Fair question. In general I'm opposed to the idea of a security system that can lock the legitimate owner out of their machine but in the case of children, I think you have to have a bit of a different point of view. It certainly is cause for concern if BitFrost starts to be abused.
Nah, see, the problem is massive, and stupid, economic rationalism. People in western societies think everything has a dollar value and everything is interchangeable because of it. Rather than say "wow, look at what these computer hardware people are doing for the third world" they say "imagine what that money could be used for instead." Rather than say "look at what is being done to educate these children" they say "imagine what that money could be used for instead." It's a false assumption of economy.
Add to that the western obsession with silver bullet solutions. There has to be one thing that we can do that will eliminate poverty. We have to summarize the problem otherwise it can't be solved. So when people look at the OLPC they immediately come to the conclusion that it won't solve the problem. They ignore all the things that it does do and focus entirely on what it doesn't do. So you get people asking how an education program is going to help provide food or clean water or sanitary drainage or stable government or any of the many other, unrelated, problems in the third world. What's especially annoying is that some people feel the need to answer these accusations with silver bullet answers. "Education will solve all those problems!" and when they are pressed to explain how, they fail, and the issue becomes somehow about whether or not education is the silver bullet or not and whether some other competing silver bullet solution is better. And in all the debate, nothing gets done.
Or, ya know, maybe the child will go to school and the teacher will say "where is your laptop?" and the child will say "umm, I lost it" in an attempt not to get their father into trouble for stealing it and selling it, and the teacher will push the "lost laptop" button on the management app and enter the child's mesh identifier and the laptop will brick itself instantly as it is always connected to the mesh.
Just because you don't know something, doesn't give you the right to assume that the worst thing you can imagine is reasonable to expect. It's not like this stuff is hard to find out either. Sheesh.
Nah-sayers like you need to STFU and get some education. If you can't see the benefit of giving an entire freakin' library of books to every child in the third world then you're never going to get it.
The OLPC project requires the laptops to go to children, and become the property of the child. There is also an excellent security system called BitFrost which makes stolen laptops essentially useless.
The long term effects of low gravity on biologicals is assumed to be better than the long term effects of no gravity. It's generally considered non-controversial and unworthy of scientific test. Of course, that is obviously wrong as we don't know anything until we test, but hey.
The US has pitiful competition in Internet service. I'm surprised that antitrust laws have not come into effect yet. Actually, no, I'm not surprised, because individuals can't sue companies for antitrust violations.
actually, in America the word has no meaning at all because something like 80% of Americans refuse to do what you just did, look it up. So they kind of sound it out. In - must be going in somewhere. Surge - they must be surging in! ency - it's like "ization", we just put that on the end of words to make them sound cool. So clearly, insurgency means "cool word for referring to people who are surging into a country" and so you get the kind of usage that you see in the summary.. it's also why Fox News spends a lot of time asking where these insurgents are coming from.. they're surging into the country from somewhere! Let's just find the hole and plug it up! Maybe they're surging in from Iran, yeah, that makes sense, let's bomb Iran!
NASA can't just go with Soyuz. By law they're required to ask for bids on the contract. If SpaceX offers a bid that matches Soyuz, they'll have a really hard time explaining to Congress why they are sending tax dollars to the Russians instead of giving it to a US company.
Scaled/virgin will have passengers to LEO by 2011(2012 at the outside). Hmm, where'd you get that from? I wasn't aware of any orbital program from them.
Yeah, just read the same article on The Space Review:) Falcon 9 / Dragon is designed to be man rated from the start. NASA probably thinks it is unrealistic to expect a manned Dragon flight before 2015, and by then it will be useless for them, but if they start asking for bids to deliver astronauts to the ISS, and SpaceX bids, they'll have to go with them over the Russians.. Congress just won't stand for it the other way.
Pushing NEOs into Earth orbit.. hmm, not without nukes, and not without significant danger of Earth impact. I imagine such a suggestion would, or at least should, be outlawed.. an extinction event is not something to mess with. Orbital adjustments to make NEO orbits more circular or synchronized with Earth's orbit might be something we'd see in the distant future, but again, it would take a LOT of energy. Assuming we're talking about NEOs of any significant size (like, mountain size), and you have the capability of "living off the land" the best bet is to just build a station next to it. Living inside it is another option, but is harder because you've gotta spin up more mass.
