Cynicism is the last refuge of the idealist

According to The Cult of Mac Blog, Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X for the MIT laptop.

Whilst it is a nice move, and I do believe it was through altruistic reasons, I ‘m glad Nicholas Negroponte and his colleagues stuck to their guns of everything involved in the project being open sourced

all round good egg, Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind up radio has flown to the States to assist in the development of clockwork generators for the MIT laptop

How fantastic

An article over at MacUser reveals the disquieting news that many printers embed a sequence of dots on the page encoding the date and time of printing together with the serial number of the printer - scary

I blogged about this last week but here are some more details on One Laptop Per Child’s fantiastic idea

Interesting article from NewsForge examining the recent war of words between Microsoft an Intel on one side who are supporting HD DVD and HP and Dell on the other supporting Blu Ray. It pretty much damns Microsoft for being duplicitous and twisting facts to suit itself. Now there’s a surprising conclusion, eh!

Microsoft touted the coming of its “all new, all 32-bit” operating system — Windows 95 — for years. But when Chicago finally appeared, it was neither all new nor all 32-bit. A few high-tech journalists of the day — but only a few — were clueful and caring enough to call them on it. Most of the trade press were not competent or brave enough to say otherwise.

An interesting article on the history of the first text-based adventure game.

Oh yes, the granddaddy of Melboorne House’ The Hobbit

“tell Thorin to pick you up” etc etc etc - hours of simple gamin fun trying to find the right combination of words

Macworld UK - Microsoft’s Ballmer to meet EC antitrust chief

I want them to levy the harshest possible fines against Microsoft - I want them to be punished in the way the US government was to scared/feeble to do

It’s heartwarming to see that there are some people out there in the technology world who see that technology has a place in saving the world and it will only happen if it is not at the hands of greedy evil corporations instead, handing technology to the poor and underprivileged.

MIT Labs have announced that they will unveil a prototype of their sub $100 laptop intended to provide every child in the world with access to technology

The lab expects to unveil a prototype of the $100 laptop at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on Nov. 17, according to Negroponte. The WSIS is due to be held in Tunis, Tunisia, from Nov. 16 to Nov. 18. He showed slides of the prototype at the MIT event.

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 (Universal Serial Bus) ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone enabled and come with 1GB of memory.

what an absolutely fantastic idea and one that truly deserves supporting.

I particularly lie the way the device will utilise open source software rather than the evil, bug-ridden bloatware that infests far too many of the worlds’ computers

Eolas Wins Round vs. MS in Browser Patent Fight

glad to hear that Microsoft aren’t getting things their own way in the fight agains Eolas - the US Patent Office has rejected Microsoft’s attempt to squash a patent which could cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars.

A Microsoft spokesperson admitted the decision was not promising. “This is disappointing news, but we are committed to seeing this case through to a successful resolution,” she said.

I guess that’s Microsoft speak for ‘we’ve been found guilty before and avoided being punished, so it ain’t over till Bill gates sings’

Microsoft’s court trial isn’t bound by the decision of the PTO, and could come to a different conclusion, though “such cases are rare,” Crouch said.

I guess we should prepare to hear about Microsoft lobbying the fool on the hill and all his cronies to make sure they get off

Evil evil, I hate them

Warner raises decapitation strategy for Apple

It’s obviously the week for the arrogance of the record companies to show through - today’s batch of idiocy comes from Michael Nash, Warner’s digital strategy chief.

What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download - what then? The industry can say, OK we’ll cut him of - very few people people buy music from digital downloads,” said Nash, who pointed out that most of the music on iPods is from their own collections.

Now there’s a good way to encourage people to buy in to digital downloads - threaten to stop them happening

And how about this little corker

“It’s going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead,” said one executive.

So actually these arrogant bastards really want to get us enslaved to paying them over and over again for their music - they need to go out of business, all of them