Slashdot Mirror
U.N. Lends Backing to the $100 Laptop
willki wrote to mention an AP story stating that The United Nations has pledged support to the $100 Laptop. From the article: "Kemal Dervis, head of the U.N. Development Program, will sign a memorandum of understanding Saturday with Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of One Laptop per Child, on the $100 laptop project, at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. The program aims to ship 1 million units by the end of next year to sell to governments at cost for distribution to school children and teachers. UNDP will work with Negroponte's organization to deliver 'technology and resources to targeted schools in the least developed countries,' the U.N. agency said in a statement."
Will the $100 Notebook ship with the QWERTY Keyboard or will it be regional? (Arabesque, Hindi, Cryllic?)
The aim is to have governments or donors buy them and give full ownership to the children.
I'm going to be real curious as to the after market value of these things. If it goes above $100, you can bet that those kids won't be getting them.
The devices will be lime green in color, with a yellow hand crank, to make them appealing to children and, so the thinking goes, to fend off potential thieves.
So, if I paint a Ferrari lime green and put a hand crank on it, nobody will steal it?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Pay to clean up the governments in these regions by bringing in consultants to train new police forces, etc. and then encourage 1st world investors to invest in the infrastructure. This approach is starting to work in some of the small Eastern European countries like Macedonia where former US agents train their national police forces to use American standards and procedures. Or how about a food aid plan where they buy the native crops first and then hire locals (with 1st world military oversight) to prepare and distribute the food (that way our soldiers can shoot them if they try ransoming the food or handing it over to warlords like what happened in Somalia).
But... it I guess it appeals to Kofi Annan's inner geek and it's politically correct to attack the digital divide when the food, running water, electricity and semi-functional government divide is a far more serious threat to life, liberty, property and the future in these countries.
I agree with you 100%. If we assume the cost of transport and other administrative expenditures necessary to get these things to the people they are targeted for to be in total $50 (generous), then you have to look at the opportunity cost of dedicating $150 to this project. Directing this to the most vulnerable groups you mention would have a much greater effect on human welfare.
It's good for the project to get the thumbs up from the U.N. but I have alot of difficulty with the overall concept of delivering technology to populations that are having trouble getting their basic biological needs met.
Maybe they have the food/water/basic education working but widespread corruption keeps the country poor. Do you see where I'm going? How is this computer going to eliminate pervasive political/social problems or otherwise redistribute wealth?
All of the boot-strapping capitalists will flame me for "denying others the opportunity to...." That would be avoiding my question.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
When a whole lot of people don't even have food, what have computers got to do with anything?
Makes me feel someone just wants even the poorest people to be under the "legal" surveilance of the NSA... what better way to do this than giving away tools for electronic communication...
1984 - never forget
Originally I was a big fan of this concept, but I'm now skeptical since I've yet to see anything on the most important part of this project, namely the educational materials that will run on or be made available via the laptop. Providing Squeak is not sufficient. What material will help kids learn to read/type, basic math, history, art, etc.? Why has there been no mention of that?
And for those of you who would link to wikipedia, etc., that's not a suitable starting place for young kids. Who is supplying the basic educational material the laptop recipients will need to get started?
They will probably get hit by lawsuits in contries that have "free trade" deals. Send these to Mexico and acording to NAFTA companies selling computers there can block this beacause it "robs" them of potential profits.
Certainly, but consider this: while money can be moved from project to project, the unique drive, vision, and skillset posessed by those guys from MIT who led this project are less portable.
It required strong leadership to get the project off the ground and through the UN. It is probably not likely that the same guys could have found a solution within their area of expertise to those other problems you mentioned. So, while those problems might be worse, and efforts to solve them might be in more need of the money, the confluence of skills and drive and circumstance in this particular place & time have led to the success of this project, which incidentally is quite a good thing, so maybe show a little support, eh?
