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by radiojosh 969 days ago
Some people really don't have a lot of disposable income. Are you saying we should just stop thinking about making products accessible to those people? You seem to think that these rich "hobbyists" make up the entire population, but I'd bet there were at least ten families in the US who couldn't afford a computer for every "hobbyist" that bought one. What a bunch of elitist gate-keeping nonsense.

These low-cost SBCs are often viewed as a gateway product for introducing people to technology they wouldn't otherwise have access to - a system that could be a serviceable PC or launchpad for hobby electronics. The hobbyists you mention, apparently flush with cash and not a care in the world, aren't the people who need the price break. It's low income families with kids that need access to resources that might lead to a better future.

Not to mention that a Raspberry Pi is an embeddable system. It might be a small part of a much larger project, so even a low price might be hard to justify.

But no, let's keep making everything expensive so that computers and technology careers are only accessible to families that already have wealth. We, the Hobbyists of lore, can strut about the city square in our wearable devices and augmented reality headsets while the dirty street urchins scramble behind us, hoping for a fallen scrap, a loose semiconductor or relay they can take home to their families so they might afford little Timmy's leg surgery...

1 comments

> while the dirty street urchins scramble behind us, hoping for a fallen scrap, a loose semiconductor or relay they can take home to their families so they might afford little Timmy's leg surgery...

While you've misunderstood my comment so badly I am worried you might have suffered a recent head injury, and I'm not getting any closer to understanding the quirkiness of people who comment on Raspberry Pi related threads which is what I was really shooting for, believe me: I respect the effort here.