Posts by James Hughes 1 2645 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
Not particularly surprising - it's an expensive business with a load of incumbents. It needed an entrepreneur like Musk to break the status quo. He's spent over a billion $ so far, so it's not cheap, so not anyone can join in.
And of course, there is no demand (at the moment) for a rocket the size of the Saturn 5 (which, BTW, is by far the most amazing piece of engineering I have ever seen in the flesh - well worth the drive to see it)
The reason that the Pureview isn't on WinPho is that the GPU that handles the camera doesn't support WInPho, and all the other GPU's out there that do support WinPho (and I think Android) are incapable of handling a sensor of this size. Which is why you will only see this sort of tech on Symbian for quite some time.
IIRC, SpaceX currently are building a test rig for their recovery system - basically big legs on a F9 first stage judging froo the pictures. They intend to do tests this year. http://www.flickr.com/photos/9614328@N02/7246837010/
It may not be as far away as people think.
Or perhaps, just perhaps it's a combination of the two? Like, the stuff that needs to be done by the Foundation is being done by them, whilst the stuff that can be done by the community is being done by them?
Just fyi, there are, I think, 8 official members of the Foundation. None are paid. It's an entirely volunteer effort. Half of those are not technical. 8 people means it's an absolute necessity to get external support, and so far, the response has been pretty good.
Well, since you appear to know something about it, perhaps you would like to offer some assistance and advice. It is a community effort after all.
Or are you the sort of person who just sits on the sidelines and laughs at people efforts and claims to be able to do it so much better? A fan of BGT perhaps?
Your comment "The RPi currently has zero focus on education" implies that the Foundation isn't doing anything to promote/help along the educational side. That is not the case. There is a lot of work being done in the background on documentation, teaching literature etc, by professionals in the subjects. Unfortunately, it's not particularly newsworthy.
As someone who works for Broadcom (on that particular GPU) and volunteers for the Raspberry Pi foundation, I can categorically say that the GPU you say is only used in the Roku device is also used in at least 5 current production mobile phones, as well as numerous other devices, so I think perhaps you need to revisit your arguments.
I wonder if you are thinking of the particular chip, the BCM2835, that has the GPU in it, which is currently used in the Roku device and the RaspberryPi. That particular chip contains the GPU to which you refer (A videocore4), but it isn't the only chip that does so.
Even Wikipedia has the information which you are missing.
You are correct in one point- it would de pretty much impossible to reverse engineer the GPU.
@Jason. FFS , it's plastered all over the Raspberry Pi site that this is a work in progress. If you cannot be arsed to read up on things before buying, caveat emptor.
That said, most stuff just works. And yes, it does perform as advertised. If you don;t read the advertisement, who's fault is that?
You have made lots of statements in your post that are untrue. You have made assumption that the device has been thrown out there, that no-one is working on educational software and documents, on syllabus etc. All that stuff IS indeed going on. Unless you actually work with the Foundation, you are unlikely to know that stuff, so please don't spread misinformation on areas you know nothing about. Just because YOU haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not happening. So stop guessing and making yourself look foolish.
Raspberry Pi can be overclocked very easily to 1GHz. Will reduce life of SoC slightly, but have had devices running for a few months at this speed no problem. Will void warranty (and doing it sets an OTP bit, so it will be known it's been overclocked)
Not sure how a device that cost $200 is a worrier to a device that costs $35.
Pi's are being delivered right now. There is a huge backlog, 350k people, but production is ramping very fast and that expected to be dealt with in 2 to 3 months. If you order now, September should be a good bet - then October for order and fast delivery. If all goes to plan with RS and Farnell who are doing the manufacture.
If you think that working 20hrs a day (or even just 10, consistently) makes you more productive, I feel you may be sadly mistaken. It's a diminishing return. Although I agree you should be rewarded for results rather than time spent, if the only way you can get those results is working long hours every day, then the employer is certainly not doing it right. Because that doesn't work in the medium/long term.
IMO.
IIRC, the original release price was £235 and £335 for the Model A and B. I have a feeling that the credit card used to pay for my Model A was never charged....so all I paid for mine was the upgrade to Model B (done by a bloke in a static caravan outside Cambridge somewhere). Good times indeed!
Lots of subjects are taught at schools. Not all of them are 'useful' once a person leaves school - but they are all useful for the all round education of children. Computer programming just need to be one of those. There a many many people out there who would probably be fantastic software people, but have never been introduced to it. This is the chance to introduce another subject, find out who is good, bad, indifferent, and stream them appropriately. This country (UK) is very short of decent softies, it's time to teach more people, to fill that gap,
I think I may be wasting my time but...
PC with parallel ports haven't been made for some years and no-one uses them nowadays.
The Raspi has GPIO's, 16 of them. Use them for parallel stuff if you want. Or add a Gertboard for even more HW interfacing options (all the ones you mention)
But my main point is that this is a device intended for teaching programming, cheaply, not necessarily programming HW, and really not intended for real time HW programming (linux isn't great for that). Arduino's and similar are much better at that, but of course, they are not standalone devices, so you need another PC.
Small fraction of the HW costs? You do realise that a thumb drive needs to actually plug in to something? Of course, the SD card on the Pi is removable, so works in very much the same way as your thumb driver for taking stuff home, and for a mere £30 you can have a Pi at home to continue your work, rather than a rather more expensive PC.
Since you believe its a far better solution, is there anything stopping you actually going out and doing this yourself? or stopping anyone else from doing it. I think the fact this has been feasible for the last 5 years but hasn't been done must indicate a problem with the idea.
That should be around July/August. Lots of backlog to get through first, and, of course, all the while you are waiting for that elusive next day order, people are getting in the queue, and getting their Pi before you do.
And of course, your last sentence makes no sense - if there is next day delivery, you won't actually need to get in a line.....
If anyone can start producing similar devices at a comparable price, they should go for it (and the Raspi foundation will welcome it). By the time you have designed and tested it of course, the Raspi will be in full production. And of course, the Foundation has no profit motive, which may dissuade /prevent competitors getting to the same price levels.
I've always wondered at this attitude. Since when did programming GPIO's become a necessity for learning to program?
As to the educational side, let me think... What could be the educational advantages of a Linux PC that runs off an SD card (easily reimaged if broken) and can be programmed in any number of languages, and can be put in a school bag? That costs £30. Including all the software. Tough one.
I was talking to someone about 20 minutes ago about this EXACT same thing (I mean EXACTLY the same - PV on roof, wanted to dump 'excess' power to immersion heater). Small world.
Raspberry Pi + SPI interface board + opto isolators , which I was talking to someone about about 10 minutes ago!
Environmentally, rockets pad sites are a good thing - very little pollution, and the whole area stays 'au naturelle.' No other development at all. No-one wants a rocket dropping on them.
One problem with Texas is the oil rigs out at sea which need to be evacuated for each laucnh. However, there are not too many on the track, so that's probably OK.
Having this site would be useful for their reusable approach (fly back boosters) - launch at Texas and the second stage can loop round the earth and land back in Canaveral. I think.
25mph isn't 10mph more than 15mph if you are talking about the energy required - drag goes up with the square of speed, so to get from 15 to 25mph you need more enerygy than you would need to go from 0-10mph. Quite a lot more.
I'm not that fit, and I can just about average 19mph on my road bike on the pretty flat Cambs Busway cyclepath (max speed about 26 I reckon). The only dangers are the complete nob-end students from Impington village collage who seem to think that walking or cycling 5 abreast across the whole path is a really good idea, and don't look where they are going. Already been sideswiped by one moron and I was practically on the left hand verge. /rant
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