[ale] Last Central Meeting/OLPC

[tom]

Much appreciated Mike. Thanks for the effort.

On Sat, 19 Jan 2008, Michael B. Trausch wrote:

> On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 12:43 -0500, James P. Kinney III wrote:
>> Everyone voted to disband and switch to Vista.
>>
>> Bwahahahaha!!!! I wasn't there either so I would like to hear about it
>> as well.
>
> It was interesting.  They passed around one of the OLPC units,
> demonstrated a great deal of the thing's functionality, and so forth.
>
> They had four units there and showed off some of the unique-to-OLPC
> networking tidbits, discussed the fact that system has a
> crypographically signed kernel, and more.
>
> Aaron had cameras there and was able to record the meeting.  I am not
> sure if those are going to be made available on the web site or whatnot.
> I would be pretty hard pressed to give blow-by-blow notes or anything
> like that, but I can summarize a bit of what I learned there:
>
>  * The people who created the OLPC believe (much like I do) that
>    software has grown to be too damn bloated.  The design of the
>    OLPC emphasizes functional but trim software that people can
>    use.
>  * A developer key is required to do many complex things with the
>    system, including use non-OLPC signed kernels.  I am not sure
>    just how I feel about that, actually, but looking at it from
>    the viewpoint of its target audience, I suppose this makes some
>    sense.
>  * The thing is durable; one of the units was tossed onto a desk
>    as one might toss an old college-ruled five subject down onto
>    the desk, and its owner didn't even flinch.  I suppose you can
>    get away with doing that with a device like this; I would probably
>    kill anyone that did that with my laptop computer.  :)
>  * It is lightweight.
>  * The user interface takes some getting used to.  It is extremely
>    non-traditional, though I can see how after using it for a few
>    days it would become easy.
>  * The system lacks a lot of the normal functionality of a typical
>    GNU/Linux box.  It does have up-to-date versions of what is there,
>    though, from what I could see in the few minutes that I had one
>    in front of me.
>  * It probably won't run Emacs.  At least not with all of the
>    bells-and-whistles (VCS and IDE functionality, for example).  I
>    made a comment about Emacs and someone replied that "If you got
>    a network of 23 of these things together..." :-)
>  * It doesn't have a file manager in the way that we normally think
>    about such things, though it will import data from and export data
>    out to USB keys and the like.
>  * You can use them to find out (within a line of sight, seemingly)
>    how far you are away from another person's OLPC.  It also seems
>    that you have to have the machines pointed at each other, and
>    you also have to give them a few seconds to get a distance reading
>    that is close to accurate.
>
> I am probably leaving out a great deal of things.  I wouldn't want to
> rush right out and get one to do my work on---hell, the thing won't even
> hold my home directory (but then again, neither will a USB stick or SD
> card)---and I would not want to try to typeset things on it, much less
> try to run OpenOffice.org on it to do homework.  However, it does fill a
> very much needed spot in a niche, and it is an innovative, not bad
> looking device that is responsive for its hardware specs.  I would like
> the chance to play with one more to learn more about it, but I don't
> have the money to be able to engage in such an encounter.
>
> 	--- Mike
>
>