Recently I followed my sister on a quest for running shoes. They had to be New Balance brand. She swears by them. We found some in a sports store in a mall. I’m glad she wasn’t after Nikes, because we all know the history of Nike’s exploitation of workers in the third world, and I […]
2009: Linux on netbooks, Nokia on Apple’s tail
I’m looking back at last year’s end-of-year tech columns and feeling totally bummed out. We still don’t have globallink communicators with roll up screens a la “Earth: Final Conflict.” It remains something for the lab, like this prototype. Still no sexbots. Perhaps they’ll be one of those techs like videophones — featured in scifi, but, […]
Resistance is futile
A while ago, I wrote a piece outlining why the One Laptop per Child’s XO computer was not for the average user. It essentially boils down to the fact that the XO uses a graphical environment, Sugar, which is totally tailored to classroom use and eschews anything outside that narrowly defined context, including what most […]
Brando Lives! (I’ll drink to that)
This post is being written on the OLPC XO laptop. Why, didn’t I already make the point that it could be used to do actual work here? Yes, but I’ve got a new, small, usb keyboard for it (yes, I am keyboard obsessed), small enough to fit into a laptop bag accessory pocket, yet big […]