General > General Technical Chat
Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 09, 2018, 08:51:54 pm ---I still don't think he's a guru.
--- End quote ---
The Guru's and Swami's Union Hulapai County local #357 begs to differ... :-DD
According to Merriam Webster, guru is a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern, which in the distant 1970's he fulfilled this definition in respect to digital designs according to your fellow eevbloggers. Therefore it is not a matter of opinion.
If he still is a guru, that may be up for debate - I really don't know if you can revoke these titles.
Richard Crowley:
--- Quote from: EEVblog on November 09, 2018, 09:51:20 pm ---You're no doubt now embarrassed to find out he's one of the industries pioneers in education, oops.
--- End quote ---
That is not clear. Some people are too clueless and/or stubborn to be embarrassed.
Isn't there a "ignore this user" feature around here somewhere?
Simon:
--- Quote from: JPortici on November 09, 2018, 07:53:09 pm ---
I don't remember if you ever told from which part of italy you came but i can assure you the north east was and still is on par with the rest of the world :)
--- End quote ---
I was in the south puglia, Alberobello to be exact, As far as i know I could not order from RS unless i was a business, internet was something i got very late on and to this day the village probably still does not have it when it was a decent sized place not far from a town that had it. It was dialup only and I eventually managed it on my 3G mobile that i had to put on a special cradle bolted to the balcony with a bag over it in the rain and a 5V regulator running off an old car battery to relay the internet connection to my computer over blue tooth. Schools internet was 56Kb/s for the entire site so actual speeds of 0.5Kbps were quite normal. Getting information was very hard,
Without the internet and until i got a prepaid debit card i could not buy anything online and did not know where to get books, there were magazines but the italian practical electronics was a joke and i was a mug paying money for a magazine that was of no better standard than those so called indutry standard magazines we get at work full of waffle. Oventually practical electronics changed it's name twice becoming a computer magazine with an electrical bent. Circuits in it were often wrong and how i would of etched a board I don't know and the school lab technician was most unhelpful (an ignorant idiot that did not even know how to etch boards properly).
rhb:
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on November 09, 2018, 09:53:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 09, 2018, 08:51:54 pm ---I still don't think he's a guru.
--- End quote ---
The Guru's and Swami's Union Hulapai County local #357 begs to differ... :-DD
According to Merriam Webster, guru is a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern, which in the distant 1970's he fulfilled this definition in respect to digital designs according to your fellow eevbloggers. Therefore it is not a matter of opinion.
If he still is a guru, that may be up for debate - I really don't know if you can revoke these titles.
--- End quote ---
tl;dr ;-)
I was a bit surprised he didn't post a photo of his union card. After all, he could make one in 5 minutes or less. It would take longer to "age" it than make it. Doubtless due to having had a few hundred thousand idiots like our vacuuos friend here make similar stupid comments. Hence the Marcia Swampfelder piece.
The simple truth of the matter is that *really* smart and capable people don't care at all what other people think of their abilities. What other people think of their personal conduct matters. One does not wish to offend.
Rest assured that *other* people imposed the "guru" label. So Don has fun with it. If you are actually good enough to achieve "walks on water" status, you get *very* tired of it *very* quickly. While you can't remove the notion from people's minds, you can poke pins in it. Been there, done that and wore out several T shirts.
There is an old proverb that the best answer to a fool is silence. It's the princile of conservation of energy. Fools respond to *all* answers in the same way. The *only* reason I got involved in this thread was the OPs use of the past tense. Fortunately it was merely because In Vacuo Veritas hasn't mastered the English language sufficiently to write grammatically. I was quite concerned that Don might have passed away.
Very few people achieve the level of success as a professional tech writer that Don and Forrest have. Even though I greatly prefer Don's work over Forrest's, I have to acknowledge Forrest's accomplishment. In part it may be simply age related. I was reading Don and others before Forrest started writing. So I'd already learned all the stuff the he presented. And quite a lot of that really was just data sheet examples redrawn by hand. Forrest did do pioneering work on the use of photovoltaic cells as emitters and got into a big clash with AT&T in which AT&T behaved *very* badly. The settlement was never disclosed, but I am quite certain Mims got quite a bit of money in compensation.
Many of my close personal friends and colleagues from work have PhDs from the very best schools in the world and were supervised by the very best scientists in the world. They are all very modest and unpretentious. Except for those who must do business with national oil companies, none of them has "PhD" on their business card. "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!"
I'm an ABD (All But Dissertation). I never refer to it that way. I always say, " I'm a failed PhD candidate, and beware of anyone who advertises it." At professional society meetings I hang out with a bunch I refer to as the "heckling section". Not because any of us are in any way disruptive. We're very polite. But we ask hard questions. And if one of us closes our comment at the end of the talk with "Food for thought." it has just been very publicly and politely announced that despite being given a very explicit hint, you are clueless and the audience should ignore your conclusions.
I had wanted this thread locked, but I share Simon's sentiment that leaving it going was far better. I have not laughed so hard in ages when I read Don's 8 November post.
A note to Dave and the other moderators: If a user starts a thread in the manner that this one was started:
disparagement of a public figure
obvious lack of even basic research into that person's work
I should like to suggest that the person be advised that if they continue posting in such vein they will be banned. There was never *any* justification for the original post. The OP did not actually seek information, but merely wanted to attract personal attention by making inflammatory remarks. That this is true is demonstrated by the OP's refusal to accept that those of us who were there hold Don in high regard and recognize the "The Guru's Lair" is a '70's joke. And even though Don himself has pointed this out, the OP has persisted in insisting that *his* opinion is more important than the opinion of those of us who learned so much from Don.
Alex Eisenhut:
LOL kinda random subject... But back in the '90s I found the TTL Cookbook in my college's library as they were clearing out older titles, I picked it up for 1$. I still have it!
Actually reminds me I always wanted the RTL cookbook because of all the RTL chips in my vintage Tek junk... Off to eBay!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version