Just in time for back-to-school shopping, Walmart puts out an ultra-cheap laptop for under $600.
It's an ECS
A535, and comes with an Athlon 1.6GHz processor, 14" screen,
wireless networking, and XP Home Edition.
As expected, Walmart continues its push of
cheap imports with little regard for anything but its own bottom
line.
I guess it's good for the US economy in one respect; cheap hardware
like this will undoubtedly keep support guys plenty busy. And at that
price you might as well buy two; one for a backup or for spare
parts.
Placeshifting Walmart03/14/2005 06:25 PM One of the buzzwords of late is Placeshifting. Seems natural,
as we have been bound by space and time, then we have Tivo and now we
want that concept everywhere. Timeshifting lets us turn flows
into stocks, the ultimate...
WiMax From WalMart?
WiMax From WalMart?08/10/2004 03:53 AM Over at the Institute for the Future, they're wondering if WalMart might end up
getting into the broadband business by hooking up WiMax base
stations (once such equipment is actually available) on all their
stores, covering much of the US in broadband. It's an interesting
theory, and gets the attention of those who think that telecoms are a
dying breed. Of course, it's really not that easy. Over at
TheFeature, I've written up a longer piece looking at some of the challenges a
company like WalMart might face in offering broadband services.
However, it's certainly not impossible to count them out. After all,
who thought Starbucks would be in the internet access business in the
first place? If you take that to a larger scale, perhaps Walmart
could get into the WiMax business as well. A more interesting
question, however, may be how the world is going to look when there
are plenty of "virtual" network operators, where one company offers up
their brand for others to put on a network. Virgin has built up quite
a set of businesses doing this, and in the mobile space, MVNOs are a
hot topic. However, could companies do this for just about any kind
of telecom/broadband offering... and more to the point, is there a
real benefit in doing so? It's cool for a big brand name company to
think they can suddenly get into a technology services business just
by licensing out their brand name, but won't there be some risks (a la
AT&T'
s annoyance with AT&T Wireless' trampling of the brand) and some
questions about just why you want to buy your internet service from
Coca-Cola?
Walmart Music Store11/05/2003 09:25 PM
The New York Post reports that Walmart is finalizing deals with the
five major labels and plans to launch its own music download service
as early as N...
Just think... Now you can — in one easy stop — get your
oil changed, pick up groceries, the latest DVD release, a low-cost
Lindows laptop, a fresh pack of underwear, a 100lb bag of dog food, a
Schwinn Stingray bike
for your kid's birthday, and buy an iPod. And oh so much
more.
Good Lord Almighty, what's next? Mac Mini's at BestBuy? Oh wait;
that's already happened!
Actually, I think getting Apple products into more non-Apple stores
will do wonders to broaden the user base and help people better
understand the Mac. What I don't get is Walmart selling iPods —
which are portable little iTunes Music Service billboards — when
they have their own online music service. And given all the reasons to hate Walmart, why would Apple want to deal with them
in the first place?
WalMart To Sell iPod Shuffle?02/05/2005 09:54 PM
According to Apple Insider, Apple has entered into a partnership with
WalMart to distribute the iPod Shuffle in possible all of their nearly
5000 reta...
I think the wife has a few of these laying around from returns. I
wonder if Walmart is going to be honoring them now with the report
that the cards have been hacked and hackers are cashing out other
peoples balances. [Engadget]
Ex-Walmart.com exec returns to become its president
Walmart and RFID tags some conclusions11/14/2003 04:38 AM If you have been reading here for a while you will remember my rant on
these RFID tags that companies...
