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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.
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.
Depends on the root problem. The anti-intellectualism could simply be a defense mechanism adopted by people who perceive that things like computing and higher education are not available to them, and so adopt an attitude that what they cannot have is undesirable anyway. If you change this perception, they might begin to abandon the attitude.
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.
so how would you go about un-entrenching it?
this is as good a move as any. it's probably more geared toward people that want to geek out but can't afford to. not exactly the USA and UK, though it certainly doesn't exclude them.
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.
There's a good chance the motivation is financial. As in IT people threatened by their charges becoming disposable. Or software developers well aware their software is incompatible. Moderation on Rpi threads has gotten brutal, and so now most everybody posts AC.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
Honestly, wrap something like this up in a cheap case and sell it like they sell Rokus and you should be able to do something about that. For the things that people actually do like surf the web and do email this would probably be sufficient.
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 mostly agree, but I still think it will be a great product for many geeks (including myself).
It'll be interesting to see how long the market lasts however. Once everyone who wants one has gotten one (or in my case, probably many) I have to wonder where they will get their continued sales from. Although I guess you can say the same about most markets.
This is how I feel about sex. You read my mind.
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.
For what it is worth, generational change does improve the attitudes in society over time. For example, 20 years ago you would not have seen major governments even pay lip service to the problem of global climate change. In another 20 years that may actually take it seriously. I believe change happens as reactionary people die.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
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?
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?
Not economical?
They explain this at the end of the article. One of the major factors is that there tax reductions for importing manufactured systems but not for components!!! Write to your MP today.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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
For what it is worth, generational change does improve the attitudes in society over time. For example, 20 years ago you would not have seen major governments even pay lip service to the problem of global climate change
In 1988 (24 years ago) Margret Thatcher made speaches on climate change, championed the IPCC and personaly opened the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And now most leaders make speaches on climate change. Thatcher was a scientist of course.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
it's probably more geared toward people that want to geek out but can't afford to.
Computers in schools have been taken over by IT departments and many parents would not want their kids "geeking out" on their main computer. Most kids can't afford to buy their own regular computers even in first world countries. Furthermore regular computers do not come set up to encourage programming. Programming environments are an optional extra (admittedly often a free one now but still you have to find and install them) and modern PCs make interfacing with your own hardware a PITA on both a hardware (paralell ports are fast dissapearing) and software (the NT line doesn't like you doing low level port access, there are hacks but....) perspective.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Well said.
Thatcher can be criticized for a lot of things (Poll Tax, etc). But people forget that she was a Chemist (Scientist) before she entered politics, and has always loved a good bit of tech.
http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2008/07/margaret-thatcher-chemistpolitician.html
http://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/thatcher-scientist/
Have a nice day!
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
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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
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.
I think to be fair, the US child is stupider on average, but the UK is lazier. So, yes, it probably evens out.
What amuses me is adults thinking that because most kids can use mobile phones to text "LOL" and download porn on their parents' laptops, that they are somehow "good with technology" and so therefore should all be computer programmers. It's bollocks, as using a computer is about as difficult as using a TV nowadays, and no one thinks that anyone under a hundred should be able to repair their own TV.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Actually, write to your MEP, as customs duties are set by the EU.
Did I miss the UK joining the EU?
Have you been in a coma for the last 30 years?
Nope. I always thought it wasn't based on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_euro
No, you'd have to be business retarded to add an extra S on the end of VAT.
In any case, it makes no difference to the reseller - VAT is effectively paid by the final consumer, as any VAT collected from sales is netted off against the VAT paid out to suppliers. That's what "VA" stands for.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The EU is NOT the same thing as the eurozone.
The UK is a member of the EU and has been since long before the euro existed. The UK and denmark negotiated opt-outs when the treaty that formed the euro was drawn up and have no immediate plans to enter. Sweden are technically required to join the EU but are trying to stay out on a technicality and several of the new EU countries haven't met the criteria for joining the euro yet (they are technically required to join eventually but afaict no timescale was ever set).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It happened in 1973. I missed it because It was before I was born.
Again? Did somebody lose the paperwork last time or something?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yeah It should have said "Sweeden are technically required to join the eurozone" sorry.
That's a somewhat embarrasing mistake, writing a post about the difference between the EU and the Eurozone and then mixing them up myself :(
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Comparing Thatcher to Hitler/Stalin (which is exactly what you are implying) makes you loose credibility in your response.
She had her faults, and she had her pros. She was hardly a monster.
At least one was able to protest against her without fear for their lives, and in the end she lost power because the people did not like a particular policy (Poll Tax).
Have a nice day!