Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:06 AM EST

If needed.



---

IANAL

My posts are ©2004-2006 and released under the Creative Commons License

Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0

P.J. has permission for commercial use. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:06 AM EST

I think the goal is a worthwhile one even if the end result doesn't quite live

up to the orignal hype. It is important to remember that this is laptop V 1.0.

Giving every child/family/village in the world access to the global library of

information would be transformative event. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:08 AM EST

Well said, thanks.

There is a Scots Gallic saying which in translation says something like; 'You

will know a person by the company they keep' [ Reply to This | # ]



next line? - Authored by: baomike on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:40 AM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:08 AM EST

Authored by: feldegast on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:18 AM EST

Off Topic posts here, please make links clickable if you can.



---

IANAL

My posts are ©2004-2006 and released under the Creative Commons License

Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0

P.J. has permission for commercial use. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:57 AM EST

Here's <a

href="http://www.siliconvalleysleuth.com/2006/09/intel_talks_up_.html"

>another video</a> from intel, less about the software, and more about

kids's reaction in Nigeria to using them (must be a early test release of the

laptops). I hope this project has long term staying power, I think the success

depends largely on it's management and continued support by local governments.

Just the access to email and google is one big selling point, in my mind.



Maybe someday we'll hear from somebody using a OLPC laptop right here! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 10:59 AM EST

Ah, the world of Max Headroom or of M$, take your pick. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:09 AM EST

Thank you for that video link on Dvorak - very educational. I have always

thought it strange the number of times /. link to Dvorak columns. Does anyone

know whether /. pick up revenue for these links? I like to have some belief in

the news sites I visit.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:26 AM EST

Am I missing something or did Dvorak proudly confess that he is a troll? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:31 AM EST

Poor George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Their

educations were so weakened by their lack of access to computers. If only we

could go back in time and give them laptops so they could have developed their

mind more. Just think about what they could have done.



And oh my, the American public education establishment is loosing 40% of its

kids to drop-out and the other 60% are poorly suited to compete in a global

economy. Why? A lack of laptops I'm sure.



PJ, I think you analysis of law and technology is better than your analogy of

education.



I am a technophile, and very proud of it. In my home are five computers plus

PDA/phones, and so forth. I've been working on computers since I was 7 years old

and am now pursuing a PhD in Computer Science. I'm stating this so it is clear

that I do not have a phobia of technology (for the record, my wife is an

electrical engineer, so neither does she).



Furthermore, I have attended Alan Kay's demonstration of squeak myself. I know

what its capabilities are and I know how it is being used by students.



My analysis: it helps students who have bad teachers and part-time parents.

After the public schools have driven all creativity and love of learning out of

their little bodies, the Squeak program comes as a welcome relief. After they

are still having arithmetic shoved down their throats in fourth grade, I'm sure

that studying acceleration and the pull of gravity using Squeak as a tool must

seem like deliverance.



Ok, my rant is over and I'm off the soapbox. I'm ready for the flame. Let me

have it,



-- SJN



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Winter on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:36 AM EST

Earlier, I posted a call for an open letter to MS. I think this is still relevant. Ideally, MS officials should be asked these questions in every interview. The reference is to the Novell blog. From the previous article:

"For the people who don't like the microsoft /novell deal. Please put your questions and remarks here" I posted the following question at their blog:



The deal between MS and Novel implies that the OLPC project is constructing a laptop which will infringe on MS' patents. The OLPC project is NOT covered by the covenant.



This means that millions of children might be denied their laptop after these have been produced and shipped at great cost.



Don't you feel morally obliged to inform the OLPC project about the patents they infringe? Couldn't we (PJ?) formulate an open letter to MS where we ask them whether they want to protect their precious IP and tell the OLPC what patents they infringe. Or whether they just want to use patent threats to crush all competition and deny millions of children in the developing world acces to cheap laptops. Laptops developed and produced at great cost by NGO's and poor developing nations. And then watch how they spin this in the run-up to Xmas Rob ---

Revenge, Justice, Security, and Revenge, chose any two. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:56 AM EST

I wonder how much the issue of patents really threatens FOSS. Since the source, including the history of the source, is freely available, it would be interesting to see how many of these "original" patents were actually implemented in FOSS code before the patent was actually filed. [ Reply to This | # ]



Patents and Threats - Authored by: PJ on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 01:07 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 11:57 AM EST

Authored by: Liquor A. on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 12:01 PM EST

<rant type=ignorable method=hypocaffeinated>



I've recently taken a little time to look at some of the SW patents. (Frankly,

reading them makes me think that the Patent Orifice should charge by the claim,

whether accepted or not, instead of by the accepted patent.)



