

OLPC's a con - former insider - edw519
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/16/krstic_olpc/

======
mechanical_fish
_"I’ve thought for a while that sending laptops to developing countries is
simply the 21st century equivalent of sending bibles to the colonies," adds
Python language author Guido van Rossum in the comments._

There may be something to what Guido says.

That said, I don't think the OLPC project was necessarily a bad project.
Because the whole thing was open source, folks are now free to part the
project out: borrow the bits that seemed to work well, redesign other bits,
and throw out the rest. That's the best you can expect from most academic
research projects.

I'm not surprised to see that OLPC didn't last that long, and that the
endpoint is a big explosion. That's the problem with these semi-academic semi-
charitable semi-engineering semi-commercial projects: It's hard to have a
child with four parents. There's a tendency for the whole thing to devolve
into a tooth-and-nails custody fight.

~~~
serhei
And let's not forget that they essentially created the tiny, cheap laptop
market. People like ASUS and Intel were _scared_ of them. If the entire
project has turned out to be "a con" and jack shit has ended up being done for
children, you have to admit that in that case they've at least pulled the most
successful bluff in the computer industry, perhaps ever.

And I still think that some of the ideas in the Sugar interface - like the
Journal, and the pervasive collaboration - are potentially revolutionary.
(They "just" lacked the necessary execution.)

~~~
mechanical_fish
Two things I forgot to say:

1) As a former academic, I suspect that _everyone_ who spends long enough in
academia goes through phases of frustration where it all seems like "an
enormous con". (In industry, of course, you learn that it's all an enormous
con in your first week. ;)

2) _they essentially created the tiny, cheap laptop market._

Exactly. And that helps children worldwide as much or more as the actual OLPC
does.

It can be ugly to watch the R&D sausage being made. Its indirect approach is
not for everyone. Every R&D project has a stated goal of "taking over the
world" or "curing this disease" or "ending poverty" or something, and almost
none of them ever explicitly reaches such a goal. And yet often those "failed
projects" publish stuff that gets picked up by the next generation of projects
and refined into something good. Or the students who worked on the "failed"
project take their experience into industry where they apply it to a real
product that actually succeeds.

~~~
edw519
"(In industry, of course, you learn that it's all an enormous con in your
first week. ;)"

I sure hope that was partially tongue in cheek, because if it wasn't, I kinda
feel sorry for you.

Many places I have worked have been total jokes and many people I have had the
misfortune to work with, let's just say, "misbehaved".

But for each of those places, I found many good businesses where people got
out of bed eager to do good things every day. They have produced value for
others and have much to be proud of. (These are also the ones who I seek as
customers.)

~~~
mechanical_fish
Oh, it's more than just _partially_ tongue-in-cheek! I actually find, as you
do, that industry is refreshingly direct compared to pure research, which is
why I prefer it.

I used to work at Agilent, a.k.a. "the good parts of the former Hewlett-
Packard." And, with the usual handful of exceptions, it really was the largest
collection of nice folks that you'll ever meet. So, yeah, I believe in the
existence of good businesses.

What I refer to is the emotional learning curve coming out of school. The part
where you learn, among other things, that not _everybody_ is trustworthy, and
that not every market-leading product is worth what it costs. That the ugly
method that is currently shipping is often better than the elegant but
theoretical alternative. That some of your company's products are, inevitably,
better than others. That any group of more than five people will face
political problems, misunderstandings, and red tape. And that without those
folks doing the marketing and accounting your business won't function.

None of which actually means that industry is a big con. It's just _real_.
It's not made of imaginary people living in an imaginary land. Academia is the
same, actually, though when you're in an especially bitter mood -- or faced
with the occasional person who _really is a con artist_ \-- you might think
otherwise.

~~~
edw519
lol

I went to business school because I was tired of being a cook and wanted a
better future.

The only thing I remember was, "A degree in business is a degree in nothing."

"How strange," I thought at the time.

"Truer words about business were never spoken," I think now.

------
gabriel
I recommend everyone go read the source essay by Ivan Krstić, rather than
someone's commentary on it. See here: <http://radian.org/notebook/sic-transit-
gloria-laptopi>

------
wumi
so can someone explain why Windows on the OLPC is such a crime -- especially,
as I said before, when some countries won't accept the OLPC without it?

whether the goal is learning or shipping laptops is immaterial -- if by
shipping laptops the students are learning, then the end goal is accomplished.
don't see how opening up the XO to Windows to get distributed to more kids who
need it is a bad thing.

~~~
andrewf
I see two almost independent objections here, and I think the press has failed
to convey this adequately:

\- One is the Linux argument; that these laptops should be open to tinkering
and closed source is inappropriate.

\- One is the Sugar argument; that the desktop-and-windows GUI is not good
enough, hence the building of the Sugar UI from the ground up. MS Windows is
viewed as inappropriate for the same reasons that the laptop wasn't originally
shipped with XFCE or GNOME.

As an interested observer, it seemed to me that both these arguments were
prominent design objectives for a long time. It's not surprising that if you
drop these objectives, a lot of the people who drank your Original Flavor
KoolAid will drop you faster than New Coke.

~~~
wmf
Both of these arguments sound like "we're going to build what our customers
_should_ want, not what they actually want". That rarely works except in a
monopoly situation. Maybe OLPC imagined themselves as some sort of benevolent
monopoly, but that rarely works as well.

~~~
jcl
In the case of the second argument -- Sugar as a more appropriate interface --
it may be more a case of "we're going to build what our customers will want,
not what they _think_ they want".

The XO has a screen that is not much larger than other ultra-compact
notebooks, but with a resolution on par with full-size notebooks. If you run a
standard Linux or Windows, any interface text or icons at the default size
will be so small as to be illegible. If you crank up the interface DPI to an
appropriate size, however, then you lose a lot of screen real estate to menus,
toolbars, and statusbars -- something we take for granted now that we have
20-inch displays (just try using Word in a 640x480 window).

What the XO really needs is an interface like a kiosk or mobile device:
something easy-to-use that aggressively conserves screen real estate. Sugar
fills this role pretty well... the default installs of Linux or XP do not.
Windows CE would have been a better choice than XP in this respect (and
others), but it would presumably have been more work for Microsoft with less
payoff, since CE has relatively few educational activities and doesn't run the
"real" version of Office.

------
Create
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte> gives Big Brother a whole new
meaning...

~~~
mechanical_fish
I hadn't actually realized that these two Negropontes were related...

I'm also not convinced that it's relevant. You can choose your friends, and
you can choose your philosophies, but you can't choose your relatives.

~~~
Create
But you can choose your employer (unless you are a slave _, which doesn't
apply here, being [] shipping magnates).

It is so simple; so elementary, that most people don't see it (e.g. think of
mass-energy relationship).

MIT's primary goals and funding agencies are well known, and so are the little
one's scientific achievements, supposedly securing him a place among "the
great". Also look @ at the goals of the OLPC, as the whole concept (not as a
cheap notebook with little green ears). It is written publicly in B&W:

"At its core, our journal concept embodies the idea that the file system
records a history of the things a child has done, or, more specifically, the
activities in which a child has participated. Its function as the store of the
objects created while performing those activities is secondary, although also
important. The Journal naturally lends itself to a chronological organization
(although it can be tagged, SEARCHED, and sorted by a variety of means). As a
record of things a child has done—not just the things a child has saved—the
Journal will read much like a portfolio or scrapbook history of the child's
interactions with the machine and also with peers. The Journal combines
entries explicitly created by the children with those that are IMPLICITLY
CREATED through participation in activities. [...] Each machine is a full-time
wireless router. Children in the most remote regions of the globe—as well as
their teachers and families—will be connected both to one another AND to the
Internet."

<http://laptop.org/en/laptop/interface/principles.shtml>

"It's data that's practically a printout of what's going on in your brain:
What you are thinking of buying, who you talk to, what you talk about."
--Kevin Bankston, staff attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

go and figure the rest. Guido's colonisation parallel with conversion to
Christianity / XP / Whatever is also very apparent: practically all "orders"
are from "client states". The ones likely to vote in favour of the MS Office
format to be an ISO standard. Advancing (computer?) literacy in MIT's backyard
would be a more ambitious goal ;)

_ Or as they say, in soviet Russia, the employer chooses you ;)

~~~
gojomo
For a critical look at the OLPC security model as an avenue for surveillance,
this paper is interesting:

"Freezing More Than Bits: Chilling Effects of the OLPC XO Security Model"

by Meredith L. Patterson, Len Sassaman, David Chaum

[http://www.usenix.org/event/upsec08/tech/full_papers/patters...](http://www.usenix.org/event/upsec08/tech/full_papers/patterson/patterson_html/)

------
ideas101
first of all i dont understand why this project is taking such a long time ...
if someone is really dedicated and committed then anything can be done, just
like TATA who created $2500 NANO car right from the scratch from patent to
assembly every single thing is innovative
(<http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/may/14tata.htm>) - TATA motivated tens of
hundreds of manufacturer and vendors to redesign their auto-parts to fit in
NANO car ... OLPC is for poor nations or say for 3rd world countries and i
dont think NGOs/Govt./schools have any preference over what o/s it comes with
as far as it can launch all educational application. OLPC laptop is not meant
for scientists anyway, so what the fuss - just keep it simple and open source
and create nice educational material so that kids form these countries can
learn something valuable. Also 3rd world countries are very humble and they
will be more than happy just to get this laptop (with or without XP).

~~~
Create
India has its own "OLPC"[1], not being a client state. Education works best,
when you work your way through: there is not royal path to knowledge (or,
teach fishing instead of selling cheap fish, if you like).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer>

