Re: to be deployed Epaati version is out!
I'm playing with Epaati-10 a bit. Entering Grade2/Math/Unit4/IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr and coming back (the instance of Project did get collected, but the accompanying PasteUpMorph serving as its world along with all objects and players are lingering. Now, I'm (again) looking at the issue so hopefully I get to something... Just a progress report, but the issue is basically around #rootsIncludingPlayers not finding all classes, and the problem is caused by a project that has scripts that reference to an object that was trashed. Namely, - You created object A and object B. - You wrote a script C at object B that refers to object A (This creates the uniclass for B). - You wrote a script D at object A that refers to object B. (This creates the uniclass for A). - You dismissed/trashed object B. - The project was saved. What happens is that to keep the script D running and project working, the system exports the object B into the saved project as well. But because it is trashed, it is not in the world, but referenced from the scripts. Epaati loads such a project, and upon exiting the project, it tries to remove the project. From #okToChangeSilently, #rootsIncludingPlayers is called to find the uniclasses used in the project. But the logic only looks at the objects in the world, and overlook the object B and the B's uniclass. Because B has a script that refers to A, pretty much everything in the project is kept because the world is reachable through A's owner chain. I still think Etoys/Smalltalk is almost suitable for what you are doing, but loading and unloading a lot of project in a session wasn't a typical use case. In a sense Epaati is stretching it. But it is fixable fortunately. One thing we definitely should do is to make #rootsIncludingPlayers better. I can think of a few different ways. One thing you should do is revisit your projects and make sure that every object refered to from the project to live in the project. IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr, for example, has quite a few of such objects. To check these guys, open a workspace in a fresh epaati.image, and evaluate: old := PasteUpMorph allInstances. Then load IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr and come back. In the same workspace evaluate: new := PasteUpMorph allInstances. new := (new copyFrom: old size + 1 to: new size). new := new select: [:e | e knownName = 'page']. and look at the submorphs of these pages bound to new. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Cerebro released
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (sorry for cross-postings) The first release of Cerebro is out! Cerebro basically offers scalable presence information and a simple collaboration API. Features currently include: - presence information (including distance and route) for all other users in the network - dynamic rate of updates based on density of neighborhood: No more than 1 update every 5 seconds (on average) guaranteed. - mesh network extended to regular 802.11b/g devices - extensible user profile including nickname, colors, keys, IP addreses, picture of arbitrary size, status message etc - file sharing using an efficient multicast mechanism - simple collaboration mechanism through 'share', 'join', 'leave' functions - simple programming API based on dbus (see examples) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cerebro Hi, what's the plan for putting this on the images? Thanks, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: to be deployed Epaati version is out!
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I think you used the display scaling a lot... The biggest problem with it is that it defaults to 32-bit depth Display and all artwork loaded into or created became 32-bit depth. You could look at the SketchMorphs in it and convert them to 16-bit (or even 8-bit with some loss of quality) to save the space at runtime and on disk. Good tip! Thanks. (It looks like halo is disabled in the projects. How can I get it back for debugging?) Press alt+shift+w, select 'OLE' at the top of the menu, and select author mode. One of our most pressing problems has to do with continual image growth, when opening multiple projects. After opening and closing around 20 projects on an XO, the amount of memory the vm uses (according to the vm stats), has climbed from 60 to 95 mb, and soon afterwards we get an out of memory error. First I thought that old projects were lingering around, but they do seem to be garbage-collected eventually. There is no reference or pointer to them to be found in any case. I haven't had the time to do any space profiling to see who or what could then be the cause of the trouble. I'm playing with Epaati-10 a bit. Entering Grade2/Math/Unit4/IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr and coming back (the instance of Project did get collected, but the accompanying PasteUpMorph serving as its world along with all objects and players are lingering. Now, I'm (again) looking at the issue so hopefully I get to something... Thanks /Ties ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Dailymotion videos on the XO laptop
2008/4/23 Sebastien Adgnot [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi all, I sent an email a few months ago to introduce you to Dailymotion and express our interest in making our videos available on the XO laptop as part of the OLPC effort. Through the efforts of the Dailymotion team, we have made great progress since my last email. I learned from the people on this mailing-list that the only / best way to display videos is with the patent-free ogg video container with Theora+Vorbis codecs. Today we are excited to present to you a web site as a proof of concept that we developed to show how we can best handle this format: http://olpc.dailymotion.com. It represents a very limited selection of videos just to test them encoded in ogg. In addition, the design of the web site represents an easy way to present the videos and might be not the final product. This is wonderful. I added you to the playable examples section of the Gnash page on the Wiki. We at Dailymotion remain extremely excited about the OLPC project and the possibility of developing a long term partnership with the OLPC Foundation. I saw in a previous email that we should try contacting [EMAIL PROTECTED] - which is handled by Darah for partnerships, right? That should be right, although I got a form letter back just the other day when I e-mailed her. Thanks for your help Sebastien -- 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
Sugar on Windows
On 24.04.2008, at 07:24, NoiseEHC wrote: Michael Stone wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 05:37:08PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote: I do know that to launch an effort to port to Windows will require resources above and beyond what are currently available. True, but there are many skilled Windows developers around (including F/OSS developers) who might assist with the work. Depending how you define Sugar, I think it can be as small an effort as 1 man. Since the majority of the code is written in Python, clearly I do not see too much work with it. I don't want to waste too much time discussing Sugar on Windows. But stating this is a 1-man effort is ridiculous - unless you are speaking of emulating a whole Linux installation. Python, and Sugar, rely on a huge hunk of libraries many of which are unix-specific. Even if you proposed to run on say cygwin this would still be a major effort. Proper porting to Windows without using wrapper libraries (which would reduce performance) would require an army of programmers, and most certainly the result would not be source- compatible with the Linux version. I'd be happy to see Windows programmers tackle this, it would benefit the kids that are deprived of using a Linux solution for whatever reason. But it should in no way diminish the efforts on the Linux side. Which is, IIUC, OLPC's official position, too. - Bert - ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: to be deployed Epaati version is out!
And, compiling textual code, including class definition, etc. in the file out part of the project is quite slow. I noticed that some projects have seemingly unnecessary class definitions of Players (I don't know why these are there), and if you can eliminate them in one way or another (you can see it in the that would help. The Football game project has fairly large class. I would suggest to have the class be part of the image so that the project doesn't have to compile the code upon loading. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Community-news] [sugar] where is Walter?
