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Because there are a lot of cheap older laptops in the third world. Some cheap new ones too. But having to pay internet fees is beyond the means of many. .

I suppose that by "x86 OLPC" they mean the current XO 1.5 which is powered by a 1GHz VIA chip.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification_1.5

That's correct.

You don't appear to be an educational facility contemplating a deployment of "one laptop per child" or a child in a developing country, so I sincerely hope OLPC doesn't give a damn about what you want.

People have ported Debian and Ubuntu to the current XO hardware, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Linux_distributions

Hi. Just reminding everyone that the current default OLPC OS now allows dual-booting to Fedora+Gnome aside from initially booting into the kid-oriented Fedora+Sugar desktop environment, making it suitable for more traditional uses by older users as well as being capable dev machines.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.3 Will be posting this multiple times here (please don't mod as redundant) as Slashdotters really need to be made aware of this fact.

Hi. Just reminding everyone that the current default OLPC OS now allows dual-booting to Fedora+Gnome aside from initially booting into the kid-oriented Fedora+Sugar desktop environment, making it suitable for more traditional uses by older users as well as being capable dev machines.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.3 Will be posting this multiple times here (please don't mod as redundant) as Slashdotters really need to be made aware of this fact.

Hi. Just reminding everyone that the current default OLPC OS now allows dual-booting to Fedora+Gnome aside from initially booting into the kid-oriented Fedora+Sugar desktop environment, making it suitable for more traditional uses by older users as well as being capable dev machines.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.3 Will be posting this multiple times here (please don't mod as redundant) as Slashdotters really need to be made aware of this fact.

I would prefer to see OLPC provide a path from the XO to a full blown Linux distribution that does not require children to learn a new UI.

Since when being in a position to learn new things is bad for a kid?

Note that it is not the knowledge that's important, but rather to "flex that muscle" involved in learning and make learning (and, if possible, critical thinking) a constant through the life. Something that the westernalized "civilizations", so blinded by efficiency/cost-reduction, have lost the focus long ago - I'd venture to say for as long as 1950-ies. No wonder the "taming" process now called "education" is seen by the kids like a burden and also as a "cost" by the society in general.

No wonder a constructivist like Negroponte, in addition to a very low price, took another radical step: to make the OLPC not feel like a pure laptop but as a tool for leaning. A disputable choice, as there are many other choices leading to the same result, but at least the mission is very well defined:

To this end, we have designed hardware, content and software for collaborative, joyful, and self-empowered learning. With access to this type of tool, children are engaged in their own education, and learn, share, and create together. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

Also, some other quotes from Negroponte's personal vision:

It's an education project, not a laptop project.

Laptops are both a window and a tool a window into the world and a tool with which to think They are a wonderful way for all children through "learn learning"

.

I suppose that by "x86 OLPC" they mean the current XO 1.5 which is powered by a 1GHz VIA chip.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification_1.5

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cow_Power which is a subset of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_and_power

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cow_Power which is a subset of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_and_power

A TV-Out. Right. I am at a loss what to say. Read the website, please, before you continue to participate in this discussion. There you will find statements like this one:

In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home.

Pardon my french, but which fucking TV do you want to connect the XO to in the middle of fucking nowhere in Africa?! Such a connector would be useless to the vast majority of the user base, it would add to hardware cost, maintenance, it would open another hole through which sand and liquids could enter the casing and it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of the OLPC project.

Regarding your first question: I do not know. I did not bring up this utterly retarded argument that somehow an extremely expensive ruggedised smartphone has anything to do with the OLPC.

MS FUD scared educational ministries into asking for Windows, but I don't think any deployment is actually using Windows on the XO. Every single one shipped running a version of Fedora Linux with the "Sugar" UI, and recent software releases ( http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.2 ) offer a Gnome desktop as an alternative.

You're entitled to your perceptions, but the XO is far from the CrunchPad. Since Negroponte's overpromising, OLPC has shipped two generations of hardware, several software releases for the laptops (and a school server), and developers have created a few hundred activities for the UI. The hardware and software was "real and inventive", now they're actually executing and delivering it while the technorati drool over new shiny.

From http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments , "There are over 1.85 million XOs in the field as of August, 2010." 500,000 kids in Peru and 400,000 in Uruguay have the laptops, tens of thousands in other countries.

I can get a €15 machine from the local garage sale if need be. That still has nothing to do with the OLPC. The majority of people in Africa make a few dollars a month which they spend on food, medication and other essential items. They cannot afford a computer, no matter how cheap it is by our standards. And dumping them in front of a "common" laptop would do them no good, either. The XO is not simply about getting online. Please read the mission statement and the docs on the project's website.

Your question, though, is quite impossible to answer. Consumption depends to a large degree on how you use your machine, so every user will get different results. Independent tests and reviews are the only way aside from personal measurings I could think of to get any realistic figure.

According to this website it does.

"OLPC and Red Hat continually develop the Fedora-derived OLPC Linux operating system."

A computer so you can use what software or access what network?

I dunno, maybe this computer using this software and accessing this network seems a good start.

A computer so you can use what software or access what network?

I dunno, maybe this computer using this software and accessing this network seems a good start.

Locking it down to vetted apps from people who register weeds out a lot of malware

So does proper sandboxing of applications. See OLPC Bitfrost for an example of how to do it right.

as well as a lot of apps that will make the performance of the battery and other apps terrible

Then the battery management application should list what applications have used the most energy, where energy is estimated from cumulative CPU time, camera time, GPS time, etc.

Further, it gives MS more control in case they want to lock things down in future.

This is the actual antifeature. Microsoft is intentionally selling what economists call damaged goods.

You are right in principle, but not in practice. The problem is that the security model for software package installations allows for privilege escalation in an unconstrained (not chrooted) environment. This means that the installer can do whatever it wants to Mozilla, and there's nothing Mozilla can do to stop it.

The solution to this problem is to use a different installation model and a different security model. Two examples are Bitfrost and iOS. Both use a security model where apps are constrained as to what they can access, and how they can access it. Installers aren't allowed to scribble all over the filesystem. Consequently, app installers would not be *able* to modify the Mozilla install, so this simply wouldn't be an issue.

So basically what's going on here is that these companies are taking advantage of a broken security model while they can. Hopefully as technology marches forward, this broken security model will become obsolete, although I see no evidence that Microsoft or Apple are working on it.

One Laptop per child has emulators for regular PCs and their software is ideally suited to a small child: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software_components They even have a "live boot" based on Fedora Linux

It doesn't need anti malware for the same reason XO doesn't. NO IPC means you can't infect one program with another.
There are no fleet management components or APIs.
go to an anderoid tablet for that. This is a consumer product that wants to mantain a consumer image. Do you actually like the fact that your IT department emposes fleet management software on your desktop at work?
There are no policy controls to prevent data theft of give data protection at all (aside from DRM).
whats that kill switch people have been harping on about? I have this suspicion that the iOS security model is made by the guy behind bitfrost

as long as the plugin is native code it can issue system calls.

But unless the plug-in is run in a process with sufficient privileges, its system calls will fail with "Permission denied".

then it can't prevent a plugin from accessing the filesystem.

What about chroot()? See OLPC Bitfrost for how a sandbox of native code could be implemented.

How about the XKCD Pet Netbook Robot? :) It's finally been turned into a reality using a One Laptop Per Child XO-1 + and an Arduino microcontroller via Project Butia!

One Laptop Per Child; http://laptop.org/en/children/

What's the difference between "malicious" and "beneficial", when it comes to software?

From the user's point of view, the threats are modeled rawther well on the Bitfrost page. But from a platform owner's (e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) point of view, the threats are anything that would either tarnish the brand or compete with the platform owner.

Please take a look at those: http://bethstepsup.blogspot.com/ http://planet.laptop.org/

Laboratory equipment such as distance measured by Sonar, or any periodic electrical signal by oscilloscope.. uhuh, no way could computers be useful for that.

A computer in a laboratory is quite useful; a computer for each pupil is not (for educational purpose).

Laboratory equipment such as distance measured by Sonar, or any periodic electrical signal by oscilloscope.. uhuh, no way could computers be useful for that.

Not distributed enough for you? Imagine a Linux based computer like OLPC targeted for kids. Your company distributes Open Source/Public Domain works under DRM to ensure that your users only run software that's up-to-date, reviewed, and covered under your support contract.

Under OLPC Bitfrost, the user can assign privileges to an app, either through the installer package or later. Some privileges may only be assigned later; for example, an installer cannot simultaneously request network access and the ability to scan the user's home directory. But the user always has the ability to assign these privileges, apart from a couple privileges related to the recovery image that require a developer key. These keys appear to be available upon the child's request with a two-week turnaround to make sure the computer hasn't been reported stolen.

They can't normally be bought except in large government-level quantities, but if you want to get your hands on one for testing, you can apply for the contributors' program. Basically you submit a project proposal on how you're going to use the units, and it's kinda like a grant except they send you laptop units.

You can volunteer as a developer and if you submit a good project proposal, there's a good chance of being sent some units.

You can check it out and apply here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program

Do you think Apple, Dell, HP, or the damn OLPC project actually develop anything?

I'll agree with you as far as Apple, Dell and HP are concerned. But the OLPC was truly innovative:

• The display works in both backlit (color) and reflective (black and white) modes. As mentioned in another comment a startup is now try to industrialize this technology (Pixel Xi) and we should finally have it within a couple of years.
• The display can stay on while the rest of the computer is turned off, thus allowing big power savings when reading stuff.
• Support for mesh networking.
• Capable of acting as a mesh networking router while the rest of the computer is off.
• The microphone jack accepts a wider range of voltages and can double as a signal analyzer for school experiments.
• Even the 'rabbit ears' serve a dual purpose: sealing the peripheral connectors and providing better range than regular embedded antennas.

You are implicitly assuming that the wear leveling algorithm spans the whole device.

That is - a write to block 407 will have the wear evenly distributed.

There are several issues here.

Firstly - eraseblocks are typically around 150K or so.

Secondly - http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org/msg170028.html - many flash devices may wear level only on 'zones'. So a write to block 407 may only wear level across .5% of the device.

Doing the wear leveling this way drastically reduces the amount of CPU and other data storage you need to keep track of where the blocks are.

The OLPC project http://wiki.laptop.org/go/NAND_Testing#SD_Cards - did some interesting tests, writing and rewriting two 20M files.
This failed in one SD of 6 tested, at 16terabytes written.

The wear leveling algorithms of 99.9% of flash devices are not public. You don't know what the wear leveling span was in the above test. It may reasonably have been a thousand eraseblocks - 130M or so.
This will mean that the actual writes per block were on the order of 12 million.
This is not a completely surprising number to me for the ~5% of the spare blocks in the wear leveling block to have been used.

Unfortunately, the secrecy means that the chip you order next week may perform differently.

Considering this press release, it does indeed seem likely the OLPC will use it.

Quoting:

The One Laptop per Child Foundation (OLPC) [...] and Pixel Qi Corporation [...] have signed a permanent and royalty-free cross-licensing agreement that will allow both organizations to deliver products incorporating the world’s most advanced screen technology.

As a result of the agreement, OLPC receives full license to all Pixel Qi “3qi” screen technology, including 70+ patents in process and all current and future IP developed by Pixel Qi for multi-mode screens. Pixel Qi is leading the design of new screens for OLPC’s next-generation XO laptops.

A bit off topic. The OLPC folks are looking for donation of the OLPC-1 for use in Haiti. Check out http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_for_Haiti for details.

From what I've heard, those are the best case specs. http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2010-May/028512.html

So the first info about the Courier I can find is dated September 22 2009.

But OLPC already showed off a concept XO-2 back in May 2008.

Funny that earlier - Steve Jobs offered to put OS-X on OLPC for free, but they "declined because it's not open source".
Now, after "a deal with Microsoft" Both XP and Linux will be options.

Makes me wish I hadn't gotten those two OLPC's. when I heard that.
But if the XO-2 ever materializes (and it probably wont) I think I'll just wait for the Mac iPad duo.

Note: The XO touchpads tend to flake out, and some of the lower keys on the keyboard can be problematic as well. This may be fixed in the later models, however.

If you decide to go the XO route, you might want to keep a USB mouse on hand, and maybe a USB keyboard, too. (They might be more comfortable for regular work on the device, as well.)

Troubleshooting XO keyboards

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/index.shtml
http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml

There is a lightweight version of Windows they can run if you can't make it with "Sugar". You can find them on eBay.

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/index.shtml
http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml

There is a lightweight version of Windows they can run if you can't make it with "Sugar". You can find them on eBay.

As I mentioned before, the web in a way handles this by simply not allowing "web applications" to do anything really damaging. That concept is how I think applications should actually evolve, although it is hard to define "not doing damage" for an application.

The Sugar operating system on OLPC's XO-1 laptop has an interesting model for sandboxing applications, called Bitfrost. But then Bitfrost presents a new API onto which Win32 and POSIX don't easily map.

To some extent, current anti-virus companies, I believe, handle this by continually checking their software against popular software packages and making sure they do not get marked as false positives (or, well, actually have viruses in them).

