I'd come to the same conclusion before even seing "a Slashdot comment" based on the fact that the article offers no evidence or sources. The real question is why the hell is the original article being passed off as news when it's really just a rumour.
You poor, oppressed soul. I can just imagine how difficult your life must have been. All those years spent fearful for your life. The time served in Alaskan prizon camps. Watching your family members be "dissapeared". Yep, it's horrible to live in the United Soviet Socialist States. Thank god for the "occasional releif" like only having to spend half an hour in line for bread. Don't know what we'd do without them.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. You country provides you with a higher standard of living and more personal freedoms than any nation in history, and all you can do is bitch, complain, and talk about starting a revolution. I understand the desire to hold on to all of your rights, but there's no need to be a goddamn drama-queen while doing it.
If you keep getting speeding tickets, you don't go to court to try and protect your "constitutionaly guaranteed right to drive like an idiot". You either stop speeding or you keep paying fines. Your postcards are getting photocopied? Don't send postcards. Your internet traffic is being intercepted? Use encryption if you really care. It's common sense. Personaly I don't really give a shit since I'm not doing anything illegal. They're more than welcome to intercept my traffic. Anything I really care about keeping secret I'll encrypt.
I'm fairly certain that the constitution doesn't guarantee the right to privately send data over an internet connection. Feel free to link to the pertinent info if I'm wrong.
The Internet is by it's very nature an open medium. Any time you send data over it you're accepting the possibility of it being intercepted or duplicated at multiple points. It's not like the postal system which gaurantees that your mail will get from point a to point b without anyone being able to view it - it's more like standing on your roof and yelling at a guy 10 blocks away who then repeats your message to another guy 10 blocks down.
Your aparent inability to reckognize the nature of the medium you're using in no way stops others from taking advantage of it. If you'd like a secure, private network, feel free to build one.
Yeah I saw some irony in there even before I hit "submit". The thing is, for me to go buy a good book or novel will cost at minimum $10, and up to $60 or so. In other words, for $100 I can get 10 books max, and probably more like 5. However, the cost of printing those books is a tiny fraction of the price, so if you can get the printing houses to donate their "intelectual property", you could have 100+ books printed off and ready to send to poor african kids for the same price as this laptop. So to me the machine would be worthwhile because it would save me money in the long run, but that's not true for everyone.
What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?
They'd get tired of cranking after a while. And they'd stop learning english as soon as they figured out they could use it for chatting. Same thing that North American kids do with them.
They gonna learn to use it themselves. After all, who needs to learn how to use a gameboy???
Uh. Yah. I'll beleive that when I see it.
It won't need troubleshooting, it will run Linux.
Now I KNOW you're just teasing:) My first dozen Linux installs (back in '99 or so) kept refusing even to boot. Now that I know how to use it, I'm still hesitant to recomend it to anyone else because the last few times I tried they all looked at me like I had a toaster on my head. Most people have trouble even figuring out the GUI, let alone screwing around with configuration files when something goes wrong. User-friendly linux hasn't been around for more than a year or two tops, and the main reasons new versions can function without maintanance is because you can run them "live" from a CD. No settings saved, no filesystem corruptions, no problems. Which might actually be a good model for the laptops, but would really limit what they could do with it.
Anyway all that is beside the point. There's much better ways to spend that $100 per child. The only way I can see these laptops being useful is if they're issued out to kids in countries that are already doing fairly well. "second world" countries, and poor parts of the first world. They're not going to do anything for some kid in the middle of Africa though.
And I'll be the first in line on e-bay to buy one at reduced prices. Can you imagine the advertisements?
"Brand new laptops, 128 RAM, 1 gig flash storage. Lot of 50. Slightly dented and/or blood-spattered. Buyer assumes all shipping charges."
Throughout the History of Humanity, $100 laptops have not been neccesary for education. The best way to educate people who are utterly clueless is to provide competent teachers. Who the hell is going to teach these kids to use the laptop? Who's going to troubleshoot it? My kid sister lives in a first world country with full access to schooling, the internet, and books, and she STILL needs me to fix anything that goes wrong with the computer. I shudder to think what would happen if you gave her a hand-cranked laptop running linux.
On the other hand $100 can print a heck of a lot of books. Books which don't break, don't require training or maintanance, and don't need to be cranked to function. Still not a replacement for competent teachers, but it's a hell of a lot better than this laptop.
With all of that said, I'd gladly shell out $100 just to use this thing as an e-book reader:) Just ditch the hand crank dammit.
There's a pretty big difference there. If I submit unencrypted info over a landline, I know that there's a very limited number of places along the way where it can be intercepted. Companies which own the major trunks and routers are unlikely to be trying to steal my CC info, or intercept my MSN conversation with the neighbours wife. The kid next door on the other hand is much more likely to be interested in that info.
