We're having this discussion because no one uses white/green striped tractor feed printer paper anymore to read source code and output. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a novelty.
In addition, they've obviously never read anything by Edward Tufte.
When I was in the USAF I wrote a letter to president Nixon, and recieved a very nice and polite reply from a General.
It read:
Dear Air Force Serviceman,
President Nixon regretfully passed away in 1994, twenty years after having last served in office. Please check HQ for a photograph of the current President, or contact your CO to order an update of Presidential photograph. The Marine Corps is the only Service that should have equipment that old.
The only time a licensing request should be denied is in the case of gross misconduct of the licensee or if the licensee is a direct competitor to whom providing the patent would materially damage the patent holder.
I believe companies blocking 'direct competition licensing' would create as much litigation as infringement does now...
Case in point, isn't nearly everyone who could use the "Pinch Technology" a direct competitor?
IANA Ergonomics Expert, but from a computing standpoint, this is not the best idea for a mouse. With a standard mouse, finer motion control of the mouse is done with the fingertips and wrist, not the hand and arm. With a vertical mouse, you are controlling the cursor by moving the entire arm, including the shoulder. Sure, you eliminate finger arthritis pain, but muscles used for gross motor control are not optimal for pointing to the nearest pixel. I can forsee more shoulder problems and tennis elbow after long-term use of this device. They're just moving the repetitive motion onto a different ledger.
I think the primary reason Negroponte would be concerned about Intel's entry into this 'market' is what he has always insisted; "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
It's one thing to provide hardware for children - this has been done in schools for years by Intel, Microsoft, and even Apple. It's another thing to provide tools that will actually improve education, and the OLPC is a program that wants to improve education standards in developing countries. School systems will be able to afford textbooks as electronic versions; children can collaborate with writing, reading, and art/music projects; and they can explore their world through ubiquitous network access, understanding what's beyond their village since they can't afford to travel.
Intel is providing a cheap set of goods and little, if nothing, else.
I have really wanted an XO Laptop, much to the confusion of my wife, who doesn't see why I'd be so interested in that low-powered hardware that could never compete with what I like to do on my 12" Powerbook. Now that I've seen Intel's ClassmatePC running XP, I understand what OLPC was going for in the first place. I have a PDA with as much processing power and memory as the XO, and while I'm still mildly interested in the hardware, it has waned dramatically as I fully understand it's true purpose. Save them for the schools.
I've played a little bit with Sony's Reader in the stores. If the technology base is the same, moving images would not be very feasible at all. To refresh the screen on the Sony, it first inverts the ENTIRE screen (possibly to 'unsettle' the ink) then writes new information. I'm pretty sure that any changes, no matter how small, required the entire page to 'flash' and refresh. Even then, there are some 'Etch-A-Sketch' style artifacts left behind. Unless they have a controller that can shake up only a portion of the ink, it will still show ghosting and blurriness.
Our city and state governments in Indiana are spending hundreds of millions of dollars building a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts to continue to play football here. We will still owe tens of millions on the old stadium when we tear it down. Did I mention the tax hike on each stadium, too?
The spaceport actually slightly more acceptable, especially if it translates into high-speed, intercontinental travel.
One thing I've discovered in dealing with my spatially organized fiancee is that I organize things in a temporal sense. It's not that I know WHERE something is, rather than WHEN something is.
I knew that the bow tie I left hanging on the handle loop of the hutch on the desk in my parents' house was there because I remember WHEN I saw it there last. Sure, that when was almost four years ago, but that's how my mind works, and I could walk right in and find it.
I think people who are considered to be messy geniuses live in clutter because they don't care where things go, as long as they remember the last time they saw it. And they do so very well. Large layers are organized in temporal strata, just like geology, so they can even work backward as to if that piece of paper was handled before or after the one for which they are looking.
I'm mostly in the "no gadget" camp as well, as I love collecting maps and atlases from places I travel.
As for the gadgets you DO take, I suggest some form of off-grid charging capability, like a solar or crank-powered PDA/phone charger. I'm not done testing the performance of my Solio [www.solio.com] solar charger (just got it last week), but I think it'll be better than the sustained, 120 RPM crank speed necessary for most manual chargers.
Most of these devices usually also work like iGo universal chargers, except they can store a charge for later.
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We're having this discussion because no one uses white/green striped tractor feed printer paper anymore to read source code and output. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a novelty.
In addition, they've obviously never read anything by Edward Tufte.
