The specific example was installation of palm readers in ATMs. I don't remember anything about the RFID bit have a link? I don't see that it help, nor the fact you can forge the fingerprint readers easily with a rubber glove. Anything which is beyond the abilities and patience of a guy with a gun is a bad idea. What is needed is a PIN code with a maximum daily limit and a gradually extending authorisation system depending on the size of the transaction taking place. For example: if it's 100 your PIN is enough; if it's 1000 you also get a call and they use voice analysis; if it's 10,000 you have to visit a branch; if it's 100,000 the branch does serious authentication when you visit, checks your family is okay and so on.
As long as the cost of the authentication is a small fraction of the profit on the transaction and the loss through bad transactions is less than the cost to the criminals of the times they get caught, everything is okay.
Even from your own point of view, you should be able to see, that instead of discussing what's good about FreeBSD, the entire discussion has been redirected into a more boring rehash of the GPL arguments that are had on Slashdot regularly. There's some value to that; it might even be worth a separate posting; but if people get the impression that FreeBSD is all about licensing then, to be frank that's a negative for quite a few of them.
bonch had his post fully formed at the time the article was put up. This is clearly the main thing he has to say about FreeBSD. The thing which, from his point of view, is most important that we discuss. Do you really think that is because he's interested in FreeBSD? Have you considered that perhaps he sees FreeBSD as a competitor and would rather that it's launch discussion is designed to put off people who are using Linux in the hope that they try one of his employer's operating systems?
Personally, I think it would do lots of Linux people a whole load of good to learn more about *BSD, especially OpenBSD. However, they aren't going to do that if FreeBSD is defined by a bunch of people who are running an extremely negative agenda with little positive. Even if your main thing in life is hatred of the FSF and pushing FreeBSD is a means to that end, I think you can see that tonch is trolling in order to misdirect the conversation and supporting him is against your interests.
Biometrics; great; Like in Mexico, they will take your hand if you are lucky. If you aren't lucky, the bank will have some kind of life detector which will check if the hand is alive. In that case the gang just takes you along with your hand and then disposes of both together after the crime. With the exception of the situation where there's a guard actually checking that the ID system is being used right by a single person, what could be stupider than using a security token you can't change.
They explain this at the end of the article. One of the major factors is that there tax reductions for importing manufactured systems but not for components!!! Write to your MP today.
Excellent reason to move on to engines like DuckDuckGo (http://ddg.gg)...
I have DDG set as a default on some computers. I really like the privacy. The first few results are very often useful and interesting; especially the nice way the structure different results so you know which are official sites etc. This really shows there is space for and a need for a new search engine competitor. The fact is though that if it's something where you have to look a little further (e.g. a local business with a somewhat common name) it just doesn't cope. If you know that you can also feed through to Google (with a !g.. or images/news etc. with !i/!n etc.) then that lets you stick with it more easily. In the end, however, the main thing DDG does is remind me exactly how good Google is. I really hope they can come up with a new / better search engine which delivers results which are overall as good as Googles.
Anyone have suggestions for improving DDG's default results?
Why? People keep saying this, but I really don't see the key things that are needed for Google to have real Anti trust issues.
A) I haven't seen any evidence that Google's monopoly is illegally acquired. People keep forgetting this, when they compare Google with Microsoft. Microsoft is a fundamentally immoral organisation. They acquired their monopoly by using illegal tactics to block other competitors (to understand the basics, have a look at Judge Jackson's findings of facts). Many of the restrictions which should be imposed on Microsoft come not simply because they have a monopoly, but because they broke the law to get that monopoly. If it were anyone but Microsoft people would say "if you can't take the time then don't do the crime"; because it's Microsoft and they are rich somehow a whole bunch of apologists appear acting as if they did nothing wrong.
B) Google is easily substitutable; it's not like a computer where you need to pay money or even an operating system where you need to know how to reinstall. You just go to a different web page, or you even just type "Bing" into Google. There is only one thing which keeps people on Google's results rather than Bings. It's not even the quality as such, which, IMHO has been going downhill since they stopped treating keywords as having to be in the page. The thing is that people trust Google not to trick them. The results are honest and clear. This is Google's biggest competitive advantage, and if it turns out that Google is wrongly ignoring twitter, that will be an opening for another search engine that is more honest. Fortunately for Google, their competitor at present is Microsoft which is congenitally incapable of honesty. The stupidity of a company which gets caught copying it's results from Google and doctoring results in favour of it's own products in the first few months after launching a new search engine is astounding.
