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$200 Net PC to Close Brazil's Digital Divide
Alexsander writes: "As announced by Pimenta da Veiga, minister of communications, a Net PC costing R$ 400 (around US$ 200) will be available in 120 days. It targets low-income users, and a 24-month paying plan will be considered. The computer will be a Pentium 500 MHz, with keyboard, mouse, NIC, 56 Kbps modem, 14" display, 64 Mb RAM and no hard disk (16 Mb flash RAM instead). The main-board architecture (developed by UFMG) will be open, allowing any company to make it. It will run Linux (probably Conectiva) with KDE, KOffice and Konqueror." The Brazilian government notice is available, as are pictures of the device. Imagine: a government doing something to help poor people get access to the internet.
My only question is this: can it be hacked á la i-Opener? Imagine StarOffice and the Gimp on that thing!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Why then are European entreprenuers leaving Europe in droves for the shores of the good, 'ol USA?
Imagine: a government doing something to help poor people get access to the internet.
And not with sneaky proprietary companies that want to monitor your usage and sell information, but instead with that mysterious free "communist" open source operating system, Linux!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Did you pay attention in stats lessons? Example: the average of: 1,1,1,1,6 is: (1+1+1+1+6)/5 = 10/5 = 2. Therefore the number of items below the average is 4 items out of 5 (ie 80%)
As for crappy schools, the notion that the quality of your school should be linked to the money you have (except of course for the 1-2% who can attend very expensive private schools) or the city you live in is a very American one.
Why not? And who's going to pay for it? Americans?
Translation in the educational/medical domain: "So now you will take other people's money away so that less fortunate will have a reasonable life expectancy and even possibly get a decent education
So it's alright to steal to make one's health and education better? Bill Clinton makes more than I do (much of it stolen from you and I, down to the dinnerware and the $750K/month office he wants). You're telling me I can just go in and take stuff out of his office and pawn it since I'd like an MBA? Cool!
We're talking about a divide that might soon become almost as important as the one between people who can read/write, and people who can't.
Where you been for the last four thousand years? You think this is a new thing? We're better off with global literacy then ever before, in spite of people choosing and supporting tyrants and thieves for governments.
In fact that's exactly what 90% of western countries do. Britain and US being two noticeable exceptions
What - steal from their citizens, pocket 70% for "processing fees" and give the other 30% to worthless governments that also pocket 90% and give table scraps to their hostages? No, I'm afraid the US and Britain are both exceptionally well trained at this scam as well.
And where are the Europeans, Japanese and Koreans? Why are they not on the angst trip list?
In general, it's easy to blather droll like this post, until you realize that the pathetic world these people live in is the consequence of their choice in government, believe in mysticism, etc. As long as they keep wishing for happiness while supporting corrupt governments, they'll be poor.
*scoove*
You're free to make any decision you want, but you are not free from its consequence.
As I look at the history of communist nations, they seem to eliminate the economic gaps between rich and poor by making everyone poor. An elegant, but hardly optimal solution.
... and for (partly) that reason, I was not advocating communism -- merely pointing out that an economic divide is an unavoidable fact of life in its absence. And (to wrench this back onto topic) governments would do well to make sure that financial poverty does not lead to intellectial poverty. Public libraries have served this purpose in the past (and will continue to do so). Initiatives such as this Brazilian one are a modern extension of that ideal.
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Well, I agree with you when you say that a computer is a great tool to learn.
It's in the Internet the role to break all frontiers and transform the common stupid patriot to an inteligent human being, one which is concerned more with the wellfare of the world than of is idea of a country.
But there is one thing that I don't agree, you will not have much success preaching the ways of the new technology to people that don't have enough basic resources, such as food, security, and a place to live.
This where I disagree with this type of goverment measures... They should focus on more basic needs. Failling that will only bring violence from the ones that most deserve atention.
Do you realy think that the street kids from Rio de Janeiro will ever care about this?
Even it there are computers in the schools? Do they attend to school?
And the people in the north east? Will they have any desire to participate?
You must know better than me, my ideia of brazilian reality comes in second hand...
Long live TUX!
Sorry, I didn't meant to make any offence.
The last article I've read about the rural areas from brazil were a little bleake. Most of it gave focus to the land less and their problems. They didn't have much of a literacy rate...
And I also doubt about the literacy rate of the favelas....
You know, most of the time the small percentage makes de diference... Although, I would question your data... making a census on a country as big as yours must be hard.
and by the way, I'me portuguese. not american.
Long live TUX!
You're comparing apples and oranges. Here's an example...
If you have ten people and 6 of them make $200/month each and 4 of them make $1000/month each, you have an average income of $520/month (of which 60% of the people are making less).
The one common denominator is that ideologies that draw from socialism emphasize that the state has a responsibility to ensure at least a minimum of quality of life for it's population, and that certain basic needs should be secured to some extent by the state.
What separates them are why, and how.
Fascist argumentation for this is that the state is everything, and a strong state should be the goal for everyone, and to achieve this, the state must ensure that all members of society are productive.
One of the common social-democratic arguments is that "common decency" mandates that one should not let people suffer when society is wealthy enough to cover basic needs without adversely affecting it's other citizens.
The Marxist argument is that socialism is a stage on the way to communism, where control is transferred from the capitalist upper classes to a state apparatus controlled by the working classes, and presupposes a socialist revolution where the workers have taken control.
For an interesting (while certainly biased) presentation of other widely diverging socialist ideologies, read the last chapter of the Communist Manifest (available online), which is a critique of different socialist ideologies that ranges from reactionary to hopelessly utopian.
I agree that the Internet will not end poverty. However, I think the Brazilian taxpayers are not wasting the money spent on this particular program.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Do you think Iraq is going to highjack most of the shipments and try to assemble them all together to make a super computer to take over Brazil?
And Jesus said:
"The poor will always be with us."
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Actually you are probably mixing up socialism and communism. They are not the same thing ! Socialism is a system that takes from both capitalism and communism. The governement assume duties not only for the justice and defense, but also in economic, social and cultural subjects. But it also gives a large place to the private sector and free-market competition.
It's all a matter of balance. You can be an extremist and be total-capitalism (USA) or communism (USSR), or you can try to take the best of both worlds and make something more balanced. As a bad commercial would say, "balance is everything"
And this is of course different from the problems when Russia (USSR) was communist. I think the problem is that you don't want to admit that capitalism hasn't worked in Russia either.
> class size, not enough money, bad teachers,
> parents who cant afford to care for their kids
> cause the government cut off their welfare....
> how are some computers gonna help??
A significant number of bright students will get hooked by the computers. They will stay after school exploring/experimenting/hacking/learning. Compared to their peers who hung out at the mall or the basketball courts, these students are far less likely to end up flipping burgers, and far more likely to be employed in an IT job.
Ofcourse this is dependant on the teachers actually letting the kids use the computers. I know when I was in elementary school the teachers were so scared that someone might break their Apple ][s that they were kept off-limits to everyone. Completely defeated the purpose of them.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
..or take up the consitiutional right to bear arms and set up a more representative government. I thought that was why you're allowed guns, right?
I think you should solve the problems in the favelas first, and then try to make them aware of the internet world.
:)
This is an escape for most of us, but to them there is little escape from their real problems. The crimes won't go away, the jobs will not appear in the internet, and food will not come from computer...
Some years ago I've seen a soap from Globo, where a politic gave free house appliances to the poorest. Now it should be a great idea, but he forgot to give them electricity first...
It's obvious a joke, but perhaps your ministry didn't see that episode
Long live TUX!
Not everybody wants the same thing. Once you realize that, everything else seems to become easier to handle.
Not everyone cares about train schedules and government supplied health care.
Not everyone cares about helping others, social justice, sports, television, or spicy food...
I don't care about any of the things that define socialism. Socialism wouldn't work for me.
I like making money. I have started dozens of businesses, most of which have failed, and a couple which have made me a good amount of money. I cannot retire (yet), but I do not worry about money.
(I don't really understand it, but it isn't really about the money. I drive a 12 year old car, I live in a one-bedroom apartment, I sew patches on my jeans, and I have several hundred thousand dollars in assets. )
If I had to live in some workers paradise with 2 hour lunches, 6 week vacations and 70% tax rates I'd go nuts! I guarentee I'd be the parasite who stays at home drinking Tuborg Gold if I had no chance of making money AND no chance of starving.
Capitalism is not friendly, it's not embrasing and it's not friendly. It is EXACTLY the opposite of all that sissy crap that I hate. It is cold and indifferent. It is it can kill you or it can make you filthy rich.
In a country where so many people don't finish school, public schools are a mess and many people can't even read, let alone afford 1/3 of that price...
On the other hand... I admire the fact that linux is used. Too bad the politicians only O.K.'d it because it would save them money.. but hey, a foot in the door is fine by me.
Liberty.
How do the people feel about this? Do most of them even care? Would this money be better spent on education? I don't like the idea of having many computers in the classroom as we have in the US. My little sister learned to add on a calculator. I think we need to go back to the basics. Getting everyone online is a better idea than what china is doing, but I think we should be somewhere in the middle.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
...I mean, come on! Do you think throwing some networked PC's into a poor american public school is going to help? Have you ever been to a poor school? HUGE class size, not enough money, bad teachers, parents who cant afford to care for their kids cause the government cut off their welfare....how are some computers gonna help??
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
The way to help the poor is not to raise taxes from the producers of wealth, and slow the entire economy. If a government wants to help its people, the best thing it can do is nothing at all.
The Brazilian government needs to start a massive program of internet cultural literacy for it's citizens before they step onto the info super-highway, in order that they understand the existing culture, and don't destory the existing culture. This program will consist of:
Then, and only then, will Brazilians be able to understand the internet.
Only then
I'm always saying to friends and colleages: a big moral advantage of GNU software is that it caters nicely to all societies and economic strata. Those who have money but no time can purchase the services of experts to get GNU software to do what they want quickly. Those who have time but no money (3rd world) can use the source (and no license obstacles) to figure things out and invest the effort to make it work. Also, with GNU software to some extent the rich world is gifting technology to the poor world, which is the right thing to do.
What happens if you don't have enough money to go to college, even if you're very intelligent?
--
Keep attacking good things as "communist"
KMSMA (WWBD?)
I'm more willing to allow for the benefit of the doubt. What doubt is that?
I don't *know* that the limitations they place on surfing will prevent an accumulation of knowledge by the users. Personally, I've learned quite a bit from sites which contain unobjectionable material. YES, it would be better to have unhindered access. Isn't some access better than none? Consider the effect of restricted Internet access in places such as China. No one can completely filter out foreign ideas.
Of course most people won't be able to afford it. But what if those who can swing it can make a difference? Does every individual need their own, fully-functional standalone machine in order to learn something?
I realize this argument is unpalatable for our cynical society. Perhaps this money (is there any money involved, or is this just a political agreement to discount hardware by corporations?) could be better spent on necessities. Not knowing the alternatives, however, I certainly wouldn't argue against this offer.
> some people have networks in their houses with
> a dozen computers! How can there be any
> conceivable need for this many computers in
> one household?
- My wife's iMac.
- My wife's laptop.
- Our daughter's computer.
- Our son's computer.
- My Linux box.
- My Windows box.
- My PalmPilot
- The webserver with webcam.
- An old 386 used for misc experiments.
- A lovingly restored 6805 from my youth.
- An unused VIC-20.
- The firewall to connect the network to the Internet.
You have a problem with this?Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Call me stupid but how exactly are they going to install Linux and KDE 2 without a HDD of some sorts. I know Linux is compact, but you can't exactly call KDE 2 compact - certainly not compact enough to fit into a 16Mb flash card.
Socialism must be swell, to give the unemployed 6 weeks of vacation and a high enough standard of living that they can come to America to raise hell during WTO protests.
Where do I sign up? Do I need to take remedial xenophobia classes to become a socialist? Do I start by quitting my job, staying home, and bitching that foreign workers are taking the jobs I'm too proud to work? Perhaps I can then beat up a few foreigners, too.
Just another capitalist pig-dog American.
You're right.
:)
Poor doesn't mean stupidity, illiteracy, or even delinquency...
Unfortunaly, people living in poor conditions doesn't have the pacience to learn, or have other things in mind than learn new skills in computers.
Now, if you don't know this is because you realy don't know some poor people. Next time you pass a homeless, ask him if he wants a computer
I agree that computer literacy should be given to everyone, that it should be a goal for every country to have a high technological knowledge. What I don't agree is when some get sacrified for the sake of it...
The image I have of Brazil is from your own countrymen, they do like their coutry but "hate the politians". Brazil is not the only one that sufers from this plague, Portugal is also suffering from lack of good leadership.
Gosh, if you look right, the world is lacking leadership. period.
The US (sorry , my not so humble opinion) is proving once again that total power is something to dread.
You say that a simple computer can change many peoples lives, I agree. It changed mine. What I say is that it doesn't change the life of those that realy need help.
Your argument settles in urban population, middle class to be more precise. I look a little bit bitter because my argument is based after looking into the rural areas and the poor classes.
By the way, I don't have any problems, I'm guessing that you don't have too, the people with problems are the ones who are fighting for a piece of land, or for the wallets of the tourists.
Long live TUX!
It's ruindows because "ruim" means "bad".
...the more middle class people with these things in their homes, the more of them there are for the truly poor to steal them and use them from the comfort of their *own* cardboard boxes.
Seriously, getting more PCs [of any kind] out there is bound to be good. If there is one thing poor countries can do these days to get long-term foreign money, it's to develop their brains. Cutting down a forest is a one-time windfall, not a real source of ongoing finance.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
This is an interesting idea, but I'm somewhat supprized at the lack of harddisks; Afterall, these people are going to need somewhere to store all of the docs they write, and information they download. Is the government providing the HD space, is there an e450 kicking around somewhere? Otherwize, I'm sure there are a whole bunch of 1-2 gig hard-drives, heck, I bet maxtor has a room full of the machinery that it would take to make them, which they probably cant use. Why not put a 1.5 g hard drive in there, for base computing purposes, it's a heck of a lot better than 16mb of flash.
Just a question here... how can the average be $x when over half are making less? Wouldn't that bring the average down?
Seeing as how I got flamed here (and rightly so) I'll post my "smack my forehead" response here. :-)
As far as "Overrated" goes though I would tend to disagree. -1 (Stupid Comment) perhaps. :-)
The Federal government shoving free computers everywhere doesn't help.
but the federal government shoving free arpanet cable everywhere sure started a revolution
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Looking through the comments on the site, I was amused that the Brazilians' pet name for Windoze is "Ruindows". (If you know Brazilian Portugese, "Windows" is pronounced roughly "oo-ween-doze" and "Ruindows" would be pronounced "hoo-ween-doze".) Look up the word on Google; you'll find all kinds of references to "erros de proteçao geral, erros fatais, operações ilegais, etc." (I think you can figure that out without knowing Portuguese.)
I totally agree. What the hell is a poor agrarian farmer going to do with a COMPUTER?? It sure as hell can't plow a field or feed his family. Maybe he could order "How not to starve" off of Amazon.com
Furthermore I think 1st world nations have gone overboard with their blind faith in the almighty beige box; computers are as much useful as they are cumbersome.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
Cheaper, and I bet you get more information faster. Better service isn't such a bad thing.
This kind of thing is immensely popular with university students- people who definitely aren't in the same group as the "poor" but who, at that point in their lives, definitely don't have the cash for a computer or a private phone line.
So maybe these cheap Brasilian computers, in the hands of community groups or (better yet) small-time entrepeneurs, could create some kind of favela.net.cafe revolution.
But: will the government also be setting up or subsidizing some kind of ISP to support these things?
This Like That - fun with words!
By looking the other way. We in India have a similar problem. The govt supplies computers to govt. institutions like offfices, schools etc. without even giving thought to whether there is anyone who knows how to use it. It never finds out whether this costly equipment is being put to use and in most places once the machines is made disfunctional by some computer illeterate, the govt either has no money to repair them or is also not bothered or aware.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Imaginethe u.s. government doing something to help poor people get access to the internet. I hear about this and wonder why the US can not do this for the Less fortunate of this country. Eh but bush is in office what is the chane of that happining.
If we refuse to be flexible, we are in effect opting out of the game of life. The world moves on without us.
The digital divide has a halflife of 18 months (Moore's law).
I am so sick of confused left-wingers in their fifties complaining about globalization and the digital divide, because honestly, to think that we could be closing the gap faster than we are is ludicrous!
"But what about the 1 billion people living on less than 1 dollar a day?"
Well, those people are surely illiterate and aren't suffering more from todays globalization than they were suffering from anything in the past. On the contrary, computers and the Internet is a means of closing the gap between rich and poor countries, it's not a threat that is going to widen it! People from third world countries such as Brazil wouldn't be able to raise their voices on an American forum as much as we have seen here on Slashdot today if we didn't have a globalized world!
Thank you very much!
Will code a sig generator for food
You do have a point and this is quite likely. At the same time
Who said that there will be any loss. An IDT winchip or K6-2+ based board with the worst type "fry your brain" 14in CRT with 16M flash, 64M memory and a linmodem will cost exactly there. Bulk prices of course. And even if not picked up by the masses it will still make a good terminal for schools if the linmodem is replaced by LAN.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
This is, of course, very true. But the point of social programs like this is to make sure that the people who are willing to put in the effort -- get a chance to try. Some obstacles are not going to change (your family, genetics, etc). But if we want to encourage a meritocracy in which everyone has the opportunity to rise to the top, we have an obligation to eliminate as many obstacles as we can.
Having a computer(or easy access to one) is a prerequisite to a modern education. It's a natural consequence that the government will support a wide distribution of cheap computers.
It's the same reason that we now have public education. Schooling (typically with a tutor) was a luxury that rich people took advantage of. As it became clear that schooling was becoming a prerequisite to "the good life", we instituted a system that allowed everyone access to that schooling, at enormous cost. We all know that some take advantage of it and some don't, but few of us question it's merit.
I'm not saying that this program is the right way to go about it -- just that the concept is one that I agree with.
My old Mac SE only had about a 20 Meg hard drive, so this seems quite reasonable.
More importantly, this is an open hardware architecture
Take another look. The case is mostly see through! You can see the motherboard and everything without even opening the case. Which of course means just that much more inticement to open it up and start hardware hacking. That may be the smartest thing about this whole deal. Looks like there's an extra slot for a hard drive controller card or whatever.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Uhuh...deregulate, and become another colony of the United(?) States....yeah right. Ask your half-elected president to regulate elections, then propose DEregulating Brazil. Go BraSil!!!
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
Third/second world countries can't catch up anyway in one step with the industrialised world and replicate their infrastructure.
However in IT (especially programming) they can leapfrog the industrial development since the costs are very low per working place. Most commodity programming is already a second/third world job and will be even more so in the future.
I saw recently an interesting interview with a Senegal government minister who is promoting to wire each village with the internet (hard job since many villages dont have telephones). In those villages were internet is available the email has already replaced traditional mail - even though an email costs more than a dollar and has to be typed in by someone since many of the users are illiterate.
During flu season, telephone sanitation peole are more important than you might otherwise have concluded.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
All we need to do now is borrow them and put them in Washington ;)
I didn't pay for my operating system either
Another interesting example is the Bangladeshi woman who used microcredit to buy a cell phone, which she rents out to her neighbors. Not a big business by our standards, but one that has a drastic effect on her and her customers.
The importance of both examples is that they show impoverished, even illiterate people gaining access to information. For people like this, information is power, money, and safety. A weather report pulled off a US Navy web site can mean life or death for a fisherman. Being able to talk to a guest-worker family member means their remittances don't get ripped off by go-betweens. There are no end of consequences.
The best thing about these programs is the way they promote mutual aid and collective responsibility. Microloans are administered by peer groups that make sure the recipient has realistic goals and plans. Groups that chip in to buy a computer are going to be personally involved in how it is used -- no dusty impulse purchase this!
__________________
I mean, yeah, there aren't any Ferraris in Brazil you know....you have to be really wealthy to buy a $200 piece of american crap anywhere but in the US. You see the US is the only place to be man! You have to be wealthy to live outside the US, where all sorts of 7 headed beasts will eat you up for lunch. Europe? Comunist. Brazil? Poor. US? Gov. oppression + violent racism. I'd stick with either comunism or poor, rather than have a IRS like yours, a president like yours, a surveillance scheme(NSA) like yours, and FOOD like yours. Up yours.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
Sorry to interrupt you.
I live in USA (although not born here) and I have two computers and a laptop. And I lived two years without TV!!!
Why? I went to a friend's house to watch the Olimpics and I got sick of commercials and all that crap.
Of course we go out to see a movie from time to time and rent a DVD at Blockbuster.
But we do just fine without a tv.
"President Bush's plan for faith-based groups helping their local communities?"
Not Bush's plan, Ralph Reed's, announced while Bush was on the campaign trail, in concert with Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson (see next).
Careful Zaphod, your slip is showing.
BTW, I'm not saying 'faith-based' is a bad idea: just make it open to all faiths (including - *shudder* - Scientologists, Wiccans, Satanists, etc.), and use the same rules that you use for non-faith-based public charities (same with school vouchers). Then let's see how many of these 'churches' line up for the free handout from Uncle Sugar.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
Wait 'till they figure out DeCSS. Oh wait, they would need a HDD for that.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
Listen dickweed, my original comment was not ignorant. I have to deal with people everyday that got a computer becuase it was the cool thing to do. They cant figure out didly shit about how it works and then call me becuase they know me. The best excuse I hear is "My Friends computer does this, why doesnt mine?" People asking questions like that should not have a computer in the first place.
And what exactly do you count as using a computer properly? Furiously beating your man-meat as you post a lame and ignorant comment on slashdot?
Oh yea beating my meat is the right way to use a computer, as is stroking at and talking to it in a sexy voice. Moron. Why dont you get off your mommy's computer and go play with your Playstation some more, isnt it time for school anyway? The bus should be just around the corner.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
--
Geek by nature.
Linux by choice
Oh finally, thank you Zealot for one intelligent comment. I can't believe so many people actually criticized this initiative. F*ck Pfizer, and the fools criticizing the improvement of Brasil.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
C'mon, most of the brazilian citizens earn about US$75 a month. Now imagine you have 3 kids to raise, you barely would buy enough food for your children, how the hell would you buy a computer? And even worse, how would you pay the phone bills?
Let's not dream about poor brazilian people with computers. THey don't care about it, they care about their own health
-----------------------------------------------
You think Bill Gates is evil?
Does anybody wonder why a government would want to subsidize giving internet access to poorer folk?
Wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere? Why do slashdotters think some hungry joe in brazil gives a flying sh*t about the internet?
Maybe there are some ulterior motives to this. This suddenly introduces a great method of gaining information and tracking a population that was previously an anonymous conglomeration.
1) The US doesn't have the largest percentage of people online (I believe that is Sweden)
2) 98% of American households own a color TV. 91% own a car. 84% have a VCR. 74% have cable TV. 66% own two color TVs. 44% own a computer.
3) PeoplePC sells a brand-name computer, on-site service, unlimited Internet access and a home page for $24.95 per-month over three years. If you can afford cable TV, you can afford a computer.
4) But if you can't afford a computer, you can browse the Net at most libraries, or pay-per-use at Kinkos.
I know a Salvadoran familiy in Washington, DC, that makes most of its money from making plantain empanadas for a local pupusaria. They have purchased a 486 computer for their daughter, and she uses AOL. They also have a large TV with surround-sound speakers. Probably the worst thing about their lives is the crime around where they live, but they prefer to be living around other Salvadorans, and they can't afford to move into a suburban McMansion yet.
The "Digital Divide" is much more about individual priorities than economics in the US.
You see, when a human encounters a new phenomenon in the world, she normally tries to associate some previously explained phenomenon with it. This is known as "understanding". Maybe you are missing this capability, which I guess would explain your post.
to find out what really happened go to www.indymedia.com
A blog about stuff.
Ha ha. Yea probably. Maybe I should donate my p233 so they can upgrade to state of the art.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
unfortunatly everyone in this thread forgets that american govt is in the pay of corperations so it can not take any kind of real steps towards helping people. soft money campaign contributions anyone.
A blog about stuff.
The goverment funds that were earmarked for subsidizing those inexpensive computers is probably now paying to supporting that link.
I agree that the internet is no more the answer to poverty than a library card is the answer to illiteracy. But it can help, give incentive to work for the future, rather than perpetuate the status quo. The internet is only part of the answer. Education is another very important part. The internet can give us information, but most importantly it gives us communication. Communication is an empowering technology, it enables people to see beyond their locale.
If a farmer has information about the weather, he can better plan his planting and harvesting. A factory worker can search for a better job. A merchant can search for the best wholesaler for the wares he sells. A craftsman can find out how much the things he creates are actually worth, and price them accordingly, rather than trust the middleman who only has his own bottom line in mind.
If you're going to give the poverty stricken anything, give them opportunity. That's what this cheap internet terminal can give. Viewing a computer as a luxury relegates the computer to the level of television, a one way medium. But the real power of the internet is that even though the bandwidth is largely one way (to the user) there is still a channel out (to the world). You can just spectate, but you have the opportunity to participate, and it is up to the individual to choose.
Right - at least that's my non-Portuguese-speaking understanding of "...construído para levar a internet de graça a escolas, postos de saúde, microempresas e pequenas comunidades."
My first thought was the same as wceschim's. There is no way the people at the bottom of the Brazilian society, in favelas or in the jungle, are going to benefit from this program. I suspect Michael suffers from the "Everything in America is worse than everything anyplace else!" mentality (the lesser known liberal variant of the "Everything in America is better than everything anyplace else!" mentality) and thinks the Brazilian poor are comparable to or better off than the poorest Americans.
"Maybe YOU like the government meddling in YOUR affairs, but I would rather chart my own course through life"
Sure you are... Without using any public roads, or drinking any public water... or even having gone to any schools. (Wait, I forgot the Republicans are working on getting rid of the public schools...)
Libertarians are like spoiled children.
Quite a statement. A few rich people should be making the decisions for all of us.
Government is cumbersome because of the requirement for public accountability, public oversight, and PUBLIC AGREEMENT with the decisions made.
Corporations are not democratic, not accountable, and don't give a shit about the good of the overall public.
In science theories are supposed to DESCRIBE behaviour.
Free-markets, capitalism, etc... are pseudo-scientific sounding "theories" that say "if only people behaved a certain way, such-and-such would follow."
Brasil's government helps out with a lot of things. They are considering adding breast implants to the list of things that govt. healthcare covers. I read it in a WSJ article. Now that's what I call good government policy!
In general, it's easy to blather droll like this post, until you realize that the pathetic world these people live in is the consequence of their choice in government, believe in mysticism, etc. As long as they keep wishing for happiness while supporting corrupt governments, they'll be poor
I looove some Americans! Honest! They look all sooo cute when they are ignorant.
The previously truly democraticaly elected president in Mexico was Francisco I. Madero in 1910, unfortunately for him (and for Mexico) the US did not like him, so they supported a traitor that killed the President and the Vicepresident. Mexico had to endure 80 years of mainly corrupt goverments as a consequence.
Other "friends" of the US:
-Anastasio Somoza.
-The Duvalier's in Haiti.
-Mobutu Sese Seko in today's DR of Congo.
-Sadamm Hussein in Irak.
-The former apartheid regime in South Africa.
So belive me, it is not always that countries elect or tolerate corrupt leaders, there are forces that have nothing to do with what the people deserve, in the case of Brazil they had military dictatorships for many years.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'd probably say someone else put him up to it. I doubt he'd think of something like that himself. It's too good an idea.
One thing to remember is that no matter how misguided you (or I) may consider a church to be, they do have your best interests at heart. Usually we see them in the context of trying to tell you what your best interests are, but their hearts are (generally) in the right place.
Once upon a time, nearly everyone was religious. There were no movie theaters -- or in fact, any kind of theater in most towns, which were in truth little more than a village; Anywhere you had drinking water, basically. The church was the center of the community, which was why it was such a bad thing to be nonreligious; If you weren't into the local church's headspace, you were a nobody, a heathen. This is why you hear about all the witches and warlocks or whatever living in the woods; Those men and women generally didn't think much of "God". They may have had their own views on religion, or been agnostic (like myself). Because of their lack of "faith", or their inability to suck it up and pretend, they were outcast from their community.
With the advent of greater technology, allowing more people to live in a single location, you were able to have more people who didn't buy into it; With larger populations come civic centers where there is entertainment not directly controlled by the church. Now you're able to break away (to a degree) from the influence of the church.
The down side of this (ah, we come to the point finally) is that the church was once a binding force in every community. It saw that people were helped by their neighbors, it kept people social. It was what the government is today.
So, my feelings are thus: I approve of the church helping people, as long as we don't start kicking people out of our communities. And the church shouldn't push religion on people in exchange for help. That's distinctly unhumble. If you want to help people, help people. If you want to proselytize, that's fine too. But don't preach to people who don't want to be preached to.
--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My response is only a collection of electrons, in a pattern to for words. There is no intelligence in them, not literally. So of course he's less stupid. For a human being, however, he is incredibly unintelligent.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Because of the lure of getting insanely rich. Not everyone falls for that though. It's like pornography, it's probably the major traffic on the internet, but I don't think a lot of people would want to live with a porn star. So I guess the conclusion is that the US is like a porno movie for entrepeneurs.
Ever tried to get a job saying "I can't read, can't write, but can count as long I've got my fingers"?
It does cost, if it's not much it's because there isn't a big budget and there is no money to buy the computers...
The problem as I see it is that the poor wil think something as "One more thing for the rich guys, no one thinks about us!", and you know? It realy sounds that way. This doesn't solve the problems in the favelas, or in the rural parts of your country.
Long live TUX!
Even if it uses KDE...
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
"Giving people handouts don't pull people out of poverity. That's been proven many times during the past few decades. "
Instead of just repeating Republican slogans, how about providing some evidence o back up what you say?
"Local communities pulling together and helping local people who need the help."
Sounds like you don't know much about what the federal programs did. You just described the federal approach that has been in place since the 60's. n The federal government assisted this sort of program.
"what do you think of President Bush's plan for faith-based groups helping their local communities? "
Obviously a plan to pump government money into organizations that will then pump much of the money into Republican campaigns.
I wonder what would happen if Louis Farrakahn put in a proposal for a program for prisons? Would the Republicans approve this? Of course not. It's about helping their friends.
Wouldn't help you much, since in Brazil we speak Portuguese, not Spanish. They're similar, but hardly the same language. But studying a little english would serve you well. Next time, try writing "(...) provide people that are most probably too stupid and ignorant with computers (...)", instead of "(...) provide people with computers that are most probably too stupid and ignorant (...)". This way it will be easier to understand that you are calling the people stupid and ignorant, not the computers. Or maybe you're just saying something with a deeper meaning which I just cannot grasp, once reading the whole sentence one gets the clear impression you're saying the computers will use the people, not the other way around. You see, one cannot be blamed for ignorance if he doesn't get a chance to study. Stupidity, on the other hand, has nothing to do with being poor. You can find stupid people among those born in rich countries, acessing the internet and even writing comments at slashdot. They're the ones who got a chance to study but became ignorants out of their own free will. And do forgive any mistakes in my writing, as I'm not a native speaker of english. Maybe with some practice I can achieve your level of poetic expression.
if you look at the user info, she's not a troll.
Liberty.
The digital divide isn't about 'computers are a luxury' and 'I have Internet but I can't afford food'. The digital divide is a growing contributing factor to social exclusion. Social exclusion is about entire communities of individuals who do not have the choices in life (education, jobs and so on) that are available to wealthier communities.
Computer literacy has been growing in importance for quite a while and the Internet appears to have accelerated the process by simply making more people computer literate. If you have no access to computers then you are being denied more than just the opportunity to natter about Star Wars on Slashdot - you are being denied basic skills training.
The effects are currently minimal but are guaranteed to grow. For many many children, computer literacy could be the differentiating factor that (a) gives them the incentive to keep going to school and (b) gets them a job when they leave.
Brazil is by no means far behind the technological curve. A glut of free Internet providers appeared in Rio towards the end of 1999, only months behind the UK. The problem, as people have mentioned, is that it is still out of the financial reach of the majority.
There is a heavy emphasis on extra-curricular education in Brazil - generally paid courses outside school hours. As in America, those in Brazil most aggressively tackling the 'Digital Divide' are the NGOs, who give courses for free. The equipment generally comes entirely from donations and the staff tend to be volunteers. CCDIA is the one I work with, but there are many more. This government scheme could give critical mass to the projects which are offering free courses to those who can't afford to pay.
I would encourage every Slashdot reader in every country to find a local project where they can help - the first-world has social problems too!
1. While just having internet access won't make poor people less poor, it will at least let them communicate with others in the same boat, and become aware of ways to get out of it. If their lot in life doesn't improve, it's also one avenue for political organization. While they could cut off free net access in the event that happened, it's many rungs up the ladder from the typical impoverished country which would take steps to keep its poor people isolated.
2. This is only part of the story. In a New York Times article I read earlier this week, there was a description of how Brazil is encouraging its researchers to violate American drug company patents and copy AIDS drugs for free treatment of the poor, the net effect being that they're controlling AIDS down there as well as we are here. Now they're distributing cheap computers with no Microsoft tax.
Why is this important? Because for apparently the first time, a less privileged country has realized that there's no need to pay rich countries for stuff that can be copied or has a freely available substitute. You can charge whatever you want for oil and take it away if a country won't pay up, but you can't take away their ability to copy your 'intellectual property'.
If they can do this and survive economically, it will change everything.
I THINK that public schools already have this type of program especially for them. Not sure if all of them do. If you had Brasilian TV, you'd see those horror stories on the news about huge lines on matriculation day for parents desperately trying to get their kids into school... Too bad its not just a horror story for the many valiant people who do it. The ones who end up in school are the ones with the hardworking parents who are attempting to get their kids out of the gutter.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
Well, if you're Brasilian I'm sure you know that we have the world's biggest digital election. It's completely digitized. 100%. (I was boasting about it during the Florida thing, hehehe.) Well, if that can get to the nowhere that is the Northwest, I'm sure we can get some comps out there too.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
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"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
Pffft, it was sure succesful for the planet, but it probably didn't make the mice very happy, contamining their super computer and all..... They COULD have found out the Question of Life, The Universe and Everything by now if it wasn't for those pesky hairdressers.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
The day of the clockwork computer sucking back data from the ether isn't far away. Then the information age will truly be upon us. I await breathlessly
Talk about system, huh!(Not to boast or anything.)
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
There is still a tax DISINCENTIVE for businesses to do anything BUT junk old computers. At least here in Panorama City, CA, US where I live Goodwill just opened up a very nice computer clearance center. There's one like it in Orange County, CA, US somewhere (Santa Ana?) and I know there's another place like it in Austin, TX, US. Businesses can take charitable tax deductions for donating computers to Goodwill, which are turned around and sold for cheap to people who can't afford new stuff. But the fact is there aren't enough places like this out there.
We should be refurbing old machines and GIVING THEM AWAY. Sure, 386/486en won't run Linux with GNOME or KDE2 well, but they can run in console mode fine and could prolly be coaxed to run X and a low RAM footprint window manager like fwvm95 or ice or something like that.
The computers don't do any good in landfills or melted down for their raw materials. They can do powerful good if they were only refurbished and redistributed. Crappy PCChips/Cyrix-based diskless boxen like those being sold for cheap in Brazil aren't as useful as a good, solid real computer, even one running a 486.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/ -- Because you can't keep a geek grrl down!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Gvmt gives the people access.. the people become enlightend.. World sees flood of tech workers.. I like this sort if thing. help the people help themselfs. Ford gave their workers computers and net access. Follow the good examples people. If you can help do it!
Power down, turbo!
"Imagine a GOVERNMENT doing something..." he wasn't talking about non-profit orgs. He's talking about the GOVERNEMNT of Brazil.
-Andy
Take a look at the picture. There's a Keyboard, there's a Display, but not much else. Unless this is some fancy terminal I can't help but have my doubts.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Yes, This is still too expensive for an 'average' Brazilian. But what did PC's cost at the beginning of the PC revolution? Were they worth the cost to the average [your nationality]?
This may not help a street urchin put up a web page, but maybe it will help a few (thousand) small businesses manage themselves a little bit better. That will help Brazil.
lsmvcprm.com, Tools for geek power
lsmvcprm.com, Tools for geek power
Thank you for your support. In four years, I will make sure that no hard working white Americans will pay a dollar's worth of tax money on the ghettos. As long as there is no ghetto, we will remove the need to tolerate rap music. Our education money will flow to faith based schools that prohibit blacks. and Asians. and Mexicans. We will execute all the criminals so that your tax money will not be used to support thier living.
----------------
Got Crack?
I have studied Marx, Engels, Lenin for some 8 years. Communist nation is contradiction according to Lenin, not Marx - because Lenin says that Communism will win only if it wins Internationally.
Perhaps you meant communist state. Communism is not anarchism and the state remains Communist's tool. According Marx state is "Organized violence of the governing class exercised on the other class(es)." and Communism is just the same with owrkers as the governing class.
And this violence was (and is) dully implemented in all the Communist states. There was no abuse of a nice Communist theory, just planned, carefull implementation. If you claim to know Communist Manifesto and State and Revolution, read them again and add to your reading Marx's Capital. It seems to be written with nicer words than the reality, but it's all there. I'm surprised that somebody's mainstreame media nformation can be in this case less misleading than reading the originals.
...but we still don't have electricity in Africa and people are starving to death around the world.
Imagine: a government doing something to help poor people get access to the internet.
And then Taco turns right around and crushes their national soul, bringing their web servers to their knees by posting this story. Nice going, once again, Slashdot (Motto: What, Your Webservers Can't Handle 100,000 hits/sec?).
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
Although it is commendable, I don't think this new computer will help that much.
I'm Brazilian and as such I can tell you: most of Brazil's population will not be able to buy this computer. They wouldn't have the $200, or the telephone line, or the money to pay the phone bill. Pimenta da Veiga is actually helping Brazil's lower middle class.
What they should do is start a real and serious project to connect all schools to the Internet. Public schools in Brazil don't even have computers, let alone computers connected to the Internet.
Without poverty, there is no wealth. If there was no poverty, who would work in the slaughterhouses? Who would deliver your pizza?
Even if there were a way to artificially remove poverty, nobody would like the consequences. Think about it. Some people will always suffer, and some people will always prosper. Its not touchy-feely fair, but its reality. I'm oversimplifying, of course - society should be humane, but there is no such thing as "eliminating poverty."
And getting back on topic, I think the computer idea is a lousy one - if there is a demand for computer skills in any country, then people will find a way to learn the skills. If there isn't, throwing cheap computers at them won't change a thing.
Flat5
Now THAT is easily one of the smartest things said today. Talking about middle class Brasilians? There are a lot of us. Most of them who don't have computers don't WANT one. Same goes for others.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
on the back of political commentary, half of our country believes that the Federal government should provide funding to local groups to handle issues rather then handle them from the federal level (the theory that less federal gov. is a good thing).
so that, tempered with Democrats wanting to put more money into social engineering programs, leaves us with lots of money available for non-profits and local entities to receive grants and tax-exempt status.
half of our nation doesn't want the federal government spending money social engineering. of course i'm using the numbers provided by those who voted for bush vs those who voted for gore. they might not be the most accurate numbers in relation to this, but they'll do for now.
(see my .sig ... )
"You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem." -- Edwards' Law
What about medicine? Penicillin? Birth control? Reading glasses? Hearing aids? etc...
Technology structures the context in which the social problem exists. Consider the printing press, telephone, railroads, etc...
...they don't give them Juno accounts.
--
Athy, athier, athiest.
I can assure you that the "old 486's" in Brazil are being used intensively. There is no supply of "extra" computers in countries like this, despite a relatively prosperous (by world standards) economy. We have cheap used computers because there is an excess of them in North America, but in Brazil (or Mexico, or Jamaica, etc) PC's are rare of any vintage.
Hell, tell that to all these Mexicans and Chinesse who are desperately trying to get into this country. ...
Let me know what they think of your "warning"
Hell, it means for me. ,frankly it sucks there.
I used to live in Europe and
US is so much better, it really is.
Finding an article at Slashdot over brazilian efforts to make computing and information systems available to the poor is very nice, but isn't surprising or amazing. No at all.
I work for an Open Source development company in Brazil, Async Open Source and we are making good money providing low cost open source software, such as Stoq to brazilian companies and institutions.
The message I want to make through is: open source and poor countries are a special combination. We have an incredible number of companies running ilegal copies of Windows, SQL server and all the proprietary software they might need. The technological gap of the solutions provided along with those platforms, when you look at the latest applications available to the rich country nations is huge. It all together make Open Source a excelent way of getting rid of licensing problems as well as a shortcut to lessen that gap.
Every day, more and more companies are realizing that Open Source might be a good option, and they are spending money to help companies like Async to develop and deploy software they need.
Goverments part has been very important. This notice over almost cheap hardware is just one among many decisions that have been made in the last 2 years. There is a law submitted to the national congress which says that public institutions must try to adopt free software (like they say here) instead of proprietary solutions. There is also banks and data processing companies sucha as Banrisul and Procergs which are making heavy use of Open Source.
The most famous success case is Conectiva a brazilian Linux distribution which have grown from a small Red Hat portuguese distro version to one of the biggest Linux players in Latin America.
People from other coutries, and specially those involved in Open Source should stop looking at Brazil as a forest populated with poor monkeys and start thinking about coming to work and make profit here. The opensource movement must see that Brazil might be a valuable adition to its cause.
It is an oft-repeated phrase amonst those who work with the masses of the third world, but I will repeat it here: 50% of the world's population have never SEEN a telephone.
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
And it doesn't matter whether you support it or not - marxist theory, whether abused beyond recognition or not, has had such an impact on the world for the last 150 years that it's worth knowing what it's about, and making up your own opinion based on the original sources, as opposed to relying on regurgitated conjecture from the mainstream media.
Does anyone here rememeber the days when America optimistically looked towards the future, confident that we would be able to rise to any challenges and overcome them? No, probably not, because those days are pretty much ancient history now, and the future has become something to be either feared or read about in today's horoscopes.
And at this point in time where computers and the internet are starting to change everything what are we as a nation doing about this? Nothing. Oh sure, we've got the largest percentage of people online in the world (for now) but these are all the people who can easily afford to be online, and who have the education to use a computer. There's nobody working to help out the kids in inner city slums, in the projects and ghettos of modern America. And they're the ones who really need an escape route from the bleakness they live in.
But that's alright for us, as long as we get our shiny new toys everything is alright. I was reading the poll and it seems as though some people have networks in their houses with a dozen computers! How can there be any conceivable need for this many computers in one household? It's all just technolust, and these people would be doing a valuable service to society by donating one of their machines to charities that, despite being chronically underfunded, do try and help the poor get online.
With the current shambolic state of education in many places and the huge lack of opportunities for many people, every little bit we can do helps. Otherwise we'll end up losing out to countries which have social programs to try and help the poor, rather than ignoring them as an inevitable consequence of a small part of the population having vast resources.
Ha, so the best and the brightest ( Linus ?) are leaving Europe.
The future will be interesting.
So perhaps we shouldn't sponser schools for the uneducated either? Do away with kindergarten since "they can't even read, what good is educating them"? There is more to empowering a lower middle class than "job skills".
I used to live in Brazil, and from what I remember, the homeless are a much different breed down there. For starters, most of the homeless that I know about here and grown men (and a few women) that don't have families "living" with them. Most homeless kids here end up in foster homes or with adopted families. Brazilian homeless are a little different, I think... there are a lot more entire families that are homeless (or, that consider a cardboard box their "home").
;-)) and he was trying to tell the guy he didn't like that flavor. Doesn't seem quite as needy as one might expect. Another instance... a friend of mine came across a homeless guy one day in town who was askin for money and food. When my friend offered to bring him to the nearby McDonalds and order him a meal, he said no, I'd just like a few bucks for a hamburger. I don't want you to take me there. AKA No, I just want a few bucks for some crack, I don't need no damn hamburger.
I'm guessing that most of the homeless people here wouldn't want a computer, or something like that. Most of them are on the streets because they're addicted (sorry if it seems like I'm stereotyping) to drugs, or plain just didn't enjoy the life they had when they had a home and CHOOSE to be homeless. I was a in a pizza place one time when a homeless guy came in and asked for a free slice of pizza. The guy at the counter felt bad, and went and got him a big slice of sausage and a bag of chips and a drink. The bum told the clerk he didn't like sausage, and that he wanted pepperoni. I couldn't believe my eyes... here was someone offering the guy fresh, hot food (mighty good too
Which brings me to my Brazillian homeless story... when we moved into our apartment down there, we had a lot of big cardboard boxes left over. When we brought them outside, I swear there were like 15 little kids waiting to take them from us so they could run "home" and add onto their house. A LOT of brazilian kids are homeless, and aren't there by choice or enjoy it. I think they'd love the chance to get a computer somewhere they'd have access to it (school, etc.)
Seems quite different from Newt Gingrich's plan to give the homeless laptops. Here, our bums would probably just pawn it off the second day they got it and buy a years supply of crack.
At $200 for the computer and say $10 per month for Internet access, the computer is still too expensive for "the poor" families.
Heck, they probably don't even have a telephone to connect the PC. (Either because of cost, or lack of infrastructure.)
Local small-businesses and public-service organizations will benefit, though. Perhaps these machines will make it possible to put together public-access Internet kiosks at the libraries and schools.
I just hope people don't buy these only to find a way to "iOpener-ize" the machine and sell them on eBay...
Completamente correto. Pena que e dificil de entender a situacao Brasileira sem ser do Brasil. E e MUITO dificil dizer como e que e a situacao do Ingles no Brasil. :-)
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
This, like most averages about Brasilians, is brought down massively by the very poor in the Northeast. It also creates a lot of misconceptions about us. The most offensive comment I've read today was this idiot talking about how the Americans pay for Brasil's expenses. (I still don't get what was going through his head.) Where I reaelly see this working is in the favelas of Rio, etc.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
BTW, I didn't reallt neeed the Babefish translation (being Brasilian and all) but I'm not sure if it said this: The main board, (designed by the federal university of Minas Gerais) is OPEN. The architecture is totally open.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
Couldn't they at least have used a believable NAME? I know what you mean!
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
The gist of the thing is this: Our Government's main goal for the last decade or so is to raise the poor's living standards. How do we do this? Easiest way: Education. This internet idea wasn't made for giving the poor money, or some stupid way of getting people out of poverty. (as most people here seem to think.) It was made as a source of INFORMATION. THAT, my friend, is the noble purpose to it all.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
On first blush, this sounds like a wonderful concept, but it begs two questions:
1) Is the Internet service itself provided by the government?
2) Are they providing the communications lines to the poor for free as well?
If the answer to (1) is yes, one wonders what constraints the government might put on the ability to visit sites that the powers deem "inappropriate". If the answer to (2) is no, then the government is providing door stops.
(If these questions were answered in the article, I apologize in advance, since I don't read Portugese.)
I have a vision of some sort of similar program in the U.S. First, there would be the scandal over the bribes paid by whoever got the contract to supply the systems. Then, there would be the conservatives up in arms over the government providing a service that allows people to go to (gasp!) PORN sites (alternatively, the liberals would be fuming over the government censorship due to the presence of cyber-nanny software).
Besides, given the state of government computing systems, the systems provided would be 80286's running 1200 Kbs modems.
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
"kind of real steps towards helping people"
Get rid of taxes.
What would more real than that ?
I had seen a blurb on Fox News a few weeks ago about the Borneo gov. rigging poor villages with solar powered battery stations so they had power to run computers and thus they were wired with the internet. The pictures they showered were people living in houses no better than the tree forts I had built when I was a kid. "Papa leave the computer on so we can eat with light tonight."
aztek: the ultimate man
No sig for you!!
Brazil's new tourism slogan: Visit Brazil, you can't breath...but you can surf at 56 baud!
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Government doing anything other than shooting people trying to shoot me is a Bad Thing. (I'm not really THAT libertarian, but it's succinct...)
I'm all for non-profit organizations (yes, Virginia, even *gasp* CHURCHES!) providing services and "welfare" to the community. I think that's the way it should be done.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Yeah, its gotta take a lot of effort on the part of the person that needs the help too. But nobody's going to get themselves out of poverty by just waiting around. If the computer can give them the idea that they can improve their lot in life, then it succeeded. A computer in my view is just a tool. Some people know how to use it, some don't, but very few of the people who don't know how to use it can't learn.
I'd rather see them spend that money giving out computers than teaching them how to chop down the rainforest for an unsustainable farm, or to raise more cattle for McD's.
I want a few of these. If I only paid attenting during Spanish at school.
What is the purpose of trying to provide people with computers that are most probably too stupid and ignorant to use them correctly in the first place? And why do people think that a computer is a solution to ANY problem?
On a more happy note, at least they are putting Linux into them, I guess this is to prevent the Gov't phone lines from being flooded by questions about a strange blue screen. Like Microsoft(TM) Windows(TM) 98(TM)SE(TM) would ever fit in 16 MB of flash Memory.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
It did work in Poland and other central and eastern European countries.
It's about time. Now if they could just make it run on clockwork....
First of all, some Brasilians KNEW all the console games, understand the Internet, etc, despite of the comment of Hairy_Potter. What we see here is only marketing from our government. A great percentage of our country can ever read portuguese (I'm trying English! =o), what about get an Internet surfer ?!?! We need first to get BASIC education. To the masses, so they can THINK. All this money should be used to give the homeless a chance to go to school, get a job. Just my brasilian opinion.
What about medicine? Penicillin? Birth control? Reading glasses? Hearing aids? etc..
.sig, is: no matter the benefits any given technology can bring to humankind, if it is accessible only to the people that have $$$ to pay for it. (or for those who knows it, if the knowledge isn't free for all).
Man, come visit my country (well I don't know if you're a brazilian too), and you'll see that all those things help the people who can *pay* for it. Public hospitals here are a (bad) joke, for an example. Birth control? Our government doesn't looks concerned about that. The biggest the number of (dumb) electors, the better for our politicians. I said dumb because we don't have _decent_ public schools. The majority of our people, as a result, are accommodated about the country situation. The poor people, the ones that have to live with $78 a month, have sometimes 10+ children. Crime, drugs, child prostitution, etc. etc.
I'm aware about all the advances you said. I know (some) of the marvelous things that were invented/discovered and benefits the whole humankind. But what I like in Edward's Law, and the reason I choose it to be my
I like technology but, I believe that in our case (Brazil), we have to focus on resolve our social problems first. Maybe the $200 computer can helps, maybe not, I don't know. But I know that I don't see my government concerned about the social problems (say, unemployment) as they should.
(huh... finally, sorry for my bad english.)
--
"You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem."
h@hh@hh@...@.&.... "You shall not pass!"
According to Library of Congress Country Studies the average monthly earnings of [Brazilians is] US$211, and of this, in 1990, 60% of the nation was making less than that.
So while it is encouraging to finally see a country try to get it's nation online (although, IIRC, wasn't there a country with a traveling "Internet boat" and "Internet vans" prior to this?), you really have to realize that w/o the 24-mo paying plan, this is still nothing more than excess legislation.
Information is the catalyst for revolution
I'm brazilian. And I think that the idea is great. First of all, the brazilian government is not giving anything to brazilian poor people. In fact, they ask to a University to make a prototype of a cheap computer (it's a kind of open hardware, or free hardware). Now, this hardware can be mounted by any company that is interested to. But the brazilian government will also help people to buy these computers, because it can be paid in 24x of Us$ 8,00 (8 dollars per month!). I think anybody, who is interested, can pay Us$ 8,00 per month, since in Brazil. Of course there is another problem: a lot of people that can buy this computer, do not have a telephone line. But this is also changing. Two years ago, to buy a telephone line you had to pay Us$ 1500,00 (sometimes more than these), and now is Us$ 25,00. The problem is that the telephone company can't install a lot of lines in a few time. I don't think that the main dream of a person that don't have a car, or a washing machine is to have internet in home. But I really think that a lot of people that need to, will have conditions to access it. And the choice of Linux is really amazing. There is a journalist in Brazil (Sandra Carvalho, of InfoExame Magazine) that have written that the choice is wrong, because Linux is difficult to learn... This makes no sense: a person that have never used a computer (and don't know Windows) will problably have the same difficulties to learn Windows than will have to learn Linux. Because of that I think the idea is so great! In fact with that anybody in Brazil that wants to acces internet and learn Linux, now have a good chance to do that. Congratulations to Brazilian Government! Probably the really poor people will not use it, but, with this project, a lot of people (poor, but not extremely poor) will have conditions to buy it. And this will make the proccess of popularization of internet and computer quickly! And to people that think that the government have other priorities, why don't you help to do that? I think this kind of people don't do nothing to help and only like to talk bad things about others. It's really a great idea.
I wonder if there's any chance of them selling some of those up in the States? It seems to me that if they sold some up here (at a small profit), it could do them well.
I wouldn't mind getting my hands on some of these; they seem like an ideal thing to use to make a school Linux computer lab... A dozen or two of these and a server running NFS for storage would be much more cost efficient than, say, Win/Dells, and they have much more processing power than recycled Pentium 100 systems.
It seems to me that we could help them and they could help us, all at the same time, and I would so love to infiltrate some high schools with real programming classes (even if you only teach PHP/MySQL/Apache, it would be much more useful than what they currently teach, and I'm sure you could get Java or C/C++/Cb in there).
-- "Duh! Headline of the Year" nominee, from News.Com: --
Trojan horse targets AOL subscribers
Members of the Internet service are being warned to keep watch for a
password-stealing virus circulating in the form of an e-mail attachment.
February 1, 2001, 8:40 a.m. PT
Not necessarily either, I'm thinking. I do think people "raised" on linux w/ KDE will be partial to it over, say, MS-Windows, simply because they're accustomed to it. But I don't think this implies that they'll get into the whole open source movement.
For one thing, it might never be explained to them. If it's only stated that "here's your computer, here's how you work it," there's really no chance of getting into the movement, is there? When I see it really becoming an issue is when someone gets really good at writing shell scripts to customize his/her environment, gets interested in programming, and wants to go to the US to study. Then someone will have to break the news that to be taken seriously in the US computer industry, you have to know Windows2000, and I'm sorry you can't use that because MS says it costs even more than your computer!
To care about Open Source as a phenomenon, I think people must be aware of the alternatives.
wow, you must really think you know me......
who are you to judge me??? I tell it as I see it.
where is your wisdom and intelligence?
Source of both definitions
:) Go in the countries themselves and see how people live, don't judge from how "energetic" people are at work. I've been to several places including USA and all over Europe, and I was quite shocked to see some people eating in the US McDonald trash in American back alleys. As to energetic American workers, the one I've worked with mostly reminded me of shiny-happy-people drones bombarded with cheesy commercials every 5 seconds. Not my definition of happyness.
Actually you can't trust any dictionnary to give accurate definition of a political word. I could quote an old 70s russian dictionnary about the word "capitalism", and I bet you wouldn't like the definition either ! As another poster said, socialism covers a lot of ground with the only common point being that the state should at heart to help every citizen and balance things out.
worker's incentive to produce, innovate, or take any risk at all is removed
That just shows you think socialism==communism. If you think the above is true, then how do you explain the 1 million+ company creation in the European Union every year ? Or are those people paid by the gov. to start their own business ? There is a striving free-market in countries with socialism ideology, just like there's in the USA. The fact that Germany is the 3 world biggest economy and France the 4th just shows how wrong you are.
the happiest, most optimistic and motivated people are in the US
They are energetic because they can be fired tomorrow without any job security
I have also observed that, nearly without exception, people who come to the US from elsewhere, stay in the US. They may complain that this or that is not as good as "back home" but they don't leave.
Yeah, that's the same thing in all developped country. People go there mostly because they want more money. They arrive, get a job, a house, a wife, a dog, 3 kids, a 30 year loan and never go home. Doesn't prove anything. I've been to the US and left because money doesn't buy happyness and the US are not somewhere I would raise my kids. Heck, Ashcroft and Bush alone are a good reasons to flee this place.
I loved your comment by the way, it made me smile already this morning.
Does anyone else see the irony in producing computers that people can get for 200 dollars so that they can close the "digital gap"? I mean, come on, if they can't afford a 500$ computer and a telephone line, they are probably poor enough that they live in substandard housing and/or recieve poor medical attention and/or have crappy schools and/or live on a poor diet and/or etc. etc.
a list of things a thousand times long and each infinitely more powerful than being able to watch pr0n online. Are we to believe that these people will get their 200$ computers that will only allow them access to the web and email and this will solve the rest of their problems? And don't forget, we are talking about Brazil, for the love of pete, they have much more important issues that internet access.
I think some brazilian politian has a buddy who stands to make a crapload off of this.
The other point is, who is paying for this. If the government is sucking up the "loss" in the sales, where is that money coming from, taxxed people? So now you will take other people's money away so that less fortunate won't fall behind on the latest issue of "the Onion" and can keep up with slashdot? WTF?
If an american politician suggested we take money from the rich to buy Power Ranger toys for the poor, or rather, make them available cheaper to the poor, don't you think it would be stopped?
This is sheer stupidity. Folks who are so scared of being thought of as back-woods or less than first world because they aren't all trapped by AOL yet and aren't berated with banner ads for $hit they will never be able to afford that they'll sink valuable resources into a worthless effort such as this. It's a damn shame.
-- there is no point in pulling the pud... if you do it right.
don't forget the Yanomamo, one of the most exploited indigenous tribes of the western world.
It is a wonderful idea, I wonder if it would be possible to make it even cheaper (no mouse, no keyboard) to create what would be a free Internet Terminal, perhaps build near a public phone.
;)
I was thinking about a 'virtual' keyboard, a panel which can pop up on the (touch) screen, where there are no 'dangerous' keys (ctrl-alt-f1, and gain shell from there). Of course someone could set up a website with escape chars that can be copied into a shell, if someone gains one, but this will be easyer to filter/hack away.
Linux: a FREE os on every Desktop...
...which reminds me someone's dream, but I don't remember who was it
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Since the day someone decided that the job of government is to help the people of the country rather than just finding excuses to start wars.
I would gladly never take a government funded college loan if it meant that welfare would be abolished.
Well then, fuck you. That's what you're saying to the rest of the people in whatever country you live in - "fuck the lot of you-I'm alright". Of course while you're saying this you aren't using any government supplied roads and obviously you've posted this message on some strange network which doen't owe its existance to Govt. sponsored projects and your house is powered by electricity which does not come from a station built with the aid of Govt development grants (nor, for that matter, do you live near any of the big Govt.-paid-for hydro-electric dams).
No man is an island. If you want to live as if you are then go and live on an island and stop being a dead weight on the rest of us.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"If we couldn't laugh at things that didn't make sense,
My bicyles
I live on Brazil and there a lot of buzzing about that computer. But unlike gov said, it will cost around US$ 300,00 (R$ 600,00) and not US$ 200,00 as said. And, it appers it will have a DOC (Disk On Chip). Well, as soon as they released it, i will get the machine...excellent home routers, firewalls, low volume webservers and gaming station! Hey, that machine is better than mine ;)) (AMD k6-II 400 mhz with 64 of RAM)
gcc -o sig sig.c sig.c:4: #error NO SIG FOUND make: *** [sig] error 1
Well,
This is one of the Great Ideas from the Brazilian goverment...
So we would think, but the real poor people in brazil don't even have Electricity, much more phone lines and money to buy a computer...
This is one more measure to let the rich get cheap computers... In brazil the middle class is quite small...
They should first take the kids from the streets and put them in proper homes and then think about giving them access to internet.
After that they should think about the ecological problems with amazonia...
They have so many problems and what their leads think? No wonder...
Long live TUX!
Ah, it looks like its a SiS motherboard with all the stuff on board (modem, nic, video card, etc)
gcc -o sig sig.c sig.c:4: #error NO SIG FOUND make: *** [sig] error 1
If this program really takes off in Brazil, it means that the first digital experience many Brazilians have will be based on Linux. "Linux as a first OS" would differ from the typical background of a US techie raised on MS-ware (although not everyone used DOS/Windows first, I know). Will these Linux machines carry with them the aura of the open source movement, or will it be just another OS to them? (I recall, for example, that although DOS was not free, it had many die-hard advocates who seemed to be partial because "DOS was what they knew.")
1st) FHC (which is our president) doesn't NEED to did that; He is, as always, a dirty politician, but at least he is a scholar. 2nd) We already can buy a computer for US$200, due to the massive evasion of customs. Near all of this stuff comes from taiwan. The people from UFMG did a great job of finding the right pieces of hardware (and of course using linux), but it is all here if you want to take it. 3rd) Brazil is a BIG country. There are regions of an average salary higher than regions of USA or Europe. However, this WILL benefit (no doubts about it) the medium and richer regions. The poor regions will not even know of this. 4th) You can buy any piece of software you want, you name it, for US$5 at the streets of Spaulo, Rio or Bhorizonte. Even multinational companies use illegal software here. 5th) We already have our own tolkien society, Brazilian (Star Trek) StarFleet, and so on. But we, as a majority, understand that Internet is only another way of comunication. 6th) How can someone blame a government for aiding people acess the internet, I really can't understand.
You can always flame me at pauloegidio@hotmail.com
Not that this isn't a commendable effort, but how is this really going to affect the standard of living?
My thoughts on this say that it's a pacifier, like the Brazilian govt. is saying "We won't help you out with housing or city and family planning, but we'll give you a cheap computer!" If it were a case where things like that were being done this effort would make a lot more sense...
Plead sanity, then they'll know you're crazy...
To berate the government when they use this to control what "the people" see on the Internet
Imagine! The first government in the history of the world to do something for purely altruistic reasons!
By the way, if you buy that, I've got this bridge...
I don't trust the Brazilian government (or, any government) to run this kind of program. I predict that within a year or so, assuming this program makes significant in-roads, the cheap, non-free-as-in-speech Internet computer will be serving up some kind of prole-feed to the users. Do you think that anti-governement propoganda will make it's way down that subsidized phone line to the end user? Will the news ticker display headlines such as "Brazilian President caught in flagrante delicto with a mule"?
More likely, it will be a conduit for government propoganda and a shield for the government to hide behind.
You want to help Brazilian citizens get Internet access? Go down to Brazil, open a business and hire people. Teach them to operate a computer, suggest a good brand (local, preferably), help them set it up and give them technical support if they need it.
That's helping somebody -- saying "wow, that Brazilian government is so cool, giving away computers" is NOT helping. It's a coward's way out.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
OK, you don't say your name, so I'll jut call you chicken. Hey chicken, the Web is not american, neither is Linux nor YOUR OWN LANGUAGE. Hey chicken, if America blows up we can still use Al Gore's invention (didn't he invent the internet?). We have paved roads up to your wife's house, where we score while you suck on coffe in some McDonalds management room. Get a life, fat ass american looser.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
It appears to be an AMD K6-II 500, not a Pentium 500 as the poster suggested. Heck, this is faster than any of my home machines!
-Paul Komarek
And it is not math, it is one good american invention called Regular Expression and used with another good american invention called PERL. Yeah, perhaps the USA does have some good stuff... You suck though. Up yours, once more!
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
Post your name chicken If Ferraris were made in US we wouldnt buy them. $BSB = Blowme Sonofa B*tch; $USA =~ s!people!sh[i]t!; Go learn elections, then learn of the world. P[U]ssy.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
dumbass!! the guy is from Brasilia, BRASIL, he speaks portuguese, spanish is the language spoken in Miami, CUB^H^H^H US
Long ago, there was an article on Slashdot about a free, high quality online university subsidized by Michael Saylor of Microstrategy. This was the missing link. There are already a few good free sources of information out there (Project Gutenberg, The Baen Library), but a comprehensive educational program available for free would provide a much more "equal opportunity." Has anyone heard anything from this, or is it vaporware?
Yeah, but I bet a lot of 'em would like to visit. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Do you really need a dozen? And it's not like they can say that they're testing it with different systems, many of them were duplicates...
Stop the criticism! First, the brazilian gov isn't paying a cent for doing the computers, they are just incentivating it, paying (already) researchers of UFMG (A university) to create it. The entire computer can be built around this prize if you buy the separate parts, but now they are releasing a product with the lowest price they can get. What the gov should do, was to lower the tax (around 17% of the final value) over this particular product. And think on possibilities, people that work the entire day but can't have a computer (around US$ 600/700 over here), now can have one of these and use the NET for research, studies, etc. Its true that are a lot of issues that need to be worked out, but all help is welcome! BTW, the Computer will probably use a AMD k6-II 500, SiS MotherBoard, cheap products that are already on the market...
gcc -o sig sig.c sig.c:4: #error NO SIG FOUND make: *** [sig] error 1
well, the whole concept is cool, wish my government would do that, but not with PCs, but maybe give me a PS 2 ??? wouldn't say no to that, or maybe a T3 connection ... ;)
Nur die Harten kommen in den Garten
I am sure he will work something out.
Oh great, now you've slashdotted a whole country. Very nice!
As for crappy schools, the notion that the quality of your school should be linked to the money you have (except of course for the 1-2% who can attend very expensive private schools) or the city you live in is a very American one.
If this is supposed to imply that all Brazilian kids get a similar eduaction it is very ignorant. Brazil is one of the most unequal societies in the world. The favela kids don't have any schools or health care at all, and are hunted for sport by the police.
These cheap computers may help the middle class get on the web. But it's very likely that primarily it will help some fat cat involved in it make millions of govenrment money. Did I mention that Brazil is one of the most corrupt countries in the world as well?
It's a great place to visit, though. But stay out of the favelas!!
Since when did it become government's job (any pro-democracy government) to provide computers to anyone? Why make people who work hard and pay taxes pay for computers for those who have 20 kids and might not work or whatever.
Same goes for welfare. I'm in college but I earn enough to pay taxes and I resent the fact that I have to pay for stuff like that.
Oh, and if you say that government provides for college loans let me say this, I would gladly never take a government funded college loan if it meant that welfare would be abolished.
Well let's to the real matter
,20'and 29')
:) now tell me what you do with 1500bucks in USA? nothing, right?... :) :0)
A pc like that one, a AMD500Mhz, costs in brazil more os less U$500, soh it restricts it's market to about 10-15% of the families. A PC costing about U$300 is affordable by at leats 30% of the brazilian houses.
This price diference is done just by reducing the taxes and by the "compact" eletronics on it.
IMHO, is a _BIG_ advance, my 12-year old brother use the internet in most of his homeworks that need some researching..
Just for curiosity, with the advent of free internet access the number of user is today estimated in 12Mi ppl. Considering we're 5 in my house and just 2 use internet, i can say that at leats 7-8% of the forty-something million houses in brazil have internet. And have of course a computer. (I'm not considering the ones who only use at school and workplaces).
For the ones who doesn't have the notion of what is the "money value" in Brazil , going to explicity my case:
House of 5, between 12 and 48, only one worker(dad:) who never earned more than U$1,500/mo in his life, but we have:
a 180M^2 4-bedroom home, great, close to a 1,500,000 ppl city (where is set the main office of conectiva, for example www.conectiva.com)
2 cars (produced in 95 and 97)
3 TV (14'
A mmx200 and a new AMD 950Mhz w/ printers and all that crap
2 phone lines
2 ppl studing in one of the better universities of the country (ow, ex-students of my college: www.continuum.com.br, game producers..read!)
And we are very healthy
I bet you can't buy a great big size pizza for less than 3dollars..i can
AND WE PAY ALL TAXES
Well Looks like we did it again. BOTH of the sites are down. Kinda scary when /. can take out gov't sites. I know its Brazil but still, I'ts kinda funny.
I have an idea. Organized Slashdotting. Take out some Juno and the like legally. Now that would be entertainment.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
Hey! I have a sister?
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
I don't think so. First, you don't live in Brazil and I don't think you have an idea of the reality and the problems we have here. The government will not use our taxes to make this PC's, but will give isenction of taxes to the company that will. This is the point. Here in Brazil we have a lot of jobs in computer area, and very few people that is able to get this jobs. The unemployenment is a big problem here, and this will help to minimize that. Other dificulty that we encounter here is the prices of hardware, since every hardware we heve here came from other countries , and the cambial diference betwen the Dollar and the Real is very big. This makes it a "litle" painful to a average citzen to buy some hardware.
Marcelo Drudi Miranda
mdrudi@terra.com.br
PS: If you want, feel free to contact me, and I can give you some more explanations.
Who do you mean "we", Anonymous Coward? In 1989 I worked for Embratel, a Brazilian Federal Government owned company that operated the state monopoly (as regulated by the Brazilian Constitution) for long-distance telephone communications in our country. Today I work for Embratel, an MCI/WorldCom owned company (NYSE symbol: EMT) which is one of the several different companies providing long distance telephone communications in Brazil (as regulated by market laws, which are now acknowledged by the Brazilian Constitution).
we paid for a phone line
we paid for electricity
we bought this computer with over a month's salary
we paid for ISP
we wasted time looking for pr0n
now we have no food, medicine, education, clothes, heating/cooling, etc. etc. etc.
BUT WE ARE ON-LINE NOW.
do they seriously think that making a poor hovel internet capable fixes the greater problem?
you can put cinnoman on a horse apple and I still won't be eating it.
-- there is no point in pulling the pud... if you do it right.
That is, quite simply, false.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Damn are you a complete retard? 1st - It is PERL not a pearl. 2nd - Spanish is what they speak in Miami, where your half elected president got coughmmm coughm mm elected. 3rd - I have lost too much time with an Anonymous Coward. Take care McJunkie
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
Here is a fact: Life doesn't wash over you like a wave. People do have choices, homeless people CAN find JOBS, but many of them decide to beg for money, because it requires little to no work with probably a pretty good return payout.
It's not like im a cold-hearted bastard here. If i see someone down on their luck, I will slip them a few extra bucks. Everyone has bad luck sometime in their life. Maybe they lost a job, or can't find one. But, if we hand-feed them with government funded programs, they will not even bother looking for a job.
First, try to learn the difference between "it's == it is" and the possessive pronoun "its".
Brazil is, if i remember correctly, one of the countries which participate in the International Space Station effort. Where does the money come from?
I forgot to punch the "Post Anonymously" button, -1, Flamebait...
Would public schools be able to afford this computer along with a telephone line?
In that case, this project could be a success in that respect.
I'm a Brazilian, which issues are those? (BTW, who is the "pete" who you love so much?)
The other point is, who is paying for this. If the government is sucking up the "loss" in the sales,
It's NOT subsidized, other than not having "intellectual property" on the design. It was designed by UFMG, the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and the design may be freely used by anyone. Ever heard of Free Software? This is Free Hardware. The chips, power supply, circuit boards, manufacturer's profit, taxes, etc, all add up to about $200. This is not a subsidy. It's those who pay more for "patented" designs who are suckers...
Another item of interest is that Brazil is taking this very seriously. The architecture has been tested, they are talking of introducing a new telephone dialling code 0100 exclusiely to keep calls from these machines free for the locals, and further, it ios proposed that each school and publuc building get a machine.
This is a very progressive action by a government. It is not unusual though, as similar comments have been heard from many third world countries. Brazil has stated it as follows (relying on Babelfish for the translation...) "A personal computer, without mobile parts, that function with opened software, of public domain, constructed to take the Internet of favour the schools, ranks of health, microcompanies and small communities... with cost zero for the final user."
I read recently that the WindowsME license is more expensive than the average monthy salary in Nigeria. This is where GPL and public domain really contribute to world prosperity.
Here is a link of interest Algeria has less than 6% telephone density (about one phone per 20 people), and an average ISP (there are only three) costs about 25% of the average person's income.
Bringing the world a little closer to people like this is a calling worthy of Linux. Built by the people for the people.
Three cheers
.. if only.
It IS intended for schools. The lower middle class will be able to buy it for $200, in 24 monthly payments, but the primary target is public shools and libraries.
Has anyone asked the question should we be concerned about internet access for the poor? Usually they are less educated and would benifit less from the information highway. Easy online credit card purchases? I hope not! Internet access only make sense if it was tied to online job skills trainning or something of that nature. Where would the huge benefit come from?
Your post is a perfect example of ignorance, bias, xenophobia and racism against European.
this looks like another plan by the brazilian government to seperate the upper classes from the lower classes. it's been going on for years.
Silly Fool!
You do not chart your own course through life!
You were taught in government/corporate schools
to be a good American Worker!
Your life consists of serving your
government/corporate masters.
Eat, Sleep, Go to Work.
This is all you know.
Then, you pay taxes to feed the next
generation of slaves.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
Yes. Government Bad. Corporations Good.
Silly Fool! Do you not see the error in
your thinking? No type of oppression is
good! Who does government serve?
The corporation!
Anonymous posts are filtered.
