"Windows is crack" aside, My point is that none of this matters. NN has an agenda of getting as many laptops to kids as possible. He will do that in any way he can, and his current idea seems to be to ditch Linux AND Sugar AND any educational principles. Just ship as many laptops as possible. So running Sugar on top of Linux, or a minimal Sugar with Linux just don't matter unless you completely go around NN and OLPC.
It seems clear that NN doesn't give a crap about whether Linux has feature/capability parity with Windows. The point is the perception of governments he wishes to sell laptops to. If they perceive Windows as better, than it makes the sale easier.
The point with Windows is it is easier to market laptops running Windows that Linux, period.
Why the constant fixation on laptop size? There is a natural laptop size, and it is related to human eyesight and type-ability.
I think the point is not to make the gadgets smaller. In fact I think the eeePC goes to far already.
Just focus on making them lighter, more power efficient, easy to use without a mouse, cool running, and instant-on/off. That's where the effort should be placed.
Older Palms, at least, don't hibernate. Hibernate is when you take all your memory state and write it to a non volatile medium, like a flash drive or hard drive.
Palm Pilots keep all of their databases in RAM, and when you turn them off, they don't hibernate. They just turn off the CPU and display. Power continues to flow to the RAM. Yes, they have to initialize their RAM the first time you turn it on after RAM was lost for some reason, but this is not the nominal case.
Well you're wrong. I can do plenty of interesting applications with both. Text editing and terminal emulation is pretty useful and the Model 100 is very good at both.
But to conclusively disprove your point, just look at the Palm Pilot. It turns on instantly too.
This sounds like a great advance. However, computers that don't need to be booted or that boot instantaneously is not new.
TRS-80 Color Computer, for example boots instantly since it runs from ROM unless you are using OS-9.
The TRS-80 Model 100 keeps its file system in RAM and has a separate NiCD to backup the RAM. It boots instantly. The backup lasts months in my experience (even today with old NiCd's).
And any computer can simply be left on... no boot time.
So there's nothing here that cannot be done with a mixture of existing tech, except use less overall power when doing it.
Bring your own customized keyboard, and a virtual machine application (running Ubuntu (and Firefox) inside)?
I doubt any place would be upset about bring your own keyboard and plugging it into their PC.
I could imagine a device that encrypts the data typed into your special keyboard. Then run a hacked up version of QEMU that knows how to decrypt your message.
Eventually someone would figure out how to watch the QEMU instance.
Have to do some spread spectrum shield modulation as a countermeasure against these devious Borg attacks. Seriously, the code could be made to dynamically alter itself and be hard to trace.
Sounds like a nice weekend project for an enterprising hacker...
Patents should only be granted if the party requesting a patent can successfully argue that the patent is necessary for the products they propose to sell to pay back all R&D costs plus, say, 5% ROI.
For example, drug patents are widely seen as useful to encourage drug R&D, on an individual basis. A blanket consideration of pharmaceuticals could be arrived at fairly quickly.
But software is regularly able to provide a good ROI with only copyright to protect it.
Eventually, a body of law and regulations based on these arguments would decide what can be patented, and what cannot. It should evolve over time since need for temporary monopolies can be expected to change over time.
To get $1.20 dividend, what's the share price of the stock? Let's say the yield is a relatively high 5%. So to yield $90K, that's $90,000/.05 = 1.8M. Hmm... that's pretty close to 2M, not 1M. With the volatility of the stock market I wouldn't count too heavily on capital gains after retirement.
Personally I'd consider the "Money Problem" safely solved at $3M or $4M, and I wouldn't be heavily invested in the stock market. Government treasury bonds more likely. Once I make that $4M in retained earnings I'll be working on open source projects full time:-)
I doubt "millions" refers to earnings. It likely refers to revenue. So after a few "millions" in revenue he has to pay tax and any expenses including salary, benefits of staff. It divides up pretty quick. Plus the owner has been drawing salary and dividends in the meantime.
Plus if you think you can retire on what's leftover there I think that is a bit unrealistic. Say he has 1M leftover. Assuming a risk-free rate of 5% that's $50,000 per year. That used to be a starting California programmer's salary in the late 90's. I don't know about anyone else but I didn't feel rich. You definitely cannot support a family on that supposing he has one. Certainly you won't be renting an island, a chef and prostitutes for $50K/year.
The reserve price is not "public knowledge." It is a secret price floor.
