Slashdot Mirror
Free IBM Computers For UK Households
Albanach writes "The Scotland on Sunday newspaper is reporting that UK firm Metronomy are offering 200,000 IBM PCs free of charge to UK households. Of course, there is a catch - advertising. Accepting the terms and conditions will get users a free IBM PC running Windows XP, but they will also be required to watch three minutes of TV style advertising for every hour of computer use and undertake to use the PC for a minimum of 30 hours per month."
Didn't a failed experiment like this happen in the U.S. already? This reminds me of all the free ISPs that used to exist for a brief time that are now all defunct or for pay.
There don't appear to be any technological barriers to just accepting the PC and reintalling the OS with something sane. Contractually, however, you're agreeing to watch the ads, so if you're not doing so, I suspect they'll just come and take the PC back. Also note that the PC remains the property of Metronomy, and is loaned to the end user for a 3 year period, thus they're well within their rights to just end the loan period early.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Personally, I am cool with advertisements in the middle of things I do passively ... like watching TV.
But when I engage in an active action like writing a paper or reading, advertising gets blocked or at best ignored totally
Given the low prices of PCs and concerns over privacy how many people are actually going to take up this offer?
This seems awfully similar to the Free-PC campaign ran years ago.
Perhaps IBM can subsidize such a business model. As annoying as the advertising could be, I certainly would be interested in a free PC.
The disconcerting part of the article is the data-mining, however. The article claims that the personal information is confidential but it still makes me feel wary.
I'm curious as to what the specs on these machines are. It would have to be a damn good machine for me to consider such intrusive advertising practices. I recognize that, however is not likely.
*
troll blacklist. Please mo
ONLY three minutes! You mean there are Windows XP boxes out thre that only force you to watch that advert for Windows XP you get after a reboot for three minutes every hour? Where do I sign up?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
or... why watch?
nice reminder to take a break - go the toliet, don't get headaches, don't get carpal tunnel syndrome.
In order to get this PC, you would have to watch 90 minutes (1 and 1/2 hours) minimum of advertising each month. I am not sure the PC is worth sitting through that amount of advertising.
-Valen
This seems like an ominous step to the day when you no longer have control over the software you run. Once the masses accept this control for the free (as in beer) hardware, it will be harder for anyone to actually have the right to execute whatever code they wish on their machine (free as in speech). Not likely Linux'll ever see the light of day on those boxes.
TV expects me to watch the comercials and pay.
Being forced to stop using the computer for a couple of minutes every hour seems like a good way to make people get out of the chair, go for a little walk around the house, at least so they change sitting positions. I doubt few will actually sit and watch the commercials.
On the other hand, being lazy as people tend to be, this will probably be hacked within a week or so.
Free is free. Saying anything else is just splitting hairs.
I get to deal with 12+ hours of watching advertisements per month on my NON-FREE, PAID computer already. Go figure.
Hate me!
It'll be interesting (okay, disturbing) when somebody decides to do this with a trusted BIOS.
Perhaps there will be no installing linux, no piracy, no avoiding your ad-watching duty, no viruses, no freedom... And probably no desire for the masses to change because "we already HAVE a computer".
IBM Thinkcentre 411 inc vat
You just need to look at IBM's own website to realise that a same spec PC is 411inc vat - nowhere near the 800 this news article is claiming it's worth!!
1) Get the computer.
2) Reverse-engineer the network traffic.
3) Setup old 486 to simulate the PC receiving ads and simulate user activity.
4) Reinstall OS
5) ???
6) Profit!
Is it just me, or are dotcom bubble things back in fashion?
This was back in '99
It's just a BloJJ
A DRM system may be able to enforce this in most cases, but the techno-literate will bypass it.
Maybe it's going to be enforced differently, though. Perhaps each time you watch an advertisement you will have to take down a code, or connect to a remote server - if you don't submit the code or the server doesn't record your view, somebody will physically come and take the computer away (and kill your pets).
Flashback to 1999! Do they have no business model and a recent IPO that went up by 280% on the first day of trading too?
I don't think they are pretending it is charity. It is just a low cost option. Insteaad of paying with money you get to pay with time. While this would suck for me and I would never do it, it might very well work out great for some people. My mom who just toots around the Internet and checks her e-mail would probably be a prime canidate for this. To her, watching a few comercials while she does her thing would be no big deal.
I simply fail to see how this is sick, to me it is just another payment option. For people who are not going to do much with their computer it might be a worthwhile option.
the inquirer has the specs
3 minutes of ads every 30 minutes, Guesstimating off the length of shows on dvd, there's around 10 minutes of ads in every 1/2 hour of tv.
On the other hand it might not be too favourable to those people who pay $/megabyte for their internet connection.
They mention about a CD to be installed on the PC for the advertising to run. So theoretically, I could install the CD on my old Pentium III and let the new computer to run ad-free. Can't I?
Depends on what they're pushing I guess, if it's Aldi 7p baked beans, they'll probably do alright.
I didn't think it was that bad here in the UK...
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
Don't tell anybody, but when the adverts start, I'm going to CLOSE MY EYES! heheheee!
c'mon, do you really think they won't have thought of that?
What displays the ads? software. What else does the software do?, well, it probably sends signals over the Internet. So if the signals aren't sent, there's something wrong, and they take the PC back.
Also, how else would they enforce a 30-hour per month minimum?
Now. What else do the ad software transmit...
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
what's the point of offering rich Germans a 'free' offer?
Please tell how you can use a monitor like that.
1. Watch Ad's for x min's
2. Shutdown, Switch-Off & Switch Hard Disks
3. Boot OS of Choice
4. Enjoy Usage Freedom
They have to watch for a minute every 20 minutes and it can only delayed by 5 minutes.
Think about the target group that will accept the offer (which will presumably not buy too many airline tickets online) and assume some clever advertising strategy I guess it might be a good way to programm people (you could do it 'behavioural-context-sensitively' and hit the right spots).
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
What is this post? a first year college project with double-line spacing to fill the half-page requirement?
There have been so many similar things, free ISP, even free telephony, paid by advertisement interruptions.
It always fails. Why?
Because it makes you feel like Alex in Clockwork Orange being force-fed evil media!
Right, right?
Will code a sig generator for food
that at some point we will wind up being paid to take all of the goods there are to produce.
This is my sig.
why is this insightful? the economy is doing fine with very low unemployment, probably true that no one has any money though, everyone seems to be living on credit!
they will also be required to watch three minutes of TV style advertising for every hour of computer use and undertake to use the PC for a minimum of 30 hours per month.
As some people have already stated, it is easy to take a bathroom break once an our, like watching TV except in this respect you don't have to worry about missing anything.
The 30 hour minimum per month would probably be easy to get around. Just leave the computer on when you are not using it. The commercials would probably "air" whether you are there or not. Or will it track keyboard/mouse movements?
If someone were to "hack" this then maybe they could have the commercials run, but in the background, and with no sound? They probably have some way to account for the commercials and 30 hours of use per month. If you could figure out how it communicates then you could just have it send out fake communications with your ID. This might even be able to be done under Linux.
It is curious that IBM is doing this with XP instead of Linux. If they implimented it with Linux they could retain the root password which could make it a bit more difficult to get around the conditions.
You might be able to dual boot between Windows and XP. You would just have to let it run 30 hours a month in XP. But the EULA probably prohibits installing other operating systems. But it probably prohibits hacking the communication too.
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
...and welcome to PeoplePC!
He was a cute kid, at least. Wonder what he's up to these days.
Great! So I can get a free PC which will automatically remind me every 20 minutes I should take a break from the PC? Seriously, how many people will use that 1 minute of ads to make a cup of coffee or take a toilet break?
It would be nice if the article would have said how they will enforce this. Perhaps the users have to be connected to the net or something so after the ad is played, it sends some packets over to IBM to keep tabs. If the user is supposed to use the computer for a minimum 30 hours a month, what's to stop them from simply leaving the computer on all day and all night? Would IBM go far enough to check for periodic input?
Confucious says: Man who runs behind car gets exhausted.
// jeku.com
Yeah... It's just a sick marketing campaign. Makes people thing that they're actually getting something for free.... right... Oh, and anyone who reads the comment.. I wasn't trying to make a direct hit on all Christians.. just trying to make an example.. I'm sure you know the people. Goes with any charity.. etc... people in it for selfish reasons.... Just wish people would do something nice for a change... a.k.a linux.. open source... Learn people learn.. but I'm sure most of you slashdotters have :)
What's the fuss about the adverts? Don't these people have Tivo? Oh, PC adverts... er... duct tape across the screen, maybe?
later they'll get free pc+verybroadband provided they watch 57minutes of add per hour.
if you do not believe me, then you obviously got used to watching to 5 minute ad breaks every 2 clips on vh1 classic.
just say NO to ads, it's to intrusive not to damage your conscience.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
> How long till it gets hacked?
