[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

Tue Jan 22 17:09:22 GMT 2008

Software distribution in remote area's.........interesting point

It's possible , I've been thinking of the following idea's.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/31/unamplified-wifi-distance-record-set-at-125-miles/

if you can work with governments to relax their tx power output regulations for ISM bands, then your only limits are the curvature of the earth! nice....
It's all done with stuff you can get from pc world.... (el cheapo).

These require little power, and can be run off solar/battery

http://www.green-wifi.org/ have some solutions

more for cities, than rural. however...

I've done some work in this area, it works!!! (well)

Also, 

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/

I've been toying with the idea of using long range radio, and modulating data
over it, it would'nt be quick, but for develiering software update delta's. it
may work nicely. It's not two way, but you could archive entire sites
(like wikipedia) and transmit them over long range radio.

Imagine what you could do with a Satellite HDTV channel, say if sky allocated
one HDTV channel to the delivery  of data , (files etc etc). then you could
receive all the data you even need, using a fairly cheap consumer dish
setup and modified gnu radio HDTV receiver. I'm not quite sure how many
gig's you can get down a HDTV channel in one day?

Imagine Cefax, on Steroids!!! ;-)  

Also, just to clear up something that's been bugging me, Free software
has nothing to do with price, that's a common mistake by newbies.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
 Free software is a matter of liberty, not price.  To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. 
So, <insert friendly corporation here> can supply 'free (cost)' tools, it doesn't make it free software, you still can't modify the software, and then distribute
those changes to others. The API's are still locked, you can't suggest
additions or modifications to those , they are secret. in fact TRADE SECRETS.

So, Free is about freedom to do what ever you want with the software.

I think it's very important to send 'free' software to children, it's a good
ethos to learn. They can have, however the freedom to run non free software
if they so wish.

Should children at young ages be protected from global brands? Until
they are at an age they have enough knowledge to choose on their own.

If I want to have a look inside my kernel, and see how something works,
I can, I think that whole freedom to learn should be given to kids. Not,
the current stop asking questions , and trust us ethos. Why should
children be told it's illegal (DCMA) to explore 'your laptop'.  If I reverse
engineer a proprietary  kernel, I could be deemed a criminal, Do we want
criminalize children in the third world, when they start taking thier software
to pieces....

Beware of open source, open source is not free software, open source means
you can see the source code, but you can't modify that source code, and
distribute copies of it, bit it's certainly a step in the right direction. Major
players could open source their products tomorrow, it still won't be free software.

Maybe History will teach us that the only viable free piece of software is actually
the kernel and operating system. Perhaps thats what has great value today,
will have no 'monetary' value in the future.  A device driver is useless without
the hardware (you buy the hardware). However, if you have an open kernel,
it's much harder to enforce locks such a DRM.

a door is either open and closed, can you have a half open door? when it's
ajar... GPL is really there to stop people from shutting
the door after you've walked thought it. 

see, you thought the future was about windows, in fact it's about doors.

Free software might have it's critics, not all aspects of software need to be
free, but in education, it's different, it's not an office, it's not a production
environment, it's a learning environment. The use of non-free software in
education should be prevented, you should let the users choose, not
bodies taking backhanders and sweeteners from corporates.  

Cheers,
Lee
'look ma I only mentioned Microsoft once in this post, that's how irrelevant they are'

Andrew Clayton <andrew at digital-domain.net> wrote: On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:29:41 -0800, Gary Short wrote:

> -------- Original Message --------
> > From: Robert McWilliam 
> > Sent: 22 January 2008 13:38
> > To: dundee at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > Subject: Re: [dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!
> > 
> 
> > Same way the device itself gets there. You send it preloaded with
> > useful stuff. 
> 
> Of course, but (hopefully) there will be new software added to the
> catalogue of available software at regular intervals. Very soon the
> first laptops will become "out of date" and after time, there will
> (again hopefully) be so much software that it can't all be housed on
> the hard drive of just one machine. At that point you have to have a

That would be the flash memory. There's no hard drive as that would be
at least too power hungry and too fragile  

> process whereby new software can be cascaded down to even the most
> remote village. If you don't have such a scheme then you run the risk
> of creating a two tier community - those with access to the central
> repository (though this repository could easily be distributed) and
> those who do not.

One idea I heard was that updates could be tricked down through the
mesh networking.

Possibly also updates could take the form delta packages whereby only
the changed files are shipped not the whole package. Like the yum
presto project with their delta rpms.

Andrew

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