If I understand correctly, a patent must not be 'obvious' to a person 'skilled

in the art', but yet the description in a patent's claims must be sufficient for

that selfsame skilled person to produce the subject of the patent.



It seems that most of the claims in Microsofts patents are so obvious that

anyone who can write a few lines of basic could come up with them - and yet the

description itself is so generic that a programmer with years of experience

still could not implement them from the description.



And this pattern seems to repeat in ALL software patents.



In my mind at least, this should be sufficient to make the it patently invalid.





None that I have seen have included any sort of reference implementation - which

I would consider to be a minimum requirement - or anything as informative as an

RFC to describe the operation.



Of course, if a reference implemtation was provided, then 'spectral analysis'

could have been used to show that there is prior art for ALL of the claims I

saw.



Ah well, </rant>





---

Liquor A. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 12:45 PM EST

Actually Squeak is not GPL but covered by the Squeak License.



Squeak was originally developed at Apple and Disney. Here's the license:



http://www.squeak.org/SqueakLicense/ [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: DFJA on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 01:17 PM EST

Here's an idea - someone with an interest in GNU/Linux should sue Microsoft

claiming unfair marketing practices surrounding their patent FUD (is this Lanham

act in the USA?). Could they be forced to disclose what patents they are

referring to in order to defend themselves against such a claim, or would they

be able to keep these secret from the public? The number of redacted documents

in the SCO cases makes me fear the latter, although clearly whoever sues would

be a party to these. My worry is that of course Microsoft have enough money to

make such a case drag on sufficiently to bleed any company dry should they try

this.



Alternatively, could they be forced by a court to make a declarative statement

of the patent claims they wish to make, in such a way that they forfeit any

rights to anything they don't declare? A kind of "if you ever want to use

it, you must declare it up front" approach. I seem to remember a legal

precedent was recently set to do with submarine patents, but my memory fails me

as to which it was now. That's essentially the threat that Microsoft are

issuing.



---

43 - for those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe

and everything [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 01:22 PM EST



Microsoft is looking more like SCO/Caldera every day -- just empty claims they

don't dare test in court.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Sean DALY on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 02:07 PM EST

I was astonished when Bill Gates criticized the OLPC project. At the same time, I can't help but think that this way of thinking is a direct result of the Microsoft monoculture. It is one of Microsoft's greatest weaknesses, this habit of using Microsoft Everything; it has been so long since they cared about interoperability, the automatic response is to fit the hardware to the bloated software instead of really innovating. I have a colleague at work, a senior manager oversseing sales in a part of the world which includes Africa. He has a favorite saying: "IT projects are too important to be decided by IT people". I can't agree 100% :) but I take his point. I hope the armchair pundits who loudly opposed the OLPC project will understand that innovation comes from searching for a solution to a problem, rather than worrying about lost potential profits in underdeveloped regions of the world. Sean DALY. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: jplatt39 on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 02:19 PM EST

M$ wants to sell a luxury product. It may have people who are willing to

discuss it as a commodity, but the truth is, software has to cost a lot less

than they think they can afford for it to continue the kind of amazing work it

has done. Plus Gates is a hardware junkie: he wants his fix. And he assumes

that we all do. He's going to play this patent thing for all it is worth.

After all, he's not going to jail over it is he?



He's stepped into the fight against Malaria, and his views have changed,

substantively. One can only hope that he sees, eventually, that either this

kind of tool has to get out there, and I mean something more efficient than his

crippled Windoze, or they are just going to have to deal with piracy and

whatever versions of Open Source are out there.



I know. They're going to have to deal with whatever versions of Open Source are

out there anyhow. And that's a good thing. But if we're going to have a

comfortable lifestyle we will have to deal with them on more equitable terms,

and that means understanding that IP "piracy" is as much a response to

the political control of the flow of information as it is the economic control.

