OLPC Developers Boost Security 73
eldavojohn writes "The developers of software for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative are redefining security for the personal PC. Since the laptops have the potential of communicating with any other laptop, the developers have a unique opportunity to implement both virus protection on the kernel, master boot record and also the way in which the laptops deal with security and 'code-sharing.' The developers are currently seeking outside counsel from security experts and if you're worried about these security schemes posing only problems to the children, 'these security measures can be turned off by the PCs' owners. To protect against that leading to disaster, the laptops will automatically back up their data up on a server whenever the machines get in wireless range of the children's school. If a child loses data, the files can be restored by bringing the laptop within wireless range of the server.'"
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Technology (Score:2, Insightful)
And I am a software guy who loves technology and computers in general!
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By teaching them Entreprenuership?
"Easy as taking a laptop from a baby."
KFG
Re:Technology (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh...
Wait...
They are not specialists in genetic engineering.
Oh, and they are not economists, and do not have a lot of political affairs experience.
Come to think of it, they also do not have the skills needed to do pharmaceutical research either.
Well, then, what are they good for? I suppose they should just sign over a portion of their paycheck to a non-profit group that might one day help. That is the American way, right? Donating money to resolve guilt about all of the world's problems?
Or maybe... Just maybe... They could volunteer their own time and expertise to do something in their own field to help, and then ignore anonymous people who criticize them for no other reason than the fact that the genetic engineers, the economists, the pharmaceutical companies and, most of all, the politicians are not doing anything in the meantime in their own respective fields.
Ehh, that would never work...
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Talk about pointing out the bleedin' obvious.
KFG
A simple solution to the wrong problem. (Score:2)
"...to help..." with what? Specifically?
The problem is not that these kids don't have laptops.
The problem is not that these kids are losing data files.
The problem is that these kids live in an unstable (politically/economically) environment. And no amount of laptops will change that. The laptops will not protect them. The laptops will not end a drought. The laptops will not bring in mor
Re:A simple solution to the wrong problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all the poor countries are a mass of hungering people...
Food is always the basis. (Score:2)
If that was so, they would not need us to supply the laptops.
No, because the laptops only solve the "problem" of not
What part don't you understand? (Score:3, Informative)
Have you even read anything about the initiative? The laptops are sold to the countries. Are you suggesting that those countries could design and manufacture the laptops?
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You'd get a mod point if I had one.
Judging from some of the comments, you'd think everywhere they were planning to disribute these laptops was like Darfur. Sure, there are many spots on the globe too unstable to benefit from this plan, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of places where they could do some real good.
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Short term, yes, people need to be fed. Long term, they need to understand how to build effective social systems. Computers are the basis of most of our effective modern social systems. Ergo, computers are as important as food in the long run.
Finally, I h
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That's very nice, but where has the necessary connection been shown that giving someone a laptop will produce such incentive?
Give the third world access to the medicine and food that modern societies use, and everyone doesn't stop having four or five kids
Actually
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John Fitzgerald published an interesting article [actualanalysis.com] a few years ago about some people's belief that because others are using computers successfully, that merely introducing a computer into a given situation will make the participants more productive, comparing it to the cargo cults in Melanesia many years ago.
Merely shoving a laptop in a child's face will not make them better, brighter, etc. If anything the laptop will server to function as a distraction, much as my TI-83 was in calculus class (all I ever di
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I live and work in Melanesia, I can say for a fact that the cargo cults (and their mentality) are alive and well here. The impact of this mentality on development is significant. It's quite common for p
Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
But I'm a supporter of the OLPC project too -- because saving people from extreme poverty and disease is only part of the battle. The other part of the battle is giving them the tools to be competitive in a global marketplace. In a globalized capitalist world, every economy needs to figure out what their comparative advantage is. Many of the poorest nations in the world have limited natural resources, and little critical infrastructure (roads, power grid, etc.) to leverage the natural resources they do have. OLPC stands an outside chance of making *people* the comparative advantage.
It's not an either/or proposition. It's *and*. It has to be.
And I'm a software guy who loves technology and computers in general.
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We have experience with this kind of thing (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Technology (Score:4, Insightful)
The same way books, education, and printing-presses do.
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Bouts of social instability can sometimes become opportunities to become engrossed in your computer or books. Obviously, not Darfur or post-invasion-Iraq levels of instability, but still...
If the kids have at least semi-regular schooling and decent food and shelter, then the computer will be of considerable help to most of them. Anywhere a decades-old handmedown encyclopedia has ma
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kids who have to work and can't study
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Lots of people complain that there are more pressing problems (such as poverty, political instability, famine, AIDS, etc.) that "we" should work on. These statements show a rem
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I think the problem is most people here take education and information for granted as it is readily available and ubiquitous. Otherwise, I concur wholeheartedly.
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This will lead directly to prosperity for the kids (Score:2)
Request for Urgent Scholastic Relationship
We are the top official of the treasury of the thrid grade student government who are interested in importation of goods into our school with funds which are presently trapped in Nigeria. In order to commence this business we solicit your assistance to enable us to transfer into your account the said trapped funds...
