[clug] el cheapo linux box?

[jm]

On 8/05/11 10:35 AM, Paul Wayper wrote:
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> On 05/07/2011 02:39 PM, Robert Edwards wrote:
>> On 07/05/11 08:16, Jim Croft wrote:
>>> what's 15 quid in real money? :)
>>>
>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13292450
>> I thought it was interesting how he got stuck into modern ICT courses
>> being not much more than glorified typing courses from decades past...
>> (and being responsible for the decline in students entering Comp. Sci.
>> courses at Uni.)
> Yeah, the thing that strikes me as incongruous is that on the one hand he's
> saying "the problem is that people don't get open architecture, they don't get
> to hack on stuff", and on the other he's saying "here's my all-in-one
> closed-up solution that outputs HDMI and takes USB peripherals".
Small steps, small steps. I know your not belittling his project your 
just highlighting its limitations. We don't know what form his final 
licensing is going to take. He may opens source the design from the 
beginning or he may do so once his recovered his costs.

[snip]
> (And I do think that there are, of course, many kids who are interested enough
> to make the simple leap from "hey, my computer can do stuff" to "hey, I want
> to make my computer do *my* stuff" and want to find out how.  So it's not like
> we're going to run out of programmers.  But the gold rush is over in my
> opinion - and Microsoft, Apple, Sony and Nintento are very happy keeping it
> that way.)

I've got a few ideas for projects which I'd like to do for the new 
tablet computers which would along the lines of the putting a 
programming environment within easy reach of every user. This would fill 
the gap you see with the missing BASIC. These devices would be the 
perfect target for such an environment as "every kid" is going to come 
into contact with these devices and idle hands being the developers 
playground if you had such an environment just sitting there waiting to 
be tapped it would get discovered just as you said you discovered the 
BASIC environment. The trouble as you said and everyone knows is that 
the walled garden environment suits these companies. They do it in the 
name of security, but in reality we all know it's done for control.

Having said that I think that you could work with Google to something 
along these lines. I've got one idea which would work within the 
existing darvik VM and another which may have to exist partially or 
fully outside it to work. Both are in desperate need of time and money :-).

Alright, better get to doing the day job.

Jeff.