If we allowed open source clients to access the Earth database it would be easier to dump the (unwatermarked) images en-masse and avoid paying the imagery owners for it. Clearly, that's not something anybody wants - satellites don't launch themselves.
I have to object to that last sentence. Getting rid of the watermarks en-masse would be a good thing, and satellite photography will continue to be made despite a lack of copyright protection over the imagery. In fact, I doubt copyright on satellite imagery would stand up to a constitutional attack addressing the fact that under Feist such photography is not copyrightable in the first place.
Yeah, I'm sure that the gaia project was a threat to Google. A bit melodramatic, aren't you Mr. Jones?
Not that much. The idea is that if Gaia got popular the people who claim copyright on the images would stop letting Google distribute them. Google would then have to scrap Google Earth or buy/find/make images under a less restrictive license agreement. Jones is implying that they would choose the former, though more likely they would choose the latter.
Not having used Google Earth, what difference does it make accessing the images via the Google Earth API versus directly?
Probably don't have those nasty watermarks and copyright notices embedded in them that way.
Once the author has pulled the GE download code, he is free to retarget it to say the NASA World Wind imagery and carry on, we have no problems with that.
But, that would defeat the whole purpose. World Wind is already free software.
That open source project was using Google's services without authorization.
Actually, the open source project was creating software which helped others use Google's services without authorization.
How would you feel if someone routed your cable service to themselves, with the imminent possibility the cable company finds out and fines you?
I'd feel like getting a new cable company. Of course, I don't have cable...
This quandary is actually a good reason not to use proprietary data. The argument would be similar to this one made by RMS: "As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software." - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
If Digitalglobe (who are the providers of Google's content on google earth) decided Google were breaching their TOS and decided they'd be better off keeping their imaging to themselves then everyone loses, including anyone using local.google.com and Google Earth.
Maybe. But then again, maybe not. If Digitalglobe stops licensing proprietary imagery to Google, then Google will have to get free content from somewhere. This would likely cause a huge increase in the amount of free orthoimagery out there, which means everyone wins, except Digitalglobe that is.
Personally, I think that allowing data to be so freely stored, it will not be long before it is connected to other information. How long before states like Pennsylvania pass laws that require bars and beer stores to swipe driver's licenses, and provide this to a central database? (Perhaps its being done already?)
Already being done? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me. It could be argued to be an illegal search for them to use the information, but I could see that case go either way. In any case, as long as the bars and beer stores are going along with it voluntarily, there's really no way to stop it.
That central database would be cross-referenced with vehicle registration information to find car license plates. From car license plates, traffic cameras (which, around here, are everywhere) can locate vehicles and provide police a 'drunkard radar'.
Yes, there would be positives in addition to the negatives.
I'm not sure if this stuff is a good idea or not. Drunk driving is a dangerous, illegal thing; however, these forms of tracking are also fairly scary.
My own personal feeling is that the government shouldn't be tracking people ordinary citizens. Then again, I don't think the government should require driver's licenses in the first place.
But private industry tracking people who voluntarily provide the information, I don't have a problem with that.
Except when your friends ask you to meet you there, and they're already inside... you've almost no choice but to go in.
No, you have a choice. Suck it up, and let them store your information, or don't go in. If your friends don't understand then maybe a) your fear of the bar doing something bad with your information really *is* unreasonable; or b) your friends aren't very good friends. Personally I'd go with A...
What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead?
Is that what these high-school dropouts are doing, working 40-hours a week instead? And if so, does that mean there's something wrong with our school system? Am I being overly cynical in thinking that producing drones to who enjoy working 40 hours a week is the very purpose of our school system?
What's the big problem with American High Schools where more and more children are feeling that it's better to risk the "real world" than to continue on with their education? Of course, another question that should be asked is: Is High School really the problem, or is it America's Educational system as a whole?
That's a fairly leading question. After all, just because lots of kids drop out doesn't mean it's the fault of the school or the education system. Some kids are going to drop out no matter what the school or school system is like.
That said, I think there are lots of problems with America's educational system, and by saying that don't think I mean to imply that it's exclusive to the US - in fact I think any public education system will suffer from most of the same problems. US schools are too focussed on regimentation. Students are forced to be far too competitive. Teachers are too often mediocre or worse. And worst of all, the courses, the rules, the schedules, the subject matter, almost none of it is individualized to the student.
