This is a tired old argument. The idea ia that these children can have clean water, food, AND an education. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. This laptop not only provides them with electronic books, but also access to computer hardware, software and potentially the Internet. Just using computing as an example, using this laptop some of these kids might learn how to program, create great software and may eventually land themselves a place in a great university or a great job. I'd guess that the poor want direction in life and an opportunity to educate themselves, do interesting work and improve their lot in life as much (if not more) than the not-so-poor do. It's not *just* about food and water, even though of course these basic necessitiies need to be met. It's important to note that this laptop is aimed at countries, like Thailand, that have an infrastructure in place but are still relatively poor when compared to the US, most of Europe, Japan etc. There are many countries like this throuought Asia, Africa and South America that could really benefit form these laptops.
And I've seen the Dalai Lama speak--he knows very little of math, physics, and technology. And is thus worthless.
Just because the Dalai Lama can't write proofs, calculate the stress on a I-beam or program in C doesn't mean he wouldn't believe Bhuddism's world view should change if some scientific discovery suggests that it should.
What you say is probably true, but I was thinking, perhaps very naievly, that what a tragedy it was that we use such powerful computers for modelling better ways to blow each other up.
I was watching an Aussie sci-fi flick the other day (yeah you don't see many of them) about the aftermath of a nuclear war, and one of the characters says "It took 3 million years of evolution to create a species intelligent enough to unlock the secrets of the universe, and what do we do with that knowledge? We blow ourselves up."
So although it conflicts with the usual definition of "free as in freedom" in free software, I think there may be something to restricting software like this to non-harmful use.
While some may have issues with the wording/implementation, I think trying to prevent military use of this kind of software is a very good thing.
I once visted the Earth Simulator in Japan. If I remember correctly, at the time it was the worlds fastest supercomputer which was being used primarily by climate scientists to predict and deal with climate change. I was disgusted to find out that next most powerful supercomputers, located in the US, spent most of their time running simulations for weapons research.
Seeing as these developers have developed software to create ad-hoc supercomputers, I can understand why they would want to prevent milliary use.
I think the reason the OP put the word grieve in inverted commas was to show how ridiculous it was to suggest that the case be put on hold for 60 days to allow time for the family to grieve, before hitting them with the lawsuit. The "grieve" in this case is more likely a single word quote from the article than a suggestion that the family is not going to grieve. I seriously doubt the OP would suggest something like that given the fact they submitted this article.
Phil Schillers introduction of the Mac Pro was awful
What are you talking about? His introduction was all about the technology they used and how it enabled them to do certain things with the machine. I was impressed that someone with the title "VP of Marketing" could actually talk about tech like he knew what he was talking about.
I've seen Steve Jobs try it, but he admits he doesn't understand the tech, everyone has a laugh, and they move on.
I'd like to see more VPs of Marketing in other tech companies who understand the tech they market to somewhere close to what the engineers do.
Also, as many others have pointed out, this is a developers conference. The entire audience were developers so the presentation should be targeted at them and not at consumers or the genreal public.
One area where you may have a point though, is that what he talked about was mainly the specs that developers could probably get from product sheets. However, it's not clear whether or not that was the first time that information was made available. In that case, the presentation was spot on - it let the developers know what kind of specs the high-end Macs would have, and thus what kind of apps they could be making specificially targeted for it.
Yeah I agree:). Linguists have tried to develop new international languages to replace English (e.g. Esperanto) that have less cruft and exceptions, but unfortunately very few people bother with them in practice, and keep using English:).
Wouldn't it be cool if we all spoke a language which was expressive but at the same time had a machine-parsable grammar and had absolutely no silly exceptions or odd concepts like the masculine/feminine nouns that French and Italian has?
I'm no expert on this, but I think linguists will tell you that we tend to modify/evolve langauge to suit our culture and circumstances, so any designed language (and even existing natural ones) will be modified into many different dialects as it is used by various cultures around the world.
