Showing posts with label usb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label usb. Show all posts

10 June 2012

Germany Increases 'You Are All Pirates' Tax On Solid State Media By 2000%

Techflaws alerts us to an announcement by ZPÜ, the organization responsible for setting the levy on storage media in Germany, that fees will rise rather significantly (German original). For a USB stick with a capacity greater than 4 Gbytes, the tax would increase from 8 eurocents (about 10 cents) to 1.56 euros (about $1.93), a rise of 1850%; for a memory card bigger than 4 Gbytes, the fee would go up from 8 eurocents to 1.95 euros (about $2.42), an increase of 2338%. 

On Techdirt.

03 February 2009

Now Brazil Goes Big on the GNU/Linux Desktop

At the end of last year I wrote about a big Brazilian project to provide 150,000 GNU/Linux notebooks for schools. Now the Brazilian Ministry of Education has topped that by ordering 324,000 "green" workstations running on GNU/Linux (although I can't quite tell whether this is as well as or instead of - anyone know?).

Here's the announcement by the Canadian company Userful, which is providing the very cool technology:

Userful, ThinNetworks, and Positivo today announced that they have been selected to supply 324,000 virtualized desktops to schools in all of Brazil's 5,560 municipalities.

This initiative will provide computer access to millions of children throughout Brazil. It is a historical achievement being: the world’s largest ever virtual desktop deployment; the world’s largest ever desktop Linux deployment; and a new record low-cost for PCs with the PC sharing hardware and software costing less than $50 per seat.

The workstations are "green" because they are virtual desktops consisting of just a screen and a keyboard/mouse, all plugged into a central unit; up to 10 such low-energy setups can run off one PC. The claimed savings are considerable:

Userful's ability to turn 1 computer into 10 independent workstations will save the Brazilian government an estimated $47 million in up-front costs, $9 million in annual power savings and additional savings in ongoing administration and support costs. The computers will use 90% less electricity as compared to a traditional PC-per-workstation solution.

Modern desktop computers sit idle while we check our e-mail, surf the web, or type a document. Userful's PC sharing & virtualization technology leverages this unused computing power to create an environmentally efficient alternative to traditional desktop computing. Up to 10 users can work on a single computer by simply attaching extra monitors, mice and keyboards. "This deployment alone saves more than 140,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually, the same as taking 24,000 cars off the road, or planting 35,000 acres of trees”, said Sean Rousseau, Marketing Manager at Userful. Turning 1 computer into 10 reduces computer hardware waste by up to 80%, further decreasing its environmental footprint.

Sounds like a pretty impressive solution, in terms of cost and energy. It's particularly suitable for schools, where large numbers of users need to work at the same time, but not intensively. The size of the deployment should ensure that other countries get to hear about it, and maybe even try it. Are you listening, UK?

Update 1: As you may have noticed, the link above to the press release no longer works; all references have been pulled. I'll try to find out what's going on and update this post.

Update 2: Apparently the original press release had some "errors", currently unspecified. I hope to have the revised press release soon, and I will update the story as necessary. It seems that the gist remains unchanged, which is good.

Update 3: Press release has now reappeared.

04 December 2007

Excessive Cubicle

I'm in favour of fun as much as the next clown, but the new book Eccentric Cubicle from O'Reilly seems to be forgetting a key aspect of the hacker world it aspires to engage with: economy - making less do more.


This book is a dream come true for you office-bound souls who are tech DIY enthusiasts, hobbyist engineers/designers, and Makers at heart. Imagine having your cubicle sport projects such as:

* A mechanical golfer
* Lucid dreaming induction device
* USB-powered bubble blower
* Fog machine
* A desktop guillotine

What are these but extremely wasteful uses of raw materials, and excessive burdens on the earth? A case of making more do less.

03 November 2007

Open Source Hardware: A Meme That Won't Die

Open source hardware is nice in theory, but currently self-contradictory in practice. The key thing about open source is that it's generated by code, and the code can be hacked. The same is true of open content, open data, open genomics and the rest. Until they come out with better fabbers whose underlying generative code is both available and hackable, we're doomed to pale imitations of true open source hardware.

In the meantime, Bug Labs has come up with a fun waystation on the road to that end goal:

BUG is a collection of easy-to-use, open source hardware modules, each capable of producing one or more Web services. These modules snap together physically and the services connect together logically to enable users to easily build, program and share innovative devices and applications. With BUG, we don't define the final products - you do.

Note that one key open source feature that you can reproduce in hardware is modularity, and indeed it's key to Bug's approach. And in a real sense, Bug has its heart in the right place:

BUGbase is the foundation of your BUG device. It's a fully programmable and "hackable" Linux computer, equipped with a fast CPU, 128MB RAM, built-in WiFi, rechargeable battery, USB, Ethernet, and a small LCD with button controls.

14 July 2007

Eee - I Want One

This looks very tasty:

The Asus Eee PC 701 notebook

* Display: 7"
* Processor: Intel mobile CPU (Intel 910 chipset, 900MHz Dothan Pentium M)
* Memory: 512MB RAM
* OS: Linux (Asus customized flavor)
* Storage: 8GB or 16GB flash hard drive
* Webcam: 300K pixel video camera
* Battery life: 3 hours using 4-cell battery
* Weight: 2lbs
* Dimensions: 8.9 in x 6.5 in x 0.82 in - 1.37 in (width x depth x thickness)
* Ports: 3 USB ports, 1 VGA out, SD card reader, modem, Ethernet, headphone out, microphone in

Even tastier is the price: with the dollar delightfully weak these days, we're talking just a smidge over a hundred quid each. Put me down for a brace.

23 November 2006

Turbo Wizpy

A long time ago, TurboLinux was a cool company with a turbo-charged CEO, Cliff Miller. As I wrote in Rebel Code:

Born in San Francisco, he had lived in Australia for a year as a child, and then went to Japan for two years, where he stayed with a Japanese family and attended a public school. After he moved back to the United States, Miller attended college, and spent a year in Macedonia, then a part of Yugoslavia, to further his studies of the Macedonian language. "I finished my BA when I was nineteen," he explains, "and then a year later got my MA in linguistics as well," and adds with what amounts to something of an understatement, "I tend to be pretty intense, and just get through things as fast as I can."

But that was in another land; Miller moved out, TurboLinux moved on.

And now here it is, with a dinky little object that sounds, well, cool:

It's an MP3 player. It's an FM radio. It's video and photo display device. It's an e-book reader. It's a sound recorder. It's a Linux-based personal computer ready for web, email and office usage. Yes, it's Wizpy, the Swiss Army Knife of handheld gadgets announced by Japan's Turbolinux this week.

I particularly liked this feature:

Just plug it into a PC's USB port, restart the host machine and it'll boot up into the open source operating system so you can surf and work and be sure nothing's being recorded on the hard disk.