One size does not fit all when it comes to education. A multitude of students are not properly addressed by the education system. Some portion of those students drop out. The rest waste their time until they graduate.
But, at the rate we're going I'm happy enough to know that a massive die off is coming soon and I'll be the first in line to take a few idiots down. That is all.
Sounds like you're in the "OMG OMG teh sky is falling!!!" camp. From everything I've read the most likely scenario is an extremely gradual changing of the coastlines over the course of centuries. IOW, there is no "massive die off...coming soon". Lots of people will likely lose their homes and be forced to move. The economic effects will likely be tremendous. But a "massive die off"? I don't think so.
Of course, I just received the DVD in the mail - maybe Al will convince me that things are actually worse than this.
I agree with your point that as we grow as a society these laws become less useful, but I don't think we're there yet.
I think most if not all parts of the country are there when it comes to advertising. As for regulation of the discrimination itself, maybe not (especially when it comes to large apartment complexes).
Two years ago, a major apartment complex in my college neighborhood got nailed by the city's fair housing laws for discriminating against students and people of college age.
My initial reaction is that this type of discrimination isn't really worth worrying about. It certainly doesn't seem to me to be as bad as discrimination based on race or religion.
As they should be, as taking a thousand apartments out of the market when it is already tight really does hurt potential tenants.
What happened to the apartments, did they lie there vacant, or did someone else rent them? If they just stayed vacant, well, the apartment complex probably would have gone out of business fairly quickly anyway. If they were just rented to someone else, then they didn't take a thousand apartments out of the market, they just rented them to older people.
I'm ashamed to say it, but one of my relatives moved and was pressured by neighbors into not selling to a minority family. That may be one home to that minority family, but if my otherwise decent relative didn't do the right thing, what are the chances they find another person willing to sell a home to them in the same neighborhood. These laws (if enforced) help decent people do what they know is right. If my relative knew the law, he could have shrugged at his neighbors, "I'm not getting sued." He got his comeuppance though, the other bidders fell through and it took months to sell.
I find that to be a more reasonable argument, though part of the flipside is that a law against such behavior is essentially impossible to enforce. With an apartment complex you could require that all similar apartments are similarly priced, and that applicants can't be denied except for certain pre-determined reasons. But with a single home sale unless someone is a cash buyer and willing to pay the asking price, there is necessarily going to be some need to negotiate. I guess you can ensure that the real estate agents at least aren't involved. But then again, the National Association of Realtors could do that too, without involving government regulations.
When the bigot chooses to engage in commerce, he loses some of his rights to associate with whom he pleases.
So nice to know I live in America, where I'm free to do anything I want, as long as I never interact with anyone else. C'mon, how is it possible to live in this world without engaging in commerce? I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion (that this regulation is OK), but I do disagree with your line of reasoning. In order to exercise my rights, I have to be able to exercise them in commerce.
But if he wants to engage in commerce and earn a profit, he does so with society's help in terms of market regulation and authority to enforce contracts.
What if he doesn't want to earn a profit? What if he doesn't want government help in enforcing any contracts? What if he doesn't want any market regulation?
Engage in commerce? I say all of us should be able to compete on a level playing field.
Of course we should. But I really don't see how that's relevant, unless you're talking about some sort of socialism where everyone is completely equal.
In short, keep your bigoted acts private and you're fine. Air them in public and fuck you.
Well, as I said above I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion. We, as a society, certainly shouldn't allow these sorts of things on a mass scale (on a small scale it's really harmless, though - if 1% of rental units didn't allow whites I wouldn't care). Whether or not that means we need laws against discrimination in housing, I'm not sure. In some areas of the country maybe they're more necessary than others, but for the most part I think the market will regulate itself enough to pretty much eliminate the problem.
For example, craigslist has just been told that it's exempt from these discrimination laws. Does that mean it's going to suddenly start allowing them? No, it doesn't. If the New York Times or the Tampa Tribune were exempt from these laws would they start condoning ads for whites only apartments? No, I can say fairly confidently that they wouldn't. 20, 30, 40 years ago maybe they would, but we've grown as a society and as we continue to grow these types of laws will be less and less useful.
A landlord cannot advertise that the apartment is near a church or synagogue because this implies an illegal preference based on religion.
I sure hope that either you're wrong or this is just a California thing, because that's one of the stupidest laws I've ever heard of.
