Well, presumably, if the (paraphrased) "much BSD development is done where the law doesn't demand clean-room reverse engineering" statement really is a valid difference between OpenBSD and Linux, the legally (in some parts of the world, presumably where much Linux development is done) tainted OpenBSD drivers would remain tainted, and thus Linux developers in those parts of the world would face legal jeopardy for porting them.
Of course, if this is really the reason, the OpenBSD drivers are probably illegal for distribution or commercial use in those parts of the world, not just illegal to port.
I'm not going to comment on how valid this distinction is, since I'm far from an expert on eitehr geographical distribution of development effort on various open-source OS's or differences among international jurisdictions on legal jeopardies associated with reverse engineering.
I think it may work for the parents who aren't control freaks, don't try to use it for routine monitoring, but do use it to help get leads on where to find their children if they are unexpectedly very late and unreachable.
I think it won't work for parents who try to use it to keep minute-by-minute tabs on their children and fly off the handle with rage any time their child appears, from the information it provides, to have broken a parentally-imposed rule.
Some of us - Even adults for a good many years now - Believe that kids have some right to privacy. Personal experience demonstrated to me, at least, that the more controlling someone's parents acted, the worse that person turned out. You can let them know that they can always turn to you for help, but you can't actually do their thinking for them.
Using this technology is not necessarily "acting controlling". Acting controlling is a matter of how it is used.
While a lot of comments here have focussed on shortcomings that will undermine this system as used as a system of disciplinary control for children; used in a more restrained manner in a family that otherwise has good trust and communications, it could have good emergency uses.
And not just for children -- I certainly wouldn't mind my wife having the additional information it would provide in the event of something happening to me. Now, of course, there are privacy concerns about keeping the information from unwanted monitors (yeah, NSA guy, I'm talking about you, among other people), but its a technology that certainly has good uses.
Pray tell, what are you referring to? Every spreadsheet program I've ever used allows for edit in-place, in addition to the text field.
Er, yeah, that was really not what I meant; what I meant was that Google Spreadsheets style of edit-in-place was something I wished for, rather than the mirrored mode of most spreadsheets; GS -- unsurprising since edit-in-place is the only way to edit -- does more to highlight the in-place editing with its edit-box, compared to the way Excel does it.
The problem is that edit in-place is very confining, and is usually only used for quick edits.
How is it confining?
Also, their implementation of edit in-place can be frustrating. In most spreadsheets, clicking off the cell will disable editing mode. The only way to exit editing mode is to hit ENTER or ESC. Not particularly usable, IMHO.
In Excel, for instance, this is only true if entering a cell address would not be syntactically proper in the entry in the cell. One could debate whether a "consistent" interface (in the manner of Google Spreadsheets) or a "smart" interface (in the manner of Excel) is better here; certainly, I've occasionally been frustrated in Excel when a typo resulted in my leaving to select a range and instead moving the focus to a new cell, but its a rare problem. It certainly a transition issue, though I don't think its a particularly big one; I definitely wouldn't go so far as to call it unusable, and its probably easier for a new user to learn.
How important that is probably depends on what the Google Spreadsheets vision is -- lots of people talk about it as an "Excel-killer" aimed at current Excel users, where such an incompatibility would be a bigger deal and ease of learning to new users wouldn't be as big of a concern. OTOH, lots of internet users probably don't have Excel at all -- they don't have any use for it which would justify shelling out the cost. I'd bet in the overall strategic vision, their more the ultimate target of Google Spreadsheets (one it is, for documentation and other reasons, far short of being ideal for, yet) than Excel users.
Given that its key feature is multi-user editing, I would have thought its primary target was biz.
The idea that collaborative work on documents is exclusively, or even principally, something that corporate users are looking for I think is a mistake, but not one Google has made -- the value of collaboration to the average internet user is a central driving force behind a lot of the newer Google offerings.
Formulas are edited in the cell rather than having a text field on top. This is REALLY annoying to anyone who uses a spreadsheet program regularly. There is an uneditable text field at the top (doesn't work right in Mozilla 1.7.12), but it's not useful for anything other than ogleing at.
I work with spreadsheets daily, mostly with Excel, and have for years. Edit-in-place has been something I've wished every spreadsheet app would do for quite a long time. Its different, sure, but to me its good different.
Yeah, but you still need to get to the 2% mark. I'm looking at this review, and I am utterly dumbfounded at some of the features it's lacking.
Since the user doesn't host the application on their machine, and upgrades are entirely invisible, the web application model that Google is using naturally lends itself to focussing more on making sure what is released is usable, reasonably bug-free, and designed right, not on making sure it has every feature that could ever be desired. New features can be added easily, whereas changes to existing features are nearly as disruptive as they would be with traditional applications.
There are plenty of spreadsheet uses that don't need charting, so there is no reason it needs to be in the initial release. Sure, it seems like it ought to be fairly easy to implement, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't one of the early upgrades, but with the way Google is delivering apps, there is no reason they need to have everything including the kitchen sink when they are initially released.
Similarly, the lack of online help is a no-no for a spreadsheet program. Users still need to do computations, even if they're as simple as addition, subtraction, averaging, and weighted averaging. Failing to include online help means that users will have no idea how to properly compute these formulas. Even just dropping the expected args into the text field would do wonders for usability!
Online help is a bigger deal than charting, since it goes to usability of the existing features; I for one. I do see this as a big shortcoming.
However, miles are miles, and gallons are gallons. There's no one simple way to measure processor performance, and measuring the amount of power output by today's chips is proving just as difficult.
Sure, both performance and power usage of a chip will vary depending on what you do with it, so any simple one-number power:performance measure won't tell you much useful.
Of course, the same thing is true with cars, too; both gas mileage and other aspects of performance (including whether it will go where you want it to at all) will vary by a range of other factors that don't get measured in simple miles-per-gallons measures.
Now, true, mpg ratings are probably more useful than any single broad processor power:performance measure.
3D is useful (even with 2D screens) for all kinds of data, and conventional interfaces are adequate, if not ideal, for working with it (otherwise, we wouldn't have 3D games).
But 3D's internet utility, I think, is going to materialize in forms that are very much not like what we think of as "web browsers", though there may be some overlap (of course, "Web" applications are becoming increasingly ill-suited to the traditional web browser model as well, leading browsers to increasingly become fairly generic application platforms) -- I think that things like OpenCroquet are more like where internet 3D will bloom than 3D adaptations or plugins for traditional web-browsers.
What's with the false dichotomies? Maybe they filed the patent because they developed an application they intended to use, and for which an application would both protect them from suit and enable them to sue anyone else stepping into the same space.
And rememeber: this dynamic isn't just young idealists going up against business-experienced people; its business-experienced people going up against young idealists in the idealists' home turf.
Well, no, its business-experienced people who benefit from narrow control of media distribution going up against both the idealistic and the simply self-interested consumers of all ages, many of whom themselves are business-experienced.
Is it your thesis that the progenitors of and participants in the war did not start out as 17 year olds with an axe to grind?
Most people who become adults start out as (or rather, go through a phase of being) 17 year olds with an axe to grind.
What was the average age of the pariticpants in the war anyway?
Probably fairly young -- on both sides.
Or are you, perhaps, suggesting that men such as Lessing and Barlow are inexperienced?
Well, no, I don't think the characterization of the fight as being between the old and experienced vs. "teenaged Hezbollahs" is at all accurate to start with, but that was kind of beside the point of my comment.
The American War for Independence featured two sides, each led by experienced people in the fields of business, government, and war; I'm not sure exactly how it is relevant.
In theory, the gov't shouldn't have even asked them for the records, yet it still happened. Worse, we've got a monkey in the white-house that may bend the rules a bit to try even harder.
The problem here is not with Google. Its with an out-of-control government and and apathetic public that fails to reign in the government. Google allowing users to store data or not allowing users to store data makes little difference in that.
The public is in many districts in the US -- though, admittedly, far more expensive laptops than OLPC is putting together. Of course, the districts where this is happening are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not generally the least affluent districts, so the ones where the parents would be most likely to have problems buying their own children computers aren't the ones where the public is buying computers for children.
Of course, nothing prevents the US Department of Education from putting in an order to OLPC -- heck, OLPC would probably even let US states do it, which would better fit the way education is provisioned in the US -- but its not likely to happen. Microsoft has enough lobbyists and PR funds to direct against any public effort at mass distribution of FOSS-driven computers in the US.
Pardon me but if you try to sell me a computer and told me that I'll want to upgrade any piece of it soon, I would be inclined to tell you you're crazy and buy a computer that doesn't needs an immediate upgrade.
Um, they didn't say you (the purchaser) would want to upgrade it, they said they (Sony) would want to. Or, in other words, that purchasers looking as far down the line as you are today, but doing so (say) two years from now, will want more hard drive than you will today.
Isn't it the case that aid and relief that goes to African governments are largely diverted for the corrupt politician's use?
Sure. Food aid that goes to African governments often goes to states that are nearly completely failed regimes that have collapsed into the domains of essentially autonomous warlords, whatever the nominal nature of the central government.
Only two of the countries currently working with OLPC are African at all, and they are Nigeria and Egypt. Both of which are among the more stable regimes on the continent. The others are China, India, Thailand, Argentina, and Brazil.
