Yup, this like the Apple Corps Vs Apple Computer type case - one party does something that might break a long standing agreement, so they let the courts sort it out. Though In this case the red cross on white background has become so generic that neither party has a real claim to the trademark.
For a country to base their entire economy on digital files is supreme madness, as stupid as the Golgafrinchans' use of tree leaves as money.A digital file is like a tree leaf. They cost nothing. To pay for one is madness, to try to use them as a medium of exchange (trade for other goods) is even greater madness.
The bits used for online banking are also free... you're confusing the value of data with the medium.
The heavy handed attempts to stop the sharing of something that is entirely cost-free to everyone is as stupid as the Golgafrinchans' torching of the forests.
Actually their actions were quite rational, like farmers destroying crops to keep prices up. You say that sharing is cost-free, but it has an external cost. The nature of the digital world leads to a tragedy of the commons, there is no loss to inviduals copying, but the net result of their actions unchecked is a degradation of the market to the point where the goods they download will no longer be made.
Because that is how it is playing out in practice. Emulators have a lot of drawbacks and maintaining backwards compatibility with earlier, woefully flawed designs is only producing more problems: see also security situation under Windows.
Most free software isn't updated anyways, but it gets cloned. That's why theres hundreds of free word processing apps, rogue-like games, and education software. I've found it easier to write something that performs the same function from scratch than to try and go through somebody else's crappy code and fix it.
All of which suffer from lack of integration with the platform. That is why most non-trivial project authors who are desperate for a Windows port use Microsoft's own tools.
Define trivial. If I'm developing an extremely hardware intestive application then yes I might go with Microsoft's tools, but there are very few applications like that which need to be developed for education PCs.
LOL. Your uncritical hero worship and wholesale swallowing of the propaganda is amusing. Most if not all of these companies wouldn't even notice if the CEO was hit by a bus and did not show up to work for years. As a matter of fact some of the most highly paid CEOs historically are the ones who presided over their company's collapse or a radical downsizing of revenues.
Some of the most highly paid employees are the ones who sit around and don't do anything. Picking one or two examples doesn't dismiss that on the whole that CEO pay is closely tied to stock performance as demonstrated by salaries tracking the S&P 500. Why do you have such vitriol towards CEOs? Do you also hate people who work sitting at a computer all day instead of putting in "a good days work" out in the field breaking a sweat?
You mean the ones on Microsoft's payroll? Some "caring".
If somebody abandoned the project solely because they hated Microsoft, they are short-sided zealots. Get the computers in the hands of children, and develop things to help them no matter what the platform. It's like those governments that turn down food and medical aid because it's being delivered from the US.
This is just too pathetic. So now your "ideal" "educational" platform for the kids throughout the world is a locked-down system which requires any member of the "unauthorized" hoi polloi to crack it (only to get locked down and or outright wiped out with the next patch - ala iPhone).
I didn't say it's my ideal system, it's a realistic system.
de-facto enslavement of these whom you supposedly wish to "help" to some multi-national corporate interests. Which pretty much ends all discussion on the subject.
Why is it de-facto enslavement? Its a choice, continue on the current path, or accept a less than perfect means to accelerate development. Idealistic projects are great on paper, but are useless unless they materialize and get into the hands of people. Sometimes you have to deviate in the short term and find pragmatic solutions so that the ultimate vision can be realized.
$0.10/min is a fortune in some of these places where $20 a month is a good salary. Again you are restricting the whole scope of this "help" to the most affluent. Which coupled with your Freudian slip above makes perfect sense. They are the most "ready" for being ripped off.
I wouldn't call people who have no running water, poorly constructed homes built out of rubble, and limited electricity "affluent." Yet, people in those conditions can afford cellphones and use them as a primary means of communication. And this is the same audience that low cost PCs are targetted at.
It was a typo, the peak of US family's purchasing power occurred in 1950s not 1920s. LOL. Yes, there were no other abundant opportunities in the 1950s. You are getting less credible by the
Because they cease to interoperate correctly with the rest of the changing software ecosystem. If you manage to stop everyone from changing anything anywhere, and keep your hardware from failing, than you can keep all your software (assuming no crippling bugs are present) unchanged indefinitely. In real life this is an impossibility.
Why do you say it's impossible, that's the whole point behind backwards compatibility which is why we continue to use backwards technology developed decades ago. And if any piece of software is popular enough it will be cloned, emulated, or somehow still kept around. And with online capability more and more software is being deployed as an online service - plenty of web apps out there.
