that the keyboard is so hard to match is that it has been used and refined by humanity for such a very long time, compared to other interfaces. Think about it, the alphanumeric keyboard even predates the steering wheel by about 20 years!
Also, please remember, there is a NPO behind all this with the goal of decreasing the price as much as possible per unit, not a large company with the goal of trying to charge as much as possible to increase profits.
It is a primary goal to make these things cheap, and maaaan THEY ARE COOL!
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175
AND
Negroponte's team has always stressed that $100 was a long-term target for the machines, but recently publicized figures had put it in the $150 range. Negroponte says the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds. He added that Citigroup Inc. (C)'s Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.
The project is still on track to its price target of $100, it is still in BETA FFS!
Quit with the FUD already! Theres nothing like working on something high profile to make you grow a bit of a distaste for/. hype!
I think the advertising industry is getting much more wet over this one.
90% of the adoption of this technology will be for advertising, once everyone has it. It will have the same sort of worth as a Macromedia Flash browser plugin.
It isn't the customers that "broke" the business model. It's the people who are "stealing"
The concept of stealing: Person x has something, Person y steals it, now Person x doesn't have it anymore. This, undoubtedly is something else.
It's still using something that doesn't belong to you in an illegal manner.
IMHO, as soon as you download a file to your hard drive, it belongs to you in some way or another. As far as the legallity is concerned, law is supposed to reflect what is 'socially acceptable' in a society. This is why prohibition was overturned, and why things like murder and the sexual exploitaton of children is illegal. The law needs to bend to a point where it is not making Average Joe Mp3 a criminal. I think laws made against the people and with the interests of large media companies should be questioned, rather than defended just because they are law. Lets not forget that copyright law is supposedly there to defend individuals standing up against large companies, not the other way round.
Never in my life, or my wildest dreams have i ever thought this possible.
I mean, really, a site getting slashdotted -in anticipation- of slashdot linking to it! Who would have imagined?
I know this is very late, but I noticed that this article, unmended, is still linked to the BBC Business section
so, here is my feedback:
I am sure you have a lot of feedback about this article, so I will keep this short.
I am a Linux user who has become quite upset by the belowmentioned article.
I am in very regular contact with so called 'zealots' of the Linux community, and my experience has been that, particularly among the most talented and worthwhile of this community, malicious use of computers is greatly frowned upon. As a talented person would have to be behind the MyDoom virus, I find it unlikely that the writer of the virus was actually a contributing Linux user.
Even if it was Linux users who made this virus, claiming the users of a particular operating system responsible for this recent viral attack is like claiming the Africans responsible for AIDS.
As I am reporting a factual error, I should quote what I feel is not factual in the contents of this particular article, but in this case, I would be quoting almost every single line as biased, unfactual, unresearched and malicious. I no longer consider the BBC to be a worthwhile, informative, or unbiased news source, and it is very likely that I will no longer read your articles or watch your TV broadcasts.
Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality
I tend to aggree with you.
This phone got a good asskissing evaluation, but looks like it was tested in an office environment, not the natural habitat of a mobile, or cellular devices.
Possibly this technology is suited more for a desktop PC, or other non-critical motionless devices.
I also think this would be difficult to sell to our button-mad consumers, who are the reason for UI anyway.
I won't be buying one until I have no choice.
Alien 1. The humans have built a huge supercomputer and are about to reveal and BROADCAST our position!
Boss Alien. So? Destroy it.
Alien 1. But It covers the... entire planet...
-end of signal-
This is my take on the whole thing:
Linux, inded, Open Source is like communism. It doesnt work unless everyones involved in it.
I know many of you will disagree with my example, but heres my meaning:
Open Source Kernel Modules submitted by hardware manufacturers WILL NOT work unless EVERY hardware manufacturer opens their code. They keep their binaries, and they keep their trade secrets, but if everyone opens their source, the benifits felt by all would outweigh the losses of information, much in the same way as Linux distributions prefer to work alongside each other, even though they are realistically in competition with each other.
I think the real issue here isnt with Black Box Modules on the desktop, but rather hidden modules in embedded systems, such as consumer devices (dvd players, for instance) where the company who could very well be violating the GPL is doing it under cover, and away from the prying eyes of most Linux Hackers, possibly even compiling their own code into the kernel, and not GPLing it. I think embedded device manufacturers should be taking this step of opening their source, for common gain, especially since they are the ones that most frequently use the kernel without singing its praises.
A binary module to save a desktop customer, who has forked out money for a nonfunctioning product is a good thing, and I hope this technology flourishes, and intergrates properly, but using the expertese of thousands of devolopers who give their time for free, creating a Linux system for end users, but not crediting linux, thus creating a world where most Linux users dont even REALISE that they use it, and only contributing to it by inserting a binary module to save a $lot_of_money$ on R&D, or licencing is WRONG.
I think this has already been studied- The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale.-Microsoft, Microsoft Halloween Doc 1
even if no harm can be proven.
How can you disprove harm in this case?
A social security number is an American's entire life and worth, as far as law and government are concerned.
Without it, you arent even a vote.
Slashdot Mirror
..Unless you take into account the ship's wheel, an invention going back to around 1700, 170 years before the typewriter.
Now now man! Keep in context here! I have NEVER NEVER plugged a ship's wheel into a gaming console!
Besides, we ALL know that the early ships were steered by PADDLES!
..Unless you take into account the ship's wheel, an invention going back to around 1700, 170 years before the typewriter.
Now now man! Keep in context here! I have NEVER NEVER plugged a ship's wheel into a gaming console!
that the keyboard is so hard to match is that it has been used and refined by humanity for such a very long time, compared to other interfaces. Think about it, the alphanumeric keyboard even predates the steering wheel by about 20 years!