There will be a deposit, or something that you lose if you tamper with it. Or if they implement (even a simple) electronic protection mechanism, it would be a violation of copyright to circumvent it. (due to the recent implementation of the EUCD.)
> why watch?
Why do some slashdotters think that the product development team will never think of an idea that they thought of after 20 seconds?
You'll have to constantly click through the ads or something. And it comes with a modem, so it will certainly be feeding back info to headquarters etc.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Heh, Think about it though... if everyone went out and spent money..the economy would be fine. It's the fear of losing all your money... and then no one spends money... that causes a downfall in an economy.. well... a large reason.
"The economy in the U.K. is horrid right now. Nobody has any money or work and everyone is on welfare."
Oh, come on, it's not that bad. If people have no money, how come house prices have risen by about 40% in the last two years ?
"What use is advertising to "poor" people if they can't buy most of the crap you are hawking?"
Come off it, this is still a pretty wealthy country, on world-wide basis. It remains to be seen whether this is a good idea, but I'm sure IBM have done their sums, and a bit of research.
"I would have picked Germany, at least they have money. Seig Heil!"
Stop being a prick.
"Oh, in case you are wondering I'm British."
Yep - and the kind of Brit that the rest of us are ashamed about.
You have to connect to a dialup ISP for at least an hour a month for this thing - what about us using broadband - do we have to go back to slooow speeds and pay the price per hour - is it worth it?
The economy in the U.K. is horrid right now. Nobody has any money or work and everyone is on welfare.
You're evidently living in a different UK to me. I'm living in the UK that has a growing economy that is doing better than any of the G7 countries. I'm living in the UK where unemployment is pretty much lower than it's ever been. (Although Bliar has done a few magic tricks to make it that way statistically.)
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
(looks over at the Compaq 5301 in the corner)
Where have we heard this before? Oh yes, Free-PC.
In 1999 or there abouts Free-PC was doing the "ad-supported computer" scheme. Of course, back then streaming video for ads was out of the question and so they just chopped a 1024x768 desktop to be an 800x600 desktop with standard animated GIF type ads around the surplus.
I was lucky enough to get one. Free-PC had no chance. I think they were toast even before the dot-com bubble burst. In the end, the were bought by eMachines who had no interest in supporting the crazy scheme so they sent us all letters giving us ownership of the computers.
Truth be told, I thought it was a decent machine for an (ugh) Presario. Has some kind of AMD, I think it was a K2-66 maybe. I kept lugging around because I intended to find an upgrade for it, but the fastest processor it supports (a KIII+) goes on eBay for ridiculously absurd prices.
But anyway, back on topic, I think companies are nuts to keep trying this. It took all of five minutes for people to figure out how to hack the Free-PC to be a normal PC (not to mention, play any game that used DirectX and ads go bye bye). I highly recommend people sign up for this. I'd bet dollars to pesos they go under in a year and everyone walks away with a free computer. History repeats itself right?
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Obviously there are sections of the UK that are poor - Wales, Scotland sans Edinburgh, and utter dives like Hull. However this tends to be due to the abject lack of skilled workers available in these areas. People need to realise that there isn't a great need for unskilled labour these days.
Obviously this won't stop the free PC plan failing. People will simply get up and make a cup of tea whenever the advertising appears. Either that or someone will crack the advertising feed so it can be sent to the background/hidden. Never underestimate how ingenious people can be when it comes to getting something for nothing.
> I don't see anything limiting me to installing my own OS
Terms of conditions:
> "Every month, you will receive a cd containing adverts to be
> shown over the following four weeks. Each disc must be
> loaded onto your PC for the system to update. Should you
> fail to do this, your PC will be disabled."
So, if you understand what you wrote, are you suggesting that they'll ship a GNU/Linux version of their ad software?
Also, the terms and conditions say that you must connect to the internet at least once per month. Obviously this is so that some piece of software can transmit data to verify that you've installed your ads etc. Will this software be available for GNU/Linux? hey, maybe it will even be Free Software. no.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I know you're just trolling but I'll bite anyway as someone has modded you insightful.
FYI:
Unemployment in the UK currently stands at 5%, compared with 6% in the US and 10.5% in Germany which puts the lie to your 'everyone is on welfare ' claim. BTW, Brits don't say 'welfare', it's call the dole which makes me suspect your claim to be British.
Inflation is at 2.6% compared with the US at 2% and Germany at 1.2%, however wages have increased 3.6% whicg puts the lie to your 'no-one has any money' claim.
And finally, the UK is running a budget deficit of 1.9% of GDP compared to Germany at 3.7% and the US at 4.6% (and Japan 7.7%). Not great, but better than most.
On the whole, the UK has ridden the downturn better than most countries.
Anecdotally, I used to work for a US s/w firm in the UK - when the firm folded with the tech crash, every single UK employee had no problem finding other work - to this day many employees in the US are still unemployed or at least under-employed.
Cheers,
Nick
PS All figures are from the Economist indicators section for November 22nd-28th 2003.
Ghost the disk that comes with the computer onto an old, fairly useless pentium. Write a script to watch the ads for the contractually required time. Put the old pentium in a cupboard with an ethernet cable and forget about it, except for once a month, when you drop in the CD of new ads.
Format the nice new fast computer with whatever os you choose, and use it as you please.
They get their ads "watched" three times an hour, 24/7, by a genuine internet-connected PC running all the spyware they feel like, and you get to use the new hardware as you like.
... but aparently some managers at IBM can't.
This is the most retarded idea I've heard in a long time. It escapes me how can someone with half a brain doubt this is not going to flop. I can't wait until they launch it, fail miserably and then some genius manager including in his insightful book about the dot-com economy as he was discovering something.
Hmm... Speaking of that, how about a virtual display proggy of the shareware type that are available?
Just let the ads display on "Screen 0" or whatever, and use "Screen 1" for everything you wanna do. If you turned the speakers down, you'd probably never even notice the ads.
Possible?
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Err, are you *sure* you're from 'round here? The economy is in pretty good shape actually; better than most of Europe, lower unemployment etc. Sure, manufacturing's not doing too well, but in general things've held up a lot better here than on the continent over the last 4 years.
I do however agree that the avertising is completely worthless, and this thing's going nowhere - people just don't like having to do things like take ad-breaks...
-CHris
So I guess one can't use the computer without being stuck with XP. Perhaps this might be sort of useful for Mom and Pop computer users, but to get any real use out of the computer...
thats not worth it to the company...what, the condoms will get used by them every 15 or 20 seconds, hence, no advertising....and yes, i understand the joke about the movie part.
---Excuse the bad English, I'm American---
How do they know that that specific computer is one of the "free" ones? Why not just wipe the hard drive and install Linux? Maybe figure out what the format is for however the computer tells IBM that you viewed your quota of advertisements, and have a script that sends in an appropriate message every month or whatever.
If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
Since when is MS-Windows XP useful for something else than gaming?
:)
Can You imagine a commercial while You are in the middle of a deathmatch?
Huahuahua!
Has anyone picked up on the fact that they're deploying Intel Celeron CPUs ? Don't Intels have a unique CPU ID ? I'd be surprised if their monitoring software didn't report back the ID of the host machine and send it to head office.
In fact the s/ware that displays the ads may very well refuse to run on anything other than an "official" machine.
If you're going to pretend to be British at least have the intelligence to disguise your North American upbringing.
"Welfare"? Nobody in the UK would call it welfare - that's such an Americanism it's unbelievable. As is "hawking". Try using more colloquial terms in future: eg, "benefits" instead of "welfare", "flogging" instead of "hawking". By the way, nobody uses the word "horrid" here either, apart from people living in a time warp.
"Realized"? Oh dear. Worse than using Americanisms is using American spellings. Outside North America the word is spelt "realised". Perhaps if you actually were from the UK you'd have learnt that.
If you truly are British care to tell us where your from? Want to name half a dozen British retailers you'd find on the typical high street? Care to explain the offside law? Or tell us what top job a Swede holds in England? Want to tell us what's bigger over here, Frasier, Friends, Scrubs, Sienfeld or Will and Grace? Want to tell me what the most famous football terrace in Britain's called? Or name the comics you grew up reading when you were a kid? Or which TV quiz conundrum round? Didn't think so.
Apart from all that, nice troll attempt. Now stop pretending to be something that you're not, you pathetic little man.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Why can't I find anything on http://www.ibm.com/uk/ about this.
Is this a hoax?