Also Windows freeware can in fact be open source
Which is a rarity.
Go search through sourceforge, there's plenty of OS independent and Windows XP software on there.
Part of the problem is of course that in order for FOSS to work on Windows, the developers must purchase both Windows and Visual Studio or some similar toolchain, which goes against of the whole idea of Free Software and is barely tolerated by many of the Open Source people (due to cost and other factors).
No, there are plenty of free tools for programming windows in pretty much any language. Hardware is far more closed than software, yet you seem to dismiss that because the crusade against Microsoft.
It reminds of all these people who attempt to justify multi-billion salaries of CEOs by painting them as somehow "responsible" for advancement of technology or science, as if there are not thousands of equally (or more) talented people waiting to take their place should the "irreplaceable hero" get hit by the bus.
I agree, they earn millions because they do their job and make money for stockholders. Science and technology advancement has nothing to do with it.
The XO will ship only with Windows. That is now a foregone conclusion. All the FOSS friendly people have already departed or were ejected out of the project.
All the pure zealots may have taken their ball and gone home, those who actually care about providing software to children in developing nations are still working on the project. People are still working on Sugar, and developing Linux apps, as well as people working on XP apps.
Err, what the fuck is the point then? "Scaled down" Windows is no longer Windows. The entire platform is revolving around the "experience" of Windows bloatware and the bloated OS itself! If you are going to "trim down" Windows, then you are no longer shipping what everyone on the planet is using but some sort of fake, crippled system... which is very much along the lines of what this whole concept of OLPC-borne "crippleware" is all about.
Windows is bloated because it throws everything and the kitchen sink in. When you have a fixed platform it's easy to strip things down, just as Microsoft stripped down Windows to work on the Xbox. Many do-it-yourself types have been running stripped down XP on EEE PC and other low cost ultra portables.
Err... because no one will write free software for it (specially for the locked down cellphones with their NDAs, software certificates, download portals and what not).
Yes nobody jailbreaks their iPhone, and those who don't want to get into that legal grey area have plenty of tools to develop for Symbian. Make a platform popular enough and people will develop for it.
Dude, cell phones are the most nickle-and-dimed, ripoff platforms known to man. Essentially you are proposing the most efficient method of swift separation of whatever little money these people have and transferring that to cell-phone carriers, 10 cents a time. Use your head for once. Cell phone carriers and crack dealers have far t
According to your own words you now expect piles of haphazard "freeware" to be used as the mainstay of the tools used on such laptops, with no system of assuring that these programs get updated, fixed or otherwise kept up.
Why do applications need to be constantly updated and fixed? It's this same reinventing the wheel that convinces school districts to buy new revisions of textbooks. Also Windows freeware can in fact be open source, it's up to the author. You keep painting a picture of open source vs windows like the two things are completely opposed to each other. Again, for the most part the debate is moot because most teachers don't have the knowledge or will to dig around in code, and good closed source software encourages FOSS developers to make clones.
Free Software is a magnet for people who are willing to contribute something to society but who are adamant that their contributions will not be simply re-packaged by some jackal and sold for profit. A vast majority of volunteers seems to share this outlook. That is why with the advent Free Software most people who would have otherwise created "freeware" for Windows have long since departed that realm for ideologically compatible ground: Linux. The pool of quality "freeware" Windows programmers is these days really, really shallow, despite of that platform's commercial popularity
I disagree, often you will see projects for both Linux and Windows because developers just can't ignore the popularity of the Windows platform - Open Office, GIMP, Firefox, etc.
If it commands 95%, forcing 90% of all other software to be written for that platform and if that system is also a property of a singular US corporation, you not only got "a problem" it is a gigantic problem. Windows is single-handedly responsible of throwing the whole of the Computer Science back nearly by an entire generation. Technologies popular at the end of 1960s (like virtualization) are only now becoming available for the Wintel platform. That is 40 years later!
Technology advances faster than society. Windows may have slowed the adoption from a technical perspective, but it accelerated the adoption of computers socially. It's not like alternatives weren't offered like OS/2, it's just people want backwards compatibility and familiarity. Software is alone in that regard, BIOS is old and outdated, as is the x86 archetecture, but they work well enough, and it's more costly to change to something that is technically better
As a matter of fact the opposite is happening: the OLPC users are in effect made to use Windows via a combination of actual corruption and influence peddling, plus the decidedly unhealthy effects of US corporate monopolies
Or legitimate demand. There are also those governments who are demanding Linux because of National security and economic reasons. Ultimately it's up to the customer what they want - If XO would ONLY ship with Windows that's a problem, but supporting Windows just lends some freedom for customers to choose what they want.
