[Oberon] OLPC - One Laptop Per Child

[Aubrey.McIntosh at Alumni.UTexas.Net]

There was the NIC computer that used Linux and booted from a CD, and
there was no "disk".  It did have ethernet.  I booted BlueBottle onto
that machine.  They appear to be defunct.

I also have a LEX CV860A machine on my desk and it runs BlueBottle.  I
love this machine.  This machine is available for about $250, and has
no mechanical parts (heat sink, no cpu fan, cflash, USB memory stick)

I thought there would be some advantage to the Oberon community to
focus on this class of machines, and I even corresponded some directly
with some of the BlueBottle group.

I guess I feel jaded after maybe 15 years of wondering how to make
Oberon more accepted.  What was your sense of something new or
compelling about the OLPC machine?


On 12/11/06, Douglas G. Danforth <Danforth at greenwoodfarm.com> wrote:
> http://slashdot.org/ had a recent article about the MIT project
> "One Laptop Per Child"
> (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines)
> In that documentation the following caught my attention since this
> aspect is similar to Dr. Wirth's design for Oberon.  Is anyone at
> ETHZ interacting with the MIT group on OLPC?
>
>
> "Simplicity
>
> We designed the entire laptop interface with a goal of simplicity. It
> can be tempting—and also quite easy—to add an overabundance of features
> to software: the abundance of MIPS and memory exacerbate the
> software-bloat phenomenon. The laptop hardware "limitations" lead toward
> a more concise direction and aid in designing for simplicity.
>
> Keep in mind that simple doesn't necessarily mean limited. OLPC hopes to
> demonstrate to the world that simple—even minimal—controls can have
> great expressive power. Avoid bloated interfaces that do too much, and
> limit the controls to those immediately relevant to the task at hand.
> Rather than creating a "Swiss Army knife" of an activity, think of the
> laptop itself as the knife, and instead develop a particular tool for
> that knife that does one thing, and does it very well. When all the
> activities on the laptop embrace this idea, the true power of the laptop
> will emerge."
>
>
> -Doug Danforth
>
> --
> Oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems
> https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon
>


-- 
-- Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D.