OLPC Project Interface Revealed

BogusToo writes to mention an EE Times article describing the interface for the OLPC project laptop. Using some fairly intuitive UI concepts (like simplified web browsers and a chat client), the Linux-based system attempts to do away with the kludgey parts of computer use. A video demo of the interface has been placed on YouTube. From the article: "Earlier postings around the Internet have also shown how the physical design of the laptop has changed, including the elimination of the much touted on-board hand crank that was supposed to power the cheap, lime green laptop. It's still there, reportedly, but has now been moved to the power adapter. The OLPC's produced earlier this week in Shanghai still need to go through loads of testing, such as knocking them off desks and dropping them in mud, as kids are wont to do. They may also be kicked around, like soccer balls, a popular sport in 99.9 percent of the world."

Comments

Kick it around like a ball?

[arthurpaliden]

So when was the last time you say a child use the family laptop for a soccer ball? Grow up please.

Re:Kick it around like a ball?

[nurb432]

Perhaps you should go visit a 3rd world country where the average brainpower is about the same as a rock.

Then you might see this 'sport' take place.

Re:Kick it around like a ball?

[MMC Monster]

So poverty is now equated to intelligence?

Re:Kick it around like a ball?

[tomstdenis]

Family laptops are bigger [e.g. what we're used to], usually kept safe by the adults. These are smaller and meant to be used solely by kids.

Tom

Re:Kick it around like a ball?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen people do stupider things to their computers and bring them in to have them fixed and I live in the 'brilliant' USA...

A lady brought in her favorite keyboard, wanted it repaired. Did not want a replacement, as she only liked that keyboard. The keyboard's problems were two fold:
a: Her daughter had taken it out back and used it for a rousing pickup game of baseball (as the bat)
b: her daughter had found the cord to be a nuicance and cut it off with a pair of scissors.

I've had SEVERAL machines come in with the VGA connector pulled off the motherboard when people try to detach the screwed on cable without unscrewing it first.

I had a business owner carefully disassemble his hard drive and bring in the platers in a zip lock baggie because we told him if he brought in his harddrive we might be able to recover the data (the drive had not been dead, just generating a lot of errors when he replaced it.) He needed the data on the drive for a tax audit begining at 8am the next morning.

I often talk to people who can't get something to work primarily because it isn't plugged in. For example, no dialtone on the modem because there is no phone line hooked to the computer. No video signal because the monitor is not hooked up to anything (there are no cables coming off of the monitor at all... heard that more than once... that's because you didn't hook the cables too the monitor that came with it).

Printers regularly get sprayed with WD-40.

A customer took a wireless router from us and wanted to mount it on the wall, so he drilled two holes through the middle of the router and screwed it to the wall. Then expected a refund when it didn't work. Another tech tells me a tale of someone drilling a hole through their LCD display to mount it on the wall, but I'm not sure I believe that.

We had a laptop back there last week which had several muddy boot prints on both top and bottom, and numerous dings where it obviously got tossed around. According to the bringer, it's their son's laptop and he just brings it in from college, tosses it on the floor, and regularly walks on it.

We had a customer that bought several of those 'small' Dell computers (business machines that are small tower/desktop units... bookshelf style I think they are called) in a row. They were the cheapest thing dell was selling in the line, and came with about a 60 day warranty. The all died in less than 6 months. The customer was putting the Pentium 4 computers in a desk drawer and then piling papers on top of them. I've also had a customer use their computer to block a heating vent in the winter because they didn't like the warm air blowing directly upon them.

I've had people cut the wires on their fans because they didn't like the noise (or even better, jam them with a stick).

Someone whittled down the power connector to plug in a new hard drive because it didn't fit (had it upside down) and killed the drive.

A supposed A+ certied tech brought us 5 machines he was building. He had tried to hammer the processors into their sockets (he hadn't pulled the lever up).

And finally, I worked on an Amiga 500 once that had no keyboard... just the membrane pad underneath it with letters marked on it with a sharpie. Upon opening it there were about 500 22 gauge wires inside. Why? because the owner had physically picked the machine up and thrown it across the room where it hit the doorframe, destroyed the keyboard and physically broke the motherboard in half. I was just adding memory to it, at the time (a year or two after the breakage) it was actually working.

Re:Kick it around like a ball?

[nurb432]

Isnt that wat the entire project is for, to help them increase their intellegence in 3rd world nations?

And i got modded down for saying the obvious.. geesh.

Durable Laptop?

[0jjjjjjjjjj0]

Having worked for a school, I know how durable these devices are going to have to be to withstand day-to-day use. The Compaq, Toshiba and NEC laptops of 10 years ago didn't take much more than a nudge to the back of the LCD to crack it or break the backlight, leaving the (admittedly rich) parents to fork out another $3,000 for a replacement unit, or $1,200 for the out-of-warranty repair.

I hope that these computers end up being not just "cheap" but inexpensive to own, operate and repair. Insurance premiums on cars go up if the cost of parts/repair is high; the perceived value of this device changes in inverse proportion to this - why would a school/state/country buy thousands of them if the spare parts/repair cost is going to be high?

Here's hoping it's right when it comes out ...

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

My problem with the OLPC is related to the whole low power/low spec business. I keep hearing about how important it is to save memory, CPU and power on the machine. And yet... the GTK widget set that it uses has gotten slower and slower with every release since GTK 2.6.

The GTK developers simply have no idea what they are doing. They ditched all the old X code and moved to Cairo which massively increased the RAM and CPU requirements for GTK apps... particularly hurting phone/PDA users like Nokia google for it... it's all there on the web). On top of the Cairo problems, they also made changes that sabotaged the performance of the various widgets. Basically, every version of GTK past 2.6 has been a fucking performance trainwreck, and the developers responsible (people like Owen Taylor) have just snuck off quietly and not taken responsiblity.

I remember the GNOME mailing list discussions about adopting the then forthcoming GTK 2.8 -- adopting it meant taking a risk on GTK getting it RIGHT since they would be reliant on untested code. Lots of credulous developers said that they should adopt it because they had faith in the GTK developers not screwing them over. Mugs.

Half a dozen versions later, and GTK still sucks fucking balls... and what's more, the OLPC suffers from it even worse because it is a low-performance system. Essentially... it runs like shit because of the GTK developers never having heard of stuff like optimization and benchmarking.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[oliverthered]

There's nothing stopping you from using the 2.6 version of GTK

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from the fact that the GNOME software stack is dependent on later versions. So there is a shit load of software with bugs and security problems that FORCE YOU TO RUN SHITTY SLOW VERSIONS of GTK.

But apparently you, and your moderation admirer, can't read properly.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Lumpy]

Which is why my daughter carries a old C640 laptop for school. I can buy a complete replacement for dirt compared to new laptop prices and parts are very readily available.

Fools give kids a new laptop that costs > $500.00US And yes I am calling many rich people fools.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Directrix1]

Quit your bitching. What, did you lose 12 milliseconds of productivity? Boo-fucking-hoo. GTK works fine, is sufficiently fast, is more than likely bound by your input speed than it is bound by your system. I've run GTK on a Zaurus, and its still responsive enough to use easily and without frustration (which is all an interface has to be to people that aren't sadistic about millisecond response times). So to reiterate, boo-fucking-hoo.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia refuses to use any version of GTK past 2.6 for the reasons I listed above... but don't let that stop your ill-informed bullshit.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[burns210]

The laptop hardware is made to be pretty rugged, specifically there are no internal moving parts. Only thing that move are (1)The monitor joint (2) the keyboard's keys (3) the 'bunny ear' wireless antennae.

As for protecting the LCD? Well, the plastic casing is slightly thicker than on standard laptops (2 MM, I think) and should give it a better resistance to bumps and drops. But it is important to note how well these laptops have traditionally been taken care of. Nicholas Negroponte (the MIT professor from the Media Lab that is heading the OLPC) has repeatedly told stories of how these laptops are often the brightest source of light in the house, and treated as if they were priceless.

American children may take laptops for granted, thinking their parents will simply replace it if it broke. This does not seem to be the case in the target countries of the OLPC

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this marked insightful? Memory use didn't massively increase (my job involves coding and testing gtk apps on mobile devices) and performance has increased quite considerably since GTK 2.8 (no, not to 2.6 levels, but all the same, it in no way 'sucks balls'). That's not to mention the massive increase in flexibility and functionality the use of cairo enabled.

As for the final comment, that's clearly just a troll. All sorts of efforts are being undertaken to optimise and, as the poster pointed out, there are benchmarks all over the web.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's marked insightful because it is true. After 2.6+ GTK is a dog. Cairo didn't not improve GTK one bit. Cairo can, and is, used separately from GTK. It's use within GTK has done nothing but turn it into a slug. Cairo might one day be a route to faster graphics in GTK... right now it's a millstone.

The GTK developer, Owen Taylor, who ripped out all the X code was adamant that it would improve performance... he never ran a single benchmark before making that claim (ironic because he used to be rabid about demanding benchmarks from other people). He ran some later, and the performance penalty turned out to be disasterous. It was, however, too late by then, because the GNOME mugs had already committed to using 2.8.

To say the Cairo switch was a complete fuck up is understating it. NO-ONE trusts anything the GTK developers say anymore.... and frankly, it's about time. It's been plain for a couple of years that none of them really have any idea what they are doing beyond adding and polishing new API. You might also be interested to know that various PDA manufacturers have forked GTK and ripped out Cairo and started optimising the rest themselves.

Here's hoping for a coup.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[oliverthered]

Next you'll be complaining that Vista is so much slower than windows 3.1.

There's nothing stopping you from applying the patches that fix bugs yourself. Ciro should use hardware acceleration so it shouldn't be so much of a problem if you had a decient PC.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. GTK 2.8 was no great jump over GTK 2.6 -- unlike Vista over win 3.1.

2. There's nothing stopping you from applying the patches that fix bugs yourself. - the war cry of the moron whenever FOSS fucks up really badly.

3. Cairo should use hardware acceleration so it shouldn't be so much of a problem if you had a decient PC. -- Cairo doesn't use hardware acceleration.

4. The OLPC isn't a decent PC... fuckwit

5. Wasn't one of the selling points of FOSS the fact that older machines don't get left behind and put on forced upgrade treadmills.

You're a fucking idiot, mate.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[oliverthered]

1. GTK 2.8 was no great jump over GTK 2.6 -- unlike Vista over win 3.1.

So you find it acceptable in some cases then.

2. There's nothing stopping you from applying the patches that fix bugs yourself. - the war cry of the moron whenever FOSS fucks up really badly.

If your shipping a few million PCs then I'm sure it's not going to be too much overhead for you.

3. Cairo should use hardware acceleration so it shouldn't be so much of a problem if you had a decient PC. -- Cairo doesn't use hardware acceleration.

Yes it does it's called glitz

4. The OLPC isn't a decent PC... fuckwit

see 2

5. Wasn't one of the selling points of FOSS the fact that older machines don't get left behind and put on forced upgrade treadmills.

see 2

You're a fucking idiot, mate.

and your a ludite.

Re:Durable Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you find it acceptable in some cases then.

Where did you get that? You compared GTK2.8 v GTK 2.6 to Vista vs Win 3.1. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

If your shipping a few million PCs then I'm sure it's not going to be too much overhead for you.

Like I said, the war cry of the moron. Maintaining a fork of GTK just because the developers are too fucking stupid to optimise properly and don't bother to run benchmarks before making changes. Not to mention all the extra time, trouble and incompatibilities that are introduced in that process. Yes... how very sensible you are.

Yes it does it's called glitz

No it doesn't. Glitz doesn't fucking work.. and isn't going to work for a long time... and it doesn't solve the poorly written SOFTWARE problem because it just throws hardware at it. And in addition, the OLPC isn't going to benefit from glitz. Can't you read, you moron?

and your a ludite.

A luddite? Do you even know what that means. I doubt it. You sure as hell can't spell it. Apparently, being against incompetent software engineering makes you anti-technology. Shock!

Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the GUI non-standard?

Seriously... a lot of development effort must have gone into this thing - lots of custom applications and lots of new design. But why? Why not just use an off-the-shelf GUI: KDE for example? Surely there is a lot to be gained by mimicing the de-facto standards established by MacOS and Windows. It helps your users, and helps your developers, and helps third-party developers in the future.

I just don't get it: what is the benefit of reinventing this particular wheel?

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

what is the benefit of reinventing this particular wheel?

Probably the CPU cycles & energy that can be shaved off by the GUI.

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[david.given]

Why is the GUI non-standard?

Because all the existing GUIs in the world today --- including System 6 --- are overweight, overcomplicated, way more powerful than are needed, fiddly, baroque, inconsistent, difficult to use, difficult to learn, and in fact are downright scary to people who aren't accustomed to computers.

KDE, Gnome, Windows, OSX, etc are all completely inappropriate for a machine of this nature.

(In fact, I still think they have a lot of work to do. The relationship between activities isn't particularly clear. Some applications, such as the word processor, still use popup menus, which is very bad. Etoys --- that's Squeak, isn't it? --- is visually inconsistent with the rest of the system. But at least they're heading in the right direction.)

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Etoys --- that's Squeak, isn't it?

It look like squeak, smells like squeak, and, squeaks like squeaks.

I was blown-up. One million childs growing with Squeak. *That* would be a good idea.

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Splab]

You got that right. Yesterday I installed a PC for one of our retired profs. Since he isn't on payroll he hasn't been up for upgrade for quite some time, when I went by him he was working on a 80486sx, using dos and WordPerfect 5.1. The main reason for upgrade is that I fear his old box will quit if someone sneezes at it, but upgrading meant giving him a windows XP box. Now this is the first time he has used windows, ever! That man was scared of the new stuff he had to learn. (And I cant blame him).

Ohh and why not just put in a Dos with wp 5.1? Well do you still have the install discs lying around?

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely a lot of work to do, I thought it was still rather clunky and non intuitive. It looked like even the guy demoing it had difficulty navigating the system sometimes. This needs waaaaay more polish before it's ready to be given to the kids. If it's not simple and fun they won't use it. I hope they can end up with something worth while :)

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[david.given]

I was blown-up. One million childs growing with Squeak. *That* would be a good idea.

Unfortunately, I loathe Squeak. Smalltalk is very cool, but Squeak have managed to wrap one of the greatest programming languages ever with a user interface designed by anally-retentive O/C monkeys. Admittedly, in this context the fact that it behaves like nothing else on earth isn't an issue, but Morphic still requires far too many weird CTRL+SHIFT+right mouse click+drag combinations to do simple things like moving windows around --- it's ergonomic hell, as well as being difficult to learn. By combining the process of constructing applications with using them, I believe that they've achieved something that does both very badly. Not to mention the fact that it looks like someone sneezed on the screen. (Literally. All those coloured blobs...)

Admittedly, the last time I used it was with the Croquet demo image. I spent half an hour trying to figure out how to make it do anything --- mainly trying to resize the Croquet window to fill the VM window --- and then gladly nuked it. It was an utterly loathsome experience.

I need to download the OLPC demo image and try it out and see if they've improved it any.

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[chill]

Actually, I was in a resale store the other day and there was a stack of Windows 3.11 floppies sitting next to a stack of WordPerfect 5.1 floppies. I was sort of in shock, seeing those. :-)

On the other hand, you could have used FreeDOS. I'm not sure about the WP, though. Hell, at least he wasn't used to WordStar.

  Charles

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[david.given]

Ohh and why not just put in a Dos with wp 5.1? Well do you still have the install discs lying around?

Caldera OpenDOS is available for free --- if you hunt around a bit --- and works pretty well. You may also want to give FreeDOS a try, it's probably decent enough to run WordPerfect.

Alternatively, you could give him one of the OLPC LiveCDs and see how he gets on with that!

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[mozumder]

That's like trying to use KDE for you Cell phone...

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Moofie]

"Why is the GUI non-standard?"

Because there's no such thing as a standard GUI?

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[peragrin]

I have dos 6 floppies around but I don't have wp 5.1

I also have a win95 bootdisk, and a winNT bootdisk in my pile of old software for just in case.

I also have every version of windows between windows 3.0 and win2k.

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[advocate_one]

I wouldn't be... I've still got my boxed set of Dos 3.2 in my desk drawer at work and also have an old twin floppy "laptop" with cga screen that runs DRDOS GEM 2 just to prove to folks you don't require wizzbang hardware to run a gui on... here's the beasty...

Re:Why is the GUI non-standard?

[Kesh]

Ohh and why not just put in a Dos with wp 5.1? Well do you still have the install discs lying around?

In an attic a state away, yeah. Dunno if they still work after all these years.

On second thought, it's WP 6.0 not 5.1, but close enough I'm sure. ;)

OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a world full of nerds and geeks to come up with a project like this where a big bunch of the planet still has NO electricity and NO running water, not to mention little food and illiteracy on a large scale.

Twits. Just because YOU have a laptop doesn't mean starving kids in (fill in the blank) need one so they can chat on the net. What frickin' net will they have access to anyway? Pull your geek brains out of your asses.

How about starting up the OBFPG project and get every Geek a Blowup Female?

Sadly, this actually makes more sense.

Re:OLPC BS

[Wooloomooloo]

Sigh. It has been mentioned in every single OLPC discussion here in Slashdot that the laptop is not intended to be used in poor countries "where people starve all day inside their mud huts" (as people like to say here), but in places where kids have the most basic needs covered already, like Argentina, Lybia and [some parts of] Brazil.

Re:OLPC BS

[east coast]

It takes a world full of nerds and geeks to come up with a project like this where a big bunch of the planet still has NO electricity and NO running water, not to mention little food and illiteracy on a large scale.

While you are correct in part also consider the old saying: give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he will feed himself for the rest of his life.

If people are dying in a village because they have no food they need food first but after that what? Do you expected a never ending trail of planes dropping food forever? The unit could be used to help educate the village into doing what's right for themselves. By teaching better practices to the ignorant we can hope that they become self sufficient. Education is the foundation of a solid society.

It's not like they're shipping these things out with Counter Strike installed. These machines could become a keystone in fighting bullshit like illiteracy. They can learn the dangers of certain water sources and make better decisions on what crops grow best under conditions that these people can directly interact with.

A lot of the third world's problems would become vapor with a bit of the education that you and I take for granted.

Re:OLPC BS

[Upaut]

If they survive, the machines will be shipped off to places like Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Thailand and Libya, where strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi signed a deal with Negroponte to supply the country's 1.2 million children with the machines and supporting infrastructure for $250 million.

Look at the list of deployment. These are not horribly poor countries. They have electrical infestructure, access to medical care in many cases, food, clothing, and domestic products they sell. What they lack is a well established educational system, or funds for the ever changing textbooks. This laptop is to eliminate the second, and help build the first.

Not to mention in even poorer countries, such as the Dominicain Republic, the best hope for leaving poverty is to get a job in the tourism industry. What are the qualifications for the best jobs? English. Computer skills. People skills. This project could help hundreds of kids grow up with a decent future that does not involve baseball in another land... Then as these people grow and earn more, their savings will be reinvested into improving the lives of themselves, and their families, lives. Better houses. Improved streets. Creature comforts. And a better school for their children.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

while much of the criticism is valid (why give a kid a laptop when you could feed an entire village for a year for the same amount) this project does not target world hunger. The same criticism might apply to many charities; Why have missionaries when you could take all that money going into air fare etc and give people food, why fight aids when third world hunger may be a more pressing problem (and I am not trying to diminish these problems, they are quite serious and yes I donate some of my money to hunger specifically) But the idea is there are places in the world where while hunger may not be a solved problem, there are socioeconomic classes which can eat, but can not afford lots of other things. This being one of them.

Okay great well what's that going to do for anyone? If suddenly some of these people are globally connected to the rest of the world, they can tell us very directly what their problems are and how they would like to world to act on them. They can get access to free information whe they might not even have a proper library in the area, they could conceivably culture the skills which would help them in their own communities in ways various charities haven't considered, and more rapidly. Has the water become contaminated? They may be able to research a sand filter. They could find out about the Germinated Brown Rice method, and increase the quality of local nutrition, or form international communities of developing locales that may exchange processes and information pertinent to ALL. This is just about empowerment, and the people who seriously can't feed themselves aren't going to need, want, or get these things.