So say I am sniping an item. It's price is currently $0.01. I estimate it is worth between $30 and $50 depending on market demand which I can't gauge very well. There is a secret reserve of $48. I put in my maximum bid of $50 at the last 6 seconds. No one bids against me. What do I pay? Not $.01, not $30. I pay $49. I'd argue the market price was between $.01 and $30. So the seller achieved at least a $19 premium over the market price.
This is why I *never* bid on auctions with a reserve. It gives the seller too much of an advantage.
If the seller had put a starting price of $49 I think I would have been hesitant to bid in the first place since he is at the high end of what I feel is the market price.
I like it best when there is a good market for an item and everybody snipes. In such cases, we come pretty close to the true market price in my opinion.
In fact for most applications one need not trade off speed. My PDAs and cell phones are not "faster computers with more RAM" but all of them launch applications faster than my desktop or laptop, switch instantly between apps, turn on and off instantly, all of this while never thrashing on the disk and lasting for days on the battery rather than 2-3 hours.
So my argument here is that, unless you are doing serious number crunching, CAD work, etc (which most people do at a desktop) most measures of speed that matter can be exceeded by a "weaker" machine that has better purpose-designed software.
I dunno. Aside from the current blog buzz, the only thing that will continue to excite folks in the developed world about the EEE, CloudBook, et al are if they add more utility. That utility needs to come as:
all day battery life light-weight instant on/off (like a PDA) full-screen window manager (like a PDA) de-bloated software but with a full sized keyboard and display
The point for me is not a low-cost cheapie computer. The point is more utility, usability, portability when moving from the kitchen to the conference room to the park to my couch. No plugging in. It's a laptop but the opposite of a "desktop replacement."
None of this requires the fastest speeds and feeds or the worlds best LCD.
It does require a reset of the software to make it appropriate for a truly portable laptop. It does require lower power CPUs and displays and better hardware for power management and software+OS that cooperates to make that power management really work.
Given that laptop sales are at an all-time high, I'd say the answer is "yes". Do people want more? Sure, but they're willing to settle for 3 hours.
They don't have much choice but to settle for it when the market doesn't provide them an option. However I think that's starting to change with Internet tablets and things like EEE PC
Part of them problem is laptops are just an extension of desktops, and desktops are driven by more and more resource usage (and thus more power). I'm sure someone could come out with a laptop with a 12 hour battery life, but:
It'd run modern desktop software slowly.
Which features that people actually use in that "modern desktop software" make it run slowly? Other than how printer drivers work and how fonts are rendered, word processors, at least the way folks actually use them, hasn't changed much in 20 years. So I'd say people would do fine without the layers of API bloat that don't add any value. We need a reset on the software side. We need solutions appropriate to the circumstance, not just bloated crap from the desktop. Laptop software should be fundamentally different from desktop software. For example, laptop GUIs should be more keyboard oriented since a mouse isn't always useable.
It'd have a smaller storage space (20 gigs of flash ram?) (this isn't so bad really)
Yeah unless you're doing video editing, 20 gigs is a lot of space. And I think you don't just cram a desktop OS into a laptop, so you could cut out a lot of bloat. The OLPC project is on a decent track, though trying to build everything around Python packages tailored to desktops and servers was a huge mistake.
The screen wouldn't be quite as "nice" as the 3 hour laptop. The maker would likely have to compromise on the screen technology to reduce power consumption.
Yep. Though displays are rapidly improving and some real advancements were made by OLPC
low-power devices like this exist, of course. They're just identified in a different class of device because of the above compromises.
Not in a laptop form factor. I've been looking for a few years now. What I'd like to see: True Portable Definition
The Alphasmart products are targeted at the education market, not the general market. So what advertising there is would never reach the general consumer. Also the higher price likely has something to do with the target market. The Alphasmart Dana, for example, is basically a Dragonball Palm with a larger screen, built in keyboard and USB.
In any event, I think these days you cannot appeal to the mass audience unless the device provides Internet access. Although for some people avoiding distraction from the Internet is a selling point. Writers really like the Alphasmart Dana.
"Ultrasmall" is fine if you don't need a display and keyboard.
I think the utility for these new processors is reducing power consumption on devices that are the same size we normally expect.
Is anybody really satisfied with ~3 hours of battery life on a laptop? Considering this is the 25th anniversary of the Model 100, which sold 6 million units, has 20 hours battery life, lighter than most laptops today and was easier to use, instant-on, off, people should know we can do better.
I don't think Miguel is on the Board of Directors... he's a VP which puts him in a senior position on the management team, not on the board. The board sets the high level strategy. The managers execute it.
