$100 Laptop Platform Moves On 100
The BBC is reporting that Sugar Labs is planning on taking "Sugar," the XO laptop's innovative interface, to the next level and distribute to a broader audience. "Sugar is a user interface that allows children to collaborate even when working on different machines. For example, they can write documents or make music together. The open source software also contains a journal and automatically saves and backs up all data. [...] Sugar Labs will work closely with developers from the open source community to develop the user interface for other computers and operating systems. It has already been bundled with the most recent releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux operating systems."
don't you mean the $190 latptop. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Loose translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Asus got it right (Score:5, Insightful)
If nothing else, the OLPC project was responsible for the low priced UMPCs which we can now buy - remember the price of a UMPC a year or two ago? It was cheaper to buy a pretty high spec (but full size) machine.
The OLPC project has lost its way - perhaps because of Negroponte, perhaps because of Intel or maybe pressure from other (Redmond?) forces. Whatever, the OLPC original idea was great - create a functional, robust laptop and include a user friendly interface, a simple peer to peer networking system to allow sharing of files between these machines, an OS which allowed you to learn how things worked etc.
Because of the political infighting which has taken place, the project seems to have lost the support of those who would be of most use to it - i.e Open Source enthusiasts who could have worked on the XO machines and the Sugar interface to create new programs. So the folks behind that Sugar interface have taken it to the community in the form of this new effort called Sugar Labs - intending to develop, with the assistance of the community, the interface and make it available for other small UMPC machines - including the EeePC.
IMHO, this is to be applauded and I for one will certainly have a look at it again. The only small snag at the moment is that it doesn't seem to like running in my VM install of Kubuntu. But I am sure I can find a spare drive here somewhere to install (K)Ubuntu 8.04 or another supported system and fire up the Sugar interface.
Re:I don't like Sugar (Score:4, Insightful)
"Moves On"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Loose translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
No, its not a loss leader. With a loss leader you lose money or don't make any, MS isn't doing that. A copy of XP costs exactly $0 for MS to produce. Granted, XP did have some costs related to development but now, we are around 6 years into XP and we can assume those have been paid off. With a physical product each copy costs money, in parts, in time, in shipping. With software each copy can be recopied an infinate amount of times without any loss in quality or any increase in cost, compare this to a gallon of milk where each cow can only produce so much milk. Whereas a gallon of milk has costs related to packaging, software doesn't have this problem with downloads where the price of bandwidth is tiny to almost unnoticeable and using more modern P2P technology makes even those costs go away, likewise shipping is free.
This is not a loss leader for MS, a copy of XP costs them exactly $0 to make, and they get $3 for each copy so that is a direct $3 profit for each system with XP sold.
Re:Loose translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, there are costs associated with maintaining XP with security updates and bugfixes, running product activation servers, knowledge base servers (all of which need to be maintained) and all kinds of other expenses such as licensing of media technologies.
Don't get me wrong, I greatly dislike MS, but to say there are no costs associated with it is dead wrong. These cost do, however, often apply to open source companies as well, and most certainly some of them apply to OLPC. It may well be that going with MS's deal is just cheaper than doing it all in-house.
Why is Sugar gone from the XO? (Score:1, Insightful)
More Grand Delusions (Score:4, Insightful)
We learn by asking questions that are important to us. Teaching leads the child to ask questions that may or may not turn out to be important to them (although I'm going to give you a free pass on calculus) but will equip them with the skills required for employment.
This is the fundamental purpose of the industrialised method of teaching children on the grand scale where they are incarcerated in school from the age of 4 to 16 (I'm using my native Scotland as the model here, other rates may vary.) I am a teacher, I am not terribly impressed by a lot of my colleagues but in their defense - no machine or application can do what a teacher does. This is why so many great creative minds were produced in the last century in the post-war period - people had the freedom to think.
Of course by the sixties school boards were squandering valuable financial resources on TVs, movie projectors, film loops and other idiotic assorted garbage to the detriment of spending money on traditional classroom resources - books, desks, chalk and teachers and by this time the career was held in such contempt and so poorly paid that the schools were filled with the empty-headed using sociologically based - learning by screaming or whatever dumb theory of the day was popular and all conducted in the language of political correctness.
A quick look at some figures (freely available on the Scottish government website) shows how much the Scottish states spend on education from a GDP of approximately 56 billion GBP.
Have a look at any private schools (curiously called public schools in Britain) where the paying customer determines what is considered a successful curriculum.
The have computers where they should be, in the computer classes.