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Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC
First time accepted submitter salcan writes "There is growing interest surrounding the Raspberry Pi Foundation and their promise of a PC that will cost just $25. We've seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year. Eben Upton, director of the foundation, recently gave a talk at Bletchley Park regarding Educating Programmers, which focused on the thinking behind the $25 PC."
First time I've heard this mentioned. This really is the successor to the BBC Micro!
FTA:
"Something we didn’t realize is that Raspberry Pi not only intend to make this PC work through a HDMI and DVI connection, they also want it plugged into old analog TVs just like kids managed with in the 80s. It also means you don’t need an up-to-date display in order to start playing with this device"
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC? Whoa. Radical, dude.
I am convinced that I can always be convinced otherwise.
The Raspberry Pi isn't exactly the same thing -- it does not include a case, keyboard, LCD, or speakers. But, you can probably get all that stuff for another $25. So maybe the OLPC has a new partner.
$25 is less than the cost of most Arduino boards, if it's possible to add some digital/analogue inputs/outputs it could become electronics bloggers new favourite toy (at least for high power mains projects, I suspect Arduino will still have much better power consumption!)
It has a HDMI port
It also has an analogue TV out.
We don't even know how much RAM will it have
The $25 version will have 128Mb, and there's a $35 with 256Mb.
whether it will run Linux
It will run Linux, originally the hope was to run Ubuntu but with their restricted memory footprint they're having to go with a version of Debian instead. Amazing what you can learn when you watch the full video and actually listen to it.
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?
Becomes a server?
If 128MB version costs $25, why they didn't go with 2GB for $30 instead? $5 difference for almost "classic" web PC with mainstream OS (Ubuntu).
839*929
dohoho
There are quite a of of nettops sold without anything but the 'box' and they still deserve to be called a PC.
quality wireless alarms and shutter door gate controllers
A Mac Mini isn't a PC?
Of course not, it's a Mac. XD
(I know, I know...)
Ah, your posting history shows that you're probably not trying to troll, and that you have been on a Slashdot hiatus since 2008. My apologies.
PS your bio should say "sexist", not "sexiest".
which is totally what she said
I want one of these and I can easily afford (and own) PC's worth 4-figures.
I don't know why, I just want one.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
If so many people use their PC for web browsing only, absolutely anything that is more power efficient ,portable and cheap should find its market and not only in third world countries .I saw a movie on youtube showing Quake 3 being played (and rather smoothly) on Raspberry PI, so it's not that slow.
quality wireless alarms and shutter door gate controllers
You raise a good point that a all-in-one solution, such as a laptop, would be ideal. But what's so interesting about the $25 PC is that it's not all-in-one, and encourages thinking outside the box. After spending a month or two toying around with Linux, students could be encouraged to explore cutting-edge technology by pushing all their Raspberry Pi computers together and building beowulf clusters, render farms, or protein folding simulators at very low cost. Or perhaps even create a next-generation videogame console with this PC at the heart!
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
or that Mensa has really low standards
If you've only just realised that, you've never met a Mensa member before. It's a club for people who define themselves by their intelligence, yet are so insecure about said intelligence that they require affirmation by membership of a club that is `exclusive' to people who manage to get a rather mediocre score on a fairly trivial test.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Seriously? Not sure how it works in the US, but in the UK, schools by textbooks, pupils don't, and if the school had to pay $100 for each textbook then they'd blow their entire annual budget on textbooks before they even thought about hiring teachers...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The Raspberry Pi hardware doesn't do the same things as the OLPC does. The Raspberry doesn't include an form of input or output as part of the reference hardware. So, at that point we are basically selling a computing core, ram, and some storage for $25. If the students need monitors, mice & keyboards at each location, they may as well just carry around a USB thumb stick with a custom LiveOS and put the Pi or other processing core at the work station. That sounds a LOT like my son's middle school.
Are we getting confused here between undergraduate textbooks and the kind of textbooks used by, say, 12 year olds?
I'm seeing the RP as something to be used by under-16s to get their introduction to software tinkering -- just as so many of us did with our 8 bit home computers.
Some folks just don't bother logging in.
25USD? Probably only in the USA. I guess in Poland the price of the A/B models will be something like 75/100USD... Hooray global market!
That's true for K-12 education in the U.S. as well, but university students must purchase their own books.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Looks like a great project. I think a key though will be to have some well-written documentation or tutorials to go with it. For my first computer (Atari 800XL), my Dad just bought a book on BASIC and a book of type-in games, and it was going through those that encouraged me to learn and experiment. Hopefully they can get a hookup with O'Reilly or somebody to produce a companion volume.
Reeeally pie in the sky wish would be for a BBC series to go with it, a la The Computer Programme, Making the Most of your Micro and Micro Live. Never gonna happen sadly. :-(
It's a Unix system - I know this.
And let me say it before someone else does: "If I had a UID like yours, I wouldn't bother, either."
Yeah, you were one digit off a palindromic UID. You must have been gutted.
Any chance of a link to where such hardware can be picked up for that sort of price?
The Raspberry Pi isn't aimed at university students, it's aimed at schoolchildren. So it follows that when they talk about textbooks, they're referring to school textbooks.
When I was in (Dutch) secondary school, textbooks used to be around €50, so that’s a little cheaper than university but still way over $25. Secondary school students can usually rent their books from the school here instead of having to buy them themselves, so that brings the total cost down to about €10 per book for the student.
Who the hell has a low UID? Are you smoking something? Or did I miss a few million registrations?
Back in my hole. Get off of my lawn!
Shut it, n00b. ;)
How is the cost of university textbooks even remotely relevant when discussing a computer aimed at schools?
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Heres one, and yes I have actually purchased from here (as I said an NC600 is sitting on my desk).
