OLPC 2.0: After Layoffs, One Laptop Foundation Reboots With New Focus and Big Plans (Xconomy)

[Posted January 29, 2009 by jake]

Xconomy examines OLPC's plans post layoff. Based on an interview with Nicholas Negroponte and OLPC President Chuck Kane, the article looks at the netbook market in comparison to OLPC, how and why the layoffs occurred, along with plans for the future. "Kane and Negroponte stressed, though, that Sugar might be able to work in conjunction with Windows, just as it does with Linux. 'Sugar is terrific software for early childhood learning,' says Kane. 'There's a lot of elements that make it very unique and very powerful.' He says OLPC hopes to keep working closely with Bender and Sugar Labs in the future. 'We believe that the future product that's produced out of there will be very instrumental in what we have to offer.'"

Sugar is terrific software

Posted Jan 29, 2009 21:36 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (6 responses)

I would love if writers avoided to use hyperbolic, ambiguous adjectives
like terrific. "Sugar is terrific software" can be read both way...

And it SHOULD be read both ways

Posted Jan 29, 2009 21:44 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

Sugar is both interesting idea and awful implementation so it's apt description...

And it SHOULD be read both ways

Posted Jan 30, 2009 8:11 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

Thats the sort of thing that makes terms like terrific terrific.

Languages are meant, especially English, by design to be ambiguous. Any sort of communication is going to be very incapable of delivering what is in one's mind to another person's. Communication between random strangers is going to be very lossy.. only a tiny fraction of the thoughts that people want to implant in a string of text will make it through non-mangled.

So ambiguous is often very good because it will help slow down a person and make them ponder the implications of what is being said. Context always matters very heavily; written communication especially. Repetition is good, too.

The ambiguity of "Terrific"

Posted Jan 30, 2009 19:02 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting perspective... I actually had to go look up terrific at Dictionary.com to fully understand ballombe's post, and although I haven't used the Sugar interface (nor the OLPC XO), I've read enough user comments over the past 2 years to understand how appropriate khim's comment is.

This limitation of communication is both a bug and a feature. :)

The ambiguity of "Terrific"

Posted Jan 30, 2009 21:09 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]

Sugar interface is available on Fedora, Gentoo and Ubuntu. The interface itself has improved compared to the old version and needs some minor tweaking. I think some issue are related to inability to adapt to different layout. Bad decisions from OLPC especially NN affect the organization.

And it SHOULD be read both ways

Posted Jan 30, 2009 23:28 UTC (Fri) by riddochc (guest, #43) [Link]

Languages are meant, especially English, by design...

Beg pardon? Natural language? Design? :)

ambiguity considered harmful

Posted Jan 31, 2009 3:45 UTC (Sat) by stephen_pollei (guest, #23348) [Link]

All human level languages probably have to have measure of semantic ambiguity, however keeping semantic ambiguity to a minimum, and eliminating other forms of ambiguity seems like a good design goal. As far as I know only lojban , loglan, and it's derivatives have attempted to do so.

Also ambiguity shouldn't be confused with vagueness or imprecision; "the price of infinite precision is infinite verbosity" and "the map can never be the terrain". Someone once referred to languages as a form of lossy compression and I think that might be an apt metaphor -- that can never change. Also context does matter; humans almost always rely on context to provide some of the information that their communications leave out, anything less would be too inefficient.

However I don't see ambiguity as being helpful aspects of natural languages; rather I see them as minor speed-bumps which people of normal intelligence easily overcome -- and as a natural by product of being accumulated and accreted over by mostly unconscience choices over a large span of time.

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Jan 30, 2009 18:07 UTC (Fri) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (6 responses)

"In the 2007 holiday season, Negroponte told me, the program took in $37 million. This past season, the foundation partnered with Amazon to sell the laptops and increased its advertising and marketing efforts substantiallyto two or three times what they were in 2007, or close to $20 million, virtually all of it pro bono. Yet, sales fell off a cliff, coming in at about $2.5 million."

Presumably those responsible for the XO Windows moves have resigned, or are being held accountable for this? If the advertising had been donations, alot more children would have received laptops.

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Jan 30, 2009 18:14 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

nice subject, except they haven't switched to windows (even though you would think that they have from some of Negroponte's statements)

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Jan 31, 2009 15:43 UTC (Sat) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link]

Yes, it's totally unfair comment, couldn't resist a parody of the kind of
hatchet job, we could expect on ZDnet if "Linux support" was deemed a
failure that cost sales. The plans and loss of focus, undermined the
platform, at time they needed idealistic contributions to do tedious things
like bug fixing.

Nick's new friends just haven't come through for him, have they?

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Jan 30, 2009 18:35 UTC (Fri) by fandom (subscriber, #4028) [Link] (3 responses)

It is likely the drop came from all the netbook competition.

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Jan 30, 2009 18:59 UTC (Fri) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link]

Or from the reaction to the first G1G1 program. Owning an XO turned out to be not as fun as expected, since you have to keep the software updated, can't really use the mesh networking except with other XO owners, can't do much development on the machines themselves, etc. It would be more fun to contribute by using your regular desktop and laptop and help develop Sugar.

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Feb 3, 2009 10:44 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (1 responses)

It seems Negroponte has made so many friends in India, they decided to manufacture a $10 dollar laptop. It will be presented today.

PC switches to Windows, sales collapse

Posted Feb 6, 2009 19:00 UTC (Fri) by leoc (guest, #39773) [Link]

Yeah that didn't turn out well.