We just say it is a logical falacy to quiet our concience in the presence of human tragedy,
No, we say it's a logical fallacy because it's a logical fallacy.
You can't claim that doing one thing precludes doing another.
It's also anything but a foregone conclusion that expending all human effort into research is effective, and will result in more treatments, more quickly.
you print, and you forget that CUPS exists. Where's the hangup?
Was your USB printer plugged-in and powered-up when you started your system? No? Oh well. No printing for you, then. Reboot to print, or work out your own hack for CUPS, or manually get in there fix it every time you run into this stupid problem.
CUPS is the worst kind of software, IMHO. The kind that is just smart enough to second-guess what you've told it, and do bad things, but still not smart enough to be able to handle basic issues on it's own, and requires human intervention anytime something changes.
While Theo de Raadt, has slung profanities at the NDA approach, he is free to write a driver for OpenBSD if he wants by using the Linux driver as documentation, but he best not copy any of the code from the Linux driver if he wants to avoid having to GPL it (which he almost certainly does).
That's really a rather baseless attempt to confuse the issue. Theo deRaadt has attempted to use GPL'd code as hardware documentation many times, and he knows full well the limitations of it.
There's ample, in-depth explanations of specific issues of this if you just search the OpenBSD mailing list archives. Particularly with fairly recent Sun hardware.
If you refuse to enter into a non-disclosure agreement with these companies then don't complain when the only documentation you have is a Linux kernel driver. The specs aint that great anyway.
NDAs directly conflict with open source principles. It's astonishing that Linux developers are so anxious to go that route.
The fact that he's claiming the driver is just as good as specs demonstrates that he has never attempted to do that himself.
someone can go & read about them, find out they're not real things, and the read the story of how the hoax/myth/whatever was perpetutated.
The gaping hole in that theory, is that the Mel's Hole article doesn't bother to corroborate or contradict any of the evidence offered, even though much of it would be trivially easy to track down... Large checks and non-profits don't just appear and disappear without a paper trail. Not to mention travel records, alibis, etc., etc.
The Piltdown Man article specifically says it was fake, and disproven. No such luck statement for Mel's Hole. And the "DISPUTED" tag at the top of Mel's Hole doesn't exactly lend credence to your claim, either.
that as an owner of a music station, to compete I have to play a high percentage of popular/RIAA company artist's, music, and finally
I won't assume that at all. When I, and probably most others, look for a radio station, I'm not tuning around until I hear the most frequently RIAA-licensed song-play. I listen for the type of music I like. Crappy, familiar, and very frequently played songs need not apply.
Any money taken out of promotion, music acquisition, news feed expense lowers the quality of the "acquired" entertainment, and lowering employee expenses means that I will never have consistent quality in the booth. Or that I will simply go out of business because my station can no longer turn a profit
That assumes an extremely low profit margin to begin with (which goes back to my "business model" comment) and complete management inflexibility operating the business.
I tried looking for alternative documentation, but all I could find was endless sample macros - useless if what you need is reference material - and adverts for some guy's book, which is apparently really good, but if I'm going to pay for proprietary material I might as well just use the proprietary software I already own instead of having to wait days for a book to be delivered. So I gave up.
I very quickly found a tremendous amount of available documentation. The OOo macros book I presume you're talking about happens to be under a free documentation license, which means it is anything but proprietary.
The gist is that paper doesn't decay nearly as fast as they expected due to lack of oxygen,
Every landfill needs pipes installed to vent methane gas. Those pipes also have the side-effect of allowing oxygen in, so I'm already skeptical.
I'm skeptical of (naturally-occurring) plastic-eating microbes as well. Plastic products that have been dumped 50+ years ago can be found, 100% in-tact, and looking like new, in numerous and varied uninhabited areas across the world.
I've heard of microbes being employed to convert styrofoam into plastics, but none that decompose normal plastics in a reasonable amount of time.
No, but internal combustion does deliver several orders of magnitude more energy than a hydrogen fuel cell.
Without some qualifiers, which you have left out, that doesn't even make any sense... An ICE can develop more power than a fuel cell, or less.
