OLPC lays off half staff

credit crisis?

<quote>Blaming the credit crisis, chairman and founder Nicholas Negroponte thanked those leaving for their contribution to "a noble cause".</quote>

And me thought that the target audience already was, and therefore can not be affected, in a constant credit crisis! Fortunately they will install it with Windows, so Microsoft will be less affected by the crisis...

Dumbass@AC 12:39

XO are *not* windows laptops...it doesn't take much of a google to figure that out.

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| | | | |

| | Non-python | Sugar shell | Python |

| | Sugar | (Desktop window, | Sugar |

| | Activities | panel, | Activities |

| Regular | (Etoys, | journal) | |

| X | Simcity, | | |

| Apps | Mono |---------------------------------------------------|

| | activities, | Sugar toolkit (python-only) |

| | etc.) | |

| |----------------------------------------------------------------------|

| | DataStore | Presence |

| | service | service |

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| Matchbox window manager |

| (considering switching to Metacity for improved compatibility) |

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| |

| GNOME-ish Linux desktop |

| X11, HAL, D-Bus, NetworkManager, GConf, Telepathy, etc |

| |

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It's an unfortunate setback for the project, but one I hope, that doesn't see them going under. An incredibly worthwhile cause, not only to benefit the remote regions of the world, but also as a potential to have every child in UK education given one.

Believe it or not, there are still people that don't have a computer at home, and schools that cannot afford new machines as they're continually asked to find cost savings. Living in Glasgow, I'm well aware of the almost 3rd world poverty that some children live in, and maybe, maybe not...a proper introduction to IT at key stages may just help some of these kids in future.

Sorry...got on my soapbox a bit...TITS!!

One World ...

... one child, one debt. Everybody shares the pain. Sometimes I feel NOT giving them a laptop with Windows is the lesser of the two evils.

Annoying

I find it annoying that what ever is done or tried to do we always have this:

"some development experts believing clean water, electricity and basic medicine are more important immediate requirements for kids in the developing world."

So if I hade the means to deliver free condoms for Africa or, what ever, it would be worthless because "clean water, electricity and basic medicine, soop, soup, shoes, boots, sandales etc. are more important.

I must admit too that I feel Microsoft and Windows are sort of a totally killing ingredient in this project.

A bit like giving McDonalds the responsibility for nutrition and food for starving kids.

RE: XO are *not* windows laptops...

Yes, at the moment they're not. But not for long

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/15/2320243&from=rss