One Laptop Per Child News

Sounds really great! It will, of course, have its own market.

What text formats will be available?
PDF? ODF reader? PS? (X)HTML?
An ODF reader should be available:
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/odfviewer
As is a firefox plugin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1888

It would be a kick-start if the reader could be used for Project Gutenberg.

Winter

Martin, I certainly think it can be a wonderful thing. There are plenty of instances where I believe it would be quite more useful than a computer, no matter how sophisticated.

Besides committing to buy one (or a few) when it comes to light, what else you think it's needed to make it work?

"since Illumination's own proprietary format holds around 300 pages of text and illustrations in around a megabyte."

Do the world really need another proprietary format? Why not using standard formats? I honestly don't believe that Illumination is better than others, mostly because we know very little about it. So is a comparison between Illumination and other formats (PDF, DejaVU, HTML, XML, OpenDocument), available or either being done?

I am asking this considering the cost of production of the ebooks themselves. A new format would not be necessarily cheap for publishers to support...

Hi

Well, I can see I need to deal with the technical specs pretty soon rather than just with the appearance of this little beast; I wil do so fully ASAP, but for now:-

The Illumination Reader uses its own format for books, that is to say, "Illumination". This is a book-creation suite with its own 'reader' software, which is written and compiled into MSDOS. The whole thing -- the reader, the reading software and all of the books -- thus forms a single unit, or concept.

Illumination, for instance, won't do anything other than anything other than read (or write) a book in Illumination format; and no other piece of software except Illumination can read an Illumination book.

This approach is of course highly unusual in these times, but has several quite large advantages. So far as I know, for instance, no other page format can put a complete 300-page illustrated book into just a megabyte of memory space; and this in turn is because all the Illumination reading software doesn't have to do anything except take a page out of memory (around 2 to 6 Kb) and bang it onto the screen in the form of coloured pixels.

Nothing else, no internet, no games, no keyboard, no mouse, no Windows, no overheads except DOS (FreeDOS will do nicely), nothing except a 40Kb reading program itself written in DOS.

(Every Illumination book, in fact, contains its own version of the reading program -- and this in turn will make it pretty easy to copy-proof, keep out viruses, etc.)

And all this, in its turn, means a power consumption of less than half a watt for the book-reader itself, which in turn means it can be powered by a solar PV panel . . .

Look, it's a 1990's piece of work, the whole damn thing, and although this implies some weaknesses it also, surprisingly as things turn out, carries some quite enormous strengths with it.

But the thing for me to get across right now is that every single book, in whatever language, which is read on one of these little beasts is gong to have to be translated into Illumination format --- which, fortunately, is extremely easy to do even for a non-computer person.

(It's been done, in fact, for a 200-page comic book called NERVOUS SYSTEM, whose author-artist had, in 1990, indeed never touched a PC in his life, and it only took me 4 hours to teach him all he needed to know, after which he went away with a borrowed PC and simply wrote it . . .

Enough for now --- ask more questions and I will answer them ...

Cheers, Martin

Hi all

"Minimalist." That's the word I was looking for. It's jolly minimalist and so is the whole thinking which surrounds it.

( Er . . . and also, one hates to be boring and all, but it's pretty green too. Dormouse-sized carbon footprint, I shouldn't wonder. )

Luv

Martin (and apologies for any typos)

I'm willing to bet big bucks that Martin has little more than a few drawings and an idea.

To put together the kind of product he has described takes more than a few months and a 'bright bloke a few miles away'.

Developing a 'proprietary format' is also something that smells of smoke and magic and is easy to pull out of a bag of tricks.

Martin, come back when you have a working prototype.

As far as the 'book reader' concept goes, I'd like to point out their inadequacy as a learning tool specially for young children or students. The power behind the OLPC idea is the creativity and learning loop in the activities, not a passive reading activity. Thats where products like the XO will take children beyond reading what others have written and actually contributing their own works.

For the dollar value (or Pounds sterling) the XO hardware and software package is worth more than a book reader.

Looks good. I wouldn't mind having one myself.

However, remember that the plan is to have the olpc down to $50 in a few years. And no doubt it will have competitors with similar capabilities and similar prices.

Remember, an ebook reader is basically a crippled computer. It has a cpu, memory, display, and input ports. But it is lacking a few other things like a keyboard and built-in storage (and in the case of olpc, mesh networking and human-supplied power).

That is important because if you add the missing parts in, you raise the cost maybe 25-50% but increase the functionality more than ten times. So a fully functional computer, once it is affordable, is a much more efficient investment for most people.

Kudos for Martin for his initiative, but I am afraid that I have to agree with Robert (above). Until there is a working prototype, what are we really talking about here? A design which features as its most critical technology component (the clock-stopping hot screen, to borrow some of Wayan's hyperbole) something that is simply to be taken from OLPC. This would seem to me to be a non-starter. A new proprietary page/file format ... this sounds rather ominous. (A nice touch, compiling into MS-DOS!) Whatever you feel about Negroponte and Co. (and opinions on this messageboard appear decidedly mixed), you can not but admire the fact that they have actually built a working product from scratch, in a remarkably short amount of time, which is going out into the marketplace. With with statements like "the thing for me to get across right now is that every single book, in whatever language, which is read on one of these little beasts is gong to have to be translated into Illumination format --- which, fortunately, is extremely easy to do even for a non-computer person" I don't wonder is Mr. Woodhouse is just having a laugh at all of us here.

Sorry to be a pain, but I have more concerns:

"to be translated into Illumination format --- which, fortunately, is extremely easy to do even for a non-computer person."

More details? Is there going to be a "back-end" conversion tool that accept any text format and delivers a fully encapsulated "binary" for the e-reader?

What about old books, for which no e-version is available. Those will most likely need to be scanned and converted. DjVY was designed just for this. How's the new format going to handle this issue?

What about figures, images, diagrams, formulas? Science is not simple text, but to be fully understood, it needs to be visualized. From what you describe, using DOS as a base may sound great for efficiency, but I don't think it will provide the ability to show appropriately graphics, formulas, and diagrams. Am I missing something?

Dear All:

Ancient Chinese Proverb:

"Person saying it can't be done should not interrupt person doing it."

=====================================================

I'm terribly sorry, people, but I already have around twenty Illumination books, each on a single diskette, each containing its own reading program, and each running on a fifteen year old computer under MSDOS.

