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Changes at OLPC
The front page of the
OLPC wiki currently has a message from Nicholas Negroponte describing
changes which are being made with the project. These include laying off
half the staff, pushing development of the generation-2 machine, and
"passing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the
community." OLPC is also dedicated to becoming the $0 laptop in developing
countries, though how that will happen is not specified. (Thanks to Rahul
Sundaram).
(Log in to post comments)
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 19:43 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] What, Nicholas? Your great friends at Microsoft, for whom you made such a fundamental change in OLPC's direction, can't support you now? Or is it just that they feel they don't have to support you now, since they've neutralized the threat?Netbooks seem to be showing the potential for commercial vendors to overtake the OLPC hardware effort. Bruce
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:10 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the netbook market is not yet tackling the OLPC niche (specificly the durability of the machine)
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:31 UTC (Wed) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]
My understanding was that the XO laptop was falling apart all over the place. Is there really evidence that they are more durable than anything else?
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:44 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
where have you been hearing this?
I own several of them and from personal experience they are definantly more durable than the other systems I have seen and used.
I don't go out of my way to abuse them, but I don't take nearly as much care with them as with the other systems.
that isn't saying that they can't be broken.
there have been specific problems with the touchpad,
Keypad/keyboard Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:36 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]
My keyboard/keypad was DOA - sticking ctrl key issue.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:44 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Durability is important, but in general a known field as opposed to bringing down the cost of all the components, etc. You can buy a durable laptop from Panasonic, but targeted to a different niche.But the task you'd imagine that has been set for OLPC, given the concept pictures of version 2, is to create the bleeding-edge of laptop technology. I don't see how a haptic LCD replacing a keyboard is going to be very durable, even if there's a nice sheet of lexan on the top.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:56 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
but the durab;e laptops from panasonic are substantially more expensive than the normal ones, while the OLPC machines are very comparable in cost, if not cheaper, remember the G1G1 program has you paying double the cost, there is the 'give many' program that allows you to buy 100+ at a time for a cost of ~$250 each, so that is a better 'real' cost for the machines.
I think the XO version 2 that is being worked on will be a disaster, so I'm not at all worried about it being delayed. that being said, I hope that this doesn't hurt Pixel Qi (the company Mary Lou Jespen founded) which was doing the development much, I want to see that screen available on other systems ;-)
Durable Posted Jan 7, 2009 21:16 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] There isn't anything about the materials necessary for durable laptops that would make them expensive. You don't need titanium, there are lots of strong plastics. I bet Panasonic makes a significant mark-up on those laptops.Bruce
Durable Posted Jan 7, 2009 22:54 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]
I may agree with you just a little. The physical cost of the additional components is not extremely high. But there is some additional cost and extra markup on top of that is a good business decision.
There is extra stuff in there that costs more money.
Part of that extra stuff is the shock protection for the interior. You don't want capacitors falling off the board surface, for example. Cheap stuff does this by covering everything in epoxy but that makes it effectively unservicable. I don't actually know what the Panasonic Toughbook does for this problem.
There is also a fancy shock cushion for the hard drive or replacing the drive with an SSD. Either option costs more than standard.
Two things that justify extra markup is rarity and testing.
Because there is some increased cost associated with toughness, fewer customers will buy the product so the price must be even higher to compensate for fewer sales. Those customers that will buy it are looking for tough durability specifically and so the price may be higher because its a hard to find quality.
Testing for toughness means even more destructive tests on samples. I doubt you see Sony dropping many Vaio laptops onto concrete floors. But if toughness is one of your primary selling points, you will want to make sure your product is staying tough by testing a few out of every thousand.
Durable Posted Jan 9, 2009 5:55 UTC (Fri) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
>>Two things that justify extra markup is rarity and testing.
>>Because there is some increased cost associated with toughness, fewer customers will buy the product so the price must be even higher to compensate for fewer sales. Those customers that will buy it are looking for tough durability specifically and so the price may be higher because its a hard to find quality.
I think rarity is bigger factor than testing.
However I think also that something aimed at the durability market is also likely going to be treated far worse and have higher warranty claims.
That being the case I'm sure they are making higher profit margins on them. There are plenty of alternative materials that are cheap.
Tough plastics, Aluminium instead of magnesium and titanium.
Personally I'd love to see the tough models become the standard and the current models become the lightweights :p I'm sure plenty of other folks would like more durable laptops to be the standard.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 19:15 UTC (Thu) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
I was walking through my house yesterday and saw my 4-year-old get tangled up in his mouse cord and pull his OLPC XO off of the desk onto the floor. I didn't even slow down in my walk. "Good thing there's not a spinning platter in there!", I thought.
I also thought for a moment about how I would like to own a nice durable, portable OLPC XO for myself. I wonder if I could get a bluetooth keyboard going. Hm:
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:49 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
We really can't compare OLPC to Acer or Asus products unless we have a better understanding of the demographics of the market. OLPC isn't a retail product, its not going head-to-head with any consumer oriented netbook product in the retail setting outside of G1G1. The goals and deployment strategy of OLPC are not the goals and deployment strategy of a commercial OEM. Its very difficult to say how the commercial offerings are impacting OLPC deployments without having a really good understanding of who is buying netbooks and for what purpose. Are governments buying Acer netbooks in bulk to give to students? I don't know.
But OLPC isn't marginalized in the overall netbook market any more than Dell or Toshiba...two commercial retailers..selling both linux AND windows netbooks in the retail market...where OLPC doesn't have a presence outside of the G1G1 program.
http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/displaysearch/h...
OLPC is in the middle of that pack...and they aren't even a commercial OEM...and they don't sell a product aimed at adult consumers.
Since I do not know how OLPC as a non-profit funds its expenses, I don't know how to interpret the restructuring. But I will say this, OLPC isn't the only non-profit that's taking a hit. Brick and mortar non-profits which provide critical day-to-day social services in the US are taking a huge hit this year in terms of financial support.
blogs from small non-profit operators as absolute painful to read:
Am I shocked that OLPC as a very forward thinking global social problem solver is also having a rough time of it? No. Regardless of the mistakes Nicholas Negroponte has made, this is an absolutely horrible time for non-profits. If you aren't making a charitable donation to a local social services non-profit in the town that you live..this is the time to start doing it. Soup kitchens, after school programs, work training programs, hospice care, sled dog racing organizations..find something..other than the local highschool football team..you think is worth supporting in your area and help keep the non-profit which makes those services possible solvent.
-jef
sled-dog racing? Posted Jan 7, 2009 22:01 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
Not to distract from your appeal to help prop up other collapsing aid societies, but perhaps you can teach us a little about what sled-dog racing organizations do for communities? Is this about emergency services delivery?
sled-dog racing? Posted Jan 8, 2009 8:09 UTC (Thu) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
It is about coming "peak oil", I think. Horses, donkeys, and dogs would help us to roll along then :>
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:16 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
I'm sure I've previously seen analysis that says charities focused on small regular donations aren't badly hit by ordinary recessions. Only a prolonged depression, in which unemployment is very high and people worry about affording food and other essentials cuts deeply into charitable giving for ordinary people.
Even corporate donations are fairly secure for the first year or so, they're usually budgeted in advance, and arbitrarily removing all giving from the budget looks desperate which sends a bad message to investors.
The biggest problem in terms of charities is supposed to be new major donors. OLPC probably needs those, but a local animal hospital or addiction helpline can go on for another year or two without a new building or an X ray machine or whatever they were after.