Gasoline has few (sic) higher energy density than hydrogen
"Density" is an arbitrary metric, which is of absolutely no use unless you have a fixed space, and are filling every available bit of it with fuel. Lead-acid car batteries, for example, have a very low energy density, but we continue to use them instead of alternatives like LiIon for good reason.
Gasoline prices are due to politics, not supply.
That is completely wrong, and not backed up by any facts. The rise in the price of gasoline is in-fact due to increased demand over the past few years, without an equal increase in supply. Issues like refining capacity contribute to the higher price, but not significantly.
There are vast amounts of oil reserves in the world that are not being used. We have enough oil reserves to keep going for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Oil is getting harder and more expensive to extract. We won't run out for at least another century, but in 20 years, you'll wish we had.
hydrogen releases far more dangerous global warming gases than the internal combustion engine. Water vapor is about 266 times more warming than CO2.
The hydrogen didn't just spontaneously come into existence... It was created from existing water, and merely gets converted back into it once again.
Fuel cells release small amounts of H20, whereas gasoline releases profuse amounts of CO2 and the like.
Much of the water will seep into the ground; it won't all become atmospheric vapor.
Atmospheric vapor isn't endlessly accumulated like CO2. If you add water vapor to the atmosphere, that will increase humidity, and mean less evaporation from other sources. It might have a significant effect in places like deserts where there are few other sources of water, but it won't really increase the level in most areas.
Look, the ability to make hydrogen has been known for over 100 years. Why hasn't anyone used it?
It IS used in numerous places. The space program is almost entirely fueled by hydrogen.
However, fuel cells are complex and still expensive. There has been little demand for hydrogen, as fossil fuels like oil have been cheaper than dirt (or water) for most of the past century.
You can't get something for nothing. It will always take energy to make energy.
That's rather banal. Your characterization is nonsense. It takes FAR more energy (and time) to produce oil than it does to produce hydrogen. And if the fuel source is just sunlight and water, it is extremely cheap to produce in large volumes. Not having to pay for sunlight, you do essentially get something for nothing.
Additionally, you should really look at something like the electrical grid. It is actually FAR cheaper and more efficient to burn oil in a high-efficiency power plant, transfer the electricity across the grid, and convert that electricity back into mechanical energy, than to run a small engine on oil. It's a huge gain, even if you waste energy by charging and drawing that electricity from a bank of batteries. The terrible efficiency of internal combustion makes this possible, and if the price and efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells can be improved, it would be possible with hydrogen as well.
Even LPG is considerable cheaper (and more powerful) than hydrogen. It's also even more plentiful than gasoline. Cheaper too.
I buy propane regularly. It isn't any cheaper than gasoline, and even if it was, it's only that way because propane is a byproduct of gasoline production. Gasoline sales
People who listen to radio, for the most part listen to music the RIAA controls because they like the music.
What? Who even said that people hate RIAA music?
The fact that people like RIAA music doesn't mean they hate all other music. There are tons of small bands out there, it just takes a few days for someone to sort through thousands of various songs and pick out the decent stuff to air.
In this world where "success" is measured by growth and accelleration, a culture of cannibalism. [...] It's that mentality that really seems to be causing this chaotic and carnivorous meltdown in business and culture.
I'd say that is entirely fueled by current idiotic state of the stock market.
Because of the decline of dividends, perpetual increases in stock price are the only thing that matters to investors. Also, because of the extremely large number of amateurs, and simplistic advice by professionals, it seems such simple metrics like quickly increasing stock prices, P/E ratios, etc., have gained mythic proportions... So much so that stocks crash on a small drop in profits, and go skyrocket to hundreds of times the value of a company when there is a small increase in profits.
This has caused much of the stock market to become nothing but a massive pyramid scheme. Unfortunately, those who are the most idiotic, and bought into the scheme at the highest and most recent price, are now the ones who get to vote on what the company does, and of course they vote for more mergers, more insanity, and more short-term profits, to just keep sustaining the pyramid.
When it falls apart, it's will be big. We saw it happen in the 1920s too, but people easily forget hard-learned lessons.
But there are still many small stations that realistically can't afford to dish out money to the RIAA
Interesting...
When it's RIAA using DRM, suing people, etc. it's always, "It's up to them to figure out a new business model." When it's small radio stations having to pay standard and relatively small royalties to the RIAA it's, "They can't afford it. Someone needs to save them."
if the RIAA wins (i.e. the mammoth music production companies such as EMI, Sony, etc.) ), the little guys automatically lose, and we get more of the corporate fodder-crap music, etc. and NO outlets for true expression.
I don't get it. How are license fees, making "corporate fodder-crap music" more expensive, going to make radio stations play more of it? I expect it to be exactly the opposite.
RIAA has to fight it out with Clear Channel, which definitely has the resources to fight them.
This will finally get public attention on copyright, royalties, and how aggressively the RIAA has been acting for the past several years. Most people don't know much about internet radio, but they know plenty about the noise box that keeps them entertained as they drive to and from work.
Then, if the RIAA are successful, they'll be making unsigned and non-RIAA artists who will happily sign royalty-free contracts, far more attractive to radio stations. More radio play, means more sales, which means real competition with RIAA.
I see a huge upside, and very little downside, for the public.
Having seen that interview he did last night, I'd say it's at least as much about his ego than actually helping kids.
Having also seen the 60 Minutes interview, I'd say it's not about his ego at all, and 100% about actually helping kids.
Intel, on the other hand, came off as clearly trying to undermine the OLPC for their own financial benefit, while the CEO futilely tried to spin and deny it as best as possible.
Presumably, they tried intel, but intel wanted too much for the part, or was less than cooperative. We don't know what went on there.
Yes we do. Intel simply doesn't have anything on the low-end. They've axed their XScale product line, which wasn't x86 compatible to begin with. Their mobile/Core CPUs are fine in laptops and desktops, but nothing they make runs on 1 Watt like the AMD Geodes.
AMD hasn't been massively marketing themselves and the OLPC. Intel, however, never misses an opportunity to promote themselves and the Classmate.
That would be completely stupid of Intel. First, it would be putting money in the pockets of AMD. Second, AMD press would have an absolute field day -- "If Intel trusts us for the hard stuff, shouldn't you?"
That's idiotic. First, AMD certainly isn't raking in the profit on the OLPC... They're selling product, but near cost, and really don't have much to gain in the deal.
Second, AMD hasn't been ripping Intel a new one over the fact that ia64 failed miserably, and that Intel is now licensing/using and depending on AMD's x86-64 in their own chips.
And third, Intel really needs to realize that they don't have anything competitive with AMD Geode... They've done a terrible job with XScale, and are discontinuing their entire line of low power ARM processor. Even their lowest voltage x86 CPUs have far higher power requirements, as well as requiring more supporting hardware. If they wanted to offer an alternative, at least they could do so honestly, instead of a crappy power hog of a non-starter. Their extensive subsidizing of the unit is really just to cover up how crappy and inappropriate it really is for the task.
they can build these things for less than the price of most MP3/AAC music players.
I have no clue what you're talking about...
I just quickly checked CircuitCity's website and found a 1GB Flash MP3 player for $40. That's a hell of a lot less than $176 for an OLPC.
That leads me to believe -we- are being taken "quite" advantage of by vendors of music/movie players.
For the sake of the OLPC, several companies are seriously reducing their profit margins. If it wasn't for the more significant profits they get from other activities, they wouldn't be able to do so. You are essentially expecting companies to price all of their products at "surplus" prices, despite the risks and initial development costs involved.
The only flagrant price-fixing I've seen was with Laptops. Until Walmart offered a cheap-crap laptops for $400, there was an unspoken rules that laptops sell for $1,000 and up. Companies like Dell suddenly woke-up, and offered their low-end laptops for $400. Prices have slowly crept up since then, but it's still easy to find a good Laptop for $600, completely unlike the old days.
I have to disagree. The only way text is readable at 800x400 is with very, very large fonts. Among other things, that means constantly scrolling, as well as either jagged or blurry text which is more difficult to read, and an all-around unpleasant experience.
NTSC TV screens are ~720x480, and reading text on them is absolutely horrific. Interlacing only makes the situation worse.
I have and had several PDAs with similar screen resolutions, and I have a very difficult time reading text on them as well. It's certainly possible, but I couldn't read significant portions of a book that way.
For the hardware, I'm sure there are numerous license fees as part of the component prices.
Everything has been designed from the ground up, its a new legacy free, tightly tuned computer that has thrown out all the old PC baggage and nastyness,
OLPC is still a full-fledged x86 system... It's got just as much legacy as anything else. The only difference really is the lack of a BIOS, and perhaps removing VESA support. An improvement, but not ground-breaking stuff.
with a new light, useable OS, that can fly on a 350ish MHz machine.
Linux isn't a new OS. The distro for OLPC has been tuned for better performance, but it really isn't going to "fly" with extensive use of memory and CPU-intensive tech like Python, and Gecko.
If it works, there is no reason why they cant make desktop systems using the same code, optimised, open source components. Imagine an OLPC desktop with 512MB RAM and a hard drive, and perhaps an 800MHz chip.
They could easily have been doing that for years now. There's absolutely nothing here that's going to drastically change the economics of computers, beyond the OLPC itself. Making performance improvements isn't magic, and there's plenty of reason it hasn't been aggressively done before.
Spam HAS been solved, it's just that most people aren't implementing the fix. Use Gmail if you don't want to set up your own filtering system.
I use a dozen blacklists and every other spam filtering method you can imagine... Plenty of spam still gets through, of course it's about 1/10th what it would be without them.
If you aren't getting any, your e-mail address can't be very popular. Put it in a mailto: on a few popular websites, get active on some high-traffic mailing lists, etc., and you too will have the most skilled and dedicated spammers out there trying to get hundreds of pieces of spam in your inbox...
Even my completely unlisted GMail accounts have had a couple pieces of spam slip through. The one thing gmail has going for it is with a large enough userbase, they can just wait until they get the first spam report, and then delete anything similar from every single mailbox. A bit like an army of spam reporters.
If a cheap source of hydrogen were to become available the first thing real engineers would do is design and build refineries to convert it and whatever carbon based feedstock that is cheapest into.... wait for it.... methane, gasoline and diesel fuel.
That's unbelievably, laughably idiotic.
Because there is _nothing_ fundamentally wrong with diesel and otto cycle engines that hybrids can't solve.
Hybrids don't make combustion any more efficient. They're still at 25%, and they FUNDAMENTALLY can't improve significantly upon that. Look-up Carnot... It requires extremely high combustion temperatures to get decent efficiency, which is never going to happen in tiny car engines. Of course, the otto cycle is even more inherently wasteful.
Internal combustion engine aren't even half as efficient as current fuel cells, and no matter how many centuries of improvements develop, combustion simply can't ever hope to catch the theoretical efficiency of a fuel cell.
And yes, I know, compiled doesn't mean it actually also works:-)
More than that, the fact that 95% compiles doesn't mean there aren't an army of 3rd parties going through the effort of making significant code changes, and submitting them back upstream. I've done it myself many times. Complex code is never just a recompile to get it to work elsewhere.
Personally, I think it's a lot better than having an Nvidia or ATI chip, and not having 3D support at all.
We're talking about OS X here. It's all closed-source binaries. Complaining about license incompatibilities between binary drivers and X11 is complete crap.
Yeah, just like how the wide range of different architectures most UNIX software runs on alienates developers...
No. Open source *nix software developers write and test on x86/Linux, and release it. That's all. If it's open source, there are others who are interested enough in getting it working on their non-x86 machine that they'll do all the work for you, and send back patches.
Nothing out there, that is even remotely complex, can just be recompiled everywhere. Projects that do support multiple achitectures, and need performance on all of them, like ffmpeg and MPlayer, put tremendous amounts of work into optimizations and compatibility for each architecture.
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No, we say it's a logical fallacy because it's a logical fallacy.
You can't claim that doing one thing precludes doing another.
It's also anything but a foregone conclusion that expending all human effort into research is effective, and will result in more treatments, more quickly.
Was your USB printer plugged-in and powered-up when you started your system? No? Oh well. No printing for you, then. Reboot to print, or work out your own hack for CUPS, or manually get in there fix it every time you run into this stupid problem.
CUPS is the worst kind of software, IMHO. The kind that is just smart enough to second-guess what you've told it, and do bad things, but still not smart enough to be able to handle basic issues on it's own, and requires human intervention anytime something changes.
That's really a rather baseless attempt to confuse the issue. Theo deRaadt has attempted to use GPL'd code as hardware documentation many times, and he knows full well the limitations of it.
There's ample, in-depth explanations of specific issues of this if you just search the OpenBSD mailing list archives. Particularly with fairly recent Sun hardware.
NDAs directly conflict with open source principles. It's astonishing that Linux developers are so anxious to go that route.
The fact that he's claiming the driver is just as good as specs demonstrates that he has never attempted to do that himself.
The gaping hole in that theory, is that the Mel's Hole article doesn't bother to corroborate or contradict any of the evidence offered, even though much of it would be trivially easy to track down... Large checks and non-profits don't just appear and disappear without a paper trail. Not to mention travel records, alibis, etc., etc.
The Piltdown Man article specifically says it was fake, and disproven. No such luck statement for Mel's Hole. And the "DISPUTED" tag at the top of Mel's Hole doesn't exactly lend credence to your claim, either.
I won't assume that at all. When I, and probably most others, look for a radio station, I'm not tuning around until I hear the most frequently RIAA-licensed song-play. I listen for the type of music I like. Crappy, familiar, and very frequently played songs need not apply.
That assumes an extremely low profit margin to begin with (which goes back to my "business model" comment) and complete management inflexibility operating the business.
I very quickly found a tremendous amount of available documentation. The OOo macros book I presume you're talking about happens to be under a free documentation license, which means it is anything but proprietary.
http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooomacros/
Every landfill needs pipes installed to vent methane gas. Those pipes also have the side-effect of allowing oxygen in, so I'm already skeptical.
I'm skeptical of (naturally-occurring) plastic-eating microbes as well. Plastic products that have been dumped 50+ years ago can be found, 100% in-tact, and looking like new, in numerous and varied uninhabited areas across the world.
I've heard of microbes being employed to convert styrofoam into plastics, but none that decompose normal plastics in a reasonable amount of time.
Incidentally, your URL has been taken-over by a link-farm. Might want to change that.
Without some qualifiers, which you have left out, that doesn't even make any sense... An ICE can develop more power than a fuel cell, or less.
"Density" is an arbitrary metric, which is of absolutely no use unless you have a fixed space, and are filling every available bit of it with fuel. Lead-acid car batteries, for example, have a very low energy density, but we continue to use them instead of alternatives like LiIon for good reason.
That is completely wrong, and not backed up by any facts. The rise in the price of gasoline is in-fact due to increased demand over the past few years, without an equal increase in supply. Issues like refining capacity contribute to the higher price, but not significantly.
Oil is getting harder and more expensive to extract. We won't run out for at least another century, but in 20 years, you'll wish we had.
The hydrogen didn't just spontaneously come into existence... It was created from existing water, and merely gets converted back into it once again.
Fuel cells release small amounts of H20, whereas gasoline releases profuse amounts of CO2 and the like.
Much of the water will seep into the ground; it won't all become atmospheric vapor.
Atmospheric vapor isn't endlessly accumulated like CO2. If you add water vapor to the atmosphere, that will increase humidity, and mean less evaporation from other sources. It might have a significant effect in places like deserts where there are few other sources of water, but it won't really increase the level in most areas.
It IS used in numerous places. The space program is almost entirely fueled by hydrogen.
However, fuel cells are complex and still expensive. There has been little demand for hydrogen, as fossil fuels like oil have been cheaper than dirt (or water) for most of the past century.
That's rather banal. Your characterization is nonsense. It takes FAR more energy (and time) to produce oil than it does to produce hydrogen. And if the fuel source is just sunlight and water, it is extremely cheap to produce in large volumes. Not having to pay for sunlight, you do essentially get something for nothing.
Additionally, you should really look at something like the electrical grid. It is actually FAR cheaper and more efficient to burn oil in a high-efficiency power plant, transfer the electricity across the grid, and convert that electricity back into mechanical energy, than to run a small engine on oil. It's a huge gain, even if you waste energy by charging and drawing that electricity from a bank of batteries. The terrible efficiency of internal combustion makes this possible, and if the price and efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells can be improved, it would be possible with hydrogen as well.
I buy propane regularly. It isn't any cheaper than gasoline, and even if it was, it's only that way because propane is a byproduct of gasoline production. Gasoline sales
What? Who even said that people hate RIAA music?
The fact that people like RIAA music doesn't mean they hate all other music. There are tons of small bands out there, it just takes a few days for someone to sort through thousands of various songs and pick out the decent stuff to air.
I'd say that is entirely fueled by current idiotic state of the stock market.
Because of the decline of dividends, perpetual increases in stock price are the only thing that matters to investors. Also, because of the extremely large number of amateurs, and simplistic advice by professionals, it seems such simple metrics like quickly increasing stock prices, P/E ratios, etc., have gained mythic proportions... So much so that stocks crash on a small drop in profits, and go skyrocket to hundreds of times the value of a company when there is a small increase in profits.
This has caused much of the stock market to become nothing but a massive pyramid scheme. Unfortunately, those who are the most idiotic, and bought into the scheme at the highest and most recent price, are now the ones who get to vote on what the company does, and of course they vote for more mergers, more insanity, and more short-term profits, to just keep sustaining the pyramid.
When it falls apart, it's will be big. We saw it happen in the 1920s too, but people easily forget hard-learned lessons.
Interesting...
When it's RIAA using DRM, suing people, etc. it's always, "It's up to them to figure out a new business model." When it's small radio stations having to pay standard and relatively small royalties to the RIAA it's, "They can't afford it. Someone needs to save them."
I don't get it. How are license fees, making "corporate fodder-crap music" more expensive, going to make radio stations play more of it? I expect it to be exactly the opposite.
I haven't heard a better idea in a long time.
RIAA has to fight it out with Clear Channel, which definitely has the resources to fight them.
This will finally get public attention on copyright, royalties, and how aggressively the RIAA has been acting for the past several years. Most people don't know much about internet radio, but they know plenty about the noise box that keeps them entertained as they drive to and from work.
Then, if the RIAA are successful, they'll be making unsigned and non-RIAA artists who will happily sign royalty-free contracts, far more attractive to radio stations. More radio play, means more sales, which means real competition with RIAA.
I see a huge upside, and very little downside, for the public.
Having also seen the 60 Minutes interview, I'd say it's not about his ego at all, and 100% about actually helping kids.
Intel, on the other hand, came off as clearly trying to undermine the OLPC for their own financial benefit, while the CEO futilely tried to spin and deny it as best as possible.
Yes we do. Intel simply doesn't have anything on the low-end. They've axed their XScale product line, which wasn't x86 compatible to begin with. Their mobile/Core CPUs are fine in laptops and desktops, but nothing they make runs on 1 Watt like the AMD Geodes.
AMD hasn't been massively marketing themselves and the OLPC. Intel, however, never misses an opportunity to promote themselves and the Classmate.
That's idiotic. First, AMD certainly isn't raking in the profit on the OLPC... They're selling product, but near cost, and really don't have much to gain in the deal.
Second, AMD hasn't been ripping Intel a new one over the fact that ia64 failed miserably, and that Intel is now licensing/using and depending on AMD's x86-64 in their own chips.
And third, Intel really needs to realize that they don't have anything competitive with AMD Geode... They've done a terrible job with XScale, and are discontinuing their entire line of low power ARM processor. Even their lowest voltage x86 CPUs have far higher power requirements, as well as requiring more supporting hardware. If they wanted to offer an alternative, at least they could do so honestly, instead of a crappy power hog of a non-starter. Their extensive subsidizing of the unit is really just to cover up how crappy and inappropriate it really is for the task.
I have no clue what you're talking about...
I just quickly checked CircuitCity's website and found a 1GB Flash MP3 player for $40. That's a hell of a lot less than $176 for an OLPC.
For the sake of the OLPC, several companies are seriously reducing their profit margins. If it wasn't for the more significant profits they get from other activities, they wouldn't be able to do so. You are essentially expecting companies to price all of their products at "surplus" prices, despite the risks and initial development costs involved.
The only flagrant price-fixing I've seen was with Laptops. Until Walmart offered a cheap-crap laptops for $400, there was an unspoken rules that laptops sell for $1,000 and up. Companies like Dell suddenly woke-up, and offered their low-end laptops for $400. Prices have slowly crept up since then, but it's still easy to find a good Laptop for $600, completely unlike the old days.
I have to disagree. The only way text is readable at 800x400 is with very, very large fonts. Among other things, that means constantly scrolling, as well as either jagged or blurry text which is more difficult to read, and an all-around unpleasant experience.
NTSC TV screens are ~720x480, and reading text on them is absolutely horrific. Interlacing only makes the situation worse.
I have and had several PDAs with similar screen resolutions, and I have a very difficult time reading text on them as well. It's certainly possible, but I couldn't read significant portions of a book that way.
For software, that's not new at all.
For the hardware, I'm sure there are numerous license fees as part of the component prices.
OLPC is still a full-fledged x86 system... It's got just as much legacy as anything else. The only difference really is the lack of a BIOS, and perhaps removing VESA support. An improvement, but not ground-breaking stuff.
Linux isn't a new OS. The distro for OLPC has been tuned for better performance, but it really isn't going to "fly" with extensive use of memory and CPU-intensive tech like Python, and Gecko.
They could easily have been doing that for years now. There's absolutely nothing here that's going to drastically change the economics of computers, beyond the OLPC itself. Making performance improvements isn't magic, and there's plenty of reason it hasn't been aggressively done before.
I use a dozen blacklists and every other spam filtering method you can imagine... Plenty of spam still gets through, of course it's about 1/10th what it would be without them.
If you aren't getting any, your e-mail address can't be very popular. Put it in a mailto: on a few popular websites, get active on some high-traffic mailing lists, etc., and you too will have the most skilled and dedicated spammers out there trying to get hundreds of pieces of spam in your inbox...
Even my completely unlisted GMail accounts have had a couple pieces of spam slip through. The one thing gmail has going for it is with a large enough userbase, they can just wait until they get the first spam report, and then delete anything similar from every single mailbox. A bit like an army of spam reporters.
That's unbelievably, laughably idiotic.
Hybrids don't make combustion any more efficient. They're still at 25%, and they FUNDAMENTALLY can't improve significantly upon that. Look-up Carnot... It requires extremely high combustion temperatures to get decent efficiency, which is never going to happen in tiny car engines. Of course, the otto cycle is even more inherently wasteful.
Internal combustion engine aren't even half as efficient as current fuel cells, and no matter how many centuries of improvements develop, combustion simply can't ever hope to catch the theoretical efficiency of a fuel cell.
You forgot a few:
poster
postable
postface
posthaste
postdate
postdigestive
etc.
The more "post" and the less of any other words, the better. Please try to work more variations of "post" into your next... err... submission.
More than that, the fact that 95% compiles doesn't mean there aren't an army of 3rd parties going through the effort of making significant code changes, and submitting them back upstream. I've done it myself many times. Complex code is never just a recompile to get it to work elsewhere.
We're talking about OS X here. It's all closed-source binaries. Complaining about license incompatibilities between binary drivers and X11 is complete crap.
No. Open source *nix software developers write and test on x86/Linux, and release it. That's all. If it's open source, there are others who are interested enough in getting it working on their non-x86 machine that they'll do all the work for you, and send back patches.
Nothing out there, that is even remotely complex, can just be recompiled everywhere. Projects that do support multiple achitectures, and need performance on all of them, like ffmpeg and MPlayer, put tremendous amounts of work into optimizations and compatibility for each architecture.