Brazil's Homegrown Technologies

Positivo is a computer brand that has been quite a while now in the Brazilian market. Making affordable computers for middle-class families, Positivo is now bringing in the new generation of affordable PCTV's. This company will likely get an upper hand against companies like Dell and Compaq, since their computers are imported from the USA with higher taxes. Also, just like any technologic product in Brazil, credit cards allow 10 monthly payments with no interests.

Meet the future OLPC's

As prices for nowadays laptops are dropping, new technologies become available in the market, to make computers more affordable. In the case of the OLPC, the new technology that will be included will be a QWERTY touch screen, also used on the famous iPhone. This new technology of a keyboard, will expand the opportunities for younger children to use simpler keyboards, while older ones will be used to use standard ones. Also other characters and languages will be available, making it more accessible. The future price will drop from nearly $200, to only $75.

OLPC and Windows XP

Microsoft have struck an agreement to bring Windows XP to the XO Laptop. For more information about the deal: http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9945438-56.html

Hopefully, the laptops will have a bigger variety of programs, but the only problem that I see is that the hardware will not catch up to XP's specifications. Sooner or later, it will have to be upgraded to meet minimum requirements to run XP; which will mean a higher cost.

Bridge Building Contest

This year's Bridge Building Contest will be open once more for grades 11 and 12 students, at our High School. It will take place on May 6th, and the current record is of 209.4kg by Sullivan.
The contest is basically set on the rules that the students can only build a 100g bridge with balsa wood and carpenter glue.

To check 07's competition photos:
http://www.myndrs.com/bridge07/index.html

As for the Bridge Records:
http://www.balsabridge.com/2007-rec.htm

As for our sponsors:
http://www.balsabridge.com/sponsors.htm

In the additional links area, there is also an interesting link about Balsa Bridges facts:
http://www.mat.uc.pt/~pedro/ncientificos/artigos/techbal.html



Vancouver is a city of many interesting bridges. Here is my favourite: Burrard Bridge - Picture taken by P. Vogel.

Almost done...

As we are heading to the last month of regular classes, I look back into my school year (especially ICT) and remember all the things I've done: Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Python, C++, Java, and Networking.
Today I have finally (and really finally) packaged my Visual Basic Project into one downloadable file. Also, we will continue working on Visual Basic chapter 5, and more networking assignments.

Project Multiform summary

For the past month, we've been working in a Multiform project for Visual Basic.
Alot of work and time has been put into this project by all students; and today has come to evaluate them.

My project basically consists of a Splash screen, main page, 5 different programs according to the theme, an Easter Egg, and an about page.
My theme is about being lost, and how those programs will help to make you survive for the time being.

Easter Egg
Also known as a "bonus" program, an Easter Egg was added to my project. It is accessed a game caled "Race for Humanity" that man and woman have to race each other in order to win. My Easter Egg is accessed by the keys Ctrl + Alt + C

Programming

Right now, us students are working on the programming language JAVA.

Even though it basically looks like the same as C++, some codes applied to it are different:

// My First C++ Program
// February 2008
// Cecilia Abreu
//

#include
using namespace std;

void main () //void means that this function (program)
//returns nothing after it was run
{
cout << "By Cecilia Abreu" <<>

/*Program to display the traditional Hello World! message. */
/*Cecilia Abreu */
/*March 2008 */

public class HelloWorld {
public static void main (String args[])
{
System.out.println ("Hello World!");
System.out.println ("By: Cecilia Abreu");
}
}