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:41 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I do not think OLPC's problem isn't the economy. I think it is that Nicholas turned around the mission statement in the middle of the task and lost a lot of credibility for the project, and some of his donors ended up walking off because they weren't able to trust him any longer. I don't think that any early disclosures of the XO2 concept have increased confidence, either.I think lots of people would be more confident if Mary Lou ran the project. But she's probably burned out on that now. Bruce
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:44 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Oops. Sorry about the garble. I mean "I don't think OLPC's problem is the economy".Add to the above that the brightest lights on the team were motivated to walk off.
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:51 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
"I do not think OLPC's problem isn't the economy."
Double negative, that sentence parses as the opposite of what you meant to say. Careful... someone might quote you out of context.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. I'm pretty sure the continued availability of opinions is pretty recession-proof.. but that's just my opinion.
Here's what would be great. Instead of speculating as to whether or not the stated reason is not exceedingly truthful, how about you go ferret out a donor and get them on record agreeing with our assessment of the situation, that they've backed away from the project because of a loss of confidence in the project's direction. That would be fantastic.
-jef
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:38 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]
What? Then Bruce would be reporting factuality, and that's not what punditry is all about! He's probably have to return his card, or something.
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:48 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Pooh on you. Google is mentioned in the above-cited article as a multi-million-dollar investor. Google's more recent philantrophic activities are listed here. OLPC is not listed.
charities in a downturn Posted Jan 8, 2009 10:25 UTC (Thu) by metasj (guest, #56000) [Link]
Google.org (which you link to) and Google, Inc. (which sits on the OLPC board) are different entities with different charitable efforts.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 22:03 UTC (Wed) by ngiger@mus.ch (subscriber, #4013) [Link]
As far as I know OLPC did not change completely the direction or do you have any evidence about it? (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_myths#The_laptop_will_run_...)
And the XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old. Way too small for my fingers.
OLPC is still first an educational program. And convincing educational authorities that a new tool is good for your children (even if it breaks old teacher habits) is hard and takes time.
And OLPC (with all its defects) is not only the Boston/MA based foundation but also a lot of pilot/deployment projects and a lot of grassroot organizations spread over most of the world.
Look at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments and see that OLPC made quite some progress in the last four years.
Let's hope that Sugar survives, as it is a good idea for childrens who never got in touch with a computer beforehand. But good ideas don't win always.
Caveat: I am a member of the OLPC Support Gang and OLPC Switzerland and therefore certainly biased.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 22:51 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Getting Sugar deployed as a desktop option for standard linux distributions should significantly help with Sugar adoption. Sugar isn't tied to the OLPC hardware both Fedora and Ubuntu are working on making Sugar a desktop session option making it possible to put Sugar in from of kids (and adults) in places where OLPC isn't targeting any deployments.
I wonder how many of us who using a traditional linux desktop/laptop, could commit to using the Sugar environment for a month instead of our current desktop environment.
-jef
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:46 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I tried it on Debian today, with the update packages since Debian unstable is frozen. It needs some TLC. There's no good way, as far as I can tell, to install an activity on Debian. The software installation control panel applet is missing. I can install them from the browser, but they sit forever pulsing their icons when I try to start them.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 0:02 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I don't know the state of Sugar in Debian. I know people are working hard to make Sugar usable on Fedora. Fedora contributors have been publicly encouraged to help with the effort. There's even a Fedora Sugar live I believe:
http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-education-list@redhat....
Greg has a series of blog posts talking significantly about the effort and his personal experience using Sugar exclusively...but since livejournal just cratered it seems...i can't easily reference them here. I don't want to hand over a set of google cache urls, I'm not sure if that's appropriate.
They've been working hard recently to get the presence server up and running so the collaborative elements of Sugar applications work.
-jef
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:55 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I've got a few XO machines, I think Sugar is a big mistake and the sooner that there are options to not use it the better.
there are a couple of major issues to be resolved before Sugar can be an option on a normal machine (and these issues need to be solved for the OLPC project as well)
don't push things to hard or you will have people try stuff that doesn't work and turn into bitter opponents.
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 9, 2009 2:03 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
A better strategy to _really_ help developping countries would be to provide them :
2/ provide IT center for schools for pupils near 12-18.
Many children leave scholar system near 10-12 years. They will nearly never use a computer during the rest of their life, as it would be too expensive, even in cyber center 1$/hour is too much. (300 million people survive with 1$ per day)
OLPC seems good idea, but it shows too much ignorance of reality in the targeted countries, not to speak of erroneous strategy...
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 9, 2009 2:26 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you say that the way to help is to gie universities lots of desktops, but then you say that most people leave school around age 10-12
don't you see the contridiction between these two?
as for 'they never touch a computer again', if the area is flooded with computers (every kid in school has one), that may not be the case any longer.
connectivity is a problem, but even with very limited bandwidth things can still be done (what is the old saying? "don't underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with tapes")
on the one hand we have people like you telling us that OLPC is a worthless plan, on the other hand we see stories about how the availability of cell phones is revolutionizing poor areas. I don't know how to break it to you, but cell phones require a lot more bandwidth to be useable than a XO laptop.
the truth is probably that there are areas where the OLPC's will not work, but there are also a lot of areas where they can work
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 9, 2009 5:10 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
what i mean is it would be more useful to provide computer to people who really need them now (universities) than to 6-12 yo children who will mostly never see one again.
Flood country with computers ! What is your planet ?
I won't comment "with very limited bandwidth things can still be done", see Niger with 1MB/s backbone for the whole country some years ago, and probably still now.
The official site of NEPAD, the African continental plan to adress their problems:
"The connections cost in Africa averages 20% of GDP per capita, compared with the world average of 9%, and 1% for high income countries"
" Objectives :
Cell phones revolutionize communications becauses billions of investments are done by companies because there is a market, and the cost of cell phone is far much lower than one olpc. Thats a real development,(improve infrastructure) fitting real local needs, not a charity done by more-than-gifted-but-ignorant-foreigners, and that why it works.
And i dont think that giving a cell phone to each 6-12 yo child would solve any problem.
I think its a good thing that olpc fails because it is based on misconceptions, and drains lots of resources that could be much better used elsewhere, for example in universities who really need computers.
OLPC is dead, let's go to OLPUS one laptop per university student, of course with open resources:
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 9, 2009 18:18 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
when OLPC deploys laptops to a country they give one to every kid in grade school.
in a few years we will see what happens when those kids leave grade school.
it may be that they give the laptops back, but do the schools really want 5-year old laptops to issue to new students? (which would be 10 years old when those kids leave school), or will they get new laptops for the new students and let the kids keep the old machines.
If the kids keep the machines they will continue to use them after they leave school.
just becouse 1B people are starving, that doesn't mean that educating the next 2B people who aren't starving.
and who knows, possibly by educating those 2B people the overall productivity of the world will go up and more food will be available to feed the 1B
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 10, 2009 1:25 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
I agree that educating the not so poor will later help the poorest.
OT: Wrt to food problem, the problem is not world productivity, it is agriculture subventions which allows US and EU to control food for a big part of the planet, and causes misery by preventing primary economy development. Fighting false ideas is very important for human development, that's why i insist so heavily on this, sorry :-)
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 10, 2009 2:19 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] We're getting pretty far from the topic of laptops for children. But before you pin the problem on agriculture "subventions" - which I guess means control exerted through capitalism on the production and distribution of food - you should also consider the Malthusian aspect. The major governors of population throughout history, and no doubt before, have been famine and disease. Even with the most efficient possible production and allocation of food, eventually the population would reach a point at which all would be hungry, if illness wasn't killing us off. I can't believe we could be very far from that point today. The only long-term solution would be for human beings to limit their own procreation to a level at which the ecosystem can sustainably feed us.Bruce
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 12, 2009 5:33 UTC (Mon) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
s/subvention/subsidy/ in my posts (and s/subsidy/zero/g in US and EU :-)
The control is exerted by subsidies to the richest countries ! (cotton...)
