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OLPC 2.0 — One Laptop Foundation Reboots
Greg Huang writes "In early January, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation laid off half its staff and shed work on the Sugar graphical interface. Now, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and president Chuck Kane for the first time detail the foundation's new plans, describe how the XO laptop will do what netbooks can't do, and share their hope to keep working with Sugar developer Walter Bender, who left OLPC last year."
Stop vaporising this dead horse.
Now based on a discontined CPU, and renamed because they never hit the price target; hijacked by Microsoft's department of evil, I really think they need to give up.
I have preordered the Pandora console and I'm happy. It gives me about 10h of running Ubuntu on an ARM cpu in a mere 0.3 kg of weight.
Oh thre's also an unofficial blog and a video vault. You might like the forums too.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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This is significantly more than a simple reboot. The goals of 'OLPC' are entirely different than the plans of this new 'OLPC 2.0' as far as I'm concerned and I imagine it is this way for many others as well. We watched and applauded as OLPC began only to watch in dismay and tears as they project allowed itself to be taken over from within.
There are all kinds of points that could be made here, but I'll let the others bring those up. For me the complete 180 they've done has made me write them off completely as a useless relic of what happens when you completely lose sight of your goal to the point you start to believe the ends justify the means. RIP OLPC.
--bornagainpenguin
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and share their hope to keep working with Sugar developer Walter Bender, who left OLPC last year
I anticipate Bender will tell them to bite his shiny metal ass.
One Layoff Per Worker? Perhaps they should extend the "two for one" and just close the company...
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy. Those suckers have 9 inch screens, Atom processors, and a gig of RAM. So who needs this OLPC stuff?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The most vivid example of this philosophy, to me, was Negroponteâ(TM)s comparison of the XO and netbooks. XOs cost about $225 apiece. Netbooks, which are produced by companies like Acer and Lenovo, among others, run about $300 to $450 but offer more memory and graphics power and larger screens. So, one could ask, wonâ(TM)t the normal, cost-curve-squashing evolution of computers obviate what OLPC is trying to do, and more efficiently than a non-profit? Negroponte replies that OLPC is not trying to compete with commercial computer makers but instead asking, "What are the things the normal commercial market wonâ(TM)t be pushing?"
What won't the "normal, cost-curve-squashing evolution of computers" include? Well, I don't see a huge rush by Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and others to include cranks, solar panels, and other alternative charging options to their units. I don't think the "normal commercial market" has decided to go that direction yet. Also, I doubt highly that these same companies will ever make their equipment repairable by children as this would cut into their profit margins too much if they had to stop making computer equipment with proprietary and hard-to-replace components.
The underlying, subconscious goal (in other words, whether they realize it or not) of the OLPC project is to prove that reliable, hardy products don't have to cost a fortune. It's the mentality of the business world today to produce cheap crap that is then sold at a premium in order to finance yacht parties and private jets for the upper echelon of their employee-base. the OLPC is just one of the few outfits out there trying their best to disprove that particular business model.
The XO is more rugged, but its not really lower power than netbooks. Most Netbooks are using things like the Atom, which is very low power and with sub-ms sleep states. The XO's only real power-advantage is the non-backlight mode on the screen.
Does the mesh networking actually work in the XO? And the mesh networking, how useful is it anyway?
And the XO's G1G1 is hardly "poor economy", its that the XO early adopter-types got them the first go-round (and realized how useless they are: the keyboard is abysmal, the trackpad flakey, and teh software an abomination in the sight of God and Man), so there was no one LEFT in the second.
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As long as they don't restrict the product to less developed nations the uptake will happen. It can be argued that OLPC started the netbook category, when ASUS and Intel saw the outpouring of support. If they create a product, allow it to be sold world wide, and the developed nations will create demand and volume for the charity work.
The OLPC screen really rocks. Only device I can comfortably surf on sun bathing on the deck.
Silly of me to ask, I know.
They have collocated 1 million machines.
