[olpc-software] graceful handling of out-of-memory conditions

[Jim Gettys]

The problem is that the kids won't always have network access,
particularly when at home.

So we'll need some sort of store and forward mail.

Service discovery is going to be really important to us.

And similarly, we need to do our IM peer to peer, so that if a group of
kids are near each other, they can chat, without having to have general
net access (just access to the nearby kids).

Jabber looks like the most promising protocol for that; we can either
elect machines to be jabber servers dynamically, or work on making
jabber more peer to peer.  And jabber also has the concept of store and
forward messages (part of why it is probably our best bet as a
technology base for IM).


On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 21:24 -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Jim Gettys wrote:
> > 
> > I'm seriously considering abandoning evolution at this point.  For what,
> > is the question.
> >
> 
> While I won't bother to do a web search and quote stats ;-) I have the 
> impression that in the US people only use these Outlook-style mailers, 
> IMAP, etc. if their email account is provided by either school or work; 
> personal accounts are predominantly web mail of one kind or another.

If you are not a road warrior, that is.

Our kids are going to be somewhat like road warriors though: there are
many parts of the world where they won't have connectivity back to the
school in the evening.  With luck, however, they can mesh with at least
some of their classmates (villages of some number of families are common
in rural areas).  When possible, we'll try to tie them back to their
schools, but this won't be possible in many places.

> 
> On top of that, it seems to be widely accepted that teenagers talking to 
> teenagers these days use IM instead of email virtually always, using 
> email only to talk to adults or web stores or what have you.

Store and forward mail is useful for more than email, but for many other
sometimes connected services.

> 
> What this means is that a kids' laptop in the US could easily just punt 
> and say "get a hotmail/gmail/yahoo account"

Most, but not all, US kids.  There are very poor parts of even the US,
some of which I'm very familiar with (though due to Dolly Parton, that
particular area I know well is no where near as poor as it was 30-40
years ago when I first saw it).  Other areas have not been as fortunate
as that little piece of the Smokey Mountain region.

> 
> I won't pretend to know how email fits in to One Laptop Per Child, but 
> if a "thick client" mail app is uninteresting to US teenagers, perhaps 
> there are creative ways to avoid needing one on the global laptop too.

I don't think we need all the complexity of an enterprise client.  I do
think we have to have store and forward clients so that mail can be
dealt with off line.

> 
> Possible questions, Where does the IMAP server live in the envisioned 
> One Laptop Per Child deployment? 

Might or might not be IMAP.  We expect mail and other services run on a
small server at the school/village level.  Plug a disk into one of our
machines, and you have a low power server (though there are  even better
small boxes for that purpose that are very low power we'll probably use
instead).

> Could a webmail server live there 
> instead for example? 

Sure.  But a webmail server isn't fully sufficient by itself, given what
I understand the situation is in many parts of the developing world,
talking to some people who've been there (and getting lots of
innoculations so I can visit myself sometime soon).

> To what extent will the kids be using some sort of 
> chat, vs. email, and who will the kids be chatting with or emailing?

When connected, people all over the world.  I watch my own daughter
discover people to collaborate with on a world wide basis.  She
certainly uses both mail and chat; each have their place.  Mail is
time-shifting; chat is instantaneous.  Part of the intent is to be able
to tie kids together all over the world.  Think of schools/classes
paired with schools/classes in other parts of the world.
                    - Jim


-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child