This fellow is pretty amazing: http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Internal_Upgrades. To the already tiny Eee PC, he added (internally!):
That’s pretty cool…
Since a few months, sellers can no longer provide neutral or negative feedback to buyers. Not sure if I completely agree with this as I reckon buyers can be quite dodgy and how else to capture that. But the objective was to weed out retaliatory feedback. I.e. buyer has a bad experience, provides neutral or negative feedback, and in return for his honesty gets back similar feedback. So that’s no longer possible. I suppose that’s good.
I actually had such an experience at the beginning of the year, before the new policy. That one (in this case neutral) retaliatory feedback seriously impacts my rating to just over 90%. Not much of an issue as a buyer, but if I want to sell something, potential buyers might regard me as dodgy just on the basis of that number. Of course they could delve into the exact feedback comment and figure out what’s been going on to some degree, but who bothers with such detail while browsing eBay for goodies?
The formula for the rating is positive / (positive+neutral+negative), and all that limited to the last 12 months. Let’s take my simple case where I get one neutral. For 11 transactions over the last year, you get 10/(10+1) = 90%. Ok so I don’t buy stuff on eBay all the time. Most people don’t. But let’s double the number of transactions and see how the formula works out: 20/(20+1) = 95%. Still not good for seller karma. Anyway, you get the picture; this kind of thing is damaging, and you’d really have to go on a buying spree to make up for it. With different buyers or on different weeks, otherwise it’s counted as a duplicate and disregarded. And heaven beware if any of the many different sellers also decides to give you a neutral rating!
Ok ok, so the new eBay policy prevents this exact scenario from occurring again. But consider the mechanism if you’re a seller. Buyers *will* provide you with feedback, and using the same formula a single malicious buyer can destroy your reputation. You suddenly have to sell a lot more to make up for it, except you may not be able to, because of your rating! In a nutshell, unless you’re a powerseller moving dozens of items a month, you’re pretty much an open target. If you, like I, sell the odd item once in a while, you don’t have a chance.
But hang on, isn’t there a policy that allows you to get feedback removed? Yes, but only in very specific cases. For this, the comment would have to be defamatory, referencing an unrelated item/transaction, a policy file number, a URL or other contact details, stuff like that. Also, a clearly negative comment on a positive rating qualifies. But not the other way round.
So, the loophole is a gaping one, and that is: you just scribble something nonsensical or at least meaningless; that way it won’t qualify for removal. So you can just give a seller a neutral (just as damaging as negative, as far as the formula is concerned!) with a comment of “blah de blah” and that does the trick.
Someone please tell me that I went wrong with my logic – and where!
I spent some time today on that, it had gone increasingly gaga after some software and POI updates, then lost the plot completely, and then didn’t want to boot anymore. The usual reset/restore procedures didn’t improve things, so I invented my own which did not involve a restore procedure. I basically formatted the flash and reset the NVRAM and then added the basic stuff until it did stuff again ;-) So now my GO works once more. Horay… just need to figure out where the favourites were stored so I can restore them, setting that up from scratch is a pest.
Along the way, while searching for info online, I actually found out that the TomTom GO series actually runs a Linux 2.6 kernel. There’s a few custom modules for the specific hardware, but basically it’s just an ARM processor.
So there ya go. Good stuff!
Is your child not quite ready for proper typing, but does she love “typing stories” on the keyboard The trick is finding a program that allows them to muck around without the possibility of triggering special functions through some keypress or mouse movement. With the help from Greg Black & James McPherson on the #humbug channel, this is what I have devised for Phoebe’s Eee PC:
Using emEditor, create a menu item “KeyBashing” somewhere and give it a keyboard as icon. Commandline /usr/bin/uxterm -fn 10×20 -geometry 79×21+0+0 -title ‘Keyboard Bashing!’ /home/user/typer.sh
typer.sh contains the following:
stty -isig
echo Welcome! Start typing – exit by closing window
echo
cat >/dev/null
Make typer.sh executable with chmod +x typer.sh
The stty -isig command disables keycombos like Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-C.
After editing menus, you can use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X.
I acquired an Eee PC for my Phoebs. On special somewhere, unfortunately not a pink one ;-)
While I see that lots of people are replacing the Asus/Xandros OS with Ubuntu for Eee or other distros, I’ve decided to stick with the default for now. It’s a very easy desktop to use, with all clutter, confusion and traps disabled but still accessible through other means. Traps you ask? Yea… traps. A three-year-old with a mouse is a dangerous mix ;-)
So, why have a computer for a 3 year old anyway, and why an Eee, and ….?
Phoebe is already quite aware that work generally involves using a computer, so she insists having one on her little play desk: “for work”; that’s no reason to give her one though. Eee starts very quickly, being flash based and in its default simple desktop mode. Smurf gets easily bored so any regular machine just doesn’t cut it (believe me I’ve tried).
But kids these days must to become computer literate. Being able to use a mouse and a keyboard is not an optional extra. So, letting them play with it from early on, it’s a natural thing rather than something complicated later.
I installed GCompris and put it into the Learn menu, as Phoebe loves to play with the mouse exercises.
She also liked typing, but I haven’t yet found a program that allows just simple “keyboard bashing” without icon clutter (more traps). Suggestions welcome – perhaps an add-on for GCompris?
And no, I won’t be installing MySQL on this machine!