http://www.google.com/intl/en/...

It turns out they are not that much cheaper though, so I don't really see the value proposition in practice implied by Phil Shapiro since they are not yet $100 and screens still cost money:
"Review: Asus crafts a tiny $179 Chromebox out of cheap, low-power parts"
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

I'm surprised Roblimo could miss pointing the Chromebox out, just mentioning the Raspberry Pi. Although he was right to point out the SSD speedup is significant for any small computer.

Another big miss is that for US$50 you can buy an Android Smartphone and use it only with Wi-Fi. Example of what we paid $50 for a few months ago, but now is $31?
http://www.amazon.com/Kyocera-...
"The Kyocera Hydro is sophistication and style in a mainstream Android smartphone that can work for everyone. Plus it offers water-resistance, giving consumers the âoeno-fearâ durability and security they demand. With a 3.5 inch HVGA touchscreen, 3.2 MP camera and video, and Android 4.0, you get the best of all worlds."

Although I would much rather use the Chromebook with a keyboard for making content than trying to use an Android phone. But $30 to be connected with the global internet? That is an amazing realization of many educational technologist's dreams (e.g. Alan Kay Dynabook or OLPC XO-1). And perhaps also some nightmares... See also the 1950s short story by Theodore Sturgeon called "The Skills of Xanadu" on where that all could lead.

My own hopes and predictions from 2000 based in part on seeing the "Cybiko":
"[unrev-II] The DKR hardware I'd like to make..."
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Also, I don't see why a teacher or librarian is so keen to limit people's mobility (although it doesn't surprise me, going with the "school is prison" meme).

A big value to my $250 Samsung Chromebook is how light and portable it is. I still use my Quad Core Mac Pro Desktop with three big screens for work and running VirtualBox VMs (and the Chromebook could not replace that, especially the screens) -- used to run Debian for about five years until we (my wife especially) got tired of all the random breakage with every "apt-get dist-upgrade" around 2008 (probably much better now). But I use my Chromebook (with Linux under the covers) for just noodling around or surfing the web and posting on Slashdot sitting in our living room, or doing some light for-fun development work. As I said in another post, I wrote this JavaScript-based information manager tool bootstrapping system entirely on the Chromebook:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

Why do I use the Chromebook instead of my desktop (treadmill workstation actually) Mac Pro? Psychological and social, mostly. I gain some distance from my daily paying work by using a different computer in a different place. I also have done it partially as an experiment in learning about the next generation of computing. It's true that our two-year old Macbook Pro is still a much better computer as far as keyboard and screen and CPU and what it can do -- but it is often otherwise in use these days. My wife would always complain about me leaving a lot of tabs open in Firefox. And so on. The Chromebook is more a personal computer just for me. And it was cheap enough that I could justify it as an experiment compared to another $1000-$2500 Macbook.

We did however buy a $1000 Win 8 ASUS laptop a few months ago anyway. What a disappointment as a laptop. Even with a bigger screen and much faster processors than the Chromebook, I'd rather use the lighter Chromebook with better battery life and more robustness if I drop it (no HD). The Chromebook is not constantly hassling me about upgrades and reboots and having to install new apps to get basic functionality or get the trackpad to work right and so on (even if it does upgrade itself). Windows (now 8.1) seems to mostly just get in my way. Every time Win8 updates itself it seems to break something or lose a custom setting for the trackpad (maybe an exaggeration, but not much). And the less I use Windows, the higher percentage of the time using it is spend in system administration and reboots. Still, the ASUS would make an OK desktop and in an emergency if my 4+ year old Mac Pro failed (one reason I got it), I could do my day-job work on the ASUS, connecting it to a big screen via HDMI and a USB keyboard and trackball and an external USB disk.

I've been using computers for more than thirty years and have had enough of all that system administration in my spare time (for pay it is different). And for what? What do either the Mac or Windows really provide me for my spare time use and system administration? It would be different if I was a gamer more than an author and programmer, I admit. Both Mac and Windows have value still as gaming platforms -- but less and less for anything else. The web and HTML5/CSS/JavaScript with URLs for everything is such an amazing "platform" for me compared to a desktop -- much better than a conventional desktop in many ways. Yes, the web could be better, and web browsers coudl be better (better standards, better support for local apps, etc.), but I have less and less need or interest in desktop stuff. I can see the value in porting our old educational software from Delphi and Java and Python and Smalltalk and C++ to HTM5/CSS/JavaScript (or using emscripten perhaps).

