Dirty Secret


craigix said:
If it were a scam I think we could have made more money by just doing real full time jobs for the last 18 months.
Jobs are for suckers.
 
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My brother inlaw has promised to bare his butt on the front steps of our townhall opposite the police station and risk getting busted if my pandora arrives. He's pretty confident it'll never come off, lol. Man it's gonna be funny when my pandora arrives and he has to keep his word. I'll be posting the moment on the forum for your viewing pleasure, LOL :D He did look a little scared when I mentioned that the well known company Texas instruments where making all the boards. Watch this space :D
 
puppydee said:
He did look a little scared when I mentioned that the well known company Texas instruments where making all the boards.

Even though they're not.
Isn't it just "some company in Texas"?
 
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lulzfish said:
puppydee said:
He did look a little scared when I mentioned that the well known company Texas instruments where making all the boards.

Even though they're not.
Isn't it just "some company in Texas"?
Yes, but he doesn't have to know that...
 
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If this were a scam it would seem like it was going totally smoothly until they ran off with our money. It's obviously not a scam :p
 
It's hard not to get excited again, although have felt we we're close before. It's hard not to tell people about it, having to bite my tongue till I get it in my hands. If only I could get paid for living on these boards I would be rich over the last year :)
To be honest the only thing that I would like to have been put in place would be a more modern repository, something that could've really been worked on in this time and finished to a high standard prior to release as it's not dependent on the hardware to be done. Everything else is hardware dependent and has to wait till we all get it in our hands, although I think we'll have lots on there even from the start.
 
The Mrs asks me about once every couple of weeks 'soooo... when is your Pandora coming now?' to which I spout the latest 'oh well, at the moment the case moulds are half complete, and it's gone through radiation testing, blah blah blah' all of which I'm saying to her sarcastic expression, and the 'uh-huh...' which follows it.

In honour of the sarcastic non-believers, I'm going to coin the word 'SUPO' Smug Until Proven Otherwise.
 
*Sighs*

Well, the waiting. I have told my colleagues at school about the Pandora weeks before the preorders started.
Some of them have commented on me not having it yet, but always respectful and in an interested way, nobody
actually made jokes. Maybe that's due to personal respect, I can't tell.

The thing is, recently we had to do a presentation of our choice, I chose the Pandora project. Given time was
five minutes, I took about twelve, but everyone paid attention and actually showed interest.

First I showed off my GBA SP, PSP and NDS Lite and asked if someone in class would recognize the devices, which
everyone would. So I wrote down the devices' names on the left hand side of the whiteboard. Then I asked for a purpose,
the answer was clear: gaming. So I made a horizontal bracket underneath the consoles (I did add others, too) and
commented "gaming". From that word, to the right, I made a two-sided arrow. PPL noticed that the complement would
be "working", which I wrote down right of the two-sided arrow. Then I made them name portable devices (which was
the caption) filling that niche, which I wrote down on the right hand side of the board. Then I drew a circle in
the middle of the two columns of devices and wrote "Pandora" inside.

That's where I started my very short introduction to the device, already having covered the idea and role models,
followed by the fact that (and why) it's a community project, the main developers, the hardware, open source meme
concerning hard- and software aswell as the current status and expected future of the project.

Damn, i could have talked for at least half an hour. The thing is, if you can convey the whole story well enough,
anyone who is remotely interested in computers can and will follow you, getting the point of why it's worth waiting
for this particular device.

--
Edited for better understanding.
 
@Na-Noo. Nice topic. Damn near may me cry. Glad to know I'm not suffering alone.

And of course it's a scam. Just Craigx et al have blown all the cash on professional photoshopped mock-ups. Not cheap that stuff!

Still smiling about Gruso's comment regarding 27 weeks[sup]TM[/sup], but that was another Topic.
 
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kuru said:
The thing is, recently we had to do a presentation of our choice, I chose the Pandora project. Given time was
five minutes, I took about twelve, but everyone paid attention and actually showed interest.

I had to do a presentation last December and choose the Pandora.

When peopl ask me now what the current situation is I don't give them a chance to mock, I just go in straight away and say "Like I said last time, It'll be here in 2 months!"

A smirk from both sides and the conversation is over before it really started.
 
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The Pandora is not a scam. The Pandora team has put a lot of time and money into the project, and if they could in some way do something that would speed up them making some of their money back (i.e. ship the pandora), don't you think they would do it?