See under ASUS. And the "architecture" is woefully inadequate for a Windows-centric platform and will require a total redesign. We already discussed that.
Inadequate for a typical Windows build, but much of the bloat can be trimmed down with a special platform specific build. It's not like XP is cutting edge, it's 7 years old; technology has moved a long way since then, where even stripped down hardware is extremely powerful relative to the hardware back then.
Possibly, but then again you are right back to the whole problem of creation of educational software. Also cell phone platforms are traditionally the most locked down, byzantine to develop for and generally the crappiest possible choice for such a project. But then again there is the OpenMoko project... so there are indeed possibilities here. Maybe
Sure, only a minority will choose to become farmers. But by giving people the right to support themselves rather than working for the man, we are at least making sure that nobody is worth off than humans were 100000 years ago. No able bodied man will die of starvation when he has a chance to grow his own vegetables and build his own shack to keep out the elements.
Many people will die of starvation in that scenario. Even the very poor right now are better off than humans 1000 years ago, let alone 100,000. You also have the problem that not all land is good farm land, not all good farm land yields plenty of food every year. With a poplulation of 6B individual farming just isn't a workable solution. Further nobody has to work for "the man," they just choose to because it's the safest thing to do.
As a human born on planet Earth, I have a right to a plot of land for sustenance and shelter, in reasonable proximity to where I was born.
That's great if you want everybody to go back to being self sufficient farmers - unfortunately most people prefer to have a better standard of living through specialization and trade.
"Property rights" won't amount to a hill of beans to the first person to get up there, stand on the spot and say "this is mine".
In other words, property rights are unenforcable, and none of the existing governments on earth have any real say. What government is going to spend 10 billion on space hardware to settle a legal property ownership/squatting claim?
In yet other words, possession is 9/10 of the law. Go ahead and argue about the other 1/10, because you don't matter.
That's all well and good if property on the moon existed in a vacuum (no pun intended). Any settlement of the moon, at least early on will be closely tied to resources on the earth. A govenment/regulatory body doesn't have to deal with you on the moon, they just cut you off from supplies and arrest you the minute you step foot on earth. Or in the case of a commercial interest they can start fining the earthbound portion of the company for illegal land use.
An agreement outlining "property rights" goes a long way to help settle disputes on how the land is to be used. We need the debates and create agreements upfront to prevent long and painful litigation, diplomatic conflict, or war.
Even if opening of private property on the moon is allowed, and it creates a rush to buy property, all that would happen is that the property speculators will buy it up cheap and sit on it until it is worth something. There is no incentive for them to do anything with it after they have brought it.
That's not how many purchases of state property works, it's not about a piece of paper, nor is it about putting up a fence. Developers place bids (cash and project proposals) to develop the property and written into the contract is the requirement to meet those proposals. That prevents people from buying land and sitting on it, and contractually binds them to meet the goals set out. So a developer will make a bid on land to place a shopping mall, another may want to build an amusement park, what the sale does is allow planning of how best to use the property. Government sale of property isn't so much about raising money, it's about managing a limited resource.
Because not only is their number a fraction of those who contribute to FOSS, but the whole idea of closed source is an anathema to the supposed goals of such a project: education.
You create a false dichotomy, closed source vs education. The barrier only exists in a small context which is people trying to learn about programming. Software is a tool, most people don't care about the code, they care about the interaction and results. Just as most programmers could care less about the process used to create computer chips, only a small minority of students are interested in digging around code.
If you were discussing a project whose aim was to distribute as many variants of solitaire or "trainers" for commercial games as humanely possible throughout the world, or pointless "utilities", the situation would be different. That is where the vast bulk of "freeware" on Windows is. The rest of the "freeware" is in fact "adware" or "crippleware". Attempts at giving away the "first hit" in efforts to hook the user and make him pay for the "full version".
You seem to think there are people who write Windows and people who write Linux applications, when many times those populations overlap. I will agree the signal-to-noise ratio of good and bad software for Windows is worse, but that's because it's the easiest platform to develop.
As slaves of the US corporate "culture" you mean? Ever heard of "diversity"? Probably not.
