AMD to stop working on Geodes

[Carlos Nazareno]

> People say they buy computers to work, but by and large they really
> buy them to play.  And geodes
> wont run modern games so they aren't selling.

Before the term DDOS came into use, there was only the Slashdot effect
where entire servers would melt down because of the sheer number of
geeks a link to the front page of slashdot.org would bring.

foru simple words can save the entirety of OLPC and the AMD, and in
fact make both filthy rich, rich enough to execute our insane kumbaya
vision.

military grade hacker toy

say those four magic words, sell the XO via geek online stores, and
1CC will be so slashdotted to high heck with orders that the waiting
list will take years to fill out. At similar price points, the XO-1
puts the Nintendo DS, Tapwave Zodiac, GP2X, Sony PSP, Chumby and iPods
+ iPhones to shame.

Support? real men don't need no steeenkin manuals or directions! just
ship em in a plain cardboard box with a power adaptor and all will be
good to go!

Start selling current batches of 1GB Nand 256MB RAM. These are
collector's items and will increase in value.
Move out all existing stocks, and then fix fab to ship next version
with 512MB RAM + 4-8GB NAND. Moore's law and Windows Vista have
brought down the price of memory to dirt-cheap levels.

Chipmakers produced so much RAM and opened so many factories in
anticipation of Vista's insanely stupid bloatedness (that was the
first time I ever saw a software company make bloatedness and
inefficiency as a prime selling feature) that when it miserably
failed, they now have so much RAM on their hands they don't know what
to do with it.

Chipmakers are in deep trouble right now and RAM prices have never
been so low. Anyone looking to upgrade RAM, now is the time. OLPC?
Have Quanta start on the XO-1.1 with the increased storage + memory.

My concern with the upped specs is that AFAIK, more ram = increased
power consumption? Or was that only for desktops and sticking
additional sticks in empty memory slots?

Also, here's something Jerome Gotangco over at OLPC Ph has noticed
after sticking in Teapot's Xubuntu XO Intrepid Ibex liveSD: Battery
life seems to have gone down a lot.

I just recently managed to get the same working on 2 of the developer
units with me on different kinds of SD Cards, and it seems that using
the SD for the primary storage/OS cuts the battery life a lot because
of the increased power draw from having to jump electricity through SD
cards? (I haven't timed it yet, but I think battery life went down to
about 2-2.5 hours with an active wifi connection and the screen
brightness set to black and white sunlight readable mode?)

Will do further tests.

-Naz

P.S. Seriously. Look at the popularity of the homebrew and
retrogaming/emulation scene. Opening up sales of the XO to the geeks
of the world will also provide the EXACT OPPOSITE of drawing away
resources from OLPC. The sheer amount of geekery will give back and
produce the amazing kinds of stuff you see from the homebrew and
emulation hacker scene, creating troves of the much needed content the
XO is lacking.
P.P.S. Beggars can't be choosers. Asking for donations but putting
conditions on it is just twisted ethics. Just sell 'em at $200 and
economies of scale + moore's law will take care of things.

P.P.P.S. Seriously seriously WTF seriously.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. WTF? WTF?WTF WTF?

P.P.S. All snarkiness aside, will post better on why this is really
extremely ethical and is the proper way to go. I have to sleep. Very
little sleep since monday. nyt all.

P.P.P.P.S. re: multitouch go for it! MPX, keep the "2nd screen" as a
real keyboard -> power draw of 2nd screen + lack of haptics is a
serious functionality problem. thanks to all who replied, such
incredible starting points and I've done research on those 2 things I
said even googling, but am tickled pink that the methods I outlined
are in use :D check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQpr3W-YmcQ&NR=1 too :)

nyt

-- 
carlos nazareno
http://twitter.com/object404
http://www.object404.com
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