I think that is why the OLPC software is all about sharing between students and teachers. ie one student can start an application and other student can join him/her with his/her XO and see the problems being solved or help solve them. It's not like you sitting at home in the back room figuring things out and unless you save and sent the application and file nobody can see what you did.
I agree that manual skills need to be taught but the OLPC XO and Sugar software was designed for sharing and solving problems with others. Lots of work went into designing the Mesh networking which allows devices to connect to each other in a one-to-one configuration and a many-to-many configuration.
The original XO did have an area for use with a drawing pencil/pointer but it didn't work well but the next gen of XO is supposed to be a tablet so even manual input(hand drawings etc ) will be possible.
if educators look at everything new as something that'll fail then get rid of them. Our educators should be infatuated with learning and new ideas and embracing new ideas. Here it is 2012 and still our kids are leaving high school without a clue how to use the general purpose computer( notice it's not called a word processing machine ). We are taught to read not because there's one book we should read but because the written word is everywhere. And besides, progress means moving to new ways of doing things including enhancing existing methods.
If we think the computer is not a fad then we should be giving the kids a chance at learning how to use them to learn and then allow them to learn as much as they want or can from there. ie the software on the device should be about teaching classic concepts along with the ability to explore other concepts(programming, drawing, painting, logic, mathematical graphing, etc. And with open source, there is no financial issues limiting schools, parents, etc. On top of that, some of the students will raise up to be teachers aids for new students, the schools IT specialists, and even the software programmers etc.
or we could just stick with pencils, paper, caulk board and printed books and then in 10 years wonder why the rest of the world has overtaken us in education skill sets. But someone needs to assist the educators even if it's just one other educator at each school who learns Moodle gets the rest up on using existing coursework and then improving them to their students needs.
exactly but they would leverage existing licensing contracts for force the "licensing agreement" just as they've done with most of the Android signers. If you noticed, most of them already licensed and sold Microsoft Windows based products so they were already licensing Windows. Now that they've basically lost the FAT patent they need something to replace it and as you suggested, an SSL patent might be a good one.
not to be picky but that would be 2000( 12 years ) as the Honda Insight went on sale in early and the 2001 Prius went on sale in July of 2000.
BTW, I think many who purchased the GM and Ford SUV hybrids are probably the majority of those who would not get another hybrid. The fuel economy improvements on those heavy wind pushers were minimal at best.
good points. Related, I've heard a few smartphone users state in conversation that they hardly used their PC's any more. So watch the quarterly shipment numbers start to shrink along with Microsoft revenue in the consumer space.
the desktop PC form factor is not going away but what percent of the current desktop market requires that form factor? Remembering that a tablet like the iPad can be turned sideways on a stand and used with a bluetooth keyboard or something like the Transformer Prime.
Add in the ability for remote access to a desktop like computer(Citrix, etc) and we are probably looking at less than 50% of the current desktop PC market. It is this reason why Microsoft is willing to dump billions into the phone and tablet segments in an attempt to bring this migration to a halt.
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 1
that's what I was afraid of. still to many little pieces missing for todays systems. I had to skip VirtualPC/Virtual Box when they didn't have USB support and went with VMWare and VMWare dropped OS/2 support. It seems IBM did some tweaks using obscure parts of the x86 CPU and it's the only OS using them so they are not implemented. Or something like that.
Thanks for the great information on where OS/2 is today.
my point is that just because Microsoft Windows is on a monopoly share of desktop computers it does not mean my TV should be run on it, the speak-n-spell run on it, my phone should run on it, and it does not mean that an educational tool which is shaped like a laptop should be run on it. The poor logic you use would mean that the iPhone is useless because it's not Windows and Android is useless because it's not Windows.
and I'm not going to waste my time explaining how Microsoft got that position in the market nor why a very computer ignorant public perpetuates there position.
It sounds to me like someone is a bit defensive about the world of Microsoft they live in.
I'm not sure school kids in the 1-6 grades would benefit from just having an Internet connection on an OLPC XO. There are lots of software preloaded on the XO for learning, exploring, and interacting. But it does take some initial understanding of the basic features of the XO and Sugar before letting the kids go. And the kids will figure some things out.. I saw a 1 year old looking at pictures on an iPhone by swiping his finger on the screen. They figure this stuff out given just a bit of info to get them going.
