POUR INFO ET LECTURE. <br><br>GSP<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Jim Gettys</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jg@laptop.org">jg@laptop.org</a>></span><br>
Date: Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 9:22 AM<br>Subject: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-10-27)<br>To: Community News <<a href="mailto:community-news@laptop.org">community-news@laptop.org</a>><br><br><br>Community News<br>
A weekly update of One Laptop per Child October 26, 2008<br>
<br>
<br>
>From the field…<br>
<br>
Note from the editor: more field reports are always welcome for<br>
community news! - Jim<br>
<br>
<br>
Twenty-five XOs apiece were distributed last week at the SAM bin Noah<br>
and Ghamdan Schools in Sana'a, Yemen. The donor was Mövenpick Hotels &<br>
Resorts. "The laptops are a creative way for children to learn through<br>
discovery, exploration and independent interaction," said Mövenpick<br>
Hotel Sana'a General Manager Mr. Nasir W. Saudi. "Not only that,<br>
children will be able, through the laptops, to expand their horizons<br>
beyond that of their immediate environment"<br>
<br>
Fritz Hoff reports: "In the Netherlands, since November 2007 a<br>
grassroots group is active: OLPC NL. Since May 2008, there is also a<br>
foundation OpenWijs.nl (OpenWise.nl) that helps organizations to start<br>
and implement OLPC projects. Two projects are underway and 15 projects<br>
are in preparation (Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles, Suriname, Ghana,<br>
Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Kenya).<br>
<br>
This week we will receive the first 72 XO's for the Netherlands and 15<br>
XO's for Nicaragua. In Nicaragua 2 other projects are being prepared and<br>
through a network of Dutch sistercities perhaps another 10 cities with<br>
more than 50 schools will start projects. Therefore the Ministry of<br>
Education of Nicaragua is already involved.<br>
<br>
In addition to projects in primary education, we are also working with<br>
illiteracy, blind and visually impaired (translated text-to-speach,<br>
braille), tele-health / telemedicine, adult education, technical<br>
education, elearning (Moodle and Dokeos) and websites (communities with<br>
Drupal).<br>
<br>
As you can imagine we have an urgent need for people who can help us,<br>
although we have already some very good volunteers.<br>
<br>
More information: <a href="http://www.openwijs.nl" target="_blank">www.openwijs.nl</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Technology<br>
<br>
Support:<br>
<br>
1. Reuben Caron worked with the deployments in Birmingham, Paraguay, and<br>
Haiti this week. He continued work on <a href="http://jabber.laptop.org" target="_blank">jabber.laptop.org</a>, installed XS<br>
0.5-dev7 and began testing the installation. Ed McNierney, Kim Quirk,<br>
Michael Stone, and Chris Ball have been involved in discussions of<br>
Uruguay's field issues and preparations for a developer visit. Everyone<br>
benefited from detailed presentations and discussions with learning team<br>
members recently returned from Rwanda, Haiti, Ethiopia, and Perú.<br>
<br>
2. For the G1G1 program, Kim Quirk and Aaron Royer were able to review<br>
the first draft of the Amazon storefront this week. We have first draft<br>
of the returns and refund policies as well as revenue and settlement<br>
report information from Amazon. Most of the community media, magazine,<br>
newspaper ads, TV commercials, and billboards are well underway.<br>
<br>
3. This week Seth Woodworth worked on media for the community, including<br>
posters, banners for blogs and flyers for volunteers/contributors to<br>
distribute. Seth has also been working with our new Google advertising<br>
grant and establishing OLPC presence at DailyMotion/YouTube.<br>
<br>
Updates from the Web: A growing number of people are blogging about the<br>
upcoming g1g1. Very little of the conversation lately has been negative,<br>
but people are still looking for more specifics about what we're doing<br>
in specific countries.<br>
<br>
Stats for <a href="http://en.forums.laptop.org" target="_blank">en.forums.laptop.org</a>: ~300 hits a day;~8000 unique visits a<br>
month; Most hits come from the US, followed by the UK, Canada, India,<br>
Austria, Germany, and China<br>
<br>
Stats for <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org</a> (previous week): 76,000 unique visits last<br>
week; one of the most popular pages was Greg's Release notes:<br>
(Release_notes/8.2.0). After search engines <a href="http://distrowatch.org" target="_blank">http://distrowatch.org</a><br>
directed the largest amount of traffic to the wiki<br>
