Yeah, I’m not the first to notice this. The specs, details and pictures are available in a lot of places, better than I could summarize. Interesting things I got out of the presentation: lots of Python (yeah!), this is a great example of dogfooding (discovering useless ticking of kernel that eats CPU power, heats data centers and leads to global warming) in this case means little kids stuck pedaling, and that brings it home for the OLPC developers. The code they will be turning back into the Fedora, Red Hat and Open Source communities will run faster and cooler. They’ve pushed dbus further than before, turning a lot of poor “loop until something happens” code into subscribe-and-notify messages. They’re cleaning up sloppy dependencies where everthing needs Perl (their example, don’t flame me) but hardly use it for everything.
The display is cool. 1900×800 in hi-resolution monochrome for outdoor use, Those 1900 black pixels become individual red, green or blue pixels for a lower resolution backlight color display. Very clever. They replaced the most expensive individual unit in a laptop with, well, a $50 most expensive unit in the OLPC.
It’s an elegant machine.
Tag: fudconboston2007