Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Albert Cahalan wrote: Sorry to hear about your war. Attitudes such as this sir, is the reason that America is viewed by many nations as a belligerent and imperialistic monster. It is not whether you can argue for the case that America is NOT a monster. It is the fact that she is _seen_ as such which should cause you pause to think. - a ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Classroom tools
2008/1/16 Jameson Chema Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Let's keep our feet on the ground here. Just because teaching is a field where mediocrity (or worse) often goes unpunished, does not mean that expertise is irrelevant. It is possible for a bunch of non-teachers on a mailing list to have good ideas, or to discuss good ideas they've heard elsewhere. But some of the worst disasters in education come from good ideas that turn into trendy dogma. Success comes from thoughtful, flexible application and evaluation by experienced teachers who believe, and then divulgation that respects the ideas and inclinations of those who do not at first believe. There is a strong tendency for experienced teachers to reject anything new, just as in every other human endeavor. And we need far more than divulgation, we need entrainment. Teachers need to discover discovery themselves before we can divulgate the rest to them. They need to Get It [TM]. Most of us on this list are probably similar in our learning styles - naturally oriented towards understanding and discovery, resistant to repetition. I remember hating many of the most traditional aspects of schooling, most particularly the emphasis on formulaic recipes. Yes, I nearly failed third grade because I could spell, and wouldn't do spelling homework. But when I became a teacher and tried socratically to get my students to construct their own recipes, refusing to tell them 'step 1 step 2' for anything, I had some spectacular failures. One or two students would love it and figure out what I was trying to teach in 5 minutes - then get even more bored than they would have been from the formula, as I spent the rest of the period getting frustrated with students who were frustrated with me because they didn't get it and I wouldn't just tell them how. It is a hard balance to strike. Socratic teaching was devised for a one-on-one situation by a master. It was never meant for the classroom. I recommend looking at Caleb Gattegno's work on discovery using Cuisenaire rods. But you can't improvise this stuff in the clasroom until you have mastered what others have discovered how to do. I've made constructivism work in the classroom a few times, too, and it is great. But let me tell you: the less fired up and prepared I am, the more likely I am to choose something more traditional. Because when things don't go well, constructivism is much worse. I believe that the actual idea is to get children so interested in discovery that they will carry it forward, even on your off days. But yes, you still have to know your material, the children's capabilities, the likely paths of discovery, and the likely impediments to discovery backwards and forwards. However, as Maria Montessori amply demonstrated (and her followers have almost entirely forgotten) we know very little about what children are really capable of. We need a serious set of research programs, and a means of sharing the resulting knowledge. That means that we need to get a lot of teachers to catch the discovery bug, so that they will join in collaborative discovery of collaborative discovery itself. Luckily, we here do not actually have control of any schools. If we ossify into dogmatic constructivists, we will just hurt our own project, not students. If we do not make the tools teachers need, as well as the ones kids need, nobody will pay any attention to us, and OLPC will just dry up and blow away. I do not want that. Yes, indeed, control is not what we need, and certainly not what I want. I want teachers and parents, as well as children, to have the advantages of discovery. And there's another constituency besides teachers and students: researchers/administrators/bureaucrats. Them, too. It's easy to paint these guys as the enemy. For instance, in the US, standardized testing companies, with their seductive call of 'cheap, clean data', have seduced these guys into imposing the nightmare of No Child Left Behind, where the test is king. But if, as I said above, there are right ways and wrong ways to teach, who is going to sort it out if not the researchers? Researchers have done excellent work that is utterly dismissed by administrators, teachers, and governments in disasters such as New Math and the continuing war between the linguistics profession and the language teaching profession (local and foreign language, both). Even the controversy between Whole Word and Phonics, which is utter nonsense. It is impossible to read English without using both methods, and in addition referring to a dictionary from time to time. I defy anybody to figure out, unaided, the pronunciation of the astronomical term aphelion. (I have already given you a major clue, so you can't count yourselves. But I do congratulate you if you get it from just that clue.) Phonics can't handle once, the 'ough' words, and a multitude of others, and Whole Word can't hope to handle words like
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 1:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Edward Cherlin wrote: I was in the hills north of Seoul, Korea, in 1968 Mr Cherlin - with much respect to your service in Korea (I have friends who also served) but may I ask you to please consider the possibility that your experience as an armed, trained and well-supplied soldier was not the same experience as that had by civilians caught in the crossfire of armies ? Mr. van Gelder, I respectfully request that you read my message, over and over if necessary, until you understand the severity of your egregious and insulting error. Then apologize, not just to me, but to the others on this list who have had it far worse, and are even more fed up than I am with those whose ignorance and lack of imagination causes them such pain. The rest of you, no spoilers. He has to make this discovery himself for it to take. And to think that hummingbirds are the messengers of the Gods in Mayan mythology. - antoine -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
How to? School server implementation
Hello everyone, I have some general questions regarding school server implementation. I was hoping someone with development experience or someone with pilot experience might have some knowledge on this matter. I am working to implement the OLPC pilot program in Nepal, and would really appreciate some feedback on these questions 1. What is the best way to publish/collaborate/save etc with school server? Meaning what is the best way for kids to save, retrieve, and share files through a school server? I know moodle is an option , but is there anything else? Has anyone tried a different way to do so? something like web folders maybe ? 2. Is the active antenna the same as any wireless router working as an access point? I should be able to use the same networking features if i use a wireless router right? 3. What is the range of the antenna by itself? (discarding the fact that the XO's can relay) best, -sulo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Jeffrey Kesselman wrote: My personal suggestion to the self-appointed censors is, if you don't like the content it ships with, go create some you DONT find objectionable to offer as an alternative. The fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning Jeffrey... and this is a flaw which any sophomore would have been able to spot in the days when they still taught logic and critical reasoning skills at American universities is this: - Putting violent arcade games in an educational resource violates the right to spiritual and emotional recovery for nations that are in the process of recovering from war. - Making lists of whatever entertainment resources you wish _OFF-SITE_ does not violate anyone's freedom of speech nor their right to choose whatever type of drivel they wish to waste their time on. What part of this do you not understand ? - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Edward Cherlin wrote: I was in the hills north of Seoul, Korea, in 1968 Mr Cherlin - with much respect to your service in Korea (I have friends who also served) but may I ask you to please consider the possibility that your experience as an armed, trained and well-supplied soldier was not the same experience as that had by civilians caught in the crossfire of armies ? - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 4:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Albert Cahalan wrote: Sorry to hear about your war. Attitudes such as this sir, is the reason that America is viewed by many nations as a belligerent and imperialistic monster. I'm sure you misinterpreted me. Maybe you thought I was being sarcastic; I was not. I do however mean to suggest that a problem in one part of the world should not be used to justify restricting things elsewhere. I have sympathy for the pain, but I don't agree that this should impact those outside of the region in question. I also don't believe that all people affected by war will be unable to enjoy DOOM. In any case, they certainly won't be forced to install and run it. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Edward Cherlin wrote: On Jan 18, 2008 1:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Edward Cherlin wrote: I was in the hills north of Seoul, Korea, in 1968 Mr Cherlin - with much respect to your service in Korea (I have friends who also served) but may I ask you to please consider the possibility that your experience as an armed, trained and well-supplied soldier was not the same experience as that had by civilians caught in the crossfire of armies ? Mr. van Gelder, I respectfully request that you read my message, over and over if necessary, until you understand the severity of your egregious and insulting error. Then apologize, not just to me, but to the others on this list who have had it far worse, and are even more fed up than I am with those whose ignorance and lack of imagination causes them such pain. The rest of you, no spoilers. He has to make this discovery himself for it to take. And to think that hummingbirds are the messengers of the Gods in Mayan mythology. Ed - look... Unless I'm completely misreading you, you are arguing on the basis of your experience as a soldier that Children need to be exposed to violence lest their naivety be taken advantage of by monsters. This is a valid point of view. I let my own children play the Harry Potter games and Starcraft etc. etc. (and yes, when they are older Quake or whatever other waste of GPU cycles Id has come up with by then) to their heart's content because of that very reason. BUT The thing which I am trying to point out is that on the continent on which I live children are _already_ on the receiving end of violence with the result that their needs are different to the needs of my children. Or to put it yet another way: South Africa is still deeply fractured along racial and economic lines. Less than ten minutes from my children's school is a predominantly poor community. The children in this community have daily experiences of drive-by shootings, sexual abuse, rampant crystal meth and alcohol addiction, gang warfare and other such pleasantly formative experiences. Now in my children's school, there are a small amount of children from that community. With a result, that I can guarantee you that if ANY parent at my kid's school were to start arguing that the school should install Doom on the media center's computers that I would oppose them in any way I can. Sure - if we were to make these kinds of decisions on the basis of a majority then _clearly_ there are more kids at the school who would learn from Doom than kids who would be traumatized by Doom. I would hope however that such a decision would rather be made on the basis of common sense. - the messenger of the gods ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New joyride build 1544 [unable to olpc-update]
Hi, I can't seem to olpc-update to this build or joyride-1543. The images seem to be available. Also, rsync rsync://updates.laptop.org doesn't list these builds, but 1542 as the latest (although I'm not sure what this exactly means :-) Cheers, Reinier Build Announcer v2 wrote: http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build1544 Changes in build 1544 from build: 1543 Size delta: 6M -olpc-library-common 1-18 +olpc-library-common 1-19 -olpc-library-core 1-19 +olpc-library-core 1-20 --- Changes for olpc-library-common 1-19 from 1-18 --- + selection/index fixes; removing unused subdirs + Improved reusability of older bundles, fixed index pages + rm xo-guide, fixed es translation --- Changes for olpc-library-core 1-20 from 1-19 --- + selection/index fixes; removing unused subdirs + Improved reusability of older bundles, fixed index pages + rm xo-guide, fixed es translation -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 1:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeffrey Kesselman wrote: My personal suggestion to the self-appointed censors is, if you don't like the content it ships with, go create some you DONT find objectionable to offer as an alternative. Hear, hear. The fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning Jeffrey... and this is a flaw which any sophomore would have been able to spot in the days when they still taught logic and critical reasoning skills at American universities is this: Antoine, you are turning this into an rwar. This is an ad hominem attack, as I'm sure they taught you. Stop it. - Putting violent arcade games in an educational resource Which nobody here has suggested doing. We're talking about a list of what exists, not about what anybody recommends, and certainly not about what ships with the XO. violates the right to spiritual and emotional recovery for nations that are in the process of recovering from war. Utterly false, just as in the case of violent movies such as Hotel Rwanda. Treatment for PTSD requires gradually easing the stress to the point where the victim can stand to think about what happened without bringing it back. And about every other kind of violence, real or fictitious. They have to get to the point where they could play these games. - Making lists of whatever entertainment resources you wish _OFF-SITE_ does not violate anyone's freedom of speech nor their right to choose whatever type of drivel they wish to waste their time on. I reject your motion to censor. What part of this do you not understand ? You, sir. I fail to understand what bee you have in your bonnet. - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
What part of this do you not understand ? Why we are still painting this bike shed. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Chris Hager wrote: Noah Kantrowitz wrote: I don't see why breaking this up by tags (some of which can be things like PG13) isn't a good enough solution. We all know kids will seek this stuff out no matter what, lets at least do it in a controlled way. The MPAA uses those ratings: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PG13#Ratings) - G (General Audience - all ages admitted) - PG(Parental guidance suggested - might not be suitable for children)) - PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned - might be inappropriate for 13 years) - R (Restricted - 17 years requires parent or adult guardian) - NC-17 (No children under 17) Basically, we could introduce this ratings as tags on [[Activities]]. Xo-get could list only 'G'-rated Activities by default, and users can then 'enable' all other somewhere in the application (preferences, ...). Or perhaps a bit lighther version: - G (General Audience) (without tag) - M (Mature material, not recommendet for people under ... years of age) Is there a need for more than those two ratings right now? For xo-get, it would be nice to make it into a tag like R:[Rating], for example R:M for M-rated Activities. And we might suppose, Activities without rating-tags are 'G'-rated. Chris ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Noah Kantrowitz wrote: I don't see why breaking this up by tags (some of which can be things like PG13) isn't a good enough solution. We all know kids will seek this stuff out no matter what, lets at least do it in a controlled way. The MPAA uses those ratings: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PG13#Ratings) - G (General Audience - all ages admitted) - PG(Parental guidance suggested - might not be suitable for children)) - PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned - might be inappropriate for 13 years) - R (Restricted - 17 years requires parent or adult guardian) - NC-17 (No children under 17) Basically, we could introduce this ratings as tags on [[Activities]]. Xo-get could list only 'G'-rated Activities by default, and users can then 'enable' all other somewhere in the application (preferences, ...). Chris ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Jameson Chema Quinn wrote: Wasn't it the Nazi's who first used censorship? On the other hand, people who died in Nazi concentration camps have unanimously refused to play Doom. /me invokes Godwin's law. - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Jameson Chema Quinn wrote: Wasn't it the Nazi's who first used censorship? On the other hand, people who died in Nazi concentration camps have unanimously refused to play Doom. /me invokes Godwin's law. Good call. - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Edward Cherlin wrote: Mr. van Gelder, I respectfully request that you read my message, over and over if necessary, until you understand the severity of your egregious and insulting error. Then apologize, not just to me, but to the others on this list who have had it far worse, and are even more fed up than I am with those whose ignorance and lack of imagination causes them such pain. My apologies Mr Cherlin and to the others on this list. I jumped to a conclusion regarding the purpose of Mr Cherlin's presence in South Korea which was entirely and completely erroneous. - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Wasn't it the Nazi's who first used censorship? On the other hand, people who died in Nazi concentration camps have unanimously refused to play Doom. New thread please? ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008, at 4:58 AM, Antoine van Gelder wrote: With a result, that I can guarantee you that if ANY parent at my kid's school were to start arguing that the school should install Doom on the media center's computers that I would oppose them in any way I can. No one is coming even remotely close to saying that these kind of potentially offensive or harmful activities/content should be there by default, what is being said is we shouldn't pretend it doesn't exist. If someone wants it, it will be right there in the list, with a nice little description that makes no false projections as to what is contained. It comes down to what OLPC's job in this is. Are we simply chronicling what content is out there, or are we actively pushing certain content and curtailing others. I think both have a place, and a wiki page with links to a small collection of high-quality educational content would be a great addition to the wiki. However a page called Activities should contain all activities, or needs to be renamed. --Noah ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
I wrote: The fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning Jeffrey... and this is a flaw which any sophomore would have been able to spot in the days when they still taught logic and critical reasoning skills at American universities is this: Edward Cherlin wrote: Antoine, you are turning this into an rwar. This is an ad hominem attack, as I'm sure they taught you. Stop it. My apologies Jeffrey, Edward is correct. It makes me angry to hear a person throw around words like 'censor' or 'freedom of speech' when those rights are not being threatened. Censorship is the suppression or deletion of material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. Asking for material which could be traumatic to kids communities who have not have the good fortune to be born in a country that has experienced unparalleled levels of peace and economic prosperity to be kept off-site is neither suppression nor deletion. Treatment for PTSD requires gradually easing the stress to the point where the victim can stand to think about what happened without bringing it back. And about every other kind of violence, real or fictitious. They have to get to the point where they could play these games. Yes, they _do_ have to get to that point. But surely in a therapeutic setting ? You, sir. I fail to understand what bee you have in your bonnet. I see the river of dreams running red with the blood of children. - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Albert Cahalan wrote: On Jan 18, 2008 4:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Albert Cahalan wrote: Sorry to hear about your war. Attitudes such as this sir, is the reason that America is viewed by many nations as a belligerent and imperialistic monster. I'm sure you misinterpreted me. Maybe you thought I was being sarcastic; I was not. My apologies Albert. I was upset and jumped to conclusions. - antoine ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
