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 cruising the OLPC Community rather than growing strong in leg and arm and spear ... and soccer ... in their own real community and family. It's a toss-up how to imagine things. And their little eyes will suffer. But be that as it may, I feel OLPC people on the ground anywhere in the world will be all to the good regarding progressive efforts of all sorts.

As my little XO-1 works its magic I am constantly in wiki learning and went further than expected in Forth lessons one afternoon. But let me say right now I do not intend to spend my remaining years with code. I want to participate in the OLPC Project however, and I prize these early hours, each stage of understanding based on actual use of the XO-1, and of course wiki and the Community, what any child or adult would face, indispensible to my usefulness.

I am getting to love the keyboard but when the ERASE key gets stuck watch out! Why not glo-in-the-dark or lit by a single led? Without power management I use 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 every context? And a manageable saved "Favorites" list instead of all that Journal. The drop-down from BACK is nice though. I look forward to the Microsoft SD in 2008 just for favorites and XP-like shortcuts and changeable font and desktop that survive boot. Glad I got a USB Key made ... and it works!

Just introducing myself. At 71 my short term memory sometimes leaves me at a loss for what I had just thought to do, sometimes having to do with thoughts as well but mostly actions to get a tool or check some thing or process, but largely when I am moving about doing physical things, which is how I was mostly in life when I did those which fed ego and self-esteem and made me what I am today. It will be interesting to see if navigating wiki and and being involved with a new "mechanical" system's development, let alone trying a little code and config, improves my focus.

I was slow figuring out "Mode" in DOS. Then never used it. I always taught kids about making little d.bat and c.bat etc files. I was Book and A/V Clerk in a public HS when the IBM XT hit the scene. Neither I nor anybody else had time to figure them out comfortably. But I had the manuals where the teachers had a classroom of testy kids. I quickly self-taught and got on top of Lotus as well, doing lost-book lists for the students to save them $20-35 bucks a pop by listing (by the title and stamped assignment number) those books that had been collected from the halls and rooms or otherwise retrieved. The school administration didn't like it. Cost them a lot of income. I ended up doing budget and inventory input and reports.

So much for the past. What I want to do is participate in a spearhead action here in rivercity, in Soulard (STL) MO USA. My little nbeighborhood so filled with nightlife and clubs is gentry-fying more every month and quite nicely thank you ... more and more infants and grandparents, dogs on leashes, people with jobs. A quarter-million people parade and debauch in front of my properties every year at our Mardi Gras. I have the time, the resourses, the well-situated commercial and residential property, with attractive space therein, and I am a gadget nut. I presume OLPC wards off all but self-starters who will manage their own shit ... and oh, I also have a lot of shit that I've wanted to eBay for a few years now ... good stuff I won't list here ... which would easily make good learning activity on the XO, good new cash AND good new space as our little starter group seeks 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 an alarm do-dad to locate one's XO like in a pile?

I'm old now and there's less reason for me to get excited about the world. But I think USA citizens taking an interest in OLPC and based on hands-on with the XO as a learning tool, would promote confidence in the Project. Again singing to the choir, as various modes of resistance and corporate sabotage arise, intentionally or not, adults at home in the USA getting connected and knowledgable could well be of crucial importance in the short term affecting the availability here of eager able people leaning towards following through on what were heretofore but dreams. Hopefully a free-laptops-to-all-students craze will sweep the world as recycling of computers leaches out of the landfills into the Courts. XO ought to become a cell-phone, wireless to TV, roll-out lit keyboard.

I was delighted to make my own USB Key yesterday and I put 653 on it, then writing over 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 drum up some local contact, leading to OLPC activity in STL. Oh did I mention I've got a couple of good geeks as tenants and in my immediate family.

A guy on eBay claims his XO-1 will USB to a printer. I get he's not informed? Single XO-1s still bring 500 plus on eBay and also go for under 300 regularly. I can pass out all I can get. I fanticize a DOS-like file manager, to rename, copy, and delete, without going into Terminal, and ".bat"-type files that can autorun on boot. I guess Linux isn't into that though. I'll have to learn to config in Terminal. What a drag man. Forth is fairly un-learnable without prior experience with code languages and syntax. Where'd they get the name? Go forth and multiply? I'll shut up now.