Talk:One Laptop per Child/Archive 4

Archives from August 2006 to March 2007

Trivia

[1]: "For the record, the first .ogg file that was played on the laptop was a remix of Depeche Mode’s Stripped." —porges_(talk) 00:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hardware Criticism

This needs to be rewritten, it sounds almost illiterate.

"Then the battery is next to the coloured display one main reason for a higher price than 100 Dollar."

I have no idea what you are saying here. Someone with knowledge of the project should rewrite this.

Here is an attempt at turning the Hardware Criticism Section into something a bit more coherent. It would be helpful if the various assertions were backed up by citations/references.

One criticism of the hardware is based upon the assertion that many open-source applications—e.g., Open Office—need a processor speed of at least 750MHZ (the laptop is only 366MHZ). A critic questions the choice of using a color display: it is asserted that a monochrome would be adequate and less expensive. A critic also questions the decision to include a microphone and camera: it is asserted that children can use one of the three USB ports to add a webcam. The choice of nickel metal hydride for the battery is also questioned: it is asserted that lithium would be a better choice, even though it is more expensive.

--Walter.bender 01:13, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Software criticism

I am only aware of one non-open-source module in the entire system—from the BIOS, which is LinuxBios; to the firmware, OpenFirmware; to the operating system, Fedora, to the applications themselves—that is one part of the firmware that runs on the Marvell co-processor for the WiFi. Thus the assertions that "many software applications for the laptop are not open source" seems a bit of an overstatement. I don't understand what is meant by "and so this is an overwhelming from the big players for a total new market. The good goal to make a laptop and find through a big community the distribution channels, the big players just use them." Perhaps this can be clarified?

"Example: Skype. This is not open source and as well google talk with open Jabber_protocol is bounded to the gmail account." There are many examples of non-open-source applications. Why are they being listed here? Is this to suggest that OLPC is using these applications instead of open source equivalents? Where is this documented?

"Mozilla Firefox suite... fail[s] due to the low processor hardware." This is simply not true. The laptop is using the Firefox engine with its own UI wrapper. --Walter.bender 13:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

It might be true. In the laptop prototypes they added 256 MB of RAM to make Firefox (engine) run. But this additional memory will be removed in the final version of laptop AFAIK.

"to make Firefox (engine) run." Where did this assertion come from? (As I recall, having been in the room when the decision was made, we put 256 MB of RAM in the B1 machines to make it easier for developers to work in light of the overall tuning of the system being incomplete. There was no special consider given for Firefox/Gecko/Xulrunner.) --Walter.bender 23:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Infrastructure Section POV

I've tagged the Infrastructure section because it sounds like the criticism itself rather than a neutral explanation of it. E.g. "The OLPC wants to deliver a comprehensive laptop-computer to the kids in developing countries but it underestimates the importance...", "The $100 laptop project will have to help build...". --Facugaich 18:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

In fact we are working with the governments to come up with affordable internet access: the prices for Internet connections are very high—but they need not be. We are also emphasizing the utility of local—intracommunity—communication, which is free. It is worth mentioning that our original premise was that while many people and organizations were—and are—worrying about connectivity, there was—and is—a paucity of people working about devices that can take adavntage of the connection. --Walter.bender 22:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

More re infrastructure: built-in mesh-networking capabilities automatically provide high-bandwidth wireless connectivity at home, school, and community, allowing for the whole community to connect to itself. The mesh will provide connectivity for other devices built to utilize such a network, encouraging local innovation and access. Connecting the mesh to the Internet back-haul requires some form of infrastructure, and in most cases, it is expected to be some sort of a wireless solution. OLPC is working with local governments on both the utilization of existing infrastructure and the deployment of low-cost, environmentally-resilient, and easy-to-install networking equipment. --Walter.bender 21:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to edit the section to be more neutral. If you can give me some attributable source for the last comments above, I'd be glad to work them into the text.--agr 01:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

More High Res. Images?

The orange model shown here: [2] has different perspectives and views that I can't find anywhere else, but the images are very low resolution. Could someone with the high resolution versions (if they exist) put them up in the article, or at least provide a URL where they can be seen? Thanks in advance.

