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Is it near the OLPC store? That would seem appropriate, I'd love to get one of their new OLPC XO-1.75 laptops.

Is it near the OLPC store? That would seem appropriate, I'd love to get one of their new OLPC XO-1.75 laptops.

I'm sure there are more issues at play for saving lives in sub-Saharan Africa than a lack of AI stethoscopes.

Well, we know they also need One Laptop Per Child and balloon-based Internet...

I don't see how sub-1080p resolution necessarily makes a subnotebook "unusable". The first two generations of iPad were 1024x768, and the first generation netbooks were 1024x600. The diagonal measure of a 1366x768 square pixel display is 1567 pixels. At 11.6 inches on the Stream 11, that's 135 DPI, or almost double the 72 DPI that of classic Mac computers.

The display of the OLPC XO-1 has a 1200x900 pixel resolution, but the way its color backlight works makes it perceptually comparable to somewhere between 800x600 and 1024x768. So if a Stream 11 is "unusable", so is an XO-1.

On the XO-1 we recommend that you restart Sugar every few hours, and especially after visiting the Background screen in My Settings. The leak is even more severe if the network view shows many icons.

C'mon.

What happened to OLPC? The $99 laptop

OLPC still exists, but is now irrelevant. The project is almost dead.

First, they failed to hit their $100 target. The laptop cost roughly double that.

Second, their program focused on the wrong strategy. They tried to make the perfect device but didn't focus enough on volume. They should have made a laptop that they would cheerfully sell to anyone for $100, and shipped hundreds of millions of devices. Instead they made a somewhat boutique device that cost $200 and they wouldn't sell it to you unless you paid $400 for it. (Under their "give 1/get 1" program, you would pay double for a laptop and OLPC would then give a laptop to a student somewhere.) The boutique strategy didn't work out.

Then they spent time trying to design some new devices that never went anywhere. (XO-2 XO-3)

We now live in a world where you can get an off-the-shelf Android tablet for $40. Therefore you can get roughly four tablets plus four USB keyboards for a similar cost of a single OLPC device.

I respect the OLPC project's ambitious design goals. A laptop that is rugged, can work outdoors, is repairable, and has mesh networking features, running nothing but free software! Neat! But compromising on some of these details could have lowered the price and the project might not be irrelevant now. I'd like to see some statistics on how often the mesh networking is actually used, how often schools actually repair these devices.

Around 2012, the OLPC project tried releasing a special OLPC Android tablet for $150. I can't find any information on how many they sold, but I don't think that really worked out either.

At this point I think the best strategy would be to just write educational software to run on Android tablets, and assume the market will take care of making the tablets.

P.S. I personally paid $400 for the original OLPC laptop. I found the thing to be frustratingly slow and hard to use. (In fairness I routinely use computers that cost way more than $200, but even so...) The worst part was the touchpad; I found it wildly inaccurate so using it was frustrating.

Also, I was looking forward to hacking the thing; I wanted to hit that "Show Source" code keyboard button, see some Python code, and make some sort of improvement. I found that most of the time when I hit the "Show Source" button it didn't do anything and my urge to contribute died.

In the end, I donated my OLPC to a church group, to send to a school in a very poor part of India.

I used to use a Palm Pilot to read books and run various programs including games. The display wasn't great but performance was great (you never had to wait for the thing to respond to a click) and the battery lasted a very long time. (If I remember correctly I got about two weeks of life from a pair of AA cells. I switched to using rechargeable NiMH AA cells, and still got days of use before needing to recharge.)

IMHO the OLPC project could have made a tablet device similar to a Palm Pilot, but with a much larger and higher-resolution monochrome screen... and hit their $100 price point. Such a device would be useful for running educational software and very usable as an ebook reader. In particular the long battery life would have been a huge win compared to the actual OLPC hardware. Such a device shipped in the hundreds of millions of units would have had a much higher chance of changing the world. It could have been offered both as a stand-alone device, and in a nylon case bundled with a USB keyboard (kind of like the Apple Newton case). In t

What happened to OLPC? The $99 laptop

OLPC still exists, but is now irrelevant. The project is almost dead.

First, they failed to hit their $100 target. The laptop cost roughly double that.

