You make a good point. I think it might be much easier for a natural salesperson (I'm not.). I hadn't thought about myself being a natural networker. There may be some truth to that. I was and continue to be blessed by people who have a persuasive voice (maybe the natural salespeople types) to put my name in the hat for projects they find out about. I rarely look for work, because they are out there selling for me. They are good people doing good things for me because it is in their nature, not because they will see any reward. (Not in this life anyway.)
Another thing that helps is being or having someone who has a passion for sending out invoices, and following up to get them paid. This I have had to hire others to do, and even instruct them to stay on my case until I provide them the information they need to get the job done. Most recently my wife has taken on this role, she's the best yet, because she isn't the least bit intimidated by me.:-) Sending out invoices early and often makes a big difference to the cash flow, the life blood of any business.
I had similar concerns and this is what I did, and how it turned out. [Sorry this is so long, but I spent way too much time making it this short.]
At about your age I was facing the prospect of going the management route or doing what I loved. I had been acting like a manger as a team lead but avoiding much of the messy side of dealing with personel. I was expected to move on up and take on the added burdens of full management and give up the hands-on fun (for me) stuff. Didn't want it, yet I saw what happened to 50 year olds who didn't move up. I didn't want that either. So, I planned an exit strategy, and left becoming more or less a consultant. I had an incorporated company(very important to be an employee of a company - not a freelancer) already set up and 6 months of cash put away before I left.
Here are a few key things that worked for me. They weren't really part of my strategy, but just came naturally, and really paid off. (1) I really cared about the folks (mostly 10 to 15 years younger) I was leaving behind, and I wanted them to succeed after I left. I made it a point to mentor them, so they could survive after I left. (2) I really cared about the organization and the current projects I was working on, and delayed my departure for a year, to make sure they succeeded and there was a heir apparent team lead to take over. (3) I didn't tell anyone what I was planning, other than my wife, my dad (who had just retired) and a close uncle. (4) When I was ready to leave, I went to my boss, and told him I would like to sit down with his boss and anyone else that they wanted to invite and explain exactly why I was leaving, what I intended to do after I left, and make sure that any rumors would be put to bed about why I was leaving. I reviewed everything I would say with my boss, and asked for any suggestions he had that might make what I said as painless as possible for him and his boss. (5) The main points of that meeting were (1)(2) and (3) and I wanted them to know what I planned, before my peers and team members found out, so they could prepare to deal with any fallout. (6) I also offered that I would stay up to 6 more months to help finish or transition projects, or I was prepared to be escorted by security on the spot to clean out my desk (which was official human resources policy at my previous job). (7) The last and maybe most important point I tried to make in this meeting was that I was hoping not to burn any bridges, because they, the organization, the bosses, the team members helped make my career, and I didn't want them thinking bad about me, because who knows, they might even need me from time to time as a consultant. I told them that, I wasn't just thinking about it.
Now frankly, I figured I had a 50-50 shot of being shown the door immediately or worse. They probably thought I was a bit crazy leaving excellent pay and benefits for an uncertain future, but seemed to respect the approach I was taking.
Bottom line - they asked me to stay on for 6 more months and gave me a great send off complete with memorabilia. 6 months after that I was their consultant and they started outsourcing some development tasks, and now 12-1/2 years later, I still do work for them. Most of my income comes from other sources, but they are a dependable customer and the people I left behind have brought me a lot of business through their natural networking. My house is paid for, both my kids went to college, for as long as they wanted, and are doing very well in their chosen professions. I'm able to give away a substantial portion of my income to benefit those less who are less fortunate. So at least to this point it as worked out well by any measure.
One last part but not the least part of this story - (I'm pretty sure this will get mod'ed down because it cuts so much against the grain), I prayed this whole thing through, before during and after. I 'knew' this was the right thing for me to do and there was a right way to do it. Full disclosure: Yes I'm one of those. In
I work with a staggering number of engineers who are very religious and it has always boggled my mind. How can anyone with an analytical mind possibly accept things like Noah's ark?
Actually, if you can get past the presupposition that it can't possibly be true, Noah's ark is an interesting study in engineering.
I'm not sure if this is representative or not, but the link below is to an essay by one "believing" engineer. One of many that Google turns up.
NOAH'S FLOOD: Examination of scripture from the standpoint of an engineer
"The researchers’ general approach was to test volunteers — in some cases, Canadian undergraduates, in others, as the paper explains, a “nationwide (though nonrepresentative) sample of American adults recruited online”. Both sets of volunteers constitute only a limited sample, as Gervais and Norenzayan acknowledge." So, how many flaws in the study can you find in this one sentence?
To give people who haven't been following closely or paid too much attention to the trolls, what is the difference between engineering prototype for developers and the finished product? The finished product is for school kids and comes in a plastic case, yet to be designed (or at least produced). The plan was to certify the finished package, which may or may not have required the plastic to include a conductive coating on the inside. All of the first 10,000 Rpi's were just PCB's intended for developers for writing drivers, testing peripherals, and producing educational software for the final product. This made sense for 10,000 boards. But when over 200,000 people tried to buy, it be came clear, the boards were going to find their way to the general public, so better safe than sorry, the powers that be decided they must be certified, even in their "unfinished state". Now that they have passed the certification tests, this makes it much easier for small scale manufacturers (mom and pop shops, makers...) to use the RPi for other purposes legally. THIS IS HUGE if you are into this kind of thing.
According to the Dr. Web site:
"Each bot includes a unique ID of the infected machine into the query string it sends to a control server. Doctor Web's analysts employed the sinkhole technology to redirect the botnet traffic to their own servers and thus were able to count infected hosts."
Why such a strange distribution of infections? If you look at the list of known infected sites, you can see they would only appeal to a rather odd group of web surfers.
So now in 2012, 2289 units per month of a model is now considered a banner month. In the 80's I worked for GM in a component plant. One configuration we made was for a Chevy model, not necessarily the most popular, that I remember as being produced at 2200 units per day ( 2 shifts, 5 days per week). I remember because there were times due to problems, we could barely keep up with the assembly plant. Our LEAST popular configuration was for a top of the line Cadillac, only about 300 per day (6000 avg per month) required for it if I remember correctly.
You make a good point. Probably not a true story, but one I was told as true as a child:
A family friend has an assortment of expensive and junk rod and reels hanging on the wall is his carport (an open garage facing the street typical in many subdivisions). Normally his house is completely dark, and in an area where everyone has a gun or two, quite foreboding. One night he forgets and leaves his carport light on. In the morning he finds his best rod and reel stolen with a note: "Thanks for leaving the light on, I was able to pick out one I really wanted."
I only have the Googling experience so far, though I once designed and installed security systems for businesses. For my business I use ADT, but for home, I really don't like adding another monthly service bill in addition to phone, cable, internet... so yes I'm a tight wad.
BTW. Video record the burglars if you want and maybe with lots of work you might cause them a little grief. But a really loud alarm, and maybe some strobe lights might actually make them stop and move on to a less noisy place.
I'm told the number one thing you can do to deter break-ins (this according to an ADT guy) is to add more outside lighting. Don't see how that would help in the day time though. Maybe very obvious, large real or fake outdoor cameras would be equivalent?
Quote from Element 14 (one of the two distributers) Full FAQs Here
The current situation is: 2000 Raspberry Pi’s are now in the UK. Pictures are posted here for anyone who doubts their existence! The compliance teams of element14, RS and Raspberry Pi are working round the clock with the testing houses to assess the product now. Any issues that are identified (hardware or software) will then need to be rectified and we will ensure this happens as quickly as is humanly possible. There are different compliance standards around the globe and we are focused on meeting all of those as quickly as possible. However, some may take longer than others. As soon as these initial 2000 Boards are compliant to at least one set of required standards, we will receive our share of this first batch from Raspberry Pi. We will ship on a first come, first serve basis to countries where compliance standards have been demonstrably met. So, customers who ordered first in countries where compliance standards have been met, will receive the product first. Regrettably, we cannot give any firm delivery commitments on Raspberry Pi’s until this testing is complete. Please be assured we will provide this information as soon as we can. Once the product is fully compliant our manufacturing partners have the necessary stocks of components to ramp up production very quickly, so despite these frustrating, initial delays we are confident the picture will improve and lead times for new orders will reduce.
To be fair to apple though (and I hate doing this:) they probably have enough server capacity to deal with the flood that the RasPi has generated...
Maybe not. I took me about 2 hours of refreshing before I was able to order an Apple TV today. The Apple store, even with the experience of several frenzied product launches, was not looking too good.
I spoke too soon. As I was checking out the estimated ship date was April 3. The email I just received confirming my order has May 14th. A fairer but disappointing turn of events.:-)
I received a "Raspberry Pi Update" email from Newark, today (March 2) at 19:46:08 GMT thanking me for my interest, and including a Buy Now button. Apparently I had filled out the Register-Your-Interest form prior to finding out how to pre-order (see previous post). I almost ignored it having already pre-ordered yesterday with an estimated ship date of May 10th. But... I was curious as to what the current shipping estimates were.
Surprise! April 3rd! (Yes, I completed the order. Sorry if that offends anyone.)
So, now I'm wondering if maybe, I'm now actually in the first batch, or May 10th was just a wild safe guess, and now they are getting better estimates from the factory?
The R-Pi wiki at eLinux.org has an interesting table where people are entering their order time, the place they ordered it from and the estimated ship date they were given. One of the entries (mine) matches up with your info pretty closely. Link to Page http://elinux.org/index.php?title=RPi_Shipping
I went the other way and paid the $20. Knew about the phone option, but wasn't sure which would work the best. Glad you posted. Maybe you can update when you actually get it for comparison purposes. I don't think this is the only one I'll order this year.
No. Once the R-Pi site comes back online you can read the FAQs that explain the many reasons why. One major reason is that the chips are impossible to solder by hand, it requires a special robot (or pick and place and exotic solder machine). Another is that it would cost more to buy the individual parts than it would to buy a couple of units. The suppliers are being kind enough to give them prices like they were buying millions of parts though they are buying only 10's of thousands. As an individual you can't buy so of the key parts at all. If you are a manufacturer you would have to sign an NDA with some of the key part suppliers and commit to a few million pieces. It is more thoroughly explained in the FAQs and forums, because this question keeps coming up.
Correct. The $20 fee appears to be a direct ship from Farnell in the UK charge. My understanding if you call it in, you only pay typical Newark shipping. I'm guessing the website is tied into Farnell in the UK and they tack that on to cover the individual handling, customs paperwork, postage... If you order by phone, Newark USA probably has a way of ordering a batch shipping to Newark USA and then Newark uses their regular distribution methods. That's a bit of speculation, but seems to fit the bits and pieces of info I got from Newark. In the end, I decided it was worth the extra 10 to 15 bucks to have it ship direct from the UK - maybe it would knock a week or two off the process. It could be just the opposite though. A bulk order to Newark USA, that Newark splits up might move a lot faster. I understand your frustration. Just don't think there was much the foundation could do to make Farnell, Newark et al do their job better for a onetime event like this.
Unless I'm mistaken all "donors" such as myself received their stickers. At no time did the foundation imply that donors would be first in line or get any special privileges. I suspect only non-donors are raising a stink.
Their partners are much more experienced but this is a very unusual event, remember AT&T and Apple had their launch problems too.
Farnell uses Newark as its U.S. distributor and though their website is getting pretty hammered and the customer support guys say it is kind of crazy, they are taking both online and toll free number orders.
I wouldn't expect R-Pi foundation to have a staff that is any better in reaching the partners' customer support staff for info, than you or I or any of the other 100K plus people figuratively pushing and shoving in line.:-)
From a Newark Rep: "83T1943 is the Newark Part # for the Raspberry PI and has an approximate lead time of 30-40 daysyou will get charged shipping if you order online, you should call in 800-463-9275"
I'm in the US and had a heck of a time figuring out a way to order. Pre-order links not working, no results searching for Raspberry Pi on partners' site...
But in a chat with Newark rep, found that you can just enter part # 83T1943 and it will come up. $20 handling fee if you order online, less if you call the order in. "83T1943 is the Newark Part # for the Raspberry PI and has an approximate lead time of 30-40 daysyou will get charged shipping if you order online, you should call in 800-463-9275" You will still probably be charged some shipping - but according the Newark rep less.
Disclosure: Not associated with Newark, other than an occasional customer.
This is news because it means that any cloud or SaaS site that businesses or non-profit orgs depend on can be shutdown with no recourse for the innocent users. This shows that it is not just users of file sharing sites like MegaUpload (that may live on the edge) that are in danger, but any site (with only the best intentions) but with many users,( some possibly violating the sites usage terms) is at risk. I for one used JotForms for several small sites where the application was not critical, but it could have been. When Intuit (quickbooks online) or Sales Force sites are suspended, it will be no more tragic than this is for some non-proffits and small businesses. I have empathy for the owners and users of the 2 Million or so innocent forms, and so should at least a few slashdotters IMHO.
I'm obviously not getting my fair share of R Pi stories. Only one a week or so gets modded up to a level where I notice. I'd like one a day modded up to say a level 3 or higher. Can we automate that like with the Apple and Android posts?
Slashdot Mirror
You make a good point. I think it might be much easier for a natural salesperson (I'm not.). I hadn't thought about myself being a natural networker. There may be some truth to that. I was and continue to be blessed by people who have a persuasive voice (maybe the natural salespeople types) to put my name in the hat for projects they find out about. I rarely look for work, because they are out there selling for me. They are good people doing good things for me because it is in their nature, not because they will see any reward. (Not in this life anyway.)
Another thing that helps is being or having someone who has a passion for sending out invoices, and following up to get them paid. This I have had to hire others to do, and even instruct them to stay on my case until I provide them the information they need to get the job done. Most recently my wife has taken on this role, she's the best yet, because she isn't the least bit intimidated by me. :-) Sending out invoices early and often makes a big difference to the cash flow, the life blood of any business.
You are welcome and thanks for the feedback. It sounds like you are approaching the possibilities the right way.
I had similar concerns and this is what I did, and how it turned out.
[Sorry this is so long, but I spent way too much time making it this short.]
At about your age I was facing the prospect of going the management route or doing what I loved. I had been acting like a manger as a team lead but avoiding much of the messy side of dealing with personel. I was expected to move on up and take on the added burdens of full management and give up the hands-on fun (for me) stuff. Didn't want it, yet I saw what happened to 50 year olds who didn't move up. I didn't want that either. So, I planned an exit strategy, and left becoming more or less a consultant. I had an incorporated company(very important to be an employee of a company - not a freelancer) already set up and 6 months of cash put away before I left.
Here are a few key things that worked for me. They weren't really part of my strategy, but just came naturally, and really paid off.
(1) I really cared about the folks (mostly 10 to 15 years younger) I was leaving behind, and I wanted them to succeed after I left. I made it a point to mentor them, so they could survive after I left.
(2) I really cared about the organization and the current projects I was working on, and delayed my departure for a year, to make sure they succeeded and there was a heir apparent team lead to take over.
(3) I didn't tell anyone what I was planning, other than my wife, my dad (who had just retired) and a close uncle.
(4) When I was ready to leave, I went to my boss, and told him I would like to sit down with his boss and anyone else that they wanted to invite and explain exactly why I was leaving, what I intended to do after I left, and make sure that any rumors would be put to bed about why I was leaving. I reviewed everything I would say with my boss, and asked for any suggestions he had that might make what I said as painless as possible for him and his boss.
(5) The main points of that meeting were (1)(2) and (3) and I wanted them to know what I planned, before my peers and team members found out, so they could prepare to deal with any fallout.
(6) I also offered that I would stay up to 6 more months to help finish or transition projects, or I was prepared to be escorted by security on the spot to clean out my desk (which was official human resources policy at my previous job).
(7) The last and maybe most important point I tried to make in this meeting was that I was hoping not to burn any bridges, because they, the organization, the bosses, the team members helped make my career, and I didn't want them thinking bad about me, because who knows, they might even need me from time to time as a consultant. I told them that, I wasn't just thinking about it.
Now frankly, I figured I had a 50-50 shot of being shown the door immediately or worse. They probably thought I was a bit crazy leaving excellent pay and benefits for an uncertain future, but seemed to respect the approach I was taking.
Bottom line - they asked me to stay on for 6 more months and gave me a great send off complete with memorabilia. 6 months after that I was their consultant and they started outsourcing some development tasks, and now 12-1/2 years later, I still do work for them. Most of my income comes from other sources, but they are a dependable customer and the people I left behind have brought me a lot of business through their natural networking. My house is paid for, both my kids went to college, for as long as they wanted, and are doing very well in their chosen professions. I'm able to give away a substantial portion of my income to benefit those less who are less fortunate. So at least to this point it as worked out well by any measure.
One last part but not the least part of this story - (I'm pretty sure this will get mod'ed down because it cuts so much against the grain), I prayed this whole thing through, before during and after. I 'knew' this was the right thing for me to do and there was a right way to do it.
Full disclosure: Yes I'm one of those. In
I work with a staggering number of engineers who are very religious and it has always boggled my mind. How can anyone with an analytical mind possibly accept things like Noah's ark?
Actually, if you can get past the presupposition that it can't possibly be true, Noah's ark is an interesting study in engineering. I'm not sure if this is representative or not, but the link below is to an essay by one "believing" engineer. One of many that Google turns up. NOAH'S FLOOD: Examination of scripture from the standpoint of an engineer
"The researchers’ general approach was to test volunteers — in some cases, Canadian undergraduates, in others, as the paper explains, a “nationwide (though nonrepresentative) sample of American adults recruited online”. Both sets of volunteers constitute only a limited sample, as Gervais and Norenzayan acknowledge." So, how many flaws in the study can you find in this one sentence?
To give people who haven't been following closely or paid too much attention to the trolls, what is the difference between engineering prototype for developers and the finished product? The finished product is for school kids and comes in a plastic case, yet to be designed (or at least produced). The plan was to certify the finished package, which may or may not have required the plastic to include a conductive coating on the inside.
All of the first 10,000 Rpi's were just PCB's intended for developers for writing drivers, testing peripherals, and producing educational software for the final product. This made sense for 10,000 boards. But when over 200,000 people tried to buy, it be came clear, the boards were going to find their way to the general public, so better safe than sorry, the powers that be decided they must be certified, even in their "unfinished state".
Now that they have passed the certification tests, this makes it much easier for small scale manufacturers (mom and pop shops, makers...) to use the RPi for other purposes legally. THIS IS HUGE if you are into this kind of thing.
According to the Dr. Web site: "Each bot includes a unique ID of the infected machine into the query string it sends to a control server. Doctor Web's analysts employed the sinkhole technology to redirect the botnet traffic to their own servers and thus were able to count infected hosts." Why such a strange distribution of infections? If you look at the list of known infected sites, you can see they would only appeal to a rather odd group of web surfers.
So now in 2012, 2289 units per month of a model is now considered a banner month. In the 80's I worked for GM in a component plant. One configuration we made was for a Chevy model, not necessarily the most popular, that I remember as being produced at 2200 units per day ( 2 shifts, 5 days per week). I remember because there were times due to problems, we could barely keep up with the assembly plant. Our LEAST popular configuration was for a top of the line Cadillac, only about 300 per day (6000 avg per month) required for it if I remember correctly.
You make a good point. Probably not a true story, but one I was told as true as a child:
A family friend has an assortment of expensive and junk rod and reels hanging on the wall is his carport (an open garage facing the street typical in many subdivisions). Normally his house is completely dark, and in an area where everyone has a gun or two, quite foreboding. One night he forgets and leaves his carport light on. In the morning he finds his best rod and reel stolen with a note: "Thanks for leaving the light on, I was able to pick out one I really wanted."
skylink sc-1000
I only have the Googling experience so far, though I once designed and installed security systems for businesses. For my business I use ADT, but for home, I really don't like adding another monthly service bill in addition to phone, cable, internet... so yes I'm a tight wad.
BTW. Video record the burglars if you want and maybe with lots of work you might cause them a little grief. But a really loud alarm, and maybe some strobe lights might actually make them stop and move on to a less noisy place.
I'm told the number one thing you can do to deter break-ins (this according to an ADT guy) is to add more outside lighting. Don't see how that would help in the day time though. Maybe very obvious, large real or fake outdoor cameras would be equivalent?
Quote from Element 14 (one of the two distributers) Full FAQs Here
The current situation is:
2000 Raspberry Pi’s are now in the UK. Pictures are posted here for anyone who doubts their existence!
The compliance teams of element14, RS and Raspberry Pi are working round the clock with the testing houses to assess the product now. Any issues that are identified (hardware or software) will then need to be rectified and we will ensure this happens as quickly as is humanly possible.
There are different compliance standards around the globe and we are focused on meeting all of those as quickly as possible. However, some may take longer than others.
As soon as these initial 2000 Boards are compliant to at least one set of required standards, we will receive our share of this first batch from Raspberry Pi. We will ship on a first come, first serve basis to countries where compliance standards have been demonstrably met. So, customers who ordered first in countries where compliance standards have been met, will receive the product first.
Regrettably, we cannot give any firm delivery commitments on Raspberry Pi’s until this testing is complete. Please be assured we will provide this information as soon as we can.
Once the product is fully compliant our manufacturing partners have the necessary stocks of components to ramp up production very quickly, so despite these frustrating, initial delays we are confident the picture will improve and lead times for new orders will reduce.
To be fair to apple though (and I hate doing this :) they probably have enough server capacity to deal with the flood that the RasPi has generated...
Maybe not. I took me about 2 hours of refreshing before I was able to order an Apple TV today. The Apple store, even with the experience of several frenzied product launches, was not looking too good.
I spoke too soon. As I was checking out the estimated ship date was April 3. The email I just received confirming my order has May 14th. A fairer but disappointing turn of events. :-)
Sorry to have wasted the reader's time.
I received a "Raspberry Pi Update" email from Newark, today (March 2) at 19:46:08 GMT thanking me for my interest, and including a Buy Now button.
Apparently I had filled out the Register-Your-Interest form prior to finding out how to pre-order (see previous post).
I almost ignored it having already pre-ordered yesterday with an estimated ship date of May 10th.
But... I was curious as to what the current shipping estimates were.
Surprise! April 3rd! (Yes, I completed the order. Sorry if that offends anyone.)
So, now I'm wondering if maybe, I'm now actually in the first batch, or May 10th was just a wild safe guess, and now they are getting better estimates from the factory?
A list of expected ship dates are at eLinux: http://elinux.org/RPi_Shipping
The R-Pi wiki at eLinux.org has an interesting table where people are entering their order time, the place they ordered it from and the estimated ship date they were given. One of the entries (mine) matches up with your info pretty closely.
Link to Page
http://elinux.org/index.php?title=RPi_Shipping
I went the other way and paid the $20. Knew about the phone option, but wasn't sure which would work the best. Glad you posted. Maybe you can update when you actually get it for comparison purposes. I don't think this is the only one I'll order this year.
The Teensy is a nice platform, but nothing like the R-pi, they really are apples and oranges best suited to completely different applications.
No. Once the R-Pi site comes back online you can read the FAQs that explain the many reasons why. One major reason is that the chips are impossible to solder by hand, it requires a special robot (or pick and place and exotic solder machine). Another is that it would cost more to buy the individual parts than it would to buy a couple of units. The suppliers are being kind enough to give them prices like they were buying millions of parts though they are buying only 10's of thousands. As an individual you can't buy so of the key parts at all. If you are a manufacturer you would have to sign an NDA with some of the key part suppliers and commit to a few million pieces. It is more thoroughly explained in the FAQs and forums, because this question keeps coming up.
Correct. The $20 fee appears to be a direct ship from Farnell in the UK charge. My understanding if you call it in, you only pay typical Newark shipping. ... If you order by phone, Newark USA probably has a way of ordering a batch shipping to Newark USA and then Newark uses their regular distribution methods. That's a bit of speculation, but seems to fit the bits and pieces of info I got from Newark. In the end, I decided it was worth the extra 10 to 15 bucks to have it ship direct from the UK - maybe it would knock a week or two off the process. It could be just the opposite though. A bulk order to Newark USA, that Newark splits up might move a lot faster.
I'm guessing the website is tied into Farnell in the UK and they tack that on to cover the individual handling, customs paperwork, postage
I understand your frustration. Just don't think there was much the foundation could do to make Farnell, Newark et al do their job better for a onetime event like this.
I think your forgot the sarcasm tag. :-)
Unless I'm mistaken all "donors" such as myself received their stickers. At no time did the foundation imply that donors would be first in line or get any special privileges. I suspect only non-donors are raising a stink.
Their partners are much more experienced but this is a very unusual event, remember AT&T and Apple had their launch problems too.
Farnell uses Newark as its U.S. distributor and though their website is getting pretty hammered and the customer support guys say it is kind of crazy, they are taking both online and toll free number orders.
I wouldn't expect R-Pi foundation to have a staff that is any better in reaching the partners' customer support staff for info, than you or I or any of the other 100K plus people figuratively pushing and shoving in line. :-)
From a Newark Rep:
"83T1943 is the Newark Part # for the Raspberry PI and has an approximate lead time of 30-40 daysyou will get charged shipping if you order online, you should call in 800-463-9275"
I'm in the US and had a heck of a time figuring out a way to order. Pre-order links not working, no results searching for Raspberry Pi on partners' site ...
But in a chat with Newark rep, found that you can just enter part # 83T1943 and it will come up. $20 handling fee if you order online, less if you call the order in.
"83T1943 is the Newark Part # for the Raspberry PI and has an approximate lead time of 30-40 daysyou will get charged shipping if you order online, you should call in 800-463-9275"
You will still probably be charged some shipping - but according the Newark rep less.
Disclosure: Not associated with Newark, other than an occasional customer.
This is news because it means that any cloud or SaaS site that businesses or non-profit orgs depend on can be shutdown with no recourse for the innocent users. This shows that it is not just users of file sharing sites like MegaUpload (that may live on the edge) that are in danger, but any site (with only the best intentions) but with many users,( some possibly violating the sites usage terms) is at risk. I for one used JotForms for several small sites where the application was not critical, but it could have been. When Intuit (quickbooks online) or Sales Force sites are suspended, it will be no more tragic than this is for some non-proffits and small businesses. I have empathy for the owners and users of the 2 Million or so innocent forms, and so should at least a few slashdotters IMHO.
I'm obviously not getting my fair share of R Pi stories. Only one a week or so gets modded up to a level where I notice. I'd like one a day modded up to say a level 3 or higher. Can we automate that like with the Apple and Android posts?