Children already have contact with computers - through recycling e-waste

Here are some pictures from the Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, proving that many impoverished children already have ready access to computers:

[3] [4]

Oh wait. Those are e-waste computers, trash sent from e-countries for cheap dismantling free from environmental and labor laws. Leading to the ironic situation that many poor children will have contact with OLPC computers not in school but in an outdoor open fire pit for melting them down into valuable materials so that their family can buy food and clothing.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see how this relates to the article. Also, please sign your posts, thank you. Penman 1701 23:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps through the OLPC program, children everywhere will have access to the real value of computation and computing; obviously the anonymous posters seem to find computing useful; do they not want everyone to have the same opportunity to express themselves? Also, they may want to note that there are no toxic materials in the XO; but alas, mot much e-waste relative to conventional computers either, so they'll have to use their computers for learning instead... --Walter.bender 23:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Future archival, external links

I'm planning on tidying this article using my usual technique of starting from the bottom. The external links section is just a massive policy violation. Before I remove all of it I'm going to see how much can be integrated with the article / references. I've already removed duplicates and random blog opinions.

I notice that there's an old thread which just generated discussion on the project's name change. I was planning on archiving a lot of that old discussion, would it be okay to duplicate the last few comments and archive the rest (up to last month or so)? Chris Cunningham 11:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Not that complete or accurate

From a quick look at the laptop.org wiki, there are various things which the article doesn't really mention. For example, while the laptop is intended initially for schools, there is consideration of launching a commercial arm to sell laptops at a high markup with the profits going back to the project. Also, while the project does largely use closed hardware, they say they'd be more then willing to use open hardware or any other alternative closed hardware, if someone is able to get a working model for them. It sounds like they plan to concentrate on the closed hardware model for now because the open hardware just doesn't seem to be advanced enough for them and they lack the technical expertise as well but they do hope to explore it more fully in the future. Nil Einne 16:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The commercial section is already mentioned. The criticism section of this article is all junk anyway, so feel free to correct that bit. Chris Cunningham 22:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Secondary Market

This laptop may be the most valuable -- and most easily liquidated -- single asset some families have ever possessed. US$135 is a large sum in much of the world. For those units that are given away in especially poor areas, I'm curious to know what the resale market will be. How many families will decide to auction their childrens' laptops off on eBay and take the cash? Will organized rings steal them and resell them? Or will enterprising merchants simply walk through villages and offer a tempting amount of cash for them? <>< tbc 02:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Concerned about Video Playback

Obviously the processor on the Children's Machine has to be fairly low end in performance, but something that's concerned me from the start is how it would be able to handle video playback. Will the 400MHz AMD Geode be able to handle Google Video and Youtube content at their standard (what appears to be QVGA) resolution? How about QVGA of most DivX, AVI, WMV, Real Player, MPEG 1,and Quicktime (Sorenson Video 3, MPEG 4, and H.264) content, at least at a respectable and consistent frame rate (15 fps or higher)? How might it handle VGA video of any of those formats? Obviously it will be able to playback video recorded to or live from it's own camera, but how well if there's other apps - like a web browser - running and using CPU? Will the graphics card be able to offload any of the workload or will the CPU pretty much so do the heavy lifting on it's own? How much of a load from other apps would it take to choke most video playback? It seems to me that while VGA and DVD quality video playback of most codecs might be expecting too much, and I'm certainly not expecting high def. playback (even though the display could handle HD res.), quality QVGA playback is a necessity if the kids using these thing want to check out much in the way of any video on-line. Are there any comparable PC's of similar processing power that can act as testbeds for video performance on The Children's Machine? If so, how do they fare? I'm wondering about percentage consumed by the various codecs at 30fps and various resolutions.

Even before switching to the LX, video playback is quite adequate. Real Networks and the team from the OSU OSL have ported the Helix player to the laptop and pretty much anything short of HD plays fine. --Walter.bender 22:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Forgot to include the URL so you can try it yourself... --Walter.bender 21:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Delisted from GA

After re-reviewing this article to conform WP:WIAGA, as of 3 October 2006, this article is delisted from WP:GA page for the following reasons:

1. The article focuses more on future product, rather than history or its concept. Therefore it cannot be verified, per criterion 2 of WP:WIAGA. Section Technology gives best examples of this, as it mentions non-exist product. This article cannot be accurate as the final product has not been released yet.
2. There are more list items than explaining in text. It fails criterion 1.(c).
3. There is not much mentioning of MIT Media Lab, as they have involved a lot in this project. It fails criterion 3.(a).

"as they are involved a lot in this project"—What is the basis of this assertion? The project began at the Media Lab, but was spun out 9 months ago and there has been little involvement since.--Walter.bender 01:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Too many WP:WEASEL words.

I would suggest editors to focus more on concepts behind this project, who has involved in this project and the history of this project until the present time. Do not explain about non-existent products or events, as they cannot be accurate nor verifiable. Unless editors only mention legitimate document plan of a certain product, then the context is based on the document. As far as I read, this whole article is more like a marketing, rather than encyclopaedic information. If all the above matters have been resolved, this article can be renominated again. — Indon (reply) — 12:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Merging talk?

I noticed that the archived talk here was broken, so I fixed that. What about the discussion on Talk:One Laptop per Child, though? How should that be referenced here, now that the articles have been merged? Chris Cunningham 11:41, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Moved into new archive. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Dvorak

Just out of curiosity, will the computers have the ability to switch over to Dvorak? I assume that would be in the settings in Linux but since I know nothing about Linux I thought I'd ask here. Mithridates 08:28, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, Linux comes with a lot of language/keyboard settings. Until now, every computer I used had the ability to switch to dvorak, be it win, mac or linux. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.83.161.6 (talk) 22:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

The software is not a problem but to convert the keyboard to dvorak requires all the keys to be identically shaped (i.e. no curved edges or different widths) many laptop keyboards do not work out for dvorak, which often you can only discover once you start popping the keycaps off. Zeth

Heh. This laptop has a one-piece rubber-like keyboard. Popping keycaps off would require a sharp knife. Replacing them would require a high-quality flexible glue or enough heat to melt the plastic. I suggest using a marker instead. 24.110.145.57 00:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I have not tried it but many people suggest that the best way to learn touch typing is not to change the keypads. This is claimed especially true of dvorak where the most common letters are on the home row and would be covered by your fingers if you are typing correctly anyway. -- Q Chris 17:49, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed sections

Recently removed sections include this longer passage:

Keeping the mesh up depends on everybody cranking their machines at regular intervals, across wide areas of land. Downtimes are to be expected when some people fail to keep their machines running, with new social conflicts arising as a result.

The OLPC's efforts to deliver a comprehensive laptop-computer to the kids in developing countries faces further challenges in the preparedness of the local infrastructure. At least skilled mentors will be needed locally to help the project establish in the area and teach both pupils and teachers how to benefit from the new hardware.

In today's digital world, Internet access is very important. Except for relatively expensive satellite Internet access, there are few traditional Internet providers in the very rural areas of the developing countries. Other access methods, such as Wizzy Digital Courier, might be useful in the interim and can bring the price point very low. USB flash drives are carried back and forth, perhaps with truck or bus drivers, with UUCP as a base protocol to provide the last mile. Bandwidth remains high, at the cost of very long latency. The Children's Machine project will likely have to help build or grow the infrastructure if it wants to be successful.

Others have pointed out that while the software is open source, the hardware is not. Several groups are attempting to create a truly open source processor architecture, open source video circuitry, et cetera. See Open source hardware. These projects are in the very early development stage though; the closest might be Open Graphics.

Samsara (talk • contribs) 00:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

P1's discussion of the crank is no longer relevant as the design does not possess a crank. The source is a non-notable weblog.

P2 and P3 are in second-language, informal English, are unsourced and make weaselly claims.

P4's primary claim (that the hardware will remain proprietary) is contentious and unreferenced; the latter half appears to be advocacy. Chris Cunningham 11:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually if you read the blog post again, you'll find that the criticism made is relevant as long as the source of power is not permanent, i.e. the mains. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

(A) The mesh does not require "everyone" to be running at the same time; (B) The power required to operate the mesh is expected to be approximately 25% of a conventional wifi device, so the "downtimes" will be relatively short; (C) Providing some connectivity, even if it is intermittent without requiring additional infrustructure would seem to have some merit... --Walter.bender 21:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Removed for original research/lack of citation:

OLPC also has the potential to seriously impact a developing nations native computing/IT industries. As OLPC is a non-profit, it can significantly undercut other companies in developing countries on price. This may lead to loss of employment due to the local companies being driven out of business and a dependency effect where the nation becomes dependent on OLPC for technology, something they may not be able to provide.

Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

For completeness, would it be worth contrasting the Gates criticism: "Bill Gates mocked the project, saying “If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type." with his suggestion to give children cell phones instead of computers? "Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chairman, demonstrated a mockup of his proposed cellular PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, and he mentioned it as a cheaper alternative to traditional PC's and laptops during a public discussion here at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum." [5] --Walter.bender 19:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd say yes, it seems relevant; it would have to be written in a way to make clear that part of his criticism is that he holds a different view of creating useful and affordable devices. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. It seems like a too-cute debating point. Mr. Gates is not the subject of the article and I don't think anyone fails to realize his bias on the matter. I wouldn't devote more space to his views.--agr 20:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

"I don't think anyone fails to realize his bias..." Why cite biased sources? Or, for the sake of transparency, it would be worth noting that both Mr. Gates (and Mr. Barrett) may be conflicted. That said, there are valid arguments to be made regarding alternative form-factors. Perhaps there should be separate sections: one for an unbiased critic of the technology and one for a discussion of how industry leaders have been positioning themselves vis-a-vis a potentially disruptive approach. --Walter.bender 23:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is a criticism section and critics often have an axe to grind. Mr. Gate's axe is more obvious than most. I'd love to see a separate section on the pros and cons of the technical approach. I'd be curious to know how much of the difference between the current projected cost and the original $100 goal is accounted for by feature creep: TV camera, SD slot, touch pad and cursor keys, fancy hinge, movable antennas, stereo speakers. And cell phones could be a viable alternative to laptops even in the first world. Consider the rumored Apple iPhone, for example. But we need sources we can cite. Anyway, in my opinion, OLPC's best response to criticism is to ship a good product on time, get it in the hands of kids and show the concept works. --agr 02:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the value in a pro-con section. Drawing or inviting conclusions doesn't seem to be an encyclopedic value. Anyway. I oppose adding the Gates point in, Bill Gates's agenda is irrelevant to the article. Chris Cunningham 08:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Now, I don't love Bill Gates particularly, but if we aspire to NPOV, then comments such as "Bill Gates' agenda" and "Mr. Gate's axe is more obvious than most." have no place whatsoever in this discussion. If you're going to cite any criticism, you might as well put it in context, and if it's as little as "Bill Gates, who demonstrated a 'cellular PC' mockup in October (?) 2006 that could rival ...". Again, it's news-y, but an encyclopedia is about context. And Chris, if you disagree with "pro-con" sections, why did you expand the one in Ubuntu (Linux distribution)? - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I did not make myself clear. I think the article should be left as is. I'd enjoy a pro/con section, but i don't see how we can write one under Wikipedia rules. As for Gates' agenda, I'm not proposing such language be included in the article. I think it is self evident that Gates, who sells a competing product, is hardly neutral and that most readers understand this.--agr 14:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I would second your point that readers would understand that as founder of Microsoft (this info should be given), Mr. Gates may be biased. However, as a possible competing product, this cellular PC idea fits within the wider context of the article and deserves at least a "see also". - Samsara (talk • contribs) 15:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no question that "OLPC's best response to ciritcism is to ship a good product", but I am not sure what that has to do with the Wikipedia article. I still think that there is merit in a technical criticism section that is unbiased--that points out alternative approaches, e.g., cellular PC and ultra mobile PC, but also merit in explicitly--and separately--address the issue of industry response. It is not clear to me that simply reminding readers that Mr. Gates is the founder of Microsoft is sufficient to give them the necessary context: perhaps a link to an article--if one exists--about the sometimes contentious relationship between FOSS and proprietary approaches to software would do the trick. --Walter.bender 16:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if the perspective given here has a place in the article (or in an article about general trends in computing? --Walter.bender 00:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I thought the following from a recent Slashdot discussion was particularly cogent. Not sure if it is a good enough source to quote in the article however:--agr 22:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

"lahvak (69490) on Friday December 08, @09:51PM (#17170380)

Additional Costs

The fact that there are numbers to three significant digits is a pretty good indication that this section of the article is not very credible. There certainly should be a discussion about "additional costs", but some objectivity would be in order. For example, there are numerous studies suggesting that there is no need to train children to use computers, e.g., The Hole in the Wall Project. What is the basis of the connectivity figure? etc. Benchmarking based upon one USAID program is also misleading at best. --Walter.bender 22:54, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

You cannot look at this problem through the eyes of a western businessman. You see a computer, you see a person who does not know how to use it, and as a result you see need for training, user manuals, instructors, etc. It doesn't have to be that way:

I grew up in a communist country in the 70's and early 80's. The only computers we had (by we I mean the public, not the government) were donated to us from the west. With very few exceptions they came wit no instructions, no manuals, often with very little software. So we learned how to use them. We figured it out. I know people who learned how to program by reading printouts of programs they found somewhere on a floppy with software that happened to have come with a source, and tried to figure out what the program actually does, without even knowing much English. We did have some manuals and books, mostly old editions, also donated, and we circulated these around. Not everybody was able to do that, but there were plenty of us who could. And believe me that we would be pretty upset if at that time somebody in the west said: "Don't send them computers, they won't be able to use them without having proper training and infrastructure.'"

In light of the continuing spread of misinformation about the program costs -- most recently reprinted in the April 2007 issue of IEEE Spectrum: 73% of the Government of Nigeria's entire budget to purchase 4-million laptops -- I remain concerned about the Wikipedia article containing such misleading and knowingly inaccurate data. What would people suggest regarding cleaning up this section? (The link to the IEEE article -- http://spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/4985 -- is unfortunately subscription only). --Walter.bender 19:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Converting lengthy list to text tag

I don't think Its a good idea in this case, I can't see how a list a features can benefit from being convert to one or two paragraphs, we will lose information and its presentation will be far less convenient--Khalid hassani 15:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a product catalogue. Technology articles have a horrible tendency to contain huge lists of not-very-interesting information. The majority of the Feature List, for instance, is already covered in the preceeding and following sections and could safely be removed without losing any information at all. The list of intentionally omitted features barely mentions why they're omitted, because technical people assume that a list speaks for itself. Lists are rarely an interesting way of conveying information and this machine is sufficiently novel that it's unlikely that a side-by-side comparison (which is one thing a list makes it easy to do) with other devices is useful to helping to understand it. Chris Cunningham 15:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

prototype images

Instead of randomly sprinkling the 1st/2nd/3rd gen prototype images like in a newspaper article written by a 6th grader, could someone put them in a logical organization in a section that makes sense? An image should not be stand alone; it should complement the adjacent paragraph.

Proprietary hardware criticism

Theo de Raadt and Richard Stallman have voiced some complaints about their use of hardware with documentation only available under NDAs. There's an article about this at [6]. Is this of interest to add to the technical criticism section? 198.205.33.94 17:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Participating countries

The reference to "Negroponte's press releases is curious, because OLPC has not issued any press releases in regard to country participation. That said, there have been numerous public pledges to one laptop per child, lowercase, by various heads of states and budgets allocated towards the goal of providing every school-age child a laptop computer.

The recently added assertion that "the language of the applications of the laptop are defined due to the participating countries as well, so next to English the home languages of the following countries are included in the installer image of the operating system and software" is perhaps an awkward way of saying that local languages will be installed on the laptop? --Walter.bender 23:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I've edited the section to address these points. --agr 15:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Thailand

The ref for the Thailand intention is [7] (regrettably a Yahoo webpage). I didn't see how to get it into the cite structure. Simesa 07:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Why deliberately inflate the laptop's black market value?

This may not be the correct place to discuss this, but it seems like OLPC's current plan for marketing the laptop only to governments pretty much guarantees a black market.

It seems like the best way to neutralize the whole issue of theft and resale it to offer the laptop for the same price to everyone, no strings attached, and establish that OLPC will buy back any laptop from anyone for cost, no questions asked. If some kid would rather sell his laptop, how are they going to stop him? At least OLPC would have their hardware back so they could give it to someone else.

They could help themselves more if they went one step further and made an effort to establish to all of the people who cared that there was no legitimate way to buy a laptop except directly from them. No second-hand market, but resellers, no nothing, so that anyone who wanted to buy one through some other channel would at least be aware of the fact that it was probably stolen from a poor school kid.

Representatives of OLPC have said (but don't quote me on this) that some black market sales are inevitable, but that's not enough reason to stop the project. One way they're considering preventing it (in some places) is to require the laptops to log in to the (school's) base station or they'll be disabled, but they don't like this solution too much. See Children's Machine#Children's Machine on the Open Market for info on how/when they'll be available to the public at large. And I just got to play with one of these machines and they're very cool. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 03:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Did OLPC state their reasons anywhere for having an aversion to selling the product to the public at large? Wouldn't additional buyers bring down the cost, which is kind of the point of the project? --Jackdavinci 19:16, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually the article deals with this issue quite well already. See: Children's_Machine#Theft_and_resale. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 15:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Bitfrost was created to solve the problem of theft and resale. --69.136.111.100 19:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Partly. Bitfrost is also about containment of applications that are hostile (trojans) or could become hostile (vulnerable to security exploits). Unlike normal desktop computer security, this protects more than just the OS itself. The user's other files are also protected. (the chat program should not be able to delete your photo collection) AlbertCahalan 01:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Without intending to offend anyone, if a system like BitFrost (e.g. obtaining periodic leases to keep functioning) was going to work, people would already be using it to protect $2,000 laptops. The entire system is an open platform, it will be hacked. The only people something like BitFrost is going to stop are legitimate users who's school server has broken/crashed/been stolen or who have moved.

Hackers and criminals are not going to have a problem with it.

BitFrost also seems to defeat the whole idea of having the laptop belong to the child. If it needs a lease from a particular school server, then whatever you may say, it belongs to the school.

I can see what the representatives from OLPC have said, but I disagree that they or the article have dealt with this issue. The US has to be careful who we give other kinds of aid to because so much of it ends up being intercepted or stolen and resold and we are talking about stuff like bags of flour. If the _battery_ in the laptop were worth $5 and a thug could obtain the laptop for nothing just by waiting until some kid is walking home from school, that would be enough incentive for someone to steal it. Let alone if you could sell the whole laptop for $50.

If there were no other way to prevent theft, there wouldn't be much that you could say about it, but when it appears obvious to me that their approach is only going to guarantee that kids are going to have their laptop stolen it is hard not to say something.

Also, pointing out how cool the demo machine is highlights the problem. :-) Few of the rest of us are ever going to handle one.

I stand by my original suggestion that offering them to everyone at the same price is the best way to prevent a black market.

Chris Blizzard?

Is Chris still a part of the project? The revamped OLPC website no longer has him listed. --69.136.111.100 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, he is. --jacobolus (t) 20:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Bitfrost

Article needs a section on the Bitfrost security system. Also see this Wired news article. --69.136.111.100 13:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC) Insert non-formatted text here

Thailand (2)

In the introduction Thailand is cited as a participating country which is going to order a large amount of laptops. In section Participating countries, Thailand is listed among others, however stating it does not participate any more. I am going to correct that. Anyone who knows better than me, please correct me in turn. --Ben ^T/_C 09:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Found the reference for the plans of Thailand's government for buying computers. It is more recent than the report of cancelation of the program, an apparent contradiction. Please somebody correct the facts. --Ben ^T/_C 09:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not open the design for rebuilders ?

Everybody should be able to produce and rebuild the OLPC and sell it to whom he likes. If he pays a license fee, he gets a certification and becomes official rebuilder. There are tons of people in "rich" countries, that cannot afford a good laptop. Dell and Microsoft do not like this idea? I can understand.

If you have a questions about the OLPC Project, post them on one of the olpc wiki discussion pages. This page is for discussions about improving the linked article. --69.136.111.100 02:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

display geometry diagrams

I hope those help. To improve the OLPC one:

• Exactly what is the spectrum of the white LED in use? (this will need to be converted via the CIE tristimulus values and the CIE XYZ color space)
• Is the rainbow effect sharp, or do the colors get blurred by some sort of diffuser?
• How thick is the rainbow? Is it distorted by some sort of lens?
• Where are the cut-offs for red and blue?
• Does the rainbow just span pixels, or is there a lens beneath each pixel to bring the color into the right pixel? (for example: one could chop the rainbows with a square grid rotated 45 degrees from the display, then shrink those squares 50% to fit through the pixels)
• Does the rainbow have red or blue on the upper left?
• For each pixel, is there a lens that reverses the rainbow?
• How exactly is the dead space shaped?

AlbertCahalan 16:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)