Broadcom have open-sourced the chip used on the Pi now (as I recall, this is including the source for the Videocore GPU); I think that was always the RPi Foundation's intention, but it's only recently made it through the legal processes.
Folk are working on Android for the Pi - it is coming. Personally, I hope this distro gets ported to the Pi, because having a full Debian instance, with the ability to run Android apps within a window (much like Wine does for Windows applications within Linux), gives users the best of both worlds.
I get fed up of all the idiots crawling out of the woodwork and talking crap. I strongly suspect the troll I replied to has never been out of his/her home country, to anywhere there is a different culture, meeting people, or seeing how anyone else but them lives. I've been through the Middle East (can't claim to have visited the UAE or Kuwait, but have been through the airports in both countries) and have spent a combined period of several months visiting Indonesia, not the tourist areas, or staying in hotels, but living in normal folks' houses as a guest and spending time with them.
Anyone is entitled to believe in any God (or pantheon of Gods) they want. They can believe their religion is the only true religion if they want; religion is about faith, after all. I'm just sick of people who put down other people based on their ill-informed, prejudiced view of things. You want to write about someone's culture/religion in a critical manner, you'd better actually see how those people live or practise their religions first.
Oh, piss off. If you're too stupid to differentiate between the religion and the extremist interpretation of the religion, then I really pity you. I'm also shocked that this has been modded *UP* rather than down as "troll" or "flamebait".
Scientology is, as has already been pointed out, a cult started by a Sci-Fi author who wanted to make a lot of money. Islam is a religion, and there are millions of truly faithful Muslims out there who are every bit as peaceful in their daily life as the millions of truly faithful Christians (or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Sikhs, or followers of x y or z other faiths).
Just in the same way most Irish weren't involved in blowing up each other / the British during the height of the Troubles (note this was a war about the difference between the two main groups of Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) and about occupation/independence, and *nobody* was saying shit back then about "all Christians are terrorists".
Those who blow themselves and other people up while claiming they're doing it in the name of Islam are idiots, and are delusional. The average suicide bomber has been brainwashed into it by the sorts of horrific people (i.e. Osama Bin Laden / Al Qaeda and other like-minded organizations) who recognize the power of religious belief and exploit that to their own ends - i.e. money and power. That's what it comes down to, not religion. If they can recruit young and impressionable enough people, and present themselves to these people as priests and clerics, and preach to them that God will reward them if they commit these acts, then it's far more likely to succeed then just placing a wanted ad for soldiers.
TL:DR version - I think you're an idiot - "terrorist" and "muslim" are not interchangeable terms.
Hitchhiker's had a bastard of a puzzle too, the infamous Babel Fish puzzle, where you literally could not complete the game without solving it. Had my brother and I stuck for many years. Tried many different combinations of where to put the satchel, where to put the dressing gown, where to put the junk mail, etc. Damn fish kept getting stolen by various types of cleaning robot (including an airborne one).
Eventually managed to solve it and complete the game, but when I went back to the game again recently, I couldn't for the life of me remember how I solved it the last time.
Apparently, Infocom eventually started selling t-shirts that said "I GOT THE BABEL FISH".
Useless? Nope. It's not exactly a stellar performer, but it has a lot of uses. Remember, it's designed as an educational product, rather than as a PC replacement. It is not as powerful as your average desktop PC. But it is not useless.
My own Pi runs Samba4 (it's an Active Directory domain controller for my home Windows PC network, and runs a DNS service), it runs CUPS (for network printer sharing), it runs CrashPlan (for backing up my other PCs' data), and it runs the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack so that it can run some dynamic web-based services - the ones I use are Cacti and Observium (for graphing/monitoring my Cisco devices), and Horde Webmail/Groupware.
This is exactly what I used to use an old AMD Sempron box for. Granted, that AMD box was free, and more powerful - but it's bigger, noisier, makes more heat, and consumes more power than the Pi does.
I think the Pi is a fantastic project. It would be nice to see a more powerful ARM CPU and extra RAM on the next version of the board, but I'd be just as happy to see Ethernet being separated from the USB bus, and a SATA connector with the option to set your Pi up to boot from a hard drive out of the box (note that mine does run off a USB hard drive, but it still has to use the MicroSD card as a bootstrap - a SATA controller could also mean faster I/O throughput).
