Raspberry Pi

On Wed, 27 Feb 2013, Tony Duell wrote: How long before certain [in need of defensetration] officials attempt to control CASH? There was actually an attempt years ago to abolish $100 bills! "because drug dealers use them"! The college administration here (see defenestration remarks) has decided that instead of a library patron handing 10 cents to the librarian to pay for a single page printout, that they must now leave their printout behind, go to another part of the building, pay 10 cents to the bursar's office, and bring the receipt back to the library to reclaim their printout. This was all due to the president of the college being SHOCKED to find out that the library had almost 25 dollars (mostly in coins) in a lockbox in a drawer. I wish that there were a cheap coin-operated printer with a preview screen! THAT is what the LAWYERS say! While I would PREFER dead-tree, those docs could be distributed on SD card, CD-ROM, or even on a remote server for download. I was disappointed that DEBUG on the 5150 wasn't built into the ROM. But, at least it came with PC-DOS 1.00, and the Technical Reference Manual was a pretty good start at reference material. It was a while before intro books were available. OTOH, Radio Shack jumped straight in with the David Lien books for the TRS80. You might need to actually write real software. :-) SOME C compilers are SO lame, that they can't comprehend an array index other than 16 bit int! :-) To get those things accepted by SCHOOLS (NOTE: That is ORTHOGONAL to getting them accepted by TEACHERS), they need to be repackaged, WITH A CASE. Remember when Apple could not adequately break into the educational market? They solved that quite cleverly with their Hell and Bowel deal. The case had to be modified to latch (not velcro), and the cord NOT detachable, so that it wouldn't separate and wander off (THAT requirement has since been relaxed in schools). But, most importantly, it had "BELL & Howell" as the name. It was, therefore, no longer an obscure hippy company named after a fruit. AND, since COMPUTERS required Board Of Education special committees, it could now be slid past the budget approval process as "Audio-Visual Equipment". I don't know why they had to be BLACK. Seriously. THAT is what it took. BUT, once those were accepted as being "legitimate", with their implicit approval by B&H, THEN most schools could then buy them cheaper without going through B&H. Any serious attempt at marketing to schools needs to start with a case, with SAFETY labels. They don't however, really CARE whether it is documented or even whether it works. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com 0.685 semesters to go