How many here actually *care* about the goals of the project?

[DavidS]

Prometheus said:


riFFraFF said:


P.S.
I will consider the project a raving success on the day that young student uses his/her RasPi to create a spambot with an AI component sufficiently powerful to "Do Math to Post".


That sounds like a challenge! You should make a competition thread for it.


No no he said "…that a young student uses his/her RasPi to…" not one of us  .  Though it is doable as the addition expression is text (should have been an image).

Had to edit as the standard smiley does not work (the  style).

[gvnmcknz]

An inexpensive Internet Kiosk device.

Community Cafe / Older peoples centres etc..

I've distro-hopped through lots of Linuxes(ii?).

Slitaz (on X86) very, very light on memory, runs fast in RAM memory.

I think it's being ported to ARM.

95% of time I'm in the browser, Google Docs etc. works fine (if not doing War and Peace).

Love, peace, and Open Source!

gvnmcknz

(Aged Geek)

[gvnmcknz]

Puppy Linux is definitely being converted to ARM

[RichardN]

I love the whole concept, because once that first generation of us had had all the fun figuring what the heck to do with the microprocessor development boards the software came along to completely swamp the hardware and denied the huge majority of the computing population the same joy and pain we had.

I love it even more because I've been cosseted so badly by all the layers of BS software between me and the hardware for decades and I have a yearning to get back where I belong - in among the raw code - and surely a new generation would benefit hugely from knowing how it works under the hood too.

[johnf]

PiOfCube said:


I"m wearing two hats with regards to the Raspberry Pi.

As an individual (my own "PiOfCube"s YouTube videos et al) I will be "messing around" with the Raspberry Pi and make stuff like media streamers for the tutorials. However, even a media streamer would be of great educational benefit for those that do not have a PC and by using a R-Pi just for media streaming could give people access to educational resources via YouTube, Khan Academy and other things like that.

As Chair of "Open Indie Project Dot Org" (a non-profit organisation) I will be doing some pretty serious stuff in the form of fully tested circuit designs and assembly instructions (which will be released under an Open Source licence). We will not be selling finished products that use the R-Pi, just publishing the diagrams and related documentation so anyone can make use of them (the plans) at no cost. These devices will probably include audiometers, portable field medical support units, emergency notification systems, classroom support units and many other things. We will really have to wait for the R-Pi to get into full production before we start pushing these ideas for obvious reasons. In some cases, these ideas will probably not come close to anything that is available to the UK and USA and in some cases they will probably not have the same sensitivity. However, in the case of audiometers, you can easily pay £1,000 (GBP) for a basic unit. After doing some prototyping, we may find that the Raspberry Pi might just do the same job (and also include a patient database system for the local health worker) for approximately £40-£50 (GBP). Even if it isn"t within the same tolerances as the £1K+ versions, it would still be of great benefit to those that simply wouldn"t have the chance to be tested on such expensive equipment.

[riffraff]

DavidS said:


Prometheus said:


riFFraFF said:


P.S.
I will consider the project a raving success on the day that young student uses his/her RasPi to create a spambot with an AI component sufficiently powerful to "Do Math to Post".


That sounds like a challenge! You should make a competition thread for it.


No no he said "…that a young student uses his/her RasPi to…" not one of us  .  Though it is doable as the addition expression is text (should have been an image).

Had to edit as the standard smiley does not work (the  style).


No, The real AI should involve comparing the page code with OCR of a rasterized image of the rendered page to identify the input choke point and the required response - whether or not it's an image should be irrelevant . That's a BIG challenge. Supercomputer size challenge. But then again we used to think that facial recognition was a big challenge.

[Cyclops91]

walney said:



Quote from ukscone on December 2, 2011, 16:47
any idea what the LD50 is for the raspberry pi?


Depends which orifice it"s inserted in.


....but don't we call them ports in here? <grin>

[johnf]

johnf said:   We should also be thinking about the Special Needs  market, whether auditory  processing, wheelchair add-ons, other mobility gadgets.

Many of these are available only from specialised manufacturers , they cost the earth and servicing  is very difficult to  arrange. R-Pi is a very cheap spare part, the voltage is  "elfin safety"  and the  software is  downloadable  and potentially  free.

I make no apology for  drawing  attention  , again, to  The vOICe which is sight replacement . The vOICe as a wearable system is crying out for the R-pi as a truly portable and ergonomic  demonstration  processor .

I reckon that a top-end Arduino could eventually  take over the street work involved in The vOICe.

