I think most studies have shown that laptops actually have little or a negative impact on helping children learn
Fret not, as Nicholas Negroponte has stated "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
This is not some new hair brained lets throw laptops at 3rd world countries plan as many try to make it out to be. If you do a little research into the project you'll find that it was started years ago with various test implementations using standard laptops running Windows software. The OLPC is an extension of original work performed by these people so they probably have a pretty good idea about what they are doing and what they need to make the project a success.
about performance: OLPC uses AMD Geode CPU at 366 MHz while CMPC runs at Intel Celeron Mobile 900 MHz. so who's the really winner?
The Geode, obviously.
What you thought higher frame rates while playing Halo2 makes the Celeron the clear winner? Think again. The Geode uses 40% less power than the Celeron, your CMPC will be a dead paper weight while the OLPC will still be doing its job.
about resolution: You must know, if you know a bit of tech, that LCD screen size matters much more than its resolution
And once again, how much power does the CMPC display consume? The OLPC is.1 to 1 watt. They don't even have the specs on the CMPC site or wiki.
about operating system: Classmate PC supports both worlds from ground up: Linux and Windows XP Pro
The OLPC runs linuxBIOS and linux which enables significant power savings features which are not available in an off the shelf BIOS + Windows/linux install.
To my knowledge TPM is not used for DRM sorts of thing but for anti-theft purpose since a kid carrying a mobile laptop is so vulnerable to thieves and robbers in the street.
WTF? I suggest you improve on your knowledge of TC, its claimed "that it will make computers safer, less prone to viruses and malware, and thus more reliable from an end-user perspective", it doesn't stop a thug from stealing it.
Unfortunately one of the side effects of TC is that the hardware and software makers get to decide what is trusted and prevent end users from doing something with their hardware and software such as say running linux or open office because they deem them as not being trustworthy.
Really I have no idea why anyone is even bothering to argue in defense of the anti-OLPC solutions, and yes they are anti-OLPC. If you look at the specs on the Classmate PC it is rated at 4 hours of use on its batteries, the OLPC is rated in DAYS. The OLPC XO is designed for a purpose, the supposed superior offerings from people who are used to marketing products in energy rich societies are not even close to what is needed in hardware and software for a project like OLPC. The only reason they are even trying is because their over inflated marketing egos have them believing they are the end all be all of technology solutions for the planet. They need to grow up.
They are effectively promoting their PC as a 'real' one (vs.a plaything of the XO) because it can run XP, while the XO doesn't.
The XO is clearly a more interesting concept, though.
And there in is the reason the XO is a superior solution. All the criticism of the OLPC XO and the benevolent offers of "superior" Windows based machines with $3 OS licensing fees is based off the need of a few greedy thugs to build their markets. The objective of OLPC is not to build a market for Microsoft and Intel to sell their products and introduce developing nations to the proprietary software licensing treadmill, its about instilling the ability to learn at an early age so these children will grow up with the ability to improve their living conditions. As Negroponte has already stated "An educated and creative population is, without a doubt, the best path to global health, wealth, and peace."
While I'm sure a more expensive Windows based machine could be used for the same purpose, the initial experiments that led up to OLPC used Windows based laptops, the XO and its software were designed from the ground up to serve the specific purpose of "learning learning" while the so called superior solutions being pushed by multi-billionare corporate CEOs and the like are designed to help themselves break into new markets where their current products are simply too expensive.
These wealthy individuals who lack the knowlege and experience of the people who developed and run the OLPC should simply STFU and let the professionals do their job.
Where do you get the idea that Brent Hatch lobbied for this?
I thought I read an article that was critical of CPR and Unspam which talked about the individuals who persuaded the legislature to pass the law and Hatch's name came up, however, after perusing several articles found through google I did not find the statement.
Perhaps the impression that Brent was supporting CPR came from his support of CP80, involvement with Raph Yarro, and his father's (Orrin Hatch) public support of CP80 and other anti-pornography efforts which abridge freedom of speech rights in the name of saving children and of course setting up a little business venture on the side.
Is this why Brent Hatch, who lobbied to have this idiotic bill passed, was hired for 3 to 4 times what state attorneys are paid to now defend this idiotic legistation?
Looks more and more like a scam where local cons are skimming tax dollars.
Brent Hatch is involved in SCO's crusade against linux. Many other similar players like Ralph Yarro and his CP80 crusade.
Heavily involved. Hatch lobbied for the current law that is now costing tax payers and, lo and behold, Hatch was hired to defend the law at 3 to 4 times what state attorneys are paid.
Ralph Yarro is also CEO of Think Atomic, the company that will be making money off the laws that he claims are needed to enable CP80. These people are using the religious right's unfounded fear of pornography to fleece law makers and tax payers for their own personal financial gain. They appear to be a bunch of hoodwinking grifters.
My advice for the people of Utah is that if they believe the regulation is a good one, why should it matter if it turns a profit? If protecting kids is their goal, they should fight this to the bitter end.
Before the people of Utah waste tax payer dollars on a regulation they believe to be a "good one" perhaps there should be some clarification as to whether it is effective and whether it is constitutional. There is a group of people in Utah who see a way to scam tax payers out of their hard earned dollars by tricking them into believing that if they don't agree to these illegal scams they are somehow on the side of harming children with pornography.
It will be a bitter end because it is a lost cause when you foolishly write laws which demand the entire universe bend to your will because they wont.
The problem is not that solar panels aren't improving fast enough.
The problem is that petroleum is still so cheap.
The problem for solar power is that the efficiency is low enough and manufacturing costs high enough that it makes it difficult for the average home owner to invest in a system. The cost to purchase and install a solar voltaic system for an average home owner is in the realm of $30k and it will take about 20 years to pay for itself based on reduced power bills.
What we need is better efficiency which will allow for a smaller system, cheaper manufacturing techniques to reduce the cost, or a combination of both.
Obviously a precipitous increase in the cost of petroleum based fuels will help to justify the cost of existing solar voltaic systems but I'm hopeful that improvements in efficiency and manufacturing costs will be the real driving factors because I don't look forward to handing over a large percentage of my income to energy companies whether its petroleum or solar.
What is currently happening that needs to be fixed by this law? Forcing websites to cough up to be given a high bandwidth access to end users would be bad, but (AFAIK) that's not happening.
Yet. There have been noises lately from corporations who wish to cash in on mergers which have created large blocks of internet subscribers. Noteably the CEO of SBC has been making serious threats to change the way the internet works by charging content providers to have access to SBC customers.
And make no mistake about it, SBC's intention is to charge every content and service provider a toll to have access to customers on SBC's broadband connections.
I see no reason to make a law to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
The reasoning is that telecoms like SBC are becoming broadband ISPs and ISPs have managed to stay clear of the common carrier status. THIS is what SBC and others want is to drop the common carrier status so the FCC can no longer regulate them and they can begin to cash in on the monopolies they are building by extorting Google and others for the profits SBC's CEO covets.
It would be nice to see Microsoft start to open source (that is with a GPL or equivelant license) at least some of their products. But why FoxPro? This is the same software package which got Microsoft into trouble over copyrights. I believe all the "intellectual property" issues surrounding FoxPro have long been settled, am I right?
Two operating systems run more than 95 percent of the world's computers, but dozens of systems are behind the 2.5 billion mobile phones in circulation...
Last year, two-thirds of smart phones sold ran on Symbian's operating system, an increase of about four percentage points from 2005, according to Canalys, a consultant and market research firm based near London. Microsoft was second last year with a 14 percent market share, slightly less than the year before, followed by Research in Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, with 7 percent, and Linux, with 6 percent...
So 89% of the cell phones in the world run one of two operating systems. Throw in RIM and you have 96% of the phones covered with three operating systems, not dozens. It doesn't sound too disimilar from the desktop market.
In reading the article it sounds more like somebody wants to push out any new entrants to the market, sounds something like the desktop market, sounds like a bad idea, sounds like anti-competitive, sounds like monopoly speak, sounds like somebody in management is tired of paying all those high paid engineers and wants to force everyone into the same phone so they can pay for a smaller development crew to cover everyone who has a phone and increase their profit margins so they can pay the CEO even more than he is worth.
Let the market decide, if the companies developing cant hack it, fold.
Technically, he wrote a program that enables one to violate the rights of content creators.
Technically Toshiba has created a device which makes it possible for someone to violate the rights of content creators by playing an HD DVD movie in front of an audience using a Toshiba HD DVD player and a big screen HD TV.
