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MIT Unveils Prototype for $100 Linux Laptop
Examancer2 writes "MIT is showing off a prototype of a $100 laptop. It uses a 500MHz AMD processor, stores everything on flash memory, and runs Linux. The AC adapter acts as the carrying strap, and there is a hand crank so if you can't find a source of electricity you can charge it kinetically. The prototype laptop is also much more flexible and durable than your average notebook. In addition the unit has a screen that has a special daylight-friendly black & white mode that makes a great ebook." From the article: "Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations. Negroponte, who laid out his original proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, said MIT and his nonprofit group, called One Laptop Per Child, is in discussions with five countries--Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa--to distribute up to 15 million test systems to children." More coverage of this story available from ITWorld, InformationWeek, BBC, ZDNet, and the Associated Press.
My first concern is that once given away, a very poor family might look towards selling the laptop on the black market for food, clothing, etc. How much expense would be added if biometrics were incorporated into the design so that once a laptop is "mated" to a child, only that child can operate it, thus rendering its worth on the black market so much less?
So you end up manufacturing fewer laptops, but maybe that means more of them end up being used as intended?
(and the hand crank is too cool to leave to the kiddies. I am forced to wonder whether so many of us would still be strangers to the ladies if required to produce our own power. Two hours coding, three hours debugging, and four hours pedaling the stationary bicycle that powers our boxes to allow for the coding and debugging would reduce global warming, save on healthcare costs AND yield superior breeding material, all at the same time!)
--
You didn't know.
Well, by "they" I mean our presidential candidate... wait, I mean governor... aparently wants to buy them for all the students in MA schools.
Of course, he's really just campaigning right now, not really trying to do anything in MA so it'll never happen, but they did mention it on the news this morning.
More information on the $100 laptop can be found here.
A bit of bad news from this page:
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
They are really pursuing a great cause but I would like to see some of these features, like the hand crank and black and white screen mode, in other laptops as well. Not paying out of your ass for higher levels of durability would be cool too...
Of course, as other articles in different papers have said, you won't be able to walk down to your local computer chain and buy one of these. They're strictly for developing countries.
...in contrast to many others.
;) :/ )
:/ I'm too rich apparently :|
I wonder what exactly are the processors inside...the big question is whether those are Geode (x86) or Alchemy...I wonder if choosing NON-x86 architecture would be a good way to prevent gray-market a bit and convincing parts manufacturers to supply them considerably cheaper (since the laptops wouldn't be a competition for their primary wintel market). And since it's Linux it's not a big deal when it comes to architecture...
128MB of RAM? probably similarly low...HOVEWER there's one very important difference to our typical laptops/desktops - swap is to be avoided at all costs (flash based - limited number of read/writes and...slow). Personally, I would modify the kernel/desktop enviroment (or something) that it will not allow launching of new apps when physical memory limit is closing in (eventually - allow, but display something like "to assure longevity of your laptop, please close applications you're not using)
Also, worth noting IMHO will be software choice once it's announced - simply because those software titles will become one of most widely used IN THE WORLD, no only when cosidering Linux desktop.
What are your guesses?
Since I think this laptop will be a bit RAM limited, I think they'll choose something light as possible, but easy to use also...XFce perhaps? Epiphany/Kazehakase? Opera? (I wouldn't be surprised if Opera agreed to port their browser...it's free anyway, and they would get HUGE usage boost; of course there's the question what licensing principles this project has...)? Abiword? (KOffice would be nice also...but KDE wouldn't
BTW...too bad probably it won't be available for me probably
One that hath name thou can not otter
I don't know a lot about electrical stuff, but wouldn't it take a real long time to get a decent charge out of a hand crank?
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
I've played with Linux on a 266MHz Pentium II, and that worked pretty well. It's only a matter of tuning the system and throwing out unnecessary stuff and eyecandy.
...but I tend to ignore anything that sums up as an announcement. Which is all this really is, or worse, because they mention they will not be available. Ever.
