There is a Developer Console activity which provides a shell, log viewer, X resource meter, and memory usage meter.
If you want a more adult interface than Sugar, you might be more interested in PepperPad. They are providing an OLPC compatible pre-release containing both a 1.5 JVM and a more adult-oriented environment.
The intent is to provide alternative power generation for these laptops. Ideas include human power, animal power, solar, wind, water, etc. See this page for details.
They haven't had a built-in hand crank since the first prototype. The North American ones will come with a standard wall adapter. They are exploring all sorts of power generation ideas, such as a yo-yo shaped pull cord generator. Check here for many of the other ideas.
XO is also the name of Sanrio's Badtz-Maru's gang.
In Japanese, X is the marking for "incorrect" and O is the marking for "correct" on such things as homework and tests. XO (wrong then right) is a nice metaphor for learning.
Another luminary working on the project is Mitch Bradley. For the firmware and hardware debugging environment OLPC is using Open Firmware (which Sun recently open-sourced). Mitch is the guy who invented it at Sun! They have been busting hardware deadlines left and right due to this lovely environment.
Also working on it is Jim Gettys, one of the original developers of the X Window System.
I have fond memories of my Geo Metro XFi (Small Blue Thing). It was a step down in mileage to get my Prius. The lady I sold it to is still happily driving it for her morning commute, and saving a ton on gas compared to the beater she replaced.
I'd rather turn your jibe around. Why the hell do we need cars larger than a Metro for daily driving? The larger the car, the more it is a menace to public safety.
I'm hoping the EPA figures out sane emission testing that will allow the tiny engines in the Swatch Smart cars to be legally imported and driven in the US.
Me too. I have worked on an image database which had to deal with importing and previewing formats like WMF, and they are indeed a pain. Even on Windows, where you supposedly have system support for WMF, they never seem to import right.
I'm looking forward to more standard vector formats like PDF and SVG (although the built-in scripting bothers me). Adobe Illustrator files have always been a thorn in our side.
...maybe it would be better to have 32 or 64 cheap, low-power, in-order, stack-based CPU cores on a single die. But that's 10-15 years away
This is exactly what Chuck Moore, the inventor of Forth, has been designing for the last few decades. Many of his MIMD grid multi-core designs made it to prototyped silicon, though they didn't take off in the market. His latest effort is called SEAforth (for "a sea of processors").
I always thought of my MessagePad 2000 as the Batmobile of PDAs. I mean, just *look* at it! Swooshy curvy and matte black and faster than any other PDA when it was released. It would not look out of place on Batman's utility belt.
Funny thing is I already use my Newton for E-Books:
* The Times font is easy on the eyes. * Back light makes it nice to read in bed. * There is a nice Mac/Win app called Paperback which converts any text file (such as Gutenberg texts) into a Newton E-Book. * For more formatting control, Apple published their own Newton Press. * Both of these technologies are searchable, which also makes the Newton great for storing reference material.
"...when is Apple going to update the their version of X11 to reflect this, or are we stuck with XFree86?"
When volunteers step up to the plate to make it happen. (X11 isn't exactly Apple's highest priority; it's more of a way for Apple to get their foot in the door at Unix shops, so they can sell them Quartz/Aqua later on down the line.) I think there was one (1) main person working on porting Xorg to Darwin, and that guy got swamped with other projects. He put out a call for more devs in December, but I don't know if anyone responded.
And with the new Composite, Fixes, Damage extensions, the Xorg server is poised to be as pretty as Aqua.
X in general has been woefully understaffed compared to other big open source infrastructure projects (gcc, kernels). But that means there are HUGE opportunities for new developers to make a difference! Who knows, ya might get a free MacBook out of it!
NewtonOS reminds me more of squeek (the smalltalk platform) or hypercard or opendoc where applications can mix and match pieces together in a neat notepad like gui. I really wish that there was a newton like pda with a built in IDE, with ruby like syntax... I can imagine coding up software on the fly to do little things for me, but I digress.
Funny you should say that... NewtonScript was based on the prototype object-model of Self, a language some describe as "like Smalltalk, but more so". Programming in NewtonScript is similar to programming in JavaScript, but with richer libraries. It also came with a persistant object store ("soup") that made writing database apps painless.
NewtonScript programs were stored with symbols, so you could use a utility such as ViewFrame and have the equivalent of a Smalltalk browser in the palm of your hand! Although the Apple environment for writing programs was hosted on a Mac or PC, Steve Weyer came out with a system (Newt) for programming directly on the Newton. I used these two capabilities to take an existing chess program for the Newton (Deep Green) and write a serial-port adapter for it, so that I could play that program on the internet chess servers (at the time, it was the fastest handheld chess program available due to the 160MHz ARM). Mmmm... geeky! Try doing that kind of integration on a Palm or PPC!