Still yeah, I am glad I'm a native speaker of English since it would be a pain to learn as a second language! Imagine all the special cases you'd have to memorise! Spelling, grammar exceptions that may not fit the definition you learned but native speakers use anyway etc.
But Xerox is a lab, and the work they did was research. I believe Apple licenced their technology or just used it if that was permitted, I'm not 100% sure on the details. Either way, that is the purpose of reaserch.
Whatever happened to the idea of sharing ideas anyway? So what if Xerox used a GUI before Apple and Apple before Microsoft. Doesn't mean Microsoft should have to use an alternate user interface. But we'll leave this discussion for a software patents article. Unfortunately there are too many of those!:)
I liked that episode where G'Kar was trapped in the elevator with that weird-haired guy
That would be Ambassador Mollari. And yes, the quarrels between those two were always very very well done. Entertaining and funny without being over the top. A bit like when you watch two old friends having a go at one another.
I still remember a funny Mollari quote that'd I'd like to use one day (hopefully the people with me will not know of it!). Two friends of yours meeting for the first time:
Friend A: "[You] has told me all about you!"
Friend B: "Oh, I hope he/she didn't tell you anything bad"
You to Friend B: "Oh never mind, [Friend B], I only told him/her the good things. It was a very short conversation."
No, "windoze" has been a way to refer to Windows for as long as I can rememeber. It's simply done to poke fun at the operating system, something which it rightly deserves.
What is sad is seeing others stick up for Microsoft. For a company that has screwed over it's customers and developers for 20 years, why is anyone at all eager to stand up for them?
But this is a puzzle exbibition... you'd expect that the patrons would enjoy solving puzzles, or they wouldn't even be going there.
Captain Obvious saves the day!
Ah, yes. I guess that does work, thanks. But the blockquote style is quite nice. Hey Slashcode is open sourced right? I wonder if I implemented it instead of complained about it, it would ever make it on Slashdot?
Hey Slashdot, if you're listening, it would be great if we could do things like the parent did with [quote][/quote], instead of typing in the whole post in HTML by hand. It just takes too long to type "blockquote", and then you have to use "br"'s or surround your paragraphs with paragraph tags just to get the spacing right. And if you forget and don't preview, well bad luck. (As an aside, I subbitted this as "Plain Old Text" but it insists on rendering HTML I type in here).
I realise the editors must be extremely busy from having to meticulously review and edit each submission before posting them on the front page, but if you could spare a few moments to implement or reuse something like this (many open source web boards already have similar functionality) it would be much appreciated.
(yes I know this is offtopic, but I couldn't think of a better place to put it)
OK, I must admit, I had a bit of a rant there, and presented my argument poorly and in retrospect it just looks stupid.
I had meant to say PHP wasn't the be all and end of web development and that PHP lacks a decent (any?) application server. I think the problem I was facing was just that PHP wasn't the right tool for the job as I moved from a web-based application to a client/server one. I'm aware that sessions aren't unique to PHP of course. It's just that I have bad memories of trying to get a Java client to XMLRPC my PHP server and pass the session ID and do all sorts of dance to get the application state the way I wanted to process the request. Comparing that to my great experiences with Twisted Python I wonder why I bothered trying to shoehorn all that functionality into Apache/PHP. So where I am going with all this is that I was blaming PHP, the language itself, for this when really I should've chosen a differnt language or framework at this point.
Sometimes I get a little emotional with PHP because of this:)
Whether you are a hobby web designer or a professional developer, MAMP comes in handy when you need to test your product.
and:
Zend Studio 5 is the only Integrated Development Environment (IDE) available for professional developers that encompass all the development components necessary for the full PHP application lifecycle.
OK admittedly he/she did metion PHP specificially in the second quote, but they seem to equate "professional developer" with "chooses PHP"! Hah! I had to restart an application I was working on that went from web to client/server with a GUI because PHP just doesn't cut the mustard for anything other that a web guestbook. Even if I did stick with web delivery I was running into problems with PHP (don't get me started on that session crap - oh here's an idea, run your application as a separate process to the web server and keep application state in memory! Maybe theorectically possible with PHP but I've never seen it done.) Basically, it's a joke, and it so much so that it now annoys me to no end when deveopers use "professional" and "PHP" in the same sentence (without a "not" in there somewhere"). If I had've started with Python or Ruby for example, I'm sure I could've at least reused some of that code. Thanks for wasting years of my life and teaching me bad programming habits, PHP.
If you do consider yourself a "professional developer", and you're working on an application where you think PHP is the right tool then drop that crap like a ton of bricks and try some other language... Python I can vouch for, and I hear Ruby is great too, and they both have great web frameworks.
None taken. To be honest I know very little about computer archtecture so couldn't notice all (ok, well, none) of the errors and oversights you pointed out.
So maybe I should have left the bit about informative out and just called it entertaining:) It's good to know that some of these reviews aren't so accurate, so thanks for the heads up.
You must be young:)
I'm 27, but yes obviously immature (and in need of a good read of Patterson and Hennesy. I bought it a while ago, and it's been sitting blue and shiny on my bookshelf ever since. Good book though, I just don't have the time for it at the moment.):)
That has to be one of the most entertaining, yet informative, reviews I've read in a long time!
From TFLA (The Fine Linked Article): "[Intel's] P4 chip has largely been having its ass handed to it on a silver platter by the Athlon64 family of CPUs from AMD."
and then later:
"But this is where their [(Intel's)] little parade comes to a screeching halt - why? Because in the most simplistic of terms, Conroe (dubbed Core 2 Duo) kicks the Athlon64 right in the balls and doesn't look back."
Now, my friends, *that* is how you write a review!
Slashdot Mirror
This is a tired old argument. The idea ia that these children can have clean water, food, AND an education. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. This laptop not only provides them with electronic books, but also access to computer hardware, software and potentially the Internet. Just using computing as an example, using this laptop some of these kids might learn how to program, create great software and may eventually land themselves a place in a great university or a great job. I'd guess that the poor want direction in life and an opportunity to educate themselves, do interesting work and improve their lot in life as much (if not more) than the not-so-poor do. It's not *just* about food and water, even though of course these basic necessitiies need to be met. It's important to note that this laptop is aimed at countries, like Thailand, that have an infrastructure in place but are still relatively poor when compared to the US, most of Europe, Japan etc. There are many countries like this throuought Asia, Africa and South America that could really benefit form these laptops.
Just because the Dalai Lama can't write proofs, calculate the stress on a I-beam or program in C doesn't mean he wouldn't believe Bhuddism's world view should change if some scientific discovery suggests that it should.
What you say is probably true, but I was thinking, perhaps very naievly, that what a tragedy it was that we use such powerful computers for modelling better ways to blow each other up.
I was watching an Aussie sci-fi flick the other day (yeah you don't see many of them) about the aftermath of a nuclear war, and one of the characters says "It took 3 million years of evolution to create a species intelligent enough to unlock the secrets of the universe, and what do we do with that knowledge? We blow ourselves up."
So although it conflicts with the usual definition of "free as in freedom" in free software, I think there may be something to restricting software like this to non-harmful use.
While some may have issues with the wording/implementation, I think trying to prevent military use of this kind of software is a very good thing.
I once visted the Earth Simulator in Japan. If I remember correctly, at the time it was the worlds fastest supercomputer which was being used primarily by climate scientists to predict and deal with climate change. I was disgusted to find out that next most powerful supercomputers, located in the US, spent most of their time running simulations for weapons research.
Seeing as these developers have developed software to create ad-hoc supercomputers, I can understand why they would want to prevent milliary use.