pyglet
http://www.pyglet.org/ Just installed and tested (not on the XO yet). It seems a good alternative to pygame. -c. -- www.cesaremarilungo.com ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Finally, any suggestions about how to extent, augment, or replace Media Wiki with tools to make these sorts of things easier for the community to manage would be appreciated. There are several mediaWiki extensions that might help: 1. You could do an evil hack using the well-tested PageFunctions (for variables declared at the top of an including page) and ParserFunctions (for using in templates that can hide themselves depending on the variable values). This would involve significant, hard-to-maintain work for each new slice view you wanted to implement. However, if all views were just a series of subsets of the 'all' view (all, unproblematic, core), this would not be too hard, and populating it could be done by anyone able to copy and edit wiki templates. 2. The WikiDB extension [1] appears to be precisely, exactly what is wanted here. From quickly browsing its homesite, it appears to be working, but possibly too buggy to slap onto a wiki as large as the OLPC one. Significantly, it does not guarantee that the databases it creates will stay in sync under rarer operations (restoring deleted pages...), nor does it appear at first to have a way to regenerate its databases if they do get hosed. Go have a look if you're interested and tell us what you think. 3. Semantic mediawiki is a heavyweight replacement version of Mediawiki with some tools that, while they are not precisely what we want, would work for this issue. Probably overkill. [1] http://www.kennel17.co.uk/testwiki/WikiDB ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Classroom tools
There's nothing preventing Johnny from doing this without a laptop. It's just easier with the laptop, but then again, so are legitimate tasks. I don't think OLPC should be getting into the business of creating anti-cheat provisions. I do think that tagging objects with the people who have worked on them might be a good idea, though, for this and for other purposes. --Thomas Tuttle On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:46:14 -0500, Mikus Grinbergs [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: When I showed my G1G1 to a teacher friend, just about his first thought was: this is an opportunity for surreptitious assistance. Suppose Tommy needs to do something for school, but is stumped. He contacts Johnny on the mesh, who (for a suitable future pay-off) feeds Tommy the answer. How is the teacher to know that Tommy did not do the task himself ? mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 10:33 -0500, Michail Bletsas wrote: Dan Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 01/18/2008 10:08:09 AM: On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 08:36 +0800, David Woodhouse wrote: On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 19:16 -0500, Giannis Galanis wrote: It must be noted that the important issue of this discussion is how to have the radio blocked from BEFORE the XO boots, so as not to be conflicting with the airline regulations. We should change the firmware so that it isn't active automatically as soon as it's loaded -- let the driver activate it when it's appropriate. Then the decision as to whether the radio is blocked can properly be handled in userspace, and the device can be left quiescent if appropriate. Yes. The active antennas firmware would need to be slightly altered to start on firmware boot, but the normal XO firmware should certainly be radio-off-until-driver-enabled (by setting IFF_UP or device open). So let's alter a fundamental design principle so that the XO doesn't transmit a single frame when riding an airplane... ?? I don't think so. If people feel so strong about this they can always block firmware loading. Mesh forwarding will go on when you initialize the adapter and it is up to the user to turn it off if they feel that they have too. We're not really arguing here, we agree. Everyone agrees that wireless +mesh should start automatically by default after bootup. What David (and I in like 3 mails yesterday in this thread already) had proposed was that the XO firmware should disable the radio _until_Linux_loads_ and the driver tells it to enable the radio. When Linux loads, the driver (or NetworkManager, or whatever) starts the radio. That way, the user at least has a change to at some point say no, don't turn on the radio by default if they want to. _Nothing_ would change for users who do not want/care/need to touch the radio in this scenario, everything would continue to work as it currently does. I'm not sure where you get the idea that we're saying it should all be in airplane mode all the time unless the child explicitly turns the radio on. We're saying exactly the opposite of that. Dan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: font size in console
15x30pc rocks! 2008/1/18, Bernardo Innocenti [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Albert Cahalan wrote: Yes. It got buried in my inbox while I had to make up some hours for work. Also, you asked for a copy of the full thing, but I need to regenerate that and I might as well throw in the new characters while I'm at it. BTW, I was mistaken. It's about 1000 characters. As long as it's not too big (remember that the font lives in precious non-swappable kernel memory), the more glyphs we have, the better. I'm fine with the wording that Wikipedia uses for public domain. (disclaiming the weird nonsense which hopefully wouldn't apply to me anyway) Oh, I didn't get you were the original author of this font. I thought you had converted it or something. Since you're in contact with him, feel free to let him know that he is welcome to have it. Good. -- \___/ |___| Bernardo Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ \___\ One Laptop Per Child - http://www.laptop.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Emiliano Pastorino LATU - Plan Ceibal Av. Italia 6201 CP: 11500, Montevideo, Uruguay Tel: (598 2) 601 3724 int.: 467 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: pyglet
The XO does not have hardware OpenGL support and has a very slow processor so OpenGL is disabled in X. It means that 70% of pyglet will not be too useful. Cesare Marilungo wrote: http://www.pyglet.org/ Just installed and tested (not on the XO yet). It seems a good alternative to pygame. -c. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
It seems that there are three ideas that have so far emerged form this discussion: tags, favorites lists, and need for a better back end than the wiki currently supplies to support search, sort, etc. As SJ pointed out very early on in the thread, there is a page in the wiki (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_guidelines) that is dedicated to the definition of criteria by which activities can be assessed. Please help us expand/refine the list and perhaps cross reference the list with existing tag systems. It'd be great to generate some pages in the Activities page hierarchy that include slices through the activity list that are appropriate to different contexts, e.g., my favorites, etc. Finally, any suggestions about how to extent, augment, or replace Media Wiki with tools to make these sorts of things easier for the community to manage would be appreciated. -walter ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 4:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeffrey Kesselman wrote: The fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning Jeffrey... and this is a flaw which any sophomore would have been able to spot in the days when they still taught logic and critical reasoning skills at American universities is this: - Putting violent arcade games in an educational resource violates the right to spiritual and emotional recovery for nations that are in the process of recovering from war. JFHC. I;m sorry... but your accusing the folks whoa re against censorship of talking in abstracts? What IS the the right to spiritual and emotional recovery for nations that are in the process of recovering from war ?? Part of the geneva coinvention I missed somewhere? Can we PLEASE lay off the empty propaganda phrases and discuss this like adults?? Censorship denies others the spiritual and emotional right to chose what they experience, how and why, for themselves. See? I can do it to. Doesn't mean anything at all, but I can do it. I'm going to go take a stress pill now. Propaganda does that to me. JK ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 10:08 -0500, Dan Williams wrote: Yes. The active antennas firmware would need to be slightly altered to start on firmware boot, but the normal XO firmware should certainly be radio-off-until-driver-enabled (by setting IFF_UP or device open). Let us make a clear distinction between the two types of 'active antenna' here. The ones which are actually attached to servers and acting as wireless devices for a computer, we want to act like in the XO. When they come up automatically into mesh repeater mode, that's actually a complete PITA -- and it means we can't reboot the servers because then the driver can't initialise the wireless because it's in mesh repeater mode and doesn't respond properly to being reset. Only for the standalone devices which we're going to hang in a corridor and feed 5v do we want _any_ kind of automatic network operation. And then it needs to be configurable -- we have to set the channel. Since we need a way to configure the channel on the active antennae, let's use channel zero to indicate 'no automatic mesh'. And please can we have that firmware by tomorrow, Ulan Bator time -- so that I can actually set up the school server so that it's rebootable without subsequently having to disconnect and reconnect the firmware? I'd do it myself, but bug #429 bites again... -- dwmw2 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 6:17 AM, Chris Hager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Hager wrote: Noah Kantrowitz wrote: I don't see why breaking this up by tags (some of which can be things like PG13) isn't a good enough solution. We all know kids will seek this stuff out no matter what, lets at least do it in a controlled way. The MPAA uses those ratings: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PG13#Ratings) - G (General Audience - all ages admitted) - PG(Parental guidance suggested - might not be suitable for children)) - PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned - might be inappropriate for 13 years) - R (Restricted - 17 years requires parent or adult guardian) - NC-17 (No children under 17) Basically, we could introduce this ratings as tags on [[Activities]]. Xo-get could list only 'G'-rated Activities by default, and users can then 'enable' all other somewhere in the application (preferences, ...). Or perhaps a bit lighther version: - G (General Audience) (without tag) - M (Mature material, not recommendet for people under ... years of age) Coming up with ratings is relatively easy. The ESRB already has a system you can use if you want. http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp Deciding who gets to decide how they are assigned... thats harder. JK ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 1549