I view the project as an illustration in how things can go wrong in project management. I've dealt with that shit in the past, and I sympathize with everyone on the Pandora team. For anyone on the forums who thinks it's easy to create a project like this...

- Suppliers are not going to care about your project, unless you're a big portion of their revenue. Most of the time, a few thousands parts are nothing to a supplier. You will probably be put last in line for any samples, lead-times, documents, etc... Essentially, you'll be paying them to do the absolute minimal amount of work for you (after you hound them to do it). To them, a few weeks going by without any action is nothing. Are all vendors this bad?... probably not, but should you expect this to some degree?... yes. But how many vendors will your project have to deal with?

- Outside engineering & manufacturers are not going care about your project either. Just like with suppliers, unless you're a big account, you're just not going to get much attention. You may get a portion of an engineer's time, which means if the engineer has nothing else to do, then they'll work on your stuff. With manufacturing, you'll have to get a build window scheduled because manufacturers are probably not sitting idle just waiting for you to give them something to do. Now, for the build to actually go, any required parts need to be present. Remember what I said about suppliers? For me, shipping always seemed to be about a week (or two). Lead times on designs and build windows can be weeks to months. If anything goes wrong with the design or manufacture, it can take weeks to months of back and forth communication.

- Financing... ugh... take everything I said about suppliers and manufacturers and multiply it by 10 or so.

In essence, nobody else is going to be excited about your project like you are, and most of the time it'll feel like you need to pester people to do the work you already paid them to do. I do not blame the Pandora team for being excited about their project and thus being optimistic with their timelines.
 
ChrisK said:
Did you mean to start your own thread, was it meant for another one?
You wrote so much and yet none of it seems relevant.
No one saying its a scam, no ones said it should have come earlier or even that don't understand why it hasn't. In fact said specifically that did understand! What a way to try bringing down the tone of the whole thread.
 
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Na-Noo said:
ChrisK said:
Did you mean to start your own thread, was it meant for another one?
You wrote so much and yet none of it seems relevant.
No one saying its a scam, no ones said it should have come earlier or even that don't understand why it hasn't. In fact said specifically that did understand! What a way to try bringing down the tone of the whole thread.
Na-Noo thanks for summarising ChrisK's post. Saves me having to read it. "snip" just about says it all albeit a little long windedly.
 
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ChrisK said:
The Pandora is not a scam. The Pandora team has put a lot of time and money into the project, and if they could in some way do something that would speed up them making some of their money back (i.e. ship the pandora), don't you think they would do it?

I view the project as an illustration in how things can go wrong in project management. I've dealt with that shit in the past, and I sympathize with everyone on the Pandora team. For anyone on the forums who thinks it's easy to create a project like this...

- Suppliers are not going to care about your project, unless you're a big portion of their revenue. Most of the time, a few thousands parts are nothing to a supplier. You will probably be put last in line for any samples, lead-times, documents, etc... Essentially, you'll be paying them to do the absolute minimal amount of work for you (after you hound them to do it). To them, a few weeks going by without any action is nothing. Are all vendors this bad?... probably not, but should you expect this to some degree?... yes. But how many vendors will your project have to deal with?

- Outside engineering & manufacturers are not going care about your project either. Just like with suppliers, unless you're a big account, you're just not going to get much attention. You may get a portion of an engineer's time, which means if the engineer has nothing else to do, then they'll work on your stuff. With manufacturing, you'll have to get a build window scheduled because manufacturers are probably not sitting idle just waiting for you to give them something to do. Now, for the build to actually go, any required parts need to be present. Remember what I said about suppliers? For me, shipping always seemed to be about a week (or two). Lead times on designs and build windows can be weeks to months. If anything goes wrong with the design or manufacture, it can take weeks to months of back and forth communication.

- Financing... ugh... take everything I said about suppliers and manufacturers and multiply it by 10 or so.

In essence, nobody else is going to be excited about your project like you are, and most of the time it'll feel like you need to pester people to do the work you already paid them to do. I do not blame the Pandora team for being excited about their project and thus being optimistic with their timelines.

Agreed. It takes money to make money. They didn't have too much money to start with, so they are not making too much money. It seems like their main aim of this project is either one of two things (perchance even both): 1. To gain recognition and publicity to make more money by shipping/manufacturing more Pandoras or creating newer better ones in years to come. 2. To gain support (financially and developmentally) so they can create and have the sweetest emulator/netbook around.
 
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