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=LAPTOP NEWS=
=LAPTOP NEWS=
1. Salvador, Bahia: XO goes to Carnaval. Joselito Crispim, founder of
1. B2 machines began arriving in Cambridge at the end of the week. We've begun shipping several hundred machines to developers and partners.
the community group Baguncaco, a long-time collaborator of David
Cavallo, introduced musicians Carlinhos Brown and Chico Cesar, both of
who support community efforts in culture, development, and education.
Brown and Joselito are teaming up to work with the new governor of the
state, a close friend of President Lula, to bring the XO to these
disenfranchised neighborhoods of Salvador. Likewise, Chico Cesar
committed to bring the XO to João Pessoa. They appreciated the
emphasis on creative expression, construction, and mesh-enabled
collaboration. These artists/community activists immediately saw the
benefits for for learning and inclusion.


2. USB: This week a large part of the software technical team chased a
2. David Cavallo reports that the Uruguayan government and IDRC hosted a two-day meeting in Montevideo for countries in the region intending to implement one-laptop-per-child initiatives. Attending were representatives from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Countries presented their plans and discussed pragmatics of deployment. Significantly all of the countries know 1:1 must be achieved.
problem in the Geode GX CPU that is causing a 30% slowdown during
certain kinds of USB transactions, including the one that our wireless
interface uses. The effect is clear: software runs much slower than it
should. A preliminary workaround shows 25% improvement. Further
investigation is underway.


3. Wireless: Javier Cardona and Luis Carlos Cobo from Cozybit spent
3. Barcelona: Michail Bletsas demonstrated the laptop at the Brightstar booth at 3GSM World Congress.
part of the week at OLPC testing and debugging the mesh firmware with
Michail Bletsas and Marcelo Tosatti. Together, they were able to
consistently recreate intermittent problems and pinpoint their causes.
They were joined on Wednesday by Ronak Chockshi and Ramya
Chandrasekaran from Marvell's OLPC Q&A team who are stepping up their
testing efforts.


The firmware now supports multicast frames and we have the network
4. Performance: Red Hat's Marcelo Tosatti was in Cambridge this week. He spent time looking at Geode-specific speedups of core functions of the operating system. Although they did not offer the improvements promised, he will continue to look at them for inclusion as they might have a larger impact on other Geode hardware. He also explored the Psyco Python compiler. It speeds up some benchmarks by as much of 3×, but it is not yet clear how it affects our real- world applications. We have to do more measurements.
neighborhood working on XO laptop at OLPC over the mesh interface. The
current firmware also does not drop any packets when communication is
first initiated between two nodes.


The wireless driver has been submitted to the netdev-2.6 tree, and
5. Journal: Tomeu Vizoso has joined the Sugar team. This week he started work on some re-usable UI controls for use in activities and spent some time on the front end of the journal. Marco Gritti spent time working on the journal design and looking at animation performance on the machine. Parts of the front end of the journal are starting to come together and are included in the latest builds.
John Linville, who is a Red Hat employee and the upstream wireless
maintainer, is looking to try to get it into 2.6.22. This will make
our long term support for the kernel much easier, and is an important
milestone that reflects the work that has gone into the driver.


4. Dan Williams spent a few days working with Collabora working on
6. Sugar Tutorial: Between working on builds and fixing memory leaks in some of our Python binding, John Palmieri “Sugarized” a Tetris-like activity for the laptop written by Vadim Gerasimov. John plans to will use this a as the basis for a tutorial on how to create a Python-based activity for the laptop.
mesh and networking issues. They specified a new set of APIs and what
needed to be done to support connecting to servers to get mesh-like
functionality. This will be required at larger schools and to support
inter-school connections. Activities will be able to connect between
people on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis and work is already
underway to support this in both the back-end library we'll be using
and the server that we'll be prototyping on.


