15 July 2008 : Java and the One Laptop per Child project 
The
One Laptop Per Child project is an ambitious project to develop a cheap, rugged PC designed for the educational market in the third world. The idea is to develop a system designed to allow every child in the third world to have a computer as an aid to their education. The target system was designed to cost $100 and be powered by human power since electricity in many villages is unavailable or unreliable.
The OLPC (frequently called the XO) ships with a specially designed set of applications. All code shipping with the system is fully open source. Most system software on the platform is written in Python. There is a unique operating system called Sugar layered on top of a version of Red Hat Linux. Because Java is not completely open source, java is natively shipped on the XO.
This talk describes and demonstrates the capabilities of the XO. The projects success and failures in meeting the announced goals are reviewed. While Java does not ship natively on the XO, it is possible to install Java and to run significant Java applications, a capability which may prove useful, especially in third world deployments. Finally the future path of the XO project is discussed.
Speaker Bio:
Steven M. Lewis has been working in the software development field since the early 1970’s. He had a PhD in biophysics and taught bioengineering at USC for 13 years. His specialties were simulation, respiratory control and gas exchange. He led the effort to convert software at IDX from C to Java in the mid 90’s. He was principal architect at OneWeb Systems where he build an XML based framework for delivery of web pages. He has been the Director of Development at Unified Signal Inc a company developing virtual private cell phone networks. He has lectured extensively on Java and helped develop the UW Extension’s advanced Java course. He recently worked at Combimatrix to develop the software for a machine to synthesis DNA microarrays on Silicon chips in Collaboration with Furuno Biologics. He is currently an independent consultant.
keikunchan, 108 days ago.
