On Tue, 27 Oct 2015 18:58:19 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> Nothing else really plugged in, either.  HDMI, external hard drive,
>> power.  Wireless keyboard/mouse combo that I generally don't use.
> 
> At that point, doesn't it kinda make it look like *the screen* is all
> the smarts? Not the inconspicuous little box in the corner?

Not really, but then again, I connect the HDMI to a receiver that then 
sends the output to a projector.  So my "screen" is a 10' diagonal image 
projected on a white wall.

But it doesn't really matter.

> Oh, I *totally* agree with what you're saying. My question is how you
> keep the kids from just glancing at it and going "this is lame!" and
> going back to playing Angry Birds or something.

By making it interesting, which is done by making it relevant.  A lot of 
kids are curious about stuff like that.

>> Yes, but that's true on a lot of PCs that run Linux as well.  That
>> doesn't mean you can't do system-level programming on it.
> 
> Thanks to backwards compatibility, every IBM PC-compatible starts up in
> 8080 emulation mode, and has a BIOS that lets you do stuff without even
> knowing what model of video card you have. Even then, it surely has 100%
> VGA register compatibility, so you can program it that way.
> 
> On the Pi, until you poke the GPU, the CPU isn't even *turned on*...

Mine turns on when I plug it in, before the OS is done.  That's firmware-
level stuff, generally not the sort of thing I think of with "system-
level" programming.

>> I think there's a lot you can do that's interesting without any video
>> at all.
> 
> Oh, really?
> 
> [That maybe sounded sarcastic. It wasn't meant to.]
> 
> Clearly you've got different ideas to me... What kinda thing are you
> thinking?
> 
> [Genuinely interested here.]

Web hosting is the most obvious example.  Music streaming, controlling 
home automation - lots of IoT-related things, actually.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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