Agreed.
http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;...
XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old Posted Jan 15, 2009 13:41 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] IMHO this is silly. What's causing damage to Africa is the kleptocracy that's the dominant government form there. A country will get nowhere with a dictator who wants to stay in power even when the population dies due to the effort. You certainly will hear a lot of excuses that the help provided by outsiders is hurting the people. If you look at other parts of the world, things go quite differently. Asia has developed very significantly during the last decades. There are still poor countries, there are still many countries where the political system is not up to western standards, but at least the dictators are benevolent. They don't kill their own people, like they did in the 60s and 70s. However, I think the originator of this subthread is right: You should not concentrate on the small children first; if you only have a limited amount of founding, take the students first. The benefit there is higher. It raises the education of the elite, and whatever you think about equal democracy, it's always the elite who sets the direction of a country. When they are stupid, uneducated, and selfish, they will ruin it. One problem of third world countries is the quality of teachers. Negroponte want to "solve" that problem by skipping the teacher. I don't think you can. By helping the students first, you can create sufficiently good teachers, and it does not really take that long. By the time the OLPC really is a billion unit product, you'll already could have a few million capable teachers.
countries bandwidth and internet access Posted Jan 9, 2009 6:05 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
Based on CIA factbook:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/int_int_int_ban_mbp_per...
Niger
USA:
So i maintain:
2/ the only realistic solution to share our wonderful things is to provide local proxy, for example a (not so big) bunch of DVD with distro mirrors (10 DVD's) and wikipedia (10 DVD's), and tldp.org and other goodies (less than 10 DVDs), or a 100$ some hundreds GB HD.
countries bandwidth and internet access Posted Jan 9, 2009 6:29 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] OLPC's concept of net access is mesh networking, more than connection to the global backbone. Kids can network to teacher's laptop. Teacher can get materals by sneakernet.
countries bandwidth and internet access Posted Jan 9, 2009 11:06 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
True, mesh networking is a really good idea, maybe a short term low cost solution of using a wire/wifi would have been enought ?
I was refering to the OLPC propaganda:
This is unrealistic in Africa, which is nearly half of the developping countries.
The OLPC team of 60/32 people is probably more important than the team of Nepad working on ICT and education.
There are many very sad examples of great ideas leading to complete failure due to ignorance, eg contraception (translated as "barrier to children" which is opposite to culture whereas a local term "spacing sorgho plants" would have been perfectly understood and accepted http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2009/01/08/l-aide-a...), agriculture (new food people don't eat, or which require very long cooking time so the energy budget explodes), in water management (destabilise the local economy balance and create international tension, or deep drill that fall apart after 2 years and force people to manually get water from 40m when before it was 10m) ... This only due to, let's say, the certitude of being Right, when one has only a very superficial knowledge of the situation.
Child education is very culture-dependant. So, we (highly tech developped people), can maybe provide technology expertise, or share university courses, but for child's education the content must be done by local people, or for sure it will be inadequate.
Let's say olpc had some great ideas, partly suitable, but went wrong, and need to travel in Africa to learn.
countries bandwidth and internet access Posted Jan 9, 2009 18:44 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the OLPC 'perfect deployment' is very similar to your #2
the laptops use the mech networking to talk to the school server, which is the proxy to whatever Internet connection there is, and also has a large store of content on it's local drive.
OLPC is deploying these systems out in the wild, they are working with people who are setting up point-to-point wifi connections over several miles to bring connectivity to the schools. they are _very_ aware of what the bandwidth limitations are.
countries bandwitdh and internet access Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:20 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
Nice to learn this. I did not this on laptop.org. I'd be glad to have an url, ideally which explains the funding of the infrastructure too, and how OLPC fits a pre existing demand from the country.
On laptop.org, in press:
for 100 000 xo, for rwanda, cambodia ...
I doubt that Rwanda wanted laptop for childs, but of course they accepted them when they came. It is just misused resources that fit no need, but the sponsors are satisfied, so why complain ?
35 million$ is 5% of rwanda budget !
Reread my rant against powerful foreign NGO that do unwanted things. I just hope they will take the olpc and put them where there will be more useful.
countries bandwitdh and internet access Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:58 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
are you saying that all $35M came from Rwanda? and only got them 100,000 laptops?
they probably spent ~$200,000 or so on the 100,000 laptops for Rwanda (probably a bit more to account for infrastructure pieces)
the $35M is probably the entire budget for OLPC for the year (and in 2007 they were not distributing many laptops, they only hit mass production in october 2007)
where is your evidence that the laptops that were sent there have been misappropriated? if they didn't want them they wouldn't have spent the effort to work with the OLPC organization to get them, train teachers, and distribute them.
OLPC doesn't just load a crate with laptops, put them on the boat/plane and then declare success. a deployment team works on-site, with the teachers and watches that the laptops are being distributed to the kids. they also continue to watch after that, if for no other reason that they are looking for success stories to post, but also to help worth through problems.
your attitude that OLPC must be evil is doing a huge disservice to the people with the OLPC project that are on the ground in the countries working to make things succeed.
countries bandwitdh and internet access Posted Jan 10, 2009 1:50 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
my post was unclear sorry.
I meant that OLPC fund rising for 2007 is equivalent to 5% of the budget of Rwanda ! And if we count $200 x 500 000 unit = $1 billion, the whole olpc budget is greater than Rwanda budget. (did you read what i wrote about powerful but ignorant foreigners NGOs ?)
Of course any as-poor-as rwanda country will accept some thousands of brand new laptop. The sad side of the story is that there, universities lacks computers, and all all these laptop would have been much more usefull to the country at the university than in the hand of 6-12 yo child !
And it seems obvious to me that knwoledge transmission must begin at university, then naturally flows downward in schools, as _their_ university also produce _their_ teachers.
Your attitude that OLPC must be *perfect* is doing a huge disservice...
Do you know people on the ground in some developing countries... ? I do, i m just telling what they explained to me, frankly, without any hope that i would come with $millions.
countries bandwitdh and internet access Posted Jan 10, 2009 2:19 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
if you think that I consider the OLPC project perfect then you have missed my very heated criticism about them. I defiantly do not consider them perfect or anything close to it.
however, I do think that they are doing good things, and doing it in ways that are mostly orthogonal to other efforts underway.
saying that there are starving children so we should not give ones that aren't starving assistance is like the kid being told to eat his peas because there are starving children in china and the kid saying 'fine, send them my peas' the conclusion doesn't follow from the problem.
as I said earlier, it's not a zero sum game.
I disagree that knowledge must begin in the university. I think that starting from the bottom will help more people, and will end up generating higher average levels of learning faster than starting at the top.
earlier in this thread the argument was made that OLPC was junk because most kids leave school around age 10 and will never see computers again in their lives. If this is the case, where do these university students come from?
even in the US the percentage of people who have gone to college is relatively low, if you wait until that point you will miss most people.
I do know people on the ground in developing countries, and while they sometimes question the efficiency of this or that project, I don't see them arguing that the projects should be scrapped, I see them trying to take advantage of the benefits of those projects and to counter the failings.
