Nicholas? [LWN.net]

Nicholas?

Posted Jan 7, 2009 19:43 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
Parent article: Changes at OLPC

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

to post comments

Nicholas?

Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:10 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (9 responses)

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] (8 responses)

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

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] (4 responses)

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

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] (2 responses)

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 (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Adding_Bluetooth

Nicholas?

Posted Jan 7, 2009 20:49 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (9 responses)

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.
http://www.nptimes.com/08Nov/news-081124-1.html

blogs from small non-profit operators as absolute painful to read:
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/dec/02/wheres-the-ba...

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 (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

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] (6 responses)

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] (5 responses)

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] (3 responses)

"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] (2 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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] (21 responses)

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] (3 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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 (guest, #55989) [Link] (16 responses)

A better strategy to _really_ help developping countries would be to provide them :
1/ good infrastructure for universities, with enough working desktop computers in classrooms and fund to pay the teachers and the running costs (power and bandwitdh are very expensive in those countries, as are alarms, secured doors etc... to prevent the stealing of everything).

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (15 responses)

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 (guest, #55989) [Link] (5 responses)

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 ?
1 billion people are starving, they don't have money for food or drinkable water, electricity is lacking (regular power cut due to some king of round robin scheme to provide electricity to everybody in Dakar, capital of Senegal which is one of the best doing country in sub-saharian Africa).

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:
I quote only 2 parts of the 3 pages worth to read document presenting ICT:
Aout Nepad > Priority areas > Human Development > ICT
http://www.nepad.org/2005/files/documents/30.pdf

"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 :
- to double the teledensity of 2 lines per 100 people
- to develop and produce a pool of ICT-proficient youth and students from which Africa can draw trainee ICT engineers, programmers and software developpers.
- to develop local content software, based specially on Africa's culture legacy"

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.
Cell phone are also a community effort, not one for each people, but one per business unit. Also, when there is no power in a village, there are no cell phones !

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:
- open OS and software to permit them to study how it work, and adapt/build their own solutions fitting their real needs.
- open content (books, wikipedia...), which can be copied and modified, not ebooks with drm that will only cost a lot, and will mostly be inadequate occidental content.
This would work and provide a real help, that was the initial plan of olpc before the treason ;-) even if the targeted audience was/is wrong imnsho.

XO is a laptop for children 6-12 years old

Posted Jan 9, 2009 18:18 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

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 (guest, #55989) [Link] (3 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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.
And one good news is: the number of child per family decreases when people gets richer.

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 (guest, #55989) [Link] (8 responses)

Based on CIA factbook:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/int_int_int_ban_mbp_per...

Niger
International internet bandwidth: 30 Mb/s
Price basket for internet: 104 $month
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ng-niger/int-internet

USA:
International Internet Bandwith: 970 Gb/s
Price basket of internet: 14 $/month
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us-united-states/int-...

So i maintain:
1/ olpc is misinformed of reality when it speaks of internet access for children with their wonderful technology

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] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMeX2D4AOjM
"connected so the child can access the internet" 42s-44s of the video.

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.
This is also one identified problem of development: foreign NGOs have more power than local governments (at least in Africa), and they do what they want, no matter if it is asked for, or at least adequate.

I can tell you: they don't care about high-tech for children, they just want normal (preferably low power) computers for universites and schools, they can tune and repair easily, like we do with ordinary exchangable components. And they need to part-time work as cyber-center, to cover the expenses (mainly teachers, power and bandwidth cost)

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

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 (guest, #55989) [Link] (4 responses)

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:
"# 2008-01-07
One Laptop per Child Giving Campaign Raises $35 Million in 2007"

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

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 (guest, #55989) [Link] (2 responses)

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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.
Do you think it is possible to send 250 million xo ? I don't.
That's worth $50 billions of hardware (not to speak of other costs).
Can _we_ (foreigners) send/help enought teachers for 250 million children ? no.

So 250 million child, lets say 25 million bachelor, 2.5 million at university.
1 machine for 10 students, that's 250 000 machines in several hundreds universities. This is possible now. (the number are certainly wrong, but not that much)

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.

http://meandubuntu.wordpress.com/ms-and-floss/

Nicholas?

Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:04 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (11 responses)

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] (4 responses)

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 1:47 UTC (Thu) by matthew_parry@hotmail.com (guest, #55987) [Link] (3 responses)

http://olpcnews.com/sales_talk/microsoft/how_microsoft_go...

Nicholas?

Posted Jan 8, 2009 15:27 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (2 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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 0:53 UTC (Thu) by leoc (guest, #39773) [Link]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586754115002717.html

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] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #51588) [Link] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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] (9 responses)

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] (8 responses)

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] (6 responses)

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 (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

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] (4 responses)

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 (guest, #7029) [Link] (3 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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 (guest, #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?