I'd think that if they want to cut your hands off, there's not a lot you CAN do for them, right? I would just come in to work on time, think of whatever you did that needs to be documented for the next guy, and be there when people come asking questions about the same sort of thing. Otherwise, enjoy the vacation...
But definitely the better a state you can leave them in when you go, the higher they will think of you, and it will only make them a better reference either directly, or through IT personal networking.
Actually you should look up some of the things that have happened with the Macbook Pro. Not the batteries, but the hissing noise, playing things full volume with headphones plugged in in Windows, power buttons that sink in and have to be replaced, noisy headphone jack, or striped screen to name the common ones.
I have one from work and I love the thing because none of that has happened, but you get no better hardware quality than Dell or Lenovo; a bit worse I'd say. I found a while ago when I searched for a maker of high end laptops that hasn't had a wave of quality issues that that distinction goes to Sony. Though if I had to recommend one I'd say they're still too costly for what you get. Dell Inspiron and Latitudes are nice and if they have any shoddy parts they'll die under warranty. They're also pretty easy to open up and strip down - you can find service manuals for them online. If you're paranoid about low quality, check the RAM - I've had a lot at work with bad Samsung RAM lately. Hynix seems fine. Other defects I'd say are less than 1% of the ones we set up lately.
Well said and I kind of overshot that point. I still think the idea is excellent, but even if they were classrooms in a box we couldn't just drop them on people and hope for enlightenment to spring up.
What I think would be much better is if we could get a large library of free, multi-language textbooks and then start worrying about the platform. The XOs come with a chunk of Wikipedia, and some fun apps it would be hard not to learn and explore with, but it's still too far off. I think with XP they could at least have a large library of free software to choose from even though I also see the advantage of a... sounds weird, but basically proprietary open source system that has only educational tools available for it, so that is IS only a learning tool.
But mostly I see it as a potential tipping point to where you could have 50 textbooks on a computer for the cost of one textbook over here (or less than some of mine!) The rest is up to the communities they land in.
I don't care about karma points this time, I have plenty to burn...
Some people need to get off their moral high horses for a second and look where OLPC has made it so far. Now this is no fault of Linux inherently, but after all the work they've done, it's not very usable. Not compared to a modern system, but as a computer period. The OLPC is a system where you cannot differentiate between files and "journal" events so every time you open a file it creates an alias of it indistinguishable from the original (unless you delete an alias and it breaks all the others but leaves the file intact...)
YOU CAN'T EVEN SAVE YOUR PLACE IN A BOOK. That pretty much makes it worthless as a textbook or book reader unless you write the page number on a piece of paper and scroll to it.
The activities are cool. There's no reason they can't take them along. But I think they saw how slowly and poorly things were going, swallowed a LOT of pride, and decided to go the functional route. Win XP you can do things like... find a 100% free program, install it, and NOT NEED TO START IT FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT! Even if it's not specially prepared by OLPC! If you think it crashes all the time you're either computer illiterate or haven't used Windows since Win98. Security? Maybe a problem since these will ostensibly mostly be on the net - but as they are now you can just back up whatever data is on it, plug in a USB flashdrive with the software+firmware and boot with buttons held down and the system reimages. We're not talking about downing a multimillion dollar corporation here, more like a kid's laptop starts acting slowly (apparently because the teachers allowed admin access to every student - wait, why do that?) so you save their work and zap it back to brand new then reload the data. With current functionality this "data" would be a couple MB of textfiles and maybe a few movie/picture recordings.
If you've never used one and never will, you're just guessing what's best. As ever, this is about giving poor kids working laptops to learn with. As for $3 to $7? They were already that much more expensive before they cheapened the process further. You could save more cash by not having Wifi or a color screen (not much since it's a diffraction grating that splits the colors out...) What's the good of a cheaper laptop if it's not useful? Really people, I have a couple of these things and I love them, but they're just not there yet and it's been too long, the project is in danger of being overrun by the market they basically created for devices like this. Don't get all bent out of shape because some kids in places you don't know for certain will be using a laptop you've never seen and it WON'T be running Linux! The horror.
IMO Windows XP is a quick, streamlined system that also has a modern, good looking desktop. It is also expensive. It has many security flaws discovered, but imagine that, running on most of the x86 desktops of the last decade. They are quickly patched and honestly my last security "incident" was in Windows 98 because I unwittingly installed a trojan. Of course it is not open source, and periodically an installation must verify its legitimacy. On the other hand, it is gobsmackingly stable if you don't let it get overrun by crapware and if you have the technical expertise to troubleshoot most Linux issues you shouldn't even have to think to keep WinXP in shape.
