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OLPC Gets a New Name, New Features
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Aug 25, 2006 09:48 PM
from the go-little-laptops-go-and-spread-the-word dept.
from the go-little-laptops-go-and-spread-the-word dept.
pickyouupatnine writes "According to a story on Ars Technica, the $100 MIT Laptop is now going to cost $140. It has a new name — it'll now be called the Children's Machine 1 (CM1). The added price comes with new features! The laptop will now come with a 400 MHz AMD processor, 512 Megs of Flash storage, an SD card slot, mic and headphone jacks, a built in camera, built-in wireless, and an 8-inch LCD at a 1280x900 resolution." From the article: "Tremendous progress has been made this summer on the Sugar user interface system that will be shipped with the CM1. Funded by Google through the Summer of Code (SoC) initiative, intrepid college student Erik Pukinskis has collaborated with the GNOME development community to adapt AbiWord for use with the portable Linux system. Although still experimental, AbiWord has successfully been integrated into the Sugar environment. Artists and developers continue to work on the evolving Sugar interface, and the fruits of their labor can be seen in demoes, mockups, and design reviews."
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Technology: Negroponte Responds to $100 Laptop Criticisms 586 comments
teefaf writes "Wired News is running an article on the most recent developments surrounding Nicholas Negroponte's (of MIT) $100 laptop project. The project aims to make 'cheap' computers available to children in developing countries. In the article, Negroponte responds to the inevitable criticism from Intel and Microsoft, "When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right", and elaborates on his vision for the future of the project, "He also said the display and other specifications could change as enhancements are made. In other words, he seemed to be saying to his critics: Don't get too hung up on how this thing operates now, 'The hundred-dollar laptop is an education project,' he said. 'It's not a laptop project.'". The article also states that the initial production cost of the laptops is expected to be $135; the $100 price-point probably won't be hit until 2008. It's possible that the cost could drop as low as $50 by 2010."
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Slashback: ICANN, OLPC, Agile, Yahoo, BayStar 84 comments
Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: Spamhaus case tests ICANN; Getting your own OLPC (CM1) computer; Followup Agile commentary from Steve Yegge; Yahoo's time capsule permit revoked by Mexico; and Microsoft denies BayStar connection. Read on for details.
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Software security issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume there is one nice security hole in these laptops... Is there an automatic update system? Is it centrally controlled like Windows Update or since there are supposed to be large numbers of segregated ad-hoc networks is the distribution of these updates going to be peer based?
How do you prevent making one large botnet powered by a bunch of third-world children turning hand cranks?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you'd read any of the stories about the OLPC you'd know the crank was dropped from the design months ago. People keep using that image to stigmatise it. Your "third world" qualification only adds to that odour.
But to your actual point: I hardly think the laptops will be a threat to you in your first world home. Internet connectivity between the third and first worlds is poor and likely to remain s
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This makes me wonder how the various third-world countries will start treating the various physical problems that come from computers. I bet most people in the target areas are not used to sitting hunched over a screen and there will be bad backs, bad legs (from the foot pedal), bad hands from the mouse and small keyboard, bad eyes from late night computing. Should be interesting in few years after l
Feature Creep... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Feature Creep... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a good idea to me. While having a headphone jack would be very useful (listen to language lessons without disturbing others, including learning to read software), the microphone jack too (VOIP idea the article posits) is good, and the display upgrade is VERY good (especially on the 'net at large where most websites assume a minimum screen of 1024x768), I think the SD card is the killer feature.
Before this change, the storage on the machine was fixed. If you wanted to get more storage you would have to plug in an external USB drive (flash, hard drive, CD-RW, whatever). Now with SD cards you can expand the storage in unit, without having a USB key hang off the side of the machine. You can add up to 2 GB (4+ with newer standards) this way. While a 2 GB card is expensive now, it won't always be that way, and smaller cards (say 128 MB) are cheap (if I can get one at a drug store for $17, then people out to be able to get them pretty cheap, especially used). 128MB would be a 25% increase in the system's storage.
Even 64 MB will hold a TON of text, especially if you compress it.
I see this as a good thing. Let's not forget that the OLPC was to be sold at a loss (initially). So for all we know the new features increased the cost $100. They may not have increased costs at all and they just want to lose less so they can make more of 'em.
Hopefully, not only will this help people, some of the ideas will get used in mainstream laptops. If they can do that for $200-$250 (guessing on true cost), then they should be able to make me a nice 1600:900 (or so) LCD that I can view outside, inside, and won't kill a battery really fast. Considering how much power LCDs use (and how unviewable many are in direct sunlight) even a little improvement would go a long way.
And none of this counts the effecting giving tons of kids something as accessible and hackable as a C64 with the power to surf the 'net, be portable, and have an absolute ton of processing power. Considering what came out of C64 hackers (who had a vastly slower chip, vastly less memory, and no internet to get help from) I bet we will see some amazingly talented people as a result of this program.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Aarrrgh, my eyes! (Score:5, Funny)
I guess if it's for kids you want a somewhat cheerful and happy looking interface, but it seems a bit excessive. If you're simply going to blind them, why bother including an LCD in the first place?
What's with the huge resolution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop this elitist culture of whining (Score:5, Insightful)
Get up out of your server log, or your WOW game and take a look at real life in remote places. If you don't like what you see in the "$100 laptop" program, stop whining and start doing something about it. They have a website. Go contact them to help.
