Re: [support-gang] Postponement of XOCamp Event to January
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 07:52, Deepak Saxena [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Oct 29 2008, at 21:52, Ed McNierney was caught saying: Folks - The OLPC XOCamp event being planned for November 17 21 is being postponed until January, 2009. The Fedora FUDCON conference is in Boston on January 9 - 11 , and we will be rescheduling to dates either immediately before or immediately after that event. I¹d like to make that decision as soon as possible, so if anyone knows of major reasons to choose one over the other, please let me know. I think the week after would best. If we go with the week before, that is right after new year's which means more expensive flights and a higher chance of folks still travelling. +1 Regards Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Allowing an activity to be launched multiple times in parallel
Please use 8.2.0. This problem has been resolved in 8.2.0, by making each Activity launch take over the screen immediately. In 8.2.0, users can see immediately that their click was registered, and cannot easily launch another instance until the current one finishes loading. Implementation does not always match theory. I use 8.2.0. For my XO, Activity launch does not take over the screen immediately. When I left-click on an icon (in Home View, or in Journal) to launch an Activity, it takes somewhere between 0.5 sec to 2 sec for the Activity throbber screen to begin drawing (during which interval I don't know whether my left-click took or not - I just have to wait and see). That wait time (for *any* kind of reaction) would be ample for me to left-click 2 or more times (if I so chose) on the same (or another) icon. [And yes - either through indecisive finger movement or through the XO duplicating the click, I have on occasion experienced multiple instances of an Activity being launched when my intention was to launch only one. The only way I have found to ensure that only one instance of an Activity is launched is to move the pointer to the icon, right-click, wait for the palette to be drawn, move the cursor to the 'Start' entry in the palette, and right-click again. When I do this, the immediate disappearance of the palette gives me the assurance I want that my launch request is being acted upon. There is still the delay before the Activity throbber screen shows, but now I am no longer anxious as to whether it will ever show.] mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Files
2008/10/30 Luke Faraone [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 20:50, Bill Bogstad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the fact that they will quickly disappear off the screen, and may be auto-deleted by the system greatly limits their value. Only if they don't get used. In which case, those entries should scroll off the bottom and get auto-deleted. The same way that email client users usually delete the 'welcome to the system' email that many systems generate. Once a user learns the basics of the activities, they will spend less and less time consulting the manual and the screen real-estate it takes up in the Journal is better suited for other things. Until they need to consult their manual, which sugar decided they didn't need and expunged. The activity itself would still be accessible from Home View, just not the dummy journal entry that would launch it... Regards Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Postponement of XOCamp Event to January
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Ed McNierney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The OLPC XOCamp event being planned for November 17 – 21 is being postponed until January, 2009. The Fedora FUDCON conference is in Boston on January 9 Oops. I kind of saw that coming when fudcon was postponed. I'll sort my stuff out to try and be there for mid-Jan but it's a bit of a curve ball for us overseas travellers to be changing these things back, forth, and then back again. And kinda spoils our chances to get cheap tickets. 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
Project name : BundleActivity has been set up
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:14:38 -0400, Lewis Barnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1. Project name : BundleActivity Done. Your tree is here: git+ssh://[EMAIL PROTECTED]/git/activities/bundleactivity 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] -- VILLAGER: We should defend ourselves! An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! TEVYE: Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless. --Joseph Stein, Fiddler on the Roof ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Future Features Planning Meeting: Minutes from 10/29