If anyone would like a copy of one of these books --- "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" , laid out in colour by myself and gorgeously illustrated, also in colour, by David Pinnell --- all they have to do is send me US$25 and a postal address and I will send them one by return of post. Oh, and they will also need a similarly ancient PC running a version of Windows no later than 98 --- because, of course, later versions of Windoze won't run DOS properly.

Or:- You can have a copy of my own textbook on calculus, "NEXT DOOR TO NOTHING"; this is also fully illustrated in colour with graphs, diagrams, etc . . .

Or indeed, "NERVOUS SYSTEM", the wholly pictorial comic book I have mentioned above, created (in colour) by Andy Roberts . . .

---------

All twenty of these books, all of them illustrated in colour and several containing Flash-like animation, are currently running on the aforesaid ancient DOS machine standing three feet away from me on my desk.

( You can see all of this stuff on my website at
www.martin-woodhouse.co.uk )

---------

As for the reader itself: I have a schedule of all the components needed (including the solar panel and Mary Lou Jepson's screen) with current prices, and I reckon that the actual cost of the complete Reader will be well under $50 --- and probably in quantities of 250,000 plus, around thirty bucks? (I admit I am not a production engineer and that's therefore a bit of a guess.)

--------

It will cost, therefore, around $30,000 for my engineering friend down the road to build a working prototype, and another three million bucks or so to get the little beastie launched on the scale of the XO, the Classmate, the 'Aaaa', etc.

But I have approximately £300 in the bank and could put another £3,000 on my credit card, so at the moment, like I say, We Are Not "Go" . . .

If some kind organisation -- such as OLPC -- [ HINT ! HINT ! ] were to give us rhe money, though, I could probably have the first thirty Illumination books running on the Illumination Reader in front of the eyes of a small, poor, shoeless, Third World person, by, oh . . . Christmas?

Maybe not, since Murphy's Law would intrude --- but I do promise you, I'm already up and running (and a lot better looking and more functional than, say, the (monochrome, three hundred dollar) Sony eBook Reader . . .

Love to all,

Martin

Hello Robert

How many big bucks is that you're betting?

};->

Martin

Try my website instead www.schoolswithoutbooks.org

Hello again, Robert,

"As far as the 'book reader' concept goes, I'd like to point out their inadequacy as a learning tool specially for young children or students. The power behind the OLPC idea is the creativity and learning loop in the activities, not a passive reading activity. Thats where products like the XO will take children beyond reading what others have written and actually contributing their own works."

------------------------

I'm sorry, but (non-confrontationally, I hope) that is the sheerest of Digital Age nonsense.

(1) Children need to learn to read as their very first piece of education (after learning to talk) and BEFORE, LONG BEFORE they need to operate a computer (which, I agree, in these times, is an extremly useful thing too, and I am not trying to replace or even upstage the XO -- the kids will move on to it AFTER they have learned to read using the Illumination Reader and its books.)

(2) Excuse me, but I am highly educated and even a teeny bit creative, and only had bits of paper, sometimes bound into textbooks, to learn from? How about you?

(3) Yes indeed: I expect many, many Illumination books to be written by the Third World children themselves, in their own languages, as they grow up. That's why I built it to be so easy to use.

(3) -- and finally:- Find me or build me a solar-powered PC and maybe you're on.

I don't think so. Average laptop consumes around 20 Watts mean? The XO has got down to 9 Watts mean, and is aimed at 2 Watts. None of this can plausibly be supplied by a solar PV panel the size of a laptop lid.

I expect to run at 1 to 2 watts in the development stage -- my specified processor consumes 60 milliamps at 1.5v under light load, and transferring a page from memory to screen is a light load -- and to get down to between 0.1W and 0.2W mean fairly shortly.

My kids, like I say, don't have shoes, let alone books, let alone electricity, let alone access to the internet, let alone . . . Well, you get the idea? The Illumination Reader is for the world's poor. Meaning, POOR. You remember, like the village kids in Cambodia who started Nicholas Negroponte off in the first place, before he, and we, got sidetracked into cheap(ish) classroom PCs running Windows instead.

Cheers, Martin

Hello Paul Kelly

www.schoolswithoutbooks.org looks an interesting site and a good project.

What format are the books in and how big, for instance, is The Wizard of Oz?

Chers, Martin

Martin, if you were the esteemable Mr Sinclair then I'd probably throw you $30,000 but since you arent then I hope you find a backer.

Now on the subject of education, early learning techniques seem to ascribe to the creative process of finger painting, glue and cardboard, and sometimes learning the alphabet.

These early tasks are often pre-empted by crawling, walking and for the most part, talking.

The actual reading and comprehension needed to grasp the subtleties of 'A Midsummer Nights Dream' or other such literary classics may be missing in children before they reach the age of, oh lets say, 12 years old?

Perhaps your book reader may be used instead for classics like 'The Cat In The Hat' or perhaps 'Beatrix Potter' books. I know there are sure to be authors out there willing to take someone to task over copying their writings illegally.

Fortunately there are books in the public domain, as found on the Project Gutenberg. Perhaps something entertaining for young children could be found there.

I'm rather concerned also by your use of DOS as an operating system for your book reader. I'm guessing that you use MSDOS? Or have you instead used FreeDOS? I look forward to your prototype device made using a 'state or the art' display, a processor consuming 60 mA at 1.5 volts (a few MB of DRAM? the FreeDOS OS in a Flash Memory chip? some glue logic? a floppy drive to load in the books?)

I also think you need backlighting on the display since it will only be usable at night. During the day the children will have to leave them out in the sun to charge up. Its almost worth it since they will have, essentially, solar powered torches. Makes me think 'The Illuminator' is a perfect name for this device.

I just noticed an HP PocketPC sell on eBay today for $45. I wonder how many people would be selling their Illuminators on eBay when the run out of books to read.

With Love,

Robert.

Hi Robert

Oh, yes. Dr Seuss, Winnie The Pooh is where we'll start, and in fact even farther back: This is a hen. This is a crocodile. This is an egg. Hens lay eggs. Eggs turn into chicks, this is a chick, chicks grow into hens . . .
A, B, C, D, 1 2 3 ( and of course whatever the characters of their own languages may be . . .

See what I mean, all this precedes learning to use a computer; and by the time the little kids get round to using the XO they'll be just like all the other kids in the world (and unlike us) totally unafraid of computers, probably able to program them without much teaching -- certainly, able to write and illustrate their own Illumination books !

(Which we -- that is, Illumination Publishing Limited --) will publish for them.)

Oh, this is a vast, vast project, decades long, vaster even than Gutenberg (splendid though that is.) It starts at age four and goes up to age seventy four and more; from "This Is An Egg" to "Yes, Intelligent Design Is A Damn Sight Better Idea Than Dawkins".

-------

It is, Robert and everybody, going to be ****ing amazing. Gorgeous. World-changing, that goes without saying.

It'll be what Nicholas Negroponte wanted it to be, and more.

(Also of course it'll be misused by those who have the loathsome lust for power over others, just like every other good thing in this world. But I am too old to be able to take a hand in preventing that: I have just about time left to get it launched and pass it on to others.

Cheers and love,

Martin

"all they have to do is send me US$25 and a postal address and I will send them one by return of post."

Wow. 25USD for a 50USD device. What is it making it so expensive? Wasn't culture supposed to be free, or at least accessible?

"Dr Seuss, Winnie The Pooh is where we'll start, and in fact even farther back: This is a hen. This is a crocodile. This is an egg. Hens lay eggs. Eggs turn into chicks, this is a chick, chicks grow into hens . . .
A, B, C, D, 1 2 3 ( and of course whatever the characters of their own languages may be . . ."

It's going to be lot's of fun to read such stories with primitive graphic, if any, given the available info (I also checked the presentation in your website, but I couldn't find any actual screenshot or example).

I hate to bash the project, I really wish you all the best for it. However, you are doing exactly the same mistake Dr. Negroponte did, focusing on the hardware side, with no implementation plan. In a striking similarity you say that this will definitively work, and you are surprised because people don't see how great this device is. I bet no testing will be done, as it happens for the OLPC.

People will be waiting for the device. I will be waiting to see how this device will affect the education of kids. More specifically how the distribution of content will be implemented so that the kids will have access to the same large source of content available on the Internet. How kids themselves can create content for the device. Power efficiency is important. But I think it's more important the "what-you-can-do/watt" than the absolute value of wattage used. Empowering the kids to actually explore the world and create content is as important as reading, at any stage of childhood. The OLPC is not perfect, but at least it is designed to give that power to the kid. The e-book will never be able to do that. For you it's a feature. For me it's a great limitation.

Hello Nick

The points you make are all fair ones, and I think I can answer them just as fairly.

(Just as a start -- all the pages in the presentation from my website are exactly as they would look in an Illumination book (well except that Illumination doesn't do full photographic colour, it's limited to 256 colours which is easily enough for any and all artwork but not for photo-realism. It will, though, present monochrome photos perfectly.)

The reason I could't show any actual Illumination pages is that, currently, Illumination runs in 640 x 480 VGA so you simply can't put an Illumination page on screen in modern Windoze --- so I had to re-create them as ordinary (Serif, actually) pages.

Believe me, though, when you step through that presentation you are in effect looking at an Illumination book.

-----

The reason I'm charging $25 for an Illumination diskette is -- of course! -- that I'm collecting bunce to build the **** reader !

Illumination books themselves won't in any case be presented on diskettes but on plug-in RAM sticks.

A 1 Gb RAM unit will hold about 1,000-plus (illustrated) Illumination books, which (a) makes the "Libary at Alexandria" notion pretty well possible and (b) means each book costs about 0.00001 cent to produce, yes?

So what an actual book will cost the consumer is pretty much a question of how much its author(s) and illustrators get paid, plus some company admin costs, of course.

--------------

They will in any case be FREE to the kiddies in the Third World, that's pretty much the point of the exercise, yes?

--------------

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making about implementation and testing. If you mean we don't have many Illumination book yet, of course that's true, there are only about 20 - 30 of them in existence and they were all made between 1990 and 1994.

That, then, is indeed a question of building up a library, just as 'schoolingwithoutbooks.org is doing; but there's no difficulty in principle in doing it. It's just man-hours.

If you mean, testing and debugging the actual Reader, the hardware, then yes, that will take time just as it always does. But remember it's a hell of a sight simpler -- about 100 times simpler -- in hardware terms than any laptop; I don't expect it to work straight off the soldering iron but neither do I expect it to take a year (that's offering a hostage to fortune -- or to Murphy -- I know!)

If you mean testing the software, it's bug free
(and I mean bug-free) already and has been for fifteen years. Okay, bits of it will need rewriting to handle Mary Lou Jepson's screen, and SDRAM instead of a diskette, and stuff like that -- but, again, believe me, we're talking about 0.1% of the problems the Linux-BIOS team are having to fight.

( I'm no airy-fairy head-in-air designer; please remember that I built my first computer, from scratch, in 1957 -- hey, half a century ago! )

As for how the kids -- and other users, let's not forget -- will get their reading material into the machine, the answer is "by way of the plug-in RAM sticks and in no other way." No internet connection --- again, you couldn't run one on half a watt of power even if it happened to be available in the jungles of Gambia or wherever.

Sure, the RAM sticks will get their content from the Net, via servers in local schools, probably -- another reason why we still need the XO and its companions -- but the stick itself will be caried in sombody's pocket or sack in the Third World -- though when the Reader starts to takeoff in the West, as it certainly will, you'll simply take it off your key-chain and stick it into some kind of 'library vending machine.'

----

Cheers,

Martin

Nick

-- again: you say that it's 'what you can do per watt' which matters more than the actual wattage available?

I see what you mean, but, no, that's not so. It's 'what you can do per one-tenth of a watt', which is very different: the power you'ge got is the power you get out of the solar PV panel and that's it.

(And again, this is why we need a book reader AS WELL AS any mini-laptop . . .

Cheers,

Martin

Thanks for the clarifications, Martin.

The actual implementation depends greatly on the distribution. I am not talking about the medium per se, but the way the books will be available to the kids. Would you have some sort of "libraries" where kids can get their USB sticks where to download the books? Or is there going to be a server/kiosk somewhere where you plug in your device and download the books? Either way an infrastructure is required. Will the school manage it? Who will be responsible of maintaining it? Who will develop the server infrastructure?

This is in essence the testing I am talking about, trying to find the best way to distribute the content, trying to integrate it with the school system (if existing) or the local community. It would be really bad if for any reason no books were to be available...

I still have doubts about the utility of another device (you seem to refer to the reader as an addition to the XOs). Isn't that a bit expensive for the developing countries that are supposed to buy these things? Wouldn't be better joining the effort with OLPC and trying to make something together? The XO can be also an e-book reader. It'd be great (really, I mean it) if you could port Illumination to the XO. So all the books you would translate, they could also work on the XO.

