That's essentially what Negroponte has boiled the project down to by letting Sugar dev's out of the loop. Many, Walter Bender included, have gone to start Sugar Labs to ensure that Sugar remains available regardless of what OLPC does.
It destroys the "It's an education project, not a laptop project." to not ship with an operating system and educational software.
Microsoft is really pushing to get XP onto low cost laptops. They recently started a program to sell XP until 2010 for use on "ULPCs". The OLPC program is seperate though, and could potentially last longer.
It's like that at my university too, though mostly x86 stuff. I've gotten at least a dozen PIV machines and more PIIIs than I care to remember.
In a student org I'm in, we started a computer recycling program to deal with the excess and make sure hardware doesn't end up in a dumpster. We've run into a surprising amount of resistance from the University, but individual professors and some of the smaller departments are sympathetic to our cause.
You missed the point. You can't just magically automate something like object recognition. You can, however, train filters on computers based on how humans identify objects in images.
Demonoid is one of the few private trackers that doesn't ban on bad ratio. You can leech all you want, and the only thing that will suffer is your pirate karma.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpc-update
It uses rsync, but you can do it other ways. With OLPC, everyone has had the same set of problems, so they are all very well documented on the wiki. Read up before complaining.
Any cuber worth a damn will be able to identify that the cube has been tampered with within two minutes (significantly less if he or she is a speed cuber).
Amen to that. The only reason I still have any scholarships as an Electrical and Computer Engineering student is that I take a liberal arts class of some kind every semester and pull an A in it with little to no effort.
You're right, it's kind of a stretch to call anything in that article hacking, but it is designed to be (software) hackable. Though, the line in voltmeter is unique in that the audio hardware was chosen to make that possible.
It's the only laptop I've ever heard of that uses Open Firmware, or any open source BIOS. There are even tutorials on hacking it in the wiki. Plus, most of the GUI and applications are written in Python and are designed to be relatively easy to modify.
The hardware itself is far from hackable though. There is very little, if anything, that can be modified inside the thing, even though it is easy to disassemble. I imagine its the result of making it as cheap and rugged as possible.
It doesn't really matter that it takes five minutes to open it with a screwdriver and switch the battery. The point is that people want to carry two or more batteries with them and be able to switch them when one goes dead, without requiring tools (or having to void the warrenty).
Yes, but more than that, Peru had already signed a contract with OLPC for a few hundred thousand laptops. Intel, an OLPC "partner", then tried to get Peru to drop the OLPC contract in favor of their Classmate laptop.
Not quite. Without copyright, the GPL cannot exist, because there would be nothing to license. Without copyright, the code (or whatever else) would drop directly into public domain, and the most important part of the GPL is lost. There would no longer be a requirement to release the source of any modified GPLed code.
I'm not sure how you got that impression. The goal since the beginning was for governments to place orders for OLPCs for their countries (or for first world governments to pay on behalf of third world ones). As most governments tend to be funded by taxes, and someone or something is paying those taxes, taxpayers would obviously be funding OLPC purchases.
CMU got the $14 million because the Robotics Institute already has an autonomous tank, Crusher. The money was given specifically to create an updated version of it.
What was your first clue, the fact that the power cable coming out would have to be half the diameter of the device to power 25,000 homes? Leave the electrical engineering to the electrical engineers. You also missed the crucial fact that electricity does not come out of a reactor, heat does. To get electricity, you have to use the heat on some fluid to drive a turbine. The turbine obviously would not be inside this "washing machine".
It is also pretty apparent that you've never seen a nuclear reactor. A reactor itself is pretty small compared to the overall size of a plant. It's the cooling loops, turbines, myriad of control and power equipment, and containment structure that take up space.
The engineering is perfectly feasible, it's just a matter of whether or not it is cost effective (it probably is, or will be soon at the rate energy prices are rising), and whether or not people would be willing to live next to a tiny reactor (the real problem). Beyond that, it's just a matter of working through the massive bureaucracy of getting licencing from the NRC.
The notion of having a completely unmanned reactor seems like a recipe for disaster though. The Toshiba plan of keeping a few people nearby to ensure security and to monitor the supposedly fail safe systems seems safer.
I wondered the same about the line when I first saw that map. I could be mistaken, but I think its the result of towns springing up around the Trans-Siberian Railway. It had the same type of effect on Russia that the Transcontinental Railroad did for the US.
Yet another person who completely missed the point. The point of the OLPC is to provide education in areas that have hundreds of children per teacher, and the classrooms are horribly lacking in the standard teaching tools we take for granted.
American children already have well funded, well equipped, and well staffed (all relative to third world countries, mind you) school systems. Thus, the purpose of a computer in an American school is often less for the purpose of education in general than for education of the specifics of the computer. As in, learn how to write a Word document, use a spreadsheet, do research online, etc.
The OLPC project on the other hand, is not about giving a child a laptop, its about giving a child a real education.
Even so, the OLPC is going to be offered in the US, in a plan much like what you described.
I, for one, am going to order one the first moment I can.
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That's essentially what Negroponte has boiled the project down to by letting Sugar dev's out of the loop. Many, Walter Bender included, have gone to start Sugar Labs to ensure that Sugar remains available regardless of what OLPC does.
