| ??? 08/07/10 22:58 Read: times |
#177864 - Choices, choices Responding to: ???'s previous message |
There's more of an obligation than that. It's a matter of reason and etiquette. This point has been brought up time and again, even by you. The choices are,
(1) answer the question as asked or (2) remain silent Etiquette is to give a good answer. A good answer is not the same as "ansewr the question as asked". Don't you think it's strange that you are alone (!) who thinks we should answer the question, just the question and nothing but the question, even when the answer to the question is down a bad path? Your definition of etiquette is to either tell someone how to hang themselves if they ask, or stay silent. I'm happy not too many others share that definition of "etiquette". If you take that in the contemporaneous context, he hadn't at the time I made that remark, come back yet. Perhaps you didn't notice that. Not sure what time zone you are in, but I don't think you spent 15 hours or more composing your post. You missed three posts 15, 13 and 11 hours before you made that remark, which does indicate that you do make posts withut checking too carefully what have already been written. 2010-08-07 00:35 Nathan: I should have posted more info. 2010-08-07 02:09 Nathan: Thank you so very much, Mr.Westermark. I will. 2010-08-07 04:52 Nathan: I HAVE programmed a 28C16 EEPROM BY HAND [...] 2010-08-07 15:17 Richard: Well, whatever happened, it scared the O/P off, never to be heard from again. Timely answers from the O/P certainly would have helped direct the discussion. Answers to questions not yet asked just misdirect it. Avoidance. You try to pretend that my comment was about something else. Pretending to misread like that is one way of backpedaling. The question was about "silly questions" or the OP being "grilled". If I seem aggressive, it's just because I'm so tired of Erik's shilling for Keil and SiLabs. I agree that those are good products, but, please ... lets try to apply them in context of the O/P's query. So you target Andy Peters and the OP because you think Erik has made too many mentions of Keil or Silabs? The simulator in the evaluation edition of Keil is quite good - which other simulator do you recommend instead? The Silabs kits are quite inexpensive and complete - what alternatives do you recommend instead? Yes, and 59 of them were more or less in response to the same, "Make him do what WE want, not what HE wants" haranguing. Exactly my point. You have 59 times giving a response that is wrong, because you still haven't realized that people are not trying to get the OP to do xxx. This whole thread is not about forcing the OP to do something he doesn't like, but to show the OP that there are other options. To give him alternatives. Choices. Most people think it is good when someone gets options. You don't, because you think a requester should get only answers that are 100% limited to whatever may be deduced from the original question. That answer, and nothing else, even if such an asnwer may be a very poor one. If you have failed to pick that up 59 times, I'm pretty sure you will fail to pick it up 159 times more. Not sure how many posts a thread can have on this forum. If (a) you don't know what they're intended to do, and (b) you don't know why you'd want them, that might be a bit foolish.
You've taken my remark out of context, as you so often do, and completely forgotten that this was in the context of the "you have to buy a programmer ... you have to buy an eraser" thread that Erik raised. I might have taken it a bit out of context. But see it from the other direction - what do you think the OP should think when you involve him in sentences containing the word "dumb"? If I see a good price for a temp sensor, I may pick it up without needing one. Next month I suddenly may like to find one. Same with some nice Bluetooth-to-serial module. Maybe dumb, but quite fun to have a bit of "odd" gear laying around in case I get bored. If I on the other hand owned processor x and went out and bought memory y even when memory y can't be used with processor x (because I didn't made a reasonable attemt to check first), it would be really dumb. But getting gear before you have a use of them can be quite fun. When in school, I would lay my hand on anything with electronics in them just because I might find some nice component to play with. Now, I prefer to get modules or components in ESD bags, but still like to collect things. My son did this under DOS, as there was no Win9x or beyond at the time, to interfere with full control of the machine. I still have machines just for that purpose, i.e. to avoid the rubbish that Windows does. When I need Windows, I use it. When I want to do hardware work, I use DOS, or I back off even further to a box running CP/M on a fast Z80. It didn't take me many fractions of a second to realize he used MS-DOS. But did you get my point? It is not trivial to build an EPROM burner from a PC, unless you have access to MS-DOS or know how/where to download free-dos or similar, or maybe know how to modify some Linux code. So your insinuation that your son could do it and hence even Andy Peters must be able to, fell quite flat because of a huge assumption. One thing with assumptions is that they should be documented. Such as: "If you have a machine with MS-DOS, it is quite easy to..." Hidden assumptions are lethal, because it can take a lot of skill to notice the hidden traps. If you have 40 years of experience, you should be well aware of this. I's not convenient to do low-level work under Windows, so one probably would wake up and use DOS. Correct. But MS-DOS isn't for sale since a great many years, so suggestions to use it should maybe also contain suggestions to alternative routes. It's because the O/P has come back, so we're on to the next step. Apparently he's read at least some of the things written about his sad query. Now it's time to face the facts. He's either going to have to spend some money, or to do something someone else has suggested. The point, of course, is to leave the choice up to him. But the reason he has a choice, is because a number of people have given him choices. With just a minimalistic answer based on the first sentence, the OP wouldn't know about any choices. |
