Reproduction
Jon Hall and Peter Parfait were my Linux Gurus.
I read a book by them called "Joy of Linux" in the same Style as "Joy of Sex".
Having read that I got rid of the "Fear Psychosis" I had on Linux.
I am reproducing on of his "Wisdom Thoughts" here.
I am using Linux utilities and figuring out to put his photo here.
Hope I will be successful.
The Raspberry Pi computer has rekindled interest in tinkering with
hardware and created a market for products combining the tiny
computer with customized software.
By Jon "maddog" Hall
The format of the Photo was not accepted by Google, unfortunately.
Those of you who know me know that I designed electronics circuits
in high school and then studied Electrical Engineering at Drexel
University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Unfortunately during that
career I was almost electrocuted by 13,600 volts and 800 amps
(twice!). Fortunately I found software as much fun and a lot safer,
other than paper cuts from ripping printouts. Back in those days
electronic components were very expensive (US$ 128,000 for 64KB of
core memory), so I took the software route and let someone else pay
for the hardware.
I continued to be interested in hardware, and I even assembled my
own computer from chips and prototype digital circuits with the use
of breadboards, sometimes with wire-wrapping. Soldering tens of
thousands of pins perfected my soldering technique, and you really
don't want to know about the wire-wrapping.
About two years ago, I became involved with the Arduino,
which has been a lot of fun, but my time with it was limited, and to
me it was not a "real" computer because it did not run
GNU/Linux.
Then I heard about the Raspberry Pi (RPi). This was what I had
been waiting for: a US$ 35 computer that ran a real operating system
and allowed you to tinker with electronics just as you could with the
Arduino. In fact, people were using the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino
together, which was even cooler.
The founders of the Raspberry Pi Foundation are modest people who
thought that only 1,000 very low priced computers would be enough for
the world, and in doing so, they unfortunately created an imbalance
between supply and demand. (Alas, many great visionaries
underestimate their influence.) In fact, they took 100,000 orders
before they shipped a single Raspberry Pi, and for many months,
people who wanted them could only order one at a time with a 12-week
delivery lead time.
Last September, just before Campus Party Europe in Berlin,
I contacted the Raspberry Pi Foundation and asked if they would be
willing to attend and perhaps give a talk or two about their
wonderful machine. Not only did they send Alan Mycroft, one of the
original founders, but they sent three enthusiastic graduate students
and lots of RPis and bread boarding gear, and they even gave three
hands-on workshops. I attended one of them and worked with a young
"Campusero" from Spain who I thought was going to go
berserk over the fact that his software could make an LED blink Morse
code. Then, I taught him that pushing a button was not as simple as
he thought when the button has key bounce.
Over the past several months, I have had the privilege to work
closer with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, learning more about their
history and dreams for the computer. I have seen people create the
most interesting projects with it, and in some cases move beyond
projects to selling actual products based on a Raspberry Pi with some
customized software (e.g., a three-person ERP system for small
companies).
At Campus Party Brazil, I also met another of the product's
founders, Pete Lomas, whose tales of bringing the RPi to market
reminded me a lot of my days back at Digital.
I also gave two talks at Campus Party Brazil on the RPi: one about
the RPi in general and another about how to make a media center out
of the RPi from really inexpensive components. Attaching an RPi to a
VESA-equipped monitor could create a very powerful, low-cost thin
client/media center for digital inclusion. It has no fan noise, uses
very little electricity (3W when idle), and has no moving parts to
wear out.
Most refreshing was the real desire to keep the price of the RPi
as low as possible yet still deliver enough compute power to students
who want to experiment. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now shipped
more than 1 million units, and they are set to deliver another
million this year; however, I think they might need to manufacture 2
or 3 million.
Another thing I like about the RPi is the number of different Free
and Open Source operating systems that have been ported to it
(including Firefox OS) and the number of cottage industries that are
building up around it – cases, an online magazine driven by the
community, bread-boarding packages, and other add-ons.
Every once in a while there is a "step function in fun"
for computing, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation has hit a home run. If
you have not investigated it, particularly if you are part of a
school or university, I suggest you visit their website.
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