Slashdot's obsession with the disaster that is OLPC is laughable, as is the conclusion that it could replace teachers.
Confirmed OLPC Deployment: 1.84 million units. [2007-2011]
Deployments of over 100,000 units: Uruguay, Peru, and Rwanda.
Deployment in Asia: Less than 30,000 units.
For almost all practical purposes Rwanda remains the only significant, successful, deployment of OLPC outside of the Spanish speaking countries and cultures of central and South America. One laptop per child
I don't think it's just a negotiation strategy. There is no stopping Windows App Store or Mac OS X App Store, they are going to happen, and they are going to be the future for application deployment on Windows and OS X, respectively. So for Valve to try and make Linux a viable platform makes a lot of sense.
If the app store is the future, then the same economic, legal, cultural and political realities that limit online distribution by Amazon, Apple, EA, Microsoft, Netflix, Walmart and all the rest for Windows will limit content distributed by Valve for Linux.
From my experience with Windows users, many have a completely irrational attachment to Windows. They use it because they "know" it and they don't want Linux because they "don't know" it, even though their Windows installations are full of crapware and they could be fooled by any random Linux distribution with a Windows-themed splash screen.
Try telling that to Walmart which spent the better part of ten years trying to make a go of OEM Linux ---- a merry-go-round of Linux desktop hardware and software bundles which supposedly had mass market appeal and a Windows-like UI.
None struck a spark.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft solid middle class values.
That is why MS Office Home ---a first tier productivity app which consistently tops the retail software bestseller charts --- is bundled with Windows 8 on the ARM platform.
Linux tends to project a geek's ideal of technological perfection, ideological purity and political correctness, no matter how poor a fit they may be to the needs and values of other users.
It was funny in 1995 when the "protesters" were in front of CompUSA on 35th street in Manhattan. It was cute when they were outside PC Expo in 1996. Started to get kinda sad at the Windows 98 launch and went downhill after that. Now they're just a sideshow attraction.
Why use some lame app store when you can just fire up Steam and download whatever the heck u want when it comes to games?
Because you can't.
Steam does not sell games that other US retailers have found to hot to handle, more trouble then they are worth.
The original restrictions on content in the Windows Store were there because Microsoft wanted to offer clear guidelines for developers and a unified and profitable global marketplace for Windows apps.
''The semiconductor industry traditionally reduces the cost of products by 10 to 15 percent a year,'' he said, but 'hearing aids go up 8 percent a year annually'' and have for the last 20 years."
The digital hearing aid was in its infancy twenty years ago.
There were two manufacturers in the nineties, now there are over twenty.
There are features and advanced signal processing schemes available in current digital hearing aids that do have significant advantages over those found in analog instruments.
Gain Processing. One of the primary benefits associated with flexible gain-processing schemes is the potential for increased audibility of sounds of interest without discomfort resulting from high intensity sounds. While this is more generally a benefit of compression rather than digital processing per se, the greatly increased flexibility and control of compression processing provided by DSP--such as input signal-specific band dependence, greater numbers of channels, and kneepoints with lower compression thresholds--can lead to improved audibility with less clinician effort. Expansion, the opposite of compression, has also been introduced in digital hearing aids. This processing can lead to greater listener satisfaction by reducing the intensity of low-level environmental sounds and microphone noise that otherwise may have been annoying to the user.
Digital Feedback Reduction (DFR). The most advanced feedback reduction schemes monitor for feedback while the listener is wearing the hearing aid. Moderate feedback is then reduced or eliminated through the use of a cancellation system or notch filtering.
Digital Noise Reduction (DNR). This processing is intended to reduce gain, either in the low frequencies or in specific bands, when steady-state signals (noise) are detected. Although research findings supporting the efficacy of DNR systems are mixed, they do indicate that the DNR can work to reduce annoyance and possibly improve speech recognition in the presence of non-fluctuating noise.
Digital Speech Enhancement (DSE). These systems act to increase the relative intensity of some segments of speech. Current DSE processing identifies and enhances speech based either on temporal, or more recently, spectral content. DSE in hearing aids is still relatively new, and its effectiveness is largely unknown.
