I don't mean to flame, it's just a rant of frustration. Of course there are many excellent people among the Westerners. Unfortunately, there don't tend to be many of them in the upper echelons of the snowballing, empire-building machine that is giving us a bad name.
If people from other parts expect the western world to be indebted to helping the world's poorest, they should at least give us the benefit of the doubt we are not doing it for profit.
They don't expect handouts, they expect not to be exploited or enslaved.
Supporters for Ogg/Theora are voting for a Ross Perot, assuring that we'll really get a George Bush. What we really need is an Al Gore: centrist, workable, functional, capable, and proven to work.
Did not get analogy. Please provide one with Ron Paul, with some kind of liberty/fiat money angle. Thanks.
1. Teach a man how to fish 2. Lend him a crapload of money under the condition that he buys the fishing boat, fishing equipment and fuel from you 3. Wait until man can't pay off the debt due to disastrous interest rates, and invoke the default clauses such as taking ownership of his business, and diverting the fish to a Western market 4. Profit!
Alright, point taken. I still think it's a lame complaint if no source changes took place, since the spirit of the license is really to keep the contributions open.
You miss the point of the OLPC. It is NOT intended to be yet another 'throw computers at schools' project. OLPCs are not intended to run your Powerpoint. The biggest innovation of OLPC is not the hardware, it is in fact the open, education-oriented software stack. There is a key on the keyboard specifically set aside to switch to source code editing of the running application; think on that for a while and realize what kind of philosophy and corporate culture is needed to support such a deceptively simple feature. No other vendor on the planet can come close; all they are interested in is expanding mind share and pushing yet another office machine.
I can relate to the attractiveness of the project from my own sour process of growing up under the MS umbrella. The defining experience installing every new version of DOS and Windows is a short-lived sense of accomplishment at having a clean, new, working installation followed by an empty feeling of betrayal at the inability to do much with the system, the useful bits being locked down behind undocumented APIs and binaries. The ensuing months would be filled with waiting for next issues of random computer magazines, grasping at crumbs of knowledge some two-bit writer would be merciful enough to publish. An issue describing video card registers would keep me going for a year. How much more would I have learned with an open, documentation-filled machine like the XO? If on top of this it contained encyclopaedic information about building stuff it would be a dream.
About the food thing, can you explain how local farmers can get established if they can't sell their produce at a profit because they are being undercut by free food? Do you suggest to keep the free food flowing forever?
It doesn't matter if they modified the firmware, as long as they didn't modify BusyBox. I guess they must have detected some changes in the binary and went after Verizon.
Apple gear sure is popular with the Bubble generation, but you have to wonder if or how the upcoming one will rebel. They could go to MS stuff, they could ditch the standalone player and move to smart phones, they could move to portable personal servers... time will tell.
Aren't you guys missing the point of the device, which is the E-Ink display? This should make it heads and shoulders above anything else on the market, including those reflective LCDs, and especially outdoors.
I just don't buy it. The one critical thing the pocket-size devices are still missing are good quality 1900x1200 eye-mounted displays. Even then it will be a tough fight-- the input might still be lacking, for example, or the convenience of monitors might outweigh the mobility of the device. Until then, they are just "look at me I can check gmail" gadgets.
Let's also mention some applications of E8. The E8 Lie group has applications in theoretical physics, in particular in string theory and supergravity. The group E8×E8 (the Cartesian product of two copies of E8) serves as the gauge group of one of the two types of heterotic string and is one of two anomaly-free gauge groups that can be coupled to the N = 1 supergravity in 10 dimensions. Clearly, E8 is the U-duality group of supergravity on an eight-torus (in its split form). Also, any fool can see that one way to incorporate the standard model of particle physics into heterotic string theory is the symmetry breaking of E8 to its maximal subalgebra SU(3)×E6.
This attitude makes me sad. It used to be weird to want to close off access to stuff and in the process break the built-in openness of the Internet. Then the non-geeks moved in, and hungry-hungry-Hippo ensued-- now you gotta write a ten page position paper to justify opening a port. Meh.
Slashdot Mirror
It is such a pain in the ass to type all that crap in. I bet it would be possible to take pictures and automatically OCR the titles.
Not to mention that 215 processors is not exactly a lot.