I'm not a shill, every few years I try a handful of popular distros and have yet to find one I really like - but Ubuntu looks better and better. Actually I do like it, I just don't have a use for it. I have an OLPC XO-1 and it is very easy to use (and very very rough/incomplete around the edges... and center.) But I still happily run XP Pro because I have experience from DOS 3 onward, so I've never had a problem with all the bogeymen like BSOD that opponents still seem to think happen often. (I've seen a few... faulty RAM, unmountable boot volume errors on work PCs I fix (one mindless "repair install" later it's fully recovered and lost nothing,) and that's about it.) I don't know what my nominal uptime is because every month or two my giant hotrod obelisk of a desktop makes my room too hot and I shut it off overnight.
I also really like recent versions of OS X... it crashes on me every week or two, but I forgive it because it's... I don't know - comfortable?
Nothing against Linux, I've just never found one that offers me anything special or is worth the effort to set up and maintain it. It's not at all too daunting technically, but spending days on end running a maze of inconsistently written manpages and help articles to do basic tasks is... miserable. Still, in the last five or so years this has become much more the exception than the rule as far as I've seen so... it gets more viable every day (and already is for some.)
Agreed. I flatly refuse to patronize paranoid police states, particularily those that illegally kidnap and torture my fellow countrymen (only to find that Mr. Arar was innocent as he said.)
Laptops are the least of my worries. They've demonstrated on numerous occasions that wherever you are in the world, if they get their hands on you, your rights are forefeit. I won't even do a stopover in the US.
The citizens are cool enough, but the government agencies are rabid.
All motherboards? And if we want one with a cheaper, normal-sized BIOS? I haven't followed this much, but I doubt it's going to cram into 256k? Linux may be free, but I don't want to pay for the hardware to support a feature if I'm not using it, and there must be some licensing fees?
Everything Asus?
Ah well, the last couple I bought had nasty deal breaking flaws anyway and I've stopped buying them so I guess it doesn't affect me, but I am a bit surprised they'd do it so unilaterally.
Thanks for all the replies. I'm by no means an expert on this. As I understand gobbo's post, that would give us a license to p2p audio files.
The levy does not apply to hard drives, but I too remember attempts to introduce that. It's also gone from MP3 players, but covers MiniDiscs, CDR, CDRW, and CDR/CDRW sold for audio, and goes to recording artists.
So I'm not sure if they would in fact be legally conflicted in barring p2p (though it seems almost impossible) but regardless of legal standing I will say that I have paid enough musicians for OS discs, utilities, coasters, TV show archives, backups, etc... that I feel fully entitled to download their works to my heart's content (though most of what I download not the Copyright Board of Canada nor RIAA have any jurisdiction over anyhow) not that I would need that justification as music can be copied for personal use here.
I see what you're saying, and I can see the topology changing and becoming more nation-border oriented if cyberwar becomes more viable. I think that the average person will continue to have fairly easy international communication networks one way or the other. The idea is out there and the technology to make it happen abounds. If it ever got so bad that there was little reason to use it, people would demand an alternative... then we'd just have to figure out how to cope with CingularWeb or whatever was first in line with the infrastructure... *shudders*
Well, first off that would be illegal considering we already pay a levy to compensate for THEORETICAL copyright violations whenever we buy blank media. It is against the law to tax people for nothing at all (you at least have to have a "reason" even if it is not followed through on) so for this to happen they would have to repeal it. I don't see that as likely since not a cent AFAIK has gone to actually compensate artists - it's going straight into the government's pockets like a sin tax, and they're far too greedy to give up such easy money for doing nothing.
It's funny to see so much discussion of the logistics of it and whether or not you'd find porn at a souk. Reading the comments in the article it sounds like very little technical knowledge and a lot of speculation was involved in the description of the problem. "RAM rot?" I think it's more likely that whatever viruses they have were aquired through typical internet surfing and trading files via flashdrives and networks. I mean, it's possible to put a virus on a helper app on a DVD, and stick an autorun script on it, but I'm betting the source is completely speculative and anecdotal.
There are reasons such as potability and safe and sanitary handling behind it, but I always thought it was funny that a dollar will get you several times more gasoline than bottled water.