But wait! I am formally announcing a $100 laptop, right here on slashdot! It'll have a 3gb 64bit processor! 1gb of ram! 100gig flashbased storage! Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g all built in! It'll even come with a special edition copy of World of Warcraft!
See how easy that is? I just announced something. I have no intention on carrying through with it, why would I? I've already pumped up my stock price, or made myself look good to others.
I wish there was a way to filter "announcements" from slashdot.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
A simple lightbulb on a retractable shaft would likely solve a lot of issues with this. In places with undependable power like Iraq and as we've seen in New Orleans having a light source is important. Mounted on a swivel as a flashlight or room light. Durable like an LCD.
Remember that their needs are not our needs. I remember one boondoogle from the early '60s (I think) were they shipped are great expense fresh milk in a jet to starving people who promply dumped the milk and used the containers for water. It was like trying to get a rural Mid-westerner to eat Sushi.
If you pay no attention to the real needs of those you help, your not helping them.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I claim BS! I've been running Ubuntu on a Thinkpad 600E (366 PII) for the last six months and it works just fine (except sound). Make sure you have at least 128 meg and you'll be fine.
Zoid.com
Although I can understand them not wanting to market this to average consumers, why not offer it to geeks for a higher price ?
I for one would happily pay more than $100 for a $100 laptop just for the geek factor.
Not to mention the free qa service they would get !?
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
The problem is that you can not use the latest/greatest software on it. I have deployed several toshiba P-II 350 laptops with only 64 meg of ram and the hard drive replaced with a CF card in a drive adapter. linux with xfce and smaller tightly written apps on it work absolutely great. I built several of these over a year ago for poor kids with fatal diseases. put a few games on there, a nice wordprocessor (ABIword kicks everything butt) web browser,gaim and a nice small email client. it all fit on a 512 meg CF card very easily. the company gave away dial up accounts (preconfigured for the kids) at a local ISP for them so they could get online in a manner. they work great and fast.
this is not hard to do, the hard part is manufacturing sometihng new to meet this price mark. and I would love to get my hands on a couple for evaluation.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
what are you doing to help? The fine researchers here are coming up with a way to help with the education level of developing countries so they CAN feed themselves, and you are knocking them because they aren't solving all the problems RIGHT NOW? I ask again, what are you doing to feed the masses? It is very easy to critisize, much more difficult to come up with a solution, even a partial solution. I applaud MIT for their efforts, and I will step off the soapbox now.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Can someone please tell these people that computers are, barring a massive paradigm shift in how they are used for education, merely 90% distraction from the real learning that must go on in schools at these ages? (That is, unless you want to make a society of mindless forum posters.)
All of those configuration modes are really neat. If it was both light enough and powerful enough, it would make an interesting competitor to the OQO. Another interesting possibility is if they GPL their source code, the community is going to get source for an e-reader and a tablet.
At $200-$300 or maybe more. If they only cost about $100, the $200 fee would help to subsidize giving them away to the poor.
to go online and find plans to make water purifiers http://www.makezine.com/02/makeshift/ and solar ice makers http://www.thesustainablevillage.com/servlet/displ ay/microenterprise/display/14. Also, they can use wikipedia to gain extra education over what they currently have, and howstuffworks to gain basic mechanical knowledge. They will have the knowledge resources to overcome their(sic?) situation.
i am so very tired....
Now let's wait for the Gates foundation to buy these linux laptops for 3rd world kids.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
umm, i assume that linux didnt exist before 1999 then, what with the general lack of >500mhz cpus...
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Give a man a hand-cranked laptop, and your employer will outsource your work to him on the grounds that he'll work for fish, whereas you want tens of thousands of dollars per year.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Yeah, because that band-aid solution's been working incredibly, right? That's the first thing. Second thing is it's a lot easier to solve this problem since it requires a lot less infrastructure. Food is big and perishable. It's hard to get to the source. Most of it doesn't make it.
And the third thing - what, the entire world has such tunnelvision that it can only work on one thing at a time? Should I be berating the crew fixing potholes outside my apartment because they're not solving world hunger?
