OLPC 2.0 — One Laptop Foundation Reboots 187
Greg Huang writes "In early January, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation laid off half its staff and shed work on the Sugar graphical interface. Now, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and president Chuck Kane for the first time detail the foundation's new plans, describe how the XO laptop will do what netbooks can't do, and share their hope to keep working with Sugar developer Walter Bender, who left OLPC last year."
Same name; New Project (Score:5, Insightful)
This is significantly more than a simple reboot. The goals of 'OLPC' are entirely different than the plans of this new 'OLPC 2.0' as far as I'm concerned and I imagine it is this way for many others as well. We watched and applauded as OLPC began only to watch in dismay and tears as they project allowed itself to be taken over from within.
There are all kinds of points that could be made here, but I'll let the others bring those up. For me the complete 180 they've done has made me write them off completely as a useless relic of what happens when you completely lose sight of your goal to the point you start to believe the ends justify the means. RIP OLPC.
--bornagainpenguin
too late (Score:3, Insightful)
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy. Those suckers have 9 inch screens, Atom processors, and a gig of RAM. So who needs this OLPC stuff?
From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
The most vivid example of this philosophy, to me, was Negroponteâ(TM)s comparison of the XO and netbooks. XOs cost about $225 apiece. Netbooks, which are produced by companies like Acer and Lenovo, among others, run about $300 to $450 but offer more memory and graphics power and larger screens. So, one could ask, wonâ(TM)t the normal, cost-curve-squashing evolution of computers obviate what OLPC is trying to do, and more efficiently than a non-profit? Negroponte replies that OLPC is not trying to compete with commercial computer makers but instead asking, "What are the things the normal commercial market wonâ(TM)t be pushing?"
What won't the "normal, cost-curve-squashing evolution of computers" include? Well, I don't see a huge rush by Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and others to include cranks, solar panels, and other alternative charging options to their units. I don't think the "normal commercial market" has decided to go that direction yet. Also, I doubt highly that these same companies will ever make their equipment repairable by children [com.com] as this would cut into their profit margins too much if they had to stop making computer equipment with proprietary and hard-to-replace components.
The underlying, subconscious goal (in other words, whether they realize it or not) of the OLPC project is to prove that reliable, hardy products don't have to cost a fortune. It's the mentality of the business world today to produce cheap crap that is then sold at a premium in order to finance yacht parties and private jets for the upper echelon of their employee-base. the OLPC is just one of the few outfits out there trying their best to disprove that particular business model.
FUD in the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
The XO is more rugged, but its not really lower power than netbooks. Most Netbooks are using things like the Atom, which is very low power and with sub-ms sleep states. The XO's only real power-advantage is the non-backlight mode on the screen.
Does the mesh networking actually work in the XO? And the mesh networking, how useful is it anyway?
And the XO's G1G1 is hardly "poor economy", its that the XO early adopter-types got them the first go-round (and realized how useless they are: the keyboard is abysmal, the trackpad flakey, and teh software an abomination in the sight of God and Man), so there was no one LEFT in the second.
Help the poor by helping everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll take Pandora, thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:too late (Score:5, Insightful)
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy. Those suckers have 9 inch screens, Atom processors, and a gig of RAM. So who needs this OLPC stuff?
I wonder what effect the OLPC had on the eee PC. If because of the OLPC businesses like Asus start making low cost, and portable, computers then I think OLPC will have done a lot. Now if only Asus would include a similar power supply, pull a cord to generate power.
Falcon
Re:too late (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it had a lot of effect. I think it told Asus where people were looking, and Asus followed the money.
And good on them. Thanks to OLPC and Asus' following them, we now have many companies competing to bring low-priced laptops to the market, instead of hovering comfortably in the $1500 range like before.
Re:I'll take Pandora, thanks. (Score:2, Insightful)
"2009 will surely be the year of the Pandora."
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
We all know the Pandora's only marketable feature is that you can run emulators on it out of the box. Can't wait for the lawyers to jump on that one (and they will, since that feature is being promoted heavily).
Re:Same name; New Project (Score:2, Insightful)
We watched and applauded as OLPC began only to watch in dismay and tears as they project allowed itself to be taken over from within.
No, some of you watched and applauded. Most of us just stood on the side lines and shook our heads waiting for the train wreak. Most of use knew it was doomed to failure from the start. The basic concept itself was flawed. It the idea of giving free laptops to children in africa and asia before you have the infrastructure to support it? The 100 bucks spent on that laptop for one child could have gone to set up the basic infrastructure to feed a whole village, forever.
Feed the children, teach them basics like read/writing and basic sanitation. Not to shit in their own water supply. Make their bodies healthy then we worry about their mind.
Re:too late (Score:5, Insightful)
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy. Those suckers have 9 inch screens, Atom processors, and a gig of RAM. So who needs this OLPC stuff?
I think Negroponte said it best:
In the case of netbooks, he says, "You could arguably say we really created the netbook market. But if you look at the netbooks, they really copied the easy part. They didn't copy low power, they didn't copy mesh networks, they didn't copy sunlight-readable displays. All three things are absent from every single netbook."
I've personally used an OLPC before. While I'm not ready to buy one, I'm impressed with just how fine the design and build quality is for its intended purpose.
Seems like Slashdotters get regularly stuck in a mindset of "geez, it wouldn't work for me, therefore it must be crap." There are several billion other people on this planet, a sizeable number of whom might like it just fine.
Re:too late (Score:3, Insightful)
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy.
Can you provide a link to that? I can't seem to find it. The cheapest one on BestBuy.com [bestbuy.com] is $329.99.
Did you read TFA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly of me to ask, I know.
They have collocated 1 million machines.
The bloody point of these machines is to require as little infrastructure as possible.
Where they failed is:
- Never trying to harness economies of scale.
- Internal political squabbling (mostly brought by Negroponte and his silly decision to use Windows, thus becoming a collaborator with the expansion of the Windows monopoly).
- The failure to harness the impetus of the FOSS community in order to obviate many of the production costs related to software. The bare minimum to achieve this would be to ensure a free OS is at the core of the project.
Sort out these issues and you will have many takers, even in the poorest countries there are children with access to some infrastructure that would benefit enormously with such a device.
Re:too late (Score:5, Insightful)
It often seems to me that the engineering was the only thing that OLPC got right. Everything else was like a lesson in how NOT to do it.
Re:Same name; New Project (Score:5, Insightful)
And thats where some of us argue.
I believe that tow things are keeping these countries of people back.
1. Bad government.
2. Us "donating" goods, hereby destroying what commerce they had before said dumping.
Any country run by corrupt and/or bad government is going to stay bad and corrupt until the people rise up and stop it. Before that, you'll have pockets of people who do make a living, albeit barely, until the government demands tax. Then its the beginning all over again.
And about the donation of goods: I saw a few documentaries on local TV and GoogleVids proclaiming that donation is also hurting them severely. When you dump 100 ton of clothes, you ruin any chance of making money in textiles. Same in any other industry, except this monopoly is done in good faith. Honestly, buying African made goods would bring them out of poverty rather fast. But their government wouldnt let them do that.
Re:too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Sending food is good, but it only addresses the symptoms of poverty and does not provide a solution. Education does.
Provide food and education. Sending only food guarantees they will never be self-sufficient. Education at least gives them a shot at it.
And if you really want to help, send them food, computer and guns.
Re:Dead horse vapour (Score:3, Insightful)
...he also had to ensure that anyone who could actually afford them would be denied.
The conspiracist in me jumps to the conclusion that they were forced into this. Maybe some company they deal with didn't want their profitable markets taken away. It is hard to believe they would be this stupid out of principle.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
I The last thing we need to be sending to people who are starving to death and getting shot by wandering bands of "people's militias" is a damn computer.
Your frequently stated argument is bogus.
I have lived as an expatriate in rural Africa for many years, and have personally known both starvers and shootees. They are a tragic but small minority of the people of Africa. One of the biggest problems facing the education system in the country in which I lived (Ghana) is the expense and unavailability of teaching materials. Rare is the classroom where anyone other than the teacher has a textbook, and frequently even the teacher doesn't have one.
The OLPC project directly addresses this issue, making low cost (free) teaching materials available on the desks of the children.