Martin,

I have also had a little dream of a inexpensive, yet reliable book/notebook replacement for a good number of years.

However, I disagree on your design in certain points:

OS: Lightweight and efficient does not have to equate to old or proprietary, and we know that. Why MS-DOS? Why not a lightweight Linux distro made specifically for the device? This would in the end, probably prove even more efficient and enable some modern services that MS-DOS cannot.

Proprietary storage: I echo the sentiments of the previous poster(s) when I ask an emphatic "WHY?" For me there needs to be an extraordinarily good reason for such a device to use a proprietary storage medium instead of using one of the already high-capacity, popular flash storage mediums available today. For me, the idea is to free books and media and to encourage the exchange of information, not to limit it further.

The screen: I didn't see much on the screen, but I don't think LCDs today are good enough for this type of application. Instead I would look to e-Ink or similar technology, where power is only used to change the information on the screen, but none is needed to maintain it (a LCDs require).

Power source: If this device is to be used in areas without electricity, and in fact, if it is to become a worthy successor to the paper and pencil, then it should be able to function on a renewable energy source by default. My first thought is solar energy. Perhaps the device could sport a solar panel above or below the display, or perhaps there is a way of integrating a solar panel within the display itself.

Marketing: I have no qualms about this being available in the richer countries first. I think any popularity in theses regions of the world will allow component prices to go down for their introduction to the poorer areas of the world afterwards.

Thanks,

Gamoe

Martin,

With all the e-books you have, surely your target children need to know English language first?

ranti.

Martin,

Your $50 price tag depends on getting hold of the OLPC screens. However, that could be a problem, as there currently is only a single supplier and a LOT of demand.

Winter

Hello Gamoe (and all)

This question of the Illumination proprietary format seems to be a sticking point for many of us. May I explain my reasoning here?

The most common format for electronic documents at present is, I would guess, the .PDF file? I know there are others, but for formatted pages including diagrams and illustrations, PDF is it.

So, you ask, why not stick with PDF -- why do we need another format?

Answer: because, identical page for identical page, an e-book in PDF format is THIRTY TIMES LARGER -- or more, than exactly the same Illumination book. There's no question about this, the matter is fuly examined in the downloadable presentation found on the 'Illumination' page on my website.

Not only that, but in order actually to read a PDF file you need Acrobat, sitting on top of Windows, yes?

So in order to put a pictorial page of around 4Kb on the screen, you're going to expand it to 120Kb and then run, what? Adobe plus Windows -- 1.5 Gb, on it? Surely that doesn't make sense (except to Microsoft of course!) In pure engineering terms, it's massively, massively inefficient, and we usually discourage inefficiency.

But . . . yes, it's true that with today's equally massive memory storage, this sheer inefficiency doesn't matter much in purely practical storage terms. If the same book occupies 1.5Mb in Illumination and 45Mb in PDF format then okay, you can get thirty times fewer PDF books in a given chunk of external memory, but does that matter?

The answer is: "In the Wonderful World Of Windows", no, not much.

But thirty times smaller and a hundred times less reading software make a HUGE difference when, instead of having a 20-Watt laptop to play with, you're running on less than half a watt of solar energy.

Your laptop's battery weighs, what?

600gm for 33 Watt-hours, in my Toshiba Satellite; I've just weighed it. (Incidentally, that's a lot of battery to dispose of safely.)

But, at say 0.5 Watts, the Illumination Reader only needs a battery at all when it's running in the dark and the solar panel isn't pumping out that same half a watt to power it. So if we want to run for 3 hours in the dark before we need to recharge, then we need a battery capacity of only 1.5 watt-hours, or more than twenty time smaller than the Toshiba's. Say, thirty grams of battery, then?

-----------------

Look. You simply can't read a PDF e-book on a solar-powered machine, and that's it, really.

But you can read an Illumination book on it, easily.

That, in the end, is why we need another publishing format -- and when we accept it, a dozen other advantages coming crowding in: much, much cheaper; a huge library of children's books on a little RAM stick; far less toxic waste; far, far less to go wrong ....

... let's not forget that the three-year true cost of an OLPC XO has been estimated -- in these pages, I believe -- at not $100 or even $200, but getting on for $900 ? Isn't that right?

.... far less money; far less motivation to steal or sell the machine; it goes on and on.

-------

And let's not forget, either, that, good though Project Gutenberg is -- no, essential though it is -- it's still producing text files; if you want the same books as illustrated PDF files, you're going to have to create them, just as Illumination is going to have to.

Yes, it's the infrastructure that really, really matters in all this, as many articles here have said and as I wholly agree. It's the teachers, the libraries, the schools, the servers, the authors, the publishing houses --everything.

We're not making a machine, or two machines; we're building an entire educational system, and it will take years of effort whatever way we approach it.

I just see Illumination books, and the Illumination Reader, as a far, far cheaper doorway through which to pass when embarking on this huge task than any other.

Cheers, Martin

Quote: Not only that, but in order actually to read a PDF file you need Acrobat, sitting on top of Windows, yes?

No. The PDF standard is fairly open... I've used several different viewers on Linux, and of course the Apple Mac OS X is pretty good at reading them.

So the overhead of a PDF reader is probably not as bad as you fear.

I managed to find what appears to be an Illumination sample that you can download.

http://www.the-office.com/lunchbook/readit.htm

with information on their project here:

http://www.the-office.com/lunchbook/overview.htm

I do hate PDF files, big and slow, but Adobe's software isn't the only option, Foxit reader for example.

Why is their so little information? Why is their not more technical information for the reader and document format?

A size comparison:

An ODF document with some graphics
http://www.indato.ch/oss_analyse/Kurzanalyse_Open_Source_Software.odt

TXT - 32.3 kB
TXT.zip - 12.2 kB
ODF - 117.6 kB
PDF - 205 kB
DOC - 258 kB
RTF - 348 kB (lacks the graphics)
RTF zipped - 101 kB
Win2003 XML - 438 kB
Zipped XML - 98.4 kB

We can assume that the zipped TXT file is the absolute bottom of compression, removing anything graphical or formatting.

The zipped formatted formats, ODF, zipped RTF and zipped W2003 XML, are all around 100 kB, 8-10 times the zipped TXT size. This would be the bottom of what can be obtained with formatting and graphics. PDF is only twice as large.