And technically speaking just because a law is passed by the Congress doesn't mean it is constituionally legal.
The number of devices/programs you can actually create without running smack into someone's fool patent is very near zero.
And part of the reason for that are the large number of errors the USPTO makes. I believe 3.5% was quoted as the error rate when the USPTO performs internal reviews, however, the clown seems to dismiss the real world where "third-party requests for re-examination"..."are successful at having the subject patent either narrowed or completely revoked roughly 70 percent of the time. About 12 percent of patents are ruled invalid, while 58 percent are narrowed, and 30 percent upheld, according to USPTO statistics."
As long as the open source license these "bad" open source companies release it under is really an open license that allows you to modify and redistribute the code, that's all that matters.
And, just to add a rebut to the "Predatory Open Source?" article, releasing your work under an open source license is very different from giving away compiled binaries that will only run on your OS.
An open source release may commoditize a market and may be a competetive action for the company performing the release, however, it is not predatory because it does not stop others from competing in the market and if anything creates the potential for additional competition because access to the source code is made available to everyone.
On the other hand, leveraging a market monopoly to destroy competitors and competition by releasing free binaries that only run on your own products thus ensuring the continuation of your monopoly not through competition but through denial of market access is predatory and destructive.
The fact that we have anti-competetive companies holding an OSS halo over their head doesn't change the nature of open source software, it just means it is opening the markets where it seemed impossible in the past with previous business models and even the monopolists are realizing the inevitability.
Only in the US would you have a law, like the one passed last year in PA, that explicitly forbids any government from rolling their own municipal broadband when they're underserved by Verizon and Comcast.
That is pretty lame, however, removing such idiotic laws and regulations will do nothing to stop the telecoms. In areas where there are no such regulations the telecoms simply file lawsuits to force the community project to waste funds on lawyers instead of building their community infrastructure. If they can drain off enough capital from the project they'll kill it before it gets anywhere.
What we need is to build out information networks the same way we do the transportation system and let the telecoms compete by continuing to provide the services they sell now. After all, the telcoms aren't selling a connection they are selling a service. The reason they fight community infrastructure projects is because it invites competition into their services monopoly.
One possibility is public infrastructure, i.e. the roads and highways. The Utopia project would have provided fiber connections all over Utah right up to the home but the local monopolies lobbied to stop the public from building the infrastructure which the local providers refuse to build. The solution is to vote out our representatives who are working for business instead of the people who voted them in.
In 1992 the cable industry was deregulated and rather than spuring competition and better pricing for consumers we still have monopolies and cable rates increased 2 to 3 times the CPI.
Local telephone rates, which have been regulated, pretty much followed the CPI.
And long distance rates have dropped significantly and competition popped up everywhere once the AT&T monopoly was broken up.
So deregulation is not the answer and in reality the data suggests that your idea of deregulation would only make things worse, we would end up paying more for the same services.
Why don't we mob the criminals who price gouge consumers based on deregulation which was given to telecoms with an agreement that they would invest profits in fiber to the home? Then we can take those ill gotten gains and actually build the 21st century infrastructure we've been paying for rather than allow the telecoms to build bigger monopolies with which to gouge us more for inferior services.
Greed, lack of vision, and poor management in those who make the decisions.
Greed: Why dump capital into upgrading and expanding broadband services when you already have a cash cow that generates huge profit margins?
Lack of vision: Why dump capital into a service that appears to be a solution looking for a problem?
Poor management: In the US business decisions are based on the second coming principle, you don't invest in anything that doesn't have a 3 month ROI because we all know the end of the world is right around the corner.
Of course all these are debateable, but those are what I see as the root of the problem.
burnin
Re:Where's the security section of the book?
on
PHP 5 in Practice
·
· Score: 1
What PHP needs is not more features, but better designed security model.
While improvements in security should be high on the list of PHP development objectives I think PHP gets a bad rap for what are short comings in the design and coding of the applications written in PHP.
Many PHP applications are designed to use a single database user for all queries against the application database thus providing the equivalent of admin or root access to the application database if a security bug is found in PHP or in the coding of the application itself. This seems to be a systemic problem in web applications whether they are written in PHP or some other language.
