A quick search showed most to be much more expensive.
Complete bullshit. No doubt you're looking at nearly brand new units that run circles around the OLPC to try and prove a false point. Here you go. "Buy It Now": $320 shipped, 800MHz/40GB Toughbook $195 shipped, 700MHz/20GB Toughbook Or you can get them much, much cheaper if you're willing to try bidding on some: 1 2 3 4 5 -- Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 15.6). That's an awfully long string of characters
25% longer battery life isn't "significant" especially when many people just buy a second battery. Not to mention you'll get a lot more done in that 3 hours than you will on an OLPC in 4.
And old Panasonic Toughbook would handle far, far more abuse, and be quite a lot cheaper, while still outperforming the XO. Plus it doesn't look like your notebook is a watermelon someone accidentally sat on...
Since when did the leader of a country threatening to wipe an ally of the United States off the map not constitute a real threat?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't "the leader of" any country, he just plays one on TV.
What's more, even if he WAS the actual political leader of Iran, that wouldn't give him any military power at all. Outside of the US, no other country has the position of political and military leader combined, with perhaps the exception of Pakistan, with Musharif currently violating their constitution and maintaing both positions.
Every time some US Representative goes out on the campaign trail, and expouses his support for going to war with some country or other, should that count as a real threat from the US?
it's small, portable, usable under direct sunlight, wireless, runs Linux
All things very trivially easy to find in an older, normal laptop.
and has great battery life.
It has very low power consumption, but also a tiny battery due to cost, so battery life isn't significantly better than common notebooks, unless you plan on spending more money, and upgrading the battery yourself.
the availability of native domesticable plant and animal species -- which is the one resource that matters most. The Eurasian continent had them, the Americas, Africa and Australia did not.
A specious argument that sells books. African and Asian elephants put horses and bulls to shame. America had Buffalo, which would later be domesticated by european settlers, until they became rare, but are still used in less developed countries. The author even mentions Zebras with some bullcrap claim that because they are a bit more aggressive than horses, they can't be restrained (see: bridle and bit) and eventually tamed.
As for Australia... Now, I don't know if kangaroos can be made to pull a plow, but I'd sure like to see it!
What choice do I have when my 15 Month old is monopolizing the main desktop at home?
A slightly obsolete computer, that will run Linux just fine, is absolutely dirt cheap, and you can pretty easily install the exact software programs that normally run on the OLPC if you want them.
Unless you are in a situation where you have absolutely no infrastructure (electricity, internet, etc.), I can't see the benefit to getting an OX/OLPC.
its whether you can create precise enough targeting equipment.
At 32GHz, it's not like aiming current equipment is like putting up a TV antenna.
A radio signal might be more of a splatter, but at least if you point it "over there" with enough power behind it, it will get there.
That "enough power" part has been a big issue for a very long time.
"Oh sorry, we can't get the data today because its cloudy"
They aren't going to put receivers in downtown London. There are more than enough deserts around the planet to ensure nice clear reception 95%+ of the time without going to a secondary receiving location, which won't be nearly as difficult to set-up with lasers as it is currently with low frequency RF requiring huge antenna (65m dishes).
Back onto the radio front, we have Voyager 1 which is 15 billion miles away, proven with radio, that would seem good enough for me.
See above comments above about wasting lots of power, and requiring 65m antenna for very slow, very iffy communications.
It may improve bandwidth so we can transfer more data, but I'd say we're doing pretty good in that department already, I'm not sure what a HDTV feed from Mars would give us.
"Today's spacecraft do 'onboard processing', choosing some data to send and discarding the rest. But in the long term a different solution is needed."
"To download all their data these satellites would have to transmit at 100 gigabits a second. But current systems are hundreds of times too slow."
Do you remember hardcards, or hard disk drives that plugged straight into the ISA slot?
I have a 20MB hardcard salvaged from a 286 in my closet, why? Interested? I'll throw in an unopened Tandy CoCo-80 + monitor... I'd even consider letting go of my Qume 109 terminal, in all it's amber glory. And for the first time ever, I'm also offering my 33MHz Compaq 486 Laptop, with 7" 16 color screen and built-in trackball that puts modern track-pads to shame (NOTE: no floppy, CD, modem, USB, or ethernet).
China doesn't have to "go to war" - just dump a trillion bucks in USD on the currency market,
No chance. That's not something you could do quietly, and as soon as the US Gov gets wind of it, expect an emergency freezing of assets. It could only work if China had the hard currency. With US assets and Bonds, they need the US government to actively agree with what they are doing. Refusing to let a large creditor cash-out all at once wouldn't spook other investors. Of course, the prospect of China trying to divest would weaken the dollar, but not dramatically.
Besites, that would be an extremely dramatic move, and almost inconceivable in lieu of a near standoff between the two. Not to mention that China's currency is directly tied to US currency, and would hurt them every bit as dramatically. And never mind the significant US holdings in China.
No. With MPEG-2 and perhaps MPEG-4, 1080 files will be playable, but there's absolutely no chance of playing WMV or h.264 files at 1080 on this system. In fact, I doubt it could keep up with WMV/h.264 files even at 720.
If the US decides to show it can liquidate the US bonds held by another state who else is going to want to hold US bonds? Ever?
Everyone. This is ONLY if the US and China are nearing war. Not only would every other country understand and accept such a move, it would be horrendously ignorant and irresponsible NOT to do so.
In fact, I can't see how you could avoid doing so, at least effectively. If China is at war with the US, should Federal Reserve banks continue to honor their Bonds, and send hundreds of millions of US dollars to China, while they're at war with us? You really think that would ever happen?
Sovereignty means the country establishes the rules within their boundaries. If the US doesn't like it, they can always go to war with China.
Yahoo is a US company. They can't have the foreign branch of their company murdering labor organizers, supporting communist regimes, and similar activities that would be illegal in the US. If Yahoo doesn't like following US law, they can exit the country entirely.
China immediately dumps their vast US currency holdings on the open market, the US dollar becomes (even more) worthless within 1 minute due to programmed trading, etc.
You really think the DoD is completely incompetent? As soon as war with China becomes the vaguest of possibilities, all US assets held by the Chinese will be frozen, and probably auctioned off to some US company. All the US Bonds they hold will be liquidated. And unlike normal modes of forgiving debt, it won't spook any other lenders at all, so the dollar will remain strong, and perhaps increase, due to having less debt, and the prospect of a large-scale war, which always leads to an economic boom.
China and Japan (and pretty much the rest of the world) are already looking to divest themselves of their reserves of US dollars,
That's crap. Divestment is happening on a very small scale. The euro is the first real alternative to appear, and it has no track record, and in its current form, doesn't make a good reserve currency at all, as EU control over member countries is very, very weak. They can't really stop one country from horrible practices that might devalue the currency, and entire countries can and will just opt-out of the system should the Euro start to fall.
The USD will continue to be used for oil, and many other international goods, which prevent the dollar from losing its value. The falling dollar right now is really one of the issues you'd find more often in a pyramid scheme, as short-term investors just get terribly spooked over short-term problems and negative projections, and horribly exaggerate both up and down swings.
If you insure a car and then let illegals use it, then you'd be liable for any damage.
Not true at all. Most insurance plans allow for 3rd parties to drive your on occasion. It would be very difficult to prove that you KNOW someone is illegal. In absence of that proof, insurance companies would have to fulfill their obligation.
The issue is that (in this state at least) illegal immigrants can't get a driver's license. Because they can't get a driver's license they can't get insurance. Because they can't get insurance, they can't register their vehicles.
It's trivially easy for a 3rd party, who is legal, to license and insure a vehicle, and allow someone else to drive it.
Netflix streaming scales to the quality of your connection, just like Slingbox. The better your connection, the better it looks.
In case you're trying to imply something, I can assure you I watched the highest quality versions Netflix has available. I do have a slower connection, but it's quite easy to chose the highest quality version instead and let it download in non-real-time.
The fact that you didn't notice any quality problems says either you just watched a few movies that were overly easy to encode, or you just didn't notice the noise, grainyness, etc., etc.
And like I said, anime suffers horribly. Go watch Ninja Scroll.
All I can say is getting LINUX to recognize sensors on various motherboards is a pain in the Ass.
First off, this isn't for sensors on the motherboard, but the likes of PSUs and water-cooling systems that don't currently have sensors, or at least not standard.
Second, you're absolutely right that reading sensors via the Linux means is a nightmare. Setting myself up for a troll mod here, I know, but I have to say the *BSDs have had the sensor problem all sewn up, for quite a while now. 'sysctl -a hw' properly lists sensor info for every motherboard I've tried it on (Some systems OpenBSD, some FreeBSD).
Even on my Linux system, after failing miserably in the long and messy attempt to get lm_sensors working right, I just installed xmbmon on Linux (it's a standalone program, designed for FreeBSD quite a while back) and in about 10 seconds I got all the sensor data, without the hassle.
A human operator could also make the robot turn its gaze towards a child or wave as they went away.
So it isn't just a robot, artificially intelligent enough to fool toddlers. It's something of a human-controlled puppet, with them telling it to do more advanced things than it could figure out on its own.
Slashdot Mirror
Complete bullshit. No doubt you're looking at nearly brand new units that run circles around the OLPC to try and prove a false point. Here you go. "Buy It Now":
$320 shipped, 800MHz/40GB Toughbook
$195 shipped, 700MHz/20GB Toughbook
Or you can get them much, much cheaper if you're willing to try bidding on some:
1
2
3
4
5
--
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 15.6). That's an awfully long string of characters
25% longer battery life isn't "significant" especially when many people just buy a second battery. Not to mention you'll get a lot more done in that 3 hours than you will on an OLPC in 4.
And old Panasonic Toughbook would handle far, far more abuse, and be quite a lot cheaper, while still outperforming the XO. Plus it doesn't look like your notebook is a watermelon someone accidentally sat on...
There are tons of smaller notebooks out there. Of course you can't be bothered to spend 60 seconds searching eBay.
No. 3 hour battery life is quite common. And those are very optimistic figures.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't "the leader of" any country, he just plays one on TV.
What's more, even if he WAS the actual political leader of Iran, that wouldn't give him any military power at all. Outside of the US, no other country has the position of political and military leader combined, with perhaps the exception of Pakistan, with Musharif currently violating their constitution and maintaing both positions.
Every time some US Representative goes out on the campaign trail, and expouses his support for going to war with some country or other, should that count as a real threat from the US?
Difference species, same family. Not that big a difference. And they certainly exist in developing countries.
http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/698125.html
Go troll elsewhere.
All things very trivially easy to find in an older, normal laptop.
It has very low power consumption, but also a tiny battery due to cost, so battery life isn't significantly better than common notebooks, unless you plan on spending more money, and upgrading the battery yourself.
Gah! First time around I didn't notice that "10" was meant to include the conversion from bits to bytes.
A specious argument that sells books. African and Asian elephants put horses and bulls to shame. America had Buffalo, which would later be domesticated by european settlers, until they became rare, but are still used in less developed countries. The author even mentions Zebras with some bullcrap claim that because they are a bit more aggressive than horses, they can't be restrained (see: bridle and bit) and eventually tamed.
As for Australia... Now, I don't know if kangaroos can be made to pull a plow, but I'd sure like to see it!
Really? It looks like a flattened watermelon to me...
A slightly obsolete computer, that will run Linux just fine, is absolutely dirt cheap, and you can pretty easily install the exact software programs that normally run on the OLPC if you want them.
Unless you are in a situation where you have absolutely no infrastructure (electricity, internet, etc.), I can't see the benefit to getting an OX/OLPC.
What's wrong with that? Windows just wants to rock and roll all night, and party ever-ry day.
At 32GHz, it's not like aiming current equipment is like putting up a TV antenna.
That "enough power" part has been a big issue for a very long time.
They aren't going to put receivers in downtown London. There are more than enough deserts around the planet to ensure nice clear reception 95%+ of the time without going to a secondary receiving location, which won't be nearly as difficult to set-up with lasers as it is currently with low frequency RF requiring huge antenna (65m dishes).
See above comments above about wasting lots of power, and requiring 65m antenna for very slow, very iffy communications.
"Today's spacecraft do 'onboard processing', choosing some data to send and discarding the rest. But in the long term a different solution is needed."
"To download all their data these satellites would have to transmit at 100 gigabits a second. But current systems are hundreds of times too slow."
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/dsn-02e.html
"Laser transmission also saves power"
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/laser_dsn_020725.html
I have a 20MB hardcard salvaged from a 286 in my closet, why? Interested? I'll throw in an unopened Tandy CoCo-80 + monitor... I'd even consider letting go of my Qume 109 terminal, in all it's amber glory. And for the first time ever, I'm also offering my 33MHz Compaq 486 Laptop, with 7" 16 color screen and built-in trackball that puts modern track-pads to shame (NOTE: no floppy, CD, modem, USB, or ethernet).
Let's see:
2^10 = 1024
2^8 = 256
1024/256 = 4
10 is the new 4!
No chance. That's not something you could do quietly, and as soon as the US Gov gets wind of it, expect an emergency freezing of assets. It could only work if China had the hard currency. With US assets and Bonds, they need the US government to actively agree with what they are doing. Refusing to let a large creditor cash-out all at once wouldn't spook other investors. Of course, the prospect of China trying to divest would weaken the dollar, but not dramatically.
Besites, that would be an extremely dramatic move, and almost inconceivable in lieu of a near standoff between the two. Not to mention that China's currency is directly tied to US currency, and would hurt them every bit as dramatically. And never mind the significant US holdings in China.
Haha!
No. With MPEG-2 and perhaps MPEG-4, 1080 files will be playable, but there's absolutely no chance of playing WMV or h.264 files at 1080 on this system. In fact, I doubt it could keep up with WMV/h.264 files even at 720.
Everyone. This is ONLY if the US and China are nearing war. Not only would every other country understand and accept such a move, it would be horrendously ignorant and irresponsible NOT to do so.
In fact, I can't see how you could avoid doing so, at least effectively. If China is at war with the US, should Federal Reserve banks continue to honor their Bonds, and send hundreds of millions of US dollars to China, while they're at war with us? You really think that would ever happen?
Yahoo is a US company. They can't have the foreign branch of their company murdering labor organizers, supporting communist regimes, and similar activities that would be illegal in the US. If Yahoo doesn't like following US law, they can exit the country entirely.
You really think the DoD is completely incompetent? As soon as war with China becomes the vaguest of possibilities, all US assets held by the Chinese will be frozen, and probably auctioned off to some US company. All the US Bonds they hold will be liquidated. And unlike normal modes of forgiving debt, it won't spook any other lenders at all, so the dollar will remain strong, and perhaps increase, due to having less debt, and the prospect of a large-scale war, which always leads to an economic boom.
That's crap. Divestment is happening on a very small scale. The euro is the first real alternative to appear, and it has no track record, and in its current form, doesn't make a good reserve currency at all, as EU control over member countries is very, very weak. They can't really stop one country from horrible practices that might devalue the currency, and entire countries can and will just opt-out of the system should the Euro start to fall.
The USD will continue to be used for oil, and many other international goods, which prevent the dollar from losing its value. The falling dollar right now is really one of the issues you'd find more often in a pyramid scheme, as short-term investors just get terribly spooked over short-term problems and negative projections, and horribly exaggerate both up and down swings.
Not true at all.
Most insurance plans allow for 3rd parties to drive your on occasion.
It would be very difficult to prove that you KNOW someone is illegal. In absence of that proof, insurance companies would have to fulfill their obligation.
It's trivially easy for a 3rd party, who is legal, to license and insure a vehicle, and allow someone else to drive it.
In case you're trying to imply something, I can assure you I watched the highest quality versions Netflix has available. I do have a slower connection, but it's quite easy to chose the highest quality version instead and let it download in non-real-time.
The fact that you didn't notice any quality problems says either you just watched a few movies that were overly easy to encode, or you just didn't notice the noise, grainyness, etc., etc.
And like I said, anime suffers horribly. Go watch Ninja Scroll.
First off, this isn't for sensors on the motherboard, but the likes of PSUs and water-cooling systems that don't currently have sensors, or at least not standard.
Second, you're absolutely right that reading sensors via the Linux means is a nightmare. Setting myself up for a troll mod here, I know, but I have to say the *BSDs have had the sensor problem all sewn up, for quite a while now. 'sysctl -a hw' properly lists sensor info for every motherboard I've tried it on (Some systems OpenBSD, some FreeBSD).
Even on my Linux system, after failing miserably in the long and messy attempt to get lm_sensors working right, I just installed xmbmon on Linux (it's a standalone program, designed for FreeBSD quite a while back) and in about 10 seconds I got all the sensor data, without the hassle.
So it isn't just a robot, artificially intelligent enough to fool toddlers. It's something of a human-controlled puppet, with them telling it to do more advanced things than it could figure out on its own.
So, I guess, basically a PR stunt for Sony.