Some do a better job than others. ClamWin, in particular, uses the ClamAV definitions that are designed more for scanning e-mail than for scanning a hard drive, and for files that aren't often e-mailed (such as Excel.exe), ClamWin shows all sorts of false matches.

In short, yes, whitelisting has issues because, as you say, maintaining the whitelist sanely and securely is a difficult (impossible?) problem.

It's possible if you're Microsoft or Apple. These companies have the resources to maintain a central whitelist called Xbox Live Marketplace or App Store, and their platforms are popular enough and homogeneous enough that they can get away with charging developers $99 per year for XNA Creators Club or iPhone Developer Program to run self-compiled programs on a developer's own machine. Frankly, I prefer the Bitfrost model more.

Interestingly, this is the approach that OLPC and now Sugar Labs have taken for file access in Sugar, using the Journal activity. This is also the direction Gnome is heading in, with Zeitgeist and its GUIs.

It's a little strange at first, and it certainly can't replace normal file browsers completely, but it ends up being pretty convenient in day to day use. Of course, these aren't filesystems, just layers atop them.

Do the OLPC XOs have webcams?

Yes they do... http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml

everyone remembers Microsoft idea of limiting this to three - can Apple pull out with one? I don't think so.

The geek forgets that running three activities under SUGAR was [and remains] the practical limit for the OLPC. Release notes

The mobile device with very limited resources can become unresponsive or will simply crash under stress.

I wish this functionality was built into the OS, rather than having to do it manually (for example, a way to disallow internet access during installation) -- but at least it's doable on Android. I don't think any other phone platforms give this level of permission separation or control. I'm not so sure that app review would really fix the overall problem; it might catch the obviously-malicious phishing apps like in this story, but I bet that the app auditors' opinion on what is a privacy violation differs greatly from my own.

Maybe you're thinking of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow, which implements http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost, which does exactly what you're describing. It's currently in Debian ( http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rainbow ) and Fedora ( http://ppc.koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=7262 ).

I wish this functionality was built into the OS, rather than having to do it manually (for example, a way to disallow internet access during installation) -- but at least it's doable on Android. I don't think any other phone platforms give this level of permission separation or control. I'm not so sure that app review would really fix the overall problem; it might catch the obviously-malicious phishing apps like in this story, but I bet that the app auditors' opinion on what is a privacy violation differs greatly from my own.

Maybe you're thinking of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow, which implements http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost, which does exactly what you're describing. It's currently in Debian ( http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rainbow ) and Fedora ( http://ppc.koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=7262 ).

Imagine if we can get to the point where a normal user can use a laptop computer for a year without running with sufficient privileges to install untrusted software.

Video game consoles have had such a lockout for over two decades. But this raises another question: How would developers get their software trusted for use by home users? A peer-review model like Xbox Live Indie Games? A centralized approval model like Apple's App Store? Or a sandbox model like OLPC Bitfrost?

From the OLPC website:

Mission Statement: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

They even go on to say that this is about education, not laptops. So why are they working on building these devices when if all they want is a cheap Panasonic Toughbook? It seems that instead of trying to build cheaper devices, they could partner with a company (like Panasonic) to provide this kind of technology on the cheap.

By focusing so much on the technology, we are forgetting that the purpose of these devices is to enable kids around the world to become more connected. This can be done with an old Toshiba Satellite laptop from 2001, you don't need the latest and greatest software to access the Internet.

Misleading headline. Even after character recognition and heavy compression, 1.6 million books are going to come out at more than 200k per book. That's .2 million MB, or 200 GB. On a normal laptop with a rotating 2.5" drive, that'd be infeasible.

The OLPC has no rotating drives, but rather a 1GB solid-state chip. (Which makes sense, reducing temperature, energy usage as well as shock sensitivity.)

So they probably mean they'll be bundling some software for reading it online.

The XOs usually also have a XS server nearby, available via Wi-Fi. This XS can easily host a rotating drive of 1TB via USB and host the 1.6 million books and more. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_Server

Misleading headline. Even after character recognition and heavy compression, 1.6 million books are going to come out at more than 200k per book. That's .2 million MB, or 200 GB. On a normal laptop with a rotating 2.5" drive, that'd be infeasible.

The OLPC has no rotating drives, but rather a 1GB solid-state chip. (Which makes sense, reducing temperature, energy usage as well as shock sensitivity.)

So they probably mean they'll be bundling some software for reading it online.

A shame that book industry didnt jump at it when was the right moment.