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I teach in a government school (voluntarily). The schools are short of teachers. Kids come to class, but there are no teachers to teach them. Most of the time, they just sit around, drawing, painting, bullying other kids. These kids have enough money for food, clothing and shelter, but not for books. T
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You think it's about the Technology??!?!?
OLPC isn't about exposing po' folks to kernels, compilers and binary code. It's about bringing the tremendous wealth of knowledge accessable on the Internet to everybody. In my household, (Myself, Wife, 5 children and usually a couple of their friends) the computers and Internet are a great combination of entertainment, news, and informati
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I appreciate what you're saying, and for what it's worth, I think you're right. To a degree.
But OLPC actually will do a lot for technological learning in the developing world. People will have to support them, after all. I live and work in IT in the developing world, and even discussion about this project (which has been significant - there's a huge interest here in this) has done a lot to make people think about everything from t
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Follow the money. Whenever there's repetitive propaganda like this ignoring general knowledge it's likely to be an astroturfer, a lying marketer promoting their product.
In these cases it's probably M$'ers trying to marginalize a platform that is likely to see millions of Linux installations, reducing M$ mindshare. It's worth a lot of money to M$ to stop or reduce that.
---
New game: Spot the lying astroturfer [wikipedia.org] on /.!
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Syncing work up? (Score:2, Interesting)
That being said, this project has been in the news for a LONG while now (at least it'd seem), are they any closer to actually reaching their goal?
Cautious Progress (Score:3, Informative)
I've been following this project pretty closely and I would like to say that everyone is very concerned that this is done correctly the first time. Bill Gates and India's government have already denied support to this project for reasons previously discussed on /.
I don't think this is a project that you want to rush and I am gratefull that they have been m
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Weeeeeeell, lessee. They're overtime, overbudget and the cost of the device has already risen %50 before release, so yeah, I'd say things are chugging along at the normal rate of progress.
KFG
Standard computers? (Score:2)
I guess they think the insecurity is hardwired. And then they go on to act as if the OLPC being secure is unrelated with the fact that it runs Linux.
I thought that was presumptuous. (Score:2)
Thats a pretty inaccurate way to talk down to their audience.
virus protection? (Score:3, Insightful)
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what I think might have been better is having a physical switch which needs to be moved in order to write to the kernel or MBR (although I'm not sure how you would go abo
Protection from the USERS themselves (Score:2)
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But at the same time they are distributing these things to kids; most of
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If this initiative is successful, Linux could become the most widely used operating system in the world, and would therefore be the biggest target for infection. Virus writers would turn their attentions from Windows to Linux. Our experience with Firefox has shown the falsehood of confident expectation that open sourced software would be immune to malware, and it's only got 10% of the market. A
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That not a law of nature; that's a logical fallacy known as begging the question [wikipedia.org]. The fact is that this story is about making the OLPC computer infertile ground for viruses.
But in fairness, you're on the verge of making a good point about monocultures. This is the first large-scale test of the assertion that monocultures are dangerous in their nature (true enough - any problem is shared by
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Actually, there's only one proposition, so it'd be merely a tautology. And his assertion wasn't even really a tautology, it's as if he said "people with compromised immune systems will get infected by viruses". I believe the technical term in formal logic for that type of statement is Duh.
Personal PC? (Score:1)
I'm curious how it will turn out (Score:3, Insightful)
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One Python per child (Score:2)
We have broken the Perl dependency
Seems fair enough. All i can add is:
We are the Knights who say..... "Ni"! We are the keepers of the sacred words: Ni, Ping, and Nee-womm!
It's a shame... (Score:1)
If the
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Where are the apps for this platform? (Score:2)
Where will they find apps for this platform? Look at sourceforge.net, download.com, microsoft.com, cdw.com, or any other source: There are endless apps for existing platforms, freeware, shareware, commercial, open and proprietary. Where will OLPC users get a
Ask questions here (Score:2)
Some info, but more issues (Score:2)
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This is a "good thing", this will be the first ever laptop designed around the needs of education. This is also the first ever laptop designed just for Linux, loads of legacy hardware (BIOS, Serial cable) is not needed.
The hardware, software and bundled books and homework ('content' if you like) are all being specifically re-designed.
>The Sugar UI, networking, now security, and probably a bu
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sudo apt-get install imagemagick
sudo apt-get openssl-0.7
make
sudo aptitude install gcc
make
(search forums on error message)
emacs
make
sudo make install
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Hopefully they will have yum or something.
Hey, there is no reason why the kids have to stick with fedora, I'm sure Gentoo will build on it.
If you can get a decent Internet connection then there are western servers available for distcc, or one child could make a stage 4 file archive and share it with the rest. For many years, I had a laptop with half the specs of the OLPC (1996 laptop, swapped for a macbook in 2006), Gentoo worked great as it could make the binaries really small to save
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I understand it's Fedora at heart, but for example, OS X is Mach & BSD at heart, yet most Mac users can't realistically use BSD apps (I don't mean
Apps should provide a consistent UI -- will that be a problem with Sugar? Will networking apps work with OLPC networking (Bittorrent clients? File sharing clients? Chat clients? Flock? Antivirus? Firewa
OLPC? (Score:1)
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They also had unique oppotunity to use the Mac OS (Score:2)