Anyhow, just feeding someone won't solve the economic hardship that may have caused the hunger, where fair trade and human rights could improve their quality of life dramatically. Giving those countries a louder voice might be a big step there.

OLPC a huge waste of time? Maybe, this has yet to be seen. But why are we attacking a genuine effort to empower the voiceless when we should be demanding that our governments and communities jump in and take action?

Your most compelling argument is "Where do they get internet access from?", and that is probably the biggest problem with this plan, not that the laptop is worth a thousand pounds of grain. At least this is the way I see it.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought about putting together a similar program to deliver proper iPod adornments to kids living in areas stricken with moderate affluence, like Toluca Lake and such.

Sure these kids have their basic needs covered, Porsche, Fendi handbags, big screen plasma, but you won't see even one diamond encrusted Pave iPod case anywhere. All the kids in Montecito have diamonds all over their iPod cases and I'm tired of watching this parade of suffering pass by.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how willingly Slashdot barfs up the Standard Propaganda. Third world countries are not poor because of some ethereal "lack of education." They are poor because we have their resources. Period. Its peasants and kings folks; the only difference is we got a few more kings now.

Re:OLPC BS

[smilindog2000]

I think it's a bold experiment. What will poor children do when enabled with knowledge obtainable from the web? What happens when they have all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips? Will they continue to live as peasants? Will they rise up and build better lives for themselves? Will the realize that the rest of the world is horribly messed up for working so hard yet not obtaining the happiness they have?

Re:OLPC BS

[Loconut1389]

even so- rather than spend $X on this laptop project, why not take that same money and put it to countries that -don't- have the basics like food then? $208 per kid should cover a lot of food.

So the question is, what's more imporant- kids that barely have food get laptops (which is admittedly quite valuable for education purposes), or kids that have nothing get food.

Conceivably, the generation that get the laptops can then move on to feeding some of the ones that didn't get laptops, but meanwhile those people starve. So, do we enable more people to help others, at the cost of those starving today- or do we feed those starving today and then worry about educating them all once the basics are covered?

Re:OLPC BS

[ajs318]

This criticism keeps coming up, but it's a non sequitur. It's a bit like saying "We can't cure cancer, so there's no point in trying to cure minor infections". Or like saying "As long as there's even one miserable person in the world, nobody should be happy".

The OLPC is for people who already have access to food, water, shelter and so forth. There are plenty of other initiatives to provide more basic needs. Support those if you want to, but don't knock this project. It's got the potential to do great things.

Re:OLPC BS

[east coast]

I think we will have to wait and see. I can understand if these kids pull short of the normal day bullshit that we put up with but being able to create a situation in which you have good food and water and the ability to take care of each other has to be a step up from waiting for handouts and dying a premature death from diseases that are easily dealt with.

In the end even if we only get these communities to the point where they become self-sufficient and not integrated into the over all culture of the world we won't have to continue to throw money at them hoping that eventually they get on their own feet. If there is anything that is clear in a "welfare state" it's that feeding the poor doesn't make them more productive, it just makes fatter poor people. Maybe with an education instead of a bowl of rice and a Twix bar these kids will pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Even if we only really help 3-4% of these people it may be a wise investment.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you expected a never ending trail of planes dropping food forever? "

The more interesting question is what they did before planes or laptops.

Most of the extreme poverty and disease is a result of brutal regimes, the stealing of their land, deforestation, oil wars, chemical water poisoning, tribal wars with modern weapons, and the destruction of their way of life.

I am personally for these laptops as I feel that modern technology is largely responsible for ruining these people lives, so the only way they will ever have any power is to get control of technology.

Re:OLPC BS

[name*censored*]

I like all these people who are so eager to poke holes in other peoples charitable ideas, but dont have their own projects (or they'd have mentioned them). If we gave the OLPC money to the kids in the third world countries (ie, mudhutland) then yes, they would live, but once they grow up they wouldn't be able to get jobs. They don't just need food, they need medicine, education, shelter, clean water, revolutions (to overthrow corrupt governments).... It's not like first world countries where absolutely anyone could get a job, even if its cleaning sewers. Meanwhile, the kids in the second world countries (ie, where the OLPC project is designed for) grow up and can't compete in a country where the vast numbers of people and the scarcity of jobs (although not as bad as in third world countries) means that they don't have any advantages (eg, computer literacy) they can use to work in companies, or start companies, which would generate economic growth, and bringing them out of the second world. With extra jobs and less population growth (the affluent tend to have less children), the second world countries will start employing people from the third world countries, which further drives economic growth..

It's like the dilemma of "would you save one disabled person or 2 fully mobile people from a burning building" - yes it's horrible, but it's more effective to save the mobile people... the disabled person still has exactly the same right to be saved as the other two, but it's not possible to save all 3 given the available resources.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

What we really need to conquer is elitist bullshit like people thinking that half working cut rate versions of the laptop they use to search Wikipedia will finally impart knowledge of which water sources are polluted to poor Africans when 5,000 years of accomplished that taks 4,999 1/2 years ago. Same thing with crops.

When will you Westerners figure out that no matter how great you think you are the entire rest of the world does not have to learn to mimic you to survive. The problem in Africa isn't that your average tribesman is just too dumb to find water, it is that every untainted watering hole is guarded my men carrying rifles made in your country and shipped here by your government, standing at the ready to put a bullet in any head that isn't on their side. Their side being the side that will let Westerners pillage the country in return for more rifles to guard more water sources to kill by attrition anyone who isn't complicit in the scheme to carve up the entire world and hand it over to the West.

Keep your laptops.

Re:OLPC BS

[east coast]

When will you Westerners figure out that no matter how great you think you are the entire rest of the world does not have to learn to mimic you to survive

Yeah, and if we'd do nothing to help the "entire rest of the world" we'd be told that we're greedy and stingy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I happen to like this method.

Re:OLPC BS

[Moofie]

If I had access to two fully mobile people, the three of us would probably be able to get the disabled person out.

But your point is well taken.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

even so- rather than spend $X on this laptop project, why not take that same money and put it to countries that -don't- have the basics like food then? $208 per kid should cover a lot of food.

So the question is, what's more imporant- kids that barely have food get laptops (which is admittedly quite valuable for education purposes), or kids that have nothing get food.

Conceivably, the generation that get the laptops can then move on to feeding some of the ones that didn't get laptops, but meanwhile those people starve. So, do we enable more people to help others, at the cost of those starving today- or do we feed those starving today and then worry about educating them all once the basics are covered?

Most of those efforts are well-intentioned but misguided. Everyone feels bad for starving kids -- nobody gives a shit when the starving kid grows up to be an angry man with no opportunity other than waving an AK-47. Or an angry woman with a gaggle of kids that she can't feed.

But fortunately for do-gooders everywhere, the starving-kid-turned-militiaman or starving-kid-turned-rape-victim will father a few more starving kids to feed before dying or running away.

Re:OLPC BS

[advocate_one]

this hoary crap about the money being better spent on food for the starving kids etc. is being posted by microsoft employees and shills...

Re:OLPC BS

[philipgar]

uh; I hate to break it to you, but they aren't pushing these to 2nd world countries. Second world was a phrase used during the cold war to refer to the communist block of countries. The first world was the free developed world, the 2nd world was the commies, and the 3rd world was everyone else. Since then there has been an expansion of the terms referring to fourth world countries as the absolutely poorest countries.

Please don't use terms when you don't know what they mean.

Phil

Re:OLPC BS

[Loconut1389]

my point wasn't so much a point as it was a philosophical question to say that even if you're someone who thinks civilized countries should make it a point to feed everyone in the world that needs feeding, this laptop project might be a real step in that direction anyway- so if you're arguing to feed people first, this laptop project might make more working citizens (of any country) that might in turn (out of gratefulness or just intelligence) work on feeding those with truly nothing. There's a time lag involved, but ultimately, perhaps the laptop project is a greater good than feeding the poor directly?

Re:OLPC BS

[ben there...]

It's not like they're shipping these things out with Counter Strike installed. These machines could become a keystone in fighting bullshit like illiteracy. They can learn the dangers of certain water sources and make better decisions on what crops grow best under conditions that these people can directly interact with.

A lot of the third world's problems would become vapor with a bit of the education that you and I take for granted.

I hope that teachers and educational institutions around the world take advantage of the availability of these machines after their introduction and can develop common curricula, translated to the appropriate language, to rapidly teach large regions of the world. It's much cheaper to send out one $100 laptop than it is to distribute dozens of books per child. It's also much easier to keep the curricula up-to-date, simply by updating the material, translating it once, and distributing it.

This opens up a lot of doors for educators to participate in "open source" teaching.

Re:OLPC BS

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are correct in part also consider the old saying: give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he will feed himself for the rest of his life.

... teach a man to program, and you've effectively ensured he won't reproduce? :)

Re:OLPC BS

[mccoma]

I am personally for these laptops as I feel that modern technology is largely responsible for ruining these people lives, so the only way they will ever have any power is to get control of technology.

Despots have a longer history of ruining peoples lives then technology. Technology doesn't kill people, People kill people. Gotta love not holding people responsible for their actions and instead blaming some concept or object.

Re:OLPC BS

[name*censored*]

Yes, and it's now used to describe "developing" countries (developing being the PC term). The 1st world is the industrialised countries, the second is developing and the third is undeveloped. Just because you happen to only hear the PC words doesn't mean the others are wrong. Words can change meanings you know, for example, "bugs" meaning flaws (in code) originally came from an early computers collapsing because a bug was quite literally eating it. Now, it just means flaws (usually in code) and has nothing to do with a moth's brunch.

You can try it yourself

[pieleric]

Actually, although the youtube demo shows mostly everything, you can try it yourself using emulation (it runs on a x86 after all).
Intructions are here. It uses QEMU and a special 100Mb system image.

Happy slashdotting...

Re:You can try it yourself

[solevita]

There seems to be an easier point and click alternative for Windows and OS X users.

Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[StefanJ]

These people are hungry! Isn't it more important to get them clean water? Why would people who make less than a dollar a day want a computer? It's all a plot to enable the next generation of outsourcing. These people need sewing kits, not computers! If you give computers away you are furthering the evil cult of altruism. The color is uggggggly! How can I buy one?

There. Did I miss any?

Now you can talk about the contents of the article rather than blather about the same stuff that comes up every time the One Laptop Per Child project gets discussed.

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[torpor]

With an OLPC in some remote village or two, with children around to use it and learn from it, basic services in that area can be improved -drastically- over the course of a single generation.

Education is a significant factor in resource management and environmental/subsistence control. Imagine the poor kids on wastelands learning how to make their own filtration system, step by step, with bio-sensor assistance from their updated-daily OLPC's receiving advice and guidance from a-far ..

Putting these in remote, desperate places, may seem at first blush to be a terrible waste of time, but if the software is right, it will be fixing the problems in front of the user. For kids in poor places, that means learning more about how to manage their environment and improve it by applying education.

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

OBFPG Shipping Notice

Please so not reply to this notification

This message is to inform you that your Blowup Female from the One Blowup Female Per Geek project has been shipped.

The funds that were utilized to bring you this much needed missing aspect of your life were provided by starving children without running water and electricity. They read your messages on Slashdot and figured that you needed the Blowup Chick more than they needed your "help".

Included in your shipment is a sample packet of GOO-GONE so you can keep your Rubber Gal in tip-top shape.

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Knuckles]

Did I miss any?

Not much, just every other OLPC discussion plus the comments above and below yours that explain that this IS NOT AIMED AT COUNTRIES WHERE PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY. Check the fucking buyer list for christ's sake. I swear, /. gets dumber by the day.

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[McNihil]

Do you want to feed a hungry man or teach him how to fish? I feel that teaching has a much more lasting effect than a cup of rice (which they will get in any case regardless of the OLPC being a success or not.)

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[vidarh]

And you obviously missed the entire point of the message you just replied to... Try reading it again, and keep an eye out for sarcasm..

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Onymous Coward]

Just as I got to the RSS client part of the video I thought about this issue. Gives new meaning to the phrase "feed the third world".

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Lumpy]

Gawd you people are silly...

open OLPC device, select web browser type clean water and food into the google search bar and click on more> even more> and select local.

use search results that show you the clean water and food.

It's really simple!

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Knuckles]

*hides in shame* Apologies to StefanJ. It seems I was so enraged by having to read through a multitude of similar postings -- but written in earnest -- just before I came across this one that I completely missed the sarcasm.

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Blakey Rat]

How about "what the hell is OLPC?"

The standard "could you spend at least 3 words explaining WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!" complaint applies for this summary also.

(For others like me, OLPC is the "One Laptop Per Child" project, apparently, making those wind-up laptops to sell for cheap. You've probably heard about it, just under a different name or no name at all other than "cheap wind-up laptops.")

Re:Here, I'll get these out of the way . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the inevitable: "If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. But if you give a man 640,000 fish, that ought to be enough for anyone."

That or the Pratchett line.

This is ridiculous.

[Zweideutig]

Why are we doing this? These people don't need computers. They need more medical attention and food donations. If we give these people everything they want beyond what is needed for immediate survival, they will never feel a need to become self sufficient. This is global welfare gone bad.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[PGC]

You want to feed them fish , OLPC is trying to teach the coming generation how to fish.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Tyler Eaves]

Why does everyone keep thinking about Africa?

The main targer for these are places like Brazil, and India... where basic human services are in-place.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Zweideutig]

My point is that we shouldn't be wasting our money on other people, we should be helping ourselves.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[OneSmartFellow]

The main targer for these are places like Brazil, and India... where basic human services are in-place

You clearly have never ventured far into either of those countries

Re:This is ridiculous.

[vidarh]

And how are you "wasting your money on other people" seeing as the countries who want this will pay for it themselves?

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Fred_A]

You want to feed them fish , OLPC is trying to teach the coming generation how to fish.

And a useful skill it will be in the absence of fish :)

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

People need the freedom to choose for themselves what they want, and to work for it, without constant political and physical interference.

Parents need the space to educate children to live in their culture and environment instead of pining for a life they can't have and might not actually want if they got it.

Corrupt governments and crooks need more snake oil fantasies to sell to the population and more non-indigenous resources and power to leverage.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, it's hardly even welfare. It's a low-cost embedded device targeting a specific class of users which has been wholly neglected. The OLPC could empower these people to autonomously learn and compete in a global marketplace. Many of these countries aren't even developing the same way that america has, it's a truly different world, and that calls for truly different approaches.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the post say that basic human services are in place everywhere in Brazil and India? No. Hell, they're not in place everywhere in the U.S. But basic human services still exist in those countries.

What, did you think that it was people living homeless in the jungle that are responsible for Bollywood and taking our IT jobs?

Re:This is ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're only paying for half of the manufacturing cost, and obviously not for all the free R&D labour.

I think many governments of India could pay local companies to develop a better and more appropriate product for their needs. And that would create jobs in India, rather than in Chinese slave camps.

Re:This is ridiculous.

[DrSkwid]

Everything made in India falls to pieces after a few weeks.

Except the Taj Mahal, but that was never finished !

You can't just type in a location?

[Nermal]

From TFV:

"Note that there is no url bar" (in the browser)

I really hope there's more to it than that. I mean, I realize that google isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but having any single search engine be the mandatory primary interface for the web, to the exclusion of even being able to type in urls directly seems insane to me.

<marge>Hrmmm....</marge>

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[gdek]

Bzzt. The prototype I played with last Tuesday did, in fact, have a URL bar in the browser.

Nice try, though.

P.S. it's unbelievably cool in person. :)

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[Ed Avis]

Tim B-L's first browser didn't show URLs... they were meant to be technical implementation details and not exposed to the user. In practice, though, an idealistic approach like that is never going to work because people still want to include URLs in plain text documents, and there's no sensible index of the Web to use as an alternative.

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[1310nm]

Yeah, who the hell thought up this interface? Why wouldn't you just let the kids use an existing WM like XFCE, gnome, or KDE? This isn't going to be a very good learning tool if nothing works like it does in the real world. You don't learn anything by being put in a rubber-walled room with a couple of rubber balls, you learn by being in the real world and making mistakes. Who broke their DOS install as a kid and had to reinstall from scratch? These kids aren't retarded, they're just not exposed to modernity.

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[evronm]

Just because there is no URL bar doesn't mean you can't type in a URL. I routinely hide the URL bar on my laptop to preserve screen space, and then just hit Ctrl+L when I need to type in a URL.

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[Darkon]

Tim B-L's first browser didn't show URLs... they were meant to be technical implementation details and not exposed to the user.

So what page did this early browser open by default?

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[Moofie]

Well, there was probably only one page, so I guess it'd open that one.

: )

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[Nazgul_Cro]

You can type in address, of course. The same space is used for both title bar and URL. When you click on it, it displays URL and it is editable. Otherwise it shows title bar.

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you just let the kids use an existing WM like XFCE, gnome, or KDE?

KDE? On a machine with 128MB RAM and 512MB flash memory and no harddrive?

Re:You can't just type in a location?

[Ed Avis]

I don't know what the default page was - from this screenshot it looks like the browser defaulted to your home page (which you might have needed to set by hand) but may have had a way to enter a URL from the menus.

They are using Squeak (smalltalk) for the EToys

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty cool :)

Smalltalk is way way way better than perl, python or ruby and Squeak is a neat VM for smalltalk.

Thank goodness these children will be learning to use a real language which is clean.

Starving kids?

[Marcus Green]

Why do you think that this is aimed at starving kids?

Re:Starving kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

OH, my bad.

This isn't aimed at starving kids? Why the fuck not? My POINT exactly. It should not even exist as a project until the starving kids ARE taken care of. It's purely a Geek project with Geek interests.

Who the hell is going to teach the recipients of the laptops how to use the damn things?

Are you planning on shipping a can of internet with each one?

Does each one come with a rod and reel and a net and some bait? You'll need these if you want to teach them how to fish rather than just giving them fish.

This whole idea is just plain stupid. Misguided in it's target. Why not send them all mood rings and ouiji boards while we're at it. Oh, and bags of rocks. And don't forget the magic 8-balls.

If this project is aimed at kids that already have the capacity to use a laptop and have an available infrastructure to get on the net then it's just good to create more Geeks.

Re:Starving kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

It should not even exist as a project until the starving kids ARE taken care of. It's purely a Geek project with Geek interests.

Please lead by example: smash your computer.

Re:Starving kids?

[feranick]

Because they are not. They are targeted to developing countries where food and starvation are not an issue.

Re:Starving kids?

[feranick]

You TOTALLY missed the point of the project. Lots of people have the wrong perception of developing countries as starving countries on the edge of civil wars. Sure those countries exist, but the vast majority of developing countries (Argentina, Lybia, Thailand, Brazil for example) are not starving, yet they don't have the resources of a developed country. These countries are looking at ways to improve their educational system, because other problems are overall solved. The OLPC is aimed just at that. In fact the project is potentially so important that could benefits rural areas in developing countries (which I am sure you elitist don't belong to and have no idea of what is like). So, please stop trolling (by the way are you contributing to the reduction of the world starvation yourself?).

Re:Starving kids?

[hanju]

The vast majority of developing countries (Agentina, Libya Thailand and Brazil)
have major poverty problems I think you need to understand that just because a country has food doesn't mean the people do.

Mod parent up

[Zweideutig]

This is insightful.

Mod up "Informative."

[StefanJ]

I would have, but I needed to make a snarky comment.

Thanks pieleric!

gimme a terminal!

[xtracto]

I agree, I hope they can stand the rough climates of some of the third world countires... for example Chiapas climate (in Mexico) can be really hard for electronics (humidity and rain) and if this is going to kids who have never owned a high tech portable equipment they must be quite durable.

