We need a first wave of these devices ASAP in the hands of the free software community to sort out the capabilities of the device and then create a software base for it that will be useful for its intended purpose.
I'd be happy with seeing ONE of these things, first! Not a single one has ever been made, nor has any company said that they CAN be made. This is all still just back-of-the-napkin stuff.
Could someone please think of something totally overriding (and simply understood) that would turn people who are sceptical onto this project?
1. It's 'skeptical'.
2. I'd be more convinced if this guy can actually produce a single laptop for under $100. All he's done up to this point is shoot his mouth off, and get a company that says that they'll look into it. There's no economic way, short of him paying for all of the laptops himself, for this to work.
Let's see... I live just 3 miles from a major US University, and I don't have any kind of wireless avaiable. Hell, I have exactly (1) choice of broadband. Where are kids in sub-saharan Africa going to get wireless, exactly? How about kids in Bangladesh? The jungles or Uruguay? c'mon... this is just ridiculous.
That's great if I was already an online gamer, but for somebody like me who just wants to play, and doesn't want the hassle of seting up and configuring a server, finding people to play with, etc., it's just too much of a PITA. If I could just plug my PS2 in and play with other grown-ups, that'd be great. Heck, I don't even know what most of these games are like online, and I end up losing my patience too quickly to get into them. Until the game companies figure some way that grown-ups could plug in and play, I know that I'm certainly not doing it.
Sure, that happens. That would happen with a "perm" job, too. The good thing is that as a contractor is that it's very easy to find another job because you don't get branded as a "job hopper". You just say that your contract ended, and there you go.
I don't know about you, but I don't consider a "fun gaming experience" to play against a lot of spoiled 10 year olds who want to do nothing but cheat. Every time I've tried to play *any* game online, I've been sorely disappointed. I'm perfectly happy to play against the computer, where I have at least a *chance* of winning, and I don't have to deal with lots of spoiled little ADD shits.
Not usually. Contractors are generally employed by a contracting company (like Kelly) that take care of all of that. I was a W-2 (regular employee) contractor for more than 8 years. I even got health insurance from my contracting companies.
I couldn't agree more. I was a contractor for 8 years for various big companies, and I couldn't be paid enough to be a permanent employee. As a contractor, I made a LOT more money than the "permanent" employees, I got to dodge most of the beauracratic bullshit, and I got paid overtime if I worked more than 40 hours a week. In fact, I always thought that the "permanent" employees were the suckers. And you're right, the ability to switch jobs without it looking bad on a resume was invaluable. I went from phone jockey to senior DB developer in less than 6 years. No way I could've done that as a "permanent" employee.
Unionize? No way. Not Microsoft employees. They're paid well, and treated even better. Any attempt to unionize would be, I'm sure, met with "You're fired", and they'd be replaced in 10 minutes. It's not like there's a lack of people willing to work at Microsoft, contract or otherwise.
Well, it sounds like "locking up" on a Windows gizmo was better than no gizmo at all, for them. What does that say about Apple if they won't even eat their own dog food?
I could even see a future where we could do away with DNS in the long term as we could access webpages or other information through this network of shared temporary file folders. No need to host your own information on a server, just drop it into your share/temp folder and let others find it via whatever search engine or "torrent host" they use.
I see a future where I don't even need the Net. I'll just remember things, and people will telepathically connect to my brain to share information.
I've seen a few that use other (third party) users to mask both the sender and receiver from one-another.
Oh yeah, and I'll be perfectly anonymous.
Do you have even the foggiest ideas as to what you're talking about?
Microsoft is one of the largest, most valuable, most important organizations on the PLANET. I think that it would take a big team of people to actually keep up with what the entire company is doing. Believe it or not, super-geeks are the only ones that think of MS as a "bad" or "good" company with any kind of "bias". Most people just think of them as a large, important company that has a massive impact on the world economy.
That's why there's lots and lots of hosted Exchange Services out there. That's what we use, and it's fantabulous. We do it because Exchange is very useful, and there's no substitute for it, but not quite $10K or so worth of useful to us.