Charity is about applying the skills you have. I doubt the people involved know crap about solving world hunger.
Also, that assumes that the entire third world is starving. It's not, mostly. Many need education more than anything. This helps solve that.
Just to be absolutely 100% clear, there are many, many, many people in many, many, many developing areas who could really use the education and social infrastructure these guys are working on but aren't really in immediate danger of starving. In fact, *most* people aren't in immediate danger of starving. Which isn't to say that they all live with the sort of luxury and immediate access to food that we have in the US or other first world countries. I would say abosultely, yes, in many cases getting them a laptop is at least as important as getting them food. Because not everyone who lives in the third world is a bloated fly-eaten starvation victim.
Presumably their cost is about $100. Why not sell it to us 'wealthy' Western nations for $150 or so? We get a neat inexpensive laptop, they get $50 to fuel their production/distribution mechanism.
The digital divide exists even in First World nations. I do wonder if some effort will be made for the percentage of poor people who have no internet access in the West as well. This is especially important as more and more public services provide information and application forms via the Internet. I'd like to see the $100 computer available for them too.
I somehow doubt that nations with serious starvation problems will be giving out many of these laptops -- especially to people who are starving. Programs like this are more oriented towards areas where food is already being taken care of (like China), but the local government wants to accomplish more than simply keeping people alive. Your point is well made, but there's probably no actual conflict here between food and technology.
Very cool concept. I'd love to see some of this technology trickle down to the consumer level (hand crank, cheap ruggedized case etc). In fact, I'd love to see these available to the consumer at $200. For every unit you buy at $200, you are buying one for a developing country. It'd be like buying a cheap laptop and donating to charity all at once.
My biggest concern with this, and all other laptops-for-schoolkids programs is that they actually do proper class programming with them (programming as in lecture design etc, not Objective-C/Java/etc). It's not simply enough to hand kids a laptopo and expect them to suddenly learn more. You have to shape the classes and the materials in such a way as to be well-suited to a classroom full on network-connected, laptop-toting schoolkids. This can be done, but it does take thought; hopefully the school boards engaging in such programs have done this planning.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Link to article on how broadcasting grain prices helps standardize the market and prevent the small-time farmer from getting screwed.
Thats a direct example of not just technology, but technologically aided flow of information directly "empowers" (read: gives them more money) a person.
Who knows how laptops could be used!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Sure, anybody works faster running on Crank!
I'm not saying (as I think some that responded to my original post) that these devices are useless and have no value, it's just that their value is a little far removed from the core needs. Of course, as other posters suggested, perhaps the target audience is not those who don't have any resources at all, but who have some base resources but just can't get out of the hole their in. I'm still not sure how these can get them out of their hole, because the only way to typically get out of a hole is to either suddenly have a glut of resources so time is freed up to invest in something else, or the willingness to take a risk and forego what resources one does have to journey somewhere else. Of course, the possibility to perhaps communicate with someone willing to donate resources to get someone out of their situation makes the analysis more complex.
Anyway, education doesn't do much if one cannot do something with that education; that was my point. Knowledge in and of itself isn't useful, it's the application of that knowledge that comes in handy. Now, the tricky part comes in where some knowledge is where to go to use other types of knowledge. ;)
Anyway, after taking a minute to think about it, if these things are distributed along with a plan to help those who get them understand how they are supposed to be used, I'd be more accepting of the resources (after all, 15 million units x $100 is $1.5 billion, which is still a lot of resources) required for this program.
And for those other posters who feel I'm trolling, I'd challenge them to try subsistence farming (when I was a young child, my family grew about 30% of our food ourselves. That was hard enough on good land, not to mention storing all that food, chopping wood for the furnace, etc...) on marginally arable land without a machine shop or hardware store around for a year and see just how much free time you have to poke around on the internet, or find/make the materials and tools required the makeshift water purifier for which you provided a link.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Who's up for subjugating a third world government to get a hold of a shipment of these?
On a more serious note, what's to stop the third world government from filling its coffers by, say, selling these things on ebay? Assuming these are ever even produced, there remain huge challenges in getting these down to the people they are meant to benefit and training educators to be able to use such a device.
Which would you choose?
Help the third world by expending millions to distribute these to third world countries and assist in training educators in their use
-or-
Rake in profits that would make Steve Jobs drool by selling these units for $199 a piece in the developed world
Come on people... surely there are countries where people (children included) are starving and they need help desperately. And there are also those countries that are not exactly starving for food, but they are desperately need to hold their own and take care of themselves.
My point is that if you live in a poor country the first thing you would want after your stomach is full is to find out how you can work to get this stuff for yourself. Computers are the ultimate pieces of machinery to help educate the mind and also with the ability to connect to the International Network to get all the information they need about farming, building, etc. whatever they need to build up their communities into shape. Replace all the missionaries with materials and these laptops.
The finished product rocked. I lived with a room mate who owned a couple of them, and they worked wonderfully. The weird thing, though, was the price-tag.
In the third world, a wind-up radio cost about ten bucks. But here in the West, where money grows on trees and the streets are paved with gold, the average Yuppie had to shell out up to $200 for the gizmo.
I don't know if I agree or disagree with this kind of marketing, but it'd be interesting to see how the story goes with MIT's do-hicky. Not that it'll probably make much difference; from their web-site; "these laptops are not in production. They are not--and will not--be available for purchase by individuals."
For my part, I am partial to the HP Jornada 820 when it comes to small and ultra-portable computers. Word-processing with no moving parts other than the flip-screen and lap-top keyboard means an 8 hour battery life. --It runs on flash cards, and so long as all you want to do is write and store data, you can't do much better. (Forget gaming, though, but I couldn't care less about that.)
I think there should be more devices like this generally available; they're just so useful. Dedicated word-processors with good key-boards and screens are hard to come by and too damned expensive for what you get generally. The Jornada is the exception, which is probably why the plug got pulled on it. --HP stopped making the Jornada 820 back in the late nineties; I got mine off Ebay for about $250, and I use it all the time. I wish it could run on wind-up power. I wonder if there's a charger out there which has a hand-crank. . .
I think there's a subconscious conspiracy to make sure people don't have access to useful tools for writing and creating which don't come armed with severe operating limitations, (the standard lap-top with lame battery life), and a million and one mind-numbing distractions, (DVD players and game and music options. Bah. Writers write, they don't waste time messing around with toys.)
-FL
That's all fine and dandy, great, a $100 laptop, but you know, you have to worry about the poorer folk who are more apt to sell the $100 laptop on eBay for a slightly higher mark-up so they can get a little extra cash to support their crack habit. The other problem I have with this is more severe than selling a laptop for nose candy funds. It seems the United States of America has fallen to #9 on the most-educated list. What happened to us being the knowledge super-power? If anything, we should stop being so charitable towards other countries since many of them have surpassed us in technology and manufacturing as we're plummeting deeper into stupiderness.
Is it just me that believes we should fix problems at home first before stretching an arm out to third-world countries?
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Why can't I buy one?
I would pay plenty for a rugged Linux laptop with 500 MHz AMD in it. I say I cannot buy one because in an article I read they said it should be a stigma to use it as an adult. The Simputer people were the same way (I twice contacted their sales asking for info, it said on the sight it was as good for people in NY as India, no response). If these companies are making products that are a good value, but still prophitable lets defray the cost some. If it is truly durable I would pay $500 for it over a low end Dell/Gateway. Then they can donate 4 to a school and everyone wins (I would be far more likly to buy one sub $250 though).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
For a moment I thought "oh my god, the MIT Media lab for once actually did something useful", but then I read the article and realized that the computer exists only on paper. The article is just press-seeking vaporware release, all hype and little substance in true Media Lab style.
MIT Media Lab motto: purveyors of snake oil since 1985.
It's a cool computer and great idea to supply the developing countries children with them.
That aside, as earlier posters noted why not just help feed them? The current food supplies are enough to feed the entire world and people are still starving (food supplies are increasingly becoming a problem though). So how will making these low-cost computers available to developing countries be any easier than making food available? How will they "fix" the supply chain problem?
