Apple likes to keep things a secret until the show so they get the "oh my gosh" factor going.
Not just the "oh my gosh" factor, but as we learned with the last iPod introduction, learning that there's something hot out there makes people buy Apple stock, and short right after the event for some speculative profit (which results in the Apple stock falling).
I guess this the Apple stock falling is what pisses him off most.
Don't forget what might be the real motivation behind said checksum. When devices such as XBOX360 "talk" to the iPod, without authorization from Apple, they now have to break also said checksum, which may be used to (ab)use DMCA and shut off iPod support in XBOX360.
Or in Linux. While I don't think Jobs will go after the Linux hack, I wouldn't be surprised even for a second if he does: he's pretty aggressive about protecting Apple IP as you know (even from random bloggers out there).
Offering a lousy product is not illegal. So Microsoft has nothing to fear from courts about that. But maybe from the market. If they actually discontinue sales of XP in early 2008 as announced, I guess we will finally see a significant number of people moving off Windows;-)
Well, I know: and this is my plea really. What's illegal doesn't cause problems for us, and what's legal (offering shoddy product and cutting off our ability to purchase hardware with the previous version) causes problems.
If only the legal system was more adaptive to cries of the people out there.
But, I'll trust you on the market mechanism. The only realistic choice for many seeking new hardware will be Mac, since it runs the commercial software they need (office, photoshop etc.).
Casual consumers may make some good use out of Ubuntu+Firefox, as shipped by Dell:P
I hope you're right not because I want people using 20 different OS-es, but because Microsoft might actually get their act together. When they do great software, they're unmatched in terms of industry support, ease of use, and accessibility.
It's just right now they've f**ked up bad enough that the cons outweigh the pros of using Windows... (this may sound odd on Slashdot).
As a test, I just tried to beat this pc to death by multitasking the following: excel 2003, excel 2007, word 2003, word 2007, access 2003, access 2007, publisher 2003, publisher 2007, visual studio 2003, visual studio 2005, windows media player 11 (playing an mp3 with visualization running, coldfusion studio, firefox, ie7, opera, photoshop 7, thunderbird, and last but not least, Taskman.exe. Keep in mind these are all 32bit apps running on x64, so I'm taking an even bigger performance hit than usual.
You forgot to add Notepad, Calculator, and Paint. Do you even have any idea what you're talking about. Your post is coming off pretty silly with this "multitasking test" if you ask me.
What I'm speaking about is personal experience, and the experience of many other people who's job is to care about those things, but hell, if you can run few copies of Access and not get "death by multitasking" (?) then I must be Microsoft hater spreading FUD.
As if offering Microsoft Windows XP across the board blunts the monopoly. In freer countries, one can walk into a random computer store and buy notebook computers without any Microsoft at all (and I have the store datasheets in hand to prove it), but not in San Jose, California. There's a reason for that beyond simple supply and demand economics.
There is no damn monopoly. There's OSX, there's Linux, DELL and Lenovo offer it preinstalled even. And you can buy Mac machine with OSX.
Don't be naive. The whole monopoly crap is back in the mid nineties. Microsoft no longer has monopoly. There are plenty of good choices around. And exactly because of this, as I told you, many people in US I know converted to Mac this year.
I'm talking about pressing issues here, that we feel not abstractly and indirectly, but quite painfully directly: Vista is crap, and we want the ability to order our machines with XP.
Either way, I'm much more optimistic about the "sharing of server protocols" part of the judgment. It would be great being able to use Samba as an AD controller.
I didn't know that "it would be great" represents a valid reason to sue anyone. It'd be great to have free ice-cream, so do I sue the ice-cream manufacturers?
The matter of fact is, Microsoft's tactics to create greater lock-in effect have started playing against themselves. Open standards gain popularity that make their own incompatible solution irrelevant. The irony.
To begin with, let me tell you about a friend of mine: Mr. Question Mark [penny-arcade.com]. He's happy to help whenever you have a sentence phrased like a question.