You may not be kidding, but you ARE out of your mind.
Although you've got a good point. Considering the fact that the whole area could be drowned again in a year or two, it makes sense to only have "$100K salaried people" living there. They're the only ones able to rebuild after it happens again.
That's rather the point. We're always hearing about how the poor outnumber the rich by some massive percentage point. So if there's so many more poor than rich, then from an environmentalist point of view it makes more sense to target the poor. If we're talking about reducing emissions then it's irrelevant which groups we target to do it, what's important is the overall reduction in emissions. Let's not take an environmental issue and turn it into an environmental-and-poverty-anti-capitalism-anti-war -bush-is-evil argument.
As to the "government monopoly" argument, that's a good reason to create several competing "crown" corporations. Encourage competition between them, but ensure that in the end they report to the government.
Also, it'd be REAL nice if you could provide some figures. I don't know what the actual cost breakdown for the building, powering, upkeep, and proper demolition of a nuclear power-plant are, but I can gaurantee you they're not "on par with solar power". Provide some figures and then maybe we can debate further.
I'm fairly sure that people can have sex at 16 in most parts of the world. I'd be very surprised if even half of the 16 year olds in the US were still virgins.
Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way. Real relationships are not self-focused, but must have a significant component of other-focus or they don't survive.
Damn. I distinctly recall "devaluing the humanity" of multiple Victorias Secrets models when I was about 12. Wal-mart models too when I couldn't get a hold of anything better. Human beings are quite adaptable when it comes to most things. If you cut off access to pornography, we'll find another replacement for our fantasies. What's next, banning the modeling of swimsuits? Hell, might as well go the whole way and have women wear Burqas. Obviously every time I look at a woman wearing tight pants and a tiny shirt, I'm "devaluing her humanity", right? And by exposing herself that way, she's damaging my fragile little mind by teaching me to "relate to women in an unhealthy way". So fuck 'em; make them cover up from head to toe. I'm fairly certain that seing just the bridge of her nose won't make me lose control and start madly masturbating in the middle of a McDonalds.
Just watch out for an increase in homosexual relationships.
Because it would have cost less "public money" to research it before hand?:p
Right. You'll take any excuse that you can find to bash Bush and this one is no different.
Note that I'm actually opposed to this entire concept; however, I base my views on the merits of the actual program, and not on an insane loathing of the Bush administration.
Except that that's rarely how it works. Historicaly, tyrannies come to power not by using the threat of external powers to scare their citizens, but rather by claiming to be "looking out for the people". Why? Simply because it's much easier to take away people rights on the guise of tolerance, political correctness, and assisting the poor, than it is by creating an external enemy. People will hapilly cooperate in their own downfall as long as you can convince them that your actions are meant to help the downtrodden.
And the last time I checked, they were required to get a warrant before doing so. What do you bet there wont be some court cases over air surveillance because the cops didn't get one?
What are you smoking? Police only require a warrant in order to invade your personal property. No warrants are required to monitor public spaces.
No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.
So what he's effectively saying is "I can't be bothered to be a good father, but I'll be damned if I'll let my kids use non-MS products!".
Police departments don't use black BMW's. And if cops are present at your "peaceful rallies", it's only to ensure that they remain peaceful. I'm not a cop, but I HAVE done riot control. None of us want to "bust your heads" or "keep you down". If at the end of the day I can go home without having been involved in any physical confrontations, I'm extremely happy. Means more time for my previous injuries to heal. You stay peaceful and we'll all get along fine. You start acting like idiots and you'll get your heads smashed in. If we sometimes get a little overzealous in our work, it's mainly because we're so pissed off that you assholes interrupted an otherwise beautiful day.
O: What do you mean I can't smoke this joint on the street?
P: It's illegal.
O: Well, what do you think about that law?
P: I'm just doing my job.
O: What do you mean I'm trespassing?!?!
P: You're staging a sit-in in the presidents office.
O: So??? Don't you think we should be allowed to do that?
P: Hey man, I'm just doing my job.
O: Are you seriously telling me I'm not allowed to drive 120mph in a 35 zone?
P:.....
Maybe if you'd stop breaking the law, you wouldn't end up "on the other side of the argument"? Just a thought...
FYI, whether it's cops, soldiers, firefighters, or EMT's, none of them are likely to express their personal or political beleifs to you while in uniform. The reason for it simple and should be obvious; the organizations involved don't want that one individuals opinion to be blown out of proportion and made to reflect badly on the entire organizaton. What would be the media response if a handful of cops or soldiers went around telling anyone who would listen that "all ragheads should die" or that "there's nothing wrong with snorting the occasional line"?
