Yay!

Cheers to all!

Alan

------------

At 05:24 AM 11/6/2007, Jim Gettys wrote:

On behalf of OLPC and children everywhere, I'd like to take this opportunity to "Thank You All!". - Jim Gettys

On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 14:13 +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

...

Picture of the first "XO-1" children's laptop coming down Quanta's production line:

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:StartOfMP.jpg

And every single machine comes with Squeak/Etoys pre-installed - a big thanks to everyone involved directly and indirectly!

• Bert -

---

Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys

-- Jim Gettys One Laptop Per Child

---

Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys

Hi Alan,

-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev- bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Alan Kay Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 9:33 AM To: jg@laptop.org; Bert Freudenberg Cc: Squeakland list; etoys; The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: [Etoys] OLPC mass production started

Yay!

Cheers to all!

Alan

I searched for "One Laptop Per Child Hero" and expected to see your name or Negroponte.

To my dismay, Google returned a complete stranger to me, Masi Oka.

Do you know why OLPC appointed Masi Oka, an actor and special effects specialist, as its Global Ambassador to sell its 400US$ "Give One Get One" computers.

Is the campaign "Give One Get One" the hero's idea?

Cheers,

PhiHo.

Yoshiki,

The squeak-dev mailing list traditionally has very high tolerance for posts that are not trying to communicate with other members,

Communication is not an easy thing.

It doesn't matter how loud you are yelling into your walkie-talkie, if the person at the other end doesn't turn on his handset, he won't hear a thing you said.

Communication is a two-way process. Communication also requires some compatibility in perception.

Would the OLPC Global Ambassador uses his mother tongue to market the $399.99 "Give One Get One" computers in North America? He might use (universal) body language or pictures, though.

Communication would be greatly hindered by prejudice.

As a Smalltalker, when you do not understand a message, just simply say that you do not understand instead of judging the other not communicating.

Maybe he is trying to send a message with good intention but you are apparently not capable of understanding it.

but squeakland and etoys are not necessarily like that. Please consider a few minutes before you post.

Actually after I press "Reply all", I did remove a couple of recipients from Alan's original list. I thought that Squeakland and etoys list might benefit from Alan's response. I am not so sure about your response.

...

Do you know why OLPC appointed Masi Oka, an actor and special effects specialist, as its Global Ambassador to sell its 400US$ "Give One Get

One"

...

computers.

Well, because he is well-known among TV-watching people?

Is this what you know or your guess (with the question mark)

BTW, you might want to read the weekly update of OLPC:

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news?opendocument=

Thanks for the link.

I watched that "Give One Get One" commercial on youtube.

The announcer looks quite handsome.

At the end, I don't quite understand what is he trying to communicate with the closing phrase "One Laptop At A Time".

For this campaign "Give One Get One", shouldn't it be "Two Lap Top At A Time" because "One For A Child in the developing country" and "One For A Child in your land".

Both of them would get the benefits that he's been touting before that, not?

Did he try to say that out of the 2 laptops that one is paying for, only the one goes to the developing country would bring the child what he is advertising. The laptop goes to the child in North America wouldn't make a difference.

...

Is the campaign "Give One Get One" the hero's idea?

No.

And, please don't waste other people's time with such non-sense.

If the Global Ambassador is responsible for marketing these $399.99 "Give One Get One" computers then it makes perfect sense for him to come up with any strategy that he can think of.

Of course it must be approved but it's still his idea.

On the other hand if he got his job not because of his talents in marketing but just because he is an actor with skills in special effects then it is really non-sense. In Nicholas Negroponte's own words (December 2006):

http://www.olpctalks.com/nicholas_negroponte/negroponte_netevents.html

<QUOTE> Now, one thing you should realize is that there are about 250 people full time on this project, not counting the Linux community. The Linux community I estimate as about 2,000 people, but that's a very funny number, so you should almost ignore that. But, of the 250 people who are working on it, if you want to think of a sales and marketing department, which is kind of an odd concept for a non-profit, but you're looking at it. Okay. I do that all alone. It's not a gang of 50 people that go out and explore markets and sell. This is not that kind of project. It's really very, very different. We don't sell laptops. </QUOTE>

Now he is no longer alone:

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news?opendocument=

<QUOTE>

Masi has joined OLPC as our media spokesperson, however, an ill-timed writers' strike precludes Nicholas and Masi doing some of the talk-show appearances that had been envisioned.

</QUOTE>

Is he too busy with other task or is Masi more qualified to handle sales and marketing for OLPC?

What's really the role of the Global Ambassador? Is "media spokesperson" a synonym for "Global Ambassador"? What kind of qualification is needed? Why now suddenly OLPC needs such a role?

I have always thought that OLPC would receive requests from the developing countries (no marketing required) and the only "sales" job is to set a quota for each country and the manufacturer would ship directly to the those countries.

To be honest, I am really confused.

Hence the posting following up Alan's posting in the hope that he can shed more lights on it.

-- Yoshiki

PhiHo.

P.S:

Dear Lists,

I apologize for not putting the tag [OT] so that those of you don't care about OLPC can skip it.

