I remember I use to enjoy that game immensely when I was younger. I almost do believe it may very well help a person to develop their thinking abilities.
It helps develop their thinking abilities. After all the Maxis buildings are replaced with EA buildings, signs, logos, skyscrapers. People will instantly know whos the man.
Is this to give the kids a virtual sense of what it's like to live in a 1st world country? "look at all of the nice luxuries you will never experience!" how about the irony of building a nuclear powerplant on a computer you have to handcrank?
This comment is funny, but it relies on a common misperception that the poor kids for whom the OLPC was created have no idea what modern urban life is like. Most of them live in or in the shadow of large modern cities, Johannisberg, Kolkata, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Manila, and Mexico City, just to name a few. They have plenty of opportunities to see modern life, they just don't have much opportunity to participate.
Let me help you out with a simple analogy. You read slashdot, right? So, you have plenty of opportunities to see beautiful women, but all you get to do is watch, from a distance. That's why you bought that stick of Axe Deoderant.
Great, now all the kids in third world countries are going to think that western cities are subject to alien attacks if you type "cass" more than 3 times.
I see I'm too late to beat our cynical Slashdotters to the punch. Instead of complaining about how evil EA is, and what kind of ulterior motives they may have, can we simply not recognize this as a net Good Thing? I know I learned a lot of planning for the future, fiscal management, and balancing multiple (sometimes conflicting) priorities while still achieving overall success, from that game as a child. Technical issues aside from making the game run, this will be a great gain for OLPC users.
First, the legal details:
The GPL source code version of SimCity will not be called "SimCity", but we will use the SimCity source code to make a city building game called "Micropolis", which was the original working title of SimCity.
That's because EA reserves the right to review and QA the official version of the game that's published under the name "SimCity" on the OLPC.
So we can make improvements to the TCL/Tk version of Micropolis (based on the GPL source code), and submit them to EA for review and QA
When I first got my copy of Sim City years ago, I was such a jerk as a mayor. I had a damn fine city. No crime, no pollution, no trash, no fires, no NOTHIN'. It was the perfect city. I always managed a surplus, and the city could keep growing and growing. My excellent management skills made sure everything was compact and efficient. I was extremely creative in my infrastructure. I was also a jerk. When I realized that I was doing TOO good of a job, I decided, "That's it. This is boring. I'm going to be a jerk." So I started putting airports right smack in the middle of residential sectors, putting a single factory in the middle of a commercial district, making roads that could easily go straight zigzag, and making huge detours when I could easily put an inter-section. I also raised taxes as high as possible without having people get too mad. The power was really, really fun. Now, do we want a world full of egotistical ten years who are jerks to those who follow them "Just 'cause." I think not!
Of late, it seems that EA is cleaning itself up. I between screwing up C&C: Generals (a patch for the expansion left the game in a broken state for a few years), employee mistreatment, and generally writing mostly shovelware franchise titles like Madden, I had been boycotting them. But now I think they deserve another chance because:
Spore
Give away the original C&C
Made a C&C game that actually has a story connected to the rest of the C&C games
One of the first developers to realize the Wii had potential
So while I'm still keeping a close eye on them, they've at least convinced me that their games are worth buying.
I've been reading Good to Great [jimcollins.com], and I think EA's acquisition of Bioware is interesting. Bioware not only makes good games, but they also develop some interesting engine technology. For example their infinity engine was used by a number of other games and recently we read that Mass Effect's chat system will be used in other EA titles. It seems like a more sensible acquisition to buy a company for their catalog and game tech expertise than to do it just to exploit the popularity of certain games. It could
sim city was great. sim city 2000 was awesome. sim ant was pretty fun, had some really humorous moments. sim farm was tough. every farm i built went bankrupt except almond farms. maybe it was too realistic. sim life was cool as far as i could tell, it really taxed my pc at the time.
i still have the floppys, manuals and boxes for all those games. top quality stuff, i don't think you see materials of that quality any more when it comes to games.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday November 08 2007, @04:50PM (#21286879)
A lengthy mailing list post [anonymouse.org] from Alan Kaye, one of Papert's colleagues, raises the possibility that SimCity is not as constructionist as it seems at first glance:
SimCity is similar but more pernicious. It is a black box of "soft somewhat arbitrary knowledge" that the children can't look at, question or change. For example, SC gets the players to discover that the way to counter rising crime is to put in more police stations. Most anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and economists would disagree violently. Alternate assumptions can't be tried, etc.