That could not have been less funny if it had had a link to child porn.
Oh, come on, it's not that bad. If people have no money, how come house prices have risen by about 40% in the last two years ?
Because of the scam among lenders to loan massive amounts of money to borrowers who can't afford the repayments, because the mortgage is overgeared, and by encouraging mortgage applicants to lie about their income. This has been extremely well-documented in the past months, and has certainly contributed to a feverish (unhealthily so) property market in the UK.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
Well as you are meant to take a break every 30 minutes or so just get a cup of tea whilst the adverts are on. Anyway I've ordered mine. Lets seem what happens
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I'm pretty sure IBM's research would only have gone as far as "do we get enough cash for the hardware up front to show a profit?". If the answer to that is "yes", then IBM really doesn't have to care whether this succeeds or fails, does it? They get a profit and, perhaps more importantly, some column inches about how they are helping bring computing to those who might not otherwise have it.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I agree its not worth that much but I think those prices don't include a monitor but that would still be only 500. Of course there is a P4 2.6Ghz which is 800 which is what they might of picked up.
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
yeah the british will tut tut and grumble very quietly so no one can hear it ;)
Yes, what a scam. Damn those money lenders and their clearly stated interest rates! All the poor defenseless people carelessly living beyond their means are now in debt and are going to have to... *gasp* pay it back! Who'da thunk it?
"Care to explain the offside law? Or tell us what top job a Swede holds in England? Want to tell us what's bigger over here, Frasier, Friends, Scrubs, Sienfeld or Will and Grace? Want to tell me what the most famous football terrace in Britain's called?"
Oh my God! I thought all this time I had been living in the UK! Apparently I haven't because I'm not a sports-loving popular culture-guzzling idiot.
(I couldn't answer any of the above questions. Well, not with correct answers anyway).
graspee
Recieve the free pc, swap all the hardware with crappy parts from a 486 eg.
Run the (now crappy) pc for 30 hours a month, and take all the good shiny new pc parts and whack em on an ad-free comp
Retailers are easy:
So there is Pete Beale who has the fruit and veg stall, The women from Corrie who have the corner shop.The Woolpack and Queen Vic
Top Swede..um Head Chef at the Ritz?
OK I can't think of anything more funny (not that it is) to write
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Firstly, advertising has proved time and again to be a sustainable business model throughout all media sectors. Why shouldn't this work too for PC/Internet Access?
It's a great way for low income families to get online, or gain experience of using PC's - thus increasing their employability.
The masses are more than happy to trade privacy for free stuff - cf loyalty cards.
Stop looking for the faults in everything!
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
3 minutes * 30 hours * 12 months * 3 years = 3240 minutes wich is 2 and a quarter days worth of ads. Mmm, so the PC itself costs about 411 in vat from the IBM site (according to other people). But of course you OWN that machine. This one comes to about 7 quid per hour of your time. Is your time worth that? I know I get paid more but for many that is better then their hourly wage (no taxes).
So is just over 2 days of your time PLUS cost of internet worth getting a pc? Hardly I think, the killer is in the ISP costs. Unless one of those "free" ISP's is acceptable where you only pay for actual minutes (don't forget this is england not america with its free local calls) then you could pay for the pc simply by the subscription costs.
Why? Well the calculation of 54 hours is the MINIMUM. Only a light computer user will be able to do the 30 hours. And they will not be using up more then a fraction of the bandwidth that even a light ISP subscription pays for. Money in the bank for the ISP. They like light users. People like me who max out their download month after month they would like to do without, or in my personal case charge through the nose.
Of course heavy users get a better deal on the ISP costs but also have to watch far more ads. Further more how is leaving the PC on overnight to finish a download counted? Watching a movie will be hell. In england people are used to the BBC not to american style 5 minutes commercials interrupted by programs.
Games will also be difficult. Forget online gaming, "sorry got to watch an ad please don't frag". Many games don't like to be switched to the background.
Conclusion for who cares, the only people for whom this is a great deal is those who need a computer for a few simple tasks, who don't have the money to buy their own AND who have for some reason free access to an accepted ISP. Students living in a dorm perhaps? Oh wait, no ms office being mentioned as pre-installed.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well ok , you CAN physically install it , but reading between the lines on their agreement form about having to use the internet 30 hours a month
I'd bet my granny that the PC comes with some sort of phone home software and if it doesn't phone home after a month (because its been deleted) then I'm pretty sure someone would come knocking on
the door a few days later. Of course you could always put Linux/BSD on and just use the PC for a month then wait for the knock,
depends what you need it for.
--
Simon
Sounds like a cheap way to get extra distcc power! You would not even need to see or hear the ad's. Now imagine a beowolf cluster of.... $%^$%[NO CARRIER]
ghost the disk. Get a copy of VMware. Load in Linux. Load the ghosted disk into a virtual disk - which will compress it anyway so all those zeros are meaningless. Probably strip out 90% of the crap from the virtual machine.
/dev/nul or to an X-window that isn't displayed.
Fire up XP in the virtual machine and run it as a background process with output directed to either
End of issue. If the virtual machine becomes a nuisance it can be killed any time.
If you still need XP then you can use XP has the host OS and run the crippled copy in the virtual machine anyway - or you can run a clean copy of XP in a virtual machine while the spyware version remains separate.
Keep a copy of the original malware version in a separate file and periodically replace the one that is going to get poluted.
Also - run the whole thing behind a firewall (openbsd and you can d/l it from here: www.bsdwall.org for free) and close off any bloody ports their malware tries to use.
Then if they bitch simply shrug your shoulders and proclaim that they have no right to ask you to run without a firewall and you ain't giving them root access to the firewall either.
By all means - order up a machine - it is free of course.
------------
If you need it for a server - life is about the same. Set up your server with XP running in VMare - and remove the keyboard, mouse and display screen because you don't need them anyways.
Probably have a cron deamon kill and reboot Xp every hour or so - restart from a fresh copy of course. Tell them you find you have to re-install XP frequently.
-----------
Note the machine is probably a really bare bones critter with onboard video so it'll never make a game box anyways.
------------
Order up about 5 for me ok? Send me an email and I'll send my address since I'm not in the UK. Set them up properly and get one for your mother, grandmother, cousins and so forth. Show them the power of Linux.
Do we have opensource VM yet?
If you had a choice between a computer with adverts and one without, at the same price, you would of course choose the one without. So this begs the question of who buys a computer worth a few hundred quid for this, it seems fairly major inconvenience. Most people have computers these days, and even if it means a small to fair upgrade I'd bet most people would be unwilling. Especially if they were considering the performance overhead that the ad software is going to take.
The people left over using this are people who can't afford a new PC, and who lack the knowledge, time or wherewithal to make an old one work on older (or possibly less horribly bloated) software, or indeed the computer savvy to know that an older computer with such software is completely adequate for most peoples needs (we all survived on it however many years ago). What these people are also going to evaluate is that the benefits of having access to a computer and the internet is worth the advertising.
The problem we have is that when we raise the bar to enter society there are problems. Where there is no good public transport provision in an area, a car is nessecary to conduct a decent life (especially outside a city), leading to ghettoisation of those who don't. [On a side note the people who are ghettoised in inner cities not only suffer through not having a car, but their areas are sliced up by roads to which they have no access. Crippling communities, and flaunting what others have in front of their faces every day] What I am leading to, far too slowly, is that this leads us to a world where computers are a nessecary part of life in the western world, especially with the advent of the internet. People without have less access to the wealth in society, leading to a situation where advertisers can further force their way into the homes of people who are wise enough to realise what they could gain from the computer it places there.
The hardware upgrade spiral is the very most antisocial and upleasant aspect of the wintel cartel. Maybe govornments who want to free themselves from it should have schemes to recycle old computers and sell them cheaply (including software licenses). It'd probably help their GDP too.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Wow...I didn't realise today was the day SCO employees were told to spam Slashdot. Is that you McBride ? Come on out in the open like a man.
While I agree with many of your thoughts I do not agree that computers are out of reach for poor folks.
Here in Calgary I can and have bought several machines for under $200 Canadian - that is under 100 quid. As for them being underpowered? no... my desktop is an upgraded 1998 celeron 433 and it now runs at 1.3gHz (Note: tualatin core celeron's are faster and better than coppermine pentium III's in all respects ) and it has 384 MB ECC memory and I don't think you can even get ECC on P4's anymore.
This means that newer computers do not even measure up to the MINIMUM standard I use.
