Yes, as a matter of fact, I would say that it was. What are the odds of two people in the same year comming up with a truly unique idea. A far more likely story is that all the components including a need and economic resource, to make the telephone an enevitable invention. And, yes an obvious one.
Actuall it does. I doubt anyone, when faced with someone thinking they are Jesus, would think "Wow, what a unique idea!". The idea is obvious. Not true, but obvious. Besides the fact that you (currently) cannot patent the idea that you are Jesus.
As for being a high standard. Yes. It probably is. I certainly would be open to debate about how many people independently coming up with an idea was necessary to consider it obvious. But you must keep in mind that the premise of "IP" is that the person "ownes" it because he created it. By allowing one person to "own" an idea that another person created, just because he was first, flies in the face of the entire moral/ethical basis of "IP".
To use the old "steal a loaf of bread because your starving" analogy...Is it ok to steal a loaf of bread just because you made a loaf just like it a year earlier?
While your listing the things that succeded due to internet freedom, don't forget about the things that failed because of ISP/Telco trickery.
*Video confencing still has not taken off. Not because of general bandwidth limitations, but because of upload caps.
*Telecommuting is limited due to blocks, throttleing, or "accidental" outages on ports necessary for telecommuters. (Those of us that do telecommute often pay dramatically more to not have artifical barriers.)
I'm sure others could add to the list. It is the video confrencing that pisses me off. The upload speeds are always so much lower than the download speeds in just about every package that you need a package with way more download speed than necessary just to get sub par upload speeds.
I telecommute, and work on projects that very often require team coding. As in two people sitting together looking at the same screen. Screen sharing works, and we are very productive, but sometimes it would be a whole lot easier if I could see the other coders finger pointing at the screen, or piece of paper.
And, before the trolls come out and tell me I should just move closer to my work, and go into the office, keep in mind. My clients and I are saving money, reducing infrastucture costs, saving air quality, while at the same time improving my quality of life as well as that of my family. I think it is good for me, my son, and society that I get to keep my child home with me most of the time instead of shipping him off to spend more time with a daycare provider than he does with his family. I also have no desire to move myself and my family next to an industrial complex.
I think the standard of "obvious" should be that if two different people independantly come up with the same idea, then obviously the idea was "obvious".
But if you go around saying that the white cat is actually white, and up is actually up, your firm is not going to trust you to tow the line when the chips are down.
This is not suprising. The primary purpose of a warrent isn't for the person being served. It is to prevent casual civil rights violations by the police. Most of us have seen police commit crimes. Usually minor ones like taking a bribe of free food or coffee in a restaurant. The warrent is so that the police won't take that kind of casual attitude about entering your home.
The handing over a warrent, I would suspect, is more for the investigation of businesses, and other less violent crimes. In those cases, handing over the warrent can prevent escalation.
I know if someone enters my home without knocking, and waiting for a response, my first reaction would be to hit them in the head with something heavy, and preferably sharp. Luckily, I have no history of any illegal activity beyond a couple of speeding tickets. This makes it exteamly unlikely that the police would bust my door down. I'm just glad that if they do, they will have to have had a third party verify their intent BEFORE they try.
I don't disagree with your conclusion about the troll, but your reasoning is flawed. The 'You haven't done X, so you can't know what your talking about' argument is flawed at best. Here are some other examples of that argument that might point out the flaw:
You can't know if a crime is being commiting unless you've been to a police acadamy.
You can't know your legal rights unless you hava a law degree.
You can't know how to raise a chile unless you are a parent.
You can't understand piracy unless your a *IAA member.
You can't judge resonable cost unless you are the manufacturer of that product.
The poster is so far off base, that you do not need to use 'tricky' logic to dispute it.
"From what I have seen, generally the security guards who are hired to guard companies are peaceful, qualified individuals. However, the security guards hired to guard retail stores, concerts, and other places where they deal with the general public, are usually poorly trained and either a) looking for a job and don't care what it is, or b) applied because they want a reason to get physical with someone."
This is what I have seen.
Re:You 'solution' like so many others...
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Obesity Contagious?
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Ok, I followed your link, and while I can't claim to have hit every link, I went through 10 or 15 links, and found only one project that has actually been built. It had photos of new slum housing that is common now in California. It had no photos of the retail or work spaces that seems to be a core concept to the "New Urbanists". You may be happier and consider building slums to be "thinking", but many of us don't.
