As for the display... make it an acessory. [..] It might not cost U$10... but will be close enougth. Exactly. It won't be a laptop any more, and it still won't cost anything like $10.
What operating system would this run? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to let India have *any* Windows product for free. They certainly would if it was ultimately a cut-down version that didn't impinge upon sales of their "real" Windows (which the cheap Windows machines would be designed to work with) and locked mainstream use into that of Windows-based technologies, so that higher-end users would be strongly pushed towards using (again) "real" Windows simply because it's what 99% of the country uses.
The money to be made from users of the cut-down Windows would likely be negligible compared to the profit made from locking in a society to Windows.
You're thinking western style laptop. I'm guessing this is more of a 16 character x one line display, touch screen, everything built on the back of the LCD itself. What we'd call a middle-finger-top computer here in the US, or a flash drive with added flash in the far east. Well, pedantically you could say that any computer that fits on your lap is a "laptop", but in general use there's some sort of underlying meaning that your ultra-basic computer strays too far from.
Whilst there may be a use for such a computer in certain contexts, as general purpose education tools, let alone anything approaching "I.T.", it would be laughably crude and not even remotely plausible as a cheaper alternative to the OLPC.
For $10, I don't think it's remotely possible to build a "laptop" that would be able to plausibly mimic the *functionality* and usefulness of what we'd normally consider a laptop. Even if you strip
every remotely glossy feature and concentrate on what it *does*, you're not going to get something that could plausibly perform even remotely as the equivalent of a laptop PC. At best you'll have a programmable calculator or very basic computer that resembles something from the 1980s. And as I said, I can't see that being remotely useful for general-purpose educational use.
I know that India isn't the west, but I think that the "benefit" of such a computer to them would still be questionable. If the computer does have "laptop"-type functionality, expect it to cost a few times more than $10.
The article doesn't actually say it will be a computer. Maybe it's just a slab of wood or something. No... I've just figured out how they're going to build a laptop for $10. Here's the P-P-P-Prototype!!!
some people are sickened that it comes under an open license MS has licensed bits and pieces of it under licenses that are *supposedly* open. That's an easily-abused word.
Wake me up when they open things enough such that it's possible to create truly portable and open versions of.Net without *any* potential legal threats.
and are afraid that linux will become that bit more irrelevant on the desktop side of things Well, you're right. We're afraid that MS's pseudo-"open", but in truth proprietary languages/framework- just "open" enough to implement some of the core features but not enough to guarantee support for most applications, playing a permanent one-version-behind game of catch-up with MS- *will* give the illusion of openness and competition, whilst ultimately letting MS steer things back towards Windows. Is there something wrong with that?
With respect, there's something not quite right, something slightly strange about your post.
I'm trying to figure out whether it reminds me of (a) a not very good attempt by someone in PR or a shill to present themselves as a member of the community, (b) a slightly-too-subtle parody of an obvious attempt at PR/shilling or (c) sarcasm that's (again) just a little too subtle to be recognised for what it is.
No one gives a shit about homebrew. And by "no one" I mean the 99% of the people that own a PSP or would consider purchasing a PSP. It's an infintesimly small segment of the market. Sure you may care. Your friends may care. But you and your friends probably also get your jollies recompiling your kernel or something equally hardcore geeky. You're not mainstream. This point is irrelevant. Yes; Slashdotters often say things like "If Sony opened up the PSP, they'd make more money because me and one of my friends would buy one to mod". It's not simply that they're a small minority... but also that Sony hopes (or hoped) to make their money- I assume- via a stream of locked-in and Hollywood-licensed content, which they probably thought would be compromised by such a move.
In short, they might have considered the potential hacker/modder geek market, but given that opening up the PSP would also have scuppered the intended plan to gouge mainstream users with expensive content for their locked-in console, they probably dismissed it. They weren't selling the GP32.
Of course, that's probably what they wanted to do; it didn't quite play out like that.
IMHO, what Sony did wrong isn't *entirely* dissimilar; not restricting homebrew per se, but simply restricting the console, the content that can be played on it and what can be done with it. Joe Public *does* like that sort of stuff. In common with the article, I've said myself that if the PSP hadn't been artificially locked down, it'd be a great multimedia machine, all-round cool device, and fantastic value for money.
As it stands, it feels artificially restricted. Consider also the Mylo, Sony's overpriced WiFi-based communications device. It seems to have an awful lot of overlap in functionality with the PSP. If the PSP had been designed to work with a simple keyboard add-on, or even if they released a new model with one built-in, it could do this quite easily.