The CM1 is neat. Me want. (Score:4, Insightful)
resolution isn't that simple (Score:3, Informative)
That is in monochrome, specifically for displaying ebooks. The color LCD is supposedly a quarter of this resolution (according to wikipedia), likely because each color pixel is made up of 4 color components (according to wikipedia it may be a RG-GB config). So, in monochrome mode, the color filter is somehow removed and each of those 4 components can create their own monochrome pixel.
Put an electrical plug in it and id buy one (Score:3, Interesting)
In trying to make a laptop for the third world, they might have stumbled
upon an amazing breakthrough product. Is it possible they might have
accidentally stumbled on the Commodore 64 of laptops? Even at $199
Id buy my nephew one.
Disproportionate Specs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they should have named it the (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong approach to education... (Score:3, Insightful)
The solution to education is that we elevate it to status that it deserves. Talk to many successfull people, and I'd wager that they could point to less than five (5) teachers that made a difference in their life and learning. Our Education system has these major ERRORS in it's design.
1.) Grade school is focused on churning out people who meet an arbitrary number on college entrance exams
2.) College is focused on churning out as many BS students as possible.
3.) It's too easy to get a teaching certificate
3.) ALL CLASSROOM TEACHERS ARE PAID TOO LITTLE
Solve problems 1, 2, and alter those to focus on critical thinking and you'll see a major difference in our children. Solve problem 3, 4, and we will never have to speak about teacher shortages again.
I'm getting tired (Score:5, Insightful)
will have crank to power it up!
ok now it won't have crank
will look like a normal laptop!
ok now it'll look like a laptop-cross-lolipop.
it'll be $100!
ok now it won't be.
I expect this to progress in future until it ends up as a perfect clone feature/price-wise of a Dell laptop.
They should've discussed and tested all this stuff in private before thew blew the horns, again and again and again and again.
Re:No, try again (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I suspect that the new designation is a nod to project member Seymour Papert, who wrote the book "The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in The Age of The Computer" -- in which he argued (back in 1992) that access to computers and online information networks would be crucial in improving our education systems and preparing our younger generations for dealing with a new and rapidly evolving world.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, children are better served by a teacher who cares about his/her work and genuinely chall
Re:No, try again (Score:5, Informative)
Believe it or not, that's one of the important points Papert makes in his book! He decried the typical use of the classroom computer as a mere testtaking machine, or as a means to further solidify the status quo of the school lesson plan. Papert argued that, in addition to acquiring more computers and making them more available to students and teachers alike, schools need to find ways of using computers to *change the teaching process itself*.
Sadly, Papert also pointed out that such an educational revolution would be met with resistance by none other than the education system itself. To paraphrase the book, the system must protect its own existence, and it seeks to maintain the state of that existence. It will fight any threat to either one until all avenues have been exhausted.
After all these years, "The Children's Machine" has proven to be uncannily accurate.
Parent
Re:No, try again (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly, Stoll is FAR behind the times - his book was written more than a decade ago, and he argued that the concept of e-commerce was "baloney." Clearly, our children need to make good use of the internet today, and e-commerce is thriving more than ever (he's apparently abandoned his original stance in favor of selling Klein Bottles on the internet (http://www.kleinbottle.com/)).
I don't see how it's possible today to argue that our children don't need exposure to computing to succeed.
Parent
Re:No, try again (Score:5, Interesting)
Tacking "computers" onto the existing public school system will certainly prevent most children from ever becoming an expert in the field.
*ding* "okay class, time to put down your english books. We're going 'learn computers' now."
50 minutes later:
*ding* "enough computers, time for History! Let's all get excited about History!"
(This is Gatto's third lesson [hackvan.com]: indifference. "Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan.")
When you say that children need "exposure" to computers, that seems to indicate to me that you think they some kind of formal introduction. My computer learning experiences were a process of discovery; all the computer "lessons" and "classes" I had in the government's schools were mostly worthless. If all they did was "here's a computer, look what I can do with it, have fun" that'd be one thing. But that's NOT how the government "exposes" topics in their child-prisons. First there are lessons, and then there are tests to grade the student's intake of the material. Then the kids who don't care about the topic are put in remedial classes, and thus begins the downward spiral...
Computers are snake oil, offered by politicians as a fix to the structural problems in their schools. The only fix needed is to restore freedom to the educational process. Let the children pick what they want to learn about, and how they want to learn it.
Parent
Re:Didn't Deliver (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got a Mac, I've had it for about 18 months now and I love it. I especially love the command prompt and all the Unix utilities. That said, I agree with the decision they made. Being able to tinker and repair the laptop, as well as write kernel changes and such, is a major boon. Children will be able to learn much more about the computer if they are interested. As much as I love my Mac, it doesn't compared to Linux in a few areas. There is much more information available through some of the interfaces on Linux (/dev and such, for example) than I can find on my Mac. There is quite a bit of documentation on writing drivers and kernel changes for Linux, but next to none for OS X save Apple's documentation (which I find to be a little sparse).
Don't forget that while OS X runs well on older Macs, a custom slimmed-down Linux will run much faster and use far fewer resources. OS X is just not designed to run on 128MB of RAM by any stretch, let alone less so applications still have room to run. Frankly I think Jobs knew that OS X was incompatible with what the OLPC people were planning (mostly hardware wise, but also in ideals).
I'm not surprised that RedHat is the distro chosen (especially considering that they are a sponsor), but I don't think that's why they didn't go with OS X.
Parent
Re:Didn't Deliver (Score:4, Informative)
Also, please provide the source code for OS X.
Parent
Re:A camera on a children's computer is a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
sounds like someone did a bad job at parenting, like the parents of the kid in the article.