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-gs/237314653-PC-Station-Thin-Client-Small-PC-Network-terminal-PC-share-station-wholesalers.html
As I said before, I've got a T580 on my desk, works amazingly well.
Never met a member.. but I did come to a similar kind of conclusion when I saw the website, and the fact you have to pay to be a member.. nice little racket they have going on there.
which is totally what she said
Shouldn't that info be on the WEBSITE?
It is.
Don't you check your "facts" before posting them online?
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I did make it into university (actually, I had more trouble making it out again - after my PhD and a postdoc, I eventually managed to escape from academia, although they occasionally persuade me to return for a bit), but in school, including A-Level, all of my textbooks were provided by the school. Most textbooks for this age range were under £10. I still have a few of my textbooks (the school sold old ones off sometimes, or gave them away if they were switching to a new textbook the following year), so I just checked online for the cost of the new versions of them. The most expensive one was £12.60, most were in the £5-10 range. My mother was a teacher when I was at school, so I was constantly aware of the price of textbooks, because it was a significant factor in her school's total budget. At $100, they'd have been bankrupt within a year. At £5, they were struggling to find money to replace the ones that wore out.
University textbooks are more expensive, but that's no more relevant when discussing something aimed at schools than saying that cars are more expensive. They're a different product for a different market. School textbooks are there to give you a reference for the course and to be handed back at the end of the year. University textbooks are meant to be a reference that you will continue to refer to after graduation, if you stay within the field. School textbooks generally cover material that's been known for a long time, whereas university textbooks are expected to cover the latest research (at least, the ones worth buying).
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I've never gotten quite what Mensa is supposed to be. Apart from an artificial ego-boost, why would anybody want to join Mensa. What is it they actually do? It's only perceived value seems to be from the membership itself. Why bother joining them at any IQ-score?
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Does it stop being a device that can Compute thing for an individual Person?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?
Becomes a server?
A server with attached keyboard and monitor is a PC then?
The monitor and related stuff is a kind of handicap... Let's call it a workstation, 'cause you'll have to work harder at keeping it going.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The funniest thing about MENSA is what it means in Spanish. :-) Yeah they're so smart nobody noticed they joined the stupid club.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I'm seeing the RP as something to be used by under-16s to get their introduction to software tinkering -- just as so many of us did with our 8 bit home computers.
That is indeed their stated aim. But in that case, I'd suggest a PC is the wrong choice. The magic of the 8-bit computers was that they were simple enough to feel like you could get complete mastery of them. You could start with the simple build in BASIC language, and if you want to put something on the screen, you could just PRINT or POKE. No vast and complex APIs to master. No creating a window, no getting a device context, no requirement for a draw function that will be called by the system, no components, no dialogs, no MMU getting between you and the hardware ports etc.
10 PRINT "Hello World"
They'd do better to create a simple computer based on a SoC - ARM, Propeller, AVR or something, and put a simple language (not necessarily BASIC) in ROM that comes up on boot. It'd also be far easier to hit the $25 target.
Python or Ruby would make good choices for a modern day simple language.
From the pic of what they showed, that's all I saw. The casing, as well as the display themselves would cost double that amount. And keyboard - I'm assuming one wants it to be somewhat ergonomic, instead of dumping old keyboards to this just b'cos it might be for kids in Uganda. I'm assuming that it has an ARM based SoC, plus some on-board RAM - presumably DRAM - and then some other controllers for external devices and interfaces. Also, how is the BOM of this $35 - that would be just the cost of everything, and the price typically has to be twice to recover costs, unless one wants to create another red-ink company.
Also if your really poor, you probably don't want to buy a new monitor when an old one can be had for little or no money, and will work just fine. Same for keyboards and mice, new ones are cheap enough but used ones are often thrown out in large quantities and work perfectly well.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
All my textbooks when I was in graduate school were $60 and up. Didn't bother buying them - just took notes, used the handouts and occasionally borrowed the text book if I had to. Ended up w/ straight B's. An O'Reilly book probably costs $35, but I haven't seen them being used much in universities.
So what did you do - buy cheaper books that the professor didn't recommend?
That's probably OK for the next couple of years, while the digital TV switch is recent enough that people are still giving/throwing away their analog TVs. But by 2014-15, the cost of adding the analog TV interface to every motherboard just for the tiny few which will find new cheap analog TVs will not be worth it. Cheaper would be work on a cheap HDMI/analog downconverter. Which sounds like an excellent project from the HW community using a cheap motherboard like this one. By 2015 HDMI TVs will be cheap enough, and enough getting given/thrown away, that they'll probably be more plentiful and cheaper than the antique analog TVs still passing through the hands of collectors and luddites.
--
make install -not war
From what I can read, so far, nearly all of the commenters are missing the point. This is not intended as a "cheap PC" option in the same way that OLPC was meant to get laptops into the hands of third-world children; if you read up on it, it's intention is for use as a "standard platform" for learning programming techniques in a limited environment. People like David Braben grew up learning to write extremely efficient code because they had such limited memory to work with, such as the Sinclair ZX80/ZX81 which only had 16KB (NOT a typo, that's KB, not MB), the Acorn/BBC B with 32KB and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48KB. There is a general feeling that current students are getting "sloppy" and presume they're always going to have GB's of memory to stretch out in, so they've created PI to encourage creative thinking without placing too much demand on the wallets of students.
They used to regularly tout the National Association for Gifted Children (UK) for new members. My parents refused to let me join Mensa because of the high cost and the fact that it did indeed seem like a big scam.
The member I met had a neck-beard. I remember the bot he bought with him; I was truly impressed. The complete lack of social humour made me nervous. I was 10.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
?!
The Raspberry Pi device is a SoC-based computer. It's an ARM chip from Broadcom and it runs Linux. So it'd be dead easy to start people off with Python or Ruby.
