"That's good, of course, but Eastern Europe had decent grid power for most of 20th century, and heated stone buildings, and moderate climate, and low humidity, and everything else that facilitated use of office (desktop) computers with no trouble."
Desktop computers need climate control? Since when? Ever run an Apple Lisa? I have. Without air conditioning in the middle of summer, and you know what my biggest complaint was? The _ink_ wasn't drying on my topographic map of the Pontiac Landfill.
We're talking mid 80's here. Computer power supplies, and desktop computers themselves are not exactly rocket science anymore, and are a _lot_ more rugged than you think. I work in a factory, where much of it has no AC. We've got _desktop_ machines out on the shop floor, in a pretty nasty environment. They get caked with oily dirt, and the keyboards get disgusting. But you know what? They work. One of the revolutionary things about the Microcomputer revolution was the invention of a computer that _did not_ need climate control and filtered-9-ways-to-Sunday electrical power.
I would reply to the rest of your message, but it's based upon faulty assumptions and well, lies.
"A main goal of the project is to make a machine that children will actually want to use. Having a cool green laptop, rather than a beige monstrosity, makes a big difference."
You know, I must sit back and laugh and point. Clearly you are not old enough to remember a society without microcomputers. When you go from "I have no computer" to "Hey, look at this cool TI-99/4a with a tape recorder!", you don't quite care how cool it _looks_.
"Lack of education is the most serious problem afflicting poor people. It's more serious than starvation and disease"
You're an utter idiot.
"Poor people get AIDS because they are staggeringly uninformed about safe sex; many of them have no idea the disease is even sexually transmitted. They starve because they have no idea how to plant crops properly."
And you need computers for this _how_? Famine is more the result of politics these days than failing crops. Indeed, I ask you to _prove_ to me of a famine that happened in the past 30 years that was the result of _merely_ failing crops and not warlords fighting over resources. And we've had politicians in Africa _denying_ that sex transmits AIDS or that HIV causes it.
"Buying thousands of books for a "well stocked" library is much more expensive than some ultra-cheap laptops"
And where are you going to _buy_ the content for those laptops?
"through a wireless mesh network"
A lot of good that does for someone outside the city limits.
Damn, but you are uninformed about the rest of the planet. I suggest you go to your local video store and rent/buy a Bollywood movie. The last one I saw had a good 5 second shot of a sink with running water to _show off the wealth of the character's family_.
Charging someone $100 bucks for a computer in such a situation is almost an astronomical price compared to handing down a fully working desktop machine that would typically wind up in the rubbish here in the US.
"What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?"
Why must literacy require a computer? What did people do for centuries without computers? Indeed, I put it to you that computers have done _little_ to advance literacy. Look at the humongous literacy problems we have today in _AMERICA_ _with_ computers in school!
"Office computers won't survive, and they require too much power, and the power must be stable and good."
And laptop power supplies are less fragile? What color is the sky in your world?
Put it this way: a neighbor of mine started the East West Education Development Foundation. Know what they started giving out? Desktops. Desktops too fragile? He had incredible success distributing computers to people who had none and couldn't afford them.
To this day I get along just fine without a laptop. To say that the laptop form factor is an absolute must is silly. Besides, such a machine is going to be shared by more than one person. Laptops, and portable devices like them, are simply not rugged enough for the abuse.
"Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as well as for play."
Bullshit. Plenty of people become educated and play just fine without computers. What people need are schools and well stocked libraries. FFS, calculators were banned for math until my senior year in HS.
"there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."
If there is no electricity, the lack of a laptop is the least of their problems.
A friend of mine has a reader for Windows. It doesn't sound nearly like that. Indeed, another acquaintance has speech synthesized on his web page, streamed to mp3 and it doesn't sound hideous.
Flite sounds exactly what the NOAA started using when they decided to get rid of the live readers for weather radio. They have since upgraded, but I have long ago put away my weather radio because of it.
And based upon the one moderation point that modded you as troll, I came to the conclusion that your comment was funny, and bitchslapped in metamoderation.
And here I sit with a 64 bit Linux and I still can't run Picasa, since Wine won't even install. Someone up there said it's Google tossing us a bone, a dried up marrowless bone. I disagree. It's less than a bone. It's a turd from the catbox.
Wow...just wow. I never ever expected this sort of reply to what I posted in a lighthearted way. You, sir, are well on the way to a heart attack at 40.
I can troll if I want to I can leave your posts behind 'Cause your posts don't troll and if they don't troll Well they're no posts of mine I say, we can troll where we want to A goatse they can always find And I can act like we come from the GNAA Leave the moderations far behind And we can troll.