Would this logic also apply to advertising that the apartment is near a school, because it implies an illegal preference based on familial status? Would it be illegal to mention that the apartment is near a music store, because it discriminates against the deaf?...near a bar, because it discriminates against people under 21?...near a highway, because it discriminates against people with certain forms of agoraphobia?
I don't mean to shoot the messenger. So seriously, would those other examples be illegal too? The school one seems fairly cut and dry - it should be the same as the synagogue one. The music store one could be argued not to apply, as deaf people might still enjoy music with certain devices, but then again Christians might enjoy going to a synagogue. The bar one is pretty cut and dry too, like the school one. And the highway one, well, that's the ridiculous of the already ridiculous, I admit.
If the cost isn't being subsidized, then there should be no problem with me buying one for my son.
The minimum order size is about a million, so you'll need to find an intermediary that's prepared to sell you just one. And there's probably going to be a queue...
What if I convinced some investors to give me $150 million loan? I could buy and resell these devices? Which parts are customizable? Can I boost up the ram a bit? Take out the camera? Add a pcmcia port?
I guess my best bet of seeing the laptops here would be to convince my legislator here in Florida to dedicate $200-300 million of its $3.2 billion budget surplus to give every elementary school kid in the state one of these. Wouldn't be impossible, I guess, but I don't even know my legislator, and someone from the project has probably already talked to the Florida legislature.
What I really like is the idea of the mesh network. If I really could get a $150 million loan I'd probably be better off talking to Marvell directly.
It really isn't a question WHETHER we will be able to read old digital data in the future.
Instead it is a question of whether the data is WORTH the effort.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. Of course, for the stuff that we *know* is going to be important it's even easier than that. Each time you upgrade technologies, hardware or software, you convert the data. With the advent of cross platform networking things get a lot easier, too. Today you can transfer data from any device to any other, so long as each device can be hooked up to a computer with Internet access.
The benefit of digital data is that it can be copied even if we don't know what it means.
That has its advantages, but in some ways that's actually the problem. People copy the bits and think they're done, but if you really care about the information you should convert the file format too (as you point out, not doing so doesn't make it impossible to retrieve the information, but it makes it harder, sometimes much harder).
However, egyptian hieroglyphs on stone and ancient cuneiform on clay tablets protected from the elements have lasted for millennia. That is the point here. We do not currently have a digital medium that will last millennia without manual renewal according to its expiry cycle.
I wonder how long punch cards can last. Put them in well sealed container, and you could probably store them for millennia. The biggest problem with current storage systems is that they pack the data so tightly. It really doesn't have anything to do with digital vs. analog. You can write 1s and 0s on clay tablets, and at the physical level tapes and hard drives are really analog.
Most importantly, this is a technology that's never been field-tested for it's technological capability nor in pilot projects investigating its success, yet they are asking countries to go deeply into debt to purchase millions (minimum order is one million) of these to deploy in their countries.
Why not manufacture them in the third world? Then they won't have to go into debt. They'll probably be able to produce them more cheaply too, as the worker salaries are much lower.
It really does cost $100 (or $150 or something - I think they said the price had gone up a little).
Actually, AFAIK it doesn't yet exist (in bulk production).
The reason you can't buy one in a store is twofold - the OLPC project aren't interested in selling through conventional markets - and other manufacturers aren't interested in trying to sell large quantities of a cheap, stripped down machine because it's harder than selling smaller quantities of an expensive fully loaded machine.
The two reasons I was thinking were 1) they don't yet exist (in bulk production), and 2) the cost is being subsidized. Just because someone sells something at a certain price doesn't mean that's the real cost. I can sell some poor kid a laptop for $1 - does that mean I made a $1 laptop?
You are also perhaps thinking of the OLPC device as just a cheap - but otherwise fairly standard - laptop. It's actually more like a big PDA: These laptops are horribly limited compared to what a 'regular' laptop has.
Not at all. I'm quite aware of the specs, and while they're somewhat crippled in some areas they're also quite advanced in other areas. Very low power consumption, built in wireless mesh network capabilities (which even works with the CPU off), Linux bios and GNU/Linux OS with no need to hack it, near indestructibility. I'd liken it to a beefed up, more portable iPAQ IA-1 running a real OS.