Yeah, I didn't check the journals or the actual content of the previous posts. Maybe they all have obviously stupid mistakes, but some of the mods were too stupid to notice.
Since putting "troll, trooowllll" in my signature, I've had less irate posters lambasting me for having an opinion, it's nice.
I guess I do troll slightly sometimes myself (especially with the "Americaaaa, fuck yeah!" types), but mostly I'm being genuine. My sig is just a quote from my favourite Boxxee song, rather than an indicator than I'm trolling :p
which is totally what she said
I partially take that back. Having now watched the embedded video, I see that it IS an ARM based device, and they considered and rejected the AVR as not powerful enough. But still, I think it's a mistake to have Linux as an OS. It's way more complex than the old 8-bit computer paradigm.
It's easy, you just get them to sign a contract and get the rest of their money through data plans.
$25 dollar PC?
But as he was one digit below, he could just have immediately registered another account to get a palindromic UID.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I don't think I can get the professors wire bound collection of photocopied articles for $25 let alone a published book.
15 years back or so I was writing a program for a publishing company that calculated how much money the company could make off a book. While I was debugging the application I was trying to see how cheap I could make my average textbook. Hard Cover, Color Diagrams, Paper that won't dissolve on a humid day... I couldn't come up with a pricing model where break even wasn't under $50.00 a book. Being that most textbooks only may have a run of maybe 10,000-50,000 or so. It makes it hard for real mass production.
What they really need is to get professors and students to demand cheaper quality books. Soft Cover, B&W and just text, with limited diagrams, done on low quality (brownish, rough) paper. Then you can get the cost of books down. But professors rarely think about that.
I remember one of my CS professors he just had his son start college and he was enlightened at the cost of the books. While he knew the price of the book for his class he rarely stopped to consider that the students also needed 5-6 more classes with books that cost as much or more. Also professors who often show a real interest in the material they are teaching have a hard time realizing that for a lot of the students that class isn't really as interesting to them as it is for the professor, and once they get the grade that book will probably is going to be resold back or never used again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because there are places like community colleges that still make you pay for books?
I joined when I was about 17 out of curiosity; the people I met were mostly lacking any social skills, kind of awkward to be around and lacking any sense of humour. Usenet's rec.org.mensa had very similar people populating/trolling it so I got out of any association with them kind of sharpish.
They're the World's smartest idiots IMO.
Try Goodwill, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Salvation Army, or any of a dozen local thrift shops. The best part is that by giving these old monitors new life, the charities win and we keep them out of landfills.
The answer to the problem you propose is Kindle (or any other ebook platform).
Shit, last class I took (3-4 years ago), the text - less than 1.5cm thick, maybe A5 size, few diagrams (though lots of formulas), was $135. The accompanying reference set (A4, probably 5cm over three softcover books) was another $100.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
But still, I think it's a mistake to have Linux as an OS. It's way more complex than the old 8-bit computer paradigm.
Yes, and no. The problem is that the old 8-bit paradigm doesn't really stretch to modern applications. There's no point doing this if the device isn't powerful enough to do things that the students will find useful. And these days, in order for it to be useful, it really needs:
* Internet access
* High resolution display
* Ability to run familiar applications (e.g. a web browser, office package, etc.).
The hope is to get the students to *use* the device first, then persuade them to tinker with it.
For our generation, the 8-bit systems worked because (1) there was nothing better within the average person's budget and (2) there was a network effect where large quantities of software were being written for the 8-bit systems and therefore they were useful.
If the only requirement was a system that was easy to tinker with, it already exists: Arduino is perfect for this application, and with the addition of a few peripherals is about as powerful and useful as the 8-bit systems we grew up with.
But a system that's actually useful for modern applications, presents useful software that the students can use to get the jobs they need to do done, that's more likely to actually get them using it. And once they're using it, *then* we can start teaching them how it works. And Linux isn't complicated enough to get in the way too badly, I think. And getting those applications working *without* that complexity would be tricky.
I teach some Unix system programming courses at a college. These might be a really good tool for that; for negligible cost, the students can have a fully-functional Linux box gives them real hardware root access, without the risk that they'll do any damage to anything.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of Beowolf Cluster jokes.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Here's the problem I have with your story. If the materials are such a big part of the cost, why does the $120 physical textbook have an e-book version that costs me $90? TO RENT! If I want to keep using it after the semester is over, I need to pay another $25.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'd say it was also that there was an easily available language built-in, that you could just use.
Actually, I think that javascript could be the language kids these days grow up with. Every web browser has an interpreter, and it's fairly straightforward to get a brower to interpret it -- it's just that it's not at all obvious. No one is going to stumble upon opening up Notepad, writing javascript, and opening the resulting file in a brower. It seems like Mozilla could do some interesting stuff here...
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
All it is is a processor, with some memory. No keyboard, no display, no wireless. You can't say 'Why is the cheap laptop 100$?'.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC? Whoa. Radical, dude.
That's called a "barebones" PC by online retailers.
If I were seeing an ad for this "PC" for $25, I'd expect a bolded asterisk with a footnote that said, "keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard drive, and ethernet/Wi-Fi port not included".
That's not a low UID. This isn't even a low UID.
12 year olds don't buy their textbooks. They're assigned textbooks owned by the school for the year.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
My text books cost 300$ each. One close to 500$. Where the HELL did they find a 25$ text book?!?
I'm not sure how many "old" monitors have HDMI ports.
No sig today...
It's also German for Cafe(teria)
To meet other like-minded people.
Mensa was actually formed *before* the Internet. It's hard to believe that people actually found time to join Mensa in between all the rock-banging and fighting off the sabre-tooth tigers, but true...
No sig today...
Huh? I'm Spanish but I never heard the word "mensa" outside this context...
No sig today...
Yea...average over here (at least at my school) is around $400/semester for textbooks. It's not unusual for a single book to cost over $200. We all know we're getting ripped off, but there's not a hell of a lot we can do about it. A lot of people have started buying the international editions online...but then it's hard to sell those once the semester's over. A lot rent, too, but I personally think you're better off buying online and selling back locally.
I think Linux is the right choice, but I also think it would be nice to have a distro that was aimed at encouraging the kind of tinkering the 8 bit home computer empowered.
That means:
- A scripting language within easy reach (compare with BASIC)
- Easy access via simple APIs to 'cool stuff' - sound and graphics. (compare with BASIC's DRAW and SOUND keywords)
- Enough power to break the system
- Easy to return to a stable state (on 8 bit, this would have been a power cycle)
You are replying to a thread that includes the words "It also has an analogue TV out"
Community colleges make school-age children pay for university-level textbooks?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Don't you have a library for textbooks?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
No, Arduino doesn't fit the bill because it requires another computer to program it with, and doesn't as standard come with video.
Linux is way too complicated. Even the basics: "How do you edit a file?" depending on who you ask the answer is Vi, Vim, Emacs. All too complicated. Even Pico is too complicated. I certainly wouldn't want kids subjected to the editing by line number that we had to do, but whilst unwieldy it was at least conceptually simple.
As to internet access, people have written browsers even for the 8 bit machines of yesteryear. They're limited, but mostly because of lack of memory. Given an ARM and a reasonable amount of memory, internet access can be provided without having Linux.
Low-res screen is an advantage, not a hinderance. It means if you light a pixel on purpose, or one you didn't intend to, then you can see it. It also lowers the bar on what acceptable graphics look like, so it's easier for the kids to design their own screen elements. Even the Raspberry Pi guy on the video was saying they hoped the TV out would be the primary way of using it. Low res and all.
I'm not at all convinced by the argument that they will see familiar apps, then be convinced to start programming. They don't have a hope of producing anything like those apps, so they are more likely to just continue using them, and not do programming at all. Better that they just see some simple programs on the system and understand that they can create things like that.
Says the newb. :-D
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Well if your 18 and going to the community college which is a type of school then yes, yes it does.
Do they actually meet?
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Those numbers sound like complete bullshit to me. My first book, The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor, was a hardback printed on nice paper. It's 300 pages and the RRP is $49.99. That means that the price that the publisher charges retailers is $25. The publisher needs to sell 3,000 to make a sufficiently large profit to justify the up-front investment in paying me an advance, getting the printing done, and so on.
My next book, Cocoa Programming Developer's Handbook, was a 900 page paperback printed on quite thin paper, with a RRP of $60. That means that, at $30/copy, after selling 3,000 copies (and including paying me my royalty, paying one-off costs like copyediting) the publisher is making a reasonable profit.
If you're selling 10-50k then you're raking in cash at $50/copy RRP.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I would go with "world's smartest assholes" but maybe we should just substitute "aspies" for today's language.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My getting a diploma in Electrical Engineering seems to disprove that. At Kettering, they told us what book to buy. Then informed us they they are published on site, written by the professors, and not available used. We checked, they weren't kidding. Freaking Evil.
If you're rational about it, those clubs are almost despicable by definition. There's a good reason why Feynman dropped his National Academy of Sciences membership:
Honors, and from that day to this, always bothered me. I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Science, and I had ultimately to resign. Because there was another organization, most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join us in our organization. Including such questions as: 'we physicists have to stick together because there's a very good chemist that they're trying to get in and we haven't got enough room...'. What's the matter with chemists? The whole thing was rotten . Because the purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor. OK? I don't like honors.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Mensa: the World's smartest idiots. Should go into someone's sig!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Welcome to societies that are well off. Heeeere's your card..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I joined when I was about 17 out of curiosity; the people I met were mostly lacking any social skills, kind of awkward to be around and lacking any sense of humour.
Sounds very much like slashdot then.
in this case, that $5 difference can also be seen as a 20% increase in cost.
Karma: NaN
Only in the USA. Note that this is a topic about a UK-based project...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Watch out, they may be testing you: If you buy $500 textbook that means you're not smart enough to deserve a diploma.
Seriously it depends on the subject. If you chose a very narrow field that has few students but needs a lot of research textbooks can be pricey.
Here's another idea... ALLOW USED COMPUTER EXPORTS. Europol (the Police of Europe) just announced that used computer exporting "criminals" have been discovered to be Africans sorting through stuff rich people throw away, and sending it back to their families. Major study just released, documenting 220,000 tons of electronics imported into Ghana, show 85% reuse or repair-and-reuse (15% failure, not much higher than new store returns). Reducing the restrictions on used computer exports would accomplish the same thing, and buyers overseas would be less beholden to junk dealers who ship lower quality. Exaggerate Risk + Prohibition leads to Mexican Marijuana cartels, Al Capone, and "solutions" like this which cost more and work less well than a 3 year old computer.
Gently reply
Intelligence and Wisdom are two very different things ;)
I don't think there's any library anywhere that will have dozens of copies of $150 textbooks just so that students don't have to buy their own copies. I went to a big ten school in the U.S. and for most engineering courses the library had a couple copies in reserve for a class of 100+ students. If you didn't have money, you had to run after the class to be first in line at the library to get the book from reserve and xerox the problems and whatever else you needed.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I think that, at least in the U.S., textbook authors should be collectively sued for racketeering. They let the publishers extort money from students, and they are willing participants. If you're bright enough to write a textbook, you may well self-publish -- it's not hard. You'll get way more money into your pocket, and it will be way cheaper to the students.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
We have a perfectly good term for computers in general. They're called computers.
But some people will count any appliance with an embedded CPU as likewise a computer. This leads to confusion between appliances that run only the single app they came with and appliances that can have apps loaded on later but only those signed by the appliance's manufacturer this comment to a recent Slashdot story about an Xbox 360 jailbreak: "If you can't expect to load homemade apps onto your car, microwave, or alarm clock, don't expect to be able to load them onto the video game computer next to your TV set."
Not only that, but it wouldn't be beyond 10-12 year olds to master the innards of this thing. All it takes is a well written book and libraries for say python. I think that there should be an operation mode where it boots directly into python running on a graphical console (fbdev on linux). Of course you'd need to do some development to set python to run that way, but hey -- that'd be fun.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Linux is just a kernel. There's nothing wrong with having the kernel there. You get the benefit of having reasonably well debugged drivers and network stacks, while still being able to write your own. If you want to test your own networking stack, you're free to open a raw socket and do whatever you want, just like you could in DOS. If you want to write to a partition and play with your own filesystem, you're free to do that as well.
What I dislike is the X windowing system. It's seems like such an over-the-top thing for what little functionality it provides these days. Almost all GUI frameworks do their own rendering of everything anyway, they only use X for window management and to push events around. It's sad that it takes an X server to run most unix graphical applications...
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Show some sensitivity -- your country is not the only one in the world, you know. As a 12 year old, I had to buy my own textbooks. Yes, the money came from the parents, but the school owned no textbooks, not even in the library IIRC.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I joined when I was about 17 out of curiosity; the people I met were mostly lacking any social skills, kind of awkward to be around and lacking any sense of humour.
Sounds very much like slashdot then.
Slashdot has a sense of humor, just look at how Unicode is handled!
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
For most uses all you need is a spiral-bound A4 or Letter size two-sided printout. Maybe they should be visiting Kinko's more.
I'm not quite sure if you're not a paid troll for the publishing industry :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
My goodness yes they are.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
As I said, if "computers" is too generic for your taste, there's also "microcomputer" that doesn't have either of the areas of confusion. Or even "personal computer" spelled out rather than abbreviated to "PC". It's specifically "PC" that is associated purely with IBM PC compatibles. As for example in the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" adverts. No one is objecting because a Mac is also a "PC". Everyone understands that "PC" generally means IBM PC compatible, and most will also assume Windows.
I'm pretty sure they aren't going to replace their TVs unless they break. And even then, they'll go get it repaired before buying a new one.
Furthermore, an SDTV that can't be repaired will be replaced with an SDTV from a pawn shop or a charity shop. This is what HDTV geeks don't understand. But then, there are a lot of old CRT computer monitors, which would still work with an enhanced--definition (480p) VGA output.
Come on. This is so exciting... For $35 (these have network ports), I'll probably buy 10 of them just to start with. How many cool projects could you bang out starting with $35 hardware and a wall-wart? Fish tank controllers, alarm systems, packet radio systems, aurora monitoring stations, power monitoring systems, train set controllers, (really any R/C model controller remot-ified by radio), atmospheric clarity monitors, weather loggers... c'mon. The applications are limited only by your imagination.
Oh. Wait. I see the problem.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It only has meaning in a few Latin American countries. From the DRAE:
menso, sa.
1. adj. coloq. Ec., El Salv., Hond., Méx. y Nic. tonto (â- falto de entendimiento o razÃn).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
HDMI port? Why not just SSH and/or telnet into the thing, etc.? All you need is a $1 cable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The raw materials of the book isn't the largest part of the cost, it's royalties. You also still have all the overhead of marketing, sales/customer service, editors, copyright, and of course you still need to make a profit. You also paid for the rental DRM software for your e-book.
The renting of e-books though is a straight up scam.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Yes. Yes they do. A few years ago, a friend invited us to a party and when we got there, we didn't see anyone else we knew. And the people were weird. Finally, our friend told us it was a mensa party and she thought we'd be interested. Haven't seen that 'friend' since.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Why no wifi option? Running cords is very 1990s, why does my phone have wifi but the Raspberry Pi PC doesn't? Yes I know I can buy a usb wifi dongle but they really need a version with wifi built-in.
Also the version with no ethernet port is worthless. It's 2011, any computer without network access is worthless.
I read the FAQ and I understand their reasoning for not including wifi ("we’re trying to build the cheapest possible computer that provides a certain basic level of functionality") but you're really hurting the people you're trying to help by forcing them to pay more for a wifi dongle elsewhere or do without and be cut-off from the world and why would you want to cut-off the people you're trying to help from the rest the of world?
Seems like the price is really $40+ because the $25 version is worthless and you have to buy a wifi usb dongle to get going which pushes the $35 version above $40.
I'd like one just for the low power usage of only 1w and being only $25 it makes sense to replace other devices, just need a usb wifi dongle and external hard drive. If there was a way to add a little more RAM it could be really useful and replace a lot of PCs which would save a lot of power but 256mb just doesn't go very far now days.
Here's to hoping for a ~$40 version with wifi and 1gb RAM or maybe someone else will see this project and decide to do it the right way.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Damn it! One more sign I'm now 'old'.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Who needs a kernel? A kernel keeps a user away from the raw hardware. Why would we want to keep a kid who's learning how to program away from the hardware on his own computer?
So long as the computer has a reset button to take it back to a known stable condition, let him go wild with accessing the hardware ports directly.
Nah, everyone over 210684 is an idiot.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I'm not sure I understand. Surely sharing the cost of the textbooks among as many children as possible to keep the individual costs low would be the strategy chosen by societies that are not well off, right?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yeah MSFT tried that with WebTV and it didn't work so well, did it? text looks like shite on a crusty roll on an old TV set unless you are gonna rewrite the code to put everything big as hell like the old VIC20 and even then it'll be eyestrain o-vision.