We met on IRC on Wed October 30. **Important note: The miniconference has been postponed to early January. ** Minutes from the meeting: 1 - Follow up on open action items from last week. AI: Greg to resend request for proposals and include deadline of Monday October 27. Will send to devel, sugar, techteam and server lists. GS - Done AI: Everybody: Read and update wiki. Add any major feature request to: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap#Requirements_and_Feature_Suggestions link to relevant threads on lists as needed. GS - Page design updated thanks to Eben. Still needs more feature suggestions. This will go on beyond the miniconference. AI: Greg to add submission to xocamp e-mail address to xocamp2 wiki proposals section: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2 GS - Done AI: Eben to transfer or transclude or link XO related sugar features on feature roadmap page. GS - Not sure if this is closed. Greg to follow up with Eben. ** 2 - Review XOCamp proposals from: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2 We reviewed the proposals for about 1 minute each. Two follow up items identified for each proposal: - Check for consensus on reserving time for the proposal. Each was tentatively flagged as Yes/No/Defer. This was the preliminary opinion of those present and subject to change. No means people thought it was not a good topic for the conference (can be changed). Defer means people wanted to see more detail before deciding. - Pick an owner who will follow up as follows: A -- How much time is needed. B -- Who can lead the discussion C -- What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other) Since proposals may not make the final cut, owners should only do as much preparation work as needed to help us decide. Those topics which make the next round of selection will then get more detailed preparation. For the owner of each item, please address the three points above (A,B,C) by updating the wiki page. I started reformatting the page to make a place for follow up. Eben, S and wiki experts I appreciate any reformatting help! Proposals reviewed: * Who is the user and what do they want? Yes. Follow up person: Greg * Distributing OLPC Defer. Follow up person: Rafael and Greg * Annotation Defer. Follow up person: Mel to follow up with SJ and Ed to get details filled in. Also suggested that this and next two be merged with Ed's proposal called: What does an electronic textbook look like? * Book reading Defer. Follow up person: Mel to follow up with SJ and Ed to get details filled in. * Searching Defer. Follow up person: Mel to follow up with SJ and get details filled in. * 8n and l10n: 9.1 and beyond Yes. Follow up person: Sayamindu and CJB to start filling in detail. * Language learning on the XO Yes. Follow up person: CJB to start filling in detail. * Multiplayer wikipad Defer. Follow up person: Mel to contact SJ to get more info. * Customizing skins Defer. Needs owner. * School Server Yes. Follow up person: Martin to add more detail. * Customization, Imaging, and Activating XOs Yes. Follow up person: Reuben, Kim to add detail and find an engineering partner to help present. * Automated testing tools Yes. Follow up person: Mel * How does support work today - what can we do to make it better/easier? Defer. Follow up person: Mel, Kim to flesh it out. * View source key everywhere Defer. Follow up person: Scott owner with Tomeu holding some info. Definition of this may be done already or may just need a flash session. * Report Cards on XO No. Follow up person: Greg to contact Yama and Mikus. If there is strong demand may come back. * Power management Yes. Follow up person: Deepak, CJB * Eliminating Mesh, keeping 802.11 Defer. Follow up person: Greg to look for owner. May want to give Gnu and hour or two to use as he likes. * Eliminating DRM in G1G1 No. Follow up person: Greg to check with Gnu. See comment above. * Whether and how we want the volunteer community to help us with 9.1 Defer. Follow up person: Mel and Sebastian to follow up and combine with support item above. * Replacing Sugar Totally Defer. Follow up person: Greg to follow up with Gnu. See also above. * Fixing featuring activities No. Follow up person: Needs owner. * Next-generation journal ideas Yes. Follow up person: Scott * Interoperation with legacy apps Yes. Follow up person: Scott and Marco. Also combine with Marco's Compatibility with desktop applications proposal below. * Printing No. Follow up person: ? * Libraries Defer. Follow up person: ? * Performance Yes. Follow up person: Erik, Marco and Deepak. Also merge with Marco's performance item below. * Compatibility with desktop applications Yes but merge with Interoperation with legacy apps above * Top five performance problems - Marco Pesenti Gritti Yes but merge with Performance proposal above * Web based activities Defer. Follow up person: Marco to add more detail * Sugar as an upstream
[Server-devel] XO Miniconference (aka XO Camp) postponed
Hi All, We are re-scheduling the miniconference from November 17 to early January. The new dates will be posted as soon as they are available at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2 See the announcement below and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Greg S ** Folks - The OLPC XOCamp event being planned for November 17 21 is being postponed until January, 2009. The Fedora FUDCON conference is in Boston on January 9 - 11 , and we will be rescheduling to dates either immediately before or immediately after that event. I¹d like to make that decision as soon as possible, so if anyone knows of major reasons to choose one over the other, please let me know. Unlike the November event, participating OLPC staff and employees who do not work in Cambridge will be traveling here to participate. I hope this will make the January event a more substantial and productive one for everyone, despite the delay. - Ed P.S. If you have previously forwarded announcements of the November event to other mailing lists, please help us spread the word of the postponement to those other lists. But please take a moment to check those lists first so we don¹t bombard them with multiple forwards; thanks. Ed McNierney VP, Software Development One Laptop per Child [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Server-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
setup for XO development
Hello, I would like to try out the XO software and get started with doing some development. As I am a security guy, I am mostly interested in core development, especially bitfrost/rainbow, and the document store. I expect an emulated environment would be a good choice for this type of development. I followed instructions on the wiki and tried to set up virtualbox (because it's what I already use, I have no problems switching to kvm/qemu if needed, although unfortunately the 2 will not run side by side on the same system). The image I am using is the official build 767: xo-1-olpc-stream-8.2-build-767-20081001_1633-devel_ext3.img.bz2 on an amd64 ubuntu hardy, with latest non-free virtualbox (2.0.4). ..but I ran into the 3dnow problem that other people have complained about already. When booting, I get the following message: This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: 3dnow Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU. Should I try kvm/qemu to solve this problem? Or are there other olpc images I should be using? Or should I try running it natively? I would rather not have to dual-boot... Or, finally, should I rebuild myself an image from scratch, with a non-3dnow kernel? I'm not afraid to try any of these options but I'd rather not have to try them all before I get anything working, which is why I am asking for help ;-) thanks, Paolo Milani ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.
nbsp;FWIW.nbsp; I have had a number of high school teacher and university instructors ask about using the xo as a language learning appliance.nbsp; The two reoccurring themes have been:XO as a portable language lab.Ability to develop a language learning activity which could tailor itself to the needs of an individual learner.nbsp;thanksdavid On 10/28/2008, 20:04, Gary C Martin ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:On 28 Oct 2008, at 23:46, Chris Ball wrote: sugarGreaterThan Hi, sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan I#39;m learning Spanish at the moment, and I wish the XO made it easier sugarGreaterThan for me. I don#39;t have any knowledge of what the right way to do either sugarGreaterThan conventional or constructionist language learning on computers is; if sugarGreaterThan anyone has much experience with either, I#39;d love to hear about it. sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan I have some obvious candidates for software that could be produced in sugarGreaterThan mind: sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan * A method -- similar to Scott#39;s recent GtkLabel overlay for sugarGreaterThan allowing sugarGreaterThan strings inside Sugar and activities to be translated -- that sugarGreaterThan does a sugarGreaterThan dictionary lookup of a word on the screen and overlays the sugarGreaterThan translation of that word into a local language. This should be sugarGreaterThan activity-agnostic, if possible. For bonus points, translate sugarGreaterThan phrases instead of just words. sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan * Perhaps some kind of Pronunciation Activity that gives you words sugarGreaterThan in the target language, speaks them to you, explains what they sugarGreaterThan mean in your local language, and asks you to speak them back, sugarGreaterThan perhaps grading your response? (All but the last part is already sugarGreaterThan possible to do manually in the Words activity, but not in a sugarGreaterThan structured way.) sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan * Is there any free content that matches iconic images to words, sugarGreaterThan so that language vocabulary could be taught even without textual sugarGreaterThan translation to a local language? sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan Feel free to come up with questions/ideas around language learning on sugarGreaterThan the XO in general in this thread, and they#39;ll make it into the sugarGreaterThan conference talk. Still being worked on by Urko, but functioned quite well last time I tested on an XO. I set it up with a bunch of pathophysiology term flash card type questions/answers: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Assimilate sugarGreaterThan Thanks, sugarGreaterThan sugarGreaterThan - Chris. sugarGreaterThan -- sugarGreaterThan Chris Ball sugarGreaterThan ___ sugarGreaterThan Sugar mailing list sugarGreaterThan [EMAIL PROTECTED] sugarGreaterThan http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar ___ 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: [sugar] Postponement of XOCamp Event to January
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 6:06 PM, C. Scott Ananian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Ed McNierney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The OLPC XOCamp event being planned for November 17 – 21 is being postponed until January, 2009. The Fedora FUDCON conference is in Boston on January 9 As should be clear, I'm not happy at all with how this is being handled. We will have Martin, Marco, Tomeu, and Bernie here the week of the 17th (at least). We should at least informally discuss 9.1 plans at that time. From my point of view, the situation is not so messed up as it could be seen from inside. The XOCamp has been delayed, but this doesn't mean we need to stop any work. Stuff that is going to be worked on in the near future can still be discussed as we have been doing to date. I personally am not fully convinced of the XOCamp idea, but Scott is a smart guy and, as I still haven't attended properly to one, am happy to give him the benefit of the doubt. Some people from outside have decided to visit Boston for some days, is their trip not useful because the XOCamp has been delayed? I don't think so at all! We have been working together for a long time and these have been exciting times. We surely have lots to talk, share, discuss, etc I'm confident that when the remotes come back to their homes, the work atmosphere will have improved significantly and this will reflect in our productivity. So, plans have changed, but are things really so bad? Regards, Tomeu ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Allowing an activity to be launched multiple times in parallel
On Thu, 30 Oct 2008, Gary C Martin wrote: I had the same mental hoop to jump through with my Moon activity, it's just a viewer of data, however after a version or so I soon has some useful state worth keeping (which viewing options a kid may have selected), and I do have more states to add in the future. Thanks, I appreciate the feedback on this question. I did some testing with License activity a while back, and do like the idea. One of the things that initially frustrated me was that I was forced through all those pages of description to get to the license I wanted, I then named the instance 'my choice of CC license for content blah', and then when I resumed later to have another look, License put me back to the start of the whole process again – I had expected my choice of license to have been kept as state so I could resume later and check what I had chosen. ...wow, someone has actually run it! (-: I'm interested in a discussion and hearing what current best practices are seen as. I haven't had a lot of time to work on the activity, but I want to set a few things straight. (I'm also generally very interested in help with this activity!) Well if you're looking for feedback ;-) the main things I'd like to see are: 1) Add the required license information into the activity.info file! ;-) *blushes* 2) Store activity state so a kid can resume back to where they were 3) Smaller images, there are almost 4Mb of png files eating into the precious XO storage space, I'm sure jpg would be more than good enough. Interesting point. At least I could perhaps drop the resolution. 4) A leaner activity, there is a 3.5Mb 'built' directory in the bundle and digging down most of the is taken up by built/share/liblicense/licenses, could the license data be kept compressed and just unzipped when finally displayed, text compresses really well, and python has modules for working with compressed files. Good points all around. I'm running low on time to work on it, but I will try to handle these. I've added them to the wiki page on the License activity http://wiki.laptop.org/go/License#What_could_use_help so I don't lose them. -- Asheesh. -- Never, ever lie to someone you love unless you're absolutely sure they'll never find out the truth.___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Data Storage and User-facing System Requirements [was Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Files]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Erik Garrison wrote: It seems from my reading of mailing lists, IRC logs, and listening to conversations with people that we are trying to resolve all of these issues by implementing more code to get around difficulties imposed by our current data storage implementation and security model. My argument is that we can do less work and get an improved result from the user's perspective by removing the layers of code (datastore and security restrictions) which prevent applications from behaving as they normally do on other systems. Erik: If you want applications to behave as they do on other systems, then why not just use an other system? I am not being facetious, and I hope I don't seem disrespectful. If you are not interested in Sugar's goal of rearchitecting the computer experience to optimize for our students, then don't use Sugar. It sounds to me like your goals would be achieved, for example, by running Andres's debxo-LXDE or the Fedora XO spin, perhaps with minor UI customizations. Sugar is not nearly finished, but it is headed for a realm of new features, including an entirely new metaphor for stored data. You seem to be proposing that we stop that development process because our current betas (Sugar is still in beta) are not up to the quality of mature systems. This upsets me. Please don't derail this train just because it has not yet reached its destination. If you would like to argue that OLPC should not be shipping Sugar, because it is not ready, then I am happy to listen. If you would like to argue that the datastore and Journal, once their implementation catches up with our designs for the future, will still be inferior to traditional filesystems for our target users, then that is an architectural discussion we can have, though you will meet a great deal of resistance. I think you should take a look at Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It's a very stable, simple platform that presents a classic Linux desktop environment in a UI optimized for small computers. You might find that you prefer it over Sugar. There's nothing wrong with that. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkKBlwACgkQUJT6e6HFtqQrBACdGR27QDeNyHkxYb58CsJjya4l gOQAni6nBGlJZ9E9/a0uqpatCaFV/cyE =O/tm -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: idea for running out of RAM
On Oct 30 2008, at 10:05, Erik Garrison was caught saying: Deepak, Did you continue down this path (auto-saving application state to NAND when we run out of memory)? How tenable is the idea of saving application state to NAND on our system? No I haven't. :( Could the oom-killer have a hook to enable this functionality to be invoked instead of simply killing the application? Yes, the question is what is the proper interface back to user space. In talking to some upstream kernel developers,this type of interface has been desired by others but nothing has been accepted upstream. Next step in this process is research what has been proposed so far, why they've all failed, and figure out what we want to do. One such interface is proposed at http://lwn.net/Articles/267013/. ~Deepak -- Deepak Saxena - Kernel Developer, One Laptop Per Child _ __o (o ---\, Give One Laptop, Get One Laptop //\ - ( )/ ( ) http://www.amazon.com/xoV_/_ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Data Storage and User-facing System Requirements [was Re: [sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Files]
On Thu, 30 Oct 2008, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Erik Garrison wrote: It seems from my reading of mailing lists, IRC logs, and listening to conversations with people that we are trying to resolve all of these issues by implementing more code to get around difficulties imposed by our current data storage implementation and security model. My argument is that we can do less work and get an improved result from the user's perspective by removing the layers of code (datastore and security restrictions) which prevent applications from behaving as they normally do on other systems. Erik: If you want applications to behave as they do on other systems, then why not just use an other system? if Sugar is only the Journal then I would definantly say to not ship Sugar until it's ready, and even then I would question it's value. however Sugar is a lot more than just the Journal. The problem is the attitude that some people seem to have that becouse Sugar is new and innovative, all existing software should be re-written to use all the new Sugar goodies. this means that until Sugar is complete and re-implements all the worlds software, there will be a significant number of people who cannot use it becouse it can't run something that they need for a system that's running Linux on a x86 cpu, the fact that it can't use the vast majority of the software available today (including the opensource software) is embarrasing. but beyond that, it limits how effective the OLPC can be by limiting the users (and as a side effect, limiting developers) it's time for everyone to give up the dream that Sugar will be the biggest OS in the world and everyone will adapt to it. (some people have acknowledged this publicly, most have accepted it privatly, but some people still seem to think that they can force the rest of the world to adapt to Sugar) Switching from 'the Journal is the main API, and we will implement some other mechansims to simulate a filesystem' to 'provide a POSIX filesystem and make the Journal be a view to that filesystem' would change the Journal from a liability to an asset. it would eliminate one of the biggest barriers for existing software (the window manager stuff would just about cover the remainder), and with the Journal being optional it can be used where it makes sense, and bypassed where it doesn't make sense (or where it's not ready yet) note that the POSIX filesystem does NOT mean that the user needs to directly access the filesystem on the nand, it could be that the file access is done through FUSE so that additional metadata can be stored along with the file. they key is that it needs to be transparent to the software so that existing software doesn't need to change. David Lang ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: setup for XO development
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 02:55:00PM +0100, Paolo wrote: Hello, I would like to try out the XO software and get started with doing some development. As I am a security guy, I am mostly interested in core development, especially bitfrost/rainbow, and the document store. Music to my ears! If you haven't already found them, please check out http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Security There are a bunch 'TODOs' on those pages where your assistance would be most welcome, or if you prefer, you might suggest some topics that interest you. I expect an emulated environment would be a good choice for this type of development. Actually, for a variety of reasons, I'm working quite hard to make rainbow usable on stock linux machines like those represented by Debian and Fedora chroots. Therefore, if you can show me interesting rainbow patches that work in those environments, I'm quite likely to take them. Regards, Michael P.S. - One long-standing request which might interest you is to integrate rainbow into the sugar-jhbuild system used by many sugar developers so that they conduct their regular development in an environment more similar to that found on-XO. A nice side-benefit of this task is that you would become well-equipped to participate in further sugar-related and tinderbox-related development in the natural course of fulfilling the task. P.P.S. - What are you thinking about document storage? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: setup for XO development
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 02:55:00PM +0100, Paolo wrote: Hello, I would like to try out the XO software and get started with doing some development. As I am a security guy, I am mostly interested in core development, especially bitfrost/rainbow, and the document store. Music to my ears! If you haven't already found them, please check out http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Security There are a bunch 'TODOs' on those pages where your assistance would be most welcome, or if you prefer, you might suggest some topics that interest you. I expect an emulated environment would be a good choice for this type of development. Actually, for a variety of reasons, I'm working quite hard to make rainbow usable on stock linux machines like those represented by Debian and Fedora chroots. Michael, Could you provide a high level comment on the feasibility of running rainbow as a security mechanism on Sugar on Fedora of Debian machines without the chroot? thanks david Therefore, if you can show me interesting rainbow patches that work in those environments, I'm quite likely to take them. Regards, Michael P.S. - One long-standing request which might interest you is to integrate rainbow into the sugar-jhbuild system used by many sugar developers so that they conduct their regular development in an environment more similar to that found on-XO. A nice side-benefit of this task is that you would become well-equipped to participate in further sugar-related and tinderbox-related development in the natural course of fulfilling the task. P.P.S. - What are you thinking about document storage? ___ 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: [Localization] [sugar] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please be _very_ careful on any thought about teaching English with the XO. It is a requirement in many countries. We don't have a choice. Enemies of the project everywhere are just waiting for a chance, any chance, to call us yokels of the imperialist empire, and they would have a field day if the XO delivered EFL. The defense against this nonsense is to provide courses for as many languages a possible, and toolkits for people to develop their own for languages not currently popular in the textbook industry. Also, to encourage schoolchildren to learn how to record and preserve their linguistic heritage everywhere. Of course we know that many locally parents want EFL, as they want Math, but there is a weird layer of opinion that would just be so happy to ruin the whoile project for short term political gain. Pay no attention to the naysayers, Yama. By their fruits ye shall know them. To develop _tools_ for language learning is _very_ good, as a general concept. Aymaran kids need to learn better skills in Aymara, and such tools would be useful, Castillian speaking kids skills in Castillian and would benefit to learn Aymara and Quechua also, but proposing Aymara and Quechua kids to be assisted to learn Castillian using the XO is already a delicate matter, proposing English is a definite no-no in these times. In many countries English or a former colonial/imperial language (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian) are required for all children. In the Netherlands, for example, students get 12 years of English. English is the only language that people can agree on in India, and is the language of almost all higher education there. _We_ are not going to impose anything on the children. We are going to make tools available. Since all of this is a local decision anyway, I know of a deployment that, at the request of local parents and with local workers is developing EFL materials. Tell us more. What I suggest is that as a team to focus in the _tools_. Dictionaries, interactive tools (HablarConSara, etc). Those can then be loaded with local language packs, and eventually, and as a local decision, other languages, which of course are not limited to English. I see that we agree on the principles, and we are discussing presentation more than substance. I listened to an NPR report the other day on how fashionable it is to have pre.schoolers learn Mandarin nowadays. Yes, we have Chinese immersion in elementary schools and preschools here in Cupertino. Yama ___ Localization mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] [Localization] 9.1 proposal: Language learning on the XO.
Please be _very_ careful on any thought about teaching English with the XO. Enemies of the project everywhere are just waiting for a chance, any chance, to call us yokels of the imperialist empire, and they would have a field day if the XO delivered EFL. Of course we know that many locally parents want EFL, as they want Math, but there is a weird layer of opinion that would just be so happy to ruin the whoile project for short term political gain. To develop _tools_ for language learning is _very_ good, as a general concept. Aymaran kids need to learn better skills in Aymara, and such tools would be useful, Castillian speaking kids skills in Castillian and would benefit to learn Aymara and Quechua also, but proposing Aymara and Quechua kids to be assisted to learn Castillian using the XO is already a delicate matter, proposing English is a definite no-no in these times. Since all of this is a local decision anyway, I know of a deployment that, at the request of local parents and with local workers is developing EFL materials. What I suggest is that as a team to focus in the _tools_. Dictionaries, interactive tools (HablarConSara, etc). Those can then be loaded with local language packs, and eventually, and as a local decision, other languages, which of course are not limited to English. I listened to an NPR report the other day on how fashionable it is to have pre.schoolers learn Mandarin nowadays. Yama ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [Olpc-open] The 40th Anniversary of the Dynabook event at Computer History Museum
At Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:12:46 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote: On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:45 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:24:09 -0400, Brian Jordan wrote: Cool! (bump) Yes and thanks. The third panelist has been announced and it is none other than Mary Lou Jepsen. http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1221864610 Are they going to get Doug Engelbart for the panel? No. However, there is an event for him and the demo: http://stanfordtickets.org/tickets/calendar/view.aspx?id=2324 -- Yoshiki ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: setup for XO development
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 04:35:30PM -0500, David Farning wrote: On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 4:18 PM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, for a variety of reasons, I'm working quite hard to make rainbow usable on stock linux machines like those represented by Debian and Fedora chroots. Michael, Could you provide a high level comment on the feasibility of running rainbow as a security mechanism on Sugar on Fedora of Debian machines without the chroot? Feasible, but it would go faster with some help. (The chroots are just for convenience so I can test both platforms in a repeatable fashion on a single machine.) In more detail: * I've got a new version of rainbow in the works which sits as an exec-wrapper around any program you want to run. I've also got tentative sugar patches for making sugar use this rainbow. * When invoked, rainbow generates new credentials (e.g. uid, gid) if necessary, assumes its new identity, sets any requested rlimits, closes filedescriptors, and hands over control to the program of your choice. * The user and group manipulation is accomplished by manipulating some files in a spool directory at the location of your choice; a separate glibc NSS module reads this information and returns it through the standard libc apis on demand. * Human operators assume the authority necessary to perform this operation by means of a setuid helper, e.g. sudo. This design makes it eminently feasible to port to any glibc-based Unix platform and, with a bit more care, to any POSIX platform on which we know how to make new users and groups and are permitted to assume their identity. Caveats: a) the implementation is not yet capable of isolating multiple human operators from one another, though I expect to implement this functionality in the not-too-distant-future. b) the implementation provides nothing more and nothing less than the isolation provided by running programs under fresh uids and gids. Many sorts of mischief are still possible, particularly on systems which set lax default permissions on user home directories (e.g. Debian). c) the implementation is quite new and is hence highly likely to contain bugs, unstable APIs, etc. d) rainbow is still written in fairly naive python and it pays the usual speed and memory price for this convenience. (It also uses at least one naive algorithm when selecting new credentials.) e) I have removed support for the rainbow dbus daemon since it was needlessly complicating my life. It remains to be seen whether activities' startup procedures can be sped up enough to sustain this change. For these reasons, the new implementation is still far from 'production quality'; however, that's no reason not to start trying it out. (Code is available in the 'integration' branch in the users/mstone/security and users/mstone/nss-rainbow repos on dev.laptop.org.) Regards, Michael ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
