I think this box would be an ideal computing appliance for the average user. Of course, I would recommend CentOS and a carefully configured set of applications and GUI.
Think, like, your mom and dad checking their email and looking for bargains on Craigslist. At 4 watts.
I think we all like some censorship. I would like to avoid ever hearing about or seeing child porn and would not like my children to have access to easy recipes for explosives and drugs. (Access to scientific materials is legitimate and should be encouraged, and if they can find out how to make explosives and drugs from that, it's probably not a bad thing.)
In a shareholder meeting, the only question being asked is "Does this raise or lower our income?"
If the answer is "lower," those proposing the idea have to come up with a darn good reason why, or the shareholders get angry, because their stock is going to be worth less than it could be.
China is a big market, and Google wants to expand aggressively into this, so it was a sensible business decision.
Was it a sensible decision in other areas, like ethics or law? The answer to that has to be asked of a higher entity, because it is the pressure of the shareholders' demands that makes Google unable to answer to those areas.
Confronted with distributing food rations to hungry orphans, people would rather be fair than efficient, even if it means letting some of the food go to waste, a US study shows.
But the tests demonstrated that most people preferred equity in distributing food -- that all the hungry mouths got fed equally -- rather than an efficiency that perhaps meant that one orphan got almost nothing but also that no food went to waste.
Have a ton of old code, writings, etc. on 3.5" disks -- I had the brains to copy over the 5.25" data back when I had an Apple, apparently.
I don't really want to go buy a retro//gs and all the stuff that comes with it and have it around the house, and am not even sure how to get all of these files to PC or BSD-friendly formats. Some are text. Some are Appleworks.
I copied over everything I had on a Mac platform, but didn't have a SuperDrive, so couldn't read the// 3.5" disks.
Anyone up for a LAN party where we all convert our old stuff to current formats?
Archiving was easier when everything was in universal formats. (No MS-XML formats for me.)
I am not here to dis Windows XP. I like Windows XP.
However, the whole point of the Asus Eee PC is that it is a stripped down unit for common tasks, generally net-based. You write a letter or short text on an Eee, you surf the net, you check your email, maybe SSH into a UNIX host.
For this, even for longtime Windows users, a light implementation of Linux is probably better. There are fewer licensing issues. All necessary tools are built in. It can maximize the limited processor, memory and disk of the Eee.
I could see installing Windows 2000 on one, sort of, but in my experience, the overhead of Linux is a lot less because it does not have to support binaries from the past 3500 generations of Windows.
Please, let us return to sanity. You may want Windows XP on your full-size HP laptop, but on your Eee, go light.
I think zebra striping helps people read tables with more than four columns, but there's also a camouflage effect especially when a quick glance is given.
Most individuals can't afford this technology, but a city can.
Public transportation, if done correctly (a first in America), is safe and clean and cheap or free, runs 24 hours a day or close to it, and allows us to avoid the expense of private cars.
The rest of our driving can be done on golf carts for those errands near home. Or horses, which are as green as transportation is going to get.
There are intangible benefits to public transportation.
It brings us closer together with our neighbors. It ends the illusion that we can ignore problems like crime and abuse. It frees up acres of space from parking lots and duplicate roads. It gives law enforcement a better place to focus than on handing out parking tickets.
Most of us spend way too much on our cars, and that's the necessary expenses. This cost won't go down. The car was a design enabled by cheap oil, and now that's over, so we should adapt.
Not only are the game shows bad, the soap operas moronic, and the news hours obviously paid advertisements, but our shopping network features declasse technology.
From what they can tell, showing up on earth and saying "I am an alien" is a quick way to get a dead-end job in food service.
They're hanging out in the horsehead nebula, periodically manipulating us with botnets comprised of compromised Windows machines.
Please come down to the station to discuss it. And bring any possessions you will need for relocation.
The rumor that this gene also coincides with a gene that regulates independent thought is not true. Do not believe this rumor. Only criminals repeat rumors.
