Re: All for the public good...

>

...but you'd need a lot more evidence to satisfy a court that you had just cause to go prying...

<

I'm not even afraid that someone publishes that I've done wrong. If I've done it, I'll have to live with the consequences.

What my concern is, is that some over-eager writer* gets the details not quite right and you end up making the front page for child abuse AND IT WASN'T YOU. Then a correction and apology gets published on page 17 three days later. No one will read it and your reputation is wrecked for ever.

*And yes, they are about; if they don't publish fast and waste too much time checking the facts, then someone else might beat them to the printing deadline. And northing's worse than being the second paper that publishes a gory story.

@ The BigYin - Re: Only disciplined?

>

...as numerous news stories inform us...

<

Those are written by journalists whose informers demanded too much money.

@ Crisp - Re: Disciplined

Unlikely. It will probably boil down to a 'verbal warning', valid for 6 months.

Whispering: ' Is that the Super Universal News? Put me through to Mr. Medium Cheese. - - - Hi, Meddy, listen mate, I got to lay low for a while - yea, about 'till September - look, if you can find anything to make my supervisor get into this as well, I can of course help sooner - of course, I'll mail that to you - cheers, buddy'

Coughcoughcough...

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

>...the less software support the better.<

That *would* be true, if the target audience could be bothered.

I personally am afraid that the Rπ will not spark the same interest as its predecessors. In the early days your computer came practically useless unless you yourself typed something up. You couldn't just google for a ready made solution to your needs and find it. The most you could hope for was a magazine with some paper code that you had to type off. That made you look at the actual code and debug your own typo's if, or more likely when, they occurred.

Kids nowadays are much more interested in a running system that does everything 'out-of-the-box'; and the price won't be bait either. They usually have a mobile phone that cost 10 to 20 times as much already.

If children want to learn programming, they can learn on every computer. Even if it is starting on MS-Office's VBA on an old PC snapped up for £30 off ebay.

Don't get me wrong, guys. I love the Rπ idea, it's great! I will also definitely be tinkering around with one.

But as a revival of the PET/ ZX80/C64 era, when you couldn't wait to get home and try that new line that you thought up in school (during French, most likely...)? No, I don't think it will work.

Pity.

Re: ALL NHS patient records online by 2015

or faxed somewhere at random.

@ Poor Coco - Re: @ Vordicae - Manual Launch ?

Beg differ:

They're not staying there for ages, the temperature does not drop to –60°C immediately after launch, they don't need a lot of transmitting power (2x 0.5s answer-beeps at 3W per minute would nicely do, which will roughly give you a consumption of less than 2Wh* even if your transmitter is not all that efficient), a bit of insulation might do some good, non-rechargeable alkaline batteries don't suffer from low temperatures as much as rechargeable Lithium cells, if you feel too cold, you can include a chemical handwarmer...

They have been up there before and shot video; I can't remember any battery-powered battery heaters from PARIS and they surely didn't use any magic then.

*~ the capacity of a single AA cell.

@ Vorficae - Re: Manual Launch ?

I like that idea; after all it's less than 50km and total line of sight, too.

And then I thought of this:

You (that means the SPB Team) could use the signal travel time of a radio repeater beacon on board to determine the height.

Have a 'peep-repeater'. Send a signal to the balloon that just gets returned. Measure the time.

Electromagnetic waves travel at ~300,000 km/s. That would make about 6 microseconds for a 1km ( 3300 feet) answer signal (3µs up and 3µs down). At your targeted height of 100,000 feet that will grow to 180 µs turnaround time. If the returning signal takes longer than that, send the trigger signal.

You could actually sit there with a Big Red Button and watch the numbers growing and then press it at the desired height! Come on, isn't that epic?

@Wile E. Veteran -- Re: Why play with penguins...

>

Not interested in doing any additional diagnostics

<

I know, but it bugs me... ;-) I would wildly guess that that was a graphics issue:

Boot up holding Shift, press F6 for boot options, choose 'nomodeset' as a boot option.

hth.

#####################

Apart from that: I just like it if you can put your fingers into the OS; I'm not a great fan of the walled gardens.

Of course Nintendo games run very reliable on Nintendo consoles, but nothing else either way.

@ James Hughes1--Re: @ Pete2 --Biscuits or Pi?

Well, I thought that a $25 Huawei phone could never be outsold by a $400 Apple one. And yes, I know that the Apple one has higher specs - so has the Intel board.

About the delivery, your very reasoning in your post is putting customers off. 'Huge backlog', 'expected',' should' and 'good bet' are not confidence-inducing terms.

As much as I love the RaspberryPi (don't get me wrong, I really do!), I think it's suffering from marketing and production failure. Sadly more vapour than ware.

@ Sir Wiggum: Re: @ Sir Wiggum is not a yank

In which case I should have suggested a Chelsea Tractor. ;-P

Ok, joke aside, apart from some Porsche, AMG-Mercs, M-Beemers and such, German cars aren't any harder than any other makes.

French: I think the last truly different experience (fro Jack Average) was the Citroen GS.

@ Sir Wiggum:

German car seats have a default design limit of 125kg (19st 10lb in 'real' money).

You should maybe consider a Chevrolet Silverado for increased comfort.

@ Pete2 --Re: Biscuits or Pi?

It might be a Pi worrier, I think.

I'm absolutely taken with the RaspberryPi; I'd love one. But they're not happening! I looked on the website, and you can now again pre-order for a delivery date of maybe later...

This is going to pi-ss people off. If Intel gets this on the market (and I think they have more of a chance to put out volume than the Pi foundation) and offers higher specs, then people might just be willing to pay a higher price for something they can buy, than for something they can only again and again wait for.

This delay is killing the RaspberryPi in my opinion. It gives any competitor too much time to get to the market where some Chinese makers can probably push them out by the 10Ks on short notice and won't worry too much about upsetting a non-profit foundation with a lot less clout than a commercial brand like Intel or Apple or such.

@ AC 1627h-- Re: BPI retards

>And the individuals at Google, who provide all of those same nice links ?<

The individuals at Google are rich, that's different.

There.

@ Nev--Re: Double standards

Especially if it involves one giving just that to the other one...

SCNR

Re: Double standards

Aaaawww, sniff sniff. How sad. Those poor people...

@ llewton:

...and you have made a very valid point with that, I think!

Mike Brown, you are mistaken

in the belief that a doctor would use this application. You will not bee seen by a doctor, you will be seen by a nurse who, as he or she is guided by the NHS-App, had all of 4 month's worth of training and sold shoes before.

If you're lucky.

In future then, because it won't make such a big difference, you might just come to A&E and find a self-service iPad strapped to the locked door that issues a prescription online which will be delivered by Royal Mail within the next 3-5 working days.

Re: I agree with the premise, but not the reasoning.

You would find that your boss will think different (although I do agree with you personally). ICS is probably not the best example anyway, I was more thinking about the Linux (specially Ubuntu) release names. You could probably sell 'Canonical Linux 10.10' to your CEO, but 'Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat'? He'll think you watched too much Cbeebies...

Re: I agree with the premise, but not the reasoning.

It might already be too late.

Pushed by the top level who want to look fashionable, some business processes get forcibly rewritten to NEED an iPad. Where, in former times, a simple, £5.99, tally counter was enough for a traffic survey, it now is done with a tablet, THE tablet.

Because the beancounter doesn't want to talk about an Android ICS ("What does ICS stand for? Ice cream wtf? This is a serious business, not a playground. And as we're at it: don't buy anything that sounds like a character out of the teletubbies or comes with a Pangolin in the name, either, or you've had it!" ) tablet, they want an iPAD. These people don't vacuum clean, they hoover (even if it's a Dyson).

Because: It's a safe decision to pick a big, popular brand. If it works well, then it was well decided. If it goes bellyup, then the 'overpaid IT guys' couldn't make it work even though they were given the very best materials. No mud on the boss.

I am afraid that we will see more and more 'forced' tablet applications due to this. And that will skew the whole IT setup. I recently spoke to a 'freelance photographer' (he's not famous, guess why...), who needs to replace his 'Photoshop on Windows' workstation with a Mac, because he bought an iPad, "...and it will be much better if it is all >properly< set up."

I hope I'm wrong.

@ zen1

Are you serious about this? I mean, I have no idea of how the american patent system works, but if they're just filing it: what's the point then?

Re: Good luck to him

@ AC 2302:

You haven't read the patent.

Read it.

Re: Time to go..

Even though he's a pretty good writer, you seem to read too much Frank Schätzing...

Re: WTF?

Even more important than that: Who the f*&% wants to Twitter?

@ BigYin:

Are you working for Apple?

Yes,

if you can pay the lawyers...

You forgot

the 'how can I stich up my neighbour whose cat crapped on my garden furniture?' angle.