Let me tell you about a friend of mine: Mr. Don't Patronize Me B*tch.
Those were rhetorical questions and I chose to use full stop, as it better represented my intended tone, never mind what I could have used. I hope you manage to sustain your being without spilling internal organs all over your room, while reading how I dare fight Mr. Question Mark.
Pretty soon we'll need to buy one DVD per DVD player and they'll have some kind of activation thing where the first time you play it ties it to that DVD player if we keep going down this road.
It's already like that, in the form of intengible, locked-to-this-machine DRM downloads.
You realize in 10 years DVD's maybe won't even be published anymore.
We're about to enter the next level of digital right management hell now.
The biggest problem is that it took 10 years to get to this point, and Microsoft still hasn't disclosed the specs for how to make interoperable products.
Maybe it won't matter a lot in another 10. Microsoft has abandoned its own back compat with Vista in many places and the businesses are denying Vista transition.
In fact I've been in contact and read/heard plenty of opinions of private users, small and big businesses, government employees and they all don't want anything to do with Vista (which is increasingly hard given many vendors do NOT offer non-Vista machines, forcing businesses to purchase standalone XP licenses or use second hand hardware).
More amusing are the comparisons I've heard about how fast Vista is: "slow as a dying dog", "as a overweight grandma on a treadmill", "turtle on vicodin", "turtle dipped in mud climbing uphills"...
Microsoft's own software (Office 2003, VS 2005, etc.) isn't compatible with their own OS right now.
Microsoft's a mess, and honestly, I do believe the EU lawsuit is a fiasco and not what we needed. What good is it they fined them nearly a billion. Will this help us somehow.
I honestly would rather prefer they sued them for delivering unstable, incompatible, and a resource hog of an OS, and maybe even sue the hardware vendors for not consistently offering XP as an option across the range (wee see some half hearted attempts here and there, such as Dell offering XP to businesses, and not to consumers).
This is a really pressing problem for millions of people worldwide. The vague problem of them including Media Player in Windows isn't that big, turns out (seeing that most sites use Flash / MP4 QuickTime for video anyway).
I mean, they compete with their own Media Player, by introducing Silverlight. If it stiffled competition so much, what sense does it make competing with your own player. Apparently EU sees things oversimplified.
Furthermore, MS would rather
pay
than lose their monopoly, and as a result, they will now have less money to put into proper development and thus indirectly stifle Microsoft's ability to put proper investment on bringing timely SP-s to Vista and XP (they got cash, but not so much cash that 700 million go unnoticed in their budget).
All in all, whether you think it's too little too late, or like me, you think it's the wrong "victory" to begin with, nothing to cheer for in this decision of the EU court. Just more crap that will hit the fan.
The desktop era is ending; there's maybe a decade left in it.
The funny thing in such predictions, is that even people heavily qualified to make them usually come out wrong.
The market develops too fast and in too unpredictable directions, saying desktop is doomed is silly. It will definitely be modified and modernized with time (just like today having super thin full color display, audio and camera is mostly standard, once it wasn't).
But don't kill it prematurely. For the very least, all developers, designers and possibly office workers as a whole will keep using desktop machines for their professional work since a mobile computer will always offer less due to size/mobile constraints. It's a niche, but a huge one.
And the area Apple is weak at, is desktop computers.
Once SP1 hits, the flywheel's going to spin a LOT faster.
Don't be too quick: people and businesses waited for SP1 in previous releases as a milestone of stability and compatibility, upon already good first release of the product.
Vista was released prematurely, and this SP1 is coming suspiciously fast, to me this means Microsoft tries to sell the "Service Pack 1" brand, and not bring the OS to SP1 quality level. Businesses are easy to fool, but not SO easy. So let's see..
Why is it that we live in a world where our console gamesaves are protected more aggressively than our bank accounts and our identities combined?
Reason 1:
Because the manufacturer of a hardware/software product has more expertize in data protection and encryption than a bank owner does.