University = starting point of knowledge transmission Posted Jan 12, 2009 6:49 UTC (Mon) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
I agree mostly, except for where we can help.
Approximately 1 billion people in Africa, half of whom are under 25 yo, that represents 500 million people.
Lets say 250 million under 12 yo.
So 250 million child, lets say 25 million bachelor, 2.5 million at university.
And from these universities, _they_ (developping countries) will "produce" their teachers/programmers/biologists/doctors/... which in turn will create their educational content, and educate the whole continent.
We can help in universities, because math are math, and there the teaching languages are spanish/english/french/... so we can directly share our educational content and tools. This is not the case for early education, which is very cultural dependant,
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 22:19 UTC (Wed) by matthew_parry@hotmail.com (guest, #55987) [Link]
I agree with you Bruce.
The threat to Microsoft has been neutralized and Microsoft has moved on.
Time and again, it has been shown, Dance with the Devil and he gets your soul.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:04 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
And how exactly OLPC is/was/could be a threat to Microsoft?
Nicholas? Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:19 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] If you don't mind, I'll let someone else handle this question. I'm busy today, and introducing someone to this topic from zero is rarely a rewarding task.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 15:27 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
Since when exactly an attempt to port an operating system to a new hardware platform became a bad thing?
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 17:13 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
When it diverts resources from the project, adds hardware costs, and detracts from the original goal of a cheap, reliable product which can be modified by the users.
Now if your goal is to cripple a cheap product in order to make your expensive inferior product more viable, then by all means, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 17:50 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the resources diverted were people answering questions and documenting things so that the microsoft engineers could figure out how to do things.
such documentation is good for opensource developers as well.
as far as adding hardware cost, the claim I've seen is that the SD card slot was added for this purpose, but from what I've heard the extent of that hardware change was altering the plastic and adding a socket that was wired to existing chips. hardly a make-or-break item.
and for now the SD card slot is necessary to run many linux distros as well (including Fedora), so it's existence is good for opensource as well.
the biggest hardware change from the initial specs was the change from 128M to 256M of ram, and that wasn't done for microsoft, it was done because firefox became too bloated to run acceptably with the smaller memory. that change cost a _lot_ more than the SD card slot.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 0:56 UTC (Thu) by tbrownaw (guest, #45457) [Link]
Windows is Crap, and people only use it because they are Locked In. If someone has experience with an OS other than Windows (especially their early, formative, experiences), then their eyes will be Opened and they will forever Repudiate the Lock-In.
As the Prophet has said, "the first hit is free".
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 0:57 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Hundreds of millions of laptops running Linux and not Windows? Hundreds of millions of children growing up learning Linux and not Windows? Come on. I feel like I'm explaining to someone about how water is wet.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 15:17 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]
And where exactly are these hundreds of millions, tenths of millions, or even just millions? ;->
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 3:47 UTC (Thu) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link]
Think of it this way... How could microsoft compete against an entire generation of children raised on Linux? Oh, they couldn't! I mean the thing has a "View Source" button for crying out loud. Think about how revolutionary it would be to have a generation of Linux trained computer programmers.
Perhaps not all of them, but a decent number of the smart ones would figure out how to edit or add features to their favorite activities. This is a real catalyst for open source in general. OLPC being extremely sucessful would be a huge thorn in Microsoft's side. Does that make sense?
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 7:40 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
'view source' is a great idea, but the software side of it hasn't been implemented yet (in just about every case)
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 2:15 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
OLPC was entirely capable of killing itself without Microsoft, Intel or anyone else having anything to do with it. It's been mismanaged from the technical side from the beginning, from underestimating the difficulty of bringing a new hardware platform up from scratch through to repeatedly changing fundamental aspects of the software architecture through to straightforward inability to communicate clearly with outside contributors and contractors.
Maybe the interaction with Microsoft had something to do with it. But pinning the entirity of OLPC's failings on that is shockingly naive, and anyone who thinks that there was a realistic chance of the project being more successful without any of the Microsoft stuff happening is just ignoring reality.
Blaming Negroponte's interactions with Microsoft for the current situation just indicates a lack of awareness of how deeply rooted OLPC's problems were. Pretending they didn't exist just makes it easier for future organisations to make exactly the same mistakes.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 2:50 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] They did bring a new hardware platform up, and they did bring up a platform incorporating a new software paradigm, too. It seems that OpenMoko had much more trouble with this than OLPC did. These tasks can not have been that unsatisfying to donors, they got done, and on schedule as far as I can tell.So, I think the problems were elsewhere. Counting on economies of scale that did not materialize, failure to recruit someone competent in selling such an idea to government and a sales staff to work for that person, personality conflicts, direction changes, intrigue. The stuff AMD reportedly did to them seems pretty raw. And they should have strategized what to do about Intel and MS better, because it was inevitable that there would be friction there.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 3:06 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
The brought up a new hardware platform, significantly later than expected and still buggy in fundamental ways (the mesh network still doesn't work properly, resulting in many of the advertised features being impossible - dcon has little quirks like not firing a vblank interrupt during the vblank) and they provided a software platform that's been rearchitected more times than I've shaved in the past 12 months. This isn't a criticism of the ability or dedication of the developers, just of the process that led to the failure to achieve the (admittedly aggressive) goals. From the outside, it looks awfully like better management would have made a big difference.
Don't get me wrong, I think OLPC has been a great achievement and the extent of its real world success has impressed me. But it's far too easy to just buy into the "Everyone who associates with Microsoft is doomed to failure as a result" story, and doing so doesn't actually help us avoid the real problem in future. A strong volunteer community can accomplish many things, but it won't improve the quality of your management.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 7:33 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
seperate out the software problems from the hardware problems, especially when you are accusing them of failing on the hardware side.
the mesh network issues are almost entirely software problems. this was made worse by the tunnel vision of kids working in the wilderness and forgetting that they also needed to work in a super-high-density school setting.
I'll admit I hadn't heard of the dcon problem, (the touchpad issues seem far more significant)
now that other distros are starting to be available to run on the XO I expect the software side to shape up quickly (nothing like competition to spur progress)
I agree that the microsoft dealings were not a major cause of problems (other than PR problems, which are noticable), NIH syndrome and lack of compatibility had far more to do with their problems.
but they aren't dead yet. they shipped a half million laptops last year (not counting the 2008 G1G1 program) and the factory will still be building more.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 12:40 UTC (Thu) by dcbw (guest, #50562) [Link]
From somebody who worked on it, a huge problem with management was moving goalposts and featuritis, because if they didn't have feature X right away they weren't going to be able to close the deal with country Y, thus every single one of our goal-directed monthly snapshots was blown by 2 weeks of work on a new hot-button feature that usually proved pointless or a lot less important.
Second, because management kept talking to a number of quite different countries with quite different requirements, they weren't able to distill the *actual* software goals down to something managable. Had they decided to only target kids without a roofed school in the bush (or only kids in higher-density schools with WiFi APs), it would have been a lot easier to nail. Instead, to sell the laptop, management had to have *both* of those. And that's only one example of this behavior and thinking.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 20:10 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
This sounds really familiar. Let me tell you a similar story.
I can think of a commercial Debian derivative that was hideously late in launching because of factors like this. "[A] huge problem with management was moving goalposts and featuritis, because if they didn't have feature X right away they weren't going to be able to close the deal with [hypothetical target market]*."