Note that a 1.3gHz Tualatin will run about 85-95% of the speed of a 1.8gHz P4. This is because of longer pipelines and a detuned core which imposes many additional cycles in order to get the same job done. Remember, Intel had to find some way to puff the numbers. [Besides - I'm not CPU bound anyways so my machine will NEVER run faster than now regardless of how many cycles per second I buy]
The cost of my upgrade? Under $100 bux Canadian. So a poor person should be able to put themselves into a 1.3 gHz machine with the upgrade for less than $200 quid - easily - and still have money in that budget to pay an enterprising smart student out of high school or uni.
--------------
IMHO, most poor people have enuf money for their boose and smokes. It isn't a question of cost - its a question of priorities.
Well, I think I asked enough questions that weren't sports-related. I doubt he can even answer one of them without resorting to half an hour of googling.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who cares if its got advertising. Sounds like another node for SETI or other distributed client.
It's a fair point that you managed to assemble such a machine for such a price. The problem is that the people I'm talking about don't have access to the skills and knowledge you have. If you can maybe you could make it available, I'm sure many/most people on slashdot give out their skills for free to all sorts of people quite regularly. I know I do. ... the poverty trap. Among the many reasons poor people smoke and drink more (and more damagingly) the one reason is to numb the pain, satisfying a craving is also still a satisfying feeling, when I smoked I enjoyed it and I still acknowledge that it was enjoyable. Dickens said something about alcohol being the only way that poor people could find it in themselves to sing and dance, and that only a brute could deny it to them (it was in hard times, and probably many other books if someone cares to remember it exactly). While the scale of western proverty isn't the same as dickensian poverty was, and whether you agree with him about denial, you can see where he's coming from.
The point on booze and smokes, while also drawing us neatly back to some points about advertising and what it does in society, is something else I can't let sit there. It's part of the same thing as the other point actually
in case you are wondering I'm British
It's called Great Britain, I bet it'd be called Amazing Britain if it wasn't for people like you dragging down the average
In Soviet Russia Slashdot cliches use you
1998 called. They want their business model back.
All's true that is mistrusted
Nonense.
The two bullshit M$ "windows" "menu" keys are on almost all PC keyboards 24 hours a day. You try getting a PC keyboard at a reasonable price without that marketing bullshit. M$ really are a bunch of assholes.
Absoredundantly, but XP AND ads every other minute. Wow.
So, where do I sign up for the electroshock-torture-and-sleep-deprivation alternative 'offer'?
If this won't bring "the masses" screaming for GPL goodness, we are probably doomed. Doomed I teel you!
668.5
"It has also emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation."
I wouldn't put it beyond GWB, desperate for results, to silently approved torture of the "detainees". Now he's ratings are up again.
Is there any reason you couldn't just use it as an ftp server og direct connect download comp. or whatever?
And just make some dummy script which browses some webpages for 30minutes per day?
Sure is possible, I use: http://xdesksoftware.com/ to do just that, I can be programed to always open a specific program on a specific virtual desktop along with some other nice things, so grab the PC and use that.
Unplug monitor and speakers; Stick a NIC in it, and use PC as your mp3/pr0n server or anything else you'd care to do. If you have to start these adverts yourself, write a script for it... In fact your don't need the keyboard or mouse either... Free monitor anyone? This is all assuming that there is some inherent system that disallows formatting, yada yada yada..
How was this offtopic?
If you've mode points and no sense of humour, by all means, mod me down. But pick an applicable reason, please. Or better yet, save your mod points for the trolls.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What, one question on American TV? Anyway, isn't offside a rule, not a Law?
Phil
vrai- you would benefit greatly from the extraction of your naive head from your privately educated english arse sometime in the future...
I've been unemployed since graduating with a Masters in Computer Science in 2002 but despite this I'm not considered unemployed.
I'm writing this on my lunch break at my "work".
I have been placed/forced to go on the Training for work program where I work over a 40 hour week for just over 50.
Many of my friends from University are in the same position with many working in shops like Boots and not even attempting to gain work in IT as they feel it is hopeless.
I have applied for over 50 jobs a week for the past year getting very few responses and then being turned down for lack of post grad experience ignoring my three years of commerical programming prior to University. The two job offers I did recieve were working for just over minimum wage in a location that would require a two hour commute each morning and would have left me worse off financially than what I currently recieve.
I am in the unfortunate position of living in a fairly remote area of Scotland having moved back with relatives after graduation and find there are no oppertunities for even minimum wage work in the local area.
The economy in the south on England is great but employers are very reluctant to consider people that arent residing locally and the high cost of living in the area makes it impossible to relocate there without employment.
I do agree with both of your points. Like you - I also make my time available pro-bono. What I find is that often people who proclaim they can't afford things also are unwilling to use free versions of what they claim they cannot afford.
What I find here is that many people who are straight out of uni and high school and who do have the skills are unwilling to take a chance and try to set up a business for themselves. Instead they look for a job and usually end up pumping gas or parking cars or waiting tables.
Meanwhile, I know some grade 10 high school kids who were doing professional level website development and consulting (as it turns out on my servers - since I said the servers are there for you to use - free of charge). They set up an extremely popular website called Musclecanada.com and did this before they were out of grade 10.
A couple years later I showed it to a friend who shapes and she found a book in there that she told me later was a first class accomplishment on par with anything any of her trainers used. This was done by 15-17 year olds.
Those same kids are now in 3rd year business management. They set up a company straight out out grade 12 and mass marketed with $60,000 advertising budgets which they financed on over 20 visa cards and successfully set up and ran a business with over 20,000 customers - in that first year.
These kids know dick all about computers. It is unfortunate that those who do often tend to be too afraid to get out and try something.
Perhaps this says something about poor folks as well because I find that if I offer to set them up in a machine with a free copy of Linux for instance and openoffice and webbrowsing via mozilla and email services and the gimp and so forth - they tend to not want it. Instead I get asked to install a pirate version of winders. When I refuse they often shrug their shoulders and decline.
The issues here are so bad that a friend of mine was asked by the school his kids attend to try to circumvent piracy measures and when he pointed this out to them he found those doing the asking looked to other people to help them break the law.
Attitude is still a really big part of this equation. So while I agree that poor people need access to computers I also say that we have a big educational hurdle to overcome as well. I am doing my part here.
I did give my daughter a computer. It runs Linux. She can install her own NT 4.0 (legal - I gave her a copy of it too, and a disk to put it on. She can do anything wishes with it). She's starting to find that linux works pretty well for her. At work she uses XP.
Here in Calgary we are trying to deploy linux based systems - specifically into low cost housing projects where people do not have access to machines... these are group access installations.
Hopefully they accept what we can offer. If not - they are on their own I guess.
-------------
As far as these IBM machines are conserned... I really think we need to get some and get openoffice and every other useful package these people need installed and set up a website where they can find out what they need to know in order to take advantage of the offer. We can give them a download ISO for free. If we do not do this, many will try to pirate software and others will probably spend far too much of their money getting sucked into things like word and office.
Since we now have the productivity tools we need we should try to get them out there in common use.
We used the other method - you know, like hard work and being good at our jobs. But don't let little things like facts get in the way of your ad hominem.
Without the money generated by the City, the UK would have a GDP per capita in same range as Portugal. Whilst it isn't the only area of wealth generation in Britain, it is certainly a vital one.
Really? I am shocked.
That's one hell of an assumption - clearly in Evil One's world it is only possible to get a good job through nepotism. Here's a hint, a willingness to work hard and a modicum of talent will get you further than the right school tie.
OK, so I live in the Isle of Man, not the UK, but our economy mostly reflects the UK.
Firstly, the original poster compared the UK economy with the German one. All the economic indicators show that the British economy is doing significantly better than the German economy. The original poster was inferring that the German economy was doing so much better than the British one when it's clearly not. There is less unemployment in Britain than Germany. Government borrowing requirement is lower in Britain.
Even in the economic "great times" there is some unemployment. Also, some sectors can do worse than others. Although the British economy is doing generally well compared to most other western economies, there are some sectors that are in recession. The tech sector is generally slow.
I'm neither a criminal nor a lottery winner, yet I managed to afford a 4-bedroom house which I bought last year. I work for $WE_MOVE_PARCELS in a decidedly middle-class position for pay that's par for the course for a sysadmin. House prices here are similar to Worcester in England.
Taxes are shooting up because of your government's open wallet policies, not the prevailing economic conditions.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Apart from all that, nice troll attempt. Now stop pretending to be something that you're not, you pathetic little man.
I think the correct phrase is 'bugger off, you wanker', but then only a brit would understand that.
It will only be a matter of time until whatever TSR/service that launches the ads get mangled by user-installed software, spyware/viruses, or the general Windows wear & tear of use.
Instead of getting an advertisement every 20 minutes, you'd get a missing DLL error message, illegal operation pop-up, or, even worse, a BSOD.
