Make:

• Self-printing Game of Life in C#
• Micro-controller based photo-plotter
• CAPS LOCK trainer key
• Run Win apps on Mac/Linux (free)
• 3D scanners using a webcam and laser pointers
• Make your mice and keyboards talk serial and vice versa

In related news; OLPC now officially stands for "One License Per Child", Negroponte stated.

God damnit no, why did M$ win again? This is horrible, now an entire generation of first time users will associate computers with these awful design paradigmae. Open Source is not only called that because of the source code but also because of the ideas and insights behind it. Windows XP is something more like a pair of blinders. That's why this fool is so proud of "running all windows applications" so they can sell them office and other craptacular stuff only so they don't use something free. Why must an operating system look and feel like windows? Because everyone is raised on windows and they then feel that's the only way. But that's so stupid. Microsoft hasn't done anything to innovate the desktop ever since Win 95 and all the fancy graphics widgets they stole from other people. Is this a company that should dominate the market? Brutal competition and no innovation? Stifling development leads to prolonged income. Keep people from getting where they want to go and you can sell them stuff on the way. Take them longer to get somewhere = more moneyz for U.

But anyways who am I kidding they will sell thousands of these to blinded officials that are impressed by corporate attention and marketing prospects and no needy kid will see them and if so when it comes to upgrading to Office 2008 OLPC Edition none of them will know what a credit card is anyway... Congratulations lobbyists. The OLPC was hardware one time purchase and free software as in free updates forever. All MS users know that this is never the case with Microsoft. Maybe in a year or two they decide to do Vista Professional Homeless OLPC Edition and then who pays for that?

I'm going to cry now, for the love of god this was an education help project and now it's turned into a marketing shitstorm. We'll never save the planet this way. Our postapocalyptic biodromes will be run on Microsoft I tell you.

You know, I'm not a Gnazi at all, but I think that there's one huge issue that's been totally not taken into consideration with this decision. What happens when Microsoft decides that supporting the OS for OLPC isn't worth it anymore? Who will maintain it? Furthermore, I think putting OLPC users into a position where they may have to pay for license upgrades is really bad policy -- it's sure to lead to landfills full of the things.

When the OS is open source, the possibility of maintenance always exists, and the cost of upgrades is limiting to the cost of getting the bits to the users. These two things are exactly what's needed in the case of the OLPC.

Posted by: RocketGuy on May 16, 2008 at 9:16 AM

Rather than the usual rant about how M$ is wrecking the world and so forth, I'll comment on what this story reminds me of.

Years ago, I read a story in road and track, about some farmer who found a rare racing Alfa in his barn. As a practical exercise, he got the Alfa running, but disconnected it's turbo (just chewed up the spark plugs), and dropped the body of a caddy onto it, since that's what he had lying around.

An Alfa enthusiast, upon learning of this, came out to see the car, and apparently had to be pulled off the farmer, outraged that this fine piece of engineering history had been used so.

He even tried to sue, unsuccessfully, to get custody of the car for restoration etc.

I kinda thought the farmer had the right of it at the time, but now I also see the enthusiasts point of view.

So, back to the topic at hand. This, while of some technical interest, sucks.

What OLPC was doing with their linux distro had some truly interesting things that I hope make it into the more mainstream community. Radical departures from the derivative and obsolete win environment.

I have to stop now, otherwise I'm going to start losing sleep again, and the wife doesn't approve of that.

I have two G1G1 XO Laptops. I love the hardware, but Sugar is an abonimably bad UI. It looks like Microsoft has done a great job with the drivers, and I'll buy a couple copies if I am able to.

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