5. Sugar: Tomeu Vizoso and Marco Gritti made progress on the Sugar UI
7. School server: John Watlington is joining OLPC to head our School Server project; he will also be helping out on completing the Generation-1 system until a hardware architect can be found.
widget system. They created the infrastructure needed for menus and
rollovers and they placed pop-up activation logic in the controls so a
control can choose between menu-like activation, rollover-like, or a
custom one. In parallel, Eben Eliason has been exploring how we might
best make use of pie menus. Marco also started on the infrastructure
for adding devices to the home page, and worked with Dan and the
Collabora team on the new mesh and networking interfaces.


6. Firmware: In support of wireless boot, Lilian Walter has the Open
8. Firmware: Richard Smith released Q2B73, which includes improved battery-charging embedded contoller (EC) code from Quanta and many Open Firmware (OFW) improvements. Since Mitch Bradley was in Cambridge all week, he and Richard spent much time working on firmware improvements; notably some OFW code that lets us look at all the public EC battery RAM variables. (See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Firmware_Q2B73)
Firmware (OFW) wireless driver working in managed mode in the
following additional security modes: WiFi protected access (WPA-PSK),
cipher-type temporal key- integrity protocol (TKIP), and WPA2-PSK,
cipher-type TKIP. Next up is to implement cipher-type advanced
encryption standard (AES).


Mitch Bradley has Fastboot/VSA-less firmware is working and is
Mitch found the residual MSR problems with the fast-boot startup. The EHCI (enhanced host-controller interface) works, B2 works, and DCON (display controller) works: all systems go for resume from RAM testing. Mitch also found and fixed a DMA boundary-crossing problem in the OFW SD driver. The same problem also exists in the Linux SD driver. Andres Salomon is fixing it there. Lilian Walter continues work on the WPA/WPA2 (Wi-Fi protected access) supplicant functionality; the firmware wireless driver is ready for preliminary integration, but it has not yet appeared in a firmware build.
entering internal test phase. We expect full deployment after a week
of testing; kernel changes to support VSA-less operation have been
integrated and appear in this week's OS build. Richard Smith has built
and tested a ROM with this enabled.


7. JFFS2 file system: Chris Ball and Dave Woodhouse are investigating
10. Kernel and base system work: Andres also worked this week with Mitch and Jordan Crouse debugging kernel support for the virtual socket architecture (VSA)-less firmware. Andres also merged Marcelo's cleaned-up libertas driver into an experimental kernel. Linus Torvalds has merged dynticks into the kernel, so Andres started merging in 2.6.20-rc1.
the [jffs2_gcd_mtd0] thread, which is slowing down both our boot time
and performance directly after boot by tenѕ of seconds.


8. Jim Gettys and Chris Ball worked on reorganizing and preparing
11. Python: Chris Blizzard, John, and Marco exploring a non-fPIC Python 2.5 to use in our build; the current plan is to wait for a new stable image next week, and then move to the Fedora 7 versions of the Python tools, compiled with our compiler flags, but Fedora's source code. This would mean we do not have to maintain a set of Python sources ourselves. We expect that Python 2.5, compiled with correct compiler flags, will speed up our application startup time, perhaps by as much as a factor or two.
BTest-2 release notes, as BTest-2 systems are now shipping.


9. Kernel: Andres Salomon reports that the dynamic-tick patches (and
12. Media: Erik Blankinship reports that he has the mplayer plugin working in the XO browser playing back ogg-theora successfully.
Geode- timer patches) are now in the experimental kernel. We have also
synchronized the kernel with 2.6.21-rc1, that will have become master.
This means that rather than the 2.6.19 kernel we have been running,
OS images will start including 2.6.21-rc1 (with dynticks and support
for VSA-less firmware). This paves the way for the power management
work we are looking to do. Richard and Mitch prepared a fast-boot
firmware that requires an experimental kernel, and booting the machine
was an order of magnitude faster.


