I, for one, welcome our new feline robot overlords.

I took notes on my laptop extensively all through my undergraduate degree in Computer Science, and I always used OpenOffice.org Writer's equation editor. It has a nice, concise syntax, and it was, in fact, possible to enter even very complex mathematical expressions in real time, faster than my prof was able to write them on the board. This was true even for matrixes.

Here's an example of some of my notes made with OO.o: http://csus.cs.mcgill.ca/wiki/COMP-330_(Panangaden%2C_Fall_06)_Lectures

My linear algebra notes would be more impressive, because they often involved fairly large and complex matrix equations, but I never made those notes available online.

I had a colleague who also took notes in class who had quite a nice method - he wrote all of his notes in wiki markup, with latex for the mathematical expressions. He didn't have a laptop, but instead used a PDA and small, foldable keyboard.

An example of his notes are here: http://csus.cs.mcgill.ca/wiki/COMP-302_(Panangaden%2C_Pientka%2C_Winter_06)_Lectures

I think it's quite a nice result.

The option to turn down the EULA is not exposed through the UI at all. The only way to avoid agreeing to the EULA is to turn off the computer.

I'm very interested in this kind of a product. As a student, and do copious note-taking. Rather than print all my notes and be gouged by the ink companies, I prefer to use software like Foxit (which runs great under Wine) to annotate my PDFs. A tiny little computer with a resistive touchscreen like this one would be just great. Now if only I could get it without Windows. In many ways, it's a lot like the 2gopc, which I thought would be the ideal product for me, except for the fact that they haven't rolled out Linux support like they were planning. Also, I'm not sure where I'll find the machine in Canada. I find that's one thing I don't like about Asus as opposed to Dell, I have no idea how to buy their machines.

What I liked about XHTML was the conceptual clarity regarding the creation of compound documents. Like XML, XHTML is modular, precise and fully extensible via XML namespaces. This allowed one to augment XHTML without needing to fully revise the XHTML spec: one simply needed to use an alternate XHTML namespace inside of the XHTML document. So, for example, this made it very easy to use XHTML in conjunction with SVG, another XML application. I know that HTML5 defines ways in which it may be used in conjunction with SVG, but I'm not sure if it's extensible in the same way. What happens if we want to mix in another format, like XForms? Will we have to go back and revise the complete HTML5 spec?

I posted a very similar idea to Ubuntu brainstorm a few weeks ago, as a proposed solution to the problem of paying developers of free (libre) software. I feel it's highly relevant to the dialog taking place here about this article, so I've copy-pasted some of it here:

Despite its closed nature, Apple's App Store has proven to be a tremendous success. The App Store model involves a central organization that approves and distributes commercial applications directly to users. The central organization takes a small percentage of the revenue generated on each app sold; the rest of the revenue goes directly in the pocket of the developer. The overall goal is to make it as easy as possible to connect users who want to pay for high-quality free software, to developers who want to produce that software.

It is very easy to imagine Canonical acting as the the central distributor in this model, as it currently performs this role already with software that is free-as-in-beer (much of it is free-as-in-speech as well). Additionally, much of the core technologies required for such an app store to exist are already in place: distribution, packaging and installation is all provided by apt; Synaptic provides a convenient graphical front-end for installation and package management. Perhaps, with small extensions to these existing systems, it would be possible to create an infrastructure to allow for individual payments to application developers.

It is also important to note that while Apple's app store primarily hosts non-free software (free as in beer, and free as in speech), and uses DRM to ensure that users do not make copies of this software, I believe that neither of these features are essential to the success of an Ubuntu App Store. It is possible to imagine individual users swapping .deb's of contribution-based software via filesharing networks, or visiting the authors' websites to compile "contribution-based" software from source and package it by hand; and, according to the terms of the GPL, and most other free software licenses, they would be completely within their rights to do so. However, such methods are much less convenient than simply clicking through a graphical interface, and obtaining your packages directly from Canonical, especially with respect to the demographic of non-technical users that Canonical would like to target. Just so long as value is added to the software in some way, be it by way of convenience or by some other means, then a "contribution-based" repository will be used over other methods of obtaining and installing the software. Additionally, I feel that many Ubuntu users would like to see developers get paid, and thus would be more inclined to use such a service.

In conclusion, while putting a price on software that has otherwise been free-as-in-cost might at first seem a bit unusual, we must consider that providing a convenient, direct mechanism for developers to be paid for their software will help, not harm, the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, the ecosystem of free-as-in-speech software, and the Free Software Movement in general. It will attract more users and more developers to the Ubuntu GNU/Linux platform, especially as such a mechanism does not exist on Microsoft Windows. One need only look to the success of the Apple App Store, and Sun's soon-to-be-launched Java app store, to see that there is a demand for such a distribution model.

If you like this idea, please feel free to vote the it up on Ubuntu Brainstorm. Thanks,

Jake

If you're talking about viPlugin, which, last time I checked (about 8 months ago) was commercial and cost $10, it wasn't complete enough to be generally useful to me. There's a vi emulation mode for Netbeans called jvi which is quite good. The other option which I'm currently investigating for Eclipse is eclim, which looks great and is actively developed, but was not very stable when I tried it.

No plugin that implements vi keybindings :(

Many of the complaints you list here I think are valid, because I'm using Ubuntu Linux as well and I have found myself thinking the exact same thing. Specifically, all of the trouble with X.org and dual-head, the high IO, and the slow firefox all resonate with me. None of these are enough to make me go back to Windows though; overall, Ubuntu offers a much better experience for me than Windows.

Mac OS, on the other hand, is very intriguing. Unix-based (FreeBSD, specifically), and yet has 110% hardware support. A thriving ecosystem of free software available (much [most?] of it ported from GNU/Linux). Overall, it seems like a pretty attractive target. There are just two things that really really prevent me from using it: the UI, and the culture. The UI I find to be bloated and ineffecient, and the culture feels quite closed. Until Apple opens up their OS and allows me to install it on non-Apple hardware, and stops bricking jailbroken iPhones, I just don't see Apple products as something I want to use. Better to target Ubuntu, which is technically very close, and properly philosophically aligned.

Oh, and as far as getting MS Office working on Ubuntu, apparently you can get it to work under Wine:

http://www.programmerfish.com/roffice-2007-in-linux/

I haven't tried it myself, though, so your mileage may vary.

This has not been such a good year for open hardware projects. First OLPC, and now OpenMoko. I would say that both projects may have been overly ambitious, and were certainly poorly managed. I wonder, what will be next? OpenPandora? Can anyone list any successful open hardware projects?