There are lots of other reasons to change a speed limit - even more sinister is why some roads are at 45 or 55 when all the safety data (lane width, curves, traffic volume, ingress from blind side streets, etc.) clearly says they should be at 35, US1 in parts of South Dade County fit this description for quite a while - they did it to keep a number called "Level of Service" higher so they could continue to receive federal funds for the road.
The easiest way around here to get a new traffic light or speed limit change is when somebody dies in an accident clearly attributable to the lack of said safety feature. Mommies with hairs up are everywhere, but they don't really get much traction without some fresh blood to sling at the politicians.
Some diagnostic tests (breast cancer screening, for example) increase the risk of contracting the disease you are screening for.
In the case of the prostate cancer study, it seems that treatment of detected, but actually benign, tumors was causing more mortality than just living in ignorance of them.
I vote the same way. It's because I vote based on an ethical framework, not always short-term shallow selfishness.
Rhetorical question: Would it be wrong to vote for a tax decrease for segments of the population that make less than you? After all, that wouldn't benefit you.
Thanks for that perspective. Something like a flat tax sounds ethical and fair if you say it fast enough, but even what's his name with 9-9-9 did a quick retract to 9-0-9 if you're below the poverty line. It's a quality called compassion, and it pays dividends to society, measurable not only in altruistic good feelings but also in bottom line dollars and cents prosperity, for everybody, including the top 1%.
Just because our present system rewards personality types like Steve Jobs doesn't mean I aspire to be like him, or that I believe we would be more prosperous if we had more people acting like him. I think the fact that people like that are highly rewarded in our system is a flaw in the system, not a flaw in the rest of us who don't act like that.
Well, I'm not complaining that it's too expensive, I really like the form factor, power consumption, and many other things about the Pi - and at $35, it's a hell of a value for what it is - but what I was trying to get across is that, for me, bloating the form factor by 50%, throwing in wifi and maybe even bluetooth (you can never kill enough cables until they are ALL gone), and jacking the price to $75 or whatever it takes, I'll be waiting for that before I buy a couple of them.
For another bad automotive analogy, call it a Yugo if you will, I'll buy one and drive one if it just had a few more features and power - I'm not opposed to how it looks, or the brand name, just that it doesn't meet my needs right now. In fact, I really would rather drive it than a Ford Taurus, even though the Taurus might meet my needs right now, smaller and more efficient appeals to me.
Please don't take this wrong, but TL;DR... Crabbing is a form of relaxation, computers serve a purpose and that purpose is no longer a way to spend my free time (though, it once was.) I solve this kind of stuff 40 hours a week for other people, and I suppose I fit the "get a Mac" profile pretty well.
Thing is, you don't have to wrap it in glass and aluminum and sell it through a trendy store for me. And, for years now, Linux has been up to the task of competing with Apple, if only the hardware vendors would step up and sell solutions that "just work" instead of throwing it out there and saying "knock yourselves out, the possibilities are endless..."
I think you misinterpreted my position, that those who have gained shouldn't be trying to close the door on the next generation. Unless you disagree and believe you got your share and shouldn't have to (put in a cliche) pay it forward.
No, "pay it forward" and outside your immediate family, is, in my opinion, the backbone of modern prosperity. Once kings and princes gave way to governments that actually help all the people and not just the royals, the royals and everyone else under that government prospered in ways that the old-style kings couldn't even begin to imagine. It's a good model and we would do well to drill that in as part of the state funded education curriculum.
Unfortunately, I think it is a lesson that has to be learned from society, genetically, we seem pre-programmed to look out for ourselves, and occasionally our direct offspring, at the expense of anyone and everything else.
A well informed and educated populace creates a far more stable population, capable of making sound decisions at election time.
Where should society spend it shared resources on frivolities like luxury yachts, cosmetics, jewellery, super cars or on educated the populace to the highest degree possible. Should we as a society follow the sane path or the path of narcissism and psychopathy.
I have never been to Australia, but the Australians I have known describe it to be much like the U.S.A., and, here, we have a real problem with people making sound decisions at election time.
