[Localization] XOs for Cambodia (was Beth Kanter sent you a message on Facebook...)

Fri Feb 22 06:07:17 EST 2008

Javier,

I cited facts in opposition to your objections to the OLPC XO. I also
stated my opinions about your opinions, which do show signs typical of
NIH syndrome (most notably, making spurious objections to a competing
project), and stated that one of your claims is laughable. (I laughed
at it.) I do not consider it insulting to say that someone is in
error, even serious error, or to suggest possible reasons. You may say
what you like about my opinions, but I object vehemently when you try
to tell me with great and completely misplaced confidence what I am
thinking.

I see no facts that tell in any way against me or the XO in this
diatribe of yours.

* You live in Cambodia and are working on an education plan for
Cambodia. That's the entire substance of what you say. The rest is
overheated opinion.

* I live in the known universe, and I am working with a large number
of other people on an education plan for the children of the entire
world. I will cite facts again in support of my opinion that your
objections to the XO and to me are spurious, and request that you cite
facts in return.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 8:36 AM, Javier SOLA <javier at khmeros.info> wrote:
> Edward,
>
>  The difference between an talker (or evangelist as you call yourself)
>  and a doer is that the evangelist always talks about theory, and never
>  touches reality.

I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea, teaching English in the
classroom, and I have taught other subjects at levels from preschool
through graduate study since then. I have managed the creation of Free
Software for schools in multiple languages. I spent several years in
Buddhist monasteries, where I did jobs such as cooking for the
community, building a school and monastic buildings, and herding
goats. You are not describing me.

> He believes that he has the right to insult and degrade
>  those who do real work, believes that he is an intellectual and that
>  what he imagines in his intellectuialisation of problems is the one and
>  only truth.

I believe no such things. Do you believe that you have the right to
insult and degrade intellectuals? Or me?

I have not insulted you or anybody else doing real work. I heartily
approve of KhmerOS as part of the solution, but I don't think it is or
can be the complete solution for education in Cambodia. (There is no
one solution. I believe in what works, not what sounds good.) I have
complained (giving my reasons) about your publicly stated opinions,
which I find spurious and objectionable. If you object to my
objections to your objections to OLPC, say what the problem is, and do
not attack me as a substitute for reasoned debate.

You claim, then, that you have tried the XO, that you do not suffer
from NIH, and that none of the facts I adduced are relevant? Let's
hear it.

>  I live in Cambodia and I am in charge of writing the Master Plan for ICT
>  in Education for the country,

It doesn't show up in Google. Is there a URL for it? Wait, is this it?
http://www.open.org.kh/en/node/45

Phase II - December 2007 to September 2008

    * Draft a Master Plan for ICT in Education, which will include
specific objectives for the deployment of ICT in Cambodia's education
system. The Plan will cover a span of five to seven years.

You are beating your breast about a plan that doesn't even exist in
draft form? How can I possibly discuss it with you?

> based on reality, not on trying to push a  specific gadget.

"It's an education program, not a laptop program."--Nicholas Negroponte

And certainly not a gadget program. Again, state your objections to my
objections, and do not insult my project and the project of thousands
of developers and hundreds of thousands of children gratuitously.

More than 10,000 OLPC XO computers are going to arrive in Cambodia
this year, running Free Software localized into Khmer. Where does this
fact fit into your non-existent Master Plan? Are you aware of it
happening?

> I assume responsibility for what I do and for the
>  students who spend their time studying the curriculums that we prepare.
>  Cambodia is the first (and only) country to have changed its education
>  system to use FOSS applications, and this is the result of five years of
>  hard work here, not of some easy-chair writing in California.

There you go again.

I have the idea, based on published material, that Cambodia's
changeover to FOSS for education (applause) had something to do with
Nicholas Negroponte's work in Cambodia, and his work with the
Cambodian government. If this is not the case, say so, and state what,
in your judgment, really happened. Do not insult those who developed
the OLPC education plan in Cambodia, not just in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and certainly not in California.

>  You want to know what the reality of Camboya is? Come here and work
>  here, you are welcome to join us... and if after five months you still
>  think that the OLPC is the response to the needs of Cambodia, or that it
>  will help the list, go ahead and work on it...  but I very much doubt
>  that you would. Your signature in a prior message says "End Poverty at a
>  Profit by teaching children business"... you would understand what this
>  means here, and how little the OLPC responds to this...

I would be delighted to work in Cambodia, and particularly to meet and
work with the Cambodian children. Would you work for five months with
children using XOs, when they get to Cambodia?

But I have no idea what you think I would learn that I do not
understand from my time in Korea. I grant that the Khmer Rouge messed
up Cambodia worse than the Japanese messed up Korea during their time
of imperial rule, or the North Koreans messed up South Korea during
their war. But why do you think that I don't know how it is when there
are too few teachers, not enough schools, and no follow-up past a
certain age, after a seeming eternity of soul-searing oppression and
ultraviolent war? My own relatives endured similar oppression and
murder in Europe not so long before, and several other peoples are
enduring variations on that same theme today.

Oh, BTW, I was in the hills north of Seoul when the North Korean
assassination team came through not far away on their way to kill
President Pak Cheonghi. The didn't get near him, but they ended up
surrounded by police near a school where my best friend in the Peace
Corps worked. They threw a grenade on a bus just before they were
captured, killing several people, including a good friend of my
friend, who was as you might expect rather bent out of shape about it.