I had heard of the "New Urbanists" before, and found some of the ideas to be anything but thinking. Things like considering strangers wandering through your neighborhood for "chance encounters" to be a good thing. To be fair, I went to your link. It seems to just be ideas with no real meat to it. Honestly (I'll try to keep an open mind, but) the "New Urbanists" seem to be a bunch of developers that have figured out a way to get people to pay the same price for crappy slum homes as they would for nice homes.
Add to that the fact that many of the projects appear to be "artist lofts", and we are back to the "it works for a few, but is unsustainable for the masses".
Hear hear...I had Sea-Monkies that lasted for 3 years, until they were forgotten on a sunny windowsill, and killed. We did have a problem for a while where we had one big monkey that was agressivly killing the smaller ones. In the end though it was our own negligence that did them in.
As a matter of fact, until you get to the point of fasting, it does not always work. Simply reducing the quantity of food will cause many peoples metabolism to slow down. This in turn means they must eat even less food. This is a vicous circle that is extreamly unhealthy. While, I can believe that there is a small portion of the population that is fat just because they eat too much, I'm not buying that it is a primary cause of being fat. I know that if I want to lose weight, I INCREASE my food intake. I just switch to a high protein, high fat, low sugar diet, and the weight just flies off. Now, I know that I am on the far side the the curve when it comes to sugar/fat tolorences, but based off of "common knowledge", I would have to be some kind of genetic anomally. I'm doubting that I am really that special.
Funny, I have known several people that simply washed out of the military because no matter how hard they were on them, they simply could not drop to the required weight.
I feel sorry for all the poor saps that think "nothing worth achieving is ever easy". I have found that there a many things in life that are both worth while, AND easy. Your comment is pure dogma.
"Participants were asked questions about how they achieved their weight loss, and the researchers who maintain the NWCR found that:
89 percent changed their diets and increased physical activity (10 percent used diet modification only and one percent used activity only)."
And what percent of those people attempted to loose weight in by what methods. If only 2 percent of the people interviewed tried to use diet modification alone, then it would show that exercise had very little to do with weight loss. Then add on top of that the fact that high sugar diets are what have been in vogue for the last few decades, it is amazing that the numbers are even as high as they are.
http://www.fda.gov/diabetes/food.html Shows the food pyramid that recommends a diet of primarily sugar. Don't think the base of the pyramid isn't sugar.
The problem is that eat well and exercise to get skinny has been pretty well debunked by huge portions of the population. If it was really that easy, most people would be skinny. What we see happen over and over again is that people who are already skinny exercise, and claim it is the exercies. People who are fat exercise, and the people who are skinny claim they don't exercise enough. The same happens for what is currently considered "healthy" eating.
If the vast majority of people didn't have personal experience (either with their own attempt at weightloss, or people they know) disproving the "eat well and exercise" myth, you might see different mod results. I have had this debate with people in person many times, and have frequently been willing to put my money where my mouth is. I have frequently offered bets ranging from $500 to $5000 to "eat well and exercise" folks that I can easily lose 20 pounds in 2 months eat primarily Jack-in-the-Box Ultimate Cheesburgers, and doing no extra exercise. None have been willing to put their money where their mouth is. (I don't put you the money-mouth category, as you need to be local to monitor that kind of a bet)
Your solution, like so many others is specifically reliant on you being the only one that does it. I I was the only person in the country that threw garbage out my car window, the country would be a fairly pristine place. If I was the only person burning garbage in my back yard, there would be no problem. If I was the only one driving and using electricity, our air would be clean. The problem is that once these things become common, they start to break down. Most parts of the US (and I suspect most 1st world countries) could not handle the influx of all commuters moving to within walking distance of their work. I have been to many client sites that did not have ANY housing withing walking distance, much less enough to handle their employee load.
If your suggestion is that we should just compleatly restructure our social/economic system to handle living and working within walking distance of each other, you might want to start someplace more realistic than tell people "just move closer". Beside, I personlly like the fact that I don't have to sell my home and move just because I changed jobs.
Re:Obesity comes from a simple condition...
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Obesity Contagious?