What is needed for the present  is a robust demonstration that seeing-with-sound  can be made to work  in an un-sheltered  environment.

The software is available for PC and Android, there are some remarkable special camera functions.   R-pi  could open up a world market  for this technology. 




PiOfCube said:


I"m wearing two hats with regards to the Raspberry Pi.

As an individual (my own "PiOfCube"s YouTube videos et al) I will be "messing around" with the Raspberry Pi and make stuff like media streamers for the tutorials. However, even a media streamer would be of great educational benefit for those that do not have a PC and by using a R-Pi just for media streaming could give people access to educational resources via YouTube, Khan Academy and other things like that.

As Chair of "Open Indie Project Dot Org" (a non-profit organisation) I will be doing some pretty serious stuff in the form of fully tested circuit designs and assembly instructions (which will be released under an Open Source licence). We will not be selling finished products that use the R-Pi, just publishing the diagrams and related documentation so anyone can make use of them (the plans) at no cost. These devices will probably include audiometers, portable field medical support units, emergency notification systems, classroom support units and many other things. We will really have to wait for the R-Pi to get into full production before we start pushing these ideas for obvious reasons. In some cases, these ideas will probably not come close to anything that is available to the UK and USA and in some cases they will probably not have the same sensitivity. However, in the case of audiometers, you can easily pay £1,000 (GBP) for a basic unit. After doing some prototyping, we may find that the Raspberry Pi might just do the same job (and also include a patient database system for the local health worker) for approximately £40-£50 (GBP). Even if it isn"t within the same tolerances as the £1K+ versions, it would still be of great benefit to those that simply wouldn"t have the chance to be tested on such expensive equipment.

[Jongoleur]

When I first heard about the project nine months ago, I was particularly impressed with the educational emphasis that the Foundation had.  I've seen ICT from the sharp end and I appreciate that it doesn't really have anything to do with computers other than give some training in Office skills so kids can use a computer to grab stuff off Wikipedia and type up projects using the Wikipedia material.  Cross-curriculum, that's the ticket!

That the Raspberry Pi is so flexible that it can do a multitude of other things is amazingly impressive, but that's not what its being made for.

So yes, I DO care about the goals of the project.

(Of course, I also thought Whoooeeee!!!!  Tiny PC! WANT ONE!!!)

[slacer]

Long long ago at a time where stores were filled with many differend brands of home computer (vc20/vc64, sharp, casio, schneider...) I went to one of the biggest stores in town as often as possible equipped with pen and paper.

To learn the first basic dialect from the different computers. You know - some computers where bocked by a crowd of pupils and other machines (less attractive to the croud) where free to toy around with.

Learning basic without teacher, looking over other kids shoulders, writing down what they typed into the keyboard... and trying to redo this on another free computer...

I was sure this is something great and I had to prove my parents I would not throw this device under my bed after a short time of enthusiasm...

After endless months of waiting and begging my parents for a computer, I finally got my c64 and bought the datasette myself.

I learned to program small things and read about homecomputers in every magazine I could get into my hands.

Years later I switched to Amiga and fell in love with 68000er assembler

This was a great time and it would be great if we could give current pupils

the same possibilities with Raspberry Pi.

The initial poster of this thread was unhappy about everyones ideas for private projects and only few educational projects mentioned.

Well, I think you need another platform (website/forum) to attract teachers, schools and pupils.

How can we push this further?

Invite teachers! Involve students.

Launch some boards and connect them to the Internet and allow teachers to login with a demo account.

Find someone to create showcases for the Raspberry PI and the gertboard and how it would be possible to controls lights, relays, ... for school projects.

Ask yourself

How can we get those boards into the schools?

Let them know these boards exist...

But schools cannot simply buy a bunch of boards, they are required to follow some rules. It may take some time until the first school is equipped with these boards and it could take another year until you can use this school project as reference on your website...

My english language has some limitations, but I hope you got the point.

[SwampPuppet]

Well its my first post and I can"t help but wonder what the Raspberry Pi will be used for?

With my ultra-cynical head on I imagine headlines such as "In 2015, 80% of all roadside IEDs in Afghanistan had a British made Raspberry Pi powering them". Terrorism just got a whole lot cheaper. Indeed a generation of children will grow up learning from devices like these, but is it likely to be a Western World generation?

The other thing that jumps to mind is who will buy the first batches? Not children, that"s for sure. I have not seen a single child on the forums. At the risk of being flamed the people buying the first 10,000 will be one of 3 groups.

1) Collectors. Those who want the original Raspberry Pi. The machine that spawned 200 million clones. They will want one of the first 10,000 and hope something changes even if it is the colour of a component, to distinguish theirs as one of the first batch. Most of these will never leave the box and will periodically appear on ebay at inflated prices for the rest of eternity.

2) Old men. There is no point in dressing it up. Men with beards, sandals, tweed coats with leather elbow patches who have been rubbing their thighs at the thought of rigging their tomato plants with a retro computer for temps and water, that whispers echos of their childhood and a beloved zx spectrum or similar.

3) Journalists. Who will benchmark them and bin them.

Maybe there is something that Raspberry Pi can learn from Microsoft. STUDENT EDITION. Make a Student Edition $5 (model A) and subsidise it with a "pro edition" (that should have been your model B for the enthusiasts that will buy up all your stock before a child gets near it) at $75. Then only sell the Student edition to students as Microsoft does with Office software for example. Maybe you could have even given them to schools on a 1:1 rate with the Model B costing the price of a model A&B ($60).

Anyway, my 2 cents. I hope I"m wrong and that kids up and down the country will be playing with these next month but I just don"t see it. I think the product is right, but the business model is wrong.

[liz]

Read around here a bit, or read some of the interviews we've given the press, and you'll understand why we're aiming the project squarely at hackers to start with. You'll also learn that the environment you see here now is not what you'll see in six months' time. We need to populate a software stack before our educational launch, and the team making the device is very small, so we need a community to do that.

In the summer, we'll be having a second, educational launch, with cased devices, supporting materials for teachers and students, a schools-specific website, and lots of age-appropriate software; there is a lot being worked on by our partners already, and we have offers from community members to build tools and ports as soon as they can get their hands on a board. We've got some other, really exciting stuff up our sleeves for then that I can't talk about yet, but I am perfectly confident that you're dead wrong about whether or not we have the skills to get this into schools.

And your IED example is fatuous (you're not even the first person to come up with it; it's a relatively common bit of trolling round here). Alarm clock, fertiliser, nail, pipe and sugar manufacturers must be quaking in their boots at the sort of impression they make on people like you.

[Mr_Navigator]

I view the RP as something akin to the original LASER, something that was invented that really didn't have any real practical use, when there was already technology that did a multitude of jobs. Surgeons had scalpels which worked incredibly well, Engineers had devices that measured to incredible sizes, yet the LASER changed all that (eventually), it took people with some creativity to work out what could be done.

[SwampPuppet]

@Liz

Its not that I don't believe you have the skills to get this into schools. I don't think you have the production capacity to do so. One or two batches of 10,000 a month is going to be swallowed by enthusiasts. Month after month. Year after year. The same people will buy multiple units. One that works the central heating, one that lives in the car etc. That's assuming no one makes a commercial venture from them and sells thousands.

I came here and read about the product because I think it a great concept. Not because I have run out of bible sites and youtube videos to troll.

'People like me' would love to see this in schools, but with so much talk from enthusaists, to be honest I do find it hard to see where children will fit into all this.

If the 'hackers' get there first and pioneer everything, the kids aren't going to be interested. 'The hackers' were the kids of the 80's who were first to the plate last time around. They didn't have communities building an infrastructure beforehand. They were the ones who got their hands dirty.

Thank you for your reply. As I said, I hope I am wrong but fear this super little project will drown in good intentions. Make me wrong. Please.

[jamesh]

SwampPuppet said:



With my ultra-cynical head on I imagine headlines such as "In 2015, 80% of all roadside IEDs in Afghanistan had a British made Raspberry Pi powering them". Terrorism just got a whole lot cheaper. Indeed a generation of children will grow up learning from devices like these, but is it likely to be a Western World generation?


Who cares which part of the world learns. We are all humans.

As for IED's, the Raspi is powerful enough to drive a centrifuge to separate uranium, or guide a ballistic missile. You really need to think bigger if the best you can come up with is IED's.

Oh, and terrorists have plenty of money - they don't' need cheap kit when they can afford expensive kit. Like an iPhone.

[liz]

Manufacturing capacity isn't limited to one or two batches per month; it'll be driven by demand. If demand rises, we'll make more.

Obviously, in the first month or so we are going to be limited by what we can afford to make with our seed fund. But if demand is as great as you think (and we hope) it'll be, we'll be able to make far more devices. We don't have our own factory and will be using a number of different manufacturers, so we're not constrained by the output potential of any one factory.

[laurie]

I think it's fab idea - it's part of what makes this thing so cool. I'm no programmer or anything, but part of growing up with computers was the sense that you could control it - even if that just meant using one of those books with basic programmes you could type in which is all most of us could ever do. But it was enough. With today's machines being so 'consumption' centric I think it adds to the sense that making it do things without buying a programme to make that leap for you is for a geeky elite. I'd hate to think that we end up with the next generation who don't feel computer-type machines are really controllable.

And as for education, the first person I'm planning on educating is myself... I've got no idea how most of this stuff will work but I'm looking forwards to trying to find out.

[tufty]

There"s actually quite a few kids here. Smart kids, mind, who can spell better than a good number of the adults and string together far more coherent arguments than OMFG TERRORISTS. Plus there"s the teachers, and people who are already putting together educational materials based around what the Pi can run. This latter group are doing work that means that, even if the device itself turns out to be a damp squib in educational terms, the goals themselves will be furthered.

I really hope that the Pi succeeds in its stated aims, despite the vast majority of interest here being in bloody media centres. But if it gets swamped by geeks wanting cheap ARM boxes, or even terrorists wanting cheap arms, the fuse (if you"ll excuse the pun) has been lit.

Simon

[Lardon]

SwampPuppet said:


The other thing that jumps to mind is who will buy the first batches? Not children, that"s for sure. I have not seen a single child on the forums. At the risk of being flamed the people buying the first 10,000 will be one of 3 groups.

1) Collectors. Those who want the original Raspberry Pi. The machine that spawned 200 million clones. They will want one of the first 10,000 and hope something changes even if it is the colour of a component, to distinguish theirs as one of the first batch. Most of these will never leave the box and will periodically appear on ebay at inflated prices for the rest of eternity.

2) Old men. There is no point in dressing it up. Men with beards, sandals, tweed coats with leather elbow patches who have been rubbing their thighs at the thought of rigging their tomato plants with a retro computer for temps and water, that whispers echos of their childhood and a beloved zx spectrum or similar.

3) Journalists. Who will benchmark them and bin them.

Maybe there is something that Raspberry Pi can learn from Microsoft. STUDENT EDITION. Make a Student Edition $5 (model A) and subsidise it with a "pro edition" (that should have been your model B for the enthusiasts that will buy up all your stock before a child gets near it) at $75. Then only sell the Student edition to students as Microsoft does with Office software for example. Maybe you could have even given them to schools on a 1:1 rate with the Model B costing the price of a model A&B ($60).

Anyway, my 2 cents. I hope I"m wrong and that kids up and down the country will be playing with these next month but I just don"t see it. I think the product is right, but the business model is wrong.


4) Geeks. Nerds. Hackers.

People who will try things. Show the entire world what kind of great things the Raspi can do. Write tutorials about their funny projects, how it works, how you link this with that, put it together and make all these little components interact smoothly.

People who will share their experience and their ideas. Build a community. Help newcomers. Expand the possibilities.

If Linux and Arduino are the way they are today, it is because of many children with beards, sandals and tweed coats.

By the way, I believe in the "buy one give one" initiative. It is a GREAT idea.

[Jongoleur]

SwampPuppet said:


Well its my first post and I can"t help but wonder what the Raspberry Pi will be used for?

With my ultra-cynical head on I imagine headlines such as "In 2015, 80% of all roadside IEDs in Afghanistan had a British made Raspberry Pi powering them". Terrorism just got a whole lot cheaper. Indeed a generation of children will grow up learning from devices like these, but is it likely to be a Western World generation?

The other thing that jumps to mind is who will buy the first batches? Not children, that"s for sure. I have not seen a single child on the forums. At the risk of being flamed the people buying the first 10,000 will be one of 3 groups.

1) Collectors. Those who want the original Raspberry Pi. The machine that spawned 200 million clones. They will want one of the first 10,000 and hope something changes even if it is the colour of a component, to distinguish theirs as one of the first batch. Most of these will never leave the box and will periodically appear on ebay at inflated prices for the rest of eternity.

2) Old men. There is no point in dressing it up. Men with beards, sandals, tweed coats with leather elbow patches who have been rubbing their thighs at the thought of rigging their tomato plants with a retro computer for temps and water, that whispers echos of their childhood and a beloved zx spectrum or similar.

3) Journalists. Who will benchmark them and bin them.

Maybe there is something that Raspberry Pi can learn from Microsoft. STUDENT EDITION. Make a Student Edition $5 (model A) and subsidise it with a "pro edition" (that should have been your model B for the enthusiasts that will buy up all your stock before a child gets near it) at $75. Then only sell the Student edition to students as Microsoft does with Office software for example. Maybe you could have even given them to schools on a 1:1 rate with the Model B costing the price of a model A&B ($60).

Anyway, my 2 cents. I hope I"m wrong and that kids up and down the country will be playing with these next month but I just don"t see it. I think the product is right, but the business model is wrong.


An  interesting post, first or otherwise, but based on a rather superficial understanding of the Pi project.  Its been well known for some time that:


The Raspberry Pi foundation is not a large company with funding oozing out of its pores, capable of building up a huge pre-launch stock of mass-market ready product.
Initial production would be "limited", as far as 10000 unit batches can be considered limited for a device that has potential but an uncertain takeup rate.
That the initial batches would be targetted at the enthusiast market as they are the best able to cope with a machine with a few rough edges, incomplete documentation (and no, I don't mean low-level Broadcom specific information) and a standard Linux distro. "Children" were never intended to be the recipients of the first batches.
That a cased and supported mass-market product with proper support material would be released within months of the bare-board product.


As for your points on potential purchasers.  Collectors may well form a small sub-group of initial buyers, but by the time of the second batch, their percentage will grow vanishingly small.  Journalists will form a similarly limited subgroup. And why should they "bin" them?  Even journos probably know someone else who would appreciate a Pi.  Perhaps they could sell them onto "collectors"?

The point about roadside IEDs is equally interesting.  80% market penetration, eh?  I'm surprised we don't hear that the Arduino, for example, is not being used in a similar role already.

And am I the only one who finds your rant about "Old Men … with beards, sandals, tweed coats with leather elbow patches who have been rubbing their thighs …" an incredibly ageist and sexist stereotypical view of a group of people?  Perhaps the sort of people who have knowledge, experience and the ability to do wonderful things with the Raspberry Pi and prevent it being viewed as purely a kids computer.

Finally.  Why suggest such an initial high price for the B?  Are you that keen to prevent it from being taken up by the widest possible demographic?  Oh, and a $5 Model A?  Ideal for the IED market, I'd suggest…

Enjoy! 

Edit: for typos and sense...

[timgiles]

Gosh. Can I ask why you feel the need to make the comments you do?

Seriously, if life is as stark and bad, peoples intentions so dishonest, the vast majority hating on the 'poor children' and depriving them of a RPi, a device you are convinced will be used in IEDs!!! Really?

So by your logic everything in the world should be destroyed, including the people. The earth should be left sterile and the human race dissolved. Since virtually any material can be used to kill (water, air...) and any human can rain on anyone else.

I for one am happy that the foundation has a goal to improve and regenerate the UK Computer industry by getting children to recognise that someone needs to type at a keyboard before Angry Birds actually appears on their phone.

I will support the foundation, donate when I order. But will I decide not to buy 3 or 4 RPis in the coming 6 months because I want to use them for non educational use. NO Fing WAY. The device is for sale. It is for general sale. If all 10,000 were used as Media Centre devices, so what! 10 or 20 or 50 thousand would be ordered in the second batch. OK, those are all used up. This would drive 200,000 for the summer. I dont understand where the problem is with the RPi being successful of being able to be used for more than the teaching of children.

What is wrong with you trollers. Do you find being unemployed and sponging of the state, giving you the time to sit on the internet all day writing trash, fore filling?

[scep]

And on that note I think it's time that this once dead thread was closed.

[bredman]

I feel that the RPi may change the landscape of computer education, and we have no way to predict what will happen.

I know that the primary goal of the foundation is to promote computer programming, but I hope that it will have wider-ranging effects.

Recently, I helped a 14-year-old boy with learning difficulties to assemble a 386 computer from spare parts. All he did was plug some cables together and use a screwdriver, and it did take him over an hour to do it. Will it teach him to be a computer engineer? No. But he got enormous satisfaction from being in absolute control of creating something. He had previously been uncomfortable with computers, including a fantastic €2000 gaming laptop that he rarely uses. Now he feels much more comfortable.

In a similar way, teaching children to program may not make them computer scientists. But it may help them think just a little differently about the world.

Also, exposing the power of a simple dedicated device may prompt people to ask why they have to buy bloated multi-function devices.

PS. I may have a beard and be past my prime, but I will never wear a tweed jacket with leather elbows.