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Jobs Offers Free Mac OS X For $100 Laptops
bonch writes "Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X free of charge to the $100 laptop effort by the One Laptop Per Child project. However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips."
Gee if I was an OS writer Id do it too - its free publicity!
:D
I feel so glad for the red hat crew right now, because theyre going to get lots and lots of promotion from this
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Does this seem like a little bit of zealotry? I mean, why not use a nice, EASY*TO*USE OS instead of something the under-priviledged people using this machine will have to struggle to learn?
Cemil.
However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips.
Sometimes it's tough to stick to your principles. However, in the long run it is always better not to compromise on your beliefs.
Idiots.
Give them a laptop the kinds can more easily use to accomplish their task.
I am an avid Linux user.. But i sure hte hell wouldn't expect most kids to figure out how to configure or install some applications at this point in Linux's development.
Strong product keys like Windows 9X/2000 had, no activation.
Open videocard? no
open chipset? no
open OS? of course! We have principles.
If Steve offers OS X to you for free, you take it.
Yes!
Red Hat sucks
No!
Red Hat? It looks like they've been helping, but wouldn't using something like Debian Embedded be better, as it could be less bloated?
> I thought it was offered free? So where's the problem?
Your understanding of the word `free` in this context.
To really get publicity, he shouldoffer it for free to the general public! Now that would get media attention.
While fast for what it does, OSX does quite a bit. Will you really get a 3d accelerated GUI environment to run on a $100 machine? That seems like asking a lot from the hardware which costs so little. While OSX is nice, I've heard that it can be somewhat slow on even a 700mhz iBook. Do we really want to use it on a $100 laptop?
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I don't see any reason why they couldn't take a nice bare-essentials distro, and build to it from the ground up. I've set up Slack boxes to work rather pain-free for computer illiterate users. No worrying about having to use bundled crap.
Oh well, I'm biased. Grain of salt ;)
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Free installs doesn't mean all upgrades and software will be free and the choices might not be as high when you don't want to spend any $ for the software that you'll need to go along with the OS.
By choosing Red Hat not only do they have a free OS and practically guaranteed free upgrades, they'll also have a huge selection of free software to get maximum use out of the laptops.
It is akin to offering cigarettes to school children for free. You get them hooked early then they pay for the rest of their life (yes I borrowed this from Stallman, and poorly paraphrased too I might add). These guys firmly believe common software should be open source. Especially those wanting to find an opportunity with computers, open source offers them a free way to learn coding methods and such that they may not have access to in their schools. They get free upgrades t their machines if they wish, and do no have to fall behind in the newer software. It is a win-win situation for them.
Whether you believe in open source or not, it is hard to argue it will not benefit those who are receiving these laptops. In the future if they want to use MacOS they can pay for it themselves and leave Linux behind if they feel it will make them more productive or happy.
As much as I love my Mac, I must admit that the last thing a developing country needs is to be helplessly tied to a major corporation. If Microsoft offered them Windows and was accepted, we'd all be up in arms.
Morton's Steakhouse offered to give all of the kids a free steak dinner, but the project declined, saying they needed to stick to their previous decision of powdered eggs for everyone...
Pelease from MIT... The $100 iPod project will let every child in every developing country download Sheryl Crow's new single to their own U2-branded iPod.
Or you use a debian variant. Who knew Red Hat was completely open source? I thought they included pine and other similar things.
Now these laptops definitely aren't going to be using Mac Hardware so what version of OSX would it be? Did the offer mean that they would have to include hardware to allow the x86 version of OSX to run or would it simply run as is.
Price being one of the main issues it seems like additional hardware would be an obvious no-no. So does this mean that it was going to be OSX running on native x86?
I haven't been following the whole Mac to Intel thing too closely but I was under the impression that most likely not any old PC would be able run OSX.
If off the shelf hardware wasn't going to run the version of OSX offered it seems like not being full OSS isn't the only issue it was turned down. Did Jobs know this prior to the offer for a little extra boost of the public's image of Mac or is that just my "don't trust the man"-sense tingling a little prematurely.
It is akin to offering cigarettes to school children for free.
WHAT? OS X causes lung cancer? I'm SHOCKED!
I borrowed this from Stallman
Didn't you get the memo? RMS is a crazy hippie.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah.. they won't get their homework done but at least they'll learn shell scripting.
You can't modify OSX so they want to go with a free OS that's, well... Free. Open. Hackable. So they can use it and learn what makes it tick.
Red Hat, however, doesn't take an overwhelming amount of system resources, which I presume is ever so slightly important for something that's supposed to be able to be powered by a hand powered generator. Besides, Red Hat is also donating a couple of million to this project, something which Steve Jobs doesn't seem to be doing.
Uh, how about kids who are actually using the notebooks to get their homework done... and not needing to FIX their linux installs at all!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Somehow, I don't see OS X running very well on a $100 laptop.
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"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Well their reason for not selecting it might be zealotry, but I have to beleive that they can create a Redhat based distribution that will work with their hardware all the time. That is part of the Apple secret. If your hardware is a small handpicked set, then having an OS that just works is that much easier.
Think Deeply.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Actually, OSX runs VERY well on an old 333MHz iMac with 64 megs of ram. I won't take the latest version, mind you, but it works well. No lag in the dock or anything.
More critical thinking skills for the kids that get to fix their linux installs instead of clicking on pretty icons.
It's that attitude that's keeping the bimbos out of the computer dating sites you know!
You can't take the sky from me...
Be afraid, be very afraid..
And Mr. Negroponte, after meeting with Mr. Gates, now says, "The machine will run anything, including Windows."
MS might be planing a way to ursurp all those laptops after they've been distributed. Hope Jobs does the same.
It is said that the Linux window managers are imitating Windows. Could it be said that it was really Windows imitating X/Motif/Open look? Didn't windowing systems happen on Unix workstations before they happened on PCs, and wasn't Windows trying to be more like the workstations than like the Mac?
For starters, the Mac hangs on to the application program menu as this shared resource where the app that gets the focus also gets control over the single on-screen menu. That may have been fine back in the day of small screens and limited pixels, but in these days of monster displays and ever more pixels, for crying out loud, give each app its own menu as is done by the Linux window managers and by Windows. The Mac system of you have to think which app has control over the menu is too much a distraction. Interestingly, Java apps running under OS-X have their own menus along with a bare-bones Mac main menu.
This type of thing needs to be ENCOURAGED, not discouraged. Even if it was Microsoft.
Besides, the OS is becoming less and less conspicuous. Get the laptop, load OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird.
What's the big deal? Do they think these kids are going to be compiling their own kernels on these $100 laptops?
Red Hat used to be a quality distribution. But we have to go back to the Red Hat 5.x and 6.x days to notice that.
As time has gone on, there have been many improvements that they have failed to adopt. Dropping support for RPM in favour of APT is one such improvement that they didn't make. The whole GCC 2.96 debacle sure didn't help their reputation amongst developers.
Either way, you are correct, Red Hat is not the way to go. Mac OS X, especially free, would have been the best possible choice. Not considering that, Kubuntu would have been the second best option. It'd offer a solid, coherent KDE system, built upon the power of Debian.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
This computer is far closer to a PDA than an actual computer. Mac OS X is a desktop computer OS. If Apple made some kind of PDA-like device and acceptable OS UI to go with such a device, then that would have been fine.
But as it sits, it would have been fsck-all impossible to shoehorn Mac OS X 10.4.3 "just work" into a Negroponte laptop. They wouldn't get to adjust the UI themselves - the part of Mac OS X that is totally closed. With Linux - you can change whatever you want to fit your device. Its perfect.
Now, an Apple engineered open source OS for PDA sized devices - aw hells yeah. That would rock like Mac OS X and the iPod OS because they would design it to "Just Work".
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
one of the primary reasons will be a sucky desktop OS. This laptop is supposed to be an enabler. OSX vs Redhat? Which is easier to use?
The people running this project have let their prejudices towards FOSS get in the way of doing what is right for the end users. They wanted something more "hackable"? OSX isn't hackable enough? What, are they planning to change the kernel?
Sheesh!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Way to get kids off on the wrong foot with Linux -- banish them all to RPM dependency hell!
"There are people in developing countries who have never seen computers so it's not like, 'How is this better than Windows?"'
Well, with that argument, why not just hand them a pile of dogshit?
That's the most useless justification for staying with Red Hat Linux as I've ever heard.
Further, it's not as if Red Hat-proper is "free". You can bet your bottom dollar that Red Hat is seeing dollar signs out of this deal. Big dollar signs.
Sure, Jobs may have been in it partly for ulterior reasons as well - I'm not going to pretend to know what he's thinking - but considering that the entire core of Mac OS X is open source, and what's not open source is a very polished, easy to use, major-vendor-supported OS with amazing language and multilingual support, revolutionary accessibility support, including the first commercial OS to include a free full-fledged spoken interface, and so on, I think that rejecting it out-of-hand on the basis of wanting to be "100%" open source is a little bit short-signted and foolish, when one steps back and looks at the big picture.
I literally can't believe MIT rejected this offer.
(And no, there wouldn't be concerns with system requirements. Apple would have engineered a targeted version of Mac OS X specifically for this program.)
Last time I checked you could install more than one OS on a computer..
You had a fantastic little platform in the Newton. The profile of the educational version was perfect. If you would simply provide such a platform again, at a reasonable price, and provide development tools such as HyperCard, you wouldn't need the hundred dollar laptop effort. YOu could create your own!
Making it easier for us to contact your company with such proposals would be nice also.
Did Steve Jobs offer to have OS X running on AMD chips? I presume that Apple already knew what processor the $100 laptop would have. I do not know the ins and outs of Apple's agreement with Intel, but I wonder how they feel about this. Still, since Apple is not actually manufacturing the laptop, I guess they can run their OS on whatever they want. Still, it is interesting to note that Apple would considering running OS X on AMD products.
Should've gone with Debian/Ubuntu.
Red Hat has contributed money to the project.
-everphilski-
Unbelievable the reactions.
Apple offers it's OS-X free and everybody in this sections says take it.
Imagine Microsoft would offer Windows for free for this device? Everybody cries out loud.
(You can already see some reactions like that around this reaction)
I think it's very wise not to tie yourself to any vendor.
With commercial OS makers, you will have to hope they keep the terms the same in a couple of years and as Seymour Papert said: you can't tinker.
It's also a bit weird that Mr Jobs refuses 3rd party hardware makers to use OSX and now he suddenly 'donates' OS-X...
The overwhelming tone is that they should take up Steve Jobs on his offer - for whatever reason. If Microsoft had made the same offer, dollars to donuts the same people here on slashdot would be saying "f*ck you and the horse you rode in on."
-everphilski-
Apple, for offering up their hard work for free for a great idea. Apple wants people to be able to have a good, modern system for people to work with that is easy to learn and use.
Thank you, Apple.
I also admire the laptop project for turning them down. The point of a computer is not just to "do things" - it's to learn that things can be done. It wasn't pocket calculators that changed the world, it was readily-available, general-purpose, programmable computers.
Having a tool you can study and modify in great depth is a wonderful thing. It's not just a tinker-toy set, it's a tinker-toy set and ready-made large-scale projects *in that set* for you to study and alter/improve upon.
This is the same thing that brought about "hacker boom" of the TRS 80, of the Apple ][, and, yes, even early DOS - except this is larger scale, more sophisticated, and more flexible.
The $100 laptop is not about writing school reports, it's not about web logs, and it's not about accounting software. It's "here's what you can do, here's the tools to do it, and here's how it can be done - come join us."
That is the ultimate goal of Free software, and it can not be accomplished using Mac OS X, no matter how excellent a system OS X is.
I think sir, you will find that kids are FAR more adept at grasping unknown concepts than you and me. We have our ways and are set in them. To learn something new, we need to get away from what we are used to. Kids don't have that disadvantage. Believe me, I know from experience. They grasp Linux as fast as they grasp Windows. From what i've seen (I setup a linux computer lab for an orphanage in India and helped them decide the computer syllabus for the school), Linux helps more because the brighter kids start poring through the man pages and start mucking around with shell commands and scripting after some time (all we told them was that if they needed to know about something, use "info " or "man " - nothing else). They actually learn from it and sometimes they ask you about options that you didn't know existed :) With Windows, the help from both Windows and the command shell isn't too great and the chance to experiment isn't really there. They also appreciate choice. Give them an option to choose their window manager at the login screen and they will go through every single one! Why? Because they can and because they're curious.
:) Sure, there will be those who dont want to learn. That is something that won't change regardless of WHAT you're trying to teach them. But for those that DO want to learn, anything will do.
Sure, Mac OS X is a great OS that just works. Sure its a real steal at no cost. But for kids, the cost of the OS doesnt matter. The fact that it just works is good. But what they really want to do is get into the internals and rip it apart to see what makes it tick. What better candidate than something that's open source? They dont have deadlines to meet. They are not bothered by customers who inist on their documents being in the MS Office format. For kids, it's about the concepts. If it doesn't work, they'll try for some time to see why. They will ask you why it doesn't work. They will try to fix it. If they can't they will ask you. They will listen while you tell them what's wrong. If you can fix it, they will watch you doing it very carefully, trying to understand what you are doing and asking 100 questions in the process. If you can't fix it, they forget about it and move to something else.
Do not underestimate the kids' thirst for knowledge and their ability to acquire it
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Actually, having had a lengthy private conversation with the gentleman, I think I can say that RMS is a sane fellow with a sincere belief that liberal programs help people. /usr/portage/distfiles, but I do look at them now and then. Having that latitude is not to be casually foregone, for all OS X is eyecandyville.
I shared with him that quote from Civ IV "The bureuacracy is expanding to support the needs of an expanding bureaucracy" but the point seemed to elude him. Possibly he focuses on the results, rather than the ethical vacuum existing within the Beltway.
At any rate, among the problems with the opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it. I can't say that I have spelunked deeply within all of the tarballs in
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
i wonder if jobs would have mandated that the laptops have TPM in order to install the free OSX (do any AMD chipsets have TPM?). this would raise the price of the laptops. if he would have created a version that ran on the laptop without TPM, it would be on bittorrent in no time, and installed on my dell soon thereafter.
I may have read it wrong, but the page at MIT says that this is for "developing nations". Its not bad enough we lose a lot of tech jobs to offshore companies, now we have to provide free laptops to "developing nations". I am not saying it isn't a cool initiative, and yes a lot of families here can afford to buy their kids laptops, but where's the push to get them into the hands of underprivileged American kids? And then to get schools to actually USE the technology in a meaningful way... My son attends a "progressive" middle school with a "technology" program...so far he has played Sim City and built a 4 foot tower out of paper cups.
This is reminiscent of what Apple has done for a long time. They alwasy have pushed Apples and Macs into schools, through heavy discounts and "Apples for the students" schemes (50?K worth of dockets from a certain supermarket would get the school a mac clasic, if I rememeber correctly) aimed to get every student trained in using their machines. It was a good idea that worked reasonably well all round.
So, it's not suprising that they tried to do the same thing here. But I agree that they should have rejected it. Getting the source code into the hands of a few million inquisitive youngsters is a Good Thing, (with out collective mindset, of source: there will be some that will shudder at what they might do with it!!), and Apple would demand DRM to prevent those copies ending up being black-marketed around the world.
Still, nice try!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Not a very appropriate comparison, is it? The OS itself is not harmful like a drug, but it is something that you tend to get addicted to, and if it's not a free solution, there will be a cost to the addiction.
To ensure that a developing country has a chance, they should learn on a OS that they won't have to pay a years salary for when they ween themselves from the laptop.
If apple was willing to give free copies to anyone who asked in the future, I'm sure they would reconsider. The only reason for apple to make that offer is the hopes of taking more money from poor developing countries in the future. That's kind of un-apple, isn't it?
The right choice was made.
that all the Mac zealots came out to bash Linux and how OS X is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Right tool for the right job, is the mantra. In this case, these $100 machines aren't exactly robust. An operating system as robust as OS X may work well on pricey, narrow-field hardware that's engineered specifically for the OS. But in this case, these are your run of the mill, low-spec machines, so a customizable OS would work much better.
And the point above all points: It's NOT free. The kernel may be free, the underlying system may be free, but the OS isn't.
Read the only personal Runyon page out there.
when I tested some Java apps on a Mac.
There's your problem.
Try to actually use one. Use the iApps. Use Safari. Use Terminal. Tinker. Play. Break stuff and fix it. The system is so much cleaner, more logical than Windows (and with a few exceptions, Linux)... and of course far easier on the eyes than anything else out there.
(You are absolutely right about Java, though. It's pretty poorly integrated.)
Regarding the application menu being at the top: look up Fitt's Law. It's far easier to shoot the cursor to the top of the screen or the corner than it is to aim the mouse at a 24-px-tall bar. That's the main reason for the menu being the way it is.
They specifically want something that the users can tinker with. Is Apple going to supply the complete source code under a free source license?
I think not.
Infuriate left and right
Does this seem like a little bit of zealotry?
Not to me. But then again I'm pissed off that the project is exporting the confusing term 'open source' instead of the clarifying 'free software'.
an ill wind that blows no good
Actually, having had a lengthy private conversation with the gentleman, I think I can say that RMS is a sane fellow
Sane, perhaps. But still wrong.
The first time I met him, I mentioned an interest in writing an emulator for PDP 8 through 11 for NeXTSTEP. He tried to convince me that I should write an x86 emulator instead, and give it away for all the usual bullshit altruistic reasons. I told him that if I ever gave code away, it would be code that I enjoyed writing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well thank God they rejected it. Otherwise, poor starving children will be running a better OS than me and such travesty cannot stand!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I couldn't agree more --
/. double standard is constantly in effect -- you people should be ashamed, and if you aren't, you should get a clue and THEN be ashamed.
and here's an idea.... Hard drive space costs pennies now, even for mobile devices. What about say, 10-20 gigs dedicated to 'restore' images, you could get at least 5 FULLY installed clone images of various free OSS distros, give them a few different flavors of unix / linux to tinker with (with some sort of common partition only for storing whatever personal files they may need, which won't be touched by the image writer), that way, when they 'tinker' enough to fubar the entire install, they're a reboot, 10ish keystrokes, and 10 minutes away from a complete reinstall of whatever distro they choose.
once again though, I cannot possibly agree more with the parent, the
Just because Steve Jobs is offering OS X for free now, doesn't mean that these people will get OS X for freeif they one day decide to buy a new computer or upgrade. If people in these countries become dependant on an OS that costs money and particularly hardware that they can't manufacture themselves (Apple hardware), they will be at the mercy of multinational corporations and US export taxes etc.
Well, here's the problem. The Mac desktop, and in fact the entire Apple experience, is intuitive for a certain kind of person. Artists, fashion mavens, leftists, and other creative personalities can sit down with a menu bar spanning the width of the screen and comprehend its sensitive, tasteful aesthetic. It's a rare instinct, this appreciation for beauty and truth; accountants and other such pencil-pushers haven't a prayer.
In summary, unattractive squares like you should stick to Linux and Windows. Fitts' Law is for different thinkers.
Apple may have used intuition or good taste when they put a single menu bar at the top of the screen initially, but later on they did research which backed it up.
The edges of the screen are prime real estate and are easy targets to hit because the mouse pointer is constrained by the screen; effectively the menu bar is infinite in height. In order to hit a menu bar at the top of a window, you need to decelerate and hit a target that is fairly small. You need to do precision control in two dimensions instead of only one.
I think one of the reason Windows users are always complaining that using the mouse is slower than the keyboard is because putting the menu at the top of the window makes the mouse slower to use than if it were at the top of the screen.
Bruce Tognazinni devotes an entire chapter--27--of "Tog on Interface," (1992, Addison-Wesley) to this very topic. He cites four or five pieces of research.
But, never mind. It's only research. Tognazinni wrote--in 1990!--"People for years have been explaining to me that in this era of giant screen monitors, we just have to do something about those menu bars way up there at the top of the screen; that menu bars should be attached to windows, or pop up beneath the cursor or something. Anything, just so they aren't up at the top of the screen any more." And I am sure people will be doing it fifteen years from now, too.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
And how, exactly, does the fact that they're donating money indicate that they're not in it for the publicity? Corporations donate money all the time to events for the publicity.
(I don't think that Coors really has much of an opinion on that free Cher concert, and yet they donated money to it... and oddly enough they had a big banner over the stage... who would have thought!)
--
RumorsDaily
You didn't realize that those computers will not be distributed to let the children "do their homework" as you say, but to let them learn how to deal with computers (become computer literate persons) and access the internet. And children have a lot of free time to spend learning how to get their systems to do some funny stuf.
Those who will try to use the computers to help with their homework may not even get good grades because of teachers clueless (can't deal with the data) or because of their excessive clue (not making the children dependent on the computers).
Rethinking email
Make OSX open source!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Linux is more like the opposite of rolling cigarettes--you want to unpack everything.
English is easier said than done.
Seen it run good on a 233 Powerbook with 32MB ram. little slow starting up though.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
However, in the long run it is always better not to compromise on your beliefs.
What if those beliefs are asinine, as in this case?
Which beliefs are you talking about? The one about compromising beliefs, or the ones about this case?
Local language text books? Generic history? Farming references? As usual, the hardware will be easy - what will the software be.
How about an online connection? It seems like all the cool kids are online, now, right? Isn't that the point of these things? Getting modern?
My cynical side thinks that this might be a nice gesture, but not much more than that, if having a cheap computer is not relevant in the lives of the recipients.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You're absolutely right.
We don't need any more people who actually know what the F*** the computer does.
We need more widget-clickers, Damn it!!
(BTW, "underpriviledged" doesn't mean stupid)
I have to agree with this. I recently needed a second computer at home, so i broke out my old 400Mhz G3 PowerMac. I installed OS 10.3 on it and with only 128M of ram it's still pretty fast. It impresses me every time I use it. For web surfing and email there isint a whole lot of difference between it and my PowerBook G4 1Ghz.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Or anybody using KDE...
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I can see it now...the lid of the laptops will be plastered in huge advertisements. It's actually good to see major companies subsidizing this because everyone wins. The laptops stay cheap, and the companies get lots of advertising.
And how, exactly, does the fact that they're donating money indicate that they're not in it for the publicity?
He didn't say it wasn't publicity. He said it wasn't FREE publicity.
Red Hat is not getting free publicity. They are buying publicity for two million dollars. That's pretty fucking far from free.
Then again, Red Hat has been stretching the definition of "free" in a lot of ways over the last couple years, heh.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Doesn't it seem like pro-proprietary software zealotry to think that refusing an opportunity to lose one's software freedom is pitched as "zealotry"? No, framing this issue as zealotry won't help you understand what is really going on.
Ease of use is not freedom. Ease of use is a subjective assessment (everything is probably roughly equally hard to learn when you have no experience with computers) that doesn't address educational goals to the degree software freedom does. Any software can be made easier to use and people don't need to rely on proprietors to do it for us. We can and should do it for ourselves and share the results with people (particularly those who will share their improvements with us). This is part of the spirit that got us the free software OSes we enjoy today.
What Apple is offering here is a gratis opportunity to put on some handcuffs and choose between a set of masters. Some of MacOS X is free software but not all of it. Why subject the kids to a computer they can't control completely? Why help them grow an addiction to proprietary software that will be hard to break? I realize that /. readers tend to think this way only of Microsoft, but Apple is offering a comparable deal here: no software freedom, more like "the first bite is free".
For more on this, I recommend reading Why schools should use exclusively free software.
Digital Citizen
Most likely, given it's a native OS on it's own hardware, taking full advantage of every pipeline and bit of each bus.
It is not the same to run a perfectly optimized OS (and no, not even Gentoo gets that far) on specialized HW.
Tordek, Dwarven Warrior - Juegos de Rol en Argentina
Sure, standard laptops can be fragile, but you seem to have completely missed the fact that these are special custom laptops.
In particular - the laptops will have a crank so you can power them without a constant power supply.
Also, referring to the kids as little monkeys? Come on.
From the FAQ:
"[It] will use innovative power (including wind-up)"
"Kids in the developing world need the newest technology, especially really rugged hardware"
"Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with regard to taking the computer home at night."
What I love about open source is that it's about choice and options. That is something Apple isn't. While I think OS X is nice, Apple is a mini-Microsoft wannabe. They are as lock-in (customer) and lock-out (competition) as anything Microsoft has ever done. I like their products, I hate their philosophy. I'll take OSS, thanks anyway.
References:
See, iPod, Aqua, OS X on Intel requires Apple's hardware, and even the unfair business practices their own resellers filed against them, etc...
Maybe you should read the subject again. I don't think he was objecting to the OP's use of the word "publicity".
I think it's obvious that they are getting publicity. I think the point that strider44 was trying to make was that it's not *free*
It appears to me there are many valid reasons to pick RedHat:
1) RedHat IS paying $2 million for this project, and is one of the 5 companies spear heading this.
2) You can't afford to call up apple / microsoft and say 'hey remember that OS you gave me free? can you please spend time getting this to work for me?'
3) I'm sure the Develops WILL recompile the kernel, and make it just for the laptop in particular. Probably configure everything, and then take an image of the hard disk
4) IIRC, applications like apt, synaptic, yum, yumex can be easily ported to whatever verson of RH they are running, and RedHat still runs the repositories
5) Mac OS / Windows tend to be rather resource hogging compared to Linux (esp with recompiled kernel). Remember, this hardware won't be top of the line
6) Using a GPLed product like Linux ensures that the OS STAYS free, and you will never have to pay / activate the OS / Do any work at all.
With literally thousands of people in developing nations dying every day due to lack of clean water, vitamins, food, and other essentials, isn't this project rather silly?
I've set up Slack boxes to work rather pain-free for computer illiterate users. No worrying about having to use bundled crap.
While that is a very admirable accomplishment, I have to wonder why everyone seems to think these computers are an exercise in a "* for Dummies" effort.
I believe the recipients would be better served learning about the art of computing rather than a "How to use 'Productivity Tool X'" waste of time.
Why not Darwin? It includes most of the things that set OS X above Linux (no slurs intended), like the better BSD security, the bundling of applications into self-contained directory structures, etc.
It's also open source, which meets the specified requirement. If Steve really wanted Apple to be a part of this, he would have pushed Darwin.
Full-blown OS X has way too much overhead to be practical on the proposed hardware, in any event. This was just a PR thing, no real intentions -- other than putting the product name (OS X) into the news.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.
I'm a little more forgiving to Apple (as compared to Microsoft) as Apple has an Open Source foundation (Darwin). Also, just look at the numerous open source foundation items found embedded in the OS. http://www.apple.com/opensource/ Granted, some of this is just marketing BS... but comparing OS X to XP simply isn't fair to the good work Apple has done working with the Open Source community. Sounds like the $100 laptop project threw the baby out with the bath water.
Henchman: Steve, this $100 project wants an open-source OS to run its laptops
Steve: Okay, let's offer them a closed-source OS and let them decline it
Henchman: Exactly! We'll look philantropic and lose no money!
MacOS (and RedHat) is nice and all, but if you want your kids to be able to compete against my kids for a technical job, you should forget about making their toys easy to use. Kids can learn this stuff faster than you think.
I'd also consider installing OpenSolaris if the drivers supported it. Too bad accelerated graphics support isn't there yet.
they will have to use it for several years before they will ever be able to learn how to install and play games, and etc, osx would have been easier for children to use, i dont know why they would have turned it down??
He also says money normally spent on textbooks would be used to pay for the laptops for Brazilian schoolchildren. "I'm very optimistic," he says, giving the project a "70 to 80%" chance of being launched in the country.
I'm sorry but does anyone else see a problem here? I know lots of us here would like to have every single person wired and staring into a monitor to do just about everything but I find this a bit uncomfortable. As a graduating computer engineer, I find that having a book is still much better than reading it off a monitor. Maybe it's just me, but I certainly hope this doesn't backfire on them..
Pine is "open source". It just isn't FREE SOFTWARE. http://www.washington.edu/pine/overview/legal.html
life in low-res
It was copywrited and then patented by MS. As a result, the innovative "+5 Conspiracy" technology has a license which is not only non-redistributable but is also incompatible with GPL based Software such as Slashdot's Slashcode.
They would be making a $100 laptop themselfs, and give tons of them away to schools. It worked in the Apple 2 days, it could work again.
What if Bill Gates had offered a free license of Windows for this project? I read some people in the comments miffed that the project didn't take up Jobs' offer. But seriously, think about it. If you replaced OSX and Jobs with Windows and Gates in this scenario, those same people commenting would have been shouting to high heaven if the project took Gates up on the offer. In terms of the goals of the project, though, it's the same thing if Gates or Jobs offers Windows or OSX to use as the operating system.
I say kudos to the project for sticking to their guns and their principles. Keeping your integrity can mean tough choices sometimes, but it's always better in the long run.
life in low-res
Parent has been wrongfully modded flamebait - PLEASE MOD UP.
imagine a cluster of those...
open source will only grow in popularity with projects like this one... jobs obviously saw the potential in having osx become the standard os of many emerging countries...
Get your torrents...
Duuuuuhhhh...
Besides, it would void the spirit of the project, giving kids a chance to do development and stuff... Newton (or prettymuch any PDA interface, barring Zarus or WinCE) is too light for dev work
-everphilski-
Not everyone who lives in their grandparent's basement is a loveless, pale faggot. My girlfriend left me for one of them :/
But really, providing an environment which promotes learning can't be such a bad thing can it? Systems like OS X and Windows seem to encourage even the mildy curious to wave their hands and go "Voodoo magic" much earlier than something like Slackware. Maybe I'm just distracted by shiny things though...
you posted a/c because you know most ppl would have modded that down in a heartbeat but i do agree with you.
"oh look mommy, they just bought us cheap laptops.. yay!!!..."
"okay dear, lets just starve some more and you can die of dehydration then ill buy one for your sister"
haha. i didnt have a laptop growing up... wtf.
Apple knew they would be declined; its not a concern what chipset it is running on. It's all a publicity stunt. If they hadn't done it now, Microsoft would have done it later.
-everphilski-
I would hope that the project's principles will allow for more free software to do those jobs. Giving the students free software today can inspire them to develop such free software in the future. We can and should switch to free software to do these jobs (free BIOS, for instance) when it works. We should help those working on such things now. Recent history shows that when we work on such programs and switch to using them we gain the freedom over our own lives.
I too would like free software for all the parts of my computer that run software (as opposed to those that run instructions burned into ROM, which might as well be hardwired circuitry). But progress on these grounds will be made one step at a time. There's an old aphorism about winning a revolution by using the enemy's bullets; of course, the free software community is fighting a non-violent revolution, but using what's available often means using something repressive to build something better. Had the project chosen a proprietary OS where perfectly good free software exists, that would have been a different situation entirely; fortunately for the children using these computers, the project leaders say they aren't choosing proprietary software.
Digital Citizen
for a kid, something like GIMP is MORE than enough...heck, they will use the default paintbrush tool and the default color and start drawing. At the end, the drawing is a bunch of squiggles. But to them, it's an ice monster. They will ask you how to change colors. You show them, they're happy. They will find out the rest in their time. You then show them gradients....they play with them...Sometimes you get a little ahead of yourself and try to explain to them layers, opacity and filters...they lose interest. Why? because they want to draw their ice monster and all they need is 3 shades of blue.
With kids, what I've seen is that their imagination plays a MAJOR role in what they do. So, something even as limited as paintbrush is good enough to them. The ones who want to learn more about drawing will do so. They will come to you with questions. You show them how to do what they want and they will remember because that is what they are interested in.
Same with word processors. They will play with font sizes and bold, italics and underline fonts and will explore every button on the word processor to see what it does. They'll use character and line formatting to write "their story". Maybe a few figures here and there. it won't be structured and it won't need a table of contents - and openoffice is more than capable for those needs. They are also not bothered by it's sluggishness...to them...that's the way it works...no complaints.
Its the same with something like inkscape...as long as they can print their pictures or save them to work on them again, they're happy.
And yes, I do know what you're talking about and when stuff goes wrong, they will wait for you to fix it and then they're happy to get back to what they were doing. One thing with Linux stuff...you generally only have to fix it once. Once it works, it works well. That suits kids perfectly.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I think the grandparent of this post completely misses the point that everyone is different. Some want to play with the OS, some want to play with music programs, some want to play with art programs, some want to do word processing, some may want to do programming. We can't presuppose their intents and desires.
Forcing them to use open source software is as bad as forcing them to use closed-source software.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
RTFA, redhat is one of the primary contributors, when ubuntu is coughing up $2mil towards the project maybe then it might be running that distro. Redhat also has the resources to get the device drivers and other bits needed to get the project running quickly.
If its not fun, why do it? - ben and jerry
I don't know why Steve bothered offering. If the machines don't have SSE3, Rosetta won't be able to run any PPC binaries.
Common sense is not so common.
1: Sell cheap laptop with OS X to poor kids 2: Familiarize them with Apple's proprietary software 3: Give them some iPods, too 4: ? 5: Profit!
Way to sidestep the global marketing brainwashed groupthink and reject the use of sex to sell products! You certainly are creative and revolutionary. Well done.
i supose that any current system that may be used on those laptops will have to be adapted, but is easier to adapt from the open source because their have more devs knowing the internals and they're already working without hw acceleration.
Now, i supose that the only benefit that Apple can get from this is mindshare and publicity, but they won't to open source their desktop, so why don't they give more help to the gnustep project? it can be like a low end OSX running with linux/BSD kernel; with it they can give to people a taste of its framework and they will have lot of future developers trained to make free and commercial software for OSX?
Go Linux, go Linux, go Linux,....oh god, no, they're going with Linux, /. seems to be go, go, go, but as soon as they do something with them then everyones, no, no, no. Its the funniest thing I've seen since the last election.
Go Apple, go Apple, go Apple,....no, no, not the Apple,
Go M$, go M$, go....hold on, wtf.
Every time Linux or Apple come up, everyone on
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
Drag a folder to the dock.
Right click to get a nested list view, left click to get the actual folder.
Done.
I'm surprised your post isn't moderated as troll, calling the grandparent poster's point asinine with no explanation at all. I'm also glad that the free software community doesn't hinge on you to progress.
Digital Citizen
Because they may be doing it for higher causes. Some people, even those in corporations, still would like a better world for their kids.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
What, you mean like this?
If you think about it, GNUStep running on Darwin is already damn close to replicating OS X with Free Software. Sure, there's a few things missing (notably, Core*), but if OS X started getting really widespread adoption like this, those holes would be patched up quick.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
They're not "value added", they are freedom removed. Users get the software minus the freedom.
Digital Citizen
Great now I can't get a 100$ OS X laptop because of some open-source zealots and their principals.. MAN!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
...my entire GUI menu under the cursor at all times. I could deal with it. Eliminate a lot of wasted movements with proper button controls and a little muscle memory. I don't like anything permanent taking up screen real estate. I find "tool bars" teh evil. I use them, because that is primarily what is presented with the mainstream OSes, but still...if the hand is on the mouse the mouse should be able to do most anything you want to do. This is very similar to what the pure CLI guys like, be able to do everything from the keyboard and not use the mouse. I just prefer the hints and gestures of GUI control over the rote linear stream of memorized commands, even with shortcuts.
Eventually, someone will come up with an interface that combines the best of keyboard and mouse in one unit, and I have a sneaking suspicion the big breathrough will be coming from the gaming/console using world, and not the desktop/workstation world.
That is what it is about. Alot of people out there claim that Linux is hard to use and understand, when the reallity is, that it is just different than what they are use to. Hopefully, this will create the first generation of Linux users who are not comprised mostly of "Geeks". I hope that this will inspire poeple to give Linux a chance.
This is not RHEL, and this is not Fedora. This is not GNOME at all. It's a completely different UI. There's no "bundled crap".
Also, Slack probably doesn't have engineers to throw at the project, paid. The other commercial distros might, but they're not participating for reasons I know nothing about.
.....opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it.....
Is the purpose of the $100 computer to learn about computers and programming them? I thought it was supposed to be a communication and learning tool for the low income millions who may have never even seen a computer. Of all OS in existence, OSX seems closest to a simple communications box, yet powerful enough to be satistying to geeks also. In schools, if configured for a limited user, it can be used easily by almost anyone and there is little worry about malware installation. Three or four appropriate programs set up by the administrator into limited user accounts makes a very secure, easy to use machine.
All theory is gray
These computers use proprietary processors from AMD, and doubtless a lot of other proprietary hardware. So how do they get to claim "100% Open Source" while using proprietary components? Why do hardware manufacturers get exemptions for their closed Intellectual property models?
... and then they built the supercollider.
I don't know the answer to my own question, but the hardware point you make is only really valid as long as the drivers are all open source as well. Anyone know what they are using in that regard?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"very well?" You must have a LOT of patience. I've placed OS X on older G3 Macs, and I've found it incredibly difficult to be productive. Processes take forever.
I can hardly stand OS X on an older G4 with 256 megs of RAM.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Or how about clean water to Bangledeshis, who are dying by the thousands due to arsenic poisoning? For the price of one of these computers, we can supply a family with safe water for years. These people, too, will create jobs, products, and knowledge that will benefit all.
That is exactly the mindset that proliferates ignorance and vulnerability in the "masses".
Ignorance is not bliss, it's apathy.
That is why they wanted to use open source so they can tailer the OS to the hardware. If it has something that would be unreasonable to run on the hardware than make the nessisary changes.
Same with the apps on it. Slim it down, make it run smooth, and be functional. On Windows/Office you might be able to remove some components without violating the lincense.
Why not go with a completely free Linux distro like Debian instead of a commercial one?
They should have come back and said - we'll take it, if you make the whole thing open source and not just Darwin. Free the Aqua!
Someday I think Apple will go there, but it would have been good to have a push. In the meantime I agree the most important thing for this laptop is to keep the software as open as possible so people that end up with one can really make the device work for them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
.. that makes Linux a cigarette do-it-yourself kit complete with rolling papers ..
I guess that would make BSD a doobie do-it-yourself-kit? Now I know why BSD is so much better! 'cause Herb is the word, my man.
The real path to male liberation
I thought OS X 10.3 ran pretty well on my 500 MHz iBook, but 10.4 seemed noticeably more sluggish. Still usable, but slower.
Um, just sharing.
Yeah, but I'm just more worried about system resource usage. That is why I'm recommending a stripped-down distro.
You all have valid points, though. I'm just a bit of a stuck-in-the-mud, really :)
Oh, and I don't live in my parent's basement. I actually live in a college dorm, and, in 32 days, an apartment (with luck - I'm graduating from college).
Besides, my parents don't have a basment.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I shared with him that quote from Civ IV
Did he slug you in the mouth for quoting from a closed source binary? Stallman is hardly sane. He believes you are not "free" unless you ascribe to HIS meaning of freedom, and that's not freedom at all.
At any rate, among the problems with the opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it.
What are you wanting people to learn, exactly? Arcane UNIX commands? Uh, how is that good for kids?
Having that latitude is not to be casually foregone, for all OS X is eyecandyville.
And with that, you prove your ignorance about OS X! My DarwinPorts installation hates you now.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Gee, that conjures up a real cute Norman Rockwell kinda mental picture. Beaming child with laptop photographed beside contaminated drinking water source, siblings smiling through malaria-crazed eyes and old grand ma-ma, the only adult not to have succumbed to AIDS, cranking the handle merrily while she waits for the arrival of real electricity to the village so that what little food they have doesn't spoil and so she doesn't have to scour the land in search of the odd twig for the cooking fire. Kinda makes you feel all warm inside. I'm busy developing some new games for them right now, like "Ringworm Jim", and "Sim Sanitation". God bless ya, Mr. Jobs (and all who would sail with him).
Install Linux and give it to kids who don't know how to use a lightbulb! (there may be a little exaggeration there)
Except for the fact that SSE3 is a core component of OSX on x86 and currently no AMD chips (to the best of my knowlege) have SSE3 capabilties.
They want an operating system "that can be tinkered with," which displays the standard Slashbot geek assumptions:
1.) That everybody is a goddamned operating systems kernel engineer instead of a user who wants to get some fucking computer work done. 95% of you people have never even modified a single line of your local Linux kernel source tree.
2.) That there will always be a majority of kids who aren't interested in staring at lines of source code to feel good about their "software freedom." Give me a break.
3.) That the tiny minority of kids who would actually be interested in Linux and 100% open source would just wipe OS X off the laptop and install Linux for free anyway.
4.) You guys obsess over making every little kid a coder, when XCode/GCC ships free with OS X, and these kids could have been designing the next great Cocoa apps. Cocoa simply whips the butt of everything else out there.
5.) There are TONS more creative kids than coder kids, and think of all the incredible creative stuff that would have been nurtured here. iLife ships for free with OS X. Now these kids won't get to have Garageband for free, or iPhoto for free, or iMovie and iDVD for free. But hey, now they get to experience the joy of having to install two entire desktop environments and libraries just to run each other's apps! Have fun with a "package management system" and a fragmented filesystem hierarchy that dumps files all over the place instead of in well-designed bundles!
6.) Which leads to my final point. These kids will be taught the wrong ways to do things instead of the right ways. App bundles, real application APIs, real drag-and-drop, etc....
But, the designers' wishes triumphed. Oh? What's this? Red Hat donated $2 million to this project, and now they're getting used over OS X? Ah, that's why. So much for free and open. Only the designers got what they wanted. I guarantee a kid given a choice and presented both systems would have gone with Apple...
"Sufferin' succotash."
Yeah, instead it's corporate market exposure paid for by Red Hat! (to the tune of $2 million "donated" to the project)
"Sufferin' succotash."
He would have made it Open Source.
Tag lost or not installed.
They keep saying how economics of scale will push the price of these things down to about $100. BUT they are only talking about selling them in third world countries. These are not the people who are buying all kinds of tech. They should start selling these in the US, Europe and Japan. They'll sell millions of them and the prices to produce them will plummet.
NTITE
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
GNU/Catcher in the Rye
By RMS
"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little free programs playing some game in
this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little free programs, and nobody's
around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some
crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch the free programs if they start
to go over the non-free cliff - I mean, if they're running and they don't look
where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's
all I'd do all day. I'd just be the GNU/catcher in the rye."
-- author unknown
I read
You are thinking 1st world where there IS a network administrator in the school. Think 3rd world where the school is a grass hut in the middle of God's country and the "network" is via cellular or satelite.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Interesting. But, how much of their blissful Linux experience can be attributed your 'knowing a shell script from a shell fish'?
I read
They are doing just that. The fact that RedHat is doing it, doesn't mean they are just installing a stock Fedora release on the boxes.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Consider: If this project ever actually gets past vaporware, the platform they use will get a large population of first-time computer users in nations which are still developing markets. In other words, they stand a good chance of becoming the defacto standard for said nations. Since software has zero cost to make copies, and you have no chance of selling your product to be used on these anyways, you would have to be retarded not to offer to let them use it or free. I'm amazaed Microsoft hasn't offered. If anything they should charge money to be the OS of choice (which considering Red Hat's large donations, may be exactly what has happened).
"What are you wanting people to learn, exactly? Arcane UNIX commands? Uh, how is that good for kids?"...
When was the last time you were in Linux? Not everything is commandline reguardless of the FUD from M$. Repeat after me...GNU is Not Unix! There is some fine code (both CLI and GUI based) that can be used for teaching technical skills. Last I checked (I can be wrong and am willing to admit it unlike some) you can't get the source for OS X. At least not all of it.
"And with that, you prove your ignorance about OS X! My DarwinPorts installation hates you now."
And with that you prove your ignorance about Linux!
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
"Sure, Mac OS X is a great OS that just works. Sure its a real steal at no cost. But for kids, the cost of the OS doesnt matter. The fact that it just works is good. But what they really want to do is get into the internals and rip it apart to see what makes it tick. What better candidate than something that's open source?"
It depends on what the goal of providing kids with cheap computers is.
If the goal is for the kids to use the computers as tools to use in school to learn non-computer subjects, MacOS X with the bundled applications (iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, graphing calculator, etc.) provides fantastic learning tools. Though I'm far from sure that $100 computers could be used for photo and video editing. Of course, the availability of thousands of educational programs for the Mac would certainly make the computers more useful for general education than a Linux computer (which has relatively little educational software available).
If the goal is for the kids to learn about computers, Linux is an OK answer. Since all of the source is available (though you won't be recompiling the entire OS and application stack on an $100 computer, so this is somewhat academic), it's a bit better than MacOS X on this score, where most of the environment is OSS, but with a proprietary framework and many applications). But from the perspective of being a software environment that's open for exploration, Linux or Mac OS X can't hold a candle to Squeak Smalltalk (http://www.squeak.org/).
I suspect that the reason that they turned down Apple wasn't because of what teachers or students want or need, but the goals of the people running the project. They (I am guessing) really want to create an open source consumer platform, and this "education" strategy is a way that they've picked to bypass Microsoft's dominance of the desktop OS market. I suspect that they picked the goal of $100 total cost including the OS, storage, etc., because it precludes x86 CPU's and Windows licensing costs and resources, so MS is excluded by definition. So if your goal is to jump-start OSS as a consumer platform, you won't want to use Apple's proprietary OS even if that would be better for the teachers and students, because it doesn't achieve your real goal. That's not to say that this goal isn't legitimate (in the long run, you could argue that jump-starting OSS on the desktop is good for everyone), but it's a long-term strategic goal that is more important to Red Hat, for example, and makes the computer much less useful for students and teachers for the next few years. I suspect that Apple knew that their offer couldn't be accepted by Red Hat (who wants Linux) or MIT (who wants a "clean slate" for research), but felt that it was better to make the offer than not.
Whatever the reasons, if they don't want to use the best OS for religious/strategic reasons, they really should consider Squeak Smalltalk as a platform. It has some advantages over the traditional Linux application stack:
- Smalltalk was designed and has been used for educational purposes for three decades. Squeak Smalltalk in particular is a fantastic teaching environment. There are all sorts of powerful components available (e.g. http://www.opencroquet.org/, a distributed 3D environment, http://www.squeakland.org/ which has tons of great code generated by students and teachers, http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/essay s.html, which documents a huge number of educational projects based on Squeak Smalltalk, etc.).
- Squeak is completely open source, written in itself. This makes it much easier to understand than all of the layered technologies that are "Linux", which makes it more useful for students.
- Squeak is far more resource efficient than the full Linux application stack. It can run over Linux, or Windows, or MacOS X, or WinCE, or even without
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
....Think 3rd world where the school is a grass hut....
Surely somebody in each country can be found to set up such computers for the specific environment where they will be used.
All theory is gray
You'll notice that you said some people in corporations. The official stance of the corporation however is not to give everyone a warm fuzzy feeling inside. The only purpose that a corporation has is to make profit. Yes many individuals want to create a better world. Some of those individuals work in corporations. Those individuals should be commended for their forward thinking views.
The corporation would be pissed if it participated in any community service that did not receive any attention, publicity, mind share, or free advertising. The bricks and stones of a corporation headquarters don't shine a little brighter when it has helped another person.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
The real story here has nothing to do with $100 laptops, Linux vs Mac OS X, or Open vs. Closed Source.
Steve Jobs proposed an arrangement under which Apple would allow computers other than its own to run Mac OS X.
Just this summer, Apple VP Phil Schiller was telling the media, "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."
Now, this is a long way from selling boxed copies of OS X for installation on whitebox PCs, much less a bundling agreement with Dell...but still, it's a significant development. What other devious schemes might Steve Jobs have for OSX86?
This is the option you're being presented with:
"Would you rather have a free BMW or a free cardboard box with wheels drawn on the sides?"
They picked the box.
Why not revive the Tiger Learning Computer and add a little color LCD monitor... couldnt be much different in price and has plenty of software :) //c
It was an all in one solid state implementation of the Apple
http://www.apple2clones.com/?q=image/tid/165
there's no replacement for displacement
Speak for yourself, bud. I'm as right-wing and left-brain as they come. I heap scorn on "creative" people every day. Art is shit, I always say. Yet I wouldn't give up my Mac for anything.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
As a student myself, I got through a lot of high school using mostly Linux. Now that I'm in college I don't even have a Windows machine with me, and I'm doing fine.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
I'm not sure who's trolling here. I do know you're wrong on a fair few points...
Your point being ... what, exactly ? You *are* aware that the kernel in OS X is open-source, aren't you ? That all the source code is there, available for anyone to hack on ?
Ah, I see, you're *not* aware that it's an open source kernel (google for 'Darwin OS X') at the heart of the mac ? I guess that makes this point moot too...
I can't see how that's an argument in favour/against either. With either solution they can reformat the drive and install whatever they want ...
*cough*, *choke*, *gurgling death rattle*. You *have* to be kidding. I've used WxWindows for cross-platform apps, and Cocoa blows it away! I've been coding for the last 25 years, and the Mac (and I only started using them a year ago!) is by far the best platform I've ever coded on.