No Child Left Behind . . . . . Without a Laptop
With high tech countries like the US performing so poorly in math/science and just about everything else... why on earth would we unleash this on poor nations? Would they be better of with a $100 device that makes clean drinking water? I mean there has to be something better to put all this effort towards. I understand its a noble cause, but I think its misdirected.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Shouldn't we focus of give everychild in the UNITED STATES/EU a laptop BEFORE we give a massive amount of funds that will be stolen by warlords. Billings, Montana
Windows Vista Help Forum
something tells me you are a fool....
this program is targeted for poverty stricken children but children that are above the point of survival..
not everything is about the absolute worst off, some programs are *GASP* desigend to help other people too.
basically those children you mentioned have nothing to do with this article or the focus of this device.
the children that will greatly benefit are already going to some form of school (which will hopefully be made quite a bit better with some technology)
different programs have different targets, this program is not targeting the child prostitutes and orphans of the world.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
The $100 laptop is being sold at cost right? I'm sure there are geeks out there who would be willing to pay $200 or more for something like this to hack.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mkay. I see this type of troll everytime these stories come up. These laptops aren't for starving children with hanta on their death beds. These are for children who live in poor nations, but are otherwise living and doing ok. Countries that education is their next step to becoming a modernized country. Their governments are concerned with getting their own people education right now, not feeding starving children half way around the world. It wasn't long ago they were the starving ones. You act as if the money would go to one or the other. That's not the case. If the money weren't going towards these laptops, it'd probably go right into their education systems.
And money isn't what those starving countries need. It's social order usually. America pays farmers for their food and buries it to control food prices. We have PLENTY of food to give away. Getting it in the hands of starving people is the problem. More often than not they will end up in the hands of warlords or destroyed. Throwing money at the problem isn't going to help those countries. Until dictator X is overthrown their people will continue to starve. And the UN isn't about raiding countries to overthrow dictators.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Make Wikipedia or another Dictionary the default home page and then people can immediately start searching and learning about the world.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You're responding to a post about a:
( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
(*) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world
The location is:
( ) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
(*) Other unspecified
You're objecting to it on the basis that:
(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost
Your argument is bogus because:
( ) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
(*) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs
Drill baby drill - on Mars
It's funny you mentioned that. I was just thinking of the military uses of a hand powered laptop. No need to recharde batteries, no need for generators, etc... Perfect for the War Lord on the Go (R).
There you go! There's a product idea. Warlord Laptops - when you need that information right before your rape and pillaging!
Testimonials...:
Why I have been raping and robbing for years and when I got my Warlord Laptop, our productivity has gone up 300%! I can now rape and pillage more villages than ever!
- warlord in Congo
Rather than giving children laptops, why dont we work to stabilize thier countrys by helping people become better farmers, teachers, doctors.
Just a thought.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
I think one reason people on Slashdot have such a pessimistic view of the $100 laptop, is the images that have been conjured up by Negroponte and co. Mostly extremely poor children living in some jungle village somewhere.
In reality, these laptops would probably be used by the urban poor and working class or those in well developed rural areas in rapidly developing countries. I have been to Fujian porvince in China, stood in a rice field and then used the internet, in a small village composed of mostly really old windowless stone buildings.
Urban infrastructure was near enough to provide internet and electricity to those who could afford it, but even so, people were very poor. This is the kind of setting I can easily see the laptop coming to its own. Those people were poor enough so as not to be able to afford good educational material, but can sustain themselves and would not benefit from food or whatever Slashdotters are offering instead of laptops.
I think those pessimistic views reflect an inherent ignorance about the world. The media often paints a rather bleak picture of the rest of the world, whereas most people get along fine, though could always use a little help.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Geeze! Stop picking on my CPU speed - I'm sensitive. Please, keep it civil and just insult my penis size! Thank you!
:-)
The project: http://laptop.media.mit.edu/
It might seem a bad idea to offer laptops over water, food and shelter, especially to governments/organizations, who in the past have held donations at ransom or misappropriated funds.
However, one can only hope, there are some smarter distribution plans this time.