One thing I was wondering while watching the video is that it seems there is no way to open a terminal. I agree that the interface MUST be dumbed down a lot but I am also completely sure that there MUST be a terminal in order to access more "complex" things in the computer. I know (from personal experience) that the kids are the first ones to learn the new technologies and exploit them. If you are going to give them this computer, then lets make them able to get the most out of it.

A terminal and a python enabled system would be enough (IMHO).

Re:gimme a terminal!

[YrWrstNtmr]

I agree that the interface MUST be dumbed down a lot

Why? My 4 year old granddaughter seems to be pretty capable of cruising around limited parts of the house PC. Her aunts, uncle, and mom seemed to be pretty capable of doing the same when they were that age. Kids are not dumb. They will quickly learn whatever interface you put in front of them.
Seeing as how the big box stores are selling standard laptops for $400 and under (somtimes a LOT under) this week...when you consider the vast difference in purchasing power...the "OLPC" concept is mostly already here in the west. It's just not backed by a fancy organization.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[vidarh]

Take a look at the software components list. It looks like they are planning to add a shell, and a lot of the system is already Python based. I really do hope the shell gets included as standard. As a Ruby fan (and someone intensely hating the Python indentation stuff), I question the choice of Python, but I guess it's better than nothing ;) (and inevitable when Redhat is involved...).

I don't agree it must be dumbed down - I started programming on a VIC-20 where almost anything remotely interesting required lots of PEEK/POKE. I was 5 at the time, and didn't know a word of English. By the time I was 7 we got a C64, and I could program it better than my dad (who wrote programs for it as part of work) within months. I was an exception among my friends, but even the ones that didn't take up programming had no problems picking up whatever they needed to do what they wanted to with the machine.

It's adults without computer experience that needs dumbed down interfaces, not children. All you need is some examples they can copy and modify to get them started.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[Dan Ost]

I'm curious why you hate python's use of indentation.

Indentation-wise, my current C code (and my C code from 10 years ago) looks no different from my Python code.

Most people I know who complain about Python's use of indentation stop complaining once they realize that it doesn't apply to line continuations within open parens, brackets, etc.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[Darundal]

The thing with the "simplified" (I think that is a very relative term in relation to any GUI) interface is that not only are the kids going to be using it, but there are going to be teachers using it too. Teachers who have never used a computer before. And while I agree, children have no problems picking up the basics of different UI's (having the practical example of my sister, who, at six, had absolutly no problem using the standard Windows Interface, Gnome, and a hyper-minimalistic Litestep skin with a dock at the bottom of the screen) older people (in my case, parents and their friends) need what essentially amounts to a basic tutorial on what is where if the UI changes in the least. If slightly older people who encounter computers on a daily basis (or even teens who think about not the concepts of the UI, but formulaicly think "click this for this, then that, and then that happens") have issues going from one UI to another, or even using the UI they are used to, then how can you expect someone who has probably never encountered and/or used a computer before to do so? You have to make it as simple as possible. They basically just removed all the stuff that is likely to confuse someone. For the kids growing up using these, the UI looks similar enough that even if they formulaicly think "this and this for that" and don't think about the concepts, they shouldn't be lost on most typical UI's.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[truthsearch]

As a Ruby fan (and someone intensely hating the Python indentation stuff)...

If you don't indent your code (whatever the language), I hope it never makes it onto one of these laptops. Or any of my computers, for that matter.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[kgp]

OK, its designed for kids not syadmins. It's not a "linux box" it's a computer that runs the linux kernel.

But in the XO B1 version shift-F6 brings up a terminal with a shell in it.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl alt F2

Re:gimme a terminal!

[burns210]

One thing I was wondering while watching the video is that it seems there is no way to open a terminal. I agree that the interface MUST be dumbed down a lot but I am also completely sure that there MUST be a terminal in order to access more "complex" things in the computer

There is a terminal activity. It does not, by default, have a frame icon (bottom left row of icons). It is opened with a key combination.

A terminal and a python enabled system would be enough (IMHO).

Which is also included An activity's UI, Sugar itself, etc, is all written in Python and is the 'blessed language' for development on the OLPC. Backend code (Abiword, Gecko) are obviously not Python, though.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[eklitzke]

As a Ruby fan (and someone intensely hating the Python indentation stuff), I question the choice of Python

To the other good comments about this issue, I would like to add that a fairly common error in programming is having unmatched tokens. Unbalanced parentheses are pretty annoying, but mismatched curly braces in C (and other languages that use them) are particularly insidious, because normally braces that are in the wrong place are dozens or hundreds of lines apart. When I program in Python I never have this problem, because things are nested exactly how I think they are.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[vidarh]

I hate it because I hate having formatting imposed on me by the language. Formatting is very important to me in any language, and with Python I feel limited to the point where I never use it unless I absolutely have to (i.e. when I need to work on someone elses code). Ever seen how long C/C++ people can talk about positioning of braces? Well, it happens because people care deeply about formatting. When the choice is taken away, some people stop arguing, and some people refuse to work with that language.

Regardless what Python fans think of it, it's one of those issues that will keep quite a few people (like me) from seriously considering it as a language for their projects, regardless of other merits, because some of us find it too painful.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[vidarh]

Presumably you don't know Python, or you would have understood that the "Python indentation stuff" I referred to is Python's use of indentation to determine nesting level in code, a practice which a lot of Python fans love, and which a lot of non-Python people absolutely loathe and which in many cases is people's main justification for wanting to avoid Python whenever possible (I'm in the latter camp).

Re:gimme a terminal!

[vidarh]

And if you use any decent editor you don't ever have that problem with C/C++, Ruby or any other sane language either.

Sorry, but you will never convince me that making indentation affect semantics of the code is a good idea, considering the amount of badly indented code and people using different tab/space settings in their editors, cut and past problems (i.e. programs that strip all repeated whitespace when they paste, or combine lines etc.) and other code mangling I see on a regular basis. As long as there are proper tokens to indicate the start and end of a scope I can fix that trivially, and get the code reformatted exactly the way I want it (using "indent" and similar apps, or even just my preferred editor modes).

I've tried Python on enough occasions to know it's just not interesting enough for me to overcome my hatred for that "feature". Maybe when I was doing mostly C++ I could have been convinced if someone were persistent enough, but now that I do Ruby too I just don't see the point of even considering making the effort.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[pembo13]

Reread the comment, the poster understood exactly what you meant.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[vidarh]

If he did, then the comment he posted was just plain stupid, as my post in no way indicate that I don't indent my code, but that I don't want to be forced to indent my code in the way that Python requires. I chose to interpret his post in the best light possible - if you're right, then he's a moron.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[HeroreV]

So how do you indent your code? I really can't imagine more than one way to indent besides using tabs or spaces and the number of each, which Python always handles just fine. Do you switch from tabs on one line to spaces on the next, or what?

Re:gimme a terminal!

[vidarh]

It is less about indentation per se than it is about the use of indentation instead of other indications of where blocks end - I know that wasn't clear in the message you replied to.

And I've given reasons for that elsewhere - indentation is just too brittle. Passing code through cut and paste, e-mail, editors with various settings etc. frequently messes up formatting. In other languages you can trivially automatically reformat code with broken indentation without any risk of changing the semantics. In Python you can't. To me that is a deficiency.

To me, the Python indentation is a "solution" that causes problems without solving any.

Maybe you never run across those issues or don't care, but I do, and syntax and code layout is too important for me to want to use a language with a limitation like that when I have alternatives that works just as well without those limits.

Maybe I'd not care so much if the other features of Python had been more compelling to me, but whenever I've looked at Python my reaction has been indifference, and if I'm indifferent to the features available in a language, then any negative is going to put me off it.

Re:gimme a terminal!

[HeroreV]

Maybe you never run across those issues or don't care

Of course I have. In Python I have to carefully indent code before running it, while in C++ or JavaScript I sometimes don't care about indentation until I've figured out how I want to do something. Requiring good indentation can make experimentation more tedious.

I like Python's weird indentation thing, I just wish it was optional. Why shouldn't code like below that mixes the styles work? Simply because it's not "Pythonic" enough?

if test:
  doFirstThing()
  doSecondThing()
  doThindThing()
 
if test {
doFirstThing()
    doSecondThing()
  doThirdThing()
}

sweet!

[operato]

now they can google to find out how to stick a leg up instead of training a doctor or a nurse!

Really a nice direction ..

[torpor]

.. to see Linux moving in. Custom interfaces for task-molded computers, and cheap too.

My only gripe with the OLPC is that I can't buy one for my son or daughter .. yet .. but for sure I will.

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[YrWrstNtmr]

My only gripe with the OLPC is that I can't buy one for my son or daughter

Why? The price? Considering that BestBuy was selling (limited quantitise) of standard Toshiba Satellites for $250 today, factor in the vast difference in annual imcone/purchasing power, and you're already there.

What's holding you back?

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[mspohr]

The key term here is "limited quantities" for $250.00

Ever heard of a "loss leader"?

Try to buy a few million of these laptops at $250.00 each and I think you'll discover that it's not possible.

You'll also be stuck with a Windows virus magnet(tm) that will make the machine unusable within days (minutes) of connection to the Internet. Plus you won't get all of the educational software bundled with the machine and you won't get the mesh networking (probably for the better if you're using Windows) and you won't get the low power consumption that makes the machine usable where power isn't readily available or reliable.

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[torpor]

What's holding you back?


I can't go look at one at my local consumer-toy outlet, buy it right then and there, and bring it home with me.

Sure, there are other things on those shelves, equally fun and interesting, but the OLPC is a class product. Clone it someone, please.

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[YrWrstNtmr]

Yes, limited quantities
Yes, loss leader.

I was addressing a /. reader who wanted one of these for his kid(s). Why? It would seem to me for the $100 price. But he's probably not the target market for these particular machines. Something a little more expensive wouldn't be nearly as much financial burden.

Laptop prices (as with just about all electronics) have been falling rapidly. Even at regular prices of low end machines ~$400, the concept of "OLPC" is mostly already here. Expecially for most people reading this.

Stuck with Windows? What, exactly, is preventing you from instaling the OS of choice?

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[YrWrstNtmr]

I can't go look at one at my local consumer-toy outlet, buy it right then and there, and bring it home with me.