All the left wing organizations could learn a thing or two from that. The main problem with their image is that, while the majority may be quite moderate, the extreme views of a few individuals get all the media time, and reflect badly on everyone associated with them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd come to the same conclusion before even seing "a Slashdot comment" based on the fact that the article offers no evidence or sources. The real question is why the hell is the original article being passed off as news when it's really just a rumour.
Occasional releif? :p
You poor, oppressed soul. I can just imagine how difficult your life must have been. All those years spent fearful for your life. The time served in Alaskan prizon camps. Watching your family members be "dissapeared". Yep, it's horrible to live in the United Soviet Socialist States. Thank god for the "occasional releif" like only having to spend half an hour in line for bread. Don't know what we'd do without them.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. You country provides you with a higher standard of living and more personal freedoms than any nation in history, and all you can do is bitch, complain, and talk about starting a revolution. I understand the desire to hold on to all of your rights, but there's no need to be a goddamn drama-queen while doing it.
I'd stop sending postcards.
If you keep getting speeding tickets, you don't go to court to try and protect your "constitutionaly guaranteed right to drive like an idiot". You either stop speeding or you keep paying fines. Your postcards are getting photocopied? Don't send postcards. Your internet traffic is being intercepted? Use encryption if you really care. It's common sense. Personaly I don't really give a shit since I'm not doing anything illegal. They're more than welcome to intercept my traffic. Anything I really care about keeping secret I'll encrypt.
I'm fairly certain that the constitution doesn't guarantee the right to privately send data over an internet connection. Feel free to link to the pertinent info if I'm wrong.
The Internet is by it's very nature an open medium. Any time you send data over it you're accepting the possibility of it being intercepted or duplicated at multiple points. It's not like the postal system which gaurantees that your mail will get from point a to point b without anyone being able to view it - it's more like standing on your roof and yelling at a guy 10 blocks away who then repeats your message to another guy 10 blocks down.
Your aparent inability to reckognize the nature of the medium you're using in no way stops others from taking advantage of it. If you'd like a secure, private network, feel free to build one.
In other words, it's probably based on an unverified claim by an anonymous source?
Gee, I sure am glad they rushed to inform us.
Yeah I saw some irony in there even before I hit "submit". The thing is, for me to go buy a good book or novel will cost at minimum $10, and up to $60 or so. In other words, for $100 I can get 10 books max, and probably more like 5. However, the cost of printing those books is a tiny fraction of the price, so if you can get the printing houses to donate their "intelectual property", you could have 100+ books printed off and ready to send to poor african kids for the same price as this laptop. So to me the machine would be worthwhile because it would save me money in the long run, but that's not true for everyone.
What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?
:) My first dozen Linux installs (back in '99 or so) kept refusing even to boot. Now that I know how to use it, I'm still hesitant to recomend it to anyone else because the last few times I tried they all looked at me like I had a toaster on my head. Most people have trouble even figuring out the GUI, let alone screwing around with configuration files when something goes wrong. User-friendly linux hasn't been around for more than a year or two tops, and the main reasons new versions can function without maintanance is because you can run them "live" from a CD. No settings saved, no filesystem corruptions, no problems. Which might actually be a good model for the laptops, but would really limit what they could do with it.
They'd get tired of cranking after a while. And they'd stop learning english as soon as they figured out they could use it for chatting. Same thing that North American kids do with them.
They gonna learn to use it themselves. After all, who needs to learn how to use a gameboy???
Uh. Yah. I'll beleive that when I see it.
It won't need troubleshooting, it will run Linux.
Now I KNOW you're just teasing
Anyway all that is beside the point. There's much better ways to spend that $100 per child. The only way I can see these laptops being useful is if they're issued out to kids in countries that are already doing fairly well. "second world" countries, and poor parts of the first world. They're not going to do anything for some kid in the middle of Africa though.
And I'll be the first in line on e-bay to buy one at reduced prices. Can you imagine the advertisements? "Brand new laptops, 128 RAM, 1 gig flash storage. Lot of 50. Slightly dented and/or blood-spattered. Buyer assumes all shipping charges."
I bet if the MS machine is $200 and the BSD machine is $150, the BSD will begin to quickly gain marketshare.
Only if people pirate windows and install it on the BSD machine.
$50 more is NOT a huge difference to pay for an OS you're comfortable with, regaurdless of the price of the actual laptop.
If, on the other hand, the MS laptop sold for $1000 and a linux or BSD laptop sold for $150, THEN you'd start to see users switching over.
If I remember correctly, they'll have multilple USB ports.
Throughout the History of Humanity, $100 laptops have not been neccesary for education. The best way to educate people who are utterly clueless is to provide competent teachers. Who the hell is going to teach these kids to use the laptop? Who's going to troubleshoot it? My kid sister lives in a first world country with full access to schooling, the internet, and books, and she STILL needs me to fix anything that goes wrong with the computer. I shudder to think what would happen if you gave her a hand-cranked laptop running linux.