<br>
Testing:<br>
<br>
4. Joe Feinstein reports that the QA team conducted a large school<br>
environment simulation test, with 59 laptops connected to a school<br>
server and ten people using the Write activity simultaneously. The team<br>
tested various access points attached to a school server with the<br>
purpose of developing recommendations for field use. We also started<br>
testing the backup/restore feature of a school server, and continued<br>
working on approaches to automate testing.<br>
<br>
5. Mel Chua is organizing some community<br>
testing:<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Analyzeby" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Analyzeby</a> Eduardo Silva (User:<br>
Edsiper), which has been chosen as the first community test activity of<br>
the week. We need help finishing the test cases at<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests/Activity/Analyzeand" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests/Activity/Analyzeand</a> facilitating<br>
community testing of this activity over the next week. Join the<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/testingmailing" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/testingmailing</a> list to participate, or if you<br>
have an activity you'd like to have tested as activity of the week. Mel<br>
is also looking for volunteers to develop a community testing portal on<br>
the wiki. Email to the mailing list if you're interested. Mel also<br>
rediscovered thehttp://<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org/go/XO</a> Monitoractivity, which is<br>
similar to what Joe wants for multi-XO monitoring/testing. We're working<br>
towards using it to oversee a multi-XO test bed now.<br>
<br>
Sysadmin:<br>
<br>
6. Henry Edward Hardy reports that the group has made some progress in<br>
setting up mirror servers for dev and pedal. An experimental mirror of<br>
dev is now up and running. There are still a few technical issues to<br>
resolve but progress is being made.<br>
<br>
Software Development:<br>
<br>
7. Many G1G1 users and country technical leads are now downloading and<br>
evaluating release 8.2. So far, most reviews are very positive.<br>
<br>
8. Future release planning is now focused on the Feature Roadmap page<br>
-<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap-" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap-</a> which tracks all the main<br>
features under consideration by the OLPC community for development.<br>
<br>
The entire software development group continued with preparations for<br>
the technical mini-conference to be held in mid November. The call for<br>
proposals has gone out. See the planning page for this event and submit<br>
proposals athttp://<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp_2</a><br>
<br>
9. Chris Ball worked on adding feature specifications to Trac. We now<br>
have a "specification" ticket type alongside defect/task/enhancement,<br>
and a specification ticket contains fields that the other ticket types<br>
don't (and vice versa). My first pass at a set of specification fields<br>
is:<br>
<br>
- Spec reviewer (text)<br>
- Spec reviewed? (checkbox)<br>
- Spec current milestone (draft/submitted for review/approved/first<br>
milestone/second milestone/third milestone/reviewer signoff/finalize)<br>
<br>
Chris expects these fields will be refined before we start using them to<br>
hold the specifications that result from the planning meeting. The goal<br>
is for the release manager(s) to have an overview available as a Trac<br>
report that shows the state of the path through design and<br>
implementation for each proposed feature -- which ones are progressing<br>
steadily, and which are blocked or insufficiently described. Having us<br>
create specs for proposed features should ensure that a round of review<br>
on proposed designs takes place, and also help to guard against feature<br>
creep near the end of the release.<br>
<br>
XO OS Software:<br>
<br>
10. C. Scott Ananian spent the week in Perú with SJ Klein, and will<br>
bring back a better understanding of the in-country issues we can<br>
address in future software development work. Erik Garrison continued<br>
getting feedback about the use of compcache and issues encountered with<br>
xcompmgr.<br>
<br>
11. Paul Fox now has a working version of the merged EC firmware,<br>
building under wine, and incorporating all of the changes made during<br>
his initial sdcc porting attempt. This should eliminate Paul and<br>
Richard's need for Windows during EC development. Paul has also been<br>
looking at the touchpad issue again, and proposed a button-triggered<br>