Do you want a laptop for your kid, or do you want this laptop for your kid? Why this one in particular? The interface? Price? Power consumption? What makes this one so special for someone (presumably) in an affluent western country?

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[hollywoodb]

Actually, as a college student, I think it would be pretty handy to have one of these myself... Assuming whatever they use as a power source isn't noisy, how cool would it be to be able to take notes in class all day long (I can type faster than I can write) without having to monitor your battery, carry multiple notebooks, etc etc? I'm also a bit older than your average college student, I have a house, yard, garage 45 miles from the university that I drive each direction every day. I can't just "run back to the dorm" to type up a paper. Perhaps not as a main system, but something I can throw in my backpack that is rugged, cheap, purposeful, wifi connectivity, unlimited runtime.... I could use that. Granted I can carry the AC adapter around for the laptop I have now, but that severly limits where and when I can use it before my battery runs out.

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[quanticle]

While the low price is a plus for me, I'd personally buy one of the OLPC laptops for durability and power consumption reasons. This laptop is designed to withstand some pretty serious abuse. The $250 laptops from Best Buy aren't nearly as hardened. This laptop actually has to have a decent battery life. The cheapo ones from Best Buy do not.

In fact, the only other "hardened" notebooks I can think of are high-end Thinkpads and Panasonic Toughbooks. I challenge you to find me one of those for $250.

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[Demona]

Perhaps because it fills the woefully ignored niche market in this affluent Western country of providing an efficient portable computer, as opposed to a gigahertz crotch-warmer that barely has enough battery life to play an average movie on the vaunted DVD's they are advertised as being powerful enough to play. (The TRS-80 Model 100 could "run for days on a set of four alkaline AA batteries".) Or perhaps of providing something durable, as opposed to something that snaps in half if you give it a funny look. The amount of "choice" in the laptop computer market is even worse than the desktop, and I welcome anything that puts pressure on businesses to provide real alternative solutions rather than more of the same overpowered, overpriced crap.

Re:Really a nice direction ..

[Moofie]

I would be glad to pay for two (or three!) rugged laptops and keep one of them for my own use, and donate the others. I believe that's the plan when these things hit production.

My question is...

[OneSmartFellow]

....why is it only One Laptop Per Child, I mean, how stingy is that ?

Re:My question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing it's because of the built-in limitation of One Lap Per Child.

Weirdos

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They may also be kicked around, like soccer balls, a popular sport in 99.9 percent of the world.

If you thought curling was a strange sport, get ready for laptop soccer!
All the kids are doing it, well 99.9% of them at least!

GTK question (also mod parent up)

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the things that sucks the most about GTK is the non-standard file dialog that doesn't allow you to type in a location or browse directories in a sensible way.

Unfortunately it is hard to avoid this, because many popular applications use it (Firefox, Azureus, and GAIM, to name but a few). Additionally, the GTK developers appear to be married to this design, despite many complaints (including a complaint from non other than Linus Torvalds, who called them "fucking idiots", IIRC :)).

Is there any way to make a sensible file dialog appear instead? Like a 3rd-party patch that changes it?

Re:GTK question (also mod parent up)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes: take the GTK libraries, rip out all the guts and insert your own. Just make usre it uses all the same function names and parameters so it's compatible at the API level.

This is likely to be a big enough change that your modified version would be considered a new work in its own right. So while you're at it, change the licence from LGPL to GPL. That way, those greedy closed-source developers will be prevented from linking against it.

Re:GTK question (also mod parent up)

[TuringTest]

Or, you can press CTRL+L in GNOME file dialog and type in the directory location.

Re:GTK question (also mod parent up)

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you can press CTRL+L in GNOME file dialog and type in the directory location.

Thanks, that seems to work nicely.

Not very intuitive, though! If you hadn't said this, I would never have known. Why isn't there an on-screen button to do this?

Re:GTK question (also mod parent up)

[MaXMC]

I usually just start typing and I get a "location bar".

We?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean 'we'? You aren't helping with the project, so what's it taking from you?

You are right

[geekoid]

please start working to get some orginization, private or government or both, to buy a million of these for low income/no income children in the united states.
You want to help the people, get on it.

Bear in mind, that all the countries are paying for these.

New UI - why??

[Richard_J_N]

I don't understand the reason for the new user interface? It can't be due to resource limits, since they already ship GTK (with firefox), and it can't be for reasons of complexity, since most kids pick up computing skills really fast. So why re-write all the apps? I think that it's quite wasteful of programmer effort. Wouldn't it be better to work on reducing the resource requirements(*) of Gnome (refactor it to make some parts of it compile-time options)? Existing minimal linux distros (eg DSL) are very good at providing good programs with low resource requirements; they just need some "tidying" to make them more user-friendly.

* For lower resources still, use the excellent IceWM. But if we already have firefox, then we've already loaded GTK, and may as well use Gnome. Anyonw who wants a demonstration of how fast simpler programs can be, please try Dillo.

Re:New UI - why??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the reason for the new user interface? It can't be due to resource limits...

It can, and in part it is. Flash space and RAM are limited, but the biggest UI resource limit is the display. It's a solid 1200x900 in monochrome mode, but the color resolution is more complicated. I haven't heard a number. Let's say it's in the neighborhood of 600x450. Existing Linux user interfaces don't scale down very well.

Re:New UI - why??

[Nazgul_Cro]

Mesh networking and activities.

That's why.

To elaborate - OLPC are not trying to simply ship cheap PC laptops. They're trying to provide a completely new platform of usability. It's not just about window manager, it's about how OLPCs should be used.

Basically, OLPC laptops have low-powered high-range WLAN cards which automatically configure network in a peer-to-peer mesh. Most features of Sugar interface are directly built with mesh networking and shared activities in mind, and most applications are encouraged to be able to work the same way.

Other reasons are technological, but other way around than you mentioned. For example, the Home screen (one of the optional views on Sugar, mostly equivalent to desktop as most of us would know it) has built-in task manager (called activity ring), represented in a circle around the XO human figure. It's also a visual feedback of memory constraints (128 MB RAM), and it provides means for resource management that doesn't require knowledge of the underlying architecture.

For more information about its interface, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Gui delines is a nice read.

Text processor is AbiWord. It's not consistent with the rest of OLPC interface, but don't forget that the entire interface is still in testing and development phase.

Re:New UI - why??

[ronaldgminnich]

you want a lightweight interface? Try Inferno (see http://vitanuova.com./ Andrey Mirtchovski got the non-X11 (uses framebuffer) version working. Where a 128MB OLPC seems tight for memory, inferno happily runs its 120KB web browser, and it feels lost in 32 MB -- yep, we don't even have to bother giving it more than that.

You get a reasonable interface, you get a good language (Limbo -- far better than Python!), and you get a more modern OS universe than Linux.

Well worth a look -- now that I'm not working on the LinuxBIOS side any more (a full-time guy at OLPC now handles the LinuxBIOS for OLPC) I intend to do a native port of Inferno to OLPC.

BTW, if you want a command prompt, you can load Linux into the BIOS FLASH, and get an ash prompt on bootup -- or, in the system-as-shipped you can get a Forth prompt. Your choice. But getting to a command prompt on boot is easy, and you can then boot from a USB stick, and run whatever you want. You are NOT restricted to the shipped UI in any way, or even to Linux for that matter. Freedom to hack is a very important part of what OLPC is providing.

thanks

ron

Re:New UI - why??

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, OLPC laptops have low-powered high-range WLAN cards which automatically configure network in a peer-to-peer mesh. Most features of Sugar interface are directly built with mesh networking and shared activities in mind, and most applications are encouraged to be able to work the same way.

Wow. So the GUI is really just the tip of the iceberg - not only does the OLPC project require an entirely new GUI to be designed, written and tested, it also requires new methods of networking: also needing to be designed, written and tested.

Has this mesh networking thing ever been widely tested outside academia? To what extent does the OLPC network system reuse code that has been proven to work? Surely the implementation must be very different from a regular Internet Protocol network.

This OLPC thing sounds like a nightmare project! So much new and untested stuff to be invented especially for the OLPC. It's as if there was no sane person at any of the planning meetings: just a bunch of people proposing features without considering the costs and risks that would come with them.

The people who say "look, you guys, this is too much" are being ignored, because everyone is too busy thinking how great it will be when the whole thing is finished. But it won't get finished if the development cost is too high. It'll end up being a waste of time and money unless the development costs can be managed.

Re:New UI - why??

[Nazgul_Cro]

Wow. So the GUI is really just the tip of the iceberg - not only does the OLPC project require an entirely new GUI to be designed, written and tested, it also requires new methods of networking: also needing to be designed, written and tested. Has this mesh networking thing ever been widely tested outside academia? To what extent does the OLPC network system reuse code that has been proven to work? Surely the implementation must be very different from a regular Internet Protocol network. This OLPC thing sounds like a nightmare project! So much new and untested stuff to be invented especially for the OLPC. It's as if there was no sane person at any of the planning meetings: just a bunch of people proposing features without considering the costs and risks that would come with them.

For more info about this methods of networking, check out the following wikipedia sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ad-hoc_network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network

Mesh routing technology has been tested for a long time, and it has some military use, although OLPC should make their laptop its first civilian use. Another link on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Machine states that they are going to use OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol for wireless communication.

Note that it's nothing more than a routing protocol. And as most routing protocols do, it operates on top of TCP/IP. So, yes, it will be a TCP/IP network. OLSR is only a protocol that defines how routers recognize and reconfigure each other, and build routing tables.

They're not inventing much new technology. They are only cleverly incorporating existing technology.

Misread

[tttonyyy]

The OLPC's produced earlier this week in Shanghai still need to go through loads of testing, such as knocking them off desks and dropping them in mud, as kids are wont to do. They may also be kicked around, like soccer balls, a popular sport in 99.9 percent of the world.

Hmm... kicking OLPCs around is a popular sport?

Re:Misread

[grcumb]

Hmm... kicking OLPCs around is a popular sport?

If you're Bill Gates, it sure is.

(My reply is here.)

Re:Misread

[tttonyyy]

Very interesting reading - I'd mod you up if I could.