1. Teach a man how to fish
2. Lend him a crapload of money under the condition that he buys the fishing boat, fishing equipment and fuel from you
3. Wait until man can't pay off the debt due to disastrous interest rates, and invoke the default clauses such as taking ownership of his business, and diverting the fish to a Western market
4. Profit!
Alright, point taken. I still think it's a lame complaint if no source changes took place, since the spirit of the license is really to keep the contributions open.
You miss the point of the OLPC. It is NOT intended to be yet another 'throw computers at schools' project. OLPCs are not intended to run your Powerpoint. The biggest innovation of OLPC is not the hardware, it is in fact the open, education-oriented software stack. There is a key on the keyboard specifically set aside to switch to source code editing of the running application; think on that for a while and realize what kind of philosophy and corporate culture is needed to support such a deceptively simple feature. No other vendor on the planet can come close; all they are interested in is expanding mind share and pushing yet another office machine.
I can relate to the attractiveness of the project from my own sour process of growing up under the MS umbrella. The defining experience installing every new version of DOS and Windows is a short-lived sense of accomplishment at having a clean, new, working installation followed by an empty feeling of betrayal at the inability to do much with the system, the useful bits being locked down behind undocumented APIs and binaries. The ensuing months would be filled with waiting for next issues of random computer magazines, grasping at crumbs of knowledge some two-bit writer would be merciful enough to publish. An issue describing video card registers would keep me going for a year. How much more would I have learned with an open, documentation-filled machine like the XO? If on top of this it contained encyclopaedic information about building stuff it would be a dream.
About the food thing, can you explain how local farmers can get established if they can't sell their produce at a profit because they are being undercut by free food? Do you suggest to keep the free food flowing forever?
It doesn't matter if they modified the firmware, as long as they didn't modify BusyBox. I guess they must have detected some changes in the binary and went after Verizon.
...it will obviously lead to better fuel economy and more reliable engines ;) Man, does Toyota have a work-on-your-own-projects day like Google?
We don't need no steenkin' customers!
Can the pollen from the terminator plants infect humans and make them sterile? That wouldn't be too good.
Apple gear sure is popular with the Bubble generation, but you have to wonder if or how the upcoming one will rebel. They could go to MS stuff, they could ditch the standalone player and move to smart phones, they could move to portable personal servers... time will tell.
If you're going to add ion drives, you should go all out and also throw in the Mark IV computer, level 4 shields, and neutron beams!
Aren't you guys missing the point of the device, which is the E-Ink display? This should make it heads and shoulders above anything else on the market, including those reflective LCDs, and especially outdoors.
that not a single death among the 86500 survivors has been caused by radiation ;)
I just don't buy it. The one critical thing the pocket-size devices are still missing are good quality 1900x1200 eye-mounted displays. Even then it will be a tough fight-- the input might still be lacking, for example, or the convenience of monitors might outweigh the mobility of the device. Until then, they are just "look at me I can check gmail" gadgets.
You sure got the status symbol thing right. Here are some thoughts these two products evoke:
:)
Exhibit A: Natalie Portman has one. Kristen Bell has one. The ex-college-buddy, now a $ucce$$ful investment banker has one.
Exhibit B: A bald, monkey-like beast sighted in public screaming like a pig, with sweat stains on the chest and under the armpits has one.
Need I say more?
I'll second this to undo a mismoderation ;)
if Stallman has been reading xkcd lately ;)
It's kinda funny that the Tesla Roadster runs off of DC batteries :)
Let's also mention some applications of E8. The E8 Lie group has applications in theoretical physics, in particular in string theory and supergravity. The group E8×E8 (the Cartesian product of two copies of E8) serves as the gauge group of one of the two types of heterotic string and is one of two anomaly-free gauge groups that can be coupled to the N = 1 supergravity in 10 dimensions. Clearly, E8 is the U-duality group of supergravity on an eight-torus (in its split form). Also, any fool can see that one way to incorporate the standard model of particle physics into heterotic string theory is the symmetry breaking of E8 to its maximal subalgebra SU(3)×E6.
(mostly stolen from the Wikipedia article).
Now if only he and his dad followed in Milosevic and his dad's footsteps...
The prize was clearly a million dollars, not a cigar! I guess the editors don't even read the summary.
This attitude makes me sad. It used to be weird to want to close off access to stuff and in the process break the built-in openness of the Internet. Then the non-geeks moved in, and hungry-hungry-Hippo ensued-- now you gotta write a ten page position paper to justify opening a port. Meh.