Walmart sale of $30 DVD players causes stampede12/02/2003 01:24 AM Ok, so $30 is a really good price for a DVD/VCR combination player,
but is it worth nearly crushing another human being to death just to
get one? Apparently so:A stampede of shoppers left a woman seriously
hurt this morning. She was trampled by a crowd of bargain hunters at a
Central Florida Walmart. 41-year-old Patricia Vanlester is at Halifax
Medical Center tonight. Family members say she came to Walmart to buy
an advertised DVD, but what she got was a trip to the hospital...When
the store finally opened, shoppers grabbed for the item. People
started fighting for the DVD player and pushed Vanlester to the
ground. "I screamed and said stop don't step on her," Ellzey says. "My
sister is on the ground but no one would listen." Walmart employees
rushed to Vanlester. She was knocked unconscious. She was airlifted to
Halifax Medical Center.Read...
WalMart tried to confiscate journo's camera
WalMart tried to confiscate journo's camera01/06/2005 04:49 AM Cory Doctorow:
A naked man streaked a Wal-Mart in Maryland, and a freelance news
photographer snapped some pics. Wal-Mart sent out a goon who demanded
that he turn over his camera and not take or publish photos of
Wal-Mart without permission.
"He said if I didn't turn the camera over to him, he would have me
arrested" and ban him from the store, Roy said.
Attorney Mary R. Craig, who represents The Herald-Mail, said Roy
"certainly was well within his rights" to take pictures.
The store can set limits, such as on taking pictures inside, but the
expectation of privacy probably is less outside, she said.
She said Roy probably didn't violate anyone's privacy, especially the
naked man's.
Alice Neff Lucan, an attorney who represents the
Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association, said Wal-Mart "emphatically"
had no right to demand Roy's camera.
"He didn't violate any of Wal-Mart's rights and he didn't violate the
streaker's rights," she said. "He just took a picture of what was in
the public's view."
Walmart Music Store - Beta Testing12/18/2003 01:05 PM
Reuters notes that Wal-Mart has begun testing its new music download
service on Thursday.
According to Reuters, Walmark will be gathering customer ...
A couple of MIT undergrads were over here at the house
yesterday. These technology connoisseurs said that the
stagnation of features available in Windows will drive consumers to
buying Macintosh computers, especially laptops. Apple is
apparently on a roll with new OS features including a disconnected and
resync-able file system scheduled to ship in 2005 (didn't Carnegie
Mellon do this with Andrew File System many years ago?). I
compared their prediction to the high-end audio nerd's belief that CDs
would be supplanted by a digital format with superior sound
quality.
In the audio market the connoisseurs were mostly wrong. There
are two competing high quality digital music formats, SACD and
DVD-A. Together there are fewer than 1000 titles available in
these formats, more than two years after their release, and you can't
find these in most record stores. By contrast the mass market
has embraced digital music formats that are lower quality than
CD: MP3, XM Radio, Sirius Radio (the satellite radios put out
about 64 Kbits/channel and are noticeably inferior to a regular FM
station, even on a fairly cheap set of speakers).
Suppose that Microsoft never adds another feature to Windows?
Not even my personal pet desire, the ability to display and lightly
manipulate camera raw format images that come from high quality
digital cameras. Would that drive consumers to buy
Macintosh? Not if the computer market turns out to be like the
audio market where people said "CD quality is more than good enough; I
just want music that is more convenient and/or cheaper". People
would say "Windows XP Home is good enough but let's get it for as
little as possible". The result will be a $350 laptop at
Walmart. I met a senior Dell engineer recently and he told me
that Dell was already producing a laptop on which they could cut the
price to $500, without downgrading any components, and still make
a profit. The cheapest Macintosh laptop, by contrast, is
$1100.
People who stopped buying CDs now spend their home
entertainment budget on fancy digital cable. If Microsoft's
feature stagnation leads to a big drop in the average price of a
purchased PC who will pick up the dollars not spent? My
prediction is mobile phone makers and carriers. I saw a
billboard yesterday for a Nextel phone with built-in GPS and
voice-prompt navigation. That seems more useful to most people
than whatever OS tweaks Apple and Microsoft might offer to their
1970s-style mouse-windows-keyword systems.