You are also aware the standard compiler is gcc on the mac, right ? I only ask because you didn't seem to know that Darwin was OSS...
Er, I don't think there's anything to compare to the iLife suite on Linux. You're aware that people really make entire movies using Macs, right ? Really. The creative tools are second-to-none. And of course, it runs all the stuff that Linux runs because that's all OSS...
Well, that's a matter of opinion. I think the Mac way works, but I'd not go so far as to label it the 'right' way. I think it's *a* right way.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Consider: If this project ever actually gets past vaporware, the platform they use will get a large population of first-time computer users in nations which are still developing markets. In other words, they stand a good chance of becoming the defacto standard for said nations. Since software has zero cost to make copies, and you have no chance of selling your product to be used on these anyways, you would have to be retarded not to offer to let them use it or free. I'm amazaed Microsoft hasn't offered. If anything they should charge money to be the OS of choice (which considering Red Hat's large donations, may be exactly what has happened).
And one fine day a western man was shopping in the streets on Congo when he bought a pirated OSX CD for a penny, and *pfft*, there goes Apple's multi billion dollar hardware sales.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Only on Slashdot you will see an incomprehensible, 9 letter acronym with the actual phrase next to it. Talk about a waste of 9 keystrokes.
red hat may not take many resources. but doese X combined with gnome or kde? I think so
as for the money, well, OSX Tiger costs $130 USD. so getting this for free for each machine would take the sales of 20,000 of these laptops to surpass the $2M redhat donated.
I agree with what's be said before. why not just take the free osx then let the people know that hey, if they want to try out a completely free OS using OSS they can just wipe osx and throw on ubuntu or something
If they want to call the operating system "Red Hat" or use Red Hat logos, that would require an agreement with Red Hat and could be expensive. Otherwise, Red Hat Linux is free. There are plenty of clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that are freely available, for example CentOS, and Fedora Core is free software.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I've recently had the chance to work on a 30" monitor, and the menu bar is still delightful. what's important is not that it is far away, but that it is always in the same place.
But truly, for most applications it is simpler on a mac to take advantage of the keyboard shortcuts and right mouse context menus...
I still find it surprising that most people seem to think that Macs don't have these things...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I do know you're wrong on a fair few points...
Yep, looks like I've been horribly misinformed, lied-to, and deviously fed moutfuls of propoganda surrounding OS X. Good to know.
You are also aware the standard compiler is gcc on the mac, right?
That I *did* know, having read through the wx docs. Like I said, it's a preference, simply because I try to keep all of my code cross-platform to begin with.
I suspect (note: *suspect*) that there was pressure (applied or implied) to go with RH, given that they'd donated all that cash.
Of course, but even though the OS is RedHat-branded, it's still pretty "open" and "free". I guess choice-of-vendor should factor into it too.
If MS had made a similiar offer for XP, then slashdot would
have been filled with "drug dealers offering the first
hit free" type of comments.
Ya, go ahead mod me down.
Half the commenters here seem to be saying that OLPC should just have accepted Apple's offer. I doubt that they'd say the same if it had been Microsoft rather than Apple.
Fortunately, the people behind OLPC have a longer-term vision (or just Red Hat's influence...)
"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."
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
So this $100 laptop does not necessarily have to be used as a computer.
Heck, if they can overclock it, maybe it can be a hotplate too!
That THEY can tinker with.You are assuming that these laptops will be just like any other personal computer you or I know. What they will probably be is a "virtual book" which has an easy way to write documents, surf the web, and use built in educational programs:
He said the child could use the laptop like a text book.
As in an appliance, not a full laptop. So that means that Jobs probably offered to have OSX at the core of this appliance and the project people said "its easy for us to make a limited purpose box with Linux because WE can tinker with it." As in the development libraries for the visual stuff is open. Plus they are not going to ship the laptops in single pieces, so there will be extreme nerdiness involved to get them to work:
The device will probably be exported as a kit of parts to be assembled locally to keep costs down.
So its not like the project leaders turned down $100 iBooks for the kids.
But hey, don't let my making sense get in the way of your Linux bashing party.
Open Source Sushi
Linux is just as easy to use as OS X (I use both), especially GNOME (which is designed according to many of the principles of classic MacOS). Ease of configuration is irrelevant here --- these will be closed-box systems that come pre-configured. They won't be any different from cell phones that use Linux, in this regard.
The decision to stick with open source is not a matter of ideology. The whole point of this exercise is to come up with a computer that can be provided to developing nations without "strings attached". That's why they're working so hard on the hardware to get the price down to $100. They're not trying to start a charity to give away computers --- if they were, they could easily use second-hand computers, or donated machines. Using OS X means depending on the charity of Apple. What happens if Apple decides to withdraw support for the program? What happens when new versions of the OS come out --- will Apple provide those for free? Using an OS that isn't tied to a corporation is the only way to deliver these machines the way they want to deliver them.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Red Hat require you to pay for security updates?
+++ATH0
Who cares if OSX isn't open source? It's a hell of a lot better than anything Redhat's put out lately.. this is a loss for the children who will eventually use these laptops.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Shouldn't that read "Fedora Core" instead of "RedHat Linux" ? The last RHL (9) went EOL April 31, 2004. I guess it isn't "RedHat Enterprise Linux" that they will be using ?! After all if they would be using "RedHat Enterprise Linux" it's also "free of charge" since normally RedHat sells "RedHat Enterprise Linux".
Oi! Yorkshire's not the 3rd world! ;_;
You hit the nail on the head!
The point is not to give free tools to people - it is to educate a small percentage of the 3rd world people to a level of expertise in which they will be able to support the information processing needs of their countries, i.e. create affordable software for which they don't have to send money out of their countries to Apple/Microsoft/etc.
Giving out free Mac OS Xs would just make sure that they will only end up using the computers and not tinkering with them at all. This would create a situation in which the 3rd world people would remain cheap labor for sports shoe manufacturers while the (expensive) IT expertise would remain in today's economic powers.
If you aren't going to have the drivers for a card open source, then what does it matter if some OTHER parts of the software are closed as well? Why should the window manager (the part that is closed on OS X) have any more reason to be open than a video card driver? That's the line of thinking you are going down.
My point is that the hardware costing anything becomes meaningless when it's really just an extension of closed software. Hardware is nothing without the software to make it run, so in the full context of this story if the box does not have drivers that are fully open source then they are indeed being hypocritical in saying they will not take on OS X. If the drivers are indeed open then there is no conflict of philosophy and the action is well understood.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It looks like towards the end MS knucled into this projects and just about forced them to allow windows on the system
Redhat as a distro is terrible the upgrade path and support cycles for non-enterprise versions is horrible. RIP $100 laptop.
Red Hat Linux -> Check
Mac OSX -> Check
Windows XP -> Very Friendly (if you include the above two, the Billy G. will be foreced to play too.) Check
Wouldn't the best solution be to hand out a couple of DVDs with each of these laptops, that carried ALL of these OS's?
Let the kids try/play with all of them. Now that seems like an education to me.
I'm sure this offer was not declined because OS X is not suitable for the project. It couldn't be because it offers little opportunity for the project to customize the system for the limited environment it will be running in. I am sure it also has nothing to do with the fact that it does not natively support most of the thousands of open-source applications that the project will certainly want to take advantage of, rather than paying for proprietary software. I am equally convinced that Apple would not make such an offer as a cheap publicity stunt. The MIT project leadership are simply a bunch of idiots who are too dumb to know that they should transfer their work into the divine hands of Jobs, who can do no wrong.
Kudos to Apple!!
Good point. I'd go further though and say if these are to work, they should be about the people using them appropriating them for their own means - not "join us" but rather "join with each other and find your own way, develop your own solutions". "Join us" sounds a little too much like nineteenth century missionary activities - "here, starving dirty savage, take these gifts from us and you can become like us, almost as good us, in our image". "Joining us" might be one solution, certainly on several dimensions, for example skills and knowledge sharing, but I'd emphasise as you do in your post the hope that the computers are appropriated by the communities and developed independently as soon as possible.
Did he slug you in the mouth for quoting from a closed source binary?
That's really not his style. I've never heard of him taking a swing at anyone. He's more likely to launch into an extended diatribe until you get tired of it and walk away.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Micro$oft might be "very friendly" to the project, but the only OS that they might get to run with any functionality on such limited hardware is WinCE. Somehow, the "free as in beer" unrestricted open source version of ANY M$ OS has never materialized. Nor would any applications that M$ might offer ever be open source. Since this defeats the stated purpose of the $100 computer agenda, why would anyone switch?
Without an unencumbered open source OS and applications, regionalization would not be possible, at least not to the extent that Red Hat Linux(TM) would be. Both India and China have hundreds of localized languages, as well as the African continent. No doubt, though, that Micro$oft marketing types wetted their pants at the prospect of another 2 billion users of their OS and apps. It isn't like M$ hasn't flogged the letter and spirit of monopoly laws with their viral M$ tax on new PCs, heavy discounts to schools and universities, FUD by any means possible, etcetera.
So logically you do *NOT* want something like Linux, where a simple deleting of a file or a misplaced semicolon can screw the entire system with no technician within 500 miles.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Well I find this interesting due to the fact that Apple seems to be open to allow other hardware vendors to use their OS. Since the days of cloned pre-Mac OS X PowerPC macs Apple have denied that anything other than their hardware would run their OS... So unless Apple was only offering Darwin this seems like a rather significant change of policy from a company they supposedly is gonna hardwire their OS to their hardware.
is the fact that if this takes off, then they'll be millions of new linux developers out there - all producing efficient code.
This is a huge threat to both MS and Apple equally.
I'd have thought both of them would release cut down freebie versions of their own OS to try to get market share - I wonder if they'll be any mechanism to stop alternative OS being installed. If there isn't I'm pretty sure a large number would switch to the MS/Apple OS, fragment the market and pretty much stuff up one of the whole points of the project. If there is, then this is all a bit evil DRM...
...instead of getting things done and interacting with the rest of the world, these kids will have the pleasure of fucking around with RPM dependencies and libc incompatibilities. Great, principled move fellas.
The machine is 500MHz, has no disk, a 1 megapixel dual mode display, and 1G of RAM (*not* 128M, as you claim here).
o +reality/2100-1044_3-5884683.html
Specifications were gathered from these sources:
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000120060924/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html
http://news.com.com/The+100+laptop+moves+closer+t
-- Terry
Such as News Corp? Please...
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
You need to install the Java 2 SE 5.0 release 1
s e50release1.html ...and then select it as your default Java.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/java2
-- Terry
I went to the article and they show a picture of a notebook computer with a crank handle on it. I would assume that this is for developing nations that do not as yet have an electrical grid as part of their infrastructure.
That's fucked up.
No running water. No electricity. No toilets. But they'll have a notebook computer. Will it have WiFi? I wonder how they plan to do WiFi or any networking without electricity.
I remember in the 70's people were bemoaning the fact that there were more television sets per household than there were toilets: "All that shit coming in and no where for it to go out." That was 35 years ago. Today we have the same problem with computers only now we're applying it to the entire planet.
Imagine what this will do to the economic structure of software development. We're sending RedHat OS computers to the same dudes that Sally Struthers has been trying to feed for 30 cents a day. I wonder how long it will be before that same half naked grubby little dude has your job because you aren't willling to work for $1.00 a day like he is.
Welcome to a global economy.
I wonder if they would rather have a working toilet?
Nothing is stopping Apple to produce a special osX version for this laptop and distribute it free on (sponsored) DVD's, if Apple doesn't do this then the offer wasn't serious but just cheap marketing. Maybe it was just a warning to all that osX is going to be licensed to other computer makers.
Not that "tinkerable" - I expect that the source code for everything won't come loaded on the machine.
v ing-5/113030655622200.xml
According to several recent articles, the machine has a bunch of USB ports, Wireless mesh-topology networking, 1G of RAM and no hard disk; the storage will all be flash.
See also:
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ssf?/base/li
-- Terry
I'm glad there are other people as upset about this descision as me, but I can't believe how many other people on slashdot jump all over this "everything must be open source, otherwise it sucks/is evil/whatever" crap. I don't want to start a flame war or anything, but I'd love for someone to explain to me why "open source is the only way to go for all software". Not a rant, not a list of crap M$ has done, just a concise paragraph outlining exactly why "software MUST be open source". 'cause frankly, I just don't see it. I think OSS is great in certain areas, but I really don't see why it has to be the rule.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Cross-platform code that doesn't suck = GNUstep. wxWidgets is not nice - I've written software for both GNUstep/Cocoa and wx.
