but you didnt get the EPA numbers. The point I was making was that the EPA numbers are the results of specific tests in specific conditions. And because everybody drives differently, under different conditions, and with different destinations, warmup times, etc, the EPA numbers are for reference ONLY.
Some people, such as yourself, drive more efficiently and in conditions conducive to besting the EPA numbers and its very probable that another vehicle with higher EPA rating than your Toyota will result in you getting higher MPG than you are getting now.
The numbers are/were a reference and now they will probably be far less useful to those who know/knew what they were for....
I will say that there should have been some rating for the load the A/C put on the system and/or how long it took for the vehicle to warm up to efficient operation. Hopefully, the new data will be there in such a way as to not be buried within a single number or two.
exactly what I was thinking when I read the/. headline.
What gets my goat is that people still think the EPA numbers are going to be what they will get. It even says on the sticker that you will NOT get this mileage. Granted, they should have changed the names/labels to "City Test Result" and "Highway Test Result" instead of just City and Highway.
IMO, these new numbers are just going to confuse and already confused public.
And my guess at why this is happening now is because a handful of people purchased hybrids and then went and drove them for 5 minutes each day. When they were getting only 25 MPG( as shown to them on the display ), they complained that they were not getting the ~55-60 MPG the sticker shows for 'city' driving. And nobody did or could explain to them that EPA numbers are NOT real world numbers and they will NEVER get the same numbers.
good point but another option is to put an email cleanser inline to remove all problematic formating. Also, because they will probably not give up Microsoft software for this, they have to realize that a major change is needed for longterm protection.
Don't forget how they changed the EULA for NT Workstation so that you were not allowed to run a web server on it. Netscape was underselling Microsoft( Windows NT Server + IIS ) by much $$$ because their Netscape web server ran just fine on MS Windows NT Workstation.
And since Microsoft is willing to do ANYTHING to prevent competiton, they changed how people could legally use the OS in regards to who they were threatened by at the time.
That crap you keep hearing spewing from Microsoft Executives regarding "Customers are asking for X,Y,Z" is and easly lie. And they can easily pay off one or two 'partners' to publicly say they want what shit Microsoft is pushing. but usually, it's all bull and used primarily to push an agenda which protects the MS Windows monopoly.
Atleast you got Halo for your Mac( or are getting it ). A similar exmple is when Netscape was kicking ass in the browser market. There was this little company called DimensionX who had a cool development system for multimedia applications written in Java. IIRC, they were doing something with Netscape too and it had to do with developing Java applets or something. Well, Sun Microsystems wanted to purchase them to help show what Java can do but Microsoft wanted them too. Only Microsoft wanted them to kill them and stop Java from getting recognized as a useful tool. The bidding war was on and when all was said and done, Microsoft ended up with DeminsionX for millions and terminates its Java products. They did the same with a company called Coopers & Peters.
So if a technology is growing which is outside of complete control my Microsoft, they go out and purchase and terminate those companies leading the way.
Heard of OpenGL? Well Microsoft can't have a cross platform 3D tool getting developers excited. They must come up with another 3D system which will ONLY RUN ON WINDOWS.
Got 80% marketshare in handhelds( PalmOS ). Microsoft start seeing all the other dbase vendors shipping dbases clients for PalmOS so Microsoft releases MS Access lite for WindowsCE, which nobodies heard of. Fast forward 10 years and you find that Microsoft has lost over $8 billion on WindowsCE just to dominate the handheld market. Ie, they bought their way into the market with $10's of billions over about 10 years.
This guy wants to know why people hate Microsoft? He/she should look at how Microsoft pretends to "compete" in the market. Hint, they don't compete and do EVERYTHING they can legally and sometimes illegally to stop the reall innovators from making their product sucessful.
And lets not even go into how they steal other companies IP and then after 5-10 years when the company has no more customers and exists only as an owner and a lawyer, they pay out a few million in a "settlement".
IMO, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and the rest of the crew are snake oil salesmen. They use Microsoft to crush anybody and everybody they decide is a threat to the money train called the Microsoft Windows monopoly.
You are very lucky to even hear of Microsoft doing a Mac version of a product they've purchased. Given how they hate that Apple is making a sucess out of the iPod, I wouldn't doubt that EVERY Microsoft product for the Apple is heading for the chopping block. IMO
This reminds me of MS ClearType. You know, that technology Steve Wozniak invented for the CGA monitor and Microsoft Research rebranded as theirs after the patent expired.
As I've said elsewhere, with a $6 billion annual budget, if THIS is the 'innovation' they're getting then they should ask for their money back. IMO a wireless handheld trackball would do a better job.
I do know that Microsoft has been spending PR $$$ trying to make the world think they are 'innovators'. There was a recent article about how the MS Research Labs get no respect. This ain't gonna buy me.
BTW, I've seen some of what's been shown at various ETech conferences and what Microsoft shows from their R&D labs are pathetic compared to what NEW and INNOVATIVE project and ideas are presented by everyone else.
Nope, didn't think of it and wasn't paid to think of it. But I have used a wireless optical mouse on my leg, shirt sleeve, hand and a few other things when I wanted a mouse without a flat surface. And if for some reason I wanted to use a 'mouse' while holding my hand out in front of me, I'd be looking for a wireless handheld trackball setup.
I could see this posted on Make by some garage hacker but from Microsofts R&D department? Sorry, it'll take a bit more to impress me when they've got over $6 billion annually to play with.
But I think that without a large organization pushing the distro( RedHat, Suse, Canonical, etc ) it is likely that the enterprise users are just going to be confined to smaller department users. Granted, the overall numbers might be larger but a company like MySQL AB can't make a profit supporting thousands of 5-10 user departments like they can supporting 1,000+ user installations.
I agree with you on were Debian fits and its capabilities but from a financial standpoint, going where the larger "bubble" of users are just makes cents.
Canonical and Linspire do put a public face behind Debian-based distros, and Canonical is pushing for the server market, but otherwise, it's like killing ants with a beebee gun. Not very efficient.
My first thought was how strange this was considering how Shuttleworth is trying to move Ubuntu(Debian based) to the server( Ubuntu 6.06 LTS-long term support ) amongst the other Debian distro's out there. I wonder why the had originally included Debian for MySQL Enterprise Support in the first place since the business case is still growing.
My second thought was to some old news that MySQL Inc was partnering with Microsoft and are they getting any 'incentives' to move away from anything but Novell Suse products. Debian being the first to go.
But, this is MySQL Enterprise Support we're talking about and you won't find as much enterprise support for Debian, or at the same scale, as you'd find for RedHat or Suse. It is a shame though and I hope their "partnership" with Microsoft is not an issue here. If it is, I suspect we'll next hear of another deal with Microsoft and the dropping of RedHat Enterprise support. Not necessarily in that order. IMO.
currently the cost of Sun Microsystems purchasing Star Division and StarOffice and open sourcing it all.:-/ IMO, if they're gonna include JAVA, what OO uses should be compiled to native code and then let any extension/addon/etc which would use JAVA be interpreted and have an option to compile those too.
the difference is, you will be hard pressed to find a company who can hire these people away from Microsoft. In the Xerox/PARC days, alot of those people went to other companies to move the tech forward. It would be interesting to see what multiplier Microsoft uses to set these guys/gals pay scales. My guess, somewhere around 4x.
Smart move by Intel to include having the manufacturing done in the country they're selling into. It will make the devices more expensive but it gives the government a good public marketing pitch for keeping the money local. I don't know if they could even consider using Microsoft on these if they're pitching localized financial spending.
Unfortunately, this doesn't scale out to all countries but will work in the largest of markets. You know, the ones that'll have the most press potential. Interesting plan...
But now, Bill Gates has billions in his foundation to purchase his way into the hearts and minds of the worlds youth. IMO, he may be retiring from Microsoft, but he's going to be peddling their 'stuff' in direct competition to the One Laptop Per Child project. And he'll do it not because it's the right thing to do but because he thinks the Microsoft way is the One Microsoft Way and only way. IMO.
I think the handheld market moved to a point where companies grew too large to sustain low margin products. The low-end Palms( III and m105 ) are great handhelds but they made very little on these and as Palm was purchased by larger and larger companies, they insisted on more profits. And, IMO, one of the main reasons cheap devices have disappeared is the marketing guys need for a color screen and more ghee-whiz features. The battery power and processing power requirements drove the system prices up up and up. As you mentioned, there is no longer an entry level handheld outside cheap mobile phones. And phones suck as a PDA because they have small screens and the 3rd party software just isn't there like it is for the Palm PDA market since the device is so tightly controlled.
I know people who still use their old Palm III based handhelds even when they could easily purchase some other device. They love the device because its battery lasts for weeks with heavy use and the screen is easy to read and use in almost all lighting conditions. I'm sure they also appreciate how easy the Palm pen interface is.