Cheap WalMart, AOL Computers Spark Online Services - Web-Based Applications Will Reach Larger Small Business Market, Home-Offices to Benefit Also
The
Idea:
Look at those who crave and hoard power, and who are indifferent to
suffering and death and destruction, and you'll probably find a
psychopathic personality who has been tipped over the edge by lack of
emotional connection. The lack of affection, and the neediness it
breeds, may be the toxic seed that grows into the architects of the
destruction of our world.
I confess I have struggled with
Glenn Parton's most recent pro-polyamory (free love) essays
.
It's not the ideal that bothers me, it's the amount of weight he puts
on the idea: That if we all freely and unjealously found multiple
sexual partners the basic problems of the world would be solved (I'm
exaggerating, but not by much). This has bothered me especially
because
his earlier essays resonate so powerfully with me. So I've been giving
it some thought and I think I see a reconciliation between his ideas
and mine. I would argue that it is emotional neediness
that underlies most of the antisocial, ecocidal behaviour that is
destroying our world. I would acknowledge that a polyamory culture
would be both a manifestation of a less emotionally needy world, and a
means to reduce emotional neediness, though I doubt that it is either
a
necessary or sufficient condition to significantly reduce emotional
neediness.
First, some definitions. Needs versus wants. A need is a want that
will
lead to pain, illness or suffering if it is not met. Needs and wants
can be physical (food, material possessions, sex), emotional (space,
peace, natural connection, security, reassurance, to be loved, to be
needed), or intellectual (share ideas and information). Nutritional
food is a physical need. Personal possessions are physical wants.
Sharing ideas and information are intellectual wants. Emotionally
healthy people have few emotional needs other than the need for
connection. Emotionally ill people, I would argue, have substantial
emotional needs, bordering on the addictive. This article will attempt
to present a theory of why there is so much emotional neediness in our
modern world, and how this neediness is causing us to destroy our
planet.
I'm going to use myself as a case study, and I hope that this will
help
readers to understand the 'frames', the social worldview, underlying
my
argument. So I need to give you a brief history of my emotional life
and health:
I presume that as an infant I was needy, but that in the Gift Social
Economy that was my world at that time I managed to somehow return the
gifts of attention that my parents bestowed on me. As a baby I was
attractive enough to be featured on the front page of the city paper.
Until I was 8 or so that Gift Social Economy continued: The
neighbourhood kids with whom I played were generous with their time
and
attentions, as was I. Everyone knew I was partial to one girl in
particular, but to my knowledge there was no jealousy, as my
infatuation never caused me to decline social interaction with anyone
else. But then the Gift Social Economy gave way to a Competitive
Market
Social Economy: The cute girls began to hang out exclusively with the
tall guys. The teachers began to favour the more obedient and diligent
students as I grew bored with the lessons. My body grew slowly and
awkwardly. I lacked, and didn't learn, social graces and coordination,
so I couldn't dance or swim, was lousy at sports, and my face was
ravaged by acne. My communication skills, written and oral, failed to
develop. By the age of sixteen I was a shy, introspective teenager
with
few friends, and an average student. I was a daydreamer, and (showing
my shattered ego and desperate need for 'popularity') I aspired to
move
to Australia and become a politician. I had nightmares, and I was
anxious and unreasonably frightened of people and social interaction.
And then at seventeen I discovered I loved poetry and literature and
began to read, and then to write -- unoriginal, banal stuff
atrociously
written at first, but it improved with practice and encouragement from
a wonderful small group of peers. And my increasing reading breadth
gave me more authors to mimic in style and vocabulary. After a year I
had become an accomplished writer and I graduated from high school
with
several scholarships, a renewed sense of self-confidence, and utterly,
hopelessly, intellectuallyin
love.
From that enormous and sudden emotional high the crash was
precipitous.
I loathed university -- the idea of learning by sitting in a classroom
and listening to someone talk seemed ridiculous to me. I was
intellectually bored and emotionally numb. Then I went into the
work-world and faced the humiliation of begging for crappy menial
jobs.
