there used to be a commercial on the boob tube in the 90s where a guy was in the middle of some courtyard and he was jumping up and down yelling buy! buy! sell! into his headset with an eyepiece screen and a small computer on his belt. I was just reading some news on Motorola doing Android phones and it made me wonder why we are not seeing devices like what that commercial showed. When an ARM chip and do 720P HD video in just a few watts, one would think that driving a tiny transparent display screen and doing some voice recognition would be within reason for a belt hung system. I don't know if the Snapdragon chips have DSP capabilities but the TI Omap processors have had DSP in them for years. IIRC, voice recognition fits the task of a DSP design quite well.
Now how much are those little LCD display screens?
If you have any proof they didn't pick ARM because of x86 compatibility with Windows then please post it. I got the impression the AMD chip was picked because of the peripheral driver issues they had with those hardware vendors only supplying binary drivers. So ARM was not allowed on the platform because of close source hardware vendor partnerships.
IIRC, they didn't do _that_ much for Microsoft and pretty much just added the SD card. But, they did let Microsoft take up their time and even some of their office space. It really wasn't an easy hardware kit to build considering it was supposed to work outside, by kids, and be very energy thrifty. Nobody has even come close to what the XO does and only the Kindle can be read outside in full sunlight.
The Microsoft stuff misdirected the marketing of the project once it was determined that Microsoft and Intel successfully blocked many of the sales they had MOU's for.
So, targeting nursing homes and grades schools worked for Microsoft and now it's being shown that MS BING users are more likely to click on ads. What a surprise. For another surprise then, watch how many of MS BING customer's computers are infected and also have key loggers running.
I have to wonder just how much all these kinds of reports on how great BING is going is costing Microsoft.
the drivers mentioned are for the Hyper-V system of Windows Server and not VirtualPC desktop virtualization software. I will agree that on the Windows desktop that it would benefit both customers and Linux if when Linux ran in the virtual machine, it ran as fast as possible.
This is about Hyper-V in Windows Server so none of that really matters regarding benefiting Linux. They did this because if they didn't, server admins would put Linux on the hardware and stick Windows on it's own box or go with another VM technology which is what they were doing before Microsoft bought the VirtualPC software from Innotek.
this reminds me of a conversation with a guy I met at a bar who just graduated from college and was talking about tech and Microsoft stuff. He had no clue about how many times Microsoft was in court on anti-trust issues, had no idea how many technologies they sucked up and got sued for after the companies failed from lost revenue/customers. Just plain naive of all of what's gone on in the last 20 years of Microsoft's monopolistic protection schemes. For the longest time he had this look on his face like I was nuts and lying. But then he heard some names he'd heard of, noticed the timing seemed right and I guess he started understanding I wasn't just making this all up. He said, "Wow, I had no idea they did all that to get where they are." When I say some of this to people with little to no clue at all about tech and they literally laugh and think I'm just a Microsoft hater. So it's amazing what even a small clue can do to understanding what is real and what is fake. Too bad the press people are just so ignorant of what's going on or went on. Otherwise, they might not think everyone who gets down on them for reprinting Microsoft's lies is a nut case.
I would not doubt that some of the Linux kernel people are more than happy to help VMWare out with their drivers but are they all they keen on moving VMWare drivers into the kernel? I believe there was talk about some kind of common hypervisor interface but that's about it. KVM is the open source hypervisor for the Linux kernel. I'm thinking that you are under the illusion that MS VirutalPC is the most popular VM tech and from the numbers I've seen, VMWare still owns that market. And yes, it is very likely that Microsoft execs are losing sleep over Linux and how well Linux runs on their VM tech. The reason is likely because customers know when it runs poorly and will put Linux on it's own hardware because of this and when this happens, using an open source VM like KVM or Xen is likely or even a multiplatform one like VMWare. This leaves Microsoft Windows as either only hosting its own Windows in VMs or Windows getting moved into the Linux hosted VM platform. The tricks and lies they pulled with this GPL'ed driver and press release shows they are putting effort into this.
Ok, you can stick your head back in the sand now because this was all probably alittle bit too scary for you.
