Anybody to whom patriotism means more than profit. I realize that patriotism may be an entirely foreign concept to free traitors, but that's the difference between somebody who takes a college graduate and trains them to do the job and somebody who just offshores the job.
Yet another insult from the damned CxO class to the Programmer's Guild. I wonder how many Americans they have to insult before people start shooting CIOs?
Not every place (especially in the third world) has broadband available. But many places have phone lines now.
Likewise, in the United States, it's about a $20/month difference between broadband and dialup. That might not mean much to you, but it means a hell of a lot to somebody on a fixed income who has no need for the extra bandwidth.
At a similar time, I owned a Hitachi HPW10E4MB; it came pretty close as well and in fact I bought my brother a Casio Cassiopeia A-60 at the same time with thoughts in that direction. Unfortuneately, the HPC market soon died, replaced by PocketPCs for the most part. This is more what I had in mind, but it's cost is well outside the range anybody would expect.
I tend to agree, except for one small problem- the lack of a fullsize keyboard and screen. While this is a good platform (notice in another reply I mentioned Windows Mobile "sublaptops"), the lack of a fullsize screen is a huge detriment, especially to eyes that need at least a 12pt onscreen font for reading. Likewise the lack of a full size keyboard makes it hard to type on.
But beyond that, you're quite correct- my T-Mobile MDA which I purchased when it was *much* more expensive ($495 with a 2-year contract) is exactly the type of platform I'd like to give to cutomers, except for the aforementioned problem of keyboard and screen (lack of USB type A host connector is also a problem, but I'm working on that one- Windows Mobile 5.0 supports USB OTG, and all that is required is a special cable with a separate power source).
What I'm really looking for isn't simplicity- it's MINIMAL DOWN TIME. As in, a lack of stupid question calls and/or virus/spyware removal calls from that individual. Linux in ROM goes a hell of a long way to preventing such calls (heck, any ROM based OS does), for the simple reason that such platforms are a lot more immune to viruses and spyware (just reset to defaults and the computer is "fixed").
With a built-in SD slot, one could argue that this system is *built* for digital snapshot type people.
Having said that- I actually disagree with the OLPC folks on this one. Their design is *VERY* close to *EXACTLY* the type of computer I've been wanting for elderly customers for 20 years now. ROM-based Operating System. User Independant, with solid-state removable media for storage. Easy connectivity. Art-based rather than business-based software built in. Ruggedized enough to survive reasonable usage.
Your average $50 laptop off of EBay doesn't fit the bill. But a $300 OLPC, that ALSO gives to a charity, very nearly does. The three things I see as missing are dialup access, a word processor, and printers drivers.
In fact, the next closest I've found to this that fits the bill would be a $1600 Windows Mobile device, or maybe an older CE 2.0 version of the same thing- not something you're going to buy for a retired person, and STILL you have the printer driver problem.
That would be sufficient to suffice, I should think.
After all, they're not looking to do presentations or calculate multi-column spreadsheets. The retired set is looking to put out Christmas letters and keep track of their investments, at worst.
Hmm- anybody know if the cutdown version will still run OpenOffice? If so, it'd make a damn good present for the retired person as well- a machine that will do e-mail, basic word processing, and web surfing, all in a handy little package that includes three USB ports and an SD slot.
Plenty of people have left writings with the stipulation that they only be released some time after death. This is just an extension that allows do-it-yourself world interaction after your self is gone.
I like Gerald Ford's Dead Man Switch- but isn't it a bit Rube Goldbergish to use the media for such a thing?
Congradulations on being the only person to figure out what I was saying. That is exactly right. Fundamentalism in all it's guises is the end of reason, the end of discussion, the end of compromise. This is the same whether you're talking about Sunni Individual Jihad Islam, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormon Missionaries. There can be no compromise with somebody who believes that they are absolutely right and you are absolutely wrong. When weapons enter the disagreement, that attitude becomes one of genocide.
We underestimate our enemy if we think we're going to get out of this without their total annihilation or our total annihilation. The one thing working for us at this point is that Islam is still in their reformation period- the battle as to who will win, and become, the Grand Caliph of 12th Iman or whatever is still raging, and so far we've only gotten collateral damage from that. When that battle is over, things will get very dangerous VERY quickly.
You want to know something really sad? People always accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of. Gay bashers are nearly always flaming homos afraid to come out of the closet. And people who accuse others of being religious nut jobs that want world domination are nearly always themselves religious nut jobs that want world domination of their own religion.
BTDT- I'm Roman Catholic and we went through that between 900 and 1600 AD. And that's EXACTLY why I recognize the same thing in Islam- because I know my own church history.
Now let me ask you this- do you recognize a serious threat when it beheads your inlaws with roadside bombs? I attended a wedding last May. The Father of the Bride shipped out the next day for Afghanistan. In September he was killed by a Taliban ambush. I wanted to know why- so I bothered to read the Koran and find out why. I bothered to actually RESEARCH the topic, which is more than any of you idiots have ever bothered with, including our so-called commander-in-chief, who apparently doesn't understand that this is a freakin' war of REFORMATION, no different at all from what Christianity went through in the 1500s and 1600s. Do you remember what happened to stupid athiests back then? They were burnt as witches for being too stupid to understand the theology of the ruling class.
The point is, if you need 3 man pages to describe your switches, EVEN IF THEY ARE JUST FILTERS, you are not doing ONE THING. You're doing 3 man pages worth of things. And from a UI standpoint, that's just damned confusing to the user.
Read the Koran- not as a scripture, but as a political platform- and you'll quickly see what I mean. We've already shown our own incompetance at dealing with these folks- nothing like an old man in a cave who depends on daily dialysis beating the world's largest army to prove just how incompetant that military force is.
It ends with either every non-Islamic infidel dead (this includes every Muslim of every sect that doesn't win the war to control Mecca, in 200-300 years), or with a nuclear weapon detonated on top of the Kabba at the Great Mosque in Mecca. Those are the only two options for an end to this. The Constitution is an anachronism that is obsolete in the face of that fact.
For somebody willing to do the work, such a thing could actually PAY FOR ITSELF. It would make a great battery manufacturing and charging center- just surround it with Wave power generation bouys and charge, ship, and sell the "green power" renewable batteries.
Completely agreed- and it's been pointed out many times over the years. My favorite is About Face by Cooper- he's the guy who created Visual Basic version 1.
However, a couple of quibbles- the first is:
I don't know how to get there, but users/people want computers to behave like toasters. They want very simple, limited-option and intuitive behaviors.
A toaster is a pretty non-intuitive interface. The first toasters were worse (only one heating element, you had to time the bread yourself, and flip it over when one side was done to toast the other side). Two heating elements, a single lever, and an automatic timer did increase it's usefullness, but it's still very non-intuitive (and just what does "press this unmarked lever and turn this dial to desired doneness" really have to do with making toast?).
Secondly:
Bottom line, my opinion, users are not lazy, they just want to get some work done without needing the equivalent of a Bachelor's in Computer Science to get that work done.
The article isn't calling USERS lazy, it's calling Software Engineers lazy. In combination with what I said above, though, I disagree. Most machines take a lot of know how to use them- then the know how becomes custom, common sense, a part of the culture- and suddenly it's "intuitive". The one thing you're right about though is that limitation of options yeilds muscle memory- which creates, eventually, a culturally intuitive interface. The fewer options the user has to consider at any given state in the state machine, the better.
I know it's old tech- but if you can get ahold of Ghost PE, I suggest burning a "clean install" to a series of DVDs. Keep important data on machines you trust, and when you do need that Win2k machine for some special use, you can always just restore the backup from DVDs first, overwriting the entire partition. Windows will continue to work for you for decades that way- I've got an image of a Win95 machine I still use from time to time.
Re:US Airspace full enough already
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 2, Funny
I'd hope that at that point you'd be flying at 200-300 feet, to increase the accuracy of your guns or to actually hit the control tower. You're not going to be strafing anything from 1900 feet....bombing maybe but not strafing.
Re:US Airspace full enough already
on
UFOs In the News
·
· Score: 1
Yes- but you usually fly your pattern *around* the airport, not right smack dab over the runways, at least, not until you're ready to *land* or *take off* in which case by definition you're going to be flying *below* 800 feet, as at that time you're going to be leaving the pattern behind.
Guess they failed to file that all important flight plan- they weren't expected and O'Hare Gate C17 was occupied by the United Flight being directed by the guy who first saw the saucer.
Re:US Airspace full enough already
on
UFOs In the News
·
· Score: 1
Exactly the point of the United Employees- though I have to wonder, given the flight characteristics of your standard comercial jet liner, how an object estimated to be hovering 1900 feet over the runway is in anybody's flight path- it usually takes 2-3 miles to climb that high, and similar profile on landing.
