Indeed. I've got an old washing machine motor I now use as a grinding or polishing wheel on my workbench downstairs. Can't remember how young I was when I took the first non-working one apart.
Precisely. A friend of mine worked on the first heads up displays for NASA. He painstakingly measured how much information an astronaut/jet pilot could pay attention to at once, and react to within a certain time frame. The same sort of design needs to go into cars' HUD's.
My car has a full time HUD showing speed, very unobtrusively. I no longer need to move my eyes from the road to see my speed. Same for when I use the car's GPS, and have a trip showing. I don't have to remove my eyes to look at the map, I simply can look at a very small arrow below the speed as I near a turn, and it says how many tenths of a mile until that turn. An audio signal notifies me, so I don't need to divert my eyes to the lower portion of the windshield.
If done well, a HUD adds to safety.
Yes, noticed that many times. "What was the error message?" error 0x001523408502 at 0022321503001201024902345, or something like that. I like the suggestion of enter the first six letters...
Better yet, "read this to your support person and enter the three letters your support person tells you to. If your support person is Microsoft itself, enter, 'LOL'"
Of course, adding a phrase like, "Tell your support person NOW all the following letters/numbers," for severe errors, and "Write down and email or read the following letters/numbers to your support person when you want him to fix whatever went wrong. Tell him what you were doing when this happened, open the little notebook you keep beside your computer, in which you keep a list of all the changes you make to your system, and read him the list of changes you made to your system since you last spoke with him." Would save a LOT of time.
Today I got a desperate call from a new client:
"I was on a WebEx conference call, my computer locked up, and now the partition with all my data is gone, can you HELP me remotely?" Windows showed drive sizes and sizes of his partitions. It was clear there was no room on his two drives for another partition to hold all his data. What could have happened? After some discussion, it turned out he had an external USB drive that lost power.
Sometimes the hardest part is helping people not feel stupid after stupid mistakes.
Washington DC, of course, would have a ban on air powered vehicles within city limits, as there is already too much hot air.
One of the problems is how to compress the air without using polluting means. Er, wait a minute, they've found a way to harness most politicians' speeches! Brilliant!
Same here, all word of mouth. I take pride in having never advertised. Once in a while I tell myself I should put a business card in my wallet. But few of my customers use paper anymore.
I'll try to help come up with standard understandable privacy policies:
We take your info and:
A. Sell it to anyone willing to pay. B. Sell or give it to only those for whom we think it's OK. C. Have our subdivisions and partners sell it. D. Say we won't sell or give it to anyone, but do so anyway. E. Use it internally any way we see fit, but don't give or sell it. F. Only use it where we must, to provide you with the service you request of us. G. Ask you before using it or giving or selling it away. H. Don't use it. In fact, we throw it away, shredding it. I. Any of the above PLUS we give it to your friendly government investigators without notice to you.
Somehow I doubt it. Think the Gates Foundation would be dumb enough to only give to the OLPC project if the OLPC agreed to load MS software? Wouldn't that violate the terms of a 501(c)3 foundation? (and cost them their tax exempt status.)
No surprise here, really. A long time back it was announced that the XO was being partly redesigned for the specific purpose of being able to load XP lite on it. What is surprising is that MS won't be paying anything to OLPC, but will be COLLECTING instead.
What did surprise me was coming out with XP on the EeePC. That got redesigned so that XP lite could fit on it. When I got mine, I considered XP, as it was the same price, and I figured I could dual boot it. But then I figured it'd have worse battery life, be slower.
Well, what would be the first program you'd load on an XP XO? Firewall. Second? Antivirus. Third? Spyware/malware scanner/protection. Fourth? "Error xpxo, Out of Disk Space. Contact your system administrator."
"It always costs a lot less per unit to make 1,000,000 of an item than to make 1,000 of an item." -- Always?
Is it cheaper to make 1,000,000 copies of Windows than 1,000 copies of Ubuntu?
On the other hand, advertising can also keep the little guys out of the market, ensuring large corporations can set higher prices for a product category. Like just about anything, it can be used for good or for evil.