I agree with you 100% on how pathetic our education system is in regards to how they think the device makes them smart. Nobody is teaching what a computer really is and many businesses and government jobs blow off real computer use education. I know someone who got the label "computer geek" at her office after she self taught how to use MS Excel. And I'm talking the basics of Excel and she was the resident computer geek in an office of 40> year old professionals. As I mentioned in another thread, I've seen recent college education teachers graduate and have no understanding of the computer other than, as you mentioned, Microsoft Office apps.
The idea, "I have a computer, therefore I must be smart." must be rampant here in the US. It's so sad thinking how it's been over 15 years since the general population(US) had access to cheap computers and Internet connectivity yet still we are so uneducated about one of the most powerful tools invented.
I'd seen where some village used an old car alternator connected to a ox driven turnstile or something like that to charge a dozen XO's. And small 12V battery would be needed too just to power up the alternator once it got going. And old treadmill motor might work too but would probably need a regulator and might only do a few XO's. And old bicycle might be used to turn these too.
There are many ways to build a little 12V generator and probably dozens here on/. who could help with instructions. Let us know if there's any way we can help so that getting power is not the problem for the XO there.
You do understand that we are talking about little children and not kids in middle or high school right? These primary school age kids were supposed to use the applications pre-loaded and the teachers, assistants and/or school IT people would be the ones who might use the source listing/hacking features.
From what another in these threads said from experience in parts of Peru, it's an educational mess. Kids are told what to do and what to write down and not to think on their own. And it's so corrupt that teachers are told to clock-in by signing in with their name and time started along with ending times but what they do is always write when they were supposed to start and supposed to end. It's all about appeasing the political powers that be and not so much about teaching independent thought.
I would think that with a little bit of overview on the device and it's apps, many kids could have a ball learning on their own at home with the XO and if a neighbor was close enough, networked learning and playing too. The XO does mesh networking so 2+ devices allows for many of the Sugar apps to be worked on together( shared ).
and I know current US teachers who recently graduated from college and they are next to clueless about how to use the computer for anything but "The Word" and "The Excel". Even then they are taught, these are adults mind you, they are taught what to click on more than anything. I'm pretty sure there have already been examples in the US of how little giving kids laptops really helps them when there is no skill at the teacher level or specific curriculum defined and based around the laptops.
The XO and the Sugar system is still somewhat complicated and kids could greatly benefit from the basics of what the camera is and the LED showing it is turned on, what the microphone is along with it's LED, the Journal and the 4 icons for the network, applications, application and home screens. Just dropping it from the sky isn't the best way to get the kids to really figure out ways to use them. But I fully agree that micro managing by adults isn't going to get them to learn how to learn the devices and the Sugar software.
it appears you never read about the goals of the project. paper products do not last in the rural humid environments the OLPC devices are designed for. I didn't agree with the idea that teachers will learn with the students how to best make use of the devices but that's has nothing to do with the device design. As a replacement for books which can't be constantly replaced, the XO is very nice and as a platform for learning exercises it too is a very nice platform.
But you can't just drop it out of an airplane and expect it to be used even close to its intended purposes. "The Gods Must Be Crazy" comes to mind.
yes, Apple and Google should just shut down shop and go home because Microsoft has the answer today and into the future. FAIL!
Did you ever hear that the reason companies hire college grads is not so much because of what the learned in school be the fact that they could be taught something new? And if kids are being taught what pictures to click on and not the concepts of word processing, spreadsheets... oh wait, you were talking about the user interface(UI)... I guess by default all Windows users know Microsoft's Metro UI?
In other words, your comment is a big FAIL. It's about learning to learn, not what the tool's UI or apps look like.
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 1
the last I had read was that OOo was getting "ported" to OS/2 via Net Labs work. The whole Oracle mess with how they caused the OOo fork and then attempt to mend the fence after the horse was out was disgusting. Nice to know at least OOo is still there. And nice to hear a good port of JFS was there now too.
Does one have to purchase eCS or can Warp 4 be coxed into installing on "modern" hardware today?
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 1
that rings a bell as the saying goes. I don't recall what was the last fixpack I'd installed but it was atleast fp13 although I also recall getting the server kernel off of the ibmpc ftp site and running it along with hpfs386 and Warp was a screamer. I think it was when Star Office/Open Office left out OS/2 that I had to go fully into the GNU/Linux world. I do miss the WPS and all the amazing things it could do.
thanks for the corrections.