Including minesweeper is tasteless

[bazorg]

There, said it. :(

Not just minesweeper

[pagaboy]

On the same note, they should remove "Solitaire" from all computers belonging to geeks.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. This is a terrible mistake, and a terrible waste of time. It breaks software standards and de-facto user interface standards. It makes it hard for both users and applications to move between the OLPC and any other computer.

If I'd been on the OLPC team, I'd want to get everything done in the simplest way possible: I'd want to reuse software as much as possible, and I'd want to comply with every standard that I reasonably could, including user interface standards. Thanks to the extensive library of free software, it would be easy to get almost everything needed without having to write any code at all. But it seems that the OLPC developers knew better. I'd love to know why.

I tried running the Linux image last night

[MarkWatson]

I thought that it was very cool, but I wonder how confusing the Squeak "playground" might be without some hands on training/tutorial.

I only spent 20 minutes running the image, but one thing that I did not notice was region-specific documentation for water cleanliness training, etc. I thought that these would be customized for each country/region. Does anyone know about this?

I was telling a lot of non-nerd friends about this project at a big Thanksgiving party yesterday, and not only did everyone really like the idea but no one seemed to think that this would seriously take away money from food, fresh water, etc. programs.

Re:I tried running the Linux image last night

[MrHanky]

I don't know, but I did manage to get the turtle to move about a bit when I fiddled with Logo on the C64 as a child. From what I remember, I think I started out with whatever was there as "instructions" (wow, reverse-engineering), then made my own stuff from how I understood it worked. Actually, that has often been my approach to shell scripting as an adult as well. As long as you aren't afraid to destroy something, you should be able to learn a lot from just playing with it.

Re:I tried running the Linux image last night

[ClamIAm]

one thing that I did not notice was region-specific documentation for water cleanliness training, etc. I thought that these would be customized for each country/region.

lol prototype

Scrap this UI

[Anonymous Coward]

Scrap this UI! It's very crap thing.

Either use GNOME or KDE. But if this two can't be used, use IceWM with all the links pre-configured. We don't need to reinvent the UI again!!! Stop this non-sense and waste of time.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[vidarh]

Presumably it's a memory issue. With 128MB or 512MB RAM (the website and the video seems to conflict) and flash as the only secondary storage (meaning you really don't want to swap) running a heavy desktop environment really isn't something you want to do.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably it's a memory issue

Understood. But the machine is already loading the GTK libraries for Firefox. Those are huge. And it doesn't answer this question: why not just use a lightweight window manager?

The thought of all the extra work required to build, test and support this thing makes me feel ill. Especially when I know that KDE will run comfortably in 192Mb of RAM in "low graphics" mode (I have a six year old laptop with up to date KDE on it). And there are much lighter window managers than KDE!

Worse than ms bob?

[hikerhat]

Is this worse than bob? If removing tool bars and menus and only allowing one application to run at a time maximized was some sort of user interface panacea, I think every OS on the planet would already be operating that way. The actual reason for removing tool bars, menus, and forcing applications to run maximized: that's really easy to do. It is much much much harder to actually _create_ some kind of new user interface that will be 'easy' for anyone in the world to pick up and use, and then write applications that take advantage of that revolutionary new interface (there's no way to force existing applications into that hole). Much as it sucks, the WIMP paradigm is still the best anyone has ever come up with. Selectively disabling portions of WIMP (based on how easy it is to disable, not usability) doesn't make WIMP better. It makes it worse.

Re:Worse than ms bob?

[Nazgul_Cro]

OLPC interface works great. It is different from standard WIMP interfaces, but after reviewing it a bit (and spending 5 minutes to actually read something about its philosophy) I found it extremely simple overall. True, best and simple don't always go together. I still consider full WIMP interface to be superior in terms of usability and customization.

However, OLPC's Sugar interface is very simple to pick up, and quite customized to OLPC machines and their hardware capabilities. It promises to be more consistent, once finished, than most WIMP interfaces tend to be. And don't forget: OLPC's goal was to produce cheap and usable laptops for children, not to score points from advanced users based on their GUI design/implementation.

smarts

[Anonymous Coward]

staying ignorant when presented with new ideas and techniques might contribute to it, and yes, probably a matter of intelligence *in some cases*. It is not a universal thing, but applied generally..sure. If you have a group of folks who think raping 2 year old girls cures AIDS, yep, I'd call that lack of smarts on several levels leading to continual chronic poverty, both from ignorance and just..well..stupidity. I mean, that practice is just *stupid*, no two ways around it. How about thinking "dragon bones" are some sort of magical elixir? Is that ignorance or just ingrained, inbred stupidity? There's a fine line there some place...

    And I think this is one of the goals of the OLPC, get some fast good way to get some real knowledge out to millions of more people in developing lands, so that this sort of thinking can be replaced with something a little better. Even starting with the youngest generation at least you might have a chance, kids are sure a lot easier to educate than older adults in most cases. The only way to replace ignorance is with better data, and the only way to work around stupidity is a lot of patient repetition of good data, in a variety of ways.

Re:smarts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no dumber than religion.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[eggz128]

and flash as the only secondary storage

Speaking of which, the word processor is using a picture of a floppy disc to represent saving a file. Since a)The OLPC doesnt have a floppy disc and b)The target users may never have seen a floppy disc, they may need a new icon...

You obviously don't have children.

[WebCowboy]

...because if you did you wouldn't have asked such a question:

So when was the last time you say a child use the family laptop for a soccer ball?

Never underestimate the destructive capacity of a three year old--especially a bored three year old. Angry three year olds are serious occupational hazards for hapless parents.

Perhaps the older children and adults that would be typical users wouldn't mistreat the machine like this, but these machines must survive households in developing nations, and I'm sure very many of them contain three year olds that are siblings and offspring of these users (and would be potential future users of the machine). A great deal of these families are of modest means as well and I'm sure they have to share close living quarters and have no place to keep the machine out of reach of the younger children. Perhaps the rather non-spherical OLPC unit wouldn't inspire toddlers to try using it as a soccer ball but I'm sure their fertile imaginations would come up with other means of destruction.

Re:You obviously don't have children.

[arthurpaliden]

I do have kids and I came from a large family. I guess we are just better behaved.

OLP2WC

[camperdave]

AH! So this is aimed at second world countries, not third world countries. You see, the name is confusing. It makes people think every child is going to get one. They should really change the name.

Mystery Meat

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I haven't seen that much mystery meat navigation since I uninstalled that proprietary Flash garbage.

OLPC Emulator for download

[WinBreak]

I watched these videos and thought "that seems too fast to be the $100 XO laptop." Found out it's an emulator, and you can download it and check it out too.
http://www.winbreak.com/olpc.htm

Re:OLPC Emulator for download

[WinBreak]

Link on my website now updated to have LiveCD version of the OS.

Re:OLPC Emulator for download

[joe_plastic]

http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/
http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/devel opment/latest/livecd/

UI = torture

[proudhawk]

I found that interface to be almost sheer torture to look at. I can imagine what a child somewhere in the back woods of nowhere is going to think of it.

just imagine 20 years down the line when someone asks if they like linux and they are going to think back on that OLPC interface and state rather emphatically "I hated linux and that OLPC device I had".

talk about someone so in love with their own idea as to lose sight of the point of the project itself!

Re:UI = torture

[Nazgul_Cro]

Seriously, what did you expect? Aero? Compiz? Beryl?

Imagine a scenario: A child living in cramped suburban home somewhere in third world, probably with at least a dozen more people sharing the same home. The family manages enough food and they probably have some electricity, but not much more. Such children are a primary goal of the OLPC program.

Such children probably already have some benefits. They can usually get free used clothes, school books, and they probably have at least some form of free health insurance and basic education. Now, that child just got a laptop from his school for free! Now he can surf the internet via mesh network, have access to word processing, games, he can do anything he likes with his new OLPC which he gets to keep forever.

That child is OVERJOYED! He doesn't think "OMG what a crap interface!", he is happy that he got something which he could never afford, something which offers a ton of new possibilities, not only to him, but to his entire family as well!

The only child who will think of it as crap is the one which already has access to better computers, or the unlucky poor kid who will hang out only with rich kids who will be flaunting their Dells, HPs, Macs, IBMs, System76s and other computers which they paid for more than the poor kid's family earns in a year.

Also, I bet interface will look better on real OLPC laptops, as they have tiny 7.5" screens sporting a huge 1200*900 resolution.

Re:UI = torture

[Anonymous Coward]

this project illustrates the problems of the two sides of the computing world.

on the one hand, you have bill gates, the self professed philanthropist and man of good-will going around having his empire talk trash about this idea b/c he won't be making any money of it. if he was mr charity, as he likes to be viewed, he'd accept that it isn't windows based and he'd take some of his foundation cash and develop educational software for this device inspite of it not generating cash for his illegal monopoly.

can you imagine these units in the hands of the people with information they *need* to know - like how to avoid aids? these could not only be a cool toy for kids, but they could educate entire communities with targeted information to elevate their quality of life.

but, noooooo! "you don't support my illegal monopoly, fark off, you commies. i have a 'charity' dinner to go to or i'd curse you some more!"

then we have the computer geeks without a clue. all this time and energy investment developing something cool (and utterly stupid and non functional, imho) when they could've actually been developing applications to better the day to day lives of those in the community.

there is absolutely no reason a current lightweight window manager couldn't have been chosen and tweaked with minimal effort, but NOOOOOOOOO! I AM GEEK AND I NEED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

even if it does work, it fails. instead of learning what EVERYONE ELSE IN THE FREE WORLD... ENTIRE WORLD... KNOWS, these folks have to learn something, well, entirely different. they erected another BARRIER for these people to fight through once they get up to date with these laptops, but hey, THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE GEEKS FEEL COOL NOW! the rich will know what everyone else has, the poor will know this backwards system that will become synonymous (sp?) with poverty.

"nice ghetto laptop, loser. you can't even use my cool green ubuntu, schmuck!"

work 3 times harder for 1/3 the results.

it is 2006 and this is so sad...

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Speaking of which, the word processor is using a picture of a floppy disc to represent saving a file. Since a)The OLPC doesnt have a floppy disc and b)The target users may never have seen a floppy disc, they may need a new icon...

