Ok, how many times has that happened that they actually fixed?
The one time I used Geek Squad it was with this all-in one PC (think of it as a PC iMac, the only reason I really used them is because I had no experience with all-in-ones and there was no easy way of taking the case off that I thought would go back together nicely (it was all plastic you had to snap apart) add with that a lost instruction manual and I had something I really didn't feel comfortable taking apart. Long story short they manged to break the case, didn't acknowledge that they broke it, than about a week later the motherboard died (the original problem was faulty RAM). They denied any involvement with it. Since then I haven't used Geek Squad. My favorite is how they tried to get me to pay $20 to install a PCI wireless card, I think plugging a cartridge into a SNES is harder than installing a PCI card.
Enough said, this was even accidental which ended up in 4 deaths, but ~250 were exposed to it. Think of how much more if a larger amount of radioactive sources could be used.
I'm not talking about someone making a nuclear weapon, but someone using radioactive waste with a small-ish explosive to disperse it. Or someone carrying a good amount of it loose on their person then infecting the healthcare system and anyone in the area. I mean, it would probably be more effective in the end than someone with an explosive belt.
The problem with nuclear power isn't really the fact that it produces toxic waste but rather (especially in a post 9/11, post USSR world) is the security aspect. The USA has enough space that we can effectively store a ton of nuclear waste for a very long time. However securing it is a challenge. There will always be unaccounted waste that could be in anyone's hands. You only need to look at some shocking photos from Russia to see that (see http://englishrussia.com/?p=2198 for an abandoned Soviet nuclear lighthouse). While the USA currently is a whole lot more stable than post-soviet Russia, it still raises a number of questions. While we might be able to secure it for 100 years, what happens after that? There are plenty of abandoned coal and hydro power plants in the world and abandoning nuclear plants is a bad idea. So how do you secure them fully to keep the waste out of the hands of people who wish to do harm while still providing for the fact that they -do- go obsolete after a time.
I think it would be great if somebody who was overweight came to me and said, sponsor me for each pound I lose, the proceed will go to the heart and stroke foundation. That's somebody getting up a and doing something. Having a bunch of geeks sit around and play computers isn't really that interesting.
...Because watching someone lose weight is much more exciting?
Social networks, rather less so. Shockingly, networks are subject to network effects. I can create a new account anywhere, anytime; but unless I can convince people to switch with me in decent numbers, I might as well not bother.
Yes, and thats one of the reasons why social networks have spread in popularity. However, Friendster was started in 2002, yet I don't know anyone who still goes on Friendster in the USA. Same with Myspace, Facebook has pretty much devoured all of Myspace's marketshare and most of those still on Myspace have a Facebook account.
Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives -- tax breaks or liability relief -- that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents
That is in a word, stupid. The thing about online services is, there is little requirements to entry and they are easy to change from one service to another. Its trivial for me to switch from Facebook to any number of different social networks. Same with search engines, etc. All it takes is simply replacing the URL. Regulation will only stifle innovation.
Because our society is based on the founding principles of equivalency. Therefore rather than giving people money for no real reason, we prefer them to "earn" it by doing something else. Generally your going to have a lot more people wanting to run a marathon than you would people building houses. The reason being is that there are a lot more people who A) feel like they accomplished something by running a marathon B) have running a marathon as one of their "life goals" and C) there are a lot more people who can run marathons than are competent in carpentry. While I myself, (like many geeks) am not good at running a marathon nor am I really that skilled with wood, a Final Fantasy marathon would be something enjoyable that I would do.
whereas the cost of human labor (i.e., of surgeons and nurses) will not.
Eventually though it might. Eventually automated machines can take care of a lot of stuff. While surgeries might have to have more human intervention, eventually all minor procedures and general care-taking could be done via machine. So while for the foreseeable future you would need a human surgeon, in the two weeks you are in the hospital you might not need hardly any other people to take care of you.
Seriously, China's "nanny state" protection is worse than Nintendo's censorship in the NES/SNES days.
The game has been modified to meet the Chinese government's demands before. Skeletons added to the game in an update overseas appeared with flesh in China.
So you can't see people's bones in China but a dead corpse is just fine? I mean, heck, back in the NES days you could play Castlevania and kill skeletons all day long and that was just fine with Nintendo's censorship.
Government objections have also prevented the China release of Wrath of the Lich King, the game's latest expansion. The expansion twice failed to gain government approval despite content revisions, possibly due to elements like the "death knight" character class, according to local media.
So lets see, the Chinese government won't let you have a class called a "death knight" while the government constantly celebrates the "great leap forward" which ended up killing a ton of its own citizens, celebrates the Chinese Civil War as some great achievement which ended up with millions dying. I really don't understand China's censorship, especially since this will give them lots of tax revenue.
