Really? Who told you? I am an embedded systems developer, and we wouldn't touch Windows for anything but user interface running far, far away from anything that touches custom hardware. Some tools I use are marketed as Windows-only -- except they are not.
Windows does not run non-Windows software -- including a large amount of great software that runs on Linux. But being either a Microsoft shill, or one of the "users" who learn about software from Microsoft ads, you wouldn't know what it is.
Heck, on a small laptop Windows won't runs a lot of Windows software in any usable manner.
No, this is purely to create confusion. They always mess with unrelated terms to gain perception of familiarity in users -- meaningless slogan "Digital Nervous System" mimicked DNS acronym, ".NET" imitates a top-level domain, etc.
You may miss few commits just before the snapshot has been created, but in case the database does buffering, you will miss them anyway when/if machine crashes. Or you can miss a rollback because you don't know if you had an incomplete transaction in progress -- they don't all stay in memory.
On the other hand, a backup with transaction log can be made MORE reliable than a filesystem snapshot because it is specifically optimized for this purpose -- state can be reliably recovered even if filesystem is few steps behind, as long as log is committed after filesystem became unwritable (easily achieved by sending it to another host)
"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge... Just throw a chair into Yahoo HQ parking lot, Steve.
Plus, best practices for backup dont even use or want online backup. The Right Way to backup a real production MySQL instances is via filesystem snapshot, using something like LVM or ZFS. (owl goes here)
Databases backups over filesystem snapshots? With the assumption that all database commits are automatically filesystems commits, and there is no buffering between those layers? And with no incremental backups through transaction logs?
My configuration is a reimplementation of what moocapiean did in a bit more controlled environment, and updated to work with Hardy packages. I have posted the current version at here -- it includes my UI updates and various scripts previously posted on the same forum, configured to work in a consistent manner. It still lacks nice installer and debian packaging, however once installed it acts like a regular Ubuntu setup, customized for XO. Power management is still missing (conflicts with SD), so under heavy use laptop battery lasts about 3 hours.
If they want to start it from scratch as a commercial company, they are welcome, but who in his right mind would buy their product? The whole point is that OLPC has a good chance to be useful because of volunteers writing software/curriculum and donations subsidizing hardware. I am sure, no one currently working on software for this will continue doing so if OLPC management suddenly ordered everyone to port it to some castrated version of Windows, so all they will get is a laptop that runs an equivalent of bare Windows Mobile without the mobile part.
I am sure, Microsoft will be happy to poison everything that can be distributed, but what is in this for OLPC people? If it's failure without Microsoft, it's just as a failure with Microsoft, so they can just ask Gates and his "charitable foundation" to pay them to cancel the project and save themselves a lot of grief.
I am going to add a way to easily switch between screens running Sugar and "mainstream" window manager.
This is pretty much the most "mainstream" laptop configuration imaginable. For any practical use on this laptop, educational or otherwise, it is already superior to anything that would involve Windows. Heck, I am POSTING FROM IT!
If the goal is anything other than spreading the disease that is Windows, they can just take this configuration -- and I am willing to help in improving it.
There is agriculture in climates ranging from the sub arctic to the equator. 'We' haven't optimized our agriculture for one specific temperature. Actually we did. The fact that SOME agriculture is practiced in suboptimal conditions does not mean that regions with those conditions sustain their population on a local food -- it's common to grow something rare but adapted to the local climate and trade it for something more nutritionally valuable (wheat/rice/corn/potatoes) grown elsewhere. If availability of wheat and rice will be reduced, world population is not going to survive on apples, tomatoes and cranberries.
Generally, warmer climates are more productive. Just look at the difference in agricultural productivity between Britain and Germany (mild) and Canada (cold) at the same latitude. Then Somalia should be swimming in food.
Given the Putin government's history with the media, 'extremist material' may be very broadly interpreted as any content unfriendly to the interests of the Russian government." And given the "Western" (read: American) media history with Putin government it may mean Fox News, that should've been blocked in US long ago if Americans valued their sanity.