It's easy:
Step one: Turn the middle side topwise. Topwise!
It read:
Dear Air Force Serviceman,
President Nixon regretfully passed away in 1994, twenty years after having last served in office. Please check HQ for a photograph of the current President, or contact your CO to order an update of Presidential photograph. The Marine Corps is the only Service that should have equipment that old.
Sincerely,
A General
I believe companies blocking 'direct competition licensing' would create as much litigation as infringement does now...
Case in point, isn't nearly everyone who could use the "Pinch Technology" a direct competitor?
He obviously doesn't understand Part 3...
1. Move individual atoms to make company logo
2. Determine the force required to move those atoms
3. ???
4. Profit!
Sure that's a long time, but at least it's Suntory Time.
If someone's putting information that's not worth keeping on a DVD, why is making it with less material the right answer?
You left out my favorite meme, you insensitive clod!
IANA Ergonomics Expert, but from a computing standpoint, this is not the best idea for a mouse. With a standard mouse, finer motion control of the mouse is done with the fingertips and wrist, not the hand and arm. With a vertical mouse, you are controlling the cursor by moving the entire arm, including the shoulder. Sure, you eliminate finger arthritis pain, but muscles used for gross motor control are not optimal for pointing to the nearest pixel. I can forsee more shoulder problems and tennis elbow after long-term use of this device. They're just moving the repetitive motion onto a different ledger.
"...Robots should always be smaller than people because that way it's easier to fight back when they go crazy..."
You haven't read _PREY_ by Michael Crichton yet, have you?
I think the primary reason Negroponte would be concerned about Intel's entry into this 'market' is what he has always insisted; "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
It's one thing to provide hardware for children - this has been done in schools for years by Intel, Microsoft, and even Apple. It's another thing to provide tools that will actually improve education, and the OLPC is a program that wants to improve education standards in developing countries. School systems will be able to afford textbooks as electronic versions; children can collaborate with writing, reading, and art/music projects; and they can explore their world through ubiquitous network access, understanding what's beyond their village since they can't afford to travel.
Intel is providing a cheap set of goods and little, if nothing, else.
I have really wanted an XO Laptop, much to the confusion of my wife, who doesn't see why I'd be so interested in that low-powered hardware that could never compete with what I like to do on my 12" Powerbook. Now that I've seen Intel's ClassmatePC running XP, I understand what OLPC was going for in the first place. I have a PDA with as much processing power and memory as the XO, and while I'm still mildly interested in the hardware, it has waned dramatically as I fully understand it's true purpose. Save them for the schools.
I've played a little bit with Sony's Reader in the stores. If the technology base is the same, moving images would not be very feasible at all. To refresh the screen on the Sony, it first inverts the ENTIRE screen (possibly to 'unsettle' the ink) then writes new information. I'm pretty sure that any changes, no matter how small, required the entire page to 'flash' and refresh. Even then, there are some 'Etch-A-Sketch' style artifacts left behind. Unless they have a controller that can shake up only a portion of the ink, it will still show ghosting and blurriness.
Our city and state governments in Indiana are spending hundreds of millions of dollars building a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts to continue to play football here. We will still owe tens of millions on the old stadium when we tear it down. Did I mention the tax hike on each stadium, too?
The spaceport actually slightly more acceptable, especially if it translates into high-speed, intercontinental travel.
One thing I've discovered in dealing with my spatially organized fiancee is that I organize things in a temporal sense. It's not that I know WHERE something is, rather than WHEN something is.
I knew that the bow tie I left hanging on the handle loop of the hutch on the desk in my parents' house was there because I remember WHEN I saw it there last. Sure, that when was almost four years ago, but that's how my mind works, and I could walk right in and find it.
I think people who are considered to be messy geniuses live in clutter because they don't care where things go, as long as they remember the last time they saw it. And they do so very well. Large layers are organized in temporal strata, just like geology, so they can even work backward as to if that piece of paper was handled before or after the one for which they are looking.
I'm mostly in the "no gadget" camp as well, as I love collecting maps and atlases from places I travel.
As for the gadgets you DO take, I suggest some form of off-grid charging capability, like a solar or crank-powered PDA/phone charger. I'm not done testing the performance of my Solio [www.solio.com] solar charger (just got it last week), but I think it'll be better than the sustained, 120 RPM crank speed necessary for most manual chargers.
Most of these devices usually also work like iGo universal chargers, except they can store a charge for later.