Woo, non-AI-related update!
I started thinking recently about the sorry state of the world. War, famine, poverty, disease. Genocide, atrocities, crime, racism.
As an (Ugly) American, most of this is just stuff I see on reuters.com. I watch things like the war in Iraq and brutal crackdowns on protesting monks in Myanmar with little more than desultory interest. "I feel bad, but what can I do? I'm all the way over here; they're all the way over there." This is what most people think. Making it doubly hard to empathize is the fact that nothing like that is happening outside your window. For most Americans, nothing like that has ever happened outside their windows.
And my situation is more insular than most. I live in a very rural, very affluent community with essentially no population diversity. In short, it is Whitelandia, and rich Whitelandia at that.
So what the fuck do I care about all these downtrodden people in the rest of the world for? I've got the good life! Right? Right?
Sure. The good life. When I was young, though, I met someone who told me that leading a good life just isn't enough. At first the idea was foreign to me. My parents had raised me to believe that if I just was kind and generous in the course of my daily life, I could make a difference. This isn't true. No matter how kind and generous I am, it just isn't going to make a difference for some poor kid in the Philippines living in a trash heap.
So what is one to do? Join the peace corps?
You're still thinking too small. One of my favorite quotes is this:
"If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best."
Donald Hall wrote that, in his piece "Poetry and Ambition," and I always thought it was an excellent point applicable to much more than poetry. If you are going to lead a useful life, why not try to do great things? Don't just join the Peace Corps or the Red Cross, create the next Peace Corps or Red Cross.
My goal in life is to create something as long-lasting and as useful to the future of philanthropy as these great organizations. Something that genuinely helps people in need, instead of aiding and abetting people who watch the world on TV.
There are two organizations right now that I aim to emulate, which as you can see from the quote above is my highest praise:
1) Room To Read
2) One Laptop Per Child
Both of these are, I think, outstanding ideas and completely unconventional. There are a great number of agencies devoted to the eradication of disease, and these too are worthy ways to help, but I think the greatest benefit will come from the eradication of ignorance.
With any luck, I can lend a hand in the future as well.
'Cause I'll throw you off the line. I'll break you and destroy you, given time.
This site is turning into all OLPC news all the time. But I can't help it if it seems to stay in the limelight.
These fuckers think they can run roughshod over OLPC! First Microsoft attempts to re-design Windows to fit on the ultralight and ultra-hot OLPC XO, and realizes it for the fool's errand it is. My guess is someone finally told the boss MISSION IMFUCKINGPOSSIBLE in no uncertain terms. Such as, you know, yelling "MISSION IMFUCKINGPOSSIBLE" right in their face.
But wait, there's more! Microsoft, showing audacity levels never before seen, has asked OLPC to help them. "Can you redesign the whole fucking thing so we can play, too?"
If Negroponte has any stones whatsoever, and I bet he does, he will send back this message: "Nuts!"
Apologies for this profane rant. It has been tagged accordingly.
"But Sean! Where is the clever title? Where is the probably copyrighted image you add to make yourself seem oh-so-witty?"
Pipe down. I'll add a fully-fleshed article tomorrow morning, maybe. I have been busier than hell with school stuff, company stuff, and personal stuff. Attempts to take the suck out of my life have snagged the top priority on all my cores, to make an awful computer metaphor.
I break radio silence only to let you know of the stuff going on with the OLPC.
Pow!
Blam!
Future! I can smell it cooking down south. Man, that last sentence is gross!
Those who live outside the US may be wondering why people in the so-called First World are getting to use these (Pow! links to a story about Alabama kids using the OLPC in school.) While I could probably make a pretty funny joke about Alabama being a howling maw of poverty, the question is just. What the fuck, Negroponte? I mean, yeah, great, spread the love. But the spread the love in places the love is needed. Kids in Alabama are not in desperate need of these things. It seems they won't even be used to their capacity -- just as some half-assed teaching aid. The kids have to give them back at the end of the year!
The program I envisioned when I heard about this was something GIVEN to children unable to acquire these resources any other way. I'm pretty sure those kids in Alabama have a library with computers, or probably even a computer lab in a nearby school or even one in their own elementary school. I envisioned a tool that a child could make into any other tool they needed or wanted. A cornucopia machine the kids could use in any way they wanted, to program anything they wished. I am more than a little disgusted that some are going to the US as a charitable donation to a SCHOOL, not actual individuals.