Yes, and diversity has it's problems. Or do you not remember the days when programs were written for DOS, Apple, XT, Tandy. There are pluses and minuses to having different operating systems roaming around. By installing the most popular OS doesn't mean you are locking out every other one. Those interested in something different can easily change.
Getting wealthier at any cost is a very short-sighted way of thinking which has lead to untold disasters in the past. Also, it is the ultimate hubris and arrogance to think that everyone wants mini-Americas everywhere. This is the "thought" that drove the PNAC cabal with Bush in front to invade Iraq. Apparently there was an American, desperate to burst out of, in every Iraqi, or some such.
There's a big difference between a military invasion, and putting a McDonald's in Russia where people in fact did line up to get little piece of America. Despotism comes in making a decree that only Linux can be used when people ask for XP because of your belief that open source is "better."
But skipping the wider geo-political implications of the Microsoftization of the Universe, the main point of this discussion was that OLPC was supposed to be different, billed itself as being different and attracted supporters on the basis of being different. Remove that and the whole point of the OLPC project disappears. Any old "charity" can refurbish old laptops (most of which are way more powerful then the XO) and ship them bulk to the places you mentioned.
The hardware is "different," a 6lb cheap plastic laptop with 2 hour battery life doesn't work in those areas. The hardware design is the breakthrough, the size, ruggedized design, and archetecture provides a far more survivable solution than refurbs.
You mean the demand is still there, but from now on it will be only fulfilled in the easiest and most juicy (from the perspective of potential commercially strategic gains) areas. That means that the OPLC has lost its edge and the real attack will come from the likes of ASUS who soon be able to achieve the prices those wealthiest of poor nations can afford. And software piracy will take care of the rest, which ironically will result in firmly putting Microsoft in the driver's seat of their future.
It's also possible XO approached the market from the wrong angle. As cellphone capabilities expand, that might in fact become the solution to the comp
A company spokesperson is also promising fixes for the multitude of problems in "Star Wars Galaxies" that have plagued the MMORPG for the last five years
Most of those technical problems were fixed in SWG, the game was stable and a solid 250k playerbase. The biggest problem was the game design limited it to a niche Roleplayer audience, so they broke the game completely with NGE so it had more mass market appeal.
I think our major difference lies in our expectation of the project. My understanding from the beginning was this was aimed towards developing countries that had the resources to provide education services, but did not have the resources for full computers. Places like Philippines, Brazil, Thailand etc. where people live in relative poverty, but have access to water and shelter. Such places don't have reliable power (hence the hand crank), and the cost for a laptop is expensive. Here is where I think the difference can be greatest, because those nations are connected, and creativity with computers can be shared and will allow them greater economic opportunities.
That "excitement" took a huge hit, as evidenced right here at Slashdot, particularly amongst those who were the most prone to write stuff for the XO, after the Negroponte's u-turn.
The excitement for XO may have taken a hit, but the excitement for a low cost, low power platform has not. Just because Negroponte lost focus with his specific project, doesn't mean somebody else isn't trying to pick up it up.
Fallacy #1: there is no "market". Unless by "market" you mean kids using free software who will never pay a dime for it.
Why does it have to be FOSS? There are people who write closed source for free.
That is why FOSS was essential to this, no one else will, barring multi-million grants and corporate "gifts" (that keep on "giving") do this in a project dominated by non-FOSS, commercial ideologies. If there is no buck to be made, commercial entities won't touch it. And there is no buck to be made here by definition, unless you can afford to play long-term strategic market domination warfare games, which is precisely what Microsoft can do and does and why it was desperate to muscle its way into the OLPC.
Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still results in doing the right thing. If the countries adopt XP as the primary platform and develop economically, what is the problem. They are still better off economically and in terms of education.
"Race to the bottom" is a term which describes devastating effects of unregulated capitalism on various economies, specifically leading to spiraling descent into abject poverty of previously affluent middle-class. It is a four-letter word. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you meant something else by it.
I was referring to the "race to the bottom" (according to Sony) where all the computer manufacturers are beating themselves up to create $100 & $200 computers and truly commoditizing the market. We are seeing more efficient, lower cost parts (eg Atom processor), and less bloated software - nobody will ever run Vista on these machines, and many people hack XP to slim it down when putting it on an EEE PC
As to the rest, again, there is no money to be made on this directly, so I fail to see what will motivate all these contributors whom Negroponte just essentially kicked in the teeth.