However, 802.11n has a much larger range than 802.11g. So while you might not use all the speed, the fact that you can get a much better connection everywhere in your house makes it a better standard.
I would think that it would have to be, otherwise no one will use the real standard due to backwards compatibility. Most probably the draft version of N will be about the exact same as the final version of N.
Not really Vista but a machine needed to run Vista at decent quality (dual core CPU, 2 gigs of RAM+, large HD or SSD, etc) I mean, compared to a OLPC PC, my old development machine (Athlon 64, 1 gig of memory, 250 GB HDD with dual disk burners) is far more powerful than the OLPC computer.
Yes, I have one of the 701 4G EEEs with a customized Xubuntu on it that is ok, but seems to choke on multitasking but isn't too bad for singletasking. Then again that one comes with an Intel M rather than an Atom and 512 rather than 1 gig of memory. However, I did set up a 900 with an Atom CPU for a relative and using any sort of Linux save for those optimized for netbooks was really, really slow (though I am an impatient person, but still) however Ubuntu netbook remix was simi-usable (though they still don't understand how to use a flash drive on there...).
and finally, the simple principle of "I'll write an app that shows an HTML page'. Guess what - they did it already. It's called a BROWSER. If you want to raise money, put up a donation button or something.
That makes the flawed assumption that A) everyone who uses it is on an iPhone with service and an unlimited data-plan or B) everyone can connect to a wi-fi network. I have an iPod touch, not an iPhone, reading this while on a bus would be pretty much impossible without an app for me.
Depends, if you don't have a data plan I think though you still have to pay. I have a generic Samsung Propel (a767) and despite making a Java application that works just fine on the Java mobile emulators, I still can't get it to run on my phone when on a Micro SD card.
Sure, but its similarly unfair to say that Debian is 95% obsolete. To say that is to imply that either they have stopped work on it, or it isn't being actively maintained.
He fails to see that even the upgrading of a simple component like a library can cause all sorts of dependency issues. Not to mention that most distros follow a pattern of release, security updates, release where during the release is the only main changes in packages. This makes it a whole lot easier for maintainers to make sure nothing breaks.
Its no surprise that Arch makes it to the top being a rolling distro, that is, one that doesn't have "releases" like Ubuntu, Debian, etc. but rather upgrades the packages as it goes along. Similarly, Fedora and Ubuntu tend to release pretty often, Ubuntu releases every 6 months and Fedora releases pretty fast. Gentoo/Funtoo are very similar to Arch. Sabyon, Slackware, Debian and SuSE don't release new versions very often. I also find it odd that they are testing Debian stable rather than testing or unstable.
So? Yes, the OLPC computers -are- second rate. They are second rate because its nearly impossible to get anything more powerful/rugged than the OLPC without costing a lot more money. A lot of humanitarian work has to be second-rate otherwise it wouldn't get done. All that work done cheap so you can help more people. I'm sure that we would think the water tastes funny if we were to go to a village with newly installed clean water treatments.
Sure, poor kid will take whatever he can get, but he sure won't hesitate to get to something that runs Vista if he can possibly arrange it.
Sure, but its an unreachable dream. To put it another way, I've seen people driving Ferraris, I know for certain I can't afford a Ferrari, instead I drive a used generic SUV. Is the Ferrari faster, does it have a better interior, yes. Sure, if I can find a Ferrari for $5,000 I'll buy it, but I highly doubt that I will ever see one that cheap. Does that make me feel "second rate" that I can't afford a car that costs as much as my house? In some ways, sure. But you live within your means. If that means having to use a OLPC laptop rather than a quad core with 3 gigs of RAM, something tells me that the poor person in Africa really doesn't care.
It's vexing for users to switch from MacOS to Windows, or from Windows to MacOS, and both have long-established, entrenched interfaces that they are all *very* slow to change. Windows still has it's "X" window kill switch in the top right corner, etc.
Right, because we all know the villages in Africa must all be using Windows XP and every kid knows how to use them. Sure when marketing this to the first world, you must keep that in mind, but that isn't the goal of OLPC. The goal is to take children who have only heard of computers, perhaps have seen a computer, but don't know how to use one. You aren't taking the average guy who works with Windows at work, uses Windows at home and giving him the Sugar UI, you are taking a poor kid with no knowledge of computers and giving them a computer.
Sure, but in the end, only OSS can really take them out of poverty if they want to use technology as their primary way of making a living. Don't get me wrong, you can make money using MS's stuff, but only when you really have something else to offer. For example, a supermarket may use MS technologies to keep track of inventory, there a computer is a tool, not a primary means of living. If the goal is to teach children how to make a living with technology, F/OSS is the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, how many times has that happened that they actually fixed?
The one time I used Geek Squad it was with this all-in one PC (think of it as a PC iMac, the only reason I really used them is because I had no experience with all-in-ones and there was no easy way of taking the case off that I thought would go back together nicely (it was all plastic you had to snap apart) add with that a lost instruction manual and I had something I really didn't feel comfortable taking apart. Long story short they manged to break the case, didn't acknowledge that they broke it, than about a week later the motherboard died (the original problem was faulty RAM). They denied any involvement with it. Since then I haven't used Geek Squad. My favorite is how they tried to get me to pay $20 to install a PCI wireless card, I think plugging a cartridge into a SNES is harder than installing a PCI card.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
Enough said, this was even accidental which ended up in 4 deaths, but ~250 were exposed to it. Think of how much more if a larger amount of radioactive sources could be used.
I'm not talking about someone making a nuclear weapon, but someone using radioactive waste with a small-ish explosive to disperse it. Or someone carrying a good amount of it loose on their person then infecting the healthcare system and anyone in the area. I mean, it would probably be more effective in the end than someone with an explosive belt.
The problem with nuclear power isn't really the fact that it produces toxic waste but rather (especially in a post 9/11, post USSR world) is the security aspect. The USA has enough space that we can effectively store a ton of nuclear waste for a very long time. However securing it is a challenge. There will always be unaccounted waste that could be in anyone's hands. You only need to look at some shocking photos from Russia to see that (see http://englishrussia.com/?p=2198 for an abandoned Soviet nuclear lighthouse). While the USA currently is a whole lot more stable than post-soviet Russia, it still raises a number of questions. While we might be able to secure it for 100 years, what happens after that? There are plenty of abandoned coal and hydro power plants in the world and abandoning nuclear plants is a bad idea. So how do you secure them fully to keep the waste out of the hands of people who wish to do harm while still providing for the fact that they -do- go obsolete after a time.
You get it through... USB. Which is one of the reasons why eSATA won't ever take off. Though there are a few computers with powered eSATA connectors.
I think it would be great if somebody who was overweight came to me and said, sponsor me for each pound I lose, the proceed will go to the heart and stroke foundation. That's somebody getting up a and doing something. Having a bunch of geeks sit around and play computers isn't really that interesting.
Social networks, rather less so. Shockingly, networks are subject to network effects. I can create a new account anywhere, anytime; but unless I can convince people to switch with me in decent numbers, I might as well not bother.
Yes, and thats one of the reasons why social networks have spread in popularity. However, Friendster was started in 2002, yet I don't know anyone who still goes on Friendster in the USA. Same with Myspace, Facebook has pretty much devoured all of Myspace's marketshare and most of those still on Myspace have a Facebook account.
Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives -- tax breaks or liability relief -- that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents
That is in a word, stupid. The thing about online services is, there is little requirements to entry and they are easy to change from one service to another. Its trivial for me to switch from Facebook to any number of different social networks. Same with search engines, etc. All it takes is simply replacing the URL. Regulation will only stifle innovation.
Because our society is based on the founding principles of equivalency. Therefore rather than giving people money for no real reason, we prefer them to "earn" it by doing something else. Generally your going to have a lot more people wanting to run a marathon than you would people building houses. The reason being is that there are a lot more people who A) feel like they accomplished something by running a marathon B) have running a marathon as one of their "life goals" and C) there are a lot more people who can run marathons than are competent in carpentry. While I myself, (like many geeks) am not good at running a marathon nor am I really that skilled with wood, a Final Fantasy marathon would be something enjoyable that I would do.
whereas the cost of human labor (i.e., of surgeons and nurses) will not.
Eventually though it might. Eventually automated machines can take care of a lot of stuff. While surgeries might have to have more human intervention, eventually all minor procedures and general care-taking could be done via machine. So while for the foreseeable future you would need a human surgeon, in the two weeks you are in the hospital you might not need hardly any other people to take care of you.
The game has been modified to meet the Chinese government's demands before. Skeletons added to the game in an update overseas appeared with flesh in China.
So you can't see people's bones in China but a dead corpse is just fine? I mean, heck, back in the NES days you could play Castlevania and kill skeletons all day long and that was just fine with Nintendo's censorship.
Government objections have also prevented the China release of Wrath of the Lich King, the game's latest expansion. The expansion twice failed to gain government approval despite content revisions, possibly due to elements like the "death knight" character class, according to local media.
So lets see, the Chinese government won't let you have a class called a "death knight" while the government constantly celebrates the "great leap forward" which ended up killing a ton of its own citizens, celebrates the Chinese Civil War as some great achievement which ended up with millions dying. I really don't understand China's censorship, especially since this will give them lots of tax revenue.
