how to let activities write to file without risking security
Hey list, At OLE Nepal we need to let our etoys image allow writing to disk, however under rainbow the image is executed under another user id. What's the way to give an/our activity permission to write to certain directories without just making them world writable, which is surely not the way to go. Thanks, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
Hi, Before thinking about solution, could you explain specificaly what you want to write to disk and how that will be used? /Korakurider On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey list, At OLE Nepal we need to let our etoys image allow writing to disk, however under rainbow the image is executed under another user id. What's the way to give an/our activity permission to write to certain directories without just making them world writable, which is surely not the way to go. Thanks, /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Dennis Gilmore wrote: On Monday 07 April 2008, Michael Stone wrote: cjb, cscott, and I just chatted about build names. We have absolutely no problem announcing official-703 (when candidate-703 becomes official) under whatever name seems good but we have no consensus about what that name should be. cscott proposes '8.1' on the basis that it will be our first 2008 release. mstone thought we should bake a month into the name (perhaps 2008.04 or April-2008). Scott strongly preferred to avoid baking a month designator into the name because, as best I understand, he thinks we cannot afford to ship another release until we've made 'enough' improvement in at least one of our (approximately) four networking scenarios. I like scott's proposal '8.1'. Putting a month or a season(summer/winter) there restrict us - and since we have seen that 'update.1' has taken longer than expected it would be wise not to. I honestly think we should call it OLPC 2 which matches the cvs/build tag and signifies release number 2 OLPC 1 being ship.2 then we just increment the number for each stable release. we have a development codename of joyride. we can create a name for each release. This would work for me as well - though the extra information of (year/release) is not available here. Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Morgan Collett wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:51 AM, Simon Schampijer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dennis Gilmore wrote: On Monday 07 April 2008, Michael Stone wrote: cjb, cscott, and I just chatted about build names. We have absolutely no problem announcing official-703 (when candidate-703 becomes official) under whatever name seems good but we have no consensus about what that name should be. cscott proposes '8.1' on the basis that it will be our first 2008 release. mstone thought we should bake a month into the name (perhaps 2008.04 or April-2008). Scott strongly preferred to avoid baking a month designator into the name because, as best I understand, he thinks we cannot afford to ship another release until we've made 'enough' improvement in at least one of our (approximately) four networking scenarios. I like scott's proposal '8.1'. Putting a month or a season(summer/winter) there restrict us - and since we have seen that 'update.1' has taken longer than expected it would be wise not to. We need to call it something while it's proposed / under development, and before we know exactly when it will ship. Some distros use codenames while it's under development, and then the final release is named accordingly. (For example, what if a release we think will come out in late 2008 slips to 2009?) Otherwise, strict time-based releases would be required (which I'm in favour of, but I don't know if that decision has been taken yet...) Morgan Good point, I think having a feature or a time based releases has a great impact on the naming. In feature based releases the naming dennis proposed (e.g. OLPC-2) would make sense to me. Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:51 AM, Simon Schampijer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dennis Gilmore wrote: On Monday 07 April 2008, Michael Stone wrote: cjb, cscott, and I just chatted about build names. We have absolutely no problem announcing official-703 (when candidate-703 becomes official) under whatever name seems good but we have no consensus about what that name should be. cscott proposes '8.1' on the basis that it will be our first 2008 release. mstone thought we should bake a month into the name (perhaps 2008.04 or April-2008). Scott strongly preferred to avoid baking a month designator into the name because, as best I understand, he thinks we cannot afford to ship another release until we've made 'enough' improvement in at least one of our (approximately) four networking scenarios. I like scott's proposal '8.1'. Putting a month or a season(summer/winter) there restrict us - and since we have seen that 'update.1' has taken longer than expected it would be wise not to. We need to call it something while it's proposed / under development, and before we know exactly when it will ship. Some distros use codenames while it's under development, and then the final release is named accordingly. (For example, what if a release we think will come out in late 2008 slips to 2009?) Otherwise, strict time-based releases would be required (which I'm in favour of, but I don't know if that decision has been taken yet...) Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:16 PM, Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But if someone has a good idea about saving an image and writing to the changes file on the XO, I'm all ears. If you just want to save your work during development in Squeak, the setup procedure in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Smalltalk_Development_on_XO might help. I think it is no good to directly overwrite ootb image/change file on activity directory. /Korakurider ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Korakurider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Before thinking about solution, could you explain specificaly what you want to write to disk and how that will be used? /Korakurider Well, I was wondering on a general level how Sugar handles this, because I ran into similar problems when trying DOOM last week. On a specific level I wondered how to save a Squeak image and how to deal with saving projects. I already got my answers from an earlier mail to this list from Bert: You must have the startupInUntrustedDirectory preference enabled, in which case not the image directory becomes the default directory, but rather what was passed as SQUEAK_USERDIR environment variable in the etoys-activity script. That script takes care to set it to the activity-writable location ($SUGAR_ACTIVITY_ROOT/data), see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Low-level_Activity_API#Writable_Directories; Then I got a warning about not being able to write to the changes file, and found some preference variables to toggle that'll do the work. (warnIfChangesFileReadOnly or warnIfNoChangesFile). That's enough info for me right now. But if someone has a good idea about saving an image and writing to the changes file on the XO, I'm all ears. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Bugs ML (or archiving) stop?
