Design Hardware/Software for Global Civil Society

-cman- writes "White box builders and Gnome hackers take note! With the announcement of various oxymoronic "trusted computing" initiatives in recent week, Bruce Sterling, self-appointed Pope-Emperor of the Viridian Design Movement has announced a new design contest to design a '...genuinely trustable, cheap, well-designed, rugged, sexy, accessible computer system that is owned, manufactured and operated for, well, Global Civil Society.'" I'll buy one.

Comments

my design

[Yellow Brick Choad]

i prescribe a VT220 for use by Global Civilians. if someone can't figure out how to use it, they shouldn't be allowed near a fucking computer in the first goddamn place.

Uh .. ah..

[dk.r*nger]

I take it the think has to be biodynamic, too?

I don't get it. Mr. evironmentalist want's a espionage-free computer. And it has to look good, because it is targeted on the ever-fashion-aware Global Civil Society servants?

Why doesn't he go buy one a rugged laptop [dolch.com] and sticks linux on it? No backdoors, no espionage, all trusted computing for the field?

I probably don't get it, do I?

We, who are about to salute you, die

Re:Isn't this what standards bodies are for?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the fscking x86 PC and it's all of the above!

Re:Perhaps nobody will build them?

[neuroticia]

Who says "Big" means capable? In my experience "Big" means fragmented with parts that are unable to communicate with the whole.

A good example of this: My DSL provider. The "DSL department" cannot communicate with the "Hosting department" to figure out which part of it is eating the mail for the domain they host. Hah.

Small companies tend to have their act more "together" because they do not need to have a board meeting to decide whether or not to take path A or path B.

All large companies have going for them is funding.

-Sara

Re:Isn't this what standards bodies are for?

[Soko]

Of course that's what standards bodies are for, but try to get a company - any company - to go along with a standard when they think they can create their own. If you own a standard that everyone uses, you own them, and your stock holders are laughing all the way to the bank. Think RamBus and thier shady, underhanded attempt at extracting tribute from the entire industry for thier "Intellectual Property" that they snuck into standard JEDEC RAM specs. They almost got away with it, too. There are many companies, Microsoft quite obviously included, who would swoon at "owning" a standard. The best way I can think of in ensuring "vendor neutral" is making absolutely certain all companies are aware of power grabs. Then one of 2 things will happen - the initiative will die on the vine and the issue will go away, or detente will be declared and things will actually be vendor neutral.

BTW, Microsoft pretty much does control the North American PC market. A bitch-slap is about all that Microsoft is going to get, alas, when what they need is a really bloody nose (IMHO). Like saying something to the effect of "OK, so it's a standard now. Fine. Standards mean you publish the specs for anyone - and we mean anyone - to produce products that can inter-operate, or we shut you down and take them anyway. Your choice." I've said a few times before that internationally recognised standards should carry the weight of law.

Soko

and pay for ....!

[johnjones]

anyone who has anything to do with a standards body nowadays know's that people try and hijack standards so their tech/patent gets into it

this way if you implement the standard you have to pay

you can't have an opensource MPEG 4 without paying 3million bucks when you distribute it and they call that a standard

ok real hardware and software

in terms of a kernel their is in My Humble Opinion

Linux

Open BSD

netbsd for every arch under the sun (joke included)

then we have the problem of hardware

Opencores provides some of the effort BUT my favorate is

LEON-1 VHDL model
- Functional SPARC compatible processor core integer unit. Runs on Altera, Mietec, Temic MG2, Xilinx. Developed for space missions. Implemented as a highly configurable, synthesisable GPL VHDL model.

Altera 10K200E FPGA or Xilinx XCV300 enable this you can also get a LCD and keyboard AMBA devices from www.gaisler.com

what I would like is a machine that you could say that the whole thing is opensource

regards

john jones

And I thought I was cynical . . .

[npsimons]

There's no way. You would, in effect, have to re-design every part of the computer to manage this. This includes a different card spec (PCI and AGP are apparently not multi-culti enough), a different CPU (they display corporate logos, after all), different BIOS (corporate logos again), etc. You would have re-design the entire computer, ignoring all existing specs. This is crazy.

While I'll have to agree that Sterling's proposal seems off the wall and not very well thought out, it's still an idea that appeals to me for some reason. Maybe it's the thought that there has to be a better way (yes, even better than Linux). Maybe I'm just not cynical enough and I still dream of seeing a world in which a paperless office becomes a reality without losing our freedom of speech.

Hope is a waking dream.
-- Aristotle

I refuse to just let the corporations steamroll over my rights - and yours. I've been through depression, but I've never given up, and I never will.

We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know.
-- Plato

So you say it's crazy? So you say it's impossible? Oh, well let's just not give it another thought then! Let's let the CEO's of Microsoft and Enron do the thinking for us. Surely, they have our best interests at heart, and there's nothing we can do to improve our lot.

You see things; and you say "Why?"
But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"

Well, I'll tell you what: you can sit on your rump, telling the ones who are out there doing the impossible that it's impossible. If that's what you really want, you can have it. I'll leave you with one last quote to ruminate upon:

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein

Simputer

[femto]

A worthy contender...

http://www.simputer.org/