I still want local storage though. We have a $250 MyBook Live for a local server that can even run Python and PHP code I write. Why don't I run that server code from my more powerful Mac Pro? The MyBook Live uses less power and is always on (maybe a 10 second delay if it spins down the disk). I don't have to worry too much about a clean shutdown of the MyBook Live. I put my work desktop to sleep when I am not using it. From a security perspective too, it is better to not be serving data from my workstation. Chromebooks would be much better if they supported mounting remote drives with WebDav or Samba or stuff like that (they may by now with plugins?). I feel that is a weekness in Chromebooks to not have that connectivity. Still, I can get around it. If I wasn't worried about bricking my MyBook Live with complex upgrades, or working towards my own "Pointrel" flavor of social semantic desktop, I'd put "OwnCloud" on it.
http://owncloud.org/

True, after a year of moderate use in my spare time for making Slashdot posts and such, the "space" key on the Chromebook seems to be having issues, so I can see a limit to the life for this device just from that. It might support a USB keyboard, but tethering it to one place would make it less valuable to me. Although it was impressive when I hooked it up via HDMI to a big TV and if just worked with two screens. I remember how much trouble getting two screens to work (and stay working) used to be under Debian around 2004. I can see other possible downsides if Google pushes an "Evil upgrade" at some point for Chrome. On my desktop, I set up Chromium instead of Chrome and I still rely of FIrefox for privacy reasons and NoScript. Once can criticize Google and privacy or spying or mistakes, like a recent bug (?) that lets Chrome provide speech-to-text transcripts of your microphone even when you have not asked it to -- but what bugs do WIndows, Mac, or desktop Linux have?
http://www.ibtimes.com/google-...
"A security flaw in Google Chrome, currently the world's most popular Web browser, could allow a hacker to turn on a user's computer microphone and secretly obtain a Chrome-generated transcript of the user's conversations, according to an Israel-based software developer who highlighted the flaw in a blog post this week."

Anyway, I can see the niche for the Chromebox vs. the Chromebook, depending on the context and availability of existing displays. I can even see why some schools would like it for computer labs and ease of maintainability. But I think most people would probably be better served by the laptop or all-in-one form factor in practice, especially for machines that likely have a limited lifespan and given teh cost difference is so small. What I paid for the Chromebook last year is probably less than I used to spend annually on paper and (expensive) inkjet cartridge two decades ago like for reviewing documents and code printouts (and even printing web pages) which I now do mostly all look at now on the computer. You did not used to be able to carry a big PDF document with you on a lightweight device you could read from. So, if I need to replace a Chromebook once a year or so, and re-purpose the old one somehow (perhaps to give it to another homeschooling family who wants to use it with a USB keyboard, or just using it for checking the weather in the kitchen), it is not that big a deal to me. Personally, I would like a 14 inch screen for older eyes, and that is probably what I would get next. A little heavier perhaps for a 14", but worth it to me. A backlit keyboard would be really nice, too, as otherwise sometimes I have to tilt the screen forward to light up the keys temporarily.

For the average home use who is not a heavy gamer (like in "education"), the Chromebook is a great value proposition for most people. Granted if you can spend more money or more time, or have heavier needs for work, or have legacy apps to use, other options may be better choices. But as above for me, it's not like you can;t have a Chromebook as well as something else. Chromebooks make great second or third or fourth computers for a family.

Sorry to say, from the slurring of the interviewer in the video, which suggested clogged arteries throughout your body. Check out health ideas here for unclogging them through nutritional changes:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
"Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounted for 32.3% of deaths in the United States in 2010, but you can protect yourself. A significant number of research studies have documented that heart disease is easily and almost completely preventable (and reversible) through a diet rich in plant produce and lower in processed foods and animal products."

More in general:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://www.changemakers.com/mo...
http://www.changemakers.com/di...
https://www.newschallenge.org/...