I actually had a rational conversation with a man who earned $99K/year salary (single income family, his wife stays home to raise his 3 children), and he was knowingly going to vote for a tax cut which only benefited those who earn more than $250K/year (which describes noone in his family, and among his acquaintances who would benefit from the break, probably 9/10 would be described by him as "what a jerk", or worse.) The only explanation he could come up with was that he "hoped to become one of those people some day" even though he had no prospects of it happening and was doing nothing that would ever take him to that income level. He is not alone - the only reason I can see that his decision making process is not labeled psychopathy is because so many people follow the same pattern.
Sounds like you should be buying a mac, not a $25 home computer that runs Linux.
If it's supported out of the box by Linux, it's supported on the Raspberry Pi most likely. It sounds like you're not the target market. This is a simple machine designed specifically for kids and budding hackers to learn and experiment with such things. Not a replacement for your family PC, chances are that your kid needs Windows to run those goofy CD-ROMs with their textbook anyway.
What my kids need most is a web browser with Flash capability to use all the goofy websites their elementary teachers recommend (starfall, spelling city, ticket to read - they all seem to NOT work on the iPad...)
And, yes, I have used macs at work, and a mini just about hits the spot, I'm sure it would scratch the itch quite well in two or three places around the house - but I'm just too damn cheap to buy even one mac mini when I can get two or three capable Atom based machines for the same money. And, (having just watched Craig Ferguson), the Scot in me would really like the next round of hardware to be even smaller, quieter, less power consuming, and C H E A P E R than the Atom boxes I have been buying for the last few years - so, no, Apple products don't get very far with me.
On the one hand, this seems entirely fair, on the other, it sounds like a ticket to four cheap years at party U for people who intend to loaf and/or earn their income illegally / off grid for the next 20 years.
I took student loans in Freshman and Sophomore years, and ended up going to get a Master's degree for 2 and a half more years, deal at the time was 8% interest on the loans (believe it or not, that was a relatively good deal at the time), and even better - zero interest accrual while still enrolled in school, so I got the money "for free" for over 5 years. I forget how long it took to pay off, it was pretty minor, but I let it run at standard repayment (whatever that was) for a little while so I could save down payments for a car and house first.
I like the Aussie solution of requiring minimum payments at tax time. Since interest rates are near zero now anyway, if you earn enough to pay any income tax, I can see inflating that tax by 50% to make payments against the loan, assuming you're not managing to pay the loan on your own, let the income tax collection system deal with it, after all, it is a government loan.
Is to outlaw unjust discrimination on basis of education. In other words, a job offer can't have education requirements that can't be justified (asking for just "college education" without specifying a degree is right out) , any more than one can hire personnel on the basis of what car they drive.
Damn, and we hired our latest intern because he has an 8 passenger vehicle so we can all bum a ride to lunch... guess we'd better cover that up (easy to do, he's also really good at the tech work.)
Let's see - books don't survive well in the majority of climates on Earth. Where you've a nomadic or semi-nomadic people (the Irish Travelers would be included), books are simply too heavy to travel at all. A computer is thus a mini library, which makes it a bloody valuable tool.
Yes, at a village level, one computer beats trying to maintain a building full of books. In the individual hut, dealing with the power requirements and just the keyboard and monitor might be a bit much. If I were a nomad, I'd definitely spring for something more like an iPad or other tablet or netbook or notebook than mess around with the logistics of a Raspberry Pi solution, in short time, the wires and separate components of the Pi would cost more hassle than any monetary savings.
Television in Africa is unlikely to have extensive coverage and is very unlikely to include core educational material as it is a profit-seeking sector for the most part and Open University-type work is not exactly profitable. A computer is thus a mini film archive, which makes it even more valuable.
The "general population" in the UK and US may not have made much use of computers before the Internet, but let's face it - they had both physical libraries and physical film archives. Why bother with virtual systems when you've the real thing? Further, computers back then weren't exactly powerful. 64K of RAM won't store many episodes of "Life on Earth", although it could probably store the entire informational content of the complete Mork and Mindy. In short, there were alternatives AND they were better.
In remote communities anywhere in the world, there are no alternatives and even if there were, they wouldn't work.