This particular version of SimCity may be different, though, because it is open source. However, the children won't be able to truly experiment with it on the XO laptops until it is converted to Python, since the XO laptops don't ship with a C compiler (and children probably aren't going to pick up C easily, anyway).
I guess this is the reason that the US of A has the highest ratio of police to civilians in the world, as it gives them the lowest crime rate in the world.
Simcity is a simplier game, hopefully the kids will be able to better understand and hack it given that they will have the source code available to play with.
People who complain that SimCity and its successors don't accurately model city building and management are missing the point. No simulation can totally model the complexities of a city. The reason SC is educational is because it teaches skills like creative problem-solving, planning, and risk-reward tradeoffs. What's the optimum road layout? Is it cost-effective to use parks to offset the unhappiness of high taxes? Will that nuclear power plant allow for greater growth in future years, or will the cost of replacing it in 50 years bankrupt me? Hell, any game that teaches people to budget and stay out of debt is a good thing--imagine what the national debt would be like if the President had played SC. (okay, that's over the top, but very few people have a grasp of how debt really works)
So what if the only way to reduce crime is building police stations. The educational part isn't the concept that police prevent crime, the educational part is the skills learned in figuring out how many stations to build, and in what locations, to achieve an acceptable crime rate while not spending too much money.
I remember SimCity on the Amiga, and accoring to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] its been on OS/2, MacOS, SNES, Acorn, BBC Micro, GBA, Linux, Playstation, ZX Spectrum, and many more.
I ported the Mac version of SimCity to SunOS Unix running the NeWS window system about 15 years ago, writing the user interface in PostScript. And a year or so later I ported it to various versions of Unix running X-Windows, using the TCL/Tk scripting language and gui toolkit. Several years later when Linux became viable, it was fairly straightforward to port that code to Linux, and then to port that to the OLPC.
Once the dust settles, I'd love to port SimCity to the TomTom GPS navigator device.
TomToms run Linux, of course, so it won't be very difficult.
Then you could operate the bulldozer by driving your car around!
It would be safest to play it in the desert, so you didn't run into any real buildings.
Disclaimer: I work for TomTom, and we're looking for some great Linux hackers! It's a great company to work for. Please send me email if you know Linux well, want to live in Amsterdam, and hack Linux on TomTom
SimCity isn't abandonware, and even if it were, you couldn't distribute or run it on the OLPC, for technical and legal reasons. The point is to extend and adapt the open source code for the needs of education, not just run the old version under an emulator.
I really don't see where they are going with this being educational. Get out on a jobsite and start pouring concrete. Things are a little different than they are in that game. I would know.
A game, used in a supervised setting for educational use, with an actual plan: Growth in learning.
A game, used in an unsupervised setting, without any plan: Is just a leisure pursuit.
Unsupervised games are the rock foundation of human society. What exactly do you think toddlers, kids and teenagers do when they play cowboys and indians, marbles, crash-the-truck, imitate-mom-and-dad-in annoying-ways, spin-the-bottle or other completely random, unsupervised, goal-less games?
I agree that there's a need for goal-driven and supervised learning (whether it takes the form of games or not), but games played in a leisurely fashion, without specific goals, are just as important in the development of a child. Not only that, but they are the only way that children can actually grow on their own, unless their educator/parents are supremely gifted and know the children better than they know themselves.
Education is more than just knowing how to pour concrete. I pity the soul that thinks that it isn't.