We went back and forth repeatedly, suffering identity crises over whether we were targeting "the enterprise" (because big, high-margin contracts are where the money is), or "grandma" (because high-volume, low-margin retail sales are where the money is). We slipped horrendously. I don't remember now but I'm pretty sure it was over 6 months.
Ultimately, while the product did finally ship and actually got good reviews, we captured neither market, laid off two-thirds of the staff, and fundamentally changed the business model of the company.
* While our founder was by no means an unknown figure, when one's brother formerly oversaw right-wing death squads in Honduras, one likely commands a degree of attention from, and shares a common language with, officials in third-world countries who can get things done.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 8, 2009 20:40 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] You didn't mention the part about investing a ton of money in distributed filesystem development which became meaningless as disks got bigger.
Nicholas? Posted Jan 11, 2009 5:24 UTC (Sun) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]
No, mainly because I wasn't on that team, but the distro one.
Oddly enough, something useful did come out of that work. The "nullfs" kernel module later became part of a customer's proprietary backup solution.
When I look back on my years there, the failures I see were primarily not technological in nature. I don't know if that's good fortune, or an experience most software developers have. I've seen some ugly, ugly code, more of it proprietary than free.
Even dpkg is better described as "self-consciously eccentric" than "ugly".
Nicholas? Posted Jan 9, 2009 13:34 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
"... moving goalposts and featuritis...."
FWIW, in the business sector (and esp. IT) in the U.S., this frequently encountered problem is jokingly (and dyslexically :) referred to as:
"Feeping Creaturitis"
Nicholas? Posted Jan 10, 2009 10:09 UTC (Sat) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
>>The stuff AMD reportedly did to them seems pretty raw.
What did AMD reportedly do to them?
OLPC is not the good solution Posted Jan 8, 2009 0:54 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
I have ben for 3 years in western africa for IT with schools and university.
1/ what is _needed_ is a working IT center (ala cyber center) in each school, that is 20 desktop for 1000 pupils, maybe 50 for 1000 students at university.
2/ the idea of one laptop per children is really more expensive and can only be imagined by rich individualist people who have never been in Africa. The finances does not allow such a solution, and the culture of sharing everything is really close to free-software, and opposite to intellectual property (in some african tongues, the possessive form does not exist in the language, it can only be "the", not "my")
3/ durable: i saw 486 and pentium with win95 and 32MB ram doing a great job, so don't be afraid, like for their cars they have magicians who manage to rebuild working machine with our rubish (even if it would be much better to have new low power equipment).
4/ last, bandwith and power cost are the real problem, don't even dream of 1MB/s outside of capital, unless you have your own satellite stuff.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:12 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
Sorry i was only negative in my previous post, i must propose something better :-).
The solution which can work now (it was immature when i was there) would be something like:
Of course with free software, and all possible documentation (remember, bandwitdth is nearly zero).
Microsoft neutralised free software in developing countries Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:29 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
For example World-Links, a huge NGO, previous a World-Bank program, which did lots of things:
http://www.world-links.org/en/programs/telecenters/
Microsoft treats directly with governments, and it's nearly impossible for a private IT company to *not* be a "µsoft partner", and when they are, of course they don't do free software, i don't know why ;-).
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:38 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
what you describe is relativly close to the OLPC plan
one 'school server' that has a fair amount of resources, some sort of connectivity (whatever is possible)
a large number of the XO laptops that contain a bunch of lightweight stuff (more than your LSTP systems, but far less than what's available on the school server)
training classes, mailing lists, and on-site support for the local teachers and admins.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 2:13 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
it seem i was unclear, and maybe misinformed about OLPC.
What i heard was olpc reinventing the wheel, and developping hardware, and in the end forget one very important advantage of open source = the possibility to study how it works. Thats how i got my current net+sys admin job, when i was initially a physicist.
"My" :-) plan is to use existing hardware, and customise a distro (let's say ala knoppix) to provide one DVD for the school, plus N DVD's for wikipedia and other contents, and a nice script to install it automagically.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 7:22 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
remember that OLPC 'wasting their time' creating the new hardware essentially invented the netbook market
reminding people that there are two sides to Moores law.
the side that everyone thinks of is that computers get faster and more powerful with time.
the side that people were forgetting is that the equivalent to the old performance gets smaller and cheaper (and uses less power as well)
I consider the hardware side of it a wonderful success.
by the way, one of the reasons why the hardware is over budget is that the opensource community let them down by letting things bloat so tha the inidial specs needed to be beefed up
on the software side they completely flopped. in large part they got into the mindset that they were instantly going to be the biggest linux distro ever, and as such everyone else would worry about being compatible with them and they didn't need to worry about being compatible with anyone else. as a result of the incompatibility they have much less software and far fewer people working with the system than they could have had.
I'm as much of a pack rat and scrounger as anyone, but there is a huge difference between a setup put together with mix-and-match cast-offs and a setup where you have everything the same (with spare parts and replacements available) I've done both and while I will do the first if it's nessasary, I will definantly prefer to do the second. at the scale that OLPC is working in each deployment, doing the mix-and-match approach would require a huge amount of knowledgeable labor on-site to keep things working. I can't see any school systems, let alone governments spending nearly the resources on this that they are willing to spend on modern (if slow) standardized equipment.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 8:42 UTC (Thu) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
>remember that OLPC 'wasting their time' creating the new hardware essentially invented the netbook market
I'm sorry to put this so bluntly but that is absolutely crap. There were small factor laptops around before that were aimed at being school kids.
The reason why netbooks are so common now is simply the costs of components has come down to the right price and companies went looking for new markets. This would have happened whether the OLPC was around or not.
What the backers of the OLPC should've focused on is developing the missing technologies and getting them used by others. It'd be a far better bang for donors bucks.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 10:04 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
prior to the XO the small format laptops were the most expensive laptops available. they had the highest performance components that could be squeezed into them.
when the XO was being designed it was being ridiculed as being too limited and too slow to be any good. as it neared full production other companies jumped on board.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 13:54 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I think that the ideas behind OLPC and the Eee are very different: one develops exclusive technology for education, while the other uses standard, outdated components to build a small form factor laptop. Whether the OLPC concept was an inspiration of any kind for the Asus team I don't know, but the components were there and ready to assemble. The small flash disk is certainly an enabling technology, but that is hardly an OLPC achievement (and not used in later models).The announcement of a $199 laptop (as compared to the "$100 laptop" from OLPC) might seem an obvious ripoff. But not necessarily so. Remember the sub-$1000 PC craze of a few years ago? Everyone was selling those systems at the time.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 20:58 UTC (Thu) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
"The announcement of a $199 laptop (as compared to the "$100 laptop" from OLPC) might seem an obvious ripoff"
Take account of economical reality (lower value of USD) when it comes to the cost of components and materials.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 10, 2009 0:51 UTC (Sat) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
>>prior to the XO the small format laptops were the most expensive laptops available. they had the highest performance components that could be squeezed into them.
There were other netbooks/UMPC/whatever you want to call them this year before.The Apple eMate 300 based on the newton comes to mind.
The reason why we are seeing a plethora of netbooks now isn't because of the OLPC but rather because the price of components has come down to an affordable level and they have an acceptable amount of power. We are doing a great disservice to the OLPC project by crediting them with something they aren't responsible for , hiding the real gems they've been responsible for.
>>when the XO was being designed it was being ridiculed as being too limited and too slow to be any good. as it neared full production other companies jumped on board.