In this context, I would argue that Television is a media of current events, and could only practically be replaced by internet access, which, granted, is doable and maintainable anywhere in the world for an investment not likely to cost more than (double) the travel expenses of a missionary to bring the equipment... on the other hand, an un-connected computer will need a library of books on chip to search, and, yes, the Raspberry Pi is a better tool for SubSaharan library work than a microfische. Are you aware of any good collections of material ready for download to such a system? I used to endeavor to collect such stuff before I got broadband access, since broadband, I have become almost entirely "cloud dependent" for my research needs. Thinking (more) tangentially here, it would seem like a central "connected" village might scrape the web for material of interest to the surrounding un-connected villages and trade offline copies of the web with them.
But this isn't a one-way street. 98% of history has been lost to us - languages, cultures, philosophies, literature, etc - because those who were interested had no means of recording the stuff. Of the societies that exist today, globally, the overwhelming majority are critically endangered. Even something as humble as children's diaries, collections of recipes and other "mundane" stuff, recorded in a medium that allows mass duplication on a trans-continental level, would help preservation efforts that were functional rather than destructive, would help prevent the mindless and savage destruction of other peoples way of life, and would allow far better understanding by average Joes that their average isn't everyone else's. And I've not even started on the scientific potential of having an actual database of records rather than mere lists of names of societies.
98% sounds a little low to me, I'd hazard a guess that 98% of what really went on, worldwide, in the 1800s has been lost by now, and it only gets worse the farther back you go. Records of ancient Greece feel like a glimpse into 0.1% of what really happened, it's like a collection of snapshots, taken from very few perspectives. For today's "connected" individuals Twittering and Facebooking their lives for all of posterity,
People who think with their genitalias would have a strong advantage in that selection process.
Look around, I think the present dickhead percentage in my neighborhood proves your point. They certainly don't multiply because everybody loves having them around.
Ye get right on that, I'll wait a while and read about how it turned out. Spending 20 hours of research, purchasing and testing to get a $50 pile of electronics and software working makes the whole thing more expensive than I can afford, unless I have customers buying 100s of copies of my resulting masterpiece.
So basically, if you buy US bonds, they will print money to pay you back. So there's a decent chance that what you get back will be worth less than what you put bought. This does not sound like a safe place to put money.
I have never found a truly safe place to put money. Gold coins purchased in the mid 1970s (shortly after it became legal for citizens to own gold bullion again) seemed good, but it went volatile as hell after the Iran-Hostage thing, peaking at $880 an ounce in the late 70's and not recovering that price in dollars until 2006, probably not recovering that price adjusted for inflation until 2010. Most "safe" stocks end up doing the same thing sooner or later, commodities and futures trading are basically derivative games and inherently dangerous - real estate went nuts following the 1973 oil crisis, then stagnant in most places until the early 2000s, then nuts again and a bubble pop this time, "bank interest" is guaranteed to grow slower than inflation these days you might as well keep the cash in your mattress as give it to a bank - another interesting phenomenon is credit cards giving "cash back" to consumers now, it's actually marginally cheaper to use a credit card than to use cash.
The best answer is to diversify, and keep significant investments in things you actually use (like a house, or land, or maybe your own business), and if you have great piles of cash left over that need investing, T-bills do beat bank rates and the mattress.
Losing value at the slowest rate possible is another way of "winning" the game.
Consider also that the first ipad uses similar specs to this and people freaking love that thing. I don't hear anybody calling it slow.
O.K. then, listen: the iPad (one, which is the only one I have used) is slow. It frags up its memory and needs rebooting, about weekly in my experience. It is hobbled by its OS into single tasking and its apps are all vetted before release into the store, and still they get stuttery and glitchy on occasion. It does some things "supercomputer fast" if you're talking about supercomputers from the '80s, but as compared to a modern desktop system of similar price, it's a damn dog.
Most of the apps that run on the iPad are written like they are from the 1990s, they deal with the lack of power by not doing things that require real power, and that's appropriate for what it is. I'm just damn amazed that the OS doesn't even support decent alarm clock (and, therefore, third party appointment calendar) applications, I've heard rumors that it does, but I've yet to see any evidence in the app store (i.e. Magic WIndow specifically states that you have to set it up before you go to bed if you expect its alarm clock to wake you in the morning, lame. That was even lame in 1985.)
our own computer revolution started with computers like the VIC 20, which this thing is a supercomputer by comparison
Your (and my) own revolution started with computers like that, there were revolutionary computers before, and since, then. The smartphone is probably this generation's revolutionary computer. The Pi is cool, I will own at least one, but it's kind of like the dune buggies of the '70s, a nostalgic throwback to simpler times, but more a curiosity than anything else. (I hadn't seen any bad automotive analogies in the thread yet, felt obliged to fill the gap.)
Contrary to popular belief, charities have the same basic concerns as businesses with regard to solvency... if they happen to be well endowed, then they could just give the Pis away, but if they're trying to be a going concern based on income from sales, then they have to be concerned with break-even point just like any other startup.
No, others have already posted even better shopping lists. My counter-point is that I don't want to experiment around with drivers and unique combinations of hardware, especially multiple wireless connectivity solutions in close proximity - if there's a solution outlined by the manufacturer (or a well recognized distributor, or anyone really who gets enough recognition as being an authority on the specific hardware that their combinations and solutions are widely adopted and tested _before_ I bother with it), that's what I'm ready to tie into.
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C'mon, let's hear it: "Jane, you're an ignorant slut."
So the entire point of your post is to say that, as someone totally outside of the target market for the device, you are not interested in it?
The point of my post is that I am someone just outside the market, and if there were a bit of additional functionality supported, I'd be squarely inside. The point is that, if model C or D has the features I'm talking about, I'm in, but if it gains support to control a kitchen blender and an ultrasonic dog whistle, I'm out. They (Raspberry) know all this I'm sure, but it probably doesn't hurt to have it discussed in the open, again.
Not saying that the entire policy picture is brilliant, most of it sucks, but the bit about keeping our domestic energy reserves while "relying on foreign oil" is one that I like.
The unfortunate parts about buying a bunch of garbage from overseas is a sad manifestation of the delusion that having more toys makes you happier - not so much a policy problem in the government as a maladjustment of American society in general.
And, giving all of our retirement away to traders and sharks as we churn our wealth back and forth is a simple manifestation of greed out of control - it needs better regulation, but that doesn't seem to be forthcoming anytime soon - people who can't control their greed are getting burned now, as they always have.
Solution. The people that sell the Raspberry Pi simply offer a tested wifi adaptor and bluetooth adaptor that is plug and play... But give them time and don't crab about a $35 system that lacks WiFi.
Yes, that would work for me (the "certified" accessories), and I'm not really crabbing, just prodding along and pointing out why I, personally, will probably only be buying one, instead of four or five, at this time. And, also, why I won't be recommending them for many of my friends, at this level of functionality.
We live in a society where basic programming is as important as basic penmanship was a century ago. Most people won't become programmers, but they will need to be able to use various domain-specific languages, even if just to write office macros.
Perhaps, but I'd say that the prevalence of programming skills more similar to the prevalence of penmanship in the later dark ages, barely 20% of (western, gadget infused) society even claims to know how to program anything more complex than a VCR timer (what I'd equate to being able to "scrawl your mark"), and less than 1% are what I would call "good" programmers (scribes of the church?), who might develop their skills on something as esoteric as a single USB ported Raspberry Pi.
Kudos to Raspberry for getting to production... but, as for my home, I have enough electronic clutter (including a couple of iPod knockoffs running Rockbox that I picked up for less than $25 on clearance - they gather dust, like so much else around here) that I want my cheap gadgets to actually do something useful.
1 or 2 percent of the general population is a market of 70 to 140 million people....
And, just to be snarky about it, the 1 to 2 percent of the population that is generally targeted by successful companies is not the 1 to 2 percent with the least disposable income. If you're shooting for the bottom, you want to cover more like 30 to 40 percent of the people, just to get enough of them with actual cash to spend and time to notice your product. Most of the bottom 30 to 40 percent in the world are preoccupied with things like food, shelter, and clean water.