Nothing like getting a BSOD while ordering plane tickets online...
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
If enough people get one, reinstall the OS of their choice we'd probably get to keep the machines.
No advertisers would advertise because nobody will be wathching, the costs of retrieving the equipment will be huge, any legal action would be prohibitively expensive.
So voila - the company collapses after three months, the PCs are written off, and we get to keep 'em.
It'd be cruel, but it'd be their own fault.
"paying some parasite buy-to-let shared house landlord's mortgage? "
Why is someone who rents a house a parasite? Maybe thats how he makes a living. Odds are you wouldn't have been able to afford the house
to buy youself so what difference does it make to you?
Actually, there were eight questions in my original post. You don't think that "Where are you from?" is a sports question do you?
To answer your second question, law is quite correct. Do a quick google for "football laws" and you'll find plenty of links, including this one.
QED.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Anyway, isn't offside a rule, not a Law?
Nope, it varies from sport to sport but in Soccer they are Laws.
That doesn't change the fact that no-one in the UK actually uses the 'z' spelling...
We allready know that this this scheme is going to fail, hard. But how about ad supportet consoles ? Adds downloaded from the net (or cd) before each game etc. ? I would think that the target group for consoles(kids, teens) are much better than for free computers(People who can't aford their own). It would allso make it harder to get by the advertising (allthrough every console can be hacked), by ensuring that everything is "ok" through the interet connection. Finally since moste console vendors allready "gives" away the console in hopes of making profit on selling games this would look like the next logic step...
Perhaps you'd care to peruse British media, including books, newspapers, magazines and websites, that will leave you in no doubt that "-ise" rather than "-ize" is the appropriate spelling in the UK.
Even the spelling checkers in software applications will replace "-ize" with "-ise" when set to UK or International English. "Realized" might be understood, but "realised" is the clearly the proper spelling in this context.
The OED link that you provide might well suggest that "-ize" is acceptable in theory but in practice it is not.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
First, sure you can get ECC ram for P4s. Just buy it. I have ECC RDRAM in mine and ECC DDR SDRAM in my system at work. It's not really that useful for desktop computers since memory errors are quite rare but hey, doesn't hurt.
As for chip speed, you're dead wrong. P3's CAN be faster than P4s per clock but in many cases they are much slower. First there is a simple matter of optimization. If the compiler optimizes for a P3 but not a P4, that can hurt the P4's performance big.
A good example would be the FlaskMPEG test Tom's hardware did on the P4 shortly after it came out. They found that the P4 sucked, Athlons whipped it soundly, and even a P3 1ghz was faster than a 1.5ghz P4. Intel knew this was messed up so grabbed the Flask source and recompiled it with their latest Intel compiler, that optimises for the P4. This made things almost 4x faster on the P4 and 2x faster on the Athlon and P3. This wasn't even using the new SSE2 instrucitons. Which brings me to the second thing: the new instructions. SSE2 is a powerful set of single and doble percision FP vector instructions. For programs that use this, which includes a lot of what is processor intensive these days, it makes a huge difference. The SSE2 optimised Flask again about doubled the P4's speed, over the orignal 4x improvement.
So between an optimised compiler, and using the new instructions, they were able to get an 8x performance difference. That is hugely significant by any measure (also interesting that the compiler improved the P3's and Athlon's speed by 2x).
The P4 is not a poor chip, despite what some zealots would like to say. It performs very well, provided you use a compiler that can optimise for it. That's fair, chips should be designed with the sole purpose of running legacy code as fast as possible since, generally speaking, it is the new apps that need more and more power, not the old ones. Same kind of thing happened with the Pentium Pro. It was actually slower than the Pentium for most home uses. Turns out it didn't handle 16-bit code all that well, also lacked MMX. Guess what? When stuff got rewritten to 32-bit the Ppro and the successors based on it's design (P2 and P3) were much faster.
Dual boot the machine. Use linux on it for any real usage (of course). And periodically boot it into windows and leave it running to meet the usage requirement.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
You overestimate the skill and initiative of a large segment of the population.
Do you really expect the average person to be able to find a cheap, serviceable used computer, and configure (let alone modify) it to meet their needs?
Perhaps now that surplus 300-400 MHz computers are common, they will become available in thrift stores, configured so that people can just take them home and use them. But we're not there yet, AFIK.
Not the student version. VMWare has a good offer to students.
Actually I do already have VMware... but I did ask about an opensource equivalent. VMware is very good and I will recommend it to everyone.
---------------
As for offering assistance. There is a group of us here in Calgary that are working on getting desktop linux into the public. We will offer ISO's and CD's. The most advanced presently seems to be MAXOS and it can be found here: MAXOS
Its based on Debian (which I use BTW) with additions from Knoppix. Cleaver people can find my email address - just ask and we'll send a CD out. We'll ask for S&H since we might get innudanted (/dotted?).
Debian is great for developers. For the masses - we need to hold some hands. Those IBM PC's being offered in the UK will be a really great place to start. I personally say we should offer a package but at the same time I say that we should not try to undermine the spirit of the offer. Each and every developer or hacker knows how to defeat anything. If we help the masses - then we need to leave it to the masses to figure out for themselves how to rid themselves of those bloody ads.
It'll give them an incentive to learn something. Moreover - we'll find more than one grandma who solves the puzzle.
So lets work with the offer instead of trying to crash it ok?
That'll teach me to reply to extracts of posts... Anyway, just goes to show that there are Englishmen who don't follow football. Now, ask me in what sport you'd find Hawk-Eye, and I'd be sorted...
Phil
Didn't IBM already try something similar to this.. A free service as long as you sit through advertising. "Prodigy"
oh, oh, oh wasn't he in M*A*S*H ?
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
Top Swede in the UK? Ulrikakakaka
Phil
They have been available here for over a year. Presnt price I was quoted is $175 CDN and that includes 128mb ram and a 10 GB Hdd w/ cd, fdd, KB amd Mouse. Monitor is extra.
OK, reading my original post maybe I was a little er.. forthright.
I live in the south east of England. My local IT industry does not benefit from the presence of international financial institutions managing offshore funds, hence the job situation. I envy the IoM residents not just for the TT. A small terraced house in my home town will set you back 250k. If I had a job I'd probably earn about a tenth of that.
And I'd agree with you about open wallet policies. However the local effect is still that of the economy going down the pan.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
Isn't this the same as local broadcast tv? If you don't watch the commercials, you are 'stealing'? I was talking to some lawyers about this (I'm their sysadmin) and they had never even heard or thought about this...
If business lawyers have never even heard of these insane 'you must watch advertising' schemes, they must be crap.
Someone who rents a house is not a parasite merely for investing their capital in a house as a business.
However IMHO the greedy mass of people in SE England who have taken out buy-to-let mortgages where they finance the house purchase solely from the rental income are parasites because they put nothing in, they merely take out, inflating house prices in the process.
My view only. I'm not an economist.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
Advertising's not the catch, WINDOWS XP is the catch!
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
This computer isn't free, and one should avoid calling it free. The agreement is for the loan of a computer in exchange for the labor of loading discs and watching advertising. This is an exchange of value, and the term free is used only because the consideration provided by the ad-watcher is solely non-cash.
Similarly, some recent 'cheap PC' offers have had a requirement to maintain some sort of ISP account. Thus, they should be referred to as having a cost of "$299 + 24*$19.95" in exchange for a computer and 24 months of ISP service. Calling it a "$299 PC" is simply dishonest. Marketers of course do this, but the media (including Slashdot) should know better.
Were I the Attorney General, I'd try to bring fraud charges against things that are labeled free when they in fact are not.
- 1. Game
2. Electronic Boutique
3. Dixon
4. Currys
5. J.Sainsbury
6. Tescos
7. Asda
8. Link
9. Carphone Warehouse
10. Marks & Spencer
11. C&A
12. HMV
Oh, you said HALF a dozen, well, add Virgin Megastores to the list for a baker. Offside...pfft. ok, i'll try, don't flame me if I am wrong, I'm not a massive footy fan. Offside is when a ball gets passed to a team mate who is in a position over the half-way mark without an opposing player between himself and the goal, discounting the goalie....Is that right?Swede: ooh ooh, must be the England Coach. Sven somebody Ericson...
Friends is probably the biggest in the UK.
Most famous football terrace? Wembely (is there an e in that???)? Comics, hmmm..Buster was my choice. Although I liked Dandy occasionally too.
Countdown...dedum dedum dedum dedededdum...
PS All figures are from the Economist indicators section for November 22nd-28th 2003. This is slashdot. We don't want none of your namby pamby fact checking around here!
They only require 30 hours of PC use a month? That's nothing! I spend 30 hours a day on my computer!