Sorry but they probably know the OSS lawyers are not going to allow being _gamed_ like the DOJ lawyers. They get no credit for using the GPL in my book because they were legally bound to do that. They may have had choices though and those were to combined proprietary and GPL'ed code in the driver, or GPL the driver all the way up to the Hyper-V. Mixing proprietary code in a blob in the driver could have opened them up to very close scrutiny of the binary blob and possibly prolonged the discussion along lines they don't want to tread close to. Their Hyper-V is proprietary so why not just throw the whole driver over the wall as GPL and figure out the best way to spin it? Trying to make it look like a favor was how they chose to do this. So what's that saying about telling lies? Once you start the lies just keep getting bigger and bigger and less believable or something like that. Take a guess where we are.
A win-win and Microsoft plays that hand? I think _that_ is why they didn't do it that way. They will do anything to not give any amount of credibility to a targeted competitor and GNU/Linux is very well targeted by Microsoft. It does seem this was rushed to some extent or they just didn't consider all their options carefully enough or they would have rather made this look like a forced issue because of a developer or two didn't watch what he/she was doing and grabbed someone else's code. GPL'ed code. Playing it as something it wasn't within todays web of communications was dumb. It just does not play out like the old days where the PR lies hit the press and it was months before any retraction or counter point could/would be published. I'm surprised they are _that_ out of touch.
Spinning this as a sign of trust and friendship was just lame and I'm wondering if Microsoft's marketing capabilities aren't starting to slip to the level of their OS building abilities.
so why is 99% of the press so ignorant of this fact and merrily continues regurgitating the marketing drivel Microsoft sends them day after day? They have been the mouth piece of their deceptions for 20 years. I also think that the business methods Microsoft uses for profit are what are so distasteful and are what rile up many in this community. They lie, cheat, steal, stab in the back, etc, etc, etc. Yes it is all in the name of making profits for them but when they keep doing that crap on my doorstep, you bet I'm going to tell them to get the f''ck off my property and smack them from then on at any chance I get. There's nothing wrong with making a profit, there is something wrong doing it by telling the world their _horse_ is better and faster than anyone else's and then shotting everyones horse when they step up to challenge that declaration.
They play dirty and have so for decades. WTF do you really expect of anyone but the completely naive?
they have never built any bridge they did not line with explosives and hold the button firmly in their own hands. So dah, you're just stating the facts since in 20 something years, they've given nothing anyone but the blind could trust. Thanks for the chuckle though, now go back to your Microsoft platform and close your eyes to reality... crap, an AC.
they don't need to get their code "into the kernel", they just need a driver to ship with their product. Because they want customers who are installing Linux on their VM tech to be counted, they'll probably recommend these customers get the driver from Microsoft. Not that I think there's any interest by the Linux kernel people to include Microsoft's GPL'ed driver, for their proprietary VM system, into the main kernel tree.
This all just shows once again that at Microsoft, job one is spin/Marketing. It also shows that even with some very visible examples of mixing proprietary binary blobs with GPL'ed code, Nvidia for example, Microsoft just has little clue about OSS and GNU/Linux. No wonder they freak out over it. It's the Boogy Man from their point of view. IMO
no, they didn't write almost an entire operating system. FYI, classically, the OS is what is under the applications and between them and the hardware. I have to believe they still wrote drivers for those special XO things but they tied the Sugar desktop platforum too close to those special drivers and special XO features. But, I can tell you that there must have been some work on partitioning some of those out because before the Sugar team left OLPC, I had Sugar running as a desktop on Ubuntu and it was pretty good. I think the real problem was that Negroponte lost his vision, let Microsoft get to him, and started questioning the software. Once he went down that path, he pissed off critical people in the org and in the community and it eventually hit the fan.
I hope OLPC, the XO, and Sugar can make it out of this funk they are in. There is alot of potential there and alot that can be learned and improved on with success. If it dies, it will remind me of pen based computers in the late 80s and how Microsoft killed that and stalled that market for about ten years.
Informative? WTF? The XO needs to be able to run in full sunlight and in places where there is little to no electricity. Those two things right there exclude the ClassmatePC and the energy requirements exclude Windows. Did you even notice that the netbooks went from less than 1GB of RAM, low power CPUs, and 4GB of flash HD to over 1GB RAM, much more powerful CPUs and many GB spinning HDs when Windows was brought into the devices? There's a reason for that, it's called engineering and using what fits the requirements. yes there were some OSS zealots going around talking about the OSS side of the project but the fact was, small, light, cheap, efficient are major points moving away from Windows. And to top it off, Microsoft does not let OEMs change the default Windows desktop and these people wanted a simple UI with a set of easy to learn and use apps/activities. They'd have to boot into the Windows and then have the user boot into Sugar not to mention all the bloat of having to have all those unused pieces of Windows installed too. Microsoft wouldn't let phone vendors change the default UI until after Apple blew them away with a simple, useful UI and even then, the OEM had to be forceful to get Microsoft to concede and let them build their own UI on Windows Mobile.
As far as Sugar goes, the idea of having it open and everything under it open is something of an enabling thing. I'm sure you can imagine there would be some kids who would not only learn the educational tools on the device but also get into how they were made and want to make some for him/her self? From what I can tell, that was the idea behind putting so much open source on there. Give them tools to learn and also leave them with much much more to learn without having to have wealthy parents to buy them basic tools to learn software development.
It really turned into such a mess when it could have been so cool to have people working to make the tool better and better every year a class used the device.
I believe the idea was to not run it ontop of say Ubuntu desktop version but instead, not tie the education system so close to the hardware. They did everything in Sugar including going into the BIOS and power management. It tied the educational platform, Sugar, to the hardware so closely that it restricted their ability to sell to schools who already had some computers. They couldn't leverage any other device someone else came out with and grow the educational aspect of the project. It was tied to closely to the hardware and it was not required to be this way.
get a clue buba, the world is not all poor and starving or wealthy and not starving. There are probably more places around the world where there's enough food, basic schooling, but little to no electricity. I even think there was a Peruvian village which made the press when interviews of the fathers of the kids who were getting OLPC XO's were originally going to take them away until they saw how much they were learning. The deal was they parents had no idea what the kids were learning because there were no supplies they could take home. After the fathers seeing the kids learning on the new computers, they let the kids have more time away from the fields because they felt if the kids learned more, they would have a better chance of a better life than their parents had or could provide.
So that junk about the world is starving so don't send them computers, send them food is naive at best and more likely, just plan ignorance. IMO.
Regarding Walmart, I don't know if putting them in Walmart would have worked. I've told people over and over that the laptop was for children but after looking over it they would almost always say it was a nice device but it was too small and the keyboard too tiny to use. I'd also read a number of the OLPC forums where people who ordered G1G1 devices were complaining because they didn't run Windows. In other words, a whole lot of people are clueless about the XO being an educational device. Even your bend on this shows it is incorrect. You remark about the kids learning programing and open source and then add a third entry of "that other good stuff". "that other good stuff" is education and the reason for the device. Sorry but you flunked the test.
unfortunately, they were also getting MOUs from world leaders saying that they'd be purchasing the devices in the millions but three factors changed that once production was rolling. Those were the price went from $100 to $180, they published ever country they had MOUs from and Microsoft and Intel had fun visiting those countries and making sure the OLPC was cut out of any future purchases.
After that happened, they should have went into full 1st world sales instead of just the G1 G1 program. So you were somewhat correct but only if not considering the attacks from profit driving companies Microsoft and Intel. I think it was once said that those companies reaction was like if 'McDonald's was fighting the World Food Org' or something to that effect. Proof of these tricks with Intel came out of Peru when a high level official in Peru told Negroponte of documented attacks on a signed OLPC contract at the expense of a secondary contract Intel could have had very easily.
nope, MIcrosoft was working against them well before OLPC drank the Windows cool-aid. In and around 2004 and 2005 Microsoft signed multimillion dollar deals with the Egyptian government tying them to Microsoft Windows. The OLPC finishes the OLPC and goes to Egypt to take them up on their orginal MOU for 1 million units and each Egyptian government official now asks if the XO runs Windows and says it must run Windows or they won't buy it.
