I've never understood the coy attitude of the OLPC. Why do they go to such lengths to make it difficult for the average Joe to buy one of these things? A couple of years ago this would have been the ideal stocking filler for kid with nerd parents. Actually getting these devices into the hands of the geeks who were clamouring for one would have benefited the project in so many ways. For one thing, by allowing such a group to buy the things, they could have begun to cultivate a hobbyist development scene for the platform.
What possible harm could it have done to make it available to anyone who wanted one?
It's probably too late for the project now anyway. It's lasting legacy might be some awareness of the importance of IT to developing nations in addition to helping kickstart consumer interest in netbooks.
From now on this should be referred to as "pulling an Amiga". I.e. killing off a good idea by restricting access.
Don't forget that there is a huge mental health industry with a vested interest in creating (oops, I mean "identifying") new classes of illness that they will have to paid to treat.
I suspect that what's happening is that they are identifying something that has become a pillar of an individual's life-style and then claiming that this constitutes an "addiction" because the person suffers anxiety when the thing is taken away. A person with a normal social life would start to exhibit anxiety and yearning if socially isolated. How often do we hear someone who is trapped at home due to short term illness say something like "I need to get out, I'm going mad stuck here"? That person must be addicted to going down the pub or addicted to work.
I probably fit the Slashdot stereotype of being fairly dependent on Internet access. I had to go without Internet access for a couple of days recently and I found it frustrating not to have it. By the time I got onto the ISP customer support, I was sufficiently perturbed to be firm with them. However, I haven't watched live broadcast TV in over ten years. Instead, I watch things off-air from my video/DVD collection in addition to downloaded content. I suspect that most of the population of the UK would find it difficult to go any length of time without access to a TV with an aerial. Same goes for lots of them in regard to access to a mobile phone with text messaging. Actually, amongst poorer people in the UK, treatment for "pointless mobile phone use complex" probably would save them some money if nothing else.
Stop it. You're taking me back to the glory days of Fidonet via BBS. [fx: wipes a tear]. I'd sometimes spend and hour or so honing a post, and I wasn't alone in that. Then I'd hit send, say a little prayer, and then hope it arrived in a couple of days time.
I'm an old Usenet hand and I think that it's had its day. A lot of it comes down to the great unwashed being allowed on my lovely, geeky Internet.
Firstly, unless you run a moderated group, there's nothing you can do about trolls. I've seen entire, vibrant groups taken down by one or two determined individuals and the idiots that feed them.
Secondly, a lot of the smaller, niche groups are dying out because people won't obey the rules anymore. They post off topic stuff on the more popular groups rather than taking the time to hunt down the proper one.
That said, one of the things that has diluted the usefulness of the Usenet archive does come from nerds, and that the posting of junk like changelogs and sourcecode.
That might be true to an extent but surely people are going to make hardware and software last longer when money is tight? Some offices simply replace a machine once it goes wrong if it's more than a couple of years old. I dare say that a 1Ghz PC with XP (or even better GNU/Linux) would suffice as a workstation for 80% of office workers. Making the current crop of machines last for another five years might give companies a chance of riding out the down turn, or at worst, save some cash.
Even firms that need top of the range PCs can retask them as general office machines after a couple of years rather than buying a new batch. All of this costs MS revenue.
I wonder if these changes will cause MS to step up the lock-in+automatic obsolescence aspects of their software?
I was an admirer of your work, albeit from afar as I was a BBC Micro and later Acorn Archimedes head. As a teen I would spend most of my money on all of the computer mags and I couldn't believe that you'd managed to do the solid 3D on an 8 bit.
Agreed. I'm a fan of Davies other work but I don't like what he's done with Dr Who. The endless soppy moments and the fixation on present day earth are the reasons that I stopped watching.
Why do I get the feeling that someone at NASA suffered a traumatic incident as a child, like Adam Sandler in The Water Boy?
"Hey, these rock formations look pretty interesting"
"They could be formed by water!"
"Well, there are number of processes that could leave a similar..."
"Water! I bet it's water! I'll start writing the press release."
"It could have been formed by water, but we can't go around telling everyone that..."
"Water! It was probably the floor of an ancient ocean that was probably teaming with life. Some of that water is probably still there! I'll start writing the press release."
Take my tip - don't buy too many shipping crate data centres at the beginning as you're better off upgrading to an IPv6 infrastructure as early as possible.
