Cognitive dissonance

There seem to be two recurring message from RPF representatives here

1. Everything is in hand. It's all being worked on. Don't bother your pretty little heads about it.

and

2. Everything needs done. It's a community effort. Don't expect us to do everything.

Re: And another thing...

Eben Upton himself said in a Radio Four interview at one of the Pi launches that it would run off a "couple of AA batteries". Just how you get 700mA at 5V for any length of time from a couple of AA batteries he did not, alas, explain.

Re: Additionally, despite no software support as yet...

Every child in the country who might be interested in programming will already own a vastly more capable computer of some sort, whether it's a phone, a tablet, a console or even a desktop/laptop/netbook. Why would they want to do their programming on a completely separate, low powered system?

The Pi would appear to have some promise for embedding in systems, if some sort of interface board ever happens, but the idea that it is a good platform for coding fails at about six different levels if you look at it closely.

Re: "you don't *need* a new machine to code with."

So do your playing around with a virtual machine already. If it all goes wrong then you don't even have to reflash - just reload the latest snapshot. Takes about ten seconds on VirtualBox.

Re: Vaguely familiar

The OU one was probably a DESMOND: Digital Electronic System Made Of Nifty Devices and used on Technology Faculty courses. There was also a series of Hektor computers (Home Experiment Kit) of which the first was a single board job like the Kim-1, the second had a keyboard and the third was more like a BBC Model B.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=817

An EpiPhone?

Is that the one with the real strong vibrating alert?

Plenty of soft doctorates here, too

Just look at the proliferation of "professional" doctorates, like the EdD, which second rate universities sell to punters as a way of getting the title without doing the work.

Re: Appallingly bad design?

It may break institutional rules to submit the same thing twice - there is generally a rule about not using the same work for credit more than once. It is emphatically NOT plagiarism to do so, though.

Re: Again.....Taking the piss now.

"Why was sensitive data relating to 600 maternity patients taken *HOME* in the first place. "

Most midwives in my neck of the woods work from home, for obvious reasons. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have data on their patients (or access to it) at home.

Brrring-brrring. Brrring-brrring.

"Hello, duty midwife here"

"I've just gone in to labour. I think the baby's coming now."

"OK, I'll just drive forty miles to the hospital, get your case note and drive forty miles back to see you. See you in a couple of hours"

Re: Again.....Taking the piss now.

""A data controller employee downloaded the data on to a personal memory stick in order to do some work at home." takes the piss on a grandious scale.

WHY is someone taking confidential data home."

I think there might be a clue in "to do some work at home". VPNs are all very well, as long as everything is centrally stored at the employer's end. It's a fat lot of good if stuff is stored on desktop machines.

Re: Comprehension fail

In some places - I believe California is one - speed limits are only legally enforceable if a survey within the last three years has shown 85% of driver to be within the limit. That seems a reasonable way of maintaining the democratic legitimacy of a regulation.

Paris, because she's fast and Californian.

1992 called. They want their network back.

So you want my phone to drop calls every time I walk from one cell to another. Nice idea.

Re: LibreOffice for Android

I have to use two applications at once lots and lots and lots of the time. I read documents and write comments in other documents or emails. I copy lots of small chunks of information from one document to another - when doing it by eyeball is far quicker than copying and pasting. I enter information from an email into my calendar. Many of my colleagues use two screens, one for email and one for everything else, for just this reason.

I find the full-screen-only-ness of tablets a complete pain in the arse, which is why the Galaxy Tab work gave me will shortly be starting an exciting new career as a photo frame.

Re: One flaw

You only need a TV licence if you watch TV content as it's being broadcast. No need at all if you are only watching stuff later on iPlayer - though that is not the impression the TVLA drones will give when they phone you if you don't have a TV licence.

Re: Could be a good idea

In most cases the BBC does not own the overseas rights, so "earning a few quid by selling them on iPlayer" is simply not an option. The overseas broadcasters from whom the BBC has already earned many, many quid would be rightly pissed off if they tried.

Re: Very Wrong.

Very, very wrong. You don't need a license to own a computer, or a TV for that matter. You need a licence to use them in order to watch material as it is broadcast, nothing else.

Re: Not quite the £25 computer in reality

Don't forget the USB hub, unless you are happy to keep swapping between keyboard and mouse.

Re: Whoa. I. Want. One.

£22 turns out to be about £30 when you order from Farnell. And that's with free delivery. Still cheap, but let's see how much they cost when they exist, eh?

Oh good, someone from RPF

Can you tell us why the story was that 10,000 were on there way, and then that 10,000 had been sold, and then that 10,000 were awaiting customs clearance when it appears that the story should have been that 10,000 didn't actually exist. Manufacturing is hard; telling the truth is easy.

It's not the only game in town

Pop over to eBay, where you can buy old desktops with much higher specification by the pallet load for a similar unit cost. OK, a tad bulkier, but at least they actually exist.

Re: Well...

Why should long term support preclude application upgrades? In fact, shouldn't long term support imply application upgrades?

"We support this for five years, which means you're stuck with the current version of Firefox until 2017" is not the greatest selling point ever.

Re: Re: Re: great!

Samsung stuff includes Swype, which makes text entry pretty easy. Unfortunately, everything else about the Galaxy Tab 10.1 which work bought for me is unutterably shite.

Last week's software upgrade has reduced the mean time between crashes for the browser from 20 minutes to about 10. Thanks, Samsung.

Googling around suggests

that the galaxy Tab 10.1 is not going to be upgraded to ICS at all. Which I can understand, because Samsung want you to buy new tablets, not upgrade old ones from "useless piece of shit" to "perhaps less useless piece of shit".

I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1. I use it as a photo frame.

Fifteen years ago, actually.

That's when I bought my truly excellent Nokia Communicator 9000.

Missing the point

Gnome3 is only marginally less horrible than Unity. Gnome2 isn't available with current Ubunti.

I've gone over to Lubuntu, which uses LXDE. Goes from the <return> after my password to fully functioning desktop in just under four seconds, faster than Gnome, uses less than half the memory. What's not to like?

Asperger's is not a disability

Asperger himself defined it as "the extreme end of normal male behaviour". Note the word "normal" in there. Most aspies function perfectly well in society - and, let's face it, most of modern science and It wouldn;t exist without them.

Mr McKinnon's decision to claim that people with Asperger's are compulsive, untrustworthy security risks has not been a helpful move.

Oh, and read up about the medical and social models of disability, will you.

Salvation

Lubuntu is your friend. Works for me.

Other people's money

Having fun is all very well, but less attractive when it's done at the expense of other people: the creditors he stiffed for £165,000 when he went bust and the ex wife who paid for the flat.

Between a rock and a hard place.

When the Gnome boys decided to commit ideologically pure suicide with Gnome 3, what real choice did Ubuntu have? Go with the Gnome 3 abomination (and shed users by the ton), fork Gnome 2 (a metric fuckload of work) or invent something to sit on top of Gnome 3? The last might be the least bad option from their point of view.

As long as Xubuntu is still available when support ends on Ubuntu 10.04LTS I won't be too unhappy.