I've always run with Cisco gear at work, so I figured, why not run with Cisco gear at home? Price is only a concern if you're buying new, and even when most people buy new, they don't buy at list price - they find a gold-certified reseller who can offer them up to 60% off Cisco list prices. Me? I bought most of my kit off eBay.
My own current setup is:
1x Cisco 1841 router with EHWIC-1ADSL for my broadband connection (this card supports ADSL2+) 1x Cisco Aironet AIR-AP1231G-E-K9 for wireless 1x Cisco Catalyst WS-C2940-8TT-S for a switch
The router was £60 off eBay. The WIC was £40 off eBay. The switch was £40 off eBay. Sure, it's only a 100 Mbit/sec switch, but my internet connection is only around 10 Mbit/sec downstream. Works for me. The wireless AP was £50 in a clearance sale from PCW Business - it was brand new in box.
If I'd bought an 1801, it'd have had an ADSL2+ interface built-in, but I wanted a router with a couple of WIC slots.
Total - £190. This ticks all the price boxes for me.
In terms of reliability - I've had the AP for a few years now and it's fine; the switch and router were more recent, and haven't let me down either. I've used all of these device types professionally for years (including in dirty warehouses, offshore oil platforms, and in Portakabins running off diesel generators), and have never had one fail yet, so I don't expect one to at home.
The 1841 isn't fanless, so it does make a small amount of noise, but it's not too bad (less noise than my peronal gaming desktop PC, but more noise than my Dell work laptop). It lives in my hallway next to the phone jack, so the noise doesn't annoy anyone. The 2940 switch and 1231 AP are fanless and run silently.
For server stuff, I've got a Raspberry Pi running Samba4 (for Active Directory), Cacti and Observium (for SNMP polling / graphing my Cisco kit), rsyslogd (for syslogging) and am currently pulling my hair out trying to get Horde Webmail to integrate authentication with LDAP. I also want to get a TACACS/RADIUS setup going.
Despite the events in the second film, the war would have happened anyway. Why? Because it did happen - in the future, there was Skynet and the war, and the terminators. Both sides sent back a soldier - one to kill Sarah Connor (in order to hasten the end of the war in the machine's side) and one to protect her (in order to ensure the human victory that would have been inevitable under John's leadership).
The second film had another assassination attempt - again, the machines knew they would lose because of John's leadership. John in the future sent the machine back to protect his younger self. Sarah Connor attempted to change the course of the future, but it was in vain - the only reason Miles Dyson and Cyberdyne Systems were working on the Terminator chip in the first place was because one had been sent back in time from when the war had started - this can't have happened if the war wasn't going to happen anyway. All the events of the first film did was change the start date of the war, and all the events of the second film did was reset the date back to the original one anyway - the day of the apocalypse as seen at the end of Terminator 3.
After playing through the first Assassin's Creed game, I'd find myself looking up at tall buildings, churches, etc. working out the best path to take for climbing up to the roof.
Never actually attempted to climb to the roof of any building - probably for the best; I hate heights.
I had these issues to begin with. But then I used a better power supply and these issues went away. The quality of the power supply unit really does affect how reliable your Pi is. I'm aware that the way they implemented USB power is far from ideal, but they have achieved the goal of producing a (quite surprisingly) powerful computer for $35.
Mine has been running for months with no downtime. It's a Samba4 domain controller, Horde groupware mailserver, DNS server, web server, SNMP poller (running Cacti), print server, and it runs Crashplan to automatically back up data from my family's PCs to an attached USB hard disk. I know I'm not the original target market for the Pi, but dammit I *like* mine, I think it's perfectly good at doing what it does for my needs, and I know I'm not using anywhere near its full capabilities (the GPU component of the Broadcomm SoC is supposed to be surprisingly powerful). It's also silent and draws very little power - which is why I used it to replace the old AMD Sempron box that was doing the same set of jobs previously.
Sure, it's not running the latest version of the ARM processor, or running the Ethernet connection independently from USB. But then if it did, it'd be larger and would cost more to build. Cut them some slack; they're doing something amazing - they're getting kids interested in how computers actually *work* instead of just using one to check their Facebook pages, and it's cheap enough that it doesn't really matter too much if they damage it.
Not sure if trolling, but I'll assume you're not (benefit of the doubt) and answer anyway.
HDMI-to-DVI and HDMI-to-VGA adapter cables mean you don't specifically need a monitor with HDMI input. The RPi has RGB outputs as well, so you can connect it to a TV (even if your TV only has a SCART input and not RGB, you can cheaply buy an RGB-to-SCART connector that will let you use the TV's SCART input).