Agreed. And the massive corporate pandering the DOES go along with the olympics only serves to legitimize everything they're already doing in terms of human rights, worker safety, environmental devestation, etc...
And for that, without getting too politically detailed, the olympics and all of their most prominent sponsors are dead to me. Regardless, even without the moral reprehensibility of it, all I see in them these days is giant multinational corporations and overpaid bigwigs throwing a huge party for themselves. Nothing motivates a country to clean up and renovate a city faster than being designated an olympic site - forget about the needs of the people, that's not good enough. Kind of the largest scale version of living in squalor but cleaning up and putting out the good silverware when company's coming.
Given their track record, once the botnet comes online I give them three months tops before someone else hijacks it and uses it to drop US gov't websites just to show them it can be done. Watch as they scramble to bring even more offensive capabilities online in response to the demonstration.
I'm not advocating that they sell it for a profit.
But from what I've seen so far, hackers already HAVE access to the OS, and this is where they are for it. The project is kind of a mirror of Linux, at least inasmuch as the laptop has gained a reputation for being clunky and hard to use compared to others in its niche (and you can argue that Linux itself doesn't have these problems, it certainly has this reputation.) While a proprietary OS could cripple the effort (like they can't go back ever once they start in?) I think their stubborn insistence on fully free and fully open source software has already crippled the effort, or at least weakened it far enough they may not be able to recoup operating costs at this rate. Potential doesn't deliver a finished product, even if there are millions of coders out there who could make this thing shine.
It's not as if I'm not concerned about MS too mind you, they're no saints. I think it all comes down to whether this is closer to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, or MS Corporation. I think even from a greedy standpoint MS could justify giving these guys totally free versions of Windows just to get people hooked on the OS. There is no reason all the same learning activities such as Pippy, the Python app couldn't run under it as well. (I got my first taste of programming in MS-DOS 5's GWBASIC, and QBASIC blew my mind with its huge help system...)
But as for Negroponte causing Bender to leave - I have no argument. I'm basically just of the opinion we should get these laptops in kids' hands the best way we can, and "They don't have any computers so they won't mind if it's a bit glitchy and unusable" doesn't sit right with my personal sense of ethics if we can easily give them better.
I'm replying on my OLPC XO-1 (quite a feat considering the rubber keyboard...) I love this thing, and it's surprisingly capable if predictably slow at it. The screen is awesome outside (but if lighting it with a lamp indoors you typically have to read it at the perfect reflection angle to the light source.) With backlight it's a bit blurred like an old CRT but the resolution makes up for it (1280x900)
However their insistence on fully free and open software has left it sorely lacking in some places. None of the "activities" that read books allow bookmarks. You just have to remember where you were and scroll back to it. The "journal" system as a file manager is also more confusing for having been so simplified. Files are events in the journal, and since it's also a log, viewing a file creates another event identical to the real file. If you delete one of the non-parent events, the others will open the associated program when you view them, but open no file even though the original will still be intact.
If moving to Windows allows them to more effectively pursue their goals for close to the same operating cost, then they should embrace it, at least until they have a viable alternative lined up. I agree with the comments I've been reading lately that it's not about personal ideals, it's about the mission of getting working laptops in kids' hands so they can start learning at a higher minimum base level.
With that in mind, the idea of "selling out" doesn't really apply. Each one of these things is effectively an armload of textbooks and school supplies for kids who may have neither, with a web browser attached. Let's just stop fighting amongst ourselves over ideals and get them out there in as useful a format as we can... anyone is free to offer them better alternatives if they have any. Until then I think they should try to further their cause before getting hung up on a personal ideology that holds the product, which is just a means to this end, back from having a chance to make a difference in the first place.
Also consider this: ClassmatePC and others move in, eat OLPC's lunch, then stubbornly sticking to their guns, OLPC is marginalized into an also-ran and shuts down. Now do the competitors stay competetive with OLPC's former prices or reoptimize for maximum profits like they were born to?
I have a couple and so far it seems the button is unimplemented anyway. More importantly, absolutely fundamental features like the ability to save your place reading a textfile or PDF is not there in any shape or form (unless you hack Opera onto it, use it to read a textfile, and save your surfing session...)
Also it has the craziest touchpad of any system I've used - it's always going berzerk and taking off until I recalibrate it with the "four finger salute."