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try contacting [EMAIL PROTECTED] - which is handled by Darah. She is the best first point of contact and can get things going. I don't know. It seems like the brushoff to me. Darah Tappitake to me 10:50 AM (16 hours ago) Dear Edward, Thank you for your support in the OLPC Initiative. School communities in Illinois are working with the XO laptop as a result of participation in the Give Many and Give or Get one program. Through the dedication of these local groups those programs are operating successfully. If there is new development in the HB5000 we will receive notification from the representatives at the Lieutenant Governor's office. Thank you for your support, Regards, Darah 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 ___ 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: Sugar on Windows
You seem to miss this: Depending how you define Sugar... See? I don't want to waste too much time discussing Sugar on Windows. But stating this is a 1-man effort is ridiculous - unless you are speaking of emulating a whole Linux installation. I was talking about to port it so that anyone could run sugar activities on windows. Porting the whole shell is totally pointless I think, and replacing all the native windows apps would took years to implement. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] This project is rolling, so should OLPC
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Our pilots at Bishwamitra and Bashuki schools start this Friday and I couldn't be more excited. I wish I were there. I find this discussion about the future of OLPC frankly *annoying* and tiresome. Ivan and Walter found the reality far more annoying and tiresome than our account of it is. The future of OLPC isn't at 1CC. It's at pilot schools around the world. It's in the hands of kids. The software and hardware on the XO are at mature point where we can really see the impact on education. Sugar needs a lot of work but it is functional now, thanks to the heroic efforts of many on the Sugar team. You are exactly right, and Nicholas and the naysayers are dead wrong. I'm looking forward to the time when the kids can take over most of the programming, most of the localization, and pretty much all of the strategy. The key question about participating in OLPC shouldn't be what Negroponte or Bender are up to, it should be what Arjun Tamang uses his XO for on Monday in Nepal or what Marisol Gonzalez does w/ it in rural Peru. Yes, it should be. But Nicholas doesn't see it that way, and he has interfered quite severely in getting the work done here. As Bert says, Onward. There is much work to do. Debating the future of OLPC as an organization does little to advance OLPC as a global movement - which it very much is. Roll up your sleeves folks, let's make this happen. They won't go any higher. This is a work smarter, not harder, moment. If Nicholas is determined to pull resources off Linux development and turn them to Windows, disaster looms for OLPC. But Sugar will be fine, regardless, because most of the volunteers are ignoring the kerfuffle and continuing to code, test, and tweak. I'm still recruiting localizers and thinking about the design possibilities for textbooks and manuals for use on a ubiquitous hardware and software platform. And recruiting artists for one of them that I have mostly worked out. Edward Cherlin: If OLPC the organization isn't meeting your needs, start your own. We started our own here in Nepal and it was the best thing we could have done. That's funny. I thought that's what _I_ said, about forking Sugar. Well, I haven't given up on Nicholas yet, so you're going to have to either put up with it or filter it. We're not stopping the argument until we get answers one way or another. Walter is currently thinking about what to create and how. Mary Lou is in the middle of Pixel Qi's A funding round with the venture capitalists. I don't know what Ivan is doing. But I'm still here, trying to get it through Nicholas's skull that _he_ is the problem here. Right now he is dangerously close to, When I want to hear _your_ opinion, I'll *tell* it to you. Thank you for your support. -- Bryan W. Berry Systems Engineer OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar -- 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 : olpc kernel open80211s
Hi ; when running make olpc_defconfig, I have this error: can't find défault configuration arch/x86/configs/olpc_defconfig. I follow the repositoryarch/x86/configs/ I find 2 files: i386_defconfig x86_64_defconfig Thanks. - Message d'origine De : Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] À : wahida mansouri [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc : devel@lists.laptop.org Envoyé le : Samedi, 19 Avril 2008, 20h16mn 05s Objet : Re: olpc kernel open80211s Presently, you should be on either the master or stable branches from git://dev.laptop.org/git/olpc-2.6. stable is what's in 703. Then run make olpc_defconfig. This will give you the default OLPC configuration. Michael __ Do You Yahoo!? En finir avec le spam? Yahoo! Mail vous offre la meilleure protection possible contre les messages non sollicités http://mail.yahoo.fr Yahoo! Mail ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [squeak-dev] Re: to be deployed Epaati version is out!
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote: I'm playing with Epaati-10 a bit. Entering Grade2/Math/Unit4/IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr and coming back (the instance of Project did get collected, but the accompanying PasteUpMorph serving as its world along with all objects and players are lingering. Now, I'm (again) looking at the issue so hopefully I get to something... Just a progress report, but the issue is basically around #rootsIncludingPlayers not finding all classes, and the problem is caused by a project that has scripts that reference to an object that was trashed. Namely, - You created object A and object B. - You wrote a script C at object B that refers to object A (This creates the uniclass for B). - You wrote a script D at object A that refers to object B. (This creates the uniclass for A). - You dismissed/trashed object B. - The project was saved. What happens is that to keep the script D running and project working, the system exports the object B into the saved project as well. But because it is trashed, it is not in the world, but referenced from the scripts. Epaati loads such a project, and upon exiting the project, it tries to remove the project. From #okToChangeSilently, #rootsIncludingPlayers is called to find the uniclasses used in the project. But the logic only looks at the objects in the world, and overlook the object B and the B's uniclass. Because B has a script that refers to A, pretty much everything in the project is kept because the world is reachable through A's owner chain. Yes, there should be a similar mechanism as when you delete referenced method in the Browser, that open or list the scripts that references the deleted script or player. I still think Etoys/Smalltalk is almost suitable for what you are doing, but loading and unloading a lot of project in a session wasn't a typical use case. In a sense Epaati is stretching it. But it is fixable fortunately. One thing we definitely should do is to make #rootsIncludingPlayers better. I can think of a few different ways. One thing you should do is revisit your projects and make sure that every object refered to from the project to live in the project. IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr, for example, has quite a few of such objects. To check these guys, open a workspace in a fresh epaati.image, and evaluate: old := PasteUpMorph allInstances. Then load IIM4_2_money identification.011.pr and come back. In the same workspace evaluate: new := PasteUpMorph allInstances. new := (new copyFrom: old size + 1 to: new size). new := new select: [:e | e knownName = 'page']. and look at the submorphs of these pages bound to new. -- Yoshiki We get the environment tested thoroughly here and that is really good. Karl ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: sugar's amorphousness
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 10:31:22AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: as the paragraph below is being repeated and translated in newspapers all around the world, and Nicholas has started sharing his opinions with the community, I would like to ask a clarification about what he really meant with this and how we could address those concerns. Nicholas mumbles something on a mailing list and it gets translated and published throughout the world. Somehow, he has the attention of the world media. That's no small trick. I guess it's too late now to ask for a rectification. Is it? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: This project is rolling, so should OLPC
Bryan Berry wrote: Our pilots at Bishwamitra and Bashuki schools start this Friday and I couldn't be more excited. This is great! Are there any blockers left on which you could use remote help on? Did you solve the customized build issues you had? Best, Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: This project is rolling, so should OLPC
simon, thanks for your concern fixed the customized build problems. All ready for tomorrow. You guys should realize that about 80% of my time is taken up by logistics. Testing, organizing XO's, labeling them, etc. I spent 4 hours today packing the XO's for tomorrow. ah the joy. little time left for actual technical stuff. w/in the next few weeks hope to figure out how edit pre-boot image using puritan. Should be fun and under a lot less pressure then ;) On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 15:24 +0200, Simon Schampijer wrote: Bryan Berry wrote: Our pilots at Bishwamitra and Bashuki schools start this Friday and I couldn't be more excited. This is great! Are there any blockers left on which you could use remote help on? Did you solve the customized build issues you had? Best, Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Server-devel] Mesh connectivity from regular WiFi gear