I sank into a serious depression (early 1970s -- a lot of that going
around then). Then I began to succeed in the work world, moving up
quickly. My social life went quickly from non-existent to frenzied,
exploiting the lingering remains of the 'free love' era for all it was
worth. My ego recovered (over-recovered) and then, when I realized
that
there was no depth to any of these relationships, I crashed again. For
a couple of years my few friends worried that I would commit suicide.
And then I met Anita, and she pulled me up, told me to grow up,
introduced me to her extraordinary, open, well-balanced children, and
made me what I am today. I re-engaged with the world, worked hard and
successfully, taught myself to be creative, and leveraged my ambition
and skills into several promotions, until I once again hit the wall
five years ago.
My depression returned. I found my newest job, which tore me away from
customers and had me working for a guy whose leadership style and
vision were the antithesis of mine, to be ill-suited to my talents as
a
writer, an idea cross-pollinator, and a skilled coach of
entrepreneurs.
We moved to our new neighbourhood in the country, which I love, but my
intellectual restlessness continued. It was filled in part by a
voracious increase in reading and then by this weblog. I quit the job,
and with it left the depression behind. I'm still struggling with my
'Second Career' decision, and I'm nervous about where my life is
going,
but I'm confident and happy. Even my growing sense of despair about
where our world is headed can't get me down.
The three periods in my life when I lacked emotional connection --
late
childhood and adolescence, early twenties, late forties -- led to
emotional neediness, which in turn led to emotional illness
(depression) and then to anti-social behaviour (withdrawal, anger
etc.)
That's a bit of an oversimplification of my roller-coaster life, but
it's pretty accurate. I was lucky -- three times I fell victim to
emotional disconnection and
three times I was rescued by those who cared, or to some extent
rescued
myself. I've always been blessed with great 'support groups'. I've
talked, especially in recent years, to dozens of people who recount
this same downward spiral in themselves and/or many people they know
--
starting with being emotionally cut off, through exaggerated emotional
neediness, emotional illness and anti-social, even pathological
behaviour. It manifests itself in different ways but the pattern,
illustrated in the top chart above, recurs with astonishing
regularity.
I've known a number of very wealthy people, and in those environments
emotional disconnection seems almost endemic. Parents are detached in
showing affection (or any other emotion) to their children, they're
often physically absent, the kids go to private schools where they
associate only with others of their 'station', they learn all the
social graces but never seem very comfortable with other people,
almost
as if they've lived their lives in a bubble. They tend to either
conform to a disturbing degree or all-out rebel at some point in their
lives, and substance abuse and other addictions are common among them
in adolescence and early adulthood (sound like any politicians you
know?)
Then they fall into line and behave outwardly in an acceptable manner,
but by then the damage is done. Most of them are psychopathic
personalities:
Callous unconcern for the feelings and welfare of
others,
Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships,
A penchant for deceitfulness,
Inability to feel guilt,
Bravado about getting away with illegal activities.
When they got older and were handed power on a platter it further
corrupted them, giving them employees and customers and voters and
lackeys and sycophants and gold-diggers to abuse and cheat, land and
natural resources to despoil, and the means to avoid responsibility
for
their actions and even avoid contact with those their corporate,
political, economic and social damage hurt the most.
These are behaviours of the emotionally disconnected, playing
themselves out in dangerous ways. The few people I knew who were
physically abused as children manifested nearly identical behaviours.
All of these people hurt, in turn, orders of magnitude greater numbers
of others. A disproportionate number end up in positions of power and
influence, positions which seem to draw them, perhaps to serve as a
salve for their emotional emptiness. "If you don't want
to connect with me emotionally", they seem to be saying, "then I'll
get
so powerful and so successful at manipulation and scheming you damned
well won't have any choice". Rich or poor, power over someone is very
important to them. Scratch a political tyrant, a corrupt business
leader, a polluter, a pimp, a spouse or child or animal abuser, and
nine times out of ten you'll find that emotional hollowness, that
vestige of disconnection. The vast majority of such people, for some
reason, are male.