You don't need a big memory card either, especially if you happen to have a spare external USB hard drive - you can have the RPi boot the bare essentials from the card and run everything else off the external disk.
When DVDs came out, I didn't bitch that they weren't backwards compatible with what I already had.
Yes they were. CD's play just fine in them.
Yes, DVD players will play CDs.
But most people who switched up to a DVD player wanted to watch films, rather than listen to music. Let me know when you manage to get your DVD player to play VHS or Betamax tapes.
Most Linux dists with Firefox and I suppose Android may have a standard browser to.
Microsoft were abusing their position to ensure other browsers couldn't be bundled as part of the OEM software builds distributed with new PCs. PC makers were literally not permitted to add any other browsers. See this US Dept. of Justice link, section V.C.2 for a summary. This was Microsoft's strategy for winning the browser wars against Netscape Navigator, and was the reason Netscape died out.
Then they integrated their Internet Explorer browser into the operating system so deeply that you can't actually uninstall it. Internet Explorer is present on EVERY copy of Windows released, whether the user wants to actually use it or not.
This is different from Linux distros distributing Firefox as part of their bundle for a number of reasons - chief of which is that Firefox isn't made by the Linux Foundation, it's a Mozilla product. Secondly, it's been a while since I installed Ubuntu, but I'm pretty certain when I did, the installer asked me which browser(s) I wanted (amongst other software) - it's not like Firefox was just given to me, I could have picked Chrome if I'd wanted to use it.
The reason Microsoft are being targeted here is that this is an anti-trust fine. Microsoft are recognized as the leader in the consumer and enterprise desktop/laptop PC OS markets - there are more Windows installs than there are Linux or Mac installs. By bundling their own browser and not giving users the option during installation NOT to install IE (let alone giving them the option to install something else), they could be viewed as using their dominance in the desktop OS market as a tool to gain dominance in the web browser market. Remember that a lot of consumers will also just go with whatever is installed, either through ignorance (they don't know how good other browsers are, and IE just works, right?) or through not feeling confident / tech savvy enough to install a different browser. You have to go download files and run installers and make choices - that sort of thing scares people, which is why the App Store model is so popular - you just click "install" and it goes and does it all for you. Putting the choice of browser in the installation wizard for the OS or in the "first-time user login" wizard when you first start up your brand new PC should even the playing field, giving users an easy way of picking what browser they want to use. Granted, most will continue using IE because that's what they've been used to in the past, or because of the Microsoft branding on it - but that's their choice.
Having the Chrome browser bundled with Android is pretty much the same as Microsoft including IE with Windows and Apple including Safari with MacOS and iOS - yes there are other browsers available, but they don't give you the choice what you want. There is no reason why the European Commissioner for Competition can't go and levy the same sorts of fines against Google and Apple for the same reasons (maybe they haven't received complaints about this practice by these companies?). It's just been Microsoft's turn this time, and the fine they're being hit with is because of their failure to comply with an earlier ruling - they were told previously to give users a choice, and this demand has basically been ignored.
OH THE HUMANITY! THE HORRORS! I HAVE TO CHANGE BROWSER MYSELF?!
You don't have to change it at all if you don't want to. The point is, it's about having the choice. You may have the technical know-how to do this, but a lot of people won't, so Microsoft win the browser wars by default.
Their biggest problem, of course, will be how to enforce the collection of this tax. If a user signs up for Facebook (etc), does that mean Facebook has to tell the French government about it so they can be billed correctly for the tax? Doesn't that mean someone can really screw Facebook up by signing up a bunch of bogus accounts registered in France, meaning Facebook has to foot the bigger tax bill? What about French citizens signing up from other countries but marking down their country of origin as France (these people wouldn't be French taxpayers any more, yet Facebook would presumably have to pay the tax on the collection of that users' data). It's not an easy one to resolve...
Try using an HDMI-to-DVI cable; if you have a TV or monitor with a DVI input, this should allow your Pi to connect and get you going.
Headless all-in-one works sweet - mine spent about 3 hours connected to my TV, even had a keyboard and mouse - now it's headless. I installed VNC server (so X sessions are possible) and I use SSH to connect to it for command line configuration changes (99% of all interaction between me and the Pi come through a TeraTerm Pro SSH connection). Install Webmin on it too if you like, then you can work on it via a web browser.