:) Just ditch the hand crank dammit.
On the other hand $100 can print a heck of a lot of books. Books which don't break, don't require training or maintanance, and don't need to be cranked to function. Still not a replacement for competent teachers, but it's a hell of a lot better than this laptop.
With all of that said, I'd gladly shell out $100 just to use this thing as an e-book reader
There's a pretty big difference there. If I submit unencrypted info over a landline, I know that there's a very limited number of places along the way where it can be intercepted. Companies which own the major trunks and routers are unlikely to be trying to steal my CC info, or intercept my MSN conversation with the neighbours wife. The kid next door on the other hand is much more likely to be interested in that info.
You may not be kidding, but you ARE out of your mind.
Although you've got a good point. Considering the fact that the whole area could be drowned again in a year or two, it makes sense to only have "$100K salaried people" living there. They're the only ones able to rebuild after it happens again.
That's rather the point. We're always hearing about how the poor outnumber the rich by some massive percentage point. So if there's so many more poor than rich, then from an environmentalist point of view it makes more sense to target the poor. If we're talking about reducing emissions then it's irrelevant which groups we target to do it, what's important is the overall reduction in emissions. Let's not take an environmental issue and turn it into an environmental-and-poverty-anti-capitalism-anti-war -bush-is-evil argument.
I guess you've never heard of breeder reactors.
As to the "government monopoly" argument, that's a good reason to create several competing "crown" corporations. Encourage competition between them, but ensure that in the end they report to the government.
Also, it'd be REAL nice if you could provide some figures. I don't know what the actual cost breakdown for the building, powering, upkeep, and proper demolition of a nuclear power-plant are, but I can gaurantee you they're not "on par with solar power". Provide some figures and then maybe we can debate further.
I'm fairly sure that people can have sex at 16 in most parts of the world. I'd be very surprised if even half of the 16 year olds in the US were still virgins.
Just watch out for an increase in homosexual relationships.
Because it would have cost less "public money" to research it before hand? :p
Right. You'll take any excuse that you can find to bash Bush and this one is no different.
Note that I'm actually opposed to this entire concept; however, I base my views on the merits of the actual program, and not on an insane loathing of the Bush administration.
Except that that's rarely how it works. Historicaly, tyrannies come to power not by using the threat of external powers to scare their citizens, but rather by claiming to be "looking out for the people". Why? Simply because it's much easier to take away people rights on the guise of tolerance, political correctness, and assisting the poor, than it is by creating an external enemy. People will hapilly cooperate in their own downfall as long as you can convince them that your actions are meant to help the downtrodden.
:p
And that's why Democrats scare me
Technically no.
ASCII didn't become a standard untill 1967. And art created earlier than that would by "teletype art" or "punchcard art", not ASCII art.
What an idiot.
From what I can tell, Joomla is designed to be much more modular.
Police departments don't use black BMW's. And if cops are present at your "peaceful rallies", it's only to ensure that they remain peaceful. I'm not a cop, but I HAVE done riot control. None of us want to "bust your heads" or "keep you down". If at the end of the day I can go home without having been involved in any physical confrontations, I'm extremely happy. Means more time for my previous injuries to heal. You stay peaceful and we'll all get along fine. You start acting like idiots and you'll get your heads smashed in. If we sometimes get a little overzealous in our work, it's mainly because we're so pissed off that you assholes interrupted an otherwise beautiful day.
I can see how that went...
.....
O: What do you mean I can't smoke this joint on the street?
P: It's illegal.
O: Well, what do you think about that law?
P: I'm just doing my job.
O: What do you mean I'm trespassing?!?!
P: You're staging a sit-in in the presidents office.
O: So??? Don't you think we should be allowed to do that?
P: Hey man, I'm just doing my job.
O: Are you seriously telling me I'm not allowed to drive 120mph in a 35 zone?
P:
Maybe if you'd stop breaking the law, you wouldn't end up "on the other side of the argument"? Just a thought...
FYI, whether it's cops, soldiers, firefighters, or EMT's, none of them are likely to express their personal or political beleifs to you while in uniform. The reason for it simple and should be obvious; the organizations involved don't want that one individuals opinion to be blown out of proportion and made to reflect badly on the entire organizaton. What would be the media response if a handful of cops or soldiers went around telling anyone who would listen that "all ragheads should die" or that "there's nothing wrong with snorting the occasional line"?
All the left wing organizations could learn a thing or two from that. The main problem with their image is that, while the majority may be quite moderate, the extreme views of a few individuals get all the media time, and reflect badly on everyone associated with them.