But no. The PSP is a games and (highly-restricted) multimedia console, and I suspect that Sony wanted to artificially differentiate the market in this way. So we get restricted PSP and stupid gadget proliferation.
I wouldn't worry about it. There are a lot of urban myths and half-truths surrounding consoles from people who think they "know" "facts", and personally I'd rather someone express their scepticism if they're unsure about something. BTW, it wasn't meant as a "you should have read my comment!" attack; that was placed later in the thread hierarchy (although posted earlier), and I've done the same thing myself on occasion.:-)
Atari didn't design or create the Lynx, Epyx did. The handheld was already created, however the company was going bankrupt and sold it to Atari. You're right; the interview doesn't actually say it was Atari that did that.
FWIW, I personally wouldn't assume that the "complete" design Atari got would include the final case design; the insides would be enough. Partly because I'd have assumed that this wouldn't have been finalised until more in-depth market research had been done, much closer to launch. Maybe Epyx really did get that close to releasing it themselves, though.
A friend of mine told me that he read somewhere (a friend of a friend of the postman's friend's cousin of the original guy...) that the original lynx design was smaller, but that the focus group came up with a somtething along the lines of "it's too small, we want something bigger, show us what we pay for!". There is absolutely no proof about that AFAIK Actually, the person who said that was R J Mical, (co-inventor of the Lynx and several other major machines, including the 3DO and the Amiga), and the interview in which this was mentioned was linked in another of my posts in this thread.
Unless you believe that the interview was faked, or that Mical was distorting the truth (intentionally or otherwise), I'd say that was pretty reliable.
They later released a second version with almost identical specs, but which was quite a bit smaller and much better looking.
The Lynx may have been battery greedy and a bit bulky (even the revised version), but the spec was still *amazing* for something that size at the time. There was a good case to be made that it filled a somewhat different niche to the Game Boy. Shame it lacked a *really* must-have game like Tetris; and *that* was fantastic- the GB's horrible flat and smeary greeny-grey graphics really didn't matter there.
Being in a public street with a camera is one thing, but flying a kite with a camera attached over private property (or a school, if you don't count that as private property) is another. The question is, where does the area "above" your private property end? Planes fly over houses, and no-one complains about the infringement from that point-of-view.
I guess I'm delusional to think the human race can get along with each other and cooperate despite the fact that some of them may have voted for a different politician. I thought we were beyond that. We're not. Even if the majority of people can get along despite their differences, there will always be a minority who feel differently.
I personally respect the opinions of my fellow citizens I personally respect the right of my fellow citizens to hold these opinions, but that doesn't mean to say I have to agree with them.
and I respect their right to vote for whoever they choose. (Repeat previous statement)
I would hope they extend me the same respect. So would I, but that's not something I'd be willing to take on trust if my job and/or life depended on it.
Of course, greed will always be a factor. Electing one politician could very easily make or break certain types of organizations. It would definitely raise the degree of partisanship in many companies. And of course that would drive things like intimidation. You assume that losing your job is the worst thing that could happen. As I said above, in some countries, you could lose your life; particularly if the government is hostile. And I don't like the idea of my voting record being open; things could change in the future.
But I still think eventually it would smooth out and the lines would be drawn more clearly. Unfortunately, they may be drawn in favour of those in power, or those who have greatest power in your local (voting) area, not necessarily in favour of democracy. Again, please excuse me if I don't take this one on trust.
Most importantly I think the people who endorsed tolerance and understanding and remained non-partisan would be the most successful. Why?
I think it would be the party hard-liners that would get pushed to the periphery, leaving the rest of (the majority) us sensible folk to actually accomplish something. No offence, but I think you're being overly idealistic. And yes, idealism is okay if it gives you the idea of the way you'd like things to be, but it's a lousy foundation to build a voting system, society, or any "real life" structure upon. That's why communism turns to dictatorship so easily; the idea is built on a fundamentally idealistic view of human nature and will inevitably fall, or be corrupted at the highest level to ensure its continued existence, destroying its stated purpose in the process.
It's a cliche, but you know the expression about "one bad apple". Perhaps you think I have a somewhat cynical and downbeat view of humanity; well, I probably do, but that's not the problem here. Put simply, there only need to be a relatively small percentage of corrupt, selfish people (basically those with psychopathic or simply selfish behaviour) to subvert and exploit any system which relies on an overly idealistic view of humanity. The "bad apples".
Until the human race fundamentally changes, these people will always be with us, and I certainly don't intend letting them destroy things.
One of the major reasons for a confidential voting process taking place in the voting booth is that it is difficult to intimidate the voter or make vote buying effective. As soon as the vote takes place elsewhere all kinds of influences become possible and almost impossible to detect or prevent. There are already problems with the postal voting system; intimidation, coercion and fraud. Throw in the issues of traceability and massively insecure and trojan-ridden computers half the country have and online voting is a damned stupid idea.
It's the only way you can be sure everyone's vote was really counted how it should've been. The moment you start hiding votes and secreting them away you introduce the possibility for corruption from the organizers. Some of what I studied in my computer science degree course was just how people could find out their vote had been counted correctly; can't remember how it was done, but it certainly wasn't "just show everyone's votes".
So, my question is: what's wrong with everyone knowing what everyone else voted? It creates the potential for intimidation on the basis of voting, and the ability to skew the vote that way. Jesus, in some countries simply *voting* is enough to make you the target of violence. (Please don't use that as justification for saying "well, it won't make any difference if they know who you voted for then").
Does it create bias in the workplace? Do Liberal bosses see their Conservative employees votes and thus not give them raises, or worse, in an at-will state such as mine, just fire them outright? Who knows; it certainly creates the potential for intimidation and manipulation of the vote.
Is this the kind of person you want to be your boss anyway? There's something about your perspective on this reminiscent of Marge Simpson (and similar mothers everywhere) saying "Well, anyone who beats you up for wearing a shirt isn't your friend."
Wouldn't the system naturally cleanse itself from people like that? Possibly. Or it might cleanse the troublemakers.
Sure, at first it'd be a bumpy road and a lot of chaos would ensue, but it seems to be the final state of things would be a lot smoother than the state of not even knowing if your vote was counted right, You'd be absolutely sure if your vote had been counted, even if you were unwilling to vote for the person you actually wanted to vote for because you'd been threatened with X, Y and Z.
or if the people counting the votes stacked them somehow. It just seems like hiding votes has always been a crutch. And the people who didn't like you and want to kill you on the basis of your vote aren't your friends anyway! Seriously, I think you're living in some fantasy libertarian lala land.
Get naked and get out! you know.. for Vitamin D synthesis. The prospect of the Slashdot readership (overweight or skinny nerds) running about the streets naked, exposing their skin to the sun for the first time in years does not appeal to me.:-6
In fact, the sun reflecting off all that pasty-white flesh is likely to blind many people and cause traffic accidents.
OLPC also will be difficult to repair - may be replacing power unit will be possible. Well, for one thing, the OLPCs will be new, not secondhand.
Laptops aren't impossible to repair once you know what you're doing. I know the inside of my own laptop a lot better now, but it took me a while to figure it out, and I'd have to relearn a very large proportion of that knowledge *every* time I came across a different laptop design.
If you have one (or very few) standard designs, it makes it plausible for some people to gain knowledge and expertise in repairing them quickly and efficiently, and there's a ready supply of new or secondhand parts.
With arbitrary laptops, they're all put together differently, and the repairer either has to know them all or (more likely) waste *lots* of time figuring out and researching how the laptop is put together.
Then you have to track down parts. If it's an obscure and/or long-discontinued laptop, this could prove difficult; you'll probably have to resort to faffing about with ebay auctions to get the parts. Does this sound like a good idea when you're trying to build a reliable infrastructure, especially in a third-world country? It sounds appalling to me.
In short, simply relying on a supply of random makes and models of used laptops is a logistical nightmare. Your viewpoint is that of the individual computer hobbyist who doesn't mind doing this sort of stuff for their own laptop. If your job was to repair *and* maintain many laptops being used for the OLPC's intended purpose in the third world, this job would be far more complicated, and you'd waste a lot of time learning how different designs were put together and tracking down parts.
In addition, as I mentioned, from the point-of-view of software, the myriad different specifications and capabilities of the varying laptops would be hard to keep track of, and would almost certainly fall to the lowest-common-denominator, negating much of the advantage of the "higher spec" laptops.
Used computers are even cheaper and still more standard than OLPC Standard is relative. Unless there's a plentiful and consistent supply of a given laptop design for a given (large) area or country, there are problems with (for example) differing capabilities between each child's laptop.
Also, used laptops generally have a shorter life and are more prone to breaking than desktops, and they're also much harder to repair. This is partly due to the case design, but also because components are much less standardised in laptops.
Thus, unless you can guarantee a large supply of similar or identical laptops for use and for parts, having people maintaining and fixing many different nonstandard designs, and finding parts for them, is going to be a logistical PITA given the lack of infrastructure in many of those countries.
Really? When has the price of computers ever dropped 43% in a year or two.
