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Comments: 126 +-   Walter Bender Resigns From OLPC on Tuesday April 22 2008, @09:51AM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 22 2008, @09:51AM
from the shiny-but-not-an-ass dept.
portables
education
westlake writes "Walter Bender, the former executive director of MIT's Media Lab, and, in many ways, the tireless workhorse and public face of OLPC, has resigned from OLPC after being reorganized and sidetracked into insignificance. The rumor mill would have it that 'constructionism as children [learn] learning' is being replaced by a much less romantic view of the XO's place in the classroom and XO's tech in the marketplace."
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Submission: Walter Bender Resigns From OLPC by westlake (615356)
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  • oblig (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @09:52AM (#23158434) Homepage Journal
    Did his final words as he left have anything to do with biting his shiny metal ass?

    • Walter Bender has finally spoken on his resignation from One Laptop Per Child. In an email to me, he says he doesn't know about any plans for Windows XP on the XO laptop, so my fears of a Microsoft take-over of OLPC may be unfounded.

      Summary and original speculation were complete BS. [olpcnews.com]

      To keep in the spirit of the thread, XP smells worse than your shiny metal ass.

      • Re:No, nor XP. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by willyhill (965620) <`pr8wak' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday April 22 2008, @11:31AM (#23159854) Homepage Journal
        This would merit the moderation if not for the fact that this account is one of your seven sockpuppets [slashdot.org]. You even created one so you could insult [slashdot.org] me.
        • Last I checked this still wasn't wikipedia (thank $god), so really, who cares?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by dedazo (737510)

            so really, who cares?

            If you were engaged in a discussion with a person and suddenly six others showed up to shill and agree with the original one, how would you like that? More importantly, he knows very well what that kind of activity looks like to moderators - seven people carrying on a "conversation" with each other in opposition to you is usually a recipe for being modded down (and get him karma in the process).

            I don't know about you, but I have a single Slashdot account and I'd like to think I'm re

      • Nowhere in his exit statement does Bender contradict the rumors about him being forced out. Instead he gives the standard "leaving to pursue other interests". This is a conventional explanation people give to avoid antagonizing their former colleagues. This concept might be strange to shot-from-the-lip Slashdotters, but it is common among people who don't view life as extended flame war.

        You give a quote that seems intended to contradict the story, but doesn't really — this isn't just about whether or

    • Re:oblig (Score:5, Funny)

      by thhamm (764787) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:09AM (#23158684)
      with biting his shiny metal ass?

      nah, but: 'i'll make my own OLPC ... with blackjack ... and hookers.'

      • nah, but: 'i'll make my own OLPC ... with blackjack ... and hookers.'
        In fact forget the OLPC, and the blackjack.

    • Did his final words as he left have anything to do with biting his shiny metal ass?


      Yes. I believe he said something like, "What the HELL are you doing? Stop that right now you freak, or I'm leaving."

    • Re:oblig (Score:5, Funny)

      by everphilski (877346) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:55AM (#23159324) Journal
      antiquing?
    • Did he go "quick and painless," or "slow and horrible"?

  • Instead OLPC should deepen its approch (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Teach children how to learn to learn learning.

  • Why am I getting a strange feeling... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tgatliff (311583) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:10AM (#23158706)
    That now that OLPC is no longer a threat that all of the other vendors of small low cost laptops will simply stop offering them... Just a thought... :)
    • Why? Manufacturers will just remodel it and brand it was as some kind of supplementary device to sell alongside their regular line of laptops, kinda like (incoming obligatory car analogy) subcompact cars geared towards first-time buyers or people that just want something to carry around that's not nearly as costly as compared to their more expensive luxury car/suv brethren. Plus, it gives them a chance to refine the tech to aim for more battery efficiency, and may possibly see it all trickle over to their m
    • Why would they do that if selling them is profitable? It's not like many of the customers buying sub-$300 tiny laptops are gonna happily buy something double the size and double the price.

    • Re:Why am I getting a strange feeling... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by couchslug (175151) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @12:03PM (#23160340)

      That now that OLPC is no longer a threat that all of the other vendors of small low cost laptops will simply stop offering them... Just a thought... :)
      Asus is doing very well with its flagship offering.
      The people who don't get it right may stop offering small lappies, but at last there is a small, uncrippled (unlike I-Openers etc) flash drive computer in a very convenient form-factor.
      OLPC may die out, but their business model isn't our problem. Asus proved that running a real desktop OS in that package is what consumers want as opposed to deliberately crippled equipment running crippled operating systems. Crippling gives "product differentiation", but it still leaves a gap. Asus just exploited that gap.

