On 5/21/07, Jeff Rush <jeff@taupro.com> wrote:
Yes, but Intel is, at this critical time (it couldn't be any worse), trying to suck the oxygen out of the project, suffocate it while vulnerable. It's a common tactic with Intel.
I give credit to both Intel and AMD for helping us dig out from under the pile of TIs we currently dump on our kids, as poor excuses for real computers. And I worry a bit about Negroponte's "dumping" rhetoric as it applies to Free Geek which literally intercepts what was headed to the landfill ("the dump") as refuse, and makes decent Freekboxes out it, bundled for schools, often using an LTSP configuration (beefy server, thin clients). These solutions are easily containerized and shipped overseas, sometimes preconfigured as model small ecommerce sites with a dedicated web server, database server, and software to suit -- a setup XO laptops don't easily duplicate. So here we are "dumping" our non-XO solutions into classrooms. Are we "bad guys" for doing this? And more to the point, is what we're doing really hurting MIT? I wouldn't think so. A billion computers is a lot of computers and it's not true that MIT needs a zero competition zone in every context. I was glad to see Geek Corps as part of the story BTW, as that adds more of a CP4E dimension to the OLPC piece, i.e. we're not just focusing on children. That being said, Negroponte deserves to see the realization of his vision in many schools. The XO is an exciting platform and needs to be given a place in the sun. I really hope he gets those orders (sort of a global IQ test to see which school systems are smarter than New York's (the ones that failed to adapt to laptops)). Plus I would guess he'll turn out to be really quite flexible once the rollout is underway, and will have no problem with some schools using his laptops more as checkoutable library items (like at some publics in Portland), with desktops (some of them thin client) more dominant in classrooms and homes (bigger screen, cheaper components if allowed to be heavier -- like Dell has these new Ubuntu boxes for cheap). Given wireless, it's all server farms in the background anyway, like the ones in The Dalles. Kirby