Every year for as long as home computers have existed. Try selling a year-old computer on ebay and you'll be lucky to get half what you paid for it, even if it's still in new condition. Well, that's flawed for a start. Let's ignore that it's going to lose some value simply because it's not new and out of guarantee, even if the spec was up-to-date.
We're talking about new computers here, not secondhand ones. Just because a secondhand computer of given spec is *now* worth £X, doesn't mean that it could be economically manufactured new at anything like that price (even with a minor premium for the newness and guarantee). You've mistaken value for cost of manufacture; that's why no-one is making and selling brand new 486s and Pentium 1s for $30-40.
Let's look at a specific example. I have an ancient P1-233 (with CD-ROM, ISA soundcard and 96MB RAM) that is worth maybe US$40 to $50(?). Would anyone be willing to manufacture a new one with identical spec for even $65? I doubt it.
If Jesus Jesus likely wasn't the pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy you'd like to believe. He was born in the middle-east, and I'm willing to bet that if he'd looked notably different from the darkish-skinned, dark-haired semitic/Arab/whatever appearance it'd have been a big deal and mentioned in the Bible. It wasn't. Thus, Jesus probably looked more like one of those turrurists than an all-American. So there!
had wanted them to amount to anything He would have had them born among reputable White people He didn't do that because he couldn't find any reputable white people:-P
Netcraft confirmed it; they also reliably inform me that, yes, Jack Valenti *could* run Linux.
Further reports of Valenti's death are coming in; for reasons that are as yet unclear, he was found naked and petrified in Soviet Russia. When as we all know, old people like Valenti live in South Korea. And.... UUURGH!!!
(Dogtanian is yanked off the stage by several angry mods)
....Natalie Portman has been implicated in the death and....UMMMMFFF!!!!...
Slashdot Mirror
The money to be made from users of the cut-down Windows would likely be negligible compared to the profit made from locking in a society to Windows.
Whilst there may be a use for such a computer in certain contexts, as general purpose education tools, let alone anything approaching "I.T.", it would be laughably crude and not even remotely plausible as a cheaper alternative to the OLPC.
For $10, I don't think it's remotely possible to build a "laptop" that would be able to plausibly mimic the *functionality* and usefulness of what we'd normally consider a laptop. Even if you strip every remotely glossy feature and concentrate on what it *does*, you're not going to get something that could plausibly perform even remotely as the equivalent of a laptop PC. At best you'll have a programmable calculator or very basic computer that resembles something from the 1980s. And as I said, I can't see that being remotely useful for general-purpose educational use.
I know that India isn't the west, but I think that the "benefit" of such a computer to them would still be questionable. If the computer does have "laptop"-type functionality, expect it to cost a few times more than $10.
Wake me up when they open things enough such that it's possible to create truly portable and open versions of
With respect, there's something not quite right, something slightly strange about your post.
I'm trying to figure out whether it reminds me of (a) a not very good attempt by someone in PR or a shill to present themselves as a member of the community, (b) a slightly-too-subtle parody of an obvious attempt at PR/shilling or (c) sarcasm that's (again) just a little too subtle to be recognised for what it is.
Or it could be genuine. Who knows?
In short, they might have considered the potential hacker/modder geek market, but given that opening up the PSP would also have scuppered the intended plan to gouge mainstream users with expensive content for their locked-in console, they probably dismissed it. They weren't selling the GP32.
Of course, that's probably what they wanted to do; it didn't quite play out like that.
IMHO, what Sony did wrong isn't *entirely* dissimilar; not restricting homebrew per se, but simply restricting the console, the content that can be played on it and what can be done with it. Joe Public *does* like that sort of stuff. In common with the article, I've said myself that if the PSP hadn't been artificially locked down, it'd be a great multimedia machine, all-round cool device, and fantastic value for money.
As it stands, it feels artificially restricted. Consider also the Mylo, Sony's overpriced WiFi-based communications device. It seems to have an awful lot of overlap in functionality with the PSP. If the PSP had been designed to work with a simple keyboard add-on, or even if they released a new model with one built-in, it could do this quite easily.
But no. The PSP is a games and (highly-restricted) multimedia console, and I suspect that Sony wanted to artificially differentiate the market in this way. So we get restricted PSP and stupid gadget proliferation.
I wouldn't worry about it. There are a lot of urban myths and half-truths surrounding consoles from people who think they "know" "facts", and personally I'd rather someone express their scepticism if they're unsure about something. BTW, it wasn't meant as a "you should have read my comment!" attack; that was placed later in the thread hierarchy (although posted earlier), and I've done the same thing myself on occasion. :-)
FWIW, I personally wouldn't assume that the "complete" design Atari got would include the final case design; the insides would be enough. Partly because I'd have assumed that this wouldn't have been finalised until more in-depth market research had been done, much closer to launch. Maybe Epyx really did get that close to releasing it themselves, though.