Me too. For the last two decades, people have looked at their computers and wanted the things to be information centers. That includes media, business information, personal contacts, everything through recipes and music.
Read our lips, big corporations. We don't want more gadgets. We want our gadgets to get more powerful and less unreliable so they save us time and make life more relaxing, not more gadgety.
1. Blu-ray gets cobranded with another product, probably a video game console or computer DVD drive maker. In exchange for the Blu-ray drive being sold cheaply, it is sold under a high profile brand to increase market awareness and market share.
2. In time for Christmas, around September, they half the price of their low-end model.
These two steps will have box stores stocking as much of the stuff as people can get their hands on. It's probable the industry is going to be forced to discount CDs and DVDs anyway, since they have become hard to sell at their current prices.
This will further devalue the pop music product that made record labels so much money.
The walls are falling in on an industry that cashed in on people's inability to tell good music for bad.
This is good news for all musicians who make music worth listening to, as opposed to music worth blaring out of a radio in the background while you IM, buy corporate media on Amazon.com, watch TV and send pictures of your weener to "girls" you met on myspace.
Really expensive machines without practical function are almost always proof of concept. The MS guys know this isn't ready for prime time, and they want more time to test it so they don't end up giving away free units to replace fried ones, like with the Xbox 360.
It's like an Apple Lisa (pre-Macintosh, even more expensive, unreliable and pompous than a Mac) or the NeXT cube: great ideas, the first to bring them to market, but still not fit into a market niche. Market niche is what Microsoft does really well.
They will trot this out to try to gain the cool points, then find out a way to apply the technology to a tablet computer that also can prop itself up like a mini-table.
Google: magical search algorithm organizes content, gets it right sometimes.
We're back to the Yahoo! model because people have figured out how to game the system, namely Google, without adding content that's important to the searcher.
I welcome this. Our computers can't yet come close to matching our brainpower.
From what I've seen lately, the hype over web technologies and our service-based economy has degraded the salaries of engineers relative to other professions, and the inflation of our currency.
This is why companies seem to like mediocre scholars, because they can buy them cheaper, throw a bunch of them at a problem and solve it more cheaply than having superstars. They like disposable employees because they never get slowed down when someone quits, leaves, goes into rehab or dies.
Colleges know this, and so they're relaxing standards and caring less about who makes it through, because they're more interested in churning out the inventors of the next FaceBook(tm).
DRM has failed because it annoyed publishers as much as pirates, if not more.
The RIAA and cohorts now change strategy: make massive amounts of bandwidth expensive.
They're trying to take out the mules for software groups, who spread around the warez, and the people who hoard and distribute music and movies.
This is more likely to succeed. Although most Slashdot readers know how bad connectivity options are in the USA, very few people who limit themselves to YouTube and e-mail have any idea.
They won't notice if they get low bandwidth caps, but they'll shriek when their kids run up the bill for $500 of overage.
And of course, a bill that large warrants an investigation by the ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-D945GCLF-Mini-ITX-Motherboard
$80
I think this box would be an ideal computing appliance for the average user. Of course, I would recommend CentOS and a carefully configured set of applications and GUI.
Think, like, your mom and dad checking their email and looking for bargains on Craigslist. At 4 watts.
$3? I wonder what they want for Vista... $0.50?
I think we all like some censorship. I would like to avoid ever hearing about or seeing child porn and would not like my children to have access to easy recipes for explosives and drugs. (Access to scientific materials is legitimate and should be encouraged, and if they can find out how to make explosives and drugs from that, it's probably not a bad thing.)
In a shareholder meeting, the only question being asked is "Does this raise or lower our income?"
If the answer is "lower," those proposing the idea have to come up with a darn good reason why, or the shareholders get angry, because their stock is going to be worth less than it could be.
China is a big market, and Google wants to expand aggressively into this, so it was a sensible business decision.