Both Microsoft and Intel did a great job at blocking fulfillment of the original MOUs OLPC collected as they finalized the design and went into production. Remember, Microsoft got into running Windows on the XO well after it was already in production. They did get them to add the SD card reader before XO-1 went into production though but I never saw or heard of Windows running on it before production. Even after production and "official announcement" of the XO running Windows, it took over a year before we really saw anything even close to production ready. And remember, Microsoft has the source code to Windows XP and MS employees were supposedly working on it. Remember, they really drag their feet doing things they really don't care to do.
if just half the people who call various explanations for Microsofts actions _conspiracy theories_ read just a small number of the various court documents showing their pattern of extremely aggressive business methods, we'd see a large drop in that phrase being used. Taking a shot at what motivates Microsoft can be done with no background on how they've operated in the business for over 20 years or with a great understanding of how they work and what motivates them. Most of the time, peolple who pull out the 'that's just a conspiracy theory' are just plain ignorant to most of what's happened at the hands of Microsoft's business methods.
In business, I've heard of the 80-20 rule to maximize profits in tough times or when you're looking to sell a business. The theory goes, most businesses make 80% of their profits from 20% of their customers so massive short term savings can be obtained by only spending resources on those 20%. It's short term because in those other 80% providing only 20% of the profits are a few customers who will replace some in the 20% as customers fail and customers grow up. Microsoft is showing signs of cutting expenses in this economy when they have never done that in the past. Are they reducing Indies on their platform because it'll save expenses? Could be but I doubt it given how automated it has been said it is and there is some income from that sector. But maybe it just looks automated and really there are dozens and dozens of Microsoft employees at terminals banging away on the keyboards to keep it looking like it's automated?;-) Maybe they've got to reduce staff further so the Indies must go too. lol
maybe Indies are gathering too much momentum for both Microsoft and the larger publishers. You can squeeze more from a watermelon than you can kiwi. But I would think that Indies would be a great benefit to the platform since they're more susceptible to exclusive deals and probably cheaper too. But maybe Indies are, because of the smaller software effort more likely to be cross platform? From Microsoft's many years of evaluating Linux and open source, they probably know it's easier to work with large corporations than small teams of developers. FYI, the word _work_ is used in a very general way since we are talking about Microsoft and working with someone even includes enacting business methods to eliminate that partner or their product.
and don't forget that Google can share profits from ads obtained directly from devices an OEM sells. Microsoft? They have to pay the OEM for putting the Windows logo on the box and web pages but no residuals from the sale. And if they try to do what Google can do, they'll have a tough time selling it to the DOJ that the sharing of profits from BING or any other MS online service is legal when those are running quarter after quarter in the red by several hundred of millions annually. This is what the press keeps leaving out even though the tens of millions made annually by the open source Mozilla Foundation is staring them in the face as an example of how this works and what it's worth. IMO
And after 5 years of Microsoft paying people to use Bing, those Microsoft partners now asking for 5 years of Bing experience can finally collect that payment for playing along.
Brake pads, if you have to pick just one, because all cars have brake pads, but carburetors are obsolete and not in common use.
Because you somehow know that brake pads will be around for a long long long time? FYI, brake pads don't get used so much on hybrids and electric cars.
the teachers in K-12 will say otherwise. they'll say that teaching "The Word" and teaching "The PowerPoint" is only only way to go because that is what they'll use when they get out of school. Seriously, that's what I've heard and what I've read others have come across. Look back at the OLPC problems once Microsoft got to their customers. Those customers were no longer happy with a tool to teach self teaching but instead were asking for Windows. That's right, they changed their tune and were more concerned what OS was installed instead of what concepts the tool would teach.
But, it's the concepts, all about concepts. With a good foundation, you can do a lot more thinking on your own and be more versatile and valuable to your employer.
I'd heard they get close to 20% of their profits from the Microsoft marketing programs. So that should give you a clue that it's worth millions. I also once read that an HP Linux based handheld project was canceled because of the same kinds of marketing dollars that would have been lost if they shipped a Linux handheld. Did you notice how Asus started showing the Microsoft logo and marketing terms once they started shipping XP on the eeePCs? Microsoft probably spends many hundreds of millions in the budgets for those marketing programs and they were allowed to do that by the DOJ settlement.
