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Registered Member #191
Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 02:01AM
Location: Esbjerg Denmark
Posts: 720
they use cell phones because when they tried land lines, the ppl would cut the wire and steal the copper. not even joking! so yea cell phones are more appropriate in that case.
Registered Member #63
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425
Alex wrote ...
Lovely. Was it alpha software, or was the stuff actually expected to work? When you say annoying sounds, are you referring to silly clicks and boobs of their kid-oriented OS, or do they generate noise unintentionally?
Alex, it felt pre-alpha, but that's fair enough. The particular model only had a B&W LCD, too. The annoying sounds were intentional, but I suppose they could have been 'cute' to a different audience.
Banned on 3/17/2009. Registered Member #487
Joined: Sun Jul 09 2006, 01:22AM
Location:
Posts: 617
Bjørn Bæverfjord wrote ...
What I question is to use of a power hungry and expensive AMD processor with the worst architecture known to man and the use of extremely inefficient software like Linux.
Wait. Since when was an AMD more expensive than an intel processer? How is Linux inneficient? It's more effcient than Windows. I'm not a fan of MACS but I think this thing should be a a MAC since they are stable. It's not like anyones going to be gamming on it.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Linux, MacOS, Windows, Intel, AMD and ARM all have their strengths and weaknesses, and in any case, decisions like this are often made for reasons that have nothing to do with technological merit.
Hardware-wise, I noticed that AMD are a founding sponsor of this project, so go figure
Software-wise, I think Linux is a reasonably good choice. A project like this needs to be open and have low barriers to entry for developers, or nobody will ever bother to write applications for it. Linux is open source, the development tools are free, and lots of people know how to develop for it now. While it can be a bit messy and bloaty sometimes (I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights thinking of my experience with the early versions of KDE) it's probably no worse than Windows in that respect.
A custom OS carefully hand-coded in C or assembler might squeeze more from the hardware, but they wouldn't be able to... shudder... "Leverage" the experience of thousands of Linux developers.
PS: You can try the OLPC OS (and even develop for it) on a regular PC or Mac, under an emulator like QEMU or VMWare.
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
Since when was an AMD more expensive than an intel processer?
No one claimed that. My claim that using AMD for a project such as this a bad choice. It is expensive, power hungry and a very very bad architecture. A good choice would be something efficient and cheap that comes in a VHDL file so you can put everything on a single chip instead of designing an expensive motherboard littered with support chips.
How is Linux inneficient? It's more effcient than Windows.
It is more efficient at some things, worse at others, it depends on what hardware it runs on and what the main use is. They are both terribly unefficient.
The cheapo laptop boots in 2 minutes, I have a computer that boots in 2 seconds using hardware that is 100 times slower. That means Linux is 6000 times slower than it could be for a specific task on a computer where every Joule of energy is extremely important.
They will probably be able to reduce the boot time by a large amount but they will still be a factor of 1000 away from reasonable and a factor of 10 000 away from optimal.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
So what you're saying is, it should have been an Acorn? Well, when you think about it on those terms, maybe it should have been. Or an Atari or C64 or something. We learned to compute on those things and it never did us any harm. I remember trying to learn 68k assembler so I could write Amiga games, and failing completely. I never "got it" till I tried programming PICs.
But I read some more of the OLPC wiki, and they say the language they plan to use for application development on the thing is... Python! So some poor African kid has to crank a handle 10 times harder, just so some other software developer doesn't have to worry about memory management and garbage collection...
Here's a challenge for you guys then: The $10 computer. Can you think of a $10 microprocessor-based "Something" that would improve education, quality of life, etc. in the same places as the OLPC is targeted to?
Registered Member #477
Joined: Tue Jun 20 2006, 11:51PM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 546
Steve Conner wrote ...
I remember trying to learn 68k assembler so I could write Amiga games, and failing completely. I never "got it" till I tried programming PICs.
(bit OT, but hey:) LOL! Heheheh...trying to write Amiga games in 68k assembler was also one of *my* first cracks at doing anything useful with assembler, and I too failed. Actually, I managed to pop up a window on the screen and draw a few 2-D rotating shapes using the OS-provided line functions (something that no self-respecting Amiga game developer would do--use system calls), and was so exhausted that I never went any further. Never got around to messing directly with the "Copper" Only recently have I revisited assembler, and also on PICs. Of course, there's no comparing the PIC's instruction set to 68k; you can memorize it by accident in your first pass on the datasheet
Banned on 3/17/2009. Registered Member #487
Joined: Sun Jul 09 2006, 01:22AM
Location:
Posts: 617
Bjørn Bæverfjord wrote ...
Since when was an AMD more expensive than an intel processer?
No one claimed that. My claim that using AMD for a project such as this a bad choice. It is expensive, power hungry and a very very bad architecture. A good choice would be something efficient and cheap that comes in a VHDL file so you can put everything on a single chip instead of designing an expensive motherboard littered with support chips.
How is Linux inneficient? It's more effcient than Windows.
It is more efficient at some things, worse at others, it depends on what hardware it runs on and what the main use is. They are both terribly unefficient.
The cheapo laptop boots in 2 minutes, I have a computer that boots in 2 seconds using hardware that is 100 times slower. That means Linux is 6000 times slower than it could be for a specific task on a computer where every Joule of energy is extremely important.
They will probably be able to reduce the boot time by a large amount but they will still be a factor of 1000 away from reasonable and a factor of 10 000 away from optimal.
Well you didn't specifically say an Intel would be a better choice but there isn't much choice out there besides AMD and Intel. AMD isn't any more power hungry than Intel or anything else. What else is there. Or maybe they should use some imbedded type stuff like Freescale semi type thing. I agree with the Linux, It's free, you can't beat that. Another thing is Linux can be scaled up or down to accomadate pretty much any hardware out there. Walmart was selling a 200 dollar computer that ran a version of Linux called Lindows. It was cheap and did the basics.
Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155
The rise of Rim and PalmOS..... The original Blackberry used the low power version of the intel 386 cpu. Satellite phones would be perfect, but even the cost of the airtime is more than these people could ever afford. However, in many developing countries the old generation GSM and analog network phones still function well.
Linux is one of the only OS that is happy being ported to several platforms. However, it still has problems handling APM behaviors. I assumed the OLPC project would use the low power 1GHz ATMEL processor with the uC linux (usually has no mmu.)
Registered Member #326
Joined: Sat Mar 18 2006, 01:12PM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 66
A fascinating report on the popularity and economic impact of mobile phones in Kenya on the BBC site.
It's striking that private enterprise run largely by local people is helping to get the economy going in a very poor country where decades of expensive handouts from Western governments and aid agencies have failed. I think one of the reasons for the success of cellphones in Africa is that this is a technology that Africans have been able to choose for themselves, rather than having know-it-all white Westerners trying to tell Africans what is best for them.
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$100 dollar laptop (now $188)
So some poor African kid has to crank a handle 10 times harder, just so some other software developer doesn't have to worry about memory management and garbage collection...
Only recently have I revisited assembler, and also on PICs. Of course, there's no comparing the PIC's instruction set to 68k; you can memorize it by accident in your first pass on the datasheet 
