Archive/Current Events/2009-09-11

Sugar Digest
1. The car allowance rebate system (CARS), more commonly known as the “Cash for Clunkers” program, was used to bail out the US auto industry. People who had purchased gas guzzlers were rewarded with $4500 towards the purchase of a more fuel-efficient car. Of course there was no subsidy for those of us who commute by bicycle—I could use some new panniers.

Maybe it is time to bail out the US education industry. When will the US government announce the "Sugar for Clunkers" program? It would work a bit differently than the car program in that with Sugar, there is no need to subsidize the purchase of replacement hardware—we'll have to find another program to bail out the computer industry. Simply replace the clunker software that most schools are using—Windows 2000 or Windows XP—with Sugar. Sugar is, of course, free—as in speech and as in beer. Any government subsidy could go towards teacher workshops. “Yes we can!”

2. I had the opportunity to present Sugar to HRH Princess Ubolratana Mahidol at an MIT Symposium, “Miracle of Life”, which focused on her youth development program in Thailand. John (J5) Palmieri and I demoed Sugar on a Stick to the princess (See photos from the event). We had an animated discussion and I will be following up with Khun Paron, a leading pedagogist in Thailand regarding next steps.

Help wanted/help offered
3. Today is Fedora Testing Day. Sebastian Dziallas is leading an effort to test the latest Sugar on a Stick beta (based on Fedora 12). Please join us in #fedora-test-day on irc.freenode.net. See Fedora Test Day for details.

4. Caroline Meeks has found a volunteer in NYC who has offered to help us make videos for Sugar Labs. Is there someone who could help him get up to speed on Sugar?

In the community
5. Simon Schampijer has posted notes about his Sugar pilot in Berlin. See his blog or read about it in the Sugar Labs planet.

6. Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero reports that there is documentation about the Sugar pilots in Colombia at http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_con_fedora11_sobre_un_desktop and http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_con_fedora11_sobre_el_classmate.

Tech Talk
7. As mentioned above, we are testing the Sugar on a Stick v2 Beta Release, based on the Fedora 12 Alpha as well as the latest Sugar 0.85.3 release. Please download and test your version of this release from here:

http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-2-beta.iso

8. Tomeu Vizoso has pushed new Sugar Base and Sugar Toolkit releases with many of the fixes and features we expect to land in 0.86. Please help us with testing.

Sugar Labs
9. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see SOM).