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So by rare, you mean extreamly common? Of all the thin and fat people I have known, actually working out was slightly more common for fat people. While I am inclined to believe that a virus could be one factor, genetics makes up a lot of it too. I'm not talking about just the "my parents were fat/thin, so I am" line of thought either. Of course your parents size would increase your likely hood to be fat/thin. It would be absurd to think that genetics plays a significant roll in a persons height, and not width.
More specifically though, genetics plays a roll in what your body needs to stay healthy. My wife can eat whatever she wants, and will not gain or loose an ounce, but put her on a treadmill for 3 days, and there is a noticible difference in her physique. She will gain muscle slowly, and loose fat fast.
Me on the otherhand, if I work out, I put on muscle at an amazing rate. Unfortunaly, I don't loose a bit of fat in the process. This means that per our current definition of "obease", I become more obease the more I work out. My weight and width incrase, while my height stays the same. I even look worse, although I certainly gain stamina and strength.
I can drop fat quite quickly though. I just have to cut out all sugars, and incrase my fat intake. A low sugar (yes carbohydrates ARE sugar) high fat diet has dramatic results in loosing fat from my body. Of course in a perfect world I would eat a 90% carnivourse diet, and work out so that I would be muscular and trim, but we don't live in a perfect world. To eat a carnivorous diet in the US requires extream dedication, and a good deal of money. Having the government and schools convincing the poplulous that high sugar diets are healthy doesn't help.
Re:Securing Open Source Code
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Mitnick on OSS
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"As of now, there's really no penalty with selling code that isn't secure."
There really isn't a penalty for making insecure anything. Unless you are selling to the military, or the banking industry, you can be as insecure as you want. Really, homes have never been secure, yet they keep building them. I've seen padlocks (which by their very nature are security devices) that can be opened with a hammer.
Now, I understand if your selling to the banking industry or military, having greater liability, but if someone is selling home accounting software, should they really have greater liablity than the company that sells home safes?
5) You want to KNOW that your Database will be supported by a global company in the future. Remember, OS2 was only cancelled this year, and then it was licensed to another company for further support. OSS is great, and there is great value in being able to hire programmers to fix and upgrade your applications, but there is also a great deal of value in having a company with IBMs track record totally committed to your data store.
"The HDL has to have extremely low power consumption (to enable, among other things, a human-power source). That excludes the baby CRTs this poster found."
No, it doesn't, but since you made the challenge, to avoid argument, here is a $10 LCD display that far exceeds the spec necessary for a C-64 Laptop. This should reduce the cost of the unit by about $30.
"It is also extremely, dangerously wrong to assert that this will be proprietary. The design is wedded to open source designs; the demo units are running a commercial (redhat) Linux distro. This is less, it is not at all, a way of bashing this vendor or that. Rather, the idea is this. Imagine the outcome of million laptops. Many, frankly, perhaps even most, will be underused (but never underestimate the hunger of the 'rest of the world' to join 'our world' via the Internet). Some modest number will really, truly have transformative educational experiences, by learning WITH computers. Another number, larger? smaller? will learn ABOUT computers, and will themselves join/. world, as enterpreneurs."
Good point. The hardware will be a completely new design that will require recompiling of all the software fore it. It will not necessarally be "propriatary". Having a new platform that will require recompiling of all software is still inferior to a proven architecture that has thousands of commercial and public domain applications.
As for the internet, taking the stance that a computer doesn't have value unless it is on the internet is absurd. We did very well with computers prior to the internet. I'm glad we have it now, but I was very happy before we had it also.
"AND: the screen is expected to be sunlight readable, both to cut power consumption AND to enable the target children to be able to see vivid images in areas where daylight is the only reliable light source."
What? People have been using LCD's in both reflective and backlite for a very long time. This is not an issue. Why "vivid images"? If the people of a country are going to be so snobby that bw monitors and text/low res graphics just arn't good enough for them, then maybe they shouldn't have computers GIVEN to them. Many of us right here in the first world USA were very happy to have C-64s hooked up to black and white tvs. But apparently what we were very happy paying over a thousand dollars for is just not good enough for these people to have GIVEN to them for free?!?!?
"The poster also didn't note that: the HDL has to be a nearly sealed, highly rugged unit, capable of localization (e.g. keyboard replacement for local scripts). O, and it has to have USB ports and WiFi and..."