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 1
that sounds about right and if you had access to HPFS386 there were some nice caching tweaks which really made it scream. I would run the server kernel for multi-CPU capabilities too. Back in the day, we'd have physically more than 1 CPU while today their packaged in a single chip.
OS/2 was, and sounds like it still is, a great platform for running lots of different software. Much like how the WorkplaceOS was supposed to work. There was even a great X11 port which allowed both local X clients to run( via EMX) and remote clients.
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 1
considering the memory footprints of the early '90s, it did pretty good. The kernel/OS used only about 4MB while the WorkPlaceShell used another 4MB. Today, many GigaBytes is normal for new PCs but that wasn't the case even 10 years ago. Besides, Loading 3 tabs in FF only shows about 450MB of virtual memory with about half that resident.
The way I saw it back then, if you wanted a "real" computer on your desk, you paid the money for larger disks and a few extra MB of RAM. NeXT hardware was very expensive and WinNT was slow and buggy compared to OS/2 back then.
And remember, that was 1GB per process/application( ie application space including its threads ).
that's what happened when OS/2 was preloaded by just a few PC vendors in Germany. But in the US where Microsoft had licensing contracts with all the vendors and that license required payment to Microsoft with or without Microsoft's OS, IBM could not crack even a few percentage points of market share.
I remember those days well. Like how Object Oriented Programming was very popular and resulted in application frameworks making cross platform software easy and fun. But with every innovation in software development came a Microsoft counter example of doing it differently and such that it only ran on Windows. OOP on Windows was called object-like. The common 3D graphics system was OpenGL but Microsoft came up with Direct3D on it's DirectX. IBM created DIVE(Direct Video Interface) and hired a small software company called ID Software to port the Doom engine to OS/2 using DIVE to show off OS/2's capabilities. That's about the time Microsoft employees were running around Comdex crashing OS/2 machines with floppy disks designed to do that.
I will send out a big "thank you Linux and the FSF" for GNU/Linux and the ability to stay away from Microsoft's software and the repeating head aches it's brought so many. I see so many on the various social media sites disappearing and then reappearing weeks later saying their Windows computers broke.
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 1
but I found it sad that when NT kernel based Windows(Windows 2k) finally became _the_ standard desktop it was then I heard all the Windows fan developers praising multi-threading. Me, I was blown away when I found that most of the default Microsoft utilities to manage Windows XP were not multi-threaded or if they were you couldn't tell in the UI. ie way too much waiting for the hour glass pointer.
LoB
Re:os/2 was not able to windows 32 bit apps just 3
on
25 Years of IBM's OS/2
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
IBM engineers had the full Win32 running on OS/2 but once Microsoft found out they modified Windows 95/aka Chicago to break that capability. OS/2 processes could only access 1GB of address space while Chicago processes got 4GB of address space. So to break the OS/2 ability to run 32bit Windows Microsoft modified their resource compilier to load the applications resources(menus, icons, etc ) up at the top of the address space instead of down low with the rest of the application. Viola, OS/2 was unable to load the full Win32 application.
There were stories of IBM even solving that problem but deciding that if Microsoft was willing to convolute their OS design to prevent OS/2 from running it once, they'd just keep doing it and so IBM ended the cat/mouse game at Win32S capabilities along with OS/2's already advanced design.
setup your own DVR from which you can easily extract any video you've recorded( ie share clips with friends/family when something interesting is seen ). The next is Zoneminder which is a home video security system which you can use to know when the mail has been delivered, when the dog ate, when the dog ate your couch, etc. Zoneminder can use video feeds from IP cameras, web/usb cams, or with a capture card CCTV cameras.
Throw in a few X10 modules for a little fun with lighting control.
All that is pretty cheap to do with extra computer boxes around and for just a few hundred bucks for some cameras and wiring.
while Microsoft, with less than 10% market share and holding, has spent billions in business deals and is spending around a half a billion just in marketing their smartphone OS. It seems strange but it says lots about how important the phone segment is to Microsoft and how even 20% isn't enough to sustain a company like RIM.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that is why the OLPC software is all about sharing between students and teachers. ie one student can start an application and other student can join him/her with his/her XO and see the problems being solved or help solve them. It's not like you sitting at home in the back room figuring things out and unless you save and sent the application and file nobody can see what you did.
