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OLPC Project Rollout Begins In Uruguay
Acer500 writes "The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality Thursday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of school number 24 in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers. The learning tools came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez. It has become a matter of national pride that Uruguay is the first country to realize the project's goal. The target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project.
From the newspaper articles: 'The happiness of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'" More information below.
According to the unofficial blog of the Uruguayan project, named proyecto Ceibal, the infrastructure for wireless is not yet in place but will be provided in the next few days by the national telco ANTEL. No photos of the event have been posted online, but you can see an institutional video on Youtube. One interesting point is that it has not yet been decided that the XO will be the laptop of choice for the entire project. Two other companies want to be considered: Intel, with their Classmate PC, and Israeli-manufactured ITP-C. In a press conference, Intel manager for the southern cone Esteban Galluzzi went as far as to compare the XO to a Pentium II, and stressed that the Classmate is able to run Windows XP. As advisor and local guru Juan Grompone stated, 'who will ultimately benefit from this is education?' This will be an interesting test to see if the OLPC project meets its intended goals of 'learning learning'. Let's hope this project is the means that will foster among some of the children the desire to learn and to tinker."
The Web in the air of Cardal
Near 40 niños of the Italy school they received its computers of the hand of several authorities of the government. In one week the niños podrà n to accede to Internet from all the points of the city
In the middle of great expectation and much alegrÃa of the niños, president Tabaré Và zquez next to a great retinue of authorities left inaugurated the experience pilot of the Ceibal Plan in the Italy school n 24 of the city of Cardal (in Florida), the one that in the prÃximos dÃas quedarà connected to Internet by means of mbricas connections inalÃ, in order that the students can accede to the Web from their homes.
In a brief speech during the act, Và single zquez refirià to "the importance" of the Ceibal project and asegurà that "cumplirà with the cronogram of arriving itself at 2009 to all the schools from paÃs". The agent chief executive prefirià to yield its time to one of the niños, that articulà words that moved to the presents.
To I finish of the act, Và zquez was consulted by the present journalists on if to raÃz of cuts in the RendiciÃn de Cuentas it were going to be all the money for the plan. Và zquez asegurà that was not going to lack the money. "the USS 15 anticipated million està n in the budget", asegurà the conductor of the Uruguayan government.
Under the glance of many parents, some from the windows or accommodated in algÃn rincÃn of the halls class, about 40 niños of 3 and 6 año received their computers X-O. DonaciÃn of Nicholas Negroponte is of 200 units. The rest of the students of that school of cardal recibirà its computers in these dÃas.
AlgarabÃa to have a PC in its hands, some for the first time, dejà won the boys, who did not hope to ignite his mà quinas, to introduce their personal data (the first time that ignite it is necessary to put the one name and to choose the colors of the screen) and to put themselves to experiment with the X-O. What mà s entusiasmà was to be able to remove photos and to film themselves with webcam that come including.
The niños by this week podrà n to sail in Internet from the Italy school, where instalà a servant to provide itself with conexiÃn in the classrooms, that in the prÃximos dÃas extenderà to the rest of the city so that the niños can be connected to the Web dese its homes. For mbrica it utilizarà tecnologÃa of conexiÃn inalà - it does not need cables that proveyà ANTEL with colaboraciÃn of UTE.
One of that mà s divirtià giving the PC was the minister of EducaciÃn and Cultura, Jorge Brovetto. Ademà s of this jerarca, también was present the minister of Industry, Jorge Leprosy asà like the minister of GanaderÃa, José Mujica, next to their wife LucÃa Topolansky.
También participated in the act the director of EducaciÃn of the MEC, Luis Garibaldi, the president of the ANEP, Luis bal YarzÃ, the president of the LATU, Miguel Brezhner, the Intendant of Florida, Juan Giaccetto asà like industralists of INTEL and Microsoft, that lanzarà n its own pilot in the department of PaysandÃ.
ProducciÃn: Cecilia Pérez and Pablo Solari, envoys of the Observer to Cardal
(It observes)
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Woah, didn't know I had to learn a different language just to read an article on Slashdot. Anyone have any English versions of the articles handy?
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
Good in the sense that children in 3rd world countries finally have a chance to experience a part of modern technology which we truly take for granted. Bad in the sense that we're breeding a new wave of Uruguayan Uber Hackers that will wreck havoc on the pipes in a couple years. I still think it's worth it and it's nice to see this project which we've been hearing about for years finally start coming to life.
The only consistency in life is the lack thereof
50% of the kids were taking pics of the other 50% playing football and the day after that they were all back to doing whatever it was they were doing before they got their laptops.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Lets see. OLPC is a little less than $200 per laptop, or the Classmate PC at about $400 per laptop. Multiply it by 2 million children... more than a 400 million dollar savings! I wonder which way the more cash strapped countries are going to go?
I would love to get my hands on some of these to see how well they work as a learning tool. The price point puts them in line with many other learning tools on the market for children. The open source platform makes them much more expandable. And, as they become more widely used, the software available for them will become much more diverse and powerful. I wonder if the Intel proposed alternative includes an Operating System in the price.
InnerWebFreud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
I find it interesting that Intel immediately jump in with "the ability to run win xp" as a major advantage. Leads me to ponder.
A lot has been said about the OLPC project sticking to open platforms, which may partially be a cost issue and partially an idealistic one. The real question is what is really best for the project? Sticking to open platforms, and open source or completely custom solutions, or a system that allows the use of windows xp?
I say windows and not os x, not because it's particularly better, thats an argument for a different time, but for the next question - is it better that the platform be completely open and/or custom, or that it corresponds to the most used operating system? The system that is used by a large quantity of consumers, the largest perhaps, and the platform that is the target of choice for people trying to make money of these consumers.
