Well, RMS speaks.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| ColonelPanik Nov 05, 2008 10:51 PM EDT |
Yes it is true that the OLPC project stopped reading its mission statement early on.
What has been done with the XO machines in the developping countries has proven
that the idea was and is viable. RMS did well in this rant, free is free. He did mention that MIPS processor that I had never hurd of before. /intended http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture Sounds good. |
| tuxchick Nov 05, 2008 11:04 PM EDT |
RMS is clear and eloquent, as always, and a nice antidote to the "oh, a tiny bit of poop in the punchbowl won't hurt anything" attitude. |
| azerthoth Nov 06, 2008 7:53 AM EDT |
I see two sides to this, I purchased my OLPC not particularly to help a child, but rather to help an open source project. This was prior to the announcement of OLXP, at the time I was highly agitated (as some might remember reading). On that point, a breach of assumed promise, abandoning the little lime green brick, I can agree with. However, dropping it just because it can in and of itself run windows, that is another story completely. How many laptops are in existance that can not be made to run windows? His new one can, certainly, but thats OK? How about the fact that it's made in China, I take it the human rights violations from that country that exist still today arent enough to stop him from supporting them financially. It is for me, I spot made in china, and I put it back on the shelf. What Richards article here is, is to highlight the negativity surrounding nearly any cause. It is not enough that you support a certain view point in a positive manner, and the 4 freedoms are a positive thing to support if you can dodge the rhetoric. You also though have to demonize any opposing view point as a means of showing your support for your 'positive'. If he had dropped the thing because of the fact that it's an annoying piece of fluff, I would have agreed with him. However, dropping it because there is a chance that there is one somewhere capable of running XP, and switching to another laptop, that is fully capable of running XP, why then that is hypocrisy, and your argument against OLPC is just as valid if applied to your current hardware. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 06, 2008 11:44 AM EDT |
@azeroth: It's not about the laptop being able to run XP. It's about the way OLPC treated the FOSS community. When negroponte came with his OLPC idea everyone (especially laptop hardware manufacturers and Microsoft) laughed at him and offered no help. Except for the FOSS community. We saw the potential, especially with OLPC putting FOSS into millions of childrens hands. Negroponte loved the idea and proclaimed that FOSS was the best thing to put on the OLPC so that it would be Free as in Freedom. The FOSS community then spent millions building the software stack for the OLPC (IIRC RedHat picked up most of the tab). And then, as soon as OLPC starts to become a success and Microsoft starts to realize it was a dumb idea to laugh at OLPC and small/cheap laptops in general the OLPC does a 180 degree turnaround, gives up it's ideology of Free and starts peddling Windows which MS is now supplying for next-to-nothing (anything to keep people from discovering FOSS eh?). OLPC used FOSS just to get Microsoft interested and left us to pick up the tab. No thank you. |
| dinotrac Nov 06, 2008 2:02 PM EDT |
To follow up on Sander's point, the idea of OLPC as a project possessed of moral authority, ie, something that could, with a straight face, ask you to give it money or buy 1 for the price of 2, was demolished by it's tilt to Microsoft. The high-horizon potential embodied by OLPC the concept are crippled when free software is stripped from the mix. It was One Laptop Per Child, not Any Old Laptop Per Child. |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 06, 2008 3:23 PM EDT |
I have been busy lately, however, I read the magnetic field at the poles have been weakening. That can be an indication one of the periodic exchange of magnetic orientation of the planet is approaching. It is the only plausible explanation I have for my agreeing with any stretch of text written by dino. Worse, it has been happening more often. Am I ill? Or was it dino's leaving the (il)legal profession and breaking free of the corrupt confines of ChicagoLand? I truly do not know, but I suspect the next time I fly South I will find myself somewhere over Canada approaching that newly minted pole. |
| dinotrac Nov 06, 2008 10:13 PM EDT |
Txt - Fear not. You have simply risen above the foul pit of sloppy thinking to bask in the warm glow of reason. Rejoice. |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 07, 2008 12:26 PM EDT |
Ah, that's the dino I knew fully basking in unreasoned ranting. But it is the other dino that perplexes me, that one less inclined to to cling to dogma and seeming to prefer logic and reasonableness over the former. In science, when there are more than one explanation that explains all the observed data one chooses the simpler. Therefore, I opt for the Earth has flipped its poles to explain your new found rationality and my propensity to agree with your words. Your buddy, Txt. |
| tuxchick Nov 07, 2008 12:30 PM EDT |
Please, someone stop them before they hug. |
| gus3 Nov 07, 2008 12:47 PM EDT |
tuxchick, don't stop them. If they actually do touch, we might finally find the Higgs boson! ...sorry, just got off an XKCD kick... |
| Scott_Ruecker Nov 07, 2008 12:59 PM EDT |
I knew the second that Negroponte backpedaled on the only free software on the XO that he had been bought out by the big boys. Like RMS says, the first hits free baby.. |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 07, 2008 5:45 PM EDT |
gus, Regarding the Higgs particle, I think with the recently reported results from the Fermi Lab., if correct, may make the entire model questionable. Somehow when I read one version of the report*, I thought I saw a diagram of the decay pattern, where there is a relatively long distance traversed before seeing the muon decay outside the collision path was both unexpected and model breaking. One explanation is that the gab is due to a postulated form of dark matter, which is inconsistent with model that predicts the Higgs boson as the fundamental explanation of gravity. However, dark matter can be a perplexing topic. For example, here is a theoretical summary of another view of dark matter with dark light and forces akin to a weak electromagnetism neither of which we can see nor measure: http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/10/29/dark-photons/ Sort of screws up some of my thought on how extra, non-Euclidean dimensions could reconcile some weird quantum mechanic phenomena that has bothered me since graduate school. My ideas were still qualitative, while these guys know how to crunch the numbers. So it's back to the drawing board. * Have not been able to find it in a later search. |
| dinotrac Nov 07, 2008 7:35 PM EDT |
You're all just jealous. I understand. Who wouldn't be? Heck, I'm jealous of me. Only my incredible humility keeps me from being less than spine-tingling wonderful to be around. |
| tuxchick Nov 07, 2008 7:47 PM EDT |
The nausea...help meee.... |
| gus3 Nov 07, 2008 9:03 PM EDT |
@dino: Never mind TxtEdMacs. Just make sure you never touch your reflection in a mirror, or you'll bring about the heat death of the universe. |
| jdixon Nov 07, 2008 9:07 PM EDT |
> Heck, I'm jealous of me. Do I hear the faint sounds of a Mac Davis song in the background? :) |
| ColonelPanik Nov 07, 2008 10:47 PM EDT |
Its hard to be humble
When your perfect in every way
Oh its hard to be humble
When you get better looking each day Hell of theme song jd I wonder if Mr. Negroponte will be invited to address any Linux/FOSS conferences? |
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