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Shikhar | 1 May 02:48
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Re: E-mail, XMPP, and non-Sugar identities

Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> There are perhaps a billion or more people in the world who have e-mail
> access (SMTP).  We would like students with XOs to be able to communicate
> with these people in an easy, sensible way.  For this reason, there has
> been a great deal of interest in e-mail clients for the XO.
>   

I am one of those interested in the development of an email client for 
Sugar (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Email_Activity), although in the short 
term the below goal would not be accomplished:

a Sugary email client should support meta-contacts in the sense of 
associating email addresses with Sugar buddies. Emails sent to the 
contact are either sent directly across the mesh when the buddy appears, 
or via standard SMTP when internet access becomes available, whichever 
happens first.
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Edward Cherlin | 1 May 03:40
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Controversies

I have made a new Wiki page, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Controversies,
with sections for the major arguments that we have been having over
OLPC strategy and tactics. I have also included links to blog posts,
mailing list threads, and interviews with Nicholas Negroponte.
Additional topics and resources welcome.

The purpose is not to promote my own view of things exclusively, but
to let everybody involved see who said what when, and to state their
own positions on the issues. I request that if you object to something
stated on the page, that you say so on the talk page, and include a
_brief_ statement of the issue from your point of view on the main
page, together with a link to the original documents, or a note saying
that it was a personal conversation, and how and where it took place.

Interpretation is welcome. "When you say this, it sounds like you also
mean that," is fine. But no edit wars, please. There is room for
multiple points of view. I won't edit what you think if you don't try
to tell me what I think. %-[

"When I want to hear _your_ opinion, I'll TELL it to you."--any tyrant

Next question: Would anybody like us to take these arguments somewhere
else? Maybe create a new Policy mailing list?

--

-- 
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
(Continue reading)

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Walter Bender | 1 May 04:11
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Re: Controversies

Thanks for putting this page together. We've set up a mailing list for
discussing the educational mission here:

http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project

-walter

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> I have made a new Wiki page, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Controversies,
>  with sections for the major arguments that we have been having over
>  OLPC strategy and tactics. I have also included links to blog posts,
>  mailing list threads, and interviews with Nicholas Negroponte.
>  Additional topics and resources welcome.
>
>  The purpose is not to promote my own view of things exclusively, but
>  to let everybody involved see who said what when, and to state their
>  own positions on the issues. I request that if you object to something
>  stated on the page, that you say so on the talk page, and include a
>  _brief_ statement of the issue from your point of view on the main
>  page, together with a link to the original documents, or a note saying
>  that it was a personal conversation, and how and where it took place.
>
>  Interpretation is welcome. "When you say this, it sounds like you also
>  mean that," is fine. But no edit wars, please. There is room for
>  multiple points of view. I won't edit what you think if you don't try
>  to tell me what I think. %-[
>
>  "When I want to hear _your_ opinion, I'll TELL it to you."--any tyrant
>
>  Next question: Would anybody like us to take these arguments somewhere
(Continue reading)

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Kevin Cole | 1 May 13:54
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Re: Controversies

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for putting this page together. We've set up a mailing list for
>  discussing the educational mission here:
>
>  http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project

Lord save me from YAML (Yet Another Mailing List, not to be confused
with Yet Another Markup Language). ;-)

--

-- 
 Kevin Cole | Key ID: 0xE6F332C7 (GPG/PGP)
 Gallaudet University | WWW: http://gri.gallaudet.edu/~kjcole/
 Hall Memorial Bldg S-419 | V/TTY: (202) 651-5135
 Washington, D.C. 20002-3695 | FAX: (202) 651-5746

 ". ! 1 |" -- Rene Magritte's computer
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J.M. Maurer | 1 May 14:29

Re: Collaboration in an activity


On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 18:55 +0200, Urko Fernandez wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> For sending files I've seen that stream tubes are used in Read activity,
> and many examples use D-Bus tubes (Write, Web, Connect...) for sending
> python objects. Can I send binary files using D-Bus tubes?

Fyi: This is what Write does. It sends binary data over D-Bus tubes,
which sometimes (on the initial join, just like in your situation)
happens to be an entire word processing file. We never send Python
objects over the D-Bus tube.

  Marc
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Albert Cahalan | 1 May 17:24
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Re: perceived sugar performance

Michael Stone writes:

> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 07:58:06PM +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:

>> * It deals with the problem of children clicking on 2-3 activities
>> at the same time, which proved to be a real issue in the field
>> (will faster activities address this? not sure).
>
> If you actually want to rate limit activity startup - why not just
> rate limit activity startup, perhaps with a "cooldown" effect?

This is exactly what Tux Paint has done for years. It holds a
lock file for 30 seconds. If it finds the lock file already
taken, it immediately exits. This works very well for kids.

> Instead, if you want to make it clear that people should be
> using one activity at a time, why not queue up launch requests
> and allow cancellation of all items in the queue?

For other reasons (GUI complexity and the OOM killer), the ability
to launch multiple activities should be disabled by default.
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Edward Cherlin | 1 May 20:41
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Organization was Re: A technical assessment of porting "Sugar" to Windows.)

