Another addition

We have a new addition to the electronics in the house.

A mac mini.

The old Dell from 2002 died(?) finally after making a few croaking noises. The blue screen showed up many times. It is possible to revive it with a hard disk wipe and installing some later software and OS versions. Instead we chose the less time consuming path and upgraded to a Mac Mini.

Technology has sure come a long way in a decade, huh?

Have not had a chance to play with it since I set it up on sunday night.

The kids love it though! Every day they tell me something they figured out how to do on the Mac just to show me how retarded I am..

Have gotten used to it!

Today we had a short discussion on "Can we sell the Dell on craigslist? who will even buy it?"

San came up with a "Can we donate it to the temple?" and the answer from the rest of us was "don't insult the temple with this computer. they already have computers from two years ago that folks have donated. this goes in a museum"

Do not know if we will find someone who will use the old computer..

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Cricinfo and a Virus that looks like an anti virus program (Cryp_FakeAV-11)

My friend checked the India New Zealand score on my laptop last weekend using Cricinfo.com. While he was at it, we suddenly got a message that said that the computer was threatenend and it went on to launch an internet explorer window and made it looked like the computer was being scanned and before you know it, multiple viruses were found in various system folders.

It also had the Windows firewall shield logo (Kid you not!) but the shield was split into four parts and each part had a Microsoft Windows color.

Turns out it was a virus called Cryp_FakeAV-11 . These guys know how to do subliminal messaging! You see the shield shape, the windows colors, the legit looking virus scan, combined with your own Antivirus message (that is telling you that this thing itself is a virus) and you can be overwhelmed... Which window do you close? Which Ok or Cancel do you press? would you wipe out your hard drive with one wrong click?

Worse, why is Cricinfo supporting these guys?

The funny thing was that my MIL got the same warning and she clicked okay in an effort to "protect" the desktop and that installed this virus shield looking virus on our desktop! Took us some time to clean up.

Beware! Go let your six year old little ones and sixty year old seniors know the risk of clicking okay!

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No Lap Left Behind

Apparently the Indian goverment is learning from President Bush.

They have come up with a "No Lap left Behind" policy.

A laptop on every lap, they said and to top things off, the thing was supposed to cost 10 bucks (500 Indian Rupees)!

There has been a lot of hoopla around this over the years.

The most common reasoning out there was that it would still cost 100 bucks to make, but it could be sold by the government for 10 bucks. Well cost and price are two different things, especially when regulated by a government.. any government! You only need to look at ethanol based fuels and cars which claim to use ethanol based fuels (also) in the US to understand this!

Now where were we? Ah, the laps, sorry.. laptops!

Let us for a moment say this thingy does get called a Laptop.

It should have

a. a processor (at least the same thing in a digital watch or a basic electronic calculator)
b. some memory (lets say they have no hard drive to store info and that is an extra)
c. a keyboard to communicate to the outside world (no mice required)
d. a monitor of some sort
e. a power source (or module if it runs on batteries)
f. an outer plastic case to hold all these together as opposed to a ziploc bag

if you have to divvy up these 6 things under 10$, you are looking at some amazing manufacturing!

Truly amazing, state of the art, cost effective manufacturing as well as state of the art distribution which is free or nearly free!

Obviously a billion laps would need to be serviced here and that means cartons and cartons of laptop devices need to be shipped and transported and distributed and that should all be included in the ten buck cost!

Plus you need top {bolly,tolly,kolly}U(Wood) actresses, former desi Miss Worlds, Universe, etc. posing with "tzis device" to make it appeal to the masses.

Somehow I feel my brother is being cheated. The government officials in India are smoking some high quality pot and they are not sharing it with the tax paying people!

$ 40, very much possible. $30 is pushing it with today's manufacturing! I am serious here. You can get a plastic case, working keyboard, a simple processor that possibly does basic text editing, calculator, clock, etc. etc. a pixelized monitor without color, 128MB memory , batteries sold separately device for 40 bucks including distribution, advertising etc.

My BIL got Jr. a laptop that comes close, and it cost $50 and it is pretty educational!

In a world where a langot costs 10-15 rupees and a VIP brief for that same lap, goes for 50, a laptop at 500 rupees is too good to be true!

Who knows, maybe some day there will be a ten dollar laptop, for real!?!

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