$100 Laptops for the Masses
This story at Techworld.com points to something really cool coming out of MIT that I had not heard about:
The MIT Media Laboratory expects to launch a prototype of its US$100 laptop in November. The facility has been working with industry partners to develop a notebook computer for use in education, particularly in developing countries.
...
The 500MHz laptop will run a "skinny version" of the open-source Linux operating system. It will have a two-mode screen, so it can be viewed in color and then by pushing a button or activating software switch to a black-and-white display, which can be viewed in bright sunlight at four times normal resolution, according to Negroponte. He estimates the display will cost around $35.
The laptop can be powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank, which is stored in the housing of the laptop where the hinge is located. The laptops will have a 10 to 1 crank rate, so that a child will crank the handle for one minute to get 10 minutes of power and use. When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap, according to Negroponte. The laptops will be ruggedized and probably made of rubber, he said. They will have four USB ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone enabled and come with 1GB of memory.
Each laptop will act as a node in a mesh peer-to-peer ad hoc network, Negroponte said, meaning that if one laptop is directly accessing the Internet, when other machines power on, they can share that single online connection.
Naive Awe?
..."Computer manufacturers appear to be cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security to make every person who buys a new computer subject to immediate, unrestricted government recording of everything they do on those computers! EVERYTHING! ...."
(PHOTOS SHOW HARDWARE FOUND IN COMPUTERS AND LETTER FROM DHS IN RESPONSE)
Keylog hardware is installed in new computers and all info being sent to Homeland Security
http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/gov_caught_installing_keystroke_logg...
----------
MIT annouces $100 laptops (and yes, we all know about the military funded labs of MIT)......San Francisco is trying to do free wireless access to all the boys and girls AND the above.............(free) hardware installed for the Big Brother's in DC....................it all just starts connecting up to the "master plan" of ultra spying the public in general.
I would think making sure everyone is online would make is so much easier for this White House regime to find the dissenters!
Beware of strangers bearing gifts!
Get real
Such a universal provision of free hardware and free wireless access would (if armed secretly with monitoring devices and software) generate such a large volume of information that the information would be useless.
EFFECTIVE spying on citizens needs to be targeted on "the usual suspects", and the determination of this list is necessarily a manual process.
I would never downplay the seriousness of this issue, but despite right-wing fantasies about a government they like to think is totally unlike them and not in fact representative today of their nastiest wet dreams, the way you get to be the subject of surveillance, is you sign a petition at an anti-war demonstration.
On the right, you have to be a real head case to attract attention, and I am talking about serious bands of armed men who know how to move across broken ground secretly and in formation, and who can do so because they are physically fit...which pretty much excludes most fat white boys in the "militia", dangerous as the phenomenon is in the large.
The above post would neatly deprive poor people in the USA and the world of Internet access by means of which they can get jobs and grow desirable crops. It also provides an argument to the pig "broadband" companies who have in recent years made it their business, not to provide cheap wireless access...but to try to prevent Philadelphia and other cities from setting up public wireless access, so they can profit from high fees affordable only to the wealthy.
For years, Starbuck's has "provided" wireless access...in violation of the uniform commercial code, since its baristas demand a credit card and refuse legal tender for any access to wireless at Starbuck's.
The big companies are desparately afraid of losing a boutique business and for this reason refuse to provide affordable wireless while fighting its public provision. Raising this red herring, of "privacy", just gives them another argument.
If some clown in the Department of Homeland Security is wasting his time watching me access Wicked Weasel Bikinis, he is also wasting my tax dollar.
Is it so hard to find dissenters?
For one thing, this White House couldn't catch Osama bin Laden, it seems, even if Osama bin Laden were to stand on Pennsylvania Avenue in full Osama bin Laden fig.
For another, you don't need high-tech tools to find dissenters. Look out your window, George, there are thousands out there marching behind Cyndi Sheehan!
Wow
Sounds great, Dan. I'd heard about this thing but not in any detail.
I love the fact you can crank it.
I predict that there will be a market for this device in the developed world in addition to the so-called less developed world. A small, simple and reliable portable computer might not meet the needs of a developer (although this baby would give a whole new meaning to "cranking code") but would be a word processor and email device for a true mass market.
I want a scaled up version of such a computer because the motion, salty air, and moisture of the Lamma island ferry is what causes my Vaio to freeze; as best I can determine, the connection between the hard drive and motherboard is interfered with momentarily while Windows accesses virtual memory and because without ability to access pages an OS like Windows stalls, my Vaio freezes up.
[I am not a hardware guy and would appreciate advice on this matter, or sympathy.]
But when I look for a "ruggedized" system I find the only such systems are made for the military. All that is available at a low price point is a clear plastic sheath, a sort of computer condom.