Nearly sealed and highly rugged? Not an issue. Simple and cheap. I can drop the c-64 currently for sale off the roof, and it will function just fine. Sealing it is simple.
USB...I just call BS. Here in the US, we did just fine without USB for decades. It is definitly NOT an necessity. It is a luxary.
Localization....Wrong. Virtually every language on the planet has can be written in using romanized character sets. It may not be what they are used to, but when we started using computers we had to learn the metric system, so again, why is it that what we were happy to have would be beneath these people?
WiFi...Are you joking? They don't have any reliable light except the sun, and you expect them to have WiFi hotspots running? That is rediculous. Besides, as stated before, we were very happy for a very long time with networkless computers. What makes it so necessary for them to have it?
"Now, as the poster observes, you can kluge something together for about the same price sans these attributes. That's not the point."
So, given that we would use a $10 LCD instead of a $40 TV, you can "klude" together something for ~70% of the price. To
And there is the fallacy of the $100 computer. A whole lot of us were very happy using C-64s on little black and white CRTs. People have become spoiled with our fancy smancy vga monitors and whatnot, but a little black and white TV is dramatically better than nothing. We are talking about extreamly poor people here. black and white is fine. As for networking and keyboards. While I will give you the keyboard comment. I see them regularly for less than $5. Network. No. There is absolutly no need for it. It's great living here where it is common and cheap, but thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of homes ran for a very long time, and very well with C-64s that hand no networking. You are again trying to apply our very fancy modern computers to true entry level computers users.
As for the portability issue. First, laptops are just now becoming mainstream in the U.S., why would you expect a developing country to jump right of at the same level? You have obviously never seen the early portables the we here in the US drooled over when portables first became available.
Second, The point isn't that I think these people should go online and purchase in single quantities from US retail all the parts to put C-64 protables together as I have outlined. The point is that if I can do it in 15 minutes at single quantity retail prices, purchased as seperate products, even an incompetent engineer could put the core components together in a single much smaller package purchased at large quantity wholesale pricing, at a dramatically lower price. I would guess that it would be in the $50-$60 price range.
Now, a cheap 320x200 black and white lcd would certainly sprouce up this already excellent system by dramatically lowering how much cranking you would have to do for each minute of computing time, but that is just getting greedy.
Now if I can find all of the components to put together a $100 laptop in 15 minutes, I'm sure someone smarter than me could do it better. This is $100 with a huge amount of waste. Extra light, built in radio, siren, and compass. Not to mention the cost that was added for retail profit, and the cost of putting together three seperate packages.
Some may whine that 'It's only an 8-bit computer' or 'It's already outdated'. Well, the $100 laptops that are being proposed are propriotary machines that are also very outdated today. With a C-64 based laptop, at least the end users would have access to actual software. I think these people would be perfectly happy having the standard of living we had in the 80's, and that is what the C-64 would bring.
What this tells me is that there are some people out there that are going to try to make a lot of money by asking for dontation that are way out of line for what they are providing.
Because to properly control AIDS, much of our social structure would need to change. Some changes are:
*Acceptance that people are not going to stop having sex
*People are willing to risk death for sex
*Acceptance that when we hit puberty, we are adults, and will start having sex
*Honest prostitution would need to be legal and acceptable
*Dishonest prostitution (currently the most common dating ritual) would need to be shunned
*The truly stupid would need to be rounded up and incarcerated for their own and our protection. I don't mean the generally stupid, or those that disagree with me. I mean people like my neighbor that thinks her cats don't need to be fixed because it is their responsibility not to get pregnant. If she is to stupid to understand what a cat is, she certainly is not going to be convinced that she needs condoms.
*Acceptance that people don't choose sexual partners due to their intellegence
*Acceptance that people will have sex with other people that they don't like
*Acceptance that in fact when desperate enough, much of the poplulation will have sex with people they don't find attractive
*Acceptance that the difference between men and womens sexual behaviours is more due to social pressures than biological ones
I'm sure that there are many others, but these prevent education from being effective alone. We live in a world of self denial, and I don't see that changing soon.
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to). I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career."
What exactly does this have to do with being female?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, as a matter of fact, I would say that it was. What are the odds of two people in the same year comming up with a truly unique idea. A far more likely story is that all the components including a need and economic resource, to make the telephone an enevitable invention. And, yes an obvious one.