It's an educational product - a little Linux computer that is designed to be cheap (major plus-point for schools) and provide all the tools necessary to learn about computing and programming. It has a kind of "Geek Port" on it (a bit like the old BeBox did) where you can connect up all kinds of electronic breadboards (homebrew or shop-bought) and you can use the Pi to interface with these things. Car-PC guys have been going nuts over the Pi, for instance.
My own Pi is for Samba4 - I currently have an old budget AMD-powered box that used for running Win2003 server to provide Active Directory, file/print, and some SNMP polling for my Cisco routers (via Cacti) - it is basically idle, yet draws a lot more power than the Pi does, and takes up a hell of a lot more space than the Pi does, and makes a lot more noise than the Pi does. I shut that server down every night because it's too wasteful of electricity - not so the Pi, so I'll also be installing a TACACS and RADIUS server on it so I can teach myself about those technologies. I am also using this as a way to teach myself about Linux as I've never really had much success with it so far. It seems to be quite a capable little machine - the processor isn't as powerful as the one in my old Win2K3 box but it doesn't need to be in order to get the job done.
My parents got one of these calls too (Dad runs a custom-built desktop PC with Ubuntu, Mum runs a Dell laptop with Windows 7).
My Mum didn't believe the guy, so she passed him over to my Dad, who spoke to them, asking them how they got their number and how they knew there was a problem, but without giving any personal information.
Eventually, the guy got fed up, told my Dad to "Go to hell" and hung up the call. I've never seen my Dad so pissed off.
That's because they want to be called "BT" and not "British Telecommunications". They even inform their employees and contractors of this. I used to work for them in an IT helldesk.
"BT" is seen as a snappier, less-stuffy title than "British Telecommunications", or "British Telecom". However, they primarily dropped the "British Telecommunications" moniker because they had become more than just a telephone company, and wanted to reduce the importance of the "telecommunications" aspect. They were performing managed IT services, writing business software, and conducting scientific research, to name just a few different things.
The phrase "British Telecommunications, PLC" is found in small print copyrights (i.e. "BT is a registered trademark of British Telecommunications, PLC").
When I was in high school, I did a week's work experience in the computing department at Dounreay
We worked on the ground floor of the building that houses the old DFR control room (it was just upstairs from us). We were right in the shadow of the spherical reactor housing (affectionately known as "the Golf Ball".
They had all sorts of old tech in their computing department - DEC VAX systems, racks full of old Gandalf kit, etc. It was 16 years ago now, and I can't remember what else they had in there. There was also just about the biggest and noisiest line printer (used for printing payslips) in an adjoining room.
My mother also worked as a contracts officer on the Dounreay site for many years.
We lived in a nearby town called Thurso, which was a small fishing port prior to Dounreay's construction. The town literally doubled in size during the 1950s as construction on the Dounreay plant began. The UKAEA was Thurso's biggest employer. Since the plant stopped generating power (in the mid 1990s), the town has stagnated and the population has been gradually declining. There's nothing up there (employment-wise) to attract newcomers any more.
Or how about they engineer some kind of PS3-based VM which enables you to use/write homebrew software that:
1) can take full advantage of the PS3's Cell architecture and graphics chipset 2) doesn't let you fuck up commercial multiplayer games, or play copied commercial PS3 games 3) doesn't need you to flash the BIOS 4) can be shared via the PlayStation Network free of charge
Kind of like the unofficial "homebrew channel" on Wii, but officially sanctioned. Of course, the fourth point would require that the software is vetted by Sony to ensure you're not producing anything that violates their PSN ToS (emulation, porn, racial/religious hatred, etc). And, they would need to produce a special EULA for that development environment that says if you do copy other people's work, you accept full responsibility (Sony can't be blamed, on your head be it, etc)
I always preferred the sort of half-medieval/gothic, half-futuristic setting of the original Quake to the far-more generic "humans vs. aliens" setting of Quake II and Quake IV. I also didn't like the pure-deathmatch approach of Quake III.
I know you can download mods that revamp the Quake engine and make it look more modern, but nothing really beats a complete revisit using a next-gen engine (id Tech 5, for example). Would love to see it happen for the original Quake.
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Ah, my mistake. Hopefully it won't be too long before there is no more reliance on a closed-source blob though.
Broadcom have open-sourced the chip used on the Pi now (as I recall, this is including the source for the Videocore GPU); I think that was always the RPi Foundation's intention, but it's only recently made it through the legal processes.
