I cannot help but think that if WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) fully supported Microsoft Office that many people could switch to their Linux flavor of choice and be done with it. Many games run under WINE already so I think support for Office is what we are really waiting for. How much funding would it take to get full support for two Office version to WORK?
I know LibreOffice and AbiWord are comparable alternatives, but a Pinto and a Lambogini Diablo are comparable. Both are cars with four wheels, but they do not quite measure up. How much funding would it take to make LibreOffice measure up?
Since the article in question is about a link to articles that have been removed or censored does that mean that article will have to be removed along with Slashdot's reference too?
Being that it takes two barrels of gasoline to make one barrel of ethanol, growing the corn and turning it into ethanol, than please let it DIE. I beg you all, please separate bio-diesel and ethanol into two separate discussions.
Many people (numbers vary) stop paying because the car does not run and it is too expensive or not worth repairing. The problem is that many poor are taken advantage by paying $6,000 for a car that is not worth $2,000. The poor that need a car to get to their job do not often have the cash or knowledge to take the car to an independent mechanic to have it checked out before purchase. I have seen "low cost" dealerships try to sell cars with cracked blocks and bad transmissions. This device is a waste of money. What dealers need is device to find the car when it needs to be repossessed which has its own safety issues.
The trick with whistle blowing is to make sure you have left the job BEFORE you blow the whistle. Snowden made sure he was out of the country. Others found employment elsewhere before blowing the whistle. With digital finger prints left in logs a whistle blower cannot assume that attempts to be anonymous will be successful.
Ruby is a great Perl replacement. It generates really nice looking content and is very readable. Do more with it than Perl with spending hours trying to understand some else's "snoopy swearing" code in Perl. Please be sure to look into Rails and Rake as well.
Being order by an Iranian judge to appear is akin to being nominated for a humanitarian award. I cannot image now proud I would be if asked to appear. Has anyone worked out some kind of award system for being asked to appear in foreign country or tried in absence for human rights work?
Red Hat essentially provides all of their software offering for free. They make the money off the service contracts. Supporting a couple of additional third party applications is just one more thing they can charge for. I like free money.
Testing work is seen as a horrid job in my opinion. I see more tester jobs posted than any thing else in my field due to turnover and a reluctance to fill the positions from within the company. What makes the matter worse is that since most engineers will only apply for the positions when they have no other option so it attracts B grade talent. Given this I would not higher someone with a Software Testing degree since I would see them a low grade talent no matter their performance.
To reduce the test team size and tighten the schedule I instead push for test driven development. The tester team should only have to pass off one the tests that the engineers already developed and crack the whip.
I love the idea of a 3D printer house. The original concept from Contour Crafting using quick dry concrete and plaster of Paris is better than the man made sand stone used by D Shape in both construction time and durability. The problem is how to add rebar to either design to make them earthquake resistant. Using Giant Compressed Earth Blocks (GCEB) are more environmentally friendly idea since no concrete is used. A machine can extrude giant earthen Legos that can then be assembled. Rebar can then be pounded or drilled in before the blocks cure in place.
How do they intend to put the rebar in the D Shape blocks?
When I started at my local university there were several high school students attending classes through various programs. Junior colleges and state schools have free and reduced price classes for high schools who want to attend classes part-time. Your brother can also take classes full time at the local junior college by getting his GED. Classes from the Management Information Systems department (a.k.a. Computer Information Systems) will teach the basic computer usage skills you have requested.
Computer training option 2: Get certification
The problem with homeschooling is at the end of an excellent education you have no real way of proving your computer skills. After all, the SATs do not test your skills with Excell. Getting Microsoft or some other certificate would be an excellent way of to test your brother’s skills and have a curriculum to follow.
Does anyone have suggestions for what certificates a high school student should get?
Computer programming option 1: Java
The Advanced Placement tests that give high school students college credit assume the student knows Java. I suggest an online introduction to programming college course, however these are more often taught in Visual Basic or C rather than Java.
Computer programming option 2: Ruby
The Ruby scripting language would give you brother an easier starting point that Python or Java while still teaching object oriented programming concepts. The best part is that he can use “Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby,” a short simple introduction to the language written by an insane man. I think the text would be very appealing to a high school student. Please check it out and enjoy the soundtrack.
To make it easier for everyone the device could use a DisplayPort rather than an HDMI and USB connectors. The DisplayPort has audio, video, and USB in it. Ethernet-to-USB would typically be in the dongle that splays out the connection. The problem is that the dongle to convert DisplayPort to USB, Ethernet, stereo audio, mic, and HDMI costs more than the mini-PC, but standardizing on the DisplayPort would make it easier for the kids and the schools to use them.
What percent of TVs have DisplayPorts in addition to HDMI connectors?
Filing systems such as EXT2 have to update a lot of nodes when a single file name is altered. Unnecessarily updating tables may cause additional wear on the flash drive. Samsung is working on a new filing system for SSDs, but I do not know anything about the impimentation or the advantages.
For Linux based systems perhaps one of the NAND Flash based filing systems could be altered to better fit the needs of a NAND hard drive. Does anyone know what changes could be made to UBIFS or LogFS to better fit the needs of a SSD?
Do any of the current filing systems work effectively on SSDs?
Voter fraud happens on the machines you DO NOT see, not on the ones you do. Compare the count of how many machines are at your site with how many you should have with how many the state says you should have when you call them.
I quite agree. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. I have been screaming that they should have used Maemo or some other Webpad GUI. Keyboard and mouse support is built in and the icons are big already. Add Open Office then SHIP.
Okay. Is there any reason NOT to use an x86 CPU? The greatest reason not to use x86 is cost. The system will have less components (at least to manage the NAND) and make the printed circuit board (PCB) cheaper. The more pins on the processor means the more layers required for the PCB. Increasing the number of layers dramatically increases the board cost.
It's actually 1200x900. The grayscale display is 1200x900. The color backlight display is 800x600.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers from. laptop.org
And in return, x86 compatibility is a good thing, because it opens up a huge world of binary software. For one, x86 is far better supported by just about everybody. The system libraries and applications code is architexture independant. They can be compiled for arm, ppc, mips, or x86 with only a couple of quick options. I cross comple complete system by simply swaping config files. Third party software compatibility is not a requirment on these systems. Actually having two diffent physicall designs/architecture would actually add second sourcing options.
B: The OLPC actually uses a 15 W-Hr LiFeP (Lithium Ferro-Polymer) battery. Which is actually 4x the charge lifespan of LiIon, and has far greater environmental tolerance, and can even be composted for disposal. Although LiFeP is an option, most are sold with NiMH. I am not sure if this is due to avalibility or cost. I listed the wrong battery before, but my arguement stands. Please correct me if I am wrong.
The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant. The external hardware is durable and well placed, but the overall system is anything but brilliant. There is no reason to use an x86 processor for the project. This should be treated as an embedded design.
To further reduce costs and increase battery life a RISC based processor should be used. Suitable ARM based System-On-Chip (SOC) processors run up to 800 MHz, thus reducing power consumption and increasing performance. Nvidia, ATI, and other companies make graphics accelerators that are more than sufficient to meet the video conferencing needs. The systems has an 800 x 600 display and uses NAND Flash memory with no hard drive, it should be thought of as an embedded product.
The XO laptop uses Nickel-Cadmium battery rather than a Lithium-Ion. The intended use case is for students who will only have power part of the day if at all. An Nickel-Cadmium battery is not suitable for this many recharge cycles. The hardware is NOT brilliant.
I work for Intel. We shred EVERYTHING after one year. Email that is not backed up is deleted after about 30 days. The why is very simple; we loose things, we forget things, we are human. If we did not have such a policy someone might ask for data we may or may not still have after a couple of years. If we cannot find it, it is suspicious, but if we have a 1 year shred policy I do not have to remember where I put each document, where I got the data, and have it backed up FOREVER six ways from Sunday. In an industry that remakes itself every six months all documents are out of date twice over anyway.
Do you know how many emails a company executive receives every day? You had better believe that I would use an auto delete policy and if I was an assistant I would not want to find an email more than 30 days old in that mountain. I think most S&P 500 companies have an even stricter shred policy.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that C# would be ideal. It should be the open EMCA C# standard. (This is not anti-Microsoft, it is just a good open standard to use.)
I meant whining not winning
I cannot help but think that if WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) fully supported Microsoft Office that many people could switch to their Linux flavor of choice and be done with it. Many games run under WINE already so I think support for Office is what we are really waiting for. How much funding would it take to get full support for two Office version to WORK?
I know LibreOffice and AbiWord are comparable alternatives, but a Pinto and a Lambogini Diablo are comparable. Both are cars with four wheels, but they do not quite measure up. How much funding would it take to make LibreOffice measure up?
+1
Being able to run cygwin in Linux should be a release test for Wine. It would sure make scripting some of the unit tests easy. Great idea.
Since the article in question is about a link to articles that have been removed or censored does that mean that article will have to be removed along with Slashdot's reference too?
Being that it takes two barrels of gasoline to make one barrel of ethanol, growing the corn and turning it into ethanol, than please let it DIE. I beg you all, please separate bio-diesel and ethanol into two separate discussions.
I think this movie will have the record number of people who bought tickets, but did not actually go to see the movie.
Many people (numbers vary) stop paying because the car does not run and it is too expensive or not worth repairing. The problem is that many poor are taken advantage by paying $6,000 for a car that is not worth $2,000. The poor that need a car to get to their job do not often have the cash or knowledge to take the car to an independent mechanic to have it checked out before purchase. I have seen "low cost" dealerships try to sell cars with cracked blocks and bad transmissions. This device is a waste of money. What dealers need is device to find the car when it needs to be repossessed which has its own safety issues.
The trick with whistle blowing is to make sure you have left the job BEFORE you blow the whistle. Snowden made sure he was out of the country. Others found employment elsewhere before blowing the whistle. With digital finger prints left in logs a whistle blower cannot assume that attempts to be anonymous will be successful.
Ruby is a great Perl replacement. It generates really nice looking content and is very readable. Do more with it than Perl with spending hours trying to understand some else's "snoopy swearing" code in Perl. Please be sure to look into Rails and Rake as well.
Being order by an Iranian judge to appear is akin to being nominated for a humanitarian award. I cannot image now proud I would be if asked to appear. Has anyone worked out some kind of award system for being asked to appear in foreign country or tried in absence for human rights work?
Red Hat essentially provides all of their software offering for free. They make the money off the service contracts. Supporting a couple of additional third party applications is just one more thing they can charge for. I like free money.
Testing work is seen as a horrid job in my opinion. I see more tester jobs posted than any thing else in my field due to turnover and a reluctance to fill the positions from within the company. What makes the matter worse is that since most engineers will only apply for the positions when they have no other option so it attracts B grade talent. Given this I would not higher someone with a Software Testing degree since I would see them a low grade talent no matter their performance.
To reduce the test team size and tighten the schedule I instead push for test driven development. The tester team should only have to pass off one the tests that the engineers already developed and crack the whip.
I love the idea of a 3D printer house. The original concept from Contour Crafting using quick dry concrete and plaster of Paris is better than the man made sand stone used by D Shape in both construction time and durability. The problem is how to add rebar to either design to make them earthquake resistant. Using Giant Compressed Earth Blocks (GCEB) are more environmentally friendly idea since no concrete is used. A machine can extrude giant earthen Legos that can then be assembled. Rebar can then be pounded or drilled in before the blocks cure in place.
How do they intend to put the rebar in the D Shape blocks?
Computer training option 1: Go to college
When I started at my local university there were several high school students attending classes through various programs. Junior colleges and state schools have free and reduced price classes for high schools who want to attend classes part-time. Your brother can also take classes full time at the local junior college by getting his GED. Classes from the Management Information Systems department (a.k.a. Computer Information Systems) will teach the basic computer usage skills you have requested.
Computer training option 2: Get certification
The problem with homeschooling is at the end of an excellent education you have no real way of proving your computer skills. After all, the SATs do not test your skills with Excell. Getting Microsoft or some other certificate would be an excellent way of to test your brother’s skills and have a curriculum to follow.
Does anyone have suggestions for what certificates a high school student should get?
Computer programming option 1: Java
The Advanced Placement tests that give high school students college credit assume the student knows Java. I suggest an online introduction to programming college course, however these are more often taught in Visual Basic or C rather than Java.
Computer programming option 2: Ruby
The Ruby scripting language would give you brother an easier starting point that Python or Java while still teaching object oriented programming concepts. The best part is that he can use “Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby,” a short simple introduction to the language written by an insane man. I think the text would be very appealing to a high school student. Please check it out and enjoy the soundtrack.
HTML version: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/
To make it easier for everyone the device could use a DisplayPort rather than an HDMI and USB connectors. The DisplayPort has audio, video, and USB in it. Ethernet-to-USB would typically be in the dongle that splays out the connection. The problem is that the dongle to convert DisplayPort to USB, Ethernet, stereo audio, mic, and HDMI costs more than the mini-PC, but standardizing on the DisplayPort would make it easier for the kids and the schools to use them.
What percent of TVs have DisplayPorts in addition to HDMI connectors?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort
Filing systems such as EXT2 have to update a lot of nodes when a single file name is altered. Unnecessarily updating tables may cause additional wear on the flash drive. Samsung is working on a new filing system for SSDs, but I do not know anything about the impimentation or the advantages.
For Linux based systems perhaps one of the NAND Flash based filing systems could be altered to better fit the needs of a NAND hard drive. Does anyone know what changes could be made to UBIFS or LogFS to better fit the needs of a SSD?
Do any of the current filing systems work effectively on SSDs?
Voter fraud happens on the machines you DO NOT see, not on the ones you do. Compare the count of how many machines are at your site with how many you should have with how many the state says you should have when you call them.
I quite agree. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. I have been screaming that they should have used Maemo or some other Webpad GUI. Keyboard and mouse support is built in and the icons are big already. Add Open Office then SHIP.
To further reduce costs and increase battery life a RISC based processor should be used. Suitable ARM based System-On-Chip (SOC) processors run up to 800 MHz, thus reducing power consumption and increasing performance. Nvidia, ATI, and other companies make graphics accelerators that are more than sufficient to meet the video conferencing needs. The systems has an 800 x 600 display and uses NAND Flash memory with no hard drive, it should be thought of as an embedded product.
The XO laptop uses Nickel-Cadmium battery rather than a Lithium-Ion. The intended use case is for students who will only have power part of the day if at all. An Nickel-Cadmium battery is not suitable for this many recharge cycles. The hardware is NOT brilliant.
The FAQ says that it will take more like 4-6 weeks to ship your laptop. I doubt that they are in production yet.
I think I will wait to see if any laptops ship before laying down any of my money.
I work for Intel. We shred EVERYTHING after one year. Email that is not backed up is deleted after about 30 days. The why is very simple; we loose things, we forget things, we are human. If we did not have such a policy someone might ask for data we may or may not still have after a couple of years. If we cannot find it, it is suspicious, but if we have a 1 year shred policy I do not have to remember where I put each document, where I got the data, and have it backed up FOREVER six ways from Sunday. In an industry that remakes itself every six months all documents are out of date twice over anyway.
Do you know how many emails a company executive receives every day? You had better believe that I would use an auto delete policy and if I was an assistant I would not want to find an email more than 30 days old in that mountain. I think most S&P 500 companies have an even stricter shred policy.