  • It looks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by esocid (946821) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:24AM (#23158904) Journal
    like Bender was kind of forced to resign since all of his responsibilities were absorbed into the other 4 restructured areas. Since January the OLPC has lost three top execs, one of whom was asked to stop collaborating with Bender. Something seems a little fishy with this operation now.

    In an interview with BusinessWeek in early March, OLPC Chairman Negroponte said OLPC was "doing almost impossible things," and that the organization needed to be managed "more like Microsoft." He said OLPC was reorganizing into four departments and looking for a CEO to lead the nonprofit.

  • Related to Ivan Krstic's resignation (Score:4, Informative)

    by harlows_monkeys (106428) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:24AM (#23158914) Homepage

    It was the demotion of Bender that prompted Ivan Krstic' to resign [radian.org] last month, so the damage to OLPC by their stupid demotion of Bender is not limited to just the loss of him. I wonder if anyone else will be leaving over this?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      krstic is not a loss to OLPC; I worked there for 2 years and Ivan was nothing but an egotistical brat who never showed up for meetings where he was supposed to present code he'd written, because he never actually wrote more than 500 lines of code and instead got interns to do everything he should have been doing from day 1.

  • Direct Link to Resignation letter (Score:5, Informative)

    by styryx (952942) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:29AM (#23158974)
    Direct Link to Resignation letter [laptop.org]

    I was going to submit this story after finding it on Digg or Reddit; the headline was focusing on Negreponte(sp?) allegedly wishing to partner with MS to put XP on XO in order to sell more units. After reading the letter and there being no mention of it I decided against submission.
    • Well, even if the rumor was true, I don't think he would publicly say anything, if only to protect what is left of OLPC. If he did say anything, people would just call him selfish and uncaring for the children he wanted to help.

  • Bender Was Quoted... (Score:4, Funny)

    by FrankDrebin (238464) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:48AM (#23159212) Homepage
    ... "bite my rubberized, lime-green ass."
    • He went on to say:

      "I'm going to build my own OLPC! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the OLPC. Aw, screw the whole thing."
    • Yah, yah.

      1: Wait till it all falls apart.
      2: Buy them up by the container load.
      3: Spray the case a reasonable colour.
      4: Reflash the OS to something businesses can use.
      5: Profit!

      There you go. Filled in all of the steps for you.
       
      • 4: Reflash the OS to something businesses can use.

        How would one "reflash" a child-sized keyboard to one suitable for use by adults' hands?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by samkass (174571)
      There were rumors posted at one point that Apple had offered to donate a core OS, but were turned down for not being completely open-source. Perhaps if those rumors had any truth, they could be fulfilled now. I'd sure rather have MacOS than linux or XP, given the choice, if I was a third world kid who wanted to learn something.

      • Re:GOOD... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:36AM (#23159046)

        There were rumors posted at one point that Apple had offered to donate a core OS, but were turned down for not being completely open-source. Perhaps if those rumors had any truth, they could be fulfilled now.

        I hope not. Look I'm as big of an OS X fan as anyone, but it is not really suited to the OLPC project in a number of ways. Also, the all OSS stack makes sense with regard to their mission, to bootstrap an intellectual property creation industry in these nations. Being able to edit and modify all the code provides a starting place for this project to sustain itself via the user base.

        I'd sure rather have MacOS than linux or XP, given the choice, if I was a third world kid who wanted to learn something.

        The OLPC software is very well designed for its core tasks of educating children, which is quite different from general purpose computing. As a kid, I'd much rather have had an OLPC that allows me to learn with all the other kids in my school, than even a modern OS X system. Swapping it out for OS X makes little more sense than doing the same with WinXP.

          • Re:GOOD... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by dunng808 (448849) <osp&aloha,com> on Tuesday April 22 2008, @07:28PM (#23165974) Homepage Journal

            being that I am not well-informed on the subject of educational pedagogy, I really can't say how well the software actually achieves its core tasks


            All too often those who claim proficiency in pedagogy are merely hiding their lack of brilliance behind a stack of journal articles and study results. I draw inspiration from Shin'ichi Suzuki, founder of Talent Education, who with no formal training in education single-handedly created one of the most successfull methods of teaching music to children. Back in the 70s Suzuki was widely criticized by American violin pedagogues who denounced him as a crackpot. The Suzuki method was built on a common sense view of learning which begins with this observation: children naturally learn their mother tongue without the help of experts. Therefore, children know how to learn, and mothers are the best teachers.

            Now apply that view to homeschooling and an interesting picture develops. Parents are fully qualified to teach young children. As children get older they benefit from subject matter experts, but it does not require a brick-and-morter school to provide them. K-12 teachers complain about the lack of parent involvement, especially as the children get older. With homeschoolers, the parent is always involved.

            how does that mesh with a core learning curriculum based on The Three R's?


            Hold on, there! Who says education has a core of three R's? Or a core of anything? This is just pedagogical pablum passed along year after year as if it were inscribed in stone by the almighty himself. Stringing together Python scripts could very well be much more relavent to today's children.

          • Re:GOOD... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 23 2008, @01:27AM (#23168408) Homepage Journal

            It may be exciting for students to hack together small Python scripts in Pippy or have a collaborative jam session in TamTam, but how does that mesh with a core learning curriculum based on The Three R's?

            Children are small humans (shocking but true) and humans learn best when they are involved with something with which they are interested. Computers are useful for this sort of thing because they are applicable to basically everything.

            Here's a simple truth for you: Those who are able to manipulate information have an edge over those who do not. For instance I can make my own vector maps instead of paying for them; I can also get my own information on the nutritive value of foods instead of buying a carb counter book simply by downloading a freely available government database.

            I was in a GATE program in elementary school and they told me I could not participate in astronomy because I was too young. Today I am a math idiot. Perhaps if instead of quashing my enthusiasm, they had presented me with mathematics related to something I was interested in, I would be more comfortable with it today? Unfortunately, even so-called "Gifted and Talented" programs are really just a means to "deal with" "problem children" (I was disruptive because I was bored) and to park them somewhere.

            What I'm trying to say is that presenting children with the maximum number of options is critical. Lots of the functionality on the system isn't necessary for all purposes. You have the option to not use it all. Meanwhile, including it may be what gets one more child interested in something that saves our collective bacon. You never know.

    • Yah, too bad for the whole point of freeing the world for the domination of a single US software company.
      • Wasn't the point to help kids?
        • Getting African hooked on Microsoft products is helping them? Or teaching them tools that they can later modify and build on themselves is helping them? I mean really, do Slasdotters really have to stretch their imaginations that much to see how using non open platforms helps them less? It is definitely better than nothing, but at this point it isn't nothing. It is going from open to closed. If it had started out closed then the discussion would be different. Seriously, this is purely depressing at this poi

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 (641858)
          And how does making them dependent on a foreign company for any computer-related job (which, by the time they are grown up is likely to mean pretty much any job) helping them? Phase two of the project aims to have the countries that bought the first generation laptops manufacture their own version two, based on the designs and code from version one. If you install XP on them, then none of the children will develop the expertise to to write version two of the software stack.

    • Sadly, no... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nweaver (113078) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @10:13AM (#23158732) Homepage
      The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant.

      Nothing else comes close for efficiency, cost, battery life (with working software), ruggedness, total lifetime, etc.

      The thing is VERY tough (i've tossed mine several times), very low power (3 hours battery life with 100% broken power management. Good power management should get 6+ hours battery life for typical users), with a brilliant screen. Just put real software on it and its very nice.

      Let alone the environmental tolerance: Normal notebook batteries die if you try charging them at 100F.

      • >The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant.

        Agreed but the problem is that the OLPC will be much more useful to children when the software and documents will be ready, for example having good e-manuals on their native language available on the local server.

        And this will take many years to have..

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cryingpoet (472652)

        The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant.

        The external hardware is durable and well placed, but the overall system is anything but brilliant. There is no reason to use an x86 processor for the project. This should be treated as an embedded design.

        To further reduce costs and increase battery life a RISC based processor should be used. Suitable ARM based System-On-Chip (SOC) processors run up to 800 MHz, thus reducing power consumption and increasing performance. Nvidia, ATI, and other companies make graphics accelerators that are more than suf

        • Actually... (Score:5, Informative)

          by nweaver (113078) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @11:52AM (#23160172) Homepage
          A: The x86 used is already very low power and very high integration, supporting sub-millisecond sleep states. With Amdahl's law being what it is, replacing the processor with a mystic 0 power CPU wouldn't add all that much to battery life. The TOTAL power consumption is 5W already, and the CPU's share of that power budget (when you consider CPU and not the associated control logic for memory, IO, etc) is low.

          And in return, x86 compatibility is a good thing, because it opens up a huge world of binary software. For one, x86 is far better supported by just about everybody.

          B: The OLPC actually uses a 15 W-Hr LiFeP (Lithium Ferro-Polymer) battery. Which is actually 4x the charge lifespan of LiIon, and has far greater environmental tolerance, and can even be composted for disposal.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by poot_rootbeer (188613)
          There is no reason to use an x86 processor for the project.

