Don't lecture me. I've lived within my means for the last 35 years I've been on my own. I've paid a shit load of taxes but I always made good money. The facts are though that a huge number of people operate cash only because it enables them to live well even though they do menial jobs like painting and yard work. I know a lot of these people and I don't judge them, they do what they need to do to make a decent living. At least they are working and aren't a straight drain on the system like the millions on welfare and other assistance programs. The fact remains that there are lots of these people and the government looks at that lost revenue as it seeks to do something about the huge deficit and the looming day when the interest gets to the point where it's unbearable. To get rid of cash makes it easy to eliminate the ability to operate these small businesses.

Without tax evasion millions of people wouldn't be making a living. There is no way to make any real money and pay taxes. I pay mine but I'm a wage slave. Lots of people cut grass, wash cars, paint houses, etc. These people operate on cash because If they make $200 dollars they get to keep it. If they get paid over the table they'll lose about half that money. Not just income taxes but social sec. and all kinds of other gotchas eat it up fast.

That's actually an interesting board. Twice the price but still it has a lot to offer for the money.

So far I keep getting this answer but no one has a link. I've sure seen nothing for less than 50 dollars that's anywhere close. I've seen a couple of boards near the 100 range that I'd say are a close equivalent, better in some ways and lacking in others.

I believe they said they fixed the USB power problems.

Alix3d3 here goes for about $125. Specs lower than the pi for cpu and ram but it does seem like a potent board.

http://www.mini-box.com/Alix-3...

I'd be interested in seeing a computer board with usb, gpio and hdmi and audio that runs linux for about the same price. Got a link?

That's the thing about the Pi, the add-ons just keep rolling in. The community support is unbelievable.

I've tried it and it was beautiful. I have to assume you're trying to do something the hardware isn't capable of. It's fully capable of any sort of light computing tasks. It works well as a media machine. This in spite of the fact it was designed to be neither. It was designed to provide a low cost, low power, small and full featured computer board for educational use. At that purpose it's off the chain. People bitching because it wont transcode blue ray movies on the fly just pisses me off. If you say Raspbian doesn't work you either don't know what you're doing or you're lying.

It does it about as well as anything under 200 dollars will. I've seen an occasional glitch on mine but it's rare. It'll not compete with a full blown media machine of course but it does extremely well. I have to admit I was amazed at what it can do. The only issue I had with mine was solved with a powered USB hub and it looks like the B+ fixes that problem.

It's a hobbyist and education board. The amazing thing really is that it's used in a lot of industrial projects now which I think surprised the Rpi people. The problems pale beside the flexibility and low cost of the board. It's not perfect, I'm sure for another 100-200 dollars it could have been.

Don't read so much into it. Maybe people just have opinions. Relax.

Any transaction that doesn't want to pay taxes moves to barter. This shit is a government wet dream. Talk about control! If you piss off the government in any way they flick a switch and you're done. Actually they probably just click an icon on a screen. Now you can't use your money, it's gone! I can see it coming though, it's inevitable.

I owned a fiat back in the 80's. It was a Ritmo and was very reliable. From what I've heard though it appears I got the only one. Kind of a reverse lemon.

All I can tell is that back in 1999 my Sound Blaster card hooked to Creative SBS speakers sounded way better than all my friends PCs which had built in audio. Times must have changed now, don't have the hardware now to do a comparison; but its anyway the audiophiles whom Creative is targeting here; and they do exist in large numbers, more than willing to pay the price Creative is asking for.