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Anybody to whom patriotism means more than profit. I realize that patriotism may be an entirely foreign concept to free traitors, but that's the difference between somebody who takes a college graduate and trains them to do the job and somebody who just offshores the job.
Yet another insult from the damned CxO class to the Programmer's Guild. I wonder how many Americans they have to insult before people start shooting CIOs?
Not every place (especially in the third world) has broadband available. But many places have phone lines now.
Likewise, in the United States, it's about a $20/month difference between broadband and dialup. That might not mean much to you, but it means a hell of a lot to somebody on a fixed income who has no need for the extra bandwidth.
At a similar time, I owned a Hitachi HPW10E4MB; it came pretty close as well and in fact I bought my brother a Casio Cassiopeia A-60 at the same time with thoughts in that direction. Unfortuneately, the HPC market soon died, replaced by PocketPCs for the most part. This is more what I had in mind, but it's cost is well outside the range anybody would expect.
I tend to agree, except for one small problem- the lack of a fullsize keyboard and screen. While this is a good platform (notice in another reply I mentioned Windows Mobile "sublaptops"), the lack of a fullsize screen is a huge detriment, especially to eyes that need at least a 12pt onscreen font for reading. Likewise the lack of a full size keyboard makes it hard to type on.
But beyond that, you're quite correct- my T-Mobile MDA which I purchased when it was *much* more expensive ($495 with a 2-year contract) is exactly the type of platform I'd like to give to cutomers, except for the aforementioned problem of keyboard and screen (lack of USB type A host connector is also a problem, but I'm working on that one- Windows Mobile 5.0 supports USB OTG, and all that is required is a special cable with a separate power source).
What I'm really looking for isn't simplicity- it's MINIMAL DOWN TIME. As in, a lack of stupid question calls and/or virus/spyware removal calls from that individual. Linux in ROM goes a hell of a long way to preventing such calls (heck, any ROM based OS does), for the simple reason that such platforms are a lot more immune to viruses and spyware (just reset to defaults and the computer is "fixed").
With a built-in SD slot, one could argue that this system is *built* for digital snapshot type people.
I looked up Abiword- and I think that's good enough. I'm DEFINATELY thinking about this as my mother's next machine.
Having said that- I actually disagree with the OLPC folks on this one. Their design is *VERY* close to *EXACTLY* the type of computer I've been wanting for elderly customers for 20 years now. ROM-based Operating System. User Independant, with solid-state removable media for storage. Easy connectivity. Art-based rather than business-based software built in. Ruggedized enough to survive reasonable usage.
Your average $50 laptop off of EBay doesn't fit the bill. But a $300 OLPC, that ALSO gives to a charity, very nearly does. The three things I see as missing are dialup access, a word processor, and printers drivers.
In fact, the next closest I've found to this that fits the bill would be a $1600 Windows Mobile device, or maybe an older CE 2.0 version of the same thing- not something you're going to buy for a retired person, and STILL you have the printer driver problem.
That would be sufficient to suffice, I should think.
After all, they're not looking to do presentations or calculate multi-column spreadsheets. The retired set is looking to put out Christmas letters and keep track of their investments, at worst.
Hmm- anybody know if the cutdown version will still run OpenOffice? If so, it'd make a damn good present for the retired person as well- a machine that will do e-mail, basic word processing, and web surfing, all in a handy little package that includes three USB ports and an SD slot.
Plenty of people have left writings with the stipulation that they only be released some time after death. This is just an extension that allows do-it-yourself world interaction after your self is gone.
I like Gerald Ford's Dead Man Switch- but isn't it a bit Rube Goldbergish to use the media for such a thing?
Congradulations on being the only person to figure out what I was saying. That is exactly right. Fundamentalism in all it's guises is the end of reason, the end of discussion, the end of compromise. This is the same whether you're talking about Sunni Individual Jihad Islam, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormon Missionaries. There can be no compromise with somebody who believes that they are absolutely right and you are absolutely wrong. When weapons enter the disagreement, that attitude becomes one of genocide.
We underestimate our enemy if we think we're going to get out of this without their total annihilation or our total annihilation. The one thing working for us at this point is that Islam is still in their reformation period- the battle as to who will win, and become, the Grand Caliph of 12th Iman or whatever is still raging, and so far we've only gotten collateral damage from that. When that battle is over, things will get very dangerous VERY quickly.
You want to know something really sad? People always accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of. Gay bashers are nearly always flaming homos afraid to come out of the closet. And people who accuse others of being religious nut jobs that want world domination are nearly always themselves religious nut jobs that want world domination of their own religion.