Delivering education to people addresses many of the underlying issues that cause the starving and shooting.
Overbudget? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought this quote from the article was quite scary:
"The Rwandan leader initially ordered 10,000 XOs, then upped it to 100,000. The program now makes up a large fraction of the countryâ(TM)s education budget, according to Negroponte."
I'm all up for the use of computers in a developed world, including the OLPC initiative but considering most of these countries don't have a basic deployment of schools, teachers, books, etc isn't it unwise to spend a "large fraction" of your budget on OLPCs?
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they're both fairly weak though. Introductory levels of education haven't changed so radically in the past X (X being whatever the refresh cycle on XO laptops would be) years that buying books would leave them anymore out of date than buying them laptops would. I'm pretty sure there's enough math that hasn't changed in the last 70 years and wont change in the next 50 that it's pretty moot. We're all still reading "classic" literature and studying history that's by and large hundreds to thousands of years old.
As for subject matter, I know everyone here like the idea of thousands of little FOSS programmers running around the developed world, but how about we work on literacy, computation, and social service, establish a backbone of sustainable economy and expanding education, then worry about whether they're cracking their shit with homebrew distros.
Should've sold it to the general population. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just imagine how much more funding they'd have if they sold it to the general public at a profit, and then used those profits for R&D, paying their employees, and creating more OLPC laptops? And their public sales figures would definitely help sell their laptops to leaders of 3rd world nations.
The buy-two-get-one was a pretty dumb business decision, too. I have no clue why anyone thought that would've gotten them out of the hole.
Instead, they decided to move to Windows (which made no sense from a cost and configurability aspect) and for some reason thought that the average first worlder was too "bourgeoisie" for their special little laptops. Now they're a sinking ship because nobody cares about them anymore, and instead, everybody is more concerned with the new netbook market.
Re:Same name; New Project (Score:4, Insightful)
"Defective behavior choices" hey.
First world arrogance is fascinating to observe. Which group of people is wantonly engaging in a reckless, profligate, short-sighted, wasteful and totally unsustainable cultural lifestyle that will ultimately have a negative impact on every living creature on the world?
Certainly not those "defective" third worlders. Think about that next time you buy your first world products with their excessive packaging and drive your car a short distance that could and should be walked or biked.
There was no hijacking (Score:3, Insightful)
OLPC was the product of the western media lab and the geek mind-set.
OLPC's market was the third world education minister - who was expected to sign the purchase order for 100,000 units --- but otherwise keep his big mouth shut.
Come hell or high water ---
OLPC would implement a constructivist philosophy of education.
It would run Linux, the Sugar GUI, open-source apps and only open source apps.
The Windows alternative was the Classmate.
Installed with more or less full versions of core MS Office apps, a media player and a browser, a laptop that would look and perform much like any other, but with more help and localization for beginners.
In other words, a serviceable machine shaped purely by market forces and in no way limited to the primary grades.
sending food makes poverty worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Start with people who can barely support themselves off the land. Add food. The population grows like crazy, ensuring that it is impossible for the people to support themselves off the land.
Since the resulting population depends on food handouts for survival, it is obviously more in poverty than the prior population.
Plus the economy was even destroyed by the handouts. (called "dumping")
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you really want to help, send them food, computer and guns.
You'd also ensure that all of the above actually reaches the people you intended...
Re:Same name; New Project (Score:3, Insightful)
The educational goals of the project were explicitly based on shipping a device built entirely on Free Software. There was going to be a view source button (that would show the easily-readable Python source of the current app), and there were discussions about how to allow the users to modify all the software on the device without bothering tech-illiterate adults when they ran into trouble.
The apparent potential of such a plan was huge. Every potential programmer in that population would certainly learn how to program as they grew up with this device. And every non-programmer would think of computer programs as something you could get your friends to write or modify.
That was a good chunk of the educational promise of the OLPC project. A generic laptop - even one running normal desktop Linux - doesn't offer the same potential; one running Windows certainly doesn't. That promise was the reason that the OLPC project was worthy of charitable donations. Without it, donors might as well donate money to Asus to subsidize the Eee PC.