If Illumination is really only 1/30th of PDF, this is obviously comparing to PDF with bitmapped graphics (else it would be even smaller than the zipped TXT version). That would only hold for books with really a lot of graphics, not you average text-book.

Winter

Martin,

Perhaps I was not clear. I was referring to the physical storage medium of the device. I was saying that there are already good flash-based storage mediums available like CompactFlash, and (regular and micro) SecureDigital.

As for file formats, I see nothing wrong with creating a new format for the device that is ideal for it. However, new does not mean closed. I really think it should be an open format. Also, I think it would be a mistake not to support the already well-established text formats (including those mentioned- TXT, RTF, and yes PDF).

As Peter mentioned, PDF readers are available for other platforms, and Adobe is not the only one who makes readers. Adobe has tried its best to make the PDF reader ubiquitous. In fact there is a DOS reader as well.

Oh and I from me as well. :-) You've got a good blog here!

Winter (and Martin),

"If Illumination is really only 1/30th of PDF, this is obviously comparing to PDF with bitmapped graphics (else it would be even smaller than the zipped TXT version). That would only hold for books with really a lot of graphics, not you average text-book."

The only way to really compare it face-to-face is to start from the same book and save it in the various formats, including Illumination and see what is the best one in terms of quality/Kb. That would show all of us how good Illumination is or isn't. Also it would show how easy/cost effective the back-end conversion is. I am expecting that a tool will be available so anybody can create Illumination content, not just Martin's company. Open source it would be nice too.

Martin, I think you'd silence a lot of us critics if you'd post a disk image of freedos + Illumination + a tiny sample text. I'm sure I could scrounge a computer with a floppy drive somewhere, or you could make a small CD image instead. Voila! Computers able to reboot into FreeDOS and show off Illumination, changing all this nay-saying to support and help evangelizing your tech.

OK, I did a quick comparison, that you are free to dispute... I used the freely available book suggested above:

http://www.the-office.com/lunchbook/readit.htm

The book is available both in Illumination and HTML. After a few conversions, here the results:

Illumination: 673Kb compressed, 1.09MB after installation.

HTML (with graphics): 209 KB

PDF: 200 KB

OpenDocument: 20KB

MS word 2003: 108 KB

RTF: 2.50 MB

We should take into account that Illumination also includes the reader with the ebook. FreeDos in its smallest version is 7.2MB.

However a properly designed OS, with PDF reader (or with OpenDocument-based reader with features reduced to a minumum to save memory space), can achieve the same and more. I am thinking a simple OS like PalmOS + PDF reader (the all thing for less than 10 MB).

Using as a start a very small distro with everything but the reader, would be also very small (Damn small linux, 50MB including networking stack, browser, utlities), probably about 20MB or less. Such OS would allow also something that Illumination would never be able to achieve: document bookmarking, commenting, etc. Afterall, when I read paper books I make comments, underline text and I expect the same from an e-version.

Hi Nick, Jon, Winter, Gamoe and in fact everyone

I was about to write a long screed on The Virtues of Minimalism but I see you have all beaten me to it !

And quite right too. Look, we know what happened to Nick Negroponte's original dream. It got turned over to the Wonderful World of Computing, where it's as simple as taking breath to say "Yes, but it would be nice, wouldn't it, if we just added This, and then That . . ." and before you can turn round, wham, you've got a (very nice) little laptop competing with a lot of other not-quite-so-nice little laptops for a market consisting of nice little well-dressed Asian girls and boys in a nice classroom somewhere.

Which, please, please and just because I am being a bit scathing about it, don't think I believe is unnecessary, I don't. It remains a terrific initiative and should be pursued as hard as possible.

It's just that we have another and even larger audience out there -- NN's original group, the kids in jungle- or desert-margin villages with no shoes, no electricity, water from the nearest stream or well, and barely any access to schooling. The people for whom the 'Yo-Yo' string-pull generator -- another excellenr idea -- is designed.

And -- I know because it applies to me too -- it's very difficult constantly to keep these people, these clients, these children in mind; it's terribly easy to get deflected onto the path which OLPC and others are now following instead -- a path which, I repeat, is both worthy and interesting in itself.

------------------

But to give something to these children, the shoe-less, we have to do something else, and we have to go back and start from scratch and ask, not "What else would it be nice to give them?", but "Sticking with the absolute basics which such a child needs to start learning stuff, HOW SMALL AND SIMPLE can we make things?"

"What, exactly, is the absolute barest minimum in hardware and software required to nothing except pull several Kb of information out of some sort of memory, do enough processing on it to make a beautiful/useful pattern from it, and bang that pattern onto a screen as coloured pixels?"

That's what I was asking myself, back in 1988 when I started all this --- and I'm totally delighted to see that you lot are already asking the same question, in the form: "Ok then, can we do any better than Illumination?"

You bet we can. You bet.

No, of course we don't need the whole X Mb of MSDOS, that's just what happened to be around at the time I started programming. We need a small core of MSDOS-like functions -- and sure, I don't care if this core, and the whole of Illumination, turns out to get rewritten in Linux, why not? All we are doing is sending bitstreams of instructions to the relays, which happen these days to be -- literally -- several million times smaller than they were when I built LETTUCE from Post Office telephone switchboard relays in 1957 at the Medical Research Council. But they're still just 'the relays' -- that's what "digital" means, right?

I bet you, in other words, that it's indeed possible to build a Reader about half the size of Illumination which will do the same job, and to hold a coloured picture in memory at even less size than I've done with Illumination's pages.

--------

"Okay" -- this is me, Mister Smart-Ass, speaking -- "so why hasn't anybody done it, then?" If I can do it, it can't be that hard. So how come a 75-year-old smart-ass, working on his own on a Surrey hilltop, can come up with a reader which is, what? about five times better than the e-book teader which all those bright young guys and gals in Sony's design department have come up with?

The Sony e-Book Reader, at three hundred bucks or whatever? It is, friends. to laugh. 'C'est a fou rire', as we say in France.

The answer is:- Because they weren't thinking straight, or asking the right questions.

It now seems that we, collectively, are doing so.

Let's go then, bubbachooks. Eh?

Cheers and love,

Martin

Hello Adam

You ask (perfectly reasonably) :

"Why is their so little information? Why is there not more technical information for the reader and document format?"

Because all that information exists only in my head (and, okay, untidily and rather loosely, in a 4-ring binder on the bookshelf behind me as I sit here, and on a couple of rather ancient 386 PC's to left and right of me.)