Directional Microphones and DSP. The ability of directional hearing aids to improve the effective signal-to-noise ratio provided to the listener is now well established. In some cases, however, combining DSP with directional microphones can act to further enhance this benefit. In some hearing aids, DSP is used to calibrate microphones, control the shape of the directional pattern, automatically switch between directional and omnidirectional modes, and through expansion, reduce additional circuit noise generated by directional microphones.
Digital Hearing Aids as Signal Generators. Since digital hearing aids have a DSP at their heart, they are able to generate--as well as to process--sound. Current digital hearing aids use this capability to perform loudness growth and threshold testing in order to obtain fitting information specific to an individual patient's ears in combination with a specific hearing aid. Sound levels also can be verified through the hearing aid once it is fit. This technology has the potential both to increase accuracy of hearing aid fittings and potentially streamline the fitting process by reducing the need for some external equipment.
The geek will focus on DSP --- which looks easy enough, at least on paper --- and forget every other aspect of the problem. The microphone, for example.
A partnership supported by NIH and NASA, emerging from the 1995 survey of federal agencies, could potentially revolutionize the technology used for di
The key is to realise that even if you *are* smarter than everyone else, they'll be more cooperative if you let them maintain their delusion of equality.
"Their delusion of equality."
Yeah, right.
Like that bone-deep arrogance and sense of superiority you can barely force yourself to hide won't be seen in your face from a mile off.
The sudden rise of the world wide web in 1993. Everyone knew cycberspace would eventually happen, but probably another decade or so. That was a huge victory for open source: thanks Tim!
I remember the Internet Suites of the mid nineties.
The BBS client, FTP. Telnet. IRC. USENET. Archie, Veronica, Gopher, and that new mutant on the block called a browser, They were grand playgrounds for the geek and a world of hurt for anyone else.
It was AOL which successfully introduced the masses to e-mail, downloads, chat rooms, instant messaging, massively multi player online gaming, automatic updates, flat rate monthly billing, the web and more --- wrapping it all up into a unified and easy-to-use client with a graphical user interface.
If the "walled gardens" of the iOS, Android and Win 8 look mighty familiar to those of us who have been around awhile, it is because they target the same audience and solve the same problems for their users.
"A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics from A'h-mose' the Scribe to Albert Einstein, Presented with Commentaries and Notes by James R. Newman."
Four volumes. Reprinted in paperback by Dover. But the hardcover originals are worth tracking down. Put them on a shelf with "Mathematics and the Imagination." There is nothing to be found which will give you more pleasure.
he US military was one of the biggest users of PS3 as cheap hardware for Linux "racks". How much says that they'll now resume installing Linux on PS3? Heck, how much says that it was a hacker working for the military who leaked the keys in the first place?
The HPC hack takes thousands or tens of thousands of consoles out of retail distribution channels --- expensive hardware that remains on the market only because it is subsidized globally by the sale of video games and services.
The hack doesn't solve the problem of making HPC affordable --- it just passes the costs along to someone else, who won't be willing to foot the bill forever,
This whole idiotic notion of the OS being important started when Microsoft realized Windows was the most used desktop OS in the world, they figured people must love Windows. Nobody loves Windows! We all cope with it because it runs our god damn software.
To anyone but a geek, an OS includes the core system software --- which they never want to deal with directly --- + a single, standardized, GUI focused on the needs of tthe non-technical end user + other components that make their system more versatile, easier to use and maintain.
Two desktop operating systems have mass market appeal --- and 'appeal" is, I think, the right word here --- OSX and Windows.
In mobile there is the iOS and Android.
All of these systems owe their success to purchasing decisions made while software support was still in its infancy. People liked the look and fell of these new operating systems and believed in what they had to offer.
The general thought seems to be that this was done due to some threats by Microsoft about raising licencing costs for suppliers who did not sell Windows on all their machines.
The Windows netbook was an easy sale to the big box retailer like Walmart that had never been able to find or build a sustainable market for OEM Linux in any form. Not to mention the prospect of strong after-market sales of Windows software.
.. and unlike netbooks, It's unlikely Microsoft will weasel in with a version of their OS for this hardware...
The hardware specs for the Intel Atom netbook were better than than my Dell desktop of 2001. The CPU clocked a little slower. But shipping with with four times the RAM and twice the hard disk storage.
The Linux netbook was a Blue Light special at K-Mart.
Seriously. Make programs (like email, IM, etc.) work with a good but open encryption protocol, like gpg for example. And surely (since Skype has shown what is possible with compression) voice applications can make good use of encryption too.
Encryption in Skype is transparent to the user. He doesn't have to give it a second thought --- much less persuade a critical mass of users to adopt the same standard,
Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"
In 1912, instant messaging meant sending a telegram or mailing a postcard. "Ten words or less." In 2012, you tweet. That changes nothing. Evidence that is relevant to an issue in dispute is admissible unless there is a compelling legal reason to exclude it.
A Miranda warning is required only when you are about to be interrogated by the police, with damn few exceptions, what you expose to others has always been fair game.
entire regions have suffered economic collapse and acquired names like "The rust belt".
The rust belt is defined by the heavy industries that became dominant in the northeast and the mid-west after the Civil War and which prospered through World War II and on into the fifties.p There were good jobs to be had here in high-wage union labor.
But at enormous cost to the environment --- and little post-war investment in infrastructure. In the sixties the bills came due.
It was simpler and cheaper to abandon the works in place and move south and west.
You got a citation for those assertions, or just random unfounded conspiratorial ranting?
Bribery is the geek's all-purpose explanation for any legal decision --- in any court in the world ---he doesn't like. It is so much easier then trying to understand the role of the judge and the differences between different legal traditions.
A quick census of my kitchen and fridge would imply that I have been to Ecuador, (where my bananas came from,) France, (where most of the water I drink was bottled,) Spain, (where the grapes in my Sangria were grown,)
That census of your fridge can expose your income, cultural, ethnic and religious background, age, health and dietary restrictions or preferences of every sort.
It costs from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon to purchase bottled water than it does to purchase a gallon of average tap water. In California average tap water costs about one tenth of a cent per gallon, while it bottled water costs about $0.90 per gallon -- a 560-fold difference. Expensive imported water sold in smaller bottles can cost several thousand times more than tap water: That $1.50 half-liter bottle of imported water may be costing you 10,000 times more per gallon than your tap water.
The geek tends to build his defenses around extravagant and implausible conceits and ignores the mundane.
The jury won't much care where the killer purchased his custom tailored suits, rare and pricey vintage wines, liquors and Cuban cigars. They will care if the defendant shares the same expensive tastes.
Generally, people don't like Microsoft products. They don't choose to use Windows, it is what is forced down their throats at the work place-- so running same at home is path of least resistance.
It is admittedly convenient to be able to run MS Office and QuickBooks and other workhorse productivity apps at home.
First-tier apps as the geek knows full well.
But that is not the reason the mass market Windows desktop ships with enough horsepower to play games like Arkham City and Skyrim in high definition with multichannel theater sound.
The push to get the PC in the workplace came from the bottom-up. not the top down. The launch of Windows 95 struck a populist chord that resonates to this day. Good Times
The geek continues to project his hatred of Windows on users who have never shared it.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot's obsession with the disaster that is OLPC is laughable, as is the conclusion that it could replace teachers.
Confirmed OLPC Deployment: 1.84 million units. [2007-2011]
Deployments of over 100,000 units: Uruguay, Peru, and Rwanda.
Deployment in Asia: Less than 30,000 units.
For almost all practical purposes Rwanda remains the only significant, successful, deployment of OLPC outside of the Spanish speaking countries and cultures of central and South America. One laptop per child
I don't think it's just a negotiation strategy. There is no stopping Windows App Store or Mac OS X App Store, they are going to happen, and they are going to be the future for application deployment on Windows and OS X, respectively. So for Valve to try and make Linux a viable platform makes a lot of sense.
If the app store is the future, then the same economic, legal, cultural and political realities that limit online distribution by Amazon, Apple, EA, Microsoft, Netflix, Walmart and all the rest for Windows will limit content distributed by Valve for Linux.
From my experience with Windows users, many have a completely irrational attachment to Windows. They use it because they "know" it and they don't want Linux because they "don't know" it, even though their Windows installations are full of crapware and they could be fooled by any random Linux distribution with a Windows-themed splash screen.
Try telling that to Walmart which spent the better part of ten years trying to make a go of OEM Linux ---- a merry-go-round of Linux desktop hardware and software bundles which supposedly had mass market appeal and a Windows-like UI.
None struck a spark.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft solid middle class values.
That is why MS Office Home ---a first tier productivity app which consistently tops the retail software bestseller charts --- is bundled with Windows 8 on the ARM platform.
Linux tends to project a geek's ideal of technological perfection, ideological purity and political correctness, no matter how poor a fit they may be to the needs and values of other users.
It was funny in 1995 when the "protesters" were in front of CompUSA on 35th street in Manhattan. It was cute when they were outside PC Expo in 1996. Started to get kinda sad at the Windows 98 launch and went downhill after that.
Now they're just a sideshow attraction.
Not even that.
The sideshow draws a crowd.
Windows 7 Sins 2,580 hits.
If Microsoft gave a shit it would be using Tor, or creating similar technology...or even just making their own OS less spyware.
Let me introduce you to In-Private Browsing and Anti-Tracking Lists
Why use some lame app store when you can just fire up Steam and download whatever the heck u want when it comes to games?
Because you can't.
Steam does not sell games that other US retailers have found to hot to handle, more trouble then they are worth.
The original restrictions on content in the Windows Store were there because Microsoft wanted to offer clear guidelines for developers and a unified and profitable global marketplace for Windows apps.
''The semiconductor industry traditionally reduces the cost of products by 10 to 15 percent a year,'' he said, but 'hearing aids go up 8 percent a year annually'' and have for the last 20 years."
The digital hearing aid was in its infancy twenty years ago.
There were two manufacturers in the nineties, now there are over twenty.
There are features and advanced signal processing schemes available in current digital hearing aids that do have significant advantages over those found in analog instruments.
Gain Processing. One of the primary benefits associated with flexible gain-processing schemes is the potential for increased audibility of sounds of interest without discomfort resulting from high intensity sounds. While this is more generally a benefit of compression rather than digital processing per se, the greatly increased flexibility and control of compression processing provided by DSP--such as input signal-specific band dependence, greater numbers of channels, and kneepoints with lower compression thresholds--can lead to improved audibility with less clinician effort. Expansion, the opposite of compression, has also been introduced in digital hearing aids. This processing can lead to greater listener satisfaction by reducing the intensity of low-level environmental sounds and microphone noise that otherwise may have been annoying to the user.
Digital Feedback Reduction (DFR). The most advanced feedback reduction schemes monitor for feedback while the listener is wearing the hearing aid. Moderate feedback is then reduced or eliminated through the use of a cancellation system or notch filtering.
Digital Noise Reduction (DNR). This processing is intended to reduce gain, either in the low frequencies or in specific bands, when steady-state signals (noise) are detected. Although research findings supporting the efficacy of DNR systems are mixed, they do indicate that the DNR can work to reduce annoyance and possibly improve speech recognition in the presence of non-fluctuating noise.
Digital Speech Enhancement (DSE). These systems act to increase the relative intensity of some segments of speech. Current DSE processing identifies and enhances speech based either on temporal, or more recently, spectral content. DSE in hearing aids is still relatively new, and its effectiveness is largely unknown.
Directional Microphones and DSP. The ability of directional hearing aids to improve the effective signal-to-noise ratio provided to the listener is now well established. In some cases, however, combining DSP with directional microphones can act to further enhance this benefit. In some hearing aids, DSP is used to calibrate microphones, control the shape of the directional pattern, automatically switch between directional and omnidirectional modes, and through expansion, reduce additional circuit noise generated by directional microphones.
Digital Hearing Aids as Signal Generators. Since digital hearing aids have a DSP at their heart, they are able to generate--as well as to process--sound. Current digital hearing aids use this capability to perform loudness growth and threshold testing in order to obtain fitting information specific to an individual patient's ears in combination with a specific hearing aid. Sound levels also can be verified through the hearing aid once it is fit. This technology has the potential both to increase accuracy of hearing aid fittings and potentially streamline the fitting process by reducing the need for some external equipment.
Digital Hearing Aids: Current "State-of-the-Art"
The geek will focus on DSP --- which looks easy enough, at least on paper --- and forget every other aspect of the problem. The microphone, for example.
A partnership supported by NIH and NASA, emerging from the 1995 survey of federal agencies, could potentially revolutionize the technology used for di
The LCD monitor can be mounted at any height and at any angle. I don't understand why large-screen touch can't be easy on both the eye and the hand.
The key is to realise that even if you *are* smarter than everyone else, they'll be more cooperative if you let them maintain their delusion of equality.
"Their delusion of equality."
Yeah, right.
Like that bone-deep arrogance and sense of superiority you can barely force yourself to hide won't be seen in your face from a mile off.
It probably didn't help that that question was more loaded than an Irishman at a wake on St. Patrick's Day.
Unless you are polling a representative sampling of XBox gamers, the results you get are meaningless anyway.
The sudden rise of the world wide web in 1993. Everyone knew cycberspace would eventually happen, but probably another decade or so. That was a huge victory for open source: thanks Tim!
I remember the Internet Suites of the mid nineties.
The BBS client, FTP. Telnet. IRC. USENET. Archie, Veronica, Gopher, and that new mutant on the block called a browser, They were grand playgrounds for the geek and a world of hurt for anyone else.
It was AOL which successfully introduced the masses to e-mail, downloads, chat rooms, instant messaging, massively multi player online gaming, automatic updates, flat rate monthly billing, the web and more --- wrapping it all up into a unified and easy-to-use client with a graphical user interface.
If the "walled gardens" of the iOS, Android and Win 8 look mighty familiar to those of us who have been around awhile, it is because they target the same audience and solve the same problems for their users.
"A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics from A'h-mose' the Scribe to Albert Einstein, Presented with Commentaries and Notes by James R. Newman."
Four volumes. Reprinted in paperback by Dover. But the hardcover originals are worth tracking down. Put them on a shelf with "Mathematics and the Imagination." There is nothing to be found which will give you more pleasure.
Funny how everyone called Windows XP the Fisher-Price PS. Now, it's the most popular thing ever.
It's also pretty funny to hear the geek rant on about long-term support for the Windows OS.
Extended Support for all flavors of WIn 7 including the Starter Edition ends January 14, 2020. Microsoft Support Lifecycle [Windows 7 - USA]
he US military was one of the biggest users of PS3 as cheap hardware for Linux "racks". How much says that they'll now resume installing Linux on PS3? Heck, how much says that it was a hacker working for the military who leaked the keys in the first place?
The HPC hack takes thousands or tens of thousands of consoles out of retail distribution channels --- expensive hardware that remains on the market only because it is subsidized globally by the sale of video games and services.
The hack doesn't solve the problem of making HPC affordable --- it just passes the costs along to someone else, who won't be willing to foot the bill forever,
This whole idiotic notion of the OS being important started when Microsoft realized Windows was the most used desktop OS in the world, they figured people must love Windows. Nobody loves Windows! We all cope with it because it runs our god damn software.
To anyone but a geek, an OS includes the core system software --- which they never want to deal with directly --- + a single, standardized, GUI focused on the needs of tthe non-technical end user + other components that make their system more versatile, easier to use and maintain.
Two desktop operating systems have mass market appeal --- and 'appeal" is, I think, the right word here --- OSX and Windows.
In mobile there is the iOS and Android.
All of these systems owe their success to purchasing decisions made while software support was still in its infancy. People liked the look and fell of these new operating systems and believed in what they had to offer.
The general thought seems to be that this was done due to some threats by Microsoft about raising licencing costs for suppliers who did not sell Windows on all their machines.
The Windows netbook was an easy sale to the big box retailer like Walmart that had never been able to find or build a sustainable market for OEM Linux in any form. Not to mention the prospect of strong after-market sales of Windows software.
.. and unlike netbooks, It's unlikely Microsoft will weasel in with a version of their OS for this hardware ...
The hardware specs for the Intel Atom netbook were better than than my Dell desktop of 2001. The CPU clocked a little slower. But shipping with with four times the RAM and twice the hard disk storage.
The Linux netbook was a Blue Light special at K-Mart.
Seriously. Make programs (like email, IM, etc.) work with a good but open encryption protocol, like gpg for example. And surely (since Skype has shown what is possible with compression) voice applications can make good use of encryption too.
Encryption in Skype is transparent to the user. He doesn't have to give it a second thought --- much less persuade a critical mass of users to adopt the same standard,
Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"
In 1912, instant messaging meant sending a telegram or mailing a postcard. "Ten words or less." In 2012, you tweet. That changes nothing. Evidence that is relevant to an issue in dispute is admissible unless there is a compelling legal reason to exclude it.
A Miranda warning is required only when you are about to be interrogated by the police, with damn few exceptions, what you expose to others has always been fair game.
entire regions have suffered economic collapse and acquired names like "The rust belt".
The rust belt is defined by the heavy industries that became dominant in the northeast and the mid-west after the Civil War and which prospered through World War II and on into the fifties.p There were good jobs to be had here in high-wage union labor.
But at enormous cost to the environment --- and little post-war investment in infrastructure. In the sixties the bills came due.
It was simpler and cheaper to abandon the works in place and move south and west.
You got a citation for those assertions, or just random unfounded conspiratorial ranting?
Bribery is the geek's all-purpose explanation for any legal decision --- in any court in the world ---he doesn't like. It is so much easier then trying to understand the role of the judge and the differences between different legal traditions.
A quick census of my kitchen and fridge would imply that I have been to Ecuador, (where my bananas came from,) France, (where most of the water I drink was bottled,) Spain, (where the grapes in my Sangria were grown,)
That census of your fridge can expose your income, cultural, ethnic and religious background, age, health and dietary restrictions or preferences of every sort.
It costs from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon to purchase bottled water than it does to purchase a gallon of average tap water. In California average tap water costs about one tenth of a cent per gallon, while it bottled water costs about $0.90 per gallon -- a 560-fold difference. Expensive imported water sold in smaller bottles can cost several thousand times more than tap water: That $1.50 half-liter bottle of imported water may be costing you 10,000 times more per gallon than your tap water.
Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype? [2010]
The geek tends to build his defenses around extravagant and implausible conceits and ignores the mundane.
The jury won't much care where the killer purchased his custom tailored suits, rare and pricey vintage wines, liquors and Cuban cigars. They will care if the defendant shares the same expensive tastes.
Generally, people don't like Microsoft products. They don't choose to use Windows, it is what is forced down their throats at the work place-- so running same at home is path of least resistance.
It is admittedly convenient to be able to run MS Office and QuickBooks and other workhorse productivity apps at home.
First-tier apps as the geek knows full well.
But that is not the reason the mass market Windows desktop ships with enough horsepower to play games like Arkham City and Skyrim in high definition with multichannel theater sound.
The push to get the PC in the workplace came from the bottom-up. not the top down. The launch of Windows 95 struck a populist chord that resonates to this day. Good Times
The geek continues to project his hatred of Windows on users who have never shared it.
As usual with all other topics, check out what Debian has been doing for more than a decade.
I don't why something like this becomes a problem for the geek.
It has never been a problem for the writer, the composer, the theatrical or motion picture producer, the architect or the engineer.
You must have missed that whole thing about the Mule.
The Mule is the only three-dimensional character in the entire series. He is also, quite literally, short-lived and sterile.