>source=
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http://www.piclist.com/postbot.asp?id=piclist\2002\08\18\163548a
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>Guys, I'm on the point of loosing patience with this...
>
>The CUMP group at least had the good sense to move the discussion
>off this list and thereby avoided clogging up the [PIC]: topic
>with all this talk, before it went dormant (for life?).
>
>Please: Either come to a consensis, move the discussion to [OT]:
>or go yahoo for a while until you have it together.
>
>Sean, your offer, taken at face value, is very generous. But the
>depth and breadth of experience, ideas, and design direction
>offered by the PICList combined with the lack of organization is
>unlikly to produce anything as well tested and proven as Tony
>Nixon's learning tools or Myke's books or Wouters boot loader or
>JAL or Scott Dattalos work on porting SDCC for the PIC or Fred
>Maher's excellent Bike Computer tutorial or Roman Black (and
>others) excellent answers to question on this list. If you really
>want to make a difference, pay Tony to update his course and/or
>offer to produce it at lower cost for him... or sponser a contest
>to give away Mykes books to the newbies who ask the funniest
>newbie question each month (special catagory for a new spelling
>of "unsubscribble")... or make WISP kits for Wouter at cost and
>finance the extension of JAL... or send Fred a book contract and
>a Spanish to English translator... or collect Romans answers and
>publish them.
>
>Not only are these other options more likely to return an
>investment in new PIC users, but they will also have a better
>chance of turning a dollar for you AND their authors.
>
>In fact, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about why this
>project bothers me so much and others have not....
>
>Everything you are trying to do already exists... perhaps not in
>finished form or perhaps not totally up to date, but they are
>there, and other people have put a lot of work into them already
>with little or no reward and without a hope of getting rich.
>
>When we started the CUMP project, there were only a few "close to
>universal" programmers out there and they cost a LOT of money.
>Everything else seemed to be available, the only missing element
>was enough people from enough different backgrounds to provide
>the programming algorithems. And I expected when Tony Nixon
>donated his Engine programmer (which was again, just about what
>we wanted to build, but without algorithms for other than a few
>PICs) I figured people would start building them or buying the
>kit from Tony (as others have build the "free"ICD or purchased
>one from Mchip) and work to add their programming algorithms for
>other target chips to the web site via the form at the bottom of
>the page.
>
>Instead, we got hung up in re-design after re-design, trying to
>compensate for every little possible problem that we percieved
>with the Engine. If we had started by just building Engines and
>publishing (SHAREING) the algorithms that we got to work, we
>would be far ahead of where we are now.
>
>This project is doing the same thing... but worse... because our
>OWN MEMBERS, Tony, Wouter, Myke and others, are the ones
>provideing the "almost" perfect products. And they are NOT
>charging a lot of money. And rather than offering to help them do
>more or cost less or improve what they have, we are now starting
>over again and, frankly WASTEING MIT's bandwidth with rediculous
>arguments over how many processors are in a PC and what the legal
>department at MChip might do (mia culpa).
>
>I sold another pocket programmer last week, and another few
>dollars goes into the account to build up a fund to pay Tony to
>add the ability to program parallel devices. The pocket can do
>everything and MORE that the Picstart programmer can do EXCEPT
>for program parallel devices... And Tony gave up hope of selling
>it and released it to me (at least) to produce and to anyone to
>modify the open source code. Result: Hours spent trying to design
>"Yet another programmer"/"Yet another development board"/"Yet
>another..."
>
>Until the PICList community is willing to put aside ego, and
>contribute to improve the work of others, we will not reach our
>personal potential for growth and enlightenment. What I have done
>with the PICList.com site was to gather the words of others,
>place them in a nice setting and show them to be the jewels that
>they are. Not my words, but the words of others... I could not
>hope to do better. And my achievement (of which I am very proud)
>came only after I was willing to admit that I could not optimize
>a math routine better than Scott, or write an easy to use
>language better than Wouter, or put out a better book than Myke,
>or build a programmer better than Tony, or explain more than
>Roman.
>
>Stop squabiling (sp?), admit that there are leaders here, and
>offer to help THEM.
>
>---
>James Newton: PICList.com webmaster, former Admin #3
>
spamBeGonejamesnewton@spam@
piclist.com 1-619-652-0593 phone
>
http://www.piclist.com/member/JMN-EFP-786
>PIC/PICList FAQ:
http://www.piclist.com
>
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