I have posted before about the One Laptop Per Child Program (formerly known as the $100 Laptop).

Below is a video of the first working prototype of the OLPC laptop.
The initial cost will be around $130 but as economies of scale go into play the hope to make the $100 goal within a few years.

I think with the red horns it looks like “da debbil”.

HT to Engadget

Scott

My wife took this picture of a bird in our backyard. I found out at BirdersWorld.com that its a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.

More info at my wife’s blog.

UPDATE!!! Tim O’Reilly has posted on this controversy. Here its is.

IMHO, his response is appropriate and he honestly says he does not know what they will do about the Service mark. Ultimately, I think that it would be unwise for them to defend their trademark, even for Conferences and Live Events. I think the amount of respect and mindshare they have among IT geeks is impressive and if they decide to actually defend this trademark, they risk alienating their core contituency. Defending this trademark is contrary to the spirit of Web 2.0.

One of the things he did emphahsize was the hatefulness of the blogosphere’s response toward him and his company and that his trust in the collective patience and wisdom of the blogosphere has been shaken. I agree with him on that. I was shocked at how visceral the reaction was from many commenters. Many also said they would never buy ORA books again. I think thats just plain stupid. They have the best books on the market, hands down, and this past weekend I added to my copious ORA collection when I bought their Head First: HTML. It is awesome.

I hope they do the right thing to resolve this controversy, but no matter how it shakes out, I still have a lot of respect for the man and his company.
We are still gonna have our conference this summer.

Scott
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As someone who has been a Technology professional for almost 15 years, I have always admired the technical books published by O’Reilly. Probably more than half of my technical books are published by them. The company, led by Tim O’Reilly, has worked hard and long as a media company to develop a reputation among IT professionals as the best in the busines and an advocate for many of the important ideas and movements in the industry, such as Open Source software and more recently Web 2.0 and AJAX.

Well, O’Reilly is taking a major blackeye right now in the blogosphere because their lawyers (technically its the lawyers of a partner company, CMP, who has acted with the full faith and consent of O’Reilly) has sent a cease and desist letter to a NON-PROFIT in Cork, Ireland that is having a “WEB 2.0 conference” and O’Reilly has recieved a”service mark” designation (similar to a trademark) for the term “WEB 2.0″.

The irony is that the whole concept of “web 2.0 is” about technology changing things such that community, sharing and openness becomes apart of the new web. And now they have claimed intellectual property over the term “WEB 2.0″ and sued a little guy in Ireland, who is a new father to boot. If you want to read more - here is the blog of the guy who received the cease and desist letter and here is the official corporate response from O’Reilly Media. My prediction is that O’Reilly will completely back down and apologize before the end of the day today.

As a result, I am announcing - THE FIRST ANNUAL FAT TRIPLETS WEB 2.0 CONFERENCE -to be held sometime this summer on the dock at my dad’s lakehouse. Free beer will be provided as well as guaranteed interesting discussion on everything geeky.

Scott