Curtis's Profile

Member since February 21, 2007

  • Name

    Curtis Schroeder

  • Location:

    United States of America

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  1. Comment - Up Close: The OLPC $188 laptop

    (Jan 15, 2008 - 10:45 PM)

    First, DatabaseBen, it's called helping the least among us. You should recognize that as a CHRISTIAN belief. Yes, there are poor here in the USA, more than there should be in one of the richest nations on this Earth, but they still have tremendous resources at their disposal by comparison, not the least of which being our public education system. Some countries require payment for all children that attend school. No money after eking out food and rent, then no education for you. Don't believe me? Then spend some time helping some refugee children that have legally immigrated to this country. You will quickly learn just how lucky we are here in the USA and how grateful they are to be here too.

    Second, no one has crowned the English language as the world's *official* universal language, that's why OLPC is multi-lingual. Even Windows is multi-lingual. Yes, many people in other parts of the world learn to speak English, because they currently find it to be useful. How many languages other than English have you taken the time to learn or master?

    Third, they are likely to already be Christian, but if they are Muslim (or Hindu, or Buddhist, etc, etc), that's OK too. You should get out more...it's a big world out there.

    Knowledge is power. The OLPC is intended to help more knowledge reach these children. Democracy requires knowledge to grow and thrive. See the connection now? There is also the old saw of teaching a person to fish, instead of just giving them a fish. The OLPC is a (modest) learning tool.

  2. Comment - Up Close: The OLPC $188 laptop

    (Jan 10, 2008 - 4:51 PM)

    I have one as well. It arrived just before I left on my Christmas holiday, so I took it with me. I purposely pulled it out in some public areas during my travels (hotel lobby to use their free wi-fi, coffee shop, etc). The eyes of the middle-school age kids that spotted it got as big as saucers. Several adults wanted to know where they could buy one. No one I talked to had heard of OLPC, but they would buy one now! It also fits inside a standard room safe. Try that with a regular laptop!

    It is clearly designed with the intent of networking with a school server. It is also readily apparent that users will be able to download new activities (.xo files) from the school server or the Internet. One can easily imagine the repository of contributed activities growing with time.

    One of the included applications is a Python scripting lab for teaching programming. Beats the heck out of starting off with Basic, as I did back in the late '70s.

    The provided wi-fi mapping and mesh network neighborhood capability is very cool. I haven't had the opportunity to actually try the mesh networking with other XO laptops, but both the web browser and word processor are supposed to support collaboration within an active mesh.

    Personally, I would like to disable the Sugar interface from launching at startup and make it an option when I want to use it, then use a standard, light-weight X11 window manager the rest of the time. I've started working through the layers of Xinit scripting, but I haven't isolated it yet (must be really buried).

    Running more than one or two apps. at a time on a 400 MHz processor bogs it down? Oh please, what a silly complaint! It would be just as slow on a similarly equipped desktop PC. I know, as my first Linux box was an old 233 MHz PC that had been retired from running Win95. I run 64-bit Ubuntu using an AMD 64 4000+ nowadays.

    My only complaint thus far is I can't touch type on the keyboard. However, I also understand it was designed for smaller hands that may not have that skill yet, as was aptly demonstrated by one of the kids that looked it over during my trip.

  3. Comment - Britain Refuses to Extend Music Copyrights

    (Jul 26, 2007 - 11:40 AM)

    The UK is to be congratulated for not giving in to industry pressure to further extend the Copyright term! Now to get the USA to *roll back* its last extension or two...

  4. Comment - New Blu-ray Discs to Expand Copy Protection, Bypass AACS Troubles

    (Jun 23, 2007 - 4:42 PM)

    Oh, I see, BD+ essentially replicates the '80s copy protection mechanism of each title having it's own special OS that loads when you boot the disk. They evidently believe (falsely) that the DMCA will protect them from an arms race similar to the one that ensued back in the 80's (when the media format in question was the 5.25" floppy). The only difference will be they can wield the DMCA to more easily sue the pants off of anyone they catch breaking the BD+ protections, but I suspect history will still repeat itself.

    Add to this the fact that HD DVD *requires* publishers to support Managed Copy, but for Blu-ray it is optional. If you feel you must buy into one of these two formats now, it looks like HD DVD is the more consumer friendly of the two.

    Me, I'm in no hurry, as I'm still waiting for the right HD display to come along before I start the *major* upgrade cycle for my home theater that HD DVD or Blu-ray would require.

  5. Comment - DRM Debate Resumes Over 'Managed Copy' for Blu-Ray, HD DVD

    (May 25, 2007 - 12:55 PM)

    The following quote is from another article on this topic over at ars technica and is important to the discussion:

    [Back before either HD DVD or Blu-ray launched, there was a war of words between the two camps over the feature. The dividing line between them is that the HD DVD folks *require* all studios to support managed copy (so-called "mandatory" managed copy), while the Blu-ray camp doesn't. Required or not, studios have the option of charging for any and all managed copy use, so it is not the case that HD DVD will offer free managed copy on every disc.]
    http://arstechnica.com/n...ng-later-this-year.html

    In general, I'm not opposed to an online registry keeping track of backups I've made. I've long thought the registration of CD/DVD burners to the owner, much like the registration of an automobile, would go a long way towards slowing down CD/DVD piracy, especially if each burner wrote its serial# to each disc at the beginning of the burn process.

    What I am opposed to is this online registry being owned/controlled by the media publishers. I would be much more inclined to trust an independent third party, especially if there is more than one so there is competition for the consumer's business. I think the bank metaphor works quite well here (thanks deminicus!); if you don't like how your "content bank" is treating you, then you can pull your assets and move them to a competitor, much like rolling over an IRA.