shutdown menu for discussion for release 9.1. Paul also thoroughly<br>
appreciated the several presentations made by the deployment/learning<br>
teams.<br>
<br>
12. Michael Stone began to address some important gaps in his education<br>
by practicing collaborative resumable graphical app design and by<br>
reviewing some important documents like the Cerebro thesis, the DNS RFCs<br>
(1034,1035), Reed's dissertation, and the GPLv3. He also participated in<br>
conversations with the deployment folks and made some preparations to<br>
visit Uruguay with Chris in a week and a half..<br>
<br>
XS School Server Software:<br>
<br>
13. This week Douglas Bagnall worked on tidying things up for the XS 0.5<br>
release. That involved quite a lot of work on the XS-OTP package, which<br>
is finally out, some repackaging of pam_sotp and ejabberd, and tweaks to<br>
quite a number of other XS packages.<br>
<br>
Sugar / Activity Software:<br>
<br>
14. Morgan Collett worked on ejabberd on <a href="http://jabber.laptop.org" target="_blank">jabber.laptop.org</a> to try and<br>
resolve the issues we are seeing. He wrote up instructions on deploying<br>
ejabberd on Ubuntu Intrepid and Debian, which ship our shared roster<br>
patches, at <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Installing_ejabberd/deb" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Installing_ejabberd/deb</a>. This<br>
should make it much easier to set up school or community jabber servers,<br>
for those not using the XS.<br>
<br>
15. Marco Pesenti Gritti spent most of the week working with Simon on<br>
porting Sugar to NetworkManager 0.7. we made a lot of progress and we<br>
have something partially functional. We need to get security handling in<br>
shape (only WEP works at the moment and just as bad hack), implement<br>
settings persistence, re-implement frame devices. He fixed the annoying<br>
flickering when switching between activity and home view, spent some<br>
time on release automation and build system and submitted three proposal<br>
for XOCamp, about performance, compatibility with desktop applications<br>
and web based activities. Finally he did some investigation of Browse<br>
and Firefox usage, results are posted on the mailing lists.<br>
<br>
16. Tomeu Vizoso worked this week mainly in performance, preparing<br>
thevwork for the next weeks and already landing some fixes in startup<br>
performance. He also modularized global keybindings so that by dropping<br>
a single python file like the following in a predefined directory,<br>
actions in response to key combinations can be defined:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://dev.laptop.org/%7Etomeu/viewsource.py" target="_blank">http://dev.laptop.org/~tomeu/viewsource.py</a><br>
<br>
Based on this last feature, proposed a solution to extend the "View<br>
source" key to all installed activities:<br>
<a href="http://dev.laptop.org/%7Etomeu/viewsource.png" target="_blank">http://dev.laptop.org/~tomeu/viewsource.png</a><br>
<br>
<br>
17. Sayamindu Dasgupta continued his work on the multilanguage support<br>
in Sugar, and came up with patches for Sugar, Rainbow and olpc-utils to<br>
implement the feature (trac ticket #8875). He also investigated a<br>
possible upgrade of the Pootle server to version <a href="http://1.2.0." target="_blank">1.2.0.</a><br>
<br>
18. Faisal Anwar of Media Modifications integrated community suggestions<br>
into the Sugar Almanac of best practices for developing Sugar<br>
Activities. He also further documented how to use Stream Tubes in<br>
activities and how to use unique inputs such as the game buttons. Please<br>
contribute and refine the Sugar Almanac with your contributions at<br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Almanac" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Almanac</a><br>
<br>
19. Walter Bender's Sugar Digest can be found at:<br>
<a href="http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-October/009426.html" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-October/009426.html</a><br>
<br>
Multicast Update:<br>
<br>
20. Mitch Bradley got the multicast updater working via the mesh at a<br>
high data rate, with an XO as the sender. The sender can be running<br>
either Linux or OFW. The latter case is interesting because the setup<br>
effort is virtually nil and it lets you "clone" one XO's OS installation<br>
onto a bunch of other XOs. In the process of developing this capability,<br>
Mitch managed to achieve a mesh throughput of twice that provided by our<br>
current Linux builds, which suggests a possible performance improvement<br>
for the Linux driver.<br>
<br>
<br>
New Touchpad:<br>
<br>
21. Pre-build laptops with the new touchpad have arrived at 1CC and are<br>