Unless you believe that the interview was faked, or that Mical was distorting the truth (intentionally or otherwise), I'd say that was pretty reliable.
Apparently, Atari made the first version of the Lynx larger deliberately because focus groups told them they equated that with value-for-money (see this R J Mical interview, search for "never trust focus groups"...).
They later released a second version with almost identical specs, but which was quite a bit smaller and much better looking.
The Lynx may have been battery greedy and a bit bulky (even the revised version), but the spec was still *amazing* for something that size at the time. There was a good case to be made that it filled a somewhat different niche to the Game Boy. Shame it lacked a *really* must-have game like Tetris; and *that* was fantastic- the GB's horrible flat and smeary greeny-grey graphics really didn't matter there.
It's a cliche, but you know the expression about "one bad apple". Perhaps you think I have a somewhat cynical and downbeat view of humanity; well, I probably do, but that's not the problem here. Put simply, there only need to be a relatively small percentage of corrupt, selfish people (basically those with psychopathic or simply selfish behaviour) to subvert and exploit any system which relies on an overly idealistic view of humanity. The "bad apples".
Until the human race fundamentally changes, these people will always be with us, and I certainly don't intend letting them destroy things.
Remember that by the time this gets going, the traditional analogue stations in the area will likely have been switched off.
In fact, the sun reflecting off all that pasty-white flesh is likely to blind many people and cause traffic accidents.
Laptops aren't impossible to repair once you know what you're doing. I know the inside of my own laptop a lot better now, but it took me a while to figure it out, and I'd have to relearn a very large proportion of that knowledge *every* time I came across a different laptop design.
If you have one (or very few) standard designs, it makes it plausible for some people to gain knowledge and expertise in repairing them quickly and efficiently, and there's a ready supply of new or secondhand parts.
With arbitrary laptops, they're all put together differently, and the repairer either has to know them all or (more likely) waste *lots* of time figuring out and researching how the laptop is put together.
Then you have to track down parts. If it's an obscure and/or long-discontinued laptop, this could prove difficult; you'll probably have to resort to faffing about with ebay auctions to get the parts. Does this sound like a good idea when you're trying to build a reliable infrastructure, especially in a third-world country? It sounds appalling to me.
In short, simply relying on a supply of random makes and models of used laptops is a logistical nightmare. Your viewpoint is that of the individual computer hobbyist who doesn't mind doing this sort of stuff for their own laptop. If your job was to repair *and* maintain many laptops being used for the OLPC's intended purpose in the third world, this job would be far more complicated, and you'd waste a lot of time learning how different designs were put together and tracking down parts.
In addition, as I mentioned, from the point-of-view of software, the myriad different specifications and capabilities of the varying laptops would be hard to keep track of, and would almost certainly fall to the lowest-common-denominator, negating much of the advantage of the "higher spec" laptops.
Also, used laptops generally have a shorter life and are more prone to breaking than desktops, and they're also much harder to repair. This is partly due to the case design, but also because components are much less standardised in laptops.
Thus, unless you can guarantee a large supply of similar or identical laptops for use and for parts, having people maintaining and fixing many different nonstandard designs, and finding parts for them, is going to be a logistical PITA given the lack of infrastructure in many of those countries.
We're talking about new computers here, not secondhand ones. Just because a secondhand computer of given spec is *now* worth £X, doesn't mean that it could be economically manufactured new at anything like that price (even with a minor premium for the newness and guarantee). You've mistaken value for cost of manufacture; that's why no-one is making and selling brand new 486s and Pentium 1s for $30-40.
Let's look at a specific example. I have an ancient P1-233 (with CD-ROM, ISA soundcard and 96MB RAM) that is worth maybe US$40 to $50(?). Would anyone be willing to manufacture a new one with identical spec for even $65? I doubt it.
Sorry.
Netcraft confirmed it; they also reliably inform me that, yes, Jack Valenti *could* run Linux.
....Natalie Portman has been implicated in the death and....UMMMMFFF!!!!...
Further reports of Valenti's death are coming in; for reasons that are as yet unclear, he was found naked and petrified in Soviet Russia. When as we all know, old people like Valenti live in South Korea. And.... UUURGH!!!
(Dogtanian is yanked off the stage by several angry mods)
(RIP Dogtanian's karma, 2002 to 2007)