Folk are working on Android for the Pi - it is coming. Personally, I hope this distro gets ported to the Pi, because having a full Debian instance, with the ability to run Android apps within a window (much like Wine does for Windows applications within Linux), gives users the best of both worlds.
You're reading a retarded headline and acting like suddenly you can play quake on your phone
https://play.google.com/store/...
As a network engineer, I'd just like to say that I wish I got $100/hr :(
Who said I had a skyfairy at all?
I get fed up of all the idiots crawling out of the woodwork and talking crap. I strongly suspect the troll I replied to has never been out of his/her home country, to anywhere there is a different culture, meeting people, or seeing how anyone else but them lives. I've been through the Middle East (can't claim to have visited the UAE or Kuwait, but have been through the airports in both countries) and have spent a combined period of several months visiting Indonesia, not the tourist areas, or staying in hotels, but living in normal folks' houses as a guest and spending time with them.
Anyone is entitled to believe in any God (or pantheon of Gods) they want. They can believe their religion is the only true religion if they want; religion is about faith, after all. I'm just sick of people who put down other people based on their ill-informed, prejudiced view of things. You want to write about someone's culture/religion in a critical manner, you'd better actually see how those people live or practise their religions first.
Oh, piss off. If you're too stupid to differentiate between the religion and the extremist interpretation of the religion, then I really pity you. I'm also shocked that this has been modded *UP* rather than down as "troll" or "flamebait".
Scientology is, as has already been pointed out, a cult started by a Sci-Fi author who wanted to make a lot of money. Islam is a religion, and there are millions of truly faithful Muslims out there who are every bit as peaceful in their daily life as the millions of truly faithful Christians (or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Sikhs, or followers of x y or z other faiths).
Just in the same way most Irish weren't involved in blowing up each other / the British during the height of the Troubles (note this was a war about the difference between the two main groups of Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) and about occupation/independence, and *nobody* was saying shit back then about "all Christians are terrorists".
Those who blow themselves and other people up while claiming they're doing it in the name of Islam are idiots, and are delusional. The average suicide bomber has been brainwashed into it by the sorts of horrific people (i.e. Osama Bin Laden / Al Qaeda and other like-minded organizations) who recognize the power of religious belief and exploit that to their own ends - i.e. money and power. That's what it comes down to, not religion. If they can recruit young and impressionable enough people, and present themselves to these people as priests and clerics, and preach to them that God will reward them if they commit these acts, then it's far more likely to succeed then just placing a wanted ad for soldiers.
TL:DR version - I think you're an idiot - "terrorist" and "muslim" are not interchangeable terms.
Hitchhiker's had a bastard of a puzzle too, the infamous Babel Fish puzzle, where you literally could not complete the game without solving it. Had my brother and I stuck for many years. Tried many different combinations of where to put the satchel, where to put the dressing gown, where to put the junk mail, etc. Damn fish kept getting stolen by various types of cleaning robot (including an airborne one).
Eventually managed to solve it and complete the game, but when I went back to the game again recently, I couldn't for the life of me remember how I solved it the last time.
Apparently, Infocom eventually started selling t-shirts that said "I GOT THE BABEL FISH".
Useless? Nope. It's not exactly a stellar performer, but it has a lot of uses. Remember, it's designed as an educational product, rather than as a PC replacement. It is not as powerful as your average desktop PC. But it is not useless.
My own Pi runs Samba4 (it's an Active Directory domain controller for my home Windows PC network, and runs a DNS service), it runs CUPS (for network printer sharing), it runs CrashPlan (for backing up my other PCs' data), and it runs the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack so that it can run some dynamic web-based services - the ones I use are Cacti and Observium (for graphing/monitoring my Cisco devices), and Horde Webmail/Groupware.
This is exactly what I used to use an old AMD Sempron box for. Granted, that AMD box was free, and more powerful - but it's bigger, noisier, makes more heat, and consumes more power than the Pi does.
I think the Pi is a fantastic project. It would be nice to see a more powerful ARM CPU and extra RAM on the next version of the board, but I'd be just as happy to see Ethernet being separated from the USB bus, and a SATA connector with the option to set your Pi up to boot from a hard drive out of the box (note that mine does run off a USB hard drive, but it still has to use the MicroSD card as a bootstrap - a SATA controller could also mean faster I/O throughput).
