

We’re auctioning ten beta Raspberry Pis - rythie
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/482

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dotBen
_"if you get one of the first 10 units you'll get a MAC address with a lot of
zeros in it"_

:)

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TuxPirate
ifconfig <iface> hw ether 00:00:00:00:00:00

~~~
secure
By accident, one of the el-cheapo motherboards I used about 6 years ago ran
with MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00. Interestingly, this wasn’t a problem — I could
still communicate with my router and didn’t even notice this for a long time.
But then I tried to communicate with my father’s IRIX machine, and we couldn’t
get it to work. Until we realized the misconfiguration :).

~~~
seanp2k2
Interestingly, using a WPA or WEP key of all zeroes breaks lots of cracking
algorithms and thus is arguably more secure :)

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Natsu
Care to elaborate?

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dspillett
Perhaps a lot of brute-force try-them-all routines skip the all zeros option,
and others consider an all zeros result to be invalid (internally mapped to a
"no match" result or so forth). A truer security through obscurity idea I
can't imagine though so if that is the case "arguably more secure" is _very_
arguable!

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deutronium
[http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Raspberry-Pi-Model-B-beta-
board-10...](http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Raspberry-Pi-Model-B-beta-
board-10-limited-
series-10-/180786734741?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2a17baa695)

Currently more than 10x the normal price.

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xxqs
Great to see the entry cost of an embedded linux development kit dropping from
over $500 few years ago, down to the price of a pizza or two. This means we're
going to see more young talented developers with actual embedded system
skills.

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joezydeco
Will the Pi really teach you embedded system skills?

I don't want to be a cynic, but I don't see how this board makes it easier to
control anything or interface to any other device. It's still Linux and it's
typical set of drivers, right? How will the Pi or the upcoming add-on
interface board let me connect an LVDS LCD or capacitive touchscreen? You mean
I still have to hack up an I2C device driver and wire it up? I need to spin a
kernel? Is there an open-source video driver for the Broadcom chip?

I think it's a nice idea to put a cheap laptop into the hands of students. But
I'll be more curious to see what those first 10 boards will be used for other
than tiny MP3/MP4 players. You're still in Linux-land and that's not the most
friendly environment for embedded systems programmers.

Resourceful and talented developers can do a hell of a lot with a cheap
Arduino or garage-sale laptop, they don't need a magical new Broadcom EVK to
do this.

~~~
xxqs
well, one can learn a lot of things if he or she is motivated enough:

* Building a bootloader from sources. Trying various boot media sources and ways to launch your code in the raw memory. Probably even some assembler stuff.

* Learning how an embedded system is built, from kernel patches to busybox

* Learning how a community embedded Linux project works, with Git workflow, tests and updates

* The board is small enough to place on a moving platform and learn how the real-time linux interacts with physical environment

~~~
joezydeco
And you can do all that with other EVKs like the Beagleboard. So the only
"motiviation" is that it's $100 cheaper?

~~~
xxqs
yes, for students it's definitely a good motivation. also it's easier to
experiment with a device which is not too tragic to break

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samet
Price is unbelievable now.

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agumonkey
Let's hope this isn't auction poisonning like the hp touchpad auctions.

