Talk:One Laptop per Child/Archive 4

message: : "For the record, the first .ogg file that was played on the laptop was a remix of Depeche Mode’s Stripped." —porges(talk) 00:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia 

message: This needs to be rewritten, it sounds almost illiterate.  
"Then the battery is next to the coloured display one main reason for a higher price than 100 Dollar."
I have no idea what you are saying here.  Someone with knowledge of the project should rewrite this.
:Here is an attempt at turning the Hardware Criticism Section into something a bit more coherent. It would be helpful if the various assertions were backed up by citations/references.
:One criticism of the hardware is based upon the assertion that many open-source applications—e.g., Open Office—need a processor speed of at least 750MHZ (the laptop is only 366MHZ). A critic questions the choice of using a color display: it is asserted that a monochrome would be adequate and less expensive. A critic also questions the decision to include a microphone and camera: it is asserted that children can use one of the three USB ports to add a webcam. The choice of nickel metal hydride for the battery is also questioned: it is asserted that lithium would be a better choice, even though it is more expensive.
:--Walter.bender 01:13, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hardware Criticism 

message: I've tagged the Infrastructure section because it sounds like the criticism itself rather than a neutral explanation of it. E.g. "The OLPC wants to deliver a comprehensive laptop-computer to the kids in developing countries but it underestimates the importance...", "The $100 laptop project will have to help build...". --Facugaich 18:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact we are working with the governments to come up with affordable internet access: the prices for Internet connections are very high—but they need not be. We are also emphasizing the utility of local—intracommunity—communication, which is free. It is worth mentioning that our original premise was that while many people and organizations were—and are—worrying about connectivity, there was—and is—a paucity of people working about devices that can take adavntage of the connection. --Walter.bender 22:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

text: More re infrastructure: built-in mesh-networking capabilities automatically provide high-bandwidth wireless connectivity at home, school, and community, allowing for the whole community to connect to itself. The mesh will provide connectivity for other devices built to utilize such a network, encouraging local innovation and access. Connecting the mesh to the Internet back-haul requires some form of infrastructure, and in most cases, it is expected to be some sort of a wireless solution. OLPC is working with local governments on both the utilization of existing infrastructure and the deployment of low-cost, environmentally-resilient, and easy-to-install networking equipment. --Walter.bender 21:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infrastructure Section POV 

message: Here are some pictures from the Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, proving that many impoverished children already have ready access to computers:
Oh wait. Those are e-waste computers, trash sent from e-countries for cheap dismantling free from environmental and labor laws. Leading to the ironic situation that many poor children will have contact with OLPC computers not in school but in an outdoor open fire pit for melting them down into valuable materials so that their family can buy food and clothing.
:I'm sorry, but I fail to see how this relates to the article. Also, please sign your posts, thank you. Penman 1701 23:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps through the OLPC program, children everywhere will have access to the real value of computation and computing; obviously the anonymous posters seem to find computing useful; do they not want everyone to have the same opportunity to express themselves? Also, they may want to note that there are no toxic materials in the XO; but alas, mot much e-waste relative to conventional computers either, so they'll have to use their computers for learning instead... --Walter.bender 23:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Children already have contact with computers - through recycling e-waste 

message: I'm planning on tidying this article using my usual technique of starting from the bottom. The external links section is just a massive policy violation. Before I remove all of it I'm going to see how much can be integrated with the article / references. I've already removed duplicates and random blog opinions.
I notice that there's an old thread which just generated discussion on the project's name change. I was planning on archiving a lot of that old discussion, would it be okay to duplicate the last few comments and archive the rest (up to last month or so)? Chris Cunningham 11:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future archival, external links 

message: From a quick look at the laptop.org wiki, there are various things which the article doesn't really mention. For example, while the laptop is intended initially for schools, there is consideration of launching a commercial arm to sell laptops at a high markup with the profits going back to the project. Also, while the project does largely use closed hardware, they say they'd be more then willing to use open hardware or any other alternative closed hardware, if someone is able to get a working model for them. It sounds like they plan to concentrate on the closed hardware model for now because the open hardware just doesn't seem to be advanced enough for them and they lack the technical expertise as well but they do hope to explore it more fully in the future. Nil Einne 16:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The commercial section is already mentioned. The criticism section of this article is all junk anyway, so feel free to correct that bit. Chris Cunningham 22:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not that complete or accurate 

message: This laptop may be the most valuable -- and most easily liquidated -- single asset some families have ever possessed. US$135 is a large sum in much of the world. For those units that are given away in especially poor areas, I'm curious to know what the resale market will be. How many families will decide to auction their childrens' laptops off on eBay and take the cash? Will organized rings steal them and resell them? Or will enterprising merchants simply walk through villages and offer a tempting amount of cash for them? <>< tbc 02:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secondary Market 

message: Obviously the processor on the Children's Machine has to be fairly low end in performance, but something that's concerned me from the start is how it would be able to handle video playback.  Will the 400MHz AMD Geode be able to handle Google Video and Youtube content at their standard (what appears to be QVGA) resolution?  How about QVGA of most DivX, AVI, WMV, Real Player, MPEG 1,and Quicktime (Sorenson Video 3, MPEG 4, and H.264) content, at least at a respectable and consistent frame rate (15 fps or higher)?  How might it handle VGA video of any of those formats?  Obviously it will be able to playback video recorded to or live from it's own camera, but how well if there's other apps - like a web browser - running and using CPU?  Will the graphics card be able to offload any of the workload or will the CPU pretty much so do the heavy lifting on it's own?  How much of a load from other apps would it take to choke most video playback?  It seems to me that while VGA and DVD quality video playback of most codecs might be expecting too much, and I'm certainly not expecting high def. playback (even though the display could handle HD res.), quality QVGA playback is a necessity if the kids using these thing want to check out much in the way of any video on-line.  Are there any comparable PC's of similar processing power that can act as testbeds for video performance on The Children's Machine?  If so, how do they fare?  I'm wondering about percentage consumed by the various codecs at 30fps and various resolutions.
:Even before switching to the LX, video playback is quite adequate. Real Networks and the team from the OSU OSL have ported the Helix player to the laptop and pretty much anything short of HD plays fine. --Walter.bender 22:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgot to include the URL so you can try it yourself... --Walter.bender 21:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concerned about Video Playback 

message: After re-reviewing this article to conform WP:WIAGA, as of 3 October 2006, this article is delisted from WP:GA page for the following reasons:
# The article focuses more on future product, rather than history or its concept. Therefore it cannot be verified, per criterion 2 of WP:WIAGA. Section Technology gives best examples of this, as it mentions non-exist product. This article cannot be accurate as the final product has not been released yet.
# There are more list items than explaining in text. It fails criterion 1.(c).
# There is not much mentioning of MIT Media Lab, as they have involved a lot in this project. It fails criterion 3.(a).
: "as they are involved a lot in this project"—What is the basis of this assertion? The project began at the Media Lab, but was spun out 9 months ago and there has been little involvement since.--Walter.bender 01:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delisted from GA 

message: I noticed that the archived talk here was broken, so I fixed that. What about the discussion on Talk:One Laptop per Child, though? How should that be referenced here, now that the articles have been merged? Chris Cunningham 11:41, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved into new archive. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging talk? 

message: I don't think Its a good idea in this case, I can't see how a list a features can benefit from being convert to one or two paragraphs, we will lose information and its presentation will be far less convenient--Khalid hassani 15:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is not a product catalogue. Technology articles have a horrible tendency to contain huge lists of not-very-interesting information. The majority of the Feature List, for instance, is already covered in the preceeding and following sections and could safely be removed without losing any information at all. The list of intentionally omitted features barely mentions why they're omitted, because technical people assume that a list speaks for itself. Lists are rarely an interesting way of conveying information and this machine is sufficiently novel that it's unlikely that a side-by-side comparison (which is one thing a list makes it easy to do) with other devices is useful to helping to understand it. Chris Cunningham 15:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Converting lengthy list to text tag 

message: Theo de Raadt and Richard Stallman have voiced some complaints about their use of hardware with documentation only available under NDAs.  There's an article about this at .  Is this of interest to add to the technical criticism section? 198.205.33.94 17:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proprietary hardware criticism 

message: The reference to "Negroponte's press releases is curious, because OLPC has not issued any press releases in regard to country participation. That said, there have been numerous public pledges to one laptop per child, lowercase, by various heads of states and budgets allocated towards the goal of providing every school-age child a laptop computer.
The recently added assertion that "the language of the applications of the laptop are defined due to the participating countries as well, so next to English the home languages of the following countries are included in the installer image of the operating system and software" is perhaps an awkward way of saying that local languages will be installed on the laptop? --Walter.bender 23:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've edited the section to address these points. --agr 15:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Participating countries 

message: The ref for the Thailand intention is  (regrettably a Yahoo webpage).  I didn't see how to get it into the cite structure.  Simesa 07:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Thailand

message: This may not be the correct place to discuss this, but it seems like OLPC's current plan for marketing the laptop only to governments pretty much guarantees a black market.
It seems like the best way to neutralize the whole issue of theft and resale it to offer the laptop for the same price to everyone, no strings attached, and establish that OLPC will buy back any laptop from anyone for cost, no questions asked. If some kid would rather sell his laptop, how are they going to stop him? At least OLPC would have their hardware back so they could give it to someone else.
They could help themselves more if they went one step further and made an effort to establish to all of the people who cared that there was no legitimate way to buy a laptop except directly from them. No second-hand market, but resellers, no nothing, so that anyone who wanted to buy one through some other channel would at least be aware of the fact that it was probably stolen from a poor school kid.
:Representatives of OLPC have said (but don't quote me on this) that some black market sales are inevitable, but that's not enough reason to stop the project. One way they're considering preventing it (in some places) is to require the laptops to log in to the (school's) base station or they'll be disabled, but they don't like this solution too much. See Children's Machine#Children's Machine on the Open Market for info on how/when they'll be available to the public at large. And I just got to play with one of these machines and they're very cool. —Pengo  talk · contribs 03:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Did OLPC state their reasons anywhere for having an aversion to selling the product to the public at large? Wouldn't additional buyers bring down the cost, which is kind of the point of the project? --Jackdavinci 19:16, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually the article deals with this issue quite well already. See: Children%27s_Machine#Theft_and_resale. —Pengo  talk · contribs 15:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Bitfrost was created to solve the problem of theft and resale. --69.136.111.100 19:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Partly. Bitfrost is also about containment of applications that are hostile (trojans) or could become hostile (vulnerable to security exploits). Unlike normal desktop computer security, this protects more than just the OS itself. The user's other files are also protected. (the chat program should not be able to delete your photo collection) AlbertCahalan 01:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why deliberately inflate the laptop's black market value? 

message: Is Chris still a part of the project? The revamped OLPC website no longer has him listed. --69.136.111.100 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, he is. --jacobolus (t) 20:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chris Blizzard? 

message: Article needs a section on the Bitfrost security system. Also see this Wired news article. --69.136.111.100 13:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bitfrost 

message: In the introduction Thailand is cited as a participating country which is going to order a large amount of laptops. In section Participating countries, Thailand is listed among others, however stating it does not participate any more. I am going to correct that. Anyone who knows better than me, please correct me in turn. --Ben  T/C  09:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Found the reference for the plans of Thailand's government for buying computers. It is more recent than the report of cancelation of the program, an apparent contradiction. Please somebody correct the facts. --Ben  T/C  09:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thailand (2) 

message: Everybody should be able to produce and rebuild the OLPC and sell it to whom he likes.
If he pays a license fee, he gets a certification and becomes official rebuilder.
There are tons of people in "rich" countries, that cannot afford a good laptop.
Dell and Microsoft do not like this idea? I can understand.
:If you have a questions about the OLPC Project, post them on one of the olpc wiki discussion pages. This page is for discussions about improving the linked article. --69.136.111.100 02:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why not open the design for rebuilders ? 

message: I hope those help. To improve the OLPC one:
*Exactly what is the spectrum of the white LED in use? (this will need to be converted via the CIE tristimulus values and the CIE XYZ color space)
*Is the rainbow effect sharp, or do the colors get blurred by some sort of diffuser?
*How thick is the rainbow? Is it distorted by some sort of lens?
*Where are the cut-offs for red and blue?
*Does the rainbow just span pixels, or is there a lens beneath each pixel to bring the color into the right pixel? (for example: one could chop the rainbows with a square grid rotated 45 degrees from the display, then shrink those squares 50% to fit through the pixels)
*Does the rainbow have red or blue on the upper left?
*For each pixel, is there a lens that reverses the rainbow?
*How exactly is the dead space shaped?
AlbertCahalan 16:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  display geometry diagrams