And if he wasn't using Firefox with Adblock Plus, or some similar setup, he'd notice Slashdot has some ads.
Obligatory additional Slashdot reference to Microsoft: It's hard to say the millions of ads done by Microsoft have benefited the consumer. My favorite: "Where do you want to go today? Oh, I think I'd like to use a bloatware and malware ridden OS that intentionally causes interoperability problems with others.";0
Not Listening to Ads: In reference to another poster's comments about younger people not skipping ads, using a TV as background sound without paying attention to the ads: Isn't that PRECISELY what many advertisers wish for? Ads not filtered by our conscious mind just enter one's brains as if the statements in the ad are fact. Subliminal ads have been outlawed in many areas.
For preventing theft of the next one, try one of these ideas. (Or several of them)
Appearance: 1. Large, multicolored stickers pasted onto laptop, making it ugly and easy to identify. Hand painting on the cover is also useful for this, provided you don't make the laptop look like a work of art. The goal is to have a potential buyer avoid it like the plague, so it won't get stolen in the first place. 2. Scratches on the top cover, that do not effect the integrity of the unit, reduce the resale value. Thus less incentive. 3. Your telephone number engraved into the case. (A client of mine once got two stolen computers back because I had written their organization name and telephone number on the backs, with a sharpie! When the police busted the ring, they saw the name/number and called them to come and pick up their computers.)
Ruses: 4. Paper note, hand written, scotch taped to top of closed laptop: "Display Bad. Replace." 5. Same, with wording: "Won't Boot, suspect motherboard." 6. Label pasted on top, "Milford Police, Official Use Only." (Not hand written)
Sizes: 7. Heavy and clunky. (hard to carry.) 8. Very small, like the AsusEEE, so you'll carry it with you everywhere, instead of leaving it home. Bonus: Low cost also discourages the theft. Minus: The EEE is very popular right now...get a small computer nobody wants, with an operating system nobody wants. Think label, "Designed for Vista Home Basic."
Paid and free phoning home: 9. Any of the phone home stuff others have mentioned.
Extraordinary Defense: 10. Have a very large Italian guy stationed by the laptop, giving an evil eye to anyone approaching it.
Superbly stated!
It can be difficult for those of us who love computers and electronics
to understand, but MANY people just use a computer as a tool.
I confess, I still use an old, rusty, shovel. I've resisted the
ads to upgrade to the shiny, slimmer bladed new ones. For me, they
aren't worth the time it would take to buy one. And then I'd have
to recycle the old one.
Now that I think of it, I bought the old rusty one at a tag sale...and it
was old and rusty then.
Very nasty people work hard and give away their work to the rest of mankind! If people don't keep their work proprietary, and make others pay through the nose for it, how would organizations like the Gates foundation be able to give away (What used to be your) money?
Translation of complaints about free software:
Rich owner of closed source software gives away money = Very good.
Poor OpenSource programmer gives away his work to anyone who wants it = Very bad.
I've heard numerous arguments that boil down to basically this.
How often do you complaints in other areas of life, where people are freely volunteering/donating their work to others for the good of all mankind? (Like: Those D*mn hospital volunteers are keeping the pay down! Or: Those D*mn Habitat for Humanity volunteers, donating their labor, are making it impossible to charge people to build a house.)
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. I've got an old washing machine motor I now use as a grinding or polishing wheel on my workbench downstairs. Can't remember how young I was when I took the first non-working one apart.
Bravo, Bruce!
Thanks, changed.
I wasted many hours playing Doom. When my little nieces and nephews came over, I'd have 3 computers networked to run Doom...I was the cool uncle.
Be kind to designers, after all, they are using Macs, and therefore don't have to put up with the useability problems of different Windows versions.
Precisely. A friend of mine worked on the first heads up displays for NASA. He painstakingly measured how much information an astronaut/jet pilot could pay attention to at once, and react to within a certain time frame. The same sort of design needs to go into cars' HUD's. My car has a full time HUD showing speed, very unobtrusively. I no longer need to move my eyes from the road to see my speed. Same for when I use the car's GPS, and have a trip showing. I don't have to remove my eyes to look at the map, I simply can look at a very small arrow below the speed as I near a turn, and it says how many tenths of a mile until that turn. An audio signal notifies me, so I don't need to divert my eyes to the lower portion of the windshield. If done well, a HUD adds to safety.
Nope. I was using 12 LXDE. Decided to switch to 13 Cinnamon 64 with Codecs.
More updated Iranian ham listing: http://www.qsl.net/ep2fm/EPcallholders.htm
Apple just takes other people's badly packaged good ideas and sticks them into shiny white plastic packages,
Funny, I recall hearing a VERY similar comment about Microsoft, back in the 1970's and 1980's.
Yes, noticed that many times. "What was the error message?" error 0x001523408502 at 0022321503001201024902345, or something like that. I like the suggestion of enter the first six letters...
Better yet, "read this to your support person and enter the three letters your support person tells you to. If your support person is Microsoft itself, enter, 'LOL'"
Of course, adding a phrase like, "Tell your support person NOW all the following letters/numbers," for severe errors, and "Write down and email or read the following letters/numbers to your support person when you want him to fix whatever went wrong. Tell him what you were doing when this happened, open the little notebook you keep beside your computer, in which you keep a list of all the changes you make to your system, and read him the list of changes you made to your system since you last spoke with him." Would save a LOT of time.
Today I got a desperate call from a new client:
"I was on a WebEx conference call, my computer locked up, and now the partition with all my data is gone, can you HELP me remotely?" Windows showed drive sizes and sizes of his partitions. It was clear there was no room on his two drives for another partition to hold all his data. What could have happened? After some discussion, it turned out he had an external USB drive that lost power.
Sometimes the hardest part is helping people not feel stupid after stupid mistakes.
"...if I had to choose my browser on purely default security scope, I'd go for IE7/Vista.."
Lynx might provide you better security.
That does it...I'm not buying a supercomputer this Christmas!
I wonder which antivirus, antispyware, and firewall software they loaded on it.
And I wonder what Windows Update Tuesday will be like for that thing...will it ask permission before rebooting?
I have to say it, I wonder what's new in the latest version of "Microsoft Office for Supercomputers 2003." My guess is clippy moves VERY quickly. ;-)
Washington DC, of course, would have a ban on air powered vehicles within city limits, as there is already too much hot air.
One of the problems is how to compress the air without using polluting means. Er, wait a minute, they've found a way to harness most politicians' speeches! Brilliant!
Same here, all word of mouth. I take pride in having never advertised. Once in a while I tell myself I should put a business card in my wallet. But few of my customers use paper anymore.
I'll try to help come up with standard understandable privacy policies:
We take your info and:
A. Sell it to anyone willing to pay.
B. Sell or give it to only those for whom we think it's OK.
C. Have our subdivisions and partners sell it.
D. Say we won't sell or give it to anyone, but do so anyway.
E. Use it internally any way we see fit, but don't give or sell it.
F. Only use it where we must, to provide you with the service you request of us.
G. Ask you before using it or giving or selling it away.
H. Don't use it. In fact, we throw it away, shredding it.
I. Any of the above PLUS we give it to your friendly government investigators without notice to you.
No idea, but works quite well with the white one. chuckle
Somehow I doubt it. Think the Gates Foundation would be dumb enough to only give to the OLPC project if the OLPC agreed to load MS software? Wouldn't that violate the terms of a 501(c)3 foundation? (and cost them their tax exempt status.)
No surprise here, really. A long time back it was announced that the XO was being partly redesigned for the specific purpose of being able to load XP lite on it. What is surprising is that MS won't be paying anything to OLPC, but will be COLLECTING instead.
What did surprise me was coming out with XP on the EeePC. That got redesigned so that XP lite could fit on it. When I got mine, I considered XP, as it was the same price, and I figured I could dual boot it. But then I figured it'd have worse battery life, be slower.
Well, what would be the first program you'd load on an XP XO?
Firewall.
Second?
Antivirus.
Third?
Spyware/malware scanner/protection.
Fourth?
"Error xpxo, Out of Disk Space. Contact your system administrator."
"It always costs a lot less per unit to make 1,000,000 of an item than to make 1,000 of an item."
;0
--
Always?
Is it cheaper to make 1,000,000 copies of Windows than 1,000 copies of Ubuntu?
On the other hand, advertising can also keep the little guys out of the market, ensuring large corporations can set higher prices for a product category. Like just about anything, it can be used for good or for evil.
And if he wasn't using Firefox with Adblock Plus, or some similar setup, he'd notice Slashdot has some ads.
Obligatory additional Slashdot reference to Microsoft:
It's hard to say the millions of ads done by Microsoft have benefited the consumer. My favorite:
"Where do you want to go today? Oh, I think I'd like to use a bloatware and malware ridden OS that intentionally causes interoperability problems with others."
Not Listening to Ads:
In reference to another poster's comments about younger people not skipping ads, using a TV as background sound without paying attention to the ads: Isn't that PRECISELY what many advertisers wish for? Ads not filtered by our conscious mind just enter one's brains as if the statements in the ad are fact. Subliminal ads have been outlawed in many areas.
For preventing theft of the next one, try one of these ideas. (Or several of them)
Appearance:
1. Large, multicolored stickers pasted onto laptop, making it ugly and easy to identify.
Hand painting on the cover is also useful for this, provided you don't make the laptop
look like a work of art. The goal is to have a potential buyer avoid it like the plague,
so it won't get stolen in the first place.
2. Scratches on the top cover, that do not effect the integrity of the unit, reduce
the resale value. Thus less incentive.
3. Your telephone number engraved into the case.
(A client of mine once got two stolen computers back because I had written their
organization name and telephone number on the backs, with a sharpie! When the police
busted the ring, they saw the name/number and called them to come and pick up
their computers.)
Ruses:
4. Paper note, hand written, scotch taped to top of closed laptop:
"Display Bad. Replace."
5. Same, with wording:
"Won't Boot, suspect motherboard."
6. Label pasted on top, "Milford Police, Official Use Only."
(Not hand written)
Sizes:
7. Heavy and clunky. (hard to carry.)
8. Very small, like the AsusEEE, so you'll carry it with you everywhere,
instead of leaving it home. Bonus: Low cost also discourages the theft.
Minus: The EEE is very popular right now...get a small computer nobody wants,
with an operating system nobody wants. Think label, "Designed for Vista
Home Basic."
Paid and free phoning home:
9. Any of the phone home stuff others have mentioned.
Extraordinary Defense:
10. Have a very large Italian guy stationed by the laptop, giving an evil
eye to anyone approaching it.
Superbly stated! It can be difficult for those of us who love computers and electronics to understand, but MANY people just use a computer as a tool. I confess, I still use an old, rusty, shovel. I've resisted the ads to upgrade to the shiny, slimmer bladed new ones. For me, they aren't worth the time it would take to buy one. And then I'd have to recycle the old one. Now that I think of it, I bought the old rusty one at a tag sale...and it was old and rusty then.
Thanks for that link. Yup, having looked at the Singularity license, it clearly it does NOT meet the requirements.
This appears to be a PR attempt by Microsoft. Where have we seen them "enhance and extend" before?
This is as OpenSource as their "Open" ooxml is Open.
People use more electricity now than in the past? Shocking, I say!
Has nothing to do with those big screen TV's for the morning news, nor
the dual monitors and multicore processors for email.
Very nasty people work hard and give away their work to the rest of mankind! If people don't keep their work proprietary, and make others pay through the nose for it, how would organizations like the Gates foundation be able to give away (What used to be your) money?
Translation of complaints about free software:
Rich owner of closed source software gives away money = Very good.
Poor OpenSource programmer gives away his work to anyone who wants it = Very bad.
I've heard numerous arguments that boil down to basically this.
How often do you complaints in other areas of life, where people are freely volunteering/donating their work to others for the good of all mankind? (Like: Those D*mn hospital volunteers are keeping the pay down! Or: Those D*mn Habitat for Humanity volunteers, donating their labor, are making it impossible to charge people to build a house.)