          Okay. Is there any reason NOT to use an x86 CPU? There are some great low-power "embedded" CPU solutions out there, but is it accurate to say x86-based CPUs do not and cannot meet those criteria?

          The systems has an 800 x 600 display

          It's actually 1200x900. I'm not sure where you got your numbers from.

          I wonder what else about the device you might be misinformed about?

      • Re:Sadly, no... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by legutierr (1199887) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @11:47AM (#23160114)

        The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant.
        The software stack is actually very cool and innovative. Unfortunately, it is also way too ambitious for the distribution timeline that OLPC has. It tries to reinvent the filesystem and all the standard WIMP GUI conventions, even while implementing everything in *Python*. On top of that, almost every element of the software stack (browser, word processor, etc.) is either implemented from scratch, or re-implemented in Python on top of a low-level branch of FOSS code like gecko or AbiWord.

        Sugar is a worthwhile project. Unfortunately, it is not yet stable (memory leaks, etc), the kinks of the completely re-imagined user experience have not been worked out, and not every "activity" that is needed to provide a complete user experience exists.

        I hope that Sugar is not dead, because when that thing actually starts working...(famous last words?) More importantly, I hope that OLPC makes some very clear and unambiguous statements regarding the future and the status of Sugar, because it needs a strong developer community to survive, and I sure as hell am not going to write anything for it if it is completely abandoned. What a waste it would be, after so much good work.

      • Re:Sadly, no... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rorschach1 (174480) on Tuesday April 22 2008, @11:50AM (#23160156) Homepage
        I was reasonably impressed with the hardware. Had to cram some folded paper into the battery compartment to stop the rattling, but other than that the construction seemed solid. The keyboard is mushy, though, and probably the most annoying I've used since the Timex Sinclair 1000.

        I've had the touch pad start freaking out in odd ways, with the pointer randomly jumping when I lift my finger to reposition it.

        The screen is very impressive, especially for the cost. The camera is surprisingly good. The software is, IMHO, a steaming pile of crap in its current state, wholly unsuitable for its target audience. It's slow to load, simple operations like exiting programs are inconsistent between applications, and there seems to be little to no built-in help.

        Both of my kids (ages 9 and 12) gave up on using it. My daughter (the 9-year-old) much prefers her old Gateway P2-550 laptop running Windows 2000, despite the machine being an ancient cast-off that ceased being a useful business computer several years ago. Firefox on that machine is vastly superior to the XO-1's browser, and the overall experience is much less frustrating.

        Despite my doubts about the OLPC project from the beginning, I've WANTED it to succeed, and I still hope to see it succeed. I want to believe that the open source community can build something that will make a real difference in the developing world, but it looks like there's still a long way to go.
      • Why is software stack questionable? Beyond the conventional "it's not a standard platform", that is?
    • What type of "real" software are you thinking of?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Alex Belits (437) *
      BWAHAHAHAHA!

      I am writing this response on one of those laptops, running prerelease Ubuntu Hardy that I have just configured for it.

      This laptop is not going to do any 3D modeling or video editing any soon, but for everything that belongs in a classroom it's fine.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by drinkypoo (153816)

            They belong in an art or trade school, kids have more widely applicable things to study -- like math, sciences, engineering, literature, etc.

            If you don't think 3d modeling is useful to learning math, sciences, and engineering, you are a genuine idiot. And if you do not think that video editing can help you learn literature you have no imagination, to boot. But perhaps I'm just misunderstanding you? Regardless, your comment is proof positive that a low slashdot ID doesn't mean anything.

            Also no one should learn 3D modeling and video editing on a computer he can carry -- inexperienced user needs massive amount of resources and very large screen to be able to do anything with it.

            While my laptop is WORLDS ahead of the XO, I have a Compaq nw9440 which is MORE than adequate for learning 3d graphics with its Core Duo, 2GB memory, and nVid

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yvanhoe (564877)
      From a romantic standpoint, less business is a GOOD thing.
      • Not if your customer is the governor of NY.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by markov_chain (202465)
            Maybe not everyone, but many did. We're talking pre-farming, which would count as business. Even then I bet there were "businessmen" who could survive even while doing less actual hunting or gathering than would normally sustain an individual.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RobertB-DC (622190) *
      Maybe he was lured over to the fire nation.

      My first thought was also that the story had something to do with the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender [wikipedia.org] -- forget the network; think Miyazaki, not SpongeBob. Excellent series in the vast wasteland of American animated TV.

      However, it should be noted that Aang, the primary character, is not a Water Bender, but an Air Bender.

      (Somehow, the inevitable loss of Karma for this way-off-topic posting seems unusually appropriate.)
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