You only get high resolution display in monochrome
The display is small - only 7.5". So 800x600 is really not that bad for such a small display. Obviously you wouldn't want to use this as a portable desktop, like laptops have become.
it's not windows compatible, there is a special stripped-down version of Linux for it
I'm sure you could put Windows on it if you really wanted to, but why would anyone want to do that?
it doesn't have a hard drive (flash memory only)
512 megs is pretty skimpy, but it does have three usb ports. The mesh network is the big question mark. If that works well the lack of space will be fairly negligible.
it's missing a bunch of standard keys on the keyboard
Nothing too important from what I've seen. I kind of wish the laptop I was using right now had a numeric keypad, but with a laptop you really don't have the space for these extras.
It has an incredibly slow CPU - no CD-ROM drive, no Floppy drive - not much RAM - no slots for expansion cards - no RAM expansion slot.
First of all, floppy drive? Are you serious? My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive either. Hell, my wife's desktop doesn't have a floppy drive. The OLPC does have a few USB ports and an SD card slot, though. The CPU speed is bearable, the ram is very low.
Still, $100 is a hell of a price for such a device.
A full library, with its costs for books, a building, and caretaker, costs much more than the $100-150 of OLPC, so it seems reasonable to try the $100 laptop approach.
The cost of the laptop, roughly $20/year for the five-year life of the laptop, is less than the cost of the books needed to teach the kids.
Really? Where do you get that figure from? I would think $100 would be more than enough to print a year's worth of textbooks (and those textbooks could last roughly five years). This is without even factoring in the fact that each student doesn't absolutely need a set of textbooks to herself.
I don't think a $100 laptop is a complete waste. But for a village with say 100 children, I think the $10,000 would be better spent on a library with five or six desktops.
a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut.
I wonder if this writer has ever been to the third world. This is simply disgusting. Yes sure, everyone in Africa still lives in huts, and Eskimos live in igloos, etc. Careful, you may be eaten by cannibals while you're out there, too! While there still are some few extremely poor indiginous communities who lack even electricity, I doubt they would have any use for a laptop - even as a source of light.
You seem to have missed the fact that it is the OLPC program, not MSN, that originated that reference: "In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home." - http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html
I don't know why he stepped aside, but many (I'd say most) people would put their egos first and resist with all their might.
It's not so much that he resigned as that he chose to support someone else rather than have the others vote whether or not to retain him. Under the Wikimedia bylaws the Chair is elected for a one year term.
Many organizations fail, or underperform, because founders can't let go.
Had Wales not decided to support someone other than himself, I doubt it would have been a unanimous vote. Whether or not it would have caused enough of a ruckous to cause the organization to fail, I really don't know.
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I have to object to that last sentence. Getting rid of the watermarks en-masse would be a good thing, and satellite photography will continue to be made despite a lack of copyright protection over the imagery. In fact, I doubt copyright on satellite imagery would stand up to a constitutional attack addressing the fact that under Feist such photography is not copyrightable in the first place.
Not that much. The idea is that if Gaia got popular the people who claim copyright on the images would stop letting Google distribute them. Google would then have to scrap Google Earth or buy/find/make images under a less restrictive license agreement. Jones is implying that they would choose the former, though more likely they would choose the latter.
Probably don't have those nasty watermarks and copyright notices embedded in them that way.
But, that would defeat the whole purpose. World Wind is already free software.
Actually, the open source project was creating software which helped others use Google's services without authorization.
I'd feel like getting a new cable company. Of course, I don't have cable...
This quandary is actually a good reason not to use proprietary data. The argument would be similar to this one made by RMS: "As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software." - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
Maybe. But then again, maybe not. If Digitalglobe stops licensing proprietary imagery to Google, then Google will have to get free content from somewhere. This would likely cause a huge increase in the amount of free orthoimagery out there, which means everyone wins, except Digitalglobe that is.
Already being done? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me. It could be argued to be an illegal search for them to use the information, but I could see that case go either way. In any case, as long as the bars and beer stores are going along with it voluntarily, there's really no way to stop it.
Yes, there would be positives in addition to the negatives.
My own personal feeling is that the government shouldn't be tracking people ordinary citizens. Then again, I don't think the government should require driver's licenses in the first place.
But private industry tracking people who voluntarily provide the information, I don't have a problem with that.
No, you have a choice. Suck it up, and let them store your information, or don't go in. If your friends don't understand then maybe a) your fear of the bar doing something bad with your information really *is* unreasonable; or b) your friends aren't very good friends. Personally I'd go with A...
Is that what these high-school dropouts are doing, working 40-hours a week instead? And if so, does that mean there's something wrong with our school system? Am I being overly cynical in thinking that producing drones to who enjoy working 40 hours a week is the very purpose of our school system?
