User:Rostauber
OLPC you can ignore my email the day after I opened my XO-1. Somewhere in the wiki I read (before I even knew my xo's full monicer) what I though said my G1G1 XO-1 was "no longer supported". So I emailed for help commenting i felt a little had. The XO right out of the box struck me as far too tedius in some crucial areas ... which I am dutifully overcoming. And naturally we softies are concerned about a program which appeares determined to put third-world children at a console enjoying the OLPC Community rather than growing strong in legs and arms and spirit relative to their real conditions of life, their community and families. And their eyes will suffer.
But little XO-1 has worked its magic and I can dig it and am working with it constantly. I was into the wiki and then had gotten further than expected in Forth lessons. But let me say right now I do not intend to spend my remaining years reading code. I want to participate though, and am passing through stages of understanding based on use of the actual laptop and based on wiki ... what any child or adult would face.
(Comment: love your keyboard but why isn't it glo-in-the-dark or lit by two leds. With nil power management I use the hi-contrast often lite up just one notch. I'm getting shortcuts down BUT where's "alt-left" to backup and "alt-right" to go forward? Hate going to BACK with the cursur, and why can't DELETE be DELETE in any context? And how about a durable "Favorites" list instead of all that Journal. I look forward to the SD Microsoft for favorites and XP-like shortcuts.
At 71 my short term memory sometimes leaves me at a loss for what I am trying to do but that's only when I am standing and moving about which is how I was positioned all my life when I did those things which fed my ego and self-esteem. It will be interesting if navigating wiki improves my focus. Journal just hasn't hacked it for me yet. More shortcuts guys!
But then I was slow figuring out Dos "Mode". And little batch files and Lotus macros got me so full of self esteem ... I always taught little batch files first when I was the Bookrioom clerk at public HS right when the IBM's came into the buildings and nobody including me knew how they worked but I was self-taught and got on top of Lotus quick doing lost-book lists for the students to save them $20-35 bucks a pop, and doing the school budget and inventory data input and reports.
So uch for the past. What I want to do is participate in a spearhead action in STL... the introduction of the XO-1 in even now gentrifying Soulard (STL) MO USA. I have time, resourses, property, space therein, and a fetish for gadgets. I recognize the OLPC preference for skilled self-starters who will manage their own shit ... oh yes, I also have a lot of shit that I've wanted to eBay for a few years which would easily make more cash AND living and working space as our little XIO-1 starter group seeks to justify and decipher itself ... or whatever we can get out of the woodwork. I feel at present I can assure you I am overcoming my own initial dissatisfactions with thre hardware. But I like the idea of a rubber case as seal and shock absorber but please make it grey ... dark gun-metal would be nice. AND hows about a personal alarm do-dad so one can locate one's own XO in the pile?
... we all need someone to lean on ... err, delegate activities to. I'm rather old now and there's less reason for me to get as excited about the problems in the world. But I think USA citizen interest and USA citizen hands-on skill with the XO would promote USA confidence in the OLPC Project and Community, and as competition, resistance, even sabotage raises their ugly heads A blind-faith willingness to let us get connected and knowledgable here in soft old USA could well be of crucial importance. Hopefully the free laptop idea will spread everywhere anyway as children that have had such an opportunity come of age and believe in it. Probably be more like a cell-phone though, that goes wirelessly to the TV and sports a useable keyboard.
I was delighted to make my own (2GB) USB Key stick yesterday and eventually risked putting OS653 on it which over-wrote stable 650. Is 653 stable, or just official? So can I get back to 650 just to play techno a little? If I put the OS650 zip and .img on the stick will XO play dumb and take it? Just trying to indicate my level of exposure and drum up some local contacts perhaps leading to some OLPC activity in STL and perhaps get some adults and teen out there in the field helping with whatever is going on in the location, water or food, housing, transportation, things about which we Americans have learned to expect and provide for ourselfes in our soft secure and weakening urban world.
Wish there was a better file manager than Journal, but maybe I'll get it together soon and start dabbling in Terminal. But that's not what I want to do. Let Joe Geek do it please. I'm ordering the USB media with the best little tools and gadgets and fixes and shortcuts and which offers erasure of the kid-stuff off the Gig we got. Who's working on that? Guy on eBay claims the USB ports will recognize a printer. Is he uninformed. XOs still bring over 500 on eBay but they also go for under 300 regularly. I can get pass out all I can get. Am not into mass marketing or any marketing for that matter.
I need a SYSTEM folder. And a DOS-like file manager, where you can rename, copy and delete, make a little batch file on the root, etc. Or can Linux do anything like Dir/p/ogn or /ogs?
