There are things we can do right now to improve the lives of people in Africa that don't involve Mesh networks. Things like investing in their infrastructure. Even in some of the richest countries the roads are predominantly dirt. By doing this, we'll improve health, increase access to education, and allow more people to interact more easily. If we put the money we're spending on these "miracle laptops" into building roads and water systems, I'm almost certain we'll see more results and it would magnify the impact of these machines.
Then why print them out? Maybe it's the technophile in me, but I abhor taking something that's perfectly good in its digital form, has all the advantages of existing digitally, and then using perfectly good trees because you need something "real." If digital stuff isn't real, what do I spend all day doing? Making things that don't exist?
I can't justify having a printer just for digital photos, especially considering
1) I can order prints online, either within iPhoto or from another service
2) I have a gallery that I can host images on and share with friends and family
3) I can go print out a photo at any number of locations using their printer, if I really, desperately need a representative of my image in petrochemicals on dead trees
4) Ink cartridges for the damn things are more expensive than the printer itself, are dried out before I use them, and don't preserve well (though this is improving)
5) They only print photos
6) Storing photos on a hard drive takes up as much space as, well, a hard drive. Try keeping 10,000 dead-tree photos (as many as I have in my iPhoto library right now) indexed and searchable, not to mention preserved.
VERDANA IS EVIL. Every time I see one of our web designers using Verdana, I cringe. Arial displays much better, and is more widely distributed.
The Next Step: Adding Artificial Intelligence
on
AIM Bots: Useful or Spam?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My friend was in a chat room, late one night. He was the only real person in the room, but there were 50 screennames on the list. They were all bots, all trying to get the other bots to click their links.
Now imagine if you programmed even a rudimentary adaptable AI into an AIM bot, and had it talk to other AIM bots with a similar AI. You'd have them talking to each other, learning from each other. Then imagine if they had web crawlers attached to them, learning about the Internet, communicating their findings back to each other.
The only way we'd know if the Internet became sentient is if it stepped up and said 'hi.'
I mean, if you're just going to print the damn things out anyway, why not just get a film camera and develop them? They'll even put it on a CD for you if you absolutely must look at them on a computer screen.
If the oil companies as much of their "record profits" into hydrogen distribution as the cable companies put into spreading broadband, it wouldn't be a problem.
But I can see why they don't: Fuel thay you can make with sunlight and water doesn't have much of a profit margin.
Okay, I'm going to assume you didn't read the link, and you're not just a troll
Apple has this technology called XGrid, which lets you perform cluster computing tasks very easily. The client is installed with OS X, and takes zero setup beyond checking off a box in the system preferences and making sure your firewall is open on a specific port. Now, whenever you go onto a network, your Mac searches for an XGrid project to participate in, requests a work unit, and starts using those spare processor cycles. Or you can connect to an existing XGrid Server over the Internet.
Apple also makes a rack-mounted computer specifically designed for clustering. This has been used to great effect by Virginia Tech with their SystemX.
So, yeah, their supercomputing software is included with their PCs and notebooks, for a very good reason.
Bioinformatics is where most of the new Mac jobs are being created, and that's one of the target markets for Apple's XServe Cluster, which is specifically designed for use in a clustered environment. That and the ultra-high-end professional video editing and 3d animation markets.
\Imagines 84 2.3Ghz processors in one rack
\\faints.
Couple this with "Subscription Applications" and you have Microsoft single-handedly creating the Network Computer. That is, an OS that requires a network of computers to function.
They'll produce wonderful text-based games, and people from the cities of MMORPG and FPS will travel out to them to buy blankets and marvel at their monochrome screens.
I never said that was all that was around my house. There's the whole of downtown that's within walking distance, including one of the best farmer's markets in the area.
I've got to stop getting into socio-political arguments before I've had my coffee.
I'm as much of a Mac zealot as the next guy, but I think that using Red Hat will be better, both in the short term and long term.
In the short term, the developers don't have to worry about changes to the code that violate licenses. Also, the OS will be so optimized for this particular machine that it's not going to need a lot of upkeep, especially because it's using durable flash memory.
In the long term, experience with an open source operating system will be good for the people of the countries these computers are distributed within. Instead of relying on an American company for their OS, they can roll their own. Also, it will increase the exposure of OSS, which can't be a bad thing.
Apple does a lot of things really well. However, they're not things that people in third world countries need. Sending OS X along with these laptops would be like airlifting an MRI machine to them. Sure, it might do a lot of good, but a few hundred ambulance motorcycles and a couple dozen repairmen to fix them will help a lot more people a lot faster.
BMI is calculated by taking your weight and dividing it by your height. This is total bullshit. If someone worked out a lot and gained a lot of muscle mass, they could have a high BMI and still be healthy. Likewise, if someone drank black coffee and smoked all the time, they could have a low BMI and be unhealthy.
Slashdot Mirror
Ms. Moss, try this on for size (pun intended):
NardofDoom believes money should be no object when it comes to acquiring the latest computer hardware.
Anyone care to elucidate what The Gov is talking about?
H!V DRuGZ CHEEP
There are things we can do right now to improve the lives of people in Africa that don't involve Mesh networks. Things like investing in their infrastructure. Even in some of the richest countries the roads are predominantly dirt. By doing this, we'll improve health, increase access to education, and allow more people to interact more easily. If we put the money we're spending on these "miracle laptops" into building roads and water systems, I'm almost certain we'll see more results and it would magnify the impact of these machines.
Not just affordable: FREE.
Taking them, installing KnoppMyth and a TV capture card and reselling them to everyone for a 25% profit!
I can't justify having a printer just for digital photos, especially considering
1) I can order prints online, either within iPhoto or from another service
2) I have a gallery that I can host images on and share with friends and family
3) I can go print out a photo at any number of locations using their printer, if I really, desperately need a representative of my image in petrochemicals on dead trees
4) Ink cartridges for the damn things are more expensive than the printer itself, are dried out before I use them, and don't preserve well (though this is improving) 5) They only print photos 6) Storing photos on a hard drive takes up as much space as, well, a hard drive. Try keeping 10,000 dead-tree photos (as many as I have in my iPhoto library right now) indexed and searchable, not to mention preserved.
And in the US, it's good policy to attack other countries. Only with bombs instead of words.
Destroyed in seconds by slashdotting.
VERDANA IS EVIL. Every time I see one of our web designers using Verdana, I cringe. Arial displays much better, and is more widely distributed.
Now imagine if you programmed even a rudimentary adaptable AI into an AIM bot, and had it talk to other AIM bots with a similar AI. You'd have them talking to each other, learning from each other. Then imagine if they had web crawlers attached to them, learning about the Internet, communicating their findings back to each other.
The only way we'd know if the Internet became sentient is if it stepped up and said 'hi.'
I mean, if you're just going to print the damn things out anyway, why not just get a film camera and develop them? They'll even put it on a CD for you if you absolutely must look at them on a computer screen.
But I can see why they don't: Fuel thay you can make with sunlight and water doesn't have much of a profit margin.
Apple has this technology called XGrid, which lets you perform cluster computing tasks very easily. The client is installed with OS X, and takes zero setup beyond checking off a box in the system preferences and making sure your firewall is open on a specific port. Now, whenever you go onto a network, your Mac searches for an XGrid project to participate in, requests a work unit, and starts using those spare processor cycles. Or you can connect to an existing XGrid Server over the Internet.
Apple also makes a rack-mounted computer specifically designed for clustering. This has been used to great effect by Virginia Tech with their SystemX.
So, yeah, their supercomputing software is included with their PCs and notebooks, for a very good reason.
\Imagines 84 2.3Ghz processors in one rack
\\faints.
Precisely. It boils down to one of the cardinal rules of good human interface design: Make the right thing easy, and make the wrong thing hard.
Also, learn Russian, Chinese and Indian, since that's who you'll be managing.
Couple this with "Subscription Applications" and you have Microsoft single-handedly creating the Network Computer. That is, an OS that requires a network of computers to function.
Come on now. You and I both know that's BS.
And I can bet it won't be included with their client systems.
I don't like the way my Mind GPU is rendering. Can I upgrade?
They'll produce wonderful text-based games, and people from the cities of MMORPG and FPS will travel out to them to buy blankets and marvel at their monochrome screens.
I've got to stop getting into socio-political arguments before I've had my coffee.
In the short term, the developers don't have to worry about changes to the code that violate licenses. Also, the OS will be so optimized for this particular machine that it's not going to need a lot of upkeep, especially because it's using durable flash memory.
In the long term, experience with an open source operating system will be good for the people of the countries these computers are distributed within. Instead of relying on an American company for their OS, they can roll their own. Also, it will increase the exposure of OSS, which can't be a bad thing.
Apple does a lot of things really well. However, they're not things that people in third world countries need. Sending OS X along with these laptops would be like airlifting an MRI machine to them. Sure, it might do a lot of good, but a few hundred ambulance motorcycles and a couple dozen repairmen to fix them will help a lot more people a lot faster.
BMI is calculated by taking your weight and dividing it by your height. This is total bullshit. If someone worked out a lot and gained a lot of muscle mass, they could have a high BMI and still be healthy. Likewise, if someone drank black coffee and smoked all the time, they could have a low BMI and be unhealthy.