Well it’s getting kinda lonely around the Cambridge headquarters of the OLPC craptop intiative. Walter Bender, designer of the device’s almost completely unusuable Sugar interface, has resigned. OLPC News reported that Bender was leaving in a huff because Nicholas Negroponte is going to use Windows XP on the green machine. Not so, Bender insists. In his exit statement Bender says two years of non-stop work (imagine that! two whole years) has wiped him out and he needs a break. So, um, he’s quitting. Apparently the idea of a vacation did not occur to him. And that’s it. His departure follows that of the project’s security chief, as well as Mary Lou Jepsen, the chief technologist who won worldwide praise for her work in designing the barely functioning laptop. That leaves Double-N alone at the top, though he’s trying to bail too by hiring a CEO to replace him. No word on how his top choice, Kofi Annan, responded to the offer.

I don’t like to gloat, but I must say this: I told you so.