10. X Windows: John Watlington documented the process of launching
13. Keyboard: Walter Bender has been working with Ted Selker, Bret Recor, and Eben Eliason on some fine-tuning of the keyboard for B3. We are exploring enlarged keycaps, tapering of the keycaps, and some slight modifications of the keycap legends. Eben and Bret have also reworked the graphics for the game-controller buttons.
Sugar on a remote display. This paves the way for remote debugging and
projecting Sugar from a machine with an external video port.

11. Games: John Palmieri has started a project called Block Party
(based upon Vadim Gerasimov's Tetris-like game with mesh functionality
for the laptop). John moved the drawing code to use Cairo instead of
GDK graphics contexts. The repository will be the basis for a
Sugar-activity tutorial John is writing. Vadim, Brian and Barry
Silverman, and Walter played Dazzle Star, a multi-player network game
originally written by Hal Abelson in 1975, that Brian and Barry ported
to run on the laptop. Vadim was in Sydney, Brian and Barry in
Montreal, and Walter in Cambridge. Walter and Brian won 12 to 11.


Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News].
Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News].

Revision as of 17:21, 24 February 2007

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.


LAPTOP NEWS

1. Salvador, Bahia: XO goes to Carnaval. Joselito Crispim, founder of the community group Baguncaco, a long-time collaborator of David Cavallo, introduced musicians Carlinhos Brown and Chico Cesar, both of who support community efforts in culture, development, and education. Brown and Joselito are teaming up to work with the new governor of the state, a close friend of President Lula, to bring the XO to these disenfranchised neighborhoods of Salvador. Likewise, Chico Cesar committed to bring the XO to João Pessoa. They appreciated the emphasis on creative expression, construction, and mesh-enabled collaboration. These artists/community activists immediately saw the benefits for for learning and inclusion.

2. USB: This week a large part of the software technical team chased a problem in the Geode GX CPU that is causing a 30% slowdown during certain kinds of USB transactions, including the one that our wireless interface uses. The effect is clear: software runs much slower than it should. A preliminary workaround shows 25% improvement. Further investigation is underway.

3. Wireless: Javier Cardona and Luis Carlos Cobo from Cozybit spent part of the week at OLPC testing and debugging the mesh firmware with Michail Bletsas and Marcelo Tosatti. Together, they were able to consistently recreate intermittent problems and pinpoint their causes. They were joined on Wednesday by Ronak Chockshi and Ramya Chandrasekaran from Marvell's OLPC Q&A team who are stepping up their testing efforts.

The firmware now supports multicast frames and we have the network neighborhood working on XO laptop at OLPC over the mesh interface. The current firmware also does not drop any packets when communication is first initiated between two nodes.

The wireless driver has been submitted to the netdev-2.6 tree, and John Linville, who is a Red Hat employee and the upstream wireless maintainer, is looking to try to get it into 2.6.22. This will make our long term support for the kernel much easier, and is an important milestone that reflects the work that has gone into the driver.

4. Dan Williams spent a few days working with Collabora working on mesh and networking issues. They specified a new set of APIs and what needed to be done to support connecting to servers to get mesh-like functionality. This will be required at larger schools and to support inter-school connections. Activities will be able to connect between people on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis and work is already underway to support this in both the back-end library we'll be using and the server that we'll be prototyping on.

5. Sugar: Tomeu Vizoso and Marco Gritti made progress on the Sugar UI widget system. They created the infrastructure needed for menus and rollovers and they placed pop-up activation logic in the controls so a control can choose between menu-like activation, rollover-like, or a custom one. In parallel, Eben Eliason has been exploring how we might best make use of pie menus. Marco also started on the infrastructure for adding devices to the home page, and worked with Dan and the Collabora team on the new mesh and networking interfaces.

6. Firmware: In support of wireless boot, Lilian Walter has the Open Firmware (OFW) wireless driver working in managed mode in the following additional security modes: WiFi protected access (WPA-PSK), cipher-type temporal key- integrity protocol (TKIP), and WPA2-PSK, cipher-type TKIP. Next up is to implement cipher-type advanced encryption standard (AES).