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build1549 Changes in build 1549 from build: 1548 Size delta: 0M -kernel 2.6.22-20080117.1.olpc.a0ca568e912c1c5 +kernel 2.6.22-20080118.2.olpc.a985ba6d19d39cc -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Choosing a correct working-dir for upgrade-server
On Jan 18, 2008, at 6:49 PM, Michael Stone wrote: When inetd runs upgrade-server/upserv.py, it does so with in the working dir /. Since the upgrade-server's python modules are not installed in PYTHONPATH, this choice of working-dir interferes with the module loading that occurs when re-running python inside fakeroot. Hardcoding the correct choice of working-dir fixes the observed failure of the upgrade-server's 'on-demand build download' feature; however, it's probably worth fixing this for real by either: a) packaging upgrade-server so that it properly installs its modules in PYTHONPATH or b) calculating an appropriate working dir at run time based on a command-line argument, environment variable, or based on the location of the python script being executed. c) Use 2.5 new relative import stuffs. --Noah ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Choosing a correct working-dir for upgrade-server
When inetd runs upgrade-server/upserv.py, it does so with in the working dir /. Since the upgrade-server's python modules are not installed in PYTHONPATH, this choice of working-dir interferes with the module loading that occurs when re-running python inside fakeroot. Hardcoding the correct choice of working-dir fixes the observed failure of the upgrade-server's 'on-demand build download' feature; however, it's probably worth fixing this for real by either: a) packaging upgrade-server so that it properly installs its modules in PYTHONPATH or b) calculating an appropriate working dir at run time based on a command-line argument, environment variable, or based on the location of the python script being executed. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Suggestion for Terms of Use for content
I immensely admire the Scratch website as a space for collaboration for kids and adults. I suggest OLPC seriously consider adopting these same terms of use. Scratch Terms of Use http://scratch.mit.edu/terms As part of the Scratch community, you are sharing projects and ideas with people: • from many different countries and cultures • of all ages (from young children to teens and grandparents) • with all levels of experience We need your help to make this community a supportive place for every member. Here's how you can help: Be respectful. When sharing projects, remember that people of many different ages and backgrounds will see your creations. Offer constructive comments. Instead of just criticizing a project, say what you like about it and offer suggestions on how to make it better. Give credit. Feel free to make modified versions of other people's projects - just make sure to give them credit. One place to give credit is in your Project Notes. Help keep the site safe. If you feel others would find a project mean, insulting, too violent, or otherwise inappropriate, click the link from that page: Flag as inappropriate. (The Scratch team will review, and may remove any project or comments.) --- I think it would be great for OLPC to put together a team to periodically review content tagged as inappropriate. This group should include teachers and women (who could be teachers :) not be solely composed of male software developers or pseudo-developers like myself. Perhaps it would be good to set up a site like www.xohacker.org where people could post their free clones of Grand Theft Auto or Leisure Suit Larry. This would give people the freedom to do what they want and maintain a safe environment for kids w/in the OLPC activities pages. Frankly, I myself like violent games but I respect that they bother a lot of people, particularly teachers and parents I work w/. I will try to contact John Maloney of the Scratch team and find out what particular procedures they have for reviewing content. BTW, I really like ScratchR community site and think it is a great option for hosting the activities. http://scratch.mit.edu/scratchr I hope this doesn't start another rewar :) -- Bryan W. Berry External Relations Manager OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 12:58 PM, Jeffrey Kesselman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 18, 2008 6:17 AM, Chris Hager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Hager wrote: Noah Kantrowitz wrote: I don't see why breaking this up by tags (some of which can be things like PG13) isn't a good enough solution. We all know kids will seek this stuff out no matter what, lets at least do it in a controlled way. None of these rating systems is any good. Where's the category for stuff that is suitable for children but not for adults? I'm quite serious about this. (Adults in this context means those who cannot remember or imagine how it is for children. It has nothing to do with age.) The MPAA uses those ratings: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PG13#Ratings) - G (General Audience - all ages admitted) - PG(Parental guidance suggested - might not be suitable for children)) - PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned - might be inappropriate for 13 years) - R (Restricted - 17 years requires parent or adult guardian) - NC-17 (No children under 17) Basically, we could introduce this ratings as tags on [[Activities]]. Xo-get could list only 'G'-rated Activities by default, and users can then 'enable' all other somewhere in the application (preferences, ...). Or perhaps a bit lighther version: - G (General Audience) (without tag) - M (Mature material, not recommendet for people under ... years of age) Coming up with ratings is relatively easy. The ESRB already has a system you can use if you want. http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp Deciding who gets to decide how they are assigned... thats harder. JK ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 1:58 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Edward Cherlin wrote: On Jan 18, 2008 1:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Edward Cherlin wrote: I was in the hills north of Seoul, Korea, in 1968 Mr Cherlin - with much respect to your service in Korea (I have friends who also served) but may I ask you to please consider the possibility that your experience as an armed, trained and well-supplied soldier was not the same experience as that had by civilians caught in the crossfire of armies ? Mr. van Gelder, I respectfully request that you read my message, over and over if necessary, until you understand the severity of your egregious and insulting error. Then apologize, not just to me, but to the others on this list who have had it far worse, and are even more fed up than I am with those whose ignorance and lack of imagination causes them such pain. The rest of you, no spoilers. He has to make this discovery himself for it to take. And to think that hummingbirds are the messengers of the Gods in Mayan mythology. Ed - look... Unless I'm completely misreading you, you are arguing on the basis of your experience as a soldier that Children need to be exposed to violence lest their naivety be taken advantage of by monsters. Yes, you completely misread me. I have never been a soldier. Now go back to the message you replied to, and find the clues. They aren't hidden. This is a valid point of view. I let my own children play the Harry Potter games and Starcraft etc. etc. (and yes, when they are older Quake or whatever other waste of GPU cycles Id has come up with by then) to their heart's content because of that very reason. Excellent. We agree completely on this principle. BUT The thing which I am trying to point out is that on the continent on which I live children are _already_ on the receiving end of violence with the result that their needs are different to the needs of my children. I simply propose that we put it to them, and hear what *they* have to say about the matter. We have no business trying to arrogate to ourselves the right to make decisions for them. Or to put it yet another way: South Africa is still deeply fractured along racial and economic lines. Less than ten minutes from my children's school is a predominantly poor community. The children in this community have daily experiences of drive-by shootings, sexual abuse, rampant crystal meth and alcohol addiction, gang warfare and other such pleasantly formative experiences. Now in my children's school, there are a small amount of children from that community. With a result, that I can guarantee you that if ANY parent at my kid's school were to start arguing that the school should install Doom on the media center's computers that I would oppose them in any way I can. To my knowledge, nobody here has argued for putting Doom on school servers. That is a strawman argument, as I am sure you have been taught. We are talking about how to list entirely optional software on the OLPC site. Sure - if we were to make these kinds of decisions on the basis of a majority then _clearly_ there are more kids at the school who would learn from Doom than kids who would be traumatized by Doom. Majority? Where does that nonsense come from? These are *individual* decisions. I would hope however that such a decision would rather be made on the basis of common sense. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.--Albert Einstein Common sense, if it existed, would be the sense which we hold in common. We don't. Certainly not you and I. - the messenger of the gods If you are going to start with us on that track, you can go back to the Mayan Hell where you came from and tell your Demon Snake Lord Hapikorn I said so. %-[ -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Beg Disclaimer Jeffrey, I'm replying to your message because it was the latest one in the thread when I retrieved my 120 OLPC mailing list message today (actually, that comes from several OLPC mailing lists, but devel seems to have the most traffic on any given day). So, what I say here is not a reply to you personally. End Disclaimer I think the direction this thread is taking is completely the wrong way to go about things. OLPC should be in the business of delivering a platform and productivity tools (e.g., word processor, paint program, etc.). It should NOT be in the business of distributing content. ANY content. Tools to build content, definitely (EToys, pyGames, et al.). But NOT the content itself. If you folks think this little dust-up over violent games is a big deal, just wait until the creationists, the scientologists and the new-Nazis discover the XO. If you take a look at some of the stuff on YouTube criticizing the very purpose and legitimacy of the OLPC project itself, you will know that we are going to have enough trouble just defending the platform and the tools. $200 USD can by a lot of rice for starving children and there is no shortage of people out there right now trying to brand the OLPC project as another elitist wet dream. My advice to OLPC is to get out of the content business in any way, shape or form as quickly as your little green computer can carry you. You don't have to worry about the XO not having enough educational content. Many people not affiliated with OLPC will be developing content for this platform. Then, let the recipients of the machines make the content decisions using their own, local standards. Cheers, Brad - Original Message - From: Jeffrey Kesselman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Chris Hager [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: OLPC Development devel@lists.laptop.org Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 2:58 PM Subject: Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page On Jan 18, 2008 6:17 AM, Chris Hager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Hager wrote: Noah Kantrowitz wrote: I don't see why breaking this up by tags (some of which can be things like PG13) isn't a good enough solution. We all know kids will seek this stuff out no matter what, lets at least do it in a controlled way. The MPAA uses those ratings: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PG13#Ratings) - G (General Audience - all ages admitted) - PG(Parental guidance suggested - might not be suitable for children)) - PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned - might be inappropriate for 13 years) - R (Restricted - 17 years requires parent or adult guardian) - NC-17 (No children under 17) Basically, we could introduce this ratings as tags on [[Activities]]. Xo-get could list only 'G'-rated Activities by default, and users can then 'enable' all other somewhere in the application (preferences, ...). Or perhaps a bit lighther version: - G (General Audience) (without tag) - M (Mature material, not recommendet for people under ... years of age) Coming up with ratings is relatively easy. The ESRB already has a system you can use if you want. http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp Deciding who gets to decide how they are assigned... thats harder. JK ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
Michail, This would be 3107, right ? 3109 is when we started seeing the auto-update mode. John On Jan 18, 2008, at 4:22 PM, David Woodhouse wrote: On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 15:50 -0500, Michail Bletsas wrote: Ideally, we want to just kill the auto-mesh-repeater mode, where boot2 times out after 5 seconds and loads the firmware from the internal flash (which is obviously larger on these devices than on the XO). Can we achieve that just by updating to a 'normal' Boot2 version from the XO? Yes, that is all that is needed to disable autoboot on the active antennas. OK, that's the plan for the Mongolia deployment then. Wad, please can you confirm (with libertas-flash.py) and forward me the current (XO) version of Boot2, so I can do that? Thanks. -- dwmw2 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
John Watlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 01/18/2008 04:56:26 PM: Michail, This would be 3107, right ? 3109 is when we started seeing the auto-update mode. Yes, M. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 16:56 -0500, John Watlington wrote: Michail, This would be 3107, right ? 3109 is when we started seeing the auto-update mode. OK, so can we go between 3109 and 3107 in both directions using libertas-flash.py or did the protocol get changed without telling us? We never did get Marvell's 'firmware update' patch for the driver to apply to the kernel they claim it applies to, did we? -- dwmw2 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 15:50 -0500, Michail Bletsas wrote: Ideally, we want to just kill the auto-mesh-repeater mode, where boot2 times out after 5 seconds and loads the firmware from the internal flash (which is obviously larger on these devices than on the XO). Can we achieve that just by updating to a 'normal' Boot2 version from the XO? Yes, that is all that is needed to disable autoboot on the active antennas. OK, that's the plan for the Mongolia deployment then. Wad, please can you confirm (with libertas-flash.py) and forward me the current (XO) version of Boot2, so I can do that? Thanks. -- dwmw2 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO
Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: As far as I understand this is due to the use of ALSA without OSS emulation. It's also what affects one of the three Speex bugs affecting the XO, as the CLI tool speexdec is unable to use /dev/dsp. For the sake of improving the state of audio in the XO; I'd really like to put to vote the idea of replacing ALSA with OSS 4. I can't imagine why intentionally divorcing from the upstream sound model to a driver stack that is never going to the upstream kernel would be a *good* thing. Bill ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
David Woodhouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 01/18/2008 03:31:08 PM: Ideally, we want to just kill the auto-mesh-repeater mode, where boot2 times out after 5 seconds and loads the firmware from the internal flash (which is obviously larger on these devices than on the XO). Can we achieve that just by updating to a 'normal' Boot2 version from the XO? Yes, that is all that is needed to disable autoboot on the active antennas. M. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 14:47 -0500, Dan Williams wrote: So wait, what's going on here? I thought the devices attached to school servers were just run-of-the-mill USB 8388 devices like the 8388 daughterboard of the XO, but different connector, right? What is the post-boot firmware flash functionality supposed to apply to, the host-less active antenna? (which is what I heretofore had understood). These two are the same device (active antenna). The device behaves differently depending on whether it detects a USB link on startup. --Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Openfirmware customisation problem - booting from USB
Mr frÿffe9dÿffe9ric pouchal wrote: Hello I would like to boot OpenFirmware from an USB key On a conventional PC or an OLPC XO? The former is supported; the latter could be made to work but will probably require some changes. so I changed the file /openfirmware/cpu/x86/pc/olpc/config.fth I commented \ create rom-loaded I uncommented create syslinux-loaded The syslinux-loaded variant in the olpc build directory is obsolete (it dated back to the time when A-test OLPC boards briefly had a conventional BIOS) and I have no plans to ever make it work again. The syslinux-loaded variant in biosload build directory should work. but when I do make clean make I have this error make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/firm/openfirmware/clients/memtest86' ./build olpc.rom --- Rebuilding ec.img --- Cmd: ${HOSTDIR}/forth ${HOSTDIR}/../build/builder.dic ../ec.bth --- Rebuilding romreset.di --- Cmd: ${HOSTDIR}/forth ${HOSTDIR}/../build/builder.dic ../romreset.bth ${BP}/cpu/x86/pc/resetend.fth:35: ResetBase ? make: *** [olpc.rom] Error 1 Can anyone help me ? Thanks Frederic Pouchal Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Openfirmware customisation problem - booting from USB
Hello I would like to boot OpenFirmware from an USB key so I changed the file /openfirmware/cpu/x86/pc/olpc/config.fth I commented \ create rom-loaded I uncommented create syslinux-loaded but when I do make clean make I have this error make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/firm/openfirmware/clients/memtest86' ./build olpc.rom --- Rebuilding ec.img --- Cmd: ${HOSTDIR}/forth ${HOSTDIR}/../build/builder.dic ../ec.bth --- Rebuilding romreset.di --- Cmd: ${HOSTDIR}/forth ${HOSTDIR}/../build/builder.dic ../romreset.bth ${BP}/cpu/x86/pc/resetend.fth:35: ResetBase ? make: *** [olpc.rom] Error 1 Can anyone help me ? Thanks Frederic Pouchal Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
On Jan 18, 2008 10:45 AM, Antoine van Gelder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeffrey Kesselman wrote: I;m sorry... but your accusing the folks whoa re against censorship of talking in abstracts? Straw man. [1] Aha! You do know what that means. Sort of. You just don't understand it. Ask me offline if you want clarification. You accuse me of accusing folk who are against censorship of talking abstract and then because censorship is bad you claim that my point is invalid. I am not advocating censorship. - antoine [1] http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[PATCH] Hack an os.chdir('~/upgrade-server') so that we can correctly download builds.