Belly aching in public about strategic decisions is a choice. It has internal political ramifications, but maybe that's just the game he's playing. It also may violate his employment contract. But only he would know that.
It's hard to tell from the outside.
-- John.
Of course, anything can get you sued. It requires no action on your part other than existence. The bar is pretty damn low.
Do you have any examples of where a company has been sued because one member of the management team stated a prefaced, personal opinion contrary to the corporate strategic decision?
Yes he has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders and the corporation. But a personal opinion is unlikely to become a legal issue as long as he handles it right and the board is OK with it.
Because you are effectively giving out information (showing your hand) when you do not have to. Do you play poker showing opponents all your cards? How would you characterize a person that did?
By putting in an early proxy bid, you give an inexperienced buyer the opportunity to outbid you early. This tends to start bidding wars that inflate the price of items beyond reason. It invites "emotion" into the equation. Sniping precludes this silliness.
Of course, bidding wars *are* good for sellers. That are never good for buyers. But most ebay users are buyers. Ebay has to take care of them first, IMNSO.
I snipe every auction. I assume everyone else does too. If anyone is using Ebay and isn't sniping at this point, they're a newbie or an idiot.
It's not a lottery, because I put in my max bid and so does the other sniper. Guess who wins? The guys that snipes with the highest max bid. Whether my bid comes in at 6 seconds or 5 seconds or 9 seconds doesn't make much difference unless we both put in the exact same bid.
Sniping is GOOD. It prevents stupid bidding wars with idiots that can't value an item by letting me hide my max bid until the very end. No Ebay fever. It's good for them too since it reduced "Buyer's Remorse" where they figure out after the auction that oops, they paid too much because they got "caught up" in the action.
All that does is force everyone to put in their max bid like they should have done in the first place.
I do put in low bids sometimes to signal my presence to friends. Also it keeps the seller from materially changing the auction details, which is a positive especially if a seller has misspelled anything.
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Actually the arms race may be a GOOD thing. Viruses and spam could be the "key driver" the market needs to force progress on artificial intelligence.
"Windows is crack" aside, My point is that none of this matters. NN has an agenda of getting as many laptops to kids as possible. He will do that in any way he can, and his current idea seems to be to ditch Linux AND Sugar AND any educational principles. Just ship as many laptops as possible. So running Sugar on top of Linux, or a minimal Sugar with Linux just don't matter unless you completely go around NN and OLPC.
Which, I think, is the right thing to do.
-- John.
It seems clear that NN doesn't give a crap about whether Linux has feature/capability parity with Windows. The point is the perception of governments he wishes to sell laptops to. If they perceive Windows as better, than it makes the sale easier.
The point with Windows is it is easier to market laptops running Windows that Linux, period.
-- John.
Why the constant fixation on laptop size? There is a natural laptop size, and it is related to human eyesight and type-ability.
I think the point is not to make the gadgets smaller. In fact I think the eeePC goes to far already.
Just focus on making them lighter, more power efficient, easy to use without a mouse, cool running, and instant-on/off. That's where the effort should be placed.
Well, you could have hoped for decent battery life. The eeePC gets a lot right, but the b/l sucks.
Older Palms, at least, don't hibernate. Hibernate is when you take all your memory state and write it to a non volatile medium, like a flash drive or hard drive.
Palm Pilots keep all of their databases in RAM, and when you turn them off, they don't hibernate. They just turn off the CPU and display. Power continues to flow to the RAM. Yes, they have to initialize their RAM the first time you turn it on after RAM was lost for some reason, but this is not the nominal case.
-- John.
Well you're wrong. I can do plenty of interesting applications with both. Text editing and terminal emulation is pretty useful and the Model 100 is very good at both.
But to conclusively disprove your point, just look at the Palm Pilot. It turns on instantly too.
Boot time is not a necessity.
This sounds like a great advance. However, computers that don't need to be booted or that boot instantaneously is not new.
TRS-80 Color Computer, for example boots instantly since it runs from ROM unless you are using OS-9.
The TRS-80 Model 100 keeps its file system in RAM and has a separate NiCD to backup the RAM. It boots instantly. The backup lasts months in my experience (even today with old NiCd's).
And any computer can simply be left on... no boot time.
So there's nothing here that cannot be done with a mixture of existing tech, except use less overall power when doing it.
Bring your own customized keyboard, and a virtual machine application (running Ubuntu (and Firefox) inside)?
I doubt any place would be upset about bring your own keyboard and plugging it into their PC.
I could imagine a device that encrypts the data typed into your special keyboard. Then run a hacked up version of QEMU that knows how to decrypt your message.
Eventually someone would figure out how to watch the QEMU instance.
Have to do some spread spectrum shield modulation as a countermeasure against these devious Borg attacks. Seriously, the code could be made to dynamically alter itself and be hard to trace.
Sounds like a nice weekend project for an enterprising hacker...
-- John.
And the Supremes answer would be something like "love don't come easy."
Sigh. I guess we'll "just have to wait."
I like the self-deprecating GICQ slogan:
"Combining the intrusiveness of a phone call with the hassle of writing e-mail"
-- John.
How about this:
Patents should only be granted if the party requesting a patent can successfully argue that the patent is necessary for the products they propose to sell to pay back all R&D costs plus, say, 5% ROI.
For example, drug patents are widely seen as useful to encourage drug R&D, on an individual basis. A blanket consideration of pharmaceuticals could be arrived at fairly quickly.
But software is regularly able to provide a good ROI with only copyright to protect it.
Eventually, a body of law and regulations based on these arguments would decide what can be patented, and what cannot. It should evolve over time since need for temporary monopolies can be expected to change over time.
To get $1.20 dividend, what's the share price of the stock? Let's say the yield is a relatively high 5%. So to yield $90K, that's $90,000/.05 = 1.8M. Hmm... that's pretty close to 2M, not 1M. With the volatility of the stock market I wouldn't count too heavily on capital gains after retirement.
:-)
Personally I'd consider the "Money Problem" safely solved at $3M or $4M, and I wouldn't be heavily invested in the stock market. Government treasury bonds more likely. Once I make that $4M in retained earnings I'll be working on open source projects full time
I doubt "millions" refers to earnings. It likely refers to revenue. So after a few "millions" in revenue he has to pay tax and any expenses including salary, benefits of staff. It divides up pretty quick. Plus the owner has been drawing salary and dividends in the meantime.
Plus if you think you can retire on what's leftover there I think that is a bit unrealistic. Say he has 1M leftover. Assuming a risk-free rate of 5% that's $50,000 per year. That used to be a starting California programmer's salary in the late 90's. I don't know about anyone else but I didn't feel rich. You definitely cannot support a family on that supposing he has one. Certainly you won't be renting an island, a chef and prostitutes for $50K/year.
-- John.
The reserve price is not "public knowledge." It is a secret price floor. So say I am sniping an item. It's price is currently $0.01. I estimate it is worth between $30 and $50 depending on market demand which I can't gauge very well. There is a secret reserve of $48. I put in my maximum bid of $50 at the last 6 seconds. No one bids against me. What do I pay? Not $.01, not $30. I pay $49. I'd argue the market price was between $.01 and $30. So the seller achieved at least a $19 premium over the market price. This is why I *never* bid on auctions with a reserve. It gives the seller too much of an advantage. If the seller had put a starting price of $49 I think I would have been hesitant to bid in the first place since he is at the high end of what I feel is the market price. I like it best when there is a good market for an item and everybody snipes. In such cases, we come pretty close to the true market price in my opinion.
And, OSC's Speaker For The Dead (1986).
-- John.
So you're the guy ;-)
In fact for most applications one need not trade off speed. My PDAs and cell phones are not "faster computers with more RAM" but all of them launch applications faster than my desktop or laptop, switch instantly between apps, turn on and off instantly, all of this while never thrashing on the disk and lasting for days on the battery rather than 2-3 hours.
So my argument here is that, unless you are doing serious number crunching, CAD work, etc (which most people do at a desktop) most measures of speed that matter can be exceeded by a "weaker" machine that has better purpose-designed software.
-- John.
I dunno. Aside from the current blog buzz, the only thing that will continue to excite folks in the developed world about the EEE, CloudBook, et al are if they add more utility. That utility needs to come as:
all day battery life
light-weight
instant on/off (like a PDA)
full-screen window manager (like a PDA)
de-bloated software
but with a full sized keyboard and display
The point for me is not a low-cost cheapie computer. The point is more utility, usability, portability when moving from the kitchen to the conference room to the park to my couch. No plugging in. It's a laptop but the opposite of a "desktop replacement."
None of this requires the fastest speeds and feeds or the worlds best LCD.
It does require a reset of the software to make it appropriate for a truly portable laptop. It does require lower power CPUs and displays and better hardware for power management and software+OS that cooperates to make that power management really work.
Given that laptop sales are at an all-time high, I'd say the answer is "yes". Do people want more? Sure, but they're willing to settle for 3 hours.
