OLPC R.I.P.? [Intel R.I.P. ?!]

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Sage
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OLPC R.I.P.? [Intel R.I.P. ?!]

#1 Post by Sage »

This Forum seems to have missed the announcement from Intel. Having queered the pitch of the original project with their untimely injection of the 'Classmate', slated at twice the intended target price, they now drop the project because it isn't sufficiently profitable. It was never intended to be profitable!.
Intel epitomises all that is nasty and greedy about American capitalism. Those of us who've been around since the 8088 know just what an appalling company is this one. Nothing they have done has been bathed in glory. Lousy products at inflated prices. Too many recalls and a cavalier attitude to their shareholders who have borne the cost of their trail of mistakes. The x86 series was never a winner, but that's another story, and may be, like the ill-conceived, ill-gotten M$DOS, a consequence of the unseemly haste of IBM back in '81.
Best plan, when BK visits their Indian subsidiary, would be to stuff his Classmate freebies into an orifice that makes maximum global headlines. For the rest of us, boycott is probably the most effective response?
Last edited by Sage on Sat 05 Jan 2008, 09:30, edited 1 time in total.

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#2 Post by MU »

according to http://www.golem.de/0801/56801.html Intel was forced by the olpc-Chief Nicholas Negroponte to stop selling the classmate-PCs, because they would be a concurrence to the olpc.
So he requests that Intel stops selling its own solution to please AMD, so that AMD can get all the benefits (=Money).
Ehm, that is a bit naive, isn't it?

The thirld world is a market of course.
No company can act for reasons of pure humanity.
They need to earn money.
So it is just legitimate, that Intel tries to sell these classmate-PCs.

Might sound a bit hard, but that is just "normal capitalism", business as usual.
I do not see that as problematic as for example selling radiactive milk-powder to southern america, as it was done by german companies (or was it the government?) shortly after Tschernobyl in the 80ies.

Mark

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#3 Post by Sage »

Interesting - not the way the BBC is telling the story. Intel is awash with cash, despite its appalling history. They could easily give away a billion machines. OLPC started out as a university project, anyway.

AMD has had a chequered history, too, but their business model and research aims have been more transparent and more equitable over the years, if less immediately successful at certain times. And, of course, every consumer 64-bit Intel cpu has AMD 32-bit translation code embedded because that was yet another problem Intel failed to solve, just like the P4 heat-dissipation, 90micron-shrink, ....PII-slot1....370socket....486 recall fiasco....286.....8086. Boycott is the only answer to goons like this. And we didn't get round to the TI chips! VIA ITX is a better way forward?

Altruism, enlightened self-interest, always pays long term dividends, but these American (and European?!) capitalists are too dim, too greedy to see the big picture.
Same issue with bird flu - if the West doesn't send limitless bundles of cash to places like Vietnam and parts of China where it can originate and breed - we all die!!!
Indeed, if every Asian smallholder were paid €1m to stop keeping pigs and poultry in the same yard, the world might be able to halt the relentless mutation of the common cold virus and recoupe the initial outlay several times over within a decade through savings in lost productivity, quite apart from alleviating the human misery.
Crushing short-sighted, short-termism global capitalism should be the goal of every decent mortal on this planet. That doesn't preclude honest clods from earning their daily crust in return for products and services.

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"Intel drops out of One Laptop Per Child program"?

#4 Post by raffy »

Are we referring to the same news, "Intel drops out of One Laptop Per Child program"? See for example
http://www.reuters.com/article/technolo ... 4120080104

Shouldn't your title be "Intel R.I.P." (from OLPC, that is).

As noted in other blogs, this is still the Intel side of the news. It could be useful to wait until OLPC makes an announcement.
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#5 Post by Sage »

Done!

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#6 Post by Dougal »

I consider this good news.
The OLPC already has a working laptop, using a AMD processor.

Intel has been so busy working along with Microsoft in the past 15 years, tweaking the same processor to make it a little faster, rather than thinking of doing something new... so the only "innovation" seems to have come from AMD and IBM (the Cell processor -- the reason Sony Playstations are used for supercomputers!).

When the OLPC laptop was ready, Intel suddenly panicked and wanted in -- so they joined and suddenly there's development of a OLPC laptop with an Intel processor. What for? If you finish building a house and suddenly some contractor comes and suggests you rebuild it using him, will you start over, or just go on and move into your house?
And what if the Intel-based OLPC laptop were to be completed -- has anyone got doubts that they would have tried to kill the AMD-based version?

I say good riddance.
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#7 Post by Sage »

Wouldn't disagree with a single word, Dougal.

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#8 Post by Dougal »

Another interesting tidbit:
Intel were supposed to display the prototype of their version of the XO laptop next week. Now that they've retired, it's been scrapped.
That seemed like an interesting coincidence, which made me thing maybe Intel was unable to create anything as good as AMD...

Now this:
http://charbax.com/2008/01/04/intel-dia ... er-enough/
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best so far

#9 Post by raffy »

The best in low-power processor for x86 is so far the AMD Geode. The article points this out, and it's something I've told Intel execs here last year, and they had no answer.

Sad to say, the XO is felt by many to be slow, so it must be the software that is slowing it down. Puppy Linux runs happily in the processor abandoned by OLPC, the GX466. Now OLPC uses the LX700. See the GX466 at work.

Puppy Linux and the AMD Geode are like lovers who still have to eyeball (to use current slang :) ) in a rendezvouz called "laptop".

Now, it's a coincidence that one of the more aggressive developers of low-power hardware is in Dougal's backyard, Compulab. :)

Expect Quanta or any of its spin-offs to market an XO mutant soon. However, Intel is seeing success of its eeePC, and many geeks were convinced that it is THE low-cost laptop.

Luckily for Puppy, mdd is donating an XO to Barry:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 7&start=15

EDIT: typo of "Sad", was "Say".
Last edited by raffy on Mon 07 Jan 2008, 05:00, edited 1 time in total.
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#10 Post by cb88 »

well not to skew the topic or anything but a friend of mine bought one of those nokia n800 internet tablets running a modified debian if i remember correctly ... it has a TI arm chip with DSPs to help with some heavy lifting... i was really impressed with the device it has very good battery life (even overclocked to 400mhz from 330mhz...he wanted to compile faster :-) ) i think that the next gen arm processors (which is what is in the olpc right?) would make quite decent PCs (assuming the DSPs are fully supported)
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x86

#11 Post by raffy »

arm processors (which is what is in the olpc right?)
Nope, it is x86 processor - search for AMD Geode processors.
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#12 Post by cb88 »

hmmm must have been that it uses linux bios or someting that makes it different.....

i know what a geode is ;-)
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#13 Post by Sage »

The 'geode' marque is not new. AMD started to use the series for smc cpu about a decade (?) ago.
As for 'i' , they are, as Dougal indicates part of the DWintel cartel. Everything to do with $$$, not much to do with customers. The only approach that people like this understand is a worldwide boycott. And that is going to be an extremely hard nut to crack in view of the extensive brainwashing prevalent in their homeland. It's going to take personal intervention by better-informed, smarter folk like those visiting this Forum.

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Re: OLPC R.I.P.? [Intel R.I.P. ?!]

#14 Post by mcewanw »

Sage wrote:For the rest of us, boycott is probably the most effective response?
I agree, I don't care if the Classmate is better than the OLPC (which in a technological innovative sense I doubt anyway) I wouldn't take one if they were giving them away. Because... I think Intel's behaviour and motivation for producing the Classmate is a disgrace. They have tons of money and could easily have truly helped the OLPC project instead of trying to bully it out of the market.

As Dougal says, good riddance to Intel. And yes, they have a lot to answer for. Their stupid processors have been hopeless in terms of memory models and their crappy design meant their has been no easy/efficient way to virtualise them (vmware had to go through horrible hoops to get round the issues).

I do hope someone manages to get Puppy Linux running on the XO soon. I'd particularly like to see someone getting Sugar to run on top of a Puppy base on the machine; I imagine it would run much faster on a slim puppy than on the bloat likely produced by Redhat.

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#15 Post by Dougal »

cb88 wrote:i think that the next gen arm processors (which is what is in the olpc right?) would make quite decent PCs (assuming the DSPs are fully supported)
There's an ARM-based XO laptop being developed.
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Re: best so far

#16 Post by Dougal »

raffy wrote:Sad to say, the XO is felt by many to be slow, so it must be the software that is slowing it down. Puppy Linux runs happily in the processor abandoned by OLPC, the GX466.
I think any recent computer that doesn't run fast means software bloat -- I use a 450MHz PIII and it never has any problems (except maybe for playing videos, but that has to do with my 8MB of video memory...).

The reason the OLPC is slow probably has to do with various security related things: anti-theft (it phones home if stolen!), the fancy new busyness where every app runs in it's own "jail" for protection from malware etc.
However, there's also the fact that pretty much all the "special" apps (including the Sugar interface, as far as I know) is written in Python! So you can expect Sugar to be slow on Puppy, too.
However, Intel is seeing success of its eeePC, and many geeks were convinced that it is THE low-cost laptop.
What I don't understand is why there isn't a AMD-based eeePC! Just think how much better such a laptop will be with a AMD (or VIA) low-power processor...
Luckily for Puppy, mdd is donating an XO to Barry:
I'm not sure how lucky we are: Barry being given the Classmates only seems to have caused a stall in the development, focusing on trying to get things to work on them.
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niche

#17 Post by raffy »

I'm not sure how lucky we are
As you've noted also, low-speed and low-cost but (still) productive computing is Puppy's niche, so to us, these goodies are irresistible. And to Barry, it will be fun to play Puppy's tricks on them.

The issue to many consumers is the availability of choice, which software-hardware bundling stifles. The XO is a bundled product, and you're right, the fun ends there.

Intel has leveraged on this bundling of the XO in promoting software choice in the Classmate. Yet we can predict where this is all leading, most likely in W-landia: "Tell me who your friends are..." :wink:

In this regard, I'd say that the time spent on the XO should be better than on the Classmate.

Now, if there is a sub-500 mhz PC wanting a small and able OS, that should deserve Puppy's total attention. :)
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#18 Post by Sage »

Like I said, all this Wintel tail-chasing, go-faster HW is proving an huge distraction - esp. to the smarter guys like BK. This week's CES is only going to ratchet up the whole sorry saga. There's already enough components existing to last the millenium.

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#19 Post by Aitch »

Like I said in another XO OLPC thread on these forums,
unfortunately it's the kids who lose out
Even this 'buy one get one free' ploy isn't going
to help revive the project
Many people see it as a failure because they haven't
read Negroponte's original pitch for the project
Publicitywise, I think he acheived his goal
The chip giants feuded where they could have taken
it onboard, but they aren't as altruistic as Negroponte
and many people now buying the laptop, just aren't kids,
who the device was intended for
There are many innovations apart from the AMD chip
which make it the better product, even down to
the built-in generator for recharging the battery
However, the feud will take on a new dimension,
with the Green Computing agenda now set to storm
through the industry
Who's going to produce the most energy efficient PC,
has as much to do with the way software writers utilise
the chips abilities, & I agree with Sage that there's a need
to get away from modular programming, & go back to machine code
How many people remember waiting for a tapeloader on a Z80
to play space invaders, watching an amazing display & listening to some manic music, on a 1Mhz processor?
Isn't the very speed of Puppy, the thing that attracts so many?

With Micro$oft predicting that we'll be touching interactive screens
and speaking to our PCs, exchanging pictures [yuk!] and the whole web based phone direction, being adopted by rich nation's youth,
As an elder, I can't help feeling that there's loads of skilled people here, not getting the best use of what we know,
and that many have a problem disposing of!
Nothing's dead yet!

Aitch

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#20 Post by Sage »

Let's hope the good news from New Hampshire doesn't eclipse the fallout at yesterday's CES. Got to dissuade the good citizens from buying WIntel cr*p!

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