It destroys the "It's an education project, not a laptop project." to not ship with an operating system and educational software.
Microsoft is really pushing to get XP onto low cost laptops. They recently started a program to sell XP until 2010 for use on "ULPCs". The OLPC program is seperate though, and could potentially last longer.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/apr08/04-03xpeos.mspx
It's a 2gb SD card. Linux would be on the 1gb NAND flash and Windows would boot off of SD.
It's like that at my university too, though mostly x86 stuff. I've gotten at least a dozen PIV machines and more PIIIs than I care to remember.
In a student org I'm in, we started a computer recycling program to deal with the excess and make sure hardware doesn't end up in a dumpster. We've run into a surprising amount of resistance from the University, but individual professors and some of the smaller departments are sympathetic to our cause.
You missed the point. You can't just magically automate something like object recognition. You can, however, train filters on computers based on how humans identify objects in images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_lantern
Demonoid is one of the few private trackers that doesn't ban on bad ratio. You can leech all you want, and the only thing that will suffer is your pirate karma.
Oddly enough, my friend had a video removed from Youtube last month of four Robosapien RS Medias dancing to a Village People song.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpc-update It uses rsync, but you can do it other ways. With OLPC, everyone has had the same set of problems, so they are all very well documented on the wiki. Read up before complaining.
Open up a terminal, su -, olpc-update 656 It was a bug on build G1G1s shipped with.
Any cuber worth a damn will be able to identify that the cube has been tampered with within two minutes (significantly less if he or she is a speed cuber).
Amen to that. The only reason I still have any scholarships as an Electrical and Computer Engineering student is that I take a liberal arts class of some kind every semester and pull an A in it with little to no effort.
The OLPC XO uses them. The power density isn't as good as normal lithium ion batteries, so they might not end up in normal laptops for a while.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/16/engadget-knocks-4-billion-of-apple-market-cap-on-bogus-iphone-email/
You're right, it's kind of a stretch to call anything in that article hacking, but it is designed to be (software) hackable. Though, the line in voltmeter is unique in that the audio hardware was chosen to make that possible.
It's the only laptop I've ever heard of that uses Open Firmware, or any open source BIOS. There are even tutorials on hacking it in the wiki. Plus, most of the GUI and applications are written in Python and are designed to be relatively easy to modify.
The hardware itself is far from hackable though. There is very little, if anything, that can be modified inside the thing, even though it is easy to disassemble. I imagine its the result of making it as cheap and rugged as possible.
It doesn't really matter that it takes five minutes to open it with a screwdriver and switch the battery. The point is that people want to carry two or more batteries with them and be able to switch them when one goes dead, without requiring tools (or having to void the warrenty).
Yes, but more than that, Peru had already signed a contract with OLPC for a few hundred thousand laptops. Intel, an OLPC "partner", then tried to get Peru to drop the OLPC contract in favor of their Classmate laptop.
Not quite. Without copyright, the GPL cannot exist, because there would be nothing to license. Without copyright, the code (or whatever else) would drop directly into public domain, and the most important part of the GPL is lost. There would no longer be a requirement to release the source of any modified GPLed code.
I'm not sure how you got that impression. The goal since the beginning was for governments to place orders for OLPCs for their countries (or for first world governments to pay on behalf of third world ones). As most governments tend to be funded by taxes, and someone or something is paying those taxes, taxpayers would obviously be funding OLPC purchases.
CMU got the $14 million because the Robotics Institute already has an autonomous tank, Crusher. The money was given specifically to create an updated version of it.
It is also pretty apparent that you've never seen a nuclear reactor. A reactor itself is pretty small compared to the overall size of a plant. It's the cooling loops, turbines, myriad of control and power equipment, and containment structure that take up space.
It sounds a lot like the 10MW Toshiba "nuclear battery", which has a pretty good chance of being built.
The engineering is perfectly feasible, it's just a matter of whether or not it is cost effective (it probably is, or will be soon at the rate energy prices are rising), and whether or not people would be willing to live next to a tiny reactor (the real problem). Beyond that, it's just a matter of working through the massive bureaucracy of getting licencing from the NRC.
The notion of having a completely unmanned reactor seems like a recipe for disaster though. The Toshiba plan of keeping a few people nearby to ensure security and to monitor the supposedly fail safe systems seems safer.
Don't forget though that the jury is going to be made up of joe schmoes like the juror in Capitol v Thomas who had never been on the Internet.
I wondered the same about the line when I first saw that map. I could be mistaken, but I think its the result of towns springing up around the Trans-Siberian Railway. It had the same type of effect on Russia that the Transcontinental Railroad did for the US.
Yet another person who completely missed the point. The point of the OLPC is to provide education in areas that have hundreds of children per teacher, and the classrooms are horribly lacking in the standard teaching tools we take for granted.
American children already have well funded, well equipped, and well staffed (all relative to third world countries, mind you) school systems. Thus, the purpose of a computer in an American school is often less for the purpose of education in general than for education of the specifics of the computer. As in, learn how to write a Word document, use a spreadsheet, do research online, etc.
The OLPC project on the other hand, is not about giving a child a laptop, its about giving a child a real education.
Even so, the OLPC is going to be offered in the US, in a plan much like what you described. I, for one, am going to order one the first moment I can.