Slashdot Mirror
there used to be a commercial on the boob tube in the 90s where a guy was in the middle of some courtyard and he was jumping up and down yelling buy! buy! sell! into his headset with an eyepiece screen and a small computer on his belt. I was just reading some news on Motorola doing Android phones and it made me wonder why we are not seeing devices like what that commercial showed. When an ARM chip and do 720P HD video in just a few watts, one would think that driving a tiny transparent display screen and doing some voice recognition would be within reason for a belt hung system. I don't know if the Snapdragon chips have DSP capabilities but the TI Omap processors have had DSP in them for years. IIRC, voice recognition fits the task of a DSP design quite well.
Now how much are those little LCD display screens?
LoB
If you have any proof they didn't pick ARM because of x86 compatibility with Windows then please post it. I got the impression the AMD chip was picked because of the peripheral driver issues they had with those hardware vendors only supplying binary drivers. So ARM was not allowed on the platform because of close source hardware vendor partnerships.
LoB
IIRC, they didn't do _that_ much for Microsoft and pretty much just added the SD card. But, they did let Microsoft take up their time and even some of their office space. It really wasn't an easy hardware kit to build considering it was supposed to work outside, by kids, and be very energy thrifty. Nobody has even come close to what the XO does and only the Kindle can be read outside in full sunlight.
The Microsoft stuff misdirected the marketing of the project once it was determined that Microsoft and Intel successfully blocked many of the sales they had MOU's for.
LoB
So, targeting nursing homes and grades schools worked for Microsoft and now it's being shown that MS BING users are more likely to click on ads. What a surprise. For another surprise then, watch how many of MS BING customer's computers are infected and also have key loggers running.
I have to wonder just how much all these kinds of reports on how great BING is going is costing Microsoft.
LoB
the drivers mentioned are for the Hyper-V system of Windows Server and not VirtualPC desktop virtualization software. I will agree that on the Windows desktop that it would benefit both customers and Linux if when Linux ran in the virtual machine, it ran as fast as possible.
This is about Hyper-V in Windows Server so none of that really matters regarding benefiting Linux. They did this because if they didn't, server admins would put Linux on the hardware and stick Windows on it's own box or go with another VM technology which is what they were doing before Microsoft bought the VirtualPC software from Innotek.
LoB
this reminds me of a conversation with a guy I met at a bar who just graduated from college and was talking about tech and Microsoft stuff. He had no clue about how many times Microsoft was in court on anti-trust issues, had no idea how many technologies they sucked up and got sued for after the companies failed from lost revenue/customers. Just plain naive of all of what's gone on in the last 20 years of Microsoft's monopolistic protection schemes. For the longest time he had this look on his face like I was nuts and lying. But then he heard some names he'd heard of, noticed the timing seemed right and I guess he started understanding I wasn't just making this all up. He said, "Wow, I had no idea they did all that to get where they are." When I say some of this to people with little to no clue at all about tech and they literally laugh and think I'm just a Microsoft hater. So it's amazing what even a small clue can do to understanding what is real and what is fake. Too bad the press people are just so ignorant of what's going on or went on. Otherwise, they might not think everyone who gets down on them for reprinting Microsoft's lies is a nut case.
LoB
I would not doubt that some of the Linux kernel people are more than happy to help VMWare out with their drivers but are they all they keen on moving VMWare drivers into the kernel? I believe there was talk about some kind of common hypervisor interface but that's about it. KVM is the open source hypervisor for the Linux kernel. I'm thinking that you are under the illusion that MS VirutalPC is the most popular VM tech and from the numbers I've seen, VMWare still owns that market. And yes, it is very likely that Microsoft execs are losing sleep over Linux and how well Linux runs on their VM tech. The reason is likely because customers know when it runs poorly and will put Linux on it's own hardware because of this and when this happens, using an open source VM like KVM or Xen is likely or even a multiplatform one like VMWare. This leaves Microsoft Windows as either only hosting its own Windows in VMs or Windows getting moved into the Linux hosted VM platform. The tricks and lies they pulled with this GPL'ed driver and press release shows they are putting effort into this.
Ok, you can stick your head back in the sand now because this was all probably alittle bit too scary for you.
