[am-translate] OLPC Presentation Comments

[Daniel Yacob]

Greetings All,

I've been late to send a small report on the One Laptop Per Child
programme after hearing a presentation by Nicholas Negroponte 
(head of the project) two weeks ago.

In the presentation Negroponte passed around the working model
of the laptop, the production models had just arrived to the US
that same day and even he had not seen them yet. They are produced
on the same assembly lines used to make Dell another 1st class
laptops. The price right now for the laptops is (I think) $148
dollars each. The idea of a $100 laptop is a misconception of the
press. My 2008 the price should come down to $100, and maybe to
$50 by 2010.

The laptop first looks like a toy, it is very small and light,
for a child's hands I guess it is the right size. The keyboard
has no "CapsLk" key, he made a joke on how no language in the
world needs a CapsLk, so they put a control key there.  It has
foldable antennas to help with wireless networking, the interface
is built around the idea of being in a wireless neighborhood,
so it is assumed that children will be actively exchanging
information. The interface is based on Linux Fedora. It does
not have a "crank" to manually generate electricity. I think
he said that it does (or will) have an inertial recharger, so
that while kids walk to school and back that motion recharges
the battery (some watches do this). The monitor can fold around
into different positions, in one form it looks like it is
a video game player.

Some other interesting notes was that where they've tested
the laptops, it turns out that parents end up using the laptop's
1/3 of the time. It has changed some family dynamics because
the adults have to get help from the children, so they start
to respect their children more. He says that he hears many
times a parent say that they have "become friends" with their
children.

They have some future plans such as to make special analog
peripherals for things like testing water quality.

They are presently in discussion to introduce the OLPC
program to Ethiopia. A government has to have $200 million
available to participate.  This is larger than the national
budgets of some countries. In South America, some countries
have joined together to come up with the $200 million.  Their
policy is that when the laptops are distributed to a country,
the interface MUST be in the local language.  So if Ethiopia
gets into the program, there will be lots of Amharic computers
everywhere. I don't know if they support only the national
language or every language of a country.

It would be interesting to investigate their special version
of Fedora and look into what needs localizing.

cheers,

/Daniel