"I'm not an economist."
Quite obviously. If the mortgage is more than they get back via rent then they lose money making the whole venture pointless. The whole
idea of rent is to make the landlord money, he's not a charity.
We've all heard experts telling us that we should get up and walk around every hour or so after staring at a monitor... So this gives a pretty good excuse to do so ;)
FYI C&A closed down a few years ago.
I'm prepared to be educated, but i don't see any substantial supply of usefully configured cheap used computers for the masses.
As other people have said, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tries to reverse engineer the "phone home" software - we need a Linux version of that too of course :-) As someone else said, perhaps virtual desktop software for XP might be another useful trick, so that the ads appear in desktop 1, whilst you do all your stuff in desktop 2 and never see the ads.
Note that they won't deliver the PC directly to your home either - it ends up (sometime in Feb/March next year) at a courier depot and you have to pick it up yourself! My best guess is that this company won't even last 3 years and you'll end up owning the PC at the end of it.
Sorry, scratch mouse & monitor above. You did say they were included.
My fingers are way too fast this morning. I meant to say: mouse and keyboard are included, as you
said.
Perhaps you should also read actual books, in addition to papers and magazines. From Collins Cobuild:
"I did not dispute that realise is more common, but to claim that realize is unappropriate"
ROFL!!!
That really is golden, a made up word in a pedantic discussion on the merits of americanised spellings.
How very USian.
Well...because we can, and it makes an interesting afternoon...:)
But damn, people. All the suggestions of "2nd hard drive" "boot into Knoppix" "VMWare and run XP in the background" "hack this, hack that"
WHY BOTHER?
This machine is not aimed at you, nor anyone you know( ok...maybe your granny. but if you were a good grandson, you'd have hooked her up by now.). This is aimed at the current non-PC people. And as a way to get them into the virtual world, it's OK.
If/when a way is found to circumvent the adware, phone home routine, etc...the advertisers will get no return on their money. One by one, they will pull out, Metronomy will kill the program for lack of funds, and a lot of people will never get their free PC. The only ones that may possibly benefit will be the ones that get in early, as they may be allowed to keep the machine after Metonomy goes under.
Let's leave this one alone to sink or swim on its own accord. Personally, I think it'll sink, but we don't need to push it off the end of the pier.
"Realized"? Oh dear. Worse than using Americanisms is using American spellings. Outside North America the word is spelt "realised". Perhaps if you actually were from the UK you'd have learnt that.
Really? I think you will find that "realized" is the correct spelling whether you are in North America or not, sweetie.
Care to explain the offside law?
So the litmus test for being truly British, is the ability to explain a "law" (I think the word you're looking for is "rule") relating to an internationally renound sport? Interesting.
If you truly are British care to tell us where your from?
What's a "from?" That sentence implies he owns one. Remember kids; Your is a possessive noun, You're is the contraction of You are.
Or which TV quiz conundrum round?
Where do I start with this? You can't even construct a coherent sentence by this point.
Apart from all that, nice troll attempt. Now stop pretending to be something that you're not, you pathetic little man.
Now there I agree with you. There is nothing worse than, for instance, some idiot trying to pass himself off as intelligent by correcting spelling 'errors' that weren't even errors and using completely non sensical logic to make his point. I'd take your own advice kiddo.
Now return to your AOL chat room and talk with people more on your level, thanks
I'm assuming they went tits up for a reason ;)
Naah - he applied to Metronomy for a PC and they informed the Army.
Metronomy are going to claim the $25M reward. That's the only way this business model makes any sense at all.
Keith.
Err realised is the traditional English spelling.
If anyone wants cannon fodder for episteme - he's half American. (Sorry Jamie, kinda).
Yes, every English male under the Sun knows how the offside law works, and I'd bet that not very many American men do - what else is he supposed to ask? For an ascii image of his passport?
Quoting from the article:Interestingly, "-ize" wasn't found in newspapers, which are written in the here and now, by journalists writing contemporary English. Magazines contained some use of "-ize" but used "-ise" over ten times as frequently - frankly, some of this can be put down to taking extracts of books, directly using copy from a sister publication in the US (eg, the British edition of Vogue using an article that originally appeared in American Vogue but not taking the time to correct the usage), etc. And, as for books, well, I believe that I covered those in my first paragraph.
Frankly, as someone who writes and edits for a living, I'm far more aware of the everyday usage of the English language and its idiosyncrasies than most people. My evidence isn't "the stack of newspapers and magazines on [my] desk", it's over a decade of publishing experience. I said it before and I'll say it again: "-ize" may well be acceptable in theory but in practice it is not.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm with the Dylan2000 contingent on this however I suspect it won't be a riproaring success. Without reiterating the previously mentioned arguements in its favour here are a couple of additional factors. Enough people in the UK already have one computer connected to the internet at home or at work. Even factoring in part of the population that will never use the internet, the UK is by no means saturated but there are probably enough people who will apply for one if there is little or no small print. Where I think it may collapse is if Metronomy demand additional requirements from thier users after they have them in thier homes. As has already been mentioned, Radio and TV advertising is significantly higher in the UK. If we include the amount of ads and trailers on at UK cinemas that is still higher than Metronomy's requirements. What's more I'm sure there is plenty of pent-up demand within households themselves for internet access. I hear it all too often where different family members and couples are wishing the others would get off the home computer so they can get online themselves. Another issue is time slots. E.G. there are only so many hours in the evening and at weekends where people can IRC thier friends, different soaps on tv, before and after evening meals, (for kinds) before curfew.... Metronomy can write off the costs of the computers against tax. Even though they are manufactured elsewhere the US dollar is at a weak position against UK Sterling. What's more Joe Public are the ones that will have to pay for the ISP. Granted I can't see many slashdot types wanting one but if you had kids or elderly relatives who may be frail but still have all thier marbles, I'm sure they wouldn't say no to it. All of my elderly relatives and thier friends including my mother already do between two to three times the required monthly quota already. As much as I have reservations regarding XP it is much more usable and stable than its predecessors. For those who have rarely or have never used a computer before this will make it much more accessible than previous attempts. The clincher will probably be if they have a computer literate friend or relative who can guide them when they get stuck, it should make things as we say in Glasgow, 'a doddle' (ie piss-easy). IMHO this also raises another factor that although has been implicity mentioned but doesn't seem to be fully acknowledged. The truth is Slashdot types are minority on the web. Normal people vastly outnumber us. I can't see how it will make loads of cash for Metromomy but there seems to be enough of a window of opportunity for them to make some money. Business model permitting that is.
I hate to repeat myself, so I'll simply provide you with a short link to the reply I posted to someone else, who raised the same points you did.
I should point out, as I neglected to mention in that reply, that, by their very nature, books are more international than magazines, which in turn are more international than newspapers. By "international", I mean that a single print of a book may well be distributed in several countries, or use text that originated elsewhere but which hasn't been localised for its new audience. An example of this are the companion books produced my Microsoft et al to teach people how to use their software: even the British reprints of these books use American spellings ("color", "program", etc).
The same is also true, although to a lesser extent, with magazines. The Lancet is a British publication but I would imagine that a significant proportion of its readership are outside the UK, hence I'd expect to find that "-ize" is more likely to appear in that publication than in a popular daily newspaper, such as The Daily Telegraph or The Times.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There were a couple of companies that tried this. I got a free computer through FreePC.com back in '99.
I had just gotten out of college and had no computer at the time (and was pretty broke)... plus I had a strong suspicion that the company would go out of business... so I signed up on FreePC.com and got a free Compaq Presario.
Not a great computer, mind you -- 32 meg ram, 2 gig harddrive (I think.. maybe 1.5), 333 mhz cyrix processor, win 98, dial-up internet access included. But I added another 56mb RAM to make it useable and used a shareware tool called WinSniper to hide the ad windows (which were in a border around the screen, at all times). I still didn't have the whole screen to work on, which was unfortunate, but I didn't want to disable the software altogether, since it reported back to their site when I logged onto the internet.
So it was a subpar experience... but after a few months the company folded (as I had expected), I removed their software, and that was my computer for a year or two. Now it's retired. I keep meaning to install some variant of Linux on it, but never quite get around to it.
Anyway, this British program sounds like a similar scheme... I'm hoping they did a lot of research into why their predecessors failed so miserably before they launched this company. Yes, computers are cheap, but you need to get a lot of ad revenue to cover salaries for all the *support* personnel you will need. Plus, the demographics they're hitting are all bass-ackwards; advertisers want to pitch to people who are ready to *spend* money on new stuff... NOT people who are willing to suffer just so they can *avoid* paying a few hundred bucks for an inexpensive computer. Think about it.