LoB
Sorry but they probably know the OSS lawyers are not going to allow being _gamed_ like the DOJ lawyers. They get no credit for using the GPL in my book because they were legally bound to do that. They may have had choices though and those were to combined proprietary and GPL'ed code in the driver, or GPL the driver all the way up to the Hyper-V. Mixing proprietary code in a blob in the driver could have opened them up to very close scrutiny of the binary blob and possibly prolonged the discussion along lines they don't want to tread close to. Their Hyper-V is proprietary so why not just throw the whole driver over the wall as GPL and figure out the best way to spin it? Trying to make it look like a favor was how they chose to do this. So what's that saying about telling lies? Once you start the lies just keep getting bigger and bigger and less believable or something like that. Take a guess where we are.
LoB
Whatever their motives, everyone wins.
A win-win and Microsoft plays that hand? I think _that_ is why they didn't do it that way. They will do anything to not give any amount of credibility to a targeted competitor and GNU/Linux is very well targeted by Microsoft. It does seem this was rushed to some extent or they just didn't consider all their options carefully enough or they would have rather made this look like a forced issue because of a developer or two didn't watch what he/she was doing and grabbed someone else's code. GPL'ed code. Playing it as something it wasn't within todays web of communications was dumb. It just does not play out like the old days where the PR lies hit the press and it was months before any retraction or counter point could/would be published. I'm surprised they are _that_ out of touch.
Spinning this as a sign of trust and friendship was just lame and I'm wondering if Microsoft's marketing capabilities aren't starting to slip to the level of their OS building abilities.
LoB
so why is 99% of the press so ignorant of this fact and merrily continues regurgitating the marketing drivel Microsoft sends them day after day? They have been the mouth piece of their deceptions for 20 years. I also think that the business methods Microsoft uses for profit are what are so distasteful and are what rile up many in this community. They lie, cheat, steal, stab in the back, etc, etc, etc. Yes it is all in the name of making profits for them but when they keep doing that crap on my doorstep, you bet I'm going to tell them to get the f''ck off my property and smack them from then on at any chance I get. There's nothing wrong with making a profit, there is something wrong doing it by telling the world their _horse_ is better and faster than anyone else's and then shotting everyones horse when they step up to challenge that declaration.
They play dirty and have so for decades. WTF do you really expect of anyone but the completely naive?
LoB
they have never built any bridge they did not line with explosives and hold the button firmly in their own hands. So dah, you're just stating the facts since in 20 something years, they've given nothing anyone but the blind could trust. Thanks for the chuckle though, now go back to your Microsoft platform and close your eyes to reality... crap, an AC.
LoB
they don't need to get their code "into the kernel", they just need a driver to ship with their product. Because they want customers who are installing Linux on their VM tech to be counted, they'll probably recommend these customers get the driver from Microsoft. Not that I think there's any interest by the Linux kernel people to include Microsoft's GPL'ed driver, for their proprietary VM system, into the main kernel tree.
This all just shows once again that at Microsoft, job one is spin/Marketing. It also shows that even with some very visible examples of mixing proprietary binary blobs with GPL'ed code, Nvidia for example, Microsoft just has little clue about OSS and GNU/Linux. No wonder they freak out over it. It's the Boogy Man from their point of view. IMO
LoB
no, they didn't write almost an entire operating system. FYI, classically, the OS is what is under the applications and between them and the hardware. I have to believe they still wrote drivers for those special XO things but they tied the Sugar desktop platforum too close to those special drivers and special XO features. But, I can tell you that there must have been some work on partitioning some of those out because before the Sugar team left OLPC, I had Sugar running as a desktop on Ubuntu and it was pretty good. I think the real problem was that Negroponte lost his vision, let Microsoft get to him, and started questioning the software. Once he went down that path, he pissed off critical people in the org and in the community and it eventually hit the fan.
I hope OLPC, the XO, and Sugar can make it out of this funk they are in. There is alot of potential there and alot that can be learned and improved on with success. If it dies, it will remind me of pen based computers in the late 80s and how Microsoft killed that and stalled that market for about ten years.