So; what is a search engine? A system which gives an opinion about which pages they would like to recommend based on your query string. If Google's opinion is that you are better with their data than Twitters that's fine for them to say. More importantly; if Google doesn't want to pay for access to Twitter's data. Or any other bunch of factors at Google's discretion then that is Google's decision. In order to change that you would need real evidence that Google broke the law in ways which greatly benefitted their search engine "monopoly".
They call it "intellectual property law" for a reason.
And that reason is deception and trickery. You use a meaning of the word "property" which includes virtual, temporary and non fundamental rights of control. Most people use "property" to mean things that are owned indefinitely, fully controlled (to the point of total destruction) and can be passed on and inherited for as long as they exist. By getting some people to use the word "property" in the way lawyers use it they trick less knowledgable people into thinking that these created rights are the same as basic property rights. That is deception.
What do you mean by IP (I assume "intellectual property")? Trademarks? Copyrights? Trade secrets? Patents? For each of these the answer to your question would be different.
For example, if I use your trademark in order to identify your product there is nothing you can do about that even if I say "ACME(TM) screws are a piece of garbage". On the other hand it makes absolutely no difference to your ability to protect your trademark and you don't need any contract or thoughts in place.
With trade secrets, I would see letting it get onto someone's device as similar to getting it into someone's brain. It shouldn't cause a problem as long as a) you have an ongoing business relationship with the person and b) a contract which protects the trade secret. If, however, you didn't have a contract you would be lost.
"Intellectual property" is a terrible term which groups together a bunch of unrelated things. It would be much better if you specified which parts you want to discuss and what you are afraid of. Grouping these things together just confuses people, which seems to be one of the main reasons that lawyers do it so often.
2 million is nothing. They planned to be at least one or even two orders of magnitude larger. So they're failing by their own criteria.
I'm sorry; but in that case their own criteria were unrealistic. They are the most successful wide scale open source based educational computer systems supplier.
Negroponte decided to befriend Microsoft. We all remember how it ended.
That was definitely one of the main things which really limited the potential of the project. A whole bunch of people left when they started to be Microsoft collaborators. I think, though, that it was an honest mistake. This is something that can be seen from they way that they didn't let Microsoft hijack the project and Microsoft ended up leaving. It's surprising how little people inside the tech industry fully understand the level of criminality and deception that Microsoft practices. On the edges and outside of tech this understanding is almost non-existent.
And now it repeats yet again, I can't wait to hear that OLPC tablets are going to run Win Phone OS.
Negroponte may not have known about Microsoft before, but now he's been screwed over once. He's not likely to want to repeat that.
I don't know if you can own information, but there is definitely a concept of secrets and privacy. Your own thoughts should be protected so that you can think freely without fear. By extension, it's reasonable to imagine that companies should be allowed to have trade secrets. Just as it would be upsetting if people set up a scaffolding half a mile away and directed a super long zoom lens into your bedroom; even if they did it from their own property; it's reasonable to allow companies some ability to protect trade secrets.
It seems to me that this, where you are restricting the right of someone to spy on information which is held primarily by the company, is on much stronger ground than copyright, where you try to restrict someone else from saying something which is already in their mind.
On the list of things keeping children in poor countries from getting an education, lack of laptops is way towards the bottom.
The thing which is missing is access to information and various tools. A computer is a good and cheap way to deliver information when textbooks aren't available and is a good and cheap way to deliver tools such as calculators; word puzzles and so on when those aren't available. These aren't really that much available in a standard base OS install that you would see, but OLPC provides a custom environment where they are available.
You'd get far more bang for your buck with desktops.
I suggest you have a look at the OLPC FAQ, which explains this stuff. Desktops require large amounts of continuous power, which just isn't available in the environment these places are designed for. Laptops with batteries and low power usage just work better here. These students often simply don't have a space where they could put a desktop anyway.
And most of all, every time I read about OLPC, it's always about the tech and the specs, not how it actually helps kids. That strikes me as techno navel-gazing at its worst.
You are reading about OLPC on Slashdot "techno navel-gazing at its worst" is our hobby. Perhaps you should go and read about this from the people who are actually doing it.
Until I actually read or see a story that details the benefits to real children (and please, feel free to send those links), I'll keep assuming that this is first and foremost about people finding ways to make themselves feel good about what they do.