Some people build up a massive force of tanks and try to wear MS down (the MS tanks are unreliable, they run their own software) but I prefer to create my own web browser and give away as much free email storage as I can. I don't like using too much lock-in if I'm playing as Google but it's unavoidable if you want to win.
I hate those "novelty" missions where you've got to get Balmer across the map or something.
No wonder they're pushing through IPv6! Note that Ubuntu defaults to IPv6 even though it causes loads of newbies problems. Note also that Mark Shuttleworth has been into space... What does that guy know that we don't?
Hey, give them a chance. If their excellent 3D graphics chipsets are anything to go by this could give you the power of a 386 processor ON YOUR DESKTOP! Imagine it: DooM running in practically real-time. This baby could render the teapot POV example in 3/4 mins rather than the hours it would take on the older XT class machine.
Thank god. No more having to watch the old episodes through a hacked together cable decoder box that I made out of a paperclip, some tin foil and two bits of shoe lace.
But surely the barriers that stop any person from getting into the cinema without paying are artificial? Why not just allow anyone to come in? If they like the film, they will want to pay as much as they think it's worth. That seems to be compatible with the standard Slashdot user view on copyright.
A good bit of reasoning by analogy is like a car, I always say.
THIS IS WHY WE MUST HALT THIRD WORLD HUNGER! It's only a matter of time before a super-race who can survive without food and modern medicine emerges. It's also the reason why it's OK to keep certain minority groups living in conditions relative deprivation. We're helping them. Look at Mr T for example. Soon, there will be a mighty race of Mr Ts. I'm glad I'll be over here in the UK when those chickens come home, baby. I pity you all.
I wonder if a technique for faces, for example, could be developed? It could work like the photofit technique used in criminal investigations. A region of a face would be compared to a sequence of pixelated images of typical features until a match is found.
I suppose a lower number of mutations might reduce the rate of evolution, but wouldn't the lower mortality rate of modern be a bigger factor in side-stepping natural selection?
In all fairness, on closer examination, it would seem that the press reports aren't entirely accurate. It seems that she was charged primarily for possession of terrorist instructional materials. However, her poetry was taken into account.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never understood the coy attitude of the OLPC. Why do they go to such lengths to make it difficult for the average Joe to buy one of these things? A couple of years ago this would have been the ideal stocking filler for kid with nerd parents. Actually getting these devices into the hands of the geeks who were clamouring for one would have benefited the project in so many ways. For one thing, by allowing such a group to buy the things, they could have begun to cultivate a hobbyist development scene for the platform.
What possible harm could it have done to make it available to anyone who wanted one?
It's probably too late for the project now anyway. It's lasting legacy might be some awareness of the importance of IT to developing nations in addition to helping kickstart consumer interest in netbooks.
From now on this should be referred to as "pulling an Amiga". I.e. killing off a good idea by restricting access.
Don't forget that there is a huge mental health industry with a vested interest in creating (oops, I mean "identifying") new classes of illness that they will have to paid to treat.
I suspect that what's happening is that they are identifying something that has become a pillar of an individual's life-style and then claiming that this constitutes an "addiction" because the person suffers anxiety when the thing is taken away. A person with a normal social life would start to exhibit anxiety and yearning if socially isolated. How often do we hear someone who is trapped at home due to short term illness say something like "I need to get out, I'm going mad stuck here"? That person must be addicted to going down the pub or addicted to work.
I probably fit the Slashdot stereotype of being fairly dependent on Internet access. I had to go without Internet access for a couple of days recently and I found it frustrating not to have it. By the time I got onto the ISP customer support, I was sufficiently perturbed to be firm with them. However, I haven't watched live broadcast TV in over ten years. Instead, I watch things off-air from my video/DVD collection in addition to downloaded content. I suspect that most of the population of the UK would find it difficult to go any length of time without access to a TV with an aerial. Same goes for lots of them in regard to access to a mobile phone with text messaging. Actually, amongst poorer people in the UK, treatment for "pointless mobile phone use complex" probably would save them some money if nothing else.
2:2502/11.2
I'm an old Usenet hand and I think that it's had its day. A lot of it comes down to the great unwashed being allowed on my lovely, geeky Internet.
Firstly, unless you run a moderated group, there's nothing you can do about trolls. I've seen entire, vibrant groups taken down by one or two determined individuals and the idiots that feed them.