That's my great great great great great *breathe* great great great granddad. It's a sad day when grave robbing is a profession. You shall reap what you sow. There's a curse been put upon that dig, and whoever disturbs the bones shall have "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats playing forever in his or her head until the end of days.
Them: "Dude, my computer is slow and it's got some sort of popup that comes on when I turn it on"
Me: "You're infected"
Them: "But how? I don't go to any porn sites...." yadda yadda yadda.
And when I get to the sick peecee, I see that not only does it have _one_ piece of malware, but it barely boots from the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of evil packages all fighting for control of the poor machine.
It's a losing battle. No, it's not scare mongering. It's reality.
"As a kid I was taught that I had to learn Math. An no one explained to me WHY I had to learn math"
As a kid, it was indoctrinated into me that "pure math" is somehow superior to "applied math", as if abstractions were somehow superior to real life examples. And when it came to showing how math can be applied, it was reduced to the most boring examples imaginable. I can't remember how many times I had to do damn simultaneous equations involving trains or other vehicles, for example.
Gawd.
The only pure math I ever had fun at was geometry - both doing calculations and logical proofs. That and trig, and especially the two tied together. Involve an 8 bit computer and I had a ton of fun. But I sucked at being a student. I sucked at homework, and loved to do my own stuff independent of everything else. My HS euclidean geometry teacher was always pissed at me for getting A's and B's on tests and quizzes and not doing a lick of homework.
I wonder how she'd react to how I make my living, basing almost everything I do at work from stuff I learned from her for the past 15 years.
If you click on the "History" link, you're brought to a japanese web page...and it looks like a lot of people (relatives) are visiting. If you visited your gramma in the rest home, don't you think she'd be happy?
Just a thought.
You, yes YOU, who are feeling guilty reading this...go visit your gramma.
"So is a real dog, just the parts are squishier and the programme is more complex"
Sometimes the less complex program of an electronic dog is a plus, as it would lack these functions:
1. Go apeshit when the doorbell rings 2. Piddle in the corner at random times 3. Jump on visitors 4. Hump visitors' legs and sniff their crotches 5. Suffer from separation anxiety when you go to work 6. Fish out "treats" from the catbox.
The 1990 lockout pissed me off. It was a good decade later before I even paid attention to a single game. The 1994 strike didn't help either. It's a bunch of millionaires arguing with a bunch of millionaires. With ticket prices in the stratosphere and crybaby players and owners who only care about the almighty dollar, who really gives a shit besides the stats geeks? Now MLB wants to own the _facts_ of a game? Does MLB Incorporated want to piss off the only people left who are passionate about baseball?
Screw MLB. Who's up for a petition to get NESN to start carrying curling instead of the Sox?
GRay wrote: > > Dave wondered: > > > ObT: MotorGimp Stephen Hawking says that for an astronaut who falls inside > > the event horizon of a black hole time would slow down at an exponentially > > increasing rate, such that eventually it would appear to stop altogether. > > Imaging having itchy balls just as you pass through: You'd start to > > scratch, maybe get you hand halfway there in the first second after you > > pass the event horizon. In the second after that, you cover another half of > > the remaining distance. The second after that, half again. But you'd never > > ever reach 'em. Spending eternity with itchy balls, and never being able to > > get close enough for a good rub. Now *that's* hell. Take note, christians. > > > > Or, bliss! > > Imagine, the eternal cum:) Just as you start to cum, you fall into the > event horizon. The intense first spasm slows as you fall forward, > eternally cumming... > > What a way to go, er, cum.
ObScienceNerd: [Geek Voice] Actually, according to the Theory of Relativity, the astronaut would not experience the time slowing, and would be able to enjoy one final ball scratching/orgasm before being ripped apart atom by atom by tidal forces, and utterly annihilated.
The time-slowing would be seen by observers, however. So if they were watching an attractive astronaut removing her clothes, wanking furiously as she slipped her thumbs into the waistline of her panties, when she crossed the event horizon they would be disappointed as she would appear to suddenly slow and stop, getting redder and dimmer before finally fading from sight, forever denying the observers a glimpse of her silken pubic thatch. They'd have to close their eyes and use their imaginations.
ObT: Ejaculation on zero gravity. If an astronaut were able to concentrate enough during orgasm, they could shoot their load across the cabin and nail a fellow astronaut in the back of the head. I imagine that this has been done on Mir, because 4 or 5 months in space station the size of a trailer truck would get pretty fucking boring. Of course on a leaky deathtrap like Mir, they'd be lucky just to get a hard-on before the obligatory "You're Fucked" klaxons started honking, announcing the life threatening crisis-of-the-hour.