The OLPC has a stories page on their front page. That's probably a good place to start. Beyond that they have a bunch of mailing lists where you will be able to find a whole load of stories. However, be aware that there probably hasn't been much reason to direct detailed information towards those like yourself who aren't involved or volunteering so you will find that you have to dig through all the individual country level lists in different languages. These seem to be more active than the top level ones.
Things may not have turned out to work exactly as they imagined, but OLPC promised to deliver cheap computers to schools in developing nations. It delivered cheap computers (over 2 million!!) to children in developing nations.
In the meantime, as a side effect OLPC created the netbook market and drove the creation of the devices which are now leading to leading to $50 tablets.
That seems pretty much like delivering to me. That they didn't deliver anything to you personally isn't their failure. The world does not owe you.
For very good reasons, most consumer protection laws don't allow this. If the customer says the system was broken when deliered you have to replace it. At that point, you need to provide enough support to find the power switch otherwise your costs will rocket. At that point, you are providing support no matter what.
Why would any government get involved in a $100+ tablet when they can get them for half, AND manufacture them under license locally, creating jobs in their own countries?
More "sophisticated" answer:
OLPC systems are designed for education. The hardware is designed to be tough enough to last years in a school environment where most hardware is designed to survive just beyond the guarantee period as long as you treat it right. The batteries are designed with different compromises; the don't charge to the maximum so they last much longer, but have a worse headline performance. The main operating system has the full source code under an open source license so the students are guaranteed to be able to modify it if they want to learn how it works. They come with a whole integrated anti-theft system which, combined with their abnormal hardware, makes them much more likely to stay with the school than other systems.
Overall this means that OLPC systems deliver much more for much less total cost. You or I may not know or understand this. We aren't specialists in educational systems. On the other hand education ministries have people who know exactly this stuff. The question then becomes; "why would an education minister buy anything else". The answer to that is either that they have different circumstances (OLPC is not really designed for use with rich students who can be expected to have their own computer at home) or, more often, that the politicians are in bed with big business.
Wtf... feeling a little holier-than-thou, PopeRatzo? You have no idea what his situation is.
"I'd donate to charity."
"That's not a big enough donation."
The guy isn't planning to donate. He wants to get access to their hardware. And he's acting as if it's a big favour for them ("in manufacturing it's all about volume") and ("Let first world developers help out the third world ones").
The truth, though, is that in manufacturing it's all about patents and support. On the patents side OLPC is getting away with selling these cheap as long as they don't stamp big time on the feet of the big players. Microsoft made that very clear last time around by setting out to destroy the whole program and by getting in the way of a bunch of the government OLPC programs. On the support side, OLPC has set up an organisation for supporting these for schools with lots of volunteer help. If they sell them to individuals that opens up a whole load more costs and they aren't able to apply volunteers because their volunteers are interested in education, not general computing
This could have been put more politely but currently_awake isn't willing to pay his way. Maybe he doesn't realise that, but two times price is not nearly enough and he shouldn't feel he's making a donation if he does get to buy it at that cost.
Of course freedom of speech allows you to say something that is so blatantly wrong, but it also allows me to correct you... In some countries there is some degree of freedom of speech but nothing like in the USA.
As an example, in France making a sexist or racist joke can lead to jail time. And France is not Myanmar. Canada has also strong laws regarding "hate propaganda" and antisemitism.
The thing about rights is that, even if they are fundamental, they can never be absolute. You have the "right" to live, but if a supernova destroys planet earth not even the supreme court of the USA will be able to enforce that right for you.
The right to free speech is impacted by a bunch of different things. In particular, following the experience of the second world war it was realised in a number of countries that the right to spread Nazi propaganda directly impacts on the right of people like Jews to life. For this reason many countries which stil recognise the right to freedom of speech end up with some limits on it. The classic example is that it is illegal to shout "fire" in a theatre in the USA unless there really is a fire.
In the USA the compromises are different from elsewhere, but they still exist. In fact, the USA is one of the worst countries in the world for the ability to access mainstream media with non standard political viewpoints. The speech which is recognised as most protected by the supreme court (political) is the one which just isn't available to poor people. Other countries, such as France, are far superior in this regard since they have laws which ensure that it is impossible to have the same concentration of media ownership and since they control the use of money in the political process.
That's not to say that the Nazi thing is right. It's just to say that it's not sufficient to say that those countries are worse than the USA in this regard.
When you say that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, you remind me of a child that does not understand that their poor neighbor can't afford a Xbox like they do.