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Mitch Bradley <wmb <at> laptop.org> wrote:
>  A general observation about organizational behavior:
>
>  Organizations do not act coherently to nearly the same extent as
>  individual humans.  Individuals change their minds, act in ways
>  inconsistent with their stated goals, respond to different external
>  pressures at different times, etc.  With organizations it is even worse,
>  and the larger the organization, the more complicated it becomes.
>  Organizational leadership changes, goals and external realities change,
>  internal groups vie for influence, compete with one another and work at
>  cross purposes.  Different people within the organization make
>  statements that are attributed to "the organization".
>
>  Expecting an individual to behave coherently over time is dodgy at best;
>  expecting it of an organization is almost certain to disappoint.
>
>  In the OLPC case, the leadership at the very top hasn't changed, but the
>  second tier has changed, and the situation and external pressures have
>  changed drastically.

Yes, the middle tier is now supposed to be Kim Quirk (Technology),
Robert Fadel (Administration), Charles Kane (Business Development),
and whoever replaces Walter in Deployment. Has anybody heard? The
failure to announce such things is one of my biggest complaints.

Kim and Robert are adamant about not supporting first world
deployments, although they sort of allow them. GiveMany is a joke, and
the OLPC community isn't permitted to discuss projects like Illinois
(100,000 units proposed) with the staff. I haven't talked to Charles.
(Continue reading)

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Gary C Martin | 1 May 19:01

Re: perceived sugar performance

On 1 May 2008, at 16:24, Albert Cahalan wrote:

> For other reasons (GUI complexity and the OOM killer), the ability
> to launch multiple activities should be disabled by default.

Do you mean 2+ instances of one activity, or multiple activities?

I do agree that UIs that support multiple activities (and switching)  
will be more complex than one that is completely modal. The iPhone and  
iPod Touch are the best current examples I can think of, though they  
clearly have some areas still to solve in terms of using several  
applications together to achieve something no single one could alone.  
Current lack of Copy/Paste is a well cited complaint (but I can see  
Apple solving/fixing that at some point, at least I hope so). There's  
also the whole conversation going on about will Apple allow developers  
to create background applications. These devices are currently more  
about accessing than creating, the XO is about creating and accessing  
– I think that changes the UI game enough to warrant activity instance  
switching.

Preventing multiple activities on the XO would be too extreme, I  
think, though it would be the next logical step down for UI  
simplification. For the younger end of the target audience I can see  
this being a positive (an assumption, I have no proof), but it would  
reduce the utility of the XO over a range of learning usage scenarios  
for everyone else. You loose much of the combinatorial effect of using  
several activities to achieve an end goal – can you imaging trying to  
write homework that need a photo added, images from the web, reading a  
pdf with the homework assignment/questions, or how an invitation to  
participative in another's activity would be very disruptive (say a
(Continue reading)

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Martin Dengler | 2 May 03:38
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Re: [PATCH] tweak battery charging (progress) bar

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 06:09:36PM +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu <at> tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 5:46 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> >  > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 8:56 AM, Martin Dengler
> >  >
> >  > <martin <at> martindengler.com> wrote:
> >  >  > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 02:03:21PM +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> >  >  >  > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu <at> tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> >  >  >  > > On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 2:17 AM, Martin Dengler
> >  >  >  > >  <martin <at> martindengler.com> wrote:
> >  >  >  > >  >  +        self.set_size_request(style.zoom(style.GRID_CELL_SIZE * 4), -1)
> >  >  >  > >
> >  >  >  > >  Sounds good to me, but I think Marco dislikes set_size_request.
> >  >  >  > >
> >  >  >  > >  Marco, what do you think?
> >  >  >  >
> >  >  >  > I don't think we should set palette size to a fixed width. The whole
> >  >  >  > gtk layout logic is dynamic, so that, for example, you can increase
> >  >  >  > the font size without screwing up...
> >  >  >
> >  >  >  There is indeed little point in having a nice auto-sizing GUI if code
> >  >  >  is going to fix assumptions about sizes.
> >  >  >
> >  >  >  In case you/anyone can think of something that might be acceptable, I
> >  >  >  want to make the motivation clear: 1) many of the palettes in the
> >  >  >  mockups at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Designs/Frame seem to have a
> >  >  >  fixed size; and 2) on IRC eben mentioned he liked the palettes a bit
> >  >  >  wider (IIRC), and I, after trying it out on my XO, found the same.
> >  >
(Continue reading)

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Martin Dengler | 2 May 03:38
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[PATCH] make width/text of battery palette look nicer

---
 src/view/devices/battery.py |    3 ++-
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/view/devices/battery.py b/src/view/devices/battery.py
index a97d014..e4d82d3 100644
--- a/src/view/devices/battery.py
+++ b/src/view/devices/battery.py
@@ -84,6 +84,8 @@ class BatteryPalette(Palette):

         self._level = 0
         self._progress_bar = gtk.ProgressBar()
+        self._progress_bar.set_size_request(
+            style.zoom(style.GRID_CELL_SIZE * 4), -1)
         self._progress_bar.show()
         self._status_label = gtk.Label()
         self._status_label.show()
@@ -120,7 +122,6 @@ class BatteryPalette(Palette):
                                        'min': remaining_minpart})
         else:
             secondary_text = _('Charged')
-            status_text = ''

         self.props.secondary_text = secondary_text
         self._status_label.set_text(status_text)
--

-- 
1.5.4.1
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