User:Rostauber

OLPC you can ignore my email the day after I opened my XO-1. Somewhere in the wiki I had thought I read what I though said my G1G1 XO-1 was "no longer supported". So I emailed for help commenting i felt a little had. Also the XO right off struck me as tedius in some crucial areas ... which frustration I am dutifully overcoming. And naturally we USA softies are concerned about a program which is determined to put third-world children at a console and cruising the OLPC Community rather than growing strong in leg and arm and spirit relative to their own real community and family experiences And their eyes will suffer. But be that as it may, I feel OLPC people on the ground anywhere in the world will be promnotional to other progressive efforts there.

As little XO-1 works its magic and I am working with it constantly into wiki and further than expected in Forth lessons, let me say right now I do not intend to spend my remaining years reading code. I want to participate though, and passing through stages of understanding based on use of the XO-1 and wiki and the Community is indispensible to my usefulness, and what any child or adult would face.

(Comment: I am getting to love your keyboard but why isn't it glo-in-the-dark or lit by two little leds? Without power management I use the hi-contrast often sometimes lighted up one notch. I'm getting shortcuts down. BUT no "alt-left" to backup and "alt-right" to go forward? And what made me think I wAS GETTING A TOUCH-SCREEN WHEN i SENT OFF THAT $400 PLUS? Why can't DELETE be DELETE in any context? And a manageable and saved "Favorites" list instead of all that Journal. I look forward to the SD Microsoftwill sell in 2008 maybe just for favorites and XP-like shortcuts, wider scroll buttons onscreen and permanent improvement of font and desktop as a setting.

Just introducing myself in this depiction of where I'm at and what comes to my mind. At 71 my short term memory sometimes leaves me at a loss for what I was trying to turn my thought to, but only when I am standing and moving about and doing physical things which is how I was positioned mostly in life when I did those things which fed my ego and self-esteem and made me what I am today. It will be interesting to see if navigating wiki and becoming more and more involved with a developing laptop format (let alone trying a little code insertion) improves my focus.

I was slow figuring out Dos "Mode". And I always taught little .bat files. As Book Clerk in a public HS when the IBM's came in and nobody including me knew how they worked, I was quickly self-taught, and I got on top of Lotus doing lost-book lists for the students (to save them $20-35 bucks a pop) and I ended up doing the school budget and inventory data input and reports.

So much for the past. What I want to do is participate in a spearhead action in Soulard (STL) MO USA which is even now gentrifying quite nicely thank you ... more and more infants, dogs on leashes, people with jobs. I have time, resourses, commercial and residential property, space therein, and a gadgets fetish. I recognize OLPC prefers self-starters who will manage their own shit ... I also have a lot of shit that I've wanted to eBay for a few years which would easily make cash AND living space as our little XIO-1 starter group would seek to justify, support and debug itself. I like the idea of a rubber case. A better seal and shock absorber and practical. Dark grey would be nice. AND a personal alarm do-dad so one can locate one's XO in a pile?

I'm old now and there's less reason for me to get excited about the world. But I think USA citizen interest in OLPC based on hands-on with the XO as a learning tool would promote USA confidence in the Project and Community. To go on singing to the choir, and as various resistance and corporate sabotage may appear intentionally or not ... getting connected and knowledgable here in soft old USA could well be of crucial importance, in the short term, affecting the rate of success or failure of the Project now XO is born. Hopefully a free-laptops-to-students craze will spread as children with such an opportunity blossem and as they come of age and work non-partisan activities into the social adjenda. Probably be more like a cell-phone, wireless to the TV, lit roll-out keyboard.

I was delighted to make my own USB Key yesterday, and eventually I put 653 on erasing 650 ... or is the backup (boot holding circle game button) still 650? Is 653 stable, or just official? Can I get back to 650 if I put the 650 .zip and .img files on the stick? Just trying to indicate my level of exposure and drum up some local contact perhaps leading to some OLPC activity in STL and perhaps some adults and teens from here heading out to help with whatever is going on in distant locations, water or food, housing, transportation, things about which we Americans expect in our soft secure weakening urban world.

A guy on eBay claims his XO-1 will USB to a printer. Is he not uninformed? XOs still bring over 500 on eBay but they also go for under 300 regularly. I can pass out all I can get. I need a DOS-like file manager, to rename, copy, and delete, without going into Terminal, and even to make .bat type files to autorun on boot. I guess though that I'll have to learn to config on terminal. What a drag man.