As to the value;
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day...
Teach a man how to fish, and feed him for a lifetime.
Best to think of the project in these terms, no?
What OS is going to be on these $100.00 laptops?
You are assuming that empowering and educating requires a computer. It does not.
You are assuming that the computer is somehow critical in the educational process when the opposite can be argued quite effectively.
Would training the unwashed masses to use computers for the year 2020 Call Center staff raise the living standards in a country? I don't have a good answer either way...
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Although, Nicole Kidman was just named UN Ambassador...
M .20060126.wkidman26/BNStory/Entertainment/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
...was not food and not freedom... the key was education and information.
Giving people food fixes the problem for a short time, they will be hungry again in a week, giving them tools nessesary for groving their own food fixes the problem permanently. Starting with the children is a very smart move, they learn quicker and do not have the limitations (and bad habits) their parents has learned from their parents...
I do however still not understand why mr. Negroponte don't want to sell these laptops on the free market, it would give the project both a competent user base and a much larger developer base.
Will be able to download the latest crappy music and get sued for it like the rest of the world.
I think you're right and I would add to that:
...This program is designed to provide better schooling to children and therefore give them the opportunity to earn a living while not have to turn to prostitution or sweatshop labor.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Exactly. Eventually someone will steal one of these units and ppaint strips and put a giant wing on it to make it faster.
Cylinders are extremely draggy. If you make them into little airfoils the hand cranks will have a lot less resistance.
They won't even *sell* them. They'll only give laptops to institutions in the developing world.
But me, and many others want one. The end result is that because of artificial scarcity the market value of the laptop will be well above $100, and there'll be a strong incentive for whoever is a school-admin in those countries, to sell those things. Not a good thing.
Why not just sell them in quantities of 1000 to whoever pays the price, so all of us Geode/Linux fans can get one?
*pfft, stupid non-capitalists*
sheesh, the UN is worried about LAPTOPS?
starvation, genocide, nukes in the hands of feeble lunatics
seems the people need food, guns and intervention to deal with these issues, unless the laptops are made of nutritious parts, that can also be configured into a weapon.
so what is the UN insiders "cut" of these "$100" laptops?
That the U.N. would support a socialist program for handing out laptops that were designed by a university professor. I'm not saying that the proponents of this idea do not have their hearts in the right place, but lets be honest, it is what it is. Maybe this time it will work. I hope the program is successful, I'm just a little skeptical about these kind of largescale government sponsored give aways. This was tried in the Soviet Union for years and years. What happens? Well, the average Soviet spent more than 2 hours a day waiting in line to get their food,car,soap,vodka,etc. Imagine that everything in your country was as innefficient as the dmv (department of motor vehicles). This is socialism. Again, hopefully these laptops make a great impact, but I will believe it when I see it.
No Sigs!
In general, the number one thing you can do to help people in poor countries is improve education (particularly of girls/women). Pretty much every other positive social/economic outcome follows from this.
Now, if you want to argue that there are more cost-effective ways of educating people in poor countries, then there may be valid points to make there. Is it easier to provide information via textbooks and teachers than laptops? Will this reduce the amount of money available for other education programs. I don't know.
Otherwise, I just don't see how these people who know nothing about manufacturing and operations can just waltz in and accomplish what a 100 billion a year industry can't. Everyone in the industry is ALREADY focused on making laptops as cheap and plentiful as possible. If they do eventually get below USD 100, it very likely won't be the result of anything the MIT folks did, although somehow I doubt that will stop them from taking credit for it anyway.
Free Hans!
In all seriousness, I applaud programs that work to take donated equipment from corporate and other high-end environments, and donate them to schools and similar recipients. The greatest cost, thus making the idea of a $100 new laptop better, is the labor involved in repairing and standardizing donated machines.
