Re: [sugar] OLPC's bizarre behaviors
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Kim Quirk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Lots of things that we do don't meet any normal expectations of a > 'company'. Most people at OLPC will tell you we are not a 'company'. ... > I have been trying to understand it, explain it, live with it , > and improve it for a year now. What I think is going on is a unique > and somewhat chaotic (perfect storm?) intersection of non-profit, open > source, research lab cultures with the need to ship a real product. This is excellent analysis. And I'd go a bit further than Kim actually in saying that I don't feel particularly bad that we are a bit of a mess. Being a bit of a mess means that we are breaking new ground so quickly that the ground is changing faster than the org gets used to it. Which leads to a few observations (which overlap somewhat with what Kim is saying) - IME, people complaining that "we don't know what we are doing" can be a positive indicator. The scenario outside the car is changing! - Learning to organise and handle new situation X is only worthwhile once we are confident that X is here to stay. - Therefore, there will be many situations that are impossible or not worth to be well prepared for. So "being a constant mess" is a reasonable approach. We can handle that by saying that "strange new situations" are common, and we have to keep an open mind and be ready to work w the team to get new and strange things done. - Prioritisation is important. Some things are too much of a distraction. Letting them go to hell can be less disruptive than an all-hands effort. This is - IME - the hardest part. When everyone is ready to take on whatever comes, it's hard to avoid getting the team distracted. Which can also be stated in more blunt terms: We are doing development of new stuff! If you want it predictable and organised, I hear EDS is hiring - the processes and procedures manual is 800 pages :-/ All of the above is from my experience in various organisations large and small, and govt and private. We are radically diffrerent from a big corp, and even from established non-profits. In this space you can expect us to be very good at a couple of very specific things, and a complete mess about a lot of other stuff. We will have to get good at "some of that other stuff"... in the meantime it'll be frustrating. :-/ There's a good book about this - Waltzing with Bears by either DeMarco or Yourdon, that says basically: if you are considering a project that doesn't take you into uncharted territory, *can it*. It's not worth it if it's not so new that you feel lost and helpless. It's written for big corps that are frozen in terror ;-) but it applies to what we are doing @ OLPC. Uncharted territory. So everytime we spot something in the horizon there's some fear that the earth might actually be flat. http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/EUR/2400-0070~Sailboat-and-Waterfall-at-Earth-s-End-Posters.jpg but I think we should keep sailing no matter what. m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] New joyride build 1971
Now have the 'Circle of Activities'. But Journal does not start automatically. [Did not have Journal on Joyride 1970, either.] What are the steps to start Journal manually ? Thanks, mikus ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] OLPC's bizarre behaviors
Support-gang (Alan, and others), Lots of things that we do don't meet any normal expectations of a 'company'. Most people at OLPC will tell you we are not a 'company'. That doesn't mean these things are good or bad; clearly there is some of each. But many times it means we all scramble around to do things that were poorly planned and poorly communicated trying to answer questions that we haven't thought through. I am anxious to stop the scrambling because it is a model for burn out and not sustainable for most people. I have been trying to understand it, explain it, live with it , and improve it for a year now. What I think is going on is a unique and somewhat chaotic (perfect storm?) intersection of non-profit, open source, research lab cultures with the need to ship a real product. The non-profit provides us with excess emotion towards a mission, where heated discussions are extra heated. Open source brings us a regionally and culturally diverse community of people that need lots of good communications and teamwork to be focused and productive. The research background brings an individualism, little or no management structure, and a lot of really smart people. On top of all that are the 'company' like things we have tried to achieve: create a production quality product with 7 new technologies, and launch over 300,000 of them in the first 4-5 months of production. Are we crazy? yes. Is it ok to be that crazy? This week we got a lot of feedback from various countries and individuals who are very enthusiastic about what we are doing and feedback that it IS working for the kids. So, yes. Can we use help? Absolutely. Lots of it! The hardest thing for us to figure out is how to let people help us. Thanks for thoughts, ideas, and all the help you have already provided! Kim On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Alan Claver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 5/16/08 6:26 PM, "Richard A. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Stay tuned. Now that the press release has been made other more >> detailed info can follow. > > Yes. That's the way to run a company. Make a press release and then scramble > the company to match the promises and keep your support people in the dark > so they can't prepare for what may come. > > I certainly prefer to read information on OLPC News rather than hear it from > the people that I'm supposed to be helping by volunteering my time. > > ___ > support-gang mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang > ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] New joyride build 1970
Joyride 1970 has the OLD 'Frame', instead of the 'Circle of Activities' in the Home view. Please fix. mikus ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Journal 89 released
On 21 May 2008, at 21:11, Bert Freudenberg wrote: > On 21.05.2008, at 20:23, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> a new version of the journal has been released: >> >> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/journal-activity/journal-activity-89.tar.bz2 > > Looks like I missed a change in development policy again. So > activities are now released as tar.bz2 on some web page? > > - Bert - :-) Well seeing that the blasted joyride and faster builds have been off air now almost a week!!! Thank goodness I say (thanks Tomeu, I rsynch'ed the changes to my Xo B4 to have a test). --Gary ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] release infrastructure
Hi, I'm wondering if you guys could provide a publicly accessible area
on dev.laptop.org for releasing tar.bz2 and .xo files. It's pretty
cumbersome to upload files to the Wiki, and I'd rather not use private
hosting.
Also, is anyone working on a 'setup.py release' command? What would
it do? Something like the following steps would be useful to me:
1. Verify no uncommitted changes exist (git status returns non-zero).
2. Increment version in activity/activity.info.
3. setup.py dist
4. setup.py tarball (or tar cjvf Bundle-Version.tar.bz2 -T MANIFEST)
5. git commit activity/activity.info
6. git tag -a Bundle-Version -m 'Bundle-Version release'
7. git push --all --tags
7. scp Bundle-Version.{tar.xo} dev.laptop.org:/pub/releases/
Warnings should be shown for things like missing po, AUTHORS, NEWS, etc.
Any comments about what steps should/shouldn't be included?
And, this still leaves the developer to update the Wiki page, git push
and git push --tags.
Regards,
Wade
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[sugar] Log 7
http://www.wadeb.com/log-activity.tar.bz2 This release fixes #6005, #6356, #6597, #6014, adds various GUI improvements. ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Web-87 released
Hi, a new web-activity release is out and passed the smoketest! Sources: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/web-activity/web-activity-87.tar.bz2 XO: http://dev.laptop.org/~erikos/bundles/Web-87.xo Changes in this version: * First round of pylint fixes (erikos) * Fix typo #6962 (DanKrejsa) * Fix onStateChange for downloads #6962 (DanKrejsa) * s/Open/Show in Journal #5958 (erikos) * A lot of new translations Dependencies: xulrunner: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/xulrunner/xulrunner-1.9.beta2.20071212cvs.tar.bz2 hulahop: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/hulahop/hulahop-0.4.0.tar.bz2 Best, Simon ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Journal 89 released
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 21.05.2008, at 20:23, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> a new version of the journal has been released: >> >> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/journal-activity/journal-activity-89.tar.bz2 > > Looks like I missed a change in development policy again. So > activities are now released as tar.bz2 on some web page? http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Release (any previous policies may or may not be in simultaneous effect...) Regards Morgan ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Journal 89 released
On 21.05.2008, at 20:23, Tomeu Vizoso wrote: > Hi, > > a new version of the journal has been released: > > http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/journal-activity/journal-activity-89.tar.bz2 Looks like I missed a change in development policy again. So activities are now released as tar.bz2 on some web page? - Bert - ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Chat 39 released
I have uploaded a new release of Chat to: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/chat-activity/chat-activity-39.tar.bz2 http://dev.laptop.org/~morgan/bundles/Chat-39.xo This release contains: * ACK received messages (cassidy) * Handle pending messages when setting the message handler (cassidy) These changes make the handling of messages more reliable. Regards Morgan ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Pippy VS Develop
Ar 19/05/2008 am 10:40, ysgrifennodd Eben Eliason: > On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Chris Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > to solve. I don't view the two activities as competitive: > > > > * Pippy:Introductory Python tutor > > * Develop: Activity creation IDE > > Agreed. I think they serve different audiences/purposes. The only > reason this could become confused is because Pippy grew the ability to > export activity bundles, albeit somewhat limited ones. This makes it possible to start an activity in Pippy, save it, and later edit it in Develop. -- Dafydd ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Journal 89 released
Hi, a new version of the journal has been released: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/journal-activity/journal-activity-89.tar.bz2 Changes: - Update the results view only when the journal is the active activity. Cheers, Tomeu ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Terminal-activity version 11 released
A new version (version 11) of Terminal Activity has been released. You can get the sources at http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/terminal-activity/terminal-activity-11.tar.bz2 -- Changes since the previous version * i18n improvement: the activity has a POT file now (sayamindu) -- Thanks, Sayamindu -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings] ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [Server-devel] Problems with mesh OLPC Sur list / problemas con la malla
Since I can't read Martin's answers in Spanish, I thought I would answer a few in English. If these two sets of answers don't agree, can someone point it out so we can get them right. See inline below. Kim 2008/5/15 Yama Ploskonka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi y'all, I am double posting for I do not know whose fish this is. > > A teacher in Uruguay indicates issues with operating with mesh, two > others confirmed they had a similar experience of random connectivity. > > Please help, either subscribe to OLPC-Sur to answer in Spanish or > respond through either list or personally and I will translate back. > > Yama > > > Translation of the original message: > > The problem I was mentioning is that we know the mesh in itself to work, > what we have not been able to do is to achieve a collaborative activity > such as you are supposed to be able to. > Chat works perfectly, I connect, I see who is in the neighborhood, I > invite that person and we chat; but it is very difficult with other > activities. > The connection is very unstable and in a group with 15-20 children there > is always a couple XO that will not connect or they don't see the rest > even if they are connected. We have solved this by working by pairs, > but if it is supposed that the plan is one computer per child, what is > proper is that each one have one, isn't it? > As a sidenote, I am writing from the XO, two blocks from my house there > is a school that has un punto de acceso, I am lucky I can connect!!! > > > In the neighborhood you can see 3 points of the mesh (I do not know if > that is what you call them, doesn't matter) 1, 6, 11. Generally > connection works on 1. After this is established, it lasts less than > half an hour and it breaks, or some XO disconnect. > I want to make clear that even though the connection is random, I can > choose on what mesh to connect by clicking on that point, it takes a few > minutes but you can do it. > > Questions: > Do you know how far this can be done? ==> Laptops should be able to connect to each other at 100meters or possibly more, if there are no RF 'barriers' (such as thick walls, metal or screen meshes). > Are the numbers related to that radius? ==> I think you mean the number of laptops. The more laptops that are within the radius of the wifi, the higher the traffic and the less reliable the connections will be. We have made a number of changes in code and expect to make many more between now and the August release. Also, we are recommending infrastructure access points for classrooms with more than 20 laptops. > Why do those XOs that are in one mesh see each other but not those in > another? ==> The simple mesh channels 1, 6, and 11 are separate RF channels. There is no bridging in simple mesh mode. In a school server environment, the school server will bridge the three channels. > It would be good that all the people who are connected see each other > and the different points act as bridges to gather those who are farther > away. > In the classroom not all can connect to the same mesh so it is > impossible to achieve a shared project. ==> If you don't have a school server, then you should have all the children click on the same mesh channel (1, 6, or 11). > Another matter is that, suppose we can connect several people, chat or > talk works impeccably but when we try to share activities that are like > more complex such as Paint or Write (don't even mention eToys) all gets > much more difficult. ==> Yes, most of these are bugs that we are still fixing. Some fixes were introduced in the 703 build; more bugs are being addressed in the upcoming August release. We recognize that the reliability of mesh and collaboration is high priority. > > greeTings > > > > > original message follows > El problema al que hacía referencia es que > conocemos el funcionamiento >> de la malla en sí, lo que no hemos podido lograr es realizar una >> actividad colaborativa tal como se supone que debería ser. >> El chat funciona perfectamente. me conecto, veo quién está en el >> vecindario, lo invito y charlamos; pero es muy difícil con las otras >> actividades. >> La conexión es muy inesatable y en un grupo de 15 o 20 niños siempre >> hay un par de xo que no se conectan o no ven a las demás aunque estén >> conectadas. Lo hemos solucionado trabajando en duplas, pero si se >> supone que el plan es una compu por niño, lo correcto sería que cada >> uno tenga la suya no? >> Comento que estoy escribiendo desde la olpc, a 2 cuadras de mi casa >> hay una escuela que tiene un access point, por suerte me puedo >> conectar!!! > >> En el vecindario se ven 3 puntos de malla (no sé si así se llaman, no >> importa) la 1, la 6 y la 11. Por lo general la conexión se logra en la >> 1. Luego de establecida la misma, dura menos de media hora y se corta, >> o se desconectan algunas xo. >> Quiero aclarar que si bien la conexión es aleatoria, puedo elegir en >> qué malla conectarme haciendo clic
[sugar] Chat 38 released