--
This stare intentionally left blank.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Is that like saying, Roast Beef is the traditional English lunch?
:(
:))) )
And you ruined it by pointing out I was half American
I KNOW HOW THE OFFSIDE RULE WORKS. I bet you don't know how the "ineligible receiver downfield" rule in REAL football works though, do you?
( I sure know how the "uninteligble comment" rule on here works though...look at the guy I replied to.
unintelligible, even.
Firstly, as I pointed out elsewhere, football has laws, not rules. Go find the relevant reply I made elsewhere for enlightenment.
Secondly, yes I erred. That should have read "where you're from" as you pointed out. Mea culpa. That's what I get for staying up all night to watch the NFL late night game on TV.
Thirdly, I erred again. That should have read "which TV quiz has a conundrum round", but anyone who's British would have spotted the words "TV" "quiz" and "conundrum round" worked out what I was trying to say.
None of that changes the fact that the poster to whom I was replying is a lying bastard. He's about as British as Mount Rushmore and he knows it.
Lastly, I'd like to thank you for creating this new Slashdot account today just so that you could appear as a legitimate user replying to my post. (Your UID is 732930, just 23 less than the UID of the new account named "justchecking" I just created to see check my theory.)
I'd bet good money that you're the very person that I was replying to in the first place. Frankly, creating a new account just so that you could argue about my post without addressing its central issue (namely, that you're clearly not British, so pretending that you are to make your post seem more accurate is pathetic) is so sad that I don't have a superlative to describe it.
Go back to your cave, little troll.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Roast beef... English lunch... where, how... what? There is no "ineligible receiver" downfield rule in REAL football (and the fact that I don't know what it means to American football only highlights the offside rule separating English/Americans - you're half English, of course you know what it is.) uninteligble [sic] yeah :)) ...let me guess, that's the spelling on and off the North American continent? :p
Right, I'm definitely not an economist, but I disagree -
A property's rental income does not have to match its mortgage repayments in order to be a good investment. If I pay 500 per month mortgage on a house, and take only 300 rent per month, that leaves me paying a nett 200 per month. By the end of the 10-year mortgage, I've payed 24,000 nett for a house that's worth 60,000. And that's not even taking house price appreciation into account (the figures are simplified, but you get the idea).
If the rental income exactly matches the mortgage payments, it means that the property costs me nothing. A free house! I know this is what property owners aim for, but it's not necessary in order to make property a good investment.
Well, if a WR (or back) runs out of bounds and is the first player to touch the football on a downfield pass then he's an ineligible receiver and has just committed a foul.
Or, if he's bumped out of bounds by a defender and does not immediately make his way back onto the field of play as soon as possible then he's also ineligible if he touches the thrown pass before anyone else.
Alternatively, if he's a down lineman (center, guard, or offensive tackle) that's did not report in as an eligible receiver before the play, and he finds himself downfield when a forward pass is thrown, then he's also an ineligible receiver downfield, even if he is nowhere near the ball when it lands on the field or is caught.
You see, I do know that rule. I've played Madden on the Sega MegaDrive (Genesis), PC, Playstation, etc. I've also been an officially accredited journalist at WLAF/NFL Europe and American Bowl games with sideline and post-game locker-room access.
Want to ask me another NFL-related question? Perhaps you want to know how I feel about Steve McNair's chances of winning the league MVP award this year despite missing yesterday's game against Buffalo with a broken bone spur in his left ankle? Or how I feel about the Marc Bulger-Kurt Warner QB controversy?
Wonder what I think of Keyshawn Johnson being deactivated for the last six games of the season by Tampa Bay? Why Barry Sanders is my all-time favourite running back? Or how annoyed I am that I dropped Joe Horn from my fantasy team's starting lineup this week only to see him score 4TDs and pull out a cell phone too?
Think I'm making this up? Don't think I know anything about American football at all? Check out some of my NFL-related comments here, here and here. I may not be American but I bet I know more about the NFL than you'll ever do.
What do you want to test me on next? The infield fly rule? Go ahead little man, go ahead.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
ONLY 30 hours a week?
sheesh, a common geek does twice that much!
Not really a function of being poor but the vast non-IT-literate classes get their pcs from PCWorld or Time here in the UK or even Dixons - they normally charge between 600 and 900 quid for a celeron - so thats about 900 USD plus. They will probably buy it on shop credit at 29% and pay if off slowly therefore costing about twice that. Most people do not have the knowledge and practical skills to muck about with upgrades and the like, regardless of how cheap.
No, I'm not suggesting that OUP or Harper produce unacceptable copy (if indeed they do favour "-ize") or that he main heading in almost every major dictionary in the UK is flawed.
The only thing that I am suggesting is that "-ise" is what's used almost universally throughout the British media, and "-ize" is almost universally regarded as an Americanisation (no pun intended). If you can find me one popular British publication that favours "-ize" over "-ise" or even one individual who hails from these shores who prefers the "-ize" form then I'd be amazed.
I'll say it for the third time: "-ize" may be acceptable in theory but in practice it is not.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
If you watch 90 minutes of advertising a month they'll give you a free PC?
Reminds me of CMU's floppy day, where they'd give you a free floppy disk if you came to watch the football team play. Not many people showed up.
- IBM moving 4,700 hi-tech jobs to Asia -
o ff shoring.ap/index.html
IBM documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal said about 4,700 programming jobs could be shifted overseas to save costs, a growing high-tech industry trend known as "offshoring."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/12/15/ibm.
It seems you wish to receive further schooling, ok.
Firstly, as I pointed out elsewhere, football has laws, not rules. Go find the relevant reply I made elsewhere for enlightenment.
Bullshit
Laws apply in situations where an external body, without the prerequsite of collaboration and/or acceptance with those they are intended to govern, enforce and oversee adherence to said laws whether they are agreed upon by the third party or otherwise.
Rules apply in situations where the governing body merely oversee the observance of rules, which are accepted and adhered to by those participating usually without any necessary enforcement. Hence, this would apply to sports.
Secondly, yes I erred. That should have read "where you're from" as you pointed out. Mea culpa. That's what I get for staying up all night to watch the NFL late night game on TV
I wasn't aware that fatigue related to the ability to apply basic grammar in a sentence. I'd be interested to see the scientific study that concluded that. Caveat those who pull the straw from the eye of others, while missing the rafter in their own. There is a certain amount of irony, incidentally, in you watching a ball game.
Thirdly, I erred again. That should have read "which TV quiz has a conundrum round", but anyone who's British would have spotted the words "TV" "quiz" and "conundrum round" worked out what I was trying to say.
I'm not sure why your inability to construct coherent sentences should result in the inconvenience of me having to decipher what you're warbling on about. The only other person I have to do that for is my Niece. She's 6.
Lastly, I'd like to thank you for creating this new Slashdot account today just so that you could appear as a legitimate user replying to my post. (Your UID is 732930, just 23 less than the UID of the new account named "justchecking" I just created to see check my theory.)
Would you care to explain the subtle difference between someone with an account who is legitimate, and someone who isn't? I wasn't aware that why, when or how you created an account had a bearing on its legitimacy. I regularly read slashdot but have never really bothered paying much attention to the comments section. The reason I did today, was due to someone showing me something from said section.
I'd bet good money that you're the very person that I was replying to in the first place. Frankly, creating a new account just so that you could argue about my post without addressing its central issue (namely, that you're clearly not British, so pretending that you are to make your post seem more accurate is pathetic) is so sad that I don't have a superlative to describe it.
That rather contradicts your earlier comment of None of that changes the fact that the poster to whom I was replying is a lying bastard. He's about as British as Mount Rushmore and he knows it. Newsflash moron; I'm not the same person, although I have to admit that the fact you think I am and are basing your entire argument around this absurdity is rather funny. I have never claimed to be "British", I hold both American and British passports as I was born in the UK and have one British parent but I consider myself an American citizen. If you read cs02rm0's comment on my earlier post (he's a friend of mine) you will notice that he also points out this fact. As far as I was concerned, I couldn't care less what the other guy was on about he's probably as stupid as you, I addressed your rather bromidic post mainly because of its non sensical argumentation.
I appreciate that you have no doubt expended much energy in furiously typing your reply and have become rather atrabilious in the process. Unfortunately, had you not gone about it in the same manner as your original post, (ie with total ignorance) this wouldn't have happened.
Think before you type kiddo.
Uhh...the comment about football wasn't even directed to you...stop obsessing over me :">
;)
I may not be American but I bet I know more about the NFL than you'll ever do.
HAHAHAHAHA, so you're just a wannabe American instead. ok, all becomes clear.
How many times have you been told that you're cute when you're mad?