And if you ask (just as reasonably) "Why is that?"

-- then we'd have to go into the whole history of Illumination, from when I typed the first line of it in C in 1988, onwards

-- but, basically, because nobody was in the slightest bit interested in 'cheap electronic books in colour' in 1992, 1994, 1997 or at any time since; until, in fact, the OLPC project hove into view . . .

-- and even then, as I have pointed out in these pages, nobody seems terrifically interested either . . .

Boo-Hoo-Hoo? Big tears? No, because in addition to being anciently bloody-minded and a smart-ass, I am basically a cheerful person, as you can easily see from my picture at the head of this article. So I just went away and wrote another novel.

( I am however more than a little annoyed right now on behalf of the millions of shoeless Third World children whom I think might benefit from Illumination, but that's a different matter. )

Cheers'n love,

Martin

There is much more to the Intel OLPC deal than we were told first:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/27/technology/fastforward_negroponte.fortune/index.htm

"The reception to the Intel news in the many developing countries where Negroponte has been indefatigably promoting his computer was "nothing short of euphoria," he says. "A number of government officials e-mailed me to say 'My god this makes my job easier.'""

However, the following sounds rather "If the neighbourhood bully beat you up and stole your lunch money, we blame you", (remember, Intel is now officially in court for illegal practises in the EU):

"But there is suddenly more maturity on both sides."

Winter

In re Intel/OLPC:

This sounds like a classical monopolistic merger (although in a completely undeveloped market, which makes the question of market distortion hard to calculate). Given the imbalance of monetary resources the resulting product mix will in no way inhibit Intel's plans, and should enhance their hardware.

OLPC should, if it chooses, benefit from Intel's ongoing R&D in educational implementation. Of course, this assumes a reciprocity between the two parties which may not exist. Remember, Intel has the cash resources, while OLPC has only its design and its public image. If OLPC gets cooperation from Intel then it may be able to climb down from the Constructivism limb onto something more stable.

It may, however, turn out that Intel is all get and no give, and OLPC will have to settle for removing direct competition while still dealing with Intel's selective augmentation of the Classmate design (or whatever comes next in that product line). Such an approach could shrink OLPC's prospects for world domination, which might be a good thing.

My concerns all along were that OLPC's rash "we-don't-need-teachers" implementation approach would be the only game in town and would end up badly, thus closing down the prospects for any alternatives in that market. The way the merger is proceeding shows some hope that the game will get bigger and other approaches will be available.

In general, good news, but much of this analysis is based upon speculation. Time to watch the Kremiln closely.

Winter,

Thanks for the link re: Intel and olpc. Really remarkable what it has to say.

"All that, as well as the stunning physical design of the XO, will now be available to Intel to incorporate into the Classmate, if it so chooses. "We're giving them all our technology," Negroponte says. If and how this will happen will take many months to figure out, of course."

That would be bad news if olpc were a corporation set up to make profits selling laptops. But instead it is about making IT available in the developing world, and the more companies are working at it, the faster it will happen.

Olpc has completely changed the game. For decades oem's have ignored the developing world, producing computers were not at all suitable for most of the people in the world. Now olpc has produced one, a whole new market has opened up, and Intel has been forced to sign on. More companies will no doubt join in.

Lee,

You have spent decades in the developing world trying to adapt computers that are simply not suitable. Now oplc has developed one that is. Why don't you figure out how to make use of it in your own projects?

Putting this more broadly, your projects are based on computers being very scarce in the developing world. In a few years olpc and other computers will be down to $50, and computers will become abundant, like they are in the developed world. Doesn't that imply you should change how you go about your projects?

Eduardo Montez,

You give me too much credit. I have not been working for decades on computers in the developing world - only since 2000 when the first meeting was held which led to the Jhai PC. Prior to that I developed several computer designs that have survived and prospered (the primary design being that of the video architecture for the personal computer). I do not consider myself to be a failure.

I have stated several times in this blog that the hardware and system software design of the XO represents a major and necessary advancement for computers in the developing world. Somebody had to do it, and OLPC did it first. I have stated my admiration for the entire OLPC design team.

I do indeed plan to use the OLPC technology in whatever I do for the developing world. I wish you would realize that, as I just stated in the next to last paragraph of my post, my concerns about OLPC have to do with their implementation strategy and not hardware design. I do maintain a concern that OLPC will not make their final product design openly available. In 35 years of developing products I have observed that when the money is on the table the rules often change.

Nothing that you have written changes my opinion that an appropriate implementation strategy should be grounded in the perceived benefit to the community of the implementation. Perceived, that is, by the members of that community, not perceived for them by experts or enthusiasts.

Please direct your comments toward my arguments, and not at irrelevant issues or falsely stated assumptions.

Well I guess I need to appologize for reading in a position that you do not actually hold.

The reason I assumed that you were so negative is that your comments about Negroponte have been so negative. However, it seems that this was not related to your position about the oplc technology as such.

Regarding the next to last paragraph about implimentation strategy and how that seems be changing now that Intel is on board: we started out in different places, but it seems we now have roughly the same position.

"OLPC should, if it chooses, benefit from Intel's ongoing R&D in educational implementation. Of course, this assumes a reciprocity between the two parties which may not exist. Remember, Intel has the cash resources, while OLPC has only its design and its public image. If OLPC gets cooperation from Intel then it may be able to climb down from the Constructivism limb onto something more stable."

I don't have much doubt that Intel is going to help oplc with implimentation. I think Intel joined up with oplc partly because it sees a new market is developing, and wants to help it grow, and helping oplc with implimentation is a key way to do that.

Martin, though the OLPC display is its finest technological achievement it might be overkill for your application if you don't plan to show video on your device. You might want to consider this alternative (the current models lack color but it has been demonstrated):

http://www.zbddisplays.com/

Hi Jecel

>Martin, though the OLPC display is its finest technological achievement it might be overkill for your application if you don't plan to show video on your device. You might want to consider this alternative (the current models lack color but it has been demonstrated):<

Many thanks, I will be getting in touch with them tomorrow !

