February 15th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
DesktopLinux.com reports that eight countries will receive a share of the initial 2,500 OLPC machines in February.
“The experiment is a prelude to mass production of the kid-friendly, lime-green-and-white laptops scheduled to begin in July, when 5 million will be built.
State educators in Brazil, Uruguay, Libya, Rwanda, Pakistan, Thailand and possibly Ethiopia and the West Bank will receive the first of the machines in February’s pilot before a wider rollout to Indonesia and a handful of other countries.”
With a goal of 150 million delivered by 2010, OLPC will alter the landscape of computing around the world. Further, it could help Linux marketshare reach 20% or more globally, entirely as a side effect of the project’s primary purpose. No wonder Bill Gates can’t stop trying to critique it!
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | 1 Comment »
February 6th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Gregory M. Lamb of the Christian Science Monitor has reviewed the concept and prototype of OLPC’s XO, the “$100 Laptop”.
“It’s an astonishing experiment: Design a cool computer, unlike anything on the market, loaded with innovative features. Manufacture it for not much more than $100 apiece, a fraction of what other computers cost. Persuade government officials in developing countries to buy millions of them, and hand them to schoolchildren. Then stand back and see if you’ve done what you hoped – created a revolution in the way kids learn.
The next step in turning this techno-dream into a reality begins in February when prototypes of the XO laptop go out to be kid tested in a dozen or so countries from Brazil to Rwanda, Libya to Pakistan.”
Mesh networking, extremely low power consumption, and water- and dirt-resistant construction are some of the interesting and important hardware features being pioneered by the XO machine. However, the distribution and usage models are where the most unique innovations will occur.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on CS Monitor on the OLPC XO, the “$100 Laptop”
January 30th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
I’d better post these before they get stale!
Chris Duckett writes Will OLPC Change Linux?
He examines the OLPC project’s ability to rethink a lot of entrenched computing paradigms, because it’s a new platform without legacy dependencies:
“The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project is in the enviable position at the moment of being able to change technologies and directions as they choose, with no rollouts and a lot of the work still to be done software wise. Free of the inertia that an existing product presents, OLPC can be fresh in its thinking and be a trend setter…
Another interesting choice was that of using application bundles, like OS X, and not a standard Linux packaging system. The reasons for this were that it is easy to install and delete, it is easy to share, there is no need for dependencies (because it is all in the bundle) and has an added benefit of removing the need for a centralized repository. If you think about children trying to use apt-get in the sub-Sahara, it makes sense to choose an application style that is decentralized and simple to use.”
Some very interesting thinking here!
Meanwhile, O’Reilly reports Groklaw Team Exposes Serious Flaws in Microsoft’s OOXML Specification. The original Groklaw analysis can be found here, carefully cataloging a long list of errors in the Microsoft spec. This analysis is an impressive piece of work.
Posted in GNU/Linux, OLPC, Uncategorized | Comments Off on OLPC’s Paradigm Shift, and OOXML’s Flaws