Is it ironic that this news comes from an Australian site which the Australian government has expressed support for filtering of downloaded games ( http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/25/1821235 )?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but don't iPhones only support B/G wireless networks? That would mean you would be only getting the G signal...
However, 802.11n has a much larger range than 802.11g. So while you might not use all the speed, the fact that you can get a much better connection everywhere in your house makes it a better standard.
I would think that it would have to be, otherwise no one will use the real standard due to backwards compatibility. Most probably the draft version of N will be about the exact same as the final version of N.
OCRemix is always a good site to show people when they think that the only reason people ever make music is to make money.
Not really Vista but a machine needed to run Vista at decent quality (dual core CPU, 2 gigs of RAM+, large HD or SSD, etc) I mean, compared to a OLPC PC, my old development machine (Athlon 64, 1 gig of memory, 250 GB HDD with dual disk burners) is far more powerful than the OLPC computer.
Yes, I have one of the 701 4G EEEs with a customized Xubuntu on it that is ok, but seems to choke on multitasking but isn't too bad for singletasking. Then again that one comes with an Intel M rather than an Atom and 512 rather than 1 gig of memory. However, I did set up a 900 with an Atom CPU for a relative and using any sort of Linux save for those optimized for netbooks was really, really slow (though I am an impatient person, but still) however Ubuntu netbook remix was simi-usable (though they still don't understand how to use a flash drive on there...).
and finally, the simple principle of "I'll write an app that shows an HTML page'. Guess what - they did it already. It's called a BROWSER. If you want to raise money, put up a donation button or something.
That makes the flawed assumption that A) everyone who uses it is on an iPhone with service and an unlimited data-plan or B) everyone can connect to a wi-fi network. I have an iPod touch, not an iPhone, reading this while on a bus would be pretty much impossible without an app for me.
Depends, if you don't have a data plan I think though you still have to pay. I have a generic Samsung Propel (a767) and despite making a Java application that works just fine on the Java mobile emulators, I still can't get it to run on my phone when on a Micro SD card.
Sure, but its similarly unfair to say that Debian is 95% obsolete. To say that is to imply that either they have stopped work on it, or it isn't being actively maintained.
He fails to see that even the upgrading of a simple component like a library can cause all sorts of dependency issues. Not to mention that most distros follow a pattern of release, security updates, release where during the release is the only main changes in packages. This makes it a whole lot easier for maintainers to make sure nothing breaks.
Its no surprise that Arch makes it to the top being a rolling distro, that is, one that doesn't have "releases" like Ubuntu, Debian, etc. but rather upgrades the packages as it goes along. Similarly, Fedora and Ubuntu tend to release pretty often, Ubuntu releases every 6 months and Fedora releases pretty fast. Gentoo/Funtoo are very similar to Arch. Sabyon, Slackware, Debian and SuSE don't release new versions very often. I also find it odd that they are testing Debian stable rather than testing or unstable.
Sure, poor kid will take whatever he can get, but he sure won't hesitate to get to something that runs Vista if he can possibly arrange it.
Sure, but its an unreachable dream. To put it another way, I've seen people driving Ferraris, I know for certain I can't afford a Ferrari, instead I drive a used generic SUV. Is the Ferrari faster, does it have a better interior, yes. Sure, if I can find a Ferrari for $5,000 I'll buy it, but I highly doubt that I will ever see one that cheap. Does that make me feel "second rate" that I can't afford a car that costs as much as my house? In some ways, sure. But you live within your means. If that means having to use a OLPC laptop rather than a quad core with 3 gigs of RAM, something tells me that the poor person in Africa really doesn't care.
It's vexing for users to switch from MacOS to Windows, or from Windows to MacOS, and both have long-established, entrenched interfaces that they are all *very* slow to change. Windows still has it's "X" window kill switch in the top right corner, etc.
Right, because we all know the villages in Africa must all be using Windows XP and every kid knows how to use them. Sure when marketing this to the first world, you must keep that in mind, but that isn't the goal of OLPC. The goal is to take children who have only heard of computers, perhaps have seen a computer, but don't know how to use one. You aren't taking the average guy who works with Windows at work, uses Windows at home and giving him the Sugar UI, you are taking a poor kid with no knowledge of computers and giving them a computer.
Sure, but in the end, only OSS can really take them out of poverty if they want to use technology as their primary way of making a living. Don't get me wrong, you can make money using MS's stuff, but only when you really have something else to offer. For example, a supermarket may use MS technologies to keep track of inventory, there a computer is a tool, not a primary means of living. If the goal is to teach children how to make a living with technology, F/OSS is the way to go.