Oh well, enough whining. At least the vast majority are going someplace useful. Enough bitching from me for now.
Watch tomorrow for a review of a book named Leaving Microsoft to Change The World that someone amazing gave me.
For the few people actually reading this goofy crap (Hi Mom) I decided to write down some of what I have been thinking about the Kindle, which every other blogger on the planet seems to be pissing themselves in either spasmodic glee or rage about.
Frequent readers (or people who, you know, actually KNOW me) are aware of the fact that I read books like they are going out of style. I took four* books out of the library here on Saturday and I am done with two.** And it was a busy weekend without much time to read. Though I am a well known skimmer, I truly love reading books.
I also like programming. And technology, and computers, and all kinds of things other programmers and technophiles enjoy. This includes little gadgety handheld things, though I rarely buy them. I actually only own an iPod due to my clumsy attempts to flirt with the girl selling raffle tickets leading me to buying a ticket with my coffee money for that day.
This combination of the love of gadgets and books ought to make me uniquely biased towards the Kindle, but you know what? I seriously could care less about the thing. While it has some features that I like (E-Ink, the ability to read non-Amazon text files easily), it also has a slew of features that piss me off to no end.
1) It looks fugly. Yeah, yeah, looks don't matter, only functionality. Grow up. If it looks like asshole, I don't want my hands on it.
2) DRM. Wait, what? You mean I can't lend other people my Amazon eBooks bought through my Kindle? Well fuck you too, Bezos. If you are so petrified of BOOK PIRACY(!) then just build in a month-long time limit before the book I lent to my friend evaporates from my friend's Kindle.
3) Orwell's worst nightmare comes true. Peruse this chilling passage from the Kindle's Terms of Service:
The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service. - Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service.
Publishers' marketing research must just be tossing Bezo's salad all night long over that one. Nothing like intensely close scrutiny of one's reading habits! It's bad enough that Amazon itself tracks so much information when people use its site, but tracking such things as bookmarks and deletions is completely intolerable. I can see it sending out police patrols to arrest me for pedophilia after reading Lolita one too many times.
So, needless to say, I will be passing on this loathsome hunk of shit. However, OLPC has your back for all your nerd holiday shopping needs. The XO is on sale through the 31st of December! Now THERE is something that should be setting the blogosphere*** aflame, but everyone is too busy jerking off all over the Kindle.
* Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, The Confusion by Neal Stephenson, and Atonement by Ian McEwan in case anyone cares.
** Both Vinge books. I hope he keeps writing; his space operas are amazing in depth and vision, and the postcyberpunk stuff like Rainbow's End is equally excellent.
*** Kill me now.
Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Nick Negroponte.
Prepare to meet the best way to drop $400 dollars this holiday season.
Whilst in Miracle of Science, I struck up a conversation with a guy who happened to do some scut work on this project. I hesitate to let any of it loose, because it probably isn't for the public, but I learned some amazing stuff about this sweet machine. But let me just say, this is going to be an amazing piece of hardware and software. Buy it for some lucky kid elsewhere right now, or grab one for yourself as well on the twelfth!
Says Microsoft.
The nerve of these idiots never ceases to amaze me. The plan is to bootstrap the whole of Africa by dragging them screaming into computer literacy. I think this is one of the best uses of charity I have ever seen, and not just because I am a rabid computer nerd. Tito Negroponte is to be commended for both his vision and his execution.
But wait! Microsoft needs to shit all over little kids! Again, for those too colorblind or lazy to click the orange text, Microsoft is trying to slim down their OS enough to work on the OLPC. While this adds a long-needed whiff of legitimacy to the OLPC project, I think they never factored the cost of a SOFTWARE LICENSE into their $200 target price.
Windows, to me, is a piece of waste. And an expensive piece of waste to boot. To foist it onto children in Africa or any other developing continent(s) is akin to a business war crime. I'd be even more enraged if I thought they could make that fat fuck of an OS lose enough weight to run on the OLPC. The chance of that is about the same as the chance of me suddenly being able to excrete solid uranium: painfully unlikely.
And to any of you with sensitive ears (eyes?), I apologize for my profane post.
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