This sounds like a perfect machine to hack!
I mean, why do you need 500mhz for a net-PC?
sounds like all you need is a Harddrive, and for 200$ you can't beat it!
They're the dudes who are designing the mainboard.
Just for the record, the free (Federal, state, and otherwise public) colleges are usually the good ones. It works by your rank in the national test you take after High School; this way the smartest (usuallt not the lower class) get the free schools. (pretty smart, huh?)
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
really, i'm tired of hear this bullshit of my countryman, weeping about how poor and ignorant Brasil is. the litany (or opera bouffe) is everytime the same: "Let me weep over my cruel fate, And that I long for freedom!" (Rinaldo, Haendel). I know that the brazilian economy is fucked up, but times are changing. this last push of brazilian government is very laudable. you know, open source is a integrant part of social forms! this push will help a lot the work of people like Rodrigo Baggio. Poor peolple from outskirts are longing for rescue their aplomb! I know that! I give all my old computers to local rappers and I can tell you: their very eyes shine before an old box carring a cyrix dx2/66...
So, if you are Brazilian, starving, no food to be found anywhere,...
...you can now go online and order a pizza!
It may take a while to get delivered though..
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
A computer is a luxury. In the real world, people who have money for luxuries can afford one (normally, after they get a TV. NOBODY would buy a PC before a TV - if you think they would, you need to leave pixel land and return to reality).
If they don't have money for a PC in the first place, they would just sell the PC and pay for other essentials.
The digital divide is just another symptom of the economic gap. You can't fix it by throwing around PCs. It's a fashionable idea for clueless idealists, though.
And let's face it - "digital divide" has a nice sound to it. So it'll stick around for a few years.
w/m
On a differnt note, there once was a planet that tried to seperate their bright and creative people from their hair dressers, telephone sanitation people and types like that ....
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You mean like you deregulated California power plants and electricity distribution ? Yeah, what a great success.
Or the train deregulation in Britain ? Yeah, lots of deads and late trains. The gov. owned train system in France on the other hand is the faster in the world, safe and anyone can afford a ride.
For your information, Russia and many other countries have deregulated under the advises of the US. Now there are 10x more poor peoples and a handfull of overly rich moguls who pillaged the whole economy.
Deregulation is not the answer to all and every problem. It has put enough people in the street to be a considered a dangerous idea at best, the root of all evil at worst.
Despite it doesn't have HDD, CD or even FDD, this article (in portuguese guys) says it will have connectors for such devices.
:)
Maybe the poor people will prefer not to pay for it, but for some brazilians (including me), it's an excellent option for a second machine
--
"You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem."
h@hh@hh@...@.&.... "You shall not pass!"
Well, what the fudge do you think your taxes are doing, other than lining the pockets of already-wealthy politicians and subsidizing corporations?
I'd rather see money go towards actually feeding and improving the well-being of _other_ Americans, but hey. As long as we're doing away with that pesky isolationist theory, we might as well help other not-so-well-off nations and hey. Giving our poor computers isn't such a bad idea, either.
Assuming (nasty word, that) we improve their condition first, otherwise it's sort of one of those "let them eat cake" situations.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Did his mistress' family come upon a windfall of Dells or something?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Please make sure you know what it means. Many countries in Europe are socialist and have better standards of living, better school results, better infant mortality rates, and lower poverty than the US. For example, the US has the HIGHEST poverty among developed nations (not just below average, but the worst).
Just because you've been fed an ideology since birth doesn't mean it's true, no matter how often you repeat it. Yes, there are countries outside the borders of the US. And sometimes, they have better solutions.
Having greater economic power doesn't mean a country is wonderful - by that rationale, China would beat Belgium hands down. The average indicators for life in the US are worse than most developed nations. The only reason it's taken seriously is because of its military might and economic power. Think about it - would Thomas Jefferson be respected so much if he'd been a Portuguese philosopher, or Alan Greenspan if he were a Spanish bank official?
It's all about power. But greater power doesn't mean the ideology is better or works for the average citizen.
(and btw, socialism doesn't mean communism. don't get started on that one.)
This is a hoax
Come on! Just look at some of the crazy terms the submitter made up:
Pimenta da Veiga
Conectiva
KOffice
Brazillian Government
I mean,seriously, if you're gonna submit this bullshit at least make it sound somewhat believable.
"It's all right, it's ok. There's something to live for" - Uncle Bill
Since one fiscal year, here, in Quebec, everyone that gets the government tax funding for childrens has the right to claim :
- 500 CA$ rebate on a brand new complete system (at least the box + a screen +...) - 16$/month rebate for a 24-month subscription to a government-approved ISP (means that the ISP has to be a Quebec company, whatever that means).I do think it's about time governments start thinking helping someone else that big corporations.
The offer helds until march this year, and I do not know if they mean to carry on with it.Of course, I'm a hard-code Kommunizt zealot.
[Pruneau
A lot of people are complaining about the US government not doing enough for people. Someone was talking about a house having a dozen computers and how they don't need that many (like that person knows what their current situation is). I have news for you people who think taxing the heck out of some people and giving free computers to others WON'T HELP.
Giving people handouts don't pull people out of poverity. That's been proven many times during the past few decades. What does work? Local communities pulling together and helping local people who need the help. The Federal government shoving free computers everywhere doesn't help.
So instead of whining and complaining that "rich" people need to pay higher taxes to help "poor" people, go out and use your technological backgrounds and go volunteer somewhere.
I would like to know something. For all you people who say the Federal government should raise taxes and all that, what do you think of President Bush's plan for faith-based groups helping their local communities? Are you saying "Great, they are finalky doing something that may help?" Or are you saying, "Separation of Church and State!!! This is a horrible ideal!!! The religous right are trying to impose their values on us!!!!" The question (IMO) is to tell the difference between people who really want to help verses the people who are socialists and just talking the political talk (I'm not saying Socialism is evil - although I personally don't agree with it).
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Quebec government help poor people also, every family that receive money for childrens, can have a 500$ discount on a PC, and 75% off for internet connection for 2 years
That means when you go to the computer store, you take a 700$ PC and pay only 200$, the remain is paid by the gvt, and for ths ISP, a 20$/month cost only 5$/month, pretty good.
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
There have been a few "anti Digital Divide" posts in this discussion already, but most of them revolve around the "computer is a luxury" issue, and that you shouldn't go around buying them for people for that reason. I don't buy into that logic exactly, but it's not far off the mark.
The real reason that Internet access can't be considered a panacea for poverty is because, regardless of what the New Economy blowhards tell you, the average Joe can't use a computer to generate wealth. You need to be able to use it to create something that people are willing to shell out bucks for - a video game, or spreadsheet programs, or at the very least, your own services (presumably using a program written by someone else).
The real economic impact of the Internet is that it has allowed businesses to leverage resources they already had in different ways. Unfortunately, the truly poor in Brazil don't have any resources. This is what makes folks who get breathless about E-Bay ending poverty so funny. You can't make any money at all off E-Bay, unless you have something to sell. Otherwise, you might as well be pr0n trolling.
There's a very real chance that small businesses in Brazil will be able to do something useful with this, assuming someone is smart enough to capitalize on their newfound net access, and can effectively target them. If the government is smart in how they distribute them, they may even be able to steer their citizens towards educational resources for their kids. But to the average guy squatting in a shanty town not far outside Rio, Internet access means (with apologizes to Buffy the Vampire Slayer) "pictures of pretty things I can't have."
-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
Will everyone really need a PC? PCs are mostly useful for clerical and technical work and entertainment. A large percentage of people in the US who don't have a PC, don't want one either. Sometimes, as I sit here all day staring at this box I wonder if they have a point.
In the mean time, I do what I can. I DO give extra equipment to friends who ask for it AND can use it. I have a hard enough time helping my wife, brother, mother, sister and brother in law. Talk about a nightmare heterogenious network to adminster, sheesh. I did point out to an old proffesor of mine that most Linux distros come with a working FORTRAN compiler as his department has none. I am a member of the local LUG, and do work to help those who show some ability and desire to help themselves. Dumping old computers on people who don't have the time to administer them is useless, even harmful. Small things can help do help, but charity begins in the home.
You would be amazed at what people do with opertunity. My gradfater took the time to teach one of his dirt poor Mississippi patients to read and write. That man whent on to become very rich selling hardwood to automobile companies, and his company provided many people with good jobs. Oh yeah, my grandfather got through school on scholarships.
This PC initiative will create some more opertunities for Brazilians. Every piece of procuctivity added to a society makes that society that much richer. People who get these machines will train themselves on how to use it, sparing many company hours of time. Because these boxes will run Linux, their understaning and ability to manipulate will be much better. Everyone will benifit as they fashion new tools for themselves that they will share. The extra time and wealth these machines create will make other things possible, like teaching someone to read and write. No one is going to loose out.
Destruction is singular. Production is multiplicative. I help you, you help someone else, and the chain goes on, up and down. If ever you doubt the close contact of all classes of people in the world, just look at the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and rest assured that the small world paradox is true.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Imagine: a government doing something to help poor people get access to the internet.
You mean, like wiring the country for high speed access (not to each individual house, but to most major areas), and buying gazillions of computers free to use at most public libraries? Boy, nobody's done that before. Socialism, save us now! Get us the high standard of connectivity that Europe has - limiting free access to academics and taxing the crap out of everyone else, so people have less to spend and companies are charging an arm and a leg for access. Socialism rocks!
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
The problems in Russia are not from deregulation, but from holes in law and lack of its enforcement, plus corruption.
What's funny with die-hard capitalists is that whenever their beloved system goes wrong, it's never the fault of capitalism, it's always the fault of someone else (mafia/governement/incompetence/etc.). Is it so hard to accept the fact that capitalism is not perfect ? That it is not the ultime answer to mankind problems ? That there might (gasp!) be alternate solutions ? That it is not suited to every culture and country ?
Of course, the article is in Portuguese, so you'll have to either trust me or wait for somebody to translate (I haven't scrolled down yet, maybe somebody already did).
P.S.: People able to afford $200 on something here are not "quite wealthy". They're middle class, just like in the USA. The difference is, only about 10% of people here are middle-class, versus 89% poor and 1% obscenely rich.
hmmm, well lets see what a search on yahoo brings up... for "community computer access"
search results
it seems to me that there are a TON of non profit organizations throughout the united states with the sole purpose of providing cheap computers and cheap/free internet access and training to individuals.
now, considering most are non-profit, that means that they get tax incentives from the government, federal grants and subsidies, as well as local government incentives.
now how can you say something like your above statement?
though i never liked the thought that we all developed from the worthless citizens of another planet.