Perhaps you are new here ( in written media ), but ALL CAPS means "YELLING", not "Capitalization". I thought you were yelling that "NONE" of the objectives would be accomplished, if consumers didn't buy the thing, and that is was "CRITICAL". I assume yelling means that something is urgent _and_ very important. I don't know how you use that form of expression regularly, I can only use convention to interpret it.
The G1G1 is a charity project. That was what I was trying to clarify. The OLPC project can exist easily without G1G1 (i.e. charity), because it's meant to work without charity. It's a feature of the project.
I never said thing were "hunky-dory" in Uruguay, esp. because I don't know what that is. I assume it's a good thing, and probably that is not the case. My point is that, luckily, G1G1 is in no way key to OLPC success, and that it is a strength of the project.
Uruguayan kids have their laptops without _any_ help from the G1G1 program. We have the money to buy them, and to pay for support. We just don't have the infrastructure or influence to build them that cheap, or to even embark on our own on a project like this. That is the help we needed, and it's appreciated.
The G1G1 program is nice, esp. for testing. But it's just another part, even if you yell that it's a CRITICAL part. Real kids have tested them in proyecto CEIBAL, in Cardal, Uruguay. We can live without the G1G1 program, don't worry.
When Negroponte talked about a 100 dollar laptop, everybody was laughing at him, saying it could not be done.
They are selling under 200 dollar laptops, with a good chance of making them for 100 dollars in one year or two, or at least for the equivalent to that amount, taking into account currency devaluation.
Other people are selling cheap, good laptops now, and a new market has emerged. Their vision, that was far fetched, is now very close. I think the OLPC is already a success.
Their first computer model has some very interesting features, from an engineering standpoint, and is unsurpassed in many areas, as of now. Even if it has some technical issues (that the kids in Uruguay have not experienced, for example), it is still a great piece of technology.
Regular mainstream laptops fail all the time. Four team mates and I bought top of the line HP laptops an year ago, for work (we are software consultants). Mine has a non fatal backlight failure, that I couldn't fix it within its warranty period, because I was not willing to leave it for a month, the time they said it would take (I had to move to another country in less than a month). Another one had its disk fail in warranty, and they are taking more than two months to fix it, and still haven't come up with a solution. Yet another one, failed on monday, after the warranty period failed.
Some other guys bought Toshiba laptops, and half of them had memory modules failure, rebooting due to overheating.
Some other guys had Lenovo Laptops, and four out of six of them had failing power strips, or failing batteries, before three months.
None of them were refurbished, and all were paid full price.
I'm not saying that this is typical, it was just my first and only experience working with laptops, and it is obvious to me now that they are not that reliable. At least, if you use them seriously, and do not have a support contract.
If people put up with this kind of issues with big brand laptops, I don't see why a keyboard failure is such a big issue on a laptop that is not intended for unsupported use. The difficulty in getting your hands on one, and the 30 day warranty should be a good enough warning.
In Uruguay, the first country where they are deploying, there are electronic stores as close to home as in any US town. I don't know about Europe.
Electronic technicians are very easy to find there.
Anyhow, I don't think they could be of much help. The computers come with a very reasonable support contract with Brightstar, and they should be taking care of the repairs.
The OLPC is not a consumer product. They don't have the infrastructure to sell it as such. If you buy millions, they can sell support, including hardware, and warranties.
They are not iXO's. Their goal is not to sell laptops for everybody. They are making this for kids who might use them to learn. Both objectives don't have to be acheived together, and don't even need to be compatible.
Better text resolution, if you need to use it to read actual books. Better battery life (3x) to read books. Networking capabilities that the EEE doesn't have. Preinstalled software suitable for learning, teaching and collaborating. Available quality support in your country.
Aside from that, EEE would not even exist without the OLPC project. Laptops exist since the eighties.
The OLPC was needed for this kind of machine to even exist. Even if their machine wasn't the best, their objective would be accomplished.
You are right. I gave up on Dilbert only after he became the BSA bitch. I though of Dilbert as a colleague, and his writer a cool guy. Now I only see them as allies of The Evil Empire (TM).
FYI: you can type about:plugins in the address bar, when you need to know anything about plugins. If you want to know something about the config, you type about:config and get to the super duper advanced settings page.
That is only an example of the respect the US have for human rights.
And about "the brutal rape and murder of children".. . I don't see why you need to add "brutal", as if some other kind of rape was less punishable.
What some people think is that killing people is a violation of human rights, even if the murdered guy is a rapist and a murderer. The whole idea is that human rights apply to all humans. Not people you like. All humans.
This is not that kind of government. Of course, they _could_ kill you (they have the ability, but it's not their m.o.), but they don't need to. Think of it as a conservative government that is friends with all the media. They don't need to actively censor a lot of people. The internet is an issue, because it doesn't respond that much to corporate interests. That's why they are censoring this. That, and because they just don't know how the internet works, and don't know about the Streissand effect.
In fatc, the issue now at Paraguay is different. China is a communist country, where manipulating the media is justified by their ideology.
Paraguay is a country ruled by a conservative coalition. Their means of manipulating the media are much more occidental, and ruled by market news.
In other words, what happens now in Paraguay is just an expanded version of what happens in most occidental countries. Big interests control everything, corrupt government people follow those interests, and use the weight of government + corporations to keep in power.
In South America, we call that "la rosca". In the US it would be "coporate lobbysts".
What I mean is that you shouldn't look at what happens in Paraguay as a third world thing. To me, it's a risk we all have.
They are hosting some of them at googlepages now. Anyhow, they are not small domains the ones that were hijacked. One of them is the official page of the party.
This is not something that could ever go unnoticed.
Many handhelds have transflective screens. The OLPC, for instance, has one. They could become the most used computer in my country, in a couple of years.
I was not saying ALL LCDs are reflective. I said SOME of them are reflective, and that _all_ LCDs are more similar to reading paper than phosphorescent displays, in the sense that their light source is commonly used for ambient lighting. That means the frequencies we get to see blend better with the environment than CRTs.
Again. LCD's don't involve shining a light into your eyes. It's very similar to illuminating it with a front fluorescent light. While "shining lights at your eyes" sounds dangerous, I don't see how it's different from looking at a bright sheet of paper.
About the ambient lighting and stuff, you are missing the point. The lighting that is enough for computers is not enough for working with paper. That is why people used to have desk lamps.
When working with paper it's usual to illuminate it so you can read better. A sheet of paper illuminated by a desk lamp reflects a lot more light than what you can get from a computer monitor, CRT or LCD. Paper in a softly illuminated place is harder to read.
I don't think the origin of light, or its intesity are issues. For me, jaggies and contrast are more important, because they affect focus, and that can make your eyes hurt.
FatPersonVision (finely scaled) looks much better to me than black bars. Black bars are distracting, and make the display small, even if it's not my "investment" (I don't even own a 16:9 tv). You probably know that our eyes and brain know how to adjust for that. And you get a bigger image. For instance, the TV screen seldom does look 3:4 from our point of view. Our brain knows how to adjust for perspective, and ratio is an easy transform, works perfect. Of course, if you look at FPV with reluctance, you will always hate it. If you try a bit, you might like it.
Because the screen directly emits light, it is typically more tiring to your eyes. That's why people often prefer light text on dark background for a screen. I generally choose "old school" green or amber on black. Used to. Right now, LCDs transfer light, and some even reflect it. That's more similar to paper than to phosphorescence.
Phosphor is gone. OLED will emit light, too, but it hasn't arrived yet. I'll have to see it first hand to know.
Mid-white on black, e.g. #C0C0C0 on #000000 is surely the safest combination. First, you're not staring at a lightbulb for 8 hours a day. I really hate white backgrounds. It's only natural for the background to be black; if we're used to the white one it's because of retards who like to think of computers as paper (this is why I say using a computer, like any complex industrial machinery, should require a licence). Second, it has the most contrast for the lowest possibly light intensity, as you use your three light sensors more or less equally, not just one as in the case of green on black. For that last argument, you fail it. Light sensors sense mostly green. The reason for using light backgrounds is that it keeps the bright more constant, and is more similar to what you can find in nature. Close bright stuff on black background does not really happen a lot in nature, so our eyes don't like it that much. Of course, it can bring back memories from unix terminals, and the good ol' days, grandpa. These days, monitors have the ability to mimic paper much better than before, so they do a fine job. It was a good argument not to use black on white for 640x480 crt's, because those damn jaggies were more easily hidden by a dark background. With high resolutions (as in high DPI) and subpixel rendering those issues are starting to dissapear, and we retards can look at the computer as if it were paper. Hey, kids who have the OLPC have it even better, with their super-duper diplays.
I'm also used to green on black. And green is better than yellow or white on CRT monitors which have convergence problems, because you don't have red and blue that need to converge to green. It's probably better even on LCD monitors when you need small fonts. Also, out of the three primary colors, green appears the brightest (human eye perceiving).
Anyway, I seem to be very confortable with black on white used by web browsers if no convergence problems exist (no old CRT). In fact, given a good LCD monitor, black on white should be the best. cleartype (or whatever subpixel rendering is named in your platform) is very good for providing nice easy to read letters. Full color works better with that rendering, so black on white whould be the best. Contrast should be high, and brightness should be adjusted to the lighting of the room. More light, more brightness.
The more it can look like paper, the better. Paper works great.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
Everyone knows Vista sucks.
Perhaps you are new here ( in written media ), but ALL CAPS means "YELLING", not "Capitalization".
I thought you were yelling that "NONE" of the objectives would be accomplished, if consumers didn't buy the thing, and that is was "CRITICAL". I assume yelling means that something is urgent _and_ very important. I don't know how you use that form of expression regularly, I can only use convention to interpret it.
The G1G1 is a charity project. That was what I was trying to clarify. The OLPC project can exist easily without G1G1 (i.e. charity), because it's meant to work without charity. It's a feature of the project.
I never said thing were "hunky-dory" in Uruguay, esp. because I don't know what that is. I assume it's a good thing, and probably that is not the case. My point is that, luckily, G1G1 is in no way key to OLPC success, and that it is a strength of the project.
Read again.
..."
I was answering your conjecture.
You said:
"Perhaps this is the reason why the OLPC wasn't sold in Europe
And I said you were right.
This is not a charity.
Uruguayan kids have their laptops without _any_ help from the G1G1 program. We have the money to buy them, and to pay for support. We just don't have the infrastructure or influence to build them that cheap, or to even embark on our own on a project like this. That is the help we needed, and it's appreciated.
The G1G1 program is nice, esp. for testing. But it's just another part, even if you yell that it's a CRITICAL part. Real kids have tested them in proyecto CEIBAL, in Cardal, Uruguay. We can live without the G1G1 program, don't worry.
I'm straight, you insensitive clod!
I don't understand how you are looking at it.
When Negroponte talked about a 100 dollar laptop, everybody was laughing at him, saying it could not be done.
They are selling under 200 dollar laptops, with a good chance of making them for 100 dollars in one year or two, or at least for the equivalent to that amount, taking into account currency devaluation.
Other people are selling cheap, good laptops now, and a new market has emerged. Their vision, that was far fetched, is now very close. I think the OLPC is already a success.
Their first computer model has some very interesting features, from an engineering standpoint, and is unsurpassed in many areas, as of now. Even if it has some technical issues (that the kids in Uruguay have not experienced, for example), it is still a great piece of technology.
Regular mainstream laptops fail all the time. Four team mates and I bought top of the line HP laptops an year ago, for work (we are software consultants). Mine has a non fatal backlight failure, that I couldn't fix it within its warranty period, because I was not willing to leave it for a month, the time they said it would take (I had to move to another country in less than a month).
Another one had its disk fail in warranty, and they are taking more than two months to fix it, and still haven't come up with a solution.
Yet another one, failed on monday, after the warranty period failed.
Some other guys bought Toshiba laptops, and half of them had memory modules failure, rebooting due to overheating.
Some other guys had Lenovo Laptops, and four out of six of them had failing power strips, or failing batteries, before three months.
None of them were refurbished, and all were paid full price.
I'm not saying that this is typical, it was just my first and only experience working with laptops, and it is obvious to me now that they are not that reliable. At least, if you use them seriously, and do not have a support contract.
If people put up with this kind of issues with big brand laptops, I don't see why a keyboard failure is such a big issue on a laptop that is not intended for unsupported use. The difficulty in getting your hands on one, and the 30 day warranty should be a good enough warning.
In Uruguay, the first country where they are deploying, there are electronic stores as close to home as in any US town. I don't know about Europe.
Electronic technicians are very easy to find there.
Anyhow, I don't think they could be of much help.
The computers come with a very reasonable support contract with Brightstar, and they should be taking care of the repairs.
It is.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Giving/Europe
The OLPC is not a consumer product. They don't have the infrastructure to sell it as such. If you buy millions, they can sell support, including hardware, and warranties.
They are not iXO's. Their goal is not to sell laptops for everybody. They are making this for kids who might use them to learn. Both objectives don't have to be acheived together, and don't even need to be compatible.
Better text resolution, if you need to use it to read actual books.
Better battery life (3x) to read books.
Networking capabilities that the EEE doesn't have.
Preinstalled software suitable for learning, teaching and collaborating.
Available quality support in your country.
Aside from that, EEE would not even exist without the OLPC project. Laptops exist since the eighties.
The OLPC was needed for this kind of machine to even exist. Even if their machine wasn't the best, their objective would be accomplished.
You are right. I gave up on Dilbert only after he became the BSA bitch.
I though of Dilbert as a colleague, and his writer a cool guy. Now I only see them as allies of The Evil Empire (TM).
FYI: you can type about:plugins in the address bar, when you need to know anything about plugins.
If you want to know something about the config, you type about:config and get to the super duper advanced settings page.
The answer to your post is: Guantanamo.
That is only an example of the respect the US have for human rights.
And about "the brutal rape and murder of children".. . I don't see why you need to add "brutal", as if some other kind of rape was less punishable.
What some people think is that killing people is a violation of human rights, even if the murdered guy is a rapist and a murderer. The whole idea is that human rights apply to all humans. Not people you like. All humans.
You got it all wrong. The cat is both alive and dead in both implementations.
Only when the codebases are merged, you can know for sure.
Amateurs.
Partido Colorado is the ruling party. They are the censors. Not the censored.
This is not that kind of government.
Of course, they _could_ kill you (they have the ability, but it's not their m.o.), but they don't need to. Think of it as a conservative government that is friends with all the media. They don't need to actively censor a lot of people.
The internet is an issue, because it doesn't respond that much to corporate interests. That's why they are censoring this. That, and because they just don't know how the internet works, and don't know about the Streissand effect.
IANAP, but I know corruption by the Colorado party is widely known there.
The issue is that lots of people just don't care and they don't think anything can be done against them.
Activism is seen as worthless. Maybe that can change things a bit.
A - Oh, yes, they know
B - Get this on CNN.
In fatc, the issue now at Paraguay is different.
China is a communist country, where manipulating the media is justified by their ideology.
Paraguay is a country ruled by a conservative coalition. Their means of manipulating the media are much more occidental, and ruled by market news.
In other words, what happens now in Paraguay is just an expanded version of what happens in most occidental countries. Big interests control everything, corrupt government people follow those interests, and use the weight of government + corporations to keep in power.
In South America, we call that "la rosca". In the US it would be "coporate lobbysts".
What I mean is that you shouldn't look at what happens in Paraguay as a third world thing. To me, it's a risk we all have.
They are hosting some of them at googlepages now.
Anyhow, they are not small domains the ones that were hijacked. One of them is the official page of the party.
This is not something that could ever go unnoticed.
Hehe
Many handhelds have transflective screens. The OLPC, for instance, has one. They could become the most used computer in my country, in a couple of years.
I was not saying ALL LCDs are reflective. I said SOME of them are reflective, and that _all_ LCDs are more similar to reading paper than phosphorescent displays, in the sense that their light source is commonly used for ambient lighting. That means the frequencies we get to see blend better with the environment than CRTs.
Again. LCD's don't involve shining a light into your eyes. It's very similar to illuminating it with a front fluorescent light. While "shining lights at your eyes" sounds dangerous, I don't see how it's different from looking at a bright sheet of paper.
About the ambient lighting and stuff, you are missing the point. The lighting that is enough for computers is not enough for working with paper. That is why people used to have desk lamps.
When working with paper it's usual to illuminate it so you can read better. A sheet of paper illuminated by a desk lamp reflects a lot more light than what you can get from a computer monitor, CRT or LCD. Paper in a softly illuminated place is harder to read.
I don't think the origin of light, or its intesity are issues. For me, jaggies and contrast are more important, because they affect focus, and that can make your eyes hurt.
FatPersonVision (finely scaled) looks much better to me than black bars. Black bars are distracting, and make the display small, even if it's not my "investment" (I don't even own a 16:9 tv).
You probably know that our eyes and brain know how to adjust for that. And you get a bigger image.
For instance, the TV screen seldom does look 3:4 from our point of view. Our brain knows how to adjust for perspective, and ratio is an easy transform, works perfect.
Of course, if you look at FPV with reluctance, you will always hate it. If you try a bit, you might like it.
Phosphor is gone. OLED will emit light, too, but it hasn't arrived yet. I'll have to see it first hand to know.
The reason for using light backgrounds is that it keeps the bright more constant, and is more similar to what you can find in nature. Close bright stuff on black background does not really happen a lot in nature, so our eyes don't like it that much. Of course, it can bring back memories from unix terminals, and the good ol' days, grandpa.
These days, monitors have the ability to mimic paper much better than before, so they do a fine job. It was a good argument not to use black on white for 640x480 crt's, because those damn jaggies were more easily hidden by a dark background. With high resolutions (as in high DPI) and subpixel rendering those issues are starting to dissapear, and we retards can look at the computer as if it were paper. Hey, kids who have the OLPC have it even better, with their super-duper diplays.
Anyway, I seem to be very confortable with black on white used by web browsers if no convergence problems exist (no old CRT). In fact, given a good LCD monitor, black on white should be the best.
cleartype (or whatever subpixel rendering is named in your platform) is very good for providing nice easy to read letters. Full color works better with that rendering, so black on white whould be the best. Contrast should be high, and brightness should be adjusted to the lighting of the room. More light, more brightness.
The more it can look like paper, the better. Paper works great.