I keep a photograph that I took in Korea on the wall by my desk. It
shows a manual laborer, who probably earned the equivalent of $1.50 a
day, pausing from his work to look at the traffic going by in the
downtown banking and shopping district of Seoul. I was told that when
it was published in Korea it startled Koreans, who realized that they
never thought about how their rapid modernization looked to those not
able to take part in it. I never forget that fact.

So, no, I do not understand "how little the OLPC responds to" actual
needs that I have actually worked on, and I don't expect to.

>  Buit it seems to be a much easier path that to insult those who do real
>  work, just to defend a gadget that is not up to the needs of a poor country.

This ranting is unworthy of you, and brings shame on your education
plan, your KhmerOS, and the Cambodians you are trying to help.

The OLPC XO was designed specifically to meet the stringent
requirements of poor students in countries where electrical supplies
are unreliable or nonexistent. It is the most rugged low-cost computer
available, running on the lowest power, with the best screen and
wireless technologies and the latest in non-toxic batteries and screen
backlights. It runs the only suite of software designed for
collaborative discovery. I use it regularly at conferences and other
public meetings, although for my professional work I need to use
graphics and publishing tools such as GIMP, Scribus, and OpenOffice
that will not fit on it.

What's your alternative? KhmerOS running on what? How do the village
children power the much bigger computers required to run OpenOffice?
Can they take their computers home? If they can, can they network from
home to school and with all of their classmates? What is your plan for
getting Internet to every school in Cambodia?

I expect answers. So you go ahead, too. Ask me whatever you like about the XO.

>  Shame on you.

"How happy we are, not hating those who hate us."--Theragatha

Go on. Try it. You might find out that people don't hate you as much
as you think.

>  Javier Solá
>
>  P.D. Of course, you are free to use anything that we have done, that is
>  the spirit in which we do it.

I expect to see Sugar running on KhmerOS, too.

>  P.D. Hi Sayamindu, long time...
>
>
>  Edward Cherlin wrote
>
>
> > Side note: Sayamindu, why is there no Khmer localization on Pootle?
>  > Put one up now. I'm bringing Cambodians in, as you can see, and there
>  > are plenty of Cambodian .po files elsewhere for us to start from.
>  >
>  > KhmerOS: Please forward this e-mail to Javier Sola and to anybody else
>  > who might be interested.
>  >
>  > On Feb 19, 2008 8:04 AM, Facebook
>  > <notification+o4ysy=99 at facebookmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  >> Re: OLPC XOs in Cambodia
>  >>
>  >> Edward,
>  >>
>  >> No I don't .... [know where in Cambodia the XOs are going.]
>  >>
>  >> One problem is that the Khmer OS software doesn't scale well on the screen.
>  >>
>  >
>  > I believe that this and the rest of Javier Sola's objections at
>  > http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/09/give-one-get-on.html
>  > are spurious, in part because he obviously hasn't tried it, in part
>  > because he appears to be suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome as
>  > a member of the KhmerOS Executive Committee, and in part for the
>  > following positive reasons.
>  >
>  > * XOs run a version of Red Hat Linux, Fedora Rawhide 7. Anything from
>  > KhmerOS on SUSE Linux can run on it immediately, or be easily ported.
>  > (And there is no reason for KhmerOS to be distribution-specific.
>  > Everything in it should have been contributed to the upstream
>  > repositories.)
>  >
>  > * All of the Khmer localizations are in external .po files that will
>  > work immediately on the XO. We will of course data-mine them for our
>  > own localizations.
>  >
>  > * The XO does not run OpenOffice, which is indeed too large. But we
>  > have our own word processor and will soon have a spreadsheet from Dan
>  > Bricklin.
>  >
>  > * We will use stock Khmer Unicode fonts, the standard Pango rendering
>  > for Khmer, and a stock Khmer keyboard layout file slightly modified
>  > for the locations of specific keys on the XO. Keytops for Cambodia
>  > will be printed with Khmer and Latin alphabetic characters, and a
>  > keyboard switching key assignment will be set.
>  >
>  > * The XO has a 200 dpi display. If we can't read your software, your
>  > screens are too cluttered.
>  >
>  > I can't very well answer Javier's objections to the XO's design, since
>  > he doesn't say what they are. But it is laughable for him to claim
>  > that the XO design does not take conditions in Cambodia into account.
>  > Cambodia was the site of Nicholas Negroponte's first experiments in
>  > computers for all students. The MIT Media Lab and then OLPC have been
>  > in contact with the Cambodian Ministry of Education ever since.
>  >
>  > http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/09/creating_the_10.html
>  >
>  >
>  >> There's also a national plan for educational technology in process - you should connect to that.
>  >>
>  >
>  > We already have. The Ministry of Education is well aware that more
>  > than 10,000 XOs will be coming to Cambodia.
>  >
>  >
>  >> Some folks left comments on these posts
>  >> http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/09/give-one-get-on.html
>  >>
>  >> I can help connect to you some folks if you want.
>  >>
>  >
>  > Yes, please. Give them my contact information, and encourage them to
>  > join the relevant OLPC mailing lists at http:lists.laptop.org/. They
>  > should check out Localization, Development, and Grassroots, at least.
>  >
>  >
>
>

-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay