Slashdot Mirror
Raspberry Pi Has Gone To Manufacturing
alecclews writes "After weeks of waiting, the Raspberry Pi foundation, who are creating a $25 computer to bootstrap computing education, has flipped the switch on manufacturing. They had wanted to build the board in the UK but it turns out to be uneconomic."
After all of the accusations of vapourware, it's nice that they're actually making these.
To Eben, Liz and crew: Congratulations! Looking forward to watching you revolutionize computer education!
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Bit annoyed that it's not made in the UK.
But at least it's not VapourWare,
Wonder how many of the other "USB PC's" will actually get into production...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
I'll luck out and get one of the first 10,000. There's going to be a mad dash on their sales page when they finally start selling them.
The world has just changed.
This is a geek solution to a perceived problem. Cheap computers won't revolutionise anything, because we have an entrenched culture of anti-intellectualism. With the US and UK being about as bad as each other.
Reading the post (I really suggest everyone does so, it's an enlightening read), I have to say this sounds particularly worrying. The government and local manufacturers almost seemed intent on stopping them from doing the work locally. Does that even make sense?
I can understand higher costs; the West won't accept salaries below a certain threshold, there's unions, and I entirely respect that. However, the schedule problem is ridiculous. A plant thousands of kilometers away from your main sales point can be faster to ramp up production than the shop down the street? We're not speaking about a small-scale project, either! I find this utterly unbelieveable. No wonder so much of the manufacturing goes overseas.
And then the taxing part is plain and simply dumb. You can't control corporations, but that the government actively deters local production? That's like shooting yourself in the foot and wondering why it hurts.
The UK and the West as a whole (I'm entirely sure that the UK is not a special case here) should be ashamed.
I was checking this out last night and I'm actually quite excited for one to come out. I've been in the industry for years now but more on the superuser side. It'll be a really fun chance to actually have a computer where I have to learn some electronics and programming to really get the most use out of it... kind of like jumping into the deep end of the pond. It'll be my main home computer.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
as long as you keep all the 'prison labor' and 'no environmental groups, no labor unions' stuff, and get rid of all the 'social safety net stuff'.
I usually recommend a USB flash drive for my students in my Unix course (taught on Macs at the school), and leave it up to them which Linux distro to run at home from the Flash drive. With prices this low, I could almost make it a requirement for the course. I'll hold off to see how they fare though.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
While it looks like fun for a hobbyist to play with, is there really some greater purpose to this device? It seems that most people that can afford an HDMI capable (or even RCA/composite) TV or monitor to plug this into can probably also afford a 'real' computer.
That said, I'll probably buy one just to play around with it, but I don't think it will change my life.
heh. without unions you would see a lot of work return to the UK ... like children working in coal mines and toxic garbage dumps.... just like children do in asia.
there is no need for democracy in communist China, because the people are already represented in government by the Communist Party.
funny corollary: There is no need for independent labor unions in China, because the government controlled labor union inherently represents the people's interests - after all, it too is controlled by the Communist Party.
as for the basic facts of history about unions and working conditions, well, you are just 100%, flat out wrong. i mean, its like you have tried to lecture me on mathematics by starting out with "the volume of a sphere is r cubed". no, its not r cubed. its not, its not even close, and any 3rd grader knows it from basic examination of the universe that is plain to their god given eyeballs.
I'm holding out for the Blackberry Kush.
They had wanted to build the board in the UK but it turns out to be uneconomic.
Translation: while they were trying to nuzzle the UK government and NGOs for money their pitch was "ummm...sure, we'll build it here - how 'bout in that eyesore warehouse over there?" However, that was never the plan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
To clear a few things up..
Model " A " = 25GBP - Model " B " = 35GBP
MdelB is ARM11, not 6, ModelB is the one you want to be able to get your hands on.
Raspberry-Pi Foundation IS the charity, it didn't donate all the money from the auctions to a charity, they are the charity themselves.
All the money earnt from the auctions which people wilfully gave up thousands of pounds for one of the first batch boards is all going to producing the 10K batch their after.
If you follow the site and read the forums instead of just assuming, then you would see people have already gotten their hands on both models, and there are already several distributions of linux running off them, and even XBMC.
There is proof that these boards are going into production, just read the site instead of assuming.
Now all we need is an app market for these :) I'd love to have a website I could go to to see what people have put on these and try them out....of course in a lot of cases you would only want to have one app on there at a time, but it'd be fun to swap out just using a download. Want it to be a file server? download the app. need a simple web database? download the app., need it to do X? see if there's already an app for it...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
If a British company imports components, it has to pay tax on those (and most components are not made in the UK). If, however, a completed device is made abroad and imported into the UK – with all of those components soldered onto it – it does not attract any import duty at all.
Tax and duty are two different things. Anyone care to explain the actual situation there? Sounds like they're confused, at least.
Is there a specific semiconductor duty that doesn't apply to finished goods? (not sure that a board like this would count as 'finished' anyway, for duty purpose)
If they're bitching about VAT, I don't see how that would be any different, completed unit or not.
The only difference I can see is more margin on Chinese produced version, barring there is no duty on semis, as mentioned above... Which any idiot would well know, by walking into a wal-mart.
Not economical?
Why can't UK make themselves economical?
a beowulf cluster out of this.
I haven't created one so I ask the /. community, for 35USD what is your take with this device making up a beowulf cluster?
What is racist about stating facts? Just curious.
If you're looking for x86 SOC, Intel's new Medfield might be your best bet. Medfield article
If you were to give these the Raspberry Pi treatment...let's say a Pi board's cost is 1/2 cpu, 1/2 everything else. So the everything else is about...rounding up....let's say about 15 bucks. So add about $15 to whatever Intel charges for Medfield and you'd have your x86 Raspberry Pi.
It will be more expensive than $25 total, because...well...Intel is involved. No way a Medfield chipset will sell for ten bucks. But it would still be cheap and let you run Wine or other groovy stuff on a dinky cheap board.
It might be close though. I found this atom board for $57, and that's a full motherboard with a lot of expensive slots and heat sinks and the like. The actual Atom chip probably isn't more than $15-20 bucks. If Medfield is in this ballpark you could still be pretty cheap.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
China is an agrarian society, so most of the poor people are farmers. The land ownership is a very controlled system but the short version is that those poor farmers can't actually sell their land (as it technically belongs to the government) but they can lease it away for a few years. When a poor farmer decides that he wants to leave to a city to seek better wages, he leases his farm to someone, thus gains a bit of money to start the new life with and might or might not find a better paying job. If he does find factory work, he can make some more permanent arrangement about the farm and if he doesn't... he can return to continue his old life!
The system is a bit unusual but it actually works pretty well. It's the main reason why Chinese cities don't have shantytowns, etc. similar to those of most developing countries.
"They had wanted to build the board in the UK but it turns out to be uneconomic."
No, really?
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550
You wonderfully expressed what I was struggling to put into words. :-)
I believe change happens as reactionary people die.
I never thought about like that, but I think that is true.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Install, leave it someplace and forget it. Do Anonymous a favor and place random stealth TOR exit nodes the world over with bifferboard and the like.
That's not an official complaint - you've not complained to anyone official. You've just gone "wah-wah-wah I don't like this guy's stereotypes wah wah wah" to the masses.
If you want to make an official complaint, the feedback link is down
|
|
|
V there
And, if you wish the authorities to curb his freedom of expression, then you are, by definition, for censorship.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863