Reason 2:
In the first case, the vendor tries to protect itself and his assets. The incentive is strong. In the second case, the vendor is supposed to protect their customers. The incentive is weaker.
---------
That said, I want to hear a single case where the modern browser encryption was directly exploited on someone's bank account. No examples, right? Right.
How many trees......could you plant for $1300? That's something many environmental types love to ignore. They spend large amounts of money on things that have pretty small environmental benefits, and then say "every little bit counts" and so forth. Whereas what they should be asking is "how could I spend this money so as to do the most good/least damage to the environment?"
How many trees do I plant to get rid of a plastic waste? Your solution is no better.
What you claim as a problem, IS a problem, but not for the computer hardware manufacturers. It's a problem for organizations like EPA, EPEAT. They set the rules, and manufacturers follow them.
In this case, Lenovo/Dell followed the rules and did their part. If you believe it's stupid, rant on EPA/EPEAT.
Call me wacky, but the UI isn't a problem. Any tool can be learned in a few days or weeks of using it.
You're wacky.
The UI will likely not stop you from doing your work if the work can be done, but it's a major productivity effector. Just the time spent waiting for GIMP to draw the grid or laying out hundreds of Windows, Photoshop now has a single Window with sticky palettes and 3 smart layout modes I constantly switch between as I work on a project. It's a huge time saver, and allows me to concentrate on the project, versus on window management.
To those who are moving in from Photoshop, and would like a similar looka and feel, provide a skin for them. For the true GIMP pros, assuming they exist - retain the existing stuff.
You're the book example why OSS fails.
So which interface will be the official? What would constitute "GIMP training". How do you imagine people spending 2x or 3x resources to maintain and update various "skins".
And last but not least, what are you - some GIMP project boss? How come you order left and right, how about take responsibility and make one of the skins? Not so easy, right?
GIMP has SO MUCH to be done for it to become a viable alternative to Photoshop, that it's unbelievable.
And Photoshop can handle video objects and 3D objects now. By the time GIMP catches up to Photoshop 5 (currently at Photoshop 3-4 level, but worse interface) Photoshop will be at version 13, and probably have a magical "do the work for me" button.
Eee software - conventional Linux OLPC software - highly customized for non-computer-literate children
You underestimate children. And the OS UI is written in Python, not compatible with anything out there.
If those kids will be growing up and joining the world market, they'll need to be introduced to common pieces of hardware, not be walled off and special needs taken for their incredible computer illiteracy.
The last thing a kid will have a problem with, is getting the hang of a stock Windows/Linux OS.
The ASUS Eee is light and has a tiny screen (even for a subnotebook) and a 3 hour battery life, while the OLPC is a rugged machine with sunlight-readable display and a hand charger.
My, my what a spec spin. Let me make one myself, using the official specs of the OLPC and Eee:
OLPC RAM: 256 MB; Eee RAM: 512 MB;
OLPC storage: 1GB; Eee storage: 4GB;
OLPC Screen: 7.5 inch; Eee Screen: 7 inch;
(wait a sec, so Eee has tiny 7 inch screen and OLPC has huge 7.5 inch screen, I see, I see)
I'm pretty sure that "pay twice the price thing" has no official basis and was just a petition someone started.
No, the commercial version will have different color and will cost twice the OLPC. At the time it was supposed to cost $100, Negroponte talked about commercializing at $200.
As recent as two months ago he announced the commercial ones will be $350, given the OLPC's price rised up to $170.
Now since it's $188, I espect the commercial version to be closer to $400.
Being cheap is about the only thing they have in common.
Jesus, yet again another deliciously ironic post. Looks like they don't have that in common, after all.
Yes, $188 is almost twice the $100 original cost. $100 was the goal, right? Even though OLPC didn't make its goal, $188 is still a ridiculously cheap laptop--no other manufacturer can match that (if they could, they'd be making it)
And that machine I link to is actually better than the OLPC. And will sell for the same price to everyone (you'll need to pay 2x or 3x the OLPC price to get it yourself). And can run Windows (XP and less) if need be.