They may have a point, if you can browse the web and see emails and print things, might that not be enough of a computer for many people?
Especially with the emergence of online versions of many traditional desktop apps, if its got a good browser, that could well be enough of a computer (particularly, enough of a second or third computer in the house) for many people.
WebTV and the like never caught on but with the higher resolution and generally larger screens HDTV's offer perhaps it has more of a chance now.
Plus, you know, the PS3 has other functions besides being a set-top web browser box. Like playing movies. And, you know, its a game console, too.
Then what does the PS3 offer that makes me want to replace my PC?
My laptop is a computer, and offers nothing that makes me want to replace my desktop PC.
I don't see why an entertainment-focussed computer system that I would attach to my TV should make me want to replace either my desktop or laptop PC, either, any more than a palmtop should make me want to replace my other PCs.
The crank still exists, basically -- its just on the external power supply, and I think they are focussing on a foot device. The essence is the same.
It makes more sense that way, especially as its a part that may need replaced.
"They", the people who created the pledgbank drive trying to get people to sign pledges, said they were doing so in attempt to convince OLPC to let them buy laptops for three times the base price, with the extra money going to donate two laptops.
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Well, presumably, if the (paraphrased) "much BSD development is done where the law doesn't demand clean-room reverse engineering" statement really is a valid difference between OpenBSD and Linux, the legally (in some parts of the world, presumably where much Linux development is done) tainted OpenBSD drivers would remain tainted, and thus Linux developers in those parts of the world would face legal jeopardy for porting them.
Of course, if this is really the reason, the OpenBSD drivers are probably illegal for distribution or commercial use in those parts of the world, not just illegal to port.
I'm not going to comment on how valid this distinction is, since I'm far from an expert on eitehr geographical distribution of development effort on various open-source OS's or differences among international jurisdictions on legal jeopardies associated with reverse engineering.
I think it may work for the parents who aren't control freaks, don't try to use it for routine monitoring, but do use it to help get leads on where to find their children if they are unexpectedly very late and unreachable.
I think it won't work for parents who try to use it to keep minute-by-minute tabs on their children and fly off the handle with rage any time their child appears, from the information it provides, to have broken a parentally-imposed rule.
While a lot of comments here have focussed on shortcomings that will undermine this system as used as a system of disciplinary control for children; used in a more restrained manner in a family that otherwise has good trust and communications, it could have good emergency uses. And not just for children -- I certainly wouldn't mind my wife having the additional information it would provide in the event of something happening to me. Now, of course, there are privacy concerns about keeping the information from unwanted monitors (yeah, NSA guy, I'm talking about you, among other people), but its a technology that certainly has good uses.
3D is useful (even with 2D screens) for all kinds of data, and conventional interfaces are adequate, if not ideal, for working with it (otherwise, we wouldn't have 3D games). But 3D's internet utility, I think, is going to materialize in forms that are very much not like what we think of as "web browsers", though there may be some overlap (of course, "Web" applications are becoming increasingly ill-suited to the traditional web browser model as well, leading browsers to increasingly become fairly generic application platforms) -- I think that things like OpenCroquet are more like where internet 3D will bloom than 3D adaptations or plugins for traditional web-browsers.
What's with the false dichotomies? Maybe they filed the patent because they developed an application they intended to use, and for which an application would both protect them from suit and enable them to sue anyone else stepping into the same space.
The American War for Independence featured two sides, each led by experienced people in the fields of business, government, and war; I'm not sure exactly how it is relevant.
The public is in many districts in the US -- though, admittedly, far more expensive laptops than OLPC is putting together. Of course, the districts where this is happening are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not generally the least affluent districts, so the ones where the parents would be most likely to have problems buying their own children computers aren't the ones where the public is buying computers for children. Of course, nothing prevents the US Department of Education from putting in an order to OLPC -- heck, OLPC would probably even let US states do it, which would better fit the way education is provisioned in the US -- but its not likely to happen. Microsoft has enough lobbyists and PR funds to direct against any public effort at mass distribution of FOSS-driven computers in the US.
Sure. Food aid that goes to African governments often goes to states that are nearly completely failed regimes that have collapsed into the domains of essentially autonomous warlords, whatever the nominal nature of the central government.
Only two of the countries currently working with OLPC are African at all, and they are Nigeria and Egypt. Both of which are among the more stable regimes on the continent. The others are China, India, Thailand, Argentina, and Brazil.
The crank still exists, basically -- its just on the external power supply, and I think they are focussing on a foot device. The essence is the same. It makes more sense that way, especially as its a part that may need replaced.
"They", the people who created the pledgbank drive trying to get people to sign pledges, said they were doing so in attempt to convince OLPC to let them buy laptops for three times the base price, with the extra money going to donate two laptops.