Actually, it just strikes me that I know the meaning of certain words ("fundamental right") and you don't yet. A fundamental right is a very specific moral / legal / philosophical concept. The meaning is a right which comes from your existence as a human being. The idea is that this is a right that you have anyway, which can be protected by law, but which is not given to you by the law. A specific contrast is between freedom of speech, which is a fundamental right and copyright, which is a created right. A change of the law could take away your copyrights, but a change of the law to take away your freedom of speech would be a crime.
Fair enough; but just understand that a 10 year old dumbphone would be the ideal phone for you; probably better than most of the ones they produce today. You could probably support your needs; phone and contract included; for many years for the cost of a single iPhone. That just fundamentally means you aren't an interesting customer compared to people who want mobile computers and are willing to pay lots more.
To be honest I'm even on your side. I was very annoyed to find out that they don't make phones with one week standby any more.
Citation needed please. Not that I don't believe you, but it's probably an illegal agreement and I would like to follow up and/or at least use it as an example in later arguments.
I'm from the US to, but that doesn't mean that I'd move to Iran and start badmouthing the Iranian authorities.
That's not the question. The question is:
Your company sends you for a one year contract in Iran; you see your male neighbor rape another female neighbor. Then he reports her to the police. Now she, the rape victim, is going up for trial for adultery and likely to be stoned to death. Do you say it's wrong?
You never intended to badmouth the Iranians; You wanted to support their culture and be open; but now you are faced with the bad side of it. Are you really saying it's a better person who lets the rape victim be stoned to death without a word?
I'm inclined to think that the GP is trying some very subtle troll
I don't think so. American law generally is pretty clear that all of the rights in the constitution apply equally to foreigners and there has been a bunch of case law saying that you can't take away free speech from people just because they aren't citizens. This is a thing which quite a few Americans are rightly proud of. Recently there has been a bunch of outrageous stupidity with things like Guantanamo (indefinite detainment without trial for foreigners) and SOPA (taking away domains from foreigners) but mostly these are outright abuses of the law and the government there still tries to avoid such things getting to court because there is a good chance they would lose.
I think the grandparent was just, as he should pointing out that there are other countries, such as the USA (or Iceland or in fact the whole EU etc.), which are superior to Bahrain in that they support everybody's right to free speech even if they are just visiting.
No; but freedom of speech is not a right which suddenly disappears when you cross the Mexican border. This is a fundamental and ancient right which nobody has the right to take away from you no matter what. This man knew that he was putting himself at risk but when he "saw the government's brutal response to a fledgling revolution, he knew he couldn't stay neutral". The point where you start to criticise him for doing that is the point where you have become supporter of the oppressor.
People who stand up for freedom need our support; they already know that they are putting themselves at risk and don't need the words of a bunch of cowards afraid of their own shadows to tell them that.
A lot of Slashdotters believe this, but none are able to offer any evidence other than a gut feeling..
Tonnes of academic papers have been put up repeatedly by many on Slashdot. It's astounding what you patent shills think you can get away with asserting a if that makes it true. For a basic list of actual economic evidence you could start here
I am nowhere near the first person to post this stuff to Slashdot and I am calling you out as a liar, either by pretending to make an authoritative statement about something you know nothing about or, by simply knowing that what you said was dead wrong. It's one thing to claim that the evidence is no good. Another thing to deny that it exists.
The main point is that most of the juicy targets for these patents are IBM customers and/or have some license agreements with IBM. That makes it very difficult for IBM to start suing. Also IBM is making a whole load of money so they might suffer big time in any countersuits. Google on the other hand has no choice but to sue.
If Google does't make a special point of going after Microsoft parnters and even exclusive Microsoft customers at this point, when Microsoft already started going after Google's phone manufacturer customers, then Google will be seen as spineless and failing to get proper shareholder value from their patent investments. That's a situation which pretty much suits IBM which has been completely cheated by Microsoft and needs to get revenge.
Apart from that, IBM will of course get an automatic license for these patents and probably has five other patents covering each area in these patents so loses absolutely nothing from the sale.
Time to start Migrating off Microsoft products to things belonging to neutral vendors (I'm not sure I would go for Google personally; actually IBM might well be the best place to buy from..). I certainly wouldn't want to be an exclusive Microsoft shop in the next few years. A bit like being the Czech republic before the second world war really. It doesn't matter who wins, you know you are going to suffer.
Europe is actually 4.01 million square miles (or 3.9 from other sources based on different definitions of the border of Europe and Asia). Your calculation excludes Russia West of the Urals which is a huge area.
Slashdot Mirror
The specific example was installation of palm readers in ATMs. I don't remember anything about the RFID bit have a link? I don't see that it help, nor the fact you can forge the fingerprint readers easily with a rubber glove. Anything which is beyond the abilities and patience of a guy with a gun is a bad idea. What is needed is a PIN code with a maximum daily limit and a gradually extending authorisation system depending on the size of the transaction taking place. For example: if it's 100 your PIN is enough; if it's 1000 you also get a call and they use voice analysis; if it's 10,000 you have to visit a branch; if it's 100,000 the branch does serious authentication when you visit, checks your family is okay and so on.
As long as the cost of the authentication is a small fraction of the profit on the transaction and the loss through bad transactions is less than the cost to the criminals of the times they get caught, everything is okay.
Even from your own point of view, you should be able to see, that instead of discussing what's good about FreeBSD, the entire discussion has been redirected into a more boring rehash of the GPL arguments that are had on Slashdot regularly. There's some value to that; it might even be worth a separate posting; but if people get the impression that FreeBSD is all about licensing then, to be frank that's a negative for quite a few of them.
bonch had his post fully formed at the time the article was put up. This is clearly the main thing he has to say about FreeBSD. The thing which, from his point of view, is most important that we discuss. Do you really think that is because he's interested in FreeBSD? Have you considered that perhaps he sees FreeBSD as a competitor and would rather that it's launch discussion is designed to put off people who are using Linux in the hope that they try one of his employer's operating systems?
Personally, I think it would do lots of Linux people a whole load of good to learn more about *BSD, especially OpenBSD. However, they aren't going to do that if FreeBSD is defined by a bunch of people who are running an extremely negative agenda with little positive. Even if your main thing in life is hatred of the FSF and pushing FreeBSD is a means to that end, I think you can see that tonch is trolling in order to misdirect the conversation and supporting him is against your interests.
Biometrics; great; Like in Mexico, they will take your hand if you are lucky. If you aren't lucky, the bank will have some kind of life detector which will check if the hand is alive. In that case the gang just takes you along with your hand and then disposes of both together after the crime. With the exception of the situation where there's a guard actually checking that the ID system is being used right by a single person, what could be stupider than using a security token you can't change.
Not economical?
They explain this at the end of the article. One of the major factors is that there tax reductions for importing manufactured systems but not for components!!! Write to your MP today.
Excellent reason to move on to engines like DuckDuckGo (http://ddg.gg)...
I have DDG set as a default on some computers. I really like the privacy. The first few results are very often useful and interesting; especially the nice way the structure different results so you know which are official sites etc. This really shows there is space for and a need for a new search engine competitor. The fact is though that if it's something where you have to look a little further (e.g. a local business with a somewhat common name) it just doesn't cope. If you know that you can also feed through to Google (with a !g .. or images/news etc. with !i/!n etc.) then that lets you stick with it more easily. In the end, however, the main thing DDG does is remind me exactly how good Google is. I really hope they can come up with a new / better search engine which delivers results which are overall as good as Googles.
Anyone have suggestions for improving DDG's default results?
P.S. Please make links clickable when posting;
Kind of an anti trust issue here...
Why? People keep saying this, but I really don't see the key things that are needed for Google to have real Anti trust issues.
A) I haven't seen any evidence that Google's monopoly is illegally acquired. People keep forgetting this, when they compare Google with Microsoft. Microsoft is a fundamentally immoral organisation. They acquired their monopoly by using illegal tactics to block other competitors (to understand the basics, have a look at Judge Jackson's findings of facts). Many of the restrictions which should be imposed on Microsoft come not simply because they have a monopoly, but because they broke the law to get that monopoly. If it were anyone but Microsoft people would say "if you can't take the time then don't do the crime"; because it's Microsoft and they are rich somehow a whole bunch of apologists appear acting as if they did nothing wrong.
B) Google is easily substitutable; it's not like a computer where you need to pay money or even an operating system where you need to know how to reinstall. You just go to a different web page, or you even just type "Bing" into Google. There is only one thing which keeps people on Google's results rather than Bings. It's not even the quality as such, which, IMHO has been going downhill since they stopped treating keywords as having to be in the page. The thing is that people trust Google not to trick them. The results are honest and clear. This is Google's biggest competitive advantage, and if it turns out that Google is wrongly ignoring twitter, that will be an opening for another search engine that is more honest. Fortunately for Google, their competitor at present is Microsoft which is congenitally incapable of honesty. The stupidity of a company which gets caught copying it's results from Google and doctoring results in favour of it's own products in the first few months after launching a new search engine is astounding.