In fact, what OLPC proved is, that commercial entities are already doing their best. Negroponte ranted left and right how the greedy vendors could make a cheap PC but couldn't, but now his dream is vaporware and he's arrived at a pretty pedestrian sublaptop, that has its analog for the same price with the good ol' commercial vendors.
I think you are failing to realize that when the wings are ON YOUR BACK there is NOTHING TO EJECT FROM!
I think you're failing to understand that for this thing to be usable, you need engines on it. And if the engines catch fire, or go otherwise wrong, the parachute will be useless if it's embedded right next to the engines.
As opposed to your design where the head is.... facing backwards?
As opposed to a full design where you have an ejectable seat and other safety measures built in.
Let's see what's the road equivalent of this plane: a motorcycle. No airbag, belt, ability to absorb chock as a full blown automobile can. Hence you're in a much bigger risk being in an accident with motorcycle than a car (statistically, and logically).
And this is without putting your head right on front of the bike. This thing looks laughable. But if they make it look slicker, and with the help of some wires and CGI, I could be fooled an average fella could easily operate it and survive.
Doesn't the material have to actually be consumable in it's original context to constitute rebroadcasting? If I'm DLing via torrent (or most any P2P software), and sending out some random packets of whatever I'm downloading, if those packets can't be re-assembled into a (for instance) playable movie, am I still violating rebroadcasting rules?
If it was like that, I'd cut off the titles and credits and claim it's not the whole movie. Truth is, unless it's a fair use exempt, it's illegal rebroadcasting.
Claiming it's not, on a technicality, makes the opposition seem as low as the lame tricks RIAA tries on their consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple likes to keep things a secret until the show so they get the "oh my gosh" factor going.
Not just the "oh my gosh" factor, but as we learned with the last iPod introduction, learning that there's something hot out there makes people buy Apple stock, and short right after the event for some speculative profit (which results in the Apple stock falling).
I guess this the Apple stock falling is what pisses him off most.
Don't forget what might be the real motivation behind said checksum. When devices such as XBOX360 "talk" to the iPod, without authorization from Apple, they now have to break also said checksum, which may be used to (ab)use DMCA and shut off iPod support in XBOX360.
Or in Linux. While I don't think Jobs will go after the Linux hack, I wouldn't be surprised even for a second if he does: he's pretty aggressive about protecting Apple IP as you know (even from random bloggers out there).
Offering a lousy product is not illegal. So Microsoft has nothing to fear from courts about that. But maybe from the market. If they actually discontinue sales of XP in early 2008 as announced, I guess we will finally see a significant number of people moving off Windows ;-)
:P
Well, I know: and this is my plea really. What's illegal doesn't cause problems for us, and what's legal (offering shoddy product and cutting off our ability to purchase hardware with the previous version) causes problems.
If only the legal system was more adaptive to cries of the people out there.
But, I'll trust you on the market mechanism. The only realistic choice for many seeking new hardware will be Mac, since it runs the commercial software they need (office, photoshop etc.).
Casual consumers may make some good use out of Ubuntu+Firefox, as shipped by Dell
I hope you're right not because I want people using 20 different OS-es, but because Microsoft might actually get their act together. When they do great software, they're unmatched in terms of industry support, ease of use, and accessibility.
It's just right now they've f**ked up bad enough that the cons outweigh the pros of using Windows... (this may sound odd on Slashdot).
As a test, I just tried to beat this pc to death by multitasking the following: excel 2003, excel 2007, word 2003, word 2007, access 2003, access 2007, publisher 2003, publisher 2007, visual studio 2003, visual studio 2005, windows media player 11 (playing an mp3 with visualization running, coldfusion studio, firefox, ie7, opera, photoshop 7, thunderbird, and last but not least, Taskman.exe. Keep in mind these are all 32bit apps running on x64, so I'm taking an even bigger performance hit than usual.
You forgot to add Notepad, Calculator, and Paint. Do you even have any idea what you're talking about. Your post is coming off pretty silly with this "multitasking test" if you ask me.
