There's more to charity than food. Once you've been fed, if you have no way to improve your lot then what's the point? You'll just go hungry again unless you do something to solve the interruption in the food delivery chain that has them on the poverty floor. OLPC gives people a break once they've had that meal -- and communications is the next step in a survival plan. Find out where the stuff is, talk to people who have stuff, organise something in trade for the next meal. You gotta keep the cycle turning, not think in terms of a single static gift. You need the process of economic improvement, not just a single instance of improvement. Don't you?
Well, what's wrong with having your own private grid? Switch to mains when it suits you, switch to a home system when all you need is a few 12V bulbs to read by. Power it with an auto battery fed by a cheap mains charger. It's knife switch technology.
I expect a lot of scrutiny from the top, here. Microsoft, for all it's warts, has always been up front in publishing to their life's blood, the developers developers (cue Monkey Dance references then ignore). The response to the message from the top, however was pathetic.
You can forgive anything from a manager except an inability to communicate. Hachamovitch broke rule #1, expect to see him kicked as soon as IE8 is released. Too late perhaps, but then maybe the top dogs were a little too hands-off?
Agile development is ok, total cowboy development on something this important is not.
Or perhaps the Microsoft Development Framework has been dumped? Sometimes people escape to waterfall development in order to have documents to hide behind. I would expect some scary people sitting in on the next few meetings, whatever it was.
True. It's been a feature of content development firms since before the PC, too. I remember reading about how Heinlein was going to submit his first short story to one of the early SF magazines, who offered a cash prize in a contest for the best SF story. He looked around and found the going rate per word for regular submissions in a competitor's magazine was considerably higher than that cash prize, so he submitted the story there instead.
It's a perception thing, I think -- you say "Prize" and the eyes light up at the possibility of a higher than normal payoff. "Payment" can be higher, but sounds so bland -- no implied improvement over the status quo. Talk to Dr. Spin about that grand high lifestyle that piddling prize offers you.
If I'm not mistaken Vista is Microsoft's currently supported OS. Why don't they want to put a minimal version of Vista on the laptop?
You mean "minimal for Vista"? Because in the context of other available OS's (including Microsoft's own) that sounds a little ambitious. I know I'm not going to upgrade the home network to Vista any time soon and resource usage is one of my concerns. It would be good to be able to raise the amount of addressable memory with a USB thumb drive, which is cool, but not as valuable to me as not consuming the memory in the first place. Mind you I don't have any hard facts, this is just a perception at this point - driven by what little I could find out on the web. YMMV, but I don't see it as a good outcome for an OLPC solution.
I had always assumed that it's a play on words: Radio Amateur, Radio Am, Ham
Another variation is that it's a self-deprecating qualifier. "Ham" as in "Ham Fisted". One's "fist" is the distinctive keying pattern a person has when keying Morse code, and a "ham fist" would be one who's a bit awkward at the key.
Some of these guys were real artists. Try keying "beesnest" in the middle of some text with a speed key. It'll put you off your rythmn, but some folks wouldn't even blink.
Morse is still relevant in bad conditions, too -- you can get a morse signal across where voice or packet won't, especially in a hurricane.
It's called defense of trademark. On steroids. PR is only a part of it. If this abuse of brand was allowed to continue, T.J Watson would stop rolling in his grave and go zombie on the legal team.
I truly do wonder about their business model. Why can't they simply put up a web site providing a legitimate product, and put all that ingenuity into metatags instead? Is it just all about the power trip, of having that much of a bot army at your uh, fingertips?
I keep thinking this is like the net wars in David Brin's "Earth", which predated the spam wars. Now there was a network.
"Hmmmm" said Yoda. "Over the browser wars are. Begun have the spam wars.
I always thought of the Shipstone device as more of an ultracapacitor, possibly charged directly by lower levels of ionising radiation during off-peak. Could that work?
...how about one the size of my electric meter box for one family? Remove electric meter, hook up reactor "battery" where it was. Easy and uncomplicated installation.
Mr. SeaFox, the Shipstone Corporation would like to help you out here.
You can certainly get eyestrain from a 60hz CRT monitor in a room full of 50hz fluro lights. The resulting beat frequency of 10hz is quite visible to some (me, for example -- and it can trigger an awesome migrane).
How cost effective would it be to have a 'portable' DC when you'd have to pay for at least 1 additional set of network and power connections?
(1) Microwave link or mobile repeater. Costly and needs preplanning, but no external cables. (2) "Portable" can mean "nice quiet diesel or LPG powered generator in the back". Theoretically you could have it up and running while it's being delivered, without waiting for it to reach its destination. I think the target word is "hurry", not "cheap". Fast setup, as in fast market capture or disaster recovery is the word. And I know there are better ways to do DR but not all of your customers think ahead like that, do they? Only the ones who probably don't need you in the first place.
Remember, if all of your customers had perfectly-run data centres, you'd probably be out of a job.
Because, with virtual server architectures being on the rise, a new data centre can mean one or two large and very generic servers and simplified connections. This means the configurations can be highly standardised. The real difficulty would be ensuring your network of backed up virtual server files were configured in a portable fashion and properly documented, as in config management database. You wouldn't need to worry about the builds so much, just the right config of virtual drives. Get it right and you'd be back up and running in an hour. Get it wrong and you'd never recover.