So; what is a search engine? A system which gives an opinion about which pages they would like to recommend based on your query string. If Google's opinion is that you are better with their data than Twitters that's fine for them to say. More importantly; if Google doesn't want to pay for access to Twitter's data. Or any other bunch of factors at Google's discretion then that is Google's decision. In order to change that you would need real evidence that Google broke the law in ways which greatly benefitted their search engine "monopoly".
They call it "intellectual property law" for a reason.
And that reason is deception and trickery. You use a meaning of the word "property" which includes virtual, temporary and non fundamental rights of control. Most people use "property" to mean things that are owned indefinitely, fully controlled (to the point of total destruction) and can be passed on and inherited for as long as they exist. By getting some people to use the word "property" in the way lawyers use it they trick less knowledgable people into thinking that these created rights are the same as basic property rights. That is deception.
What do you mean by IP (I assume "intellectual property")? Trademarks? Copyrights? Trade secrets? Patents? For each of these the answer to your question would be different.
For example, if I use your trademark in order to identify your product there is nothing you can do about that even if I say "ACME(TM) screws are a piece of garbage". On the other hand it makes absolutely no difference to your ability to protect your trademark and you don't need any contract or thoughts in place.
With trade secrets, I would see letting it get onto someone's device as similar to getting it into someone's brain. It shouldn't cause a problem as long as a) you have an ongoing business relationship with the person and b) a contract which protects the trade secret. If, however, you didn't have a contract you would be lost.
"Intellectual property" is a terrible term which groups together a bunch of unrelated things. It would be much better if you specified which parts you want to discuss and what you are afraid of. Grouping these things together just confuses people, which seems to be one of the main reasons that lawyers do it so often.
2 million is nothing. They planned to be at least one or even two orders of magnitude larger. So they're failing by their own criteria.
I'm sorry; but in that case their own criteria were unrealistic. They are the most successful wide scale open source based educational computer systems supplier.
Negroponte decided to befriend Microsoft. We all remember how it ended.
That was definitely one of the main things which really limited the potential of the project. A whole bunch of people left when they started to be Microsoft collaborators. I think, though, that it was an honest mistake. This is something that can be seen from they way that they didn't let Microsoft hijack the project and Microsoft ended up leaving. It's surprising how little people inside the tech industry fully understand the level of criminality and deception that Microsoft practices. On the edges and outside of tech this understanding is almost non-existent.
And now it repeats yet again, I can't wait to hear that OLPC tablets are going to run Win Phone OS.
Negroponte may not have known about Microsoft before, but now he's been screwed over once. He's not likely to want to repeat that.
You can not own the information..
I don't know if you can own information, but there is definitely a concept of secrets and privacy. Your own thoughts should be protected so that you can think freely without fear. By extension, it's reasonable to imagine that companies should be allowed to have trade secrets. Just as it would be upsetting if people set up a scaffolding half a mile away and directed a super long zoom lens into your bedroom; even if they did it from their own property; it's reasonable to allow companies some ability to protect trade secrets.
It seems to me that this, where you are restricting the right of someone to spy on information which is held primarily by the company, is on much stronger ground than copyright, where you try to restrict someone else from saying something which is already in their mind.
On the list of things keeping children in poor countries from getting an education, lack of laptops is way towards the bottom.
The thing which is missing is access to information and various tools. A computer is a good and cheap way to deliver information when textbooks aren't available and is a good and cheap way to deliver tools such as calculators; word puzzles and so on when those aren't available. These aren't really that much available in a standard base OS install that you would see, but OLPC provides a custom environment where they are available.
You'd get far more bang for your buck with desktops.
I suggest you have a look at the OLPC FAQ, which explains this stuff. Desktops require large amounts of continuous power, which just isn't available in the environment these places are designed for. Laptops with batteries and low power usage just work better here. These students often simply don't have a space where they could put a desktop anyway.
And most of all, every time I read about OLPC, it's always about the tech and the specs, not how it actually helps kids. That strikes me as techno navel-gazing at its worst.
You are reading about OLPC on Slashdot "techno navel-gazing at its worst" is our hobby. Perhaps you should go and read about this from the people who are actually doing it.
Until I actually read or see a story that details the benefits to real children (and please, feel free to send those links), I'll keep assuming that this is first and foremost about people finding ways to make themselves feel good about what they do.