What I'm speaking about is personal experience, and the experience of many other people who's job is to care about those things, but hell, if you can run few copies of Access and not get "death by multitasking" (?) then I must be Microsoft hater spreading FUD.
As if offering Microsoft Windows XP across the board blunts the monopoly. In freer countries, one can walk into a random computer store and buy notebook computers without any Microsoft at all (and I have the store datasheets in hand to prove it), but not in San Jose, California. There's a reason for that beyond simple supply and demand economics.
There is no damn monopoly. There's OSX, there's Linux, DELL and Lenovo offer it preinstalled even. And you can buy Mac machine with OSX.
Don't be naive. The whole monopoly crap is back in the mid nineties. Microsoft no longer has monopoly. There are plenty of good choices around. And exactly because of this, as I told you, many people in US I know converted to Mac this year.
I'm talking about pressing issues here, that we feel not abstractly and indirectly, but quite painfully directly: Vista is crap, and we want the ability to order our machines with XP.
Either way, I'm much more optimistic about the "sharing of server protocols" part of the judgment. It would be great being able to use Samba as an AD controller.
I didn't know that "it would be great" represents a valid reason to sue anyone. It'd be great to have free ice-cream, so do I sue the ice-cream manufacturers?
The matter of fact is, Microsoft's tactics to create greater lock-in effect have started playing against themselves. Open standards gain popularity that make their own incompatible solution irrelevant. The irony.
To begin with, let me tell you about a friend of mine: Mr. Question Mark [penny-arcade.com]. He's happy to help whenever you have a sentence phrased like a question.
Let me tell you about a friend of mine: Mr. Don't Patronize Me B*tch.
Those were rhetorical questions and I chose to use full stop, as it better represented my intended tone, never mind what I could have used. I hope you manage to sustain your being without spilling internal organs all over your room, while reading how I dare fight Mr. Question Mark.
Oh, and no hard feelings...
Pretty soon we'll need to buy one DVD per DVD player and they'll have some kind of activation thing where the first time you play it ties it to that DVD player if we keep going down this road.
It's already like that, in the form of intengible, locked-to-this-machine DRM downloads.
You realize in 10 years DVD's maybe won't even be published anymore.
We're about to enter the next level of digital right management hell now.
Maybe it won't matter a lot in another 10. Microsoft has abandoned its own back compat with Vista in many places and the businesses are denying Vista transition.
In fact I've been in contact and read/heard plenty of opinions of private users, small and big businesses, government employees and they all don't want anything to do with Vista (which is increasingly hard given many vendors do NOT offer non-Vista machines, forcing businesses to purchase standalone XP licenses or use second hand hardware).
More amusing are the comparisons I've heard about how fast Vista is: "slow as a dying dog", "as a overweight grandma on a treadmill", "turtle on vicodin", "turtle dipped in mud climbing uphills"...
Microsoft's own software (Office 2003, VS 2005, etc.) isn't compatible with their own OS right now.
Microsoft's a mess, and honestly, I do believe the EU lawsuit is a fiasco and not what we needed. What good is it they fined them nearly a billion. Will this help us somehow.
I honestly would rather prefer they sued them for delivering unstable, incompatible, and a resource hog of an OS, and maybe even sue the hardware vendors for not consistently offering XP as an option across the range (wee see some half hearted attempts here and there, such as Dell offering XP to businesses, and not to consumers).
This is a really pressing problem for millions of people worldwide. The vague problem of them including Media Player in Windows isn't that big, turns out (seeing that most sites use Flash / MP4 QuickTime for video anyway).
I mean, they compete with their own Media Player, by introducing Silverlight. If it stiffled competition so much, what sense does it make competing with your own player. Apparently EU sees things oversimplified.
Furthermore, MS would rather
pay
than lose their monopoly, and as a result, they will now have less money to put into proper development and thus indirectly stifle Microsoft's ability to put proper investment on bringing timely SP-s to Vista and XP (they got cash, but not so much cash that 700 million go unnoticed in their budget).All in all, whether you think it's too little too late, or like me, you think it's the wrong "victory" to begin with, nothing to cheer for in this decision of the EU court. Just more crap that will hit the fan.
download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month.