Actuall it does. I doubt anyone, when faced with someone thinking they are Jesus, would think "Wow, what a unique idea!". The idea is obvious. Not true, but obvious. Besides the fact that you (currently) cannot patent the idea that you are Jesus.
As for being a high standard. Yes. It probably is. I certainly would be open to debate about how many people independently coming up with an idea was necessary to consider it obvious. But you must keep in mind that the premise of "IP" is that the person "ownes" it because he created it. By allowing one person to "own" an idea that another person created, just because he was first, flies in the face of the entire moral/ethical basis of "IP".
To use the old "steal a loaf of bread because your starving" analogy...Is it ok to steal a loaf of bread just because you made a loaf just like it a year earlier?
While your listing the things that succeded due to internet freedom, don't forget about the things that failed because of ISP/Telco trickery.
*Video confencing still has not taken off. Not because of general bandwidth limitations, but because of upload caps.
*Telecommuting is limited due to blocks, throttleing, or "accidental" outages on ports necessary for telecommuters. (Those of us that do telecommute often pay dramatically more to not have artifical barriers.)
I'm sure others could add to the list. It is the video confrencing that pisses me off. The upload speeds are always so much lower than the download speeds in just about every package that you need a package with way more download speed than necessary just to get sub par upload speeds.
I telecommute, and work on projects that very often require team coding. As in two people sitting together looking at the same screen. Screen sharing works, and we are very productive, but sometimes it would be a whole lot easier if I could see the other coders finger pointing at the screen, or piece of paper.
And, before the trolls come out and tell me I should just move closer to my work, and go into the office, keep in mind. My clients and I are saving money, reducing infrastucture costs, saving air quality, while at the same time improving my quality of life as well as that of my family. I think it is good for me, my son, and society that I get to keep my child home with me most of the time instead of shipping him off to spend more time with a daycare provider than he does with his family. I also have no desire to move myself and my family next to an industrial complex.
I think the standard of "obvious" should be that if two different people independantly come up with the same idea, then obviously the idea was "obvious".
Yeah, and rip out that stereo! And stop bringing passangers!
Maybe they had a complete set of MAME roms. That should account for most of the price stated, as they will count each game at about $20,000 retail.
But if you go around saying that the white cat is actually white, and up is actually up, your firm is not going to trust you to tow the line when the chips are down.
This is not suprising. The primary purpose of a warrent isn't for the person being served. It is to prevent casual civil rights violations by the police. Most of us have seen police commit crimes. Usually minor ones like taking a bribe of free food or coffee in a restaurant. The warrent is so that the police won't take that kind of casual attitude about entering your home.
The handing over a warrent, I would suspect, is more for the investigation of businesses, and other less violent crimes. In those cases, handing over the warrent can prevent escalation.
I know if someone enters my home without knocking, and waiting for a response, my first reaction would be to hit them in the head with something heavy, and preferably sharp. Luckily, I have no history of any illegal activity beyond a couple of speeding tickets. This makes it exteamly unlikely that the police would bust my door down. I'm just glad that if they do, they will have to have had a third party verify their intent BEFORE they try.
I don't disagree with your conclusion about the troll, but your reasoning is flawed. The 'You haven't done X, so you can't know what your talking about' argument is flawed at best. Here are some other examples of that argument that might point out the flaw:
You can't know if a crime is being commiting unless you've been to a police acadamy.
You can't know your legal rights unless you hava a law degree.
You can't know how to raise a chile unless you are a parent.
You can't understand piracy unless your a *IAA member.
You can't judge resonable cost unless you are the manufacturer of that product.
The poster is so far off base, that you do not need to use 'tricky' logic to dispute it.
"From what I have seen, generally the security guards who are hired to guard companies are peaceful, qualified individuals. However, the security guards hired to guard retail stores, concerts, and other places where they deal with the general public, are usually poorly trained and either a) looking for a job and don't care what it is, or b) applied because they want a reason to get physical with someone." This is what I have seen.
Ok, I followed your link, and while I can't claim to have hit every link, I went through 10 or 15 links, and found only one project that has actually been built. It had photos of new slum housing that is common now in California. It had no photos of the retail or work spaces that seems to be a core concept to the "New Urbanists". You may be happier and consider building slums to be "thinking", but many of us don't.
