I see your point, for. But as a counter argument, I used to smoke, a lot. At my computer. For hours at a time. Ashing inadvertently into the keyboard. Blowing smoke into the air intakes. It must have been a horrifyingly bad environment for my computer. Today I spill stuff on my laptop with disturbing frequency. I've never had a keyboard go bad. Look at the Apple IIc -- real, full travel keys with a waterproof backing UNDER the keys (like on a Lenovo ThinkPad). To me, a chiclet keyboard just mocks the end-user and is indicitive of patronizing UI design. As soon as I saw that, it immediately occured to me that the designers of the system really didn't respect or think about the end users very much.
As for the monitor, I don't know. That sounds like a cool feature, but probably an unnecesary one for the target audience. A 1024 x 768 fixed resolution LCD (even at a low color density to save on VRAM) is likely more than enough for doing almost all tasks that the OLPC would need to do (word processing, web surfing, etc.). And a 1024 x 768 display, while it would strike a power user as torture, is definitely not mocking to the user.
I think the OLPC is cool -- it has great design looks, and the low-power features are pretty cool (I just looked up the specs -- it can do monochrome with the backlight off). I just think that the designers got taken away with the idea of making the perfect thrid world PC, and didn't focus where I would have, which is a minimum spec + cost cutting. To get PCs to kids worldwide, I'd rather do cheap and off the shelf versus where they went. If it had been me, I'd have gone with an embedded Z80-based architecture and Contiki. Or worked with Nintendo to base the system off the ARM hardware in the DS. Or the original PlayStation. Or heck, Jerri Ellsworth's C64-on-a-chip (used to power the cool 30-in-1 C64 product a few years ago) would have gotten you to the $100 price-point with good computer power, and there are web broswers for C64.
No, 1985 didn't see famine in the US -- we were all too busy still cashing in our McDonald's 1984 Olympics game pieces. But people, even in the US, had less disposable income, and arguably less free time. VCRs and computers were expensive luxuries that had way less than 50% penetration in the US, not like now when you can get a DVD player for $20 in a gas station.
The problem with OLPC is that is was designed by academics, who can never let "good enough" get in the way of "visionary perfection," so you end up with a lot of worthless spces, like a paperback book sized dual-16:9 touchscreen spec that consumes no power and producers potable water as a byproduct, instead of just outsourcing the entire production to Asus to make a cheaper version of the 10-inch EEEPC.
I'm not saying academics don't produce anything worthwhile, but there's a reason they're in the thinking business, and not in the computer hardware production business.
Good example -- OLPC has the worst keyboard in history (although it did make me long for the days of my Timex/Sinclair). I can see the academics thinking "oh those dirty, ignorant, third-world children need a keyboard that can never break," ignoring the fact that a clamshell device, even in the third world, will keep the keyboard pretty clean, that you can find off the shelf keyboards cheaper, and that even poor people in the third world can understand that they need to not rub dirty into a computer keyboard, since they may be poor, but you know, poor != stupid.
Have you ever read any real history of people's day to day lives in western societies 50, 100, 200, or hell even 25 years ago? They kind of sucked. There was no real time to ponder the meaning of life because it was a constant struggle to get enough to eat, really. Most history focuses on the societal elites, because they were the only ones doing anything interesting, while everyone else worked too hard to do much other than sleep, eat (hopefully), and work some more, so it's sometimes hard to get perspective on this issue.
Contrast that to today. In Western societies (at least) just about everyone from the bottom of the barrel to the top has plenty of free time -- when they're not scarfing down cheap caloric loads taht would stagger their forebearers -- to surf 4Chan and Something Awful, and play videogames. Yep, when freed from want, it turns out most people go for entertainment.
To which I can only say two things. First -- what the fuck do you expect, we're APES. It's not like there's some special nobility gene waiting to be turned on the second we have computers. And second -- who cares? People who want to do interesting things can still do interesting things (see: universities, make magazine, the people who provide content for the unwashed masses on you tube, the open source movement etc.).
The first component is a metal filter that controls the interaction between 40% of the oxygen in the surrounding air, the inflammable substance and some other substances. He refused to reveal the exact substances used, fearing that they will not be allowed into the Gaza Strip.
The second part of his invention is an electronic board that regulates the percentage of air and oxygen entering into the appliance, and the third component is an air pump using electrical power.
The metal cannister could be refilled with the inflammable substance for no more than 40 NIS, which would make the home cooking device functional for up to 40 days, according to Farajallah.
This would be neat if true -- a garbage disposal sized obvject providing 40 days of cooking gas for 40 NIS, but just reading alerts every single "perpetual motion" bullshit detector in my head -- the 40% figure, the secret ingredients, etc.
Actually, if you look at the video found here , you'll see that your theory of human echo-location is totally inadaquate to describe what he is doing -- he avoids the walls, but also an overhead projector on the floor and some really small items.
If you RTFA (I know, a big assumption -- Google can take you to the no-registration-required SciAm version), they say that scientists suspect there are other pathways where the info is getting into his brain, even though his visual cortex is totally destroyed on both hemispheres. This is the first blindsight demo with NO visual cortex, and thus seems to suggest strong that there are some alternate pathways going on. He can also react to facial expressions.
The fact that legitimate medical theory is sometimes wrong (lobotomy, etc.), but changes, makes me a lot more comfortable than "traidtional alternative medicine" which is just as often (if not more frequently) wrong and *doesn't* change.
I agree that prevention is better than a cure, but if I'm really sick, I want a real doctor.
I agree with this, and to the extent you can, keep the early project meetings open to as large a group as possible, to get buy in and ideas. (No one likes being dictated to.) Once you're rolling, you need heriarchy and task lists (potentially including weekly A&Os from all your leads or everyone), but at the start, keep it broad and happy.
Being like "Here's the problem. Management wants X functionality at Y timeframe, what's the best way to tackle this, how close can we get, etc." gets a lot more buy-in than "We need X by Y. End of Story." Some guys mistake the former for weakes and the later for strength as a manager, but those are the aforementioned "douchebags" everyone keeps talking about. The former allows for solutions that are not X by Y, (assuming that's unreasonable) but could be along the lines of "well, we can do.85X by Y and 1.25X by 1.3Y" Basically, you're getting options you can take upstairs and not look like a douchebag. And you're not giving your guys some rigid, illogical parameters.
Lastly, be supportive. If some guy is crunching, buy him lunch -- and don't bug him for his TPS report. If you can, bring in a barbeque and cook for the whole team (this may not be practical in, say, a sky-scraper). Pay attention and ask detailed questions. I don't mean micromanage, but if some low-level engineer is writing task lists weekly, actually read them , and be able to ask him questions about them that are half-way intelligent. (Which you can do if you yourself are smart, even if you don't totally understand what he is doing.)
Actually some old inks would fade, but these days they are much more permanent. Thermal printers that used thermal paper fade quickly, but thermal printers that used wax-based ribbons last a long time. I too have old fanzines I made 20+ years ago that I made with my Apple Scribe wax/thermal printer that still look perfect.
-Chris
Use an inkjet for those prinouts! -- Ink on paper, good. Toner on paper, not so good -- it loses its grip after just a few dozen years. A lot depends on the paper too. I have pulp magazines and books that I have compared to AGRiPPA simply because as you turn the pages they basically disintigrate.
As for AGRiPPA itself, I get the point, but it always struck me as Gibson's shark jumping moment. An extremely unegalitarian artwork that only a few people can see in its intended form is certainly the artist's right to create, but it really lessened my respect for him, and decreased my interest in his future output.
I think your sig settles it though -- you clearly have unresolved issues, and while I have no doubt that the CS guy was a moron, I equally have no doubt that you've lost any sympathy points on this thread and should stop posting.
For the original poster, I sugest you also WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN and tell them that you, an active duty Army soldier/officer, are getting dicked around and ripped off by Dell. Then, do the same thing with your hometown newspaper. Then, I suggest you let Dell know you did this. I predict a laptop will arrive immediately.
The water created by a dehumidifier is prolly much cleaner than the water sources in some third-world areas. I remember early (and sucessful) attempts to reduce disease by having people in some parts of India and (what is now) Bangledesh simply filter their water through multiple layers of cheese cloth before they drank it.
Re:Revenge of the Nerds...
on
American Nerd
·
· Score: 1
I'm convinced this "geek is the good one!" "No, Nerd is the good one!" is based on very local definitions. .
When I lived on the east coast (in Cambridge, MA), Geek was good -- it was someone self- and socially aware, if not necessarily socially successful, while a nerd was unaware and thus more pathetic. Geeks were more into tech, Nerds more into D&D or other niche endeavors that didn't necessarily require you to be smart or super-well educated to be successful in. (Not a rip on D&D!) When I moved to the west coast (Oakland, CA), the definitions were essentially reversed. A geek was considered truly pathetic, while Nerd was a term worn like a badge of pride.
(Of course, in the midwest, (based on my high school experience) most people who are not nerds or geeks call members either one of these groups "faggots" interchangably, so it's kind of a moot point there.)
On a related note, I read this book and really liked the history, but it falls apart at the end a bit as he tried to do more contemporary social analysis and it got more autobiographical.
Let;s see... Have my head hacked off by some religious lunatic versus an infintisimal chance some pencil pusher in Washington will write a database query that quickly looks at the fact that I checked out both Animal Architects and Freckle Juice from the Oakland Public Library... I'm gonna go with the security versus the privacy, thanks!
Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works? All I've seen is platitudes and empty stateents from both of them.
From everything I've read, it was basically total luck they never lost a Saturn V with astronauts attached. I saw one estimate that put it at a 1:6 chance per launch of the thing not working in a fatal way.
Anyway, I'd rather they found these errors now, rather than later...
That would be nice, which is why EA is offering it. This EA thing and the Rock Band thing are ways to give spiffs to the first purchaser, in an effort to get more people to be first purchasers, similar to the way Infocom used to package in feelies to encourage people to purchase thier easily pirated games.
Bitching about this seems a lot like complaining that a used car doesn't come with the free key fobs, or the new car smell.
The other side of the bad-news coin for eBay is that after it rationalized the collectors' market, pretty much everyone has gotten what they need. All the things I was willing to spend non-trivial amounts of money on (Infocom games, Apple II stuff, etc.), I have. I have nothing against eBay, I just have no reason to shop there anymore. My collections are complete, and I prefer to buy new things from real stores.
Half.com is still pretty good for used stuff, though.
It depends on what you want. If you want something new or modern, forget eBay. If you want something old or obscure (Apple IIc flat-panel display, copy of Suspended in the box), it's still the only game in town.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the monitor, I don't know. That sounds like a cool feature, but probably an unnecesary one for the target audience. A 1024 x 768 fixed resolution LCD (even at a low color density to save on VRAM) is likely more than enough for doing almost all tasks that the OLPC would need to do (word processing, web surfing, etc.). And a 1024 x 768 display, while it would strike a power user as torture, is definitely not mocking to the user.
I think the OLPC is cool -- it has great design looks, and the low-power features are pretty cool (I just looked up the specs -- it can do monochrome with the backlight off). I just think that the designers got taken away with the idea of making the perfect thrid world PC, and didn't focus where I would have, which is a minimum spec + cost cutting. To get PCs to kids worldwide, I'd rather do cheap and off the shelf versus where they went. If it had been me, I'd have gone with an embedded Z80-based architecture and Contiki. Or worked with Nintendo to base the system off the ARM hardware in the DS. Or the original PlayStation. Or heck, Jerri Ellsworth's C64-on-a-chip (used to power the cool 30-in-1 C64 product a few years ago) would have gotten you to the $100 price-point with good computer power, and there are web broswers for C64.
No, 1985 didn't see famine in the US -- we were all too busy still cashing in our McDonald's 1984 Olympics game pieces. But people, even in the US, had less disposable income, and arguably less free time. VCRs and computers were expensive luxuries that had way less than 50% penetration in the US, not like now when you can get a DVD player for $20 in a gas station.
I'm not saying academics don't produce anything worthwhile, but there's a reason they're in the thinking business, and not in the computer hardware production business.
Good example -- OLPC has the worst keyboard in history (although it did make me long for the days of my Timex/Sinclair). I can see the academics thinking "oh those dirty, ignorant, third-world children need a keyboard that can never break," ignoring the fact that a clamshell device, even in the third world, will keep the keyboard pretty clean, that you can find off the shelf keyboards cheaper, and that even poor people in the third world can understand that they need to not rub dirty into a computer keyboard, since they may be poor, but you know, poor != stupid.
Contrast that to today. In Western societies (at least) just about everyone from the bottom of the barrel to the top has plenty of free time -- when they're not scarfing down cheap caloric loads taht would stagger their forebearers -- to surf 4Chan and Something Awful, and play videogames. Yep, when freed from want, it turns out most people go for entertainment.
To which I can only say two things. First -- what the fuck do you expect, we're APES. It's not like there's some special nobility gene waiting to be turned on the second we have computers. And second -- who cares? People who want to do interesting things can still do interesting things (see: universities, make magazine, the people who provide content for the unwashed masses on you tube, the open source movement etc.).
This would be neat if true -- a garbage disposal sized obvject providing 40 days of cooking gas for 40 NIS, but just reading alerts every single "perpetual motion" bullshit detector in my head -- the 40% figure, the secret ingredients, etc.
If you RTFA (I know, a big assumption -- Google can take you to the no-registration-required SciAm version), they say that scientists suspect there are other pathways where the info is getting into his brain, even though his visual cortex is totally destroyed on both hemispheres. This is the first blindsight demo with NO visual cortex, and thus seems to suggest strong that there are some alternate pathways going on. He can also react to facial expressions.
Have you ever tried to carry an extra monitor around with you? It's a massive pain the ass. Power supplies, stands... it adds up, quickly.
I agree that prevention is better than a cure, but if I'm really sick, I want a real doctor.
I agree with this, and to the extent you can, keep the early project meetings open to as large a group as possible, to get buy in and ideas. (No one likes being dictated to.) Once you're rolling, you need heriarchy and task lists (potentially including weekly A&Os from all your leads or everyone), but at the start, keep it broad and happy.
Being like "Here's the problem. Management wants X functionality at Y timeframe, what's the best way to tackle this, how close can we get, etc." gets a lot more buy-in than "We need X by Y. End of Story." Some guys mistake the former for weakes and the later for strength as a manager, but those are the aforementioned "douchebags" everyone keeps talking about. The former allows for solutions that are not X by Y, (assuming that's unreasonable) but could be along the lines of "well, we can do .85X by Y and 1.25X by 1.3Y" Basically, you're getting options you can take upstairs and not look like a douchebag. And you're not giving your guys some rigid, illogical parameters.
Lastly, be supportive. If some guy is crunching, buy him lunch -- and don't bug him for his TPS report. If you can, bring in a barbeque and cook for the whole team (this may not be practical in, say, a sky-scraper). Pay attention and ask detailed questions. I don't mean micromanage, but if some low-level engineer is writing task lists weekly, actually read them , and be able to ask him questions about them that are half-way intelligent. (Which you can do if you yourself are smart, even if you don't totally understand what he is doing.)
Actually some old inks would fade, but these days they are much more permanent. Thermal printers that used thermal paper fade quickly, but thermal printers that used wax-based ribbons last a long time. I too have old fanzines I made 20+ years ago that I made with my Apple Scribe wax/thermal printer that still look perfect. -Chris
As for AGRiPPA itself, I get the point, but it always struck me as Gibson's shark jumping moment. An extremely unegalitarian artwork that only a few people can see in its intended form is certainly the artist's right to create, but it really lessened my respect for him, and decreased my interest in his future output.
For the original poster, I sugest you also WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN and tell them that you, an active duty Army soldier/officer, are getting dicked around and ripped off by Dell. Then, do the same thing with your hometown newspaper. Then, I suggest you let Dell know you did this. I predict a laptop will arrive immediately.
Lastly, thank you very much for your service!
The water created by a dehumidifier is prolly much cleaner than the water sources in some third-world areas. I remember early (and sucessful) attempts to reduce disease by having people in some parts of India and (what is now) Bangledesh simply filter their water through multiple layers of cheese cloth before they drank it.
.
When I lived on the east coast (in Cambridge, MA), Geek was good -- it was someone self- and socially aware, if not necessarily socially successful, while a nerd was unaware and thus more pathetic. Geeks were more into tech, Nerds more into D&D or other niche endeavors that didn't necessarily require you to be smart or super-well educated to be successful in. (Not a rip on D&D!) When I moved to the west coast (Oakland, CA), the definitions were essentially reversed. A geek was considered truly pathetic, while Nerd was a term worn like a badge of pride.
(Of course, in the midwest, (based on my high school experience) most people who are not nerds or geeks call members either one of these groups "faggots" interchangably, so it's kind of a moot point there.)
On a related note, I read this book and really liked the history, but it falls apart at the end a bit as he tried to do more contemporary social analysis and it got more autobiographical.
Let;s see... Have my head hacked off by some religious lunatic versus an infintisimal chance some pencil pusher in Washington will write a database query that quickly looks at the fact that I checked out both Animal Architects and Freckle Juice from the Oakland Public Library... I'm gonna go with the security versus the privacy, thanks!
huh... you say that like being protected from Al-Qaeda is a bad thing.
Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works? All I've seen is platitudes and empty stateents from both of them.
Anyway, I'd rather they found these errors now, rather than later...
Common guys, this isn't rocket science!
[that was a joke]
Bitching about this seems a lot like complaining that a used car doesn't come with the free key fobs, or the new car smell.
A bit off topic, but mad props for your 40 column post. C64?
Huh... I just figured out a neat, elegant solution to #17, but there's not quite enough space in this margin to fit it in...
Half.com is still pretty good for used stuff, though.
It depends on what you want. If you want something new or modern, forget eBay. If you want something old or obscure (Apple IIc flat-panel display, copy of Suspended in the box), it's still the only game in town.