Not directly, but it should be seen as an investment. By growing smaller economies you then open up new commercial opportunities. As you mentioned before, many kids in the US started using computers with pirated software, but as they became more wealthy they had the means to purchase commercial software.
You are working with a Western-centric point of view, disregarding the fact that many (if not most) of the target (as per original project goals) kids do not speak English and require all their software to be localized in some tribal language, some of which have barely a written alphabet.
I believe the target audience isn't what you think. It was not intended for the poorest of the poor, but rather targetted at countries where the people have basic necessities but need a low cost computer to bridge the technical gap. Places like Uraguay, Nigeria, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil. No they don't speak English, but they also do not speak "tribal" languages.
Then of course is the cost of that "easy" accessible software. Windows on its own is useless and only becomes useful with the whole software ecosystem of dominant on the platform applications, each and every one of which exceeds the cost of the entire XO laptop many-fold! And then there is speed and storage, XO not being designed to run a full-fledged Office or Visual Studio... and on and on and on.
Maybe this will come as a shock, but there is plenty of freeware written for Windows systems, and not everything is as bloated as Microsoft Applications.
Again, you are having difficulties disassociating yourself from your personal experiences and the Western outlook on things. You also conveniently forget that during the DOS and early Windows days one of the main vectors of "learning" by kids was... rampant piracy. I personally have nothing against it, as I am an opponent of the whole Intellectual Property nonsense, but if this method is not going to be a) tolerated in a Microsoft controlled (no matter what Negroponte says) project, and b) it is no longer viable without high speed internet connections, given the monstrous size of these applications (never you mind that XO will never be able to run them).
Having visited a few of these countries I can say the "sneaker net" vector of getting applications is alive and well. You don't need high speed internet, you just need to stop by the mall, or marketplace stalls.
In essence Linux (or perheaps BSD or some such) was the only method by which the project goals, as originally stated, could have been achieved.
I don't see how Linux is the only way "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves."
This has nothing to do with my dislike of Microsoft and its tactics, but is simply a result of logical analysis of the requirements versus what XP is bringing to the table.
You act like once an OS is on there it's impossible to remove. Including XP was a reaction to the demands of customers (typically governments), not some underhanded conspiracy.
What excites me about the OLPC project is not what it ships with, but that as a platform it has excited numerous developers in both the commercial and open source communities. Anybody who thought the project would be the end-all to the computing needs of the developing world is a blind idealist. What it has done is identified a market and motivated hardware and software developers to address. It kicked off the "race to the bottom" and it's the competition that will ultimately meet the lofty goals set out, not any single specialized platform.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, "educating kids" is an utter impossibility when OLPC+Windows combination is involved.
Why is this the case? Not all kids are interested in computers as a subject unto itself, most see computers as tools to do something. The ones who see computers as a tool want easy access to software that meets their needs, in many cases that means software written for Windows - which can easily and cheaply be acquired in the "underground" market. Those who are interested in the computer itself can easily find, install, and play around with other operating systems and learn the inner workings. Most people I grew up with who work with Linux and program professionally used DOS and Windows when they were younger. Personally I used Apple when I was young, DOS and OS/2 in my teens, Windows in college... it didn't matter what OS I'm running, it's all about the applications.
Don't dismiss backwards compatibility, look at how much software is there for Windows computers, it was the defacto standard for a decade. Yes Mactel is outselling Wintel, but Apple still recognized the influence of Microsoft by including Bootcamp in their latest OS - do you decry them for abandoning the idealism of computers without Windows?
The *only* reason Windows hasn't been abandoned by its disgruntled users is because of Microsoft's continued illegal actions in maintaining its monopoly. All too many users say "I hate it, but have to use Windows."
Yes, I agree people are locked into Windows, but the reason they use it isn't because of monopolistic actions, it's because they need it to for the software they want to use, low cost for hardware, and support from hardware suppliers. The only reason I run Windows is because of computer games, if I could get the games for OSX I would abandon windows.
There is *no* practical reason to put Windows on the OLPC. It brings nothing to the table but additional cost. The only purpose for it is to satisfy a vengeful and corrupt monopolist.
The practical reason is all the software out there written for Windows. Why spend time trying to find software for Linux or Mac when there are shelves of software for Windows at the mall for less than $1
There can be some grant programs to help those who really do not have the money, but the vast majority of students can pay $50 a semester for loose-leaf books. Many low income students can afford $50-100 fee to play a sport, so paying for books shouldn't be that big of a problem.
That 5% are the ones least likely to get wanderlust and try other games. The casual player will have less invested so will more likely replace WoW with other forms of entertainment.
What is scary is that politicians will listen to them because Greenpeace represents a vocal chunk of votes. The reason we on Slashdot should listen is to understand the effect they can have on electronics manufacturing by influencing environmental legislation. Look at lead-free requirements impact on electronics, it's a real pain in the ass for manufacturing and in the end the legislation is pointless since car batteries (the biggest users of lead in consumer products) are exempt. Learn what they are targeting on their agenda so you can write to your legislators to try and convince them not to follow Greenpeace's misguided agenda.
Windows on the OLPC is an outrage and clear evidence that the OLPC project is no longer about helping children and only about making money and creating a new form "Microsoft Tax" for the poor and developing nations
No it is clear evidence that the momentum for Windows can't be ignored. Just like OLPC kept an x86 compatible CPU instead of going with something more efficient for the embedded market.
Given how far the US dollar has slipped against other currencies $150 laptop would be close to a $100 laptop in 2000. Parts and labor in Asia is becoming more expensive when priced in US dollars.
Why does it have to be all bound up nicely? In college many of my "books" were professor notes that were essentially photocopies printed out on plain paper with cheap plastic binding - cost maybe $5. Have students pay for the printing and the taxpayers pay for the content.
Its about a 50/50 split between online and retail for computer hardware. I'm not saying that the statitistic is the end-all for defining market share, but it does represent a significant type of customer. The non-tech savvy purchaser who has enough disposable income to purchase an expensive computer. It means Apple's retail strategy for computers is doing a better job of attracting that target market than Best Buy or other retailers.
People buy Apple Computers for the same reason they buy BMWs, you can probably find a cheaper car with better specs, but you don't get all the stylish little extras. Apple products look sexy, and they have enough little extras that people convince themselves it's worth it. There's a different feel when you are carrying around an aluminum Macbook Pro instead of a plastic Dell, it doesn't make the computer run any faster, but it helps people feel "cool." Same reason kids wear Nike shoes, or $200 jeans - selling an imaginary lifestyle makes more profit than actual specs.
Slashdot Mirror
I always think of +20 health when I see the logo
Yup, this like the Apple Corps Vs Apple Computer type case - one party does something that might break a long standing agreement, so they let the courts sort it out.
Though In this case the red cross on white background has become so generic that neither party has a real claim to the trademark.
Actually their actions were quite rational, like farmers destroying crops to keep prices up. You say that sharing is cost-free, but it has an external cost. The nature of the digital world leads to a tragedy of the commons, there is no loss to inviduals copying, but the net result of their actions unchecked is a degradation of the market to the point where the goods they download will no longer be made.
Most free software isn't updated anyways, but it gets cloned. That's why theres hundreds of free word processing apps, rogue-like games, and education software. I've found it easier to write something that performs the same function from scratch than to try and go through somebody else's crappy code and fix it.
Define trivial. If I'm developing an extremely hardware intestive application then yes I might go with Microsoft's tools, but there are very few applications like that which need to be developed for education PCs.
Some of the most highly paid employees are the ones who sit around and don't do anything. Picking one or two examples doesn't dismiss that on the whole that CEO pay is closely tied to stock performance as demonstrated by salaries tracking the S&P 500. Why do you have such vitriol towards CEOs? Do you also hate people who work sitting at a computer all day instead of putting in "a good days work" out in the field breaking a sweat?
If somebody abandoned the project solely because they hated Microsoft, they are short-sided zealots. Get the computers in the hands of children, and develop things to help them no matter what the platform. It's like those governments that turn down food and medical aid because it's being delivered from the US.
I didn't say it's my ideal system, it's a realistic system.
Why is it de-facto enslavement? Its a choice, continue on the current path, or accept a less than perfect means to accelerate development. Idealistic projects are great on paper, but are useless unless they materialize and get into the hands of people. Sometimes you have to deviate in the short term and find pragmatic solutions so that the ultimate vision can be realized.
I wouldn't call people who have no running water, poorly constructed homes built out of rubble, and limited electricity "affluent." Yet, people in those conditions can afford cellphones and use them as a primary means of communication. And this is the same audience that low cost PCs are targetted at.