LoB
Informative? WTF? The XO needs to be able to run in full sunlight and in places where there is little to no electricity. Those two things right there exclude the ClassmatePC and the energy requirements exclude Windows. Did you even notice that the netbooks went from less than 1GB of RAM, low power CPUs, and 4GB of flash HD to over 1GB RAM, much more powerful CPUs and many GB spinning HDs when Windows was brought into the devices? There's a reason for that, it's called engineering and using what fits the requirements. yes there were some OSS zealots going around talking about the OSS side of the project but the fact was, small, light, cheap, efficient are major points moving away from Windows. And to top it off, Microsoft does not let OEMs change the default Windows desktop and these people wanted a simple UI with a set of easy to learn and use apps/activities. They'd have to boot into the Windows and then have the user boot into Sugar not to mention all the bloat of having to have all those unused pieces of Windows installed too. Microsoft wouldn't let phone vendors change the default UI until after Apple blew them away with a simple, useful UI and even then, the OEM had to be forceful to get Microsoft to concede and let them build their own UI on Windows Mobile.
As far as Sugar goes, the idea of having it open and everything under it open is something of an enabling thing. I'm sure you can imagine there would be some kids who would not only learn the educational tools on the device but also get into how they were made and want to make some for him/her self? From what I can tell, that was the idea behind putting so much open source on there. Give them tools to learn and also leave them with much much more to learn without having to have wealthy parents to buy them basic tools to learn software development.
It really turned into such a mess when it could have been so cool to have people working to make the tool better and better every year a class used the device.
LoB
I believe the idea was to not run it ontop of say Ubuntu desktop version but instead, not tie the education system so close to the hardware. They did everything in Sugar including going into the BIOS and power management. It tied the educational platform, Sugar, to the hardware so closely that it restricted their ability to sell to schools who already had some computers. They couldn't leverage any other device someone else came out with and grow the educational aspect of the project. It was tied to closely to the hardware and it was not required to be this way.
LoB
get a clue buba, the world is not all poor and starving or wealthy and not starving. There are probably more places around the world where there's enough food, basic schooling, but little to no electricity. I even think there was a Peruvian village which made the press when interviews of the fathers of the kids who were getting OLPC XO's were originally going to take them away until they saw how much they were learning. The deal was they parents had no idea what the kids were learning because there were no supplies they could take home. After the fathers seeing the kids learning on the new computers, they let the kids have more time away from the fields because they felt if the kids learned more, they would have a better chance of a better life than their parents had or could provide.
So that junk about the world is starving so don't send them computers, send them food is naive at best and more likely, just plan ignorance. IMO.
Regarding Walmart, I don't know if putting them in Walmart would have worked. I've told people over and over that the laptop was for children but after looking over it they would almost always say it was a nice device but it was too small and the keyboard too tiny to use. I'd also read a number of the OLPC forums where people who ordered G1G1 devices were complaining because they didn't run Windows. In other words, a whole lot of people are clueless about the XO being an educational device. Even your bend on this shows it is incorrect. You remark about the kids learning programing and open source and then add a third entry of "that other good stuff". "that other good stuff" is education and the reason for the device. Sorry but you flunked the test.
LoB
unfortunately, they were also getting MOUs from world leaders saying that they'd be purchasing the devices in the millions but three factors changed that once production was rolling. Those were the price went from $100 to $180, they published ever country they had MOUs from and Microsoft and Intel had fun visiting those countries and making sure the OLPC was cut out of any future purchases.
After that happened, they should have went into full 1st world sales instead of just the G1 G1 program. So you were somewhat correct but only if not considering the attacks from profit driving companies Microsoft and Intel. I think it was once said that those companies reaction was like if 'McDonald's was fighting the World Food Org' or something to that effect. Proof of these tricks with Intel came out of Peru when a high level official in Peru told Negroponte of documented attacks on a signed OLPC contract at the expense of a secondary contract Intel could have had very easily.
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nope, MIcrosoft was working against them well before OLPC drank the Windows cool-aid. In and around 2004 and 2005 Microsoft signed multimillion dollar deals with the Egyptian government tying them to Microsoft Windows. The OLPC finishes the OLPC and goes to Egypt to take them up on their orginal MOU for 1 million units and each Egyptian government official now asks if the XO runs Windows and says it must run Windows or they won't buy it.