You forgot about a layer of crushed bones of Microsoft employees, soaked with blood drained from Fox News and Clear Channel personnel. Without it ColdFusion can rise again.
3.1W is the whole laptop, not the processor (actually it's usually around 5W). CPU is only a small part of power consumption when you have devices like screen with backlight and wireless network.
Mathematics done right is extremely exacting. It resembles what is done in school not one iota, except possibly the proofs done in geometry. While I won't call things modern mathematicians do similar to what school math courses look like, the content of school math courses is VERY useful applicable to the everyday life. School math courses aren't there to make you a mathematicians, they are to teach you the foundation of math that are necessary for a wide range of applications. 3D modeling and video editing at the professional level are, indeed, way beyond the range of the average student. So is what a professional mathematician does. Completely outside the realm of possibility for all but the most prodigious students. That doesn't matter. The point is that kids will learn what they are interested in learning, and they will not learn what they are not interested in learning. They may regurgitate it, temporarily cram it in, whatever, but by and large it's a waste of time. Then I am almost afraid of asking, what in your opinion "nonprofessional" 3D modeling and video editing are. That damn spinning "E-Mail" gif? Loituma remix #65537 on youtube? I am sure, not encouraging kids to produce those abominations will only contribute to their sanity.
If you have cool projects for kids to do that interest them, they will learn. It doesn't have to be professional level. It just has to be, as some people put it, "hard fun". That's the sweet spot for education. Interesting and challenging but doable. For those few who will find it "hard fun" to do things that require massive amount of processing power, a school can easily provide a dozen of media-oriented desktops, database servers, clusters, CAD workstations along with CNC machine tools and other things that are far beyond the level of something a student would want to carry into every classroom. For most 2D bitmap and vector editing, music composition, 2D CAD drawing, C or Python software development and calculations will be the most CPU-intensive tasks actually involved in studying, and those things, being common, should be better supported on individual laptops.
What is so funny about that? There are plenty of industrial control systems including CNC machine tools, buildings automation, city/utilities control systems, safety equipment, cash registers, etc. that have computers from that time. Even embedded systems produced now are all over the place -- from PIC to x86 Linux.
I mean that Communism and Nazism behaved like religions.
No. I was there, and I can most certainly say that they were ideologies and not religions. Religion always includes or endorses some ideology, but the reverse is not true, ideology does not necessarily have anything to do with religious belief.
A state-supported ideology is common and often nearly invisible for the member of society that practices it -- it is proclaimed (often clumsily) by government officials, is seen kinda working because society can prosper while supposedly implementing it for decades, it is assumed to be right by most and rarely questioned, but people also rarely actually think about it, or any alternatives, it's as if its validity or invalidity is irrelevant to the people's lives as long as society is capable of implementing it without creating discomfort and unrest. After all, it merely claims what is "a better way of running a society" as opposed to making claims about physical world that exists independently outside of human mind and ideas. Since most of people are not politicians, assuming that politicians are following some sort of rules that have little impact on everyday lives is a natural (though often stupid) thing to do, however for, say, a physicist it would be impossible to assume that religion's creation myth is correct -- it contradict with things physicist experiences in his work. In US the ideas of "capitalism" and "democracy" enjoy the same kind of ideological support -- I can make a case of both of them being pretty poorly thought out ideas in the first place, and separately of neither of them actually playing an important role in the way US society operates, however none of it will be a scientific argument because I will have to discuss people's ideas, behavior, motivation and impression about life. At most I can catch government and businesses lying and manipulating people using ideology as the tool to achieve desired behavior of the masses, however for every my claim there would be tens of millions of rednecks claiming that they naturally love doing exactly what I see them manipulated into doing.
Religion, on the other hand, requires actual belief and is treated not only as important part of everyday lives, ethics and history but also makes claims of facts -- something that ideology often approaches but never actually does. Even Nazi had to form their ideas of "superiority" and "rightful claim" of control in subjective terms -- though they used religious imagery and pseudo-scientific language, they neither required belief in any deity or creation myth, nor bothered to find scientific evidence of any kind. Their ideas are only "religious" in a way of "but won't it be nice if YOUR ethnicity was destined to rule the world?" as their first and last greatest proof of their ideas, not unlike "but won't it be nice if the world was ruled by benevolent deity?" is the first and last greatest proof of religion. It's a pretty weak analogy.
In that sense the Communist belief in Lysenkoism is a bit like the Catholic aversion to birth control. Neither were part of the original doctrine, but once you have priests or politicians that believe they have access to the absolute truth a bit sprouting is almost inevitable.
No. It's merely one person who gained favorable treatment by the government and massively abused the power he gained through it. This has nothing to do with religion and everything with government officials' irresponsibility and concentration of power. After the end of Stalinism in mid-50's, Lysenko's theories were thoroughly discredited, and it remains a single such event in the whole USSR history -- it taught post-Stalin governments to never mess with the content of scientific discourse, and limit government's influence to choosing directions to fund and support.
US propaganda loves picking such blunders in USSR history (almost exclusively taking them from Stalin's time) and present them as if they discredit wide aspects of USSR or Russian society, C
If you don't think 3d modeling is useful to learning math, sciences, and engineering, you are a genuine idiot. I think, it became a tradition on Slashdot for someone to tell "if you think [something], you are an idiot" when they have no good argument to support their opposing position.
And if you do not think that video editing can help you learn literature you have no imagination, to boot. No, I think that watching movies instead of reading books hurts people's understanding of literature. How video editing, that is two or three degree further away from literature, can help or hurt, I have no idea unless you are suggesting that a group of 20-30 kids should study literature by making movies based on books, complete with realistic costumes and special effects. When I was a kid, a plain old drama club was something that few were able to enjoy.
But perhaps I'm just misunderstanding you? Regardless, your comment is proof positive that a low slashdot ID doesn't mean anything. My Slashdot ID merely says that I have joined right after this site was announced. My dislike of stupidity is entirely unrelated to this.
While my laptop is WORLDS ahead of the XO, I have a Compaq nw9440 which is MORE than adequate for learning 3d graphics with its Core Duo, 2GB memory, and nVidia Quadro FX1500 with 1680x1050 resolution. It is in a meganotebook (17") form factor with a three button touchpad and a full keyboard. It's also absolutely inappropriate for a middle or high school environment, and is barely acceptable for in-class work at a university. More so if intended to be carried by every student. Heck, I am nowhere close to the hectic and occasionally violent environment of a high school, and I would think twice before carrying a 17" laptop through a crowd, or placing it on a desk that is not at least as heavy as I am. And once my laptop that had about twice the performance of a XO was taken by robbers who assaulted me in San Francisco.
Given that many people got their start on an Amiga running Lightwave 3D on, say, a 25MHz processor and with maybe 8MB of RAM, and at NTSC resolutions (even interlaced with overscan you're looking at maybe 800x480 or so on an OCS or ECS Amiga) I'd say you pretty much have no idea what you're talking about. Whatever Amiga could do in 80's, this laptop can, too. I am sure, if I wanted to remake Tron on it, I would end up with a result technically superior to the original, though I don't find it (or your laptop) the best tool for such a job. Neither of those things is in any way suitable as a part of a school curriculum because, as I have mentioned before, it's hard, tedious work, and few people care for it more than, say, knitting.
By the way, google sketchup is a 3d modeler which can be immediately useful in a variety of projects and which doesn't require a degree to use. Perhaps you've heard of it? I bet many kids could learn to use that if they weren't being treated like idiots by arrogant assholes who think they know everything about how everyone else learns. Actually I support the idea that kids (and some adults) should be KEPT THE HELL AWAY from tools that enforce a particular, narrow model of thinking and organizing one's work, lest they will learn not how to think about the things they are doing, but how to mindlessly follow a strict pattern of thought that follows from functionality of a tool. Except for adults it usually involves UML.
3D modeling and video editing done right are VERY HARD AND TEDIOUS WORK, they require good spatial awareness and taste, and they contribute very little to one's knowledge. Done poorly they are much worse than painting, drawing or music done poorly, so they are deep in the area with diminishing returns when it comes to general education.
This is why they are not in the basic curriculum of anything -- least of all schools that are going to use those laptops.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? Who told you? I am an embedded systems developer, and we wouldn't touch Windows for anything but user interface running far, far away from anything that touches custom hardware. Some tools I use are marketed as Windows-only -- except they are not.
Windows does not run non-Windows software -- including a large amount of great software that runs on Linux. But being either a Microsoft shill, or one of the "users" who learn about software from Microsoft ads, you wouldn't know what it is.
Heck, on a small laptop Windows won't runs a lot of Windows software in any usable manner.
That's for marketing people.
No, this is purely to create confusion. They always mess with unrelated terms to gain perception of familiarity in users -- meaningless slogan "Digital Nervous System" mimicked DNS acronym, ".NET" imitates a top-level domain, etc.
...One Laptop Per Terrorist program.
On the other hand, a backup with transaction log can be made MORE reliable than a filesystem snapshot because it is specifically optimized for this purpose -- state can be reliably recovered even if filesystem is few steps behind, as long as log is committed after filesystem became unwritable (easily achieved by sending it to another host)
After many years of being a subscriber I was permabanned from there for claiming that it's unethical to work for Microsoft.
Databases backups over filesystem snapshots? With the assumption that all database commits are automatically filesystems commits, and there is no buffering between those layers? And with no incremental backups through transaction logs?
My configuration is a reimplementation of what moocapiean did in a bit more controlled environment, and updated to work with Hardy packages. I have posted the current version at here -- it includes my UI updates and various scripts previously posted on the same forum, configured to work in a consistent manner. It still lacks nice installer and debian packaging, however once installed it acts like a regular Ubuntu setup, customized for XO. Power management is still missing (conflicts with SD), so under heavy use laptop battery lasts about 3 hours.
Consumers also demand crack cocaine -- should I start a charity that distributes it, too?
To think of it, that would be the best use of Gates "fundation" -- this way it won't be messing up things that actually can help people.
If they want to start it from scratch as a commercial company, they are welcome, but who in his right mind would buy their product? The whole point is that OLPC has a good chance to be useful because of volunteers writing software/curriculum and donations subsidizing hardware. I am sure, no one currently working on software for this will continue doing so if OLPC management suddenly ordered everyone to port it to some castrated version of Windows, so all they will get is a laptop that runs an equivalent of bare Windows Mobile without the mobile part.
I am sure, Microsoft will be happy to poison everything that can be distributed, but what is in this for OLPC people? If it's failure without Microsoft, it's just as a failure with Microsoft, so they can just ask Gates and his "charitable foundation" to pay them to cancel the project and save themselves a lot of grief.
I got my XO laptop.
I have ported Ubuntu Hardy on it. It easily runs Firefox and OpenOffice.org.
I am working on an easy to install version, and missing controls for screen/power/...
I went as far as making a Ubuntu-ish green gtk and icons theme to match UI colors with laptop controls.
I am going to add a way to easily switch between screens running Sugar and "mainstream" window manager.
This is pretty much the most "mainstream" laptop configuration imaginable. For any practical use on this laptop, educational or otherwise, it is already superior to anything that would involve Windows. Heck, I am POSTING FROM IT!
If the goal is anything other than spreading the disease that is Windows, they can just take this configuration -- and I am willing to help in improving it.
(NO WAI)
Those are Windows people.
You forgot about a layer of crushed bones of Microsoft employees, soaked with blood drained from Fox News and Clear Channel personnel. Without it ColdFusion can rise again.
3.1W is the whole laptop, not the processor (actually it's usually around 5W). CPU is only a small part of power consumption when you have devices like screen with backlight and wireless network.
What is so funny about that? There are plenty of industrial control systems including CNC machine tools, buildings automation, city/utilities control systems, safety equipment, cash registers, etc. that have computers from that time. Even embedded systems produced now are all over the place -- from PIC to x86 Linux.
I mean that Communism and Nazism behaved like religions.
No. I was there, and I can most certainly say that they were ideologies and not religions. Religion always includes or endorses some ideology, but the reverse is not true, ideology does not necessarily have anything to do with religious belief.
A state-supported ideology is common and often nearly invisible for the member of society that practices it -- it is proclaimed (often clumsily) by government officials, is seen kinda working because society can prosper while supposedly implementing it for decades, it is assumed to be right by most and rarely questioned, but people also rarely actually think about it, or any alternatives, it's as if its validity or invalidity is irrelevant to the people's lives as long as society is capable of implementing it without creating discomfort and unrest. After all, it merely claims what is "a better way of running a society" as opposed to making claims about physical world that exists independently outside of human mind and ideas. Since most of people are not politicians, assuming that politicians are following some sort of rules that have little impact on everyday lives is a natural (though often stupid) thing to do, however for, say, a physicist it would be impossible to assume that religion's creation myth is correct -- it contradict with things physicist experiences in his work. In US the ideas of "capitalism" and "democracy" enjoy the same kind of ideological support -- I can make a case of both of them being pretty poorly thought out ideas in the first place, and separately of neither of them actually playing an important role in the way US society operates, however none of it will be a scientific argument because I will have to discuss people's ideas, behavior, motivation and impression about life. At most I can catch government and businesses lying and manipulating people using ideology as the tool to achieve desired behavior of the masses, however for every my claim there would be tens of millions of rednecks claiming that they naturally love doing exactly what I see them manipulated into doing.
Religion, on the other hand, requires actual belief and is treated not only as important part of everyday lives, ethics and history but also makes claims of facts -- something that ideology often approaches but never actually does. Even Nazi had to form their ideas of "superiority" and "rightful claim" of control in subjective terms -- though they used religious imagery and pseudo-scientific language, they neither required belief in any deity or creation myth, nor bothered to find scientific evidence of any kind. Their ideas are only "religious" in a way of "but won't it be nice if YOUR ethnicity was destined to rule the world?" as their first and last greatest proof of their ideas, not unlike "but won't it be nice if the world was ruled by benevolent deity?" is the first and last greatest proof of religion. It's a pretty weak analogy.
In that sense the Communist belief in Lysenkoism is a bit like the Catholic aversion to birth control. Neither were part of the original doctrine, but once you have priests or politicians that believe they have access to the absolute truth a bit sprouting is almost inevitable.
No. It's merely one person who gained favorable treatment by the government and massively abused the power he gained through it. This has nothing to do with religion and everything with government officials' irresponsibility and concentration of power. After the end of Stalinism in mid-50's, Lysenko's theories were thoroughly discredited, and it remains a single such event in the whole USSR history -- it taught post-Stalin governments to never mess with the content of scientific discourse, and limit government's influence to choosing directions to fund and support.
US propaganda loves picking such blunders in USSR history (almost exclusively taking them from Stalin's time) and present them as if they discredit wide aspects of USSR or Russian society, C
Not a single Stargate reference (I, for one, welcome our future ignorant overlords).
3D modeling and video editing done right are VERY HARD AND TEDIOUS WORK, they require good spatial awareness and taste, and they contribute very little to one's knowledge. Done poorly they are much worse than painting, drawing or music done poorly, so they are deep in the area with diminishing returns when it comes to general education.
This is why they are not in the basic curriculum of anything -- least of all schools that are going to use those laptops.