“Making a bid for a piece of the emerging desktop Linux market, Mattel, Inc. announced the immediate availability of downloadable beta ISOs for BarbieOS 0.99, and said it hoped the final 1.0 retail version would be on store shelves in time for Christmas.” Read the “review” at DivisionTwo and look for Eugenia’s review when the torrents show up!
Humor: Barbie, the Debian User
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I am sure my review will be very negative:
I never had a doll
I don’t see how I can properly evaluate this OS if I have never played with a doll beforehand, I always used to be a soccer kind of girl. And I am not planning to start playing with dolls at my 30s.
check out the “One Child Dead, 3 Wounded in Daycare Piracy Raid”. A+ site
Does barbieOS come with GCC?
You know you’re seeing satire when you see the words “human interface interaction, real-world usability” and “debian” in the same article.
And who created it Linusa Torvalds?
From the article: “Mattel is upping the ante by making the B-Book into a full-fledged desktop replacement targeted specifically at toddler through preteen girls who are currently Windows users but may be seeking alternatives, possibly due to increasing licensing fees or out of a desire to break free of vendor lock-in.”
I’m sure lots of toddlers and pre-teens are torn over vendor lock-in and that Mattel is interested in consumer choice. Let’s just see someone release a Larbie alternative and see how Mattel reacts! Larbie will be just like Barbie, except that she’s, um, cheap.
Folks: be wary of BarbieOS. I have it on good authority that their kernel was last compiled on 27 Sept 2002.
If you look closely, the revised model is actually a Sun Ray thin client, altough the shade of purple is a little off. Who’d of thought that Sun was going after the pre-teen market to survive?
Is this a joke? It seems almost surreal. Some quotes:
“…restrictive EULAs, proprietary file formats, and digital rights management technologies were not popular with pre-adolescent females, and almost none were satisfied with the results of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Initiative during the last year.”
Whats this? I dont know any 11 year old girls that could care less about all the things listed above.
“Many of the girls we talked to said that they were tired of constantly patching their Windows systems against the latest Outlook worm, only to find that the patch breaks one of their custom applications or reduces the performance and stability of the operating system”
First, how many preteen girls patch their OS? Zero to one is my guess. And how many are running custom (yes CUSTOM, not third party) applications??? Thats getting into the negative numbers I think. All these reasons are why BUSINESSES don’t like windows, not little girls.
“He said many girls are also complaining of getting stuck on the Microsoft upgrade treadmill”
Huh? What treadmill? I never heard of Microsoft signing such contracts with little girls.
“additional software may be downloaded from Mattel?s Click-Click-Pay Clearinghouse”
Click Click Pay?? Oh pleeeaase.. No company in their right mind names a service that.
This smells bogus to me. It just gets worse as the article progresses.
ok. so its obvious… And here I thought I was cleverly uncovering a fake
Yeah, of course it is a joke silly. It even has a humor section tag on it for goodness sakes.
ok. so its obvious… And here I thought I was cleverly uncovering a fake
————-
Now, this is damn funny!
and I am making this and make big bucks! Thanks for the free idea.
Unlike the more expensive and proprietery Barbie, which is only available as a pre-assembled and pre-packaged product, the Larbie doll is completly free and open-source! Complete instructions on how to build your own copy of Larbie can be found in numerous places, and many different distrobutions of Larbies are available. All are far more solid and secure then any Barbie, and often can be played with faster, especially in conjunction with older toys.
Larbie is highly recomended, assuming of course that you have the skill and knowledge to properly assemble it.
😉
> “I always used to be a soccer kind of girl”
So wich is it: Panathinaikos, AEK or olympiakos? Or are you one of those Manchester United or Real Madrid kind of person?
Maybe she is a Liverpool fan.
If you aren’t with Manchester U you got to go Liverpool.
There are a couple of Arsenal fans out there as well but …
Shame it’s a fake.
Got me thinking though, why not make a hyper simple version of Linux?
Remove apache, Bind, DNS, ftp daemons, NFS, Samba, Sendmail, gcc, and lock down the configuration (except for sound, graphics hardware).
Remove all the package management and library problems by having NO software installing capability whatsoever.
It would be very secure by virtue of having no outward serving capabilities at all, and easy to configure because there is nothing to configure! Just have a stripped down and prettified KDE, and web browsing, email, games and a fully pre-configured mplayer. While many of us love to tweak and use the extended capabilities of Linux, there is nothing wrong with simplifying things for those who want it easy.
I’ll wait for GIJoeOS where ‘Defragging’ you disk has a totally different meaning!
It’s hillarious…with just a hint of truth…After all, PCs are primarily marketed to teen/bigger-than-teen [hesitate to say “adult”] males. 51% of the people are girls! It’s a surprise that nobody has thought of this [for real] sooner. Barbie is a mover n shaker noways. She doesn’t sit at home waiting for Ken [does HE even have a job anymore?] I have nieces that would be all over this [if it was real] one would actually “get” it too…computers are just to “boy” for her right now.
Actually it brings up another good point…That we could see “branded” Linuxes [linunices, linuii, ???] in exacty this type of market position. Again, I’m surprised we haven’t seen it sooner. I for one was waiting for the “AOL PC” after they took over netscape. A custom distro with PengAOL and automatic updates…They could even send a new one in the mail every month [and geeks would use them for something besides coasters]
I could see this actually hapening soon. After all a Eden retails for about $150, and a mini-lcd [like attaches to xbox, ps2] retails for about $50-70 figure controlling the costs by manufacturing yourself and strip another $50 out of the retail cost and you could actually build a “kids” PC and hit a good price point.
As for Eugenia not playing with dolls, too bad. When she reviews it, she’ll probably gig it for “too much pink” in the GUI, and not “enough” configuration options for the GUI. I bet Morgan West played with dolls though, and she’d probably like BarbieOS too!
Update: Mattel purchase SCO!!
When asked via email why they did this, they replied “The little girls asked for the bad men to go away”, “I mean we had to do it, we just could bare the tears in their eyes”.
ROFL!!!!!!!!!
In the interest of national security!
You should that as your forum signature.
Quote: “Got me thinking though, why not make a hyper simple version of Linux?
Remove apache, Bind, DNS, ftp daemons, NFS, Samba, Sendmail, gcc, and lock down the configuration (except for sound, graphics hardware).”
Uh, Lindows?
Quote: “Remove all the package management and library problems by having NO software installing capability whatsoever.
”
Umm, install Lindows then remove apt?
Or maybe AROS? (Sorry guys, cheap shot 😉
Mutiny
Barbie is dumping Ken because he is a “pathetic Windows user” who gave her a virus.
“Remove apache, Bind, DNS, ftp daemons, NFS, Samba, Sendmail, gcc, and lock down the configuration (except for sound, graphics hardware).”
“Remove all the package management and library problems by having NO software installing capability whatsoever.
”
LindowsOS LiveCD. No way to add or remove software. No servers.
Ken needs to know.
straight edgers had a sense of humor (check the rest of the site…). Still, very funny.
I like the idea of GI Joe OS, especially in the default baroness theme. I think I’ll wait for the COBRA fork, however, since GI Joe will only let you play licensed MP3s, and even them, only patriotic theme music.
Real Madrid. All the way.
[quote]Folks: be wary of BarbieOS. I have it on good authority that their kernel was last compiled on 27 Sept 2002.[/quote]
Ow, that realy burns!