Slashdot Mirror
Get Ready For The Simputer
EccentricAnomaly writes: "CNN is reporting that the Simputer will roll out next month. The Simputer is a handheld computer running GNU/Linux starting at around $214 and is aiming to be an affordable computer for the third world that can be used even by the illiterate with its text-to-speech features. From the Simputer website: "The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man." Slashdot ran a story in May 2001 reporting the launch of the Simputer project." The same Reuters story is also found at the Hindustan Times.
Most of the people fail to understand that the small portion of 'literate' people in countries like India alone outnumber the population of several countries combined. That number by itself is very tempting to introduce a product of this kind.
And I'm really surprised everytime I read people saying "oh why would a third world country bring a [product/service] etc when they can't even feed their citizens". Sometimes it is best to help the people indirectly like bringing in a tool to help them learn and bringing new computer technology is the best way to do it.
India is the fourth largest economy in the world. This product is geared towards the the middle to upper class of the populace whose spending power is growing. And they are obviously educated. So this would make a good idea to bring a linux powered pda to the market.
Do-it-yourself speech recognition-based reading instruction
CMU Sphinx
comp.speech.research
Cambridge Hidden Markov Model Toolkit (speech data not included)
Best wishes,
James
What Cnet neglected to mention was that the hardware in this Simputer is actually licensed under the SGPL (which is inspired by the GPL). I wrote an article about it here. But is it right what they're doing with the license? Should they give complete freedom like the GPL? or would that not work with hardware?