Good luck Rob, I think we may have we met once briefly around 1999 at an Open Source conference in NYC (one where Ralph Nader spoke), and thanks for all the stories.

And the shift does not have to be that unpleasant as your tastes will adapt after six weeks:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap--as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation--and more self-discipline--than most people are ever willing to muster.
    Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits--and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure--thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation - and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."

Another good health resource if you are willing to take one week to do a medically supervised water-only fast in Santa Rosa, CA for a quick reboot of your taste buds. Compared to a heart bypass operation or years of physical therapy for a stroke, you won't even have to stop posting to Slashdot the whole time during a fast. Posting would help keep you busy and distracted as your body re-calibrates itself and goes into "garbage collection" mode and shifts to new biological pathways during the fast. See:
http://www.healthpromoting.com...
"TrueNorth Health Center was founded in 1984 by Drs. Alan Goldhamer and Jennifer Marano. The integrative medicine approach they established offers participants the opportunity to obtain evaluation and treatment for a wide variety of problems. The staff at TrueNorth Health Center includes medical doctors, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths, psychologists, research scientists, and other health professionals. The Center is now the largest facility in the world that specializes in medically supervised water-only fasting.
    The doctors at TrueNorth Health Center have extensive experience in the evaluation and conservative management of high blood pressure, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and a wide range of other health conditions. Participants come to fast and detoxify, lose weight, and make diet and lifestyle changes while enjoying a health-promoting diet derived from whole natural foods. The extensive educational program, including food preparation classes with Chef Ramses Bravo, make this a unique place to rest, rejuvenate, and learn to achieve optimum health."

I gave a book on Dr. Fuhrman's work to John Taylor Gatto who was sounding the same -- about a year before he had a massive stroke. Only afterwards now that he is bedridden is he now looking to follow improved nutritional advice. Don't wait like John did. Clogged arteries can be cleared in most people by aggressive nutritional intervention like Dr. Joel Fuhrman or Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn do (see Bill Clinton). You will start to feel so much better and have more energy for more interviews and posting more stories. At the very least, if not for yourself, do it for your family. Good luck!
http://www.thejohntaylorgattom...
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
http://www.vegsource.com/news/...

https://chrome.google.com/webs...

I just wrote a completely open ended HTML5/CSS/JavaScript app on my Samsung $250 Chromebook using the regular user mode and "Caret". I saved versions of the files on the Chromebook and ran them locally from Chrome. The app I wrote uses IndexedDB for local storage of snippets of HTML (which can include JavaScript). The app is intended to support boostrapping a better app by supporting experiments with HTML5/CSS/JavaScript. You can edit text and have it included as a section of HTML on the page. From start to finish (well, it's not really "done") I wrote it on the Chromebook.

I just put the code up on GitHub as an example for you (again using only the Chromebook) :
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

You can try a demo version here which will store data in your browser: http://rawgithub.com/pdfernhou...

Here is a direct link to the bootstrap.json content to paste in as a start: https://raw.githubusercontent....

See the GitHub repo for basic instructions on how to use it.

Granted, to do C compiling I'd need some tool that converted C to JavaScript in a special way, but more and more such tools exists.
https://github.com/kripken/ems...
http://www.infoq.com/research/...

So, more and more things are possible with Chromebooks or similar devices.

in that the universe seemingly must exist for us to perceive it

Specific intelligence are apparently limited by many things whether the size of the brain/processor, or the materials it is made of, or the amount of energy to run it. But more than that, the though processes seem to be shaped by some combination of evolutionary pressures and chance (or possibly even design, like if we are living in a simulation). So, an extension of what you are suggesting is that all those shaping forces in some sense may limit the kind of ideas we can have about the universe as well as the questions we might think to ask about everything. I wrote my undergrad thesis in Psychology related to this topic in 1985 called "Why Intelligence: Object, Stability, Evolution, and Model".