Hi, i am about to contact the developer of the open80211s kernel patches to see what his status is, looks like the drivers are for zydas wifi sticks (not ralink) i just compiled his kernel tree with mesh support, but will have to wait till i get home on the weekend to dig out a usb stick with the chipset and then test it with my XO. also there is a ticket in the open80211s trac(or whatever he uzses) to add support to the b43 driver, so i'll see if mb___ can help him out with that one. if this goes well, it will be a matter of 1-2 days to add a profile/feed to the openwrt tree to provide images that support this feature. i'll send an update when i have news John Quoting John Gunkel [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2008/4/21 Holger Levsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi, On Tuesday 15 April 2008 19:11, Martin Langhoff wrote: what do we know about the possibility of connecting to our active antennaes with regular WiFi hardware, perhaps from OTS laptops using linux? using ralink wireless chips its now possible to use 802.11s in software, see http://open80211s.org/ - work on other chipsets is in progress. h... the AR525W is basically an embedded x86 box with a ralink miniPCI card. I think I am going to do some digging here Some openwrt developers (cc:ed) discussed last week to create an openwrt image for popular routers which usbports, for ralink wireless sticks. (IIUC) Has someone already tested the XO mesh with ralink sticks and open80211s.org? regards, Holger http://open80211s.org/trac/wiki/HOWTO-0.2.1 This page explains how to set up a mesh network using open80211s and a Airlink 101 USB wireless adapter, Model:AWLL3026. ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- De recta, non tolerandum, sunt! - Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [OLPC-GSoC] Congratulations to the winners - and to the rest
I agree; even I'd like to do my project anyway (Email client). That there is support from OLPC is very encouraging. I just have this pesky internship requirement from my university which has to be fulfilled this summer but hopefully OLPC would be good with considering me a 'remote intern' Let's see :-) crosvera wrote: Hello people: Frist I need to congratulate the people who are selected CONGRATULATIONS. Second, me like a rejected student, I was thinking that I will develop my app anyway, because the main idea of GSoC is get involved and keep helping. So for that reason I think that me an every rejected-GSoC-Student needs keep going with the OLPC project and helping :) Cheers... and congratulation again for the selected students :) see you... soon! On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thank you to everyone who applied; we had roughly 35 great applications this year, all of which will receive laptops via our developer's program. I've also proposed that OLPC fund some of the other top-ranked applications, and a few of you have been asked about taking on an OLPC internships instead. The application and discussion process has been great for brainstorming, and for matching potential mentors with coding experience with new developers -- this has been the best part of the month so far for me. Within OLPC, we have spent many fruitful evenings discussing where some of the proposed activities or projects fall within the framework of existing efforts (some of the results of which have made their way to the list). On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Jameson Chema Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, the automatic dev program enrollment and laptop would be great, and if actual internships are in the offing that would be great too; but I am talking here about some official title/award (words for your resume) for those that complete a project off some list of we agree, this is a great idea, and we have a mentor for you. (This is not just a hint for my own benefit - actually, as an older student, this would be less important for me than what I imagine it would be for the younger students with good projects). I couldn't agree more :) We are setting up such a program, specially for the great activity proposals, which we hope will become more common over the course of the year and not only in summertime; stay tuned. SJ ___ Gsoc mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/gsoc -- Carlos Ríos V. Estudiante de Ing. de Ejec. en Comp. e Inf. Universidad del Bío-Bío VIII Región, Chile ___ Gsoc mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/gsoc ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: This project is rolling, so should OLPC
Bryan Berry wrote: simon, thanks for your concern fixed the customized build problems. All ready for tomorrow. You guys should realize that about 80% of my time is taken up by logistics. Testing, organizing XO's, labeling them, etc. I spent 4 hours today packing the XO's for tomorrow. ah the joy. little time left for actual technical stuff. Ok I see. Happy to hear everything is in good shape :) Enjoy the day tomorrow, Simon w/in the next few weeks hope to figure out how edit pre-boot image using puritan. Should be fun and under a lot less pressure then ;) On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 15:24 +0200, Simon Schampijer wrote: Bryan Berry wrote: Our pilots at Bishwamitra and Bashuki schools start this Friday and I couldn't be more excited. This is great! Are there any blockers left on which you could use remote help on? Did you solve the customized build issues you had? Best, Simon ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: sugar's amorphousness
Nicholas mumbles something on a mailing list and it gets translated and published throughout the world. Somehow, he has the attention of the world media. That's no small trick. Without this level of attention it is hard to get sponsors and without sponsors it is impossible to manufacture laptops in China. Would it be unfair of me to say that Sugar wouldn't have the same opportunity to reach kids without the XO? There is a lot of good ideas in the world. But not so many good ideas implemented. Because reality poses obstacles and demands flexibility. Is flexibility a synonym to weakness? Remember the bamboo analogy? It is interesting that ideal and idea share the same root. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: on Sugar
This is fine except for one thing. Running Sugar on top of proprietary software means that sugar developers who have to deal with problems in the interface between XP , let us say, and sugar will have to know alot more about the XP side of the interface than MS$ normally reveals. Has MS$ agreed to cooperate in helping developers of sugar or revealing their trade secrets to OLPC? On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 12:06 -0400, Nicholas Negroponte wrote: People keep asking me: Yes, OLPCs commitment to Sugar has changed. It is now larger, not smaller. Contrary to inferences drawn by Walters departure, the press and venerable sources such as OLPC News, we are scaling Sugar up, not down. Let me explain. Sugar is a very good idea, less than perfectly executed. I attribute our weakness to unrealistic development goals and practices. Our mission has never changed. It has been to bring connected laptops for learning to children in the poorest and most remote locations of the world. Our mission has never been to advocate the perfect learning model or pure Open Source. I believe the best educational tool is constructionism and the best software development method is Open Source. In some cases those are best achieved like the Trojan Horse, versus direct confrontation or isolating ourselves with perfection. Remember the expression: perfection is the enemy of good. We need to reach the most children possible and leverage them as the agents of change. It makes no sense for us to search for the perfect learning model. For this reason, Sugar needs a wider basis, to run on more Linux platforms and to run under Windows. We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months, to explore a dual boot version of the XO. Some of you have seen what Microsoft developed on their own for the XO. It works well and now needs Sugar on top of it (so to speak). As a non-profit, humanitarian organization, OLPC has a unique position, from which it can change the world for children and learning. Laptop makers rushing into the low-end marketplace is a perfect example of success of one kind. Another will be what kids do outside school and with other kids around the world. A third is what we do. We are not a business, but need to be more business-like: meet schedules, manage expectations and fulfill promises. To do that, we need to hire more developers, work more together and spend less time arguing. Because of public attention, anything we say will be quoted out of context. We can only speak with our actions and those are only one: a reliable and ubiquitous Sugar. That includes being more collaborative engineers ourselves and engaging the community better. Our limitations are not financial, but identifying the required human resources and resolve to do so. What is in front of us is an opportunity for big change. Sugar is at the core of it. To pretend otherwise would be a joke. That said, Sugar needs to be disentangled. I keep using the omelet analogy, claiming it needs to be a fried egg, with distinct yoke and white, rather than having the UI, collaborative tools, power management and radios merge into one amorphous blob. Otherwise, it is impossible to debug and will be limited to the small, albeit growing, world of the XO hardware platform. As we reach out to engage a wider community, some purism has to morph into pragmatism. To suggest that this forsakes Open Source or redirects our mission is absurd. Kids will be the agents of change and our job is to reach the most of them. That is not just selling laptops, but making Sugar as robust and widely available as possible. Nicholas ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- === Be careful! UGLY strikes 9 out of 10! === Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: on Sugar
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Aaron Konstam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is fine except for one thing. Running Sugar on top of proprietary software means that sugar developers who have to deal with problems in the interface between XP , let us say, and sugar will have to know alot more about the XP side of the interface than MS$ normally reveals. Why? I've written many Python applications on Linux that also happen to work on Windows. --Tom ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Walter leaving and shift to XP.
Edward Cherlin wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:09 PM, Tom Hoffman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 5:40 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 1:27 AM, Torello Querci [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If is possible to use normal windows application on top Sugar+Windows the educational project is broken because the developers what need to write a program (program not activity) write it on windows because in this manner one PC with windows can run it, and XO XPzed too so why write code for sugar? In this scenario Sugar is dead and OLPC became a Laptop organization If Sugar cannot offer any advantages to developers writing applications for children beyond those already offered by Windows XP, it will fail regardless. It does, though, so it won't. Here are just a few examples. * We are now working on integrating the formerly separate activities. Among other things, we will be able to feed sound and other program output to Measure, and text-to-speech with karaoke-style text coloring will be available to all activities. * Sugar provides a standard suite of software functions that can be built into interactive textbooks. * Sugar is far easier to localize than other software, and a language community can do it themselves. the way they were talking most of those things would just be made into top level apis. Things like sharing would be available to all applications. If these functions are being made into apis then there is no benefit in developing for sugar. Why would any of us spend time developing a sugar specific app at that point? we can write a normal desktop app that uses sugar apis. We would get the same functionality with more portability. Sugar as a window manager would be marginalized and fail. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Re : olpc kernel open80211s
Hi, You *definitely* want to do a 'checkout stable' before running 'make olpc_defconfig'. On Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:38:00 + (GMT) wahida mansouri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi ; when running make olpc_defconfig, I have this error: can't find défault configuration arch/x86/configs/olpc_defconfig. I follow the repositoryarch/x86/configs/ I find 2 files: i386_defconfig x86_64_defconfig Thanks. - Message d'origine De : Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] À : wahida mansouri [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc : devel@lists.laptop.org Envoyé le : Samedi, 19 Avril 2008, 20h16mn 05s Objet : Re: olpc kernel open80211s Presently, you should be on either the master or stable branches from git://dev.laptop.org/git/olpc-2.6. stable is what's in 703. Then run make olpc_defconfig. This will give you the default OLPC configuration. Michael __ Do You Yahoo!? En finir avec le spam? Yahoo! Mail vous offre la meilleure protection possible contre les messages non sollicités http://mail.yahoo.fr Yahoo! Mail ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Internet wide chat
Le lundi 21 avril 2008 à 10:55 +0200, Bernie Innocenti a écrit : - how could a kid talk with his parents or teachers who are using a normal computer FYI, I did some packaging work and resurrected the video-chat activity. I was able to videocall my 2 XO's and to call one XO using Empathy from my desktop. The UI is still awful and we need to solve some issues (#1627,#6301) to properly integrate audio/video calls in sugar, but that's a start. If you want to test it, you have to install the bundle and packages from http://people.collabora.co.uk/~cassidy/olpc-video-chat/ on a Joyride install in that order: - gsm - libjingle - gstreamer-ffmpeg - gstreamer-plugins-farsight - farsight - telepathy-stream-engine - VideoChat sugar-install-bundle is currently broken in Joyride. That should be fixed soon. G. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Design for XO .. and how to acquire one?
Hello! I have a project to develop educational games for XO with pygame .. the problem is that I have the laptop and I do not know how to acquire it .. Talking with Luiz Claudio Schara Magalhães.. and he could talk you help me .. I´m from Brazil, state of Santa Catarina .. My address is: Rua Machado de Assis, 470-D (funds) CEP: 89802-310 City: Chapecó I look back! Thank you ... -- Att. Israel dos Santos - Abra sua conta no Yahoo! Mail, o único sem limite de espaço para armazenamento! ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] [Community-news] on Sugar
C. Scott Ananian wrote: On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Nicholas Negroponte [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For this reason, Sugar needs a wider basis, to run on more Linux platforms and to run under Windows. We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months, to explore a dual boot version of the XO. Some of you have seen what Microsoft developed on their own for the XO. It works well and now needs Sugar on top of it (so to speak). You have been saying variations of this for a while now, but: * OLPC has not hired any Windows developers * OLPC has not adjusted its timeline to allow for time necessary for such a port. What are we to make of this? Are you serious about Sugar on Windows or not? If you are, then you need to immediately hire *at least* 10 windows developers to actually perform the port, and inform the deployment countries that we are placing a hold on new development for at least 6 months while the port is prepared. And the result, of course, will be a new version of Sugar which is guaranteed to run *no better* than the one on Linux. From an IT management perspective, this is madness. If you are not serious about Sugar on Windows within the next year, please continue to avoid 'now' and use 'might' and 'someday' when you talk about it, and we'll continue to try to make Sugar-on-Linux achieve its potential. I approve of keeping OLPC's options open, in case your current development team (myself included) cannot deliver on Sugar's potential, but setting vague (and demoralizing) goals for future development -- without actually devoting the resources to achieve those goals -- is madness. You have only succeeded in alienating the developers you need to make Sugar-on-Linux work, without actually achieving any progress on Sugar-on-Windows. --scott The sugar team has accomplished an amazing amount in the time they've spent so far. However, there are so many features, like security, that were not implemented or implemented as well as they should have been. Several people said a lack of manpower was to blame. If more resources are available for porting to windows, why weren't more developers hired for the initial work on sugar? Is there new funding that is making this port possible? What I'm having a hard time with is how this new, much greater commitment can be honored when the initial undertaking was understaffed. Sugar was _already_ an integral part of the XO and it now seems like it was not given the attention it deserved. -Peter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Fwd: {OLPC Nepal} Re: [FOSSNepal] Re: Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP
-- Forwarded message --
From: Bibek Paudel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 6:18 PM
Subject: {OLPC Nepal} Re: [FOSSNepal] Re: Report: OLPC may eventually switch
from Linux to Windows XP
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi all,
While I personally think it is bad for OLPC to switch to Windows XP,
here a few observations that I have made:
1. Any development/education project meant for third world countries
is best when it is natively grown. A top down approach where some guy
in Boston teaches us how to change things in our neighbourhood is
never likely to understand and respect our situation and problems. He
has other priorities. A bottom-up approach should be devised where
grassroot organizations from different parts of the world collaborate
to form a mother organization that works in their benefit. Compare
this to Nepal's political situation where every other politician/media
claims to represent the people and be working for them. Things won't
that way in technology too.
2. Nicholas Negroponte is a man hungry of some position in history of
business and humanity, both. He thinks increasing the sales of laptops
is more important than the growing impact it is creating. Selling a
qarter of a million of laptops is a success by any means for any
profit-organization. I don't understand how it is not sufficient in
case of a first-of-its-kind project by a non-profit organization.
3. Nicholas Negroponte doesn't care. Using Windows in XOs has many
implications. Besides cost and the performance of the laptops, it
means you are forcing a company's products on all children. Compare
that to a government policy whereby it makes every school going
children mandatory to wear dresses from a certain dress-designing
company or study books from a certain publisher (eg. Ekta publishers).
Thats why we have a government book publisher and curriculum designer
in Nepal and government can't recommend any other books. I don't
understand how someone can impose the monopoly of using a
vendor-specific software on all kids. And why governments all over the
world should abide by that.
4. The issue of amorphic development of XO as said by Negroponte is
at best ridiculous. Having the best of the world's technology,
engineers and money at MIT, it shocks me how he allowed a project of
OLPC's scale fall at the hands of people who neither could have a good
architect for the software or the capacity to develop them
morphically. Had he never heard of the term software engineering
before? Why was the decision taken in first place?
5. What are all the people spread all over supposed to make of the
recent developments? At the behest of a single man or a group of such
men, should they be forced to change their working style, philosophy
and way of seeing things?
6. I wish someone starts a fork of Sugar and everything OLPC. Why not
Walter Bender? Start a fork. Or else the people at OLPC, if you have
all the democracy and its powers, why don't you remove such people who
are moving away from the OLPC's original principles? I just hope
something of similar nature happens.
If you agree with me, please forward this message to other mailing
lists of OLPC where people are likely to respond to this issue.
Cheers !
Bibek
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 5:50 PM, sarose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
hey dude! your grandpa is great but you know my uncle Negroponte is
fool nonsense because he now hate Linux.
About Ubuntu, i don't know how to pronounce it. Please teach me as
well.
Try a survey with your friends or co-workers around. The answer
screams cries utterly. Don't forget to submit back to Uncle
Negroponte.
On Apr 24, 4:12 pm, Zico [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 3:42 PM, sarose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
yes its bad news and a good lesson for the gnome/kde that has not
come
up with user friendly UI till this date.
You are very wrong, brother! Don`t you see the *blinking things* of
gnome/kde? And, how do you define friendly user interface? What more
do
you expect from Gnome/KDE? Please point out, we will be really glad to
hear
that.
just stop saying linux is ready for desktop.
Why should we do that??
neither its ready for my
dad nor its ready for my little brother.
I don`t know about your dad or younger brother, but Ubuntu is ready for
my
grandfather. Now, i am teaching my grandmother to use computer ( in one
word, Ubuntu ).
all its ready
for is server only.
Very wrong.
By the way, which distro do you use?
--
Best,
Z
--
Bibek Paudel.
http://blog.bibekpaudel.com.np/
==
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
OLPC Nepal
http://olpcnepal.org
http://wiki.olpcnepal.org
-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
--
Prakhar Agarwal
Technical Head - Library RD Team
3rd Year
B.Tech, IT
JIIT University,Noida
Life is the
Re: Internet wide chat
Hi Guillaume, FYI, I did some packaging work and resurrected the video-chat activity. I was able to videocall my 2 XO's and to call one XO using Empathy from my desktop. You rock! - Chris. -- Chris Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Joyride
Le mercredi 23 avril 2008 à 19:31 -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz a écrit : -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: | Simon Schampijer wrote: | | Chris Ball wrote: | | Hi, | | | | Can anybody suggest a relatively functional Joyride with the new UI | | ? I'm at the end of a think pipe, and probably won't have time to | | download a second image if the first is marginal... | | | | 1896 ? | | | | The new Journal design landed in 1895, and there were many sugar changes | | in 1894. I think 1892 is a decent bet. | | | | - Chris. | | | | 1895 has latest journal which has some changes for the new UI as well - | | I run it here fine. | | In 1896, I am consistently unable to open Write. Everything else seems to | work. I guess I don't recommend 1896, for that reason. I don't know | when this bug was introduced. As usual, I spoke too soon. The only activity that works under 1896 is Terminal. Everything else dies without producing any logfiles. It appears that this is due to the presence-service change in 1896. The only change is this new presence-service is https://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/presence-service;a=commitdiff;h=507e53d55d2f0767f35777e2db40abd654605f08 It shouldn't affect activities launching. G. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Joyride
Le mercredi 23 avril 2008 à 19:31 -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz a écrit : -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: | Simon Schampijer wrote: | | Chris Ball wrote: | | Hi, | | | | Can anybody suggest a relatively functional Joyride with the new UI | | ? I'm at the end of a think pipe, and probably won't have time to | | download a second image if the first is marginal... | | | | 1896 ? | | | | The new Journal design landed in 1895, and there were many sugar changes | | in 1894. I think 1892 is a decent bet. | | | | - Chris. | | | | 1895 has latest journal which has some changes for the new UI as well - | | I run it here fine. | | In 1896, I am consistently unable to open Write. Everything else seems to | work. I guess I don't recommend 1896, for that reason. I don't know | when this bug was introduced. As usual, I spoke too soon. The only activity that works under 1896 is Terminal. Everything else dies without producing any logfiles. It appears that this is due to the presence-service change in 1896. Write does work for me with 1896 (as the few others activities I tried). G. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Walter leaving and shift to XP.
On 22 Apr 2008, at 22:52, Aaron Konstam wrote: How may developers want to shift to developing for an XP based, rather than a sugar based , platform? stirs How many developers want to shift to developing for a constructivist language, rather than having to make an agonizing choice between a wide range of commodity operating systems ? http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762 /stirs - a ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
This document will give a technical overview of the challenges facing any Sugar on Windows project. Mary Lou Jepson of OLPC was proud of the fact that the XO did seven new things when most hardware projects try to limit themselves to only one new thing per product. I will outline the new things which the XO system intends to accomplish, and discuss the feasibility of each of them if/when reimplemented on a Windows substrate. I will start by addressing nomenclature. What do we mean when we say Sugar? Is it the activities? The zooming UI interface? The complete system? What do we mean when we say Sugar on Windows? For this document, I will assume that Sugar means the new things which are goals of the XO system. As we will see, some of these new things as easy to accomplish, regardless of underlying operating system, while others are extremely difficult or impossible. Clearly, what is meant by Sugar on Windows is that some subset of the new things will be implemented on a Windows platform. It is up to those who argue for Sugar on Windows to be clear about which of these new things they intend to accomplish; the costs and benefits of Sugar on Windows critically depend on this definition. I will present 12 items which comprise the current XO system. Most of these are implemented to some degree on the current GNU/Linux-based stack (Sugar/GNU/Linux), although several of them are works-in-progress. For each I will attempt a rough measure of the difficulty of porting or reimplementing this feature on a Windows-based stack (Sugar/Windows). 1. Sugar design guidelines. In this minimal Sugar on Windows proposal, the only thing common between Sugar/GNU/Linux and Sugar/Windows are the design guidelines. Windows developers would port existing applications (Word, for example) and provide simplified interfaces matching the Sugar UI guidelines, but these activities would not share any code or interoperate in any way with Sugar/GNU/Linux. The collaboration and other features itemized below would exist in Sugar/Windows only to the extent to which the original or newly-written applications supported them: native Word collaboration via a SharePoint server, for example, would replace the Abiword-based peer-to-peer collaboration of Sugar/GNU/Linux. This course of action is rather difficult, as it requires essentially a complete reimplementation of the XO software, but it imposes minimal coordination and other costs on the existing XO developers and no changes to the Sugar/GNU/Linux software stack. 2. Activities. The XO comes with a large number of child-oriented activities; see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities. One interpretation of Sugar on Windows is to merely port the activities to Windows, transforming OLPC into a pure educational software company. This course is moderately difficult. Python and GTK are cross-platform, of course, but in practice many platform dependencies are inadvertently added to Python/GTK code; any developer can tell you that cross-platform code which has not actually been *tested* on another platform is unlikely to just work on it. So some amount of work is necessary on *each* XO activity. Further, activities are written to a number of XO-specific APIs, including APIs for UI elements, collaboration support, and document storage. The easiest course is to stub these out with roughly-equivalent Windows implementations of the APIs. This would be sufficient to allow Windows developers to do a significant amount of activity development on a Windows machine, but the version tested on Windows would not actually have all of the functionality of the same code running on the existing Sugar/GNU/Linux stack. OLPC's developer base would be expanded, but the resulting ports would be developer-friendly Windows versions of the activities, not necessarily a kid-friendly versions one would expect to deploy in schools. A more aggressive pursuit of Activities on Windows would result in completely- and fully-functioning versions of ported activities, which were as kid friendly as the versions running on Sugar/GNU/Linux. This would inevitably entail ports of some of the other features of the XO; we will discuss the difficulty of implementing these other features in turn below and leave the reader to sum these for themselves. 3. Window manager: Mesh/Friend/Home view, frame, etc. This is a more difficult task than merely porting the standalone activities; this feature entails replacing the existing Windows file and application chooser mechanisms with ones which mimic that of Sugar/GNU/Linux. There are two implementation possibilities: writing a new Windows application from scratch which mimics this interface, or porting the existing Python code from Sugar/GNU/Linux. Writing a new Windows application is cheap in coordination costs, but entails completely rewriting this part of Sugar from scratch. This course would probably also make porting Activities (item #2) slightly more difficult, as
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
For sound support, the situation is similar. I believe that a larger number of basic APIs are used to access sound playback features than are used to access the camera and microphone, making compatibility more difficult. At minimum, we would need to use the windows port of CSound; it is not clear to me how much work on CSoundXO would be necessary. While I have no affections for Windows, I must say that at least that end of things should not be a problem. Csound is completely multiplatform, runs on Linux, Windows, OSX (and even Solaris). So whatever OS is used, we can be there. But I would very much prefer Linux (then OSX and Windows is a very far third place). Speaking of this, didn't Steve Jobs offer OSX for free to OLPC at the beginning, but it was not taken because of the lack of FOSS credentials (even though Darwin is FOSS, is it not?). It seems funny that now OLPC considers going Windows... I sincerely hope this does not come to pass... Victor ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
Hey Scott, thanks for this. It's nice to see a clear, unbiased analysis of a complex problem. It shows that there are some clear technical advantages to the GNU/Linux stack, while correctly stating that there are options for a Windows port which would not be impossible. I personally can't imagine that the experience would be any better for users, or a good use of OLPC's time and energy, and the apparent cost of community goodwill *should not* be underestimated by management. But if it means more sales versus the Classmate, a massive donation from the Gates foundation, and a large team at Microsoft working on the project, it may ultimately be for the best for the children to have Windows available as an option on XO (it's an education project, not a linux project). It's a calculated risk to be taken by the project management. Anyway, I use tons of open source software every day on Windows XP, and the fact that the operating system is closed source (as is the processor, motherboard, and video card) doesn't bother me. It's worth noting that I can install a complete KDE environment on my XP machine via Cygwin in about 2 hours. Major OSS projects like QT, Firefox and OpenOffice are pushing cross platform development with the aim of greater adoption, I don't see why that's such a bad idea for Sugar. Anyway, it's nice to see the OLPC core people are able to keep level heads and think pragmatically. Particularly when *you* were the one implicated by Ars Technica as extremely unhappy with Negroponte's statement and argue that his goals are not technically feasible. Best, Wade On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 2:32 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This document will give a technical overview of the challenges facing any Sugar on Windows project. Mary Lou Jepson of OLPC was proud of the fact that the XO did seven new things when most hardware projects try to limit themselves to only one new thing per product. I will outline the new things which the XO system intends to accomplish, and discuss the feasibility of each of them if/when reimplemented on a Windows substrate. I will start by addressing nomenclature. What do we mean when we say Sugar? Is it the activities? The zooming UI interface? The complete system? What do we mean when we say Sugar on Windows? For this document, I will assume that Sugar means the new things which are goals of the XO system. As we will see, some of these new things as easy to accomplish, regardless of underlying operating system, while others are extremely difficult or impossible. Clearly, what is meant by Sugar on Windows is that some subset of the new things will be implemented on a Windows platform. It is up to those who argue for Sugar on Windows to be clear about which of these new things they intend to accomplish; the costs and benefits of Sugar on Windows critically depend on this definition. I will present 12 items which comprise the current XO system. Most of these are implemented to some degree on the current GNU/Linux-based stack (Sugar/GNU/Linux), although several of them are works-in-progress. For each I will attempt a rough measure of the difficulty of porting or reimplementing this feature on a Windows-based stack (Sugar/Windows). 1. Sugar design guidelines. In this minimal Sugar on Windows proposal, the only thing common between Sugar/GNU/Linux and Sugar/Windows are the design guidelines. Windows developers would port existing applications (Word, for example) and provide simplified interfaces matching the Sugar UI guidelines, but these activities would not share any code or interoperate in any way with Sugar/GNU/Linux. The collaboration and other features itemized below would exist in Sugar/Windows only to the extent to which the original or newly-written applications supported them: native Word collaboration via a SharePoint server, for example, would replace the Abiword-based peer-to-peer collaboration of Sugar/GNU/Linux. This course of action is rather difficult, as it requires essentially a complete reimplementation of the XO software, but it imposes minimal coordination and other costs on the existing XO developers and no changes to the Sugar/GNU/Linux software stack. 2. Activities. The XO comes with a large number of child-oriented activities; see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities. One interpretation of Sugar on Windows is to merely port the activities to Windows, transforming OLPC into a pure educational software company. This course is moderately difficult. Python and GTK are cross-platform, of course, but in practice many platform dependencies are inadvertently added to Python/GTK code; any developer can tell you that cross-platform code which has not actually been *tested* on another platform is unlikely to just work on it. So some amount of work is necessary on *each* XO activity. Further, activities are written to a
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
Hi Carol, I believe MS LiveMesh is a higher level concept than the OLPC Mesh. I think it requires a traditional LAN environment first, and adds functionality on top of that. Whereas the XO's mesh feature creates a traditional LAN environment out of thin air. I could be wrong though, I haven't researched it in detail! Regards, Wade ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
On 24.04.2008 20:32, C. Scott Ananian wrote: 4. Journal and Datastore. One part of the zooming UI not discussed in item #3 (above) is the Journal view, the XO's replacement for the traditional files and folders metaphor. Our current implementation is based on Xapian, which compiles on Windows (but perhaps not much more): http://lists.tartarus.org/pipermail/xapian-devel/2006-March/000311.html That said, our Journal and datastore are in need of a rewrite. The current proposal (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpcfs) is not incompatible with a Windows implementation, but the implementation strategies on Windows and GNU/Linux would likely be very different. The most straightforward course of action would be to have two completely separate implementations of the same API. This course requires skilled Windows developers who are comfortable with NTFS reparse points and/or filesystem development on Windows. Developing a single implementation which is cross-platform is likely more difficult. I looked at the OLPCFS page and it became very clear that OLPCFS is virtually identical to what Reiser4 was initially designed to be. Almost all of the listed OLPCFS features were present in the first Reiser4 designs and almost all were repeatedly vetoed by the Linux VFS guys (Al Viro and Christoph Hellwig) for design reasons, not code reasons. So if you want OLPCFS, try early Reiser4 snapshots (maybe for Linux 2.6.4 or so) and add one or two features on top of it. Sorry. I wish the idea would fly, but you may be in for some very tough criticism if you intend to have anything with a concept like OLPCFS merged in the Linux kernel. Regards, Carl-Daniel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Organization was Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.)
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Mitch Bradley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A general observation about organizational behavior: Organizations do not act coherently to nearly the same extent as individual humans. Individuals change their minds, act in ways inconsistent with their stated goals, respond to different external pressures at different times, etc. With organizations it is even worse, and the larger the organization, the more complicated it becomes. Organizational leadership changes, goals and external realities change, internal groups vie for influence, compete with one another and work at cross purposes. Different people within the organization make statements that are attributed to the organization. Expecting an individual to behave coherently over time is dodgy at best; expecting it of an organization is almost certain to disappoint. In the OLPC case, the leadership at the very top hasn't changed, but the second tier has changed, and the situation and external pressures have changed drastically. Yes, the middle tier is now supposed to be Kim Quirk (Technology), Robert Fadel (Administration), Charles Kane (Business Development), and whoever replaces Walter in Deployment. Has anybody heard? The failure to announce such things is one of my biggest complaints. Kim and Robert are adamant about not supporting first world deployments, although they sort of allow them. GiveMany is a joke, and the OLPC community isn't permitted to discuss projects like Illinois (100,000 units proposed) with the staff. I haven't talked to Charles. That reminds me. Do we have any idea what the Boards of Director and Advisors think about all of this? http://laptop.org/vision/people/ Does anybody have contact information for them? I have a few e-mail addresses. Well, I'll ask. Dandy, Ed, Joe; Alan, Mako (all bcc) pass it on, please, and read the thread. We think that Nicholas doesn't know what he is talking about with this Sugar on Windows idea and dissing Open Source, that he is and has been dangerously out of touch with staff and volunteers, and that he is now endangering the mission. Problems like this are supposed to be the reason for a Board of Directors to exist in the first place, so we want to hear that Board members are taking the issue seriously, and preferably see evidence that you are listening to what is going on, and understand the issues. Advisors, any assistance you can give will be appreciated. This is the time to advise, if ever there was one. Nicholas's post http://www.olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/nicholas_negroponte_sugar_olpc.html Replies and related posts http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-April/thread.html#13140 On Sugar (Development) http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-April/thread.html#5173 On Sugar (Sugar) http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-April/thread.html#112 Where is Walter http://www.olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/open_source_fundamentalists.html http://www.olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/one_laptop_per_child_off_the_track.html http://www.olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/negroponte_is_further_gone.html http://www.olpcnews.com/people/leadership/walter_bender_resigned_from_olpc.html -- 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: [Community-news] [sugar] where is Walter?
An aside to all about mailing list usage : please stay on-topic. Community-news is for announcements only (despite having a brief discussion earlier this week), and devel is for code and development. I'm bcc:ing devel and copying olpc-open and grassroots lists, in the hopes that this is taken up there. Ed, Darah's email isn't a brush-off, OLPC isn't doing the sort of campaigning for that bill that you propose. That is a fine thing for OLPC Chicago (or any supporter) to do. And of course we are interested in seeing it and measures like it succeed. To some of your specific points: Not everyone knows everything about your project - though it's interesting to hear. Not my project! Illinois's! They asked me to make contact on their behalf. Who asked you to make contact on their behalf? How does one invite him to State Senate Hearings? Darah or who? Does he have an appointments secretary? Why would you invite Nicholas to a State Senate Hearing? What would that accomplish? I have the general sense that people would like to advocate for passage of this bill in the Senate, and that there are people who would like to show up at the senate hearing, but I'm not clear on who they are, where such a trip is being organized, or what the desired outcome would be. There is clearly some support for the bill -- would you aim to cement it? To oppose expected opposition or alterations? To push for specific alterations? Advocacy needs clear purpose. Here is the bill status, for those interested: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocTypeID=HBDocNum=5000GAID=9SessionID=51LegID=35963 SJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Potential Rainbow changes for #6797 and improved compatibility.
Friends, Pursuant to issues raised in #6797, I'm trying to figure out whether the module-preloading hack can be chivvied into a releasable state. Having written several tentative patches to this effect, I've decided that I might as well christen the code-review [1,2,3] list that Ivan set in his last days here. (As I understand it, the idea was that we should really be soliciting reviews on all our code [Sugar team++] but that the envisioned patch volume might make devel@ too hard to follow.) Please comment. Michael [1]: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/code-review [2]: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/code-review/2008-April/thread.html [3]: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
On Apr 24, 2008, at 2:32 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote: That said, our Journal and datastore are in need of a rewrite.[...] This course requires skilled Windows developers who are comfortable with NTFS reparse points and/or filesystem development on Windows. Developing a single implementation which is cross-platform is likely more difficult. The datastore wasn't ever _supposed_ to be a real filesystem, and so it could do various Unthinkable Things in normal FS land, such as only exposing a HTTP REST API which gets used through whatever frontend is convenient, e.g. FUSE on Unix. If such an implementation existed, you could temporarily half-ass a Windows frontend via, say, WebDAV, which Windows (AFAIK) supports treating like a filesystem OOB. This is extremely unlikely to ever work on Sugar/Windows. The changes to the XP kernel are too extensive, and the XP product has already reached its end-of-life point, making the return on investment very small. In meetings with Microsoft, they stated unambiguously that they are unprepared to make _any_ changed to the XP kernel, which is a shipped product, to accommodate the XO. Only changes that can be introduced through normal 3rd-party extension mechanisms (such as drivers) are acceptable, which means overreaching power management changes are out of the question entirely. We believe that basic sound support for the XO has been implemented in the existing Windows XP port. I am not certain of the state of camera and microphone support. If not yet implemented, these also require contributions from experienced Windows kernel developers with access to the Windows XP source. Why do you think this requires source access and can't be handled by regular drivers? -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
On Apr 24, 2008, at 7:52 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: On 24.04.2008 20:32, C. Scott Ananian wrote: 11. Bitfrost: initial activation security. ... For completeness, I will note that although passive and active kill theft-deterrence systems have been implemented on Sugar/GNU/Linux, only initial activation security has been deployed in the field. Passive and active kill systems entail large support costs which OLPC has chosen to date not to incur. AFAIK the hardware side of P_THEFT alias theft protection alias activation security/kill functionality has not been implemented, rendering all software efforts moot. In my opinion, shared by other engineers at Quanta, the proposed hardware side of P_THEFT would not have slowed you down much. Dremel-ing off the epoxy wouldn't take long. The effect it WOULD have is to add at least a hour (if not 24) of latency to the manufacturing process, and to decrease the manufacturing yield, both of which would have increased the price. I discussed this with numerous people at Quanta. On the other hand, I was told at lunch today by members of the Peru deployment that software activation is a critical and necessary feature. In previous deployments of computers, Peru saw a high theft rate in the delivery process. The activation process allows them to tell potential thieves and potential purchasers of hot systems that the laptops will be useless bricks. Have we made it impossible to steal and activate a laptop ? NO. Have we made it much harder ? Yes. Unless the manufacturing details have changed since my last inquiry, I can unlock ~4 XO machines per hour WITHOUT having a developer key. The only thing I need are some really affordable tools. If someone else disassembles the machines for me, I think unlocking 10 machines per hour is well within the doable range. Here in the US, the cost of disassembling, switching SPI flash chips, and reassembling approaches $60 - $70 dollars (I asked several small job shops for quotes.) For the record: I will not take orders for mass-unlocking unless ownership is proven. Thanks. wad ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: A technical assessment of porting Sugar to Windows.
On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 12:09 PM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The activation process allows them to tell potential thieves and potential purchasers of hot systems that the laptops will be useless bricks. That is the key message, and everything we can do to make it clearer, the better for kids and everyone. The Uruguay team has implemented their own activation/deactivation mechanism, sitting pretty high in the stack but with 30 day leases and blacklists. From what they say, it has been very effective as a deterrent. 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
An olpcfs experience report
Over the last few weeks, I've spent a fair bit of time producing several essay drafts and transcriptions of IRC conversations. Something you may not have known is that I did so on top of olpcfs [1,2]. Yesterday, 1cc experienced a power failure which briefly took down my working machine. Today, with some trepidation, I remounted my olpcfs and was pleased to discover that my data were intact. While I cannot claim to have stressed olpcfs in any serious fashion, I am happy to report that it is suitable for capturing versions of simple plain-text essays and that it maintained its data integrity through at least one hard power failure. On the basis of this experience, I encourage others to download it, follow the instructions, and give it a whirl: git clone git://dev.laptop.org/users/cscott/olpcfs1 cat olpcfs1/README Michael [1]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpcfs [2]: http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/cscott/olpcfs1 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Auto backlight management?
Bert Freudenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] The XO does not have an ambient light sensor. The backlight is not turned off automatically in sunlight. [...] Opportunistic use of the on-board camera and the time-of-day clock could yield such heuristics. - FChE ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Synchronizing xs-0.3 and xo-??? --- backups
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 4:22 PM, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll tidy-up and update http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_backup_restore - Done. Feedback welcome. It's Friday here, I'll be hacking on this on Monday (NZ time) so you guys have a chance to rip it to shreds before I start... 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 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Auto backlight management?
At Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:43:53 -0400, John Watlington wrote: Bert misread the spec. When the backlight is switched off, the screen automatically switches to BW mode. Why would you want to take that out of the control of the user ? Did he misread the spec? What you wrote here and what he wrote there: - There is, however, a DCON mode specifically designed for the b/w reflective case, the anti-aliasing can be turned off and a color-to- gray mixing turned on, but again, this is done manually (in the current UI it is coupled to turning off the backlight). - sound like the same thing. -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Auto backlight management?
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bert Freudenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] The XO does not have an ambient light sensor. The backlight is not turned off automatically in sunlight. [...] Opportunistic use of the on-board camera and the time-of-day clock could yield such heuristics. Yes indeed. I brought this up when we were in the keyboard design phase, but it was determined, quite fairly, to be too much effort for the overall gain, given the other components of the system and state of the software (both then, and now, for that matter). It seems that in the future this is a wise place to spend a little extra time, since it could actually have some high energy saving benefits if done well. Naturally, we could provide a way to turn the mode off in the control panel for that that don't want that kind of micromanagement. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Auto backlight management?
On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:39 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote: Opportunistic use of the on-board camera and the time-of-day clock could yield such heuristics. The camera lights up an LED when enabled, alerting the laptop operator to its use. This privacy-preserving feature would be rendered ineffective if kids got used to seeing the LED flash on and off every so often as the system autonomously attempts to adjust the backlight. -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Is security activation critical in Peru ?
Dear John and all, I will share some personal points of view in relationship with the security issue in Peru. I have work since 1979 with computers and I have trade and repair more than 20,000 computers from those early years. I can say that I know this field very deep from first hand. /On the other hand, I was told at lunch today by members of the Peru deployment that software activation is a critical and necessary feature. / is Software activation critical? If the XOs are deployed in the poorest towns then there is small possibilities for theft and robberies. In those small villages (with 100 families approximately) all of them know each other: you can not enter or leave the village without been noticed (or allowed). Those towns are from 3,500 to 5,000 meters altitude and there is around 5,000 in Peru. No young gangs there. If the XOs are deployed in bigger cities (that is the case for most of the XOs in Peru from the information that we have got) then there is a theoretical risk. /In previous deployments of computers, Peru saw a high theft rate in the delivery process. / Previous deployments... do you mean the Huascaran project then we (the public opinion, the media) doesn't have a clue about this. That delivery is an old fact, very hard to track its accuracy (but not impossible). If you mean XOs previous deployment then is the same: we, the public opinion and the media, and the Congress... we don't know a bit about that fact. In this case there would be high responsibilities for many people involved in the deployment. And I am 99.99% that the robbery has not happen without the participation of at least one person that knows inner things about the deployment (that is common issue, ask any police in your country where he would search). If the robbery has happen as part of a bigger robbery then it was an accident not related to some bad guys wanting to get some XOs, it was a general robbery. /The activation process allows them to tell potential thieves and potential purchasers of hot systems that the laptops will be useless bricks. / No way. It is just another wall to climb. You know Russians? well... we have some Peruvian groups that are as skillful as the Russians are. I don't say that with proud, I just letting know what happens here. There are Colombians experts that come to Peru to clone every bit of any digital system that you can imagine: credit cards, bank codes, computer security systems. It is, as you know, a matter of time, interest and resources. /Here in the US, the cost of disassembling, switching SPI flash chips, and reassembling approaches $60 - $70 dollars (I asked several small job shops for quotes.) / well... some guys here will be more than happy to ask just $10 for doing the same job (again my words come without any proud on them). I think that the critical things for Peru are : a) Guarantee that the XOs will be property of the children. b) Guarantee that there will be REAL content (not the kind that exist today, with just one author (not very known) with more than 30 dark publications). c) Guarantee that the XOs will be a COMMUNICATION system with the world (not only a communication tool between a very poor group of children that will construct their solutions based on their limited experiences without taking in account what the human race have develop during centuries). I ask your pardon for these so biased points of view. With the best regards, Javier Rodriguez Lima, Peru John Watlington wrote: On Apr 24, 2008, at 7:52 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: On 24.04.2008 20:32, C. Scott Ananian wrote: 11. Bitfrost: initial activation security. ... For completeness, I will note that although passive and active kill theft-deterrence systems have been implemented on Sugar/GNU/Linux, only initial activation security has been deployed in the field. Passive and active kill systems entail large support costs which OLPC has chosen to date not to incur. AFAIK the hardware side of P_THEFT alias theft protection alias activation security/kill functionality has not been implemented, rendering all software efforts moot. In my opinion, shared by other engineers at Quanta, the proposed hardware side of P_THEFT would not have slowed you down much. Dremel-ing off the epoxy wouldn't take long. The effect it WOULD have is to add at least a hour (if not 24) of latency to the manufacturing process, and to decrease the manufacturing yield, both of which would have increased the price. I discussed this with numerous people at Quanta. On the other hand, I was told at lunch today by members of the Peru deployment that software activation is a critical and necessary feature. In previous deployments of computers, Peru saw a high theft rate in the delivery process. The activation process allows them to tell potential thieves and potential purchasers of hot systems that the laptops will be useless bricks. Have we made it impossible to
Re: Auto backlight management?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Jordan Crouse wrote: | On 24/04/08 22:10 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | this is the one drawback to the fantasic screen, any light from the | backlight that gets through is colored by the screen. it can be made to | appear white by allowing all three colors through, but it's still colored. | | this means that you can't get high resolution mode with the backlight on. | | No part of that is true. The behavior you describe is a myth, | kept alive by people who misinterpet the display specification. | | You can turn on monochrome mode at any time. Try it yourself: | echo 1 /sys/devices/platform/dcon/output | | Boom - there you go. Monochrome for your pleasure. Nope. Take out your magnifying glass and look: each pixel is either red, green, or blue, even in monochrome mode. Those are not software-controlled filters; they're formed by a fixed physical diffraction grating. Monochrome mode just tells the software to set R=G=B, but with the backlight on only one of those three is actually displayed at each pixel. (This may just be a miscommunication, but we might as well be clear.) One amusing question is: could software potentially set monochrome mode and then use fancy color-adaptive subpixel rendering to do optimized display of fonts and images? Maybe, but at 200 dpi the gains would be small, and the computational overhead would be huge. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIEXH7UJT6e6HFtqQRAiVKAKCdNl5z/A5scDGndbPHZ1Xvn0LOlQCfSDGP BBDUVl4Ybh2emEb8tVVczmQ= =x4XP -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[Server-devel] Fwd: Network Provisioning
On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:57 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 2:38 PM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Proposed change to the hardware spec: From one to four access points may use an simpler switch, connected to the server over a 100 Mb/s link. From five to seven access points will need a better switch, which provides a 1 GB/s link to the server. This means that a 1 GB/s interface should be specified for the servers. Theoretically, yes... but perhaps this is a bit over the top. For the space we are aiming... - the XS services will bottleneck well before saturating 1Gb/s traffic - 'upstream' services that the XS is routing will bottleneck well before 1Gb/s if we see a 7-AP setup, it will be there to support either a large number of laptops or a location with obstacles that needs many antennaes. In any case, it will support laptops mostly peering w each other. Wrong. Right now all collaboration moves through the ejabberd server. We hope to change that, but it won't happen for roughly a year. If we are designing for a client base of laptops that we actually expect to saturate 1Gb, then... we need to start recommending a mid-range server cluster, perhaps a SAN, all costing a few megabucks ;-) But a school of 250 students will need at least five access points. It only takes two laptops to saturate a channel (OK, maybe one). So you are saying that squid or apache can't keep up with feeding ten streams at 11+ Mb/s each ? wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Fwd: Network Provisioning
Typical PC hardware of the current generation can more than saturate a 1gb link. From what I've seen on this list, most people have deployed hardware that is certainly capable of servicing 750-1000 clients if the OS and apps are properly tuned. Of course if you're going to be servicing that many wireless clients, you'll want a higher-end VAN-able WLAN setup. That'll REALLY blow the budget. :) On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 8:22 PM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:57 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 2:38 PM, John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Proposed change to the hardware spec: From one to four access points may use an simpler switch, connected to the server over a 100 Mb/s link. From five to seven access points will need a better switch, which provides a 1 GB/s link to the server. This means that a 1 GB/s interface should be specified for the servers. Theoretically, yes... but perhaps this is a bit over the top. For the space we are aiming... - the XS services will bottleneck well before saturating 1Gb/s traffic - 'upstream' services that the XS is routing will bottleneck well before 1Gb/s if we see a 7-AP setup, it will be there to support either a large number of laptops or a location with obstacles that needs many antennaes. In any case, it will support laptops mostly peering w each other. Wrong. Right now all collaboration moves through the ejabberd server. We hope to change that, but it won't happen for roughly a year. If we are designing for a client base of laptops that we actually expect to saturate 1Gb, then... we need to start recommending a mid-range server cluster, perhaps a SAN, all costing a few megabucks ;-) But a school of 250 students will need at least five access points. It only takes two laptops to saturate a channel (OK, maybe one). So you are saying that squid or apache can't keep up with feeding ten streams at 11+ Mb/s each ? wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- Aaron Huslage - 503.860.1634 http://blog.hact.net IM: AIM - ahuslage; Yahoo - ahuslage; MSN - [EMAIL PROTECTED]; GTalk - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
