Tetsuo Time

I have been following the one laptop per child project since it first started. Today I saw a picture of children in Nigeria brandishing OLPCs.. looks like they are ending up in the intended hands after all. The jokes in this page are pretty tasteless and the real news to me is that they had recieved the machines and they look happy to me. They wont be getting spyware on those computers since even if they are allowed on the general internet those machines are running Linux and they are not running IE.

Meanwhile.. this image was dugg recently.. can you spot the error? ;)

They are saying that the pull-string generator being developed for the OLPC is going commercial meaning they are going to probably licence it so other companies can make products that are run by pull-string generators. The reason why I'm posting this here is because i'm skeptical... pull-strings on lawn mowers might be OK but typically smaller ones like you see on toys tend to break after a few pulls. These pull-strings you have to pull for one minute for a ten minute charge and i can imagine them wearing out\breaking after so many pulls. If these aren't durable enough for heavy use it might be better to go with the crank generators they originally planned or one where you use a foot pedal.

I read a digg article (I love that site).. today about someone wondering if a kid where to get used to the "Sugar" UI in the OLPC (one laptop per child) that it might ruin them against regular computer interfaces since it supposedly is radically different. But I don't agree. I wouldn't say it's unlike anything they might encounter on a regular computer. The fullscreen iPhoto interface is a lot like that one. At any rate it still has a lot of the most common interface elements like icons, toolbars, scrollbars, etc.The only difference here is it has a fullscreen interface again like iPhoto. Anyone who's used iPhoto in fullscreen mode should see the similarity.

Take a look


Also kids especially if they grow up on computers are more adaptable than one might give them credit for. So I don't see this ruining regular computers for them at all.

I read someone commenting that lacking an address bar could potentially be a security problem and I agree. Phishing sites could be even more of a problem on systems that don't show the address.