The real question is what is better for the students in this country. Not what is better for Microsoft, Intel or indeed Linux and the Open Source movement. Is it enough to give these students a computer, or should we be giving them a computer that gives them the potential to learn the systems in use by a majority of the world?
I guess the other side of the coin is this - if computing technology is about to find it's way into the hands of a lot of people who previously had no access to it, is that going to swell the marketplace such that what was previously a huge market share advantage could well be diluted by the choices made by this project? Every child in Uruguay is a lot of people - and its only a start. When other countries continue, the choice of operating system to learn might not seem quite as trivial as it may right now.
Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
Oops, sorry. I didn't mean that to be a troll, I just forgot the sarcasm tag.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
So how many of these new adventurers at the thin end of the open source wedge have contributed source code?
Come on, children! THOSE LAPTOPS WERE FREE FOR A REASON! ~cracks whip~
As a geek I luv computers, don't we all? But my gut tells me that tossing devices that, let's face it, require many branches of support like a species at the top of a complex food chain, will be about as successful as tossing paper money on them, them being poor children.
Don't misundertand, this isn't the arguement that we shouldn't travel to space, or not do other things, because somewhere in the world is a child is starving. No, my concern is for accomplishing the goal of this project, which I assume is, to help them prosper. You know, teach a man to fish instead of just giving him one fish.
Computers are excellent at doing many types of tasks, but lousy at others. People aren't poor because they don't have a laptop. In fact, I think most studies have shown that laptops actually have little or a negative impact on helping children learn. No, people are poor, in our current world and time, are poor because they don't have opportunity. Opportunity to exchange their own effort, work, or goods with other people.
Why? Because either someone prevents them, by means of a gun and or a system that makes it impossible to be free to do such exchanges. Sometimes I think people toss that word around like it's some etheral ideal that everyone knows they are supposed to say they value, but then go right on and act in contray ways. No, freedom is a very very very important ideal, an ideal that cannot be replaced by a 100 dollar laptop.
"They shouldn't spend *any* money on education until all poverty is solved"
Not so fast, let's see how this works out first, OK?
Education is the greatest basis for fighting poverty in a 3rd world country. Think better educated people -> more efficient entrepreneurs / companies -> more money in the local economy -> more taxes -> better healthcare and services etc. Uruguay could possibly have just made the first step to become the next India (IT-wise)!
BUT the greatest thing is that with more literate & educated people, the less likely they will endure another dictator. And that should happen *everywhere* else, not just in Uruguay! Without education, you could wait forever for all poverty to be solved.
Isn't the idea that instead of constantly giving them fish, we *teach* them to fish?
I think you have a wide education (educación) because of your words (palabras), I see how educated you are. You can do a more in deep research before you write (escribir). Uruguay has an excellent level of education, I studied in the Uruguay's public education system, it doesn't means that I'm more educated than people like you but a little bit more respectful. No se, pero al parecer a los yankees les falta un poquito de cultura y respeto por los demás. Sin ánimos de ofender a nadie. Saludos a los compatriotas Uruguayos. Arriba los sudacas!!!
> In fact, I think most studies have shown that laptops actually have little or a negative impact on helping children learn.
Most of the failures reported so far are due to children using the computers to browse porn. If porn wasn't illegal and taboo for adults, then children wouldn't be so interested in it. I think porn reform is needed first before computers can be introduced to schools.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Thank you captain obvious. Your post was either ridiculously insightful, or ridiculously useless.
> it doesn't means that I'm more educated than people like you but a little bit more respectful.
If you want to be respectful, you should not use offensive words like 'yankees'. You shouldn saying that yankees have no culture. Have a nice day!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Where are you from Rubinhood?... I got the point people from the reach countries think have less problems with poverty, read this http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.as p
It's worth it, definitely.
Any news on when the rest of the world can finally buy the XO Laptops? Since, well, a 200dpi display for less then $200 sounds like a damn cool device for ebook reading and I really want one.
This post brought to you by the recursive inanity league.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Wait how enthusiastic they will be when they get India-made crappy pda-like devices for $10 with DNF included!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I've spent time working in an engineering (not computer "engineering") environment working with Indians, Chinese, Brits, Americans, Canadians, Vietnamese, etc.. wait, am I replying to the wrong post?
Now for just a little more the government can hire half the Uruguayan software industry to create fabulous educational software in collaboration with talented teachers and researchers, and since they are the first then they can release for free or even sell it (making money to invest back into educational software development while also being cheaper for another country to buy than make themselves).
It would be fabulous to release that as open source, if only the programmers and others involved in making it can be somehow reimbursed or have their living expenses paid for which might not be a bad idea either. Also, it would be probably very cheap compared to first world rates. I'm thinking computers can be much more useful in education and maybe this will even result in a computer-based, self-paced learning curriculum in many languages.
Maybe a lot of geeks here wish that sort of thing was available when they were in grade school. If it could be released as open source then talented kids could learn in more depth or follow their interests, or even learn in more than one language at once, so instead of the problems that come from skipping grades there could be perhaps ordinary lessons plus self-paced directed or inquiry-based learning. Not just browsing wikipedia but enough for a child to learn from.
A similar thing written at adult level would also be fabulously useful. It appears some of this idea is in the encyclopedia of life that just won funding based on a "wish" speech at TED. The first thing needed is linux hacking for elementary school kids. Maybe before that an auto-restore, auto-backup extra partition?
I don't know, because I am not one. Ask one, and see what they say about it.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.
COOL! We're raising a new generation of myspacers!
Go, Uruguay, go!!
Two other companies want to be considered: Intel, with their Classmate PC, and Israeli-manufactured ITP-C.
What?? Where is India's $10 laptop?!
I saw this institutional video someone posted here, with the kids playing with their new $150 laptops.
And for some reason they kept poking the screens with their mischievous little fingers, as if trying to reach for something and pull it out. They just had the machines for one hour or so.