Yes, it's very interesting stuff. I, personally, don't see how Scaled/Virgin fit in - same with Blue Origin and the other suborbital contenders. It's like SpaceX and Bigelow have just leapfrogged them. I have great hopes for Armadillo but they just keep dicking around in low altitude. I can understand Carmack wanting to make some scratch before he ramps up but its starting to get ridiculous. There's also t/Space in there who may come in behind SpaceX to do COTS. So it doesn't look good for the suborbital crowd.
Apart from the Moon and Mars, there's also the Near Earth Asteroids and other objects. Maybe if Bigelow wants to stay in the space station business we'll finally see O'Neill colonies.
Those are very long term plans... and the idea is to make the (very rich) passengers pay.
In the short term, SpaceX will make some money from sat launches and COTS.. and I think we'll see them taking passengers to visit the ISS, which will probably be the most expensive private field-trip-to-a-government-facility ever. It will be interesting to see who buys these modules from Bigelow - assuming we even get access to that information.
Indeed. And that's the primitive technology that we understand today. The potential of fusion rockets, antimatter rockets, and propulsion methods we can't even imagine are the stuff of dreams.
Yeah, it's worrying. When Griffin talks about the time between the shuttle retiring and the replacement craft he never mentions what is supposed to fill the gap. Which is kinda bad, because it is his idea: COTS. Space-X and their Dragon capsule will most likely fill the gap.. but Griffin doesn't want to be seen getting behind them.
It's pretty easy to speculate that you could "hit up a few big businesses and/or private investors for the cash", but what exactly would be their return on investment? About the only way this could happen is if Bill Gates got an interest in space all of a sudden and gave away his entire fortune.
Yeah, that's the retarded world view where "innovation" means "work around a patent". In the real world, "innovation" means "build on the work of others" and patents are what you use to stop people doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair question. In general I'm opposed to the idea of a security system that can lock the legitimate owner out of their machine but in the case of children, I think you have to have a bit of a different point of view. It certainly is cause for concern if BitFrost starts to be abused.
The ISP will probably receive a nastygram from an MPAA lawyer soon and put the material back up. Then the fireworks will really begin.
if it is any consolation, we are now hosing LJ to death.
Nah, see, the problem is massive, and stupid, economic rationalism. People in western societies think everything has a dollar value and everything is interchangeable because of it. Rather than say "wow, look at what these computer hardware people are doing for the third world" they say "imagine what that money could be used for instead." Rather than say "look at what is being done to educate these children" they say "imagine what that money could be used for instead." It's a false assumption of economy.
Add to that the western obsession with silver bullet solutions. There has to be one thing that we can do that will eliminate poverty. We have to summarize the problem otherwise it can't be solved. So when people look at the OLPC they immediately come to the conclusion that it won't solve the problem. They ignore all the things that it does do and focus entirely on what it doesn't do. So you get people asking how an education program is going to help provide food or clean water or sanitary drainage or stable government or any of the many other, unrelated, problems in the third world. What's especially annoying is that some people feel the need to answer these accusations with silver bullet answers. "Education will solve all those problems!" and when they are pressed to explain how, they fail, and the issue becomes somehow about whether or not education is the silver bullet or not and whether some other competing silver bullet solution is better. And in all the debate, nothing gets done.
Or, ya know, maybe the child will go to school and the teacher will say "where is your laptop?" and the child will say "umm, I lost it" in an attempt not to get their father into trouble for stealing it and selling it, and the teacher will push the "lost laptop" button on the management app and enter the child's mesh identifier and the laptop will brick itself instantly as it is always connected to the mesh.
Just because you don't know something, doesn't give you the right to assume that the worst thing you can imagine is reasonable to expect. It's not like this stuff is hard to find out either. Sheesh.
He's a fucktard and you're replying to him, making you a fucktard too.
Meanwhile, the actual topic of this story is one of the greatest things that will be attempted this century.
Nah-sayers like you need to STFU and get some education. If you can't see the benefit of giving an entire freakin' library of books to every child in the third world then you're never going to get it.
The OLPC project requires the laptops to go to children, and become the property of the child. There is also an excellent security system called BitFrost which makes stolen laptops essentially useless.