PhiHo

As far as I know, it is not a job. Making PSA usually means that it is done at no charge.

I don't know what to say. To the best of my knowledge there are different kinds of jobs:

1/- Paid jobs (paid with salary, wages, commission...) 2/- Volunteer jobs (not materially compensated) 3/- Paying jobs (one has to pay to accomplish the job oneself)

Paid jobs as Smalltalk programming, consulting, sales, marketing...

Volunteer job is still a job. There is a job to be done for a public service announcer(PSA?) or a volunteer global ambassador (GA). This begs the question, how many volunteered for this GA job?

Now, for the paying job, those who care about ANSI Smalltalk and want to actively shape it, they have to pay to accomplish that job themselves ;-)

There is a "paying job" that almost all of human being sooner or later will have to pay to accomplish it oneself.

Here is an anecdote of an aspect of this job (please be warned of crude words ahead, a lot of F words, viewer's discretion is advised and for adults only):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nn5jlrxcpkI

At the holiday season, people, even including talent agencies, feel to do some generous activity, such as helping OLPC.

The G1G1 program did change the landscape. Some stuff Nicholas said last year don't apply to the situation now.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/23/business/laptop24.php

-- Yoshiki

Cheers,

PhiHo.

-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev- bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Alan Kay Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2007 10:16 AM To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list; 'The general-purpose Squeak developers list' Cc: 'Squeakland list'; 'etoys' Subject: Re: A Hero for One Laptop Per Child (RE: [Etoys] OLPC mass production started)

I would be very disappointed, even appalled, to see my name as a hero here. The notion of a "Hero" seems to be partly built into human nervous systems

This is especially true for children mind.

and is a favorite trope in stories.

Children stories are filled with all kinds of heroes.

Many a child brings her unfulfilled wishes into her dreams where the heroes come along to give her "dream come true", in the dreams.

Think of the scenario where tens of millions of these children are empowered with those XO (pre-loaded with all those 'dream come true'.) One wouldn't be surprised to see them invoking the incantation "Google, Google on the screen, who is the Hero for OLPC".

This idea seriously distorted and masked how Xerox PARC actually worked, for example.

OLPC has been making progress because quite a few talented people decided to take responsibility for different needs of the project. I am very proud of the Viewpoints researchers who really got behind this because they believed in it.

So there are a lot of heros, if that is the word. I think of it more as "there are a lot of enlightened people" and it bodes well for humanity when they decide to take action.

That sounds like what's described in this ancient Oriental proverb: "Following The Elephant's footsteps".

Cheers.

Alan

Cheers,

PhiHo.

P.S:

There is also another proverb, to reflect the facts of life: "Following The Elephant's footsteps, to collect bagasse".

And it's so hard to separate the wheat from the chaff!

P.P.S:

From your point of view (I am assuming that XO is a PC), how far is that OLPC XO

going with the vision:

"The PC Must Be Revamped-Now" (February 14, 2007)

http://www.cioinsight.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=200162,00.asp

OLPC XO must be your best bet to see your dream come true, yes ?

In that article, there was a mention to Squeak as "an object-oriented operating system" and another "operating system for children" :

<QUOTE>

Squeak, an object-oriented operating system and authoring environment, is actually the Xerox PARC Smalltalk operating system, upgraded to 32-bit graphics with other things added. My research group at Apple did it about ten years ago, because we were afraid that Java wasn't going to be compatible from computer to computer. Because we made our own software tools at Xerox PARC, and we had some of the same people who had done these tools, we decided we'd be much safer if we just made our own vehicle. At Viewpoints and Hewlett-Packard, we built an operating system for children, and also did many experiments in user-interface design and built new kinds of object models and other kinds of things called Etoys.

</QUOTE>

I am utterly confused with the terminology here.

Squeak is an OOOS, built on top of SOS? What makes it so? (or did you mean SqueakNOS, NOT Squeak ?)

What is this "Children Operating System" ? Is it built on top of Squeak OOOS ? (It isn't Etoys, is it?)

Was it your original vision that Smalltalk be Children Programming Language ?

Is this COS written in the CPL ?

Would you please elaborate on this COS. It sounds very interesting. It is especially so in the context of OLPC.

P.P.P.S:

SOS stands for Suckers' Operating Systems (like Bluebottle, Fedora, Leopard, Vista ... ;-)

At 07:42 PM 11/10/2007, SmallSqueak wrote:

...

Hi Alan,

...

-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev- bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Alan Kay Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 9:33 AM To: jg@laptop.org; Bert Freudenberg Cc: Squeakland list; etoys; The general-purpose Squeak developers list Subject: Re: [Etoys] OLPC mass production started

Yay!

Cheers to all!

Alan

I searched for "One Laptop Per Child Hero" and expected to see your name

or

...

Negroponte.

To my dismay, Google returned a complete stranger to me, Masi Oka.

Do you know why OLPC appointed Masi Oka, an actor and special effects specialist, as its Global Ambassador to sell its 400US$ "Give One Get One" computers.

Is the campaign "Give One Get One" the hero's idea?

Cheers,

PhiHo.