Microsoft does not "DESERVE A CHANCE" IMO and I will say that you will win the lottery before Microsoft actually competes in a way we'd a business to compete( ie better, faster, cheaper, etc ). They've never done this and nothing has shown that they've experienced some kind of epiphany which moves them to being truely competitive. IMO.
It is good to see others attempting to join the market for enabling the worlds kids.
ah but you forget that in markets outside of desktop Windows PC's( all other markets ) Microsoft has lost billions and has paid companies/businesses to use their products. They've lost over $8 billion on Windows CE, they are losing billions on Xbox, they plan on losing billions on Zune. Granted, they've only been willing to deal with the OEM or distributor with regards to moving money to them for pushing the product but it shows Microsoft is willing to use its billions in monopoly money to purchase marketshare.
Don't be surprised to see Microsoft subsidizing an MS One Laptop Per Kid project to get kids hooked on Windows instead of some other product. Intel may be looking to get back in bed with Microsoft to get more Intel chips in devices. If only to limit AMDs marketshare since profits are going to be slim in these. And IMO, Negroponte's willingness to 'work with' Microsoft is foolish. His and their goals are polar opposites and helping Microsoft in any way will only help destroy his project. IMO.
I guess they could re-flash the device with their OS and I was mistaken on that point because I was thinking ROM as in WORM and not as in FLASH ROM.
Regarding the connectivity, the OLPC devices are wired with mesh wireless connectivity. They can communicate with each other and if one device had an internet connection, they all share. But also, if one device is a data source, then they all can share and connect with that datasource. Think of the datasource PC as a simple 'internet'. So by putting a fullblown MS Windows PC in a room with 30 OLPC devices, the MS Windows PC can easily feed all the OLPC devices or serve them as in terminal server clients. The network connectivity part is a good portion of the FUD Bill Gates passes on about this project and you've seemed to have fallen for it. These devices are primarily designed to be connected and the don't need to have an Internet connection to be useful since they can share amongst themselves or a host/teacher system. Heck, one use for that SD card slot would be for the teacher to provide content while still using a OLPC device her/himself.
If you are talking about the wireless mesh networking being designed to be unstable or only provide temporary connectivity, I've not seen that. Again, I think you're mixing up when is unstable and what connectivity the devices are intended to have.
there's nothing pointing to MS Windows getting pre-installed( ie in ROM ) and TFA stated the SD slot was added for Windows. I guess they could do a ROM SD card with Windows on it but I doubt it. And I don't think Microsoft cares about these getting viruses so long as they have Windows on them. Besides another free SD card with MS Windows is all that's needed to 'clean' the system. As was mentioned earlier, they'll probably give away a free WindowsPC to drive the content to the OLPK( MS One Laptop Per Kid ) devices and putting in a SD slot to install 'clean' images is cheap.
Not to mention it'll be attempted to make the OLPK devices just terminals to Microsofts Windows Terminal Server. IMO.
Given how Microsoft 'innovates', my guess is that they're attempting to reverse engineer the OLPC device so they can release their OLPK model. It'll cost them more to make, be less useful, cost them billions in losses, but be marketed out the wazzu until the naive think they want one. Think WinCE and Zune.
Oh and those billions in losses for the project will mostly be due to Microsoft paying 3rd world governments 'marketing dollars', 'evaluation dollars', 'creating training centers', etc for accepting the OLPK instead of OLPC. ie, they'll find a way to pay people to use the product so that the competition gets no traction or loses what it has.
Too bad the OLPC gang are not as agressive at marketing as Microsoft is. They should be blasting the market with news of Microsoft validating the OLPC product by trying to get Windows on it. Remember, Bill Gates went public with bashing the OLPC project and totally spreading the typical MS FUD with misinformation on the project goals. Ofcourse a MS Windows laptop would solve the problems Bill said the OLPC had...
Slashdot Mirror
but you didnt get the EPA numbers. The point I was making was that the EPA numbers are the results of specific tests in specific conditions. And because everybody drives differently, under different conditions, and with different destinations, warmup times, etc, the EPA numbers are for reference ONLY.
Some people, such as yourself, drive more efficiently and in conditions conducive to besting the EPA numbers and its very probable that another vehicle with higher EPA rating than your Toyota will result in you getting higher MPG than you are getting now.
The numbers are/were a reference and now they will probably be far less useful to those who know/knew what they were for....
I will say that there should have been some rating for the load the A/C put on the system and/or how long it took for the vehicle to warm up to efficient operation. Hopefully, the new data will be there in such a way as to not be buried within a single number or two.
LoB
exactly what I was thinking when I read the /. headline.
What gets my goat is that people still think the EPA numbers are going to be what they will get. It even says on the sticker that you will NOT get this mileage. Granted, they should have changed the names/labels to "City Test Result" and "Highway Test Result" instead of just City and Highway.
IMO, these new numbers are just going to confuse and already confused public.
And my guess at why this is happening now is because a handful of people purchased hybrids and then went and drove them for 5 minutes each day. When they were getting only 25 MPG( as shown to them on the display ), they complained that they were not getting the ~55-60 MPG the sticker shows for 'city' driving. And nobody did or could explain to them that EPA numbers are NOT real world numbers and they will NEVER get the same numbers.
LoB
good point but another option is to put an email cleanser inline to remove all problematic formating. Also, because they will probably not give up Microsoft software for this, they have to realize that a major change is needed for longterm protection.
Who knows, maybe they will 86 MS LookOut.
LoB
well, you already know the answer. Too bad nobody at the DoD is willing to step up and ask why their *nix systems are not having these problems.
LoB
Don't forget how they changed the EULA for NT Workstation so that you were not allowed to run a web server on it. Netscape was underselling Microsoft( Windows NT Server + IIS ) by much $$$ because their Netscape web server ran just fine on MS Windows NT Workstation.
And since Microsoft is willing to do ANYTHING to prevent competiton, they changed how people could legally use the OS in regards to who they were threatened by at the time.
That crap you keep hearing spewing from Microsoft Executives regarding "Customers are asking for X,Y,Z" is and easly lie. And they can easily pay off one or two 'partners' to publicly say they want what shit Microsoft is pushing. but usually, it's all bull and used primarily to push an agenda which protects the MS Windows monopoly.
think MS OpenXML vs ODF...
LoB
Atleast you got Halo for your Mac( or are getting it ). A similar exmple is when Netscape was kicking ass in the browser market. There was this little company called DimensionX who had a cool development system for multimedia applications written in Java. IIRC, they were doing something with Netscape too and it had to do with developing Java applets or something. Well, Sun Microsystems wanted to purchase them to help show what Java can do but Microsoft wanted them too. Only Microsoft wanted them to kill them and stop Java from getting recognized as a useful tool. The bidding war was on and when all was said and done, Microsoft ended up with DeminsionX for millions and terminates its Java products. They did the same with a company called Coopers & Peters.
So if a technology is growing which is outside of complete control my Microsoft, they go out and purchase and terminate those companies leading the way.
Heard of OpenGL? Well Microsoft can't have a cross platform 3D tool getting developers excited. They must come up with another 3D system which will ONLY RUN ON WINDOWS.
Got 80% marketshare in handhelds( PalmOS ). Microsoft start seeing all the other dbase vendors shipping dbases clients for PalmOS so Microsoft releases MS Access lite for WindowsCE, which nobodies heard of. Fast forward 10 years and you find that Microsoft has lost over $8 billion on WindowsCE just to dominate the handheld market. Ie, they bought their way into the market with $10's of billions over about 10 years.
This guy wants to know why people hate Microsoft? He/she should look at how Microsoft pretends to "compete" in the market. Hint, they don't compete and do EVERYTHING they can legally and sometimes illegally to stop the reall innovators from making their product sucessful.
And lets not even go into how they steal other companies IP and then after 5-10 years when the company has no more customers and exists only as an owner and a lawyer, they pay out a few million in a "settlement".
IMO, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and the rest of the crew are snake oil salesmen. They use Microsoft to crush anybody and everybody they decide is a threat to the money train called the Microsoft Windows monopoly.
You are very lucky to even hear of Microsoft doing a Mac version of a product they've purchased. Given how they hate that Apple is making a sucess out of the iPod, I wouldn't doubt that EVERY Microsoft product for the Apple is heading for the chopping block. IMO
LoB
but the sock looks like it came from the Microsoft Store! ;-)
LoB
This reminds me of MS ClearType. You know, that technology Steve Wozniak invented for the CGA monitor and Microsoft Research rebranded as theirs after the patent expired.
As I've said elsewhere, with a $6 billion annual budget, if THIS is the 'innovation' they're getting then they should ask for their money back. IMO a wireless handheld trackball would do a better job.
I do know that Microsoft has been spending PR $$$ trying to make the world think they are 'innovators'. There was a recent article about how the MS Research Labs get no respect. This ain't gonna buy me.
BTW, I've seen some of what's been shown at various ETech conferences and what Microsoft shows from their R&D labs are pathetic compared to what NEW and INNOVATIVE project and ideas are presented by everyone else.
LoB
Nope, didn't think of it and wasn't paid to think of it. But I have used a wireless optical mouse on my leg, shirt sleeve, hand and a few other things when I wanted a mouse without a flat surface. And if for some reason I wanted to use a 'mouse' while holding my hand out in front of me, I'd be looking for a wireless handheld trackball setup.
I could see this posted on Make by some garage hacker but from Microsofts R&D department? Sorry, it'll take a bit more to impress me when they've got over $6 billion annually to play with.
But if you're impressed than more power to ya.
LoB
But hey, this came from some million dollar salaried Microsoft "Researcher", ooooowwwww.
/., it's a mouse in a sock and that's about it.
I've got a better idea, stick a wireless mouse under a remote control car and drive your way around your FPS game.
I can't believe this got posted on
BFD.
LoB
But I think that without a large organization pushing the distro( RedHat, Suse, Canonical, etc ) it is likely that the enterprise users are just going to be confined to smaller department users. Granted, the overall numbers might be larger but a company like MySQL AB can't make a profit supporting thousands of 5-10 user departments like they can supporting 1,000+ user installations.
I agree with you on were Debian fits and its capabilities but from a financial standpoint, going where the larger "bubble" of users are just makes cents.
Canonical and Linspire do put a public face behind Debian-based distros, and Canonical is pushing for the server market, but otherwise, it's like killing ants with a beebee gun. Not very efficient.
LoB
My first thought was how strange this was considering how Shuttleworth is trying to move Ubuntu(Debian based) to the server( Ubuntu 6.06 LTS-long term support ) amongst the other Debian distro's out there. I wonder why the had originally included Debian for MySQL Enterprise Support in the first place since the business case is still growing.
My second thought was to some old news that MySQL Inc was partnering with Microsoft and are they getting any 'incentives' to move away from anything but Novell Suse products. Debian being the first to go.
But, this is MySQL Enterprise Support we're talking about and you won't find as much enterprise support for Debian, or at the same scale, as you'd find for RedHat or Suse. It is a shame though and I hope their "partnership" with Microsoft is not an issue here. If it is, I suspect we'll next hear of another deal with Microsoft and the dropping of RedHat Enterprise support. Not necessarily in that order. IMO.
LoB
currently the cost of Sun Microsystems purchasing Star Division and StarOffice and open sourcing it all. :-/
IMO, if they're gonna include JAVA, what OO uses should be compiled to native code and then let any extension/addon/etc which would use JAVA be interpreted and have an option to compile those too.
JAVA isn't bad, it's just not for everything.
LoB
the difference is, you will be hard pressed to find a company who can hire these people away from Microsoft. In the Xerox/PARC days, alot of those people went to other companies to move the tech forward. It would be interesting to see what multiplier Microsoft uses to set these guys/gals pay scales. My guess, somewhere around 4x.
LoB
Smart move by Intel to include having the manufacturing done in the country they're selling into. It will make the devices more expensive but it gives the government a good public marketing pitch for keeping the money local. I don't know if they could even consider using Microsoft on these if they're pitching localized financial spending.
Unfortunately, this doesn't scale out to all countries but will work in the largest of markets. You know, the ones that'll have the most press potential. Interesting plan...
LoB
This device might fit you needs:
a rs/5
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nokia770.
LoB
But now, Bill Gates has billions in his foundation to purchase his way into the hearts and minds of the worlds youth. IMO, he may be retiring from Microsoft, but he's going to be peddling their 'stuff' in direct competition to the One Laptop Per Child project. And he'll do it not because it's the right thing to do but because he thinks the Microsoft way is the One Microsoft Way and only way. IMO.
LoB
I think the handheld market moved to a point where companies grew too large to sustain low margin products. The low-end Palms( III and m105 ) are great handhelds but they made very little on these and as Palm was purchased by larger and larger companies, they insisted on more profits. And, IMO, one of the main reasons cheap devices have disappeared is the marketing guys need for a color screen and more ghee-whiz features. The battery power and processing power requirements drove the system prices up up and up. As you mentioned, there is no longer an entry level handheld outside cheap mobile phones. And phones suck as a PDA because they have small screens and the 3rd party software just isn't there like it is for the Palm PDA market since the device is so tightly controlled.
I know people who still use their old Palm III based handhelds even when they could easily purchase some other device. They love the device because its battery lasts for weeks with heavy use and the screen is easy to read and use in almost all lighting conditions. I'm sure they also appreciate how easy the Palm pen interface is.
LoB
Microsoft does not "DESERVE A CHANCE" IMO and I will say that you will win the lottery before Microsoft actually competes in a way we'd a business to compete( ie better, faster, cheaper, etc ). They've never done this and nothing has shown that they've experienced some kind of epiphany which moves them to being truely competitive. IMO.
It is good to see others attempting to join the market for enabling the worlds kids.
LoB
ah but you forget that in markets outside of desktop Windows PC's( all other markets ) Microsoft has lost billions and has paid companies/businesses to use their products. They've lost over $8 billion on Windows CE, they are losing billions on Xbox, they plan on losing billions on Zune. Granted, they've only been willing to deal with the OEM or distributor with regards to moving money to them for pushing the product but it shows Microsoft is willing to use its billions in monopoly money to purchase marketshare.
Don't be surprised to see Microsoft subsidizing an MS One Laptop Per Kid project to get kids hooked on Windows instead of some other product. Intel may be looking to get back in bed with Microsoft to get more Intel chips in devices. If only to limit AMDs marketshare since profits are going to be slim in these. And IMO, Negroponte's willingness to 'work with' Microsoft is foolish. His and their goals are polar opposites and helping Microsoft in any way will only help destroy his project. IMO.
LoB
;-)
http://www.hasbro.com/playskool/videonowjr/
LoB
I guess they could re-flash the device with their OS and I was mistaken on that point because I was thinking ROM as in WORM and not as in FLASH ROM.
Regarding the connectivity, the OLPC devices are wired with mesh wireless connectivity. They can communicate with each other and if one device had an internet connection, they all share. But also, if one device is a data source, then they all can share and connect with that datasource. Think of the datasource PC as a simple 'internet'. So by putting a fullblown MS Windows PC in a room with 30 OLPC devices, the MS Windows PC can easily feed all the OLPC devices or serve them as in terminal server clients. The network connectivity part is a good portion of the FUD Bill Gates passes on about this project and you've seemed to have fallen for it. These devices are primarily designed to be connected and the don't need to have an Internet connection to be useful since they can share amongst themselves or a host/teacher system. Heck, one use for that SD card slot would be for the teacher to provide content while still using a OLPC device her/himself.
If you are talking about the wireless mesh networking being designed to be unstable or only provide temporary connectivity, I've not seen that. Again, I think you're mixing up when is unstable and what connectivity the devices are intended to have.
LoB
there's nothing pointing to MS Windows getting pre-installed( ie in ROM ) and TFA stated the SD slot was added for Windows. I guess they could do a ROM SD card with Windows on it but I doubt it. And I don't think Microsoft cares about these getting viruses so long as they have Windows on them. Besides another free SD card with MS Windows is all that's needed to 'clean' the system. As was mentioned earlier, they'll probably give away a free WindowsPC to drive the content to the OLPK( MS One Laptop Per Kid ) devices and putting in a SD slot to install 'clean' images is cheap.
Not to mention it'll be attempted to make the OLPK devices just terminals to Microsofts Windows Terminal Server. IMO.
LoB
Too bad anybody listens to this master snake oil salesman in the first place.
Blast me as TROLL but Gates is a fraud IMO.
LoB
Given how Microsoft 'innovates', my guess is that they're attempting to reverse engineer the OLPC device so they can release their OLPK model. It'll cost them more to make, be less useful, cost them billions in losses, but be marketed out the wazzu until the naive think they want one. Think WinCE and Zune.
Oh and those billions in losses for the project will mostly be due to Microsoft paying 3rd world governments 'marketing dollars', 'evaluation dollars', 'creating training centers', etc for accepting the OLPK instead of OLPC. ie, they'll find a way to pay people to use the product so that the competition gets no traction or loses what it has.
Too bad the OLPC gang are not as agressive at marketing as Microsoft is. They should be blasting the market with news of Microsoft validating the OLPC product by trying to get Windows on it. Remember, Bill Gates went public with bashing the OLPC project and totally spreading the typical MS FUD with misinformation on the project goals. Ofcourse a MS Windows laptop would solve the problems Bill said the OLPC had...
LoB