Funny that someone here has linked to my companies site...
Our original goal at CitySimulation was to do what Google is doing now- build every major city in the U.S. in a real-time virtual environment. Our models are not built as quickly and easily (Google has airplanes with laser scanners, vans with mounted cameras, and high-tech GPS photo mapping software), but since every square inch of our models are 'hand-crafted', they are a lot more accurate, and of higher quality.
Since we never got any investors to buy into the idea, we had to rely on doing developer projects, one building at a time. It' a nice use of real-time technology... A developer has a challenge of convincing the city council that their proposed building will fit within the context of the site and its surroundings. With an interactive model (like a video game), many questions about a design can be answered in one meeting.
Anyway, we're now moving on to areas that Google and Microsoft are not (yet) interested in- proposed buildings/renovations, and building interiors. It's fun work, as close to creating video games that I'll probably ever get to be.
I've learned TONS of things from games and other diversions on the PC.
Mavis Beacon (explicitly educational) taught me proper typing, but chatting with my friends on AIM and (especially) busy IRC channels taught me to type FAST.
Shadow President is the reason I can locate practically any country on a map faster than the vast majority of people.
A lot of stuff in my political science classes (and my own readings on philosophy in general) reminded me of ideas and people in Deus Ex.
Medieval: Total War taught me more about medieval political geography, politics, and technology (war-related tech, that is) than I was ever taught in any level of my education (yeah, I know more from reading, but no class ever taught me this stuff; we always skipped from talking about the Fertile Crescent to covering the Age of Exploration. Seriously.)
Rome: Total War and a couple of its mods (Rome: Total Realism and Europa Barbarorum, especially) have taught me a TON about the Hellenistic and Roman periods of history. Thanks to them, I know BOTH the Koine or Attic Greek AND Latin names for tons of Mediterranean cities (though I often don't know the modern name!)
Bushido Blade 1 & 2 and Shogun: Total War taught me the names of a bunch of different Japanese weapons.
I know a bit about the operation of a variety of firearms that I've never physically used, from paying close attention to the reload animations in dozens of games over the years (Counter-Strike and most WWII shooters are GREAT for this).
OK, so a lot of it's not *useful* information, but I did learn:)
That version of SimCity is the original SimCity Classic code written in C, packaged as an ActiveX control. It's not written in Java or JavaScript (or PHP for that matter).
The version of the code we're releasing initially uses the TCL/Tk scripting language and user interface toolkit. But the simulation code itself is written in C. It's plugged into the scripting language, which can call it, but only integrated to a limited extent (just what the user interface required, not exposing all the workings of the simulator).
Next we will repackage the original simulator as a Python module. The first step is to recast the original C code into a C++ class, so all the global variables and global arrays are local instance variables of a SimCity object, so you can have any number of simulations active at one time and they will not interfere with each other.
After SimCity is recast as a C++ object, we will plug it into Python and other scripting languages by using SWIG, which is a nice way to integrate C and C++ code into a whole bunch of different scripting languages.
Then we'll rewrite the user interface in Python, based on the other efficient modules that are integrated into Python but written in C or C++, including the GTK user interface toolkit for X11, the Cairo graphics library (like PostScript graphics but much better and hardware accelerated), the Pango text layout engine (draws with Cairo, supports internationalized text, so SimCity can support Unicode text and be translated into languages with non-English-like layout such as Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.), a C++ tile engine I wrote for Python that draws with Cairo, pie menus I wrote in Python that draw with Cairo, and many other useful modules.
The idea is to open up the simulator so it can be easily and deeply scripted in Python. It was designed for the C64, so it can run extremely fast (on the order of a year a second) on the OLPC, and there is plenty of left over CPU power to call back into an interpreted scripting language like Python, and still be quite playable. It will still run very fast, because the core number crunching will still be written in C, but it will be able to call out to Python hooks and plug-ins, and Python will be able to reach in, tweak the simulation, change the parameters, edit the model, etc, so you'll be able to program your own disasters, monsters, tornados, editing tools, zones, artificial intelligence, robots, agents, etc. And also implement network sharing features, muti-player features, journaling and storytelling features, tivo-like fast forward and rewind features, etc. The goal is to inspire kids to learn Python programming and develop their own games, by reimplementing SimCity's user interface in terms of reusable components.
Hey, why don't you help Mitch Bradley port his excellent Forth system to run on the OLPC? It already does, but it's in the OpenFirmware boot ROMs, so it runs before Linux even boots. But the same Forth system runs quite nicely under Unix as well (without all the direct hardware access:), and is quite luxurous. I used it on the Sun 3 and Sparcstation years ago, and worked at Sun as his summer intern on CForth, another portable Forth system. Mitch is one of the best and most accomplished Forth programmers o
Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
What's next? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
cruel and unusual (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:cruel and unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me help you out with a simple analogy. You read slashdot, right? So, you have plenty of opportunities to see beautiful women, but all you get to do is watch, from a distance. That's why you bought that stick of Axe Deoderant.
Now do you understand?
Parent
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Too Late... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats that overhead? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First, the legal details:
The GPL source code version of SimCity will not be called "SimCity", but we will use the SimCity source code to make a city building game called "Micropolis", which was the original working title of SimCity. That's because EA reserves the right to review and QA the official version of the game that's published under the name "SimCity" on the OLPC. So we can make improvements to the TCL/Tk version of Micropolis (based on the GPL source code), and submit them to EA for review and QA
Do we want a world full of jerks? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do we want a world full of jerks? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oops, wrong OS.
EA Not Being Evil for a Change (Score:5, Interesting)
Of late, it seems that EA is cleaning itself up. I between screwing up C&C: Generals (a patch for the expansion left the game in a broken state for a few years), employee mistreatment, and generally writing mostly shovelware franchise titles like Madden, I had been boycotting them. But now I think they deserve another chance because:
So while I'm still keeping a close eye on them, they've at least convinced me that their games are worth buying.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been reading Good to Great [jimcollins.com], and I think EA's acquisition of Bioware is interesting. Bioware not only makes good games, but they also develop some interesting engine technology. For example their infinity engine was used by a number of other games and recently we read that Mass Effect's chat system will be used in other EA titles. It seems like a more sensible acquisition to buy a company for their catalog and game tech expertise than to do it just to exploit the popularity of certain games. It could
Two things... (Score:2)
- What about the open source lincity ?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The screen will also do colour.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1#Display [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
sim (Score:2)
i still have the floppys, manuals and boxes for all those games. top quality stuff, i don't think you see materials of that quality any more when it comes to games.
SimCity not all that constructionist... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SimCity not all that constructionist... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
Rails not roads (Score:5, Funny)
why not sim city 2k? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
So what if the only way to reduce crime is building police stations. The educational part isn't the concept that police prevent crime, the educational part is the skills learned in figuring out how many stations to build, and in what locations, to achieve an acceptable crime rate while not spending too much money.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"OLPC SimCity is based on the X11 TCL/Tk version of SimCity for Unix developed and adapted to the OLPC by Don Hopkins..."
Re:Linux?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
More SimCity links (Score:5, Informative)
I ported the Mac version of SimCity to SunOS Unix running the NeWS window system about 15 years ago, writing the user interface in PostScript. And a year or so later I ported it to various versions of Unix running X-Windows, using the TCL/Tk scripting language and gui toolkit. Several years later when Linux became viable, it was fairly straightforward to port that code to Linux, and then to port that to the OLPC.
SimCity Info
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/index.html [art.net]
Video Tape Transcript of Toronto Usenix Symposium Keynote Address
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/keynote.html [art.net]
Video Tape Transcript of HyperLook SimCity Demo
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/hyperlook-demo.html [art.net]
HyperLook SimCity Demo Video
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/HyperLookDemo.mov [donhopkins.com]
Video Tape Transcript of X11 SimCity Demo
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/x11-demo.html [art.net]
X11 SimCity Demo Video
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/X11SimCityDemo.mov [donhopkins.com]
Linux SimCityNet Demo Video
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/SimCityNetDemo.mov [donhopkins.com]
Cellular Automata in SimCityNet on Unix Video
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/CellularSimCity.mov [donhopkins.com]
Unix World 1993 Review of SimCity
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/simcity-review.html [art.net]
Multi-Player SimCity for X11 Announcement
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/simcity-announcement.html [art.net]
SimCityNet: a Cooperative Multi User City Simulation
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/simcitynet.html [art.net]
SimCity-For-X11.gif : Screen shot of SimCity running on X11.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/SimCity-For-X11.gif [art.net]
SimCity-Indigo.gif : Multi player X11 SimCity running on an SGI Indigo.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/SimCity-Indigo.gif [art.net]
SimCity-NCD.gif : Multi player X11 SimCity running on an NCD X Terminal.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/SimCity-NCD.gif [art.net]
SimCity-Sun.gif : Multi player X11 SimCity running on an Sun.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/SimCity-Sun.gif [art.net]
HyperLook-SimCity.gif : SimCity HyperLook Edition. SimCity running on HyperLook, a user interface development environment for the NeWS window system.
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/HyperLook-SimCity.gif [art.net]
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/index.html [art.net]
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/NeWS.html [art.net]
-Don
Parent
Re:More SimCity links (Score:5, Funny)
I have a toaster that doesn't run it yet.
I you do that port, I can pay you in... um, simtoast.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Once the dust settles, I'd love to port SimCity to the TomTom GPS navigator device. TomToms run Linux, of course, so it won't be very difficult.
Then you could operate the bulldozer by driving your car around! It would be safest to play it in the desert, so you didn't run into any real buildings.
Disclaimer: I work for TomTom, and we're looking for some great Linux hackers! It's a great company to work for. Please send me email if you know Linux well, want to live in Amsterdam, and hack Linux on TomTom
Re: (Score:2)
Even funnier, it's intended for markets like these.
Here's the info: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Vista-Starter-Edition-in-Images-57484.shtml [softpedia.com]
Re:not much of a donation (Score:5, Insightful)
SimCity isn't abandonware, and even if it were, you couldn't distribute or run it on the OLPC, for technical and legal reasons. The point is to extend and adapt the open source code for the needs of education, not just run the old version under an emulator.
-Don
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A game, used in a supervised setting for educational use, with an actual plan: Growth in learning.
A game, used in an unsupervised setting, without any plan: Is just a leisure pursuit.
Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that there's a need for goal-driven and supervised learning (whether it takes the form of games or not), but games played in a leisurely fashion, without specific goals, are just as important in the development of a child. Not only that, but they are the only way that children can actually grow on their own, unless their educator/parents are supremely gifted and know the children better than they know themselves.
Education is more than just knowing how to pour concrete. I pity the soul that thinks that it isn't.
Parent
Re:Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nonsense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Our original goal at CitySimulation was to do what Google is doing now- build every major city in the U.S. in a real-time virtual environment. Our models are not built as quickly and easily (Google has airplanes with laser scanners, vans with mounted cameras, and high-tech GPS photo mapping software), but since every square inch of our models are 'hand-crafted', they are a lot more accurate, and of higher quality.
Since we never got any investors to buy into the idea, we had to rely on doing developer projects, one building at a time. It' a nice use of real-time technology... A developer has a challenge of convincing the city council that their proposed building will fit within the context of the site and its surroundings. With an interactive model (like a video game), many questions about a design can be answered in one meeting.
Anyway, we're now moving on to areas that Google and Microsoft are not (yet) interested in- proposed buildings/renovations, and building interiors. It's fun work, as close to creating video games that I'll probably ever get to be.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People like you are the reason I hated school.