Yet they chose faster processors and they aren't choosing the OLPC's screen,wind up power source, or durable casing. IMHO those are the gems of the OLPC. The casing isn't new but the screen and wind up power source are novel.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 10, 2009 0:59 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
given that the OLPC does not have a crank on it (and therefor no wind up power source) this post shows that you don't know what the origization is actually doing and shipping (as opposed to what they thought would be possible and practical several years ago)
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 10, 2009 3:37 UTC (Sat) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
You've got me there.
So I went to see exactly what they were shipping and the lack of wind up power was the only thing different to what I expected.
IMHO that's a killer for a lot of markets where power isn't available all the time. That to me was one of the killer features of
it , when you combined that with a mesh network , you can end up with quite a nice distribution model for new areas without a permanent net connection , by piggybacking on the part of the population is mobile in different areas and different radii. A good distribution model like that is important if it's supposed to meet it's educational goals.
I think Mary Lou has the right idea with the screen , if they can reduce the cost of that by mass production and popularising it in the general mobile market ie tablet pcs,netbooks,mobile phones,etc. Then the chances for long term success of a cheap education tool become much better.
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 10, 2009 4:17 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
this question came up a lot last year as the machines hit mass production. I was at a presentation by Mary Lou Jespin to techies (the USENIX conference) and the question was asked there.
the answer is that the crank ended up being fragile, and not that efficiant, so what they did was to make the laptop _extremely_ forgiving on it's input power (something like 7-30v tolerance and charging best on 9-15v), so it can get power from very dirty sources.
the other thing is that a person cranking can produce more power than a single battery can efficiently absorb, so the emphasis shifted to charging several batteries at once, and produce a large number of different chargers.
they have string pull chargers (think lawnmower)
as far as the screen goes, my understanding is that it's cheaper to produce than normal LCD screens (it has 1/3 the pixels of a conventional screen of the same nominal pixel count while having ~3/2 the effective resolution in color mode), it should hit the market in other devices Q1 or Q2 of 2009
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 9:35 UTC (Thu) by meuh (subscriber, #22042) [Link]
See the ADEN project:
http://www.africaden.net/spip.php?rubrique2 http://www.africaden.net/spip.php?article30
Better than OLPC Posted Jan 17, 2009 0:28 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
Yes, that's it. It seems simple and do the right things.
It just lack a local wikipedia and tldp.org mirror ;-) Thanks for the link, i'll to get in and contribute.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 2:11 UTC (Thu) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Well, (and please feel free to flame me as appropriate,) this is, at last, the final sign of the failure of the OLPC project. I found I had interest in this project as an outsider, and what I perceive to be its laudable goals. But I never took them up on G1G1, and when I saw the production problems and delivery delays I was relieved I didn't. After their Xmas 2007 push, I lost interest. Am I, and others, at fault for not getting involved, becoming an insider, keeping up interest, investing in the project through G1G1, etc.? To be sure, yes. But this is the way the real world works, and that is what I perceive to be a major OLPC problem from its inception. In an ideal world, it might have worked....
It's my experience that idealistic projects like this, in general, don't succeed. It takes pragmatism to succeed. And Negroponte's play to the Windows hegemony was _not_ pragmatism. It was likely a flailing, last-chance-type grasp at a lifeline to rescue OLPC once it was seen that their goals were probably unreachable.
To compound the lack of pragmatism, they displayed poor strategy and planning. The laptops cost more than the promised $100 figure, which had been a _major_ selling point. In fact, they were nearly double. They should've been able to predict that from fairly early on. Even if $100 was the planning target, had enough experienced large-scale engineering and manufacturing people been involved they could've drawn a line in the sand and said, "Um, guys, $100 is an ultimate fail. The real cost will be closer to $200 in the beginning, even in volume." Then there was the production/shipping/customer management disaster that was G1G1 2007.
So, now they're "[p]assing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the community." Since we're a FLOSS community, this is a good thing, right? Well, if you consider the cessation of Sugar development good, then it is. Sugar likely will not evolve past this point, except maybe for a few baby steps. And it's a pity, because as the world adapts to daily computer use, it's crying out for a new UI paradigm. (Sorry for buzzword overload; and anyone who argues that current UIs are the best we can reasonably achieve prior to the advent of everyday 3D computing displays may be right.)
The Windows blunder was just that, and an epic one. Microsoft won that round and is now laughing on its way to the bank. Now the majority of EEEs even come with some variant of Windows CE, right?
So, the XO-2 laptops are, I guess, in final design and pre-production stages. They look amazing. But they won't work in laptop mode worth a damn. Nothing comes close to clicky-key feedback. A touchpad keyboard will lead quickly to frustration, which will lead even more quickly to a lot more force being applied to the touchpad surface than it was designed to handle, I imagine. This major shortcoming of expectations aside, it looks to be an amazing learning/textbook/interaction platform, and very much along the lines of the early goals of OLPC. But now they have to implement it with a 50% RIF, and all others on reduced salary (i.e., reduced work hours). As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that workin' out for ya'?"
Combine all these factors, and it's easy now to predict that XO-2 will never be produced -- unless the design, tech, manufacturing capacity, etc. are bought by a commercial entity for production. And that seems very unlikely with the current downturn and its effect on the tech sector. Sugar is now at a dead-end. Then the only thing left is XO-1 production, and one wonders how long that will hold out. Is funding still coming in? Do they still have working contracts with international education departments?
And then there's that new "no-cost connectivity program." Huh? I'm sure that'll be a piece of cake to set up in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan. Right? (Do you hear the knocking at the door? That's reality calling....)
I guess if anyone out there is still interested in G1G1, you better get 'em while the gettin's good.... *sigh*
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 3:21 UTC (Thu) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
Bad form to reply to oneself and all that, I know, but I forgot to make Yet Another Point:
OLPC is no longer developing Sugar. Now it's been turned over to the community. Well, with the RIF they probably don't have the manpower to develop it themselves any more. This is understandable from that standpoint.
But, if they aren't developing Sugar, how much longer will they be _using_ Sugar? How can they use Sugar as their major UI platform if they can't depend on needed improvements or even fixes being made to it in a timely manner? It seems obvious to me that, like it or not, in short order every OLPC shipped will be loaded with Windows.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 7:38 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
they haven't been running sugar development for several months already.
if they drop sugar I would expect them to switch to a plain linux desktop, bot switch to windows.
switching to windows increases their costs (the microsoft license fees, the cost of the SD card), and limits the useability of the XO (since the SD card is in use for the OS it can't be used for content), never mind the maintinance and support issues (anti-virus/spyware software for everything, and keeping it up to date, etc)
normally I would also refer to performance, but the current (and older) Sugar builds are bad enough that it is a wash, once new builds get in place that have far better performance I expect this to matter again
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 9:34 UTC (Thu) by ngiger@mus.ch (subscriber, #4013) [Link]
If OLPC (the foundation) would switch to Windows they would loose at least two third of the community.
There are people inside OLPC which consider the turnout as a chance to get the community much more involved. See what Samuel Klein thinks about it under http://wiki.laptop.org/go/It%27s_a_New_Day
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 10:20 UTC (Thu) by metasj (guest, #56000) [Link]
That article you link to on the olpc wiki was written by Yama Ploskonka, not by me! I do appreciate that perspective and have pointed to it since. --Samuel
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 10:41 UTC (Thu) by ngiger@mus.ch (subscriber, #4013) [Link]
Sorry, Samuel. I was looking at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Sj, found the article. Just now I see, that you put in the "Wiki schedule" all new articles, not just yours.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 16:24 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
The current concern at OLPC is olpc survival, no more Children and human Development. This is sad, but shows how big is the failure.