This patent "sabre-rattling" is only helping to create a situation in

many poor parts of the world where real piracy with guns and extortion is

becoming more of an attractive option for people whose governments don't seem to

care whether they get fed or not.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 03:35 PM EST

As others have mentioned, SCO's non-case has been a net benefit for Linux; it's

made Linux stronger against legal attacks. Before, Linux obviously hadn't been

vetted. Now, it has. And better yet, public perception has been vaccinated

against nebulous accusations of intellectual property infringement.



So, while Microsoft certainly has legal resources, I expect my reaction is

typical: "Where's the beef?"



If they have something, present it. We've long known that patents are the most

likely legal threat, so it's not like Microsoft is making any great revelations.

Give us specific allegations. Linux will respond on the merits. Until then,

yawn.



If this is just the FAT32 long names patents again, I'll be annoyed. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 04:30 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 04:33 PM EST

I downoaded the qqueak-vm and squeakland debs and installed them on etch. The

whole thing comes up in German and I can't find any instructions to get it to

speak English, so I'm not getting anywhere with it right now.



Can anyone offer me some pointers? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 04:37 PM EST

I work for a large professional services company, mostly we sell 'solutions'. We have a huge pile of patents ... hardware, software, and business process. Anything that is patentable, we have some. I asked the patent attorney once, 'why ?' He said 'commercial freedom' [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Brian S. on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 05:23 PM EST



So, Microsoft. I have a question for you. What are you doing to match this? A deal with Novell. Following the hurried Becta Report on interoperability(4 page pdf) produced over the Summer in the UK. This will enable the UK government to allow the install of Novell desktops in the poorer schools in the UK and achieve their desired 100% Microsoft controlled lockin. Of course, that plan could be thrown off course by events over the next few months. I await with interest to witness the possible approval of the first Red Hat/Ubuntu/or other alternate desktop against the wishes of Sir Bill.

Brian S. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: raindog on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 06:37 PM EST

You know, I don't agree with Dvorak on this (or many other things) but I really

don't think he's acting as a shill for MS here or he would have been championing

that Intel/WinXP knockoff of the OLPC laptop. I didn't even see this story on

MSN (which I don't exactly frequent), I saw it on marketwatch.com.



I think this is just another variation of the tired old "why give them

laptops when they really just need some beans and rice" argument. And it

is dangerous to assume that the laptops will end up in kids' hands when other

forms of aid end up going to the wrong people or just sitting on docks or in

warehouses. But the idea that tech people shouldn't try to help in their own

way just because other people have failed seems like a fallacy to me.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 06:37 PM EST

I almost get the idea that he was being sarcastic, or satiric.



Almost.



If not for the fact that Dvorak is, IMHO, full of himself. At one time, I

purchased PCMagazine regularly, and read every word of his column, particulary

"Inside Track". This was way before he got on ZDTV. I think that

somewhere he lost track of the fact that his job is to *report* on tech, and

began trying to influence it.



But still....he may have been joking. I hope he was. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: The Mad Hatter r on Saturday, November 18 2006 @ 06:38 PM EST





Going to install it right now and play with it.







---

Wayne



http://urbanterrorist.blogspot.com/

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 01:11 AM EST

The full hardware docs have/will not been released.



There is no way to replace the installed OS with anything else.



You'd better hope the OLPC project maintains the code in perpetuity, because

there is no way to maintain it yourself without the docs.



Don't give me a BLOB driver, don't even give me source code.

Just give me the docs. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 02:31 AM EST

Here's some knowledge that is needed in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd worlds.



http://youthforhumanrights.org



The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified by the United Nations in

1948, but surveys show the vast majority of people have never heard of it.



On the web site there are 30 ads could be shown to people to educate them as to

what there human rights actually are! Imagine what educating people on these

rights would do!

Access to information like this is one very interesting potential benefit of the

OLPC project.

For examples, see Human Right #26 'The Right To Education' and Human Right #28

'A Fair and Free World'.





Chuck



----------

"Human rights must be made a fact,

not an idealistic dream. -- L. Ron Hubbard

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 05:04 AM EST

I hope everyone at Microsoft notices from the paragraph how important it is to be inspired by other programmers' prior work, because that is precisely what is wrong with software patents, among many other things. They make ideas unusable, and that curtails innovation. Because there are large parts of the world that currently do not allow software patents, I think you could posit that software patents are endangering the US's ability to compete, and it will only get worse. The best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems." - Bill Gates quoted in Programmers at Work, copyright 1986 by Microsoft Press. Something else that doesn't often get quoted in full; Back in 1991 Bill Gates was more concerned that some other company would take out a software patent on some obvious technology and use it to hold Microsoft to ransom. If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. - Challenges and Strategy, Bill Gates, May 16, 1991 [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 07:40 AM EST

Ah, yes. A sort of Rush Limbaugh, Hate For Hire, of computing. He writes, acts,

in contempt of his audience, even as he relates with relish *to* that audience

exactly how he hates them. And what exactly is contempt, and where does *all*

contempt come from, why is it so poisonous? Read Alice Miller, "The Drama

of the Gifted Child." Then search out her essay, "What is

Hatred?", on the web.



Now go back and watch, or remember the last time you watched, a video of Steve

Ballmer talking where you could really watch the depth of what shows in his

eyes. And then be glad he's only in charge of a corporation and not a country.

Watch the clip of McCarthy's response to Murrow. Now do the same thing with a

video of Cheney. He *is* in charge of country.



When illegitimate hatred is the underlying animus of a person, all of his or her

relationships are bent to its exercise, because illegitimate hatred persists as

long as its bearer remains oblivious to its true origin(s) and object(s). If

that person happens to be a CEO or VP or civic leader or parent or teacher or

columnist or _______, the power over people and things and events that goes with

that position are bent to amplify the exercise of that animus. >> Brrrr

<< [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 08:12 AM EST

The discussion of the effects of OLPC are likely to be mostly of a kind I

haven't seen discussed anywhere. If it is at all successful in its educational



goals, OLPC will have a profoundly disruptive effect on the cultures of the

people whose children use it. Among other things:

- it will greatly reduce the authority of parents / elders who are not familiar



with this new source of knowledge.

- it will open masses of kids to people peddling all sorts of ideas, some good

and some evil. Note that many of these kids will not have had the kind of

training in detecting lies / spin that Western kids have from watching TV (eg

from getting an advertised toy and seeing the difference between ad and

reality)

- it will make it clear to these kids and their elders just how little they

have

materially.



In other words, major culture shock, comparable in kind to the effects on a

isolated hunter/gatherer culture when it comes into contact with the modern

world, or to the effects the European invasion of North America has had on

the native cultures, but involving millions of people. The effects will be

tremendous, many for the good but potentially also very bad. I don't think

anyone can confidently predict what this project will cause. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: jsusanka on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 01:38 PM EST

PJ, I commend you in recognizing this gibberish.



What good is a nation when it is measured by GNP.



When we keep shoving shoot em up and beat them up games down our children's

throats all in the name of innovation and getting rich and the "american

way".



When the divorce rate is higher than the staying married rate and our families

and children are destroyed and desensitized all in the name of innovation and

getting rich and the "american way".



I applaud the one laptop per child project and will do everything I can to

support them.



I enjoy your website and your thoughts - you really make a lot of sense and

hopefully more people will listen.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 02:42 PM EST

I think taxing Linux is on topic :P



FEAR

UNCERTAINTY

DOUBT



Dan & David Show

OMG this is so slanted and full of FUD

http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/zd.pod/http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/z/e/200611/11-1

7-06_dananddavidshow.mp3



http://blogs.zdnet.com/btl/?p=3980



Here is a rough transcript:



6:20

#Dan: I guess the big story of the week was this on going Novell ms agreement

that has turned into paying a tax to ms for running Linux.



#David: Hah, what Redhat is calling an innovation tax. So Steve Ballmer at a

sever conference in Seattle

he took the rhetoric up a couple of notches, in terms of whether or not ms may

come knocking on the door of either, distributors of Linux beyond Novell, such

as Redhat or users of Linux themselves. And he made it clear that both, what I

mean by both is, users of Linux and other distributors have perhaps *a liability

on their balance sheet that need to be dealt with* and he also made it really

clear that he was going to look for deals with other distributors, that the deal

he made with Novell is not exclusive. So the basic indication there is that ms

believes that is has or very clearly believes that it has Intellectual Property

that is being *misappropriated* in Linux



#David: What specifically is it that's being misappropriated has that been

declared yet?

#Dan: Well you know, its hard to say, he wasn't really clear, he wasnt specific

about what in Linux could be infringing upon MS's Intellectual Property he

mentioned the word Linux

#David: Guy: Does he mean kernel?

#Dan: Well its hard to say you know technically speaking the word Linux refers

to the kernel, and to refer to the entire package thats typically distributed

around the world, you know, by the different companies and distributors, that

has all of these other pieces of software around it is GNU/Linux. And so if you

ahhh, you know depending

on who ever you are talking to, if somebody says Linux it means the Kernel

somebody else, a lot of people drop the GNU and just call the whole thing Linux.

I don't know what Steve Ballmer's style is there so its hard to tell whether he

is referring to the Kernel or not.

Now what else beyond the Kernel could be something that is infringing upon MS's

Intellectual Property rights, well ahh, one of the speculations has been, ahh

around samba. samba is the software that comes with most distributions of Linux

that , amongst other things allows a Linux box to pretend that it a MS based

file and print server, ahh, it runs the SMB protocol, which is a protocol

associated with MS's file and print server's, has been for a very long time,

dating back to lan manager. ahhm but some scuttle but thats going around the net

that says that er perhaps ahhm, when IBM, released 500 patents under a big

patent covenant to the open source community that it covered samba's butt. When

it did that so, maybe there's prior art in IBM's Intellectual Property

portfolio. That er would prevent anybody who is using samba from getting sued by

MS.

What else? Open Office is another one. You know maybe open office which is also

distributed with most copies of Linux. Maybe that infringes upon some of MS's

Intellectual Property and MS Office.

But a lot of people believe that MS starts lowering the boom on anybody who may

be potentialy infringing on MS Office Intellectual Property the European Union

will go nuts because there are so may users over there. And the EU is all ready

coming after MS.



#Dan: So why does MS want to take this point when it seemed that the company was

becoming more friendly to open source?

#David: You know its an IP based economy Dan. I mean at the end of the day. Ahh

MS's entire business model, is based on it abillity to protect its Intellectual

Property. Om and as is many other companies and so ah, say what you will about

what it takes, you know the ability to get patents and stuff like this in the

the US now. We're not just talking about patents here we could be talking about

copyrights. We still don't know exactly but ah, its an an IP based economy.

Thats what, thats what, you know, makes doing business here great. And ahh, MS's

not ready to move to the other models that, lets say, Redhat's pursuing, or lets

say SUN the one, you know, the way SUN is transitioning.

MS is clearly not a hardware company outside of a few products like Zune &

some mice & keyboards. So ah, you know they have to to protect its

Intellectual Property I dont think they have a choice.

10:48



-----------------------------------------------------------------

Just lost the will to live - Overdosed on the FUD.

Anyone else want to finish it...

and point out and refute the various FUD?



---

GPLv3 *OR LATER* has been vindicated

The "OR LATER" is vital

A GPL set in stone will be eroded over time. -SilverWave [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: LaurenceTux on Sunday, November 19 2006 @ 05:01 PM EST

One of the things that folks point out is "How are these kids going to get

an Internet Connection when there is a large lack of ISPs in #pick remote

area?" So my question is how many parts of sending say a Sun Blackbox and a

support trailer with a satcom link +hotspot are availible



(im thinking that if you need to water cool the Blackbox the output (after

cooling or before use) would solve one of those "But the villagers need

(basic living needs not Hightech)" items.) [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 20 2006 @ 05:05 AM EST

`Poor' in Spain is a rather different kettle of fish to `poor' in Ethiopia. I

realise

that Americans don't do geography, but `poor' in Spain is substantially better

off than, say, `poor' in LA -- that pesky socialised medicine, for example, and



that pesy welfare state. I'm quite prepared to believe that knowledge of

computers could be a rung out of relative poverty in rural Spain. I'm still not

as

convinced in places where perinatal mortality is >20% and starvation is a

major

risk. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 20 2006 @ 10:39 AM EST