You've got it wrong. This flying car ain't nothing. THIS is a REAL energy-wasting toy for the rich. $1 million, 5.8 mpg city, and 250 mph top speed? The fact that it even exists is a sin (but you have to admit, it is beautiful).
RE the flying car, it's actually much more reasonable than most other private planes, for which the Transition's $150k price tag is really bargain-basement (for a new plane). A new Cessna 172 is around $250k. And this particular model has a number of money-saving features compared to other light-sport aircraft; specifically, it runs on ordinary super-unleaded gas, it should get ~27 mpg while in the air, and most importantly, it doesn't need to be hangared, which can cost upwards of $500/month in some airports.
If they can pull off the engineering, I could see these guys having a good, stable business selling a couple hundred planes a year (which is about what other LSA manufacturers do). If they hit their price point, there will be good demand.
My point is that these people gathered themselves in a room, and just decided that they were the intellectual elite, and that as such they should run the country.
Or if they didn't decide it outright, the sentiment was broadly accepted enough by the audience that the moderator felt he could use that sentiment to silence a critic of the conventional wisdom in the room.
It is both odd and outrageous that a crowd of corporate intellectual property attorneys would be considered *by anyone* to be a representative sample of this country's intellectual elite, and to be a representative sample of this country's ruling class (if there is such a thing). But if they consider themselves to be that, well, that might be why we have a problem.
I was also surprised by the condescending tone that the moderator took, i.e., "You know what ad hominem means?". It is surprising to me that he would respond to what he saw as an ad hominem attack with sarcasm and contempt, which are no more acceptable than an ad hominem attack in a civilized debate. I guess Mr. Beckerman really touched a nerve.
From the article:
PROF. HANSEN: Okay, Ray. Thanks.
You reject the idea that the intellectual elite, which I think is fairly represented here, should not run this country??
MR. BECKERMAN: The law runs the country. This is a nation of law, not a country of lawyers who are best paid by large content owners.
PROF. HANSEN: Ray, let's not get ad hominem. You know what ad hominem means? You've got a losing argument and you're desperate. So just stick to the merits.
I wonder how many Americans would agree that the quote-unquote "intellectual elite" should run the country.
The display is very cool. But has anyone here looked at the openFrameworks library that they used in building the software? People are doing some things with it that I, at least, have never seen before, by the looks of this video (which I found by linking through their site):
http://www.vimeo.com/921725
The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant. The software stack is actually very cool and innovative. Unfortunately, it is also way too ambitious for the distribution timeline that OLPC has. It tries to reinvent the filesystem and all the standard WIMP GUI conventions, even while implementing everything in *Python*. On top of that, almost every element of the software stack (browser, word processor, etc.) is either implemented from scratch, or re-implemented in Python on top of a low-level branch of FOSS code like gecko or AbiWord.
Sugar is a worthwhile project. Unfortunately, it is not yet stable (memory leaks, etc), the kinks of the completely re-imagined user experience have not been worked out, and not every "activity" that is needed to provide a complete user experience exists.
I hope that Sugar is not dead, because when that thing actually starts working...(famous last words?) More importantly, I hope that OLPC makes some very clear and unambiguous statements regarding the future and the status of Sugar, because it needs a strong developer community to survive, and I sure as hell am not going to write anything for it if it is completely abandoned. What a waste it would be, after so much good work.
The summary does read like something out of a consumerist society -- "Product break, what we do now?" Well, you fix it. I own a problem XO with a stuck keyboard, and although the fix in the link you provided has provided temporary relief on occasion, it has never been a permanent fix, and the problem recurs in a very unpredictable manner. The link to the OLPC Wiki provided in the original news story above does provide instructions that an experienced UNIX user can use to re-map the alt and control keys for a more lasting fix. Unfortunately, I have also experienced sticking in other keys (including space) that cannot be easily remapped.
That being said, I purchased two XO machines (and several more as gifts) and only one machine has developed the stuck-key problem. Of course, I don't use them intensively (or at least I stopped once the keyboard started sticking).
This keyboard problem, unfortunately, is quite serious, in that it's cause has not been isolated, and the degree to which it is widespread is not known. I will say, however, that this is *old* news. The majority of what's in the Wiki was created in January. The problem was first reported to OLPC's trac system in December. I do wish that OLPC would publish the conclusions of their investigation of this, though. I talked to an OLPC operator two months ago and she said that she stopped getting complaints/RMA requests in early January. From reading some of the postings, it seems that this is a more persistent problem.
I don't even think you can use evidence collected by this type of illegal surveillance in court! Well, the trick is that there are a lot of ways that information collected without a warrant can be used outside a courtroom.
"Legitimately", information that is collected without a warrant can go into a law enforcement file and be used to place the target of surveillance on various watch lists, and can potentially be used by government employees to adjudicate matters that are handled entirely within the executive branch.
A corrupt government employee may also choose to use that information illegitimately, in order to track and neutralize political opponents, trade on insider information in the markets, humiliate personal enemies and rivals, and provide the secret corporate information of competitors to favored corporations.
I think that what is often left out of these discussions is that the government is made up of human beings who suffer from the same temptations, ambitions and vices as the entire population. If giving individuals in government certain powers makes it easier for them to pursue their own private interests, and then also makes it harder for anyone to even find out that they are abusing their powers, then individuals of flawed character will inevitably use those powers to enrich themselves and to destroy their personal enemies.
I'm not worried about honest government employees trying to do their jobs. But who's going to claim with a straight face that somehow dishonest people don't sometimes slip through the cracks and gain appointment to positions of power within the government?
It seems to me that providing these powers to individuals in government is kind of like leaving your car parked at the mall with your keys in the ignition.
I don't actually know them personally; I'm familiar with the wiki because I used it extensively when I was setting-up/figuring out my give-one-get-one (G1G1) XO. The reason that I say that the management at OLPC is accessible is that one of the people that helped me via the wiki was Walter Bender, the president of OLPC.
I absolutely agree with you, however, that the biggest problem that OLPC has right now (in light of "competition" from Asus and other quarters) is its apparent unwillingness to make the XO generally available to the US and European public. Nicolas Negroponte has made a number of statements to the effect that selling the laptop to consumers would create a market for the laptops and would provide an incentive for individuals receiving laptops gratis (from government or charity) to sell the laptops, or an incentive for criminals to steal laptops from children. It is my view, however, that *in general* even very poor people will see the value of the laptop as an educational tool and will not choose to sell it, and that controls, procedures, and compensating incentives could be created to limit the impact of the exceptions (including criminality). Furthermore, if OLPC meets its very aggressive goals and distributes millions of laptops around the world, a market will inevitably come to exist; OLPC would do better to anticipate it and take advantage of it, rather than fight it. Aren't you more likely to buy an XO from a Peruvian fourth-grader through ebay if you can't buy it from Walmart than if you can? I think so.
By not selling the XO laptop directly to consumers, OLPC is hurting itself in a number of ways. First, it is failing to take advantage of the economies of scale provided by consumer markets (economies of scale that it needs). In some ways, it is also creating a perverse incentive for laptops to be transferred from third-world children to first-world consumers (as I describe above). Most significantly, however, it is giving the impression to government buyers in its target markets that there is something wrong with their product. As someone with experience doing business in Latin America, I can tell you for certain that a product that has not gained wide acceptance by US consumers is treated sceptically. That's not to say that there is a bias against locally-produced products; rather, there has been a history of many poor countries being a "dumping ground" of inferior or obsolete products that cannot be sold in Europe or the US. From the perspective of an over-worked bureaucrat, one clear sign that dumping is not taking place is that the product being sold is also being sold in the US or Europe. A common sign that dumping *is* taking place is that the product is *not* being sold in the US or Europe.
The OLPC wiki is very extensive and growing, and is a great starting-point for making contact with the core OLPC team (including senior management at OLPC, who are surprisingly accessible). If there isn't an article specifically addressing a person's questions, the wiki at least provides a place where questions can be posted with a reasonable expectation of getting an answer. In addition, there are instructions on how to join OLPC mailing lists and IRC, where you can communicate directly with the team.
Nevertheless, I will say that much of what is on the wiki is oriented to software or organization building, and that info on OLPC hardware seems to get the short-shrift. There is a *short* article discussing the wireless repeater here, which links to the manufacturer's page here. I'm sure that contributions to the wiki in this area would be appreciated.
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You've got it wrong. This flying car ain't nothing. THIS is a REAL energy-wasting toy for the rich. $1 million, 5.8 mpg city, and 250 mph top speed? The fact that it even exists is a sin (but you have to admit, it is beautiful).
RE the flying car, it's actually much more reasonable than most other private planes, for which the Transition's $150k price tag is really bargain-basement (for a new plane). A new Cessna 172 is around $250k. And this particular model has a number of money-saving features compared to other light-sport aircraft; specifically, it runs on ordinary super-unleaded gas, it should get ~27 mpg while in the air, and most importantly, it doesn't need to be hangared, which can cost upwards of $500/month in some airports.
If they can pull off the engineering, I could see these guys having a good, stable business selling a couple hundred planes a year (which is about what other LSA manufacturers do). If they hit their price point, there will be good demand.
I think that the proper term for the redundancy in my original post is quote-unquote "pleonasm."
My point is that these people gathered themselves in a room, and just decided that they were the intellectual elite, and that as such they should run the country.
Or if they didn't decide it outright, the sentiment was broadly accepted enough by the audience that the moderator felt he could use that sentiment to silence a critic of the conventional wisdom in the room.
It is both odd and outrageous that a crowd of corporate intellectual property attorneys would be considered *by anyone* to be a representative sample of this country's intellectual elite, and to be a representative sample of this country's ruling class (if there is such a thing). But if they consider themselves to be that, well, that might be why we have a problem.
I was also surprised by the condescending tone that the moderator took, i.e., "You know what ad hominem means?". It is surprising to me that he would respond to what he saw as an ad hominem attack with sarcasm and contempt, which are no more acceptable than an ad hominem attack in a civilized debate. I guess Mr. Beckerman really touched a nerve.
smart ass
MR. BECKERMAN: The law runs the country. This is a nation of law, not a country of lawyers who are best paid by large content owners.
PROF. HANSEN: Ray, let's not get ad hominem. You know what ad hominem means? You've got a losing argument and you're desperate. So just stick to the merits.
I wonder how many Americans would agree that the quote-unquote "intellectual elite" should run the country.
The display is very cool. But has anyone here looked at the openFrameworks library that they used in building the software? People are doing some things with it that I, at least, have never seen before, by the looks of this video (which I found by linking through their site): http://www.vimeo.com/921725
Sugar is a worthwhile project. Unfortunately, it is not yet stable (memory leaks, etc), the kinks of the completely re-imagined user experience have not been worked out, and not every "activity" that is needed to provide a complete user experience exists.
I hope that Sugar is not dead, because when that thing actually starts working...(famous last words?) More importantly, I hope that OLPC makes some very clear and unambiguous statements regarding the future and the status of Sugar, because it needs a strong developer community to survive, and I sure as hell am not going to write anything for it if it is completely abandoned. What a waste it would be, after so much good work.
That being said, I purchased two XO machines (and several more as gifts) and only one machine has developed the stuck-key problem. Of course, I don't use them intensively (or at least I stopped once the keyboard started sticking).
This keyboard problem, unfortunately, is quite serious, in that it's cause has not been isolated, and the degree to which it is widespread is not known. I will say, however, that this is *old* news. The majority of what's in the Wiki was created in January. The problem was first reported to OLPC's trac system in December. I do wish that OLPC would publish the conclusions of their investigation of this, though. I talked to an OLPC operator two months ago and she said that she stopped getting complaints/RMA requests in early January. From reading some of the postings, it seems that this is a more persistent problem.
"Legitimately", information that is collected without a warrant can go into a law enforcement file and be used to place the target of surveillance on various watch lists, and can potentially be used by government employees to adjudicate matters that are handled entirely within the executive branch.
A corrupt government employee may also choose to use that information illegitimately, in order to track and neutralize political opponents, trade on insider information in the markets, humiliate personal enemies and rivals, and provide the secret corporate information of competitors to favored corporations.
I think that what is often left out of these discussions is that the government is made up of human beings who suffer from the same temptations, ambitions and vices as the entire population. If giving individuals in government certain powers makes it easier for them to pursue their own private interests, and then also makes it harder for anyone to even find out that they are abusing their powers, then individuals of flawed character will inevitably use those powers to enrich themselves and to destroy their personal enemies.
I'm not worried about honest government employees trying to do their jobs. But who's going to claim with a straight face that somehow dishonest people don't sometimes slip through the cracks and gain appointment to positions of power within the government?
It seems to me that providing these powers to individuals in government is kind of like leaving your car parked at the mall with your keys in the ignition.
I don't actually know them personally; I'm familiar with the wiki because I used it extensively when I was setting-up/figuring out my give-one-get-one (G1G1) XO. The reason that I say that the management at OLPC is accessible is that one of the people that helped me via the wiki was Walter Bender, the president of OLPC.
I absolutely agree with you, however, that the biggest problem that OLPC has right now (in light of "competition" from Asus and other quarters) is its apparent unwillingness to make the XO generally available to the US and European public. Nicolas Negroponte has made a number of statements to the effect that selling the laptop to consumers would create a market for the laptops and would provide an incentive for individuals receiving laptops gratis (from government or charity) to sell the laptops, or an incentive for criminals to steal laptops from children. It is my view, however, that *in general* even very poor people will see the value of the laptop as an educational tool and will not choose to sell it, and that controls, procedures, and compensating incentives could be created to limit the impact of the exceptions (including criminality). Furthermore, if OLPC meets its very aggressive goals and distributes millions of laptops around the world, a market will inevitably come to exist; OLPC would do better to anticipate it and take advantage of it, rather than fight it. Aren't you more likely to buy an XO from a Peruvian fourth-grader through ebay if you can't buy it from Walmart than if you can? I think so.
By not selling the XO laptop directly to consumers, OLPC is hurting itself in a number of ways. First, it is failing to take advantage of the economies of scale provided by consumer markets (economies of scale that it needs). In some ways, it is also creating a perverse incentive for laptops to be transferred from third-world children to first-world consumers (as I describe above). Most significantly, however, it is giving the impression to government buyers in its target markets that there is something wrong with their product. As someone with experience doing business in Latin America, I can tell you for certain that a product that has not gained wide acceptance by US consumers is treated sceptically. That's not to say that there is a bias against locally-produced products; rather, there has been a history of many poor countries being a "dumping ground" of inferior or obsolete products that cannot be sold in Europe or the US. From the perspective of an over-worked bureaucrat, one clear sign that dumping is not taking place is that the product being sold is also being sold in the US or Europe. A common sign that dumping *is* taking place is that the product is *not* being sold in the US or Europe.
The OLPC wiki is very extensive and growing, and is a great starting-point for making contact with the core OLPC team (including senior management at OLPC, who are surprisingly accessible). If there isn't an article specifically addressing a person's questions, the wiki at least provides a place where questions can be posted with a reasonable expectation of getting an answer. In addition, there are instructions on how to join OLPC mailing lists and IRC, where you can communicate directly with the team.
Nevertheless, I will say that much of what is on the wiki is oriented to software or organization building, and that info on OLPC hardware seems to get the short-shrift. There is a *short* article discussing the wireless repeater here, which links to the manufacturer's page here. I'm sure that contributions to the wiki in this area would be appreciated.
Yeah, probably about 800 of them, which is almost 800 more than are found in most Andean villages.
(actually, the article says that it comes pre loaded with about 100 books).