Second, their program focused on the wrong strategy. They tried to make the perfect device but didn't focus enough on volume. They should have made a laptop that they would cheerfully sell to anyone for $100, and shipped hundreds of millions of devices. Instead they made a somewhat boutique device that cost $200 and they wouldn't sell it to you unless you paid $400 for it. (Under their "give 1/get 1" program, you would pay double for a laptop and OLPC would then give a laptop to a student somewhere.) The boutique strategy didn't work out.

Then they spent time trying to design some new devices that never went anywhere. (XO-2 XO-3)

We now live in a world where you can get an off-the-shelf Android tablet for $40. Therefore you can get roughly four tablets plus four USB keyboards for a similar cost of a single OLPC device.

I respect the OLPC project's ambitious design goals. A laptop that is rugged, can work outdoors, is repairable, and has mesh networking features, running nothing but free software! Neat! But compromising on some of these details could have lowered the price and the project might not be irrelevant now. I'd like to see some statistics on how often the mesh networking is actually used, how often schools actually repair these devices.

Around 2012, the OLPC project tried releasing a special OLPC Android tablet for $150. I can't find any information on how many they sold, but I don't think that really worked out either.

At this point I think the best strategy would be to just write educational software to run on Android tablets, and assume the market will take care of making the tablets.

P.S. I personally paid $400 for the original OLPC laptop. I found the thing to be frustratingly slow and hard to use. (In fairness I routinely use computers that cost way more than $200, but even so...) The worst part was the touchpad; I found it wildly inaccurate so using it was frustrating.

Also, I was looking forward to hacking the thing; I wanted to hit that "Show Source" code keyboard button, see some Python code, and make some sort of improvement. I found that most of the time when I hit the "Show Source" button it didn't do anything and my urge to contribute died.

In the end, I donated my OLPC to a church group, to send to a school in a very poor part of India.

I used to use a Palm Pilot to read books and run various programs including games. The display wasn't great but performance was great (you never had to wait for the thing to respond to a click) and the battery lasted a very long time. (If I remember correctly I got about two weeks of life from a pair of AA cells. I switched to using rechargeable NiMH AA cells, and still got days of use before needing to recharge.)

IMHO the OLPC project could have made a tablet device similar to a Palm Pilot, but with a much larger and higher-resolution monochrome screen... and hit their $100 price point. Such a device would be useful for running educational software and very usable as an ebook reader. In particular the long battery life would have been a huge win compared to the actual OLPC hardware. Such a device shipped in the hundreds of millions of units would have had a much higher chance of changing the world. It could have been offered both as a stand-alone device, and in a nylon case bundled with a USB keyboard (kind of like the Apple Newton case). In t

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-2

The OLPC XO-2 did have two identical displays, maybe having one be OLED makes it novel enough to call their own...

Probably has more rounded corners too!

That was just a concept, never made into a real thing. Lenovo has made a similar thing a reality: Yoga Book. I've tried to type on it's touchscreen keyboard in a shop where it was displayed as a demo. It was horrible.

The proposed XO-2 was a clamshell where both halves were touchscreens, and one mode of using it was to use the lower half as a keyboard.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-2

I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure you can make something like this despite Apple's patents.

Now, Apple is making claims that their devices have good visibility outdoors, even if the user is wearing sunglasses, so maybe there is something of value in their new patents. But the patents cannot simply be "computing device using touchscreen as a keyboard" because it would have flunked the prior art test.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-2

The OLPC XO-2 did have two identical displays, maybe having one be OLED makes it novel enough to call their own...

Probably has more rounded corners too!

Work on porting to a cross-platform engine/library first. Without that your work will be much harder. And bullet points 6 and 7 in your system requirements are showstoppers.

Also, you may want to talk to organizations like Edubuntu, OLPC, and RPi since their primary focus is education.

Translation, the already shitty security around files on SD cards on Android has now gotten fantastically worse - look for "media managers" that can also handle opening databases from other applications stored on an SD card...

Security from what? "Security" is meaningless without a defined threat model. Sometimes you want to open another application's database to see what information it's storing about you, or to export documents that you have created in that application. That's not a threat, as I see it. See how OLPC defines its threat model and tell me if there's anything you'd add or remove.

Then they decided that it needed to run some form of Windows.

The End.

