That is so true! I feel really bad because now you exposed all my dirty secrets. I lobbied governement all those years to accept this program exactly yesterday, because i want to advertise on Slashdot, and win all those 1% donations. I will use this money for champagne, caviar and orbital trips. I'm also a member of Majestic 12, and work for New World Order, for full disclosure :-)

The Sugar was problem since day one of the project. Laptop design was very innovative for that time. The idea of cheap educational laptop was brilliant. How this happened, that the hardware was finished quickly, while the software was in deep alfa? They should stick to what was proven "good enough" software solution. By scattering their small resources on building the whole new user interfaces OLPC lost its chance to master the price and marketing.

I think it makes more sense, to keep it, and dropping only after we started negotiations to show willingness to cooperate and earn negotiation points.

Actually this is a perfect game for grown up. I started with ZX Spectrum platform shhoters, than was Doom and networked Quake, after that i found Warcraft, Starcraft and other RTS. Now Nethack is the only game i play. I'm interested in fancy graphics anymore, but deep gameplay is something i admire.

pop culture today is primarily a technology story

Is it really? I think the problem is that we want it to be. Lester Bangs wrote about rock. Rock would not exist withoug electric guitar, tape recorder and analog amplifier. Could Lester Bangs fix a broken tape recorder? Was he a great critic because he understood how a guitar works? No. He wrote about rock music as a cultural phenomenon, not a technological one. I see crisis in videogame criticism precisely in the fact that there are too many technofetish geeks covering it. We read too many reviews focusing on technical details - what 3D engine was used, how many frames per second you get in given resolution, what are the system requirements etc. We read too few focusing on the storyline, character development or the background information. It's like art criticism focusing only on chemical composition of the paint used by the painter. Ever since Gutenberg, culture ALWAYS was a technology story, but what we need now are critics writing about stories and meanings, not about the 3D engines, pixels and frames per second.