OLPC Gets a New Name, New Features 226
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."
No, try again (Score:2)
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.
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Counter argued by Cliff Stoll in "Silicon Snake Oil."
KFG
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.
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.
Learning by installments (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure, computer education might be useless for many people, but it is necessary for some.
Now, I'm not advocating a "Lets all go and learn
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How has additional 'exposure' to something ever prevented someone from learning it? Without computer exposure in schools, children only learn learn what they manage to gather in the little free time they have left after doing their chores and homework. With schooltime exposure, they have that same amount of time plus 50 minutes (your number) in school each day as well
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If the "exposure" is poorly done, it can set up a negative reaction to the topic, so that anytime it is mentioned, the person becomes afraid. A whole lot of people react that way to math, and the more math they see, the more they get a mental block set up against it. And I don't trust public schools to manage this "exposure" well. My little sister's high school geometry teacher (in an honors class, too) told them that pro
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Stolls claim to fame was his skill at hooking up DEC line printers to monitor the activities of a german hacker. I didn't see anything in "The cuckoos egg" to suggest an ability to argue issues like this. I think he should stick to astronomy.
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Bingo.
If you're arguing that children don't need exposure to computational ideas at an early age . .
No, but I might well argue that the schools aren't doing a very good job of it, while often wasting money that could be better used elsewhere.
KFG
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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.
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Sounds like he had it right: OUR education sustems and OUR younger generations. But as I understand it, the CM1 is targeting children in developing countries. While that's grand, I'm nevertheless a firm believer that when it comes to a child's development having access to food and water and not dying of diarrhea is more important than having access to a computer.
I just wish all the big brains at MIT and elsewhere who've put s
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?
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For some reason, I think that given that particular operating environment, anybody contemplating trying to turn these machines into zombies is really wasting their time. They are likely not going to be turned on long enough at any given point in time where they would be useful.
Mind you I'm not a network/botnet/zombie guru and I don't pretned to be, this is a gut feeling. I'd be more concerned about
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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
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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
redhat vs. debian (Score:2)
By using mature, best of class software? (Score:2)
How do you prevent making one large botnet powered by a bunch of third-world children turning hand cranks?
You can do that by using well know software that has yet to power bot nets.
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?
It will be as easy to update these ma
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Most of the Mac users I know use them exactly because they don't know, or want to know, what happens under the hood. Of course, there are Mac geeks, but proportionally few.
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A. Is brand new and relatively untested,
B. Has a captive audience that has NO PRIOR COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE
and
C. Has millions of identical (hardware as well as software) copies wirelessly connected around the globe.
This is the perfect target. Imagine trying to explain to 3rd world kids why they should install patches on their magic picture box.
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Why was the parent modded flamebait? They actually have a really good point. Qualities that have long been fairly Windows centric will now be coming to Linux i.e. extremely similar installations and barely computer-literate users. Linux has always tended to embody the opposite of those two situations. I wouldn't be surprised if viruses targeted for these machines started to appear once they start circulating in non-trivial numbers.
Why flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
Feature Creep... (Score:4, Insightful)
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And this is also having good features now (the 640x480 screen is too small in todays world - websurfing for info) and can go down in price over time.
Too bad it lost the hand crank in favor of a foot pedal though (handcrank would be 1 w
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Yes, it's so sad how the people of the US suffer compared to the good ol' days of... of... umm... before the US existed. There has always been a national debt [treas.gov], it is not necessarily a bad thing.
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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.
SD Cards in the third world (Score:2)
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It's sold at cost; I doubt MIT or Quanta can afford to lose over $60M on this project. So when they say the price is $140, my understanding is that the parts+manufacturing cost is $140.
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CM-1? (Score:2)
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?
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Another problems is that LCDs often have problems with colour at high brightness, so those neon-green on white scrollbars might be practically invisible in many situations, e.g. off angle viewing.
What's with the huge resolution? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Windows and Mac OS X both fail pretty badly. Windows actually tries to work properly, but it's buggy as hell, looks absolutely terrible, and the applications don't support it consistently. The Mac doesn't even try (although it does at least support scaling high
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Quartz has supported resolution-independence since the beginning, and OS X Tiger does scaling through Quartz Debug.
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This *should* have been in Tiger (experimental support for it was, and has been functional, although you're nuts to use it in a production application). It's on track to be included with Leopard, which is a very good thing. I certainly don't mind Microsoft or Apple copying each other on this. We really need higher-resolution screens.
To those of you who say that small fonts are useless because they're impossible to read, I urge you to g
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Smoother Font Rendering, perhaps? (Score:2)
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Info from your link [manucornet.net] on the display:
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.
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The CM1 is neat. Me want. (Score:4, Insightful)
Me too. (Score:2)
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Repeat after me.. "The third world is not a single place that has all the same problems". I'm tired of this idea that all third world countries everyone is starving, the government is corrupt, etc. That's certainly true in many very poor countries, but the "third world" is a hugely diverse place that has different problems depending on which country you're talking ab
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Also, selling the "child's" version of the laptop (if their is indeed a consumer version) will almost definitely be illegal and looked down upon. I can see these things propping up on eBay, then be
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Such countries do exist, and they would benefit the most from a solid education system. Zimbabwe would be a poor candidate to receive these. In Botswana, they would be a great idea. Algeria wo
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A camera on a children's computer is a bad idea... (Score:2)
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.
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.
I'm sad (Score:2)
I feel sad. My box not only lacks the former, my resolution is lower than the latter
I sure hope they do enough real world testing. (Score:2)
With all the worries about ... (Score:2)
Disproportionate Specs? (Score:5, Interesting)
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(512MB is insufficient, even for this computers purposes)
Why? I think you can very easily fit enough into 512MB of flash ram to have a web-browser, word processor, chat, e-book reader, and several e-books. What's the purpose you envision where 512MB of storage isn't enough?
Why not put on a cheap screen and add a reasonable amount of storage, and probably still end up lower priced?
Because it's supposed to be mostly for reading text, and it's also supposed to be cheap. The high resolution is only in monoch
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And I use OS X, not Windows.
I think they should have named it the (Score:3, Informative)
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Actual technical details? (Score:2)
1. The laptop will carry Esperanto teaching utilities [laptop.org]
2. The laptop will include an Office Assistant [laptop.org] sort of creature which was, quote, "inspired by the Tamagotchi toys, and its purpose is to allow kids to interact with the control of the computer in a simple and fun way". The assistant is named "Amiko" because that is Esperanto for "friend".
3. The laptop will have its own UI, unlike a
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Tell me how Esperanto, insignificant in world trade and commerce, the arts and sciences, gives third-world kids a leg-up in a world where English is the first or second language of two billion people.
Starting to wonder why (Score:2)
Flop (Score:2)
Seriously, 1280x1024 on an 8-inch screen? And a web-cam? What the hell are these guys trying to do? Scare people away from computers? Or, I'm sorry, "children's machines'"?
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Yes, for three times the price you can get a Dell that's entirely USELESS when it only lasts for 2 hours per charge and you only have access to electricity once a week or so (not to mention the fact that a Dell is not even slightly rugged)...
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The same technology that is going into these laptops, likely nothing more than low-voltage input inverters, could be applied to any situation.
I just don't see anything so great about a 400mhz cpu and how much storage?
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I think you're missing my point. A $400 Dell with a 15" display is probably going to use about 20-50 watts of power, depending on load. The OLPC device is being designed to use something on the order of one (1) watt.
Also, the OLPC device is designed to be rugged -- water resistant, shock resistant, etc. Dell doesn't even make rugged laptops AFAIK, and besides that making something equivalent in specs to your 15" Dell that would actually survive for more than a week in the dusty or wet outdoor environment t
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As for the web cam, it just doesn't fit into the equation imo. Wouldn't it be more useful to have double the (rather small) storage? I can't see what good giving all these kids webcams will do. Perhaps a community webcam or something would be far more practical.
You know what's cool about this (Score:2)
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.
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"Education" is wrong approach; learning=DISCOVERY (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but learning to use and program computers has greatly improved my critical thinking skills.
Of course, by that I don't mean using computers to write reports and stuff, like they're typically used in schools in the US -- that's just a waste. I mean that the inherent process of discovery that's involved in learning (on your own) to use a computer is actually incredibly valuable.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but I think the best success they could have with these laptops would be i
New Interface? (Score:2)
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140$ ? (Score:2)
This makes it sound like they will sell it for that price. I looked long and hard to find where it say that. It's still called 100$ laptop everywhere official. It turns out that estimates (!) put the production costs at 138$. They will still sell it for 100$.
Man, and I hate these arrogant people of the "first" world who know how to improve the world so much better from watching tv or reading the internet. How come there are
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.
Does it really need another GUI? (Score:2)
Besides, does the video card support XGL?
-m
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once again, stupid mit hype (Score:2)
so if some moderately wealthy person in india or korea or whatever actually gave a flying f*ck about anyone in the thrid world, they could order a years run of last years hardware, and ship a million pc at probably way under 100 bucks
and we all know about new non standard stuff: it never works
why shd the cm1 be anydifferent ?
there
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-uso.
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.
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Re:Didn't Deliver (Score:4, Informative)
Also, please provide the source code for OS X.
Old Troll - OS X fanboism (Score:3, Informative)
Worst of all, Steve Jobs offered OS X for this laptop TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE.
Jobs offered OS X to the one laptop per child program late in the day, knowing that it was unsuitable due to lack of source. It was simply grandstanding on his part. Frankly, I can't think of a non-malicious reason for Jobs to make the offer, (wh
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I haven't noticed anywhere mentioning whether or not it has a touchscreen, so I assume it doesn't. For me, that more-or-less ruins "PDA-like" uses.
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