A much better idea would be the good old D-Sub. CRTs are being dumped on the third world by HUGE amounts and even the poorest of the poor in the west can find an old CRT for cheap. Sure the picture may only be 800x600 but it will look and work a hell of a lot better than a TV, isn't that what matters?
If they truly want to help the third world it needs a cheap but solid plastic case, a D-Sub to go with the HDMI and RCA outs, USB ports for keyboards and mice, and enough storage you can actually load a few programs on the thing, I'd say 4Gb of NAND would be affordable. Add that to the $35 model and you have a unit you should be able to sell for less than $60 and make a few bucks while still having a unit that can be useful OOTB.
With 4Gb one could easily put in a stripped down Linux (maybe with XFCE or Fluxbox?) along with educational programs and still leave a couple of Gb for user files. it would be relatively snappy, easily customizable to the school or environment, work with any kind of screen they can come up with, and most importantly wouldn't need a CS degree to use. Hell with XFCE or JWM could be run by an 8 year old. This thing looks more like a hobby embedded playtoy than a PC for the third world.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Also, it's ARMv6 which Ubuntu has supported for some time now, so I think that's another reason why other distros are getting a look-in, e.g. Debian and Fedora.
Wonder if Ubuntu are thinking maybe ARMv6 is worth supporting after all if millions of kids are going to get their hands on a Raspberry Pi?
I am surprised. My mother-in-law, who was born in Mexico near the southern tip of Texas, will often tell me, "Yo no mensa." She uses it in the context of "I'm not stupid" or "stop treating me like I am stupid."
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
there's also "microcomputer" that doesn't have either of the areas of confusion.
Answer me this: "Is the Mac mini a minicomputer?"
I was taught that "microcomputer" originally meant a computer whose processor does not implement virtual memory. As microprocessors began to integrate virtual memory in the i386 era, the micro/mini line got blurred. Besides, the general public isn't familiar with the term "microcomputer" and might think of it as referring to physical size.
Or even "personal computer" spelled out rather than abbreviated to "PC".
That'd be fine if comment subject lengths were unlimited.
As for example in the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" adverts.
For one thing, not everybody who posts comments to Slashdot agrees with Apple's assertion in the "Get a Mac" ad campaign that "Mac" is not a subset of "PC". For another thing, I seem to remember the "Touché" ad in which the Mac character stated "and I'm a PC too".
Nope. Universities do not teach students, and they do not employ teachers. Universities employ lecturers, who present information to students and place them in an environment where they can learn. The students are supposed to teach themselves. This is the difference between a university and a school. You go to a school to be taught, you go to a university to assisted in learning. Failure to understand this difference is one of the biggest reasons why people drop out of university.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"We've seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year."
I know it's fun to rag on the OLPC but that comparison wasn't even a fair one. Tack on everything else to make it usable and able to withstand and operate in environments that aren't friendly to computers then you can compare it on price to the OLPC.
Finally, a computer your mom can afford!
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Answer me this: "Is the Mac mini a minicomputer?"
No. Minicomputers are multi-user systems. There's no room for confusion there. It's not a "Mac minicomputer".
That'd be fine if comment subject lengths were unlimited.
What are comment subjects to do with it? It was "PC" in the summary text.
For one thing, not everybody who posts comments to Slashdot agrees with Apple's assertion in the "Get a Mac" ad campaign that "Mac" is not a subset of "PC".
It's just one example. PC means IBM PC compatible family in most contexts.
I seem to remember the "Touché" ad in which the Mac character stated "and I'm a PC too".
On the basis that the new architecture is X86 PC compatible family and it could now run Windows. It rather helps my point. Before that and other than that, a Mac is not considered to be a PC by most people.
Again it's not that people that say any single user computer is a PC is wrong. It's that to use the term "PC" when you don't mean X86 IBM PC compatible family causes pointless confusion, and time-wasting arguments, such as this one. So it's just bad practice.
A kernel doesn't keep anyone away from the raw hardware, because you're never forced to boot it; you can decide when you boot the machine up if you want to use it or not.
Dilbert RSS feed
Same here. And until recently, the teachers could change books every year, making it much harder to resell them (since you'd have to find some other school that used them).
Dilbert RSS feed
Yes.. it's their fault that you starting bitching about something before RTFA...
As a former ChemE, I can attest to this. Senior year the books were betwen $300 and $500 each. The difference is that they are cloth bound and you keep them for your career since they are filled with reference tables you will need. Not at all surprised to CDCR on that list. Granted that was '94 and most of that is probably available online now.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
Minicomputers are multi-user systems.
Then what's fast user switching?
What are comment subjects to do with it? It was "PC" in the summary text.
Headlines (such as "Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC") are also limited in length.
You're a good example of the computer illiteracy that they're hoping to cure with this device.
Just your UID :)
Old is a state of mind.
which is totally what she said
It depends on your major, doing science and math for my undergrad the books would typically start at $90 or so and go up. But when I went back for my TESL, I think the most expensive book wast $90 and most of them were quite a bit less.
"If you've only just realised that, you've never met a Mensa member before."
Or read Slashdot much. (runs)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If you can only afford a $25 dollar computer, then it's unlikely you'll have a wifi node and broadband in your home. But you can share a usb modem (wireless, ethernet, or even a null modem) amoung a group of students.
The biggest flaw is you have to buy a DVI or HDMI capable display, a USB keyboard, USB mouse and a hub. all have to be bought new as what comes from the trash is PS/2 and VGA. you then need a USB to SATA or IDE adapter. Managing to not have all that recent and compact stuff not stolen is up to you.
So all in one it's better suited to hobbyism than low cost computing, you can buy a pentium 4 with 512MB, 17" CRT and PS/2 keyb/mouse for much cheaper than that.
a great use would be to use it as a homebrew console. I'm glad I've had a glance at TFA, as we can learn there's a much needed composite output! (can also serve for less than ideal but usable computing)
sadly quake 3 has lower requirements than web browsing, especially on the memory front. also if you swap on a USB stick, that will be incredibly slow and kill the thumb stick.
That's a very interesting distinction. Certainly touches on an important difference between university and "lower education".
But this is trying to over-specify "school" and "teach" to suit your purpose. In reality, "school" applies to universities, and "teach" applies to lecturing (and advising).
If your gripe is that "school", as you understood it in the context of the article, means "``lower'' education", then that's the point you should make. And I agree with you there -- investigation turns up evidence corroborating that this is what Braben means:
Within a few years, Braben says, every child could own one of these computers from age 11 until graduating high school.
(Quoted from an American publication.)
Be careful about getting lost in details, especially in reflexive defiance of those who contradict you. It drags everyone into the weeds.
No problem, I can supply them all day long. But two things need to be considered. 1st They won't run win7 or similar because the hardware specs will be ~5-10 years old, 2nd they won't all be the same because I will be trolling for deals from "PC recyclers".
Aka, at this point in history if someone doesn't have a PC, its probably not because they are too expensive to acquire. If you want to give children in Africa PC's the cheapest way is to divert a container full of PC's destined for some illegal recycling operation. One or two people can teach a kid how to fix an old PC in a matter of hours. Powering them, might be a different problem.
Don't worry. Give it a couple of days and you'll have forgotten it ;)
So there needs to be a system that doesn't use a kernel. A non-Linux system. Whether or not you can also run Linux is neither here nor there.
You young un's. Always arguing when us old-timers are trying to get some shut-eye... :)
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Oh dear, you've got egg on your face now. I did read TFA. It says "PC" and says nothing to indicate it's not from the X86 IBM PC compatible family.
It seem you DIDN'T read the article before bitching.
The information that it's ARM based is (as I said) in the video.
Wow, you two had a complete failure of communication there.
Books will cost between £20 and £100. You can of course attempt to buy these second handed / resell them after the fact, but there will also be an attempt to force you to buy new.
Depends. I needed a grand total of one book in my entire university career. Nearly all of my lecturers gave us handouts. One of them gave us photocopies of about half her book as handouts - although I'm not sure whether her contract with the publisher permitted that or not. The one book I bought because I needed it was important background for my dissertation, and cost 41 pounds.
Then what's fast user switching?
It's fast user switching. One user at a time, not multi-user like a mini-computer.
Headlines (such as "Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC") are also limited in length.
And would be less of a problem if "personal computer" was spelled out in the summary. But the real mistake was made by whoever wrote TFA, not the slashdot submitter that merely repeated the text.
OK, that explains your lackluster karma. Thanks for clearing that up.
+0 Meh
Right. If Mozilla added a 'open new tab for editing' option, or something, that let you edit, load, and save source (javascript/HTML), and then 'run' it by executing it in another tab... it would be almost as interactive as old BASICs were. Is there any type of add-on for Firefox that does that? It seems pretty simple. Maybe it's there and I've missed it.
Menstruation. 'La mensa' or 'Las mensas' in the Mexican dialect. Probably Central American as well, not sure.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Oh, you were thinking of an interactive interpreter like the old machines? I've never seen one for new architectures, do they exist?
I was thinking that it would be preferable to write the code in Linux, compile it as a standalone program and reboot to run it.
Dilbert RSS feed
Yes and no. First you have to get to the library, which is on campus. When I was in school I lived off campus, and it was a hassle to get there (especially since I worked part-time in addition to classes). Second, there's no guarantee the library will have a copy that isn't checked out already. Often I'd show up to get a book out and both copies (and it was unusual that the class had two) had already been taken out by someone.
Plus the books make a pretty good set of shelves now...
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
A few professors at my old UC wrote the textbooks for their classes. They cited the high prices as the reason that they'd done so. The books weren't as colorful, but had all the information we needed. They went for around $50, nowhere near as bad as what we'd have to pay otherwise.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
PC stands for Personal Computer, and AFAIK isn't tied to any particular instruction set.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Well... no. If the student themselves has to buy the books, that takes an expense away from the school itself. Yes, it puts it on the student, but budget planners in societies that are not well off likely don't get budgets for individual families. They get the budget for the school.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
For some people it means that and nothing more. For more people it means an X86 IBM PC compatible family machine. Neither usage is the absolute correct one.
Best not to use "PC" unless you really do mean a PC architecture machine and not a personal computer.
It's a computer, and it's yours, so it's a personal computer. It's for you to experiment with and play with.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If what you said were true, then in K-12, there would never be homework, because homework is a form of learning something yourself. If what you said were true, then I never would have had lab classes in undergrad, and I never would have had TA groups in grad school. The reason that you spend more time studying yourself at a "University" is because you are growing up and there is more information, more quickly. But this is not a black and white thing, from K-12-Undergrad-Gradschool, it is simply a gradient of slowly being expected to learn more and more without the direct help of an adult.
Does it weigh as much as a duck?
Too bad that's the absolute opposite of what this is.
I'm pretty sure his point was that it's unfair to compare the OLPC, a full netbook with built-in controls and a display, to the Raspberry Pi, which is an ARM dev board - like a tiny (but full-featured) PC mobo with the CPU and RAM installed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A keyboard from 20 years ago will have the keys you need, but it won't have the interface you need, because the Raspberry Pi doesn't have PS2, just USB. But that's ok - a keyboard from 5 years ago is probably USB :-) Or for about $5 you can find a USB keyboard if you don't already have one.