Oh nice, nice, nice. Good thing I just use my Comcast connection for HD video broadcasting.
The desktop era is ending; there's maybe a decade left in it.
The funny thing in such predictions, is that even people heavily qualified to make them usually come out wrong.
The market develops too fast and in too unpredictable directions, saying desktop is doomed is silly. It will definitely be modified and modernized with time (just like today having super thin full color display, audio and camera is mostly standard, once it wasn't).
But don't kill it prematurely. For the very least, all developers, designers and possibly office workers as a whole will keep using desktop machines for their professional work since a mobile computer will always offer less due to size/mobile constraints. It's a niche, but a huge one.
And the area Apple is weak at, is desktop computers.
Once SP1 hits, the flywheel's going to spin a LOT faster.
Don't be too quick: people and businesses waited for SP1 in previous releases as a milestone of stability and compatibility, upon already good first release of the product.
Vista was released prematurely, and this SP1 is coming suspiciously fast, to me this means Microsoft tries to sell the "Service Pack 1" brand, and not bring the OS to SP1 quality level. Businesses are easy to fool, but not SO easy. So let's see..
Why is it that we live in a world where our console gamesaves are protected more aggressively than our bank accounts and our identities combined?
Reason 1:
Because the manufacturer of a hardware/software product has more expertize in data protection and encryption than a bank owner does.
Reason 2:
In the first case, the vendor tries to protect itself and his assets. The incentive is strong.
In the second case, the vendor is supposed to protect their customers. The incentive is weaker.
---------
That said, I want to hear a single case where the modern browser encryption was directly exploited on someone's bank account. No examples, right? Right.
How many trees... ...could you plant for $1300? That's something many environmental types love to ignore. They spend large amounts of money on things that have pretty small environmental benefits, and then say "every little bit counts" and so forth. Whereas what they should be asking is "how could I spend this money so as to do the most good/least damage to the environment?"
How many trees do I plant to get rid of a plastic waste? Your solution is no better.
What you claim as a problem, IS a problem, but not for the computer hardware manufacturers. It's a problem for organizations like EPA, EPEAT. They set the rules, and manufacturers follow them.
In this case, Lenovo/Dell followed the rules and did their part. If you believe it's stupid, rant on EPA/EPEAT.
they're free to follow UNIX's "do one thing and one thing well" philosophy
Right, except the realistic situation right now is:
GIMP: "do one thing and do it badly"
Photoshop: "do several things and do them best"
The sadness I feel while writing this escapes proper expression, but, it's the truth.
Call me wacky, but the UI isn't a problem. Any tool can be learned in a few days or weeks of using it.
You're wacky.
The UI will likely not stop you from doing your work if the work can be done, but it's a major productivity effector. Just the time spent waiting for GIMP to draw the grid or laying out hundreds of Windows, Photoshop now has a single Window with sticky palettes and 3 smart layout modes I constantly switch between as I work on a project. It's a huge time saver, and allows me to concentrate on the project, versus on window management.
To those who are moving in from Photoshop, and would like a similar looka and feel, provide a skin for them. For the true GIMP pros, assuming they exist - retain the existing stuff.
You're the book example why OSS fails.
So which interface will be the official? What would constitute "GIMP training". How do you imagine people spending 2x or 3x resources to maintain and update various "skins".
And last but not least, what are you - some GIMP project boss? How come you order left and right, how about take responsibility and make one of the skins? Not so easy, right?
GIMP has SO MUCH to be done for it to become a viable alternative to Photoshop, that it's unbelievable.
And Photoshop can handle video objects and 3D objects now. By the time GIMP catches up to Photoshop 5 (currently at Photoshop 3-4 level, but worse interface) Photoshop will be at version 13, and probably have a magical "do the work for me" button.
