Neroponte appears to be trying to limit consumer choices and stifle competition.
Exactly.
No one else can sell laptops to third-world countries except OLPC. Intel has a more expensive and more feature-full laptop, and OLPC is afraid third-world countries might be lured into buying something like, you know, the kids in the developed world have access to - Windows and Mac PCs. Id the OLPC is the best for them, the third-world countries will buy them, if not, they'll buy what is - not what Mr. Negroponte has decided they need/want/deserve.
I remember a recent "review" of laptops for personal/school use (2 years ago? 18 months?) where the author was *still* complaining about that "one mouse button" thing, as if that was the biggest problem with Apple hardware...
Look, it's PC Magazine, and if you follow their root, they started as, uhm, PC Magazine when the IBM PC was first introduced. THey never claimed to be multi-platform, just as MACWORLD never claimed to consider the MS/Windows world...
The fact that the $199 PC sold out is because (IMHO) there were a large number of geeks that bought them so they could say "Look, a $200 computer!", then upgrade the hell out of it (RAM, HD, etc.) The WalMart PC is being bought by people who haven't touched the thing before they decide (AFAIK). The thing is cheap and serves a purpose, like many, many things at Wal-Mart. I personally bought an Intel D201gly motherboard/CPU simply because it was a $69 Intel MB with a Celeron CPU and had decent memory support (PC-4300, DDR2). That doesn't mean it was a great success, it means it was an interesting proposition for many buyers, whatever their interest.
I'd find it hard to believe that many of those $199 PCs were sold to first-time, never touched a PC people...
The question isn't where can we store our terabytes and terabytes of information for a 100 years and never touch it, the real question is where can we store our terabytes of information and allow it to be used to generate copies for sale at any time in a current format? I imagine the answer for the industry will resemble the Internet Bookmobile, where a consumer needs only submit the name of the movie they want, indicate a format and shipping preference, and the movie arrives for set price - a portion of each sale will be applied to keep the data migrated to a fresh format, and when interest wanes, a studio could decide to migrate to a "final copy" and "burn" the film to celluloid. That would the last hope for a film, resulting in lowered storage costs for the long haul, at the expense of accessibility and flexability.
The problem is the current storage model doesn't take into account the long tail of retail, and ignores the ability of technology to create new revenue streams to fund storage options...
Just think, if a movie house could order up a "print" of any movie ever made and show it in a theater - and offer DVD, HD or Blu-Ray copies to be delivered to the home of anyone that wanted one..Heck, I'd pay REAL MONEY to see Stop Making Sense on a big screen with the sound turned up to 11;^)
And how does this relate to the Asus Eee laptop and GPL concerns?
As for your moaning - grow up! I applaud your directness in admitting you are too cheap to give OLPC a cash donation. As for the Buy 1 Get 1 offer, first off it would cost you $400 - $200 for the laptop you get and $200 for the one you donated. As for not living in either the US or Canada that is your own fault, we've left our borders to the US wide open for hundreds of years, that neither you nor your ancestors couldn't find time to make it over hear before we close the borders is your own fault.
The buy 1 get 1 deal is way to get some much-needed cash into their coffers ASAP (as their 1 million unit minimum is really cutting down on potential sales), and they really weren't looking to set up repair depots and support services around the globe.
Your problem is your ancestors didn't make it into US/Canada, and you happen to live in the developed world - this effort should really be called One Laptop Per Non-White Child...
As for your coding skills, I guess OLPC will have to get by with an infinite number of monkeys minus one (you) to craft their software...
WTF - citations on this? Can this possibly be anything but a few isolated cases? I wonder if these were grey-market Eees looking for warranty repairs in the wrong market...
Yay! The Eco movement meets NIMBY on a grand scale!
I want my power to be from wind mills, but don't litter my pristine mountain ranges with those silly propellers - instead there is all this land in the middle of the country that we could put them on. Of course, minor details like power line transmission loss pale in comparison to the smugness they can claim by having 100% wind power.
These pin heads could have the net same effect if they were to move 100% of all internet data centers to the middle of the country and surround them with wind mills - that would reduce power demands in CA, increase response times for half the country, and free up some more over-priced land in CA - a Win-Win-Win!
I just found ouot about this program started over the summer by Dell & Goodwill in selected areas around the US - apparently, they strip down and sell off basic parts (plastic pellets, copper, etc.) as reclaimed commodities. I'm going to give it a try this week end (I want to get a car in the garage this winter;^)
You can not have a reciept showing how an individual voted. If reciepts are provided that show how an individual voted, then they could trade their vote for favorable treatment by their employer, politician, etc.