A related book from a database perspective:
"Data and Reality" by William Kent
http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxr...
"Data and Reality illustrates extensively the pitfalls of any simplistic attempts to capture reality as data in the sense of todayâ(TM)s database systems. The approach taken by the author is one which very logically and carefully delineates the facets of reality being represented in an information system, and also describes the data processing models used in such systems. The linguistic, semantic, and philosophical problems of describing reality are comprehensively examined⦠The depth of discussion of these concepts, as they impact on information systems, is not likely to be found elsewhere.⦠the value of this book resides in its critical, probing approach to the difficulties of modeling reality in typical information systems... it is very well written and should prove both enjoyable and enlightening to a careful reader. -ACM Computing Reviews, August 1980"

There are other possible implications as well if we are living in a simulation -- although it is still possible we may live in the simulation but our minds could also not be of it (like a human can play a video game without the video game simulating the player's mind).

By coincidence, I just read this to my kid the other day.

We watched the video of it first, but the written text is so much funnier than an otherwise confusing-conceptually video set in a diner.

It doesn't just take aptitude to become a programmer. You must also have opportunity. I assure you that 100% of the people born in the 1500s who had the aptitude to become programmers did not do so. Likewise, due to the overall poor nature of the area and resulting limited exposure to technology and investment in customized per-student education opportunities, and yes due to lack of knowledge of parents (who are the best people to teach their children to be inquisitive), I fully expect some kids in West Virginia who had the aptitude to become programmers are instead shoveling coal.

But in no way does that imply that everyone currently shoveling coal has the aptitude to become a programmer.

But in no way does that imply that everyone currently shoveling coal is incapable of learning and doing some other rewarding job, if given the opportunity to learn one.

Whether I can see a car in an adjacent lane behind me or not, I always leave enough space in front of me and then accelerate as I change lanes. I can slow back down right away, but being in that mindset means I'm better prepared if there's someone going 25 MPH over the limit approaching from behind, which is someone that any of us might not see regardless of mirror position.

He was talking about regularly using a car where two different people adjusted the mirrors, neither of which included a portion of the rear quarter panel, because he might not be able to distinguish between the two positions readily.

If he (or I) get into a car that we know has the mirrors set wrong (i.e. this isn't my exclusive car and I don't know I drove it last), it's easy to remember to set the side mirrors. You know, the same way you remember to set the seat and steering wheel and center mirror each time. It's part of the mental checklist that every competent driver should be going through before they put the car in gear.

In the same way that you don't need to look at your own hands to know where they are, I don't need to look at my own rear quarterpanel to remember where it is. Maybe that's because I've driven the same care for ~13 years, or maybe because it's small enough that I can feel it as an extension of myself, or maybe I make a point of keeping the size and shape of my car in my head along with the other information necessary to operate a motor vehicle, but I know the boundaries of the car I'm driving.

I'm trying to articulate why your answer isn't correct, but I think the simplest way is to say that, in my car, that's not true. I can see back down the side lanes better with my mirrors where they are than if they were pointed more into my own lane, especially when there's a big car directly behind me. Sorry.

Bloomberg didn't say that you can't teach any coal worker to code, just that you can't teach every coal worker to code, refuting Zuckerberg's Marie-Antoinette-style "let them write code" statement.

Only the Zuck sounds like an out-of-touch elitist in this case; Bloomberg is making a legitimate point that the retraining process is more complicated than that because it has to be tailored to the skills and interests of each person. The article summary is misleading, and the headline is outright wrong.

No, no it's not. The rationalization used by slave owners was that everyone - adults and children alike - would be unable to learn to do anything else because of inherent limitations in their capabilities. The argument put forth here is that adults may be unable to learn to do one specific job that may require not only years of training, but also a familiarity with the underlying math and technology - a familiarity that they may lack. Nothing whatsoever implies that the children of current coal workers couldn't become excellent programmers, or excellent managers, or excellent architects, etc., and so they should be indentured into coal work, too. Nor does this imply that current coal workers couldn't become good mechanical engineers, or mechanics, or architects, or artists, just that some of them could never become good programmers.

Even CentOS is already using 1.0.1, and we're talking about a distribution that is still using kernel 2.6 and Gnome 2 (not even 2.32, but 2.28 still). So yeah, OpenSSL 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 are extremely ancient.

Sorry for the bad link, i meant
https://code.google.com/p/chro...

I think this is the link of the bugreport in question:
https://code.google.com/p/chro...

Seems legit. f#$!.. Google don't be evil. This attributes to being evil, regardless whether it happened knowingly.