That's a fairly leading question. After all, just because lots of kids drop out doesn't mean it's the fault of the school or the education system. Some kids are going to drop out no matter what the school or school system is like.
That said, I think there are lots of problems with America's educational system, and by saying that don't think I mean to imply that it's exclusive to the US - in fact I think any public education system will suffer from most of the same problems. US schools are too focussed on regimentation. Students are forced to be far too competitive. Teachers are too often mediocre or worse. And worst of all, the courses, the rules, the schedules, the subject matter, almost none of it is individualized to the student.
One size does not fit all when it comes to education. A multitude of students are not properly addressed by the education system. Some portion of those students drop out. The rest waste their time until they graduate.
Sounds like you're in the "OMG OMG teh sky is falling!!!" camp. From everything I've read the most likely scenario is an extremely gradual changing of the coastlines over the course of centuries. IOW, there is no "massive die off...coming soon". Lots of people will likely lose their homes and be forced to move. The economic effects will likely be tremendous. But a "massive die off"? I don't think so.
Of course, I just received the DVD in the mail - maybe Al will convince me that things are actually worse than this.
I think most if not all parts of the country are there when it comes to advertising. As for regulation of the discrimination itself, maybe not (especially when it comes to large apartment complexes).
My initial reaction is that this type of discrimination isn't really worth worrying about. It certainly doesn't seem to me to be as bad as discrimination based on race or religion.
What happened to the apartments, did they lie there vacant, or did someone else rent them? If they just stayed vacant, well, the apartment complex probably would have gone out of business fairly quickly anyway. If they were just rented to someone else, then they didn't take a thousand apartments out of the market, they just rented them to older people.
I find that to be a more reasonable argument, though part of the flipside is that a law against such behavior is essentially impossible to enforce. With an apartment complex you could require that all similar apartments are similarly priced, and that applicants can't be denied except for certain pre-determined reasons. But with a single home sale unless someone is a cash buyer and willing to pay the asking price, there is necessarily going to be some need to negotiate. I guess you can ensure that the real estate agents at least aren't involved. But then again, the National Association of Realtors could do that too, without involving government regulations.
So nice to know I live in America, where I'm free to do anything I want, as long as I never interact with anyone else. C'mon, how is it possible to live in this world without engaging in commerce? I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion (that this regulation is OK), but I do disagree with your line of reasoning. In order to exercise my rights, I have to be able to exercise them in commerce.
What if he doesn't want to earn a profit? What if he doesn't want government help in enforcing any contracts? What if he doesn't want any market regulation?
Of course we should. But I really don't see how that's relevant, unless you're talking about some sort of socialism where everyone is completely equal.
Well, as I said above I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion. We, as a society, certainly shouldn't allow these sorts of things on a mass scale (on a small scale it's really harmless, though - if 1% of rental units didn't allow whites I wouldn't care). Whether or not that means we need laws against discrimination in housing, I'm not sure. In some areas of the country maybe they're more necessary than others, but for the most part I think the market will regulate itself enough to pretty much eliminate the problem.
For example, craigslist has just been told that it's exempt from these discrimination laws. Does that mean it's going to suddenly start allowing them? No, it doesn't. If the New York Times or the Tampa Tribune were exempt from these laws would they start condoning ads for whites only apartments? No, I can say fairly confidently that they wouldn't. 20, 30, 40 years ago maybe they would, but we've grown as a society and as we continue to grow these types of laws will be less and less useful.
I sure hope that either you're wrong or this is just a California thing, because that's one of the stupidest laws I've ever heard of.
Would this logic also apply to advertising that the apartment is near a school, because it implies an illegal preference based on familial status? Would it be illegal to mention that the apartment is near a music store, because it discriminates against the deaf? ...near a bar, because it discriminates against people under 21? ...near a highway, because it discriminates against people with certain forms of agoraphobia?
I don't mean to shoot the messenger. So seriously, would those other examples be illegal too? The school one seems fairly cut and dry - it should be the same as the synagogue one. The music store one could be argued not to apply, as deaf people might still enjoy music with certain devices, but then again Christians might enjoy going to a synagogue. The bar one is pretty cut and dry too, like the school one. And the highway one, well, that's the ridiculous of the already ridiculous, I admit.