Was it a sensible decision in other areas, like ethics or law? The answer to that has to be asked of a higher entity, because it is the pressure of the shareholders' demands that makes Google unable to answer to those areas.
This problem shows up in many places.
LAN party at noon, then pubcrawling to midnight engaging the opposite sex?
Have a ton of old code, writings, etc. on 3.5" disks -- I had the brains to copy over the 5.25" data back when I had an Apple, apparently.
//gs and all the stuff that comes with it and have it around the house, and am not even sure how to get all of these files to PC or BSD-friendly formats. Some are text. Some are Appleworks.
// 3.5" disks.
I don't really want to go buy a retro
I copied over everything I had on a Mac platform, but didn't have a SuperDrive, so couldn't read the
Anyone up for a LAN party where we all convert our old stuff to current formats?
Archiving was easier when everything was in universal formats. (No MS-XML formats for me.)
I am not here to dis Windows XP. I like Windows XP.
However, the whole point of the Asus Eee PC is that it is a stripped down unit for common tasks, generally net-based. You write a letter or short text on an Eee, you surf the net, you check your email, maybe SSH into a UNIX host.
For this, even for longtime Windows users, a light implementation of Linux is probably better. There are fewer licensing issues. All necessary tools are built in. It can maximize the limited processor, memory and disk of the Eee.
I could see installing Windows 2000 on one, sort of, but in my experience, the overhead of Linux is a lot less because it does not have to support binaries from the past 3500 generations of Windows.
Please, let us return to sanity. You may want Windows XP on your full-size HP laptop, but on your Eee, go light.
See:
Asus Micro Laptop Brings Linux to Desktop
Cost of laptop: $3000
Cost of personnel to procure it, insurance, shipping, paperwork, legislation, research, etc on a per-item basis: $8000
Total cost in taxes, per laptop, to you: $11000
Cost of laptop, out of back of 10-year-old SUV with motor running, on street, from some guy named Joey with methamphetamine acne: $400
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
I think zebra striping helps people read tables with more than four columns, but there's also a camouflage effect especially when a quick glance is given.
Most individuals can't afford this technology, but a city can.
Public transportation, if done correctly (a first in America), is safe and clean and cheap or free, runs 24 hours a day or close to it, and allows us to avoid the expense of private cars.
The rest of our driving can be done on golf carts for those errands near home. Or horses, which are as green as transportation is going to get.
There are intangible benefits to public transportation.
It brings us closer together with our neighbors. It ends the illusion that we can ignore problems like crime and abuse. It frees up acres of space from parking lots and duplicate roads. It gives law enforcement a better place to focus than on handing out parking tickets.
Most of us spend way too much on our cars, and that's the necessary expenses. This cost won't go down. The car was a design enabled by cheap oil, and now that's over, so we should adapt.
A writing professor once called this "murdering your darlings," in the context of writing fiction.
You develop a scene with blood, sweat and tears, and then realize it's baggage and there's a better way, and shorter/more compact is always better.
It hurts but it beats the alternative, which is reduced quality of writing.
http://www.codenautics.com/lemonade/
;)
Just like the Apple II classic. Teach them capitalism so they don't end up on drugs
As usual, cost isn't the question.
It's science -- bad science -- of two types:
1. Bad application of technology, including massive security holes.
2. Bad management science, leading to sloppy security and confused product design.
An ATM should be more expensive than a voting machine; the ATM has to dispense cash and be used 24-7 to do so.
A voting machine however should be secure, have an audit trail, and a clear interface so the average person can understand what they're voting for.
They've seen our television.
Not only are the game shows bad, the soap operas moronic, and the news hours obviously paid advertisements, but our shopping network features declasse technology.
From what they can tell, showing up on earth and saying "I am an alien" is a quick way to get a dead-end job in food service.
They're hanging out in the horsehead nebula, periodically manipulating us with botnets comprised of compromised Windows machines.
Please come down to the station to discuss it. And bring any possessions you will need for relocation.
