7 ms·

OLPC cuts 50% of staff

21 points by pingswept 18y ago

allenbrunson 18y ago
this project seemed so promising at first. now it has become a parody of itself.
- flashgordon 18y ago
  well atleast it did help (even without meaning to) galvanise other companies to build el-cheapo laptops and netbooks right?
  - jacobolus 18y ago
    > (even without meaning to) Actually, if you go listen to Negroponte's first few speeches floating the idea publicly, encouraging other companies to build el-cheapo laptops and ultimately getting them into children's hands was explicitly mentioned as a way for the project to succeed even if no one bought laptops from OLPC itself.
- omouse 18y ago
  Really? They're shipping the laptops, the software does work, etc. I don't see how it's become a parody other than the smaller number of laptops shipped. The initial vision was too grand and it's humbling perhaps, but a parody? Bah.
  - allenbrunson 18y ago
    Negroponte has a history of not listening to feedback, resulting in a very poor fit for the intended target markets. Based on blog posts and defections, I think the project is run poorly. Abandoning Sugar for Windows makes this look less like a desire to help third-world countries and more like an outreach program for microsoft. And so on.
    - lliiffee 18y ago
      The OLPC people were not enthusiastic in the slightest about going for windows. Unfortunately, they found that in their target markets, people cared basically zero about the software being open source and in principle modifiable, and they cared a lot about getting experience on a standard platform. Many governments explicitly chose more expensive laptops from commercial manufacturers only because they offered windows and OLPC didn't. Like it or not, windows is what most third-world countries WANT. No one is forced to use windows, of course, they are just now being given the option.
      - andreyf 18y ago
        Like it or not, windows is what most third-world countries WANT. Bullshit. Most people there want Windows as much as I want to use the IDE my boss's boss's boss decides to buy for all developers. It's all about sales: steak and strippers, baby!
        netcan 18y ago
        They were selling to governments. That's a core part of their strategy. These Governments are concerned about unemployment in their countries. They are concerned about low wages. They are concerned about not getting a piece of the info economy. They want windows because it increases employability. You might call them short sighted, but no more so then every other educational body that uses MS. BTW, it's not just about MS vs OS. It's about Sugar. The OS is (I hear) very different from other mainstream OSs. Education ministers in countries where computer literacy is low here "Use a computer that is so different from every other computer that students will not be able to use any other computer."
        andreyf 18y ago
        They were selling to governments. That's a core part of their strategy Sucks for them. Selling to large organizations is an art people perfect for decades. BTW, it's not just about MS vs OS. It's about Sugar. Sorry, I was generalizing, I stand corrected. Bah, if what the education ministers want is "computer literacy" in the sense of "how to use Windows, Word, and Excel", that's their mistake to make. What sucks most is that they sure as hell won't be affected by it. Maybe if government were run more like a company... where salaries were dependent on change-in-per-capita-GDP under one's tenure (plus a smaller piece of long-term deltas).
netcan 18y ago
I'm not sure I really get this project. I don't know much about it, but it seems they had a starting vision of how this would work & are now in the process of squeezing it into reality. Is technology really the issue here? Is the operating system or dust proof case really the bottleneck?
- mynameishere 18y ago
  There's no bottleneck. The real problems are: 1. They are giving away machines at about ~100 dollars less than a basic Dell machine (and Dell can probably go even lower when dealing with governments). These machines are vastly inferior to a Dell machine, and Windows, like it or not, is a more suitable OS for business and educational purposes. 2. They are missing out on a key fact: Computers are just not that useful for education. Yes, you can get a world of information from them, but if you actually see young people interact with them, it's mostly games and social sites and porno. This was true when I was a kid (except for the porno), and still is from my observations. A small number of students will actually use the computers to real effect. 3. AND that small number of kids can be serviced by a few computers per school. Think Gates and Allen at their school's single mainframe hookup.
  - netcan 18y ago
    1 The first one I agree is a huge problem. Their machines are not inherently better then commercial machines that can produced. They may be designed with a particular purpose in mind, but they are vision driven, not market driven. There is an ideological notion here about what sort of machine should be available that just shouldn't be there. 2 & 3 I think they were trying to address these with the software & the personal laptop issue. Sticking a few machines in a school means they support whatever the school was doing before, innovation will probably not happen this way. They probably don't have that much of an advantage there. The way I see it, they're not that far off base but they still may be completely irrelevant. Computer literacy is important in that later on, at 15 or 18 or 25 those kids will be able to decide "I want to learn to program" or "I need to know accounting" or "I want to know if what this politician is saying is BS" or "I want to start an internet business" & go do it. You need to be comfortable enough with the machine to know where to start. I know that if I want to know about bookkeeping or the French Revolution or growing sweet potatoes in slightly acidic sandy soil, I can do it online. It's about making it cheaper & easier for people everyone to know this too.
tjic 18y ago
This project has been a Charlie Foxtrot from the first. Dirt poor kids don't need laptops - they need clean water, vitamins, and malaria vaccines. The project was a scam by ivory tower intellectuals deeply out of touch with the real world, and more interested in reinventing the wheel than in accomplishing good. The sooner this project entirely dies, the better.
- bprater 18y ago
  I don't know. You are right, the kids do need basic stuff we take for granted. No question. So do we stop every initiative until those things are righted? By putting a computer in the hands of a child, it could give him a future he might not have otherwise. At which point, he might return to his village and ensure future generations have those things. I don't know if OLPC has played the game correctly, but in general, I feel excited when I hear computers reaching the hands of kids who would never otherwise see them in their lifetimes. Don't forget the opportunities you've been given living simply by being born in a first-world country.
- omouse 18y ago
  What kids need is education so they can realize that they don't have to live in this way. OLPC is a long-term thing, and clean water, vitamins, etc. are short-term. You can deliver both the vitamins and the laptops too. It isn't a binary choice.
- michaelneale 18y ago
  They were never targeting it at the "dirt poor" - that has always been clear and explicit. That is a straw man argument which is used over and over, not worth repeating. (I think its a complete failure in lots of ways myself, but still, enough with the straw men).
- cgranade 18y ago
  Scam? Ivory tower intellectuals? Those are two very odd ideas to conflate. Who better to attack issues of global inequity than those who have studied and researched the causes? Frankly, I would encourage you to not be so flip about calling such a well-intentioned and, dare I say successful program a scam. If you really think that it is, then fine. That's a tall order, though, and you'll have to do more than invoke some hackneyed stereotypes to convince others.
taw 18y ago
I got one OLPC and while hardware is a pretty nice netbook (rotating monitor is awesome), Sugar OS is a disaster. It's really slow. 5 minutes to flip pages in 10MB PDF kind of slow. Then it lacks basic features like tabbed browsing. And it's really unintuitive, I tested it on many people and pretty much nobody could get how to use it - and there's not even a manual. It's a small machine but not that small, it could easily host a stripped down Ubuntu with at least a real browser etc. Sugar killed OLPC.
TomOfTTB 18y ago
To me, the OLPC effort is a pretty of potent demonstration of why you need more than good intentions to make a success. My generation grew up in an age where, for better and worse, the technology leaders also turned out to be pretty savvy businessmen (say what you will about Gates, Jobs, Ellison, et al they knew how to build an empire). But no one seems to realize how extraordinary that is or how important good business management can be. These guys have failed to meet every deadline, gone over every budget and missed every price point they've ever tried to hit. It was going to catch up to them eventually.
- colinplamondon 18y ago
  Even their intentions weren't all that good- from the beginning this was about sticking it to Microsoft, not about helping kids in developing nations learn.
  - andreyf 18y ago
    That's really mean. You can't generalize about that many people - care to name who, exactly, you are talking about? IMO, everyone has different motives, and those I know anything about were 100% care-driven. The people I know who worked on OLPC have no beef with MS whatsoever, use MS products every day, but believe strongly that proprietary software has a very different role to play in the long-run that it does now. In countries that can pay it, software and marketing are a significant cost in producing computers, one that is passed on to the customer. Now, in an over-abundant economy like ours (USA), this is not morally questionable - without advertising budgets, my children would have nothing to eat. However, when you're talking about a country that will be increasing Microsoft's bottom line instead of investing in roads or basic education, that's plain wrong.
    - cgranade 18y ago
      I mostly agree, but I must take slight issue with the point about imposing a significant cost being morally unquestionable. Microsoft, to follow the example, has gained an unfair monopoly, and has exploited such to prevent possibly superior products from reaching acceptance. Moreover, Microsoft has abused the patent system to shut out still more potential competitors, and enforce vendor lock-in (see, for example, patent disputes with OOXML). Thus, I submit that Microsoft imposes a disproportionally large cost to society for what benefits it gives, and therefore can be said to be acting in an immoral fashion. That is, Microsoft makes their profits directly at the cost of society's happiness, which is immoral by a utilitarian view. Now, far be it for me to pick at MS in exclusivity-- they were simply a convenient example. Rather, I only mean to illustrate that the moral questions of a monopoly in technology (be it hardware or software) are not completely dissolved in an affluent society, but only reduced.
yoyoyo 18y ago
I support OLPC and I wish them the best of luck.

21 points by pingswept 18y ago

allenbrunson 18y ago

this project seemed so promising at first. now it has become a parody of itself.

flashgordon 18y ago
well atleast it did help (even without meaning to) galvanise other companies to build el-cheapo laptops and netbooks right?
- jacobolus 18y ago
  > (even without meaning to) Actually, if you go listen to Negroponte's first few speeches floating the idea publicly, encouraging other companies to build el-cheapo laptops and ultimately getting them into children's hands was explicitly mentioned as a way for the project to succeed even if no one bought laptops from OLPC itself.
omouse 18y ago
Really? They're shipping the laptops, the software does work, etc. I don't see how it's become a parody other than the smaller number of laptops shipped. The initial vision was too grand and it's humbling perhaps, but a parody? Bah.
- allenbrunson 18y ago
  Negroponte has a history of not listening to feedback, resulting in a very poor fit for the intended target markets. Based on blog posts and defections, I think the project is run poorly. Abandoning Sugar for Windows makes this look less like a desire to help third-world countries and more like an outreach program for microsoft. And so on.
  - lliiffee 18y ago
    The OLPC people were not enthusiastic in the slightest about going for windows. Unfortunately, they found that in their target markets, people cared basically zero about the software being open source and in principle modifiable, and they cared a lot about getting experience on a standard platform. Many governments explicitly chose more expensive laptops from commercial manufacturers only because they offered windows and OLPC didn't. Like it or not, windows is what most third-world countries WANT. No one is forced to use windows, of course, they are just now being given the option.
    - andreyf 18y ago
      Like it or not, windows is what most third-world countries WANT. Bullshit. Most people there want Windows as much as I want to use the IDE my boss's boss's boss decides to buy for all developers. It's all about sales: steak and strippers, baby!
      - netcan 18y ago
        They were selling to governments. That's a core part of their strategy. These Governments are concerned about unemployment in their countries. They are concerned about low wages. They are concerned about not getting a piece of the info economy. They want windows because it increases employability. You might call them short sighted, but no more so then every other educational body that uses MS. BTW, it's not just about MS vs OS. It's about Sugar. The OS is (I hear) very different from other mainstream OSs. Education ministers in countries where computer literacy is low here "Use a computer that is so different from every other computer that students will not be able to use any other computer."
        andreyf 18y ago
        They were selling to governments. That's a core part of their strategy Sucks for them. Selling to large organizations is an art people perfect for decades. BTW, it's not just about MS vs OS. It's about Sugar. Sorry, I was generalizing, I stand corrected. Bah, if what the education ministers want is "computer literacy" in the sense of "how to use Windows, Word, and Excel", that's their mistake to make. What sucks most is that they sure as hell won't be affected by it. Maybe if government were run more like a company... where salaries were dependent on change-in-per-capita-GDP under one's tenure (plus a smaller piece of long-term deltas).

netcan 18y ago

I'm not sure I really get this project. I don't know much about it, but it seems they had a starting vision of how this would work & are now in the process of squeezing it into reality. Is technology really the issue here? Is the operating system or dust proof case really the bottleneck?

mynameishere 18y ago
There's no bottleneck. The real problems are: 1. They are giving away machines at about ~100 dollars less than a basic Dell machine (and Dell can probably go even lower when dealing with governments). These machines are vastly inferior to a Dell machine, and Windows, like it or not, is a more suitable OS for business and educational purposes. 2. They are missing out on a key fact: Computers are just not that useful for education. Yes, you can get a world of information from them, but if you actually see young people interact with them, it's mostly games and social sites and porno. This was true when I was a kid (except for the porno), and still is from my observations. A small number of students will actually use the computers to real effect. 3. AND that small number of kids can be serviced by a few computers per school. Think Gates and Allen at their school's single mainframe hookup.
- netcan 18y ago
  1 The first one I agree is a huge problem. Their machines are not inherently better then commercial machines that can produced. They may be designed with a particular purpose in mind, but they are vision driven, not market driven. There is an ideological notion here about what sort of machine should be available that just shouldn't be there. 2 & 3 I think they were trying to address these with the software & the personal laptop issue. Sticking a few machines in a school means they support whatever the school was doing before, innovation will probably not happen this way. They probably don't have that much of an advantage there. The way I see it, they're not that far off base but they still may be completely irrelevant. Computer literacy is important in that later on, at 15 or 18 or 25 those kids will be able to decide "I want to learn to program" or "I need to know accounting" or "I want to know if what this politician is saying is BS" or "I want to start an internet business" & go do it. You need to be comfortable enough with the machine to know where to start. I know that if I want to know about bookkeeping or the French Revolution or growing sweet potatoes in slightly acidic sandy soil, I can do it online. It's about making it cheaper & easier for people everyone to know this too.

tjic 18y ago

This project has been a Charlie Foxtrot from the first. Dirt poor kids don't need laptops - they need clean water, vitamins, and malaria vaccines. The project was a scam by ivory tower intellectuals deeply out of touch with the real world, and more interested in reinventing the wheel than in accomplishing good. The sooner this project entirely dies, the better.

bprater 18y ago
I don't know. You are right, the kids do need basic stuff we take for granted. No question. So do we stop every initiative until those things are righted? By putting a computer in the hands of a child, it could give him a future he might not have otherwise. At which point, he might return to his village and ensure future generations have those things. I don't know if OLPC has played the game correctly, but in general, I feel excited when I hear computers reaching the hands of kids who would never otherwise see them in their lifetimes. Don't forget the opportunities you've been given living simply by being born in a first-world country.
omouse 18y ago
What kids need is education so they can realize that they don't have to live in this way. OLPC is a long-term thing, and clean water, vitamins, etc. are short-term. You can deliver both the vitamins and the laptops too. It isn't a binary choice.
michaelneale 18y ago
They were never targeting it at the "dirt poor" - that has always been clear and explicit. That is a straw man argument which is used over and over, not worth repeating. (I think its a complete failure in lots of ways myself, but still, enough with the straw men).
cgranade 18y ago
Scam? Ivory tower intellectuals? Those are two very odd ideas to conflate. Who better to attack issues of global inequity than those who have studied and researched the causes? Frankly, I would encourage you to not be so flip about calling such a well-intentioned and, dare I say successful program a scam. If you really think that it is, then fine. That's a tall order, though, and you'll have to do more than invoke some hackneyed stereotypes to convince others.

taw 18y ago

I got one OLPC and while hardware is a pretty nice netbook (rotating monitor is awesome), Sugar OS is a disaster. It's really slow. 5 minutes to flip pages in 10MB PDF kind of slow. Then it lacks basic features like tabbed browsing. And it's really unintuitive, I tested it on many people and pretty much nobody could get how to use it - and there's not even a manual. It's a small machine but not that small, it could easily host a stripped down Ubuntu with at least a real browser etc. Sugar killed OLPC.

TomOfTTB 18y ago

To me, the OLPC effort is a pretty of potent demonstration of why you need more than good intentions to make a success. My generation grew up in an age where, for better and worse, the technology leaders also turned out to be pretty savvy businessmen (say what you will about Gates, Jobs, Ellison, et al they knew how to build an empire). But no one seems to realize how extraordinary that is or how important good business management can be. These guys have failed to meet every deadline, gone over every budget and missed every price point they've ever tried to hit. It was going to catch up to them eventually.

colinplamondon 18y ago
Even their intentions weren't all that good- from the beginning this was about sticking it to Microsoft, not about helping kids in developing nations learn.
- andreyf 18y ago
  That's really mean. You can't generalize about that many people - care to name who, exactly, you are talking about? IMO, everyone has different motives, and those I know anything about were 100% care-driven. The people I know who worked on OLPC have no beef with MS whatsoever, use MS products every day, but believe strongly that proprietary software has a very different role to play in the long-run that it does now. In countries that can pay it, software and marketing are a significant cost in producing computers, one that is passed on to the customer. Now, in an over-abundant economy like ours (USA), this is not morally questionable - without advertising budgets, my children would have nothing to eat. However, when you're talking about a country that will be increasing Microsoft's bottom line instead of investing in roads or basic education, that's plain wrong.
  - cgranade 18y ago
    I mostly agree, but I must take slight issue with the point about imposing a significant cost being morally unquestionable. Microsoft, to follow the example, has gained an unfair monopoly, and has exploited such to prevent possibly superior products from reaching acceptance. Moreover, Microsoft has abused the patent system to shut out still more potential competitors, and enforce vendor lock-in (see, for example, patent disputes with OOXML). Thus, I submit that Microsoft imposes a disproportionally large cost to society for what benefits it gives, and therefore can be said to be acting in an immoral fashion. That is, Microsoft makes their profits directly at the cost of society's happiness, which is immoral by a utilitarian view. Now, far be it for me to pick at MS in exclusivity-- they were simply a convenient example. Rather, I only mean to illustrate that the moral questions of a monopoly in technology (be it hardware or software) are not completely dissolved in an affluent society, but only reduced.

yoyoyo 18y ago

I support OLPC and I wish them the best of luck.