I've always run with Cisco gear at work, so I figured, why not run with Cisco gear at home? Price is only a concern if you're buying new, and even when most people buy new, they don't buy at list price - they find a gold-certified reseller who can offer them up to 60% off Cisco list prices. Me? I bought most of my kit off eBay.
My own current setup is:
1x Cisco 1841 router with EHWIC-1ADSL for my broadband connection (this card supports ADSL2+)
1x Cisco Aironet AIR-AP1231G-E-K9 for wireless
1x Cisco Catalyst WS-C2940-8TT-S for a switch
The router was £60 off eBay. The WIC was £40 off eBay.
The switch was £40 off eBay. Sure, it's only a 100 Mbit/sec switch, but my internet connection is only around 10 Mbit/sec downstream. Works for me.
The wireless AP was £50 in a clearance sale from PCW Business - it was brand new in box.
If I'd bought an 1801, it'd have had an ADSL2+ interface built-in, but I wanted a router with a couple of WIC slots.
Total - £190. This ticks all the price boxes for me.
In terms of reliability - I've had the AP for a few years now and it's fine; the switch and router were more recent, and haven't let me down either. I've used all of these device types professionally for years (including in dirty warehouses, offshore oil platforms, and in Portakabins running off diesel generators), and have never had one fail yet, so I don't expect one to at home.
The 1841 isn't fanless, so it does make a small amount of noise, but it's not too bad (less noise than my peronal gaming desktop PC, but more noise than my Dell work laptop). It lives in my hallway next to the phone jack, so the noise doesn't annoy anyone. The 2940 switch and 1231 AP are fanless and run silently.
For server stuff, I've got a Raspberry Pi running Samba4 (for Active Directory), Cacti and Observium (for SNMP polling / graphing my Cisco kit), rsyslogd (for syslogging) and am currently pulling my hair out trying to get Horde Webmail to integrate authentication with LDAP. I also want to get a TACACS/RADIUS setup going.
No.
Despite the events in the second film, the war would have happened anyway. Why? Because it did happen - in the future, there was Skynet and the war, and the terminators. Both sides sent back a soldier - one to kill Sarah Connor (in order to hasten the end of the war in the machine's side) and one to protect her (in order to ensure the human victory that would have been inevitable under John's leadership).
The second film had another assassination attempt - again, the machines knew they would lose because of John's leadership. John in the future sent the machine back to protect his younger self. Sarah Connor attempted to change the course of the future, but it was in vain - the only reason Miles Dyson and Cyberdyne Systems were working on the Terminator chip in the first place was because one had been sent back in time from when the war had started - this can't have happened if the war wasn't going to happen anyway. All the events of the first film did was change the start date of the war, and all the events of the second film did was reset the date back to the original one anyway - the day of the apocalypse as seen at the end of Terminator 3.
I know I see the world differently.
After playing through the first Assassin's Creed game, I'd find myself looking up at tall buildings, churches, etc. working out the best path to take for climbing up to the roof.
Never actually attempted to climb to the roof of any building - probably for the best; I hate heights.
I had these issues to begin with. But then I used a better power supply and these issues went away. The quality of the power supply unit really does affect how reliable your Pi is. I'm aware that the way they implemented USB power is far from ideal, but they have achieved the goal of producing a (quite surprisingly) powerful computer for $35.
Mine has been running for months with no downtime. It's a Samba4 domain controller, Horde groupware mailserver, DNS server, web server, SNMP poller (running Cacti), print server, and it runs Crashplan to automatically back up data from my family's PCs to an attached USB hard disk. I know I'm not the original target market for the Pi, but dammit I *like* mine, I think it's perfectly good at doing what it does for my needs, and I know I'm not using anywhere near its full capabilities (the GPU component of the Broadcomm SoC is supposed to be surprisingly powerful). It's also silent and draws very little power - which is why I used it to replace the old AMD Sempron box that was doing the same set of jobs previously.
Sure, it's not running the latest version of the ARM processor, or running the Ethernet connection independently from USB. But then if it did, it'd be larger and would cost more to build. Cut them some slack; they're doing something amazing - they're getting kids interested in how computers actually *work* instead of just using one to check their Facebook pages, and it's cheap enough that it doesn't really matter too much if they damage it.
Not sure if trolling, but I'll assume you're not (benefit of the doubt) and answer anyway.
HDMI-to-DVI and HDMI-to-VGA adapter cables mean you don't specifically need a monitor with HDMI input. The RPi has RGB outputs as well, so you can connect it to a TV (even if your TV only has a SCART input and not RGB, you can cheaply buy an RGB-to-SCART connector that will let you use the TV's SCART input).
