You already did! lolol

It isn't for learning programming, it is for learning engineering.

The reason so many people use it for programming is because they're just using it as a toy and are programming it to fill a role that would otherwise be filled by a commercial-off-the-shelf hardware device, for example an indoor/outdoor thermometer.

The programming part in its natural environment is firmware programming, and indeed, you don't need something "special" you just need something truly small enough that you have to do real firmware work and not stuff all the work into general purpose programming languages.

Yeah, not only new to "open," but using recycled complaints from the 90s. It is already well refuted; in emerging markets cooperation is the strongest form of competition, everybody benefits. And in established markets, "open" empowers startups and lowers barrier to entry, preventing monopoly abuse from the established players.

Please, please, will somebody tell these idiots to download a new stupid version?! This old one is tiring.

No need to go into the future for that, their past attitude and refusal to seek placement in upcoming devices might indeed play a role in their recent large layoff announcements, and their stock price has been basically flat since it dropped in the 2001 bust.

Look at Texas Instruments, who is friendly to customers and competes at all levels, including single units, and they're really strong with an increasing stock price since the bust. They're at about half their boom peak, with steady growth the past few years; growth that coincides with the rise of the Maker movement. Broadcom doesn't even show a positive blip, because RPi alone is nothing for market share and other than that one project, they refuse to sell to emerging markets.

Something I find funny about the Broadcom "we're too big and important to sell to you small or medium sized manufacturers; go get it from pipsqueaks" attitude is that the business often then falls to TI.... who has over twice Broadcom's market cap! Broadcom is a small fish in a big pond who thinks they're a big fish in a small pond. No wonder they have to "restructure."

It is actually even narrower than that; their mandate is to provide an embedded computer of choice for educators... in the UK! They're doing great at that, and even are somewhat useful to the broader "neckbeard-SBC" market. Even people who actually dev on something else like a BBB still have a RPi in a drawer somewhere. And that helps support engineering education in the UK. Good on them, even if their products sucks! (Not saying it does, just saying the rest is true even if you don't like the product)

Simple, it increases the total market. Competition isn't zero-sum unless the market is mature and flat. A product that gets a bunch of free press and increases the demand for the whole sector is helping their competition almost as much as themselves. In these types of growing markets, cooperation is the most powerful competition. And as such, in the long term it is normal to expect the more open competitors to do better. Not only do they have more appeal to the more serious customers, but they can share not only the good PR but also technical advances.

Most of the RPi customers are not hobbyists or makers or aspiring engineers, most of them are people who like geeky toys and bought it as a toy, similar to Lego(TM), where they can plug some stuff together, follow some instructions, and make an LED blink. Maybe they set up an indoor/outdoor garden thermometer. Impressive, yes? Well, it is impressive that these people's money is flowing into the Maker niche and growing it for everybody! Thanks guys!

Small volumes aren't loss-leaders here, they're higher margin!

Nobody is asking any of the chip companies to do loss-leaders, just to be willing to sell. Most companies are coming around and dealing with customers of all sizes now. They're usually not developing new chips for this market, just selling their existing chips to whoever wants them.

Broadcom needs to know a lot about you and have you sign a bunch of NDAs before they'll even take your money. Your money is NOT as good as someone elses, to them.

While it may in fact be true that RPi has more sales and more units sitting in drawers, I'd be really surprised if more people were using RPi than BBB for real projects they themselves were putting together based on their own ideas. I'm not against people doing "electronics by numbers" kits but that is most of RPi "users."

Some hand-waving about maybe the USB would drop audio data, maybe it wouldn't, well that is not really showing that you know one is better. That is showing you don't know but are heavily biased. You don't think a BBB can run audio, because you couldn't compile a new kernel? Are you sure you needed to? Really sure? Really double sure? If you couldn't get any help from people who know how to compile a kernel (that was nerd-101 when I started on linux, geeze) then how can you believe the people who told you that you needed to? Those people clearly don't even know.

It is funny because I use BBB to develope real-life audio prototypes. You're connecting spdif which is digital, did you know that HDMI includes a 48k digital output? That's why it doesn't have an analog audio output, because it has a high quality digitial output instead. There is also a new analog cape that gives good analog IO with a quality hardware CODEC and includes bluetooth.

Here is a site that explains how to interface with a DAC using I2S on the BBB. Oh, you thought that was an advantage that RPi had? No, I2S is something everybody has. ;)
http://www.element14.com/commu...

Allow me to paraphrase your argument.

1. Buying US Treasuries
2. *waves hands*
3. Nothing

I doubt that will prevent anybody from redeeming their mature US Treasury Bonds for... dollars.

To get from "buying US Treasury bonds" to "nothing" you have to claim that dollars are nothing. I can go to the supermarket and trade those dollars for beer. So, "ha!"

(And yes, trust in the repayment is part of the value. That is already factored into the price. Welcome to middle school economics class. For extra credit, look up the credit ratings on US bonds.)

Politifact rates it as only "half true." http://www.politifact.com/pund...

Here is another Russian source that includes some relevant facts you left out, mainly the part about Ukraine having not actually done what you accuse because you excessively focus on a "vote" when there are more steps than a single vote for a law to be enacted, or repealed. The law wasn't repealed. http://en.ria.ru/world/2014030...

Reading your description, or the RT description, it would appear that the pro-EU groups in Ukraine supported the repeal. The fact is that the Parliament took an unpopular vote, that resulted in Ukrainian speakers in Kyiv protesting(!), and none of the major pro-EU politicians supported that vote. None of the pro-EU candidates in the recent elections supported repealing the 2012 law.

So while it is "half true" that they voted to repeal the law, it is not true as stated, and certainly not true in the claimed implication that the pro-EU Ukrainians are anti-Russian-speakers.

Here is an in-depth analysis. https://www.opendemocracy.net/...

Regardless of how you feel about the protests, there were free, fair, credible, and widely recognized elections after those events. Fail.

The current government of Ukraine is 100% legit by any standard. Russia engages in misdirection, which you follow quite a ways here, but they don't have any actual complaint about the most recent elections, nor have they brought any complaints to the UN Security Council.

If somebody threatens you and leaves it ambiguous, then that is a credible threat; it leaves you having to act as if it might happen, because you're left thinking it might happen.

There is actually a lot of really aware and sophisticated legal history of this stuff, because of organized crime taking such threats to the level of an art. "You don't want `something' to happen to your family, do you? Nobody wants anything bad to happen to their family. When little Billy goes to Famousname Elementary School every morning, you want him to know he is safe. When he takes his lunch break at 11:35am, you want to know he is safe." That is totally actionable as a threat, especially in the context of trying to coerce a behavior, like, "Big John doesn't like it when you write bad things about him in the paper. Then his mind is all full of bad things."

Interestingly, the same is true if you want to make a joke about yelling fire in a theater while actually in a theater; it is ill advised, and it is your responsibility to make sure that it is clearly a joke. (to a normal, reasonable person like the other real people in the theater) If it is ambiguous, and people are left to think, "wait, is there really a fire?!" then all it will take is one of them running for the door and you "yelled fire in a theater."

A similar thing with threats; if you tell the joke to somebody who is NOT the target of the threat, that is pretty safe. Even if they can't tell if you're joking. But if you want to tell the target of the threat the... threat... it is up to you to make it clear as a joke if it is indeed a joke.

It is widely understood to be true that Java has, as an actual, real-life thing in its "pros" column (and in its "cons" column) that it is easier to use by low quality, replaceable programmers. That is not an original claim, or something that is disputed by mainstream sources. That is true both for people who support Java, and those who are against it.

Here is a video interview with Larry Wall, one of the most respected (and qualified in linguistics) language designers, who says, "because it is sort-of considered an `industrial language,' and programmers are sort-of interchangeable parts, managers like it for that reason..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

No, Dilbert is an engineer who is good at math but too socially retarded to get a real job for a company that respects him. It is presumed that he was rejected by all the companies that are desirable to work for, and feels trapped.

He is the Sub-Genius.

I didn't cite it because their blog posts, first blaming Ruby/Rails and a few months later, retracting that and explaining the problems, are some of the most popular blog posts in the history of Ruby, and a major milestone in the public discussion of these issues.

If you don't even know about it, you're too far outside the developer community for my comment to have been targeted at you. Sorry, I only worry about the nerds when I post. Everybody else can suck it. And if a nerd didn't know, they'd find a search engine, and ask, instead of whining at the internet to contain citations.