OLPC didn't decide it needed to run some form of Windows... Microsoft decided it needed some form of Windows. To not be left out, Microsoft ported WindowsXP. All OLPC did to support that was made sure OpenFirmWare would boot Windows (and subsequently standard Linux distros) to prevent Microsoft from completely overwriting the firmware with standard BIOS code preventing Sugar from booting ever again. http://lists.laptop.org/piperm... OLPC still pushed for Linux / Sugar. All the stories I read were about the Sugar installs. Microsoft also pushed the Classmate to be a Windows platform.

Although OLPC had great intentions I feel there were several problems:
-Sugar was ridiculously slow. I know it's running on a crappy AMD Geode, but it was real slow.

-Assumption that everyone wants to be a programmer. One of the reasons Sugar is so slow is it's written in Python. Easy to modify, but being an interpreted language, it's slow. How high a priority is being able to modify the OS's GUI?

-Poor selection of apps. Poor selection of actual learning materials. Instead there's a million "learn to program" type apps, and some crappy games. Yes I think accessibility of learning to program is good, and lots of people on /. will talk about how hacking away on Basic on an Apple //, or POKE on C64 at their school got them into CompSci, you really are the minority. With the amount of money being spent on the things, they better really help with the basics of education (3 R's) first.

-Poor support of the deployments. In many cases it seemed they were dropped off, and it was up to the teachers to figure out. These are teachers not very familiar with computers, so what are they supposed to do with them?

-The platform doesn't age well with the students. Sugar is really targeted for young elementary students. I think if it was designed to have access to a standard Linux desktop (Xfce maybe? I think that's the one that hasn't gone to crap like KDE, Gnome, Unity and will run well on old junk) it would be good for older students, as well as opening up the platform to a lot more applications and resources. XO-1.5 at least was designed to dual boot Sugar and Fedora 11.

-Trying to be too much: Ground up building a new GUI, ground up building a new boot mechanism (OFW), wandering goal (XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75, XO-2, XO-3, XO-4), means they're not dedicated to supporting a certain platform for a longer period of time. With the amount of money these poor countries are spending on it, it should be a solid supported platform for a while.

Really I find a lot of these problems are shared with conventional technology platforms in education. At some point TV was going to be the be all and end all to education. Nope. Growing up my school had Apple //, Mac Classic, iMac, and eventually Windows PCs. Still questionable how much they added to the educational experience. I remember playing games and typing tutor on the Apple //, but there were three of them in the back of a class of 20 students. Although I could use a word processor / Spreadsheet programs (as a commonly toted example of why computers in school are important), it wasn't till University, or later "Real world" / workplace that I learned proper way of doing things (such as styles). At the very least in developing countries any push for computers (OLPC, Tablets, etc) should be a good ebook reader first, with tons of "open textbooks" / lesson plans, but I didn't see that materialize in OLPC.

In the developed world I see it continue. Look at the amount of schools spending ridiculous amounts of money on either laptops for each child, or tablets for each child. Do they actually do anything? In my Junior/Senior year in University there were students that did their Freshman/Sophmore year at a collage that re

Another manager says their product is really exciting and interesting

I would agree with you however MLJ is the same woman who designed the display on the OLPC which was quite remarkable at the time. It utilized 200dpi color while maintaining readability in direct sunlight while not being a crippling drain on the battery. Although google may pay her to hype up "Google X" , she is quite talented and innovative. It would be wise to give her the benefit of the doubt.

lack of a rigorous definition of what makes a particular piece of software "malicious"

I have cleaned out PC's belonging to friends, family and co-workers that were full of trojans.

Then perhaps the way to bring back PC gaming is to analyze the threat model and limit what trojans can do to accomplish their purposes. One could require the publisher of a device's operating system to inspect each program, as is standard practice on iOS and the game consoles. But this is not the only answer nor even the best answer. Operating systems could help by providing robust sandboxing capabilities, such as allowing each user account to make sub-accounts that can see only what the user explicitly puts in that account, and allowing system components such as video codecs to be installed into one of these accounts rather than system-wide.

The user wants to get X done on their computer. Every time you prompt the user to validate or confirm something that isn't doing X, you are taking time away from the user.

And every time you ban an entire class of applications from the monopoly repository, as Apple has done with wireless network monitoring tools on iOS, you are also taking time away from the user.

Bitfrost

A user owns all their files, and they want their applications to use their files. [But] they care about the files that any app running with the user's permissions can (by design and by necessity) access.