This should probably become a command-line option (or even an inference based on the path to the python script being executed). --- upserv.py |3 ++- 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) diff --git a/upserv.py b/upserv.py index fa4fb17..216104f 100755 --- a/upserv.py +++ b/upserv.py @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Upgrade Server. from __future__ import with_statement from subprocess import call, check_call, Popen, PIPE -import os.path, random, re, select, socket, sys, tempfile, time, urllib, traceback +import os.path, random, re, select, socket, sys, tempfile, time, urllib, traceback, os from string import Template # CONFIGURATION. override these settings in config.py if you like. @@ -176,6 +176,7 @@ def try_to_install_build(build): return str(sys.exc_value) def main (): +os.chdir('/home/upserv/upgrade-server') from optparse import OptionParser parser = OptionParser(usage='%prog [options] server|install buildno') (options, args) = parser.parse_args() -- 1.5.3.3 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO
How about just reenabling OSS emulation? It's included in alsa, so it should be no problem, maybe it's just a case of modifying modprobe.conf. I second Victor's suggestion for the csound api, though. I wonder if there is a major impact on performance by using it? Cheers, Andrés On Jan 18, 2008 5:24 PM, victor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What exactly is the problem with the alsa driver? Csound works OK with it. Replacing it with OSS will require us to write a new IO module for Csound. Without Csound, audio and music on the XO will have to be completely re-written. IMHO, developers wanting to use audio on the XO should ideally use Csound and its Python API. That's why it's there. As far as I am concerned, having developed audio apps for Linux for several years, Alsa is much better and more reliable than OSS. Victor - Original Message - From: Jordan Crouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Arjun Sarwal [EMAIL PROTECTED]; devel@lists.laptop.org Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 9:02 PM Subject: Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO On 18/01/08 20:57 +, Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves wrote: As far as I understand this is due to the use of ALSA without OSS emulation. It's also what affects one of the three Speex bugs affecting the XO, as the CLI tool speexdec is unable to use /dev/dsp. For the sake of improving the state of audio in the XO; I'd really like to put to vote the idea of replacing ALSA with OSS 4. If thats the case, then we need somebody to volunteer to write the AC97 driver for the CS5536. I don't think we would consider any sort of change until the appropriate hardware controls are in place. Jordan -- Jordan Crouse Systems Software Development Engineer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO
On 1/18/08, Bill Nottingham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't imagine why intentionally divorcing from the upstream sound model to a driver stack that is never going to the upstream kernel would be a *good* thing. ALSA is a kernel driver and should never have been anything more. A decent audio system should always be built in userspace. Does it not strike you as odd that most audio applications work better with ALSA when they are using OSS emulation? Emulation. Of a different sound system. -Ivo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Fwd: Activity search/browse on wiki (was violent activities)
I'm rescuing this concrete suggestion, since most people probably have the 'violent activities' thread in their killfile by now. (Sorry about that, I'm as guilty as any of adding personal anecdotes instead of productive contributions). The problem: have a community-maintained list of activities that is viewable and/or searchable in different cross-sections based on need. It should integrate well with the wiki, so probably the first place to look is for mediawiki extensions. There are several that might help: 1. You could do an evil hack by combining page inclusion with the well-tested PageFunctions (for variables declared at the top of an including page) and ParserFunctions (for using in templates that can hide themselves depending on the variable values). This would involve hacktastic, hard-to-maintain work for each new slice view you wanted to implement. However, if you keep things simple (all, unproblematic, core), this would not be too hard, and populating it could be done by anyone able to copy and edit wiki templates. 2. The WikiDB extension [1] appears to be a beta version of precisely what is wanted here. From quickly browsing its homesite, it appears to be working, but possibly too buggy to slap onto a wiki as large as the OLPC one. Significantly, it does not guarantee that the databases it creates will stay in sync under rarer operations (restoring deleted pages...), nor does it appear at first to have a way to regenerate its databases if they do get hosed. Go have a look if you're interested and tell us what you think. 3. Semantic mediawiki is a heavyweight replacement version of Mediawiki with some tools that, while they are not precisely what we want, would work for this issue. The focus is more on browse than on preconstructed views integrated with a wiki page - I think that for us the latter would probably be better. Probably overkill. [1] http://www.kennel17.co.uk/testwiki/WikiDB (sorry if you get this twice, I first sent it to devel@lists.laptop.org and since I did't get a copy I'm assuming the address doesn't work with lists in it.) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Activity search/browse on wiki (was violent activities)
I'm rescuing this concrete suggestion, since most people probably have the 'violent activities' thread in their killfile by now. (Sorry about that, I'm as guilty as any of adding personal anecdotes instead of productive contributions). The problem: have a community-maintained list of activities that is viewable and/or searchable in different cross-sections based on need. It should integrate well with the wiki, so probably the first place to look is for mediawiki extensions. There are several that might help: 1. You could do an evil hack by combining page inclusion with the well-tested PageFunctions (for variables declared at the top of an including page) and ParserFunctions (for using in templates that can hide themselves depending on the variable values). This would involve hacktastic, hard-to-maintain work for each new slice view you wanted to implement. However, if you keep things simple (all, unproblematic, core), this would not be too hard, and populating it could be done by anyone able to copy and edit wiki templates. 2. The WikiDB extension [1] appears to be a beta version of precisely what is wanted here. From quickly browsing its homesite, it appears to be working, but possibly too buggy to slap onto a wiki as large as the OLPC one. Significantly, it does not guarantee that the databases it creates will stay in sync under rarer operations (restoring deleted pages...), nor does it appear at first to have a way to regenerate its databases if they do get hosed. Go have a look if you're interested and tell us what you think. 3. Semantic mediawiki is a heavyweight replacement version of Mediawiki with some tools that, while they are not precisely what we want, would work for this issue. The focus is more on browse than on preconstructed views integrated with a wiki page - I think that for us the latter would probably be better. Probably overkill. [1] http://www.kennel17.co.uk/testwiki/WikiDB ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
OFW hello.elf