Intel and Microsoft should be ashamed for their attempts to poison this fantastic project.
What are you on about?
The plan from day one has been for countries to buy the laptops to distribute to children through the school system.
Try to keep up.
The long term effects of low gravity on biologicals is assumed to be better than the long term effects of no gravity. It's generally considered non-controversial and unworthy of scientific test. Of course, that is obviously wrong as we don't know anything until we test, but hey.
The US has pitiful competition in Internet service. I'm surprised that antitrust laws have not come into effect yet. Actually, no, I'm not surprised, because individuals can't sue companies for antitrust violations.
I have no kids and I work from home.
actually, in America the word has no meaning at all because something like 80% of Americans refuse to do what you just did, look it up. So they kind of sound it out. In - must be going in somewhere. Surge - they must be surging in! ency - it's like "ization", we just put that on the end of words to make them sound cool. So clearly, insurgency means "cool word for referring to people who are surging into a country" and so you get the kind of usage that you see in the summary.. it's also why Fox News spends a lot of time asking where these insurgents are coming from.. they're surging into the country from somewhere! Let's just find the hole and plug it up! Maybe they're surging in from Iran, yeah, that makes sense, let's bomb Iran!
NASA can't just go with Soyuz. By law they're required to ask for bids on the contract. If SpaceX offers a bid that matches Soyuz, they'll have a really hard time explaining to Congress why they are sending tax dollars to the Russians instead of giving it to a US company.
Yeah, just read the same article on The Space Review
Pushing NEOs into Earth orbit.. hmm, not without nukes, and not without significant danger of Earth impact. I imagine such a suggestion would, or at least should, be outlawed.. an extinction event is not something to mess with. Orbital adjustments to make NEO orbits more circular or synchronized with Earth's orbit might be something we'd see in the distant future, but again, it would take a LOT of energy. Assuming we're talking about NEOs of any significant size (like, mountain size), and you have the capability of "living off the land" the best bet is to just build a station next to it. Living inside it is another option, but is harder because you've gotta spin up more mass.
You're saying you'd rather type in "Toronto", on a cell phone, rather than just have Google Maps know already?
What, are you some kind of privacy nut? (rim shot)
I thought the problem was authoritarians telling us what we can and can't do. (For both smoking and violent video games.)
Thanks re the sig.
Yes, it's very interesting stuff. I, personally, don't see how Scaled/Virgin fit in - same with Blue Origin and the other suborbital contenders. It's like SpaceX and Bigelow have just leapfrogged them. I have great hopes for Armadillo but they just keep dicking around in low altitude. I can understand Carmack wanting to make some scratch before he ramps up but its starting to get ridiculous. There's also t/Space in there who may come in behind SpaceX to do COTS. So it doesn't look good for the suborbital crowd.
Apart from the Moon and Mars, there's also the Near Earth Asteroids and other objects. Maybe if Bigelow wants to stay in the space station business we'll finally see O'Neill colonies.
Those are very long term plans... and the idea is to make the (very rich) passengers pay.
In the short term, SpaceX will make some money from sat launches and COTS.. and I think we'll see them taking passengers to visit the ISS, which will probably be the most expensive private field-trip-to-a-government-facility ever. It will be interesting to see who buys these modules from Bigelow - assuming we even get access to that information.
Indeed. And that's the primitive technology that we understand today. The potential of fusion rockets, antimatter rockets, and propulsion methods we can't even imagine are the stuff of dreams.
Yeah, it's worrying. When Griffin talks about the time between the shuttle retiring and the replacement craft he never mentions what is supposed to fill the gap. Which is kinda bad, because it is his idea: COTS. Space-X and their Dragon capsule will most likely fill the gap.. but Griffin doesn't want to be seen getting behind them.
It's pretty easy to speculate that you could "hit up a few big businesses and/or private investors for the cash", but what exactly would be their return on investment? About the only way this could happen is if Bill Gates got an interest in space all of a sudden and gave away his entire fortune.
Maybe they'd learn about open source and commit a jihad on Microsoft, we can't lose!!
Yeah, that's the retarded world view where "innovation" means "work around a patent". In the real world, "innovation" means "build on the work of others" and patents are what you use to stop people doing that.