As I understand it, Iran is pretty well "wired" at the moment. Although I suppose Cuba could make use of such laptops. I'm not sure how much of a problem this will really be though, the UN has (to my knowledge) no sanctions on Cuba, and I'd be quite suprised if the Dubya were prepared to squander what little respect the world has left for him over something so petty.
I am not going to take a position yet on how well these laptops are going to work out. However, the fact that they are now going to be distributed by governments, paid for with government funds, means that market economics and reality will get shoved aside for politics... this is never a good thing. Especially with the track record of the UN and corruption.
Secondly, I really take offense with the notion that "the UN" is backing the laptop. The UN is primarily funded by the USA. They take up a sizeable portion of valuable real estate on US land. And the US government gets funded by "non-voluntary contributions" from US citizens. Therefore, the title should read, US Citizens Backing the $100 Laptop (Involuntarily). The distinction is important. It's very easy to spend other people's money on ideas which may not be the best use of the funds.
(Sorry, just got done spending about 3 days working on my taxes, sending uncle sam and arnie $20,000 of my hard earned, so they can put about 1% of it to good use, and blow the rest on politics and vote-buying.)
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
If someone wants to use their talents to make this happen, I applaud it. One cannot dictate to other the form of charity they wish to participate in. There are many dedicated to feeding the malnourished. There are others who work towards better treatment of disease and preventing the spread thereof. Perhaps there are those who think passing out crackers is a higher priority than passing out condoms, but there are valid arguments for both. Only by taking a big picture approach can the third world nations be granted the tools to bring themselves out of poverty. This laptop program is a commendable step in the right direction, and only one of many neccessary.
What success? Not a single laptop has been made! There's not one manufacturer that has agreed that this can even be done for $100! This is pure, unadulterated vaporware. They've found a company that has agreed to look into it to see if it's possible. That's it!
The only thing that the organizers have succeeded in doing is whipping the geek media into a frenzy.
But, while we're on the subject, I'm working on building a car for developing countries that will have most of the features of modern cars, but will be indestuctible, will operate via a hand crank, and will cost $1000. I'm accepting funding now.
I don't respond to AC's.
Why is there such a rush of governments, the U.N., and so many others already pledging support for this initiative? It sounds like it could be a good idea, but shouldn't people wait to see whether the thing actually works? They have a whole boatload of new, innovative features like automatic peer-to-peer wireless, their own specialized Linux software, etc. -- surely it'll take time to work out the kinks...
-Brendan
On the laptop keyboard there is a windows key perhaps MIT have switched to the dark side!
Not to mention the processing speed of your Ferrari =P
( I
Inevitably there will be operations in place in which some company goes in and offers to trade laptops for something they really want (such as... I don't know, food, maybe?) and then sells the $100 laptops back to customers in nations that can afford computers.
I'm looking forward to picking up one of these cheapie laptops in a year or two, even if it ends up costing $200.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I gladly pay $200 or $300 for this laptop to donate one computer and keep one for me.
It doesn't sound like you have ever had to manage a project like this. Otherwise, I think you would understand what successes they have already made (hint: you mentioned two, the article mentions more). Now...if you can't say anything constructive...well, you know the rest.
This ideology is great.
In fact here's an awesome idea.
Let's take all of the money that we spend on eduction, from educating our children, to educating the poor, and feed the hungry children in XYZ country.
The countries this technology is going to are looking to further educate their youth and prepare them for a changing world market. Having access to a laptop and the Internet enable these youth to have access to an infinite amount of information. If we can get the technology to that price there isn't any reason that every child shouldn't have one.
Seems like starving third world children will benefit the least from the technology. They need food not laptops. If they are living on $300 a year as some do that's four months of food money. If they can sell the laptops they will and in fact should. If they can't sell them they get to stare at what amounts to an expensive toy while they starve. The third world coutries lack infastructures to take advantage of large numbers of computer literate kids. If they idea is big companies will take advantage of the cheap labor and outsource isn't this just a bigger push to outsource tech jobs? Aren't talking computer sweat shops then? Instead of clothes we have $1 an hour people handling coporate records and possibly programming. Hey they'll probably pay the programmers $3 an hour since it takes more skill. Won't this just turn into big business yet again taking advantage of the third world to make a quick buck? Will it in the end benefit the people. Look at what happened in Mexico. It became an end run on environmental laws and people are coming across the border faster than ever. Big business gets slave labor and unemployment goes up in this country. A win win for big business and everyone else looses.
