OLPC XO OS build 703 changes

OLPC XO OS build 703 has at least two significant changes:
The first is that it automatically suspend when closed, with this caveat:

the system can’t suspend when the USB bus is in use by an external device (unless it’s a USB mass storage device and has been fully allowed to write any cached info and quiesce itself).

This might not seem like a big deal, but folks have been wanting it for a long time.
The second is that activities no longer come pre-installed in the OS image.

Why Computer Science Doesn’t Matter

Why Computer Science Doesn’t Matter is an essay about the lack of computer science in the educational curriculum today, and what can be done about it. They’ve come up with an interesting, and successful, approach.

[I want] to place computing where it belongs: in the hearts and minds of every single student.

Here here!

DEFUN08: ACM SIGPLAN 2008 Developer Tracks on Functional Programming

DEFUN 2008 invites functional programmers who know how to solve
problems with functional progamming to give talks and lead tutorials
at the The ICFP Developer Tracks.
We want to know about your favorite programming techniques, powerful
libraries, and engineering approaches you’ve used that the world
should know about and apply to other projects. We want to know how to
be productive using functional programming, write better code, and
avoid common pitfalls.

ICFP08 looks like a lot of fun!
(via PLT)