@RMW5: I agree, this does not seem to be the best time to pick up awards. Of course getting the R-Pi out there is a great achievement! But, supply is still short, software still a bit unstable, basically there are various technical issues that need to be solved. I think there is no necessity too increase the hype (which I don’t say is not well deserved) even more.

Yes, I’m sorry, I realise now it’s obviously been such a flop so far. Hardly anyone I know has heard of this tacky expensive toy, it’s not fit for children at all, and god knows what the foundation was thinking practically giving away such useless underdeveloped technology.

If the foundation was trying to turn a profit and keep backers happy, it’d be a worry to get too much exposure before it’s ready for its intended purpose of being in classrooms. But as a charity whose overall aim is to give children a basic knowledge of computer science I’d say it’s doing an absolutely fantastic job and couldn’t possibly get enough awards and exposure for it’s achievements so far…. just over 3 months after launch.

The Pi might change drastically between now and the time it’s in classrooms. But as long as it gets there, no one cares who’s scoffing about the awards it won along the way before changing it’s mind on direction.

Ha should have known the > sarcasm tag < tag would be stripped. First paragraph is most definitely sarcasm.

That’s OK – it’s exactly how I read it even without the tags.

@Josh (replying to my post because it has a reply button) The measure of the success of the R-Pi is not whether a PCB can be put together in a Chinese factory and shipped worldwide, but whether those people responsible for running schools decide that it is worth paying for and putting into schools. Quite frankly they don’t really care about whether it is put together by a charity, but they will care about whether it works, whether it is fit for their purposes and whether it is a cost effective. A school may save a few pounds on every unit compared to using PC’s or netbooks for the same purpose (but not by as much as you might think when all the disk monitors and power supplies are taken into account), but if using an R-Pi takes up significant preparation time that cost advantage disappears. Does the R-Pi match the rest of the market in terms of performance and reliability? Not yet, but it has potential to improve. Courting publicity with an unfinished product can be fatal as Clive Sinclair found with his QL. Get a reputation for an imperfect product and you’ll be gone in an instant. Ask Gerald Rattner.

“And it’s a good deal harder for girls to acquire that mindset when they grow up in a universe of pink ponies where their brothers get to play with bricks, have parents who make years of idle comments about girls being bad at maths”, I’m sorry Liz, but in what way is that societies fault? Sounds like crappy parents to me.

Selective quotation will get you far, my son. (And surely nobody has peddled the “There’s no such thing as society” line for the last 30 years?)

“Nobody wakes up one day and says “I want to be an engineer, and today I shall become one, for I have all the skills required and the culture will welcome me”; ” I did, but I was probably coming from the direction of thinking “I don’t know why anyone would want to be a theoretical physicist all their life”

Statistic: 31% of scientists portrayed in films are female, compared with the real life 25% of professional scientists and engineers. The images of female scientists in film is invariably positive compared with the significant number of fictional male scientists who are bent on world domination, contamination of the eco-system etc etc.

But I still don’t see what this has to do with the UK Internet over the last 12 months.

I hate to say it, but UK culture has a huge impact on preventing women from becoming engineers. This is obvious when you start comparing other cultures, like that of Australia, where women outnumber men in computing and other engineering disciplines.

During the first few weeks of my degree, three of the four women on my course, computer science, dropped out due to be vastly outnumbered. The other dropped out for other reasons.

So, what does this have to do with the competition? Well, strong advertising to counter the social stigma of a woman in engineering would help resolve the issue. You say women are portrayed as 30% of the engineers in films, why isn’t it 50% to ensure gender is not linked to the profession?!

Liam said: “This is obvious when you start comparing other cultures, like that of Australia, where women outnumber men in computing and other engineering disciplines.”

This seems highly unlikely as the lack of women in STEM / CS is generally a universal trait – 10-20% is a typical ratio – and I can’t see why Australia would have some magic bullet that makes more girls embrace engineering and CS than boys. In fact I’ll go out on a limb (it’s too late to be researching this) and say that it’s plain wrong. If you can point me to the research to support this then I’d be happy to recant :)

P.S. The “stats” about women scientists in films is ad hoc and over 10 years old. And I suspect that most of these celluloid role models wore tight labcoats and at some point in the films took their specs off and shook out their hair ;) (It also conveniently overlooks the fact that most of the “real life” 25% are in fields like biology, psychology and medicine as opposed to engineering and CS, but that’s another story.)

miss_jwo, then stick at it and you will get there. Watch out for the pink ponies. Don’t let them put you off.

Someone has to make all those electronic ponies for the girls…

Seriously, I hope you not only say it, but do it and encourage others as well.

A good engineer is a good engineer irrespective of gender and role models like you will convince others to consider the profession.