Both Microsoft and Intel did a great job at blocking fulfillment of the original MOUs OLPC collected as they finalized the design and went into production. Remember, Microsoft got into running Windows on the XO well after it was already in production. They did get them to add the SD card reader before XO-1 went into production though but I never saw or heard of Windows running on it before production. Even after production and "official announcement" of the XO running Windows, it took over a year before we really saw anything even close to production ready. And remember, Microsoft has the source code to Windows XP and MS employees were supposedly working on it. Remember, they really drag their feet doing things they really don't care to do.
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if just half the people who call various explanations for Microsofts actions _conspiracy theories_ read just a small number of the various court documents showing their pattern of extremely aggressive business methods, we'd see a large drop in that phrase being used. Taking a shot at what motivates Microsoft can be done with no background on how they've operated in the business for over 20 years or with a great understanding of how they work and what motivates them. Most of the time, peolple who pull out the 'that's just a conspiracy theory' are just plain ignorant to most of what's happened at the hands of Microsoft's business methods.
In business, I've heard of the 80-20 rule to maximize profits in tough times or when you're looking to sell a business. The theory goes, most businesses make 80% of their profits from 20% of their customers so massive short term savings can be obtained by only spending resources on those 20%. It's short term because in those other 80% providing only 20% of the profits are a few customers who will replace some in the 20% as customers fail and customers grow up. Microsoft is showing signs of cutting expenses in this economy when they have never done that in the past. Are they reducing Indies on their platform because it'll save expenses? Could be but I doubt it given how automated it has been said it is and there is some income from that sector. But maybe it just looks automated and really there are dozens and dozens of Microsoft employees at terminals banging away on the keyboards to keep it looking like it's automated? ;-) Maybe they've got to reduce staff further so the Indies must go too. lol
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maybe Indies are gathering too much momentum for both Microsoft and the larger publishers. You can squeeze more from a watermelon than you can kiwi. But I would think that Indies would be a great benefit to the platform since they're more susceptible to exclusive deals and probably cheaper too. But maybe Indies are, because of the smaller software effort more likely to be cross platform? From Microsoft's many years of evaluating Linux and open source, they probably know it's easier to work with large corporations than small teams of developers. FYI, the word _work_ is used in a very general way since we are talking about Microsoft and working with someone even includes enacting business methods to eliminate that partner or their product.
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and don't forget that Google can share profits from ads obtained directly from devices an OEM sells. Microsoft? They have to pay the OEM for putting the Windows logo on the box and web pages but no residuals from the sale. And if they try to do what Google can do, they'll have a tough time selling it to the DOJ that the sharing of profits from BING or any other MS online service is legal when those are running quarter after quarter in the red by several hundred of millions annually. This is what the press keeps leaving out even though the tens of millions made annually by the open source Mozilla Foundation is staring them in the face as an example of how this works and what it's worth. IMO
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And after 5 years of Microsoft paying people to use Bing, those Microsoft partners now asking for 5 years of Bing experience can finally collect that payment for playing along.
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Brake pads, if you have to pick just one, because all cars have brake pads, but carburetors are obsolete and not in common use.
Because you somehow know that brake pads will be around for a long long long time? FYI, brake pads don't get used so much on hybrids and electric cars.
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the teachers in K-12 will say otherwise. they'll say that teaching "The Word" and teaching "The PowerPoint" is only only way to go because that is what they'll use when they get out of school. Seriously, that's what I've heard and what I've read others have come across. Look back at the OLPC problems once Microsoft got to their customers. Those customers were no longer happy with a tool to teach self teaching but instead were asking for Windows. That's right, they changed their tune and were more concerned what OS was installed instead of what concepts the tool would teach.
But, it's the concepts, all about concepts. With a good foundation, you can do a lot more thinking on your own and be more versatile and valuable to your employer.
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I'd heard they get close to 20% of their profits from the Microsoft marketing programs. So that should give you a clue that it's worth millions. I also once read that an HP Linux based handheld project was canceled because of the same kinds of marketing dollars that would have been lost if they shipped a Linux handheld. Did you notice how Asus started showing the Microsoft logo and marketing terms once they started shipping XP on the eeePCs? Microsoft probably spends many hundreds of millions in the budgets for those marketing programs and they were allowed to do that by the DOJ settlement.
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