I had heard of the "New Urbanists" before, and found some of the ideas to be anything but thinking. Things like considering strangers wandering through your neighborhood for "chance encounters" to be a good thing. To be fair, I went to your link. It seems to just be ideas with no real meat to it. Honestly (I'll try to keep an open mind, but) the "New Urbanists" seem to be a bunch of developers that have figured out a way to get people to pay the same price for crappy slum homes as they would for nice homes.
Add to that the fact that many of the projects appear to be "artist lofts", and we are back to the "it works for a few, but is unsustainable for the masses".
Hear hear...I had Sea-Monkies that lasted for 3 years, until they were forgotten on a sunny windowsill, and killed. We did have a problem for a while where we had one big monkey that was agressivly killing the smaller ones. In the end though it was our own negligence that did them in.
As a matter of fact, until you get to the point of fasting, it does not always work. Simply reducing the quantity of food will cause many peoples metabolism to slow down. This in turn means they must eat even less food. This is a vicous circle that is extreamly unhealthy. While, I can believe that there is a small portion of the population that is fat just because they eat too much, I'm not buying that it is a primary cause of being fat. I know that if I want to lose weight, I INCREASE my food intake. I just switch to a high protein, high fat, low sugar diet, and the weight just flies off. Now, I know that I am on the far side the the curve when it comes to sugar/fat tolorences, but based off of "common knowledge", I would have to be some kind of genetic anomally. I'm doubting that I am really that special.
Funny, I have known several people that simply washed out of the military because no matter how hard they were on them, they simply could not drop to the required weight.
I feel sorry for all the poor saps that think "nothing worth achieving is ever easy". I have found that there a many things in life that are both worth while, AND easy. Your comment is pure dogma.
"Participants were asked questions about how they achieved their weight loss, and the researchers who maintain the NWCR found that: 89 percent changed their diets and increased physical activity (10 percent used diet modification only and one percent used activity only)."
And what percent of those people attempted to loose weight in by what methods. If only 2 percent of the people interviewed tried to use diet modification alone, then it would show that exercise had very little to do with weight loss. Then add on top of that the fact that high sugar diets are what have been in vogue for the last few decades, it is amazing that the numbers are even as high as they are.
http://www.fda.gov/diabetes/food.html Shows the food pyramid that recommends a diet of primarily sugar. Don't think the base of the pyramid isn't sugar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
The problem is that eat well and exercise to get skinny has been pretty well debunked by huge portions of the population. If it was really that easy, most people would be skinny. What we see happen over and over again is that people who are already skinny exercise, and claim it is the exercies. People who are fat exercise, and the people who are skinny claim they don't exercise enough. The same happens for what is currently considered "healthy" eating.
If the vast majority of people didn't have personal experience (either with their own attempt at weightloss, or people they know) disproving the "eat well and exercise" myth, you might see different mod results. I have had this debate with people in person many times, and have frequently been willing to put my money where my mouth is. I have frequently offered bets ranging from $500 to $5000 to "eat well and exercise" folks that I can easily lose 20 pounds in 2 months eat primarily Jack-in-the-Box Ultimate Cheesburgers, and doing no extra exercise. None have been willing to put their money where their mouth is. (I don't put you the money-mouth category, as you need to be local to monitor that kind of a bet)
Your solution, like so many others is specifically reliant on you being the only one that does it. I I was the only person in the country that threw garbage out my car window, the country would be a fairly pristine place. If I was the only person burning garbage in my back yard, there would be no problem. If I was the only one driving and using electricity, our air would be clean. The problem is that once these things become common, they start to break down. Most parts of the US (and I suspect most 1st world countries) could not handle the influx of all commuters moving to within walking distance of their work. I have been to many client sites that did not have ANY housing withing walking distance, much less enough to handle their employee load.
If your suggestion is that we should just compleatly restructure our social/economic system to handle living and working within walking distance of each other, you might want to start someplace more realistic than tell people "just move closer". Beside, I personlly like the fact that I don't have to sell my home and move just because I changed jobs.
So by rare, you mean extreamly common? Of all the thin and fat people I have known, actually working out was slightly more common for fat people. While I am inclined to believe that a virus could be one factor, genetics makes up a lot of it too. I'm not talking about just the "my parents were fat/thin, so I am" line of thought either. Of course your parents size would increase your likely hood to be fat/thin. It would be absurd to think that genetics plays a significant roll in a persons height, and not width.