I think the reason the OP put the word grieve in inverted commas was to show how ridiculous it was to suggest that the case be put on hold for 60 days to allow time for the family to grieve, before hitting them with the lawsuit. The "grieve" in this case is more likely a single word quote from the article than a suggestion that the family is not going to grieve. I seriously doubt the OP would suggest something like that given the fact they submitted this article.
Why, "imperical" is a perfectly cromulous word.
Bollocks. I played and finished Fallout 2 on Mac OS X!
OK, well Interplay didn't release it, Macplay did. Here's an old Apple page on the game:
http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2002/09/fallo
What are you talking about? His introduction was all about the technology they used and how it enabled them to do certain things with the machine. I was impressed that someone with the title "VP of Marketing" could actually talk about tech like he knew what he was talking about.
I've seen Steve Jobs try it, but he admits he doesn't understand the tech, everyone has a laugh, and they move on.
I'd like to see more VPs of Marketing in other tech companies who understand the tech they market to somewhere close to what the engineers do.
Also, as many others have pointed out, this is a developers conference. The entire audience were developers so the presentation should be targeted at them and not at consumers or the genreal public.
One area where you may have a point though, is that what he talked about was mainly the specs that developers could probably get from product sheets. However, it's not clear whether or not that was the first time that information was made available. In that case, the presentation was spot on - it let the developers know what kind of specs the high-end Macs would have, and thus what kind of apps they could be making specificially targeted for it.
You must be new here.
This article here from Riken themselves has some more technical details:
p hp
http://mdgrape.gsc.riken.jp/modules/tinyd0/index.
Yeah I agree :). Linguists have tried to develop new international languages to replace English (e.g. Esperanto) that have less cruft and exceptions, but unfortunately very few people bother with them in practice, and keep using English :).
Wouldn't it be cool if we all spoke a language which was expressive but at the same time had a machine-parsable grammar and had absolutely no silly exceptions or odd concepts like the masculine/feminine nouns that French and Italian has?
I'm no expert on this, but I think linguists will tell you that we tend to modify/evolve langauge to suit our culture and circumstances, so any designed language (and even existing natural ones) will be modified into many different dialects as it is used by various cultures around the world.
Still yeah, I am glad I'm a native speaker of English since it would be a pain to learn as a second language! Imagine all the special cases you'd have to memorise! Spelling, grammar exceptions that may not fit the definition you learned but native speakers use anyway etc.
But Xerox is a lab, and the work they did was research. I believe Apple licenced their technology or just used it if that was permitted, I'm not 100% sure on the details. Either way, that is the purpose of reaserch.
:)
Whatever happened to the idea of sharing ideas anyway? So what if Xerox used a GUI before Apple and Apple before Microsoft. Doesn't mean Microsoft should have to use an alternate user interface. But we'll leave this discussion for a software patents article. Unfortunately there are too many of those!
Ah, I can't believe I just stuck up Microsoft!
If I had mod points, I'd be modding you +5, Right On!
That would be Ambassador Mollari. And yes, the quarrels between those two were always very very well done. Entertaining and funny without being over the top. A bit like when you watch two old friends having a go at one another.
I still remember a funny Mollari quote that'd I'd like to use one day (hopefully the people with me will not know of it!). Two friends of yours meeting for the first time:
Friend A: "[You] has told me all about you!"
Friend B: "Oh, I hope he/she didn't tell you anything bad"
You to Friend B: "Oh never mind, [Friend B], I only told him/her the good things. It was a very short conversation."
Gold!
Me too. This guy sums up what makes B5 great (if you can ignore the ridiculous inteviewer!)
1 5954783304
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-70238687
No, "windoze" has been a way to refer to Windows for as long as I can rememeber. It's simply done to poke fun at the operating system, something which it rightly deserves.
What is sad is seeing others stick up for Microsoft. For a company that has screwed over it's customers and developers for 20 years, why is anyone at all eager to stand up for them?
But this is a puzzle exbibition... you'd expect that the patrons would enjoy solving puzzles, or they wouldn't even be going there. Captain Obvious saves the day!
Ah, yes. I guess that does work, thanks. But the blockquote style is quite nice. Hey Slashcode is open sourced right? I wonder if I implemented it instead of complained about it, it would ever make it on Slashdot?
Hey Slashdot, if you're listening, it would be great if we could do things like the parent did with [quote][/quote], instead of typing in the whole post in HTML by hand. It just takes too long to type "blockquote", and then you have to use "br"'s or surround your paragraphs with paragraph tags just to get the spacing right. And if you forget and don't preview, well bad luck. (As an aside, I subbitted this as "Plain Old Text" but it insists on rendering HTML I type in here).
I realise the editors must be extremely busy from having to meticulously review and edit each submission before posting them on the front page, but if you could spare a few moments to implement or reuse something like this (many open source web boards already have similar functionality) it would be much appreciated.
(yes I know this is offtopic, but I couldn't think of a better place to put it)
OK, I must admit, I had a bit of a rant there, and presented my argument poorly and in retrospect it just looks stupid.
:)
I had meant to say PHP wasn't the be all and end of web development and that PHP lacks a decent (any?) application server. I think the problem I was facing was just that PHP wasn't the right tool for the job as I moved from a web-based application to a client/server one. I'm aware that sessions aren't unique to PHP of course. It's just that I have bad memories of trying to get a Java client to XMLRPC my PHP server and pass the session ID and do all sorts of dance to get the application state the way I wanted to process the request. Comparing that to my great experiences with Twisted Python I wonder why I bothered trying to shoehorn all that functionality into Apache/PHP. So where I am going with all this is that I was blaming PHP, the language itself, for this when really I should've chosen a differnt language or framework at this point.
Sometimes I get a little emotional with PHP because of this
Next time, I'll remember to think then type!
OK admittedly he/she did metion PHP specificially in the second quote, but they seem to equate "professional developer" with "chooses PHP"! Hah! I had to restart an application I was working on that went from web to client/server with a GUI because PHP just doesn't cut the mustard for anything other that a web guestbook. Even if I did stick with web delivery I was running into problems with PHP (don't get me started on that session crap - oh here's an idea, run your application as a separate process to the web server and keep application state in memory! Maybe theorectically possible with PHP but I've never seen it done.) Basically, it's a joke, and it so much so that it now annoys me to no end when deveopers use "professional" and "PHP" in the same sentence (without a "not" in there somewhere"). If I had've started with Python or Ruby for example, I'm sure I could've at least reused some of that code. Thanks for wasting years of my life and teaching me bad programming habits, PHP.
If you do consider yourself a "professional developer", and you're working on an application where you think PHP is the right tool then drop that crap like a ton of bricks and try some other language... Python I can vouch for, and I hear Ruby is great too, and they both have great web frameworks.
None taken. To be honest I know very little about computer archtecture so couldn't notice all (ok, well, none) of the errors and oversights you pointed out.
So maybe I should have left the bit about informative out and just called it entertaining :) It's good to know that some of these reviews aren't so accurate, so thanks for the heads up.
I'm 27, but yes obviously immature (and in need of a good read of Patterson and Hennesy. I bought it a while ago, and it's been sitting blue and shiny on my bookshelf ever since. Good book though, I just don't have the time for it at the moment.) :)
That has to be one of the most entertaining, yet informative, reviews I've read in a long time!
From TFLA (The Fine Linked Article):
"[Intel's] P4 chip has largely been having its ass handed to it on a silver platter by the Athlon64 family of CPUs from AMD."
and then later:
"But this is where their [(Intel's)] little parade comes to a screeching halt - why? Because in the most simplistic of terms, Conroe (dubbed Core 2 Duo) kicks the Athlon64 right in the balls and doesn't look back."
Now, my friends, *that* is how you write a review!
Yes, I was too harsh :)
Congrats!
Now that's two posts claiming you got laid. What are you waiting for, someone to say congratulations?