<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 12:06 AM, Walter Bender <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:walter.bender@gmail.com">walter.bender@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
When we began the project, I lobbied to call it a Children's Machine (CM) in reference both to Seymour Papert's book and as a reference to the CM series of "connection machines" that Danny Hillis created at Thinking Machines, another effort where they through away the rules to make a solution to fit a class of problems rather than make the problem fit the solution.<br>
<br>Of course, XO is a brilliant name, that come from our design team as I recall, and I don't doubt that it was the correct decision for OLPC at the time.</blockquote><div><br>I agree that xo is a brilliant name. Congratulalions to the un-named
person who thought it up. Some of these names convey functionality and
purpose far better than the others. I have broken them into three
categories based on how it feels to me.<br>
<br>
PURPOSE:<br>
Childrens Machine<br>
xo<br>
<br>
FUNCTION:<br>
Connection Machine<br>
Dynabook<br>
smartbook<br>
<br>
TECHNO CENTRIC:<br>
netbook<br>
MID<br>
thin-and-light<br>
low cost small notebook PC<br>
low cost ultra-portable notebook computers (<a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/microsoft-wants-new-term-for-netbooks-unhappy-with-other-5-ch/">Microsoft mouthful</a>)<br>
ultra-portable<br>
mini notebooks<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I don't know that we should decide to push a name change on the market. The point I will make at the Desktop Summit is that the marketing of netbooks with 3G set an expectation that they are part of the "cloud" and that the push for bigger, fatter, faster netbooks has eroded the opportunity to think about new approaches to computing that smaller and lighter afford. But there remain opportunities to redefine the desktop, keeping it relevant, in many areas, ours being K-6. Even in the "developed" world, the Internet is not everywhere, e.g., most classrooms, and as much as it has been good for the service providers to pitch it as true, the cloud is not right solution to every problem.</blockquote>
<div><br>Would a good description of the sugar desktop be "community user interface" stressing F1 and F2 over the more traditional F3? That was my interpretation from reading the OLPC Human interface guidelines:<br>
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">Most developers are familiar with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor" class="external text" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor" rel="nofollow">desktop metaphor</a>
that dominates the modern-day computer experience. This metaphor has
evolved over the past 30 years, giving rise to distinct classes of
interface elements that we expect to find in every OS: desktop, icons,
files, folders, windows, etc. While this metaphor makes sense at the
office—and perhaps even at home—it does not translate well into a
collaborative environment such as the one that the OLPC laptops will
embody. Therefore, we have adopted a new set of metaphors that
emphasize community. While there are some correlations between the
Sugar UI and those of traditional desktops, there are also clear
distinctions. It is these distinctions that are the subject of the
remainder of this section. We highlight the reasoning behind our shift
in perspective and detail functionality with respect to the overall
laptop experience<br><a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Laptop_Experience/Introduction">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Laptop_Experience/Introduction</a><br>
</div><br>This article more or less persuaded me that cloud computing was an inevitable (long term) trend<br><a href="http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/01/cloud-computing-science20-and-social.html">http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/01/cloud-computing-science20-and-social.html</a><br>
<br><div style="margin-left: 40px;">The main value proposition is further "abstraction" that reduces
management costs. For example, backup storage is abstracted into the
cloud, so you don't have to worry about your hard disk failing.
Computation is abstracted into the cloud, so you don't have to worry
about not having enough computational nodes for your data analysis job.
It is an inevitable trend in computing, because of the need to reduce
complexity and data-management/computation-management costs. It's clear
that, in the near future, the backup storage and computation will
continue to evolve into collaborative workspaces that you never have to
administer, nor would you have to worry about backing up your work<br></div></div><div><br>Meanwhile back in the real world a huge problem in schools is filtering of the internet which ends up making many useful sites not accessible to most in school time (and in practice slows things down) - some students now by pass the filter using smart phones, smart phones as modems, 3G USB devices etc. - expensive for them but good to see the internet routing around this damage<br>
<br>Education Departments don't seem capable of providing fast untrammelled internet access in my experience <br><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
<br>-walter</blockquote></div><br>