I guess the rules are pretty much the same as for standard data centres, but since these will be looked at as a DR solution as often as not, being able to break a standard one out of the warehouse and put it online fast -- for any number of different configs -- would put it on any IT risk manager's shopping list.
Slashdot Mirror
There's more to charity than food. Once you've been fed, if you have no way to improve your lot then what's the point? You'll just go hungry again unless you do something to solve the interruption in the food delivery chain that has them on the poverty floor. OLPC gives people a break once they've had that meal -- and communications is the next step in a survival plan. Find out where the stuff is, talk to people who have stuff, organise something in trade for the next meal. You gotta keep the cycle turning, not think in terms of a single static gift. You need the process of economic improvement, not just a single instance of improvement. Don't you?
Well, what's wrong with having your own private grid? Switch to mains when it suits you, switch to a home system when all you need is a few 12V bulbs to read by. Power it with an auto battery fed by a cheap mains charger. It's knife switch technology.
Everything Microsoft has on the market pre-Vista has long since been amortized, I think. And I'm not sure ink is what MSFT has in its veins...
:= "Simply Not Available". Horrible polling system from the Interrupts that Time Forgot.
(laughs) "Prote" can sometimes mean "Protagonist".
You can forgive anything from a manager except an inability to communicate. Hachamovitch broke rule #1, expect to see him kicked as soon as IE8 is released. Too late perhaps, but then maybe the top dogs were a little too hands-off?
Agile development is ok, total cowboy development on something this important is not.
Or perhaps the Microsoft Development Framework has been dumped? Sometimes people escape to waterfall development in order to have documents to hide behind. I would expect some scary people sitting in on the next few meetings, whatever it was.
True. It's been a feature of content development firms since before the PC, too. I remember reading about how Heinlein was going to submit his first short story to one of the early SF magazines, who offered a cash prize in a contest for the best SF story. He looked around and found the going rate per word for regular submissions in a competitor's magazine was considerably higher than that cash prize, so he submitted the story there instead.
It's a perception thing, I think -- you say "Prize" and the eyes light up at the possibility of a higher than normal payoff. "Payment" can be higher, but sounds so bland -- no implied improvement over the status quo. Talk to Dr. Spin about that grand high lifestyle that piddling prize offers you.
...can it play Linux?
You mean "minimal for Vista"? Because in the context of other available OS's (including Microsoft's own) that sounds a little ambitious. I know I'm not going to upgrade the home network to Vista any time soon and resource usage is one of my concerns. It would be good to be able to raise the amount of addressable memory with a USB thumb drive, which is cool, but not as valuable to me as not consuming the memory in the first place. Mind you I don't have any hard facts, this is just a perception at this point - driven by what little I could find out on the web. YMMV, but I don't see it as a good outcome for an OLPC solution.
Have you ever noticed the dit-dit-dit dah-dah dit-dit-dit of some phones' SMS alarms? Well, that's what it is -- Morse for "SMS".
See? You're still using it.
Another variation is that it's a self-deprecating qualifier. "Ham" as in "Ham Fisted". One's "fist" is the distinctive keying pattern a person has when keying Morse code, and a "ham fist" would be one who's a bit awkward at the key.
Some of these guys were real artists. Try keying "beesnest" in the middle of some text with a speed key. It'll put you off your rythmn, but some folks wouldn't even blink.
Morse is still relevant in bad conditions, too -- you can get a morse signal across where voice or packet won't, especially in a hurricane.
No, an EJB container that is. Hmmmm??
Although I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes.
It's called defense of trademark. On steroids. PR is only a part of it. If this abuse of brand was allowed to continue, T.J Watson would stop rolling in his grave and go zombie on the legal team.
I keep thinking this is like the net wars in David Brin's "Earth", which predated the spam wars. Now there was a network.
"Hmmmm" said Yoda. "Over the browser wars are. Begun have the spam wars.
Just add alcohol.
I always thought of the Shipstone device as more of an ultracapacitor, possibly charged directly by lower levels of ionising radiation during off-peak. Could that work?
Mr. SeaFox, the Shipstone Corporation would like to help you out here.
(Heinlein, "Friday")
And how do you stop spelling bananananana?
You can certainly get eyestrain from a 60hz CRT monitor in a room full of 50hz fluro lights. The resulting beat frequency of 10hz is quite visible to some (me, for example -- and it can trigger an awesome migrane).
Then peace will guide the planets and love will rule the stars.
Do those other moons have asterollology too?
(1) Microwave link or mobile repeater. Costly and needs preplanning, but no external cables. (2) "Portable" can mean "nice quiet diesel or LPG powered generator in the back". Theoretically you could have it up and running while it's being delivered, without waiting for it to reach its destination. I think the target word is "hurry", not "cheap". Fast setup, as in fast market capture or disaster recovery is the word. And I know there are better ways to do DR but not all of your customers think ahead like that, do they? Only the ones who probably don't need you in the first place.
Remember, if all of your customers had perfectly-run data centres, you'd probably be out of a job.
I guess the rules are pretty much the same as for standard data centres, but since these will be looked at as a DR solution as often as not, being able to break a standard one out of the warehouse and put it online fast -- for any number of different configs -- would put it on any IT risk manager's shopping list.
Replied off-list
I am not schizophrenic. And I'm not either, so there.