What other major browser, Konqueror?
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
I'd rather have double the advertising thanx!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You just can't admit to getting your ass handed to you, can you? You wanted a definition of the ineligible receiver downfield rule because, if your arrogance, you didn't think I'd be able to provide one. Well that joke sure backfired, didn't it?
Wannabe American? Hardly. An appreciation for sports regardless of from where they spring is a little different from wanting to change my nationality.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"Oh, come on, it's not that bad. If people have no money, how come house prices have risen by about 40% in the last two years ?"
Simple: speculation. Exactly what squatters fight against.
Here's the situation: people need a house. People are poor because the recession. Other people who have money owns multiple houses and are willing to sell them. However when they keep them the price of the house will rise. This while they can do something with the money it is worth (ie. obligations) while also the cost of the house will rise. It is a gold mine.
Just like in the 80's. The very same happened during that recession. Between there too, ofcourse, but it is less effective then for there is less people who'd like to buy a house.
Start squatting.
The TV licensing when I phoned them about 3 weeks ago to see if we needed a TV license for a TV that was only used for displaying prerecorded DVDs (In-House promotional/informational material). I was told that if it had a tuner and so could have an ariel plugged into it and recieve a broadcast signal then it needed a license even if we had no intention of doing so. They said that the purpose of that was because of the example I gave in my earlier comment. So, I guess one of us has been lied to by the TV Licensing people.
I recall some years back reading a case where a crew member on a Cruise ship had rented a TV and video in Portsmouth and put it in his cabin on the ship. Despite the fact that it was never attached to an ariel and that for 9 months of the year he couldn't have picked up BBC even if he had had an ariel he was sucessfuly prosecuted for having a TV and no license.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
I find it annoying to have to have a license as I don't watch terrestial channels at all and pay for cable TV (much of which has adverts).
Then get a tunerless set with just composite, S-video, and SCART inputs, if they sell those in the UK.
Being forced to leave your computer for a few minutes every hour... Nice!!
I'm serious. Kinda. But I'm sure it'd do the trick for me. Oddly, I would really be delighted to have one.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
I can see a positive side to this. It forces people to take a break to get up and stretch while the commercials are on. I think all computers should have commercial breaks as to promote better health.
_nfotxn
You just can't admit to getting your ass handed to you, can you? You wanted a definition of the ineligible receiver downfield rule because, if your arrogance (nice going, idiot. Are you tired again?) , you didn't think I'd be able to provide one. Well that joke sure backfired, didn't it?
:(
:))) )'
;)
Are you really this stupid?
Read this slowly, word by word. Here's what I said:
'Is that like saying, Roast Beef is the traditional English lunch?
And you ruined it by pointing out I was half American
I KNOW HOW THE OFFSIDE RULE WORKS. I betyou don't know how the "ineligible receiver downfield" rule in REAL football works though, do you?
( I sure know how the "uninteligble comment" rule on here works though...look at the guy I replied to.
Got that? Now please tell me how that in any way, shape or form relates to ANY of your previous posts.
You can't can you? That's because that comment was in response to one from cs02rm0 who is a friend of mine, as I previously pointed out. He said (paraphrased)
'...is the traditional English spelling. If anyone wants cannon fodder for episteme - he's half American. (Sorry Jamie, kinda). Yes, every English male under the Sun knows how the offside law works, and I'd bet that not very many American men do...'
See, I even bolded the relevant parts so that even someone as ignorant as you couldn't miss them.
Now, please save yourself further embarrassment, and shh. Owning you is becoming boring.
You'd also do well to remember sweetie, that arrogant and right is far better than ignorant and wrong
all you have to do for this to work is dual boot their winxp and any other OS (even regular winxp if you swing that way). When you're using your computer, use the real os. when you're not (ie while sleeping or at work/school) boot their os. you'll get those 30 hours in with no trouble, no ads, and none of them bitching at you or saying you violated the terms.
Well... cowshit.
And I don't know about "for people to eat", even in the case of eating the cow instead of eating what it turns the grass into. You are made of meat: why not slice yourself up, pack yourself onto a styrene tray and toddle down to the local supermarket?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I have read this topic with interest, but I must admit that you were boring me towards the end.
It seems quite apparent to me that you (episteme) are nothing more than a troll.
> Owning you is becoming boring.
As an outsider, it seems to me that the person that you think you are "owning" presents a far more concise argument, thus you are not "owning" anybody, meerly being a troll.
Go back to trollville, arse face!
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
It seems quite apparent to me that you (episteme) are nothing more than a troll.
/dev/null ;)
It seems apparent to me that you are nothing more than an idiot. If by being a "troll" you mean someone who is consistently correct then yes, guilty as charged.
As an outsider, it seems to me that the person that you think you are "owning" presents a far more concise argument
Really? It would seem to me that the person concerned has chosen to ignore all points raised which he was unable to counter and concentrate his efforts on arguing over a post that wasn't even directed to him. In the light of this, I'd more than welcome a synopsis of his "concise argument". I could do with a laugh.
Go back to trollville, arse face!
I didn't realize you were twelve, sorry kid. Why don't you boot up your ub3r l337 windows machine and h4x0r me? I'm sure that would resolve everything.
cat yourpointlesscomments >
This is funny because IBM is forcing suckers to watch ad's until you become an ad zombie just to use the damn PC. But, watch some /. user figure out how to disable all the ad's. ^_^
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Sorry mate, that doesn't work, in the long term.
Solar energy->grass->cow->meat->human
works
human->meat->human
and so on doesn't
The fastest proc for it would be the K6-III, and it goes for around $30 dollars on Ebay. Not absurd at all!
The truth about Michael
Aren't you supposed to take a "mini-break" from your computer every hour or so? I know no-one who does this, but the advertising, causing people to get up from their computer ever hour, could cause an improvement in the nation's health. Less backache, less eyestrain...
Mod parent up!
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, OUP World's Classics edition, in the introduction by Cedric Watts, Professor of English at the University of Sussex: "characterization, patronizing, emphasizes, defamiliarization, conceptualizing"
- Jane Austen, Emma, Penguin Classics edition, in the introduction by Fiona Stafford, graduate of Leicester University and Lincoln College, Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in English at Somerville College, Oxford: "critisized, recognizing, characterized"
- Stoker, Dracula, Penguin Classics edition, in the introduction by Maurice Hindle, born in Great Barr, near Birmingham, studied at the Universities of Keele and Durham, PhD from Essex University, lives in Islington, London: "serialized, moralizing, prioritizing, magnetizer"
I could probably find a lot more if I went to the library.
I know which swede! He's the trainer for Englands national soccer team :)
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Red Dwarf has a big US following so, as Americans tend to get more confused with British spellings than Brits do with American spellings*, I can see why a publisher for a book that's going to sell copies both sides of the Atlantic would pick the US spellings of words that are likely to cause confusion. I believe I raised this point about international audiences before.
As to the introductions for the classical novels that you mentioned, well, when were the intros actually written? Were they penned in 1990 or was that the year of the reprints in your possession? Also, you might want to take into account the age of the writers and the reluctance of book editors to correct introductions and forwards written by people in academia, who aren't above throwing fits if someone dares tamper with their work. And, of course, my point about international audiences still stands.
Alternatively, it could be that the academics you mentioned wrote those forwards for US-specific editions of those texts and that their contributions were reproduced verbatim in other versions. Or, that because they often write copy that will be published in the US, they err on the side of caution and always use the "-ize" form.
I'm sure it will seem to you that I'm bending over backwards to explain why "-ize" appears at all in any media here in the UK but, the fact that it doesn't appear at all in newspapers, and rarely in magazines (both of which are consumed at a greater rate than books), suggest that my theory as to why the "-ize" spelling appears at all in books might well hold some water.
I'll tell you one thing for free though: I spoke to two people I know who both teach English over here, to pupils aged 11-18, and they both agreed that "-ize" is an Americanism that they would correct to "-ise" without hesistation.
(*For proof of this, just check out how often someone who uses the word "spelt" here on Slashdot is totally dismissed by an American reader who offers the word "spelled" as being correct.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I you google for "ize" and "ise" and restrict your search to
you are nothing more than an idiot.
Thanks!
I'd more than welcome a synopsis of his "concise argument". I could do with a laugh.
Sorry to disappoint, but I fear I have more important things to do today.
I didn't realize you were twelve, sorry kid. Why don't you boot up your ub3r l337 windows machine and h4x0r me?
Sorry again, but I don't do h4x0ring, bye!
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
That's nice. I can't even remember what this thread was about.
You have an important reply to a recent comment posted via AC. (in another thread) Look for it. This is to trigger your reply notification (because AC will not).
And have a better day.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.