I don't think there has been a higher-level programming environment for handhelds since the NewtonOS. I'm quite excited hearing about this EinsteinOS. Those who are interested in object oriented design ought to check it out!
At least this will give Keith more time to work on our rocket. I hope he and Jim both quickly find day jobs to support their outstanding work on the X Window System.
The timing is pretty awful for this research group; many of them were presenting their work at the this conference. "Welcome back! Here is the box of stuff from your office."
> what makes you think that GA / neural nets would contribute anything at all to improving computer's go abilities?
Err... the fact that NeuroGo is one of the favorites in the World Computer 9x9 Go Championships? (which is being held now at the same computer game conference).
There is a lot of room for improvement (especially at the standard 19x19 board size), but neural nets have certainly proven themselves at Go, a game requiring lots of pattern recognition (the neural net's forte).
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that there are other World Computer game championships at the same event, and Go is one of them. It is even another Open Source vs. Commercial slugfest, with GnuGo the favorite from the open source community.
He doesn't know Robert Hyatt very well, does he? Dr. Hyatt may be the most experienced chess programmer still active today. He has been programming world champion programs (Cray Blitz) since before many of the posters here were born!
"Staff" has little to do with engine strength. (That said, creating a good opening book is almost as much work as the engine itself. A full time book maintainer can give you the winning edge in a tournament like this.)
Sjeng happens to be the top rated open source chess program that can be compiled for OS X. All the other programs above Deep Sjeng on the SSDF rating list are commercial (except Ruffian, which is free but not open source).
It probably doesn't hurt that Sjeng takes advantage of multiple processors and GnuChess does not.
We don't use the main bus for critical communication. There is a CAN bus on the motherboard which we use to communicate with the PIC microcontrollers. This bus is designed for real-time prioritized communication between embedded components, which is why it is used in modern automobiles.
This is a volunteer low-budget project, so cost is an issue. The PC104 board we chose is a good compromise between cost, ease of development, and functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
"So, what's the current consensus on Prions?"
They get some of the best ATP mileage of the current production hybrid infectious agents, unlike the phosphate-guzzling SUperVirii.
Or how about an example of technology we can use *already*, inspired by Space Ship One. A VW Bug without wings: http://www.aptera.com/
Yes, you can easily run the emulated Sugar environment on a variety of platforms. See this page for emulation instructions.
The core developers run Sugar directly on their Linux desktops. Those instructions are here.
The underlying window manager is Matchbox.
There is a Developer Console activity which provides a shell, log viewer, X resource meter, and memory usage meter.
If you want a more adult interface than Sugar, you might be more interested in PepperPad. They are providing an OLPC compatible pre-release containing both a 1.5 JVM and a more adult-oriented environment.
The intent is to provide alternative power generation for these laptops. Ideas include human power, animal power, solar, wind, water, etc. See this page for details.
They haven't had a built-in hand crank since the first prototype. The North American ones will come with a standard wall adapter. They are exploring all sorts of power generation ideas, such as a yo-yo shaped pull cord generator. Check here for many of the other ideas.
Got one for my inner child! How can I resist a laptop from the folks who first thought up the DynaBook?
OK, when I get tired of it, it will probably go to my nephew (whose second birthday happens to be today).
XO is also the name of Sanrio's Badtz-Maru's gang. In Japanese, X is the marking for "incorrect" and O is the marking for "correct" on such things as homework and tests. XO (wrong then right) is a nice metaphor for learning.
Another luminary working on the project is Mitch Bradley. For the firmware and hardware debugging environment OLPC is using Open Firmware (which Sun recently open-sourced). Mitch is the guy who invented it at Sun! They have been busting hardware deadlines left and right due to this lovely environment.
Also working on it is Jim Gettys, one of the original developers of the X Window System.
I have fond memories of my Geo Metro XFi (Small Blue Thing). It was a step down in mileage to get my Prius. The lady I sold it to is still happily driving it for her morning commute, and saving a ton on gas compared to the beater she replaced.
I'd rather turn your jibe around. Why the hell do we need cars larger than a Metro for daily driving? The larger the car, the more it is a menace to public safety.
I'm hoping the EPA figures out sane emission testing that will allow the tiny engines in the Swatch Smart cars to be legally imported and driven in the US.
Ah. WMF...come, let me stab at thee.
Me too. I have worked on an image database which had to deal with importing and previewing formats like WMF, and they are indeed a pain. Even on Windows, where you supposedly have system support for WMF, they never seem to import right.
I'm looking forward to more standard vector formats like PDF and SVG (although the built-in scripting bothers me). Adobe Illustrator files have always been a thorn in our side.
Good responses from the original author.