With two records (paper and electronic), they can both be right, they can both be wrong, or only one is wrong. If they are both right or both wrong, you'll neve question it - you'll only question it when only ONE of the systems is wrong OR if both machines are wrong, but hav different numbers.
We would need (I feel) three systems to prove correctness - just like the NASA space programs had triple-redundant computers, each worked independently, and the results were compared before action is taken based on the results when at least two of the three systems created identical results.
The idea is that 90% of the time, you trust the electronic total. But if the election is really close or some results are suspicious, you can fall back on the paper total (which you don't bother to create otherwise).
So when in doubt, you trust the paper. Fine, then what is the point of the electronic vote tally? You won't know if there is a problem until you see a discrepency, and the only way you'd see a discrepency is if the paper tally is not equal to the electronic tally, which means you have to count the paper ballots every time.
If you ever do discover a discrepancy between the two totals, you investigate it carefully. You also audit some percentage of the electronic totals by computing paper totals. If you catch a discrepancy, you investigate.
You have to compute 100% of the paper, or there is no point to the paper, since you can't trust that the paper is the same as the electronic.
The point I am trying to make, is that you creating two records, and if/when a discrepency is detected, which do you trust?
Personally, I think we should have machine-generated paper ballots - then you can scan them (a la scantron), count them by hand, etc and there are no "hanging chads" or other silliness...
At issue, as I see it, is that if you have an electronic total and a paper total for a given election, and they diverge - which do you trust? And if you decide to always trust, say, the paper total over the electronic total when they diverge, what is the real value of the electronic total?
Put another way, if there are two children in a room (Tim and Mary) and I hear a lamp break, when I investigate if I decide to ignore whatever Tim says (unless it agrees with what Mary says), why ask Tim what happened?
Paper ballots are superior to electronic ballots in almost nearly all instances, but we in America seem to think that we shouldn't have to use such "third-world" solutions...
This is a patent application that was approved, much to my dismay, for policies to notify users using previously submitted information about changes in policies including allowing users to request that they not be notified about policy changes.
I don't see the bold new invention here worthy of a patent.
Are they claiming to have invented a "Whatever" button? Or is it a patent on using previously supplied information to contact a user?
As for the "threaten" aspect, it's not a threat - if a site changes it's policies and a user doesn't agree, why shouldn't they cancel the user?
Shame on the Patent Office for approving this silly patent, and good luck to MS to try and derive money from it!
Multiple head KVM Extender is more like it, but this unit includes the four-head video card from Matrox (a $750 item), fiber connection vs. IP or Cat5 for greater bandwidth, doesn't emit static, and is not suceptible to line noise over 250 meter runs.
Also, this is an internal solution - it occupies a PCIe 1x slot, not a dongle/adapter that hangs off the back of the system - not a huge difference, but it is a difference. It can't be used as a KVM extender, but it can be used in some places where a KVM extender would have been deployed previously...
KVMs have no place in this discussion, KVM Extenders do...
Mulitple Monitors being extended is the big deal, not switching.
Now that we agree this is not about KVMs (though you want to compare prices and features between this unit and KVMs in each of your posts), what is the big deal here?
Reduced line noise - remoting four high resolution (HD Video quality, 1,920 x 1,200) via fiber generates no noise in the line, to degrade signal or interfere with other wiring.
Reduces cabling - one fiber pair carrying 4x HD video, USB, and Audio over 250 meters is a nice, clean solution - alternatives may not exist using copper cabling.
Reduced noise - by enabling the remoting of the PC without degrading the user experience this hardware can be used to make absolutely quiet workstations/displays.
The closest product to this is a KVM Extender over either Cat5 or IP (which are not the same thing, one is a plain copper pair, the other is IP packets), and those solutions offer lower bandwidth at relatively high prices ($500/port is not unusual). This unit not only extends the video and USB (incl. mouse/keyboard), but it includes the four-head video card, a $750 item from Matrox, reducing the actual cost of a solution.
It carries audio (in and out), USB, and USB keyboard/mouse - did you even look at the review before deciding what it could and could not do?
This unit is a video display extension unit with high bandwidth (4x 1,920 x 1,200 DVI), keyboard extension with audio and USB. It is all carried over fiber, to a breakout card that install in the PC. This unit IS the video card, and the fiber extends the PCIe 1x motherboard connection out to the remote unit, along with PC connections.
Also, I've only seen two display KVMs, this unit carries FOUR.
KVMs are for multiple systems, displayed one at a time - this unit is for one unit with four displays, simultaneously... Big difference.
Exactly - even though this only displaces a single PC, you can make that PC quite powerful, and even a 1U rackmount server ot blade (with requisite PCIe 1x slot available) could provide a very dense solution. If a blade dies, move the fiber connection to a live blade, and you're back up in minutes.
THe bandwidth of this unit far exceeds anything you could do with wireless - four 1920x1200 digital displays, keyboard, mouse, audio, and USB ports over fiber...
This unit is designed and PERFECT for financial "turrets" where traders have up to four screens on their desk at one time... This solution allows them to get the computer hardware out of the turret, allowing them to pack more traders in a given space.
This isn't for the home market, even the home "enthusiast" market, nor even the insane, "gotta have it" home market - this is for certain users with very specific needs where cost isn't really an object...
As for the price, this unit includes the four port video card, that helps explain some of the cost (for example this Matrox card is $750 and provides 4 video outputs...
At a previous employer later acquired by IBM, I worked on a tool for identifying what software was installed on a given mainframe, and once installed, it would track the usage of each application each day/week/month/year, so companies could identify software they were no longer using and could suspend license/maint. fee payments. It worked by wedging itself into the OS and capturing each program load request for tracking execution, and it would scan the system for files that met certain signatures (file size, hash code, contents, etc.)...
I can see value in such a tool outside the mainframe world, even if there are no software license fee issues, and independent of any GPL-like concerns - installing many FOSS OS results in a huge collection of software being installed, and knowing exactly what is and is not on the system has a certain value...
My advice is to grow up, walk to the local convienience store, and for less than a $1 fee (in most cases) in addition to your $100 you can get a money order for $100, walk back to school and get on with your education.
You may have a point, and you may even be right, but what do you gain by arguing with the people that determine where you will live next school year over such an (honestly) minor point? You have choosen to "live off the grid" (no banks, no credit cards, etc.), and this is why you are having a problem - you are trying to pick and choose the individual pieces of the system you like (campus housing, public university education, etc.), and ignore the ones you don't (the modern banking system), and you (apparently) run to slashdot when something doesn't go your way...
If this is the first seemingly "bizzare" exchange with a large, government entity, consider yourself lucky - you will have many more before your body is recycled...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly.
No one else can sell laptops to third-world countries except OLPC. Intel has a more expensive and more feature-full laptop, and OLPC is afraid third-world countries might be lured into buying something like, you know, the kids in the developed world have access to - Windows and Mac PCs. Id the OLPC is the best for them, the third-world countries will buy them, if not, they'll buy what is - not what Mr. Negroponte has decided they need/want/deserve.
I remember a recent "review" of laptops for personal/school use (2 years ago? 18 months?) where the author was *still* complaining about that "one mouse button" thing, as if that was the biggest problem with Apple hardware...
Look, it's PC Magazine, and if you follow their root, they started as, uhm, PC Magazine when the IBM PC was first introduced. THey never claimed to be multi-platform, just as MACWORLD never claimed to consider the MS/Windows world...
The fact that the $199 PC sold out is because (IMHO) there were a large number of geeks that bought them so they could say "Look, a $200 computer!", then upgrade the hell out of it (RAM, HD, etc.) The WalMart PC is being bought by people who haven't touched the thing before they decide (AFAIK). The thing is cheap and serves a purpose, like many, many things at Wal-Mart. I personally bought an Intel D201gly motherboard/CPU simply because it was a $69 Intel MB with a Celeron CPU and had decent memory support (PC-4300, DDR2). That doesn't mean it was a great success, it means it was an interesting proposition for many buyers, whatever their interest.
I'd find it hard to believe that many of those $199 PCs were sold to first-time, never touched a PC people...
The question isn't where can we store our terabytes and terabytes of information for a 100 years and never touch it, the real question is where can we store our terabytes of information and allow it to be used to generate copies for sale at any time in a current format? I imagine the answer for the industry will resemble the Internet Bookmobile, where a consumer needs only submit the name of the movie they want, indicate a format and shipping preference, and the movie arrives for set price - a portion of each sale will be applied to keep the data migrated to a fresh format, and when interest wanes, a studio could decide to migrate to a "final copy" and "burn" the film to celluloid. That would the last hope for a film, resulting in lowered storage costs for the long haul, at the expense of accessibility and flexability.
