I’m guessing here, but it seems reasonable to suppose that Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative is no longer naming its initial product ‘CM1’ because there’s an existing computing trademark with that name: the original Connection Machine. Ironically, the two systems are about as diverse in approach as one could imagine. Just imagine the faces if the shipping company screwed up.
Mind you, I do rather like the idea of a tiny village in deepest Africa accidentally developing strong AI, on the grounds that (a.) they didn’t know such efforts were doomed to failure, and (b.) what the hell else are you going to do with a 1980s-vintage massively parallel supercomputer?
Oh, and the new name for the OLPC? ‘2B1.’ Which… umm… wasn’t that used in Star Wars?
That was 2-1B. Oh god, I shouldn’t know that..
Nooooo! ROFL! That… that was entirely and deliberately a joke, for heaven’s sake!
You’re absolutely right, though. Yow. If I had a prize for most irredeemably geeky reader, you’d be right up there on the leaderboard…
Hehe.. that’s only because my brother doesn’t read your blog 😉