More specifically though, genetics plays a roll in what your body needs to stay healthy. My wife can eat whatever she wants, and will not gain or loose an ounce, but put her on a treadmill for 3 days, and there is a noticible difference in her physique. She will gain muscle slowly, and loose fat fast.
Me on the otherhand, if I work out, I put on muscle at an amazing rate. Unfortunaly, I don't loose a bit of fat in the process. This means that per our current definition of "obease", I become more obease the more I work out. My weight and width incrase, while my height stays the same. I even look worse, although I certainly gain stamina and strength.
I can drop fat quite quickly though. I just have to cut out all sugars, and incrase my fat intake. A low sugar (yes carbohydrates ARE sugar) high fat diet has dramatic results in loosing fat from my body. Of course in a perfect world I would eat a 90% carnivourse diet, and work out so that I would be muscular and trim, but we don't live in a perfect world. To eat a carnivorous diet in the US requires extream dedication, and a good deal of money. Having the government and schools convincing the poplulous that high sugar diets are healthy doesn't help.
"As of now, there's really no penalty with selling code that isn't secure."
There really isn't a penalty for making insecure anything. Unless you are selling to the military, or the banking industry, you can be as insecure as you want. Really, homes have never been secure, yet they keep building them. I've seen padlocks (which by their very nature are security devices) that can be opened with a hammer.
Now, I understand if your selling to the banking industry or military, having greater liability, but if someone is selling home accounting software, should they really have greater liablity than the company that sells home safes?
5) You want to KNOW that your Database will be supported by a global company in the future. Remember, OS2 was only cancelled this year, and then it was licensed to another company for further support. OSS is great, and there is great value in being able to hire programmers to fix and upgrade your applications, but there is also a great deal of value in having a company with IBMs track record totally committed to your data store.
"The HDL has to have extremely low power consumption (to enable, among other things, a human-power source). That excludes the baby CRTs this poster found."
/. world, as enterpreneurs."
..."
No, it doesn't, but since you made the challenge, to avoid argument, here is a $10 LCD display that far exceeds the spec necessary for a C-64 Laptop. This should reduce the cost of the unit by about $30.
"It is also extremely, dangerously wrong to assert that this will be proprietary. The design is wedded to open source designs; the demo units are running a commercial (redhat) Linux distro. This is less, it is not at all, a way of bashing this vendor or that. Rather, the idea is this. Imagine the outcome of million laptops. Many, frankly, perhaps even most, will be underused (but never underestimate the hunger of the 'rest of the world' to join 'our world' via the Internet). Some modest number will really, truly have transformative educational experiences, by learning WITH computers. Another number, larger? smaller? will learn ABOUT computers, and will themselves join
Good point. The hardware will be a completely new design that will require recompiling of all the software fore it. It will not necessarally be "propriatary". Having a new platform that will require recompiling of all software is still inferior to a proven architecture that has thousands of commercial and public domain applications.
As for the internet, taking the stance that a computer doesn't have value unless it is on the internet is absurd. We did very well with computers prior to the internet. I'm glad we have it now, but I was very happy before we had it also.
"AND: the screen is expected to be sunlight readable, both to cut power consumption AND to enable the target children to be able to see vivid images in areas where daylight is the only reliable light source."
What? People have been using LCD's in both reflective and backlite for a very long time. This is not an issue. Why "vivid images"? If the people of a country are going to be so snobby that bw monitors and text/low res graphics just arn't good enough for them, then maybe they shouldn't have computers GIVEN to them. Many of us right here in the first world USA were very happy to have C-64s hooked up to black and white tvs. But apparently what we were very happy paying over a thousand dollars for is just not good enough for these people to have GIVEN to them for free?!?!?
"The poster also didn't note that: the HDL has to be a nearly sealed, highly rugged unit, capable of localization (e.g. keyboard replacement for local scripts). O, and it has to have USB ports and WiFi and
Nearly sealed and highly rugged? Not an issue. Simple and cheap. I can drop the c-64 currently for sale off the roof, and it will function just fine. Sealing it is simple.