They don't have much choice but to settle for it when the market doesn't provide them an option. However I think that's starting to change with Internet tablets and things like EEE PC
Part of them problem is laptops are just an extension of desktops, and desktops are driven by more and more resource usage (and thus more power). I'm sure someone could come out with a laptop with a 12 hour battery life, but: It'd run modern desktop software slowly.
Which features that people actually use in that "modern desktop software" make it run slowly? Other than how printer drivers work and how fonts are rendered, word processors, at least the way folks actually use them, hasn't changed much in 20 years. So I'd say people would do fine without the layers of API bloat that don't add any value. We need a reset on the software side. We need solutions appropriate to the circumstance, not just bloated crap from the desktop. Laptop software should be fundamentally different from desktop software. For example, laptop GUIs should be more keyboard oriented since a mouse isn't always useable.
It'd have a smaller storage space (20 gigs of flash ram?) (this isn't so bad really)
Yeah unless you're doing video editing, 20 gigs is a lot of space. And I think you don't just cram a desktop OS into a laptop, so you could cut out a lot of bloat. The OLPC project is on a decent track, though trying to build everything around Python packages tailored to desktops and servers was a huge mistake.
The screen wouldn't be quite as "nice" as the 3 hour laptop. The maker would likely have to compromise on the screen technology to reduce power consumption.
Yep. Though displays are rapidly improving and some real advancements were made by OLPC
low-power devices like this exist, of course. They're just identified in a different class of device because of the above compromises.
Not in a laptop form factor. I've been looking for a few years now. What I'd like to see: True Portable Definition
The Alphasmart products are targeted at the education market, not the general market. So what advertising there is would never reach the general consumer. Also the higher price likely has something to do with the target market. The Alphasmart Dana, for example, is basically a Dragonball Palm with a larger screen, built in keyboard and USB.
In any event, I think these days you cannot appeal to the mass audience unless the device provides Internet access. Although for some people avoiding distraction from the Internet is a selling point. Writers really like the Alphasmart Dana.
-- John.
"Ultrasmall" is fine if you don't need a display and keyboard.
I think the utility for these new processors is reducing power consumption on devices that are the same size we normally expect.
Is anybody really satisfied with ~3 hours of battery life on a laptop? Considering this is the 25th anniversary of the Model 100, which sold 6 million units, has 20 hours battery life, lighter than most laptops today and was easier to use, instant-on, off, people should know we can do better.
-- John.
I don't think Miguel is on the Board of Directors... he's a VP which puts him in a senior position on the management team, not on the board. The board sets the high level strategy. The managers execute it. Belly aching in public about strategic decisions is a choice. It has internal political ramifications, but maybe that's just the game he's playing. It also may violate his employment contract. But only he would know that. It's hard to tell from the outside. -- John.
Of course, anything can get you sued. It requires no action on your part other than existence. The bar is pretty damn low.
Do you have any examples of where a company has been sued because one member of the management team stated a prefaced, personal opinion contrary to the corporate strategic decision?
Yes he has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders and the corporation. But a personal opinion is unlikely to become a legal issue as long as he handles it right and the board is OK with it.
(IANAL)
-- John.
Because you are effectively giving out information (showing your hand) when you do not have to. Do you play poker showing opponents all your cards? How would you characterize a person that did?
By putting in an early proxy bid, you give an inexperienced buyer the opportunity to outbid you early. This tends to start bidding wars that inflate the price of items beyond reason. It invites "emotion" into the equation. Sniping precludes this silliness.
Of course, bidding wars *are* good for sellers. That are never good for buyers. But most ebay users are buyers. Ebay has to take care of them first, IMNSO.
-- John.
I snipe every auction. I assume everyone else does too. If anyone is using Ebay and isn't sniping at this point, they're a newbie or an idiot.
It's not a lottery, because I put in my max bid and so does the other sniper. Guess who wins? The guys that snipes with the highest max bid. Whether my bid comes in at 6 seconds or 5 seconds or 9 seconds doesn't make much difference unless we both put in the exact same bid.
Sniping is GOOD. It prevents stupid bidding wars with idiots that can't value an item by letting me hide my max bid until the very end. No Ebay fever. It's good for them too since it reduced "Buyer's Remorse" where they figure out after the auction that oops, they paid too much because they got "caught up" in the action.
All that does is force everyone to put in their max bid like they should have done in the first place.
I do put in low bids sometimes to signal my presence to friends. Also it keeps the seller from materially changing the auction details, which is a positive especially if a seller has misspelled anything.
-- John.