The bloody point of these machines is to require as little infrastructure as possible.
Where they failed is:
- Never trying to harness economies of scale.
- Internal political squabbling (mostly brought by Negroponte and his silly decision to use Windows, thus becoming a collaborator with the expansion of the Windows monopoly).
- The failure to harness the impetus of the FOSS community in order to obviate many of the production costs related to software. The bare minimum to achieve this would be to ensure a free OS is at the core of the project.
Sort out these issues and you will have many takers, even in the poorest countries there are children with access to some infrastructure that would benefit enormously with such a device.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or maybe it was because Nicholas Negroponte sold out to Microsoft and pissed off all the people who were buying from/evangalising the project. I'm amazed to see how much of an effect geeks/nerds can have. Don't think you're powerless fellow nerds, you can make a difference, even if it's from the confines of your mum's basement!
Just look at these threads on their mailing list from last year, Nicholas is signed-up to it, multiple people are telling him in specific terms why trying to use Windows is a bad idea, and what does he do? Ignore them.
Negroponte is getting what he deserves for ignoring the community and selling-out to Microsoft. What an arsehole.
It can be argued that OLPC started the netbook category, when ASUS and Intel saw the outpouring of support.
This is the only article I could find cited by Wikipedia supporting the widely-repeated claim that OLPC inspired the "netbook" market, and this is just speculation by one UK blogger. Yet it's cited as a source for a factual statement in Wikipedia article about the XO-1 filled with "citation needed" tags.
I'm not saying it isn't true, but it's kind of a broad and evangelistic claim and requires a little more research.
Thankfully, Gizmodo did an excellent series on the trials and triumphs of OLPC, including the "who invented the netbook" question. There's no clear answer, but it definitely appears that the OLPC woke up computer manufacturers to the fact that there was a large, untapped market out there for cheap "netbooks."
Sending food is good, but it only addresses the symptoms of poverty and does not provide a solution. Education does.
Provide food and education. Sending only food guarantees they will never be self-sufficient. Education at least gives them a shot at it.
And if you really want to help, send them food, computer and guns.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
"Developing" != "war torn and starving." There are lots of impoverished areas that have food and clean water, just insufficient education. That's where this laptop was aimed at.
I The last thing we need to be sending to people who are starving to death and getting shot by wandering bands of "people's militias" is a damn computer.
Your frequently stated argument is bogus.
I have lived as an expatriate in rural Africa for many years, and have personally known both starvers and shootees. They are a tragic but small minority of the people of Africa. One of the biggest problems facing the education system in the country in which I lived (Ghana) is the expense and unavailability of teaching materials. Rare is the classroom where anyone other than the teacher has a textbook, and frequently even the teacher doesn't have one.
The OLPC project directly addresses this issue, making low cost (free) teaching materials available on the desks of the children.
Delivering education to people addresses many of the underlying issues that cause the starving and shooting.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
I thought this quote from the article was quite scary:
"The Rwandan leader initially ordered 10,000 XOs, then upped it to 100,000. The program now makes up a large fraction of the countryâ(TM)s education budget, according to Negroponte."
I'm all up for the use of computers in a developed world, including the OLPC initiative but considering most of these countries don't have a basic deployment of schools, teachers, books, etc isn't it unwise to spend a "large fraction" of your budget on OLPCs?
OLPC runs at below 2W all included, even below 1W in ebook reading mode, Netbooks need at least 20W all included.
The reply you're going get is that A) "Books become outdated" and B) "Books cover limited subject matter"
I think they're both fairly weak though. Introductory levels of education haven't changed so radically in the past X (X being whatever the refresh cycle on XO laptops would be) years that buying books would leave them anymore out of date than buying them laptops would. I'm pretty sure there's enough math that hasn't changed in the last 70 years and wont change in the next 50 that it's pretty moot. We're all still reading "classic" literature and studying history that's by and large hundreds to thousands of years old.
As for subject matter, I know everyone here like the idea of thousands of little FOSS programmers running around the developed world, but how about we work on literacy, computation, and social service, establish a backbone of sustainable economy and expanding education, then worry about whether they're cracking their shit with homebrew distros.
Just imagine how much more funding they'd have if they sold it to the general public at a profit, and then used those profits for R&D, paying their employees, and creating more OLPC laptops? And their public sales figures would definitely help sell their laptops to leaders of 3rd world nations.
The buy-two-get-one was a pretty dumb business decision, too. I have no clue why anyone thought that would've gotten them out of the hole.
Instead, they decided to move to Windows (which made no sense from a cost and configurability aspect) and for some reason thought that the average first worlder was too "bourgeoisie" for their special little laptops. Now they're a sinking ship because nobody cares about them anymore, and instead, everybody is more concerned with the new netbook market.
Because 20 or 30 textbooks are expensive ($80 a pop!) and get outdated in five years.
OLPC was the product of the western media lab and the geek mind-set.
OLPC's market was the third world education minister - who was expected to sign the purchase order for 100,000 units --- but otherwise keep his big mouth shut.
Come hell or high water ---
OLPC would implement a constructivist philosophy of education.
It would run Linux, the Sugar GUI, open-source apps and only open source apps.
The Windows alternative was the Classmate.
Installed with more or less full versions of core MS Office apps, a media player and a browser, a laptop that would look and perform much like any other, but with more help and localization for beginners.
In other words, a serviceable machine shaped purely by market forces and in no way limited to the primary grades.
OLPC has shipped (IIRC) 1 million machines, a number of pilot programs have gone well and will soon probably turn into larger purchases, the number of volunteers doing support, local training and infrastructure continues to increase geometrically.
OLPC doesn't have a bunch of market droids making sure that the PR is out there, but IMHO they have done, and are continuing to do, great things.
I don't think OLPC is over yet - quite the contrary.
And in answer to the 'poor folks don't need computers' - that is just stupid. The OLPC is one of the _answers_ to the problems of not enough books, schools, teachers, etc. For my own part, if I had had an XO when I was a kid, I could have taught myself at more than twice the rate that the schools worked at.
For real students, the net is the key to breaking out of the straitjacket of public education, which (like a team of horses) can only go as fast as the slowest person in the room. A networked laptop has the potential to provide a kind and level of freedom most people could not have dreamed of a few decades ago - the freedom to learn, to understand, to communicate and to compete.
Many developing nations are foregoing the expense of wired telecomms, using cellular instead - it's cheaper to do unless you already have wires in place. By adding a simple Wi-Fi hook at appropriate places, these countries could support the XO's networking at minimal extra cost.
Think of it this way - a developing nation with a computer-savvy young cohort, that is used to living on dirt, could become the biggest competitive nightmare that the developed world has seen yet. In ten years, we could have budding computer and bio-tech gurus coming out of Rwanda, like Steve Jobs and the other Silicon Valley geeks came out of the SF Bay Area in the 1970's.
Those kids will have the potential and the tools to break the cycle of cultural suppression that Africa has long suffered, to break the traditions of tribal conflict and to join together in creating new 'Black Tiger' national economic engines, like the 'Asian Tiger' nations of the 1980's.
And that will be something to see. I look forward to it.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
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What, like Ohio?
The laptops are a one-time expense. New ebooks literally cost an SD card and postage.
Meanwhile, the kids with paper Pre-Algebra and Biology textbooks have read them cover-to-cover forwards and backwards because they don't have the the Algebra 1 or Chemistry books.
They have clean water in Ohio now?
Start with people who can barely support themselves off the land. Add food. The population grows like crazy, ensuring that it is impossible for the people to support themselves off the land.
Since the resulting population depends on food handouts for survival, it is obviously more in poverty than the prior population.
Plus the economy was even destroyed by the handouts. (called "dumping")
And if you really want to help, send them food, computer and guns.
You'd also ensure that all of the above actually reaches the people you intended...