Floor Terra wrote: ... > Proprietary hardware and software seems to be directly against their > core principles.
That would be the assumption. Though as always, watch the actions, not the words... > The XO laptop uses Open Firmware instead of a BIOS, so it's probably > a lot like a Sun SPARC or a PPC Mac. a lot like, but totally different. It will require its own boot loader for any OS run on it. May be "open" (key word: "may"), but annoying. It would be great if all PCs had such a boot ROM, but they won't. So this is just being odd for the sake of being odd. > Can you point me to the source where Theo de Raadt claims that it's > impossible to write a driver for the Marvell Libertas controller > (wireless networking). I can't seem to find it. how did you look? I Googled for "olpc deraadt" First hit: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=116007094304009&w=2 Second hit: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=116025489205484&w=2 Third: http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/11/olpc-under-fire-for-proprietary-components/ Fourth is kinda dull, being a recap of 1 and 2. Several other interesting hits there, though. Impossible is not quite the right word, but practically speaking, pretty darned close. The OLPC crap is kinda interesting to me. I did something about it, too, long before I ever heard of Nicholas Negroponte and his idea of laptops mattered more than roofs on schools, or paying teachers, or books, or or or... I implemented an entire student lab in a school for well under the $100/seat price of this "OLPC" project. I didn't get rich. I didn't get my name plastered all over the media at all for what I did, much less for a lot more talk than action. $100 computers are easy. * Skip the idea of the laptop. It's silly for more reasons than I care to enumerate now. * Start with some open-minded administration in a non-traditional school. * Talk to a nice person in a medium-sized company that is changing its infrastructure (the fact that I helped him with a charity project of his in the past might have helped, too). * Get them to donate monitors, switches, server license. * Haul away a bunch of big laser printers from another company * Clean some hardware out of my basement * Buy a bunch of decent but older computers for $40 each. * Install in lab with a lot of volunteer work (several other teachers, students, my dad) * buy a bunch of cheesy new keyboards that weren't as good as the old IBM clicky-clicky keyboards that we already had, but the kids loved it, along with the $5 optical mice, made 'em feel like they weren't getting just someone else's rejects). * Add one devoted, outside-the-box teacher (Erin, you rock) * Work out a plan to actually use the stuff to the students education, not just wave it around and say, "look what we got!" ta-da. A real change in a real school. But, not a way to fame and fortune. Sadly, also not easily repeatable. The problem is, public schools in the US want to be able to say, "We have the latest and greatest technology!", but they really have no plan as to what to do with it. That's the way it has to be when every parent considers themselves an expert on education ("Wow, look! I had unprotected sex and now I'm an education expert!") and wants what is "best" for their kids, or at least what sounds cool. It takes an unfortunately rare combination of non-conventional thought on the part of the administration, a phenomenal teacher, and students and parents who are happy to see results, rather than names. Yes, my plan helped, but I don't think the plan it self was that amazing. Even then, there were grumbles. The kids were disappointed because the computers we got were high-quality IBM, and not Dells (dang, they did some good advertising! They didn't care that they were older machines, they just wanted "Dell, Dude!"). A few teachers grumbled that OpenOffice wasn't MS Office (teachers are some of the hardest people to get to actually LEARN something new). A few (other) teachers were drooling over HW in more prosperous schools in the area (pointless, they weren't going to get it). However, the lab worked, and we accomplished some amazing stuff there. In fact, this is probably one of the only schools in the area that had students writing web pages in raw HTML rather than in the favorite drag-and-doodle "page layout program" and actually learned something (real) about Internet Safety. Nick.