What's even more scary is that they didn't think to get rid of the out-dated "save file" metaphor. Why can't I just type stuff in and have it persist automatically? If I type over something, the computer should just remember what was there before and allow me to go back.

Rich.

screen size?

[pikine]

These OLPC devices only have 640x480 resolution, the same as a pocket PC. If you can work with fullscreen applications on PDA or cellphone, then there is no reason why you should complain about OLPC's use of the same paradigm. OLPC is more like a PDA than a personal computer. It's just more rigged, and its architecture is open.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[Teancum]

I see this excuse and scratch my head. I have seen some incredible GUI designs that fit onto a single floppy disc. Of particular note were the QNX distro (with a web browser to boot!) and GEO-works. Yes, that is a 1.44 MB floppy disc, not a CD-ROM even. I would dare say that if you can't get the UI honed into 2-4 MB, there is far too much cruft within the code base. The only possible exception would be to deal with CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) glyphs, but even that only should take up an additional 3-5 MB due to font issues.

128 MB is down right roommmmmmmy and is a problem only for those programmers who are just plain lazy to optimize their code, or a UI that is driven more by PR than by code doing what a UI is supposed to do: display information in a clean and unobstructed manner that the user can take advantage of. Even a secondary objective of being easy enough to use that a non-geek can understand how to access the information they need is also easily done. Buttons, spinners, edit and check boxes, and "movable windows" don't really take that much extra programming.

good project!

[antonio_barcelona]

Just travel, see with your own eyes what happens outside the 1st World, meet people from other countries and you will agree that, even if it is a risky project, it has to be done. Reading about OLPC some African friends of mine come to my mind. - Kemi from Nigeria, she studied Accounts. In 2003 she had no job and she asked me for a laptop (that I couldn't afford) to install any account program to learn how they run. Finally she emigrated to London. Last news from her, were that she was working in a fast-food. - Evelyn from Ghana. She lives on the foot of Adaklu Mountain near Lake Volta in a small village without electricity power, she is the coordinator of a Eco-tourism project. When I met her in 2004 she had email address but she had to travel 50 kilometers to check her mailbox. - Hachir lives in Tunisia near the desert. He lives in a small village they have to pump water with an engine to get a shower. He has 2 kids of 6 and 7 years old. Why his kids will never have the opportunity to know what a word processor is? - Gracious from Wa in Ghana. He studies at the University in Kumasi. In September this year he also asked me how could he get a cheap PC to learn... It's obvious that there are priorities: to eat, to read but some of the children today will be the people that tomorrow will lead these countries and the more they know the better for everybody. Sorry for my English but it's not my mother tongue.

Re:good project!

[niXcamiC]

After helping countless people with their ms word problems, I'm starting to wish I'd never had the opportunity to know what a word processor is.

More seriously though, living in the poorest country in central america, I see there is a huge demand for this. People are always asking about getting computers, and their use is expanding at an insanely fast rate. I critisized this at first, not outloud, but to myself, thinking how it was stupid, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Even though it may not be helping the poorest of the poor (who will get them eventualy, I'm sure of that) it helps the slightly less poor, who are a very large portion of the population, and still deserving of help.

VMPlayer files

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is one for VMPlayer
http://tuttlesvc.teacherhosting.com/wordpress/?p=2 51

The download issue that is discussed in the first few comments on that page has been resolved.

I had never seen anything about the OLPC GUI or how to use it before I ran this image. I figured it out pretty quickly, not sure how others would do in my situation, but once you figure it out it is quit nice.

They have something better than a terminal

[TuringTest]

I say, kudos to the designers! They couldn't have done a better job. As seen in the video, they have inserted the Squeak environment! This is a Smalltalk powered system.

if this is going to kids who have never owned a high tech portable equipment they must be quite durable.

And these constraints have also software requirements; given that this project is aimed to *children* and around the *whole world*, IMHO this decision is much better than including a UNIX terminal. An environment designed to be connected to Internet 100% of time won't do.

A computer that begins with a 'sandbox' operative system is great for beginners who must self-teach themselves (try learning a desktop without mouth-to-mouth training!). But this computer is not dumbed-down at all: in has a complete object-oriented development environment just one click away. Children can experiment and learn the basics of computing, without requiring access to online forums (which may not be available to them). Try learning to master the CLI without a LUG! With Smalltalk and the included games, they can tweak and experiment and build their own simulations.

I know that this environment works, because it's how learned computers myself. My old ZX-Spectrum fits into this kind of computer. In the early 80s there weren't available BBS at Europe, and the only way to learn computing was through monthly magazines, and programming our own games. I'm sure when this children grow up they will have the same fond memories of their OLPC laptop, as many of us have of our first micro computers.

OLPC and evolution...

[feranick]

The concept of developing country assumes that these countries believe in evolution. I wonder how many great things the OLPC would do in Kansas..... Sorry, I had to.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[dabadab]

Why? It's just something you learn, actually an icon of a floppy probably would not mean "save" to anyone - even if they saw a FD previously - until they have seen this exact use.
This is an absolutely small detail, kids will just learn it (as we did learn BASIC back in the day even though we did not speak English at all).

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[eggz128]

Why? It's just something you learn,

In that case put a picture of a bunny in there.

Adults will use them!

[rvw]

I have a hunch that many adults will use these laptops. When they see the power of it, and when they have use for it, and especially when the children can help them using it, as their teachers...

Re:Adults will use them!

[tomstdenis]

Adults may use them to learn to read, count etc. The web browser may even be generic enough for those purposes. But that's about the end of it.

The OS and desktop provided are NOT general purpose.

That said, the intended use is for kids, not adults. "one laptop per child." So it makes sense to make a laptop a child could use. Hint: children are the intended users.

Tom

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[eggz128]

I'm not sure that would be all that friendly to the flash drive.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[vidarh]

True, but 128MB is not roomy if you want to run Gnome or KDE. The point being that their choices of non-memory and disk hogging desktop systems for Linux is pretty limited. Hence they've written something that fits their needs.

And I don't see anything that indicate they don't support buttons, spinners, edit and check boxes and "movable windows". In fact, they use GTK, which would have given them all the GUI elements they need, and unless they're running X without a window manager they presumably have movable windows too.

Questionable GUI

[Aqua OS X]

As an interactive designer I tend to think that GUI could be even more of a departure from current conventions. We're still introducing conventions and metaphors that will not be common to the people using those laptops.

That said, you really need to do ethnographic field research in order to develop a proper GUI. Considering that we still fight with antiquated counterintuitive 1970's UI conventions in the first world, despite being bombarded with technology, I can all but guarantee our conventions are not going to fly outside of our bubble. Especially for someone who has been raised to comprehend a completely different system of metaphor and visual communication.

No doubt, there is value to giving people access to our silly window / menu GUIs so they can learn how our GUIs work. However, access to our GUI conventions can't impair someone who rarely uses a computer and simply needs access to something like vital medical information.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[msevior]

Hi Guys,
                The "floppy disk" icon has been changed in the latest build to a much prettier and larger tango icon.

The word processor activity will continue to evolve. Our latest code has the AbiWord canvas widget embedded in python.

We can make the interface exactly what is wanted with that. Customization per country is also easy.

Martin Sevior
AbiWord core hacker

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[Kesh]

What's even more scary is that they didn't think to get rid of the out-dated "save file" metaphor. Why can't I just type stuff in and have it persist automatically? If I type over something, the computer should just remember what was there before and allow me to go back.

Maybe it's just me, but I always had multiple assignments in school. I'd rather not try to keep typing notes at the bottom of my paper on my country's history.

Geos NewDeal Geoworks Breadbox

[tekrat]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the One Laptop Per Child would be better served if the OS running that laptop was GEOS (renamed Geoworks, renamed NewDeal, renamed Breadbox)... Then the OLPC machine would really be the C=64 of it's generation and bring computing to millions who never had it before.

It seems to me that Commodore had it "right" from the start, making a low-cost, simple to use, easy to operate, durable, hackable, expandable system that started off as a toy and had nearly unlimited potential to be a serious computer.

If it were me, I'd just take the guts of the C=64, condense it down to a few small chips, make it run off batteries/solar power/handcrank, add some flash storage and a few other goodies, internet capability, and have the whole thing run GEOS. And you could make that for well under $100 and still make a profit doing it, as the C=64 gamestick sold 2 Xmas's ago for, like $20 a pop, and that probably had more usefulness than that un-usable laptop concept.

Someone has to say it

[Yvanhoe]

They may also be kicked around, like soccer balls, a popular sport in 99.9 percent of the world.
In 90 percent of the world, this is also called football..

Is the whole thing worthwhile?

[hanju]

Do you realise that the OLPC project is suggestion governments spend >USD100 on each child in potentially poverty stricken communities with no electricity? How can the expense be truly justified, for what use is a shiny new laptop to a starving child other than a bartering chip? Did the OLPC founders know that there were serious viability issues with the project? WARNING: Conspiracy theory ahead Yes, they have sapped thousands of hours of free community based expertise to buil a potentially very successful childrens laptop suitable for general retail. I'm just waiting for one of them to split and take the profit.

Higher quality version of this video available

[harrybr]

If you'd like to see the UI video at full resolution, head over to http://www.90percentofeverything.com/. There were a couple of inaccuracies in the video I should point out. The web browser is not firefox, it is (apparently) "Dillo" - http://www.dillo.org/. Also, the title bar area doubles up as the address bar.

Re:New UI - why?? - Agreed.

[JesseMcDonald]

I'm not sure that would be all that friendly to the flash drive.

They could borrow the system used in image-based persistent environments like Squeak, where in-progress changes are saved automatically as part of the system image. In Squeak (and Smalltalk in general) you can use a "FileOut" operation to save a snapshot of a particular class or method as a regular file. In a "live" editor the actual document, with all its state information and version history, would be persistent in the device (no "save" operation, and perhaps not even an explicit file format, just a collection of in-memory objects), but whenever you feel like reading it elsewhere you could export a snapshot of the current version to the flash drive (or to anything else capable of receiving a binary stream).