Actually, this email – which was titled EDA Rescue Plan – was quite inventive. It started off as follows:

Dear Max, while the federal government spends more than $700 billion taxpayer dollars to purchase troubled assets and inject capital into the financial system, Blue Pearl Software has developed an EDA Rescue Plan.

YES, Blue Pearl Software is ready to rescue EDA users from:

• Outdated and cumbersome RTL Analysis and Timing tools
• Overpriced tool contracts
• Archaic and time-consuming design methodologies
• Excessive design risk

The message then links to a special website (www.EDArescueplan.com) with offers on a variety of interesting RTL and timing / constraint tools.

Come on, if nothing else you have to admire the little scamps for coming up with an "attention-getter" like this. It certainly sparked my interest to the extent that I would like to learn more about these tools...

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me – Clive "Max" Maxfield – at max@techbites.com). And, of course, if you haven't already done so, don't forget to Sign Up for our weekly Programmable Logic DesignLine Newsletter.