I couldn't agree more about the hardware. If anybody that reads this can point me to a laptop that meets the following criteria, I would likely buy it tomorrow.
1. Costs less than $200 2. Uses little enough electricity that it could be powered by a person. (Like the power yo-yo developed for the OLPC) 3. Can be used in the rain. 4. Folds into a tablet like handheld display. 5. Can survive being hauled to school by children in a 3rd world nation.
I don't think you can find laptop hardware with the capabilities of the OLPC in the private sector for 2x the price. Come to think of it, the give 1 get 1 was actually a good deal. I wish I would have had $400 to take advantage of it.
I realize this is trite, but shouldn't that be one molecule long and 10 molecules wide? Seeing as how I don't remember graphene on the periodic table... I suppose that since they are counting individual molecules and atoms, it's not a huge stretch to think that they might have these molecules lined up in such a way that they have a 1 atom by 10 atom geometry with the extra atoms in the molecule going into the 3rd dimension.
Not trying to criticize too much, I'm just a stickler for units:)
Amen to that! I've been trying to get out of my 'monkey answers the phone' job for 3 years. And I'm a college graduate with a degree in physics!! Often, finding a good job is a full time job, so it sucks to be the guy at a job that he hates because he has precious little concentration to spend on finding a new one. I would gladly drive/ride the train/walk/swim 2 hours to make it to a job that I love.
Your statement of US and Canadian citizens not receiving money from the oil is incorrect. The oil producing companies have to pay money in taxes, and for the rights to deplete a national resource. This tax money then gets spent on running the government and providing security and other public works. This is not the case in the majority of Nigeria, where government officials live in mansions while most of the citizens lack security, proper education, and an effective government.
The corruption in the US is bad enough, but it doesn't come close to what the Nigerians put up with.
I've been reading the comments here and the comments on the previous article, and I'm surprised to see something missing.
Show of hands:
1. Who knows that Nigeria is an oil producing nation?
2. Who knows the Nigerian people see barely a thin dime of the money?
The government of Nigeria has shown itself to be easily corrupted at the expense of the people. See wikipedia and read the part about the government. It's not hard to imagine something crooked going on with this.
Any word on how M$ is going to avoid massive amounts of pirating of software by unleashing their steaming pile of OS on a 3rd world nation? Or do they just assume that everybody there will pirate the stuff anyway so they just want to "sell" a few licenses in the process?
Which is pure marketing because all the major distributions work equally well (or not well) with Windows.
Yes, I agree totally with this. Ubuntu (just to pick one) works beautifully with windows file formats and networking (or mac for that matter) with minimal configuration.
2.
All the major distributions are all basically of the same quality and use almost the exact same software. Maaaaaaybe a few configuration tools are different, but they are configuring the same software so it doesn't matter.
Not strictly true. Yes, most of the software is exactly the same with a few (freely available) patches applied to the taste of the distro. But the configuration software can make all the difference in the world. Imagine having to install a new software patch on 1,000 boxes. AFAIK there is no generic Linux program to do this. You might hand install on all 1,000 (not recommended). You might create an install script that installs the software automatically but likely needs to be customized and tested for each package. OR, you COULD use the happy global configuration utility that came with your chosen distro and designed to work cleanly.
I used to be somewhat familiar with Suse, and I think it has a program that can do global configuration of all, or a group of computers on your network. I really have no idea if RedHat does or does not (I would be surprised if they didn't). And I'm pretty sure Ubuntu doesn't have this application. Such global configuration tools could make a big difference when deciding between distros for a company.
I think we can figure this out. In WWII the Navy figured out how to put proximity detectors in their shells in order to drop planes out of the sky. If you can believe it, these devices used VACCUM TUBES!!!!
Many dispatch systems are designed in such a way that they can only be accessed through calling 911, there is no non-emergency number. This varies by locality. In some cities, 311 is used for non-emergency calls.
I hadn't heard of this. However, calling 911 was still stoopid for the store employee. I googled the phone number for the Vancouver police department in about 10 seconds.
Was it really that big of an emergency? The only time anybody should call 911 would be in the case of an emergency. The guy was there for 3 months mooching internet. I don't consider this an emergency.
Sorry, tension breaker, had to be done. As a person that did his senior seminar project on battery technology, I am continuosly surprised at how little penetration flywheel batteries get. Almost all of the issues that were brought up here with normal batteries are solved by using them.
Tides would be affected first. The orbit of the moon is no reliant on it's mass. However, the pull of the moon DOES create a SLIGHT wobble to the Earth/Moon system, and this would be affected my a change in mass of the moon. But I think that being concerned about such a small change would be anal enough to make one a slashdot reader.
Yeah, that testing process is killer. Downloading Firefox takes, what, 5 minutes on any kind of internet connection you would use in web developement. Installing it can be done after your government mandated 10 min break.
Ok, long time reader, first time poster, great website love the topic....
Infra red communication holds a lot of promise for small portable devices. Yes, it is line of site, but that is an advantage for secure connections. So and so on the street can't hack your pda while it's in your pocket, for instance.
Another advantage is the low power consumption. The led's used for this convert >99% of the electricity put into them into usable light. (real world performance for the system might vary) I don't know what the efficiency is for blue tooth, but I would be surprised if it's that good for ANY rf based device.
I have used ir on my palm device and it works great (if slow thanks to the UART limit). Simple and efficient. Point and send. Wouldn't use it to surf the internet for any long period of time, but I wouldn't want to on a device that small anyway. (no screen real estate)
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't agree more about the hardware. If anybody that reads this can point me to a laptop that meets the following criteria, I would likely buy it tomorrow.
1. Costs less than $200
2. Uses little enough electricity that it could be powered by a person. (Like the power yo-yo developed for the OLPC)
3. Can be used in the rain.
4. Folds into a tablet like handheld display.
5. Can survive being hauled to school by children in a 3rd world nation.
I don't think you can find laptop hardware with the capabilities of the OLPC in the private sector for 2x the price. Come to think of it, the give 1 get 1 was actually a good deal. I wish I would have had $400 to take advantage of it.
I realize this is trite, but shouldn't that be one molecule long and 10 molecules wide? Seeing as how I don't remember graphene on the periodic table... I suppose that since they are counting individual molecules and atoms, it's not a huge stretch to think that they might have these molecules lined up in such a way that they have a 1 atom by 10 atom geometry with the extra atoms in the molecule going into the 3rd dimension.
Not trying to criticize too much, I'm just a stickler for units:)
Get another job is easier said than done.
Amen to that! I've been trying to get out of my 'monkey answers the phone' job for 3 years. And I'm a college graduate with a degree in physics!! Often, finding a good job is a full time job, so it sucks to be the guy at a job that he hates because he has precious little concentration to spend on finding a new one. I would gladly drive/ride the train/walk/swim 2 hours to make it to a job that I love.
Your statement of US and Canadian citizens not receiving money from the oil is incorrect. The oil producing companies have to pay money in taxes, and for the rights to deplete a national resource. This tax money then gets spent on running the government and providing security and other public works. This is not the case in the majority of Nigeria, where government officials live in mansions while most of the citizens lack security, proper education, and an effective government.
The corruption in the US is bad enough, but it doesn't come close to what the Nigerians put up with.
I've been reading the comments here and the comments on the previous article, and I'm surprised to see something missing.
Show of hands:
1. Who knows that Nigeria is an oil producing nation?
2. Who knows the Nigerian people see barely a thin dime of the money?
The government of Nigeria has shown itself to be easily corrupted at the expense of the people. See wikipedia and read the part about the government. It's not hard to imagine something crooked going on with this.
Any word on how M$ is going to avoid massive amounts of pirating of software by unleashing their steaming pile of OS on a 3rd world nation? Or do they just assume that everybody there will pirate the stuff anyway so they just want to "sell" a few licenses in the process?
I, for one, welcome our flying robotic overlords!
I think we can figure this out. In WWII the Navy figured out how to put proximity detectors in their shells in order to drop planes out of the sky. If you can believe it, these devices used VACCUM TUBES!!!!
Wikipedia linke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
Many dispatch systems are designed in such a way that they can only be accessed through calling 911, there is no non-emergency number. This varies by locality. In some cities, 311 is used for non-emergency calls. I hadn't heard of this. However, calling 911 was still stoopid for the store employee. I googled the phone number for the Vancouver police department in about 10 seconds.
Was it really that big of an emergency? The only time anybody should call 911 would be in the case of an emergency. The guy was there for 3 months mooching internet. I don't consider this an emergency.
Sorry, tension breaker, had to be done. As a person that did his senior seminar project on battery technology, I am continuosly surprised at how little penetration flywheel batteries get. Almost all of the issues that were brought up here with normal batteries are solved by using them.
a ge
But don't take my word for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_stor
From the article:
Wine is not, as has sometimes been said, a Windows emulator...
Next Paragraph:
The new program is reportedly re-tooled to work perfectly under CodeWeaver's CrossOver Office Wine emulation.
If I hadn't spent countless hours trying to get ANYTHING useful running in Wine, I might be confused.
Tides would be affected first. The orbit of the moon is no reliant on it's mass. However, the pull of the moon DOES create a SLIGHT wobble to the Earth/Moon system, and this would be affected my a change in mass of the moon. But I think that being concerned about such a small change would be anal enough to make one a slashdot reader.
Errr.... that's what a nuetral format is. The formatting is arbitrary.
Until the actual mozilla.org site gets hacked, which I highly doubt it will ever happen, there's nothing to worry about.
Dude, don't temp the hackers! To some this reads like a challenge (that I hope they don't succeed at) ;)
Ouch... the truth hurts that much that I felt it over the internet.
Yeah, that testing process is killer. Downloading Firefox takes, what, 5 minutes on any kind of internet connection you would use in web developement. Installing it can be done after your government mandated 10 min break.
Likely because the previous administration installed a bunch of macs in the whitehouse. Macs are for Democrats and Commies. Not for decent Americans.
Ok, long time reader, first time poster, great website love the topic....
Infra red communication holds a lot of promise for small portable devices. Yes, it is line of site, but that is an advantage for secure connections. So and so on the street can't hack your pda while it's in your pocket, for instance.
Another advantage is the low power consumption. The led's used for this convert >99% of the electricity put into them into usable light. (real world performance for the system might vary) I don't know what the efficiency is for blue tooth, but I would be surprised if it's that good for ANY rf based device.
I have used ir on my palm device and it works great (if slow thanks to the UART limit). Simple and efficient. Point and send. Wouldn't use it to surf the internet for any long period of time, but I wouldn't want to on a device that small anyway. (no screen real estate)