Eee software - conventional Linux
OLPC software - highly customized for non-computer-literate children
You underestimate children. And the OS UI is written in Python, not compatible with anything out there.
If those kids will be growing up and joining the world market, they'll need to be introduced to common pieces of hardware, not be walled off and special needs taken for their incredible computer illiteracy.
The last thing a kid will have a problem with, is getting the hang of a stock Windows/Linux OS.
The ASUS Eee is light and has a tiny screen (even for a subnotebook) and a 3 hour battery life, while the OLPC is a rugged machine with sunlight-readable display and a hand charger.
My, my what a spec spin. Let me make one myself, using the official specs of the OLPC and Eee:
OLPC RAM: 256 MB;
Eee RAM: 512 MB;
OLPC storage: 1GB;
Eee storage: 4GB;
OLPC Screen: 7.5 inch;
Eee Screen: 7 inch;
(wait a sec, so Eee has tiny 7 inch screen and OLPC has huge 7.5 inch screen, I see, I see)
I'm pretty sure that "pay twice the price thing" has no official basis and was just a petition someone started.
No, the commercial version will have different color and will cost twice the OLPC. At the time it was supposed to cost $100, Negroponte talked about commercializing at $200.
As recent as two months ago he announced the commercial ones will be $350, given the OLPC's price rised up to $170.
Now since it's $188, I espect the commercial version to be closer to $400.
Being cheap is about the only thing they have in common.
Jesus, yet again another deliciously ironic post. Looks like they don't have that in common, after all.
To be fair, it's 60% more than the original estimate plus the dollar dropping like stone ("fluctuations" my ass)...
Right, but the dollar is dropping like stone for Asus as well, surely. How do you explain their price.
Maintaining a high level of customer service is an admirable goal. Why is this "evil"? Note, this isn't closing _adsense_ but the Adsense API.
Google should hire you as their Chief Newspeak Officer.
Yes, $188 is almost twice the $100 original cost. $100 was the goal, right? Even though OLPC didn't make its goal, $188 is still a ridiculously cheap laptop--no other manufacturer can match that (if they could, they'd be making it)
Hehe, do you realize how deliciously ironic your post is.
And that machine I link to is actually better than the OLPC. And will sell for the same price to everyone (you'll need to pay 2x or 3x the OLPC price to get it yourself). And can run Windows (XP and less) if need be.
In fact, what OLPC proved is, that commercial entities are already doing their best. Negroponte ranted left and right how the greedy vendors could make a cheap PC but couldn't, but now his dream is vaporware and he's arrived at a pretty pedestrian sublaptop, that has its analog for the same price with the good ol' commercial vendors.
I think you are failing to realize that when the wings are ON YOUR BACK there is NOTHING TO EJECT FROM!
I think you're failing to understand that for this thing to be usable, you need engines on it. And if the engines catch fire, or go otherwise wrong, the parachute will be useless if it's embedded right next to the engines.
Good thing you're not making planes I guess.
As opposed to your design where the head is.... facing backwards?
As opposed to a full design where you have an ejectable seat and other safety measures built in.
Let's see what's the road equivalent of this plane: a motorcycle. No airbag, belt, ability to absorb chock as a full blown automobile can. Hence you're in a much bigger risk being in an accident with motorcycle than a car (statistically, and logically).
And this is without putting your head right on front of the bike. This thing looks laughable. But if they make it look slicker, and with the help of some wires and CGI, I could be fooled an average fella could easily operate it and survive.
Doesn't the material have to actually be consumable in it's original context to constitute rebroadcasting? If I'm DLing via torrent (or most any P2P software), and sending out some random packets of whatever I'm downloading, if those packets can't be re-assembled into a (for instance) playable movie, am I still violating rebroadcasting rules?
If it was like that, I'd cut off the titles and credits and claim it's not the whole movie. Truth is, unless it's a fair use exempt, it's illegal rebroadcasting.
Claiming it's not, on a technicality, makes the opposition seem as low as the lame tricks RIAA tries on their consumers.