Cheers,

Martin

Martin, I am glad to find your important work. I lead the Minciu Sodas laboratory for independent thinkers around the world, and we have quite a lot of activity in rural Africa. We have a real need for a device that would let one download onto their USB flash drive and read offline the activity of our community (letters, wiki pages, chat transcripts) and preferably to be able to write responses and then upload them from their USB flash drive when they have access. I am realizing that such a "flash drive editor" could consist of say two USB flash drives (10 USD or less each), a standard computer keyboard (10 USD or less) and a simple device that would allow one to edit text files and share files (100 USD would be satisfactory but preferably 50 USD and ultimately 20 USD). I think our projects have a lot in common, see: http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?WordProcessor but based on our on-the-ground experience suggest to focus on USB flash drives. I also imagine a Linux based system would be more straightforward. I am very interested in how we might work together. I want to apply for EUREKA research funding and work with the Italian trashware community. Also, I alert you to the Macarthur Foundation and HASTAC Innovation Awards http://charitychannel.com/publish/templates/?a=14249&z=26 which I learned of through Pamela McLean in London who leads our Learning From Each Other working group. Success with your project and I appreciate any help you might suggest or provide.

Just so people don't reinvent the wheel...

1.Electronic Paper without the need for computer chips or LCD backlighting. It is called Gyricon from Xerox PARC. It can display books, newspapers, and photos.It can be made to any specified size (paper to wall poster).

2.A more efficient computer paradigm is in development. Alan Kay got a multi-million dollar(US) contract fronm the US National Science Foundation. He is to making a computer from the ground up that only uses 20,000 lines of code (compare 5.7 million lines for Linux) that includes operating system and all the applications. The reduced code will lead to reduced silicon. The project: "Steps Toward the Reinvention of Programming: A compact and Practical Model of Personal Computing as a Self-exploratorium"

Such an efficient system is smaller and cheaper than the OLPC.

What makes the ebook idea a little less likely to take off.

1. It's just an ebook reader which means it's something that someone in the future will undoubtely be dumping for cheap on the market. That's a good arguement against it, because it seems to mimic the other available technology that will come down in price.

2. It doesn't have any of the wow features of new integration to sell the geeks of the world to want to not only push it, but to own it. In other words the give one buy one XO is successful because geeks want to look at one themselves. This is because the OLPC has several bundled features that put it beyond a normal laptop which is specifically toward the third world. Your thoughts are good for affordability and ebook reader goals. There surpassed however by the extra features that the OLPC will have. Because your thoughts are merely a subset of the OLPC goal they are little more than a distraction to the OLPC group (my opinion) why? Because they need to focus on the goal at hand to be a success. Give one, Buy one program will be a big part of that success, I predict it will be so successful due to pent up demand for this device, that it will have to continue. It would be dumb to not continue it, but that's off the subject. Imagine the demand for give one, buy one, once these things start hitting the streets and more people want to own one themselves. It will be like the Iphone but much more affordable. I bet I could sell 20 or 30 of them once I get them and start showing them to geek friends. As a matter of fact, I think the XO laptop will just sell itself, judging from the interest I see when I talk about it to computer geeks.

3. Your dealing with an older book paradym which is easy to sell from the many books perspective, but has little advantage over the many ways a kid can grow and learn using OLPC.
OLPC is NOT just about reading ebooks, although it should do it well.
It's not just about colaborative learning, although it should do nicely. It's not just about games, although it can offer some basic ones. It's not just about surfing the net, although it can do that. It's not just about providing a cable network for kids to turn a villiage into a web or non-web communication system with a mesh network although it does that. It's not just about developing a device that can be powered in a number of ways with cheap chargers, solar and other wise. In short it's much more than a book reader but perhaps a child authoring system in a box which we will see as it's used and also a safe school when kids can't walk to school and have to do "work from home" or "school from home" which is something that would be very good for kids in countries with a lot of street crime. In leverages learning beyond a simple room and that's a major selling point, which even OLPC hasn't apparently put across to some of the implementing countries.

4. Do you see the appeal, it can do any and all of those things. Most complaints about what it cannot do will fall into the dust of emotional responses, but not logical arguments. Because, it's design clearly answers all the drawbacks pointed out and it's expandable via software updates. As for the stability, the first rollout guys report stated 12 OLPCs could be loaded in 5 minutes, which is much faster than reimaging and flashing any Apple, PC or other OS on the personal computer market. So it's easy to upgrade.

Most of the unique features you have in your reader are due to the fact that you've pared back dozens of features from the OLPC. If I'm a third world government and looking at options and reasons to purchase an OLPC vs your ebook reader or the PC clones that are being offered by Intel, there's not even a decision to be made.

OLPC blows away all the competition. Think about it, how much time and gadgets it would take to replace the OLPC with convnetional PC equipment or macintosh equipment.

Okay I can buy a Pepper pad, (I get a touch screen for $400 more. but third world kids don't need hardware that expensive.)
I can buy a cheap laptop on Ebay, which will fail in harse environments if it's cheap and sucks power from a grid that doesn't exist in the third world.
I can run Windows programs on the thing, add a wifi router that requires more power. Then again if the cheap PC windows laptop has a camera in it, which most don't it would cost me more so I can add a camera and some package to it.
I can add an ebook reader mode to the laptop, but most cheap laptops won't configure to this mode, only the expensive ones. I suppose I can add your imaginary $50 reader to the list.
I can give the kids dongles that they may lose with 1000 books on them instead of having them on a server which has a drive at school or a USB drive on an OLPC which acts as a localized server.
I can add to these whatever Bill Gates Office programs he'll throw in for free, which may include a bloated up Word, which is so overfeatured there's no room for any other program to exist on the laptop if it's moderately configured.

I can do all these things and perhaps throw in a text messaged phone or software so kids can launch some program to message with each other. And don't forget the explorer software which undoubtely will be filled with ads and enticing things for kids in the third world to "buy" which they cannot afford.

So after than the kid has perhaps $500 to $800 worth of crap to haul around and they'll never have the flexibility of an OLPC and it will be stuff that will be lost, uncompatible and the same ol crap that PC and Macintosh users are stuck with every day. (Windoze being worse.)

And when you look at the responses from Bill Gates and others to try to compete with OLPC, it's a joke. I mean come on, they think that they are going to be starting with a "free" we are going to get you into our camp of consumers and expect to be selling these kids maytag washing machines running Windows XP-with-washingmachine-extensions and big screen TV's. Most of these kids may never see a higher tech toy or device in their lives after seeing the OLPC.