Then the application should not run with the user's permissions. Instead, it should run with the application's permissions, where the application can see only those files or folders that the user has chosen through a file chooser form. (If you're using a PC running Windows or Linux, press Ctrl+O now to see an example of such a form; if you're using a Mac, press Command+O.) I apologize for not linking to a page about OLPC Bitfrost more conspicuously earlier, but Bitfrost implements this model, as do the Mac App Store sandbox and the JavaScript File API.

have you ever read through the list of permissions some [Android] apps ask for? [...] They're useless descriptions that essentially tell the user nothing about WHY the application wants those permissions, which is the important information.

Then the application should explain, in its description on the repository, why it needs each Android permission. I've noticed that a lot of applications on Google Play Store already include such an explanation. I'll agree that the permission rationales should be moved closer to the actual list of permissions though. This reduces the attack surface from "applications that request more permissions than the developer adequately explains" to "applications whose developer intentionally lies about what the application does with the permissions", and introducing intent into the equation also introduces the possibility of prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and foreign counterparts.

The solution is not to prevent applications from running entirely as much as to run each application in a sandbox, with access to shared resources such as the contact list controlled by privileges attached to the package and disclosed to the user upon installation. To an extent, the Bitfrost security platform in OLPC Sugar does this, as does Android. Lack of easy sandboxing is an operating system problem that deserves an operating system solution.

What would be impressive is for a bunch of like-minded engineers to get together and offer an FSF computer.
I'm an FSF member, and I think RMS has contributed invaluably to humanity.
Upping the game from here would be offering a positive alternative choice to Mr. Softy, rather than the negative "we think you're a bully" campaign.
Sure, I think Mr. Softy's bully record has been documented well enough; this is not some pro-Redmond troll.
Nevertheless, one wonders when ideas such as OLPC can go for a more broad consumer market, and if not, why not.

An MIT professor designed low cost, self-powered lap top computers here .

My thought is that this type of project has a lot in common with OLPC, since a Smartphone is essentially a PC in a small footprint. Cheap, open source, nice interface, low-end hardware, for the 3rd world. Mix Firefox OS with mesh networking, and things just might get interesting...

Whatever happened to OLPC? They are still around but I hardly hear of them anymore...

Also if you read the specs these tablets have a battery life of 2-3 hours, if there is no power at the school you better hope the students have it at home and remembered to charge their tablet. In a way this is one thing OLPC got right with the XO1 include a hand crank.

Actually, the hand crank thing was just an idea and never implemented.

Instead of a hand crank, they decided to go with a "yo-yo" charger, not attached to the laptop at all. The "yo-yo" would allow kids to use leg muscles, rather than (weaker) arm muscles, to charge the laptop.

But the "yo-yo" was never implemented either.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/YoYo

And, speaking as someone who bought an XO, I think a 2-3 hour battery life is pretty comparable. (I suppose that OLPC might have modified the system software and stretched the battery life later, after I gave away my XO. But the XO is still an x86 chip instead of an ARM, and the battery life is not likely to be that much better than an Android tablet.)

Overall, I think the Android tablet is going to be at least as good for education as an XO. The Android tablet doesn't have the cool feature of a screen that works in bright sunlight as a black-and-white, and probably doesn't have a camera, but I think neither deficiency is a deal-breaker. And Android 4.0 ICS is a much better environment than Sugar, IMHO.

steveha

Read my post below. Rereading the summary, I now have serious doubts Negroponte is behind this deployment. The Thai tablets will supposedly be running Android ICS. Negroponte's tablet deployment would have run a more conventional GNU/Linux install underneath what would most probably be the Sugar interface (Fedora-based).

Can tablets make a difference to a child learning to read for the first time, without a teacher or traditional classroom structure? That's the question we are exploring with our reading project, currently underway in Ethiopia.

People from OLPC may disagree with you, and at least the experience in my country, 5 years after it got implemented, seem to be positive.

But maybe would consider putting Sugar (i.e. from here) as environment instead of a "normal" desktop and/or distribution

Email help@laptop.org ; from what little you said it sounds like you may have run into this issue which happens if the software was never updated.

You may need a serial adapter to fix your XO; at least one company sells them.

On the list of things keeping children in poor countries from getting an education, lack of laptops is way towards the bottom.

The thing which is missing is access to information and various tools. A computer is a good and cheap way to deliver information when textbooks aren't available and is a good and cheap way to deliver tools such as calculators; word puzzles and so on when those aren't available. These aren't really that much available in a standard base OS install that you would see, but OLPC provides a custom environment where they are available.

You'd get far more bang for your buck with desktops.

I suggest you have a look at the OLPC FAQ, which explains this stuff. Desktops require large amounts of continuous power, which just isn't available in the environment these places are designed for. Laptops with batteries and low power usage just work better here. These students often simply don't have a space where they could put a desktop anyway.

And most of all, every time I read about OLPC, it's always about the tech and the specs, not how it actually helps kids. That strikes me as techno navel-gazing at its worst.

You are reading about OLPC on Slashdot "techno navel-gazing at its worst" is our hobby. Perhaps you should go and read about this from the people who are actually doing it.

Until I actually read or see a story that details the benefits to real children (and please, feel free to send those links), I'll keep assuming that this is first and foremost about people finding ways to make themselves feel good about what they do.

The OLPC has a stories page on their front page. That's probably a good place to start. Beyond that they have a bunch of mailing lists where you will be able to find a whole load of stories. However, be aware that there probably hasn't been much reason to direct detailed information towards those like yourself who aren't involved or volunteering so you will find that you have to dig through all the individual country level lists in different languages. These seem to be more active than the top level ones.

On the list of things keeping children in poor countries from getting an education, lack of laptops is way towards the bottom.

The thing which is missing is access to information and various tools. A computer is a good and cheap way to deliver information when textbooks aren't available and is a good and cheap way to deliver tools such as calculators; word puzzles and so on when those aren't available. These aren't really that much available in a standard base OS install that you would see, but OLPC provides a custom environment where they are available.

You'd get far more bang for your buck with desktops.

I suggest you have a look at the OLPC FAQ, which explains this stuff. Desktops require large amounts of continuous power, which just isn't available in the environment these places are designed for. Laptops with batteries and low power usage just work better here. These students often simply don't have a space where they could put a desktop anyway.

And most of all, every time I read about OLPC, it's always about the tech and the specs, not how it actually helps kids. That strikes me as techno navel-gazing at its worst.

You are reading about OLPC on Slashdot "techno navel-gazing at its worst" is our hobby. Perhaps you should go and read about this from the people who are actually doing it.

Until I actually read or see a story that details the benefits to real children (and please, feel free to send those links), I'll keep assuming that this is first and foremost about people finding ways to make themselves feel good about what they do.

The OLPC has a stories page on their front page. That's probably a good place to start. Beyond that they have a bunch of mailing lists where you will be able to find a whole load of stories. However, be aware that there probably hasn't been much reason to direct detailed information towards those like yourself who aren't involved or volunteering so you will find that you have to dig through all the individual country level lists in different languages. These seem to be more active than the top level ones.

In the latest stable release on my G1G1 XO-1, pressing View Source (Fn + Space) opens up a nifty project source code browser for Chat, Paint, Read and other Python activities I tried (it's pretty cool!).

The Sugar Journal is just different. If you don't name you get Paint Activity, Chat Activity, etc. which is no worse than having New document.odp, New document(2).odp, etc. It's BETTER for kids because there's no folders to navigate. The Sugar developers have smoothed a lot of the rough edges and improved things, e.g. the default when you start an activity is to resume your last document.

PDF support was terrible, but you can blame Evince and Poppler for not managing memory better on a device with only 128kB RAM. These days the Read activity remembers the last page you're on and has bookmarking with notes! You can flip the screen and close the keyboard and still use the arrow and game keys work to move/zoom/page around, so maybe it works better as an e-reader. (Also you can now open PDFs within the browser, but that doesn't work as well.)

As people work on the software it slowly improves, and new releases incorporate improvements in Fedora, GTK, Abiword, etc. The constructionist (or is it constructivist, I get my pedagogical terms confused) activities like Scratch and Turtle Blocks are impressive. But I don't think many adults would enjoy using an XO over a conventional laptop or desktop. I had run Sugar under qemu so I knew I wouldn't be blown away by my G1G1 laptop, regardless of Nicholas Negroponte's sales hype. I think OLPC has it exactly right these days, provide laptops to anyone with a credible project that advances their educational aims.

In the latest stable release on my G1G1 XO-1, pressing View Source (Fn + Space) opens up a nifty project source code browser for Chat, Paint, Read and other Python activities I tried (it's pretty cool!).

The Sugar Journal is just different. If you don't name you get Paint Activity, Chat Activity, etc. which is no worse than having New document.odp, New document(2).odp, etc. It's BETTER for kids because there's no folders to navigate. The Sugar developers have smoothed a lot of the rough edges and improved things, e.g. the default when you start an activity is to resume your last document.

PDF support was terrible, but you can blame Evince and Poppler for not managing memory better on a device with only 128kB RAM. These days the Read activity remembers the last page you're on and has bookmarking with notes! You can flip the screen and close the keyboard and still use the arrow and game keys work to move/zoom/page around, so maybe it works better as an e-reader. (Also you can now open PDFs within the browser, but that doesn't work as well.)

As people work on the software it slowly improves, and new releases incorporate improvements in Fedora, GTK, Abiword, etc. The constructionist (or is it constructivist, I get my pedagogical terms confused) activities like Scratch and Turtle Blocks are impressive. But I don't think many adults would enjoy using an XO over a conventional laptop or desktop. I had run Sugar under qemu so I knew I wouldn't be blown away by my G1G1 laptop, regardless of Nicholas Negroponte's sales hype. I think OLPC has it exactly right these days, provide laptops to anyone with a credible project that advances their educational aims.

OLPC's customers are educational organizations that can implement "one laptop per child".

A lot of the OLPC software effort is easing the hard work of a deployment: managing reflashing hundreds of machines at once with a new distribution, restoring to a stable image, device backup, school servers, service & repair, etc. That's more involved than "selling low-cost computers" and it's different from "the democratization of computers". Android and ChromeOS have some similar facilities and someone could base large educational rollouts on them, but there's little money in it, so it seems if a non-profit is still the way to go.

You're confused (or writing poorly about fish). OLPC never "jettisoned" Sugar. The OLPC software distribution now offers a choice between the Sugar UI and a Gnome desktop, and supports running a version of Windows XP from SD card; OLPC provided these choices in response to those education customers. Of the 2.5M XO laptops out there, no large deployment is running Microsoft Windows. In many Sugar activities, pressing View Source (Fn + Space) opens up the Python source code (it's pretty cool!), and the source code from the firmware up is readily available.

Anonymous Coward wrote
My complaint with OLPC is rather than try to optimize the original hardware design to make it cheaper and more capable, they simply designed a completely new device.
The original XO-1 with AMD Geode LX was followed by the faster more powerful XO-1.5 with Via C7-M, an option for a non-membrane regular-style keyboard, and now an Marvell Sheeva ARM-based XO-1.75 is nearing beta. All use the same Yves Béhar/fuseproject industrial design and reuse some components such as the battery as the XO-1, so these worthwhile revisions didn't get much coverage.

According to the deployments page, there are "2.5 million XOs in the field as of November, 2011", mostly in Uruguay and Peru.

Anonymous Coward wrote
My complaint with OLPC is rather than try to optimize the original hardware design to make it cheaper and more capable, they simply designed a completely new device.
The original XO-1 with AMD Geode LX was followed by the faster more powerful XO-1.5 with Via C7-M, an option for a non-membrane regular-style keyboard, and now an Marvell Sheeva ARM-based XO-1.75 is nearing beta. All use the same Yves Béhar/fuseproject industrial design and reuse some components such as the battery as the XO-1, so these worthwhile revisions didn't get much coverage.

According to the deployments page, there are "2.5 million XOs in the field as of November, 2011", mostly in Uruguay and Peru.

Don't be misled by those reviews. I was able to borrow some OLPC XO units via the contributors program http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program and let me tell you they kick ass.

If you reduce the brightness of the unit to zero, it will automatically go into gameboy/calculator black and white LCD mode. When the backlight is on (which will activate color), it's still readable in sunlight, will just look black and white.

The only quirk it has is that it uses parallel diagonal strips of red, green and blue pixels separately so there's a dithering effect in backlit color LCD (only 1 R,G or B light per pixel essentially instead of the usaul mix of all 3), but it trumps any of those black & white only no-backlight screens like e-ink.

Hey everyone.

Although units are very hard to get a hold of, if you're really sincere and interested about developing, OLPC will ship and lend you units free of charge with the promise that you will pass them on to the next developer when you're done with your project.

msobkow, all you need to do is to make a good project proposal and apply for the contributors program:

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

They really do send these out. I applied and OLPC sent over some units all the way to the Philippines

You guys can check what's happening with the different OLPC mailing lists here:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/

And the developer mailing list which is the most active:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

I've also been able to do some hands on testing stuff on a prototype XO-1.75 which is the Marvell Armada-driven ARM version meant to succeed the XO-1.5 (as well as being the basis for the XO-3). It's been a really interesting experience with the prolonged battery life, but not without its quirks as a "real mainstream linux" OS running on an ARM machine (it's running Fedora ARM, dual bootable to the Sugar UI paradigm or Gnome). If anyone wants to contribute to Fedora-ARM development, this would also be an excellent avenue.

Try to check if there any local groups near your place and check em out. The local group near where I'm at right now (NZ) was kind enough to lend me one of these rare prototypes (and will be returning it soon).

Cheers!

-Naz

Hey everyone.

Although units are very hard to get a hold of, if you're really sincere and interested about developing, OLPC will ship and lend you units free of charge with the promise that you will pass them on to the next developer when you're done with your project.

msobkow, all you need to do is to make a good project proposal and apply for the contributors program:

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

They really do send these out. I applied and OLPC sent over some units all the way to the Philippines

You guys can check what's happening with the different OLPC mailing lists here:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/

And the developer mailing list which is the most active:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

I've also been able to do some hands on testing stuff on a prototype XO-1.75 which is the Marvell Armada-driven ARM version meant to succeed the XO-1.5 (as well as being the basis for the XO-3). It's been a really interesting experience with the prolonged battery life, but not without its quirks as a "real mainstream linux" OS running on an ARM machine (it's running Fedora ARM, dual bootable to the Sugar UI paradigm or Gnome). If anyone wants to contribute to Fedora-ARM development, this would also be an excellent avenue.

Try to check if there any local groups near your place and check em out. The local group near where I'm at right now (NZ) was kind enough to lend me one of these rare prototypes (and will be returning it soon).

Cheers!

-Naz

Hey everyone.

Although units are very hard to get a hold of, if you're really sincere and interested about developing, OLPC will ship and lend you units free of charge with the promise that you will pass them on to the next developer when you're done with your project.

msobkow, all you need to do is to make a good project proposal and apply for the contributors program:

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

They really do send these out. I applied and OLPC sent over some units all the way to the Philippines

You guys can check what's happening with the different OLPC mailing lists here:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/

And the developer mailing list which is the most active:
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

I've also been able to do some hands on testing stuff on a prototype XO-1.75 which is the Marvell Armada-driven ARM version meant to succeed the XO-1.5 (as well as being the basis for the XO-3). It's been a really interesting experience with the prolonged battery life, but not without its quirks as a "real mainstream linux" OS running on an ARM machine (it's running Fedora ARM, dual bootable to the Sugar UI paradigm or Gnome). If anyone wants to contribute to Fedora-ARM development, this would also be an excellent avenue.

Try to check if there any local groups near your place and check em out. The local group near where I'm at right now (NZ) was kind enough to lend me one of these rare prototypes (and will be returning it soon).

Cheers!

-Naz

That people don't try to return the product when they screw it up doing something that the product wasn't intended to do (and it costs me money)

The proper way to fix this isn't to block all rooting but to provide a working recovery means to reset the operating system to factory state, restore applications from the market, and restore the user's data from automatic backup. Then figure out a way to segregate the user's data so that it doesn't have to be restored as often; the "/sdcard" partition in some Android devices has worked well for this.

That I eliminate a potential attack vector for malware

You can't neutralize malware without first defining malware. This involves enumerating the possible bad things that malicious software can do. Does this list of bad things miss anything?

But how do you prevent code that runs at the users' access level from being able to access all of the data that the user has access to?

One way is by making user accounts a tree instead of just a list. Root has access to all the user accounts under it, and each user can make separate sub-accounts and run a less-trusted application in a sub-account. Another way is by attaching capabilities to applications, as in OLPC Bitfrost, Android, and the Mac App Store sandbox (which I've been told is written by the same guy who wrote Bitfrost).

Android developers at Google said this was their #1 problem and it is the reason why they are investing so much money into trying to make new technologies to make it easier to find out what is killing your battery life and warn users of "bad" apps.

OS-level battery monitoring in my opinion is the correct solution, as opposed to imposing censorship on application distribution.

Umm, you do know they guy who made Bitfrost is now working for Apple on the sandboxing Apple uses in iPhones and OS X, right?

Just because it's from the same person doesn't mean it implements the same policy. From the Bitfrost page: "we wish to have the ability to execute generally untrusted code, while severely limiting its ability to inflict harm to the system." The iOS environment explicitly denies "the ability to execute generally untrusted code" by design.

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

Okay, all kidding aside, OLPC machines are is in serious need of content/testers/developers.

If you've got a project where you can think of a good use for these machines, you can sign up for the contributors program here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program and if your project is approved, OLPC will ship developer units to you on loan (honor system) free of cost.

Any takers?

But did they only come up with this sinister plan once Li-Ion made its way onto their market, then?

Because apparently that sinister plan wasn't in place for regular alkaline batteries.
And it wasn't in plan for NiCd batteries.
And while my older candybar phone still has a NiMH battery, my newer one has a LiPo ( I guess I skipped the Li-Ion generation ).
And this while LiPo tech has been around for over a decade.

Don't worry, LiFePO4's time in your cellphone will come (apparently it's already in use in the OLPC ( http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Laptop_Batteries#GoldPeak_LiFePO4 ) ).

Sure $35 without a case or power supply, and you still need a display, keyboard and mouse.

The $100 XO 1.75 looks like a much better deal. http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/09/marvell-powered-olpc-xo-1-75-only-draws-2-watts-of-power-finall/

It even comes with a touchscreen display, wifi, USB, keyboard, battery and handcrank. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-1.75

All 2M+ XO laptops in all the deployments run Linux. Development of the open source Fedora spin and the Sugar user interface for kids continues at a reasonable pace.

Stop spreading a meme that wasn't ever true.

All 2M+ XO laptops in all the deployments run Linux. Development of the open source Fedora spin and the Sugar user interface for kids continues at a reasonable pace.

Stop spreading a meme that wasn't ever true.

All 2M+ XO laptops in all the deployments run Linux. Development of the open source Fedora spin and the Sugar user interface for kids continues at a reasonable pace.

Stop spreading a meme that wasn't ever true.

I'm not suggesting removing the option to bypass security

Thank you for clarifying.

just that when you leave the decision to the user then this is going to happen in some cases because the user doesn't care until something bad happens.

Which is why an operating system architect should analyze how each capability granted to an application can threaten a user and what can be done to limit that damage. See OLPC Bitfrost for an interesting example.

Uhm, aren't those case-hardened OLPC laptops supposed to be for the poor, deprived kids? I hope this guy is helping his son (I suppose daughter not likely) do his homework?

If not, it appears the OLPC theft problem has not been solved.

Then again, maybe we (via Nicholas and his brother John) meant to supply Afgan insurgents with an insecure means of communication?

Preposterous, I'm sure!

students... have solved...

No, they haven't. They have made some nice progress, and apparently have small-scale usage in Haiti, but I certainly wouldn't classify the problem as "solved". They still need to get the devices to where they're needed, which means shipping, mass manufacturing, establishing supply lines, and convincing somebody (corporation, government, investor, or otherwise) that this is a worthwhile idea.

If it was possible to do all of the above for something non-essential like a laptop computer, I'm pretty sure it can be done with a something that actually saves lives.

The major hurdle has been solved and the tings you mention are just minor details.

I have an OLPC, which only has 256MB RAM, and it was constantly running out of memory. Coupled with the fact that it only came with 1GB NAND flash storage, which could not be used as swap space, and it was almost unusable. Most recently, I installed stock, unmodified Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 to an external SD card (not too difficult to do, see instructions here). The desktop would load fine, and gnome-terminal worked well, but running a modern web browser (e.g. Firefox or Chromium) was impossible. Even creating a swap file on the SD card did not help with this. I also tried stock Lubuntu, which uses the lightweight LXDE desktop, but the results were similar.

So, now imagine cutting that amount of memory in half, and there's no way I can see this working well with stock Ubuntu. Android might be a better target, or an extremely lightweight distro such as Puppy Linux. Or, just kill the requirements for a GUI, and let the kids play around with the CLI.