Korakurider wrote: Hi. I can't see April archive of Bugs ML on http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/bugs/ while there are surely some changes on Trac (see http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/etoys-notify/2008-April/000472.html for instance). What's broken? I don't know whether bugs ML itself is broken now as I 'm not subscriber. Dear sysadmin, please look into and fix it. Cheers, /Korakurider Hmm, I do only get bug-mails I am in cc, the owner or reporter or comment myself. And the archive of April is missing indeed. Can someone clear this up? Thanks, Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
trac stopped sending email to the bugs mailing list
Hi Henry, looks like trac is not sending emails to the bugs ml any more since 29th March: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/bugs/ Can you please look at that? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Korakurider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:16 PM, Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But if someone has a good idea about saving an image and writing to the changes file on the XO, I'm all ears. If you just want to save your work during development in Squeak, the setup procedure in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Smalltalk_Development_on_XO might help. During development, making the relevant directory world writable should be sufficient I guess. I think it is no good to directly overwrite ootb image/change file on activity directory. As a general policy, no. But I just wondered about it in general. The situation seems to me to be a bit ugly. Maybe I should just go on and do practical stuff though. But it would be useful perhaps when some kids might want to start hacking on Squeak level. But maybe not... /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Monday 07 April 2008, Gary C Martin wrote: On 8 Apr 2008, at 04:53, Dennis Gilmore wrote: I honestly think we should call it OLPC 2 which matches the cvs/ build tag and signifies release number 2 OLPC 1 being ship.2 then we just increment the number for each stable release. we have a development codename of joyride. we can create a name for each release. Wouldn't OLPC 2 be new XO hardware? Just a gut feeling I get – but at least there's no damn date in there ;-) the hardware is XO-1 the next revison will be XO-2 the version of the OS that we have out when the next hardware revision comes out i would hope works on both sets of hardware. even if the hardware is a different architecture then i would hope we use the same source packages for both architectures. Dennis ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Etoys] how to let activities write to file without risking security
Ties Stuij wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Korakurider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:16 PM, Ties Stuij [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But if someone has a good idea about saving an image and writing to the changes file on the XO, I'm all ears. If you just want to save your work during development in Squeak, the setup procedure in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Smalltalk_Development_on_XO might help. During development, making the relevant directory world writable should be sufficient I guess. I think it is no good to directly overwrite ootb image/change file on activity directory. As a general policy, no. But I just wondered about it in general. The situation seems to me to be a bit ugly. Maybe I should just go on and do practical stuff though. But it would be useful perhaps when some kids might want to start hacking on Squeak level. But maybe not... /Ties __ A activity with Squeak would be nice, and even useful :-) It could just be the Etoy dev image with write permission. Karl ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Joyride builds are failing
See http://dev.laptop.org/~bert/joyride-pkgs.html Insufficient space in download directory /home/cscott/public_html/ xo-1/streams/joyride/build1841-20080408_0710/devel_jffs2/install_root/ var/cache/yum/olpc-joyride/packages to download - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 04:34 +0100, Gary C Martin wrote: Well, if this is a democracy, of sorts, I'll stick my neck out and vote to stick with a release-703, or official-703, kind'a format. I just really, really dislike dates floating into version naming (and even worse product naming - where the goal is to make you feel out of date in time for the next hard sell). Also avoids all that, so whose calendar format/locale are we going to use in the name, what's so magical about the end of a year that we get a whole new number to release, and so what specific release version number did go out in the April-2008 build? Gary I don't know the answer but as I told Michael Stone using names like 656 together with names like update-1-703 is shear lunacy. What ever the naming scheme is it should consistent without on all levels of discussion about the build. The indication of which are ready fro prime time by using words like stable, development or unstable might be acceptable, but once it is stable the name should blend with the names of other stable builds. In case you missed it in the support group teleconference there was a suggestion to name Update-1-703, Uruguay-703. -- === I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself. === Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Fwd: PEAP Configuration on OLPC
Does anybody know the answer to Where does gecko keep its configuration files ? Thanks, wad Begin forwarded message: From: Motaib Abdel Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 11:34 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Cc: Bentahar Latif; Kerner Marty Subject: RE: PEAP Configuration on OLPC John, With build 650 I was able to configure proxy settings in the user.js file located in /home/olpc/.sugar/default/gecko. I no longer see the gecko directory in the new build. We’d like to automate the proxy configuration and need to know the file where these browser preferences are saved. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Is Uruguay even using 703? Peru is. Mexico probably will... Mongolia probably will... While I like the discipline that is suggested by a date scheme, it doesn't really add much real value over simply sequential numbering. We certainly should avoid using seasonal names, as that will cause hemispheric confusion. As far as a feature-based scheme, that will just increase the pressure to do an end-run around our renewed pledge to do time-based releases. I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... -walter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
walter wrote: I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... as perhaps more of an outsider here, i'd say that this is not unambiguous. people with the laptops regularly refer to them as my OLPC -- perhaps encouraged by the unfortunate PC in the acronym. as for numbers: sequential is good, but starting higher than 1 might give room for adding structure later if necessary. (e.g. the 200 series of releases might be a break from the 100 series.) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's degrees) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Fwd: PEAP Configuration on OLPC
You can use about:config in recent builds: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wifi_Connectivity#Proxy_Settings Best, Simon John Watlington wrote: Does anybody know the answer to Where does gecko keep its configuration files ? Thanks, wad Begin forwarded message: From: Motaib Abdel Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 11:34 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Cc: Bentahar Latif; Kerner Marty Subject: RE: PEAP Configuration on OLPC John, With build 650 I was able to configure proxy settings in the user.js file located in /home/olpc/.sugar/default/gecko. I no longer see the gecko directory in the new build. We’d like to automate the proxy configuration and need to know the file where these browser preferences are saved. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
