next »

[anna]

Microsoft thoughtfully put a highres image of XP on the XO in their press release.

Press release:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-15MSOLPCPR.mspx

Image here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/press/2008/05-15MSOLPCPR_lg.jpg

Zoom in and look at the corners of the XO screen, particularly the lower left.  I'm no image forensic expert, but that looks like an overlay.

[teapot]

Microsoft thoughtfully put a highres image of XP on the XO in their press release.

Press release:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-15MSOLPCPR.mspx

Image here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/press/2008/05-15MSOLPCPR_lg.jpg

Zoom in and look at the corners of the XO screen, particularly the lower left.  I'm no image forensic expert, but that looks like an overlay.

The image is definitely an overlay -- lower corners obscure the scren border, and black areas around the screen are nowhere to be found. However diagonal graininess of the blue background seems to suggest that it may be taken on XO or XO emulator, and pasted to compensate for camera's contrast/dynamic range. Pretty strange considering that XO screen is not particularly bright or glossy.

One thing is certain, Microsoft heavily manipulated everything that it produced about its XO-related development.

[anna]

If anyone in the Linux community engaged in that kind of fakery, they'd be forever discredited.

For example, the Ubuntu on XO proof post:
http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operating_system/how_to_ubuntu_on_xo_laptop.html

If any of that had been photoshopped or if the video clip was modified with Aftereffects (which I highly suspect the XP video was), there would have been a huge outcry.

I'm sure MS has something running on the XO, but I doubt it's anything like what they've publicized.  Unfortunately only they know and aren't opening it up for inspection.  I don't care to see XP on the XO any more than a lot of other people in this community, but I also don't care to be lied to.

If what they're doing is dangling out the promise of XP on the XO to make people wait on implementations, then trot out their XO competitor at the last minute, that's dishonest and wrong.

[Jordan]

Conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories.

Give me a break.  It looks like that photo is intended for the press to use in publication.  It wouldn't surprise me if that sort of touch-up is the norm, if not for the difficulty of photographing screens, because photos at that resolution would likely show individual pixels on the screen.  (It looks cool, but to most people it would look shoddy.)  The XO makes photography even more difficult, because a photograph in well lit conditions would only show the monochrome layer.  Try taking a photo of the XO with a flash if you don't believe me.

[blommer]

Reading sracer's archive of posts reveals that he is one of the most level headed, non-partisan, positive contributers to this forum. Criticism is very important to this organization that used the G1G1 promotion as a beta run. In my opinion, XP on XO was the one *realistic* thing that could have saved the terrible software implementation that is Sugar. The XO must have power management. Remember the promises of 10+ hour battery life (even talk of measuring it in days!) Personally I would have preferred something like Puppy Linux, but since OLPC burned their alt-Linux bridges early, Win XP is the closest thing the XO will get to a fully functional OS.

[markb]

I too believe that the image on the microsoft site has (at least) been touched-up. However, following the link to the developers blog throws up more convincing image:

http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/jamesu/WindowsLiveWriter/WindowsontheOLPC_B314/X0_Screen_1_

I don't feel involved enough to seriously question whether XP on a OLPC is good or bad in terms of all the OLPC philosophies; however I've yet to be convinced that giving OLPCs running XP to a bunch of kids without access to computers could be considered a bad thing.

[the cab]

Notice how the HDD light (the one on the far left) only comes on during bootup and is off the entire time during the demonstration EXCEPT when he flips the screen around to show off Internet Explorer in book mode.

Please explain: How is this odd? I run teapot's wonderful Ubuntu from the SD. The HDD light does not come on as it is not reading from ... the HDD. XP runs from the SD as well.

[teapot]

Reading sracer's archive of posts reveals that he is one of the most level headed, non-partisan, positive contributers to this forum. Criticism is very important to this organization that used the G1G1 promotion as a beta run. In my opinion,

There are plenty of trolls that do nothing but make post on boards with random "criticisms" of any opinions that anywhere approach being popular on those boards -- this kind of troll, for example, is the most successful at this point on Slashdot. sracer's posts are only slightly above that level.