Also, please remember, there is a NPO behind all this with the goal of decreasing the price as much as possible per unit, not a large company with the goal of trying to charge as much as possible to increase profits. It is a primary goal to make these things cheap, and maaaan THEY ARE COOL!
AND
Negroponte's team has always stressed that $100 was a long-term target for the machines, but recently publicized figures had put it in the $150 range. Negroponte says the cost should drop about 25 percent per year as the project unfolds. He added that Citigroup Inc. (C)'s Citibank division has agreed to facilitate a payment system on a pro bono basis; Citibank will float payments to Quanta and other laptop suppliers, and governments will repay the bank.The project is still on track to its price target of $100, it is still in BETA FFS!
Quit with the FUD already! Theres nothing like working on something high profile to make you grow a bit of a distaste for /. hype!
I think the advertising industry is getting much more wet over this one. 90% of the adoption of this technology will be for advertising, once everyone has it. It will have the same sort of worth as a Macromedia Flash browser plugin.
Person x has something, Person y steals it, now Person x doesn't have it anymore.
This, undoubtedly is something else. IMHO, as soon as you download a file to your hard drive, it belongs to you in some way or another.
As far as the legallity is concerned, law is supposed to reflect what is 'socially acceptable' in a society. This is why prohibition was overturned, and why things like murder and the sexual exploitaton of children is illegal. The law needs to bend to a point where it is not making Average Joe Mp3 a criminal.
I think laws made against the people and with the interests of large media companies should be questioned, rather than defended just because they are law.
Lets not forget that copyright law is supposedly there to defend individuals standing up against large companies, not the other way round.
I can see the commercial applications of your idea already!
You forgot:
killing peopleYou must be American.... over here we measure EVERYTHING in metric, except drugs.... How much for 1/4 oz man?
Should have just used the modpoints to get rid of a whole heap of discussion on the topic.
nfi, dont use windows
I dont know if it is evil, but when I read that line, I imagined a million gnome-dictionary windows open with 'solipsism' pasted in.....
So, due to lack of atmosphere, any life on this moon would rely entirely on the massive ice sheet that the probe intends to penetrate?
I always lick my fingers after picking my nose/ears, therefore preventing keyboard contamination.
wouldn't a beowulf cluster of these.. be a book?
actually.. a notebook
sorry, please troll me
Never in my life, or my wildest dreams have i ever thought this possible.
I mean, really, a site getting slashdotted -in anticipation- of slashdot linking to it! Who would have imagined?
I know this is very late, but I noticed that this article, unmended, is still linked to the BBC Business section so, here is my feedback:
I am sure you have a lot of feedback about this article, so I will keep this short.
I am a Linux user who has become quite upset by the belowmentioned article.
I am in very regular contact with so called 'zealots' of the Linux community, and my experience has been that, particularly among the most talented and worthwhile of this community, malicious use of computers is greatly frowned upon.
As a talented person would have to be behind the MyDoom virus, I find it unlikely that the writer of the virus was actually a contributing Linux user.
Even if it was Linux users who made this virus, claiming the users of a particular operating system responsible for this recent viral attack is like claiming the Africans responsible for AIDS. As I am reporting a factual error, I should quote what I feel is not factual in the contents of this particular article, but in this case, I would be quoting almost every single line as biased, unfactual, unresearched and malicious.
I no longer consider the BBC to be a worthwhile, informative, or unbiased news source, and it is very likely that I will no longer read your articles or watch your TV broadcasts.
Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality
I tend to aggree with you.This phone got a good asskissing evaluation, but looks like it was tested in an office environment, not the natural habitat of a mobile, or cellular devices.
Possibly this technology is suited more for a desktop PC, or other non-critical motionless devices.
I also think this would be difficult to sell to our button-mad consumers, who are the reason for UI anyway.
I won't be buying one until I have no choice.
Alien 1. The humans have built a huge supercomputer and are about to reveal and BROADCAST our position!
Boss Alien. So? Destroy it.
Alien 1. But It covers the... entire planet...
-end of signal-
This is my take on the whole thing:
Linux, inded, Open Source is like communism. It doesnt work unless everyones involved in it.
I know many of you will disagree with my example, but heres my meaning:
Open Source Kernel Modules submitted by hardware manufacturers WILL NOT work unless EVERY hardware manufacturer opens their code. They keep their binaries, and they keep their trade secrets, but if everyone opens their source, the benifits felt by all would outweigh the losses of information, much in the same way as Linux distributions prefer to work alongside each other, even though they are realistically in competition with each other.
I think the real issue here isnt with Black Box Modules on the desktop, but rather hidden modules in embedded systems, such as consumer devices (dvd players, for instance) where the company who could very well be violating the GPL is doing it under cover, and away from the prying eyes of most Linux Hackers, possibly even compiling their own code into the kernel, and not GPLing it. I think embedded device manufacturers should be taking this step of opening their source, for common gain, especially since they are the ones that most frequently use the kernel without singing its praises.
A binary module to save a desktop customer, who has forked out money for a nonfunctioning product is a good thing, and I hope this technology flourishes, and intergrates properly, but using the expertese of thousands of devolopers who give their time for free, creating a Linux system for end users, but not crediting linux, thus creating a world where most Linux users dont even REALISE that they use it, and only contributing to it by inserting a binary module to save a $lot_of_money$ on R&D, or licencing is WRONG.
Yea, life and death issues are best left to the OSes that constantly crash.
I think this has already been studied-
The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale. -Microsoft, Microsoft Halloween Doc 1
even if no harm can be proven.
How can you disprove harm in this case?
A social security number is an American's entire life and worth, as far as law and government are concerned.
Without it, you arent even a vote.