Also, did they take in to account the cost to assemble these things? Is it 100$ for parts or parts and labor? If it's made in a developed nation the cost will probably double. Why don't they have them assembled in the developing nations? That way they can provide jobs and computers to families.
Again, great idea, but I'm suspicious of the reality to delivery upon this idea.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
You must be joking. I have a P2/400MHz/128MB laptop at home running Slackware 9 and it works like a charm - plays movies (mplayer), browses the web (Opera), edits anything I need (vim/OpenOffice), compiles and runs everything I need (C,C++,Java,Python,Octave...). Doesn't seem sluggish at all. Ok, maybe Open Office is a bit slow, but not in a way that would make working with it uncomfortable. The only thing I miss is a larger HDD and a working battery - it's a laptop, but a stationary one. ;-) More memory might be useful for heavy multitasking, but I don't really have that problem.
;-) But the system as such is not sluggish at all, and since I have access to a better machine for computations, I don't really need anything more. Maybe if I was a gamer...
Hint - scrap KDE, Gnome, Mozilla/Netscape (especially old editions), stick with Xfce, Opera (or Firefox, but I haven't even tried it there, may be slow, who knows) and you're all set. Really, once you get past 300MHz you CAN do almost everything comfortably (ok, 400MHz for most movies, 500+ for some).
Ok, it's slow when it comes to number crunching, which is my job. NS2 simulations also take a lifetime. On the other hand, in this area no computer is fast enough.
While it would be nice if it were available for general purchase, that's a bit irrelevant. This could FINALLY serve as a reference design for an Open Source laptop. MIT simply needs to make the schematics available, preferrably under the GPL, so that anyone can ship the design to an online shop and have it built.
Granted, you couldn't do that for $100 - not at first. But what would happen is that businesses would sprout up selling this in volume. Which would bring down the cost for the average geek, as well as MIT. The spinoffs from this would mean that we could FINALLY get commodity parts for a laptop.
Or, in short, MIT has the opportunity to do to the laptop what IBM did to the PC.
I, for one, would be willing to help with whatever work is involved, if they GPL the schematics. I am sick and tired of dealing with the rediculous prices for proprietary laptops.
Where do I sign up?
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
I don't think just giving away laptops will teach people to use computers. I mean, the software you're talking about them using is fairly sophisticated, and not always intuitively designed. It's silly to give away computers and then expect people to learn to use them through osmosis. A lot of people they're talking about simply do not have the time or the inclination to learn to use software when they should be out figuring out how to feed themselves.
Foreign aid to developing countries is completely upside-down. We think that we can give them education and political stability, in the mean time providing direct aid and the resources for prosperity will naturally develop. It doesn't work this way, education is a luxury that only wealthy people can afford. If we really want to help these countries, we need to eliminate trade barriers and allow them to sell us low-cost goods. This will allow them to develop infrastructure, resources, and as a result political stability. Then they will have the ability to educate their population and develop into prosperous nations. Just giving people laptops is meaningless, wasteful, and stupid.
I can tell you that this type of computer is going to be a huge hit, especially in the urban areas. There's a huge untapped market for a product in this price range and huge potential. A lot of families have the money (at least in the cities) to afford a unit at that cost and they will purchase them for their kids - education is a huge priority and a lot of parents want to get as many modern tools in the hands of their kids as possible.
I have a lot of experience supporting equipment in places where these things are being considered, and a lot of the comments are spot on - the elements are extremely hard on any equipment (dust, humidity) as well as power surges. I'm not as concerned about dealing with curricula or proper usage - kids overseas are the same as they are here - they'll figure out creative meaningful ways to use these things and schools/families will figure out meaningful ways to teach/make them valuable learning tools. Don't assume just because folks are dirt poor they don't get it.