I have uploaded a new release of Chat to: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/chat-activity/chat-activity-38.tar.bz2 This release contains updated translations. Changes since Chat-35, the "Release formerly known as Update.1" version: 38 * Updated translations: zh_TW, de, it 37 * UI Change: Merge multiple sequential messages from same author (morgs) * Updated translation: ar (pootle) * #6561: Fix RTL message alignment (Arabic) (khaled) 36 * #5053: Reduce white space around boxes (morgs) * #6621: set entry sensitive not editable (morgs) * Add license to activity.py (morgs) * #6743: border around gtk.entry (morgs) * Reduce telepathy code based on improved PS channel creation API (morgs) * Open URLs via show_object_in_journal (morgs) * Update pippy metadata based on Pippy (morgs) * Updated translations (pootle) Regards Morgan ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] xulrunner rpms - or working off the upstream track
It sounds like we might better wait F9 rebase is complete... Marco On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Simon Schampijer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I am trying to get a xulrunner rpm out with the latest improvements for beta5. > Since we are still based on F7 this is not an easy task. > > I tried to use the latest 1.0-0.61 and build it for F7 > http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=48498. In 1.0-0.60 a new > dependency mozilla-filesystem has been introduced which has only been built > for F9 > http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=47659. So we have to > either > built it ourselves for F7 or I do base my work on 0.59. > > Since the track is moving F7 does not have the latest versions of some > packages > (nspr, nss, sqlite, cairo...) so I have to adjust the mozconfig to not use the > system ones. > > We use pyxpcom which is not enabled by default and sure we have some patches > (e.g. > permissions for use with rainbow) I have to modify whenever the sources > change (but > these two are not a problem of deps). > > This should be just an overview of the costs involved. Other ideas on how to > solve > the deps issues are welcome. > > Thanks, >Simon > > ___ > Sugar mailing list > Sugar@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar > ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] xulrunner rpms - or working off the upstream track
Hi, I am trying to get a xulrunner rpm out with the latest improvements for beta5. Since we are still based on F7 this is not an easy task. I tried to use the latest 1.0-0.61 and build it for F7 http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=48498. In 1.0-0.60 a new dependency mozilla-filesystem has been introduced which has only been built for F9 http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=47659. So we have to either built it ourselves for F7 or I do base my work on 0.59. Since the track is moving F7 does not have the latest versions of some packages (nspr, nss, sqlite, cairo...) so I have to adjust the mozconfig to not use the system ones. We use pyxpcom which is not enabled by default and sure we have some patches (e.g. permissions for use with rainbow) I have to modify whenever the sources change (but these two are not a problem of deps). This should be just an overview of the costs involved. Other ideas on how to solve the deps issues are welcome. Thanks, Simon ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] [PATCH] Update only when visible (Journal)
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Simon Schampijer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Tomeu,
>
> Patch looks great and should really be an improvement. Not sure we need the
> debug messages for the timers logging.debug('Remove date updating timer').
>
> As a general note running a pylint for the journal would be nice as well
> (should do that for the browse now as well :). Though pylint output is not
> perfect yet it improves quality a bit.
>
> r+
Agreed, will do a pylint check after this commit.
Thanks!
Tomeu
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Re: [sugar] [PATCH] Update only when visible (Journal)
Hi Tomeu,
Patch looks great and should really be an improvement. Not sure we need the
debug
messages for the timers logging.debug('Remove date updating timer').
As a general note running a pylint for the journal would be nice as well
(should do
that for the browse now as well :). Though pylint output is not perfect yet it
improves quality a bit.
r+
Simon
Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> during activity launching, a new journal entry is created. As the
> journal is listening for changes in the DS and updating its UI
> accordingly, if that update operation is costly in terms of CPU, the
> activity startup process can be affected.
>
> This patch avoids the journal updating itself when it is not the
> active activity, and in tests with 3500 entries, I saw a saving of 3s.
> during activity startup.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tomeu
>
>
>
>
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[sugar] ANNOUNCE: sugar-presence-service 0.81.1 released
The "I'm full of Glucose" release. tar: https://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/sugar-presence-service/sugar-presence-service-0.81.1.tar.bz2 - No code change since 0.79.3, the point of this release is to sync version number with Sucrose. Regards, G. ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