Gretchen Miller, director of world-wide marketing for mobile systems at Dell Inc., said she didn't think a $100 laptop would be powerful enough to meet students' needs. "We don't believe it's feasible at this point to manufacture a $100 notebook that meets our quality performance standards. Those things are all customer driven," she says.
Sure Gretchen. And how much does your cheapest laptop cost?
About $499 it turns out, after rebate.
A message from our sponsor
Depends on the use. If you can modify both the BMW and the cardboard box (say add some pram wheels), I know which one would be less work to get ready for the local soapbox derby!
Remember what the goal of the $100 laptop is.
I'm just here to regulate Funkyness
Actually, it'll be very hard to load another OS.
These boxes are Flash + USB + keyboard + display + WiFi/Cell + 1G of RAM. No CD/DVD drive, not floppy drive, no removable storage interface at all, apart from the USB.
The way you'll have to go about the initial OS load is to either put it on the flash parts using another process, or sucking it in using boot-from-USB (the networking won't work until you have the software for it).
In other words, they're just not going to have the equipment available to (re)image the flash in the things in the field, unless someone happens to have more complete equipment than just the laptops themselves.
So the OS choice is all or nothing (personally, I'd say they'd be better off with OS X, and not just because I'm a kernel engineer for Apple), and you will need to pretty much pick one and stick with whatever's pre-loaded.
If they are smart, they can maybe make them self-heal in the field using another laptop, but it doesn't look like that's the plan. The alternative is probably to write-protect the area of the flash containing the OS bits to keep them from getting stomped - basically, two partittions, with the base OS partition being mounted read-only. Any other approach means that it becomes a doorstop, and it's unrecoverable without someone with a big machine or a USB dongle that can cause the system to be reloaded.
OS X does make more sense for these things in general, just because it's better UI, but I can respect their decision.
Even so, it'll be really rare (perhaps impossible) for the end user to tinker with the OS kernel itself, even going with full Open Source like Linux; it's highly unlikely there will be enough storage in the flash to hold the entire OS source code anyway, so you'd (again) need compute resources that you're not making available for people to download and build their own kernel, and (re)image one of the flash parts with a newer version of Linux.
Practically, this means the Open Source nature of things isn't really going to buy the end users anything, unless they have sufficient resources that they likely didn't need the laptop in the first place (or didn't qualify for it).
-- Terry
besides the arguments of whether red hat or OS X would be better for this project, when Steve Jobs offers to put Mac OS on an x86 laptop not made by Apple, this is once in a lifetime event, and I would think that you couldn't turn him down.
besides, i don't see why kids like this need something like red hat linux. all they want to do is run a bunch of learning programs/paint/word processors? what is so bad about having a closed source operating system? 97% of the world does anyway...
not only that, but if you dedicate yourself to only using open source, you miss out on the tons of interactive software for kids that's out there (especially on mac)
not to mention the fact that the mac has much better compatibility than red hat for the majority of commercial products on the market. and the fact is, sometimes open source just doesn't cut it.
don't get me wrong, though, many times open source alternatives are fine programs, but many times they are just alternatives.
Prior to comment, I'd like to say that its a shame that the enemy of my enemy is my friend doesn't seem to work anymore between OS X and Linux. Its the Apple zealots vs the Penguinista's now... and it doesn't even seem to be a M$ plot... What's surprising to me is that hard core developers in the know are leaning towards Apple in a big way, and this is just due to a brilliant principle built into OS X: please the developers (we've screwed them in the past... now we make up for it).
Apple made a slightly wrong move in even contacting these geniuses... and all they have to do now is have a worldwide campeign after these laptops are distributed offering their OS for free. I think that the speed at which these laptops switch will increase at exponential rates.
Now that I've made my comment, I'd just like to say that I am probably an Apple zealot. I haven't loved everything they've done, just most of it, and I'm not a developer, just a technophile. The problem with linux, and the reason why what I've suggested above will work, is that linux breaks itself. It is not just that it is suprememly configurable... its that if you are not constantly on top of things, it will just break on its own accord. You take two of these laptops side by side, one running linux, the other OS X, and the one with linux will be a paper weight within months, and the one with OS X will continue to work and work and just work. It was silly for the Makers to turn Apple down, as linux is in dire need of user support, and there is no support infrastructure, espescially one that could handle something on such a large scale. Apple has excellent support already in place.
What I want to know is... what company has enough balls to complain to our government that this whole project is anti-capitalist, and that it engages in anti-competitive practices... and get it shut down?
The Admin and the Engineer
Then again, Red Hat has been stretching the definition of "free" in a lot of ways over the last couple years, heh.
Feel free to elaborate...
No wonder Apple wanted to get their OS on those laptops. The exposure alone would have reaped plenty of reward when all those kids grow up and continue to use OSX.
While OSX is far less vulnerable to such breakage (a similar filesystem and privileges configuration as that of Linux), both OSX and Win32 systems typically centralise their technical support, whereas Linux has a lively culture of community driven assistance, encouraging tinkering, sharing of resources and self-administration. This is very much the case in Brazil, which _already_ has a huge Linux community. This equates to local support; on hand, and in a language you already understand. Linux is valuable in this regard, it acts as a transport medium for the distribution, and eventual localisation, of knowledge. For this reason Linux lifts the technical capital of a region simply by being used.
True, it's not "Free" - but it is a tax deductible charitable contribution, so I assume that in reality it is costing them less than two million.
Could you all maybe explain again why it is so important to keep OSX off white box or non-Apple hardware in the West, and ALSO so important to have it running on generic non-Apple hardware in the third world?
Community service benefits corporations, because the better off people are, the more shit they can buy.
I totally agree with you, for completely different reasons. I don't think that the strength of open-source will ever be in making knockoffs of commercial software, it will come from "orphan projects" - projects that aren't commercially viable, yet are desired by small segments of the marketplace. If there is a sufficient body of work in this area, there will be a reversal in the install base - A lot of people (myself included) don't run Windows because of Office, they run it because they have some specific, specialized application that requires it. In my case, a few of these are actually free, closed source scientific data analysis programs. Even if OpenOffice sucked (I think it's good enough), I'd put up with it if it was the only office suite that ran on the same OS as my specific-application stuff.
Of course, RMS would totally disagree with this point, but I don't really care if application software is open-source or not. It's always nice, but if there is a sufficiently high install base for open-source operating systems because it's the only place to get these specific applications, all the closed-source apps you're stuck running Windows for will be ported.
I'd rather have an open-source operating system and all closed-source apps than a closed-source operating system with all open-source apps.
(*an analogy from pharmaceuticals, where "orphan drugs" are drugs that aren't commercially viable, such as for diseases other than limpdick and high blood pressure)
If Apple donates, say, $2.1 million, I suspect that OS X would be made available.
I also suspect that this may be part of the, ah, negotiations around such a donation.
Still, on its face, it's a cool offer.
What are you wanting people to learn, exactly? Arcane UNIX commands? Uh, how is that good for kids?
They learn how computers work. I see a huge difference between people who got involved in computers before and after the emergence of GUI's. People who cut their teeth on more rudimentary systems generally have a much better first-principles idea of what is going on in that black box, which is still relevant even in the most modern environment.
Knowing how to use a word processor, or knowing the various calls for drawing windows in whatever API happens to be popular doesn't mean shit in the long run. If the goal of giving these laptops away is to move these people forward in a technological society, it's far more important for them to understand the technology than just be able to go through the motions.
If a bunch of kids in Africa learn how to use a word processor, that isn't going to help at all. We already have enough starving people in India to do our data-entry. If the same kids actually gain an understanding of technology, they have a chance to move ahead.
Why not accept the offer of OS X, and install RedHat also, and set them up with dual boot. Anyone who can handle Linux to the point of "tinkering" can handle dual boot. Anyone not interested in "tinkering" who wants to just "just work" could easily be shown both and then use whichever.
I think the level of complication added by dual booting would be outstripped by providing the choice. The only downside would be the extra HD space taken up.
Tom Anthony
Linux is just as easy to use as OS X (I use both)
... and more important ... one. I agree entirely with your reasoning here.
If you're using a computer where someone else is responsible for making it work and keep working, you may be right, though I'm not at all impressed by Gnome... and I wouldn't expect Gnome to be usable on a $100 laptop anyway.
If you're not a geek and you're going to have to do something sane when something goes wrong (or even recognise that something's gone wrong), no.
But that's really irrelevant. Because I would even less expect OS X to be usable on a $100 laptop than I would Gnome. That's the first reason I think OS X is out of the question.
The whole point of this exercise is to come up with a computer [...] without "strings attached".
And that's the second
Aren't these kids in third world countries underpriveleged enough? Now we are going to stick them with a crappy OS to top it off?
* Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes *
If Steve offers OS X to you for free, you take it.
...if for no other reason than to put it in a "$500 Desktop Project" that you profit off to FUND your "$100 Laptop Project..." ;-)
Yes!
And pray tell, how do you think most of todays professional software developers learned the game? Don't think these countries will need software developers? Just look around you at how dependent modern economies are on computers to drive up efficiency and try to tell us how the developing world will ever catch up if it can't bridge that divide or how they can bridge that divide if they don't have their own developers and can't afford to hire in developers from more developed countries.
And before you even try to bring up shrink wrap software, that's a tiny part of the software needs of a typical enterprise. The vast majority of software engineers are employed to work on internal projects that are never turned into sellable products but that are used to support business operations.
If the developing world is going to be ready to take the leap to a more computerised business environment over the next 15-25 years, they need to start teaching kids now.
Look at India, and how important software engineering skills has become to them. To get there, India put in decades of heavy investments in education in engineering disciplines and science. It's a great credit to them that they saw the value of it and took advantage of the fact that they were willing to take the cost despite the many short term fixes they could have spent the money on instead.
This is about education, not about making everything dumbed down and as easy as possible at the cost of teaching kids less.
In the developing countries, all OS's are free -- bootleg versions, complete with support provided by local shops. And the OS is Windows, often '98, and the applications are primarily Office, and IE.
When debating why Steve Jobs' outreach was rejected, there might be some consolation in thinking that the prospect of Linux being the permanent OS on the machine, is uncertain, unless something is done to prevent Windows being installed on the hardware. BTW, computers in the east have, for a long time been costing in the $300- $500 range for a fully configured P4 system.
In any case, it misses the point that one of the key goals is a system that is hackable and modifiable and that is easily supported even in the absence of the ability of pay for support to, say, translate the system to one of the 1800 languages spoken in Africa that is NOT on the list of supported languages for any commercial OS's, or any number of other modifications they may like to better tailor the solution to specific needs.
Lets think about this for a minute- what is this negative mindset with anything closed source these days? I'm a big fan of open source, and use hundreds of open source applications as does anyone with various Linux machines and the few windows open-source products. At the same time, I use tons of closed source programs and am quite happy with both.
These decisions should not be made based on their open-source-dom, but rather on their quality. What is better? easier to use? more powerful? of course with the target market in mind. If a closed source application is licensed with the same distribution rights (which in this case it was), why should it being open or closed matter to its inclusion?
If Microsoft offered WindowsXP for free as well as patches, do you think they'd take it? Why not? Especially if they threw in some added application suites for it.
I am pro-open source, but it has it's place in the marketplace like anything else. If a closed-source solution is better (is it?) then are they really going to need to modify/view the source of the OS?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Yes, there are open chipsets. See www.opencores.org.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Now this is libel or something.
You've been at the Mac Zealot Kool aid I see. The only real thing about a Mac's user experience that is superior is it's software install. It doesn't get much easier than drag & drop. Spotlight's nice but most users I watch save every damn thing on the desktop and never use it. They might have a nice wallpaper somewhere under all those icons. Linux has Beagle and Windows, well they will probably integrate internet search and desktop search and in the process leave a million exploitable holes, but that's another matter.
After that is starts going downhill. First, closing the only open window does not close the program. This is fine for those who don't mind pointing the mouse into the far left corner and scrolling down a menu to exit the program. But from the amount of users I find with 10+ programs running unknown to the user, this should have been fixed years ago. It's 2005 and Mac finally makes a multi button mouse, their OS has supported them for years. Yet they have been inadvertantly selling other peoples stuff years. Go to CompUSA, every one who buys a Mac at some point goes in and buys a Kingston, MS or Logitech mouse with scroll wheel. Every other major or minor OS in the world is wrong and apple is right? I pay almost $2000 for an iMac and they couldn't throw in their frickin top of the line also over priced mouse? Another oddity, the menu at the top of the screen. Great! instead of moving the mouse a 100 pixels or so I again have to move way out of the area I'm working to access a menu, whose bright idea was that? Now lets look at uniformity, brushed metal, white, white with stipples, top window bar blended into the window as to be invisible ( aka System Preferences), brushed metal window, window with a visible top bar. Things that are pretty much standard practice on every other OS/GUI in the world, are different on a Mac. And usually it seems for no good reason except to be different. It's fine if all your ever gonna use is a Mac, but that not ever gonna happen in the real world.
I use several OS's daily, I own two Mac's and two Linux Machines. At work I develop on and administer VAX, SGI, Solarix, Windows(NT,2K,XP), Linux and Mac's. No OS is perfect period. Linux is like an old friend, it can be a server, a desktop, a laptop and it's the perfect system for people who love to tinker, like a hot rodder who has to have chrome wheels, Nitrous tank, and a million amp sub woofer. And it's great for a small talented IT department to build web apps on and a full set of network services at 1/8 the cost of other proprietary systems.
Useability, some distros have it some don't. But generally once you've used one GUI you can figure out anything. Why is it, people will call a system admistrator to find out how to use a piece of software? The administrator has not used every single feature on every piece of of software there is, but instead starts checking menus. Mac users are just as as bad at this as others, in fact ability seems to inversely proportional to position. And guess who gets the expensive Macs?
All that and I still bought an iMac, why? One word .... iPod. :)
The only purpose that a corporation has is to make profit.
Wrong. The only purpose or or legal reason a corporation exists is to protect its investors private holdings from being targeted in litigation. That is the nature of the corporate charter set by Federal and State laws. A corporation has no legal or social obligation to its investors to make a profit, but by the nature of investment it is what they prefer them do.
I mean people tend to not invest in corporations that don't make profits, so by default most corporations try to make a profit because that will make a return on the investors investment.
No one usually would invest in a company that didn't make them returns on their investment, but on occasion people do. Take non-profit corporations for example. They have their own legal tax bracket.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
See, that's how kids who learned to use computers before Windows got along.
Most of my friends knew far more about computers at 10-11 than what my parents did or will ever do, thanks to having platforms that encouraged tinkering thanks to relative openness (even if the OS's weren't open source they were small enough and well documented enough that it wasn't a problem to figure things out by ourselves, including by using a disassembler, and so was the hardware) - most of that knowledge was acquired with little or no help from adults (because most adults we knew had no clue about computers).
Don't underestimate kids.
You entirely miss the point. Learning about computers is one of many ways for this system to be a learning tool.
I had never seen a computer up close when I was 5 years old. Within weeks I was programming the damn thing. Within months I had surpassed my dad. Now I have ten years of professional software development experience (and 25 years of computer experience overall).
Why do you want to offer these people a limited, crippled setup when you can give them an open system that the kids can learn and tinker with as they please? Worst case the system needs to be reinstalled.
If I had been subjected to that kind of misguided handholding when I was a kid, I'd never had the chances to learn a fraction of what I know about computers now.
"When keeping it real goes wrong."
I mean... You have the marketing power of Apple and Steve Jobs and you give it up for fucking Red Hat? Goddamn some of these FOSS people are idiots.
Unfortunately, RedHat is one of my least favorite distributions. The fact that RedHat gave them a bunch of money is why they are using it, I'm sure. It would have been nice to have some other distribution on it. I guess an owner could always format and reinstall whatever distribution he/she prefers on it.
As far as the argument of having source code or not, I think it's a non-issue. 95% of computer users don't care about source code. They just care that the computer does what they want (plays games, mostly, and surfs the web, and lets them do email). For the other 5% (actually much less now, probably 0.1%) who *are* coders, very few of them will care about looking at the code either. For the people who will support these machines (provide updates and the like - basically RedHat), they care that they have the source because, in effect, it *is* their OS just like Windows *is* Microsoft's OS for when fixes need to be done. Sure, the OSS community will supply some fixes for RedHat but RedHat still has to examine each one and make sure it's right for their distribution.
But this is with 256MB + of RAM. 64MB? You're gonna have a LOT of disk caching going on. More than I'd be able to stomach, though your mileage may vary. If you're really running OS X on 64MB, add a bit of RAM and see what a difference it makes.
I did find a G3 that wasn't happy with OS X: a beige Powermac. OS X is supported through Jaguar, but the Powermac just wasn't interested in playing at 266Mhz with its stock 64MB RAM. I reloaded OS 9 until I can scrounge up a 256MB stick or two. Then I'll add a PCI video card and load Panther. It'll be fine.
Panther must be the second-biggest bargain in OS these days, right behind Linux. $50 new at Amazon, and it runs pretty much everything you can do with Tiger.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
At the same time, it's a bit of a shame this didn't work out. The primary objective of the $100 laptop is remote education, and there sure is a LOT of excellent Mac-based learning software out there.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Let me see if I understand this. The point of the program is to get laptops to poor children in basically 3rd world countries cheaply. So they are going to install a hard to use OS on a $100 laptop for kids that probably have never seen or used a computer before instead of letting apple install their easy to use OS when there is no price difference?
Doesn't sound like they are trying to do whats best for the children here at all. The program is going to fail and be a laughing stock.
It is possible there is but there is no guarentee that there will be one. The program pays for the hardware not the administration of it. Not all countries are wealthy enough to afford that.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Man, I wish I had mod points. You hit the nail on the head and drove it right through the board. :)
just to set the record straight -- donating computers to kids and schools
has long been part of steve jobs' mission -- he personally offered to donate
a hundred thousand computers to every school in america back in 1979...
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist
(exerpt from Smithsonian Interview with Steve Jobs)
SJ: There were two kinds of customers. There were the educational aspects of Apple and then there were sort of the non-educational. On the non-educational side, Apple was two things. One, it was the first "lifestyle" computer and, secondly, it's hard to remember how bad it was in the early 1980's. With IBM taking over the world with the PC, with DOS out there; it was far worse than the Apple II. They tried to copy the Apple II and they had done a pretty bad job. You needed to know a lot. Things were kind of slipping backwards. You saw the 1984 commercial. Macintosh was basically this relatively small company in Cupertino, California, taking on the goliath, IBM, and saying "Wait a minute, your way is wrong. This is not the way we want computers to go. This is not the legacy we want to leave. This is not what we want our kids to be learning. This is wrong and we are going to show you the right way to do it and here it is. It's called Macintosh and it is so much better. It's going to beat you and you're going to do it."
And that's what Apple stood for. That was one of the things. The other thing was a little bit further back in time. One of the things that built Apple II's was schools buying Apple II's; but even so there was about only 10% of the schools that even had one computer in them in 1979 I think it was. When I grew up I was lucky because I was in Silicon Valley. When I was ten or eleven I saw my first computer. It was down at NASA Ames (Research Center). I didn't see the computer, I saw a terminal and it was theoretically a computer on the other end of the wire. I fell in love with it. I saw my first desktop computer at Hewlett-Packard which was called the 9100A. It was the first desktop in the world. It ran BASIC and APL I think. I fell in love with it. And I thought, looking at these statistics in 1979, I thought if there was just one computer in every school, some of the kids would find it. It will change their life.
We saw the rate at which this was happening and the rate at which the school bureaucracies were deciding to buy a computer for the school and it was real slow. We realized that a whole generation of kids was going to go through the school before they even got their first computer so we thought the kids can't wait. We wanted to donate a computer to every school in America. It turns out that there are about a hundred thousand schools in America, about ten thousand high schools, about ninety thousand K through 8. We couldn't afford that as a company. But we studied the law and it turned out that there was a law already on the books, a national law that said that if you donated a piece of scientific instrumentation or computer to a university for educational and research purposes you can take an extra tax deduction. That basically means you don't make any money, you loose some but you don't loose too much. You loose about ten percent. We thought that if we could apply that law, enhance it a little bit to extend it down to Kthrough 8 and remove the research requirements so it was just educational, then we could give a hundred thousand computers away, one to each school in America and it would cost our company ten million dollars which was a lot of money to us at that time but it was less than a hundred million dollars if we didn't have that. We decided that we were willing to do that.
It was one of the most incredible things I've ever done. We found our local representative, Pete Stark over in East Bay and Pete and a few of us sat down an we wrote a bill. We literally drafted a bill to make these changes. We said "If this law changes
The corporation can neither shine a lighter brighter for helping another person, nor be pissed by not receiving any attention. The corporation is an artificial entity. There are only people who can feel and behave one way or another. The people are the employees, the shareholders, and the consumers. And all are free to be as altruistic as their conscience dictates.
I happen to be a major shareholder of a mid-sized corporation. We do a lot of charity work that doesn't get us any pub or mind share. We do it because we (the owners and executives) are also members of our community and want things to be well here.
The idea that corporations are sick, twisted, self-serving entities is as absurd as the idea that they are caring, giving entities. There are only people. Everything else if fiction.
but to say you dont have an obligation to your stockholders is bunk, its everything they teach in school and in the real world, its all about keeping your stockholders happy. There the ones that tell you what to do if you screw up and they are the ones that replace you if needed, your more then obligated to keep them happy. At least in a public company situtation.
The problem is that statement is way too over-generalized and doesn't really ecompass what the real nature of a corporation charter.
IANAL or a MBA, but I have looked into creating an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) and know about it than I would like to know. Shareholders can often influence a company if they are the owners with voting stock. If the company does not have voting stock then then it is just monetary sway of keeping the investors money with the company.
People have been told over and over again that the purpose of a corporation was to make a profit and appease the shareholders which is totally unfounded when you look at the nature of a corporate charter in legal terms. A legal charter is nothing more than creating an artificial entity that protects its investors from litigation of their personal assets when someone sues the corporation. You sue the corporation and it runs out of money, but you can't go after the shareholders.
That said... A corporation is only obligated to appease share holders if it wants to. I mean the board member and CEOs could in fact declare all corporate elections null and void and have a revolt of sorts, but they would quickly loose the capital of all the investors unless of course the investors went along with the people still in power.
Corporations do need money to operate to pay its employees and needs an investment base in order to grow, but if someone created a corporation and made it so that they had firm control of the leadership process, they could very well not intend to make any money at all if they so choose to do so.
They may not get investments or capital support from others in the process... So it wouldn't be very long lasted.
But it is a fallacy to assume that corporations are forced by law to make money. They only do so because it benefits those running them, work for them, and those who invest in them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Who would go all the way to Congo? If I wanted a pirated copy of OS X I dont have to leave my desk, plenty of places to download it for free. OS X cd's dont even seem to have rudimentary copy protection like most game cd's do. Be realistic, how many people from developed countries (apple's market) visit undeveloped countries and buy pirated software they could easily get for free at home? Lack of availability of illegal copies is not what makes people buy software.
1. Bundle Free OSX
2. Get people addicted using OSX in poor countries
3. Make governments order OSX
4.
5. Profit
If you're gonna consider Kubuntu, you might as well go with MEPIS. That way you can actually use the entire Debian package tree.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
VIA Antaur. Designed for laptops. Has free open source drivers for every piece of hardware.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I wonder if this means he's decided he wants to be involved in a cheap computing resource for the children. It seems like if he decides he wants to do something, it is going to be done- whether other people think its a good idea or not. He has been pretty successful with only a few failures but an overall impressive track record. Perhaps turning him down means that in a not-distant future, we'll see a resurgence of inexpensive education machines from Apple. I would welcome that much more than some vaporware from the MIT 'Media Lab', even if the project IS funded by RH and Google (among others)
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Well, maybe middle school aged kids.
For the tots, I'm thinking more along the lines of KidPix (http://www.hotornot.com/r/?eid=OSHMEZE-WBU). Wonderful stuff, and easy enough for a three-year-old to grasp and run with.
For that matter, OpenOffice (or Word, or whatever) is overkill. Something clean like Pages would be much better.