I bought Civ 4 for about $55. I have a generic 128 MB video card in my game machine, which should be enough for any modern development... especially a not-real time, turn-based game. Civ 4 told me that I needed to buy a card that was Brand X or Brand Y. Those cards run about $150. What a load of shit. Apparently, kids who program commercial software these days know *nothing* about optimization. It's all bloat. Suffice to say, only an idiot will pay $150 for a video card to play one $55 game. The game was returned, and I'm going to be happy with Civ 3.
No WPA support, very little support for 802.11g devices, and a lot of missing things as compared with other modern OSes (a current, working DRI implementation and support for ACPI suspend/resume would both be very nice)..
That's because NetBSD is meant to be a server OS, not a workstation OS.
I couldn't agree more. To even mention "Intelligent Design" or other such nonsense in a scientific discussion gives it credence that it doesn't deserve. "Intelligent Design" should be given the same amount of attention as the theory that the guy standing on the corner of my street has about aliens, slippers, and papayas: none.
The thing is, the business security implications of this are minor at worst, and none at best. 1. This isn't security. This has nothing to do with security. 2. This is a usage issue. Don't label a file as "bad customer", and you don't have to worry about it. 3. If you insist on using bad info to label files, then there's a way to remove it.
I hear that the 2008 Toyota Prius will have a 7' high spoiler. What's up with that?
Oh, sorry... I just figured that we're talking about products that are still a few years down the pipe that haven't been anywhere close to finalized yet.
I don't know about anybody else, but we not only don't evaluate software years before it's released, but we generally wait until the software has been out for at least a year before even looking at it. I don't know what the point is of reviewing a product this early. The only thing that I can figure out is that it's a way to get a few more pageviews.
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We need a first wave of these devices ASAP in the hands of the free software community to sort out the capabilities of the device and then create a software base for it that will be useful for its intended purpose.
I'd be happy with seeing ONE of these things, first! Not a single one has ever been made, nor has any company said that they CAN be made. This is all still just back-of-the-napkin stuff.
Could someone please think of something totally overriding (and simply understood) that would turn people who are sceptical onto this project?
1. It's 'skeptical'.
2. I'd be more convinced if this guy can actually produce a single laptop for under $100. All he's done up to this point is shoot his mouth off, and get a company that says that they'll look into it. There's no economic way, short of him paying for all of the laptops himself, for this to work.
Well, Nigerians obviously can contact us. I'd pay $200 for one of these things, if they actually ever become reality.
and Wifi connection,
Let's see... I live just 3 miles from a major US University, and I don't have any kind of wireless avaiable. Hell, I have exactly (1) choice of broadband. Where are kids in sub-saharan Africa going to get wireless, exactly? How about kids in Bangladesh? The jungles or Uruguay? c'mon... this is just ridiculous.
there are plenty of people who *do* live huge chunks of their social lives through online interactions.
Those people won't live long enough to breed. (Or at least I hope).
That's great if I was already an online gamer, but for somebody like me who just wants to play, and doesn't want the hassle of seting up and configuring a server, finding people to play with, etc., it's just too much of a PITA. If I could just plug my PS2 in and play with other grown-ups, that'd be great. Heck, I don't even know what most of these games are like online, and I end up losing my patience too quickly to get into them. Until the game companies figure some way that grown-ups could plug in and play, I know that I'm certainly not doing it.
Sure, that happens. That would happen with a "perm" job, too. The good thing is that as a contractor is that it's very easy to find another job because you don't get branded as a "job hopper". You just say that your contract ended, and there you go.
I don't know about you, but I don't consider a "fun gaming experience" to play against a lot of spoiled 10 year olds who want to do nothing but cheat. Every time I've tried to play *any* game online, I've been sorely disappointed. I'm perfectly happy to play against the computer, where I have at least a *chance* of winning, and I don't have to deal with lots of spoiled little ADD shits.
Not usually. Contractors are generally employed by a contracting company (like Kelly) that take care of all of that. I was a W-2 (regular employee) contractor for more than 8 years. I even got health insurance from my contracting companies.
I hate to agree with you, but as a late 1990's IBM "yellow badge", we always felt bad for the "permanent" employees.
I couldn't agree more. I was a contractor for 8 years for various big companies, and I couldn't be paid enough to be a permanent employee. As a contractor, I made a LOT more money than the "permanent" employees, I got to dodge most of the beauracratic bullshit, and I got paid overtime if I worked more than 40 hours a week. In fact, I always thought that the "permanent" employees were the suckers. And you're right, the ability to switch jobs without it looking bad on a resume was invaluable. I went from phone jockey to senior DB developer in less than 6 years. No way I could've done that as a "permanent" employee.
Unionize? No way. Not Microsoft employees. They're paid well, and treated even better. Any attempt to unionize would be, I'm sure, met with "You're fired", and they'd be replaced in 10 minutes. It's not like there's a lack of people willing to work at Microsoft, contract or otherwise.
Dangerwise, no. I don't think any Federal agents ever had to face off with any Columbian coderunners in some remote jungle on the ass end of the world
Those same Federal Agents created the danger themselves by making 100% safe drugs like pot illegal. The Drug War is completely bogus and immoral.
Well, it sounds like "locking up" on a Windows gizmo was better than no gizmo at all, for them. What does that say about Apple if they won't even eat their own dog food?
Why would you think that this is NOT just advertising?
I could even see a future where we could do away with DNS in the long term as we could access webpages or other information through this network of shared temporary file folders. No need to host your own information on a server, just drop it into your share/temp folder and let others find it via whatever search engine or "torrent host" they use.
I see a future where I don't even need the Net. I'll just remember things, and people will telepathically connect to my brain to share information.
I've seen a few that use other (third party) users to mask both the sender and receiver from one-another.
Oh yeah, and I'll be perfectly anonymous.
Do you have even the foggiest ideas as to what you're talking about?
I'd love to compare what processes are running on my hobby Linux box, but I have no idea how to do it!
Microsoft is one of the largest, most valuable, most important organizations on the PLANET. I think that it would take a big team of people to actually keep up with what the entire company is doing. Believe it or not, super-geeks are the only ones that think of MS as a "bad" or "good" company with any kind of "bias". Most people just think of them as a large, important company that has a massive impact on the world economy.
That's why there's lots and lots of hosted Exchange Services out there. That's what we use, and it's fantabulous. We do it because Exchange is very useful, and there's no substitute for it, but not quite $10K or so worth of useful to us.
I bought Civ 4 for about $55. I have a generic 128 MB video card in my game machine, which should be enough for any modern development... especially a not-real time, turn-based game. Civ 4 told me that I needed to buy a card that was Brand X or Brand Y. Those cards run about $150. What a load of shit. Apparently, kids who program commercial software these days know *nothing* about optimization. It's all bloat. Suffice to say, only an idiot will pay $150 for a video card to play one $55 game. The game was returned, and I'm going to be happy with Civ 3.
No WPA support, very little support for 802.11g devices, and a lot of missing things as compared with other modern OSes (a current, working DRI implementation and support for ACPI suspend/resume would both be very nice)..
That's because NetBSD is meant to be a server OS, not a workstation OS.
Are you an astroturfer?
No, I have never laid Astroturf® in my life. I don't think that I've ever seen Astoturf® close-up, actually. But thanks for asking!
I couldn't agree more. To even mention "Intelligent Design" or other such nonsense in a scientific discussion gives it credence that it doesn't deserve. "Intelligent Design" should be given the same amount of attention as the theory that the guy standing on the corner of my street has about aliens, slippers, and papayas: none.
The thing is, the business security implications of this are minor at worst, and none at best. 1. This isn't security. This has nothing to do with security. 2. This is a usage issue. Don't label a file as "bad customer", and you don't have to worry about it. 3. If you insist on using bad info to label files, then there's a way to remove it.
I hear that the 2008 Toyota Prius will have a 7' high spoiler. What's up with that?
Oh, sorry... I just figured that we're talking about products that are still a few years down the pipe that haven't been anywhere close to finalized yet.
I don't know about anybody else, but we not only don't evaluate software years before it's released, but we generally wait until the software has been out for at least a year before even looking at it. I don't know what the point is of reviewing a product this early. The only thing that I can figure out is that it's a way to get a few more pageviews.