I remember taking my Powerbook overseas all the time into the bush in Africa, out to Mongolia, or in the South Pacific - it took a beating but always worked. We also considered (and I traveled a bit with) the eMates (http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/gallery/emate300.htm) - which are sort of the same thing - I loved that thing and it was really rugged. To me the bigger hurdle is not so much hardware, but connectivity - a 100 dollar laptop that can't get to the internet cheaply isn't as valuable. If this can be combined with cheap broadband access, then you won't be able to make them fast enough.
All three functions can be performed much better with cheaper, established technology.
1. and 2. are most easily achieved by radio. Transistor radios are almost laughably cheap now, and it is possible to get shortwave sets to broadcast to very remote areas. Radio has two additional benefits: localization is very easy (simply ensure that the person speaking into the microphone speaks the language you want) and it does not require literacy. If your main priority is getting information out, then it is probably better to do it by speaking to the people who need it most in the language that they can understand (even if it's over the air). Handing them a notebook that they might not be able to use because they can't read the symbols on the screen is stupid.
3. is already happening through the use of mobile phones. GSM phones are cheap to buy and cheap to use, even for those with very limited means. In third-world markets, it is possible to buy a few minutes or even seconds of mobile phone time.
It's heretical to be anti-shiny on /. but we really have to think about how better to use the tools at hand, rather than trying to leapfrog from the Flintstones to the Jetstones with one laptop
I think if they sell these at, say, $150 a pop to americans, they have the potential to sell millions. Anyone remember the failed email appliances from a few years ago? These are a lot sexier looking and far more portable.
With the tablet and e-book functionality, it's something you could use from the couch watching TV, from the kitchen to show recipes, hell, even from the bathtub for some reading material while you relax. If it's rugged enough for 3rd world countries, then it's something kids could use without fear of causing too much damage. They'd have to have an OS on it that's simple and reliable because you can't necessarily get tech support in BFE Africa, so it's got to be stable and simple enough for my grandma to use.
I think low-cost units like this are the future of app-centric computing. Gaming still requires a more intense setup, but as computers get better, imagine hooking a VR rig to this little unit and being fully immersed in a virtual world. The potential for this kind of technology is just staggering.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
I have used KDE 3 on a 200 mhz machine. Works fine, so long as you have enough RAM. You can't run all applications, but for general use this machine is plenty fast.
I'm a little surprised at the lack of imagination I'm seeing in this article's comments. Imagination is not something usually lacking at
Personal interactions will flourish. Imagine that each person has a personal presence on the net in the form of a journal, blog, etc. Innermost thoughts, musings, ideas would be posted. Access may be restricted to groups of friends, open to all, available only in a reciprocal trade - who knows? Social interactions may form that are based on more formal public personae while the unspoken web content acts as an underlying frame. Like minds will find each other. Ideas will feed on ideas. It will be an exponential extension of today's net.
Specialties would develop. Mod kits would certainly turn up. This kid might make movies, or songs, or create one page descriptive biographies of everyone he meets. That kid might develop applications, this one tweaks assembler, another is a com whiz, and that one over there...she's special, she can go ANYWHERE in cyberspace, and if it's on the net, she can find it. She's the one they ask when they REALLY need to know the truth. It could be that some strange stuff starts to happen. Stuff about how the world is perceived and how humans relate to it and each other. Stuff we can't imagine or maybe even understand. Really, really cool Stuff.
We old folks can participate. Everyone seems to crave one of these laptops. What if they didn't sell even one outside their programs? What if to get one of these babies you had to earn it? You could help develop software. Write apps, ports, translate, tutor, teach, write textbooks, moderate groups, protect the children and their net. You could EARN the laptop. How cool would that be?
Who will pay? There will be new markets, development deals, service contracts, infrastructure to build. The companies that want to play will be the ones who pay. Governments could link contracts with obligations. You want to build out our backbone? It must include wifi for the kidtops at your expense. You want to build some buildings? We need housing for a server farm here and some schools here, here, and here. You want the support contract for the government IT infrastructure. You also must support Kidnet. At least till the kids take over,which won't be long. Access? Well how much is access to a 10 million node kidtop beowolf cluster worth? Wanna trade?
C'mon guys! This is the fucking DREAM! No more secrets. No more lies. No more disinformation and manipulation from 'those who would be kings'. Maybe even 200 million proud parents of the Earth's first planetary consciousness. Hey, who knows? Not us. We can't even BEGIN to imagine.
billy - I for one will sit back and watch 'em go
One Laptop Per Child, is in discussions with ... China
Sounds like a platform for A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.
Anybody want a peanut?
I've played wiht Linux on 500MHZ cpus, Linux crawls on this.
I first ran Linux (0.99) + X on a 386SX25 w/ 9MB RAM. Worked fine. Of course these days I'm running 2.6 on a 2xPIII@1Ghz w/ 1GB of RAM, so I'd say that "crawls" is a relative term.
FreeSpeech.org
Dude, are you sure you know what a "water purifier" is? If you can buy one for $20 why would someone figure out how to make one for $100?
Computers are great, but they aren't very useful for growing food or anything. You need different technologies for that, and different skill sets that aren't "intellectual".
Perhaps you should try someday to actually travel to a poor country and watch for yourself how those people live. I know before I was born in Brazil and lived most of my life here. I remember once when I was chatting with the girl at the popcorn counter in a movie theater she told me she was going to computer classes in the mornings. Her salary is something like $100/month
The poorest people already have the skill sets for growing food. What they need is a different set of skills, something that lets them earn a decent living instead of just living hand to mouth. The greatest number of poor people in the world suffer from "technologic unemployment". They have no marketable skills.
There's no shortage of food in the world, so knowing how and having the resources to grow food in modest amounts is useless. What can you gain by competing against the subsidized farmers in the USA, European Union, and Japan? Unless you are a farmer with thousands of hectares and spend upwards of $100k/year in seed, fuel, and equipment, you won't reach the economy of scale needed to profit.
Perhaps you are confusing "poor" with "starving" people. People who are poor normally do not have lack of food. They starve when there is some unrest like civil war that disrupt their normal way of live. In the normal situation of poor people, the best way to help them is to put them in contact with more technology. It can be a technology for growing more and better food, if the kind of food they can grow is profitable enough, or it can be some other technology. But to be of any help, it has to be a technology that provides for better productivity than what they already have, it has to be a sufficiently advanced technology. There's no value in reinventing the $20 water filter.
I always hated that fucking saying too. I really mean that. Give a man a fish, he eats for lunch then uses the afternoon to tell everyone how great getting free fish was and how much better free fish is than fish that came with the plate. He'll claim that fish that is sold cannot possibly be as good as free fish given to the public, despite the smell and odd color. He'll then pretend as if he's a fucking sage about fish and insist that everyone have the same beliefs about fish as he.
Fuck fish. I'm eating pork.
Even your definition is incorrect.
1st World: US, UK, W. Ger, and allies (NATO)
2nd World: USSR, E. Ger, Poland, and allies. (Warsaw Pact)
3rd World: Everyone else.
Economics have nothing to do with the original definitions of 3rd world, etc.
...but I'm a little concerned about their rankings in CharityNavigator:
r ch.summary/orgid/9654.htm
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/sea
I'm especially concerned about the fact that their CEO is making about 6% of the organization's total income.
I don't doubt the possibility that they are doing something very different or revolutionary (which I could see as justification), but honestly, why the high program expenses to teach sustainable, low-input farming? I'm a big fan of this method, but it appears to be run inefficiently.
If anyone remotely to do with this project is stroking his vanity by reading these posts about the project, here's a suggestion for the project. Don't use a hand-crank, use a foot pedal. Like the old sewing machines, a little treadle is [b]much[/b] more natural to use and you can use it while you work, for hours if need be. Compare size of muscles in your arm with the muscles in your calves. Point made?
This could be a much better selling point.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I for one would happily pay more than $100 for a $100 laptop just for the geek factor.
I've got an 8-year-old Toshiba P100 laptop. I figure it can't be worth any more than $100 by now.
I'll sell it to you for $150.