XP on XO was the one *realistic* thing that could have saved the terrible software implementation that is Sugar. The XO must have power management. Remember the promises of 10+ hour battery life (even talk of measuring it in days!)

If you think, current version of Sugar is "terrible", I do not even dare to describe what you can expect from the current state of XP implementation on XO.

[loser]

its good to see that this thread amounted to something newsworthy.

[anna]

Notice how the HDD light (the one on the far left) only comes on during bootup and is off the entire time during the demonstration EXCEPT when he flips the screen around to show off Internet Explorer in book mode.

Please explain: How is this odd? I run teapot's wonderful Ubuntu from the SD. The HDD light does not come on as it is not reading from ... the HDD. XP runs from the SD as well.

I dunno how it works on other XO's, but I also have teapot's wonderful xubuntu on the XO.  I booted it up last night to doublecheck and did notice the HDD light on after bootup.   I even commented out the NAND mount in fstab and still got the light.

Besides, in the video, the guy supposedly saves the video he recorded to the internal NAND.  And no light.

I'd be OK if it was either on or off during the demo, but the discrepancies bother me.

[Peter Ruhe]

I have failed to find any documentation to explain what the 2 left-hand LED indicators mean. But I personally suspect the left-most LED, which is shaped like a "lollipop" or maybe a fat radio antenna, means the WiFi radio is ON and connected to a wireless access point.  The other left-hand LED indicator seems to flash during actual WiFi data transfers.

In the Home view, you can disconnect from your wireless access point, which darkens the left-most LED for a while, until the XO starts searching for a connction again.

I sort of wish there was an indicator for transfers to/from nonvolatile storage. Sometimes my XO locks up, and I am clueless if it is doing anything internally. I come back later and it seems to have rebooted itself.

[mobyus]

Having carefully looked at the picture of xp running on the xo and also the video showing xp running on on the xo I feel comfortable adding a few observation. First the picture is clearly an overlay. Having established that fact, the first question is why lie about it, if as has been claimed, that xp does indeed run on the xo? Secondly the video is full of cleaver edits. It's not one continuous presentation. This doesn't make it a fake merely a commercial. Setting aside the emotional arguments of whether or not it is appropriate for xp to be offered as an alternative OS, the bigger question is what applications can be run on the xo?

Keeping in mind that the xo was designed as a learning tool for children, especially in developing countries, are the applications that run under xp suitable for children. There are certainly other fundamental questions that the developers of Sugar have already confronted and Microsoft has not. For example. Does xp provide for mesh networking? Do applications running on xp allow children to collaborate on documents, share pictures or creating music? What happens when the 2 Gig SD card is lost or damaged? And what about the problems with viruses, spyware, malware? Are millions of children suppose to buy Anti-virus programs just to be able to use the xo? While it may be possible technically, to run xp on the xo, is it practical to do so. These are serious questions.

Every time Microsoft uses deception they lose credibility. If Microsoft is intent on promoting OLPC and the xo they need to at a minimum be honest.

[teapot]

Every time Microsoft uses deception they lose credibility. If Microsoft is intent on promoting OLPC and the xo they need to at a minimum be honest.

Microsoft's credibility is firmly in the territory of "so bad, they are expected to get away with anything", so it's not really a problem for them.

[Gabey8]

Does anyone else have the sneaking suspicion they did something like this for the XP demonstration?

mplayer -fs xpdemo.avi

To spell it out, I'm bringing up the possibility that they captured the output from a regular XP machine to a video file and played it back on the XO to produce a carefully choreographed demonstration.  Yeah, I know it sounds like a bizarre conspiracy theory.

It's not bizarre, and it wouldn't be the first time that a company created a presentation on how an as-yet-unwritten product was supposed to work.

The company where I had my first job ever did something along those lines. They wanted to create a new document storage system. Fine. So, unbeknownst to me, they put together a demo that did what the document storage system was supposed to do. Now I was a programmer for them at the time, but I supported the products that we were ALREADY selling. The document storage system was outside my range of responsibilities, and I didn't have a problem with that.

Anyway, one morning, I saw them running the demo, in anticipation of showing it to a potential customer. I was impressed. "You guys wrote this system already, and it's up and running? Boy, that was fast!"

Nope. The document storage system was vaporware. The DEMO was what they'd worked on first, and by gosh, that was functional. The product didn't even exist, but they could demonstrate it. 

I was completely bewildered by their logic. "Um, shouldn't you actually HAVE the product and do the demo with that? Wouldn't that be safer? What if it takes longer than expected to create one of the functions that you're demonstrating?"

They looked at me like I had three heads. I didn't "get it", apparently. Getting a customer to purchase a nonexistant product, before you've written any of it, is apparently good business practice. At least, they thought so.

It wasn't long before I decided to find another job elsewhere. The company was starting to go in new directions that didn't suit me anyway -- I just didn't expect that the new directions would include what, to me, was a breach of ethics.

Incidentally, that document storage system exists NOW -- for kicks, I looked up my former employer a while ago to see if they had a website, and their storage system is prominently featured as their flagship product. But it didn't exist as of the time when I left the company... however, that demo was running just fine. 

[Jordan]

Here's what I think:

The XO is very similar to a PC and Windows NT has a very versatile kernel.  The processing and memory resources that the XO provides are also fairly similar to those required by XP when it was originally introduced.  On top of that, Microsoft also has a shitload of money and buckets full of talented staff.  They could pull of XP on the XO, and probably have pulled off XP on the XO.

Are there hurdles?  Probably.  The DPI of the XO screen would probably make most applications marginally usable.  Imagine the font size of Opera's menubar, only having to deal with that system-wide.  Other things probably haven't been implemented on XP before either, like mesh networking, so they would have to do that from scratch.  They probably have to do some fine-tuning of the system since certain components probably would bog down the XO, and they probably have to do so to fit in their business models.

I think that all of this talk about "faked" demos is pure bulls**t.  Sure there may be an overlay of a screenshot on a photo of an XO, but there is probably a pragmatic reason that has more to do with publishing photos than conspiracy theories (see my prior post).  If there are issues with the video, it probably has more to do with the people shooting the video then editing it into something palettable for viewing.  Do you seriously think that video clips on the evening news, from credible broadcasters, receive any less editing?  No.  Because the sad fact is, an unedited video would be dreadful to watch.  Just watch amateur productions on YouTube to see what I mean.

Mostly though, I think that the ideas being put forth by Linux zealots are just red herrings.  The Linux camp are the ones who lack credibility because of their persistent desire to overstate irrelevant facts, their persistent desire to claim that issues with Microsoft products 10 years ago persist to this day, and their blinders that refuse to let them see anything positive in Microsoft.

If you want Linux to be credible on the XO, make Linux credible on the XO.  If you cannot develop the software or document the system so that others can develop the software, at least sit down and create a list of reasons why Linux (and particularly Sugar) is a better platform for education in the developing world.  That list should emphasise the positive about Linux rather than the negatives about Microsoft because, quite frankly, Linux zealots have absolutely no credibility when it comes to their innate beliefs about Microsoft.

When you make the list, make sure it is things that educators and kids would care about.  Quite frankly, no sane educator is going to care about an open source kernel or an open source web browser or an open source word processor.  While it may provide freedom, it is not a meaningful form of freedom for what they do.  Things like open source activities may make sense, but you have to phrase it in the right way.  "You can customize the software for your needs," just doesn't cut it because most educators don't have the time to do that.  Something like, "motivated students can investigate and experiment with the inner workings of the software, to explore concepts beyond the pre-programmed confines of the software," may interest a few educators and a few kids.

Also make sure the benefits are honest.  Saying that the XO encourages collaboration is dishonest.  From what I've seen, very few of the activities allow children to collaborate.  Saying something like the XO has a collaborative word processor is honest, because it is here today.

The XO has an image problem.  Yes, a big part of that image problem comes from Negroponte and his gang.  Yet a big part of that image problem comes from the open source world as well.  If we're going to get over that image problem, we're going to have to get over being so darned negative about everything and we're going to have to be honest.