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There are lots of other reasons to change a speed limit - even more sinister is why some roads are at 45 or 55 when all the safety data (lane width, curves, traffic volume, ingress from blind side streets, etc.) clearly says they should be at 35, US1 in parts of South Dade County fit this description for quite a while - they did it to keep a number called "Level of Service" higher so they could continue to receive federal funds for the road.
The easiest way around here to get a new traffic light or speed limit change is when somebody dies in an accident clearly attributable to the lack of said safety feature. Mommies with hairs up are everywhere, but they don't really get much traction without some fresh blood to sling at the politicians.
Some diagnostic tests (breast cancer screening, for example) increase the risk of contracting the disease you are screening for.
In the case of the prostate cancer study, it seems that treatment of detected, but actually benign, tumors was causing more mortality than just living in ignorance of them.
I vote the same way. It's because I vote based on an ethical framework, not always short-term shallow selfishness.
Rhetorical question: Would it be wrong to vote for a tax decrease for segments of the population that make less than you? After all, that wouldn't benefit you.
Thanks for that perspective. Something like a flat tax sounds ethical and fair if you say it fast enough, but even what's his name with 9-9-9 did a quick retract to 9-0-9 if you're below the poverty line. It's a quality called compassion, and it pays dividends to society, measurable not only in altruistic good feelings but also in bottom line dollars and cents prosperity, for everybody, including the top 1%.
Just because our present system rewards personality types like Steve Jobs doesn't mean I aspire to be like him, or that I believe we would be more prosperous if we had more people acting like him. I think the fact that people like that are highly rewarded in our system is a flaw in the system, not a flaw in the rest of us who don't act like that.
Well, I'm not complaining that it's too expensive, I really like the form factor, power consumption, and many other things about the Pi - and at $35, it's a hell of a value for what it is - but what I was trying to get across is that, for me, bloating the form factor by 50%, throwing in wifi and maybe even bluetooth (you can never kill enough cables until they are ALL gone), and jacking the price to $75 or whatever it takes, I'll be waiting for that before I buy a couple of them.
For another bad automotive analogy, call it a Yugo if you will, I'll buy one and drive one if it just had a few more features and power - I'm not opposed to how it looks, or the brand name, just that it doesn't meet my needs right now. In fact, I really would rather drive it than a Ford Taurus, even though the Taurus might meet my needs right now, smaller and more efficient appeals to me.
Please don't take this wrong, but TL;DR... Crabbing is a form of relaxation, computers serve a purpose and that purpose is no longer a way to spend my free time (though, it once was.) I solve this kind of stuff 40 hours a week for other people, and I suppose I fit the "get a Mac" profile pretty well.
Thing is, you don't have to wrap it in glass and aluminum and sell it through a trendy store for me. And, for years now, Linux has been up to the task of competing with Apple, if only the hardware vendors would step up and sell solutions that "just work" instead of throwing it out there and saying "knock yourselves out, the possibilities are endless..."
I think you misinterpreted my position, that those who have gained shouldn't be trying to close the door on the next generation. Unless you disagree and believe you got your share and shouldn't have to (put in a cliche) pay it forward.
No, "pay it forward" and outside your immediate family, is, in my opinion, the backbone of modern prosperity. Once kings and princes gave way to governments that actually help all the people and not just the royals, the royals and everyone else under that government prospered in ways that the old-style kings couldn't even begin to imagine. It's a good model and we would do well to drill that in as part of the state funded education curriculum.
Unfortunately, I think it is a lesson that has to be learned from society, genetically, we seem pre-programmed to look out for ourselves, and occasionally our direct offspring, at the expense of anyone and everything else.
A well informed and educated populace creates a far more stable population, capable of making sound decisions at election time.
Where should society spend it shared resources on frivolities like luxury yachts, cosmetics, jewellery, super cars or on educated the populace to the highest degree possible. Should we as a society follow the sane path or the path of narcissism and psychopathy.
I have never been to Australia, but the Australians I have known describe it to be much like the U.S.A., and, here, we have a real problem with people making sound decisions at election time.
I actually had a rational conversation with a man who earned $99K/year salary (single income family, his wife stays home to raise his 3 children), and he was knowingly going to vote for a tax cut which only benefited those who earn more than $250K/year (which describes noone in his family, and among his acquaintances who would benefit from the break, probably 9/10 would be described by him as "what a jerk", or worse.) The only explanation he could come up with was that he "hoped to become one of those people some day" even though he had no prospects of it happening and was doing nothing that would ever take him to that income level. He is not alone - the only reason I can see that his decision making process is not labeled psychopathy is because so many people follow the same pattern.
Sounds like you should be buying a mac, not a $25 home computer that runs Linux.
If it's supported out of the box by Linux, it's supported on the Raspberry Pi most likely. It sounds like you're not the target market. This is a simple machine designed specifically for kids and budding hackers to learn and experiment with such things. Not a replacement for your family PC, chances are that your kid needs Windows to run those goofy CD-ROMs with their textbook anyway.
What my kids need most is a web browser with Flash capability to use all the goofy websites their elementary teachers recommend (starfall, spelling city, ticket to read - they all seem to NOT work on the iPad...)
And, yes, I have used macs at work, and a mini just about hits the spot, I'm sure it would scratch the itch quite well in two or three places around the house - but I'm just too damn cheap to buy even one mac mini when I can get two or three capable Atom based machines for the same money. And, (having just watched Craig Ferguson), the Scot in me would really like the next round of hardware to be even smaller, quieter, less power consuming, and C H E A P E R than the Atom boxes I have been buying for the last few years - so, no, Apple products don't get very far with me.
On the one hand, this seems entirely fair, on the other, it sounds like a ticket to four cheap years at party U for people who intend to loaf and/or earn their income illegally / off grid for the next 20 years.
I took student loans in Freshman and Sophomore years, and ended up going to get a Master's degree for 2 and a half more years, deal at the time was 8% interest on the loans (believe it or not, that was a relatively good deal at the time), and even better - zero interest accrual while still enrolled in school, so I got the money "for free" for over 5 years. I forget how long it took to pay off, it was pretty minor, but I let it run at standard repayment (whatever that was) for a little while so I could save down payments for a car and house first.
I like the Aussie solution of requiring minimum payments at tax time. Since interest rates are near zero now anyway, if you earn enough to pay any income tax, I can see inflating that tax by 50% to make payments against the loan, assuming you're not managing to pay the loan on your own, let the income tax collection system deal with it, after all, it is a government loan.
Here in England for example we pay far, far less for education than in USA and I don't see it being of worse quality, quite the opposite.
Are you sure about paying less? I mean, how much of your VAT subsidizes higher education? I do agree about the relative quality.
Is to outlaw unjust discrimination on basis of education. In other words, a job offer can't have education requirements that can't be justified (asking for just "college education" without specifying a degree is right out) , any more than one can hire personnel on the basis of what car they drive.
Damn, and we hired our latest intern because he has an 8 passenger vehicle so we can all bum a ride to lunch... guess we'd better cover that up (easy to do, he's also really good at the tech work.)
Let's see - books don't survive well in the majority of climates on Earth. Where you've a nomadic or semi-nomadic people (the Irish Travelers would be included), books are simply too heavy to travel at all. A computer is thus a mini library, which makes it a bloody valuable tool.
Yes, at a village level, one computer beats trying to maintain a building full of books. In the individual hut, dealing with the power requirements and just the keyboard and monitor might be a bit much. If I were a nomad, I'd definitely spring for something more like an iPad or other tablet or netbook or notebook than mess around with the logistics of a Raspberry Pi solution, in short time, the wires and separate components of the Pi would cost more hassle than any monetary savings.
Television in Africa is unlikely to have extensive coverage and is very unlikely to include core educational material as it is a profit-seeking sector for the most part and Open University-type work is not exactly profitable. A computer is thus a mini film archive, which makes it even more valuable.
The "general population" in the UK and US may not have made much use of computers before the Internet, but let's face it - they had both physical libraries and physical film archives. Why bother with virtual systems when you've the real thing? Further, computers back then weren't exactly powerful. 64K of RAM won't store many episodes of "Life on Earth", although it could probably store the entire informational content of the complete Mork and Mindy. In short, there were alternatives AND they were better.
In remote communities anywhere in the world, there are no alternatives and even if there were, they wouldn't work.
