Hello everybody,
I didn't get a chance to meet with you all and talk about OLPC in my last visit to Mumbai. I'm going to bug you with some more info. This is FYI.
Some of you may be interested in this post regarding a Mumbai-centric One Laptop Per Child group. OLPC Pune just got going last week. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Pune OLPC Hyderabad is brewing...maybe OLPC Mumbai is next? There are over 700,000 (7 lakh) GNU/Linux based laptops in the hands of children around the world. (See google map at http://tinyurl.com/b8oflt)
Stop and think for a few seconds...what will they do with it as they grow up? The possibilities are incredible! Feed the revolution!!!
Read it in full below, or sign up at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p5HzRlolQf0GGu6Jjmtkgag&inv=sapan...
cheers, Sameer
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Sameer Verma sverma@sfsu.edu wrote:
Stop and think for a few seconds...what will they do with it as they grow up? The possibilities are incredible! Feed the revolution!!!
My thought for first second is that why it is so hard to get OLPC machine for developers/translators (being Gujarati translator myself)? I don't see motivation for myself (atleast) without having test machine for work I am doing..
Leaving apart my personal thoughts mentioned above, OLPC rocks!
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 9:57 AM, Kartik Mistry kartik.mistry@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Sameer Verma sverma@sfsu.edu wrote:
Stop and think for a few seconds...what will they do with it as they grow up? The possibilities are incredible! Feed the revolution!!!
My thought for first second is that why it is so hard to get OLPC machine for developers/translators (being Gujarati translator myself)? I don't see motivation for myself (atleast) without having test machine for work I am doing..
Leaving apart my personal thoughts mentioned above, OLPC rocks!
-- Cheers, Kartik Mistry | 0xD1028C8D | IRC: kart_ Debian GNU/Linux Developer Blog.en: ftbfs.wordpress.com Blog.gu: kartikm.wordpress.com -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
The reason you stated is one of the goals of getting regional groups going. The idea is to have a pool of XO laptops so that people who need to develop can do so with a locally available XO. Shipping XOs to developers one at a time is expensive for OLPC, being non-profit and all that.
Globally, OLPC is restructuring its contributor program. http://blog.laptop.org/2009/02/12/change-the-world-program-wraps-up/
It used to be that you could apply for a project and if it was approved, you would get an XO. Now, to scale that up, we are looking to pools of XOs in groups as opposed to individuals. The newer contributor program should have more room for support for groups, universities, etc.
In the mean time, you can always run sugar on most mainstream distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo) or grab the VMWare image from http://croquetweak.blogspot.com/2008/12/emulating-latest-stable-olpc-xo.html
Translation is done via Pootle, so it doesn't need any specific hardware. https://dev.laptop.org/translate and http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/452 should be helpful.
Oh, and I use the term "we" very loosely. I am a volunteer with OLPC, and not an employee. Do let me know if i can be of any help.
cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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Kartik Mistry -
Sameer Verma