Mitch Bradley has Fastboot/VSA-less firmware is working and is entering internal test phase. We expect full deployment after a week of testing; kernel changes to support VSA-less operation have been integrated and appear in this week's OS build. Richard Smith has built and tested a ROM with this enabled.

7. JFFS2 file system: Chris Ball and Dave Woodhouse are investigating the [jffs2_gcd_mtd0] thread, which is slowing down both our boot time and performance directly after boot by tenѕ of seconds.

8. Jim Gettys and Chris Ball worked on reorganizing and preparing BTest-2 release notes, as BTest-2 systems are now shipping.

9. Kernel: Andres Salomon reports that the dynamic-tick patches (and Geode- timer patches) are now in the experimental kernel. We have also synchronized the kernel with 2.6.21-rc1, that will have become master. 

This means that rather than the 2.6.19 kernel we have been running,

OS images will start including 2.6.21-rc1 (with dynticks and support for VSA-less firmware). This paves the way for the power management work we are looking to do. Richard and Mitch prepared a fast-boot firmware that requires an experimental kernel, and booting the machine was an order of magnitude faster.

10. X Windows: John Watlington documented the process of launching Sugar on a remote display. This paves the way for remote debugging and projecting Sugar from a machine with an external video port.

11. Games: John Palmieri has started a project called Block Party (based upon Vadim Gerasimov's Tetris-like game with mesh functionality for the laptop). John moved the drawing code to use Cairo instead of GDK graphics contexts. The repository will be the basis for a Sugar-activity tutorial John is writing. Vadim, Brian and Barry Silverman, and Walter played Dazzle Star, a multi-player network game originally written by Hal Abelson in 1975, that Brian and Barry ported to run on the laptop. Vadim was in Sydney, Brian and Barry in Montreal, and Walter in Cambridge. Walter and Brian won 12 to 11.

Laptop News is archived at Laptop News.

You can subscribe to the OLPC community-news mailing list by visiting the laptop.org mailman site.

Press requests: please send email to press@laptop.org

MILESTONES

Feb. 2007 B2-test machines become available and are shipped to developers and the launch countries.
Jan. 2007 Rwanda announced its participation in the project.
Dec. 2006 Uruguay announced its participation in the project.
Nov. 2006 First B1 machines are built; IDB and OLPC formalize an agreement regarding Latin American and Caribbean education.
Oct. 2006 B-test boards become available; Libya announces plans for one laptop for every child
Sep. 2006 UI designs presented; integrated software build released; SES-Astra joins OLPC
Aug. 2006 Working prototype of the dual-mode display
Jun. 2006 500 developer boards are shipped worldwide; WiFi operational; Csound demonstrated over the mesh network
First video with working prototype [1]
May 2006 eBay joins OLPC; display specs set; A-test boards become available; $100 Server is announced
Apr. 2006 Pre-A test board boots; Squid and FreePlay present first human-power systems
Mar. 2006 Yves Behar and FuseProject are selected as industry designers
Feb. 2006 Marvell joins OLPC and continues to partner on network hardware
Jan. 2006 World Economic Forum, Switzerland
UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement
news release
Dec. 2005 Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop
(html)(pdf)
Nov. 2005 WSIS, Tunisia
Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Nortel joins OLPC

Photos: (Image 1) (Image 2) (Image 3)
Webcast: (Arabic) (English) (French) (original)
Webcast provided by the ITU and UN Webcast Services with the support of RealNetworks Ltd. RealPlayer is required to view the webcast (available at no cost).