At first I thought "yugh, fingerprints".
Then "god damn it, the glass".
Then "jesus christ they'll wreck the matrix..!".
So, let the bets begin: how many days do you give em before they any of those:
1. can it work under water?
2. will it fly like a frisbee if I throw it properly?
3. how does it look on the inside?
Sorry, but I think the venerable fish is becoming exhausted. Here's World Lingo's version, with my own small tuneups.
The Web is in the air of Cardal
About 40 children of an Italian school received its computers by the good will of several authorities of the government. In one week the children should be able to connect to Internet from all the points of the city.
In the middle of great expectation and much joy of the children, president Tabaré Vázquez stood next to a great retinue of authorities of School #24 of the city of Cardal, which inaugurated the pilot program of the Ceibal Plan in the Italian school (in Florida). In the next few days it should be connected to Internet by means of wireless connections, in order that the students can accede to the Web from their homes.
In a brief speech during the act, Vázquez talked about "the importance" of the Ceibal project and assured that "she will fulfill herself the deadline of 2009 to cover all the schools of the country". The agent chief executive preferred to yield his time to one of the children.
At the end of the act, Vázquez was consulted by the present journalists on the matter of cuts in the budget, and if she were going to be able to supply all the money for the plan. Vázquez assured that she was not going to lack the money. "the US$ 15 million are predicted in the budget", assured the conductor the Uruguayan government.
Under the gaze of many parents, some from the accommodated windows or in some corner of the halls class, about 40 children of 3rd and 6th year received their computers X-O. The donation of Nicholas Negroponte is of 200 units. The rest of the students of that school of Cardal will receive its computers in the next few days.
The chance to have a PC in its hands, some for the first time, excited the boys, who did not hope to ignite their machines, to introduce their initial preferences (the first time that boot the machine it is necessary to put the machine name and to choose the colors of the screen) and to prepare to experiment with the X-O. What further it excited them was to be able to take photos and to film themselves with on-board webcam.
Later this week, the children should be able to connect to the Italian School, where an official arrived to provide the school with connection in the classrooms. In the next days this coverage is supposed to extend to the rest of the city so that the children can connect themselves to the Web from their homes. For this, wireless connection technology will be used, supplied by ANTEL with the collaboration provided with UTE.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"AlgarabÃa to have a PC in its hands, some for the first time, dejà won the boys, who did not hope to ignite his mà quinas"
;-)
That sounds fishy!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
because of the WLAN's and all the bad effect that produce in childrens, just wait, there's always someone that wants to be the hero and makes everything more difficult :/
ghostbar page.
While I agree with you on every point, they give it another spin. For instance:
"-XO operating system interface was designed from the ground up for this purpose. Classmate uses Windows XP Embedded."
They are effectively promoting their PC as a 'real' one (vs.a plaything of the XO) because it can run XP, while the XO doesn't.
The XO is clearly a more interesting concept, though. I wish they would mass-market it in the west too. I wouldn't mind paying $200 for it, even if just to see how it ticks.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Translation: "Not him, but it seems the foreign devils lack a little culture and respect for others. I don't mean to offend anyone. Shoutout to my Uruguayan homies. The South will rise again!"
I may have lost some things in translation due to regional dialects.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
Regards,
E. Schrödinger
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
No problem ;)
My first computer in the classroom was an apple ][, followed by the various 68000 based macs. If I can play math, language, and geographical games on a low end 6502 or 68000 based machine, surely to god kids can learn today with "only a P2." And none of them ran Win XP either.
I know why Intel spreads the myth that you need power to use a computer. They're in the business of pushing high end processors that most people don't need.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
But on a serious note, technology (hopefully introduced via these laptops) is an enabler that opens opportunities. I'm not just taking about Nigerian scams and Brazilian hackers. You do read about how Africa nations are able to position themselves as a leader in mail processing center thanks to the ability to access scanned documents through the Internet. Maybe someday these laptops will help create the world's only remaining source for exploitable outsourced technology.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
No, Intel would never promote a rival architecture!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This will be a total disaster without well trained teachers. I think this program will be successful if, and only if, the children have highly qualified teachers to guide them. I'm afraid some officials may be looking at the computer as a placebo for their education woes. The hard reality is that third-world country are in dire need of teachers.
You're missing out the battery life on the OLPC, but typically, lower MHz ~= higher battery life, which for a kids computer is probably actually the better idea.
... and it's still more pleasant to read on a high res screen with larger character sizes. )
I have no idea where you get the weird idea that screen size is more important than resolution. That's just.... wrong. (you can fit more pixels = more letters on a higher res screen... even if you need a magnifying glass to still see them all
Windows XP or Linux by themselves are both not-so-handy, they don't cater to kids.
TPM does not help you secure your own computer, AFAIK.
Wiley publishing notes an increase in sales of its dummies series "learn to speak the language of third world countries" by creepy looking adult men.
I find it disturbing that such focus is put on third world children when a significant number of children in the U.S. and other developed countries do not have access to a similiar device or good educational opportunities. It's a shared failure of Western governments and projects such as the OLPC to favor others over their own for the sake of political correctness and what I can only describe as some sort of institutional guilt over priviliege combined with well-intentioned, but nonetheless clueless, naivete.
When it comes to technical leadership, it is sort of like the airline safety instructions you get - if the airmasks drop down, secure your own first so you can help others without losing your ability to do so. Think about it while you go to mod me down.
They allow people to communicate, simple but for most who earn a $1 a day or less this was previously impossible.
They are spurring innovation in Banking, micro-finance, and enabling new kinds of transactions
Text messaging, SMS, is still the cheapest way to get a message across - be it a pricing report for harvested crops, or a simple message to a family member in an isolated village.
True that developing countries are plagued by tyrants, corrupted governments, and other nasty people, but when people are given the power to communicate they can mobilize and share information, get organized, and that is real power.
Access to the internet is the obvious next step. "FREEDOM" just doesn't materialize, people have to fight for it, and in order to do that they need the tools. Even if there is one OLPC laptop in a village, that single laptop will open MANY doors to many people who previously had no opportunity or voice.
One of the goals of this project was to get the kids onto the web (to interact, share ideas, learn, watch porn,+++). I hope that the computers will support some proprietary standards, such as Flash, MS Word, MP3, etc. If this is not the case, then the kids will not be able to participate in "web culture" on the same level as people with "normal" PCs.
A lack of format support may cause them to lose interest in the web, thinking it is not for them. A good outcome would be that a new "web" would be created, by the kids using the laptops, tailored to the spces of the device. This is still a worse situation than having them on our existing web. The bad outcome would be if everyone started pirating MS Windows, to have the "real" computer OS.
The creators of the OS may have envisioned the "good outcome" described above, and due to language/cultural barriers, the XO users would only want to talk to other XO users. I think this is a bogus argument, e.g. if word gets around about YouTube, then the kids will want it, no matter what. (One can argue whether having the kids visit YouTube is a good thing for society, but that is really irrelevant).
Of course, some of this is an exaggeration, Slashdot and Wikipedia, for example, would work the same on any HTML browser. Many sites will not work that great, and if there is a link to a PDF or a WMV on Slashdot, it would be nice to see it.
Give one of these laptop to every TEACHER in a given country. People often forget that the teachers are just as poor as the children. If a teacher can have access to up to date curriculum that would be awesome in itself. The possiblities for teachers to swap ideas and support one another is also endless. The quality of teaching could increase immeasurably.
Nature Magazine has a cautious news story lauding the OLPC while pointing out what nay sayers observe. One concern is that the way they are achieving the price point is to push the marketing, distribution, and maintenence cost onto the buyers (the governements) and that they need to reach scale quickly, which while it probably will happen governments are demurring. If this roll out is a success it may be a big shot in arm convincing the hesitant governments. Perhaps the easiest places to get support will be one-man governments; Would-be "populist" quasi-dictators like Qudaffi is a prime candidate for a large purchase.
There's also an interesting interview with Ron Minnich of LinuxBios, who points out that the OLPC will be a major roll out for OLPC in end user hands (rather than embeds). He says that LinuxBios enables such insanely better power management than traditional bios that it's going to knock everyone's socks off. It will wake instantaneously and conserve power.
Even when operating this thing is miserly: 2 watts.
One of the suggested alternatives in the Nature Article put forward by a prominent nay sayer in India (who will not be going forward with OLPC) are that set-top style web-based apps are a better idea. I Don't actually see how. All the set top boxes currently are more expensive, don't have a screen, the screen will be too far away for it's resolution, and they don't have Key boards. So the OLPC looks pretty good.
The OLPC will automatically detect networks. I wonder if Ron Minnich managed to slide in his other project which is BPROC/Clustermatic which is used at Labs like Los Alamos to create high performance self configuring clusters with minimal cluster operating system overhead. Such a system could provide some incredible computing horsepower despite the low performance of the individual nodes.
Another thing I wonder about is printers. In the developed world anyone who can afford a computer can afford or get access to a printer so paper has never really been factored out of computing. INdeed computers if anything, are an organized way to generate more not less paper docs. In the countries using OLPC, printers won't be available. We may see the rise of paperless computing finally.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A more powerful computer will be more useful. The "myth" that you're spreading is that no-one will ever want to do anything unexpected with their computer - computers are general purpose tools, and you rarely know everything that you might want to do with one when you get it.
But... that doesn't change the fact that the XO is probably strictly better than the Classmate for its purpose. The increase in computing power a student would get in moving to the classmate doesn't really enable any interesting application categories; basically it just allows people to buy expensive (and largely useless) proprietary software. In comparison, the XO allows the user to do some really interesting stuff that the classmate does not - like surfing the web in direct sunlight over a mesh network when the nearest WAP is 5km away.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I would accuse you of being selfish if it wasn't so clear that you are just horribly misinformed (and dare I say ignorant).
Carry on.
He's obviously referring to the argument that rich countries have a responsibility to save the rest of the world from poverty even while they have problems of their own to still deal with.
I grew up using toasters and can use any brand today. Yet I have no clue on their inner workings. A toaster is a mysterious magical "black box" to me and thats ok. I don't know what has to do with the merits of power point however.
PS to parent, how's the cat? (Betcha never heard that before)
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The porn finders came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez.
There, fixed that for you.
What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'"
What could possibly go wrong?
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Don't diss the P2. A friend of mine used a P2 350mhz as his MAIN computer until about 3 months ago.
I was amazed to see it could reasonably run XP, IE7 and a java applet inside it.
^_^
Oh good god no!!!!
Quick - someone ban cameras!
There's a law (in progress, ie: not yet approved) that would require the public offices to use (as far as possible) OS software and force them to use open formats. So in that respect, the education that kids are getting is positive and useful. Up until now, Windows was taugth. Not to mention that not every school had PCs.
Also, other South American countries which are on very friendly terms with Uruguay (such as Venezuela) are too pushing OS into the public offices. In Venezuela's case, the law is in place already, and it will force everyone to switch before a set date (Uruguay's law will be a progressive change). Brasil also has a widespread use of Linux in bussiness.
A fun tale about this law: A few weeks before the law proyect was presented, Microsoft determined that ANEP (the public schools) owed them something like 500k USD in licenses based on the number of PCs and students that the schools had. After the proyect was presented, Microsoft gracefully donated those licenses.
Hint: There is a reason why Intel and AMD are focusing strongly on improving their idle power usage. And it ain't because they have nothing better to do.
Most of the time my E6600 sits here at 1.6Ghz even with firefox, audacious, etc going. For MOST of my tasks the box is just plain too fast. Of course, as a software developer I do put it through it's paces. Point is for most people who read webpages, listen to music, watch a movie, whatever, processors are VASTLY overpowered for what they do. Not every one is doing "make -j5", re-encoding live video, or whatever.
I'd bet that for most if you simply told them "it's really fast" and then didn't load a bloatware OS and tools on it they wouldn't know the difference.
Of course if Intel started just selling 1GHz cores and said "listen folks, you really aren't using the core anyways, so why waste the energy and wafer yield?" they wouldn't be able to sell $300 processors. Of course they would cost a lot less I guess anyways since the yield would be higher... hmmm...
Point is, XO is just fine with a "P2 class" processor.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
XO Specs
Uruguay's software industry is already big and one of the top five income sources for the country. I wouldn't mind it becoming the number one source :)
There's one huge advantage for governments who go with the intel classmate and run XP - it's likely that the Gates Foundation will give grants to the governments to buy them as long as they don't run Linux. Watch and see.
Do you have ESP?
I learnt many thing using a PC. Things like programming, which helped me in my University courses. Things like Google that helped... well, it's Google, you know!
I understand your concerns, I just hope this will go well in spite of teachers.
Honestly, I thought the industry learned this lesson recently.
.3 and .8 watts, and a 22.8 watt-hour battery pack. Well, do the math, the OLPC is going to be much more fun on weekends.
People made the same silly comparisons of processor and power in the PS3 and the Wii. In fact the price points aren't that different ($250 vs $500). Those systems are sold in the richest countries in the world to people who buy them with disposable income, and doubling the price still makes a huge difference. The idea that it won't be a big deal in Uruguay is absurd.
What makes a greater difference is usability engineering. The choice to include a camera, and a large easy to use touchpad, and ears, were not accidents. They were the products of good research. The OLPC folk didn't just strip down a PC, they designed it from the ground up for this purpose. At all phases of this design, power was an important factor, what the Intel folk didn't "get" when building the CheapMate, was that a 4 hour battery life in a place where they only have power at the school will severely limit the use of this tool. They still have weekends in underprived countries. Doing your homework on Friday night and going the rest of the weekend with two hours of remaining battery life is just crap. With a normal use power consumption of 2W and an e-book consumption between
As for the "screen is smaller and thus unreadable" argument, I'm afraid it's rubbish. Your hands probably aren't right at the base of your screen, and your arms are probably a foot longer than the target audience. They'll have no problem with a 7.5" screen at 1200x900, they will have the option of choosing a larger font and using the extra pixels for better hinting which vastly enhances readability. I have an Ipaq hx4700 with a 640x480 4" and have read many ebooks on it. Having read quite a few on it's 320x240 predecessors I can personally attest that the extra pixels, that allow extra hinting for the fonts vastly enhance readability and reduce eyestrain. Since the base model of the Classmate (whose price people seem to use for comparison) has only 35% as many pixels as the OLPC in it's hi-res mode (yup (800x480)/(1200x900) ) there will be no contest as to which is easier on the eyes.
The nice folks at handhelds.org have been doing more, with less since the Ipaq 3650's which were in all ways horribly inferior to the XO. The OLPC folk have done a top notch job and will make a difference in the lives of millions more children for the same number of dollars.
I also enjoyed the uruguayan public education for like 12 years before emigrating to germany.
The _only_ thing that works with this system is that there are more or less enough schools and children attend to them. Now the quality of the education is really bad, and the lack of economic resources doesn't help.
A couple of months in the years, every year, classes are suspended because teachers are on strike, students are on strike, the public transport is on strike or it's a holiday.
If that is "excellent" for you, than my friend, you need to travel more often.
Btw. why to be so disrespectful with our fellow americans? stop attending to the comite de base and living in the '50s. (yes, you cannot even play good football anymore!)
" . . . or should we be giving them a computer that gives them the potential to learn the systems in use by a majority of the world?"
We're talking about young students here. What system will be in use by a majority of the world a few years from now? (hint: it won't be XP)
In my opinion, it is almost always a mistake to teach skill in particular technologies over teaching the fundamental ideas that allow you to think on your own and adapt to changes.
Thanks for the translantion. I just wanted to point out that president Vazquez is a he :) and that the school's name is "Italy" not an italian school (many schools are named after a country here)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Uruguay is not a third world country, mind you.
It's better for everyone if these people get fast processors anyway. First, it's impossible to be sure that they'll never want to do anything taxing with their computer. Second, more demand for powerful processors drives the technology - that makes good kit cheaper for everyone and continually allows for the development of new applications that make use of more powerful processors.
Interestingly, one of your examples is inaccurate. A low end processor *cannot* playback high quality video. Without video acceleration, even a Core 2 Duo would struggle weakly trying to decode and display a well compressed high definition video file.
That's a different point, and I agree with it. But it's not that these kids wouldn't be better off if the XO had a more powerful processor, it's that these kids have constraints like money and electricity that make the Geode LX @ 500Mhz the right choice for the machine. The gain from moving to a more powerful processor would be more than offset by reduced battery life and less kids getting machines because they'd be more expensive.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Just put a 10$ 1GB SD card in the SD card slot under the screen, and the OLPC can boot into a light, customized 3$ Windows XP OS. Microsoft has been working for the past year on adapting a Windows XP light version to run on such cheaper hardware, the OLPC hardware specs are totally sufficient for running a thinned down version of Windows XP. Microsoft certainly has the means and the will to provide such Windows XP on a 1GB SD card option, which each child could after some time and as SD card prices drop get one, and have a choice a boot-up for which OS to use.
Is America the best school? Or is it the worst, but they have a decent sports program?
The Farewell Tour II
Your video argument is kinda my point though. A MPEG hardware decoder could decode the stream with much less power consumption. If your users are doing a lot of video work, sell them a hardware accelerator. Which in case you didn't notice, most recent GPUs sport.
We already have "accelerators" in our machines. Ethernet controllers offload the line handling, disk controllers handle polling the drives, sound cards handle DMA tasks, hell the DMA controller itself as well.
Making an MPEG decoder an optional addon for motherboards wouldn't be a smashingly bad idea.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Just to be on the safe side, I wanted to note that I hope it was obvious that I was being terribly sarcastic. Child pornography is disgusting and evil.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Yep, we're 3rd world, but we don't exactly live in huts and eat each other. In fact, Uruguay already has a very strong software exports sector (in fact I run an indie game dev company) and Internet access is ubiquitous. I guess the über hackers are already wrecking havoc ;)
No, really, ask Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay ), most people are surprised to learn that Uruguay is very different to the typical first world stereotype of "third world", "south american" and "latin" people.
My website
I had a P2 running XP until a few months ago too, wasn't my main PC though. It died a horrible spyware-laden death at the hands of the rest of my family to the point where it took 3 minutes to boot, another minute until the desktop responded to right click and five more to stop thrashing.
Instead of throwing it out, I stuck Knoppix in it.
What are the consequences on the environment of buying a crap-ton of laptops, and giving them out in poorer countries? They don't have infrastructure to deal with electronic waste. These things are probably going to end up in landfills, no? It's bad enough with all the electronics we have, but we have more money to throw at the problem. Honestly, when I first heard of this project, I thought of the sheer amount of materials that would be used.
Any news on when the rest of the world can finally buy the XO Laptops? Since, well, a 200dpi display for less then $200 sounds like a damn cool device for ebook reading and I really want one.
If you haven't actually seen an XO machine, just pictures, you may not realize that it's much smaller than a standard laptop. The keyboard is sized for kid-sized hands.
/seriously, how did no one else catch that? That's excluding the tons of comments about that, right?That's great, as long as you're sure that decoding video in that specific format is the only compute-intensive task the user will ever do.
Actually, I agree that GPUs should have MPEG4 decoders in them. It's a common enough format, and offloading the processing may well provide a significant performance gain for the cost. But... just because that specific task can be solved by dedicated hardware doesn't change the fact that general purpose computing power (i.e. more powerful CPUs and GPGPUs) is very useful, and much more valuable overall than a task-specific hardware accelerator.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Figures.
The genders came up both ways, so I picked one. And I think I did see "Italy School", but that didn't make sense with this level of unreliability...
But not so bad otherwise. It beats the weird characters.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As someone that has a XO (OLPC) I'll say that it is way better than any cheapie laptop I've seen. If it was available for retail purchase here in the US I'd buy several to pass out as gifts. The quality is great and it really has a lot to offer for such a low price tag. I mean it comes with the ability to participate in a mesh network and be connected to a normal wifi AP at the same time, has a decent built in camera, has a pad for pen input, is very durable, is very lightweight, stays cool, has a decent battery life, has features that make it usable as an ebook or handheld game, the software is custom written to take advantage of the laptop and work within its limited specs, and is just pretty damn cute. Every kid I've tested it on has loved it as have most adults. And remember that they actually plan to get production costs down to under $100 per laptop and then start distributing low-cost add-ons such as an OLPC printer. Your average cheapie laptop is not going to be the same.
That said, I can't believe they are distributing the XO to kids already. The software is not done at all. IMO the software is barely usable thus far. Work on the software is progressing pretty fast, and in fact that is why I have an unit, but I would not yet be distributing them with the software in it's current state. I hope they have easy access to the units being distributed so they can be updated as needed.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Sólo "un poquito"? Cierto que es más respetuoso que muchos ingleses!
Por alguna razón parece que Slashdot no permite ni ¿ ni ¡ .
The "500" is part of the marketing name. In no way does the core run at 500 MHz. Actual performance is somewhere between a 200 MHz Pentium and a 200 MHz Pentium II.
Text is often done as images intended for normal computers. Browse the web and observe. Either it ends up really small and hard to read, or you scale it by 2x each way and effectively cut the OLPC resolution down to 600x450.
i'm not saying no fast processors should exist. I'm saying we should stop trying to convince the laymen that they actually need it. The amount of power that is wasted on higher performance cpus idling is enormous compared to what our technology could allow for.
It'd be like everyone driving hotrods since the extra HP is "nice to have."
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
That 1200x900 is single-color pixels, like in a camera sensor. It's not a real 1200x900, and it's nothing like the supposed 800x600 either. It shows weird moire-like effects too. The greyscale mode is really really dim, being unusable under bright indoor light -- it might just barely be tolerable under the mid-day sun of Libya. Tablet mode leaves you with no mouse or keyboard, so not too useful. The graphics tablet has hardware defects and, being overlaid on the touchpad with faulty automatic mode switching, is more hindrance than help.
The ordinary 800x480 is pretty decent. The only downside would be reduced battery life.
Idi Amin was in Uganda, not Uraguay.
That's in Africa, Uraguay is in South America.
A blog about stuff.
Seriously, are you nuts? Did you notice that Uruguay is not part of the United States, and has no tradition to sue everybody for anything? Parents in the rest of the world would not sue the webcam manufacturer because their kid used that brand while prostituting him/herself. They would be able to admit their own failure at parenting, which is exactly what it is. So yes bad things will happen, even with these devices around. Some bad things may even happen more often with them around. But in no way can you blame a simple device for the acts of other people. Kids and parents have their own responsibility, and no computer diminishes that.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I value the innovative push higher than I value other people's money being spent on electricity. If at any point in the computer industry people had really, strongly decided to buy cheap processors instead of getting "top of the line" processors, progress would have slowed way down. People have been saying that "processors are way faster than what the average person needs" for 20 years now - and I think we can easily benefit from another 20 years at this rate of progress.
That's a horrible comparison. Other than racing, there is no task that can be done with a hotrod that can't be accomplished with a normal car. More relevently, I can't think of any task that's likely to become possible if a large chunk of the population owned hotrods that were twice as powerful as today's hotrods.
With computers there are a number of applications that get really interesting when everyone has a 16 core Opteron and 1024-stream-processor GPGPU in their laptop.
Not that I'm against low-power processors. If you can get a dual core processor in 2 watts, that means I can have a 64 core processor in less than 70 watts. =P
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Hi! I am the mantainer of the blog referred in the article, http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com./ First of all, I'd like to invite you to see some pictures of the launching of the project in my last post (I decided to include some contents in english on the blog).
I have seen many interesting comments here. Many of them are part of a discussion that exceeds uruguayan experience, as they are the technological apsects (using XO, Classmate, ITP-C...? using laptops or desktops...?), educational aspects (which contents to use, if all the children will be interested) and, obviously, economical aspects (is it worth spending so much money?... how much will the project really cost?). I just would like to make some comments:
- Not only the educational aspects of the project have to be analyzed. The project also changes the "digital gap", taking into the information society many children and their families.
- The technologies used are not as important as the agreements we have to do for using these technologies. License costs and their renewals, as well as intelectual properties of the contents generated must get up in the table.
- The real effect of a project like this will not be seen in the next days, months, neither in a few years. Maybe in 10 years we will be able to start doing a comprehensive analysis of results. Now we are making "futurology", so it is normal having different views. What is important in this step is the conviction and honesty of stakeholders to try to make things as good as possible.
Regards, Pablo Flores
But sometimes we lose sight of the bigger picture. There was a push for faster computers before anyone had computers in the home. That wouldn't change as much if home users were buying the lower power cores. There is still enough business/academic push for fast computers.
Part of the problem is the push for fast, or seemingly fast processors doesn't always go in one direction. Look at the P4. That was a leap backwards in technology. The AMD64 has been resting comfortably for far too long [though Barcelona seems to be changing that from what I hear].
And really you should care about what others pay for electricity since it affects what you pay for it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I'm disgusted to see that you are wasting time on slashdot while there are still homeless people in places like Africa and America.
You shouldn't spend *any* time on slashdot until all poverty is solved throughout the whole world.
Fun aside.
If the 14 people at OLPC uses there time on educating the childen of the world,
then that is what they have chosen to do and not for you or everyone else to decide.
If you would like to start the "one house per child" project then go ahead,
don't wait for anyone to start it for you.
this comes from here http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/Hardware_specificatio
also amd seems to benchmark their systems with a plethora of common system utilities like SiSoft Sandra, Winbench,
look here for more details http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/Pr
Although the benchmarks seem to be outlined relative to the geode line (previous models)
it could be very well be that the LX-700's performance comes very close to a full-fledged athlon 700
anyway i want one the screen is really impressive
Demand for electricity should only increase price in the short term, because it's reasonably easy to generate. The price is further constrained by the current "almost economical" status of photovoltaics. If anything, I want to see demand for electricity go up just so that electricity generation technology improves.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Some updates to the story:
o psEnVillaCardal
in response to being linked to by Slashdot the blog, the blogger has included some content in English
and second, blogger Pablo Flores who was in the event, has published the pictures of the event in Picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.es/pflores2/EntregaDeLapt
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
You're an idiot. We're already demanding enough energy from our natural resources. We should be finding better ways to make due with less, not consume more. Solar cells are about 10-20% efficient and are not useful as a source of primary power only as a supplement.
And the cost isn't temporary. I take it you don't pay rent or for your utilities. Electricity has been getting more expensive, not cheaper, over the years. Same with gasoline.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Uruguay, AoT, Ur u guay.
Cheers,
CC
Not, you're not.
Uruguay is a pretty decent small country, of rather modest means, but not Third World in any meaningful sense.
Cheers from across the river,
CC
I used to think so until I visited London for the first time last year :S
My website
And what does that mean? Being (a lot) poorer and kind of trapped in a time-warp doesn't make you Third World. Think Brigadoon, instead.
And, just in case you're wondering, I went to London for the first time in 1978.
Cheers,
CC
Give it some time, and don't be surprised when your IT job gets offshored there in 10 years.
I lived in Uruguay for several years in the late 90's. The Uruguayans as a whole are very educated. The dictators there took over not because of ignorance, but because nobody was capable of resisting them. I spoke to many Uruguayans about that time period. The consensus was that those leading the military coup had guns. Those who wanted to resist did not. It's something I think about every time the 2nd amendment arguments come up. (no, I'm not a gun owner).
In that school they have a great education, but only the foreign kids really learn something. And the sports program is decent, but they play sports that no other schools play. j/k BTW, if it were named America, it wouldnt refer to the USA, since Uruguay is in America too, but you must already know that.
You're the idiot. We could easily be using ten times the electricity we're using today without seriously taxing the power generation techniques available to us right now. And our technology is only getting better. Sure, we're using our fossil fuels damn fast, but we have replacements - and technology only improves with time.
Conservation as a solution to our power problem is foolish and shortsighted. This is simple Economics 101 - there is a market price for electricity, and people will purchase it for their use if it is efficient for them to do so. Governments really shouldn't be subsidizing the use of fossil fuels - in fact they should probably be taxing to discourage usage because of environmental concerns - but there are other methods for generating power in the same price range that don't have those problems.
Who cares how efficient they are at converting sunlight to energy? Having no solar cell is 0% efficient - 20% efficiency is a 100% improvement. As for "useful only as a supplement", that's bullshit. Power generated through photovoltaics has a price, and when that price is lower than the market price for grid power everyone will install photovoltaics. The difference is only like a factor of three - if the technology improves a bit, and the price of electricity increases a bit then we're there - and once that happens the price of electricity will only go down as the pv technology improves further.