Re:Tag as SLASHVERTISEMENT (Score:5, Interesting)
Mavis Beacon (explicitly educational) taught me proper typing, but chatting with my friends on AIM and (especially) busy IRC channels taught me to type FAST.
Shadow President is the reason I can locate practically any country on a map faster than the vast majority of people.
A lot of stuff in my political science classes (and my own readings on philosophy in general) reminded me of ideas and people in Deus Ex.
Medieval: Total War taught me more about medieval political geography, politics, and technology (war-related tech, that is) than I was ever taught in any level of my education (yeah, I know more from reading, but no class ever taught me this stuff; we always skipped from talking about the Fertile Crescent to covering the Age of Exploration. Seriously.)
Rome: Total War and a couple of its mods (Rome: Total Realism and Europa Barbarorum, especially) have taught me a TON about the Hellenistic and Roman periods of history. Thanks to them, I know BOTH the Koine or Attic Greek AND Latin names for tons of Mediterranean cities (though I often don't know the modern name!)
Bushido Blade 1 & 2 and Shogun: Total War taught me the names of a bunch of different Japanese weapons.
I know a bit about the operation of a variety of firearms that I've never physically used, from paying close attention to the reload animations in dozens of games over the years (Counter-Strike and most WWII shooters are GREAT for this).
OK, so a lot of it's not *useful* information, but I did learn
Parent
SimCity and Python (Score:4, Interesting)
That version of SimCity is the original SimCity Classic code written in C, packaged as an ActiveX control. It's not written in Java or JavaScript (or PHP for that matter).
The version of the code we're releasing initially uses the TCL/Tk scripting language and user interface toolkit. But the simulation code itself is written in C. It's plugged into the scripting language, which can call it, but only integrated to a limited extent (just what the user interface required, not exposing all the workings of the simulator).
Next we will repackage the original simulator as a Python module. The first step is to recast the original C code into a C++ class, so all the global variables and global arrays are local instance variables of a SimCity object, so you can have any number of simulations active at one time and they will not interfere with each other.
After SimCity is recast as a C++ object, we will plug it into Python and other scripting languages by using SWIG, which is a nice way to integrate C and C++ code into a whole bunch of different scripting languages.
Then we'll rewrite the user interface in Python, based on the other efficient modules that are integrated into Python but written in C or C++, including the GTK user interface toolkit for X11, the Cairo graphics library (like PostScript graphics but much better and hardware accelerated), the Pango text layout engine (draws with Cairo, supports internationalized text, so SimCity can support Unicode text and be translated into languages with non-English-like layout such as Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.), a C++ tile engine I wrote for Python that draws with Cairo, pie menus I wrote in Python that draw with Cairo, and many other useful modules.
The idea is to open up the simulator so it can be easily and deeply scripted in Python. It was designed for the C64, so it can run extremely fast (on the order of a year a second) on the OLPC, and there is plenty of left over CPU power to call back into an interpreted scripting language like Python, and still be quite playable. It will still run very fast, because the core number crunching will still be written in C, but it will be able to call out to Python hooks and plug-ins, and Python will be able to reach in, tweak the simulation, change the parameters, edit the model, etc, so you'll be able to program your own disasters, monsters, tornados, editing tools, zones, artificial intelligence, robots, agents, etc. And also implement network sharing features, muti-player features, journaling and storytelling features, tivo-like fast forward and rewind features, etc. The goal is to inspire kids to learn Python programming and develop their own games, by reimplementing SimCity's user interface in terms of reusable components.
-Don
Parent
Forth on the OLPC, OpenFirmware and ChipWits (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, why don't you help Mitch Bradley port his excellent Forth system to run on the OLPC? It already does, but it's in the OpenFirmware boot ROMs, so it runs before Linux even boots. But the same Forth system runs quite nicely under Unix as well (without all the direct hardware access :), and is quite luxurous. I used it on the Sun 3 and Sparcstation years ago, and worked at Sun as his summer intern on CForth, another portable Forth system. Mitch is one of the best and most accomplished Forth programmers o