If anything can be faulted in the OLPC mindset it would be it may open their eyes to the world to much and give them a sense of need and greed and wishing for a life in the "first world" which will not be available. With things like Peak Oil looming on the markets of the world and that being the inescapable cause to crush the worlds economies and virtually put us all back into a stone age, or at least something a lot more like subsistence farming. OLPC will not pull mankind out of the basic problems that exist which are tied to cheap fossil fuels. In one sense it's a pipe dream geek fantasy, in other sense a great opportunity to help some third world kids get a great learning tool.

OLPC is not about the internet, but it could be.
It's not about ebooks but it can.
It's not about games or cameras, or sustainable technology from a duribility feature set, but it is.

The ebook reader your proposing is so much less I can see the "bargain" aspect your trying to sell, but it's so much less, the geek in me seems to feel it's not enough.

Half the arguments you get from these posts are that you could add more, and the other half that your hardware, software and ideas are to bloated or undoable. That should be a hint. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just not anywhere nearly as good. All the flaws of the OLPC arguments except perhaps protection from porn internet surfing would be equally valid against your idea, so your basically in the same camp.

I think that for OLPC to succeed they have to ignore for the most part the flack and noise that they get from many who are floating alternative systems. They already have so much of the design idea correct, there is NO WAY they can easily see the impact or all the ways these will be used. But that's the great thing about it, it's such an expandable tool.

Hello Greg

You've clearly put a lot of thought into your criticism and I am far from rubbishing it --- but the clue to its major, major flaw is that it's written by a self-confessed geek (which is fine) and for geeks (who represent a market in which my own interest is so far below zero as to approach the temperature of liquid helium.)

Greg, there are rather more than two BILLION people in this sorry world who don't have electricity. Please, please, please, get that thought, that realisation, into your mind

These two billion people, including most notably the children among them, represent a group whose interest in the XO, The Classmate, in Linux, in the Internet, in laying games and taking photographs, etc is also a mile or two below zero.

They are the people who interest me.

And who, once upon a time, interested Professor Negroponte, though not any more.

And BTW, my reader is not a stripped down (or pared back) version of anything ---- and it's the continual tendency of people to think of it that way which puts the blinkers over their eyes.

Give me a call when you find a laptop computer which will run on an average electrical consumption of 0.2 watts and we'll have something to talk about. Until then, we are simply shouting at each other across a gap as wide as the Pacific ocean.

Cheers,

Martin

It occurs to me that that I too have a "pared-back" computer which also falls a long way short of being a decent laptop.

It only computes. Boring. I use it every day, though.

It's called a calculator.

Pretty useless bit of gear, really, eh? Won't connect to the Internet, can't take pictures either, and not much use for playing games. Very dull. You'd think someone would give it a decent Linux front end, what?

( But, come to think of it, it is solar powered.)

Cheers'n love to all,

Martin

1. Everything, sooner or later, gets dumped for cheap on the market. Every last technology gets superseded. It's the nature of technology and with the blistering pace of development of computer/communication technology everything is going to be dumped sooner rather then later, OLPC included.

2. Who cares? I'm a geek having built all my own computers for the last twelve years, futzed with various techno-toys etc. So what? In the big, wide world there are a lot more non-geeks and proto-geeks and potential geeks then geeks. A tool designed to be of interest to geeks alone is a tool that'll only effect geeks. The technology's moved past the point where only trained professionals and dedicated amateurs can participate and that's the direction of the future.

3. The book paradigm has the virtue of universal appreciation and use. Show some one that the gadget is Book 2.0 and you've probably provided them all the training they're likely to need since the book paradigm is so widely shared. You won't have to explain about the concept of pages and how they relate to the concept of chapters. All you have to do is show a user how to access the paging function and the knowledge maps to their existing knowledge and experience with books.

4. Not quite sure what this point is about but limiting functionality to e-book capabilities dramatically cuts costs and development time which is pretty important when you're aiming at very poor people as end-users. Functionality that drives the cost of the gadget out of the range affordable by end-users is functionality that undermines the value of the gadget. Simpler also means time to market is reduced getting the advantages of gadget to the people most in need of it's value.

Hello allen,

You're too right, mate, and I'll tell you another virtue of simplicity: one of my calculators --- it's a Casio, I see from the rather grubby back of its case -- is twenty-plus years old and still works exactly as well as it did when it was new off the shelf.

If the Lightbook can be built for twenty dollars, and I'm pretty sure it can, then to educate a child with it over ten years --- the only figure which matters --- assuming its reading material works out at less than a cent per book, is going to cost two dollars plus a few cents per year.

Okay, lets assume that fifty per cent of the things get lost, dropped in deep muddy water, jumped on, or swapped for a goat before the end of their lives, that means three dollars a year.

As against how much per year for an XO or a Classmate plus infrastructure?

Cheers,

Martin

Sounds great. As a long time e-book reader I'd be vastly interested, but it needs to read a variety of formats, including Mobipocket ( the un-DRMed version at least)

I don't like the sound of proprietary memory formats. Standard SD cards formatted FAT32 would be much better.

Philip Johnson

Hello Philip Johnson --

SD cards, maybe. FAT 32, no.

FAT32 needs Windows.

The Illumination Book Reader does not, could not, and doesn't need to use Windows, since it is solar powered.

Please do remember that my own, possibly eccentric, interest lies not in the developed world but with the children (and adults) or the jungle, the desert, and the slums of Haiti or Madras who have no access to electricity.

And in any case the notion of using around, what, a gigabyte of Windows in order just to read some symbols and simple pictures in colour from a screen is surely, er, not a very good idea? I can do it very nicely with 30 kilobytes of program reading 16K of memory, from plain old DOS.

Let's leave Windows to the Wonderful World Of Computing, whose abstruse demands it fits very nicely, but which is not the world of reading.

----------

None the less I thank you genuinely for your expressed interest; e-book reading is going to be the single largest area of digital processing within a few years and the more people whose views influence it now, the better.

I myself have for the moment been forced to drift away from the design and production of the Illumination Reader itself, since it doesn't look as though any person or commercial organisation has the simple good sense to support it financially. Too bad; somebody is missing out on a few billion dollars in revenue, let alone upon benefitting the non-privileged of this world.

But it means I shall have to raise the necessary few million dollars seed capital myself.

Fortunately, this is not a very difficult matter; it's childishly simple to extract it from the the world's commodities and futures markets with a fairly primitive computer program and a bit of day-trading (plus a little original thought, naturally).

I did this, using Cargill in Zurich as brokers, in 1985 --- as could presumably be checked via their archives --- and am about to do so again. )

With cheers and love to all,

Martin.