ObMir: 3 astronauts, one decrepit space station, and a 2-man escape pod. What do you want to bet that the US and Russians each hid a pistol somewhere in the station "for emergencies", and that each astronaut made sure, every minute of every day, that they they knew EXACTLY the quickest route to the pistol/escape pod?
--
Rev. Syd Midnight - Remove SPAM from my address to reply
"God had some serious quality-control problems."
-- Superior Court Judge Leslie Light
I disagree with Senator McCain. I believe in torture. I believe that Darl, Yarro, BiFF, Anderer, the lawfirm of BSF, and the rest of the foul bunch should be chained naked together, repeatedly dunked in a barrel of ripe chum that's been brewing on the dock for the month of July, and fed to sharks with frikin' laser beams.
Why is the parent a troll, especially when it's true?
A question to the moderator that sank that comment into oblivion:
Do you seriously think that if Linux had no popularity, that Microsoft would throw this much money at India? Sometimes the lack of logic 'round these parts boggles my mind. This _is_ Microsoft's admission that Linux is kicking Microsoft's ass in India.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's good, of course, but Eastern Europe had decent grid power for most of 20th century, and heated stone buildings, and moderate climate, and low humidity, and everything else that facilitated use of office (desktop) computers with no trouble."
Desktop computers need climate control? Since when? Ever run an Apple Lisa? I have. Without air conditioning in the middle of summer, and you know what my biggest complaint was? The _ink_ wasn't drying on my topographic map of the Pontiac Landfill.
We're talking mid 80's here. Computer power supplies, and desktop computers themselves are not exactly rocket science anymore, and are a _lot_ more rugged than you think. I work in a factory, where much of it has no AC. We've got _desktop_ machines out on the shop floor, in a pretty nasty environment. They get caked with oily dirt, and the keyboards get disgusting. But you know what? They work. One of the revolutionary things about the Microcomputer revolution was the invention of a computer that _did not_ need climate control and filtered-9-ways-to-Sunday electrical power.
I would reply to the rest of your message, but it's based upon faulty assumptions and well, lies.
--
BMO
"A main goal of the project is to make a machine that children will actually want to use. Having a cool green laptop, rather than a beige monstrosity, makes a big difference."
You know, I must sit back and laugh and point. Clearly you are not old enough to remember a society without microcomputers. When you go from "I have no computer" to "Hey, look at this cool TI-99/4a with a tape recorder!", you don't quite care how cool it _looks_.
"Lack of education is the most serious problem afflicting poor people. It's more serious than starvation and disease"
You're an utter idiot.
"Poor people get AIDS because they are staggeringly uninformed about safe sex; many of them have no idea the disease is even sexually transmitted. They starve because they have no idea how to plant crops properly."
And you need computers for this _how_? Famine is more the result of politics these days than failing crops. Indeed, I ask you to _prove_ to me of a famine that happened in the past 30 years that was the result of _merely_ failing crops and not warlords fighting over resources. And we've had politicians in Africa _denying_ that sex transmits AIDS or that HIV causes it.
"Buying thousands of books for a "well stocked" library is much more expensive than some ultra-cheap laptops"
And where are you going to _buy_ the content for those laptops?
"through a wireless mesh network"
A lot of good that does for someone outside the city limits.
Damn, but you are uninformed about the rest of the planet. I suggest you go to your local video store and rent/buy a Bollywood movie. The last one I saw had a good 5 second shot of a sink with running water to _show off the wealth of the character's family_.
Charging someone $100 bucks for a computer in such a situation is almost an astronomical price compared to handing down a fully working desktop machine that would typically wind up in the rubbish here in the US.
--
BMO
"What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?"
Why must literacy require a computer? What did people do for centuries without computers? Indeed, I put it to you that computers have done _little_ to advance literacy. Look at the humongous literacy problems we have today in _AMERICA_ _with_ computers in school!
--
BMO
"Office computers won't survive, and they require too much power, and the power must be stable and good."
i os/bio0252.html
And laptop power supplies are less fragile? What color is the sky in your world?
Put it this way: a neighbor of mine started the East West Education Development Foundation. Know what they started giving out? Desktops. Desktops too fragile? He had incredible success distributing computers to people who had none and couldn't afford them.
This is the guy I grew up next door to:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/bios/frame.html?main=/b
--
BMO
To this day I get along just fine without a laptop. To say that the laptop form factor is an absolute must is silly. Besides, such a machine is going to be shared by more than one person. Laptops, and portable devices like them, are simply not rugged enough for the abuse.
"Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as well as for play."
Bullshit. Plenty of people become educated and play just fine without computers. What people need are schools and well stocked libraries. FFS, calculators were banned for math until my senior year in HS.
"there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."
If there is no electricity, the lack of a laptop is the least of their problems.
--
BMO
What about shipping your old stuff overseas?
o n_contacts.htm
http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org/offices/bost
There are plenty of takers for your old equipment. Why fill up a dump?
--
BMO
A friend of mine has a reader for Windows. It doesn't sound nearly like that. Indeed, another acquaintance has speech synthesized on his web page, streamed to mp3 and it doesn't sound hideous.
Flite sounds exactly what the NOAA started using when they decided to get rid of the live readers for weather radio. They have since upgraded, but I have long ago put away my weather radio because of it.
--
BMO
OMG, I have that playing right now.
It feels like WOPR is talking to me.
flite "good afternoon professor falken"
flite "would you like to play a game?"
--
BMO
"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting"
-Gloria Leonard
--
BMO
"Did you know the Indians invented the wire recorder?"
--
BMO
P.S. - it's disturbing how "Everything You Know Is Wrong" is so similar to late-night talk radio these days.
And based upon the one moderation point that modded you as troll, I came to the conclusion that your comment was funny, and bitchslapped in metamoderation.
*chuckle*
--
BMO
"Editors Zonk and Scuttle Monkey: Are they good for Slashdot or are they better in a white wine sauce?"
--
BMO - It is hot here, like a cow on fire
And here I sit with a 64 bit Linux and I still can't run Picasa, since Wine won't even install. Someone up there said it's Google tossing us a bone, a dried up marrowless bone. I disagree. It's less than a bone. It's a turd from the catbox.
--
BMO
1. An enema
2. Sex
3. Sleep
4. Less caffeine
and last, but definitely not least:
5. A sense of humor.
Wow...just wow. I never ever expected this sort of reply to what I posted in a lighthearted way. You, sir, are well on the way to a heart attack at 40.
--
BMO
S-s-s-s A-a-a-a F-f-f-f E-e-e-e T-t-t-t Y-y-y-y
Safety, troll!
I can troll if I want to
I can leave your posts behind
'Cause your posts don't troll and if they don't troll
Well they're no posts of mine
I say, we can troll where we want to
A goatse they can always find
And I can act like we come from the GNAA
Leave the moderations far behind
And we can troll.
--
BMO - My Karma is "FABULOUS, DAHLING!"
"an /unlooted/ ...18th Dynasty tomb"
Until now.
That's my great great great great great *breathe* great great great granddad. It's a sad day when grave robbing is a profession. You shall reap what you sow. There's a curse been put upon that dig, and whoever disturbs the bones shall have "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats playing forever in his or her head until the end of days.
You have been warned.
--
BMO
Hah!
DOUBLE HAH!
Them: "Dude, my computer is slow and it's got some sort of popup that comes on when I turn it on"
Me: "You're infected"
Them: "But how? I don't go to any porn sites...." yadda yadda yadda.
And when I get to the sick peecee, I see that not only does it have _one_ piece of malware, but it barely boots from the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of evil packages all fighting for control of the poor machine.
It's a losing battle. No, it's not scare mongering. It's reality.
--
BMO
"As a kid I was taught that I had to learn Math. An no one explained to me WHY I had to learn math"
As a kid, it was indoctrinated into me that "pure math" is somehow superior to "applied math", as if abstractions were somehow superior to real life examples. And when it came to showing how math can be applied, it was reduced to the most boring examples imaginable. I can't remember how many times I had to do damn simultaneous equations involving trains or other vehicles, for example.
Gawd.
The only pure math I ever had fun at was geometry - both doing calculations and logical proofs. That and trig, and especially the two tied together. Involve an 8 bit computer and I had a ton of fun. But I sucked at being a student. I sucked at homework, and loved to do my own stuff independent of everything else. My HS euclidean geometry teacher was always pissed at me for getting A's and B's on tests and quizzes and not doing a lick of homework.
I wonder how she'd react to how I make my living, basing almost everything I do at work from stuff I learned from her for the past 15 years.
Hey, Mrs. Curtis, you did a good job.
--
BMO
If you click on the "History" link, you're brought to a japanese web page...and it looks like a lot of people (relatives) are visiting. If you visited your gramma in the rest home, don't you think she'd be happy?
Just a thought.
You, yes YOU, who are feeling guilty reading this...go visit your gramma.
--
BMO
"So is a real dog, just the parts are squishier and the programme is more complex"
Sometimes the less complex program of an electronic dog is a plus, as it would lack these functions:
1. Go apeshit when the doorbell rings
2. Piddle in the corner at random times
3. Jump on visitors
4. Hump visitors' legs and sniff their crotches
5. Suffer from separation anxiety when you go to work
6. Fish out "treats" from the catbox.
--
BMO
The 1990 lockout pissed me off. It was a good decade later before I even paid attention to a single game. The 1994 strike didn't help either. It's a bunch of millionaires arguing with a bunch of millionaires. With ticket prices in the stratosphere and crybaby players and owners who only care about the almighty dollar, who really gives a shit besides the stats geeks? Now MLB wants to own the _facts_ of a game? Does MLB Incorporated want to piss off the only people left who are passionate about baseball?
Screw MLB. Who's up for a petition to get NESN to start carrying curling instead of the Sox?
--
BMO
"We now live in the ownership society. They own it, and you can rent it for a fee"
Glen Phillips - August 30, 2005, Jammin Java Cafe'
--
BMO
From: Syd Midnight
Subject: Re: FAQ this shit!
Date: 1999/07/13
Message-ID: #1/1
X-Deja-AN: 500445758
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
References:
X-Accept-Language: en
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Trace: news.onlynews.com 931856756 216.144.10.111 (Tue, 13 Jul 1999 02:05:56 PDT)
Organization: http://www.nls.net/mp/syd
MIME-Version: 1.0
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 02:05:56 PDT
Newsgroups: alt.tasteless
GRay wrote:
>
> Dave wondered:
>
> > ObT: MotorGimp Stephen Hawking says that for an astronaut who falls inside
> > the event horizon of a black hole time would slow down at an exponentially
> > increasing rate, such that eventually it would appear to stop altogether.
> > Imaging having itchy balls just as you pass through: You'd start to
> > scratch, maybe get you hand halfway there in the first second after you
> > pass the event horizon. In the second after that, you cover another half of
> > the remaining distance. The second after that, half again. But you'd never
> > ever reach 'em. Spending eternity with itchy balls, and never being able to
> > get close enough for a good rub. Now *that's* hell. Take note, christians.
> >
>
> Or, bliss!
>
> Imagine, the eternal cum:) Just as you start to cum, you fall into the
> event horizon. The intense first spasm slows as you fall forward,
> eternally cumming...
>
> What a way to go, er, cum.
ObScienceNerd: [Geek Voice] Actually, according to the Theory of
Relativity, the astronaut would not experience the time slowing, and
would be able to enjoy one final ball scratching/orgasm before being
ripped apart atom by atom by tidal forces, and utterly annihilated.
The time-slowing would be seen by observers, however. So if they were
watching an attractive astronaut removing her clothes, wanking furiously
as she slipped her thumbs into the waistline of her panties, when she
crossed the event horizon they would be disappointed as she would appear
to suddenly slow and stop, getting redder and dimmer before finally
fading from sight, forever denying the observers a glimpse of her silken
pubic thatch. They'd have to close their eyes and use their
imaginations.
ObT: Ejaculation on zero gravity. If an astronaut were able to
concentrate enough during orgasm, they could shoot their load across the
cabin and nail a fellow astronaut in the back of the head. I imagine
that this has been done on Mir, because 4 or 5 months in space station
the size of a trailer truck would get pretty fucking boring. Of course
on a leaky deathtrap like Mir, they'd be lucky just to get a hard-on
before the obligatory "You're Fucked" klaxons started honking,
announcing the life threatening crisis-of-the-hour.
ObMir: 3 astronauts, one decrepit space station, and a 2-man escape
pod. What do you want to bet that the US and Russians each hid a pistol
somewhere in the station "for emergencies", and that each astronaut made
sure, every minute of every day, that they they knew EXACTLY the
quickest route to the pistol/escape pod?
--
Rev. Syd Midnight - Remove SPAM from my address to reply
"God had some serious quality-control problems."
-- Superior Court Judge Leslie Light
I disagree with Senator McCain. I believe in torture. I believe that Darl, Yarro, BiFF, Anderer, the lawfirm of BSF, and the rest of the foul bunch should be chained naked together, repeatedly dunked in a barrel of ripe chum that's been brewing on the dock for the month of July, and fed to sharks with frikin' laser beams.
--
BMO
Why is the parent a troll, especially when it's true?
A question to the moderator that sank that comment into oblivion:
Do you seriously think that if Linux had no popularity, that Microsoft would throw this much money at India? Sometimes the lack of logic 'round these parts boggles my mind. This _is_ Microsoft's admission that Linux is kicking Microsoft's ass in India.
--
BMO