USB...I just call BS. Here in the US, we did just fine without USB for decades. It is definitly NOT an necessity. It is a luxary.
Localization....Wrong. Virtually every language on the planet has can be written in using romanized character sets. It may not be what they are used to, but when we started using computers we had to learn the metric system, so again, why is it that what we were happy to have would be beneath these people?
WiFi...Are you joking? They don't have any reliable light except the sun, and you expect them to have WiFi hotspots running? That is rediculous. Besides, as stated before, we were very happy for a very long time with networkless computers. What makes it so necessary for them to have it?
"Now, as the poster observes, you can kluge something together for about the same price sans these attributes. That's not the point."
So, given that we would use a $10 LCD instead of a $40 TV, you can "klude" together something for ~70% of the price. To
And there is the fallacy of the $100 computer. A whole lot of us were very happy using C-64s on little black and white CRTs. People have become spoiled with our fancy smancy vga monitors and whatnot, but a little black and white TV is dramatically better than nothing. We are talking about extreamly poor people here. black and white is fine. As for networking and keyboards. While I will give you the keyboard comment. I see them regularly for less than $5. Network. No. There is absolutly no need for it. It's great living here where it is common and cheap, but thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of homes ran for a very long time, and very well with C-64s that hand no networking. You are again trying to apply our very fancy modern computers to true entry level computers users.
As for the portability issue. First, laptops are just now becoming mainstream in the U.S., why would you expect a developing country to jump right of at the same level? You have obviously never seen the early portables the we here in the US drooled over when portables first became available.
Second, The point isn't that I think these people should go online and purchase in single quantities from US retail all the parts to put C-64 protables together as I have outlined. The point is that if I can do it in 15 minutes at single quantity retail prices, purchased as seperate products, even an incompetent engineer could put the core components together in a single much smaller package purchased at large quantity wholesale pricing, at a dramatically lower price. I would guess that it would be in the $50-$60 price range.
Now, a cheap 320x200 black and white lcd would certainly sprouce up this already excellent system by dramatically lowering how much cranking you would have to do for each minute of computing time, but that is just getting greedy.
Oooooo....a $100 laptop!!! Big deal. Here is everything you need to put together a perfectly capable $100 laptop today.
Battary Powered Monitor (Item# E21591) = $33.12
6v Battary powerd Computer that has a HUGE library of educational/business/entertainment software = $24.99
Hand crank generator for charging the battaries = $39.95
Total = $98.06
Now if I can find all of the components to put together a $100 laptop in 15 minutes, I'm sure someone smarter than me could do it better. This is $100 with a huge amount of waste. Extra light, built in radio, siren, and compass. Not to mention the cost that was added for retail profit, and the cost of putting together three seperate packages.
Some may whine that 'It's only an 8-bit computer' or 'It's already outdated'. Well, the $100 laptops that are being proposed are propriotary machines that are also very outdated today. With a C-64 based laptop, at least the end users would have access to actual software. I think these people would be perfectly happy having the standard of living we had in the 80's, and that is what the C-64 would bring.
What this tells me is that there are some people out there that are going to try to make a lot of money by asking for dontation that are way out of line for what they are providing.
In just about every case, the people who have money do get better educations.
Because to properly control AIDS, much of our social structure would need to change. Some changes are:
*Acceptance that people are not going to stop having sex
*People are willing to risk death for sex
*Acceptance that when we hit puberty, we are adults, and will start having sex
*Honest prostitution would need to be legal and acceptable
*Dishonest prostitution (currently the most common dating ritual) would need to be shunned
*The truly stupid would need to be rounded up and incarcerated for their own and our protection. I don't mean the generally stupid, or those that disagree with me. I mean people like my neighbor that thinks her cats don't need to be fixed because it is their responsibility not to get pregnant. If she is to stupid to understand what a cat is, she certainly is not going to be convinced that she needs condoms.
*Acceptance that people don't choose sexual partners due to their intellegence
*Acceptance that people will have sex with other people that they don't like
*Acceptance that in fact when desperate enough, much of the poplulation will have sex with people they don't find attractive
*Acceptance that the difference between men and womens sexual behaviours is more due to social pressures than biological ones
I'm sure that there are many others, but these prevent education from being effective alone. We live in a world of self denial, and I don't see that changing soon.
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to). I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career."
What exactly does this have to do with being female?