[ale] Last Central Meeting/OLPC

[Michael B. Trausch]

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

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                                   mike at trausch.us
home: 404-592-5746, 1                                 www.trausch.us
cell: 678-522-7934                       im: mike at trausch.us, jabber
Ubuntu Unofficial Backports Project:    http://backports.trausch.us/
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