I agree that manual skills need to be taught but the OLPC XO and Sugar software was designed for sharing and solving problems with others. Lots of work went into designing the Mesh networking which allows devices to connect to each other in a one-to-one configuration and a many-to-many configuration.
The original XO did have an area for use with a drawing pencil/pointer but it didn't work well but the next gen of XO is supposed to be a tablet so even manual input(hand drawings etc ) will be possible.
LoB
if educators look at everything new as something that'll fail then get rid of them. Our educators should be infatuated with learning and new ideas and embracing new ideas. Here it is 2012 and still our kids are leaving high school without a clue how to use the general purpose computer( notice it's not called a word processing machine ). We are taught to read not because there's one book we should read but because the written word is everywhere. And besides, progress means moving to new ways of doing things including enhancing existing methods.
If we think the computer is not a fad then we should be giving the kids a chance at learning how to use them to learn and then allow them to learn as much as they want or can from there. ie the software on the device should be about teaching classic concepts along with the ability to explore other concepts(programming, drawing, painting, logic, mathematical graphing, etc. And with open source, there is no financial issues limiting schools, parents, etc. On top of that, some of the students will raise up to be teachers aids for new students, the schools IT specialists, and even the software programmers etc.
or we could just stick with pencils, paper, caulk board and printed books and then in 10 years wonder why the rest of the world has overtaken us in education skill sets. But someone needs to assist the educators even if it's just one other educator at each school who learns Moodle gets the rest up on using existing coursework and then improving them to their students needs.
LoB
exactly but they would leverage existing licensing contracts for force the "licensing agreement" just as they've done with most of the Android signers. If you noticed, most of them already licensed and sold Microsoft Windows based products so they were already licensing Windows. Now that they've basically lost the FAT patent they need something to replace it and as you suggested, an SSL patent might be a good one.
LoB
not to be picky but that would be 2000( 12 years ) as the Honda Insight went on sale in early and the 2001 Prius went on sale in July of 2000.
BTW, I think many who purchased the GM and Ford SUV hybrids are probably the majority of those who would not get another hybrid. The fuel economy improvements on those heavy wind pushers were minimal at best.
LoB
good points. Related, I've heard a few smartphone users state in conversation that they hardly used their PC's any more. So watch the quarterly shipment numbers start to shrink along with Microsoft revenue in the consumer space.
LoB
the desktop PC form factor is not going away but what percent of the current desktop market requires that form factor? Remembering that a tablet like the iPad can be turned sideways on a stand and used with a bluetooth keyboard or something like the Transformer Prime.
Add in the ability for remote access to a desktop like computer(Citrix, etc) and we are probably looking at less than 50% of the current desktop PC market. It is this reason why Microsoft is willing to dump billions into the phone and tablet segments in an attempt to bring this migration to a halt.
LoB
that's what I was afraid of. still to many little pieces missing for todays systems. I had to skip VirtualPC/Virtual Box when they didn't have USB support and went with VMWare and VMWare dropped OS/2 support. It seems IBM did some tweaks using obscure parts of the x86 CPU and it's the only OS using them so they are not implemented. Or something like that.
Thanks for the great information on where OS/2 is today.
LoB
wow, linking to a post in a thread fro 2007? FAIL and LAME!
http://lwn.net/Articles/411064/
PS, one completely bull shit reference is enough to not bother looking into the others.
LoB
my point is that just because Microsoft Windows is on a monopoly share of desktop computers it does not mean my TV should be run on it, the speak-n-spell run on it, my phone should run on it, and it does not mean that an educational tool which is shaped like a laptop should be run on it. The poor logic you use would mean that the iPhone is useless because it's not Windows and Android is useless because it's not Windows.
and I'm not going to waste my time explaining how Microsoft got that position in the market nor why a very computer ignorant public perpetuates there position.
It sounds to me like someone is a bit defensive about the world of Microsoft they live in.
LoB
I'm not sure school kids in the 1-6 grades would benefit from just having an Internet connection on an OLPC XO. There are lots of software preloaded on the XO for learning, exploring, and interacting. But it does take some initial understanding of the basic features of the XO and Sugar before letting the kids go. And the kids will figure some things out.. I saw a 1 year old looking at pictures on an iPhone by swiping his finger on the screen. They figure this stuff out given just a bit of info to get them going.
I agree with you 100% on how pathetic our education system is in regards to how they think the device makes them smart. Nobody is teaching what a computer really is and many businesses and government jobs blow off real computer use education. I know someone who got the label "computer geek" at her office after she self taught how to use MS Excel. And I'm talking the basics of Excel and she was the resident computer geek in an office of 40> year old professionals. As I mentioned in another thread, I've seen recent college education teachers graduate and have no understanding of the computer other than, as you mentioned, Microsoft Office apps.
The idea, "I have a computer, therefore I must be smart." must be rampant here in the US. It's so sad thinking how it's been over 15 years since the general population(US) had access to cheap computers and Internet connectivity yet still we are so uneducated about one of the most powerful tools invented.
LoB
I'd seen where some village used an old car alternator connected to a ox driven turnstile or something like that to charge a dozen XO's. And small 12V battery would be needed too just to power up the alternator once it got going. And old treadmill motor might work too but would probably need a regulator and might only do a few XO's. And old bicycle might be used to turn these too.
/. who could help with instructions. Let us know if there's any way we can help so that getting power is not the problem for the XO there.
There are many ways to build a little 12V generator and probably dozens here on
LoB
You do understand that we are talking about little children and not kids in middle or high school right? These primary school age kids were supposed to use the applications pre-loaded and the teachers, assistants and/or school IT people would be the ones who might use the source listing/hacking features.
From what another in these threads said from experience in parts of Peru, it's an educational mess. Kids are told what to do and what to write down and not to think on their own. And it's so corrupt that teachers are told to clock-in by signing in with their name and time started along with ending times but what they do is always write when they were supposed to start and supposed to end. It's all about appeasing the political powers that be and not so much about teaching independent thought.
I would think that with a little bit of overview on the device and it's apps, many kids could have a ball learning on their own at home with the XO and if a neighbor was close enough, networked learning and playing too. The XO does mesh networking so 2+ devices allows for many of the Sugar apps to be worked on together( shared ).
LoB
and I know current US teachers who recently graduated from college and they are next to clueless about how to use the computer for anything but "The Word" and "The Excel". Even then they are taught, these are adults mind you, they are taught what to click on more than anything. I'm pretty sure there have already been examples in the US of how little giving kids laptops really helps them when there is no skill at the teacher level or specific curriculum defined and based around the laptops.
The XO and the Sugar system is still somewhat complicated and kids could greatly benefit from the basics of what the camera is and the LED showing it is turned on, what the microphone is along with it's LED, the Journal and the 4 icons for the network, applications, application and home screens. Just dropping it from the sky isn't the best way to get the kids to really figure out ways to use them. But I fully agree that micro managing by adults isn't going to get them to learn how to learn the devices and the Sugar software.
LoB
it appears you never read about the goals of the project. paper products do not last in the rural humid environments the OLPC devices are designed for. I didn't agree with the idea that teachers will learn with the students how to best make use of the devices but that's has nothing to do with the device design. As a replacement for books which can't be constantly replaced, the XO is very nice and as a platform for learning exercises it too is a very nice platform.
But you can't just drop it out of an airplane and expect it to be used even close to its intended purposes. "The Gods Must Be Crazy" comes to mind.
LoB
yes, Apple and Google should just shut down shop and go home because Microsoft has the answer today and into the future. FAIL!
Did you ever hear that the reason companies hire college grads is not so much because of what the learned in school be the fact that they could be taught something new? And if kids are being taught what pictures to click on and not the concepts of word processing, spreadsheets... oh wait, you were talking about the user interface(UI)... I guess by default all Windows users know Microsoft's Metro UI?
In other words, your comment is a big FAIL. It's about learning to learn, not what the tool's UI or apps look like.
LoB
the last I had read was that OOo was getting "ported" to OS/2 via Net Labs work. The whole Oracle mess with how they caused the OOo fork and then attempt to mend the fence after the horse was out was disgusting. Nice to know at least OOo is still there. And nice to hear a good port of JFS was there now too.
Does one have to purchase eCS or can Warp 4 be coxed into installing on "modern" hardware today?
