Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Which Language?
On 27.09.2009, at 00:17, gerry_lowry (alliston ontario canada (705) 250-0112) wrote: -- I do not have a XO ... I've heard it has a LOGO variant called Etoys ? (can Etoys read a camera image?) Etoys is built on a Smalltalk variant called Squeak, but yes, it can access the XO-1's camera. - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Which Language?
At the risk of this becoming a religious issue of the best languages, we have not heard what the project is, i.e. what the person is wanting to build, so it is difficult to recommend the best tool for the job... Personally, the sales ptich from an old tv ad of 'it slices, it dices, it makes julian fries' comes to mind ;-/ On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Bert Freudenberg b...@freudenbergs.de wrote: On 27.09.2009, at 00:17, gerry_lowry (alliston ontario canada (705) 250-0112) wrote: -- I do not have a XO ... I've heard it has a LOGO variant called Etoys ? (can Etoys read a camera image?) Etoys is built on a Smalltalk variant called Squeak, but yes, it can access the XO-1's camera. - Bert - ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- DancesWithCars leave the wolves behind ;-) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Which Language?
DancesWithCars wrote in part we have not heard what the project is Let me clarify ... my comments are GENERAL in nature. My preference would be to see the XO ship will several small footprint languages. Each of those languages have their pros cons. From a private e-mail with an IAEP moderator, I wrote in part: XO imo needs to ship with multiple languages ... whereas LOGO may not be a suitable alternative for a general-purpose language, it is hyper suitable as a language for XO end users as a learning tool ~~ as Ken Iverson might call it as a tool for thought. I strongly belief that XO must ship with multiple small footprint language tools for thought and that those tools need to include J, LOGO, LISP, and Forth. ... one can also request from the IAEP community enhancements and extensions that make sense ... does LOGO need to be able to work with a camera image ... in general terms, no ... would the XO benefit from an API that allows extensions for J, LOGO, LISP, Forth, Python, and whatever ... that would be good. Look at Microsoft's .NET Framework ... while it has c# and vb as its foundation languages, it can accommodate many languages and they can all interoperate. In that I do not have a XO and even if I did, at the present, my time is too limited, I have taken the opportunity to add my own thoughts to this thread. I am no Alan Kay. I am no Ken Iverson. OTOH, I have been programming for 40+ years and have taught programming up to the community college level as well as to young people ... thus, I have no doubt that I can offer the occasional useful suggestions and insights. Frequently I quote: If your only tool is a happy, all of your problems tend to look like nails. Please ship the XO with the tools mentioned above so that XO end users and educators who create learning materials for the XO can have their choice of tools for thought. Gerry __ Gerry Lowry, Principal Ability Business Computer Services ~~ Because it's your Business, our Experience Counts! 68 John W. Taylor Avenue Alliston · Ontario · Canada · L9R 0E1 · 705.250.0112 gerry.lo...@abilitybusinesscomputerservices.com http://abilitybusinesscomputerservices.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Systems] 11s ap's
[this is off-topic on systems@, moving to i...@] El Mon, 21-09-2009 a las 09:35 +0200, Marten Vijn escribió: FreeBSD 8.0 shipping 802.11s support. Do they say anything about scalability? Because I was under the impression that 802.11s could not be made to scale well in practice without major surgery, or at all. I don't know the details, but this sad possibility sounds right. After all, the concept of CSMA/CD was invented because CSMA alone was unworkable in peer-to-peer networks using a shared channel. A radio can hardly receive while transmitting, let alone detect collisions, hence you're confined within the limits of CSMA. I'd rather explore asymmetrical networking protocols where nodes can dynamically become access points, similar to the master browser elections in Microsoft's SMB/CIFS. This is just my $0.02 opinion. Admittedly, I do not have real-world experience with designing and implementing advanced protocols like these. As soon I have time (not in the next 2 weeks) 'll start testing. OLPC's mesh standard is (not tested) probably not standard or compatible. AFAIK, there's no standard, only a draft which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I was told that some of the Marvell deviations from the standard were required to make the protocol work at all. If the XO's are not compatible, is Sugar going to follow the 11s standard or OLPC/marvel's standard? Sugar is protocol agnostic. The 802.11s implementation of the XO-1 resides entirely in Marvell's proprietary firmware. The original purpose of this design was to let laptops to act as mesh routers even when powered off, using only a minimal amount of power for the embedded ARM processor. For various reasons, this idea could not be made to work and was abandoned long ago. I also don't know what 802.11s support will be provided by the XO-1.5, as it switched to a different wireless chip. The Linux 802.11 stack also implements 802.11s in software, but I don't know what its status is and what hardware supports it. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Systems] 11s ap's
On Sun, 2009-09-27 at 12:24 -0400, Bernie Innocenti wrote: [this is off-topic on systems@, moving to i...@] El Mon, 21-09-2009 a las 09:35 +0200, Marten Vijn escribió: FreeBSD 8.0 shipping 802.11s support. Do they say anything about scalability? Yes, it does not. But for some reason people seem to want mesh. snip Currently it loses ~50% bandwidth per hop, like most layer 2 or 3 based mesh networks. I do have the hardware to setup a 20+ node grid for testing. So now I really would need the time ti set it up and get some data. cheers, Marten -- this email is sent from my mainframe. http://martenvijn.nlSugar on a Stick http://bsd.wifisoft.org/nek/The Network Event Kit http://opencommunitycamp.org 26th Jul - 2nd August ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Which Language?
Correction: brain RAM parity error and/or fetch error in my previous post: Frequently I quote: If your only tool is a happy, all of your problems tend to look like nails. Frequently I quote: If your only tool is a hammer, ... happy ~~ hammer perhaps my brain was thinking XO users will be happy if we give them more than just a hammer. g. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Long-term support for Sugar
Yes, a PackageKit backend that handles .xo files could be written. I believe I've suggested this before. --Scott On Tuesday, September 22, 2009, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 00:54, Peter Robinson pbrobin...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Martin Dengler mar...@martindengler.com wrote: On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 05:15:31PM -0500, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote: Chris Ball wrote: Hi, TBH I'm not 100% sure on that as I'm not a PackageKit developer but I believe that is addressed by ConsoleKit and as its in use on Fedora and I'm pretty sure Ubuntu and others (and I'm pretty sure its an external dependency of gnome too) I'm sure that issue has been addressed. My understanding is that the developers consider it addressed by %post runs as root, and if you don't like it then don't install RPMs [from untrusted sources]. So, we need to find out what's up there. - Chris. Very good point you make. It gets complicated as the users - kids - have not been shown they get it regarding giving their full name, age and address and some even phone number, so it is unlikely they will deal safely with the nuances of untrusted sources. It would be sort of a shame that the first massive attack of malware on Linux platforms happened under our watch... The whole point of Rainbow is that what I think you're talking about isn't an issue, and it's encouraged that kids share Activities. Eliminating this sharing ability is one of the problems with the current rpm / PackageKit proposals AIUI. How is the sharing implemented currently? I don't see how its different to say installing an activity via the control panel as I don't believe it leaves the .xo lying about for easy sharing. Yes, the control panel puts the .xo in the journal, from where it gets installed. Excellent so exactly the same could be done if package kit was used. Peter ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SOAS Write problem
Thank you all for your help! I'll alert Ham who is our build master and if his computer is above water after all the flooding in the Manila area I'm sure he'll fix it soon. I'm sure this bug is in our GPA build too so thank you Gerald for testing!!! On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Gerald, Many thanks for the feedback. On 27 Sep 2009, at 02:52, Gerald Ardito wrote: Gary, This image came from Caroline Meeks at Solution Grove. It came as part of a version of SOAS that she put together for me. Gerald OK, looks like a SoaS build mistake. Caroline, just a quick ping. Checking activities.sugarlabs.org, it tells me Write-63 was the last version compatible with Sugar 0.84.x. I believe Aleksey started working on the new 0.85.x toolbar code as of version 64, breaking compatibility with earlier versions of Sugar: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4201 Regards, --Gary -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Activity version compatibility
Tentative patches posted to http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1442. An Alert when attempting to install the .xo bundle would be really nice, but this at least prevents the activity from appearing in the list. It also adds the raw data, which could be displayed in the bundle's metadata. -Wade On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote: This might be a good time to introduce an optional sugar_version=... field into activity.info, so we can display a human readable error message when this mistake happens. The activity will not launch unless Sugar's version is greater than or equal to the activity.info field. Most activities will not need it, but in case of using non-backwards compatible APIs it will be handy. Is this too big a change to patch 0.84 and 0.86 with? It will take at least two releases before it can have any real benefit. Regards, -Wade On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Gerald, Many thanks for the feedback. On 27 Sep 2009, at 02:52, Gerald Ardito wrote: Gary, This image came from Caroline Meeks at Solution Grove. It came as part of a version of SOAS that she put together for me. Gerald OK, looks like a SoaS build mistake. Caroline, just a quick ping. Checking activities.sugarlabs.org, it tells me Write-63 was the last version compatible with Sugar 0.84.x. I believe Aleksey started working on the new 0.85.x toolbar code as of version 64, breaking compatibility with earlier versions of Sugar: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4201 Regards, --Gary ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SOAS Write problem