;^)
The problem is the current storage model doesn't take into account the long tail of retail, and ignores the ability of technology to create new revenue streams to fund storage options...
Just think, if a movie house could order up a "print" of any movie ever made and show it in a theater - and offer DVD, HD or Blu-Ray copies to be delivered to the home of anyone that wanted one..Heck, I'd pay REAL MONEY to see Stop Making Sense on a big screen with the sound turned up to 11
MS has a low-cost version of Windows, they just don't sell it in the US of A - it is called "Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition" - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/winxp/WinXPStarterFS.mspx
And how does this relate to the Asus Eee laptop and GPL concerns?
As for your moaning - grow up! I applaud your directness in admitting you are too cheap to give OLPC a cash donation. As for the Buy 1 Get 1 offer, first off it would cost you $400 - $200 for the laptop you get and $200 for the one you donated. As for not living in either the US or Canada that is your own fault, we've left our borders to the US wide open for hundreds of years, that neither you nor your ancestors couldn't find time to make it over hear before we close the borders is your own fault.
The buy 1 get 1 deal is way to get some much-needed cash into their coffers ASAP (as their 1 million unit minimum is really cutting down on potential sales), and they really weren't looking to set up repair depots and support services around the globe.
Your problem is your ancestors didn't make it into US/Canada, and you happen to live in the developed world - this effort should really be called One Laptop Per Non-White Child...
As for your coding skills, I guess OLPC will have to get by with an infinite number of monkeys minus one (you) to craft their software...
WTF - citations on this? Can this possibly be anything but a few isolated cases? I wonder if these were grey-market Eees looking for warranty repairs in the wrong market...
Yay! The Eco movement meets NIMBY on a grand scale!
I want my power to be from wind mills, but don't litter my pristine mountain ranges with those silly propellers - instead there is all this land in the middle of the country that we could put them on. Of course, minor details like power line transmission loss pale in comparison to the smugness they can claim by having 100% wind power.
These pin heads could have the net same effect if they were to move 100% of all internet data centers to the middle of the country and surround them with wind mills - that would reduce power demands in CA, increase response times for half the country, and free up some more over-priced land in CA - a Win-Win-Win!
I just found ouot about this program started over the summer by Dell & Goodwill in selected areas around the US - apparently, they strip down and sell off basic parts (plastic pellets, copper, etc.) as reclaimed commodities. I'm going to give it a try this week end (I want to get a car in the garage this winter ;^)
Ken
Link: www.reconnectpartnership.com
Seagate didn't lose, they gave up the fight. They offered the lawyers a payoff that made them go away and admitted no wrong-doing.
Neither a judge nor a jury found them at fault, liable, or guilty.
Ken
No, Seagate admitted adding that definition to their packaging after the lawsuit was filed - it's noted in the paperwork of this lawsuit.
This lawsuit goes back a number of years (5?) - the definition is a fairly recent addition to the packaging/marketing campaign.
Ken
Oh, and it's against the law.
We would need (I feel) three systems to prove correctness - just like the NASA space programs had triple-redundant computers, each worked independently, and the results were compared before action is taken based on the results when at least two of the three systems created identical results.
The point I am trying to make, is that you creating two records, and if/when a discrepency is detected, which do you trust?
Personally, I think we should have machine-generated paper ballots - then you can scan them (a la scantron), count them by hand, etc and there are no "hanging chads" or other silliness...
I think you get the idea...
Put another way, if there are two children in a room (Tim and Mary) and I hear a lamp break, when I investigate if I decide to ignore whatever Tim says (unless it agrees with what Mary says), why ask Tim what happened?
Paper ballots are superior to electronic ballots in almost nearly all instances, but we in America seem to think that we shouldn't have to use such "third-world" solutions...
I don't see the bold new invention here worthy of a patent.
Are they claiming to have invented a "Whatever" button? Or is it a patent on using previously supplied information to contact a user?
As for the "threaten" aspect, it's not a threat - if a site changes it's policies and a user doesn't agree, why shouldn't they cancel the user?
Shame on the Patent Office for approving this silly patent, and good luck to MS to try and derive money from it!
Multiple head KVM Extender is more like it, but this unit includes the four-head video card from Matrox (a $750 item), fiber connection vs. IP or Cat5 for greater bandwidth, doesn't emit static, and is not suceptible to line noise over 250 meter runs.
Also, this is an internal solution - it occupies a PCIe 1x slot, not a dongle/adapter that hangs off the back of the system - not a huge difference, but it is a difference. It can't be used as a KVM extender, but it can be used in some places where a KVM extender would have been deployed previously...
KVMs have no place in this discussion, KVM Extenders do...
Mulitple Monitors being extended is the big deal, not switching.
Now that we agree this is not about KVMs (though you want to compare prices and features between this unit and KVMs in each of your posts), what is the big deal here?
Reduced line noise - remoting four high resolution (HD Video quality, 1,920 x 1,200) via fiber generates no noise in the line, to degrade signal or interfere with other wiring.
Reduces cabling - one fiber pair carrying 4x HD video, USB, and Audio over 250 meters is a nice, clean solution - alternatives may not exist using copper cabling.
Reduced noise - by enabling the remoting of the PC without degrading the user experience this hardware can be used to make absolutely quiet workstations/displays.
The closest product to this is a KVM Extender over either Cat5 or IP (which are not the same thing, one is a plain copper pair, the other is IP packets), and those solutions offer lower bandwidth at relatively high prices ($500/port is not unusual). This unit not only extends the video and USB (incl. mouse/keyboard), but it includes the four-head video card, a $750 item from Matrox, reducing the actual cost of a solution.
It carries audio (in and out), USB, and USB keyboard/mouse - did you even look at the review before deciding what it could and could not do?
This unit is a video display extension unit with high bandwidth (4x 1,920 x 1,200 DVI), keyboard extension with audio and USB. It is all carried over fiber, to a breakout card that install in the PC. This unit IS the video card, and the fiber extends the PCIe 1x motherboard connection out to the remote unit, along with PC connections.
Also, I've only seen two display KVMs, this unit carries FOUR.
KVMs are for multiple systems, displayed one at a time - this unit is for one unit with four displays, simultaneously... Big difference.
Exactly - even though this only displaces a single PC, you can make that PC quite powerful, and even a 1U rackmount server ot blade (with requisite PCIe 1x slot available) could provide a very dense solution. If a blade dies, move the fiber connection to a live blade, and you're back up in minutes.
THe bandwidth of this unit far exceeds anything you could do with wireless - four 1920x1200 digital displays, keyboard, mouse, audio, and USB ports over fiber...
This unit is designed and PERFECT for financial "turrets" where traders have up to four screens on their desk at one time... This solution allows them to get the computer hardware out of the turret, allowing them to pack more traders in a given space.
This isn't for the home market, even the home "enthusiast" market, nor even the insane, "gotta have it" home market - this is for certain users with very specific needs where cost isn't really an object...
As for the price, this unit includes the four port video card, that helps explain some of the cost (for example this Matrox card is $750 and provides 4 video outputs...
Why not put a USB DVD burner on one of the many USB ports?
At a previous employer later acquired by IBM, I worked on a tool for identifying what software was installed on a given mainframe, and once installed, it would track the usage of each application each day/week/month/year, so companies could identify software they were no longer using and could suspend license/maint. fee payments. It worked by wedging itself into the OS and capturing each program load request for tracking execution, and it would scan the system for files that met certain signatures (file size, hash code, contents, etc.)...
I can see value in such a tool outside the mainframe world, even if there are no software license fee issues, and independent of any GPL-like concerns - installing many FOSS OS results in a huge collection of software being installed, and knowing exactly what is and is not on the system has a certain value...
My advice is to grow up, walk to the local convienience store, and for less than a $1 fee (in most cases) in addition to your $100 you can get a money order for $100, walk back to school and get on with your education.
You may have a point, and you may even be right, but what do you gain by arguing with the people that determine where you will live next school year over such an (honestly) minor point? You have choosen to "live off the grid" (no banks, no credit cards, etc.), and this is why you are having a problem - you are trying to pick and choose the individual pieces of the system you like (campus housing, public university education, etc.), and ignore the ones you don't (the modern banking system), and you (apparently) run to slashdot when something doesn't go your way...
If this is the first seemingly "bizzare" exchange with a large, government entity, consider yourself lucky - you will have many more before your body is recycled...
Come on - this is new? It looks like beter executions on a five+ year-old product.
Take a look at the IBM z50
And the Toshiba Libretto
And remind me, what is the new product here - faster CPU? Better battery life? Oh wait, it runs LINUX! When can I pre-order it?