The OLPC has a stories page on their front page. That's probably a good place to start. Beyond that they have a bunch of mailing lists where you will be able to find a whole load of stories. However, be aware that there probably hasn't been much reason to direct detailed information towards those like yourself who aren't involved or volunteering so you will find that you have to dig through all the individual country level lists in different languages. These seem to be more active than the top level ones.
Things may not have turned out to work exactly as they imagined, but OLPC promised to deliver cheap computers to schools in developing nations. It delivered cheap computers (over 2 million!!) to children in developing nations.
In the meantime, as a side effect OLPC created the netbook market and drove the creation of the devices which are now leading to leading to $50 tablets.
That seems pretty much like delivering to me. That they didn't deliver anything to you personally isn't their failure. The world does not owe you.
Then sell it with no support whatsoever.
For very good reasons, most consumer protection laws don't allow this. If the customer says the system was broken when deliered you have to replace it. At that point, you need to provide enough support to find the power switch otherwise your costs will rocket. At that point, you are providing support no matter what.
Why would any government get involved in a $100+ tablet when they can get them for half, AND manufacture them under license locally, creating jobs in their own countries?
More "sophisticated" answer:
OLPC systems are designed for education. The hardware is designed to be tough enough to last years in a school environment where most hardware is designed to survive just beyond the guarantee period as long as you treat it right. The batteries are designed with different compromises; the don't charge to the maximum so they last much longer, but have a worse headline performance. The main operating system has the full source code under an open source license so the students are guaranteed to be able to modify it if they want to learn how it works. They come with a whole integrated anti-theft system which, combined with their abnormal hardware, makes them much more likely to stay with the school than other systems.
Overall this means that OLPC systems deliver much more for much less total cost. You or I may not know or understand this. We aren't specialists in educational systems. On the other hand education ministries have people who know exactly this stuff. The question then becomes; "why would an education minister buy anything else". The answer to that is either that they have different circumstances (OLPC is not really designed for use with rich students who can be expected to have their own computer at home) or, more often, that the politicians are in bed with big business.
You're a regular prince.
Wtf... feeling a little holier-than-thou, PopeRatzo? You have no idea what his situation is. "I'd donate to charity." "That's not a big enough donation."
The guy isn't planning to donate. He wants to get access to their hardware. And he's acting as if it's a big favour for them ("in manufacturing it's all about volume") and ("Let first world developers help out the third world ones").
The truth, though, is that in manufacturing it's all about patents and support. On the patents side OLPC is getting away with selling these cheap as long as they don't stamp big time on the feet of the big players. Microsoft made that very clear last time around by setting out to destroy the whole program and by getting in the way of a bunch of the government OLPC programs. On the support side, OLPC has set up an organisation for supporting these for schools with lots of volunteer help. If they sell them to individuals that opens up a whole load more costs and they aren't able to apply volunteers because their volunteers are interested in education, not general computing
This could have been put more politely but currently_awake isn't willing to pay his way. Maybe he doesn't realise that, but two times price is not nearly enough and he shouldn't feel he's making a donation if he does get to buy it at that cost.
Of course freedom of speech allows you to say something that is so blatantly wrong, but it also allows me to correct you... In some countries there is some degree of freedom of speech but nothing like in the USA.
As an example, in France making a sexist or racist joke can lead to jail time. And France is not Myanmar. Canada has also strong laws regarding "hate propaganda" and antisemitism.
The thing about rights is that, even if they are fundamental, they can never be absolute. You have the "right" to live, but if a supernova destroys planet earth not even the supreme court of the USA will be able to enforce that right for you.
The right to free speech is impacted by a bunch of different things. In particular, following the experience of the second world war it was realised in a number of countries that the right to spread Nazi propaganda directly impacts on the right of people like Jews to life. For this reason many countries which stil recognise the right to freedom of speech end up with some limits on it. The classic example is that it is illegal to shout "fire" in a theatre in the USA unless there really is a fire.
In the USA the compromises are different from elsewhere, but they still exist. In fact, the USA is one of the worst countries in the world for the ability to access mainstream media with non standard political viewpoints. The speech which is recognised as most protected by the supreme court (political) is the one which just isn't available to poor people. Other countries, such as France, are far superior in this regard since they have laws which ensure that it is impossible to have the same concentration of media ownership and since they control the use of money in the political process.
That's not to say that the Nazi thing is right. It's just to say that it's not sufficient to say that those countries are worse than the USA in this regard.
When you say that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, you remind me of a child that does not understand that their poor neighbor can't afford a Xbox like they do.