As Kurt Vonnegut has argued, I suspect it's because they're such
expert
liars, and so manipulative, insecure, ambitious, addicted to power and
needy for attention, that they end up holding a wildly
disproportionate
sway over political, economic, social, educational, media and other
activity in our world, and as such their psychopathy is playing itself
out in massive ecological and human destruction. Only an emotionally
damaged psychopath would fly back from his private ranch to sign a
bill
to force nurses to keep a brain-dead woman alive indefinitely, yet
knowingly wouldn't so much as lift a finger to help the half a million
in Darfur who are suffering from relentless and savage brutality,
deprivation and overt genocide.
How many unhappy couples do you know that are bound together in
co-dependence rooted in emotional disaffection earlier in (or even
throughout) their lives? He desperately
needs to be loved, and if he's not well placed enough or ruthless
enough to build his fan base politically, economically, coercively, he
will command it from the one he claims to love, and the children
conceived with that love. He's jealous, angry, yet somehow emotionally
distant, insensitive. She, on the other hand, needs to be needed -- and he's the perfect antidote
because he needs so badly.
What possible hope is there for the children of such a dysfunctional
relationship, with this horrific model the only one they know to
follow
when their emotional
emptiness and need begins to manifest itself?
So that's
the
theory -- neglect or ignore or abuse a child and he'll grow up to ruin
the lives, livelihoods and environment of hundreds or thousands, and
will have children who will perpetuate the cycle. The answer lies not
so much in polyamory as in community--
a connected community (not the transient neighbourhoods of
coincidence and convenience most of us live in today) where affection
and attention is gifted generously, and where everyone feels
emotionally whole, fulfilled, healthy, and secure. This in turn
creates
a virtuous cycle, as that emotional warmth and connection breeds
generous, self-confident behaviours, behaviours that heal
heartache,discharge fear and loneliness, and in so doing heal our
whole
planet .
A planet where there is no need to destroy the world to fill the empty
place inside.
"Fulfilling America?s Promise: Building a Safer World and a More Hopeful America "
As America Gets Bigger, the World Does, Too04/18/2005 11:23 PM Obesity is a growing problem worldwide, even in countries whose
populations have in the past been enviably lean.
Let America Govern The World
Let America Govern The World04/10/2005 12:45 AM We all know that the New World Order is coming, in fact most probably
it has already come and gone. Yes. That is the speed which things move
at these days. In fact these days aren't even these days any more but
those days. Because they have already been and gone. Anyway America is
a big country, we all know that. The population of the USA stands at
around 295,786,000 according to this source. That is more than enough
men, women and children to successfully rule the world for many
millennia. The figures are incontrovertible.
Developed by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the
National Library of the Netherlands, this is the first stage of an
ongoing project, The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands,
being produced under a cooperative agreement signed by the two
institutions earlier this year. The companion site of the National
Library of the Netherlands, is the The Memory of the
Netherlands.
The Atlantic World is available in both
English and Dutch, and is intended for use in schools and libraries
and by the general public in both countries and around the world. It
includes more than 70 items totaling some 11,737 images from the
collections of the Library of Congress, the National Library of the
Netherlands, and six other Dutch institutions that are cooperating
with the National Library on the project: the Netherlands National
Archives, the Municipal Archives of Amsterdam, the Plantage Library of
the University of Amsterdam, and the National Maritime Museum. Among
the items digitized for the project are a letter describing the
purchase of Manhattan from the Native Americans in 1626, an etching of
the Mohawk Sychnecta, early land grants and patents from Dutch
settlers, seventeenth- century maps, and an early description of the
Dutch colony on the eve of its transfer to the British.
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The
Idea:
Look at those who crave and hoard power, and who are indifferent to
suffering and death and destruction, and you'll probably find a
psychopathic personality who has been tipped over the edge by lack of
emotional connection. The lack of affection, and the neediness it
breeds, may be the toxic seed that grows into the architects of the
destruction of our world.