Why do you say it's impossible, that's the whole point behind backwards compatibility which is why we continue to use backwards technology developed decades ago. And if any piece of software is popular enough it will be cloned, emulated, or somehow still kept around. And with online capability more and more software is being deployed as an online service - plenty of web apps out there.
Go search through sourceforge, there's plenty of OS independent and Windows XP software on there.
No, there are plenty of free tools for programming windows in pretty much any language. Hardware is far more closed than software, yet you seem to dismiss that because the crusade against Microsoft.
I agree, they earn millions because they do their job and make money for stockholders. Science and technology advancement has nothing to do with it.
All the pure zealots may have taken their ball and gone home, those who actually care about providing software to children in developing nations are still working on the project. People are still working on Sugar, and developing Linux apps, as well as people working on XP apps.
Windows is bloated because it throws everything and the kitchen sink in. When you have a fixed platform it's easy to strip things down, just as Microsoft stripped down Windows to work on the Xbox. Many do-it-yourself types have been running stripped down XP on EEE PC and other low cost ultra portables.
Yes nobody jailbreaks their iPhone, and those who don't want to get into that legal grey area have plenty of tools to develop for Symbian. Make a platform popular enough and people will develop for it.
Why do applications need to be constantly updated and fixed? It's this same reinventing the wheel that convinces school districts to buy new revisions of textbooks. Also Windows freeware can in fact be open source, it's up to the author. You keep painting a picture of open source vs windows like the two things are completely opposed to each other. Again, for the most part the debate is moot because most teachers don't have the knowledge or will to dig around in code, and good closed source software encourages FOSS developers to make clones.
I disagree, often you will see projects for both Linux and Windows because developers just can't ignore the popularity of the Windows platform - Open Office, GIMP, Firefox, etc.
Technology advances faster than society. Windows may have slowed the adoption from a technical perspective, but it accelerated the adoption of computers socially. It's not like alternatives weren't offered like OS/2, it's just people want backwards compatibility and familiarity. Software is alone in that regard, BIOS is old and outdated, as is the x86 archetecture, but they work well enough, and it's more costly to change to something that is technically better
Or legitimate demand. There are also those governments who are demanding Linux because of National security and economic reasons. Ultimately it's up to the customer what they want - If XO would ONLY ship with Windows that's a problem, but supporting Windows just lends some freedom for customers to choose what they want.
Inadequate for a typical Windows build, but much of the bloat can be trimmed down with a special platform specific build. It's not like XP is cutting edge, it's 7 years old; technology has moved a long way since then, where even stripped down hardware is extremely powerful relative to the hardware back then.
Further nobody has to work for "the man," they just choose to because it's the safest thing to do.
An agreement outlining "property rights" goes a long way to help settle disputes on how the land is to be used. We need the debates and create agreements upfront to prevent long and painful litigation, diplomatic conflict, or war.
Government sale of property isn't so much about raising money, it's about managing a limited resource.
You create a false dichotomy, closed source vs education. The barrier only exists in a small context which is people trying to learn about programming. Software is a tool, most people don't care about the code, they care about the interaction and results. Just as most programmers could care less about the process used to create computer chips, only a small minority of students are interested in digging around code.
You seem to think there are people who write Windows and people who write Linux applications, when many times those populations overlap. I will agree the signal-to-noise ratio of good and bad software for Windows is worse, but that's because it's the easiest platform to develop.
Yes, and diversity has it's problems. Or do you not remember the days when programs were written for DOS, Apple, XT, Tandy. There are pluses and minuses to having different operating systems roaming around. By installing the most popular OS doesn't mean you are locking out every other one. Those interested in something different can easily change.
There's a big difference between a military invasion, and putting a McDonald's in Russia where people in fact did line up to get little piece of America. Despotism comes in making a decree that only Linux can be used when people ask for XP because of your belief that open source is "better."
The hardware is "different," a 6lb cheap plastic laptop with 2 hour battery life doesn't work in those areas. The hardware design is the breakthrough, the size, ruggedized design, and archetecture provides a far more survivable solution than refurbs.
It's also possible XO approached the market from the wrong angle. As cellphone capabilities expand, that might in fact become the solution to the comp
The excitement for XO may have taken a hit, but the excitement for a low cost, low power platform has not. Just because Negroponte lost focus with his specific project, doesn't mean somebody else isn't trying to pick up it up.
Why does it have to be FOSS? There are people who write closed source for free.
Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still results in doing the right thing. If the countries adopt XP as the primary platform and develop economically, what is the problem. They are still better off economically and in terms of education.
I was referring to the "race to the bottom" (according to Sony) where all the computer manufacturers are beating themselves up to create $100 & $200 computers and truly commoditizing the market. We are seeing more efficient, lower cost parts (eg Atom processor), and less bloated software - nobody will ever run Vista on these machines, and many people hack XP to slim it down when putting it on an EEE PC
Not directly, but it should be seen as an investment. By growing smaller economies you then open up new commercial opportunities. As you mentioned before, many kids in the US started using computers with pirated software, but as they became more wealthy they had the means to purchase commercial software.
Maybe this will come as a shock, but there is plenty of freeware written for Windows systems, and not everything is as bloated as Microsoft Applications.
Having visited a few of these countries I can say the "sneaker net" vector of getting applications is alive and well. You don't need high speed internet, you just need to stop by the mall, or marketplace stalls.
I don't see how Linux is the only way "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves."
You act like once an OS is on there it's impossible to remove. Including XP was a reaction to the demands of customers (typically governments), not some underhanded conspiracy.
What excites me about the OLPC project is not what it ships with, but that as a platform it has excited numerous developers in both the commercial and open source communities. Anybody who thought the project would be the end-all to the computing needs of the developing world is a blind idealist. What it has done is identified a market and motivated hardware and software developers to address. It kicked off the "race to the bottom" and it's the competition that will ultimately meet the lofty goals set out, not any single specialized platform.
Most people I grew up with who work with Linux and program professionally used DOS and Windows when they were younger. Personally I used Apple when I was young, DOS and OS/2 in my teens, Windows in college... it didn't matter what OS I'm running, it's all about the applications.
Yes Mactel is outselling Wintel, but Apple still recognized the influence of Microsoft by including Bootcamp in their latest OS - do you decry them for abandoning the idealism of computers without Windows?
Yes, I agree people are locked into Windows, but the reason they use it isn't because of monopolistic actions, it's because they need it to for the software they want to use, low cost for hardware, and support from hardware suppliers. The only reason I run Windows is because of computer games, if I could get the games for OSX I would abandon windows.
The practical reason is all the software out there written for Windows. Why spend time trying to find software for Linux or Mac when there are shelves of software for Windows at the mall for less than $1
There can be some grant programs to help those who really do not have the money, but the vast majority of students can pay $50 a semester for loose-leaf books. Many low income students can afford $50-100 fee to play a sport, so paying for books shouldn't be that big of a problem.
That 5% are the ones least likely to get wanderlust and try other games. The casual player will have less invested so will more likely replace WoW with other forms of entertainment.
What is scary is that politicians will listen to them because Greenpeace represents a vocal chunk of votes.
The reason we on Slashdot should listen is to understand the effect they can have on electronics manufacturing by influencing environmental legislation. Look at lead-free requirements impact on electronics, it's a real pain in the ass for manufacturing and in the end the legislation is pointless since car batteries (the biggest users of lead in consumer products) are exempt.
Learn what they are targeting on their agenda so you can write to your legislators to try and convince them not to follow Greenpeace's misguided agenda.
Given how far the US dollar has slipped against other currencies $150 laptop would be close to a $100 laptop in 2000. Parts and labor in Asia is becoming more expensive when priced in US dollars.
Why does it have to be all bound up nicely? In college many of my "books" were professor notes that were essentially photocopies printed out on plain paper with cheap plastic binding - cost maybe $5.
Have students pay for the printing and the taxpayers pay for the content.
Its about a 50/50 split between online and retail for computer hardware.
I'm not saying that the statitistic is the end-all for defining market share, but it does represent a significant type of customer. The non-tech savvy purchaser who has enough disposable income to purchase an expensive computer. It means Apple's retail strategy for computers is doing a better job of attracting that target market than Best Buy or other retailers.
People buy Apple Computers for the same reason they buy BMWs, you can probably find a cheaper car with better specs, but you don't get all the stylish little extras.
Apple products look sexy, and they have enough little extras that people convince themselves it's worth it. There's a different feel when you are carrying around an aluminum Macbook Pro instead of a plastic Dell, it doesn't make the computer run any faster, but it helps people feel "cool." Same reason kids wear Nike shoes, or $200 jeans - selling an imaginary lifestyle makes more profit than actual specs.