LoB
that rings a bell as the saying goes. I don't recall what was the last fixpack I'd installed but it was atleast fp13 although I also recall getting the server kernel off of the ibmpc ftp site and running it along with hpfs386 and Warp was a screamer. I think it was when Star Office/Open Office left out OS/2 that I had to go fully into the GNU/Linux world. I do miss the WPS and all the amazing things it could do.
thanks for the corrections.
LoB
that sounds about right and if you had access to HPFS386 there were some nice caching tweaks which really made it scream. I would run the server kernel for multi-CPU capabilities too. Back in the day, we'd have physically more than 1 CPU while today their packaged in a single chip.
OS/2 was, and sounds like it still is, a great platform for running lots of different software. Much like how the WorkplaceOS was supposed to work. There was even a great X11 port which allowed both local X clients to run( via EMX) and remote clients.
LoB
considering the memory footprints of the early '90s, it did pretty good. The kernel/OS used only about 4MB while the WorkPlaceShell used another 4MB. Today, many GigaBytes is normal for new PCs but that wasn't the case even 10 years ago. Besides, Loading 3 tabs in FF only shows about 450MB of virtual memory with about half that resident.
The way I saw it back then, if you wanted a "real" computer on your desk, you paid the money for larger disks and a few extra MB of RAM. NeXT hardware was very expensive and WinNT was slow and buggy compared to OS/2 back then.
And remember, that was 1GB per process/application( ie application space including its threads ).
LoB
that's what happened when OS/2 was preloaded by just a few PC vendors in Germany. But in the US where Microsoft had licensing contracts with all the vendors and that license required payment to Microsoft with or without Microsoft's OS, IBM could not crack even a few percentage points of market share.
I remember those days well. Like how Object Oriented Programming was very popular and resulted in application frameworks making cross platform software easy and fun. But with every innovation in software development came a Microsoft counter example of doing it differently and such that it only ran on Windows. OOP on Windows was called object-like. The common 3D graphics system was OpenGL but Microsoft came up with Direct3D on it's DirectX. IBM created DIVE(Direct Video Interface) and hired a small software company called ID Software to port the Doom engine to OS/2 using DIVE to show off OS/2's capabilities. That's about the time Microsoft employees were running around Comdex crashing OS/2 machines with floppy disks designed to do that.
I will send out a big "thank you Linux and the FSF" for GNU/Linux and the ability to stay away from Microsoft's software and the repeating head aches it's brought so many. I see so many on the various social media sites disappearing and then reappearing weeks later saying their Windows computers broke.
LoB
but I found it sad that when NT kernel based Windows(Windows 2k) finally became _the_ standard desktop it was then I heard all the Windows fan developers praising multi-threading. Me, I was blown away when I found that most of the default Microsoft utilities to manage Windows XP were not multi-threaded or if they were you couldn't tell in the UI. ie way too much waiting for the hour glass pointer.
LoB
IBM engineers had the full Win32 running on OS/2 but once Microsoft found out they modified Windows 95/aka Chicago to break that capability. OS/2 processes could only access 1GB of address space while Chicago processes got 4GB of address space. So to break the OS/2 ability to run 32bit Windows Microsoft modified their resource compilier to load the applications resources(menus, icons, etc ) up at the top of the address space instead of down low with the rest of the application. Viola, OS/2 was unable to load the full Win32 application.
There were stories of IBM even solving that problem but deciding that if Microsoft was willing to convolute their OS design to prevent OS/2 from running it once, they'd just keep doing it and so IBM ended the cat/mouse game at Win32S capabilities along with OS/2's already advanced design.
LoB
setup your own DVR from which you can easily extract any video you've recorded( ie share clips with friends/family when something interesting is seen ). The next is Zoneminder which is a home video security system which you can use to know when the mail has been delivered, when the dog ate, when the dog ate your couch, etc. Zoneminder can use video feeds from IP cameras, web/usb cams, or with a capture card CCTV cameras.
Throw in a few X10 modules for a little fun with lighting control.
All that is pretty cheap to do with extra computer boxes around and for just a few hundred bucks for some cameras and wiring.
LoB
while Microsoft, with less than 10% market share and holding, has spent billions in business deals and is spending around a half a billion just in marketing their smartphone OS. It seems strange but it says lots about how important the phone segment is to Microsoft and how even 20% isn't enough to sustain a company like RIM.
LoB
NoMSG
LoB