Yep - perl is better for this. Start like BASIC, end up like C.
OK - it's not as clean as python, but it is noth a grat hacking/fiddling langauge and it *can* easily be made to do more in a clean way (but that requires discipline).
It isn't a computer board. Its custom chips. On a board.
How many chips have you ever designed?
Could replace all the dials on yer dashboard with one LCD screen, for a start.
Employ some computing science teachers instead of typing instructors.
JGH
"You're going to be a plumber, so we're not going to teach you to read and write".
JGH
One. (A simple graphics controller in the 80s, which I then prototyped with some 120 TTLs and some RAM. But I wasn't happy about it as a product and it wasn't committed to a gate array chip.)
In this case, they don't seem to be creating anything new, just combining existing technologies (ARM processor, Broadcom video, Linux OS and so on). Six years just seems a long time (admittedly some of that will be organising large-scale production).
Sure. But then maybe they don't need 1080p mpeg decoding support, and they could have saved a few quid of licensing to these Broadcom people or whoever supplies that technology. And I would have thought there are enough control boards out there for this sort of stuff (where you use a normal PC for developing the software then just download it).
I understand this is mainly for kids but are there really many children now without access to a computer?
Maybe.
The ARM, RAM and GPU are within a single Broadcom "SoC", the main Pi designer works for Broadcom developing GPUs, I think this has already "saved" them a lot, their human costs have been in time, rather than pounds, but I'm still surprised they can produce it for £22.
Why do they need lessons on the detail of word processors at all? On how to add a footer or change the font? You'll teach them how to do that with Word 2007 or something, next thing you know is that MS has changed the front end completely. So all that teaching suddenly was a waste of time.
They need to know what a word processor is. They need to know that you
*can* add a footer (and to know what a footer is) or change the font for a paragraph or that you can justify the text. The detail of how it's done, they can learn for themselves at home. They need to know that there are other word processors than Word, too. It's the *concepts* that matter, and the stimulation of their natural curiosity.
Easily said... but there are not many of those about.
That would be useful so they don't just think it's magic.
*That* is pretty impressive.I'd have killed for more relays to act as logic gates!
Low play value, possibly?
My BiL showed us a toy once, it was a set of parts you plugged together to make a 3D construction a bit like a roller coaster, about a one-foot cube. There was a container you filled with small marbles and an empty container elsewhere. You had a couple of little hopper trucks that you set on the rails. There were various levers and some clockwork to make it run. A truck would biff into a lever to make the full container disgorge a marble that fell into the truck. The truck then ran around the roller coaster, up hill and down Mrs Dale, biffing levers to switch tracks and so on and perhaps setting a second truck going, and eventually a lever tilted the truck so the marble ran into the empty container.
Interesting for an adult to marvel at, but play value for a kid? Nil.
Perhaps it was the software? There's been loads of discussion about the hardware but very little on the software, assuming that there is any?
Hear, hear!
And in fact they aren't. None of them end up with any notion of how to nicely lay out a document. You'll see pages of stuff where some paras are ragged-right-edge, others are justified. I rarely come across anything (e.g. in local village mags) where anyone has used styles. Want some space between paragraphs? Hit the return key once or twice, instead of applying space-before-paragraph. Most stuff looks awful.
Broadcomm are chip suppliers and designers based in Cambridge and supply video and audio playback chips, as well as Bluetooth chippery.
The decoding's in the firmware, and the GPU and CPU are on one chip to save time, space and money. It seems almost like something a couple of Broadcomm engineers started playing with and then the project grew, taking in the local University computer department.
Mainly, the whole thing is a hack of a Broadcomm media playback chip, for which full documentation is available freely on the net.
Not many, but most of them only have access to a fully built, locked down PC system based on Windows and MS Office, and probably something like an XBox and their smartphone, which are even more tightly locked down. You can't learn many of the basics from a computer that you're not even allowed to try and program at any low level.
This comes as standard with a BIOS, some connectivity to eternal stuff, and that's your lot. Add input from a USB keyboard, output to a TV set and an SD card, and you're able to start writing assembly code. Put a compiler on the card, and you're writing higher level language.
Or you can download Linux onto the SD card, and you're off with a small, cheap computer that it doesn't matter if you break. Unplug the card, and you're back to a motherboard with a bit of RAM.
I can think of quite a few uses for one of these that a PC is overkill for, especially at the price being charged, and all of them have been mentioned by others in this thread.
Auto numbering in Word is not high tech.
At least, certainly not well-implemented high tech.
Which is a major reason why the legal world stuck with WordPerfect for so long. WordPerfect could auto-number to your heart's desire.
Owain
well its a not quite bog standard Linux port. Give the power ram and disk, that means its about equivalent to a small fondleslab style computer, minus the IO hardware.
s/full/partial
While it's good to get *any* docs published by Broadcom without an NDA, there's barely any info on the GPU ...
Children usually gasp when they discover that Excel knows the day of the week you were born on
Did you miss the smiley? ;-)
In fact, for all its popularity, word is actually a fairly poor tool for complex documents IME.
WordPerfect is much better, but still[1] limited when dealing with things like cross references between documents.
[1] Having said that, I have not used it seriously for a number of years, so don't know if it has been developed any further.IIRC Microsoft's own legal department used it for years (possibly still do) - support for "table of authorities" was one killer reason IIRC.
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