Saturday, March 15, 2008
so it didn't take too terribly long to get this thing connected to my network, but i needed to dig around in their wiki first; i needed the mac address so that i could maintain security here. hey, if i had been just a little bit more of an experimental mindset, i would have found it myself quick enough. (arrow on activities bar - click on it - doh!)
if it hadn't been for my own lan security it would have connected immediately. also noticed that it really picks up on all kinds of other wlans in the area. the range seems to be as good as they say, much better than anything else i have.
lots of immediate observations, but i'm mainly focused on:
- network connectivity - done
- post to my blog - in progress (not this post)
- disk storage management & access (incoming / outgoing)
- backups
- new software acquisition & installation
- (5b) security
- os learning
- eventually, development
i am so far from that last item. but i'll just play for a while.
the browser "activity" (applications are "activities") is my first focus. and i can't help a lot of head scratching over the keyboard and other controls as well. so kids over yonder are supposed to figure all this out for themselves through trial & error, without internet access ? interesting. that will develop an interesting subculture in itself, of gurus & dependents and myth & reality.
physically, it is tiny, but works rather well. the weight is mostly in the screen part, which is unbalanced feeling unless the thing is placed on a hard surface. the display is nice & clear, resolution & colors good. the networking stuff is the cool part; a village full of these would be - well, revolutionary, perhaps even literally. imagine kids at night in their mesh network chatting in the dark while the villages sleep, plotting - what? - needs a scifi story here. that's where this thing will reach its true power - sharing.
the one thing i keep tripping over is not having touch pad tap-to-click capability.
the built in camera is nice, but i can't take a picture of it with itself. thank me for not subjecting you to the accidental pictures that i took of myself as i was figuring out special keys ;-)
the browser: what is it based on ? all that work i did recently on making my sites firefox friendly has no effect on this one. well, the javascript & css work paid off, but behaviors ? forget it.[1] which means my main site barely renders at all, like before. also noticed that my chosen font for my sites (trebuchet) is not available, and it falls all the way back to times roman. i need to put in a reasonable set of fallback font families, but y'know, it doesn't look bad that way.
anyway, my main priority now is just to prevent myself from screwing things up permanently as i experiment, or to protect myself from that if it happens.
meanwhile, this thing was withstood the initial dust bunny assault well, and may even be soon be subjected to the accidental beer spill test. the environment here is not a lot less electronics hostile than some other destinations this machine was designed to withstand.
security: hmm - hope this thing is robust against attacks. does it need firewall, virus, worm, spybot, etc. protection ? at home, i should be ok (?), but elsewhere, i'm not so sure. added 5b above.
philosophy, very briefly: just as computers do not "get" humans (yet?), humans do not intuit computers. that's still a huge gap. animals & people "get" each other far better, yet also still, very clearly, incompletely. these things have "personality" - unintended perhaps, or maybe only vaguely conceived - but not even in an "understanding alien intelligence" sort of way. yeah, how long until these kids figure out the linux os internals all on their own ? yeah, right. they are dependent on being spoon fed "activities" and knowledge, until some threshold is crossed. before that, it's all myths, magic and superstitions - not so much different than the average computer user anywhere, i guess, especially in corporate america.
he who controls the stories, controls the world.
[1] well, ok, spoke too soon there. the behaviors part is working; it's the specific xml transform behavior that is the problem. should be able to figure that out, when i get around to it. and of course the css work has an impact. i just (over)reacted with my disappointment that everything didn't just work, i guess.