The choice of "one machine for each children" sounds good to rich westerners, but shows the ignorance of what is really needed in developing countries, and what are the human develpment processes.
http://www.gapminder.org/ (great slides with UN stats about the world)
Also, one very bad hidden idea is that rich westerners think they know how to educate poor southern children.
And oh, don't forget to get back to basis in economy:
=> stop US an EU agriculture subventions which are the root cause of misery in the world, by preventing local primary economy to work.
Sorry to be a bit hard, but if we want to stop misery (that causes terrorism ...) and help our poorer brothers, we need to learn, and make clean in front of our own house before anything else.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 17:54 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
education helps primary development
'give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime'
the OLPC project isn't a services or industry project, it's an education project using technology.
take a look at this video if you haven't already seen it.
OLPC Mission: Part 2 The XO Laptop
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 20:40 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
I have spent 3 years in Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso, working with small NGO and schools in villages and tried to do something with IT there. Mostly i teached them the basis of windows 98 administration, and ms word, because it was the only choice, and the _service_ was incredibly useful to them, no mater of the technological choice. (eg, doing nice looking document to get funds from micro-credit banks for development project in agriculture or health...)
I would have prefered to install and teach them linux, but the hardware was too weak (often 16MB of RAM, and dsl was not usable at that time). One of our shame is to send them our old computers, when the transport cost are rather high once you include the local transport problem which is incredibly difficult and expensive when there are no roads nor trains (20mph is a good average speed for transport in Africa).
But the main benefit is for us: we transfer pollution cost to them and have good feeling of doing something nice. This is totally wrong because the proportion of working computers ending in educational system is very low.
"teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMeX2D4AOjM
Last, OLPC with its partner ship with a closed source editor, totally went wrong, because closed source prevent your "teach a man how to fish", they can learn only to click, nothing more.
To paraphrase linux coding style: XO people are not evil, they were just severely misguided.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 20:49 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
so what I would take away from your post is that geeks should not try to send any technology or technology based things to anyone else. all we can do is to donate money to organizations that provide food to starving kids and hope that it solves things somehow. (or put their life on hold for several years and go in on the ground, which is nice when it can be done, isn't realistic for 99.99% of people)
if true that's extremely discouraging (in part, since it hasn't worked in the last 50+ years I see no reason to expect it to suddenly start working now)
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 8, 2009 21:48 UTC (Thu) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
hmm mostly yes, situation is very difficult.
Without having spent time on the ground (or maybe huge studies), we cannot help a lot, except through our excellence in our own job/knowledge. So building a cheap, low power IT solution is a good idea, but the content must be their. So sharing our open source educational tools will be very good once they will be adapted to fit local realities. AFAIK OLPC in our rich countries we don't give one computer to each child, so why should it be in poor countires ?
We should help _their_ initiatives and _their_ solutions, by providing support mailing list, or whatever they ask for. (i teached M$ when i was hoping for implementing linux). Wrt to IT, things have evolved, for example Ubuntu is at first glance an African solution, which obviously shows that linux is also suited for Africa.
If you want to get some encouraging analyse, watch
And we can help a lot by lobbying our governments to stop the root cause of their misery = our (US and EU) agriculture subventions that prevent their agriculture to develop, and this is the first mandatory step for sustainable development. Historically all (no exception) so called "developped countries" have grown through theses steps, first primary economy and food self-providing, then secondary and last tertiary, with "protectionism" of the local economy by taxes on importations and state intervention in social welfare and infrastructures.
Probably many other actions are possible from here (see debt problem, UN funding...), but i think the best we (geeks) can do is to share what we use for our children, and help them (poor but clever southern guys) to adapt it to their needs.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 9, 2009 17:32 UTC (Fri) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
We can't solve all of their problems. So let's not even try to help them.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 9, 2009 19:16 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
For first-aid, if you don't _really_ know what to do, the only thing to do is :
- try to avoid the worsening of the situation by signaling the accident - call competent services to get help - stay with the victim and speak with her while rescue is coming
A positive approach, is then to learn "first-aid" during a stage at hospital, or with firemen... and forgot all the nasty things that incompetent neighbours told to you.
Changes at OLPC Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:13 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
so you are saying that trying to assist anyone with technology or education is worse than doing nothing.
all we should do is provide you (and people like you) with money, we aren't even qualified to evaluate if the money is being spent efficiantly.
Money and help ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 0:16 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
You transform what i said into ridiculous things.
Did i ever asked for or speak of money ?
But as you speak of money, one other problem of aid to developing countries is that the funds quickly goes back to the original donators country, and only very little is spent in local economy. OLPC is a huge example : the paid developpers are in US, the hardware manufacturer in developped countries. The target country can only say "thanks, you are so kind", when it would have prefered to have local developpers doing the job. In OLPC it seems some parts are localised, so i guess there have been paid translators.
The main things i try to share is:
Money and help ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 0:33 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
when you say 'do what they ask for an nothing more' who is 'they'
if it's the government, then frequently all they want you to do is to give them money to spend on luxuries.
in every case where OLPC is doing a deployment, someone in the receiving country has asked them to do so.
I commend you for taking the time out of your life to go in on the ground and work to make things better, but telling people that if they don't do that they are better off doing nothing won't make anything better.
Money and help ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 3:10 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
When "they" is a OLPC leader, should we blindly accept what is said, don't ask to watch their budget, and trust their wonderfull success story ?
OLPC is now tackling sub-saharian problems.
Does olpc fit Nepad Objectives ? No.
Its hard to explain in small (and emotional) posts what i learnt in several years of travels, discussions, experiences and many books readings.
Maybe google will give you some hints for nepad, gapminder, Jean Ziegler work at UN, and "right for food" (refused only by one country in the world, i let you find out which one), or Joseph Stiglitz, or digg and you will find lots of dramatic total failures, or misleading projects.
If you want a sad real story where it would have been infinitely better to do nothing than impose our rules (but it was supposed to help them, it had nothing to do with our business of course), read this :
And please, keep on trying to help other people, that's great. But get deep informations, and don't misunderstand my criticism. It's necessary and good to have criticism in order to improve.
IT can provoke big civilisation disasters, by erasing culture, that's why it is important that we (foreigners) provide only help for tech, and that the local people create the socio-cultural-educational content.
Money and help ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 4:08 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
anything that claims to be _THE_ plan for a continent is suspicious to start with. and just because it wasn't in that plan (whenever it was drafted), doesn't mean that it's not a useful idea.
you need to investigate how OLPC is working, not just read the press reports from NN's speaches. there is heavy involvement from people in-country, they are working with and through the ministry of education (or equivalent), they aren't just drop shipping laptops to schools and declaring success
Money and help ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 9:37 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
>> anything that claims to be _THE_ plan for a continent is suspicious to start with
Are you a troll ?
They are poor, but certainly not stupid nor ignorant.
Money and help ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 4:11 UTC (Sat) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
>>I commend you for taking the time out of your life to go in on the ground and work to make things better, but telling people that if they don't do that they are better off doing nothing won't make anything better.
What if it's the truth? Is making yourself feel better more important than helping them? The simple fact is until people accept that aid programs have a cost on the developing country and that not all aid is helpful they will continue to be unsuccessful in the long term. (BTW this can also be applied to social services.)