And when I got my first computer (ok, at work, but it was the first one that I was in charge of) it didn't have a monitor either - the console was a Decwriter.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The truth is that it is hard to round up all the things you need to really have a functioning Raspberry Pi system. The total system cost if you buy the cheapest new gear is about $150, or $250-$275 with a 1080p TV. (Old TVs would be much inferior, and often unsuitable due to size and weight.) One could easily spend 40-80% more at a local big box store or on padded shipping fees for the same quality of gear and much more even than that for better quality gear. Some of that you could find used, but it wouldn't be much cheaper at a used computer store (if you even have one where you live), and if you try to get it from individuals with used extra equipment, you will have to somehow have to find those individuals and likely make several trips over a period of time to pick the gear up. This will take several hours minimum of hunting, calling and driving. If a school starts requiring them for classes for hundreds of students, these resources will be depleted.
None of the following is supplied:
Needed:
Decent TV
USB mouse, keyboard, hub
SD card, min. 4 GB, preferably 8GB, loaded with compatible OS
HDMI and/or component video cable
Power supply - 6-20V, 300ma+, with the right connector
Plastic custom enclosure (not yet made as the dimensions and port locations of the final card have not been released yet)
(Not to mention a good place to put the computer in the home, preferably with a desk and chair but not interfering with other family uses.)
Desirable:
Ethernet hub or WiFi hub/bridge and/or USB WiFi receiver
Ethernet cables
Internet service, internet access device with an Ethernet or WiFi bridge
Headphones and/or speakers
USB microphone
Spare/backup SD card
Plus shipping for all of the above, and the Raspberry Pi itself.
All that adds up - the cost of the Raspberry Pi itself is only a small fraction of what is needed. The minimum expenses to a school system to set up a classroom would be much higher - likely in the $500/seat range.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
With what? The computer you already have all to yourself as a poor 8th grader? I think you are kind of missing the point of this device.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
The RAM is package on package, and the bigger memory parts aren't available yet. Yes, the $25 version is pointless when the $35 version is so much more capable, but the real minimum price needs to include shipping, power supply, SD card with loaded OS, keyboard, mouse and video cord at an absolute minimum. That about doubles the price to $70 even without a case, network, display, or other peripherals.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
"They're the World's smartest idiots IMO."
No, there are several other, more selective IQ clubs, including the Mega Society, (the supposedly 1 in a million IQ club) with a substantial fraction of members who can't/won't use their brains and don't get on well with anybody. (K.L., I'm thinking of you!)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Then more for a mouse, and more for a keyboard, oh and something to display it on.
These are less functional then the old ZX80's
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Raspberry Pi is less IBM PC compatible than a Mac. If the RP is a PC, so is the iPhone!
The authors get practically nothing from textbook sales, depressingly. Almost all of the money goes to the publisher.
-twb
All 2M+ XO laptops in all the deployments run Linux. Development of the open source Fedora spin and the Sugar user interface for kids continues at a reasonable pace.
Stop spreading a meme that wasn't ever true.
=S
The truth is that it is hard to round up all the things you need to really have a functioning Raspberry Pi system.
That was my feeling about it as well. The Pi is cute, but it's just a bare-bones implementation of an ARM vendor's reference design. You need to add an awful lot more to turn it into a functional PC-equivalent, and once you glue all that on you're probably going to end up having spent more than just buying an off-the-shelf more-capable reference design implementation. For that reason, although I think it's quite neat, I'm going to wait until it's deployed and we can get a real estimate of what a functional Pi system will require, and cost, before I start going gaga over it.
Most old monitors also don't accept analog TV video either. They are strictly VGA only.
My son is a Mensa member. He is definitely not like your depiction of others. He has fluency in 7 languages, has worked in Russia, schooled in Canada in English, French, Hebrew, Spanish. He is pretty good in Portugese, reads / writes / speaks Russian and is following Romanian.
Also composes music and does his own lyrics. Jumped 2 years of school and finished 2 years younger than his classmates.
He is also not a NERD.
So, the only problem his mother and I have with a son that is so bright, is keeping up with his richness of knowledge.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Commodore tried it with the C64 and Amiga, both wildly successful in their day..
Sinclair Spectrum...
Most games consoles...
People can still play and experiment when using an analog tv set.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I'm not disputing that the device isn't overly useful on its own, or that there won't be bundled sold in future which include all the extra hardware required to get it working...
But the fact that it's offered standalone, and not forced bundled with everything else is a good thing because many people will already have, or can get extremely cheaply all the other kit.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Funny, I had almost the exact same experience. A married couple invited us to a Mensa party (at least my friend and I went in eyes-open). Biggest bunch of idiots that I've ever met.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
With that UID I thought he was the Beagle Boys' Canadian cousin.
there is a reason they do not update them as regularly as you might like after all.
Most of my textbooks were updated more often/regularly than necessary. No new info added. No better explanations. In many editions the only thing that changed were the numbers in end of chapter problems. That way they could make the old editions, which were available used for more reasonable prices, obsolete. I have an EE (Circuits) textbook that was over US$200 but the class was taught entirely with a chalkboard and notes. The book was only ever used less than a dozen times for assigned homework. I essentially paid $5-10 per page used. My copy of that text is an 8th edition, so they run the scam pretty regularly.
I have other books that I never should have purchased at all because they were never even opened outside of class. Those classes were taught entirely, and I should add poorly, with PowerPoint slides and assignments e-mailed in pdf/doc format.
I've never had the encounter that a MENSA group was populated with idiots (unsurprisingly given what MENSA is, I mostly found them to be very intelligent), but most times I found the personalities to be quite odd like Gilmoure above did, and there's virtually always an undercurrent of extreme elitism that completely turned me off to the group dynamic. If MENSA wanted to fix itself, it would certainly have to start with this because it was like being in a room full of twelve-year-old knowitalls. The rampany social immaturity was downright depressing.
Virg