BTDT- I'm Roman Catholic and we went through that between 900 and 1600 AD. And that's EXACTLY why I recognize the same thing in Islam- because I know my own church history.
Now let me ask you this- do you recognize a serious threat when it beheads your inlaws with roadside bombs? I attended a wedding last May. The Father of the Bride shipped out the next day for Afghanistan. In September he was killed by a Taliban ambush. I wanted to know why- so I bothered to read the Koran and find out why. I bothered to actually RESEARCH the topic, which is more than any of you idiots have ever bothered with, including our so-called commander-in-chief, who apparently doesn't understand that this is a freakin' war of REFORMATION, no different at all from what Christianity went through in the 1500s and 1600s. Do you remember what happened to stupid athiests back then? They were burnt as witches for being too stupid to understand the theology of the ruling class.
That's one I know by heart. Unix: ls -r -ad. VERY useful if you know part of the file name to apply as a filter.
The point is, if you need 3 man pages to describe your switches, EVEN IF THEY ARE JUST FILTERS, you are not doing ONE THING. You're doing 3 man pages worth of things. And from a UI standpoint, that's just damned confusing to the user.
Make each program do one thing well.
Wish somebody had told that to the first guy who coded ls. Three screens worth of switches is NOT doing "one thing well".
Read the Koran- not as a scripture, but as a political platform- and you'll quickly see what I mean. We've already shown our own incompetance at dealing with these folks- nothing like an old man in a cave who depends on daily dialysis beating the world's largest army to prove just how incompetant that military force is.
It ends with either every non-Islamic infidel dead (this includes every Muslim of every sect that doesn't win the war to control Mecca, in 200-300 years), or with a nuclear weapon detonated on top of the Kabba at the Great Mosque in Mecca. Those are the only two options for an end to this. The Constitution is an anachronism that is obsolete in the face of that fact.
For somebody willing to do the work, such a thing could actually PAY FOR ITSELF. It would make a great battery manufacturing and charging center- just surround it with Wave power generation bouys and charge, ship, and sell the "green power" renewable batteries.
Completely agreed- and it's been pointed out many times over the years. My favorite is About Face by Cooper- he's the guy who created Visual Basic version 1.
However, a couple of quibbles- the first is:
I don't know how to get there, but users/people want computers to behave like toasters. They want very simple, limited-option and intuitive behaviors.
A toaster is a pretty non-intuitive interface. The first toasters were worse (only one heating element, you had to time the bread yourself, and flip it over when one side was done to toast the other side). Two heating elements, a single lever, and an automatic timer did increase it's usefullness, but it's still very non-intuitive (and just what does "press this unmarked lever and turn this dial to desired doneness" really have to do with making toast?).
Secondly:
Bottom line, my opinion, users are not lazy, they just want to get some work done without needing the equivalent of a Bachelor's in Computer Science to get that work done.
The article isn't calling USERS lazy, it's calling Software Engineers lazy. In combination with what I said above, though, I disagree. Most machines take a lot of know how to use them- then the know how becomes custom, common sense, a part of the culture- and suddenly it's "intuitive". The one thing you're right about though is that limitation of options yeilds muscle memory- which creates, eventually, a culturally intuitive interface. The fewer options the user has to consider at any given state in the state machine, the better.
I know it's old tech- but if you can get ahold of Ghost PE, I suggest burning a "clean install" to a series of DVDs. Keep important data on machines you trust, and when you do need that Win2k machine for some special use, you can always just restore the backup from DVDs first, overwriting the entire partition. Windows will continue to work for you for decades that way- I've got an image of a Win95 machine I still use from time to time.
I'd hope that at that point you'd be flying at 200-300 feet, to increase the accuracy of your guns or to actually hit the control tower. You're not going to be strafing anything from 1900 feet....bombing maybe but not strafing.
Yes- but you usually fly your pattern *around* the airport, not right smack dab over the runways, at least, not until you're ready to *land* or *take off* in which case by definition you're going to be flying *below* 800 feet, as at that time you're going to be leaving the pattern behind.
Guess they failed to file that all important flight plan- they weren't expected and O'Hare Gate C17 was occupied by the United Flight being directed by the guy who first saw the saucer.
Exactly the point of the United Employees- though I have to wonder, given the flight characteristics of your standard comercial jet liner, how an object estimated to be hovering 1900 feet over the runway is in anybody's flight path- it usually takes 2-3 miles to climb that high, and similar profile on landing.