Caroline, No problem. Just let me know when we have a working image. I am really close to deploying SOAS on our Dells! Gerald On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.comwrote: Thank you all for your help! I'll alert Ham who is our build master and if his computer is above water after all the flooding in the Manila area I'm sure he'll fix it soon. I'm sure this bug is in our GPA build too so thank you Gerald for testing!!! On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Gerald, Many thanks for the feedback. On 27 Sep 2009, at 02:52, Gerald Ardito wrote: Gary, This image came from Caroline Meeks at Solution Grove. It came as part of a version of SOAS that she put together for me. Gerald OK, looks like a SoaS build mistake. Caroline, just a quick ping. Checking activities.sugarlabs.org, it tells me Write-63 was the last version compatible with Sugar 0.84.x. I believe Aleksey started working on the new 0.85.x toolbar code as of version 64, breaking compatibility with earlier versions of Sugar: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4201 Regards, --Gary -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SOAS Write problem
Gerald, You should be able to take your master stick, delete Write, goto the Activities.sl.o, download the correct version and all should be well, at least for write. I haven't actually heard from Ham yet, there is a major flood in his area so there maybe a delay. On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Caroline, No problem. Just let me know when we have a working image. I am really close to deploying SOAS on our Dells! Gerald On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Thank you all for your help! I'll alert Ham who is our build master and if his computer is above water after all the flooding in the Manila area I'm sure he'll fix it soon. I'm sure this bug is in our GPA build too so thank you Gerald for testing!!! On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Gerald, Many thanks for the feedback. On 27 Sep 2009, at 02:52, Gerald Ardito wrote: Gary, This image came from Caroline Meeks at Solution Grove. It came as part of a version of SOAS that she put together for me. Gerald OK, looks like a SoaS build mistake. Caroline, just a quick ping. Checking activities.sugarlabs.org, it tells me Write-63 was the last version compatible with Sugar 0.84.x. I believe Aleksey started working on the new 0.85.x toolbar code as of version 64, breaking compatibility with earlier versions of Sugar: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4201 Regards, --Gary -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SOAS Write problem
Caroline, I tried to do just that. I cannot erase the version of Write that's there, and I cannot install the new one. It downloads just fine and appears in the Journal, but will not install. Any ideas? Gerald On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Gerald, You should be able to take your master stick, delete Write, goto the Activities.sl.o, download the correct version and all should be well, at least for write. I haven't actually heard from Ham yet, there is a major flood in his area so there maybe a delay. On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Gerald Ardito gerald.ard...@gmail.comwrote: Caroline, No problem. Just let me know when we have a working image. I am really close to deploying SOAS on our Dells! Gerald On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: Thank you all for your help! I'll alert Ham who is our build master and if his computer is above water after all the flooding in the Manila area I'm sure he'll fix it soon. I'm sure this bug is in our GPA build too so thank you Gerald for testing!!! On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.comwrote: Hi Gerald, Many thanks for the feedback. On 27 Sep 2009, at 02:52, Gerald Ardito wrote: Gary, This image came from Caroline Meeks at Solution Grove. It came as part of a version of SOAS that she put together for me. Gerald OK, looks like a SoaS build mistake. Caroline, just a quick ping. Checking activities.sugarlabs.org, it tells me Write-63 was the last version compatible with Sugar 0.84.x. I believe Aleksey started working on the new 0.85.x toolbar code as of version 64, breaking compatibility with earlier versions of Sugar: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4201 Regards, --Gary -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Which Language?
Benjamin M. Schwartz writes: There are other options, such as HTML+Javascript, Squeak, and C/C++, but they each suffer from some combination of reduced functionality, problematic cross-platform guarantees, and increased difficulty of programming. Let's not ignore Python, which suffers plenty: 1. Python has no language standard. The best you can claim is that the language is defined by /usr/bin/python on some random system. There is a history of breaking compatibility with new releases. There exist several Python interpreters actually, which don't run the same code. Python version 3 will probably break your code. 2. Python is a joke regarding performance. You know how Java is often several times slower than C? Java beats Python by 20x or 30x. 3. Python being easy is **your** opinion. (and you're wrong) 4. Python has reduced functionality because it lacks inline assembly. That particular language feature is the door to everything. IMHO there is a limit to the value of universally usable, but if you want to push that goal you can. The most stable interfaces are the CPU instructions, the Linux system call interface, and the X11 protocol. Bring along any interpreter you need, and statically link all the binary executables. If you need Python 2, include a copy. Be sure it doesn't need any /lib/*.so files to run; you can check this by running ldd on the binary. FWIW, plain C is an excellent choice. It's the easiest language. Unless you tolerate FORTRAN or assembly, it's also the fastest. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
