if those that make the "liberty dollars" imagine silver or gold are not "fiat" money too, they are deeply ignorant, or crooks. You should search for purchase power variations for an ounce of gold or one of silver... it went down a lot, on average, since the XVIth century, and in the meantime it varied a lot, with huge ups and downs.
All money are "fiat", and all monetary exchange is kind of a barter... whether it's paper money or gold or seashells or glass beads.
considering that by the time "sticketh" might have been regarded as a grammatically corrent expression there were sooooo many "English" grammars and orthographies in use even in printed books, the fact that thee hast no sensse of humore really irrelevant is... I only wish there was a way to use the Ascii to imitate the funny XVIIIth century alphabets, where the s-es looked very much like the f-s, so the anachronism would be complete.... right, I should stop celebrating the New Year... right now...
They will probably detain all passengers traveling via economy class for more than 4 hours per flight. If extended to railways and long distance bus routes, it would be probably more efficient simply to arrest everybody that attempts to buy a ticket: the new "ergonomic" chairs they use 'round here were made with 6 feet tall and 25 BMI white males in mind, and are probably the most important reason for the rise in SUV sales and of the suicide rate during the last 5 years.
IMHO, the OLPC was only a marketing ploy: let everybody know there is a cute little extremely portable weather proof low energy computer that nobody can buy yet, so that everybody will drool (the way I am doing now, imagining myself owning a black XO and being able to read during commute without damaging my eyesight with a PDA) and want to buy it when it goes into production.
Why it was not shipped outside US ? That is called market segmentation: let the secondary market drool a little and envy the primary market, then sell the same product at the highest price the secondary market will bear when you have enough stock. It was done with the game consoles, it is done with movies and music, why not with the OLPC's commercial successor ?
The "buy two, get one" was, imho, just a test, to see how it's going to sell and do some testing with real users.
I hope I did not sound like a anti-capitalist freak... I think what are they doing is just fine, the only complaint is that it takes so damn long for the XO to get to a shop near me. Come on, Negroponte, my wallet is as wet as it can get, and I'd shoot 300 Euros without thinking too much for a black or grey XO anytime you're ready.
would you care to quote a source:-) ? That would add a lot of weight to your argument. Until you quote some reliable source (not the Daily Mail, BBC or other tabloids, please... yes, I do believe that lately BBC turned into a sophisticated tabloid), I still believe that's just hype.
I can agree that there could be a lot of attempts to scam eBay customers, attempts originating from SEE/FSU, but I doubt that it is a very lucrative business: in my experience, transferring small amounts of money to the area is very expensive, and transferring large amounts attracts the attention of the local IRS, and the receiver ends paying taxes even for the air she or he breathes.
given that we've consumed most of the readily-available mineral resources, if there is a major worldwide collapse odds are we won't be climbing back. If there is a major worldwide collapse, the cities and their garbage dumps will be the best source of raw materials, and the recovery will be swift: just think how much iron and copper can be scavenged from a modern office building and compare with the effort to extract that from richest ore deposits ever exploited.
oh, right:)... believing, or rather hoping that the Austrians became more reasonable lately I seem to have ignored that part. You are right, the batteries will cost them quite a bit: my bet is that in the spring the "solar trees" will be connected to the wires, and the nice solar panels will collect dust and pigeon guano peacefully until replaced for the sake of the next fad.
I am close to finishing a pyramid; I'll send the royalties when a time machine will be invented, until then I'll leave them in the bank: current Egyptians cannot claim copyright; my only concern is how to compute the interest: if the money will be paid back in time, do I have to take out the interest from the original sum, or add it ?
Considering how difficult it is to retrieve legitimate money and how strict is the fiscal surveillance, I doubt Rumanians or Bulgarians make a lot by eBay scams; but perish the thought of crooks from more "civilized" countries using proxies in the area, that's not possible at all, is it ?
I do not know about laser illuminators on tanks, and indeed, with enough power, a laser could have set that helicopter on fire, but unless an industrial/military grade laser was used, I doubt any damage could have been done: at 200m an office laser pointer would make a spot of maximum 10cm in radius... am I to believe that somebody, holding a laser pointer in his hand, managed to target the eyes of a helicopter pilot hidden in his cockpit ?
my guess is the policeman saw the beam and said to himself: let's sue somebody today.
if the "perpetrator" managed to cause pain and discomfort by pointing a laser in the eye of a person flying a helicopter (fast moving target) at the altitude of 500 feet (make 900 for an oblique "hit"), and trough a thick (plexi)glass window, then that guy should be hired by the special forces as a super-sniper, and get a place in the Guinness Book too.
And PyPy unlike Parrot, is not vaporware and received funds from the European Union from 2004 to 2006.
to 2006... does it mean that in 2006 the funding got split in two, and the competing projects PéPé and PüPü were created ? This would be the result of the "EU Funding Curse" which afflicted Airbus, Galileo, the EUropean search engine, the European Digital library etc.