Actually, it just strikes me that I know the meaning of certain words ("fundamental right") and you don't yet. A fundamental right is a very specific moral / legal / philosophical concept. The meaning is a right which comes from your existence as a human being. The idea is that this is a right that you have anyway, which can be protected by law, but which is not given to you by the law. A specific contrast is between freedom of speech, which is a fundamental right and copyright, which is a created right. A change of the law could take away your copyrights, but a change of the law to take away your freedom of speech would be a crime.
Fair enough; but just understand that a 10 year old dumbphone would be the ideal phone for you; probably better than most of the ones they produce today. You could probably support your needs; phone and contract included; for many years for the cost of a single iPhone. That just fundamentally means you aren't an interesting customer compared to people who want mobile computers and are willing to pay lots more.
To be honest I'm even on your side. I was very annoyed to find out that they don't make phones with one week standby any more.
Citation needed please. Not that I don't believe you, but it's probably an illegal agreement and I would like to follow up and/or at least use it as an example in later arguments.
I'm from the US to, but that doesn't mean that I'd move to Iran and start badmouthing the Iranian authorities.
That's not the question. The question is:
You never intended to badmouth the Iranians; You wanted to support their culture and be open; but now you are faced with the bad side of it. Are you really saying it's a better person who lets the rape victim be stoned to death without a word?
I'm inclined to think that the GP is trying some very subtle troll
I don't think so. American law generally is pretty clear that all of the rights in the constitution apply equally to foreigners and there has been a bunch of case law saying that you can't take away free speech from people just because they aren't citizens. This is a thing which quite a few Americans are rightly proud of. Recently there has been a bunch of outrageous stupidity with things like Guantanamo (indefinite detainment without trial for foreigners) and SOPA (taking away domains from foreigners) but mostly these are outright abuses of the law and the government there still tries to avoid such things getting to court because there is a good chance they would lose.
I think the grandparent was just, as he should pointing out that there are other countries, such as the USA (or Iceland or in fact the whole EU etc.), which are superior to Bahrain in that they support everybody's right to free speech even if they are just visiting.
He's not in the USA.
No; but freedom of speech is not a right which suddenly disappears when you cross the Mexican border. This is a fundamental and ancient right which nobody has the right to take away from you no matter what. This man knew that he was putting himself at risk but when he "saw the government's brutal response to a fledgling revolution, he knew he couldn't stay neutral". The point where you start to criticise him for doing that is the point where you have become supporter of the oppressor.
People who stand up for freedom need our support; they already know that they are putting themselves at risk and don't need the words of a bunch of cowards afraid of their own shadows to tell them that.
A lot of Slashdotters believe this, but none are able to offer any evidence other than a gut feeling..
Tonnes of academic papers have been put up repeatedly by many on Slashdot. It's astounding what you patent shills think you can get away with asserting a if that makes it true. For a basic list of actual economic evidence you could start here
I am nowhere near the first person to post this stuff to Slashdot and I am calling you out as a liar, either by pretending to make an authoritative statement about something you know nothing about or, by simply knowing that what you said was dead wrong. It's one thing to claim that the evidence is no good. Another thing to deny that it exists.
How would climber's sunglasses, which normally protect the nose and shield the eyes, work for this?
Why would they sell them to Google?
The main point is that most of the juicy targets for these patents are IBM customers and/or have some license agreements with IBM. That makes it very difficult for IBM to start suing. Also IBM is making a whole load of money so they might suffer big time in any countersuits. Google on the other hand has no choice but to sue.
If Google does't make a special point of going after Microsoft parnters and even exclusive Microsoft customers at this point, when Microsoft already started going after Google's phone manufacturer customers, then Google will be seen as spineless and failing to get proper shareholder value from their patent investments. That's a situation which pretty much suits IBM which has been completely cheated by Microsoft and needs to get revenge.
Apart from that, IBM will of course get an automatic license for these patents and probably has five other patents covering each area in these patents so loses absolutely nothing from the sale.
Time to start Migrating off Microsoft products to things belonging to neutral vendors (I'm not sure I would go for Google personally; actually IBM might well be the best place to buy from..). I certainly wouldn't want to be an exclusive Microsoft shop in the next few years. A bit like being the Czech republic before the second world war really. It doesn't matter who wins, you know you are going to suffer.
Europe is actually 4.01 million square miles (or 3.9 from other sources based on different definitions of the border of Europe and Asia). Your calculation excludes Russia West of the Urals which is a huge area.