My personal view when it comes to charity is that I don't donate anything (time,money,goods) unless I know where it is going. It's a philosophy I intend to follow for the rest of my life. I'd love to push some of the responsibility off onto others but mountain of historical evidence tells us that it's far too easy for aid to be wasted , or harm them. I've mainly donated time and skills , and goods that aren't needed to charity so far because I've chosen a different path than most but I'm facing the situation where I could become reasonably wealthy from my own hard work and a bit of luck , so it's something I've thought about a lot. In the long term finding out that my help was harmful even though it had the best intentions would more than counteract the temporary joy from doing it. I'd feel responsible for the harm even though it was unintended (and I would be responsible for it). So looking to the long term and taking a careful involved approach is really a win/win for everybody including me.
There are many reasons why aid fails but a lot of it has to do with exploiting the countries for resources and labour. In the long run I suspect we would be better not to exploit these countries AND give them education through information and helping them construct things using basic skills. We can shorten the time to bring them up to our technological level by showing them some of the mistakes on the way up and letting them chart a better path.
If we exploit these countries we aren't helping them and we aren't letting them choose the way they want to be ,often we are supporting a Govt that the people don't want or that isn't sustainable just so we can get what we want.
It's also no use teaching them how to build or use something if they can't replicate and maintain it themselves. There are numerous times in history when we've donated technology only for it to be useless in a couple of years when the program ends because they can't maintain it (or it's too costly to maintain it). If we give them aid in the form of goods to supplement a short term shortfall we have to be careful we don't wipe out their existing industry or make them dependent on it.
A million digital books Posted Jan 9, 2009 6:39 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
Our technology initiatives will focus on:
.... 3. A million digital books
with DRM to prevent copy, in partnership with editors ?
A million digital books Posted Jan 9, 2009 18:51 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you are reading this in such a way that a million copies of one book would satisfy the goal, I read it in such a way that it would require at least one copy each of one million different titles.
also, why do you assume that they will be DRM to prevent copy, etc? nothing that OLPC has written or deployed is done this way, why would they change?
A million digital books Posted Jan 9, 2009 18:58 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
You are right. I am biased about this. Its said that all content is CC 2.5 license.
But previously, OS was open source, why did this change ?
A million digital books Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:07 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
where are you reading that the OS is not open source?
there is a difference between the OS, the applications that run on that OS, and the documents that you use those applications to read
the OS that's been deployed is open source (like any other purchasers, countries can load other operating systems on the devices after they buy them)
the documents that are provided are all provided under licenses that allow for free distribution, but not all documents are distributed under licenses that allow them to be modified.
in my opinion this is not a bad thing. not all documents should be modified. One particular case that I think of is the Internet RFC documents. they can be freely distributed, annotated, etc, but you cannot modify the document. I see this as a good thing. standards (and reference) documents being distributed unmodified is good.
having other things that can be modified is also good, but don't confuse the two.
Countries obligations to MS ? Posted Jan 9, 2009 20:56 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
Partnership with MS for dual boot with Windows XP.
Afaik, xp is an OS and is not open-source.
Also worth of interest, what are the countries obligations wrt Microsoft when they have xp powered XO ?
I read the contract, oops, the partnership between Burkina Faso and Microsoft, signed in the beginning of October 2004 in Ouagadougou, and valid for 5 years if i remember correctly. It is said to be a public document, but i don't know how to get it again. Maybe ask to MS-africa ?
One very clear point of the text was: now the country is aware of MS Intellectual Property and License cost, MS is allowed to estimate the number of infringing machines in the country, and the Burkina Faso will pay the due to MS.
Thats a nice gift !
In France we have a proverb saying "the road to hell is paved with goodwills". I think thats a good description of olpc current direction.
Countries obligations to MS ? Posted Jan 9, 2009 21:04 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the OS for the XO laptops (and XS servers) is linux, not XP. XP can be installed on the laptops.
if a country decides to sign a deal with microsoft they should know what they are getting into.
OLPC didn't force them to use windows
the 'olpc - microsoft partnership' consisted of OLPC giving microsoft people a couple of desks in the OLPC office for a few months, so that they would have access to the engineers to ask questions so that the microsoft people could get XP running on the XO laptop.
OLPC is shipping linux, not XP on the laptops (unless the customer, the country that is buying them, specifies otherwise and provides the software to load)
are you saying that if the countries inform OLPC that they will install windows on them that OLPC should refuse to sell them the machines?
Countries obligations to MS ? Posted Jan 9, 2009 23:42 UTC (Fri) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
We disagree. You think olpc has done great things, i agree to some point.
Maybe i should sumarise wrong points. - the targeted audience - non standard hardware, impossible to fix without another xo for pieces. - unknown software (who knows sugar in the world ? no one except olpc fans) - doing things not asked for by the countries - using huge resources (for their jobs) that could be much better used if they asked what is wanted by developping countries, instead of doing what they, rich westerners, think is good. (as i'm biased, i say its is good for their ego and US jobs, not for children education)
Did you read the olpc page concerning MS partnership ?
this is the biggest blunder:
You underestimate MS power in developping country, it is really a very solid wall that has already broke many efforts, and cost a lot to the poorest countries.
I'll try to re-find MS contract with Burkina Faso and will send it to our beloved editor. You will see that this is only business, it has nothing to do with education or children, its only a matter of controling the market.
Countries obligations to MS ? Posted Jan 10, 2009 0:28 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you disagree with the target of the machines.
feel free to disagree, but recognize that others thing that there is far more value in teaching all the kids a bit rather then concentrating on the universities where you only get the ones who have already gotten out of the worst areas (or they wouldn't be in the universities)
non-standard hardware
OLPC has elected to send the pieces in the form of complete working systems rather than in separate boxes for each part. there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach (parts inventories are harder to do, you end up with more of some parts than you need, but it takes _far_ less space and you know that all the parts work)
unknown software
doing things not asked for by the countries
using huge resources
closed system now
I do acknowledge that some of the early deployments are going to have windows on them, but I don't see it that OLPC is pushing windows, I see it as a failure of Sugar being ready. the good news is that software is replaceable. it has improved significantly in the last year, and will improve more going forward. every system shipped with windows can be converted to linux in the future at no cost (the labor of doing the switch is about the same as the labor of doing an upgrade to windows)
I may be a wild-eyed optimist, but I am accused of being a naysayer and cynic far more frequently.
olpc become a Trojan in education. Posted Jan 10, 2009 17:31 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
dlang wrote:
>> you disagree with the target of the machines. >> feel free to disagree, but recognize that others thing that there is far more value in teaching all the kids a bit rather then concentrating on the universities where you only get the ones who have already gotten out of the worst areas (or they wouldn't be in the universities)
Education for all, yes. Computer for all no.
You totally ignore socio-economy reality in Africa.
A rather well doing country, Senegal, spend ~40% of its budget for Education.
>> non-standard hardware
The huge disadvantage of having only one non-standard model, is that statisticaly one piece will break before others and will determine the lifetime, and you will not be able to fix it. With various ordinary components, this is very unlikely to happen, the global lifetime (or MTBF) will be much better.
>> unknown software
>> it's also defiantly true that much of the money and time that went to OLPC would not have gone to other charities
>> closed system now
And there are very true concerns with the knowledge they aquire:
OLPC seems to have done some quite good job until now.
My hope is that XO2 + XP will be too expensive compared with other standard linux solutions, and that the knowledge and community acquired with XO1 will go back toward standard linux way.
~"Home of the very small" Posted Jan 10, 2009 17:46 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (subscriber, #55989) [Link]
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