What if I convinced some investors to give me $150 million loan? I could buy and resell these devices? Which parts are customizable? Can I boost up the ram a bit? Take out the camera? Add a pcmcia port?
I guess my best bet of seeing the laptops here would be to convince my legislator here in Florida to dedicate $200-300 million of its $3.2 billion budget surplus to give every elementary school kid in the state one of these. Wouldn't be impossible, I guess, but I don't even know my legislator, and someone from the project has probably already talked to the Florida legislature.
What I really like is the idea of the mesh network. If I really could get a $150 million loan I'd probably be better off talking to Marvell directly.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. Of course, for the stuff that we *know* is going to be important it's even easier than that. Each time you upgrade technologies, hardware or software, you convert the data. With the advent of cross platform networking things get a lot easier, too. Today you can transfer data from any device to any other, so long as each device can be hooked up to a computer with Internet access.
That has its advantages, but in some ways that's actually the problem. People copy the bits and think they're done, but if you really care about the information you should convert the file format too (as you point out, not doing so doesn't make it impossible to retrieve the information, but it makes it harder, sometimes much harder).
I wonder how long punch cards can last. Put them in well sealed container, and you could probably store them for millennia. The biggest problem with current storage systems is that they pack the data so tightly. It really doesn't have anything to do with digital vs. analog. You can write 1s and 0s on clay tablets, and at the physical level tapes and hard drives are really analog.
Isn't the %age for the manufacturer part of the production cost?
How does the production cost depend on the size of the order? Are these being custom built?
If the cost isn't being subsidized, then there should be no problem with me buying one for my son.
Why not manufacture them in the third world? Then they won't have to go into debt. They'll probably be able to produce them more cheaply too, as the worker salaries are much lower.
Actually, AFAIK it doesn't yet exist (in bulk production).
The two reasons I was thinking were 1) they don't yet exist (in bulk production), and 2) the cost is being subsidized. Just because someone sells something at a certain price doesn't mean that's the real cost. I can sell some poor kid a laptop for $1 - does that mean I made a $1 laptop?
Not at all. I'm quite aware of the specs, and while they're somewhat crippled in some areas they're also quite advanced in other areas. Very low power consumption, built in wireless mesh network capabilities (which even works with the CPU off), Linux bios and GNU/Linux OS with no need to hack it, near indestructibility. I'd liken it to a beefed up, more portable iPAQ IA-1 running a real OS.
The display is small - only 7.5". So 800x600 is really not that bad for such a small display. Obviously you wouldn't want to use this as a portable desktop, like laptops have become.
I'm sure you could put Windows on it if you really wanted to, but why would anyone want to do that?
512 megs is pretty skimpy, but it does have three usb ports. The mesh network is the big question mark. If that works well the lack of space will be fairly negligible.
Nothing too important from what I've seen. I kind of wish the laptop I was using right now had a numeric keypad, but with a laptop you really don't have the space for these extras.
First of all, floppy drive? Are you serious? My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive either. Hell, my wife's desktop doesn't have a floppy drive. The OLPC does have a few USB ports and an SD card slot, though. The CPU speed is bearable, the ram is very low.
Still, $100 is a hell of a price for such a device.
Really? According to the Wikipedia article [[Children's Machine]], "a $2000 library can serve 400 children, costing just $5 a child".
Really? Where do you get that figure from? I would think $100 would be more than enough to print a year's worth of textbooks (and those textbooks could last roughly five years). This is without even factoring in the fact that each student doesn't absolutely need a set of textbooks to herself.
I don't think a $100 laptop is a complete waste. But for a village with say 100 children, I think the $10,000 would be better spent on a library with five or six desktops.
a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut.
You seem to have missed the fact that it is the OLPC program, not MSN, that originated that reference: "In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home." - http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html
The problem is, no it doesn't. If it really only cost $100 to produce the laptop, then I could walk to a store today and buy one for $100.
Not that this isn't a worthy cause. Donating laptops to people is worthy. But I don't understand the fixation on the $100 figure.
I thought "net neutrality" was a proposal to restrict free enterprise on the Internet.
It's not so much that he resigned as that he chose to support someone else rather than have the others vote whether or not to retain him. Under the Wikimedia bylaws the Chair is elected for a one year term.
Had Wales not decided to support someone other than himself, I doubt it would have been a unanimous vote. Whether or not it would have caused enough of a ruckous to cause the organization to fail, I really don't know.
So yes, you do have the audacity to think you'd know about such a deal.