Huh? Expenses are something you need to budget for - if you have a problem with that, get a job. Electricity, specifically, isn't expensive enough for me to worry about for any application but air conditioning. If it gets too expensive, I'll have to consider alternatives to electric air conditioning - that's ok.
If you adjust properly for inflation, this is mostly false. If the government screwed with the energy market less, they'd both probably cost half as much. But... instead they've outlawed safe nuclear, subsidized petroleum, outlawed small diesel cars (California did and 8 other states copied them), and allowed anticompeditive behavior around electric cars. Even so - if you have economic reason to, conserve. If you don't, conserving just keeps prices higher longer by allowing less capacity to be built.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I can honestly say that not a one of my teachers in college taught me anything either new or useful about computers. I was self-taught on everything Windows, of which the University didn't teach ANYTHING on at that time (1989 to 1994). Sure, they taught me how to use an out-dated command line on a mainframe. Meh.
No, I think the kids will do just fine. They will be teaching the teachers very shortly. The power of children is that their minds are not stuck with such ideas as "an expert required" to learn. And the kids will help each other learn. The adults would be well-advised to stay out of the way and not mess it up.
Bearded Dragon
Where are you getting your "facts"? I seriously doubt any major city could use 10x the power and not run into any problems.
... well first off, it's not reliable. You need to be able to produce a given level of energy consistently. Solar, wind, and other "eco" sources are only useful to supplement the grid.
As for why you can't use solar as your major source
And there should be a market for eco friendly devices. We should encourage manufacturers for producing more efficient processes. In a way we do in the CPU world. Intel processors for instance, consume less energy than the previous generation. They're still inappropriate for most of the market. You're problem is you want everyone else to subsidize YOUR living conditions. Let others buy over-powered processors so you can get one cheap too, etc...
But you keep thinking that we should consume more resources without end. And when electricity hits 50 cents per kWh, gasoline is 10$ a galon, etc, you can wonder what happened.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Of course it'd actually be "The United States of America" but everyone there would just call it "America" because they'd *know* that they were the only ones who really mattered. Only 11% of them would be able to locate their school on an unmarked map and none of them would be able to find Uruguay.
Be quiet. After all, you're dead. I saw the box...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
OLPC is fantastic, and I am very, very happy to see the disenfranchised of the world finally getting a crack at using the most powerful labor saving device since the lever. However, it's important to note that this project is going to completely end both the dominance of software development by the US, and I would say possibly even proprietary software. Just think, bilions of children with little to do but kick cans around dirty, dangerous streets are now going to have extremely portable computers that they can write python programs on. Certainly, not every one of these kids is going to learn how to program, but having access will certainly mean that more will than would have otherwise. I'm college educated, and am currently pursuing a PhD. but I would argue that the real reason I've succeeded in academic affairs isn't due to any school system, but rather the fact that my father was educated, and I had access to his bookshelf and his Economist subscription when I was 7 years old. These kids are going to have complete access to one of the best-designed OS's the computer world has seen at the same age, and they're going to have equally little to do, and all the motivation for self-education that grinding poverty can provide. Not every one of these kids will turn into a kernel hacker, but enough are that this is going to be absolutely beautiful. Of course, if you're planning on making $100k a year writing crummy .NET apps for the next 3 decades, things might be looking a little dodgy in a year and a half, but if you lament the dumbing down of the average human's interactions with the bare metal brought on by GUIs, and want to see lots of good free code out there, this is fantastic.
I saw someone griping that these decks don't have the CPU to run office. Who cares, if you want to produce professional looking documents, get LaTeX going and write a freaking book....Forget about web 2.0, when this project comes to fruition in 15 years we're going to be seeing an absolutely glorious technical renaissance. I just hope they don't all decide to DDoS Estonia...
I for one welcome our new Uruguayan child overlords.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Just one small correction: where it reads 'who did not hope...', should be: 'who did not wait'. This is a minor mistake in the double use of 'esperar' meaning 'to hope', 'anticipate', and the other of 'to wait for'. As for the rest, very good translation!
Sure, we can't get there immediately. We'd need to build the extra generating capacity - hopefully using modern power generation techniques.
That depends entirely on how good power storage is. With the cost & quality of batteries today and the current cost of electricity, you're right - it's most effective to use solar to supplement grid power. But, as I've said three times now, if electricity prices increase we will quickly get to the point where buying the solar panels and batteries is cheaper than buying grid power. And, both photovoltaic and battery technologies are rapidly improving.
That's a ridiculous overgeneralization. Lumping together the "eco sources" is silly. Solar and wind both have inconsistency issues at an "hours" time scale, but their inconsistencies aren't linked, and with enough energy storage for "days" it tends to average out. Hydropower and Tidal are excellent base load sources, but we're already using all our hydropower resources and haven't put much effort into tidal. Geothermal provides excellent base load, but it's probably not really a renewable resource.
In any case, I'll come back to my central point about solar power. The solar panels and batteries commonly available on the open market can be used to build a reliable power generation system - the electricity cost of that system is a hard cap on future rising electricity prices.
The neat thing about markets is that the *buyer* gets to decide what's most appropriate for them. Happily, in the CPU market, the buyers have decided to buy what's new and consistently push processor power for the past 20 years. Sacrificing that rate of progress for a little bit of power conservation would be a horrible economic decision for a central manager - luckily our economy mostly doesn't have one.
The solar panel / battery hard cap is a bit less than 50 cents / kwh - so I'll never have to pay that price for longer than it takes to install the PV system. As for $10/gallon gas, I'm ready - I'll have to change my driving habits a bit, but my Prius is pretty good on gas.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.