[Olpc-open] RE: [mass storage] Is it possible to substitute flash?

[Xavier Alvarez]

On Wednesday 17 January 2007 11:24, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
...snip...
BF>
BF> The plan is to automatically back up the kid's data as soon
BF> as the laptop comes into the school server's range, which is
BF> supposed to have large hard drives.

Talking about 'school servers'... where can I find information 
about it? Do plans exist?

I heard about Brazil building their own (news rumours basically) 
when Lula received Negroponte, but not much else.

Although the laptop could deploy without school-servers, I think 
both politically and from (a software) development point of view 
it is a good thing to have a clear message about them.

Software-wise, it is smart not to start from false assumptions. 
For example: there IS going to be a server, what if not? will the 
activity still work? Will the software need to go in a special 
server-less mode? How will that impact in the overall usability 
of the software, etc.

Or more mundane: how will the kid browse his backups? a-la *nix? 
or a more user-friendly way integrated into Sugar? Imagine in 
AbiWord something like: 'sorry, the file you try to edit is 
stored in the school-server, do you want to retrieve it?'. Or it 
could automagically recover it? What if memory is not enough? 
Will things be (again) automagically uploaded to the server to 
free space?

Politically, and here I'm assuming, governments should KNOW about 
the extra costs that they will incur into. We are talking of 
important chunks of their educational budgets here, we don't want 
it to fall due to 'but that was obvious, wasn't it?' kind of 
excuses...

Those two things together could also work to the project's 
advantage.  For example, teacher WILL be a major part of the 
equation (in many places on the wrong side - read, liability). 
With a school server, you can start luring teachers and 
administrators by providing software capable of running or 
administering the school (attendance, grades, accounting, etc). 
You give them tools, they'll be more open (even desperate) to get 
into the project...

I always loved the saying:
     Do not ASSUME, because it makes an ASS o U and ME
but we all do it... :)


My 2cts,
Xavier


-- 
XA
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Don't Panic!  The Answer is 42