Hi It appears that the sample hello world program [1] provided with OFW is not working on latest stable revision. At least, it didn't work for my G1G1 unit with Q2D07. When running it with boot command, I just get: ok boot disk:\hello.elf Boot device: /usb/disk:\hello.elf Arguments: [ nothing printed, no prompt ] It works fine when using latest SVN in qemu / pc-serial build, though. I find this really strange, because I got reports [2] that ELF images are indeed working on XO, although I don't know which hardware/firmware versions. Also, I'm not sure if this is a loading problem with ELF format or with the OFW callback interface, since Linux images seem to differ in both things with hello.elf. Perhaps someone else can try hello.elf and see if it works? TIA [1] svn co svn://openbios.org/openfirmware/clients make -C clients/lib/x86/ [2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2008-01/msg00227.html -- Robert Millan GPLv2 I know my rights; I want my phone call! DRM What use is a phone call… if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 14:47 -0500, Dan Williams wrote: What is the post-boot firmware flash functionality supposed to apply to, the host-less active antenna? (which is what I heretofore had understood). As Ben says, they're the same thing. If you don't load the firmware within 5 seconds of the boot2 code starting up, the thing loads its own firmware from the internal flash. Yes, it's horrid. It doesn't even preserve the boot2 version, because we did some stupid hack to preserve that in the _driver_ rather than keeping it internal, so when we send the CMD_802_11_RESET command to kick the device back into boot2, we get 'device firmware changed' from the kernel and it appears as a completely new device... Ideally, we want to just kill the auto-mesh-repeater mode, where boot2 times out after 5 seconds and loads the firmware from the internal flash (which is obviously larger on these devices than on the XO). Can we achieve that just by updating to a 'normal' Boot2 version from the XO? (Yes, I should be sleeping. No, I have no idea what timezone I'm in). -- dwmw2 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 08:36 +0800, David Woodhouse wrote: On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 19:16 -0500, Giannis Galanis wrote: It must be noted that the important issue of this discussion is how to have the radio blocked from BEFORE the XO boots, so as not to be conflicting with the airline regulations. We should change the firmware so that it isn't active automatically as soon as it's loaded -- let the driver activate it when it's appropriate. Then the decision as to whether the radio is blocked can properly be handled in userspace, and the device can be left quiescent if appropriate. Yes. The active antennas firmware would need to be slightly altered to start on firmware boot, but the normal XO firmware should certainly be radio-off-until-driver-enabled (by setting IFF_UP or device open). Dan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
Dan Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 01/18/2008 10:08:09 AM: On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 08:36 +0800, David Woodhouse wrote: On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 19:16 -0500, Giannis Galanis wrote: It must be noted that the important issue of this discussion is how to have the radio blocked from BEFORE the XO boots, so as not to be conflicting with the airline regulations. We should change the firmware so that it isn't active automatically as soon as it's loaded -- let the driver activate it when it's appropriate. Then the decision as to whether the radio is blocked can properly be handled in userspace, and the device can be left quiescent if appropriate. Yes. The active antennas firmware would need to be slightly altered to start on firmware boot, but the normal XO firmware should certainly be radio-off-until-driver-enabled (by setting IFF_UP or device open). So let's alter a fundamental design principle so that the XO doesn't transmit a single frame when riding an airplane... ?? I don't think so. If people feel so strong about this they can always block firmware loading. Mesh forwarding will go on when you initialize the adapter and it is up to the user to turn it off if they feel that they have too. M. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 1546
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build1546 Changes in build 1546 from build: 1544 Size delta: 0M -olpc-utils 0.63-2.olpc2 +olpc-utils 0.65-1.olpc2 --- Changes for olpc-utils 0.65-1.olpc2 from 0.63-2.olpc2 --- + Use GPLv2+ license tag as nothing in this package is GPLv2-only. + Make preview cleaner robust in the case of a missing datastore + Do not bother running journal cleaner on fresh installations (saves time on first boot) + Add a silly TODO list + Bump revision to 0.65 + Import olpc-netlog-0.3 and olpc-netstatus-0.3 + Add 'clean-previews' and incorporate it into olpc-configure. + 'become_root' script merged upstream. + Update License field to GPLv2 in order to match the COPYING file. -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page
Jeffrey Kesselman wrote: I;m sorry... but your accusing the folks whoa re against censorship of talking in abstracts? Straw man. [1] You accuse me of accusing folk who are against censorship of talking abstract and then because censorship is bad you claim that my point is invalid. I am not advocating censorship. - antoine [1] http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Suggestion for Terms of Use for content
2008-01-19T02:55:50 Bryan Berry: I hope this doesn't start another rewar :) So do I; that sounded beautiful to me in every way. But, though I hope I didn't fan the flames too hard when my hot button got mashed, I did see a good bit of evolving, productive thoughts float to the top out of the occasionally edgy discussion. I don't know what a rewar is, but I've seen a ton of flamewars, and I've never, ever seen apologies in one before. This seems to have quenched itself somehow. Where do these people _come_from_? How can we increase their proportions in other venues? -Bennett [ P.S. I'm trying to proofread carefully, but all my participation has been from my utterly delightful G1G1 xo, and my huge fingers are still getting accustomed to the keyboard. ] pgpuRkWZ2aZCF.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Downtime tonight Jan18 6PM EST
Development services (git, trac) will be going down for 6-12 hours tonight, Jan 18, starting around 6PM EST. Later in the evening, a smorgasbord of services might experience interruption, including RT, updates.laptop.org, and the translation system (Pootle). As usual, we hope to minimize downtime. -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Classroom tools
I wrote a piece about this for OLPC News, on how the Collaborative Discovery that the laptop promotes is defined in many classrooms as cheating. For a contrary view, you could talk to the faculty of Presidio School of Management, where team projects are the essence of the curriculum, and teams are diligent in calling delinquent members to account. On Jan 18, 2008 7:46 AM, Mikus Grinbergs [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When I showed my G1G1 to a teacher friend, just about his first thought was: this is an opportunity for surreptitious assistance. Suppose Tommy needs to do something for school, but is stumped. He contacts Johnny on the mesh, who (for a suitable future pay-off) feeds Tommy the answer. How is the teacher to know that Tommy did not do the task himself ? Monitoring wireless traffic in the XO environment is not at all difficult. Get a student to put something together for you. You don't even need to read the packet contents. Just the addresses are sufficient. mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Testing the Wireless driver changes
On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 01:38 +0800, David Woodhouse wrote: On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 10:08 -0500, Dan Williams wrote: Yes. The active antennas firmware would need to be slightly altered to start on firmware boot, but the normal XO firmware should certainly be radio-off-until-driver-enabled (by setting IFF_UP or device open). Let us make a clear distinction between the two types of 'active antenna' here. The ones which are actually attached to servers and acting as wireless devices for a computer, we want to act like in the XO. When they come up automatically into mesh repeater mode, that's actually a complete PITA -- and it means we can't reboot the servers because then the driver can't initialise the wireless because it's in mesh repeater mode and doesn't respond properly to being reset. So wait, what's going on here? I thought the devices attached to school servers were just run-of-the-mill USB 8388 devices like the 8388 daughterboard of the XO, but different connector, right? What is the post-boot firmware flash functionality supposed to apply to, the host-less active antenna? (which is what I heretofore had understood). Dan Only for the standalone devices which we're going to hang in a corridor and feed 5v do we want _any_ kind of automatic network operation. And then it needs to be configurable -- we have to set the channel. Since we need a way to configure the channel on the active antennae, let's use channel zero to indicate 'no automatic mesh'. And please can we have that firmware by tomorrow, Ulan Bator time -- so that I can actually set up the school server so that it's rebootable without subsequently having to disconnect and reconnect the firmware? I'd do it myself, but bug #429 bites again... ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO
What exactly is the problem with the alsa driver? Csound works OK with it. Replacing it with OSS will require us to write a new IO module for Csound. Without Csound, audio and music on the XO will have to be completely re-written. IMHO, developers wanting to use audio on the XO should ideally use Csound and its Python API. That's why it's there. As far as I am concerned, having developed audio apps for Linux for several years, Alsa is much better and more reliable than OSS. Victor - Original Message - From: Jordan Crouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Arjun Sarwal [EMAIL PROTECTED]; devel@lists.laptop.org Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 9:02 PM Subject: Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO On 18/01/08 20:57 +, Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves wrote: As far as I understand this is due to the use of ALSA without OSS emulation. It's also what affects one of the three Speex bugs affecting the XO, as the CLI tool speexdec is unable to use /dev/dsp. For the sake of improving the state of audio in the XO; I'd really like to put to vote the idea of replacing ALSA with OSS 4. If thats the case, then we need somebody to volunteer to write the AC97 driver for the CS5536. I don't think we would consider any sort of change until the appropriate hardware controls are in place. Jordan -- Jordan Crouse Systems Software Development Engineer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
New joyride build 1550
http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build1550 Changes in build 1550 from build: 1549 Size delta: 0M -sugar 0.75.8-2.olpc2 +sugar 0.75.10-1.olpc2 --- Changes for sugar 0.75.10-1.olpc2 from 0.75.8-2.olpc2 --- + Fix #1406 #5944 #6051 -- This mail was automatically generated See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride-pkgs.html for aggregate logs See http://dev.laptop.org/~rwh/announcer/joyride_vs_update1.html for a comparison ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How to? School server implementation
On Jan 18, 2008 2:50 AM, James Cameron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: G'day, I've tested the XO and the active antenna devices in the desert in Australia. Good on you. On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 02:51:57PM +0545, sulochan acharya wrote: 2. Is the active antenna the same as any wireless router working as an access point? No. A typical access point consists of a radio and a small computer which runs an embedded operating system from flash memory. Such wireless routers will lack the mesh interoperability. Without a mesh gateway, the mesh will not work ... an XO that is outside the access point range will not be able to get to the internet through other XOs. 3. What is the range of the antenna by itself? (discarding the fact that the XO's can relay) The prototype active antenna that I've tested (2007-11-10) easily achieved 1km between each when held at 3m above ground. Range is decreased as height is reduced, or when obstructions are in a path, or when other 2.4GHz radio traffic is nearby. Many of us have been waiting to hear of a replication of the previous 50-unit test, this time over 50 km rather than 10,000 ft (3 km). In some suitably flat and barren desert or dry lake bed. Then, of course, we need tests in cities, rain forest, savannah, hills, high mountains, and tundra. Are any of these planned? It is very difficult to predict how a location will operate. I would expect a range of about 200m in an area with moderate building density, if the antenna is mounted above the buildings. Plan for ranges between 50m and 500m. (Those with more knowledge please correct me.) -- James Cameronmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://quozl.netrek.org/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Edward Cherlin End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ The best way to predict the future is to invent it.--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
joyride build - versus - yum update
Changes in build 1544 from build: 1543 -olpc-library-common 1-18 +olpc-library-common 1-19 -olpc-library-core 1-19 +olpc-library-core 1-20 Because I apply customizations, it takes me considerable time to do an install of a new build. Instead, I prefer to run 'yum update' -- that lets me keep my existing customized os, and simply put in the newest modules. But NOT all new modules that show up in new builds are being found by 'yum update'. For example, 'rpm -q ___' shows the two modules quoted above to still be at their previous levels on my system. How come the new levels of these two modules were put into a build, but not into the repository which 'yum update' looks at ? mikus ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO
On Jan 18, 2008 11:27 PM, Bill Nottingham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Albert Cahalan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: You can read Hannu's take on the matter in his blog. This entry is particularly informative, but note that the code has since been released under the GPL. http://4front-tech.com/hannublog/?p=5 It must be informative and unbiased. After all, he refers to people who disagree with him as Borgs. Pay no attention to form. His arguments are solid. There really shouldn't be any doubt anymore that ALSA was a very bad path to go down. It's been a horrible mess since day one. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Why can't i access /dev/dsp or /dev/snd on my XO
Albert Cahalan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: You can read Hannu's take on the matter in his blog. This entry is particularly informative, but note that the code has since been released under the GPL. http://4front-tech.com/hannublog/?p=5 It must be informative and unbiased. After all, he refers to people who disagree with him as Borgs. Frankly, if you want to ship ALSA's OSS emulation, it's just a few modules. But swapping out the entire driver stack to something that's not used anywhere else at the moment just seems silly. Bill ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[ADMIN] end of thread (was: Violent games on the OLPC Activities page)
This thread is _entirely_ inappropriate for the development list, should never have been started on the development list, and in general makes me want to slam my head against the wall until it goes away (the thread, the wall, or the head). Please respect the Reply-To header and move all followup discussion to the open list; devel@ has a well- defined purpose, and this thread does not fit. Lovingly, your devel@ list admin. -- Ivan Krstić [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://radian.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: How to? School server implementation
On Jan 18, 2008, at 4:06 AM, sulochan acharya wrote: Hello everyone, I have some general questions regarding school server implementation. I was hoping someone with development experience or someone with pilot experience might have some knowledge on this matter. I am working to implement the OLPC pilot program in Nepal, and would really appreciate some feedback on these questions 1. What is the best way to publish/collaborate/save etc with school server? Meaning what is the best way for kids to save, retrieve, and share files through a school server? I know moodle is an option , but is there anything else? Has anyone tried a different way to do so? something like web folders maybe ? We are working on such through the journal, but have been working on it for too long to wait. An rsync based solution has been used in the past, and most of the infrastructure is in the laptop build now. A laptop is registered with a school server. This provides the laptop with globally defined names for it's presence and backup services (defined in /etc/idmgr.conf on the schoolserver), as well as creating an account on the school server. The username is the laptop's serial number, the password the UUID, and its public key is placed on the school server for future authentication. The user interface has a register command in the menu associated with the XO figure in the home screen which triggers the above process (with port 8080 on DNS name schoolserver in the local domain). It goes away once a laptop is registered. All that is missing for backup is a cron script on the laptop doing the rsync (I have examples, but the servers are down right now...), and a tweak of the schoolserver HTTP server to make the backups accessible. The result will be files that use names meaningless to the users, limiting any collaboration or sharing. But it will make disaster recovery possible! The correct way to do this is to work with the Journal to treat the laptop as a cache of a larger Journal datastore located on the Schoolserver (and beyond, in the cloud). Perhaps Ivan can detail his vision and we can get other people to help implement it. 2. Is the active antenna the same as any wireless router working as an access point? I should be able to use the same networking features if i use a wireless router right? No. You will need active antenna's to have a mesh. You can use multiple conventional access points to provide a school wireless network, (the school server software http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ XS_Server_Software supports them on the wired LAN interface). We hope to make Active Antennas available through an online store sometime in the short term future and are working with a commercial vendor to make it happen. They are also available in small quantities through our developer program. 3. What is the range of the antenna by itself? (discarding the fact that the XO's can relay) best, -sulo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel