I signed up *months* ago with RS components to be on the "waiting list" for my Raspberry Pi.

Weeks and months ticked by and eventually I got my "invitation to place an order", complete with the number needed to do so.

Off I went and paid my money with a promised "up to 9 weeks" lead-time.

No worries.

That was about 11 weeks ago -- and still no notification of shipment.

Meanwhile, for the past month or so, friends have been buying them from Element14 and they've been shipped within the week.

WTF?

I emailed RS for an update -- no reply.

Looks like those of us ordering from RS got suckered big-time!

How long before "the great unwashed" finally wake up to the fact that their governments are selling out their rights to the big corporations of the world?

Who keeps an eye on the post-political careers of these "negotiators" and reports on how many of them get "honorary directorships" of the companies they are selling the public's rights in favor of?

Surely, sooner or later, even the half of the population who are below the median IQ will have to wake up to the fact that governments and corporations are working in concert to strip them of their rights and their money.

Or have we devolved to the point where we no longer care -- so long as their is food on the table and a roof (however shabby) over our heads?

If that's all it is -- then why have Swedish prosecutors refused to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy as was offered?

If they wish to arrest him -- then issue an arrest warrant.

If the wish to question him -- go to the Ecuadorian Embassy and question him.

While you're suggesting that "a cigar is just a cigar" -- I'm suggesting that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... chances are -- it's a duck!

And to think... if he'd kept his dick in his trousers he'd be home and free right now.

Testosterone has a lot to answer for! :-)

When will countries like the USA and UK realize that they really don't need any more enemies than they already have.

Invading a sovereign nation's embassy with armed force is effectively a declaration of war.

Now Ecuador isn't going to send an armada of naval vessels or a wave of bombers to strike back at the UK -- but you can bet that a good number of terrorists will use this as justification for making more strikes against both the UK and the USA.

Is this what the UK and USA really want?

Well I'm sorry to say but it probably is.

If the UK seize Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy, he's extradited to Sweden and from there back to the USA, I have absolutely *no* doubt at all that there will be a new wave of terror attacks against both nations -- as retribution.

This will give the UK and USA governments just what they want -- an ability to say "see, Assange was evil and probably working with these terrorists to destabilize the West -- the proof is here in these new attacks".

Of course, like typical politicians, they won't care that hundreds or possibly thousands of innocent souls may lose their lives to attacks that could make 9/11 look like a childrens' tea-party.

I'm starting to think that this world is going to hell in a handbasket. I just hope that the great-unwashed public wise-up to the way they're being used and abused by politicians right across the globe.

Rob the public blind to the tune of billions (like the bankers have) and you get away with it -- in fact, governments will even pay your debts for you.

Steal a can of beans from a supermarket because you are hungry can't afford a meal and they'll lock you up.

This crap has to end soon -- doesn't it?

Do we really care?

What's this FaceBook thing anyway?

Does it compile into native code or P-code?

The TRS80 model 1 was my first store-bought computer -- I'd built my own "microcomputers" up until that stage.

Compared to the Apple it had some real strengths: A BASIC with double-precision math, a Z80 processor (the 6502 is wicked-good but once Page 0 is used up you lose so many of those cool addressing modes so the Z80 works better in a "store-bought" machine with ROM firmware), plenty of support in magazines, and later, a brilliant disk OS in the form of NewDOS80

I had most of the Tandy micros: The Model 1, the Model 2 (with 8" drives and later, CP/M), the Tandy 100, the Model III and later, the seldom mentioned Tandy 2000 with its Intel 80186 processor at 8MHz. That thing just blitzed all the 4.77MHz 8088-based PC clones that were around at the time.

But those were different days.

Before the advent of the IBM PC, every machine was wildly different and exciting. Once the "PC-compatible" virus hit, hardware became rather undistinctive and "samey".

Good days!

Back in the early 1990s (when I was working for a company that had more money than sense), we took the top off a 20MB Seagate HD and ran it for a day with no protection from dust, moisture or whatever.

Everyone in the building came past to watch the heads move and the platters spin.

It performed faultlessly.

Quite surprising -- considering the weight given to clean-rooms and the supposed risk of head-crash that even the tiniest speck of dust was supposed to produce.

We didn't put the drive back into proper service but it was enlightening.

Yep, you're still alive and unharmed -- and now you're on the Homeland Security and CIA watchlist.

Ah, the land of the free! :-)

While that's technically true, it misses the problem completely because you ignore why people eat more than they need. People eat because they are hungry. Why would someone with enough body fat to power their sedentary lifestyle for weeks still feel hungry? That's the problem, and there's a ton of evidence that it's screwed up hormonal signalling from a poor diet and lifestyle which makes people hungry when they shouldn't be. Poor sleep patterns is part of the problem, even if an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise comprises the bulk of it.

Don't forget that the public generally only knows about the things the media tells them about and -- in the list of SOPA sponsors there are a huge number of big media players -- all eager to use it to protect their content.

Hence, we've seen very little (if any) objective mainstream media coverage of SOPA and what it will mean to the average joe citizen.

Unfortunately, the real power to shape the minds and opinions of the masses lies in the hands of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the other media barons.

We're stuffed mate!

What a shame it is that 90% of the public are so complacent and unwilling to take action to protect their rights from the goose-stepping content cartels.

Imagine if, even if just for a month, *nobody* bought any music from members of the RIAA, nobody went to any theatres to watch movies from the MPAA, or bought their DVDs or even hired their DVDs.

Can you just see the look of absolute fear that would envelope them?

Even if we could find enough people to reduce their sales and rentals by 50%, that would send a very strong message that perhaps, when it comes to copyright "it's better the devil you know [filesharing] than the devil you don't [boycotts]"

Unfortunately, any move to organize a campaign of abstinence or a boycott would be doomed to failure -- because most people just don't give a damn anyway.

We get the government (and the storm-trooper tactics) we deserve they say. Maybe they're right :-(

Here are my experiences with YouTube and content owners attempts to defraud me of my own original content. I posted this a week ago:

The US recording industry is stealing from ME!

This seems to be a big (and getting much bigger) problem with YouTube as it tries to suck-up to the big content owners in a way that is starting to seriously impact other original content creators.

Moreover, by providing links to infringing material, they are also helping the content owners. They could quite happily download all the torrents, identify the IP addresses of seeders, have the courts issue warrants to identify the seeders from their IP addresses and pursue copyright claims against the individuals. Of course that would be more costly, so lets break the internet so they can increase their profit margins.