You don't need a big memory card either, especially if you happen to have a spare external USB hard drive - you can have the RPi boot the bare essentials from the card and run everything else off the external disk.
What do you get if you sit under a cow?
A pat on the head.
When DVDs came out, I didn't bitch that they weren't backwards compatible with what I already had.
Yes they were. CD's play just fine in them.
Yes, DVD players will play CDs.
But most people who switched up to a DVD player wanted to watch films, rather than listen to music. Let me know when you manage to get your DVD player to play VHS or Betamax tapes.
Most Linux dists with Firefox and I suppose Android may have a standard browser to.
Microsoft were abusing their position to ensure other browsers couldn't be bundled as part of the OEM software builds distributed with new PCs. PC makers were literally not permitted to add any other browsers. See this US Dept. of Justice link, section V.C.2 for a summary. This was Microsoft's strategy for winning the browser wars against Netscape Navigator, and was the reason Netscape died out.
Then they integrated their Internet Explorer browser into the operating system so deeply that you can't actually uninstall it. Internet Explorer is present on EVERY copy of Windows released, whether the user wants to actually use it or not.
This is different from Linux distros distributing Firefox as part of their bundle for a number of reasons - chief of which is that Firefox isn't made by the Linux Foundation, it's a Mozilla product. Secondly, it's been a while since I installed Ubuntu, but I'm pretty certain when I did, the installer asked me which browser(s) I wanted (amongst other software) - it's not like Firefox was just given to me, I could have picked Chrome if I'd wanted to use it.
The reason Microsoft are being targeted here is that this is an anti-trust fine. Microsoft are recognized as the leader in the consumer and enterprise desktop/laptop PC OS markets - there are more Windows installs than there are Linux or Mac installs. By bundling their own browser and not giving users the option during installation NOT to install IE (let alone giving them the option to install something else), they could be viewed as using their dominance in the desktop OS market as a tool to gain dominance in the web browser market. Remember that a lot of consumers will also just go with whatever is installed, either through ignorance (they don't know how good other browsers are, and IE just works, right?) or through not feeling confident / tech savvy enough to install a different browser. You have to go download files and run installers and make choices - that sort of thing scares people, which is why the App Store model is so popular - you just click "install" and it goes and does it all for you. Putting the choice of browser in the installation wizard for the OS or in the "first-time user login" wizard when you first start up your brand new PC should even the playing field, giving users an easy way of picking what browser they want to use. Granted, most will continue using IE because that's what they've been used to in the past, or because of the Microsoft branding on it - but that's their choice.
Having the Chrome browser bundled with Android is pretty much the same as Microsoft including IE with Windows and Apple including Safari with MacOS and iOS - yes there are other browsers available, but they don't give you the choice what you want. There is no reason why the European Commissioner for Competition can't go and levy the same sorts of fines against Google and Apple for the same reasons (maybe they haven't received complaints about this practice by these companies?). It's just been Microsoft's turn this time, and the fine they're being hit with is because of their failure to comply with an earlier ruling - they were told previously to give users a choice, and this demand has basically been ignored.
OH THE HUMANITY! THE HORRORS! I HAVE TO CHANGE BROWSER MYSELF?!
You don't have to change it at all if you don't want to. The point is, it's about having the choice. You may have the technical know-how to do this, but a lot of people won't, so Microsoft win the browser wars by default.
we have an old rail line that goes thru the old Navel weapons station..
So you can use a train to escape from the bad guys with the belly button guns?
Their biggest problem, of course, will be how to enforce the collection of this tax. If a user signs up for Facebook (etc), does that mean Facebook has to tell the French government about it so they can be billed correctly for the tax? Doesn't that mean someone can really screw Facebook up by signing up a bunch of bogus accounts registered in France, meaning Facebook has to foot the bigger tax bill? What about French citizens signing up from other countries but marking down their country of origin as France (these people wouldn't be French taxpayers any more, yet Facebook would presumably have to pay the tax on the collection of that users' data). It's not an easy one to resolve...
Try using an HDMI-to-DVI cable; if you have a TV or monitor with a DVI input, this should allow your Pi to connect and get you going.
