Alan Kay (wikipedia) – A powerful idea about teaching ideas (TED Talks)
With all the intensity and brilliance for which he is known, Alan Kay envisions better techniques for teaching kids by using computers to illustrate experience in ways -– mathematically and scientifically — that only computers can.
If I ever buy a netbook it needs to have a proper OS. Windows is even more of a joke on a netbook than it is on a normal laptop and since I don’t foresee apple coming up with a netbook in the near future, linux is all that’s left. And no, that crap Asus ships and calls linux is not an option. Windows wannabe Xandros with a lame interface – no thank you. Ubuntu is currently the (only) way to go. And I mean normal Ubuntu not Ubuntu with weird interface (DJ Silly Remix). Sure you can install something like Ubuntu EEE if you have an eee pc or similar but that still might not get all your hardware runing properly plus why did you have to do it yourself? That should’ve been done by the manufacturer imo.
I also find some of the hadware on the current generation of netbooks lacking. There’s nothing that can be done about the SSDs at the moment. They are all slow, low-capacity energy-vampires. One could go with the traditional mechanic drives but that’s soooo last century. The memory is a different story. 512MB is definitively not enough. 1GB is usable but 2GB would be nice. But the biggest let down in my opinion is the battery life. Assuming you don’t stick with windows or the windows wannabe that comes pre-installed, you won’t get past 5h of battery life. And knowing the reviewers and my own careless use of computer resources, that probably translates into 3h in my hands
Granted some may say I’ve missed the point of netbooks. That all netbooks are for is browsing the web, reading email and instant messaging. Nope. That’s just all you can do with the current hardware. Ok the truth is you can do a lot more but you’ll soon run into limitations. Say I want to fire up eclipse and work on my JADE powered project for the Distributed Intelligent Agents course. It’s painfull enough on my macbook I can’t imagine it being bearable on the current crop (read crap) of netbooks.
But that’s not what netbooks are for right? And if it’s just browsing and reading email, an iPhone will do. But work still needs to get done and while my macbook is great for that, I’d still like a more portable option. One I wouldn’t be too afraid to drop/lose. A more task-oriented option (e.g. work on proj A for 2h at a random place with wireless) without the hundreds of applications I keep conveniently open on my macbook would also be nice.
Obviously there are already many options in the market and more to come. But I’m not paying more than 350 eur for one. That’s the price of an eee pc 901. So all I have to do now is wait for another 12 months for it (or rather its sucessor(s)) to reach the kind of hw specs I want and for them to either drop the pseudo-linux or for ubuntu’s netbook support to improve a bit.
I got my handivi invite yesterday, registered today but I’ll wait until november to start using it. I’ll be out of the country (from the 24th of October to the 3rd of November) and that way I can try it for 1 month by subscribing to TMNs internet service for 1 month (which isn’t exactly cheap at 7.5 eur/mo).
The MB13″ lost it’s firewire and didn’t even get a new USB. Apple hates perfipherals… or more likely Jobs hates cables and mac users pay tthe price for this irrationality. FFS Asus crams 3 USBs into its eeepcs but apple can’t put 3 on a damn 13″ laptop?
Oh and the MBP now has 2 graphics cards but users currently need to logoff to switch between them. Logging off? That’s almost as bad as rebooting… you don’t reboot a mac… the uptime on my MB is usually around 30d, closing applications and opening them again is boring. This is seriously un-appleish.
I’m not a fan of glossy displays but wth I’ll see how these new ones deal with direct sunlight.
Now for the good part: thank god (well, probably just Steve Jobs) they got rid of the extremely bad intel graphics. The new keyboard is a huge improvement for the MBPs and overall the new body looks cooler.
The Assassination Of Jesse James
The last months of Jesse James’s life, from meeting Robert Ford, a 19-year-old who idolizes Jesse, to the day Ford shoots him. Jesse’s a wanted man, living under a pseudonym, carrying out a train robbery, disappearing to Kentucky, and reappearing to plan a bank holdup with Robert and Robert’s brother as his team. The rest of the gang is dead, arrested, or gone from Missouri. Whenever Jesse’s around, there’s tension: he’s murderous, quixotic, depressed, and cautious. Ford wants to be somebody and wants the reward. On April 3, 1882, things come to a head: Jesse is 34, Robert 20. Ford becomes famous, reenacting the shooting on stage, facing down the label “coward,” shot dead in 1892. Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}
From imdb.
My Rating: 8/10
Amazing soundtrack, beautiful picture. The movie has style and substance. Sadly it is a bit slow and long (160min). I really liked the introduction made by the narrator. Favorite narrator phrase:
Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them, rains fell straighter, clocks slowed, sounds were amplified.
(“he” being Jesse James)
A team of astronauts are sent to re-ignite the dying sun 50 years into the future.
My rating: 5/10
How Digg Works is a nice blog post on the digg technology blog that gives an overview of the digg network architecture: load balancers -> application server (apache, memcached, gearman) -> database server (MySQL) / file server (MogileFS). Quoting:
“Digg uses Debian GNU/Linux across the board with a mixture of MySQL, Memcached, MogileFS, Python, PHP, Apache, Gearman and various appliances to serve up billions of requests a month (and more every day!)”
What’s New In Python 2.6. My highlights: new documentation format using Sphinx (which btw looks incredibly powerful – read “complex”), awesome (but still optional) with statment (from future) to replace try…finally blocks, multiprocessing package,and more.
I had more stuff to put in this post but it has been in my “draft” folder for more than a week now so I’m just gonna post it like it is.
