This will take an old-new argument to "to free or not to free my wifi" questions. If you're talking about the recent Schneier stuff, then part of the rationale for running unauthenticated WiFi is that the hosts inside the network are hardened. Hence, assuming no mistakes in the host hardening, you could have no firewalling whatsoever on the router, and you'd still be safe.
The thing is, it's just so damn useful. For a TCP/IP savvy person, setting up, say, a Bittorrent client, or Xbox Live online play without UPnP is a chore. For normal people, it's voodoo. With UPnP (and the right client) it Just Works. Convenient or secure... guess what most people will choose?
But, agreed, it's scary stuff, if you believe your router ought to be a firewall. What's really needed is for home routers to start implementing authenticated UPnP, and for clients to work with it. (I must admit I've only glanced at the UPnP specs, but I seem to recall seeing references to an authenticated flavour).
... you see how big/close they are as well, so it's not just position. No, the Wii software expects the Wiimote to see two IR dots (one on each end of the 'sensor' bar). Everything is calculated from these two points. X/Y position is the X/Y position of the midpoint between the two dots. Roll is the angle between the two dots. Z position (closeness) is the distance between the two dots.
So the question becomes, why am I afraid of dying?
I am afraid of dying because, genetically, if my ancestors were not afraid of dying then chances are they would not have survived to pass the "fear of death" genes (eventually) on to me. At least from an evolutionary standpoint... I concur. But this evolutionary drive only requires you to resist death until you stop reproducing. There are plenty of species who embrace death after mating. In the case of mammals, however, there's an evolutionary advantage in staying alive long enough to raise children into adults who can survive. In crisis, it becomes apparent that we've evolved a fear of the death of our offspring, which outweighs the fear of our own death.
I'm always bemused by the optimism that kids are going to be hacking perl scripts if they're given the opportunity. Kids are individuals, and those who are curious about computers are just curious about computers. The rest are not.
... which would be a problem if OLPC was about raising a generation of Perl hackers. But it isn't.
Some kids are curious about computers. Some kids are curious about nothing at all. Some kids are keen on art - OLPC gives them tools to create, share and discuss art. Some kids are keen on writing - OLPC gives them tools to create, share and discuss their writing.
No matter what their enthusiasm, people in developed countries are using the Internet to further it. Gardening, engineering, art, farming, medicine, live action roleplaying... doesn't matter, being connected helps you develop.
If 1% of the kids who get one of these blossom into something that benefits their society, because of it, that's a win.
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that large scale energy storage projects should be able to address fluctuations in load.
Your compressed air system would be one such project. The mainstream option for a long while has been hydroelectric (use surplus electricity to pump water into a reservoir; when demand is high, use that water to run a turbine).
And there's the option of trying to flatten demand via economics (cheaper electricity at night), which has some success.
The NowNow service on the Amazon Kindle tackles this by requiring answers to contain a URL. Hence the answerer is at least nudged into providing a source.
There's no telling what quality that source will be, but at least it provides the beginning of a trail towards a decent source.
Forget laptops. [...] If you are a citizen of an impoverished nation, focus on the basics: reading, writing, mathematics, science (includng agriculture), and free markets. If you can succeed at the basics (and everyone can succeed at the basics), then your nation will naturally prosper. What you're missing is that the laptops are a tool for teaching all those things you listed and more. Along with the cheap infrastructure that goes along with the OLPC project, they allow children to communicate with each other and with educators.
The UK has a very successful and mature distance-earning university called the Open University. Nowdays you need a computer to do a course -- in order to use computer based learning materials, to communicate with your peers, to send your work to your tutor, etc. (there are probably grants available for those who can't afford the computer they need -- I'm not sure of the facts there). OLPC also recognises that computers are enablers for education, and seeks to place a suitable tool in as many hands as possible.
Exactly, and they need "computer skills" not just "Microsoft Skills" I'd argue that to focus too much on it being a computer, is missing the point. OLPC is a general purpose education tool. We don't teach "brush skills", we teach art. We don't teach "pen skills", we teach writing.
OLPC is a device for communication and creativity.
With its word processor, you can learn to write. With its drawing package and its camera, you can learn to create art. With its eBook reader you can learn from literature and textbooks. With its email and chat programs, you can share your work, ask questions of remote peers or teachers.
OLPC can help people learn geography, maths, science, history, wind generator maintenance, sustainable agriculture, etc. Any "computer skills" picked up along the way are purely a side benefit.
This is one reason non-FOSS software has no place in it. It would turn a communications and creativity exercise into just another way of building a market.
Q:...can't we design a computer that can "cold boot" nearly instantaneously? A: This is an economics blog, so you tell me: why don't the computer companies compete on boot-speed? (snip) Even if Linux is modified to boot in 3 seconds, it won't make Microsoft change anything. I dunno. If it actually turned heads, it would. Windows 95 needed a reboot to change IP address. People would live with it -- assume that's just how computers had to be. When you showed someone (er, the right sort of someone) how you could change IP address on the fly with Linux, they'd be really impressed. I'm convinced that if Linux hadn't shown some portion of impressionable consumers that kind of thing was possible (also, stable multitasking, convenience in CLIs like tab-completion, etc.), those features wouldn't have made it into Windows.
Linux hasn't replaced Windows like I hoped it would. But it has certainly forced MS to make Windows better.
That looks like a sound and defensible approach to teach kids how to work in CODE.
Actually the criteria for GCSE art projects when I did it (circa 1988) was a lot like the software engineering methodology of the day. Perhaps without the testing aspect.
Concept (preliminary sketches). High level design (more detailed sketches). Implementation (work in the final medium, lose credit if you deviate from your HLD).
Everyone knew it was BS, but that's how you turn art into something you can assign schoolkids marks for, I guess.
Actually, if you like qmail you need to have your brain checked.
The biggest advantage of Unix is the "We stood on the shoulders of Giants" philosophy. The library functions are continually improved and nowdays there is a library function for nearly everything. Actually that's the biggest advantage of free Unix and Unix clones.
Qmail goes completely against this philosophy by rewriting nearly every higher level function in libc it needs. Granted, when qmail came out some of these rewrites were more secure and technically superior implementations. First of all, not contributing them towards the libc's is sociopathic behaviour Qmail stems from a time when serious UNIXen were commercial and closed. Getting the libc source cost big money; fixes were not solicited.
They were dark times. Feel glad RMS fought for you.
The "e" part only takes out one tiny slice of the cost...the actual printing...which is pretty small over a large enough production. You are still paying an author, a publisher, a retailer, and all the associated employees in getting the book from draft to print and all the marketing in between. The key phrase here is "over a large enough production". For a bestseller, printing, distribution and retail are not negligible, but they're pretty small. The smaller the run, the higher these percentage costs get, until they become significant.
I'm surprised Amazon doesn't already have a DIY Kindle publishing service (other than blogs) going. I bet it's planned. There's a lot of people out there with novels they know could have a minor audience, but which will never attract a publisher. Let people self-publish to Kindle, Amazon take a 10% cut. It's money for almost no risk. Amazon could pretty much automate checks for plagiarism too.
Point well made. Wonder if Amazon is planning a work-around through the USB port for situations like this? Perhaps a kiosk in the airport gift shop to plug-in and buy a book? A specialized USB WiFi dongle might also be a solution, but it would be up to marketing to show enough of a demand to launch development of the hardware and a firmware update.
I guess for now, owners of this gadget who travel just need to plan ahead.
It seems pretty likely to me that as they roll out to other countries, and scale up production, they'll put the the hardware in the machines to support those countries' cellphone standards, and they'll bring service providers from those countries on board.
I'd hope to get seamless service across the whole of Europe, North America, and the more developed AP countries by the end of 2008 -- maybe requiring V2 hardware.
Factor the risk into your purchase decisions. That may well mean that you don't buy a Kindle or any books for it, but don't be surprised when a bunch of people do. Yes indeed. Mod parent up.
One risk I factor into my music purchase decisions, is whether one day I'll want to play that music on a platform other than the iPod. That and how much effort it would take me to work around the DRM if I needed to (several days and a big pile of CDRs). If iTMS dropped their prices *significantly*, perhaps that would compensate for the risk, but for now I buy and rip CDs.
(In fact, that time came -- my main home audio device is now an Xbox, and the few songs I bought from iTunes are not playable on it).
In principle, I would *like* to be able to do all the things with an eBook that I can with a real book (keep forever, pass on to someone else, sell, etc.). But for a low enough price, or high enough convenience, I'll sacrifice those things to some extent.
For my money, no electronic device in my life time will ever replace the book. As the first guy pointed out, I don't have to worry about batteries (unless I'm in the dark - then a back-lit screen would be nice). Books feel better in the hands, and displays will struggle for a while yet to compete with the "resolution" of the printed page.
I'm not sure I'm 100% with you there. I do feel that books have a very flexible UI -- 'bookmark' several pages with your fingers; tab important pages with post-its, annotate with doodles, not just text, etc. But to address your specific points -- the Kindle battery life is so long as to hardly be a concern. Some books feel good in your hands, but there's a sweet-spot that's not always hit. Some books are printed on cheap, rough paper that's no pleasure to handle. Some books are thicker than their spine can handle (big Stephen King airport novels). Some books are too heavy for holding above your head as you lie on your back.
I've not witnessed e-Ink, but those who have seem to claim that it *does* rival the resolution of the printed page, for text at least.
However, I would buy such a device for some printed content. That content would be magazine and journal articles. It could also be new short fiction (including novellas). I'm not sure if the licensing model would be trickier or easier - magazine literature typically has a short shelf life, and publishers might not worry so much about DRM. I have the opposite view. Magazine and newspaper articles are typically written with print layout in mind -- illustrations, boxouts, etc. Different stories are laid out on a page do draw your eye from one to another. Newspapers are designed so it's easy to skim for the content you want, then concentrate on it when you find it. I don't see the Kindle doing that well. I do see it working well for a novel, which is typically read in a linear fashion.
Or are these books locked to the Kindle? Is it hackable in that case? I'm sure its 'DVD Jon moment' will be with us in due course.
It has occurred to me that e-Ink might be as scannable as ordinary paper. Hence until the DRM is beaten, you could exploit the analogue hole with a Kindle, a flatbed scanner, an OCR program, Lego Mindstorms to push the 'next page button', and a bit of scripting...
You mean performing actual analysis of your search input every every time you type "f", "o", "r", "d"? Plenty of interfaces do this. It's likely they wait for a short pause between letters, just to save totally irrelevant searches.
For example, I use the Flock browser. If you type into the search bar, it updates a drop-down list with results from Yahoo as you type.... and you can do it in Ajax too. For example the gardening site Grows On You has a field for the botanical name of the plant you're writing about. It uses Ajax to populate a drop-down list as you type -- this is based on a fairly standard Ruby on Rails recipe (auto_complete_for).
For those of you more familiar with Guitar Hero than sheet music or guitar tabs, this song basically goes like this: green, pause, green, pause, green, red, red, pause, red, yellow, repeat. Except it's really that easy IN REAL LIFE. Except because it has a moderately confusing rhythm which varies as the song progresses, and quite a high tempo, by the time you get to Advanced level in GH, it's a bloody difficult song... and in the recording, it's not purely strumming out the standard chord shapes -- there are subtleties to the transitions between chords.
Yeah, it's not Yngwie Malmsteen, but it's not Crass either.
Possibly you wrote that before all the facts were out, but the phone network charge is billed to Amazon, and how it gets paid is invisible to the consumer -- we can only guess what contract they've dreamed up. A fixed per-byte charge? A cut of book sales? A fixed annual charge? Who knows?
By bringing up UK EVDO, though, you do raise a question. How will this device deal with roaming? At present it is only sold on US Amazon.com, and it's tied to a Sprint network in the US. If an American user leaves US soil with one of these, I assume all connectivity will be lost. Will the eventual European model use 3G instead? Will later models feature hybrid phone technology so that world travelers have a continuous service?
Odd that its $60 CDN when the currency is equal now. Hint: consumer prices do not track currency fluctuations. Obviously each affects the other, but in complex ways. For one thing, the price of an item has more to do with what people are willing to pay, than how much it costs to produce, and for another, neither retailers nor customers would like it if a product changed price every week depending on the state of finance markets.
(Of course there are exceptions, such as motor fuel, seasonal food, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, it's just so damn useful. For a TCP/IP savvy person, setting up, say, a Bittorrent client, or Xbox Live online play without UPnP is a chore. For normal people, it's voodoo. With UPnP (and the right client) it Just Works. Convenient or secure... guess what most people will choose?
But, agreed, it's scary stuff, if you believe your router ought to be a firewall. What's really needed is for home routers to start implementing authenticated UPnP, and for clients to work with it. (I must admit I've only glanced at the UPnP specs, but I seem to recall seeing references to an authenticated flavour).
... you see how big/close they are as well, so it's not just position. No, the Wii software expects the Wiimote to see two IR dots (one on each end of the 'sensor' bar). Everything is calculated from these two points. X/Y position is the X/Y position of the midpoint between the two dots. Roll is the angle between the two dots. Z position (closeness) is the distance between the two dots.I am afraid of dying because, genetically, if my ancestors were not afraid of dying then chances are they would not have survived to pass the "fear of death" genes (eventually) on to me. At least from an evolutionary standpoint... I concur. But this evolutionary drive only requires you to resist death until you stop reproducing. There are plenty of species who embrace death after mating. In the case of mammals, however, there's an evolutionary advantage in staying alive long enough to raise children into adults who can survive. In crisis, it becomes apparent that we've evolved a fear of the death of our offspring, which outweighs the fear of our own death.
Are we offtopic yet?
... which would be a problem if OLPC was about raising a generation of Perl hackers. But it isn't.Some kids are curious about computers.
Some kids are curious about nothing at all.
Some kids are keen on art - OLPC gives them tools to create, share and discuss art.
Some kids are keen on writing - OLPC gives them tools to create, share and discuss their writing.
No matter what their enthusiasm, people in developed countries are using the Internet to further it. Gardening, engineering, art, farming, medicine, live action roleplaying... doesn't matter, being connected helps you develop.
If 1% of the kids who get one of these blossom into something that benefits their society, because of it, that's a win.
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that large scale energy storage projects should be able to address fluctuations in load.
Your compressed air system would be one such project. The mainstream option for a long while has been hydroelectric (use surplus electricity to pump water into a reservoir; when demand is high, use that water to run a turbine).
And there's the option of trying to flatten demand via economics (cheaper electricity at night), which has some success.
The NowNow service on the Amazon Kindle tackles this by requiring answers to contain a URL. Hence the answerer is at least nudged into providing a source.
There's no telling what quality that source will be, but at least it provides the beginning of a trail towards a decent source.
The UK has a very successful and mature distance-earning university called the Open University. Nowdays you need a computer to do a course -- in order to use computer based learning materials, to communicate with your peers, to send your work to your tutor, etc. (there are probably grants available for those who can't afford the computer they need -- I'm not sure of the facts there). OLPC also recognises that computers are enablers for education, and seeks to place a suitable tool in as many hands as possible.
OLPC is a device for communication and creativity.
With its word processor, you can learn to write.
With its drawing package and its camera, you can learn to create art.
With its eBook reader you can learn from literature and textbooks.
With its email and chat programs, you can share your work, ask questions of remote peers or teachers.
OLPC can help people learn geography, maths, science, history, wind generator maintenance, sustainable agriculture, etc. Any "computer skills" picked up along the way are purely a side benefit.
This is one reason non-FOSS software has no place in it. It would turn a communications and creativity exercise into just another way of building a market.
A: This is an economics blog, so you tell me: why don't the computer companies compete on boot-speed? (snip)
Even if Linux is modified to boot in 3 seconds, it won't make Microsoft change anything. I dunno. If it actually turned heads, it would. Windows 95 needed a reboot to change IP address. People would live with it -- assume that's just how computers had to be. When you showed someone (er, the right sort of someone) how you could change IP address on the fly with Linux, they'd be really impressed. I'm convinced that if Linux hadn't shown some portion of impressionable consumers that kind of thing was possible (also, stable multitasking, convenience in CLIs like tab-completion, etc.), those features wouldn't have made it into Windows.
Linux hasn't replaced Windows like I hoped it would. But it has certainly forced MS to make Windows better.
That looks like a sound and defensible approach to teach kids how to work in CODE.
Actually the criteria for GCSE art projects when I did it (circa 1988) was a lot like the software engineering methodology of the day. Perhaps without the testing aspect.
Concept (preliminary sketches).
High level design (more detailed sketches).
Implementation (work in the final medium, lose credit if you deviate from your HLD).
Everyone knew it was BS, but that's how you turn art into something you can assign schoolkids marks for, I guess.
The biggest advantage of Unix is the "We stood on the shoulders of Giants" philosophy. The library functions are continually improved and nowdays there is a library function for nearly everything. Actually that's the biggest advantage of free Unix and Unix clones. Qmail goes completely against this philosophy by rewriting nearly every higher level function in libc it needs. Granted, when qmail came out some of these rewrites were more secure and technically superior implementations. First of all, not contributing them towards the libc's is sociopathic behaviour Qmail stems from a time when serious UNIXen were commercial and closed. Getting the libc source cost big money; fixes were not solicited.
They were dark times. Feel glad RMS fought for you.
I'm surprised Amazon doesn't already have a DIY Kindle publishing service (other than blogs) going. I bet it's planned. There's a lot of people out there with novels they know could have a minor audience, but which will never attract a publisher. Let people self-publish to Kindle, Amazon take a 10% cut. It's money for almost no risk. Amazon could pretty much automate checks for plagiarism too.
Point well made. Wonder if Amazon is planning a work-around through the USB port for situations like this? Perhaps a kiosk in the airport gift shop to plug-in and buy a book? A specialized USB WiFi dongle might also be a solution, but it would be up to marketing to show enough of a demand to launch development of the hardware and a firmware update.
I guess for now, owners of this gadget who travel just need to plan ahead.
It seems pretty likely to me that as they roll out to other countries, and scale up production, they'll put the the hardware in the machines to support those countries' cellphone standards, and they'll bring service providers from those countries on board.I'd hope to get seamless service across the whole of Europe, North America, and the more developed AP countries by the end of 2008 -- maybe requiring V2 hardware.
One risk I factor into my music purchase decisions, is whether one day I'll want to play that music on a platform other than the iPod. That and how much effort it would take me to work around the DRM if I needed to (several days and a big pile of CDRs). If iTMS dropped their prices *significantly*, perhaps that would compensate for the risk, but for now I buy and rip CDs.
(In fact, that time came -- my main home audio device is now an Xbox, and the few songs I bought from iTunes are not playable on it).
In principle, I would *like* to be able to do all the things with an eBook that I can with a real book (keep forever, pass on to someone else, sell, etc.). But for a low enough price, or high enough convenience, I'll sacrifice those things to some extent.
For my money, no electronic device in my life time will ever replace the book. As the first guy pointed out, I don't have to worry about batteries (unless I'm in the dark - then a back-lit screen would be nice). Books feel better in the hands, and displays will struggle for a while yet to compete with the "resolution" of the printed page.
I'm not sure I'm 100% with you there. I do feel that books have a very flexible UI -- 'bookmark' several pages with your fingers; tab important pages with post-its, annotate with doodles, not just text, etc. But to address your specific points -- the Kindle battery life is so long as to hardly be a concern. Some books feel good in your hands, but there's a sweet-spot that's not always hit. Some books are printed on cheap, rough paper that's no pleasure to handle. Some books are thicker than their spine can handle (big Stephen King airport novels). Some books are too heavy for holding above your head as you lie on your back.
I've not witnessed e-Ink, but those who have seem to claim that it *does* rival the resolution of the printed page, for text at least. However, I would buy such a device for some printed content. That content would be magazine and journal articles. It could also be new short fiction (including novellas). I'm not sure if the licensing model would be trickier or easier - magazine literature typically has a short shelf life, and publishers might not worry so much about DRM. I have the opposite view. Magazine and newspaper articles are typically written with print layout in mind -- illustrations, boxouts, etc. Different stories are laid out on a page do draw your eye from one to another. Newspapers are designed so it's easy to skim for the content you want, then concentrate on it when you find it. I don't see the Kindle doing that well. I do see it working well for a novel, which is typically read in a linear fashion.
It has occurred to me that e-Ink might be as scannable as ordinary paper. Hence until the DRM is beaten, you could exploit the analogue hole with a Kindle, a flatbed scanner, an OCR program, Lego Mindstorms to push the 'next page button', and a bit of scripting...
For example, I use the Flock browser. If you type into the search bar, it updates a drop-down list with results from Yahoo as you type.
The phrase "I'm feeling lucky" is part of the Google brand, as has been since their search engine was incepted.
Notice the phrase is also prominent (and useful!) in Picasa.
The point is, losing it would be a big change to the brand, like making Coke cans with no red on them.
For those of you more familiar with Guitar Hero than sheet music or guitar tabs, this song basically goes like this: green, pause, green, pause, green, red, red, pause, red, yellow, repeat. Except it's really that easy IN REAL LIFE. Except because it has a moderately confusing rhythm which varies as the song progresses, and quite a high tempo, by the time you get to Advanced level in GH, it's a bloody difficult song... and in the recording, it's not purely strumming out the standard chord shapes -- there are subtleties to the transitions between chords.
Yeah, it's not Yngwie Malmsteen, but it's not Crass either.
They do have tremolo bars, and you should tremolo long notes for extra Star Power, to get extra points.
Possibly you wrote that before all the facts were out, but the phone network charge is billed to Amazon, and how it gets paid is invisible to the consumer -- we can only guess what contract they've dreamed up. A fixed per-byte charge? A cut of book sales? A fixed annual charge? Who knows?
By bringing up UK EVDO, though, you do raise a question. How will this device deal with roaming? At present it is only sold on US Amazon.com, and it's tied to a Sprint network in the US. If an American user leaves US soil with one of these, I assume all connectivity will be lost. Will the eventual European model use 3G instead? Will later models feature hybrid phone technology so that world travelers have a continuous service?
(Of course there are exceptions, such as motor fuel, seasonal food, etc.)
In my mind, if you sell to the military, it's still commerce.