Seriously, sell these $100 laptops over here for $200. Every laptop purchased also buys one for a poor child on the other side of the economy scale. I'm sure $200 is about right for the "my first computer" age group. Or those who want a cheap lappy for email or aspiring authors. Also sell a solar panel as an accessory and all the greenies would go for it too!
The UN is more than aware of the poverty situations in these developing countries and I can't imagine that those in charge of this operation would send a $100 laptop to someone who'd just as soon eat the motherboard for SOME sort of sustinance(sp?)... For those kids that only know of a life where they manually slave all day to earn the meager earnings that keep their crappy hut up, completely oblivious to the climate (socially, politically, etc.) around them, they're doomed to repeat history. Also, give an organization 100 million dollars and guess how much will actually end up being effective. Give an organization tons of lime green colored laptops, it stands to reason that you'll face a whole HELL of a lot less corruption. It's easy to misappropriate funds, food, and supplies. Something as tangible and as non-consumable as a lime green laptop filled with software for kids? Why bother - your crappy $400 pc does more. Just seems that even if parts of this plan fail, it will still stand to do MUCH more good. FP on slashdot, flame away lol :)
Less Talk. More Stab.
In just about every case, the people who have money do get better educations.
No one in the industry is attempting quite the same thing at all. What the MIT project is attempting to do is to create new technology that compromises between performance and cost. In order to drive cost down, significant computing performance is lost.
I bet you were imagining $100 laptops that were exactly the same as the laptops we have now. That's what I get from your statement "Everyone in the industry is ALREADY focused on making laptops as cheap and plentiful as possible". That is quite wrong. These $100 laptops will be quite different from laptops presently on the market. Just try to find me a laptop that is powered by D cells and a handcrank. Or a laptop without a hard drive. Or a laptop with a screen that switches between color and monochromatic.
Why bother with reduced laptops? Because something is better than nothing at all.
And in terms of MIT taking credit, they started the whole initiative, did they not? Did they not propogate the idea and get the industry to think about it? Aren't they, in fact, developing some of the technology that will go into the laptop?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Give them food and laptops. I never understand the assumption that they can have one or the other, but not both.
If you're worried, then get to work and start helping those people. Negroponte is in the laptop business end of it. You all take care of the rest.
Problem solved.
You can save some of them if you give them everything they need to survive and go far in todays life. You can not afford, in time or money, to save all of them and trying to do so, or doing a half assed job for a bunch of kids, will just lead to no improvement. Better to write off those you can't save. Save some now, let them help create more resources, save a bigger batch, rinse and repeat.
It'd be nice if we could make everything good right away but that isn't really likely to happen. It'd take a world wide change in attitudes towards foreigners and the poor and personal responsibility for mankind.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Major regional languages and corresponding keyboards are no doubt part of this program. It's not like they have to develop anything new.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Some things I expect this device to do:
- Teach basic reading and writing. Speech synthesis would be ideal - let the computer read things out to the child so that they get to associate word shapes with sounds. Then get them to type the words (in areas with phonographic alphabets) and then draw the characters and have them recognised by some handwriting recognition software. If you can write well enough that software can read your writing, then you're doing better than me...
- Teach basic numeracy. It can provide simple arithmetic tutorials and then randomly generate problems and have the children solve them. With some thought, this could also teach basic algebra, trigonometry, etc.
- Provide resources for teaching history, geography, etc. Even being able to read textbooks from a screen in these subjects is better than getting no exposure to them at all.
- Provide a source of literature for children. A copy of Project Guttenberg, or similar would be ideal. