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.
given the recent user friendliness story, i can see tech support calls already...
LTTFM!!! (Listen to the f****** manual)
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
It's a bit scant on the details of how exactly this will 'help the common man' over there.
I mean, people in third world countries will be more bothered about where their next meal is coming from than browsing their email or reading Slashdot.
why does an illiterate person in a third world country need a computer?
I agree with you. Computers are a luxury item, and there are far more important problems to have monetary resources concentrated on over there, like famines and floods and stuff.
# Q: Can I create a Beowulf cluster using many Simputers? /.er; in which case you know the answer!
A: You must be a
"why does an illiterate person in a third world country need a computer?"
Probably because the "Can't read? Call 1-800-ABC-DEFG" campaign wasn't working.
(true story, there really were billboards that said that.)
"Derp de derp."
Yes. Computers are a tool for learning. Learning is more important than handing out money. For instance, it could be quite easy to create a program that helps people to learn to read and write. Such programs could also teach maths. These basic skills could help people immensly in such countries. Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
The article quotes the designers as wanting to bring the fruits of India's software revolution to the poor. But the Simputer still costs more than a year's salary even for the average Indian. Imagine a $40K computer (US per capita income) being touted as a way the American poor could use computers! Even though the Simputer supports smart cards so people can share the device and store personal info on the card, I suspect this will merely make it affordable for (Indian) middle-class families rather than the poor. I suspect the poor would have more appreciation for clean water, reliable sources of electricity, a working health care system, and a food stamp program than a Simputer that costs more than a year's pay.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Anyone else think of the femputer from futurama when they hear the name "simputer"?
... After lengthy simputations I, Simputer, have decided the fate of the men. Simputer sentences them... to death!
Simputer: That does not simpute. Simputer will return after deciding your punishment
In that case, it seems to me it would be better in the long run to invest resources into teaching people how to teach.
Does the thing come standard with a solar battary charger and a satellite dish to connect to the Internet? Most of these people don't have reliable electricity, never mind a reliable data connection. And what good will such a device do if they can't connect to the 'net to learn things. They'll just have a fragile piece of equipment to which they can transcribe their existing database (books and papers).
They have a nice idea, but I just don't see it working in the environment they target.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I got there new show.
When marketing strategies go bad. Seriously though I doubt a handheld machine is neither a good sell or really something that India needs.
That too, but a computer gives people a chance to teach themselves. For instance a computer was mounted in a wall of slum in India. Within a couple of weeks the local children had all learned how to use it. People would need to be taught a few basics of simputer use, but after that they can learn themselves. This is important because most countries in the third-world don't have many resources to teach people.
I know enough people that are literate but shouldn't be using a computer. Just today I had to walk an older lady through an IE Connection Wizard.
ME: Choose the option "I want to setup my connection manually".
HER: It's not there.
ME: Check again, I'm sure it's there.
HER: No, it's not here.
ME: Ok, read me the options you have.
HER: [option 1], [option 2], "Setup my connection manually". Ok, I found it.
I'm sorry but it's a waste of resources when you allow people to be as ignorant as they want.
For only 0.54 USD a day, you can provide the neeeded computing power to a third world child. Think about, that is less than the price of a bad cup of coffee a day. Less than a newspaper even. Won't you help? I want you to meet Nidia. Nidia is seven years old and lives in a village with no running water, no schools, and no healthcare. Your 0.54 UDS a day would change her life, allowing her to compute with the other kids in the village. Start helping today!
The last time I heard about the Simputer I was put off by the license, which treats the specs as if they constituted trade secrets. I don't know how you can publish specs and still expect trade secret protections.
It reminds me of Microsoft tying a license to their version of the Kerberos protocol. Although different in intent, the basic legal mechanism, if recognised as valid, is very, very dangerous.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Dispite everything about how India's poor cannot afford the device, $200 for a 32M/24M Flash StrongArm PDA with a 320x240 display is really very good. In fact, add a USB->9pin Serial adaptor to it, and the sky's the limit for the hobbyist looking for a cheap machine to run his projects.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Let me tell you one area where it could be useful. Many, many times in the past, there have been growth of some vegetable or fruit, in quantities much larger than usual. Normally this follows a period of scarcity of that item (perhaps due to some disease). Once the farmers see that the price of some particular produce is very high, all of them start growing the same. Note that farm holdings are extremely fragmented in India. So when the harvest comes in, compared to the amount available, there is little demand. Most of the produce just rots on the plant, as it cost of picking the produce is more than the sale price. I have seen this happening many times. Imagine, if you will, an index of areas of cultivation of a particular crop. This would not be too difficult to make, at least on a rough basis, say per village. If all the farmers could see this information, then they could avoid these periods of excesses and scarcities.
The above was just one example where it could be useful. There are some organisations planning wireless internet through buses!!! Every time the bus passes through the village, the people in the village could download information off the bus. So they would get 'up-to-date' information say twice a day. Since long distance phone calls are expensive, emails could and probably would be quite a killer app there.
Even now, there are pilot trials going on where eye doctors, remotely view the patients' eyes with web-cams and recommend medication or ask them to come for further diagnosis/treatment.
In this case, I truly believe that once this becomes popular, there can be very useful applications benefitting the common people.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
She was probably looking for something starting with "I" rather than "S". It's a well known fact observed from psychological studies of list searching that people do it left to right, indexing the leftmost letter and moving right to the next ones.
The benefit a third world country would get from something like this is not actually being able to purchase it. A system targeted for that kind of area with a cheap pricetag (cheap relative to western prices) would be purchased not by the enduser but different aid groups. Just as "cheap" medicine, food, etc. is delivered by aid groups now. No, poor people of the third world will not purchase this, but aid groups will--and then donate them. This is why you can't compare half a years salary there to half a years salary here (an aid group would not purchase systems at 40K).
Poor villages in India and China typically share a single telephone. So I could see a village sharing a simputer, provided the simputer actually does something useful.
However the simputer page is very vague about what the simputer actually does, and why a villager would want one. The page which purports to describe the role of the Simputer basically states the simputer will bring IT to the masses. Well, yes, but to what end?
When you're child is dying before your eyes from lack of food or medicine I'm sure that a simputer will come in handy. Afterall, you could always trade it for food or medicine - at $200 a pop it should be worth a least a bag a rice and some multi vitamins.
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.
Aside from the rather hefty price tag (for the supposed "third-world" userbase it's aiming for), where would one buy batteries for this thing? Where, exactly, is the Radio Shack in Ethiopia? :)
I'm a poor college student... am I third-world? Because I don't really see myself plopping down 200 bucks for a PDA, no matter how cool it is. Perhaps once I get out of college...
Lordfly
hookers and grits.
put yes FEMputer was the first thing I thought of. :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Okay, I'm not saying it's a replacement for food, but there are lots of poor people, who have almost enought to eat, but are dependant on aid because they have no skills or education. These are the people who could make use of a simputer, not the ones who are dying. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. Most of the poor in India have enough to eat, but not enough to educate their children.
umm... as i understand, when something is SIMPLE -- its easy to use.. that means you and the illeterate Indian could manage to work it -- SIMPLE doesnt mean dumb (maybe for you, but definitely not for the rest of the world) -- .. well than i suppose most of america is dumb.. i prefer not to judge them so rashly do you ???
it seems you might be needing a dum-puter for yourself -- just joking
windows was hailed as the next step in computing because it introduced the point and click -- it was simple enough for the average joe to figure out -- but since its simple doesn't mean the average joe is dumb -- and if you believe that
Partly, this is the first production run: probably half the run will go to aid agencies for evaluations ;-)
;-)
Once they get economies of scale going, cost will drop quickly - and in any case the cost of all micro-electronics manufacturing is constantly dropping (except for Apple's LCDs it seems
Plus, we're talking about a one-per-village item, not an individual use device, which is why it takes smart cards. Think of expert systems for microcredit loans, medical diagnosis, first aid, farming and the like - deployed with a voice interface in the back of beyond.
It's early stages yet, but give it time.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Umm, even the faq on their website said that IML could stand for Illiterate Markup Language. Teaching a man to fish with a pocket PC ain't happening.
I have been to a number of 3rd world countries throughout my life. In my experience, of 1,000 of these handed out in a given area, 100 will be broken in the 1st month, 800 will be resold for cash, and the last hundred will end up with people that actually use them (and keep them away from everyone else).
Wow, what are the odds that this will get mod'ed down?
So it's a thin client in the form factor of a palmtop, that can only access content specialized for it. It's not even the cheapest thin client. Why?
$200? Hell, I've seen old 486's at Goodwill for around $15. You can do the Web, E-Mail and even word processing on that garbage.
- Management of microcredit loan systems
- Medical expert systems
- Useful Science Education
- Email
- Trade
- Mapping
Microelectonics is the only thing I know of which has a sustainable exponential curve anywhere in it's makeup. If we can figure out how to make our current computer technology help the poor a little, as prices drop and the gear gets better, it will help a lot more. Fifteen years down the line, it helps hundreds of times as much, if the mapping from (price per transistor) to (human benefit) holds.Microcredit loans (of a few tens of dollars, repayable by a group rather than an individual) are rapidly turning into a key aid strategy, but finding people to run the schemes and do evaluations for who should get the loans is difficult. A simputer application could help with data and loan application gathering, and keeping track of repayments. You'd essentially run the local microcredit loan office on one, or perhaps have a traveling bank officer.
Have been proven to improve medical diagnosis in trained doctors by respectable margins. Even a simple database with appropriate treatment instructions for, say, the 100 most common ailments in the region the machine is in, plus some first aid, could really make a difference. Particularly if it had a preventative medicine bias.
People do not know what they do not know. A simputer app which contained a basic science and appropriate technology education (concepts like germ theory, designs for things like fuel efficient cooking stoves), which people could query easilly, could be very useful.
Dumb as it may sound. Just wait for the "Help, I'm 9 years old, live in Andhar Pradesh, and my family is starving because the harvest failed again. Please do something" emails to begin.
More seriously, with email, and a little time, we could see things like pairing of western high-schools with third world villages - they have a question, the highschoolers find the answer for them and email it back.
Similarly, trade becomes possible once you have information, financial structures and transport of goods (and, perhaps, rule of law). There are a lot of skilled crafts people in India - wouldn't you like to be able to order custom-made clothes or furniture for a fraction of what it would cost for generica at the Gap or Ikea?
Just amortize the shipping costs (by the container, of course) across a large enough set of trades and this begins to make sense.
One problem in governing places like India, even in the most basic distribution of help to the poor, is inaccurate or incomplete data about what is going on in the field. If we do end up with a simputer per village at some point in the future, and people log events on the box, mining that data stream may tell us how to help ten times more effectively than before.
It may also help the poor organize: PeasantDot.Org - where the rural poor get together to help each other out.
Even if it doesn't, making what we're really good at help the people with nothing makes a lot of sense.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Why not Tcl/Tk? Is there any TCL-ers here? What about TCL/TK for that beautiful thingie?
I also agree that a PDA that costs a year's salary is the last thing a third world person needs. If they want to make a cheap linux box for that market, it should be a small laptop with a keyboard, that runs on D cells (WAY cheaper per unit of energy than AA cells). That's far more useful for important applications like email, and should be cheaper to make because not as much custom hardware is needed.
For all of the strange ramblings about who in India could or could not afford one of these things, I cannot help but be intrigued by a new machine and concept that originated outside of the US, Japan and China.
It makes me think of Henry Ford rolling out the Model T in the early 20th century. Up until then, automobiles (at least in the US -- I'm not familiar with elsewhere) were marketed to the well-to-do. The Model T was marketed to the ordinary. In fact, one of Ford's goals was that every worker in the Ford factory be able to buy one.
Does that mean everybody in the US could buy a Model T? No, it didn't. But the Model T made automobiles much more accessible than they had been, for both individuals and for businesses.
I will trust that the developers know their own country better than I do, and wish them well. It will be interesting to see what comes of their efforts.
To learn to read. It's got text to speech.
From the FAQ:
/.er; in which case you know the answer!
# Q: Can I create a Beowulf cluster using many Simputers?
A: You must be a
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It means that enough of us will buy this device and allow them to purchase goats for the whole country!
This is not a Sig.
To learn to read, you need speech recognition
People are forgetting Moore's law. We had the technology to pepper the third-world with these years ago, and in an indirect way, we did. Now we must follow through.
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
Just a thought...
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
to browse slashdot. Sure they can't read the articles but they can look at great pics of case mods!
Does this mean we must r00t it and install Windows?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Computing for the illiterate?
Where are the book people when you need them?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
The idea is cool, but the market orientation of Simputer is really not that clear to me.
If the Simputer is supposed to be shared by villagers, I will suggest them to buy a cheap PC instead. Sharing a PC is much easier than sharing a PDA size device (more expandable, easier to service, not that easy to get stolen or squashed by a careless user...). According to Price Watch, a completed Duron 750MHz system with 128MB RAM, 20GBHDD, CD/modem/ethernet/video/keyboard/mouse/MS tax costs US$255. Adding a 14-15 inch monitor, the price is still around $350, on par with the Simputer ($214 to $469).
If you really think the handheld form factor is important, get this Linux PDA for US$160.
The name is great for anagrams. Check these out:
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he will sit next to a river and drink beer all day.
Not sure if you're trolling, but this is a fallacy. The more a country tries to do, the better they'll do. If they just do nothing but react to the disasters, they'll never improve.
Since all the Hindi computer engineers are working for Cisco.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
Interesting device - I'm looking forward to seeing "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" written in ILM.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I almost fell out of my chair when I got to question 10 of their FAQ:
/.er; in which case you know the answer!
Q: Can I create a Beowulf cluster using many Simputers?
A: You must be a
rotflmao!
[Connection closed by foreign host]
I am saddened to see so many racist comments about developments in a country that is half the way across the globe from people who have never been there. If you don't know anything about a topic, please shut up - and I say this with all respect. In all the urban and sub-urban parts of India, here is how computers are used - the rich have PCs at home, just like in USA. (BTW, there are rich people in India, Tarzan!) There are thousands of Internet cafes all over the major cities and towns, where people time-share computers. At about a dollar an hour, it is very affordable for people to visit hotmail or yahoo. Atleast, a lot more affordable than making international or long distance phone calls. The poor in rural areas do not know much about computers. The only thing they get from the wealthy white people is a bunch of missionaries trying to convert them. The simputer is an indigenous effort to reach them and for that, it should be applauded. I was surprised to see such arrogant and rampant racism in slashdot, as this forum is supposed to be for technical guys. And I somehow assumed that /.ers would have visited Silicon Valley atleast one or know what percentage of NASA engineers are from India. Apparently not.
Apparently, you don't need to know anything to post here - all you need is a computer (a powerful one, not a simputer) and an internet connection!
All your favorite sites in one place!
1. simputer at $216 is a very simplistic estimate (it it is not the list price). the $216 is the sum of prices of its parts if bought in bulk. it does not include the cost of assembling, testing, packing, CEO's lifestyle, rent of the office space, etc. By the time you add it all up and pay the taxes, the price could well touch $500. i bet a dollar it wont cost less $400.
2. simputer is a hardware platform that is not very different from ipaq. it uses arm processor, it has all the standard hardware features of a pocket pc. in that case, wouldnt it make sense to port simputer's software to existing hardware platforms that can leverage the economies of their existing scale of production?
3. dont be fooled into thinking that simputer is an open design. to use it, you have to pay them. check their fine print. their software is free, but their hardware design is not. which may explain why they didnt port it to existing pda platforms.
4. there is nothing especially about the simputer hardware than cannot be achieved, lets say, using the $150 handspring pda. then why pay more?
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
I think it's great that the Linux community got a big "sale" here.
If M$ came up with the gig, it would be being portrayed as a marvel of modern Capitalism.
The community created a better product and gave it away....
Even in our "enlightened" economic system - one finds it hard to compete with better and free.
In fact, my economist friend tells me that if you plug "better and free" into a model of our economic system, you either quickly achieve 100% market penetration or you get a bunch of divide by zero errors...
I want to be alone with the sandwich
So in the top tier of countries we hack PCs and Microsoft boxen to make them run linux.
So are people in india going to hack the simputer to run Win3.1.
Actually -- better yet DOS6x
Many illiterates have friends.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
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?
First of all kudos to the guys who did it. I just hope it picks up as they intend but cannot hep noticing that the article is more idealistic than practical. * No illiterate/poor guy is going to spend 200$ (10,000 Rs) in India to buy this. Computers have still not become a major part of the government infrastructure in the way they have become in say the US or Singapore. Many places which have been computers are in urban India. And today when I can pick up an XBox / PS2 for 250$ or a Palm for 300$+ in the grey market in any of the cities, will I spend 200$ for a machine with 32 MB of RAM? * What is the ROI for this product? My pop uses a 5000 Rs (100$) box from one of the ISP's to browse the Internet on the TV. I do not think I would be able to convince him to fork out double the money for something like this. * Will you buy a Simputer for 10000 bucks when we can buy a P3 machine (assembled) for 23000, or pick up all the old 486'z for 5 K + ? I feel that a computer would be more educational and useful than a simputer. The only positive thing it looks like is that the Government is going to be a big customer for their product. So more standardisation , less price-manipulation and more people using Linux!
> If this piece of hardware didn't happen to run
> Linux the headline/summary/comment on the front
> page would have been dripping with sarcasm,
> contempt and ridicule.
This site, from what I have seen over the last several years, appears to support and encourage the use of free or open software, and the free dissemination of information about technical products.
There are other websites, like those of Microsoft and Apple, that support and encourage other ideologies.
How long have you been reading slashdot, anyway? Cmdr. Taco has always been a fairly ardent supporter of oensource and engineering...and it's his site.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
The Simputer is ridiculous. Its designed ostensibly to provide computers to people who can't afford computers and help people learn and communicate. There is not a snowball chance in hell it can effectively meet either of these tasks.
If they think they have a reasonable price for some third world country to buy for schools they are putting themselves on. A pricetag of a "mere" $216 in US dollars is beaucoup cash for some family in the middle of nowhere on a dirt farm. They'd be lucky to sell just one per small village let alone one per person. People would be better off buying anti-biotics or flu shots rather than one of these things.
They get cool points among Linux zealots for even mentioning GNU or Linux but in reality having Linux on it means very little. It's like having Linux on a TiVo, nothing the user interacts with is Linux-y so to the user they aren't using something called Linux. You don't turn on a TiVo and watch a Twilight Zone marathon rerun and think "holy peepants this uses Linux and it is so cool because of that", well sane sociologically adjusted people dont. The Simputer isn't going to win over a bunch of third world Open Source zealots or some stupid shit like that. The software running on the Simputer will be all they really know or care about with regards to the system.
Instead of a stupid idea like the Simputer they should have stuck with something like a Dreamcast. The late edition DCs had a bunch of components packed onto a handful of chips and Sega even had a DC on a chip worked out ready for fabrication. They intended to stick DC guts into DVD players like the Matsushita/Panasonic DVD capable GameCube. They would be much more flexible than some handheld toy that is itching to be dropped or otherwise lost. Plus it could hook up to a television which a place likely to have the ability to plop down $50 for a DC based console ought to have at least one television in town. A number of people could use the thing at once which makes it much more cost effective.
Educational material is easy to ship off to people, a CD or DVD can store instructional material in the form of animated or live action movies for people who can't read. A student's entire lifetime curricula could be stored on a single CD. A class of students could use a single CD-ROM for several years worth of education. Textbooks from elementary to a high school level (or whatever your local equivilent is) could be stored at HTML or PDF files or some other format friendly to your particular language. As for languages, a single disc could contain the same information in multiple formats so a bunch of people speaking different languages or dialects only need to buy a single disc. Using CD-ROMs rather than semiconductor memory cards is scores cheaper and people could afford to not only buy more software but multiple copies in case one ends up ruined.
The goal of the Simputer would be more easily met by a much simpler and cheaper machine. Its creators might have the right mindset but they don't seem to have thought through the implications of the hardware they developed. Even if there was some requirement for a portable device people would be better off putting tough rubber cases on a bunch of Palm m105s or Handspring Visors and handing them out to people.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
u would pay rs.4 million for that sort of a thing. that is about $80,000 per year. plus the cost of modems and leased line installation. the whole would come to about $100,000. Now, for real comparision, my drive is paid $60 per month. and a rail ticket from one end of india to another (1000 miles) costs $10. get the picture?
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
So you're saying the Simputer is a stealth birth control device, designed to lower Third World population growth?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
You seem to have a real inferiority complex if you have to go and brag about your living standards like you do. Is it because 99,9% of your feelow countrymen couldn't afford one square foot of your house?
From their FAQ:
/.er; in which case you know the answer!
Q: Can I create a Beowulf cluster using many Simputers?
A: You must be a
This is OffTopic perhaps, but what on earth are you Indian people so incredibly oversensitive about? The article is about a special kind of PDA that the designers envisage as being usable in the third world through sharing. Whether or not it is a good idea surely says nothing good or bad about india.
How would you like it if the "white people" started getting affronted off every time some ignorant from India started claiming that we're all missionaries?
It's a valid question. "I smell curry burning". Now that's a valid troll.
Note before I start: This comment of mine says nothing about the quality of indian engineering or the state of life in that subcontinent. This because I see some over zealous Indians getting upset about perceived racism where there is actually valid questions. (I come from africa so fuck you anyway with your claims of racism)
I personally have my doubts with this device. I personally think that a standard PC with Windows or Linux Speech Input would do the job at the same price for a community of users. Even devices such as a modified iPaq or a Sharp Zaurus would do the trick. I don't know the conditions in India but I do know that induviduals in India and South Africa have started to set up Internet Cafe's etc in poorer areas and there was an artcle on the BBC on one of these places hooking up to a hospital so that the Doctor could do some diagnosis via a web cam.
The thing is that these people have access to electricity and unless you have a device that charges via solar cells, you're going to have problems in poor third world areas. Not only this but I cannot imagine a device that is loaned out to various people lasting very long anywhere (school library books anyone?) and therefore think it really is a better idea to have the device centrally located in a village where it will also fit in better with a villages social customs instead of enforcing firstworld social isolation on the people.
However this thing could go anyway. The level of corruption in industry could ensure that it get's implemented in India on a national level, but nowhere else, just as has happened in South Africa, my own homeland.
I have nothing against 3rd world computers, but it seems to me that a good whatever language version of Dick and Jane and Sally would be a lot cheaper than a computer. Of course, you couldn't use it to send e-mail, but I'm not sure that's way up at the top of rural Indian priorities. Despite the protestations of use by "pre-literates," this all sounds to me like a means of "leap-frogging" literacy the way some of these countries have leap-frogged a hard-wired phone system with cell phones. And THAT, it seems to me, is a very BAD idea.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
No, that's the model with the glow-in-the-dark control panel.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Well, this simputer reminds me of the french minitel.
This beasts were before the internet really got off very successful in France, although they were just some terminals with a built in modem. But french telecom gave them away for FREE. So if they want to have some digital revolution in india for the masses, just follow this idea. Give those simputers away for free!
The only unsolved problem is: Is there a phone jack in every indian household?
I would suggest this: Free Wireless access points in india, where owners of the simputer can access the internet.
As a guy going about to join Simputer Licensee, Picopeta, I know that the device is not aimed at just the poor. In fact, the market during the initial 2-3 years may be large companies looking for custom-built apps on powerful hand-held computers. In that sense, it may compete with iPaq et al. But finally, the hope is that the Simputer would be India's first truly world-class *product* of any type.
in any case the cost of all micro-electronics manufacturing is constantly dropping (except for Apple's LCDs it seems ;-)
Moore's law states that the density of semiconductor integrated circuit fabrication, measured in transistors per square mm, will double every 18 months. More density means a smaller die, a smaller die means greater yield, greater yield means a greater supply of defect-free parts, and when supply goes up, price goes down. However, liquid crystal display panels are not as sensitive to transistor density because their pixel density is fixed at about 43 pixels per square mm. (96 dpi = 3.77 dpmm = 14.2 dpmm^2, times RGB.) If LCDs were to shrink, they would no longer be compatible with the human eye.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Incredible. I call one Linux-related item "stupid" and I get called several impolite names. Chill out man. Switch to decaf or something. Disagreement is fine but save your personal attacks for someplace else.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I think you've got me wrong - I cheer every time a Linux company makes good. And I don't love Microsoft.
if you plug "better and free" into a model of our economic system, you either quickly achieve 100% market penetration
That's how I would figure it also. The problem I'm having though is trying to explain why Linux has such insignificant marketshare in the desktop arena. Clearly it is free. I think the ugly truth of the matter is that it's not better. At least not to desktop os users.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Frankly I just don't think the fact that the origins of the site has clear ties to the Linux community doesn't justify the kind of blatant bias I'm describing. In fact I have posted here in the past saying that the tag line on the mastehead should probably read "Slashdot: We Like Linux. Not Much Else" instead of "Slashdot: News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters." I presume you are a Linux-advocating kind of person and as such I would think you'd be interested in the most honest reporting about the subject so that good information and sound discussion could help the platform move forward...honest reporting and discussion as opposed to the empty, biased group-think one finds here often enough when the subject turns to Linux.
And since you asked I've been here a while though not as long as some. I've posted 125 comments and judging by my karma I'd say that the community here finds them useful.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
*sigh* Troll feeding time...
If this piece of hardware didn't happen to run Linux the headline/summary/comment on the front page would have been dripping with sarcasm, contempt and ridicule.
And the problem with that is....????? All kidding aside, I don't think you can say that with certainty. Read on, oh Large, Green and Ugly One...
Don't get me wrong, it would be well deserved IMO, but I'm just saying... because it's a Linux story, it was put up with the straightest of faces. That's slashdot for ya. Go figure.
If you read the story, you'll find out the the devices OS is totally secondary to the main idea of the story - distributing technology to the poor and disadvantaged. That's the reason for the straight face. Besides, I'm sure that if it were BSD based it would get the same treatment.
Develop an idea that doesn't involve open source software that has even one significant flaw and it's "lame." Develop a stupid joke of an idea that runs linux and it's "pretty cool!"
Wrong. The pretty cool idea is there is now an in-expensive device that almost anyone in a poor country can afford to buy and use.
Besides, there are few publications that don't show thier political bias from time to time. A smart person learns to sepaprate opinion from fact.
This thing is stupid by the way. Completely idiotic. I actually thought it was some kind of joke at first.
It's no joke, my friend. Get used to it. This little tablet can be a useful device to someone who's never seen a computer before. It just takes imagination, innitiative and innovation - and from the people I've met that came to Canada from India those three things are in very plentiful supply over there.
BTW, there are several reasons that it was smart to choose Linux as the OS. The most prominent is that everyone who gets one of these can read the code and then learn and understand how thier device actually works. Another is the fact that no-one can hi-jack this initiative for thier own gain.
Let's say it was BSD based, and Company A created a "compatible" device with a few quirks in thier now closed OS. They under sell the free (as in speech) project and corner the market. Now, India's poor are "cash cows" to Company A if they want any of the benefits that thier technology can bring. With Linux, that is far less likely to happen, since any one who wants to start milking the cash cow must engineer thier own compatible OS in clean room conditions, which will drive up the price of the competing devices. The Linux OS still wins, stays free and the project continues on it's intended purpose - giving technology to the dis-adavntaged.
OK, Mr. Troll, you've been fed. Off with you now - back under your rock.
Anyone else realise that if this takes off, Linux market share will skyrocket? I could write a (wellll, another) sizeable novel on the implications of that. Yee haa, we're going to have some fun now!
It's times like this that remind me why I love technology!!!
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
My example was flawed, the exact text of the option is "I want to setup my connection manually".
It's true...the kids figured out how to use the thing. Maybe they couldn't pass the MOUS test but they were able to surf the Internet and draw pictures and write little notes to each other.
It seems like children have the natural curiosity needed to figure out complex machines like computers. The befuddled Dad who asks Junior to teach him how to use his computer has become a cliche.
I just want one of these Simputers. You can bet that as well as Hindi and Pali and Urdu and a few other dialects that the Simputer understands English. English is sort of the second language in India. Voice recognition that works? In a cute little package? I'm there, man.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I can think of a few business models that a (let's use a stereotype here) young, unemployed, semi-literate mother in an isolated village in India could develop around the Simputer and net access.
Messages and images between relatives, friends, and trade contacts in surrounding villages. (or elsewhere, of course)
Finding repair parts for the local mechanic-- gathering info for a farmer about what other farmers in the region are going to plant next season-- getting price and cost data for diffferent market towns so a craftsman can decide where to peddle his goods
Arranging appointments for villagers at distant locations
Setting up trade meetings-- "meet me at the crossroad tomorrow". Brokering crop futures deals. Managing pre-market bidding of craft wares.
There are programs in place that would provide this young woman with low cost loans to cover her start-up expenses. The Indian government has found that supporting new village entrepreuners and their micro businesses has had demonstrable effects in increasing literacy, decreasing migration of poor to the cities, and decreasing the birthrate (!).
I think the Simputer fits very well into this larger scheme.
I live in Panorama City, which used to be part of Pacoima until the 1950s when the locals petitioned the USPS for the name change for their post office because they didn't want to be associated with Pacoima. If you've ever seen "La Bamba" you know what Pacoima had become in the 1950s...a place where minorities were steered to by housing covenants. In short, a ghetto.
Panorama City is still kinda rough, and it's largely Latino. However, parents here scrimp and save to send their kids to Parochial school, and now they scrimp and save to buy their kids their own computers. It's the classic story...they want their kids to have a better life than they do.
About 3 years ago I started to see it: bus benches with the legend in Spanish, "Computadoras, credito facil." What does that mean? Computers on easy credit. It was then that I realized that the computer had gone from being a business tool and a hobby for the idle rich to being a device on the way to becoming as ubiquitous in households as the TV and the telephone.
How many poor families have you seen who still have a TV and a telephone? Prolly most of them. How many of these also have a game console? Probably the majority of the TV/Telephone owners. The computer is next on the horizon. 5 years from now computers will be ubiquitous even in poor homes.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Actually I've been looking around for some sort of hand held device which I could shell script in and do some text processing with what ever my favorite editor is, say vim.
So will it be available in the UK and is it suitable for what I want?
per the windows license agreement, microsoft is to receive a payment regardless of the os installed. pay up buddy.
sincerely,
bill
Probably there is something in what you say about this site ..... as to its favouritism for Linux, which I am actually happy about.
But for this article all the previous posts and discussions have been about the device and its cost, effectiveness in poor countries etc., .... nobody ever talked about Linux in particular. Also for an open hardware design its natural to have a open source OS.
If you read the story, you'll find out the the devices OS is totally secondary to the main idea of the story
My criticism isn't of the story, but rather of the blurb on the front page of slashdot, which I think I made clear. And I did of cours read the article.
Besides, I'm sure that if it were BSD based it would get the same treatment
BSD is open source. Re-write your sentence and replace "BSD" with, say, "Windows" and see if you still agree with it.
Besides, there are few publications that don't show thier political bias from time to time. A smart person learns to sepaprate opinion from fact.
A smart person does indeed do this. But I think Slashdot is beyond the pale when it comes to the OSS/Linux issue. The often unthnking bias towards open source software is the most significant flaw of an otherwise outstanding community web site.
This little tablet can be a useful device to someone who's never seen a computer before.
If you mean it'll revolutionize the world the way the Segway did, then sure. Heh. I hope you'll forgive my - how shall I put this politely? - "wait and see" attitude.
BTW, there are several reasons that it was smart to choose Linux as the OS.
No argument there. I can think of several. Price probably being the most significant. Odd that you don't mention it. But whether it was smart to do Linux or not isn't at all my point.
OK, Mr. Troll, you've been fed. Off with you now - back under your rock.
I'm sure it's comforting to think that I'm some kind of habitual provocotuer who goes around insulting people in online discussion forums just to get noticed. I mean it couldn't be that I am actually a mature, considerate, well-behaved online citizen who's slashdot karma refelcts how valued his comments are...could it? A "troll" you can ignore. A reasonable person with a valid point deserves your consideration. I, sir, am the latter.
Anyone else realise that if this takes off, Linux market share will skyrocket?
That would be very cool indeed. But I don't think this is the device that's going to do it for Linux. Frankly I think the thing holding Linux back on the desktop is it's developers. They don't want to see the kind of Linux that "mom and pop" want. Perhaps - just perhaps - someone will make a Linux distro that is truly suitable for consumers. I predict that if/when that day comes, that distro will be universally hated by the existing Linux community.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
It should be no more than $21.60 but really move the decimal point again: $2.16. Make it out of paper and make it disposable. Then it will be something.
The Simputer is a sexy idea, but $214 is way too much dough for rural India to afford (or so I've gathered from the other posts here). Assuming the availability of electricity (and the Simputer folks seem to make this assumption as well), it would be much smarter to salvage used equipment from large multi-nationals (there is no shortage of used computers out there) and hook them together with cheap 10mbit/s cards and ethernet cables.
:-) and doing timesharing on a 486SX/33, while connected to the local BBS over a modem. It didn't seem too bad back in '95 and '96; nowadays we're all a little spoiled.
:-)
I mean, really, a used Pentium 90 might as well be worth nothing in the United States. Yet I remember compiling Linux kernels (1.2.13 on Slackware... ahhh memories...
Pentiums can do decent multimedia, text-to-speech, and can handle fairly large hard drives. 10mbit/sec ethernet can do remarkable things over fairly bad--i.e. cheap--cabling (in fact will go over two-pair phone cable in a pinch, if you don't mind a little RF noise). A 286, ISA NIC, a packet driver with IP stack, and SSH for DOS makes a great terminal. How much are 286's going for these days? You could hang 10 of these things off a Pentium, easy. Shell accounts for everyone!
Just don't make me pay the power bill, umkay?
Actually, it was apple and xerox who introduced point and click - but the point is taken
They don't have a problem using one.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Expense is only one factor to consider when introducing products into third world countries. If the economic advantage is large enough, and the price is relatively reasonable, a product will sell. A case in point is John Deere's new India Tractor. It's a very small tractor by Western standards, and very low power. There are no computer controllers, there is no cab, and no air conditioning. You couldn't give them away in North America. But we built a factory to build them in India and they are selling well there, because they meet the needs of the Indian farm economy. Oh, and we added seats on the fenders. Why? Because the farm tractor is also the only vehicle an Indian farm family is likely to own, so they use it for transportation as well as farming.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.