Dvorak is an adds salesman: he creates outrage to get more hits and sell more adds.
OLPC is a marketing trick of AMD and RedHat, with the purpose of getting us used with the idea that low power/low GHz Linux computers can be useful. AMD is already selling extremely cheap computers (google for ION A603: it sells in my area at a little above 100 Euro without OS, and at about 250 Euro with Windows XP, can run XP + M.S.Office decently and is great for a desktop Linux/Linux home server), and sometimes during the next year I believe we'll see some black XOs on the market at about 200 Euros.
OLPC is a sweet piece of gear: rugged, light, low power consumption, cheap, Linux drivers for everything inside, long battery life. If it had at least 1024x768 screen and be available commercially, I'd sell my Fujitsu and get one of those. As it is now, it's the best tablet PC available, and to be a perfect tool for a carry-on office it needs only a GSM module to let the users stick a GSM phone card in it and make calls using a headset, and a GPS module.
One laptop per children ? How about "One laptop per customer service technician", or "One laptop per inventory management employee", or "One laptop per truck driver" ?
Anyway, OLPC works best in areas with a little infrastructure and working poor. OLPC is a superb tablet PC. I would have bought one already, but they are not shipping to the "second" or "third" world, only to US of A.
Agreed. This person came to slashdot to ask such a question?
It'd be like asking Larry Ellison, "So, I have this old version of Oracle we use in the classroom which costs us 10000$ per user per year and requires 1GB of RAM just to start up, but I want to upgrade to something newer. Tell me about this Postgresql thing I keep hearing about...."
Heaven help us if RMS ever gets wind of this article.... ... there, fixed that for you.
At least with music players you could rip your CD collection. Scanning a book is far more trouble. Not really: with an office scanner you could do 5 pages per minute, then gobble all the images in a PDF with a simple bash script. It's more trouble, but not "far more trouble" if you want to keep a paper-free house:-P .
Do you feel threatened when people point out that their ancestors have been here longer than yours, and that your ancestors killed them and stole their land?
My ancestors killed my ancestors and stole their land. Am I not native (some place else, not USA) ?
I am a native of Eurasia. Am I a native in Asia, even if it's from there that my ancestors came to Europe to kill my other ancestors?
How long does somebody's ancestors have to live in a place to qualify that "somebody" as a native ?
"Traditional European" ideals were quite consistent from the Neolithic until about 30-40 years ago: white and plump was beautiful. What varied was the upper level of "plumpness" that was tolerated.
In times of plenty a more thinner but robust build is desired.
Well, then the 1950s in US must have been times of hardship and want, judging by the first Playboy issues:-P , and I guess the XVIIth century Dutch were indeed starving if their obese Venuses are any clue.
Sales tax is regressive. Even when rich boy buys a Rolex or a Lexus or whatever, the total tax paid relative to income is a smaller percentage compared to the other 98% of the population buying a Timex. ... so, what is the reach guy going to do with the rest of his income ? Hide it in a big hole in the ground, or spend it too, paying the sales tax ?
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if those that make the "liberty dollars" imagine silver or gold are not "fiat" money too, they are deeply ignorant, or crooks. You should search for purchase power variations for an ounce of gold or one of silver ... it went down a lot, on average, since the XVIth century, and in the meantime it varied a lot, with huge ups and downs.
All money are "fiat", and all monetary exchange is kind of a barter ... whether it's paper money or gold or seashells or glass beads.
considering that by the time "sticketh" might have been regarded as a grammatically corrent expression there were sooooo many "English" grammars and orthographies in use even in printed books, the fact that thee hast no sensse of humore really irrelevant is ... I only wish there was a way to use the Ascii to imitate the funny XVIIIth century alphabets, where the s-es looked very much like the f-s, so the anachronism would be complete. ... right, I should stop celebrating the New Year ... right now ...
They will probably detain all passengers traveling via economy class for more than 4 hours per flight. If extended to railways and long distance bus routes, it would be probably more efficient simply to arrest everybody that attempts to buy a ticket: the new "ergonomic" chairs they use 'round here were made with 6 feet tall and 25 BMI white males in mind, and are probably the most important reason for the rise in SUV sales and of the suicide rate during the last 5 years.
IMHO, the OLPC was only a marketing ploy: let everybody know there is a cute little extremely portable weather proof low energy computer that nobody can buy yet, so that everybody will drool (the way I am doing now, imagining myself owning a black XO and being able to read during commute without damaging my eyesight with a PDA) and want to buy it when it goes into production.
... I think what are they doing is just fine, the only complaint is that it takes so damn long for the XO to get to a shop near me. Come on, Negroponte, my wallet is as wet as it can get, and I'd shoot 300 Euros without thinking too much for a black or grey XO anytime you're ready.
Why it was not shipped outside US ? That is called market segmentation: let the secondary market drool a little and envy the primary market, then sell the same product at the highest price the secondary market will bear when you have enough stock. It was done with the game consoles, it is done with movies and music, why not with the OLPC's commercial successor ?
The "buy two, get one" was, imho, just a test, to see how it's going to sell and do some testing with real users.
I hope I did not sound like a anti-capitalist freak
have they proved it's harmful, too ?
would you care to quote a source :-) ? That would add a lot of weight to your argument. Until you quote some reliable source (not the Daily Mail, BBC or other tabloids, please ... yes, I do believe that lately BBC turned into a sophisticated tabloid), I still believe that's just hype.
I can agree that there could be a lot of attempts to scam eBay customers, attempts originating from SEE/FSU, but I doubt that it is a very lucrative business: in my experience, transferring small amounts of money to the area is very expensive, and transferring large amounts attracts the attention of the local IRS, and the receiver ends paying taxes even for the air she or he breathes.
oh, right :) ... believing, or rather hoping that the Austrians became more reasonable lately I seem to have ignored that part. You are right, the batteries will cost them quite a bit: my bet is that in the spring the "solar trees" will be connected to the wires, and the nice solar panels will collect dust and pigeon guano peacefully until replaced for the sake of the next fad.
disposal cost for batteries for street lights ? Since when do street lights work with batteries ?
I am close to finishing a pyramid; I'll send the royalties when a time machine will be invented, until then I'll leave them in the bank: current Egyptians cannot claim copyright; my only concern is how to compute the interest: if the money will be paid back in time, do I have to take out the interest from the original sum, or add it ?
Considering how difficult it is to retrieve legitimate money and how strict is the fiscal surveillance, I doubt Rumanians or Bulgarians make a lot by eBay scams; but perish the thought of crooks from more "civilized" countries using proxies in the area, that's not possible at all, is it ?
I do not know about laser illuminators on tanks, and indeed, with enough power, a laser could have set that helicopter on fire, but unless an industrial/military grade laser was used, I doubt any damage could have been done: at 200m an office laser pointer would make a spot of maximum 10cm in radius ... am I to believe that somebody, holding a laser pointer in his hand, managed to target the eyes of a helicopter pilot hidden in his cockpit ?
my guess is the policeman saw the beam and said to himself: let's sue somebody today.
if the "perpetrator" managed to cause pain and discomfort by pointing a laser in the eye of a person flying a helicopter (fast moving target) at the altitude of 500 feet (make 900 for an oblique "hit"), and trough a thick (plexi)glass window, then that guy should be hired by the special forces as a super-sniper, and get a place in the Guinness Book too.
Dvorak is an adds salesman: he creates outrage to get more hits and sell more adds.
OLPC is a marketing trick of AMD and RedHat, with the purpose of getting us used with the idea that low power/low GHz Linux computers can be useful. AMD is already selling extremely cheap computers (google for ION A603: it sells in my area at a little above 100 Euro without OS, and at about 250 Euro with Windows XP, can run XP + M.S.Office decently and is great for a desktop Linux/Linux home server), and sometimes during the next year I believe we'll see some black XOs on the market at about 200 Euros.
OLPC is a sweet piece of gear: rugged, light, low power consumption, cheap, Linux drivers for everything inside, long battery life. If it had at least 1024x768 screen and be available commercially, I'd sell my Fujitsu and get one of those. As it is now, it's the best tablet PC available, and to be a perfect tool for a carry-on office it needs only a GSM module to let the users stick a GSM phone card in it and make calls using a headset, and a GPS module.
One laptop per children ? How about "One laptop per customer service technician", or "One laptop per inventory management employee", or "One laptop per truck driver" ?
It'd be like asking Larry Ellison, "So, I have this old version of Oracle we use in the classroom which costs us 10000$ per user per year and requires 1GB of RAM just to start up, but I want to upgrade to something newer. Tell me about this Postgresql thing I keep hearing about...."
Heaven help us if RMS ever gets wind of this article....
Considering how many people care to express their lack of love for Perl, I think it must still be very important.
My ancestors killed my ancestors and stole their land. Am I not native (some place else, not USA) ?
I am a native of Eurasia. Am I a native in Asia, even if it's from there that my ancestors came to Europe to kill my other ancestors?
How long does somebody's ancestors have to live in a place to qualify that "somebody" as a native ?
"Traditional European" ideals were quite consistent from the Neolithic until about 30-40 years ago: white and plump was beautiful. What varied was the upper level of "plumpness" that was tolerated.
In times of plenty a more thinner but robust build is desired.Well, then the 1950s in US must have been times of hardship and want, judging by the first Playboy issues :-P , and I guess the XVIIth century Dutch were indeed starving if their obese Venuses are any clue.
... or to stimulate the immune system.