I think that for now it would greatly benefit from a little free, closed source software like Adobe Acrobat Reader at least until it achieves a bare minimum level of functionality. And I love the things anyway so it hurts to say this, but... like a typical Windows user trying Linux in the 90s I'm finding the free solutions are often dreadfully lacking so far. (Still, as they are they're at least half as good as the old DOS 286 I learned on so if we can get them into kids' hands as they are that's great!)
On the other hand, I only dabble with Linux about 3-4 distros every few years but "yum" (Yellow dog Updater Modified) is great and so easy to use. Even when it has run out of memory and failed installs, a little guessing let me roll it back manually and try again. One of the stickier harder to learn points - package installation, meeting dependencies, and removing software - is now extremely easy and straightforward.
Me too... I bet it's going to be an interpretation of Oshii's paper thin, gratuitously cropped interpretation of the manga. But I really worry for James Cameron's Battle Angel - Kishiro basically gave him free reign long ago saying he didn't expect it to be the same because it's a movie.
I've actually had some stainless/chromed cable ends (can't say for sure. Probably just shiny stainless) corrode over time. One headphone plug in particular takes on a thin dark grey coating every couple years of regular use.
So I take a rag with a little metal polish on it, wipe it off, then clean off the polish. Good as new. I've never had a static connection like one on an amp or piece of home theatre equipment corrode on me.
So you're absolutely right, and in my experience gold is functional but not useful. My favorite cable sham is people selling high-grade shielded, gold-plated connector cables for a home theatre digital signal. Short of being so bad it drops bits, there would literally be no difference in high and low grade - there's really no wiggle room for looking a little better or worse.
Yeah, really. Especially now - the current political climate in America is not the best time to introduce a technology that can even be CONSIDERED to predict actions. I expect it's already been abused by now.
I only get matte. I don't want a mirror/print magnet. More than that though, I want a transflective screen on a laptop. I have an XO (OLPC) now and it's great being able to read it easily outdoors. I'm amazed no one else has tried this (other than ridiculously expensive conversions I've seen.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd think that if they want to cut your hands off, there's not a lot you CAN do for them, right?
I would just come in to work on time, think of whatever you did that needs to be documented for the next guy, and be there when people come asking questions about the same sort of thing. Otherwise, enjoy the vacation...
But definitely the better a state you can leave them in when you go, the higher they will think of you, and it will only make them a better reference either directly, or through IT personal networking.
Actually you should look up some of the things that have happened with the Macbook Pro. Not the batteries, but the hissing noise, playing things full volume with headphones plugged in in Windows, power buttons that sink in and have to be replaced, noisy headphone jack, or striped screen to name the common ones.
I have one from work and I love the thing because none of that has happened, but you get no better hardware quality than Dell or Lenovo; a bit worse I'd say. I found a while ago when I searched for a maker of high end laptops that hasn't had a wave of quality issues that that distinction goes to Sony. Though if I had to recommend one I'd say they're still too costly for what you get. Dell Inspiron and Latitudes are nice and if they have any shoddy parts they'll die under warranty. They're also pretty easy to open up and strip down - you can find service manuals for them online. If you're paranoid about low quality, check the RAM - I've had a lot at work with bad Samsung RAM lately. Hynix seems fine. Other defects I'd say are less than 1% of the ones we set up lately.
Well said and I kind of overshot that point. I still think the idea is excellent, but even if they were classrooms in a box we couldn't just drop them on people and hope for enlightenment to spring up.
What I think would be much better is if we could get a large library of free, multi-language textbooks and then start worrying about the platform. The XOs come with a chunk of Wikipedia, and some fun apps it would be hard not to learn and explore with, but it's still too far off. I think with XP they could at least have a large library of free software to choose from even though I also see the advantage of a... sounds weird, but basically proprietary open source system that has only educational tools available for it, so that is IS only a learning tool.
But mostly I see it as a potential tipping point to where you could have 50 textbooks on a computer for the cost of one textbook over here (or less than some of mine!) The rest is up to the communities they land in.
I don't care about karma points this time, I have plenty to burn...
Some people need to get off their moral high horses for a second and look where OLPC has made it so far. Now this is no fault of Linux inherently, but after all the work they've done, it's not very usable. Not compared to a modern system, but as a computer period. The OLPC is a system where you cannot differentiate between files and "journal" events so every time you open a file it creates an alias of it indistinguishable from the original (unless you delete an alias and it breaks all the others but leaves the file intact...)
YOU CAN'T EVEN SAVE YOUR PLACE IN A BOOK. That pretty much makes it worthless as a textbook or book reader unless you write the page number on a piece of paper and scroll to it.