Aug. 2005 Design Continuum starts design of first laptop
Jul. 2005 Formal signing of original members of OLPC
Mar. 2005 Brightstar and Red Hat come on board
Jan. 2005 Laptop initiative officially announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; AMD, News Corp. and Google agree to join OLPC

PRESS

3 Jan. 2007 networkworld.com| OLPC Aims for Mass Production in Third Quarter
3 Jan. 2007 IDG.net| One Laptop per Child Sweetens Hardware with 'Sugar' UI
3 Jan. 2007 YAHOO! Finance| OLPC Announces First-of-Its Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer
2 Jan. 2007 Bicyclemark's Communique (podcast)| One Laptop Per Child (@23C3)
22 Dec. 2006 Financial Times | Clever Kit to Benefit Developing Countries
27 Nov. 2006 Pagina/12| La manera más económica para mejorar la educación
21 Nov. 2006 Official Release|First 1,000 XO-Laptops Roll off the Assembly Line in Shanghai
19 Nov. 2006 Jamaica Gleaner| Technology - a tool for transformation
19 Nov. 2006 International Herald Tribune| One Laptop per Child: Computer designed for those who can least afford them
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part III
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part II
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part I
8 Nov. 2006 Popular Science| Best of What's New 2006: One Laptop per Child XO- Better Screen, Better World
6 Nov. 2006 ZDNet.co.uk | Why Every Child Deserves a Laptop- Matthew Szulik, CEO, Red Hat
27 Oct. 2006 LinuxWorld | Children's Laptop Inspires Open Source Projects
24 Oct. 2006 LA Times | Upward Mobility in a Laptop
24 Oct. 2006 Fortune | This PC wants to save the world
12 Oct. 2006 Bostonist | One Laptop per Child for Libya
11 Oct. 2006 New York Times | U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren
3 Oct. 2006 GulfNews.com | College gets look at $100 Children's Laptop Computer
25 Sep. 2006 vnunet.com | OLPC offered free satellite connections
14 Sep. 2006 Vanguard | Keyboard In Three Nigerian Languages Ready-Obasanjo
08 Sep. 2006 Technology Review | Hack: The Hundred Dollar Laptop
06 Sep. 2006 nacion.com | Computadoras de $100 estarán listas en el 2007
 Aug. 2006 Wired | The Laptop Crusade
28 Aug. 2006 PCINpact.com | L'OLPC a 100 $ est finalise: un engin hors du commun
21 Aug. 2006 EWeek.com | Knocking Down Barriers to the $100 Laptop
31 Jul. 2006 NPR | Affordable Laptop Computer Project Moves Forward
07 Jul. 2006 San Diego Union-Tribune | U.S. and international educators show great interest in prototype
Jul. 2006 SPIE Professional | $100 laptop nears launch
21 Jun. 2006 BusinessWeek online | For Brazil's Poor, a Digital Deliverance?
24 May 2006 CNET News.com | $100 laptop gets working prototype
07 Apr. 2006 rediff.com | Our $100 laptops will run on human power
02 Apr. 2006 O Estado de S.Paulo | Fazer a diferença
28 Mar. 2006 FT.com | Waking up to a laptop revolution
24 Mar. 2006 Diário do Comércio | Um Laptop por Crianca
22 Mar. 2006 Times Online | Getting the world's poor logged on
09 Mar. 2006 Correio Popular | País disputa fabricação de laptop de US$ 100
  Folha de S. Paulo | Governo quer comprar 1 milhão de laptops
  Info Exame On Line | Governo quer um milhão de laptops de US$ 100
08 Mar. 2006 IDG Now | Faculdade abre programa de inclusão digital para alunos
  Folha de S. Paulo | Governo negocia fabricação do laptop de US$ 100 no Brasil
  Agência Globo | Governo estuda possibilidade de produção de computador de US$ 100 no país
  Teletime News | DVB detalha contrapartidas oferecidas ao Brasil
05 Mar. 2006 ACM/CIE | Interview with Nicholas Negroponte on the $100 laptop
16 Feb. 2006 MITIR | Podcast of Walter Bender's MURJ lecture on One Laptop per Child
15 Feb. 2006 CNET | PCs for the poor: Which design will win?
10 Feb. 2006 CNET | Perspective: Will the $100 PC fly?
09 Feb. 2006 NYTimes | A Plug for the Unplugged $100 Laptop Computer for Developing Nations
  UPI | One Laptop Project reaches critical stages
31 Jan. 2006 Slashdot | Microsoft OS Smart Phone for Developing Nations
  USA Today | Gates sees cellphones as way to help Third World
  Macworld | Red Hat officially commits to MIT's $100 laptop
20 Dec. 2005 BusinessWeek online | Quanta faces challenges in making "millions and millions" of $100 laptops.
19 Dec. 2005 Forbes.com | China to decide by March whether to join OneLaptopPerChild project.
14 Dec. 2005 UPI | Nortel to take part in OneLaptopPerChild endeavor.
13 Dec. 2005 Red Herring | Quanta to manufacture laptops; expects deliveries in 2006 4th quarter.
11 Dec. 2005 NYTimes | NY Times: 5th Annual Year in Ideas $100 Laptop
01 Dec. 2005 RFDESIGN | $100 Laptops Feature Novel Peer-to-Peer Wireless Connectivity
30 Nov. 2005 FT.com | Five companies in Asia making bids to manufacture $100 laptop.
28 Nov. 2005 Fortune Magazine | THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: I'd Like to Teach the World to Type
25 Nov. 2005 People's Daily Online | Nigerian president says government has budgeted for a million $100 laptops.
17 Nov. 2005 BBC News | UN Debut for $100 Laptop for Poor
  Seattle Times | $100 Laptops Aim to Bring Children the World
  TechWhack | MIT Unveils their USD 100 Laptop
  ZDNet | '$100 Laptops' Here by Next Year
  ABC | $100 Laptop Bridges Digital Divide
  Financial Express | Laptop @$100!
16 Nov. 2005 MIT News Office | Annan to Present Prototype $100 Laptop at World Summit on Information Society
  CNET | $100 Laptop Takes World Stage
  CNET | $100 Laptop Expected in Late 2006
  Christian Science Monitor | A Low-Cost Laptop for Every Child
14 Nov. 2005 WSJ | The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality
13 Nov. 2005 The Inquirer | Hubris over $100 Laptop idea
New York Times | Google Earmarks $265million for Charity and Social Causes
13 Oct. 2005 Technology Review | The Hundred Dollar Man: Technology Review's editor in chief, Jason Pontin, talk with Nicholas Negroponte about the Hundred Dollar Computer.
29 Sep. 2005 I4U News | Sub-$100 Laptop design unveiled
28 Sep. 2005 Boston Globe | Prototypes of $100 laptop with hand crank planned by early next year.
  MIT World | NN at Technology Review
27 Sep. 2005 Datamation | Low cost PCs for the Enterprise
06 Jun. 2005 estadao.com.br | Cada criança na escola com um laptop a tiracolo

PRESS RELEASES

Jan. 2007 OLPC has No Plans to Commercialize XO Computer.
Jan. 2007 OLPC Announces First-of-Its-Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer.
Jan. 2007 Rwanda Commits to One Laptop per Child Initiative.
Dec. 2006 Low Cost Laptop Could Tranform Learning.

Video

(Misc. videos of the laptop can be found.)

http://video.globo.com/Videos/Player/Noticias/0,,GIM607884-7823-CRIANCAS+TESTAM+COMPUTADOR+PORTATIL,00.html | Crianças testam computador portátil/ Students test the laptop, GLOBO- BRASIL

http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/061004-ee380-300.asx | Mark Foster delivers presentation to Standford University

http://www.technologyreview.com/ | Technology Review Mini-Documentary

http://www.radiofarda.com/Article/2007/01/04/f2_Interview-laptop.html | A Brief Demo

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