And now for the shameless plug. Seeing this short coming I've been working on a security model for PHP applications that avoids placing the database owner's username and password in a plain text file and using it for every database query in the application.
I could probably get that '140,000' figure down to about 6
Sweet, when can you get started? I'm sure you'll have a significant impact on those Windows zombie squads who have been spamming my inbox for months now.
every OS has its place for the people that use it. Use what you like and what you're comfortable with. If your OS is getting in your way, you're using the wrong OS. (Reasons why Linux still sits in a relatively unused 20GB partition on my HDD)
I used to have that attitude, but as someone who uses the internet heavily I now understand that the choices others make have significant and serious effects on the quality of the internet for everyone who uses it.
When the OS you feel comfortable with results in my inbox filled with spam from zombied machines, my firewall and server log files are filled with lame Windows attacks on my non-Windows machines, or the accessibility of a web site or portion of the internet becomes pathetically slow as one of those bot nets goes on a rampage, your choice of OS sucks ass.
If your not connected to the internet then choose what ever crappy OS you want, if your going to be part of a public network, consider how your choice will affect others on that public network.
Slashdot Mirror
Fret not, as Nicholas Negroponte has stated "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
This is not some new hair brained lets throw laptops at 3rd world countries plan as many try to make it out to be. If you do a little research into the project you'll find that it was started years ago with various test implementations using standard laptops running Windows software. The OLPC is an extension of original work performed by these people so they probably have a pretty good idea about what they are doing and what they need to make the project a success.
The Geode, obviously.
What you thought higher frame rates while playing Halo2 makes the Celeron the clear winner? Think again. The Geode uses 40% less power than the Celeron, your CMPC will be a dead paper weight while the OLPC will still be doing its job.
And once again, how much power does the CMPC display consume? The OLPC is
The OLPC runs linuxBIOS and linux which enables significant power savings features which are not available in an off the shelf BIOS + Windows/linux install.
WTF? I suggest you improve on your knowledge of TC, its claimed "that it will make computers safer, less prone to viruses and malware, and thus more reliable from an end-user perspective", it doesn't stop a thug from stealing it.
Unfortunately one of the side effects of TC is that the hardware and software makers get to decide what is trusted and prevent end users from doing something with their hardware and software such as say running linux or open office because they deem them as not being trustworthy.
Really I have no idea why anyone is even bothering to argue in defense of the anti-OLPC solutions, and yes they are anti-OLPC. If you look at the specs on the Classmate PC it is rated at 4 hours of use on its batteries, the OLPC is rated in DAYS. The OLPC XO is designed for a purpose, the supposed superior offerings from people who are used to marketing products in energy rich societies are not even close to what is needed in hardware and software for a project like OLPC. The only reason they are even trying is because their over inflated marketing egos have them believing they are the end all be all of technology solutions for the planet. They need to grow up.
And there in is the reason the XO is a superior solution. All the criticism of the OLPC XO and the benevolent offers of "superior" Windows based machines with $3 OS licensing fees is based off the need of a few greedy thugs to build their markets. The objective of OLPC is not to build a market for Microsoft and Intel to sell their products and introduce developing nations to the proprietary software licensing treadmill, its about instilling the ability to learn at an early age so these children will grow up with the ability to improve their living conditions. As Negroponte has already stated "An educated and creative population is, without a doubt, the best path to global health, wealth, and peace."
While I'm sure a more expensive Windows based machine could be used for the same purpose, the initial experiments that led up to OLPC used Windows based laptops, the XO and its software were designed from the ground up to serve the specific purpose of "learning learning" while the so called superior solutions being pushed by multi-billionare corporate CEOs and the like are designed to help themselves break into new markets where their current products are simply too expensive.
These wealthy individuals who lack the knowlege and experience of the people who developed and run the OLPC should simply STFU and let the professionals do their job.
I thought I read an article that was critical of CPR and Unspam which talked about the individuals who persuaded the legislature to pass the law and Hatch's name came up, however, after perusing several articles found through google I did not find the statement.
Perhaps the impression that Brent was supporting CPR came from his support of CP80, involvement with Raph Yarro, and his father's (Orrin Hatch) public support of CP80 and other anti-pornography efforts which abridge freedom of speech rights in the name of saving children and of course setting up a little business venture on the side.
Is this why Brent Hatch, who lobbied to have this idiotic bill passed, was hired for 3 to 4 times what state attorneys are paid to now defend this idiotic legistation?
Looks more and more like a scam where local cons are skimming tax dollars.
Heavily involved. Hatch lobbied for the current law that is now costing tax payers and, lo and behold, Hatch was hired to defend the law at 3 to 4 times what state attorneys are paid.
Ralph Yarro is also CEO of Think Atomic, the company that will be making money off the laws that he claims are needed to enable CP80. These people are using the religious right's unfounded fear of pornography to fleece law makers and tax payers for their own personal financial gain. They appear to be a bunch of hoodwinking grifters.
Before the people of Utah waste tax payer dollars on a regulation they believe to be a "good one" perhaps there should be some clarification as to whether it is effective and whether it is constitutional. There is a group of people in Utah who see a way to scam tax payers out of their hard earned dollars by tricking them into believing that if they don't agree to these illegal scams they are somehow on the side of harming children with pornography.
It will be a bitter end because it is a lost cause when you foolishly write laws which demand the entire universe bend to your will because they wont.
The problem for solar power is that the efficiency is low enough and manufacturing costs high enough that it makes it difficult for the average home owner to invest in a system. The cost to purchase and install a solar voltaic system for an average home owner is in the realm of $30k and it will take about 20 years to pay for itself based on reduced power bills.
What we need is better efficiency which will allow for a smaller system, cheaper manufacturing techniques to reduce the cost, or a combination of both.
Obviously a precipitous increase in the cost of petroleum based fuels will help to justify the cost of existing solar voltaic systems but I'm hopeful that improvements in efficiency and manufacturing costs will be the real driving factors because I don't look forward to handing over a large percentage of my income to energy companies whether its petroleum or solar.
burnin
And the server wasn't setup with a RAID1 at least for the partitions that hold critical data?
Backup alone is not enough, in some cases there needs to be multiple levels of protection.
Actually this is already available as an arguement for proprietary vendors but I suppose they don't use it because they persue copyright violoations agressively to the point where customers move to open source solutions.
Yet. There have been noises lately from corporations who wish to cash in on mergers which have created large blocks of internet subscribers. Noteably the CEO of SBC has been making serious threats to change the way the internet works by charging content providers to have access to SBC customers.
And make no mistake about it, SBC's intention is to charge every content and service provider a toll to have access to customers on SBC's broadband connections.
The reasoning is that telecoms like SBC are becoming broadband ISPs and ISPs have managed to stay clear of the common carrier status. THIS is what SBC and others want is to drop the common carrier status so the FCC can no longer regulate them and they can begin to cash in on the monopolies they are building by extorting Google and others for the profits SBC's CEO covets.
It would be nice to see Microsoft start to open source (that is with a GPL or equivelant license) at least some of their products. But why FoxPro? This is the same software package which got Microsoft into trouble over copyrights. I believe all the "intellectual property" issues surrounding FoxPro have long been settled, am I right?
burnin
So 89% of the cell phones in the world run one of two operating systems. Throw in RIM and you have 96% of the phones covered with three operating systems, not dozens. It doesn't sound too disimilar from the desktop market.
In reading the article it sounds more like somebody wants to push out any new entrants to the market, sounds something like the desktop market, sounds like a bad idea, sounds like anti-competitive, sounds like monopoly speak, sounds like somebody in management is tired of paying all those high paid engineers and wants to force everyone into the same phone so they can pay for a smaller development crew to cover everyone who has a phone and increase their profit margins so they can pay the CEO even more than he is worth.
Let the market decide, if the companies developing cant hack it, fold.
burnin
Technically Toshiba has created a device which makes it possible for someone to violate the rights of content creators by playing an HD DVD movie in front of an audience using a Toshiba HD DVD player and a big screen HD TV.
And technically speaking just because a law is passed by the Congress doesn't mean it is constituionally legal.
burnin
And part of the reason for that are the large number of errors the USPTO makes. I believe 3.5% was quoted as the error rate when the USPTO performs internal reviews, however, the clown seems to dismiss the real world where "third-party requests for re-examination"..."are successful at having the subject patent either narrowed or completely revoked roughly 70 percent of the time. About 12 percent of patents are ruled invalid, while 58 percent are narrowed, and 30 percent upheld, according to USPTO statistics."
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+file+patent+faces+e
The current error rate based on the USPTO rules is 70%!!! The system is borked.
burnin
And, just to add a rebut to the "Predatory Open Source?" article, releasing your work under an open source license is very different from giving away compiled binaries that will only run on your OS.
An open source release may commoditize a market and may be a competetive action for the company performing the release, however, it is not predatory because it does not stop others from competing in the market and if anything creates the potential for additional competition because access to the source code is made available to everyone.
On the other hand, leveraging a market monopoly to destroy competitors and competition by releasing free binaries that only run on your own products thus ensuring the continuation of your monopoly not through competition but through denial of market access is predatory and destructive.
The fact that we have anti-competetive companies holding an OSS halo over their head doesn't change the nature of open source software, it just means it is opening the markets where it seemed impossible in the past with previous business models and even the monopolists are realizing the inevitability.
That is pretty lame, however, removing such idiotic laws and regulations will do nothing to stop the telecoms. In areas where there are no such regulations the telecoms simply file lawsuits to force the community project to waste funds on lawyers instead of building their community infrastructure. If they can drain off enough capital from the project they'll kill it before it gets anywhere.
What we need is to build out information networks the same way we do the transportation system and let the telecoms compete by continuing to provide the services they sell now. After all, the telcoms aren't selling a connection they are selling a service. The reason they fight community infrastructure projects is because it invites competition into their services monopoly.
Is that a Utopia connection? And isn't the 10G cap from your ISP rather than the fiber carrier (Xmission, arosnet)?
Maybe someday we'll have fiber further south.
One possibility is public infrastructure, i.e. the roads and highways. The Utopia project would have provided fiber connections all over Utah right up to the home but the local monopolies lobbied to stop the public from building the infrastructure which the local providers refuse to build. The solution is to vote out our representatives who are working for business instead of the people who voted them in.
Perhaps under the proper conditions, but simply deregulating does not guarantee competition:
regulation vs deregulation
In 1992 the cable industry was deregulated and rather than spuring competition and better pricing for consumers we still have monopolies and cable rates increased 2 to 3 times the CPI.
Local telephone rates, which have been regulated, pretty much followed the CPI.
And long distance rates have dropped significantly and competition popped up everywhere once the AT&T monopoly was broken up.
So deregulation is not the answer and in reality the data suggests that your idea of deregulation would only make things worse, we would end up paying more for the same services.
I have a better one;
Why don't we mob the criminals who price gouge consumers based on deregulation which was given to telecoms with an agreement that they would invest profits in fiber to the home? Then we can take those ill gotten gains and actually build the 21st century infrastructure we've been paying for rather than allow the telecoms to build bigger monopolies with which to gouge us more for inferior services.
Greed, lack of vision, and poor management in those who make the decisions.
Greed: Why dump capital into upgrading and expanding broadband services when you already have a cash cow that generates huge profit margins?
Lack of vision: Why dump capital into a service that appears to be a solution looking for a problem?
Poor management: In the US business decisions are based on the second coming principle, you don't invest in anything that doesn't have a 3 month ROI because we all know the end of the world is right around the corner.
Of course all these are debateable, but those are what I see as the root of the problem.
burnin
While improvements in security should be high on the list of PHP development objectives I think PHP gets a bad rap for what are short comings in the design and coding of the applications written in PHP.
Many PHP applications are designed to use a single database user for all queries against the application database thus providing the equivalent of admin or root access to the application database if a security bug is found in PHP or in the coding of the application itself. This seems to be a systemic problem in web applications whether they are written in PHP or some other language.
And now for the shameless plug. Seeing this short coming I've been working on a security model for PHP applications that avoids placing the database owner's username and password in a plain text file and using it for every database query in the application.
phpgirder.sourceforge.net
When the OS you feel comfortable with results in my inbox filled with spam from zombied machines, my firewall and server log files are filled with lame Windows attacks on my non-Windows machines, or the accessibility of a web site or portion of the internet becomes pathetically slow as one of those bot nets goes on a rampage, your choice of OS sucks ass.
If your not connected to the internet then choose what ever crappy OS you want, if your going to be part of a public network, consider how your choice will affect others on that public network.