The problem, of course, is cost. Even if OS X was free, most of the interesting, kid-friendly software is not, and wouldn't be. So you'd be running Gimp and OpenOffice on OS X, which would be more painful and just as intimidating as on any other *nix.
I feel it right to eay that the point flew straight over your face.
"There are *NO* pipelines and/or busses/anything else that are available to OS X that are not also available to *ANY* modern Linux kernel."
Hmm... nope, there aren't, I never said there were, if you RTFP, what I said was that there is NO way OS-X will run as fast on another type of processor.
Of course, now you'll most likely bring Windows into the thread, somehow.
Tordek, Dwarven Warrior - Juegos de Rol en Argentina
I saw a prototype today. It was running Fedora:i s100USDPC.jpg.html :-)
http://www.agol.dk/gallery/v/NielsPublic/wsis/Tun
(not the green cardboard modex, the plexiglass one
That's fine for now, but surely going to change when they leave the "prototype" phase:
"A small team of Red Hat engineers are customizing a Red Hat distro to the processor and hardware specifications of the machine."
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/3393
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I know,for a fact, that some corporation go to great lengths to disassociate themselves from some charitable causes.
Obviously if you tracked the SEC reportings you could find out that information, but 99.9% of the population do not do that, and therefore it's pretty fucking anonymous.
A corporation is an entity ran by people, and if those people decide to do something for charities sake they do it.
Of course since its anonymous, know one knows, therefore small minded people assume it doesn't happen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, it doesn't. I couldn't even get Panther to boot with 64 MB. It does run moderately well on rather slow CPUs as long as they have enough RAM, but 128 MB isn't.
Building the processor costs x money/chip. Creating a disk image and copying it to each computer costs, perhaps, x/1000 money / computer. So your point about getting the processor for free is moot. I mean, we're not talking about the "0$ dollar" laptop, we're talking about the "100$ laptop". Those 100$ have to go somewhere. If you can make that somewhere NOT be the operating system, that means you can afford to make the machine itself better. So much for your comment regarding the free (or not) processors. Regarding the "open source processor", well, open source software is pretty mature. Sure, possibly not as easy to work with, or as pretty as **some** proprietary software, but mature nonetheless. It works quite well, especially if you give it a well known hardware configuration (does this ring a bell?). The concept of open source hardware is quite young, untested, and not available in large scale. Just the same as there is a difference between not eating pork because it's against your religion or killing people in the name of your god, there's keeping to your principles while making small sacrifices (if you want to call a red hat-based solution a sacrifice versus OSX), and having to jump through hoops and delay the whole process for years because of those principles. As in everything, you have to reach some sort of compromise.
Well, a crazy hippie who wrote gcc (I won't argue that he wrote emacs -- I'm a vim person). That gives the hippie a bit of leeway, as far as I'm concerned ;-)
Except ubuntu didn't give $2M to the cause, Red Hat did. That counts for something. And I do find it fair that the chap who gave $2M gets his name on the computer, rather than his direct competitor -- which is what Ubuntu is rapidly growing into.
who is starving, poisoned, and under constant threat of thuggery or worse? You do not need to make these people rich before they can begin to boot-strap themselves, but one needs to start with providing basic sanitation, safety, food, and water. Survival first is a necessity.
Hell, what the heck are they going to do with a computer in a place that doesn't even have reliable energy sources? Or are you saying we should only engage in this project in places that already have electricity, in which case we are spending money on relatively rich people.
I'll feed the troll...
Ah, the typical Slashbot response. "I disagree, so I will call you a troll." How ridiculously closed-minded.
And btw, wxWidgets is better than Cocoa? Are you fucking insane?! Have you tried Cocoa? Did you know the Apple devs had a working iPhoto prototype in less than a week thanks to Interface Builder?
"Sufferin' succotash."
"If the goal of giving these laptops away is to move these people forward in a technological society, it's far more important for them to understand the technology than just be able to go through the motions."
I think it would be far better to move these people forward in terms of learning economics, history, Enlightenment thinking on human rights, sanitation, etc.
Those would make a difference that would last, even if every computer on earth stopped working in a decade.
Ephemeral technical no-how just really isn't very important in the grand scheme of things.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Read the linked articles; in the last one it says:
"The proposed design of the machines calls for a 500MHz processor, 1GB of memory and an innovative dual-mode display that can be used in full-color mode, or in a black-and-white sunlight-readable mode."
There are plenty of other articles out there. In May, they were spec'ing it at 256M (not the 128M being claimed in this thread - that was last December), and in July this went up to 512M; now it's 1G. If you can read Kanji, there's several sites that actually have more information on the current specifications that they are looking at using.
This is to be expected if the main storage is flash memory - due to the limited (though larger than in the past) number of write cycles, they are not going to be able to swap to their main storage, so everything will need to fit in memory - hence the need for more memory.
If they dropped X11 and went direct to the video card instead, they could thin things down more; I actually expect that they will in fact do this, since most of the office packages under Linux these days are absurd memory hogs, and with X11 overhead on both ends on top of that, plus a window manager separate from the display server, they are going to be looking at exhausting their memory budget very quickly, even with as much as 1G of RAM.
-- Terry
....get a chance to learn about how computers actually work .....
/. readers, which is of course natural for us all here. However, there is a big world out there with millions of (l)users who want to use their computers for things that have little or nothing to do with computers per se. They don't want to futz with the thing just to get it to connect to the internet, record and play music and do any of the myriad other tasks a computer can be progrmmed to do. The want their computers to "just work"tm without having to call up their friendly geek who may be able to tell them how to connect that MIDI keybard because said geek is 200 miles away. Of all OS on the market, OSX requires the least expert help. Plug in a video camera and iMovie pops up. Digital camera? Plug it in and iPhoto appears and the pictures come on the screen. Pop a CD in the drive? iTunes comes up - click play and you hear music. Most of the time, just plug it in and it works.
That seems to be the common thread for
I hope that the smart people working on this project will be able to build a computer that is at least as friendly as an OSX Mac, but perhaps even easier and better in some respects and of course vastly cheaper.
All theory is gray
To give kids a paperweight with so many un-useable options and potential failure points that they will never boot?
A computer running linux is all but worthless in training kids to use computers in a modern work environment. The purpose isn't to train them to all be network admins (just like we don't need 5billion trashmen or CEOs). The purpose is to train them to be comfortable with computers in such a way as is valuble to them in the future.
This is meant to teach them to USE computers to get things done... not to teach them how to do meaningless things that they can then brag about to their friends (I recompiled my kernel today!!! I managed to install the updated driver for my keyboard!!!).
Does a recent version of MS Office run on this distro out of the box? If it dosen't then it's worthless to anyone trying to gain skills that will be useful in an office environment. And no... OO.org dosen't cut it.
I will never understand why so many people are to willing (nay EAGER) to throw away so many hours of their lives to battle with their computers to accomplish tasks which are so trivially easy on the two real OS's (OSX and Windows... not nessicarily in any order).
I can tinker with my OS... yay... cuz like... it can mow the grass and shit... and like... i installed it on my watch... and like... I spent three weeks installing my webca.... SHUTUP!
Corporations could do whatever they want. They could donate all their money away. They could buy tons of trout. They could attempt to maximize profits at all costs. Monetarily successful corporations chose the last option. Trout salesmen probably chose the last 2.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
The idea that corporations are sick, twisted, self-serving entities is as absurd as the idea that they are caring, giving entities. There are only people. Everything else if fiction.
One person's fiction is another person's truth I guess. I disagree that corporations are as good as the people who work in them. There is some sort of herd mentality that goes on in corporatons where good people turn into corpororate monsters. That herd mentality extends from the executive suite to the loading docks. I have seen time and again people do things in a corporate environment that they would never do as indviduals. Lieing, stealing, backstabbing, exposing people to hazardous materials and worse - ostensibly all for the good of the company - are common everyday behaviors in the corporate world, and most of the people wouldn't think of doing the same to their neighbors. Corporations are universally much worse than the individuals in them.
So you think the corporaton you invest in is good and wise because they say so? Think about it - have you ever heard ANY company, from Enron to Hooker Chemical to Wal-Mart say they are anything but great, wonderful, philanthropic pillars of benevolence and honesty?
If the foundation technology (chipsets, etc.) are so old and cheap to produce, then I would suspect the reasons for keeping it closed are also old and cheapened.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
But they *are* doing it as individuals. The corporation certainly can't "lie, steal, backstab, expose people to hazardous materials...." People make those decisions. It may be that people use the mask of a corporation to shield their behaviors. But maybe it's the anonymity of the corporation that reveals who those people really are.
Having worked for several Fortune 1000 corporations, I meet people who would cut off their arm before they work violate their ethics; and I meet people who would sell out their mother for a buck. But the ethics of a corporation are inherently the ethics of the people who make up the corporation. Corporations don't make decisions. People do.
When I mentioned that I was a major shareholder of a corporation, I didn't mean that I invest in a company and they tell me they are good. I mean I actively participate in the functioning of a midsided corporation. And I know first hand that we regularly make decisions that negatively impact the bottom line because our corporate values specify that we exist to benefit the employees, the community, and the shareholders. Obviously, we are not going to allow ourselves to lose money on a regular basis. We created the company many years ago to make money. But we also won't violate our ethics to make $12 instead of $10.
I understand that many corporations don't operate with this type of philosophy. But many do. In both cases, it is the people (primarily the shareholders and the executives) that set that tone and define those ethics and make those decisions.
They could buy tons of trout. They could attempt to maximize profits at all costs. Monetarily successful corporations chose the last option. Trout salesmen probably chose the last 2.
Ah, but you missed the fatal flaw...
If you maximize profits in the extreme, you often canibalize the company by layoffs and short term gains by altering methods of profits and the company slowly goes into a death spiral leaving the long term investors with the short end of the stick when the company just up and folds.
Maximized profts != company success.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Gee, we set up our 4 kids, and 5 of the neighbor's kids with Linux for day to day use. All of the machines available are in constant use. Oops, sorry that I didn't realize that kids are too stupid to adapt.
At least with *nix file permissions, each child has private file ownership, and their siblings can't delete each other's homework for more space for MP3's.
I suppose that we could set the kids up with a virus, worm and spyware vulnerable OS if that is really what you think is best.
Repeat after me:
Market share
Market penetration
Remember your history. Apple had the greater market share in the education market. Remember Microsoft's punishment in the anti-trust lawsuits? They gave Windows based machines to schools as a part of their reparations. They were getting market penetration in an area which they had no foothold as their punishment. Gee, I guess that'll teach 'em, won't it?
Have you heard about the Hooters application process? They hand the girls a bra and say "Fill this out."
I love the ignorant Apple nazis. Negatively mod me all you want, you'll never change the truth of the situation.
Misa no botha with yousa.
No, there isn't room for both. If you read the article or the several posts now that've mentioned it, these machines are going to have 1-1.5 GB flash memory for storage. Even Linux may be a tight squeeze, and dual booting both it and OS X, assuming the latter can even be slimmed down to fit within 512-768MB of drive space, would mean that they'd get the best of neither.
Thank you for your well reasoned and persuasive comment. That has really made me change my views. No, really, I'm gonna burn my Gentoo boot disk and be publicly flogged
I have been using Linux since Red Hat 5.0. Not as long as some here, but long enough to have a good idea of what I am on about. How many kernels have I compiled? 2. One in March this year to install Gentoo on this pc, and one in May this year to install Gentoo on a Sun E3500. So not a regular practice then.
Another assumption you make is that these children are going to be working in an exclusively Windows environment when they leave school. This is nearly true in my country, and I suspect in your country too, but do you have any idea about the situation in the third world countries these laptops are destined for? No? Didn't think so.
Also, look at the Specs for the $100 laptop. 500Mhz processor, 1Gb of ram, Flash for a HD. The screen alone is $35, so you are not looking at spending a large amount on flash storage. Minimum HD space for OS X on the Mac is 3Gb. I cannot see it going down much on intel. How much does 3Gb of flash cost? Then add some more to make it useable. Over $100 yet?
A 500Mhz processor? How long would Windows XP and Office XP take to load? These are after all famously light-weight programs, easy on the processor...
In total, you have just spouted off a load of rubbish to Linux bash.
"You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."
I'm just here to regulate Funkyness
...back in 1997. It was called the eMate, it was based off the Newton, and was designed for the education market. And like the Newton, it was unfortunatly canceled when Jobs came back. So I think the project leaders are a little foolish to dismiss Apple out of hand.