The activities are cool. There's no reason they can't take them along. But I think they saw how slowly and poorly things were going, swallowed a LOT of pride, and decided to go the functional route. Win XP you can do things like... find a 100% free program, install it, and NOT NEED TO START IT FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT! Even if it's not specially prepared by OLPC! If you think it crashes all the time you're either computer illiterate or haven't used Windows since Win98. Security? Maybe a problem since these will ostensibly mostly be on the net - but as they are now you can just back up whatever data is on it, plug in a USB flashdrive with the software+firmware and boot with buttons held down and the system reimages. We're not talking about downing a multimillion dollar corporation here, more like a kid's laptop starts acting slowly (apparently because the teachers allowed admin access to every student - wait, why do that?) so you save their work and zap it back to brand new then reload the data. With current functionality this "data" would be a couple MB of textfiles and maybe a few movie/picture recordings.
If you've never used one and never will, you're just guessing what's best. As ever, this is about giving poor kids working laptops to learn with. As for $3 to $7? They were already that much more expensive before they cheapened the process further. You could save more cash by not having Wifi or a color screen (not much since it's a diffraction grating that splits the colors out...) What's the good of a cheaper laptop if it's not useful? Really people, I have a couple of these things and I love them, but they're just not there yet and it's been too long, the project is in danger of being overrun by the market they basically created for devices like this. Don't get all bent out of shape because some kids in places you don't know for certain will be using a laptop you've never seen and it WON'T be running Linux! The horror.
IMO Windows XP is a quick, streamlined system that also has a modern, good looking desktop.
It is also expensive. It has many security flaws discovered, but imagine that, running on most of the x86 desktops of the last decade. They are quickly patched and honestly my last security "incident" was in Windows 98 because I unwittingly installed a trojan.
Of course it is not open source, and periodically an installation must verify its legitimacy. On the other hand, it is gobsmackingly stable if you don't let it get overrun by crapware and if you have the technical expertise to troubleshoot most Linux issues you shouldn't even have to think to keep WinXP in shape.
I'm not a shill, every few years I try a handful of popular distros and have yet to find one I really like - but Ubuntu looks better and better. Actually I do like it, I just don't have a use for it. I have an OLPC XO-1 and it is very easy to use (and very very rough/incomplete around the edges... and center.) But I still happily run XP Pro because I have experience from DOS 3 onward, so I've never had a problem with all the bogeymen like BSOD that opponents still seem to think happen often. (I've seen a few... faulty RAM, unmountable boot volume errors on work PCs I fix (one mindless "repair install" later it's fully recovered and lost nothing,) and that's about it.) I don't know what my nominal uptime is because every month or two my giant hotrod obelisk of a desktop makes my room too hot and I shut it off overnight.
I also really like recent versions of OS X... it crashes on me every week or two, but I forgive it because it's... I don't know - comfortable?
Nothing against Linux, I've just never found one that offers me anything special or is worth the effort to set up and maintain it. It's not at all too daunting technically, but spending days on end running a maze of inconsistently written manpages and help articles to do basic tasks is... miserable. Still, in the last five or so years this has become much more the exception than the rule as far as I've seen so... it gets more viable every day (and already is for some.)
Agreed. I flatly refuse to patronize paranoid police states, particularily those that illegally kidnap and torture my fellow countrymen (only to find that Mr. Arar was innocent as he said.)
Laptops are the least of my worries. They've demonstrated on numerous occasions that wherever you are in the world, if they get their hands on you, your rights are forefeit. I won't even do a stopover in the US.
The citizens are cool enough, but the government agencies are rabid.
I did back when I fired up the DVR regularly. I have too many games to watch shows it seems.
26/M
All motherboards? And if we want one with a cheaper, normal-sized BIOS?
I haven't followed this much, but I doubt it's going to cram into 256k? Linux may be free, but I don't want to pay for the hardware to support a feature if I'm not using it, and there must be some licensing fees?
Everything Asus?
Ah well, the last couple I bought had nasty deal breaking flaws anyway and I've stopped buying them so I guess it doesn't affect me, but I am a bit surprised they'd do it so unilaterally.
Thanks for all the replies. I'm by no means an expert on this.
As I understand gobbo's post, that would give us a license to p2p audio files.
The levy does not apply to hard drives, but I too remember attempts to introduce that. It's also gone from MP3 players, but covers MiniDiscs, CDR, CDRW, and CDR/CDRW sold for audio, and goes to recording artists.
