On a sunny day (Tue, 18 Feb 2020 03:59:59 -0600) it happened Richard Owlett
 wrote in
:

>>> As majority of replies were *Off Topic* I modified the subject line and
>>> clarified my goals with *TWO* sentences and asked *TWO* questions.
>>
>> OK my misunderstanding :-)
>
>In early 60's, the chairman of the university's freshman writing course
>declared my composition skills hopeless ;<

Stay true to yourself!

Years later I had a go at a course information technology at a university here,
that was AFTER I wrote my own OS etc... Got into a big argument about the intro
paper,
finally decided it was a clueless bunch, left the club.
As to the clueless bunch (I am in the Netherlands) many big IT projects here
were started
and had to be given up after millions and millions spent.
Tax system - > disaster
Police system -> disaster
And now recently the military IT network, those guys had to revert to using
common cellphones
as IBM & Friends did simply not deliver (a 100 million Euros or so disaster).
I KNOW who taught those guys ;-)
Much of that stuff can be done by good IT people for a fraction of the money in
a fraction of the time.
Setting up such a network is basic stuff.
Sucking gas much money as possible out of it is capitalism's excess.
A recent review here found that only 12% or so of IT people had the required
skills..
Same happens all over the world, was it not a few students who build an
Obamacare website in a weekend or so
while the trillions were consumed by companies who really have no clue,

I am a strong believer in bottom up design,
putting a cookies maker CEO in command of a space exploration company will not
work:-)
Putting politicians in design control will not work.
That is why the US needs Russia to even get people into earth orbit.
Let's just hope the cunning (my respect) people at SpaceX change that,
That does not mean Elon is, his Mars mission demo movie had people working on
laptops on the way there
none of that stuff would survive the radiation on the trip,
never mind the big LCD displays in his spacecraft... One cosmic particle hit
and you lose all your instruments!
LOL

Anyways getting carried away here, just read CNN on the Barr issue and
Precedent Duck's influence.



>>
>> Anyways .. spreadsheets .. it will be obsolete by the time you have it.
>
>I am restricting myself, at least initially, to items
>defined/specified/sanctioned/??? by Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Sanctioned is a big word.

As to what to do to get the job done in programming, I like to resort to small
micros that run
only one or maybe a very few tasks, like Microchip PICs used here:
 http://panteltje.com/panteltje/quadcopter/index.html
A big Linux based multitasker is a bit of a joke, putting ever more bloated
languages on it
makes it even worse needs ever more computer power to do the simplest things
written by ever more people using 'high' (my foot) level languages who have no
clue what blobs
of insane code those generate.. that goes for modern websites made by people
using those tools too.

Something revolutionary was recently presented in the news, I looked up the
website of the company
could not make any sense of it after trying Seamonkey, Firefox and Chrome and
decided
if they could not even make a website forget about their AI based inventions.

>> These days if I want an sort of overview of what is on the market I just
google,
>
>Search engines are not designed to yield the information in a useful
>format. The charts at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi are an
>unsatisfactory approximation of what I want.

Be very specific of what you want and do NOT I repeat NOT underestimate search
engines.
Searching '..thing.. review' can tell you a lot about people's experiences.
I usually try that before I buy.

As to land back on the raspi platform, it has been moving from an educational
tool
(where you really like to use GPIO) to some sort of web surfing thing.
I do not trust Linux very much anymore, selinux.., browsers that phone home,
CIA NSA listing to everything you type in every possible way.
I currently have no plans to invade the US, and my postings may perhaps cause
brain damage to the guys at those organizations
or to their AI ... :-)
Sanctioned... *I* decide what I interface with what,
Open sourcing stuff is nice, this for example:
 http://panteltje.com/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/
was then taken up by somebody else who did it all in software, radio hams ...
sanctioned my foot!

It is always up to you
And if you CANNOT program or have no hardware knowledge use an Android or I
think China now wants its own OS on cell phones.
Huawei is being sanctioned by US, a silly trick by US to kill competition,
Trump an other Jewish fanatic who thinks he is superior to everybody else and
rules the world.
The result is the world turns against Israel.
 A possible WW3 that will be all 'nuculear' in in GW Bush JR's words will at
least take the fear among the human made climate change
idiots for 'radiation' away, it will be everywhere every place, we need more
nuclear power plants to power our aircos if we, as
humanity, will want to survive the next heating period and next ice age, and
space travel to get out of here.

Religious fanatics lead to dark ages, Roman empire fell, leads to anti-science,
cutting scientific corners
remember just after trump go elected him standing next to Boeing gas the
greatest thing ever, where is Boeing now after cutting corners?
Maybe trump thinks programming is like twittering him saying it is great makes
it so...
OTOH once we have our problems taken on by AI we will be full circle..

Sanctioned my foot.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05