being tested. There are mechanical problems with the touchpad buttons.<br>
Quanta assures us they have already been redesigned to correct this<br>
issue. A late-breaking report from the QA team implies other issues, as<br>
well, but tickets have not yet been filed.<br>
<br>
Future Hardware:<br>
<br>
22. There was a Gen2 design meeting at 1CC this week. Fuse Project and<br>
Gecko Design have been refining both the hinge and ways of carrying the<br>
next generation XO. The proposed hinge would be very robust and low<br>
cost, but it leaves a "speed bump" between the two screens. An<br>
alternative (and less robust) design eliminated the speed bump but<br>
increased the separation between the screens. It was discarded. Fuse and<br>
Gecko will continue to refine the design to minimize the bump. While an<br>
externally removable battery was proposed, it was rejected as unduly<br>
compromising the machine's environmental integrity, without providing a<br>
battery that could be swapped on a daily basis.<br>
<br>
23. Jim Gettys met with a possible Gen2 CPU vendor to scope the effort<br>
required for X Window System and OpenGL support. He also attended the<br>
UIST conferencehttp://<a href="http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2008/" target="_blank">www.acm.org/uist/uist2008/</a>. A fundamental issue<br>
with touch base interfaces has been that they are not "discoverable."<br>
Many of you will remember the problems presented by systems such as<br>
Graffiti on the Palm. Such large gesture command requires "cheat sheets"<br>
and lots of practice for effective use. The presentation on "OctoPocus:<br>
A Dynamic Guide for Learning Gesture-Based Command Sets" by Olivier Bau,<br>
INRIA Saclay / LRI Wendy Mackay, INRIA Saclay / LRI shows a solution to<br>
this dilemma. A video of this in action should be available soon.<br>
<br>
24. NAND device management testing continues. This week one of the LBA<br>
devices failed catastrophically - they have performed about 1.1 TB of<br>
writes, and 5 TB of reads at this point. Mitch and John Watlington are<br>
working with the vendor to determine the cause. Dave Woodhouse generated<br>
a patch to JFFS2, which should eliminate the crashing problems<br>
encountered by the tests. It should enter testing next week. We are<br>
still awaiting a patch fixing the problems with UbiFS.<br>
<br>
Networking:<br>
<br>
<br>
25. Deepak Saxena worked primarily on moving the OLPC kernel forward to<br>
the latest 2.6.27 stable release.<br>
<br>
26. Ricardo Carrano continued testing the XO running as an Access Point.<br>
He has encountered some minor issues with XOs disconnecting after long<br>
periods of operation and he is working with Cozybit to resolve them.<br>
Ricardo also added more nodes, and trained engineers at UFF (in Brazil)<br>
to do testing and reserach in the Sparse Network Test<br>
bed.<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wireless_Sparse_Testbed" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wireless_Sparse_Testbed</a><br>
<br>
27. Javier, aided by Colin at Cozybit, is digging deeper into the<br>
sporadic WPA association failures. Since the low level stack (driver and<br>
firmware) doesn't produce any association failures when tested by<br>
itself, they have shifted attention to wpa_supplicant and Network<br>
Manager. They have already found that wpa_supplicant tries to reset the<br>
association state machine by issuing an association to an all-zeros<br>
BSSID (which is wrong and seems to correlate strongly with subsequent<br>
failed associations) and that Network Manager calls wpa_supplicant with<br>
arguments different from the ones that we have found to produce 100<br>
percent successful association attempts in our testing.<br>
<br>
28. Guillaume Desmottes spend most of the week integrating Gadget into<br>
Sugar and merging all the long standing pending branches. Sugar HEAD is<br>
now able to detect the presence of Gadget on Gabble connections, publish<br>
user's information according his sugar settings, request random<br>
buddies/activities and display them on the mesh view.<br>
<br>
This need the newly released telepathy-gabble 0.7.12 and<br>
telepathy-python <a href="http://0.15.3." target="_blank">0.15.3.</a> A last minute bug was found in Gabble and will<br>
release a new Gabble next week. A small modification has been made to<br>
the presence-service too which has the nice side effect to close #8444<br>
as well.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
--<br>
Jim Gettys <<a href="mailto:jg@laptop.org">jg@laptop.org</a>><br>
One Laptop Per Child<br>
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