How exactly is a laptop for every child going to help? I went to public schools in the US, and we didn't have much access to computers. My family had a PC, but most of my classmates' families didn't. For one semester in jr. high, we got to use some very old computers (even for the time) to learn to program in BASIC. Then, in high school, I got to take a computer programming class for one year where I learned some basic programming concepts in Pascal, again with very old computers. I never got to use a school-owned word processor or any educational software. But that didn't stop me from getting a good education. You don't need a laptop to learn math, science, history, and to speak and write your language with proper grammar. In college some of my classmates had very limited computer experience, but they managed to learn what they needed to know very quickly in order to get a degree in engineering. By the way, in case you think I'm an old-timer, I graduated high school in 1997.
Now, some guy from MIT has dreamed up an idea in his ivory tower that students in third world countries need laptops while students in the US still have to share old PCs. Laptops won't make up for the lack of well-trained teachers, they won't make up for the lack of emphasis on education by third world parents, and they won't improve the health of the children.
But all of this is moot, because these laptops will never materialize in any form close to what has been described. Not in ten years. Just look at the specs to convince yourself. Each time these $100 laptops are mentioned, the design gets more and more preposterous. It's vaporware designed to grab headlines and secure research grants.
You forgot to mention that they have the Linux tax included in the price. You know, that elusive extra cost that makes Linux computers cost 50+% more than an equivalent Windows computer. For example, I bought a notebook with a 3 GHz pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD, DVD+/-RW DL, 15.5" widescreen, 802.11g, and Windows XP for about $1000. The only downside is that the battery life totally sucks. Can you show me a comparable Linux laptop for anywhere near that price? Some of the laptops on the site you linked cost > $4000! Who pays that much for a laptop anymore? Some low-end Windows laptops are approaching $500.
I'm surprised they didn't fix all the bugs, then. Sometimes, the titlebar will display the title for the wrong page, and the the search function sometimes doesn't work (i.e., it won't say there are no occurances of a term, but it won't highlight one either.) No, I didn't submit a bug report because I'm too lazy.
It also works fine on my AthlonXP 1800 and 0.5GB RAM in Firefox 1.5 RC3. It's not really a very demanding application. It is just Wolfenstein 3d level graphics and physics, though.
Javascript is a client-side scripting language. It is only dependent on the server when it explicitly accesses resources from the server (images, other documents, etc.) It Opera's implementation that's the problem. I get high FPS in Firefox 1.5 RC3.
By the way, if you want to see the code, it's all in the HTML document. It's pretty cool. Hopefully this <canvas> thing will take off, and it eventually replaces proprietary technologies like Flash and Microsoft's Sparkle or whatever it's called.
I bet they will be trying to repatriate Pamela Anderson, though. I've seen some home movies demonstrating just how skilled she is (acting abilities notwithstanding).
Fresh human urine does not contain ammonia (or at least not much). Cat urine on the other hand (ewwww), contains a lot. Humans excrete excess nitrogen as urea. I don't think it matters much from a health perspective what type of urinal is used, because there will always be idiots who can't seem to use them without pissing all over the floor.
... no, wait, I didn't. It's only/. that has paid advertisements disguised as news. BTW, is there a discount on Slashvertisements posted this close to a holiday, when many people will be away from their computers?
I think they should have (and probably did) take the operating environment into consideration when designing the 360. You'll notice that the shape prevents any vent holes from being plugged by carpet. That's probably why they made it that shape. Finally, the 360 has active cooling with the fan vent in the back.
If it's overheating, the BIOS should notice and shutdown long before you start to get random glitches.
I take it you've never had a PC that overheated before. When my power supply fan failed a few years ago, it caused the adjascent hard drive to overheat. I first noticed this when I started to get wierd compiler errors when compiling a project, and they were different each time I compiled. The drive didn't just suddenly shut down; it started giving me random glitches.
My thoughts exactly. This is not a "prototype", it's just another concept. Only this concept is even less feasable that the original. Originally, Negroponte said it would have a projection screen because an LCD display would be too expensive. Now it has an LCD touchscreen display. And it's convertable to a tablet like some of the newest high-end notebooks. And all for $100. Yeah, that'll happen. Then again, if he stalls long enough (like, say, 10 years), it might just be possible to sell one of these for $100 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
If a family is so poor that they can't even afford food or clothing, shouldn't we be spending money to provide them with this, rather than spending money on biometrics to prevent them from acquiring these basic needs?
If everyone sells off these laptops in order to buy food, the conclusion to draw is that they need food more than they need laptops.
The purpose of the laptops is to help eliminate extreme poverty so we won't have to keep feeding these people. You know, if you give a man a fish... Personally, however, I think it's a misguided effort. I don't think a laptop is really necessary to achieve a good education. All it will really do is produce a new crop of very cheap, second-rate programmers so more IT jobs can be outsourced to these countries.
"All power plants just convert some form of energy into another, therefore the submitters slip is not a major one, and not worth fixing..."
So what if I said I had a copper wire that produces energy? It converts electricity to electricity at a slightly lower voltage. By your definition, that's power production, I guess.
"This whole "Windows just crashes all the time" stuff, especially on the server side, is pretty much FUD."
I wouldn't call it FUD; I'd call it outdated information. Remember Windows 95/98/Me? When they created Windows Me, they had hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of employees, and they still got it wrong. Very wrong. I've switched my home PC from Me to XP recently, and the contrast is striking. It'd say it's understandable if many Linux users who don't have experience with the latest Microsoft OS are still wary of using microsoft products.
"Flaky commercial third-party apps can gum up any OS."
So you think it's OK for bad software to screw up an operating system?
I believe the practice of playing a pre-recorded advertisement on the phone to a live person on the other end was outlawed a long time ago in the US. Apparently it's fair play to leave a pre-recorded message on an answering machine. Either that, or James Earl Jones called me several times on behalf of Verizon.
Why? Because I want every telemarketer to utterly hate his or her job. I want them to go home crying and wonder if the paycheck is worth the stress and heartache, so some of them will quit and companies who rely on telemarketing have to spend more money to hire new people. This makes telemarketing cost more for the same return, which makes it a less attractive means of generating business.
I share your dislike for telemarketers, but what gets to me even more is when they whine about people being rude to them, because they are trained to be rude to you. They are trained to talk non-stop until they ask you to verify your name, address, etc. They don't give you a chance to politely say, "no thanks". When they finally do ask you for some information, they won't take "no" for an answer. They go to plan B and start asking you why you're not interested in their fabulous offer. Just because they're doing a job, that doesn't mean they're not responsible for their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
How exactly is a laptop for every child going to help? I went to public schools in the US, and we didn't have much access to computers. My family had a PC, but most of my classmates' families didn't. For one semester in jr. high, we got to use some very old computers (even for the time) to learn to program in BASIC. Then, in high school, I got to take a computer programming class for one year where I learned some basic programming concepts in Pascal, again with very old computers. I never got to use a school-owned word processor or any educational software. But that didn't stop me from getting a good education. You don't need a laptop to learn math, science, history, and to speak and write your language with proper grammar. In college some of my classmates had very limited computer experience, but they managed to learn what they needed to know very quickly in order to get a degree in engineering. By the way, in case you think I'm an old-timer, I graduated high school in 1997.
Now, some guy from MIT has dreamed up an idea in his ivory tower that students in third world countries need laptops while students in the US still have to share old PCs. Laptops won't make up for the lack of well-trained teachers, they won't make up for the lack of emphasis on education by third world parents, and they won't improve the health of the children.
But all of this is moot, because these laptops will never materialize in any form close to what has been described. Not in ten years. Just look at the specs to convince yourself. Each time these $100 laptops are mentioned, the design gets more and more preposterous. It's vaporware designed to grab headlines and secure research grants.
Would that be Microsoft bashing or /. bashing? This story combines the best of both worlds.
You forgot to mention that they have the Linux tax included in the price. You know, that elusive extra cost that makes Linux computers cost 50+% more than an equivalent Windows computer. For example, I bought a notebook with a 3 GHz pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD, DVD+/-RW DL, 15.5" widescreen, 802.11g, and Windows XP for about $1000. The only downside is that the battery life totally sucks. Can you show me a comparable Linux laptop for anywhere near that price? Some of the laptops on the site you linked cost > $4000! Who pays that much for a laptop anymore? Some low-end Windows laptops are approaching $500.
Although teens are mentioned specifically, I imagine this would work on young children too. But that's not as good of a selling point.
I'm surprised they didn't fix all the bugs, then. Sometimes, the titlebar will display the title for the wrong page, and the the search function sometimes doesn't work (i.e., it won't say there are no occurances of a term, but it won't highlight one either.) No, I didn't submit a bug report because I'm too lazy.
5) Learn to use the /.
tag before posting random nonsense on
;)
1) Find an early troll in a popular (i.e., Linux-related) thread. 2) Post a totally unrelated reply. 3) ??? 4) Karma!
It also works fine on my AthlonXP 1800 and 0.5GB RAM in Firefox 1.5 RC3. It's not really a very demanding application. It is just Wolfenstein 3d level graphics and physics, though.
Javascript is a client-side scripting language. It is only dependent on the server when it explicitly accesses resources from the server (images, other documents, etc.) It Opera's implementation that's the problem. I get high FPS in Firefox 1.5 RC3.
By the way, if you want to see the code, it's all in the HTML document. It's pretty cool. Hopefully this <canvas> thing will take off, and it eventually replaces proprietary technologies like Flash and Microsoft's Sparkle or whatever it's called.
I bet they will be trying to repatriate Pamela Anderson, though. I've seen some home movies demonstrating just how skilled she is (acting abilities notwithstanding).
Fresh human urine does not contain ammonia (or at least not much). Cat urine on the other hand (ewwww), contains a lot. Humans excrete excess nitrogen as urea. I don't think it matters much from a health perspective what type of urinal is used, because there will always be idiots who can't seem to use them without pissing all over the floor.
... no, wait, I didn't. It's only /. that has paid advertisements disguised as news. BTW, is there a discount on Slashvertisements posted this close to a holiday, when many people will be away from their computers?
I think they should have (and probably did) take the operating environment into consideration when designing the 360. You'll notice that the shape prevents any vent holes from being plugged by carpet. That's probably why they made it that shape. Finally, the 360 has active cooling with the fan vent in the back.
If it's overheating, the BIOS should notice and shutdown long before you start to get random glitches.
I take it you've never had a PC that overheated before. When my power supply fan failed a few years ago, it caused the adjascent hard drive to overheat. I first noticed this when I started to get wierd compiler errors when compiling a project, and they were different each time I compiled. The drive didn't just suddenly shut down; it started giving me random glitches.
Check your metaphores. Momentum is not synonymous with velocity.
My thoughts exactly. This is not a "prototype", it's just another concept. Only this concept is even less feasable that the original. Originally, Negroponte said it would have a projection screen because an LCD display would be too expensive. Now it has an LCD touchscreen display. And it's convertable to a tablet like some of the newest high-end notebooks. And all for $100. Yeah, that'll happen. Then again, if he stalls long enough (like, say, 10 years), it might just be possible to sell one of these for $100 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
If a family is so poor that they can't even afford food or clothing, shouldn't we be spending money to provide them with this, rather than spending money on biometrics to prevent them from acquiring these basic needs? If everyone sells off these laptops in order to buy food, the conclusion to draw is that they need food more than they need laptops.
The purpose of the laptops is to help eliminate extreme poverty so we won't have to keep feeding these people. You know, if you give a man a fish... Personally, however, I think it's a misguided effort. I don't think a laptop is really necessary to achieve a good education. All it will really do is produce a new crop of very cheap, second-rate programmers so more IT jobs can be outsourced to these countries.
"All power plants just convert some form of energy into another, therefore the submitters slip is not a major one, and not worth fixing..."
So what if I said I had a copper wire that produces energy? It converts electricity to electricity at a slightly lower voltage. By your definition, that's power production, I guess.
Oh, well, it's -Inf.
Wow, only $150. What a bargain!
[/sarcasm]
Do the Slashvertizements cost less if they're posted this late?
"This whole "Windows just crashes all the time" stuff, especially on the server side, is pretty much FUD."
I wouldn't call it FUD; I'd call it outdated information. Remember Windows 95/98/Me? When they created Windows Me, they had hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of employees, and they still got it wrong. Very wrong. I've switched my home PC from Me to XP recently, and the contrast is striking. It'd say it's understandable if many Linux users who don't have experience with the latest Microsoft OS are still wary of using microsoft products.
"Flaky commercial third-party apps can gum up any OS."
So you think it's OK for bad software to screw up an operating system?
Last I heard, faxing unsolicited advertisements was illegal by default.
Also, how do you do it to recorded calls?
I believe the practice of playing a pre-recorded advertisement on the phone to a live person on the other end was outlawed a long time ago in the US. Apparently it's fair play to leave a pre-recorded message on an answering machine. Either that, or James Earl Jones called me several times on behalf of Verizon.
Why? Because I want every telemarketer to utterly hate his or her job. I want them to go home crying and wonder if the paycheck is worth the stress and heartache, so some of them will quit and companies who rely on telemarketing have to spend more money to hire new people. This makes telemarketing cost more for the same return, which makes it a less attractive means of generating business.
I share your dislike for telemarketers, but what gets to me even more is when they whine about people being rude to them, because they are trained to be rude to you. They are trained to talk non-stop until they ask you to verify your name, address, etc. They don't give you a chance to politely say, "no thanks". When they finally do ask you for some information, they won't take "no" for an answer. They go to plan B and start asking you why you're not interested in their fabulous offer. Just because they're doing a job, that doesn't mean they're not responsible for their actions.
I've got 100 Mb/s for $35/mo in the US. I'm not sure what the upload rate is, but I'll bet it beats 1.3 Mb/s. Do you not have cable in the UK?
What, Bono didn't have anything to say?