Headless all-in-one works sweet - mine spent about 3 hours connected to my TV, even had a keyboard and mouse - now it's headless. I installed VNC server (so X sessions are possible) and I use SSH to connect to it for command line configuration changes (99% of all interaction between me and the Pi come through a TeraTerm Pro SSH connection). Install Webmin on it too if you like, then you can work on it via a web browser.
It's an educational product - a little Linux computer that is designed to be cheap (major plus-point for schools) and provide all the tools necessary to learn about computing and programming. It has a kind of "Geek Port" on it (a bit like the old BeBox did) where you can connect up all kinds of electronic breadboards (homebrew or shop-bought) and you can use the Pi to interface with these things. Car-PC guys have been going nuts over the Pi, for instance.
My own Pi is for Samba4 - I currently have an old budget AMD-powered box that used for running Win2003 server to provide Active Directory, file/print, and some SNMP polling for my Cisco routers (via Cacti) - it is basically idle, yet draws a lot more power than the Pi does, and takes up a hell of a lot more space than the Pi does, and makes a lot more noise than the Pi does. I shut that server down every night because it's too wasteful of electricity - not so the Pi, so I'll also be installing a TACACS and RADIUS server on it so I can teach myself about those technologies. I am also using this as a way to teach myself about Linux as I've never really had much success with it so far. It seems to be quite a capable little machine - the processor isn't as powerful as the one in my old Win2K3 box but it doesn't need to be in order to get the job done.
My parents got one of these calls too (Dad runs a custom-built desktop PC with Ubuntu, Mum runs a Dell laptop with Windows 7).
My Mum didn't believe the guy, so she passed him over to my Dad, who spoke to them, asking them how they got their number and how they knew there was a problem, but without giving any personal information.
Eventually, the guy got fed up, told my Dad to "Go to hell" and hung up the call. I've never seen my Dad so pissed off.
That's because they want to be called "BT" and not "British Telecommunications". They even inform their employees and contractors of this. I used to work for them in an IT helldesk.
"BT" is seen as a snappier, less-stuffy title than "British Telecommunications", or "British Telecom". However, they primarily dropped the "British Telecommunications" moniker because they had become more than just a telephone company, and wanted to reduce the importance of the "telecommunications" aspect. They were performing managed IT services, writing business software, and conducting scientific research, to name just a few different things.
The phrase "British Telecommunications, PLC" is found in small print copyrights (i.e. "BT is a registered trademark of British Telecommunications, PLC").
When I was in high school, I did a week's work experience in the computing department at Dounreay
We worked on the ground floor of the building that houses the old DFR control room (it was just upstairs from us). We were right in the shadow of the spherical reactor housing (affectionately known as "the Golf Ball".
They had all sorts of old tech in their computing department - DEC VAX systems, racks full of old Gandalf kit, etc. It was 16 years ago now, and I can't remember what else they had in there. There was also just about the biggest and noisiest line printer (used for printing payslips) in an adjoining room.
My mother also worked as a contracts officer on the Dounreay site for many years.
We lived in a nearby town called Thurso, which was a small fishing port prior to Dounreay's construction. The town literally doubled in size during the 1950s as construction on the Dounreay plant began. The UKAEA was Thurso's biggest employer. Since the plant stopped generating power (in the mid 1990s), the town has stagnated and the population has been gradually declining. There's nothing up there (employment-wise) to attract newcomers any more.
Or how about they engineer some kind of PS3-based VM which enables you to use/write homebrew software that:
1) can take full advantage of the PS3's Cell architecture and graphics chipset
2) doesn't let you fuck up commercial multiplayer games, or play copied commercial PS3 games
3) doesn't need you to flash the BIOS
4) can be shared via the PlayStation Network free of charge
Kind of like the unofficial "homebrew channel" on Wii, but officially sanctioned. Of course, the fourth point would require that the software is vetted by Sony to ensure you're not producing anything that violates their PSN ToS (emulation, porn, racial/religious hatred, etc). And, they would need to produce a special EULA for that development environment that says if you do copy other people's work, you accept full responsibility (Sony can't be blamed, on your head be it, etc)
Wouldn't that be good?
I always preferred the sort of half-medieval/gothic, half-futuristic setting of the original Quake to the far-more generic "humans vs. aliens" setting of Quake II and Quake IV. I also didn't like the pure-deathmatch approach of Quake III.
I know you can download mods that revamp the Quake engine and make it look more modern, but nothing really beats a complete revisit using a next-gen engine (id Tech 5, for example). Would love to see it happen for the original Quake.