So I'm not sure if they would in fact be legally conflicted in barring p2p (though it seems almost impossible) but regardless of legal standing I will say that I have paid enough musicians for OS discs, utilities, coasters, TV show archives, backups, etc... that I feel fully entitled to download their works to my heart's content (though most of what I download not the Copyright Board of Canada nor RIAA have any jurisdiction over anyhow) not that I would need that justification as music can be copied for personal use here.
I see what you're saying, and I can see the topology changing and becoming more nation-border oriented if cyberwar becomes more viable. I think that the average person will continue to have fairly easy international communication networks one way or the other. The idea is out there and the technology to make it happen abounds. If it ever got so bad that there was little reason to use it, people would demand an alternative... then we'd just have to figure out how to cope with CingularWeb or whatever was first in line with the infrastructure... *shudders*
Well, first off that would be illegal considering we already pay a levy to compensate for THEORETICAL copyright violations whenever we buy blank media. It is against the law to tax people for nothing at all (you at least have to have a "reason" even if it is not followed through on) so for this to happen they would have to repeal it. I don't see that as likely since not a cent AFAIK has gone to actually compensate artists - it's going straight into the government's pockets like a sin tax, and they're far too greedy to give up such easy money for doing nothing.
It's funny to see so much discussion of the logistics of it and whether or not you'd find porn at a souk.
Reading the comments in the article it sounds like very little technical knowledge and a lot of speculation was involved in the description of the problem. "RAM rot?" I think it's more likely that whatever viruses they have were aquired through typical internet surfing and trading files via flashdrives and networks. I mean, it's possible to put a virus on a helper app on a DVD, and stick an autorun script on it, but I'm betting the source is completely speculative and anecdotal.
There are reasons such as potability and safe and sanitary handling behind it, but I always thought it was funny that a dollar will get you several times more gasoline than bottled water.
Agreed. And the massive corporate pandering the DOES go along with the olympics only serves to legitimize everything they're already doing in terms of human rights, worker safety, environmental devestation, etc...
And for that, without getting too politically detailed, the olympics and all of their most prominent sponsors are dead to me. Regardless, even without the moral reprehensibility of it, all I see in them these days is giant multinational corporations and overpaid bigwigs throwing a huge party for themselves. Nothing motivates a country to clean up and renovate a city faster than being designated an olympic site - forget about the needs of the people, that's not good enough. Kind of the largest scale version of living in squalor but cleaning up and putting out the good silverware when company's coming.
Given their track record, once the botnet comes online I give them three months tops before someone else hijacks it and uses it to drop US gov't websites just to show them it can be done. Watch as they scramble to bring even more offensive capabilities online in response to the demonstration.
Hahaha... welcome to the digital cold war.
I'm not advocating that they sell it for a profit.
But from what I've seen so far, hackers already HAVE access to the OS, and this is where they are for it. The project is kind of a mirror of Linux, at least inasmuch as the laptop has gained a reputation for being clunky and hard to use compared to others in its niche (and you can argue that Linux itself doesn't have these problems, it certainly has this reputation.) While a proprietary OS could cripple the effort (like they can't go back ever once they start in?) I think their stubborn insistence on fully free and fully open source software has already crippled the effort, or at least weakened it far enough they may not be able to recoup operating costs at this rate. Potential doesn't deliver a finished product, even if there are millions of coders out there who could make this thing shine.
It's not as if I'm not concerned about MS too mind you, they're no saints. I think it all comes down to whether this is closer to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, or MS Corporation. I think even from a greedy standpoint MS could justify giving these guys totally free versions of Windows just to get people hooked on the OS. There is no reason all the same learning activities such as Pippy, the Python app couldn't run under it as well. (I got my first taste of programming in MS-DOS 5's GWBASIC, and QBASIC blew my mind with its huge help system...)
But as for Negroponte causing Bender to leave - I have no argument. I'm basically just of the opinion we should get these laptops in kids' hands the best way we can, and "They don't have any computers so they won't mind if it's a bit glitchy and unusable" doesn't sit right with my personal sense of ethics if we can easily give them better.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10472304
I'm replying on my OLPC XO-1 (quite a feat considering the rubber keyboard...)
I love this thing, and it's surprisingly capable if predictably slow at it. The screen is awesome outside (but if lighting it with a lamp indoors you typically have to read it at the perfect reflection angle to the light source.) With backlight it's a bit blurred like an old CRT but the resolution makes up for it (1280x900)
However their insistence on fully free and open software has left it sorely lacking in some places. None of the "activities" that read books allow bookmarks. You just have to remember where you were and scroll back to it. The "journal" system as a file manager is also more confusing for having been so simplified. Files are events in the journal, and since it's also a log, viewing a file creates another event identical to the real file. If you delete one of the non-parent events, the others will open the associated program when you view them, but open no file even though the original will still be intact.
If moving to Windows allows them to more effectively pursue their goals for close to the same operating cost, then they should embrace it, at least until they have a viable alternative lined up. I agree with the comments I've been reading lately that it's not about personal ideals, it's about the mission of getting working laptops in kids' hands so they can start learning at a higher minimum base level.
With that in mind, the idea of "selling out" doesn't really apply. Each one of these things is effectively an armload of textbooks and school supplies for kids who may have neither, with a web browser attached.
Let's just stop fighting amongst ourselves over ideals and get them out there in as useful a format as we can... anyone is free to offer them better alternatives if they have any. Until then I think they should try to further their cause before getting hung up on a personal ideology that holds the product, which is just a means to this end, back from having a chance to make a difference in the first place.
Also consider this: ClassmatePC and others move in, eat OLPC's lunch, then stubbornly sticking to their guns, OLPC is marginalized into an also-ran and shuts down. Now do the competitors stay competetive with OLPC's former prices or reoptimize for maximum profits like they were born to?
I have a couple and so far it seems the button is unimplemented anyway. More importantly, absolutely fundamental features like the ability to save your place reading a textfile or PDF is not there in any shape or form (unless you hack Opera onto it, use it to read a textfile, and save your surfing session...)
Also it has the craziest touchpad of any system I've used - it's always going berzerk and taking off until I recalibrate it with the "four finger salute."
I think that for now it would greatly benefit from a little free, closed source software like Adobe Acrobat Reader at least until it achieves a bare minimum level of functionality. And I love the things anyway so it hurts to say this, but... like a typical Windows user trying Linux in the 90s I'm finding the free solutions are often dreadfully lacking so far. (Still, as they are they're at least half as good as the old DOS 286 I learned on so if we can get them into kids' hands as they are that's great!)
On the other hand, I only dabble with Linux about 3-4 distros every few years but "yum" (Yellow dog Updater Modified) is great and so easy to use. Even when it has run out of memory and failed installs, a little guessing let me roll it back manually and try again. One of the stickier harder to learn points - package installation, meeting dependencies, and removing software - is now extremely easy and straightforward.
Me too... I bet it's going to be an interpretation of Oshii's paper thin, gratuitously cropped interpretation of the manga.
But I really worry for James Cameron's Battle Angel - Kishiro basically gave him free reign long ago saying he didn't expect it to be the same because it's a movie.
Wow, it's like the old PSX game "N-Gen Racing" come to life. (Though that was jet racing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSN5YFZG-hg
I was just thinking that.
"Study proves that PCPitstop users are most likely to run LimeWire."
I've actually had some stainless/chromed cable ends (can't say for sure. Probably just shiny stainless) corrode over time. One headphone plug in particular takes on a thin dark grey coating every couple years of regular use.
So I take a rag with a little metal polish on it, wipe it off, then clean off the polish. Good as new. I've never had a static connection like one on an amp or piece of home theatre equipment corrode on me.
So you're absolutely right, and in my experience gold is functional but not useful. My favorite cable sham is people selling high-grade shielded, gold-plated connector cables for a home theatre digital signal. Short of being so bad it drops bits, there would literally be no difference in high and low grade - there's really no wiggle room for looking a little better or worse.
The first thing I thought of was the meme:
"[Backing story and explanation] What should I do?"
"Kill yourself."
Or the popular pic "Remember kids, it's down the road not across the street! Make it count!"
Could it be that a lot of these sites are just knee-jerk meme bleating as opposed to actual, personal endorsement of suicide?
Yeah, really. Especially now - the current political climate in America is not the best time to introduce a technology that can even be CONSIDERED to predict actions. I expect it's already been abused by now.
I only get matte. I don't want a mirror/print magnet.
More than that though, I want a transflective screen on a laptop. I have an XO (OLPC) now and it's great being able to read it easily outdoors. I'm amazed no one else has tried this (other than ridiculously expensive conversions I've seen.)