The rumor that this gene also coincides with a gene that regulates independent thought is not true. Do not believe this rumor. Only criminals repeat rumors.
You have 28 minutes to comply.
What people like about the Eee is that it does 90% of what a computer does for the price and portability of a cell phone.
Toying with that formula is unwise. Instead, further pare down the bloated Xandros and XP installs so that people can use a 4-8 GB machine.
I thought they were going to install Intel's Atom in the next revision?
Regardless, the Eee is an important step for open source and Linux. See Asus Micro Laptop Brings Linux to the Desktop.
I still think they're kinda doomed.
Me too. For the last two decades, people have looked at their computers and wanted the things to be information centers. That includes media, business information, personal contacts, everything through recipes and music.
Read our lips, big corporations. We don't want more gadgets. We want our gadgets to get more powerful and less unreliable so they save us time and make life more relaxing, not more gadgety.
Here's the two-step:
1. Blu-ray gets cobranded with another product, probably a video game console or computer DVD drive maker. In exchange for the Blu-ray drive being sold cheaply, it is sold under a high profile brand to increase market awareness and market share.
2. In time for Christmas, around September, they half the price of their low-end model.
These two steps will have box stores stocking as much of the stuff as people can get their hands on. It's probable the industry is going to be forced to discount CDs and DVDs anyway, since they have become hard to sell at their current prices.
This will further devalue the pop music product that made record labels so much money.
The walls are falling in on an industry that cashed in on people's inability to tell good music for bad.
This is good news for all musicians who make music worth listening to, as opposed to music worth blaring out of a radio in the background while you IM, buy corporate media on Amazon.com, watch TV and send pictures of your weener to "girls" you met on myspace.
Really expensive machines without practical function are almost always proof of concept. The MS guys know this isn't ready for prime time, and they want more time to test it so they don't end up giving away free units to replace fried ones, like with the Xbox 360.
It's like an Apple Lisa (pre-Macintosh, even more expensive, unreliable and pompous than a Mac) or the NeXT cube: great ideas, the first to bring them to market, but still not fit into a market niche. Market niche is what Microsoft does really well.
They will trot this out to try to gain the cool points, then find out a way to apply the technology to a tablet computer that also can prop itself up like a mini-table.
Coffee helps protect against dementia.
But, it leeches calcium from your bones.
Still, it avoids erectile dysfunction.
However, it destroys a good night's sleep.
Yet it can keep you thin.
But, it might make you take up smoking...
And so on, forever and ever, until people admit that even scientists recognize the world is more complicated than a single factor at a time.
Yahoo: humans organize content.
Google: magical search algorithm organizes content, gets it right sometimes.
We're back to the Yahoo! model because people have figured out how to game the system, namely Google, without adding content that's important to the searcher.
I welcome this. Our computers can't yet come close to matching our brainpower.
From what I've seen lately, the hype over web technologies and our service-based economy has degraded the salaries of engineers relative to other professions, and the inflation of our currency.
This is why companies seem to like mediocre scholars, because they can buy them cheaper, throw a bunch of them at a problem and solve it more cheaply than having superstars. They like disposable employees because they never get slowed down when someone quits, leaves, goes into rehab or dies.
Colleges know this, and so they're relaxing standards and caring less about who makes it through, because they're more interested in churning out the inventors of the next FaceBook(tm).
DRM has failed because it annoyed publishers as much as pirates, if not more.
The RIAA and cohorts now change strategy: make massive amounts of bandwidth expensive.
They're trying to take out the mules for software groups, who spread around the warez, and the people who hoard and distribute music and movies.
This is more likely to succeed. Although most Slashdot readers know how bad connectivity options are in the USA, very few people who limit themselves to YouTube and e-mail have any idea.
They won't notice if they get low bandwidth caps, but they'll shriek when their kids run up the bill for $500 of overage.
And of course, a bill that large warrants an investigation by the ISP.