[Sugar-devel] Negative press (was Re: Sugar Digest 2009-09-11)

[Edward Cherlin]

Oh, don't fret. How about the good, even overenthusiastic, press (off
by one on the version)? ;->

XO 2.5 out

Fudzilla

This newest laptop from OLPC features the VIA C7-M a 1GHz variable speed
processor, which can manage full screen video playback, offering faster
etoys and and scratch animation, larger offline library and storage
capacity, better image capture and remixing and better Java tools.

What is also interesting is that the machine was a doddle to overclock
and managed a blistering 500 Mhz. OK not that fast but better than a
pock in the eye with a short stick.

<http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15440/1/>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15440/1/&hl=en>

Anyway, well done. I either comment or send an author query whenever I
see such ill-informed articles.

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> === Sugar Digest ===
>

> 2. There has been a great deal of negative press about One Laptop per
> Child of late--much of it based on misinformation and poor
> fact-checking. I decided to respond to one blog
> [http://www.undispatch.com/node/8859], a particularly disheartening
> one by Alanna Shaikh on a UN Foundation-sponsored site:
>
> I am writing in response to Alanna Shaikh's 9/9/09 article, "One
> Laptop Per Child - The Dream is Over".
>
> Not only is the dream not over, the OLPC project has created an
> opportunity for the pursuit of more dreams by many more people.
>
> I was Nicholas Negroponte's partner in founding One Laptop per Child.
> As Nicholas has elegantly stated in his response to Ms. Shaikh's blog,
> we spawned the netbook market, which is bringing the price of
> computing within reach of millions more people. In addition, we launch
> a free software initiative, Sugar Labs, that is putting educational
> software into the hands of children.
>
> Sugar Labs (www.sugarlabs.org) is an independent outgrowth of OLPC. We
> are a global community of volunteers—teachers and software
> developers—whose mission is to bring the advantages of the Sugar
> learning platform to children everywhere, on any computer. Sugar was
> designed specially for children and offers a better alternative for
> young learners than traditional “office-desktop” software. Indeed,
> nothing in our children's future has anything to do with office work
> from 30 years ago.
>
> Ms. Shaikh is mistaken in her assertion that OLPC has abandoned  “the
> special child-friendly OS.” More than 99% of the OLPC laptops in the
> hands of children run Sugar. Governments prefer Sugar because of its
> superior quality, openness, built-in collaboration, easy
> internationalization and localization to indigenous languages, and
> unbeatable price (free).
>
> Sugar on a Stick, our latest initiative, allows children fortunate
> enough to have access to a computer at school, in the community, at
> home (or only the occasional access to a computer in an Internet café)
> to benefit from Sugar with a simple USB stick, which costs less than
> US $5. Sugar on a Stick runs on netbooks, but it also runs on
> hand-me-down computers, typical of those found in schools, that can
> only limp along running Windows.
>
> We invite you to contact as we will be pleased to answer any of your
> questions about Sugar, the free learning platform used in schools
> every day in countries around the world.

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/