Also, the Bernd Paysan mentioned is one of the prime authors of GNU Forth, one of the most popular Forth interpreters in the Unix world.
...maybe it would be better to have 32 or 64 cheap, low-power, in-order, stack-based CPU cores on a single die. But that's 10-15 years away
This is exactly what Chuck Moore, the inventor of Forth, has been designing for the last few decades. Many of his MIMD grid multi-core designs made it to prototyped silicon, though they didn't take off in the market. His latest effort is called SEAforth (for "a sea of processors").
I always thought of my MessagePad 2000 as the Batmobile of PDAs. I mean, just *look* at it! Swooshy curvy and matte black and faster than any other PDA when it was released. It would not look out of place on Batman's utility belt.
Funny thing is I already use my Newton for E-Books:
* The Times font is easy on the eyes.
* Back light makes it nice to read in bed.
* There is a nice Mac/Win app called Paperback which converts any text file (such as Gutenberg texts) into a Newton E-Book.
* For more formatting control, Apple published their own Newton Press.
* Both of these technologies are searchable, which also makes the Newton great for storing reference material.
"...when is Apple going to update the their version of X11 to reflect this, or are we stuck with XFree86?"
When volunteers step up to the plate to make it happen. (X11 isn't exactly Apple's highest priority; it's more of a way for Apple to get their foot in the door at Unix shops, so they can sell them Quartz/Aqua later on down the line.) I think there was one (1) main person working on porting Xorg to Darwin, and that guy got swamped with other projects. He put out a call for more devs in December, but I don't know if anyone responded.
And with the new Composite, Fixes, Damage extensions, the Xorg server is poised to be as pretty as Aqua.
X in general has been woefully understaffed compared to other big open source infrastructure projects (gcc, kernels). But that means there are HUGE opportunities for new developers to make a difference! Who knows, ya might get a free MacBook out of it!
Funny you should say that... NewtonScript was based on the prototype object-model of Self, a language some describe as "like Smalltalk, but more so". Programming in NewtonScript is similar to programming in JavaScript, but with richer libraries. It also came with a persistant object store ("soup") that made writing database apps painless.
NewtonScript programs were stored with symbols, so you could use a utility such as ViewFrame and have the equivalent of a Smalltalk browser in the palm of your hand! Although the Apple environment for writing programs was hosted on a Mac or PC, Steve Weyer came out with a system (Newt) for programming directly on the Newton. I used these two capabilities to take an existing chess program for the Newton (Deep Green) and write a serial-port adapter for it, so that I could play that program on the internet chess servers (at the time, it was the fastest handheld chess program available due to the 160MHz ARM). Mmmm... geeky! Try doing that kind of integration on a Palm or PPC!
I don't think there has been a higher-level programming environment for handhelds since the NewtonOS. I'm quite excited hearing about this EinsteinOS. Those who are interested in object oriented design ought to check it out!
Ian
At least this will give Keith more time to work on our rocket. I hope he and Jim both quickly find day jobs to support their outstanding work on the X Window System.
The timing is pretty awful for this research group; many of them were presenting their work at the this conference. "Welcome back! Here is the box of stuff from your office."
Staunton, naturally.
> what makes you think that GA / neural nets would contribute anything at all to improving computer's go abilities?
Err... the fact that NeuroGo is one of the favorites in the World Computer 9x9 Go Championships? (which is being held now at the same computer game conference).
There is a lot of room for improvement (especially at the standard 19x19 board size), but neural nets have certainly proven themselves at Go, a game requiring lots of pattern recognition (the neural net's forte).
> Crafty (freeware) brings its own quad-Opteron machine with 2,4 GHz!
Actually, it's a quad 850MHz.
Junior (the favorite) is on a prototype HP quad machine. Amir Ban is bound not to release any other hardware details.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that there are other World Computer game championships at the same event, and Go is one of them. It is even another Open Source vs. Commercial slugfest, with GnuGo the favorite from the open source community.
He doesn't know Robert Hyatt very well, does he? Dr. Hyatt may be the most experienced chess programmer still active today. He has been programming world champion programs (Cray Blitz) since before many of the posters here were born!
"Staff" has little to do with engine strength. (That said, creating a good opening book is almost as much work as the engine itself. A full time book maintainer can give you the winning edge in a tournament like this.)
It probably doesn't hurt that Sjeng takes advantage of multiple processors and GnuChess does not.
Ian
We don't use the main bus for critical communication. There is a CAN bus on the motherboard which we use to communicate with the PIC microcontrollers. This bus is designed for real-time prioritized communication between embedded components, which is why it is used in modern automobiles.
This is a volunteer low-budget project, so cost is an issue. The PC104 board we chose is a good compromise between cost, ease of development, and functionality.