This discussion reminds me of a favorite puzzle from Douglas Hofstadter 0, 1, 2, 3, 720!, ... That is a numbering scheme with lots of headroom. I agree that OLPC is the wrong name. There are reports that the software is now running, for example, on a Classmate PC. So any direct tie to OLPC is not necessarily appropriate. Maybe Sugar? something else? But there is not much simpler than 1,2,3... -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Paul Fox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: walter wrote: I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... as perhaps more of an outsider here, i'd say that this is not unambiguous. people with the laptops regularly refer to them as my OLPC -- perhaps encouraged by the unfortunate PC in the acronym. as for numbers: sequential is good, but starting higher than 1 might give room for adding structure later if necessary. (e.g. the 200 series of releases might be a break from the 100 series.) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's degrees) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Etoys] how to let activities write to file without risking security
On 08.04.2008, at 06:21, karl wrote: A activity with Squeak would be nice, and even useful :-) It could just be the Etoy dev image with write permission. Well, the Right Thing would be to check the image+changes files into the datastore. Problem is, it is unusably inefficient to do so currently because a Journal entry can only hold one file at a time. That means those two files would have to be pt into an archive and copied into/out of the datastore. Development images can easily grow to 50 or 100 MB, so this is not really an option. Even copying 20 MB takes a while. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
hmm, Sugar aims to be available as an alternative desktop in all kinds of linux distros, so would be a bad name for an OLPC-made distro. Tomeu On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This discussion reminds me of a favorite puzzle from Douglas Hofstadter 0, 1, 2, 3, 720!, ... That is a numbering scheme with lots of headroom. I agree that OLPC is the wrong name. There are reports that the software is now running, for example, on a Classmate PC. So any direct tie to OLPC is not necessarily appropriate. Maybe Sugar? something else? But there is not much simpler than 1,2,3... -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Paul Fox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: walter wrote: I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... as perhaps more of an outsider here, i'd say that this is not unambiguous. people with the laptops regularly refer to them as my OLPC -- perhaps encouraged by the unfortunate PC in the acronym. as for numbers: sequential is good, but starting higher than 1 might give room for adding structure later if necessary. (e.g. the 200 series of releases might be a break from the 100 series.) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's degrees) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
True. How about OLPC-Fedora.1, ... -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hmm, Sugar aims to be available as an alternative desktop in all kinds of linux distros, so would be a bad name for an OLPC-made distro. Tomeu On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This discussion reminds me of a favorite puzzle from Douglas Hofstadter 0, 1, 2, 3, 720!, ... That is a numbering scheme with lots of headroom. I agree that OLPC is the wrong name. There are reports that the software is now running, for example, on a Classmate PC. So any direct tie to OLPC is not necessarily appropriate. Maybe Sugar? something else? But there is not much simpler than 1,2,3... -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Paul Fox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: walter wrote: I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... as perhaps more of an outsider here, i'd say that this is not unambiguous. people with the laptops regularly refer to them as my OLPC -- perhaps encouraged by the unfortunate PC in the acronym. as for numbers: sequential is good, but starting higher than 1 might give room for adding structure later if necessary. (e.g. the 200 series of releases might be a break from the 100 series.) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's degrees) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On 07.04.2008, at 23:50, Ties Stuij wrote: Hey list, At OLE Nepal we need to let our etoys image allow writing to disk, however under rainbow the image is executed under another user id. What's the way to give an/our activity permission to write to certain directories without just making them world writable, which is surely not the way to go. What directory do you think you need write access to? - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
The prefix is much longer than the actual information that the name is supposed to provide ;-) p. Walter Bender wrote: True. How about OLPC-Fedora.1, ... -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Tomeu Vizoso [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hmm, Sugar aims to be available as an alternative desktop in all kinds of linux distros, so would be a bad name for an OLPC-made distro. Tomeu On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This discussion reminds me of a favorite puzzle from Douglas Hofstadter 0, 1, 2, 3, 720!, ... That is a numbering scheme with lots of headroom. I agree that OLPC is the wrong name. There are reports that the software is now running, for example, on a Classmate PC. So any direct tie to OLPC is not necessarily appropriate. Maybe Sugar? something else? But there is not much simpler than 1,2,3... -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Paul Fox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: walter wrote: I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... as perhaps more of an outsider here, i'd say that this is not unambiguous. people with the laptops regularly refer to them as my OLPC -- perhaps encouraged by the unfortunate PC in the acronym. as for numbers: sequential is good, but starting higher than 1 might give room for adding structure later if necessary. (e.g. the 200 series of releases might be a break from the 100 series.) paul =- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's degrees) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos Graduate student Viral Communications MIT Media Lab Tel: +1 (617) 459-6058 http://www.mit.edu/~ypod/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 10:38 -0400, Walter Bender wrote: Is Uruguay even using 703? Peru is. Mexico probably will... Mongolia probably will... Ok, maybe it was Mexico-703 but for reasons you state below that is the wrong way to go. OLPC-1, OLPC-2 , etc. sounds good to me. While I like the discipline that is suggested by a date scheme, it doesn't really add much real value over simply sequential numbering. We certainly should avoid using seasonal names, as that will cause hemispheric confusion. As far as a feature-based scheme, that will just increase the pressure to do an end-run around our renewed pledge to do time-based releases. I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... -walter -- === I don't know what Descartes' got, But booze can do what Kant cannot. -- Mike Cross === Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
XO-specific training for a support technician
howdy, I am training two teachers from our pilot schools how to maintain the XO, XS, and networking equipment. I have create a wiki page of the training program I have put together http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:_Support_Training i would very much appreciate the input of others. I have lots of good linux resources for them but I am trying to find a good wiki page that summarizes how the XO's distro differs from others. The differences seems to be spread out among many different pages. I am lazy so I am hoping there is a wiki page that summarizes how the XO's distro is different and XO-specific commands like sugar-control-panel and sugar-install-bundle. Any input to the training program would be much appreciated. Esp. if someone knows a better all-around Linux guide that Rute user guide to linux The amazing thing is how enthusiastic Neema and Manoj are (the teachers). thanks -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Here is my two cents on this subject. start-of-rant I worked for over ten years on a project that shipped software to states for localization and redistribution to their schools every fall. The following was true all of those years. The people that did the redistribution wanted a predictable schedule of when the software would arrive so that they could plan their work accordingly. The states did localization and training on each release so they needed to know what was going to change ahead of time. Bug fixes that fixed show stopping bugs were welcome at any time. They REALLY REALLY did not want to get releases at arbitrary times. They were much more interested in things working than in getting the lastest wiz-bang feature. end-of-rant It seems to me that having two releases each year would allow a region to select the ONE that ties into their new school year the best. To avoid use of any one calendar the ship dates could be on the solstices. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
The right answer to the naming question depends on the meta-question of what will we be releasing. Are we going to continue down the path of bundling the OS and the activities into one giant release wad, or will we split out the separate components (OS, sugar, core activities) and release them on separatel schedules? The one giant wad approach allows coordination between the components, making it possible to do flag day changes. But it also makes it likely that releases will drag out indefinitely. Ultimately, I think we will need to consider the components separately, at least for some minor releases. That being the case, the naming scheme needs to identify the component. OLPC-Component Generation Ordinal Component is, e.g., OS or Sugar or Activities Generation changes on flag day releases that make coordinated changes across all components Ordinal is 1,2,3,... incrementing on every individual component release, not coordinated across components. Walter Bender wrote: I think we are all in complete agreement re predictable release schedules. It is the naming scheme we are struggling with. -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Kent Loobey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here is my two cents on this subject. start-of-rant I worked for over ten years on a project that shipped software to states for localization and redistribution to their schools every fall. The following was true all of those years. The people that did the redistribution wanted a predictable schedule of when the software would arrive so that they could plan their work accordingly. The states did localization and training on each release so they needed to know what was going to change ahead of time. Bug fixes that fixed show stopping bugs were welcome at any time. They REALLY REALLY did not want to get releases at arbitrary times. They were much more interested in things working than in getting the lastest wiz-bang feature. end-of-rant It seems to me that having two releases each year would allow a region to select the ONE that ties into their new school year the best. To avoid use of any one calendar the ship dates could be on the solstices. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as a feature-based scheme, that will just increase the pressure to do an end-run around our renewed pledge to do time-based releases. I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... I generally agree but rather than just incrementing numbers, we can use the opportunity to use it to communicate api, stability and feature deltas. After having worked in projects with many schemes, I find that the best communicator is a 3-part release name x.y.z where... - X is the major release name. Many projects stay in 0 until the first feature-complete/stable-api release comes out the door to claim 1. - Y is the minor feature incremental version - Z is the bugfix level So - 0.3.2 means we are on our way to feature-complete, this is the 3rd add-feature release, 2nd bugfix release - 1.0.4 is the release you want to put on machines in a country with areas so remote that you can only visit for an upgrade every 2 years - 1.5.0 means we are on a stable api, 5th feature release, just issued. Conservative people may wish to wait until 1.5.2 for example, unless something in the 1.5.0 changelog is a must have feature. - 2.0 means some APIs have changed, your Sugarized app is very likely to break. While we crank out builds and while in development we can call them anything, the important thing is the label on the release. It is the most succint means of communication with decision-makers, big and small. As such it should be a clear indication of what kind of things I'll find in the changelog, specially for those users that will not read the changelog. cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
I think we are all in complete agreement re predictable release schedules. It is the naming scheme we are struggling with. -walter On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Kent Loobey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here is my two cents on this subject. start-of-rant I worked for over ten years on a project that shipped software to states for localization and redistribution to their schools every fall. The following was true all of those years. The people that did the redistribution wanted a predictable schedule of when the software would arrive so that they could plan their work accordingly. The states did localization and training on each release so they needed to know what was going to change ahead of time. Bug fixes that fixed show stopping bugs were welcome at any time. They REALLY REALLY did not want to get releases at arbitrary times. They were much more interested in things working than in getting the lastest wiz-bang feature. end-of-rant It seems to me that having two releases each year would allow a region to select the ONE that ties into their new school year the best. To avoid use of any one calendar the ship dates could be on the solstices. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Actually, it is a bit more complicated; whether we should reflect this in numbering, is, however, less clear to me. We have network protocols in the presence service we depend on, and which fundamentally affect interoperability between applications (flag days). I also posit we're very likely to have to face at least one more flag day before we reach long term stability in these protocols. Changes to these protocols *may or may not* involve binary changes to activities; sometimes these will, and sometimes libraries may hide them and they not be visible to the activities (though very visible to the person using the aggregated system). So since this seems to be a long winded discussion, I wanted to point this out; even if I don't have a proposal for a numbering scheme. - Jim On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 14:30 -0300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as a feature-based scheme, that will just increase the pressure to do an end-run around our renewed pledge to do time-based releases. I'm in favor of Dennis's suggestion. OLPC-1; OLPC-2, ... It is simple and, I argue, unambiguous. The hardware is XO-1, XO-2... I generally agree but rather than just incrementing numbers, we can use the opportunity to use it to communicate api, stability and feature deltas. After having worked in projects with many schemes, I find that the best communicator is a 3-part release name x.y.z where... - X is the major release name. Many projects stay in 0 until the first feature-complete/stable-api release comes out the door to claim 1. - Y is the minor feature incremental version - Z is the bugfix level So - 0.3.2 means we are on our way to feature-complete, this is the 3rd add-feature release, 2nd bugfix release - 1.0.4 is the release you want to put on machines in a country with areas so remote that you can only visit for an upgrade every 2 years - 1.5.0 means we are on a stable api, 5th feature release, just issued. Conservative people may wish to wait until 1.5.2 for example, unless something in the 1.5.0 changelog is a must have feature. - 2.0 means some APIs have changed, your Sugarized app is very likely to break. While we crank out builds and while in development we can call them anything, the important thing is the label on the release. It is the most succint means of communication with decision-makers, big and small. As such it should be a clear indication of what kind of things I'll find in the changelog, specially for those users that will not read the changelog. cheers, martin -- Jim Gettys One Laptop Per Child ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: After having worked in projects with many schemes, I find that the best communicator is a 3-part release name x.y.z where... Which is what Richard is saying too, except he is clearer ;-) For builds that are custom in some way (Mexico as mentioned above), the customisation has to be last, so - 1.0.33 - 1.0.33-Mexico is clear. As for a name, I would say XOOS or XO-OS. That would make my ISOs XS-OS, which makes sense. In both cases, it is a complete OS image. Someone may package the subset that is Sugar and its apps separately. Therefore we can later say that XOOS-1.0.33 and XSOS-0.5.3 have been tested together, and that carries a ton of information that, for anyone following the versioning conventions used all around, is easy to decompress and interpret. For example, if you are using XOOS-1.0.32 with XSOS-0.5.3 you probably need not worry, and in any case, a quick read of the changelog for XOOS-1.0.33 will show you if any bugfix is desirable to you. cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have network protocols in the presence service we depend on, and which fundamentally affect interoperability between applications (flag days). I also posit we're very likely to have to face at least one more flag day before we reach long term stability in these protocols. Good point. When we know we have such incompatibilities, with the major.minor.bugfix scheme we can say: XOOS-1.1.0 onwards is not compatible with XSOS-0.5.x or earlier - you need at least XSOS-0.6.0 and people will be able to interpret that quite well. They will also be able to tell that they can go XOOS-1.9.x as far as that little x goes without breaking compat. Once we've reached 1.0.0 on both projects (the dates should hopefully converge ;-) ), we are making an implicit promise that we won't have a major flag day in the medium term -- so I don't think we should call today's XO build anything close to 1.0.0. The 1.0.0 should be the release we stay backwards compatible with for a long time, and we should pile up flag-days and unleash them unto the world the day we hop to 2.0.0. (I suspect this will be hard and impossible to do 100%) cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Perhaps it would be better to use a letter instead of a number for the generation code (major release). When confronted with a string of several numbers, the human mind tends to blank out. For some reason, letter - number - number is easier to remember and say than number - number - number . For definiteness, use US ASCII upper case. Hopefully, the generation number will change only infrequently. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Project name: TabletUI is set up
Mon, 7 Apr 2008 17:01:34 -0400, Patrick Dubroy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. Project name: TabletUI Done. Your tree is here: git+ssh://[EMAIL PROTECTED]/git/activities/tabletuihttp://[EMAIL PROTECTED]/git/activities/imagetosound Please follow instructions here for importing your project: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Importing_your_project Let us know if you have any problems with your tree. Happy hacking. Cheers, -- Henry Edward Hardy [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:59 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Perhaps it would be better to use a letter instead of a number for the generation code (major release). When confronted with a string of several numbers, the human mind tends to blank out. For some reason, letter - number - number is easier to remember and say than number - number - number . For definiteness, use US ASCII upper case. Hopefully, the generation number will change only infrequently. That's a good point, considering that I've heard people talk about Ubuntu 7 or 7.1 when the version numbers are actually 7.04 and 7.10. People are familiar with the decimal system, but seven point ten makes no sense to them. Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Mini-conference followup
Hi Scott, On Monday 07 April 2008 22:14, C. Scott Ananian wrote: I've got 11 DV tapes on my desk containing the mini-conference proceedings. We had to return the DV camera we were using to MIT, but hopefully we can borrow another one to get the bits off the tapes, and then I'll be transcoding and posting the talks as time permits. I'll let you know as I progress. If anyone would like to volunteer to help, that would be appreciated! I can give you a commandline to grab the tapes with dvgrab (you want raw dv as container..) and a little script to encode to theora with ffmpeg2theora. (I guess you dont care about mpeg ;-) I _guess_ the first is mentioned on http://layer-acht.org/video - for the second I'll send a seperate mail when I'm online again. (It's really just ffmpeg2theora with some fancy options, but it takes some time to find those.) I would also love to see a (probably gstreamer based) script to encode to dirac (the new codec developed by the BBC aimed a high quality videos), so far I've only found oggconvert, which supports a variaty of codecs but is only GUI based. I haven't looked into this myself, as the one time I tried to convert to dirac, I could only encode videos with it, but not decode aka view them... regards, Holger pgpwDb6l4CMXq.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
list server downtime
We had two hours downtime just now of our mailing lists due to an upgrade to pedal.laptop.org. We have restarted mailman and are testing the service now. --HH. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Latest news from Intel
Sorry for cross posting. Could not resist myself. Please, visit the link below. Some of you might have read it already. There's a substantial mention of OLPC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7334518.stm Regards, -- Prakhar Agarwal Technical Head - Library RD Team 3rd Year B.Tech, IT JIIT University,Noida Life is the greatest teacher ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Thread Summary. to date.
Can't tell your players without a program Micheal stone: no problem Andres Salomon: hmm. Apple Blueberry (named alphabetical) Gary Martin: No, official-703.. No to OLPC2 thats hardware Dennis Gilmore: OLPC2. Oh, an the next hardware is XO-2 and should have same releases. Simon: 802.month or 802.season to push exact time. OLPC-2 type naming for feature based. Morgan: use internal names without exact ship times in case we missed. Arron Konstom: outward consistency counts. No update-1-703, even if we did it before Walter Bender: Seasons are out. Feature based naming will slip. XO-2 is hardware. OLPC-2, er Sugar-2, is software. Or, OLPC-Fedora 1, or..er, names are hard. Well, ship based on time. Paul Fox: OLPC doesn't sound like software. Start with high numbers. Tomeu Vizoso: Sugar sounds like software. Kent Loobey: Schools really want predictable dates. Let's use solstices which aren't. Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos: Prefixes shouldn't get to long. Richard Smith: How about feature based? hardware version.major software.minor software Mitch Bradley: What are we releasing? OLPC component Generation Ordinal Jim Gettys: Note that OS protocol changes may or may not change all Activity binaries. Martin Langoff: Feature based, major software (API).minor software (Stability).bugfix - country, with some interaction with ISO numbers. Let's start with 0. something since the API isn't stable. Mitch Bradley: Feature based with letters, .10 doesn't work too well. Morgan Collect: Right 7.10 is said as 7.1 and 7.04 and 7 -- Charles Merriam ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
Here's may proposal:
OLPC Year components major:minor [- special_build]
OLPC 2008 OS 1:0 - Mexico
OLPC 2009 Activity Bundle 2:14
SPE 2009 Student Bundle 1:0 - Approved by Sec. Mota
OLPC = Built by OLPC. If the Secretariat of Public Education builds a
custom, they name it SPE or anything not OLPC.
Year = The year (). This provides a simple, human readable, first
classification. It does encourage upgrading once a year and lets OLPC
easily drop support for versions two years old.
Components = The components included, e.g., School Server, OS,
Activity Bundle, Great Books, etc.
Major = Version numbers that restart every year. That is, 2008 OS
1.0 and 2009 OS 1.0 are different. As currently stated, OLPC F. is
pushing for two major updates per year 1.x and 2.x. Components
with the same major versions are generally expected to play together.
Minor = Yes, there will be patches and bug fixes. People should
decide if this should start at 0 for each {Component, Major Version}
or just for each {Component}. The latter would mean that one couldn't
tell how many patches were applied to the OS component, but would
know that 2008 OS 1:14 was built after 2008 Activity Bundle 1:13.
I'm in favor of just this latter scheme, because the shorthand 1:14
becomes unambiguous.
Special Build = A special build for a market or reason. So, - ISO
3166 CountryName or - G2G1 Build or whatever. While it may seem
redundant to the minor version, it makes it easy to parse.
People will use shorthands to describe this:
* OLPC 2008 1 means the first (April-ish) release of everything.
* OS 1:15 or 1:15 means the specific version for the current year.
* 2008 - Mexico means the build Mexico choose for the yearly deployment.
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Re: Build Debate: Followup on Build Naming
On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 14:40 -0300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: After having worked in projects with many schemes, I find that the best communicator is a 3-part release name x.y.z where... Which is what Richard is saying too, except he is clearer ;-) For builds that are custom in some way (Mexico as mentioned above), the customisation has to be last, so - 1.0.33 - 1.0.33-Mexico is clear. As for a name, I would say XOOS or XO-OS. That would make my ISOs XS-OS, which makes sense. In both cases, it is a complete OS image. Someone may package the subset that is Sugar and its apps separately. Therefore we can later say that XOOS-1.0.33 and XSOS-0.5.3 have been tested together, and that carries a ton of information that, for anyone following the versioning conventions used all around, is easy to decompress and interpret. For example, if you are using XOOS-1.0.32 with XSOS-0.5.3 you probably need not worry, and in any case, a quick read of the changelog for XOOS-1.0.33 will show you if any bugfix is desirable to you. cheers, martin I guess I changed my mind the x.y.z names seem the best system of all the suggestions. -- === Never ask the barber if you need a haircut. === Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Record activity broken in joyride-1842
I updated my g1g1 with the usual olpc-update -r -f joyride-1842 The update went ok, but when I attempted to play with the record activity, the camera doesn't give the normal video feedback, the image is frozen and can not take a picture. Switching from Video to Photo will cause the image on the display to update once then freeze again. If I alt tab to the Journal activity and alt tab back, it again takes one picture and freezes. Full power cycle does not fix it. Record and Journal are the only two activities running. Mark ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn on HB5000
I talked with Ryan Croke of Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn's office today. They are keen on this project, and would like to arrange for us to assist in getting the program designed for the best possible outcome. HB5000 is moving rapidly through the House, and will then go to the Senate, which is likely to turn it over to the Education Committee for public hearings. We should organize to bring our XOs and our children to Springfield for the hearings. Among the questions: Schools will be allowed to choose from among the available laptops. The program should capture the differences in outcomes between schools using different hardware and software, using appropriate measures LG Quinn's office agrees. Nicholas Negroponte is strongly opposed to bake-offs, but the world doesn't work the way he wants. We need to work with the legislature, the Education authority, and with schools on appropriate integration of laptops into curricula, and provide at least draft versions of electronic textbooks on all requested subjects. Much of what we want to do has yet to be designed. In fact, the software that we want to build the textbooks on has in some major cases yet to be designed. How much can we promise for the start of the next school year in September? That depends very strongly on who steps up to do it. It is very important in pilot projects to do good experimental design before hand so that the results contain usable information, not merely data. We need to talk to people who know something about these issues, who also understand what we are trying to measure. What training can be put together for the summer before? We need to demonstrate the meaning and value of learning by doing through collaborative discovery, aka Constructionism. Then we need to provide the toolkit for teachers to apply it, and provide feedback mechanisms so that their experience and insights steadily improve the process. This program requires dedicated resources, and management, on our side and several others. That means that we need to look for funding. Anybody know a good grant writer? No Child Left Behind creates perverse incentives that can interfere with the program. Can we get waivers from the Federal Government for the trials? -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
jnlp activity
Is anyone familiar with the status of the jnlp activity? -- Steven M. Lewis PhD email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Latest news from Intel
FYI, HP also announced a lower cost ($500) laptop aimed at classrooms today. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8848583 2008/4/8 Prakhar Agarwal [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Sorry for cross posting. Could not resist myself. Please, visit the link below. Some of you might have read it already. There's a substantial mention of OLPC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7334518.stm Regards, -- Prakhar Agarwal Technical Head - Library RD Team 3rd Year B.Tech, IT JIIT University,Noida Life is the greatest teacher ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Cutting a slice of wikipedia - CDPedia
Yesterday we had a mini-sprint with argentinian pythonistas and we discussed Alecu's CDPedia which is a Python toolchain that does are good job of cutting a slice of wikipedia and cutting off the least interesting parts to make it fit. His project is here http://code.google.com/p/cdpedia/ and it would be great if Alecu could explain a bit more what it does -- I am sure I didn't do it any justice above ;-) So - Alecu, meet the list, list, say hi to Alecu ;-) I would love to see this progress -- we definitely need something like this to assist the localization teams to build a good content package for the XS. Are there related projects? I thought I had seen one but I cannot find anything now, so it was perhaps discussion about desired functionality? cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Chilling Effects paper at USENIX
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 A paper called Freezing More Than Bits: Chilling Effects of the OLPC XO Security Model will be presented next Monday at USENIX UPSEC'08 [1]. The author has kindly posted the paper at [2], which I discovered after Google took me to her weblog [3]. It may be of some interest. - --Ben [1] : http://www.usenix.org/events/upsec08/tech/tech.html [2] : http://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/article-1042.pdf [3] : http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374276.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH/CjiUJT6e6HFtqQRAl/wAJ9lJims/HjnFzZVk9oKVvfYxgBryQCfd3p+ t9sOdLNh7qRcS8F6m3MdcK8= =dK+2 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn on HB5000
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:28 PM, Bobby Powers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anyone looked into the Encyclopedia of the Earth / Earth Portal? http://www.eoearth.org/ They have several ebooks and online textbooks, and peer-reviewed content (to edit, you have to apply, and all changes to the public pages must be approved by topic editors is my understanding). It could be a solid way to get more content that is less collaborative in nature (as textbooks and some hard science reference material typically is) onto the machines. Just my 2¢. See also http://www.librarianchick.com/ for a catalogue of free electronic textbooks and other learning materials from many sources. yours, Bobby Powers On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 12:49 AM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I talked with Ryan Croke of Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn's office today. They are keen on this project, and would like to arrange for us to assist in getting the program designed for the best possible outcome. HB5000 is moving rapidly through the House, and will then go to the Senate, which is likely to turn it over to the Education Committee for public hearings. We should organize to bring our XOs and our children to Springfield for the hearings. Among the questions: Schools will be allowed to choose from among the available laptops. The program should capture the differences in outcomes between schools using different hardware and software, using appropriate measures LG Quinn's office agrees. Nicholas Negroponte is strongly opposed to bake-offs, but the world doesn't work the way he wants. We need to work with the legislature, the Education authority, and with schools on appropriate integration of laptops into curricula, and provide at least draft versions of electronic textbooks on all requested subjects. Much of what we want to do has yet to be designed. In fact, the software that we want to build the textbooks on has in some major cases yet to be designed. How much can we promise for the start of the next school year in September? That depends very strongly on who steps up to do it. It is very important in pilot projects to do good experimental design before hand so that the results contain usable information, not merely data. We need to talk to people who know something about these issues, who also understand what we are trying to measure. What training can be put together for the summer before? We need to demonstrate the meaning and value of learning by doing through collaborative discovery, aka Constructionism. Then we need to provide the toolkit for teachers to apply it, and provide feedback mechanisms so that their experience and insights steadily improve the process. This program requires dedicated resources, and management, on our side and several others. That means that we need to look for funding. Anybody know a good grant writer? No Child Left Behind creates perverse incentives that can interfere with the program. Can we get waivers from the Federal Government for the trials? -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Chilling Effects paper at USENIX
On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 10:24:34PM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: A paper called Freezing More Than Bits: Chilling Effects of the OLPC XO Security Model will be presented next Monday at USENIX UPSEC'08 [1]. The author has kindly posted the paper at [2], which I discovered after Google took me to her weblog [3]. This paper is depressing. Why didn't the authors step up and contribute instead of criticizing from the citadel? This paper is dead on arrival. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [OLPC library] Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn on HB5000
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:59 PM, Jameson Chema Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is fascinating. I would say that the first triaging you should do to make this a reality for September is to reduce the number of grade levels you target to an absolute minimum. More than 3 would be crazy, two is better. This is presently set up to be the choice of the schools or school districts. But we can of course inform them of the resources currently available, and what might become available. Possibilities: 6/7: pros: 2/3 of the students in a junior high, yet you can count on having most of them there for 2 or 3 years. cons: late grade = lots of testing; jealous 8th graders. 3/4 or 4/5 : good ages, but not good saturation. 3/6 : good variety, more logistics. Once you decide this, a lot more will follow. I want to do K-2. The laptop works well for illiterate users. It has a minimum of text and a maximum of icons in the Sugar User Interface, and we will have literacy software built in. I also want to do 3-5, the ages where we know we can have the maximum impact with programming in Smalltalk. We will have to have the whole discussion, and not try to optimize beforehand. Premature optimization is the root of all evil.--Donald Knuth, quoting C. A. R. Hoare Also I had a link for you: http://www.ck12.org/ -- just starting up but has some funding and possibly an inside track to getting more, trying to make open-source textbooks attractive to public schools, worth giving them a call to see if they are interested in (ready to) collaborating with you. Illinois would definitely be a feather in their cap. You need all the help you can get with can get with content. Excellent. They are just up the road from me. I'll go see them right away. Good luck! Jameson On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I talked with Ryan Croke of Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn's office today. They are keen on this project, and would like to arrange for us to assist in getting the program designed for the best possible outcome. HB5000 is moving rapidly through the House, and will then go to the Senate, which is likely to turn it over to the Education Committee for public hearings. We should organize to bring our XOs and our children to Springfield for the hearings. Among the questions: Schools will be allowed to choose from among the available laptops. The program should capture the differences in outcomes between schools using different hardware and software, using appropriate measures LG Quinn's office agrees. Nicholas Negroponte is strongly opposed to bake-offs, but the world doesn't work the way he wants. We need to work with the legislature, the Education authority, and with schools on appropriate integration of laptops into curricula, and provide at least draft versions of electronic textbooks on all requested subjects. Much of what we want to do has yet to be designed. In fact, the software that we want to build the textbooks on has in some major cases yet to be designed. How much can we promise for the start of the next school year in September? That depends very strongly on who steps up to do it. It is very important in pilot projects to do good experimental design before hand so that the results contain usable information, not merely data. We need to talk to people who know something about these issues, who also understand what we are trying to measure. What training can be put together for the summer before? We need to demonstrate the meaning and value of learning by doing through collaborative discovery, aka Constructionism. Then we need to provide the toolkit for teachers to apply it, and provide feedback mechanisms so that their experience and insights steadily improve the process. This program requires dedicated resources, and management, on our side and several others. That means that we need to look for funding. Anybody know a good grant writer? No Child Left Behind creates perverse incentives that can interfere with the program. Can we get waivers from the Federal Government for the trials? -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Library mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Chilling Effects paper at USENIX
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Joshua N Pritikin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 10:24:34PM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: A paper called Freezing More Than Bits: Chilling Effects of the OLPC XO Security Model will be presented next Monday at USENIX UPSEC'08 [1]. The author has kindly posted the paper at [2], which I discovered after Google took me to her weblog [3]. This paper is depressing. Why didn't the authors step up and contribute instead of criticizing from the citadel? This paper is dead on arrival. I think your reaction is dismissive rather than addressing the author's criticism. Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert, but it looks to me like the paper makes specific technical criticisms and seems quite detailed. I think it would be more positive and productive to respond to the technical statements made in the paper rather than to be dismissive and ignore what looks to some of us like valuable feedback. Regards, jaya ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: trac stopped sending email to the bugs mailing list ( [laptop.org #8969] )
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Noah Kantrowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Trac thinks it is sending messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Beyond that I can't actually check. Then could you please nail down? + Is the ML is working actually? I tried to ping the ML from my gmail account but my message was rejected (ofcourse! :-). + Was message sent from trac actually delivered to list server? /Korakurider p.s. As you could see in the subject line, this case has been escalated to olpc-internal trac. Please include the string: [laptop.org #8969] in the subject line if you have updates about this issue. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: trac stopped sending email to the bugs mailing list ( [laptop.org #8969] )
Nope, I don't have access to the mail server, so my testing stops at trac. --Noah On Apr 9, 2008, at 12:00 AM, Korakurider wrote: On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Noah Kantrowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Trac thinks it is sending messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Beyond that I can't actually check. Then could you please nail down? + Is the ML is working actually? I tried to ping the ML from my gmail account but my message was rejected (ofcourse! :-). + Was message sent from trac actually delivered to list server? /Korakurider p.s. As you could see in the subject line, this case has been escalated to olpc-internal trac. Please include the string: [laptop.org #8969] in the subject line if you have updates about this issue. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Chilling Effects paper at USENIX
It would have been nice if the criticisms had been delivered directly to OLPC, instead of broadcast in a public forum, where enemies of OLPC can cite and expand on them as evidence that OLPC is hopelessly screwed up, so you should buy our competing product instead. If you get my drift. I believe that the prevailing ethos in the white hat security community is to report newly-discovered vulnerabilities first to the company in question, thus giving them some amount of time to develop a patch before the public announcement. The authors appear to be academics, however, so they would get little credit for having contributed to OLPC security by privately contacting OLPC and giving us an opportunity to address their concerns. Publishing is the coin of the realm in academic circles. Jaya Kumar wrote: On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Joshua N Pritikin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 10:24:34PM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: A paper called Freezing More Than Bits: Chilling Effects of the OLPC XO Security Model will be presented next Monday at USENIX UPSEC'08 [1]. The author has kindly posted the paper at [2], which I discovered after Google took me to her weblog [3]. This paper is depressing. Why didn't the authors step up and contribute instead of criticizing from the citadel? This paper is dead on arrival. I think your reaction is dismissive rather than addressing the author's criticism. Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert, but it looks to me like the paper makes specific technical criticisms and seems quite detailed. I think it would be more positive and productive to respond to the technical statements made in the paper rather than to be dismissive and ignore what looks to some of us like valuable feedback. Regards, jaya ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: how to let activities write to file without risking security
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:16 PM, Bert Freudenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 07.04.2008, at 23:50, Ties Stuij wrote: Hey list, At OLE Nepal we need to let our etoys image allow writing to disk, however under rainbow the image is executed under another user id. What's the way to give an/our activity permission to write to certain directories without just making them world writable, which is surely not the way to go. What directory do you think you need write access to? Specific I was thinking about the squeaklets folder and the main folder, but I got my answers from an earlier mail from you to the list. See one of my earlier mails in this thread. /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Chilling Effects paper at USENIX
Moved the top post down. On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:21 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It would have been nice if the criticisms had been delivered directly to OLPC, instead of broadcast in a public forum, where enemies of OLPC can cite and expand on them as evidence that OLPC is hopelessly screwed up, so you should buy our competing product instead. If you get my drift. In the free and open source community, people generally post their technical opinions and criticisms in the open. If they're wrong, then we can say it, while moving forward, or if they're right, then we can fix it, and move forward. I believe that the prevailing ethos in the white hat security community is to report newly-discovered vulnerabilities first to the company in question, thus giving them some amount of time to develop a patch before the public announcement. If the paper provided an exploit or specifically identified a vulnerability then they should have sent it to you guys first. Did they identify a specific vulnerability or exploit? The authors appear to be academics, however, so they would get little credit for having contributed to OLPC security by privately contacting OLPC and giving us an opportunity to address their concerns. Publishing is the coin of the realm in academic circles. Agreed. Are any of their concerns valid? Thanks, jaya ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re:
Let me take a crack at it... The closest thing to a valid criticism here is that bitfrost does not protect political dissidents from government monitoring and control. Similarly, a valid criticism of my shampoo is that it doesn't protect me from falling satellites. Which is the bigger threat to 6-12 year olds? Retribution by the government for political activism or certain elements of the general society targeting them over the Internet for whatever reason? The XO security model has always seemed more concerned with the latter. I'm sure there are a few, but I haven't met many 9 year old revolutionaries. (But, if you're out there: probably you should reconsider unencrypted communication between government provided laptops to plot your subversive activities!) Is it even possible to design a system that both provides anonymity and permits close teacher oversight? Has anyone every tried in a public school system, typically a state-run affair staffed by employees of the government to seriously protect the students from government eyes and ears? Would any teacher or school system want to deploy laptops to their students that puts measures in place to lock them out of doing their job of taking care of their charges? This paper is half-baked. Generally their arguments almost get to a point but instead they leave you wondering how and why they bothered to get where they went. The authors need to go back to the drawing board and bring some more serious arguments to the table. -- John. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Get involved - Measure Activity on the XO
Perhaps someone @devel can comment... thanks Arjun On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Ravi Kondamuru [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Arjun, I am having trouble accessing git because of my corp firewall. Is there http access to the repository. My efforts so far have been unsuccessful. I was suggested git-http-pull/push. But that did not work. See below: I am still seeing some issue with doing a fetch? Is this the equivalent to git-clone? $ git-http-fetch git://dev.laptop.org/sugar-jhbuild fatal: Not a git repository $ git-http-fetch git://18.85.2.147/sugar-jhbuild fatal: Not a git repository thanks, Ravi. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] BOF on apachecon Amsterdam
Hi I am preparing the bof, thanks for your input! see http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/ when it's online again, I ll be on #schoolserver and might some help for anwering some question. time are not sure since i can't access their wiki. expected time: next wednessday 20:30 CET kind regards, Marten On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 12:34 -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Aaron Huslage [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - We are running memory-hog-webapps based on mod_php and mod_python in prefork mode... but we have very strict memory constraints. Any hints on how to compile apache (on Fedora and Debian) so that the memory is released to the OS pool rather than to the child process' private 'free' pool? I don't think this is currently possible. With alternative mem handling libs it has *always* been possible, but often unstable/unreliable on linux. Current apache programmers can - hopefully - shed some light into the current situation as now we have more alternatives. It may be that php and python are even ready for threaded worker model. Or that dietlibc has a different malloc. Or that someone has a special custom malloc we can use. Or perhaps FastCGI is the way -- hopefully not ;-) Note - I hate to speculate ahead. Hopefully the apache crowd will tell us what the state of things is. Another web server can probably do this (Lighttpd?), but that comes with its own issues. Exactly. And we lose what apache brings to the party. One way to be to run the CoDeeN code. I'm sure they would be willing to work with us, since I know they want to open source the code. ISTR jg telling me they are using a licensed proprietary proxy but I could be wrong. Are you in contact with them? I would love to see them around here :-) Otherwise, running mod_proxy on the XS with no caching The majority of XSs will have a horrible connection - we _need_ very smart caching working together with the upstream proxy as smartly as humanely possible. What needs to be configurable from mod_perl? What custom behaviours are we talking about, or is this just a general ask for future needs? We want - The caching and handling of 1.1 cache-headers to be solid. - The upstream proxy to be able to pass hints to the xs proxy of files to prefetch. These hints would initially be of popular resouces across schools and content we intend to push out, for example, for sw or content updates. - For some content, we may even add a SHA1 as a local etag to stuff that looks unchanging but doesn't carry etags, the upstream proxy can then buffer the response and save retransmission if the SHA1s match. This would allow us to workaround web apps that aren't cache-smart. As long as we can do this quickly - before http times out - we can save a ton of traffic. HTTP timeouts and other issues limit how much we can do here, but even within those constraints, I think we can do a lot. mod_proxy circa 1.3.x was completely closed to mod_perl and didn't even play well with other modules. It was excellent as a standalone module but it did not respect the request phases, so you could not combine it with authen/authz handlers from other modules. cheers, m -- Marten Vijn http://martenvijn.nl http://wifisoft.org http://opencommunitycamp.org ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] BOF on apachecon Amsterdam
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:48 AM, Marten Vijn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am preparing the bof, thanks for your input! Fantastic! Thanks for doing this. If you remember to keep notes and post something back (maybe CC'd to the key participants from the BoF) then we can continue the conversation online. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