Secondly, a lot of the smaller, niche groups are dying out because people won't obey the rules anymore. They post off topic stuff on the more popular groups rather than taking the time to hunt down the proper one.
That said, one of the things that has diluted the usefulness of the Usenet archive does come from nerds, and that the posting of junk like changelogs and sourcecode.
It even looks a bit like the Command And Conquer one. I wonder how much tank damage that baby can take?
Even firms that need top of the range PCs can retask them as general office machines after a couple of years rather than buying a new batch. All of this costs MS revenue.
I wonder if these changes will cause MS to step up the lock-in+automatic obsolescence aspects of their software?
It's an urban myth that was http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp">debunked long ago.
I used to have to masturbate to material of that quality, you insensitive clod!
I was an admirer of your work, albeit from afar as I was a BBC Micro and later Acorn Archimedes head. As a teen I would spend most of my money on all of the computer mags and I couldn't believe that you'd managed to do the solid 3D on an 8 bit.
I hope they they have some good coverage of Archimedes and BBC Micro games, what with them being British platforms.
Agreed. I'm a fan of Davies other work but I don't like what he's done with Dr Who. The endless soppy moments and the fixation on present day earth are the reasons that I stopped watching.
Why do I get the feeling that someone at NASA suffered a traumatic incident as a child, like Adam Sandler in The Water Boy?
"Hey, these rock formations look pretty interesting"
"They could be formed by water!"
"Well, there are number of processes that could leave a similar..."
"Water! I bet it's water! I'll start writing the press release."
"It could have been formed by water, but we can't go around telling everyone that..."
"Water! It was probably the floor of an ancient ocean that was probably teaming with life. Some of that water is probably still there! I'll start writing the press release."
Command And Conquer 5: Microsoft vs Google.
Take my tip - don't buy too many shipping crate data centres at the beginning as you're better off upgrading to an IPv6 infrastructure as early as possible.
Some people build up a massive force of tanks and try to wear MS down (the MS tanks are unreliable, they run their own software) but I prefer to create my own web browser and give away as much free email storage as I can. I don't like using too much lock-in if I'm playing as Google but it's unavoidable if you want to win.
I hate those "novelty" missions where you've got to get Balmer across the map or something.
Obviously god put some oil there when He made the moon.
No wonder they're pushing through IPv6! Note that Ubuntu defaults to IPv6 even though it causes loads of newbies problems. Note also that Mark Shuttleworth has been into space... What does that guy know that we don't?
*Click* *Spining Logo* = Time for some eye candy! Happy memories :-)
Hey, give them a chance. If their excellent 3D graphics chipsets are anything to go by this could give you the power of a 386 processor ON YOUR DESKTOP! Imagine it: DooM running in practically real-time. This baby could render the teapot POV example in 3/4 mins rather than the hours it would take on the older XT class machine.
As ever, in the UK we're more than 20 years ahead of you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsEAXNlfv0
Thank god. No more having to watch the old episodes through a hacked together cable decoder box that I made out of a paperclip, some tin foil and two bits of shoe lace.
But surely the barriers that stop any person from getting into the cinema without paying are artificial? Why not just allow anyone to come in? If they like the film, they will want to pay as much as they think it's worth. That seems to be compatible with the standard Slashdot user view on copyright.
A good bit of reasoning by analogy is like a car, I always say.
THIS IS WHY WE MUST HALT THIRD WORLD HUNGER! It's only a matter of time before a super-race who can survive without food and modern medicine emerges. It's also the reason why it's OK to keep certain minority groups living in conditions relative deprivation. We're helping them. Look at Mr T for example. Soon, there will be a mighty race of Mr Ts. I'm glad I'll be over here in the UK when those chickens come home, baby. I pity you all.
I wonder if a technique for faces, for example, could be developed? It could work like the photofit technique used in criminal investigations. A region of a face would be compared to a sequence of pixelated images of typical features until a match is found.
Disclaimer: I didn't read TFA.
I suppose a lower number of mutations might reduce the rate of evolution, but wouldn't the lower mortality rate of modern be a bigger factor in side-stepping natural selection?
In all fairness, on closer examination, it would seem that the press reports aren't entirely accurate. It seems that she was charged primarily for possession of terrorist instructional materials. However, her poetry was taken into account.
Or this woman who been jailed for her terrorist poetry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7084801.stm