In this context, I would argue that Television is a media of current events, and could only practically be replaced by internet access, which, granted, is doable and maintainable anywhere in the world for an investment not likely to cost more than (double) the travel expenses of a missionary to bring the equipment... on the other hand, an un-connected computer will need a library of books on chip to search, and, yes, the Raspberry Pi is a better tool for SubSaharan library work than a microfische. Are you aware of any good collections of material ready for download to such a system? I used to endeavor to collect such stuff before I got broadband access, since broadband, I have become almost entirely "cloud dependent" for my research needs. Thinking (more) tangentially here, it would seem like a central "connected" village might scrape the web for material of interest to the surrounding un-connected villages and trade offline copies of the web with them.
But this isn't a one-way street. 98% of history has been lost to us - languages, cultures, philosophies, literature, etc - because those who were interested had no means of recording the stuff. Of the societies that exist today, globally, the overwhelming majority are critically endangered. Even something as humble as children's diaries, collections of recipes and other "mundane" stuff, recorded in a medium that allows mass duplication on a trans-continental level, would help preservation efforts that were functional rather than destructive, would help prevent the mindless and savage destruction of other peoples way of life, and would allow far better understanding by average Joes that their average isn't everyone else's. And I've not even started on the scientific potential of having an actual database of records rather than mere lists of names of societies.
98% sounds a little low to me, I'd hazard a guess that 98% of what really went on, worldwide, in the 1800s has been lost by now, and it only gets worse the farther back you go. Records of ancient Greece feel like a glimpse into 0.1% of what really happened, it's like a collection of snapshots, taken from very few perspectives. For today's "connected" individuals Twittering and Facebooking their lives for all of posterity,
People who think with their genitalias would have a strong advantage in that selection process.
Look around, I think the present dickhead percentage in my neighborhood proves your point. They certainly don't multiply because everybody loves having them around.
Ye get right on that, I'll wait a while and read about how it turned out. Spending 20 hours of research, purchasing and testing to get a $50 pile of electronics and software working makes the whole thing more expensive than I can afford, unless I have customers buying 100s of copies of my resulting masterpiece.
So basically, if you buy US bonds, they will print money to pay you back. So there's a decent chance that what you get back will be worth less than what you put bought. This does not sound like a safe place to put money.
I have never found a truly safe place to put money. Gold coins purchased in the mid 1970s (shortly after it became legal for citizens to own gold bullion again) seemed good, but it went volatile as hell after the Iran-Hostage thing, peaking at $880 an ounce in the late 70's and not recovering that price in dollars until 2006, probably not recovering that price adjusted for inflation until 2010. Most "safe" stocks end up doing the same thing sooner or later, commodities and futures trading are basically derivative games and inherently dangerous - real estate went nuts following the 1973 oil crisis, then stagnant in most places until the early 2000s, then nuts again and a bubble pop this time, "bank interest" is guaranteed to grow slower than inflation these days you might as well keep the cash in your mattress as give it to a bank - another interesting phenomenon is credit cards giving "cash back" to consumers now, it's actually marginally cheaper to use a credit card than to use cash.
The best answer is to diversify, and keep significant investments in things you actually use (like a house, or land, or maybe your own business), and if you have great piles of cash left over that need investing, T-bills do beat bank rates and the mattress.
Losing value at the slowest rate possible is another way of "winning" the game.
Consider also that the first ipad uses similar specs to this and people freaking love that thing. I don't hear anybody calling it slow.
O.K. then, listen: the iPad (one, which is the only one I have used) is slow. It frags up its memory and needs rebooting, about weekly in my experience. It is hobbled by its OS into single tasking and its apps are all vetted before release into the store, and still they get stuttery and glitchy on occasion. It does some things "supercomputer fast" if you're talking about supercomputers from the '80s, but as compared to a modern desktop system of similar price, it's a damn dog.
Most of the apps that run on the iPad are written like they are from the 1990s, they deal with the lack of power by not doing things that require real power, and that's appropriate for what it is. I'm just damn amazed that the OS doesn't even support decent alarm clock (and, therefore, third party appointment calendar) applications, I've heard rumors that it does, but I've yet to see any evidence in the app store (i.e. Magic WIndow specifically states that you have to set it up before you go to bed if you expect its alarm clock to wake you in the morning, lame. That was even lame in 1985.)
our own computer revolution started with computers like the VIC 20, which this thing is a supercomputer by comparison
Your (and my) own revolution started with computers like that, there were revolutionary computers before, and since, then. The smartphone is probably this generation's revolutionary computer. The Pi is cool, I will own at least one, but it's kind of like the dune buggies of the '70s, a nostalgic throwback to simpler times, but more a curiosity than anything else. (I hadn't seen any bad automotive analogies in the thread yet, felt obliged to fill the gap.)
Contrary to popular belief, charities have the same basic concerns as businesses with regard to solvency... if they happen to be well endowed, then they could just give the Pis away, but if they're trying to be a going concern based on income from sales, then they have to be concerned with break-even point just like any other startup.
Most startups fail before reaching break-even.
No, others have already posted even better shopping lists. My counter-point is that I don't want to experiment around with drivers and unique combinations of hardware, especially multiple wireless connectivity solutions in close proximity - if there's a solution outlined by the manufacturer (or a well recognized distributor, or anyone really who gets enough recognition as being an authority on the specific hardware that their combinations and solutions are widely adopted and tested _before_ I bother with it), that's what I'm ready to tie into.
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C'mon, let's hear it: "Jane, you're an ignorant slut."
So the entire point of your post is to say that, as someone totally outside of the target market for the device, you are not interested in it?
The point of my post is that I am someone just outside the market, and if there were a bit of additional functionality supported, I'd be squarely inside. The point is that, if model C or D has the features I'm talking about, I'm in, but if it gains support to control a kitchen blender and an ultrasonic dog whistle, I'm out. They (Raspberry) know all this I'm sure, but it probably doesn't hurt to have it discussed in the open, again.
Supposed to be coming next month... I'm not holding my breath, but I do believe it will make it out in time for Christmas.
Not saying that the entire policy picture is brilliant, most of it sucks, but the bit about keeping our domestic energy reserves while "relying on foreign oil" is one that I like.
The unfortunate parts about buying a bunch of garbage from overseas is a sad manifestation of the delusion that having more toys makes you happier - not so much a policy problem in the government as a maladjustment of American society in general.
And, giving all of our retirement away to traders and sharks as we churn our wealth back and forth is a simple manifestation of greed out of control - it needs better regulation, but that doesn't seem to be forthcoming anytime soon - people who can't control their greed are getting burned now, as they always have.
Solution.
The people that sell the Raspberry Pi simply offer a tested wifi adaptor and bluetooth adaptor that is plug and play... But give them time and don't crab about a $35 system that lacks WiFi.
Yes, that would work for me (the "certified" accessories), and I'm not really crabbing, just prodding along and pointing out why I, personally, will probably only be buying one, instead of four or five, at this time. And, also, why I won't be recommending them for many of my friends, at this level of functionality.
We live in a society where basic programming is as important as basic penmanship was a century ago. Most people won't become programmers, but they will need to be able to use various domain-specific languages, even if just to write office macros.
Perhaps, but I'd say that the prevalence of programming skills more similar to the prevalence of penmanship in the later dark ages, barely 20% of (western, gadget infused) society even claims to know how to program anything more complex than a VCR timer (what I'd equate to being able to "scrawl your mark"), and less than 1% are what I would call "good" programmers (scribes of the church?), who might develop their skills on something as esoteric as a single USB ported Raspberry Pi.
Kudos to Raspberry for getting to production... but, as for my home, I have enough electronic clutter (including a couple of iPod knockoffs running Rockbox that I picked up for less than $25 on clearance - they gather dust, like so much else around here) that I want my cheap gadgets to actually do something useful.
1 or 2 percent of the general population is a market of 70 to 140 million people ....
And, just to be snarky about it, the 1 to 2 percent of the population that is generally targeted by successful companies is not the 1 to 2 percent with the least disposable income. If you're shooting for the bottom, you want to cover more like 30 to 40 percent of the people, just to get enough of them with actual cash to spend and time to notice your product. Most of the bottom 30 to 40 percent in the world are preoccupied with things like food, shelter, and clean water.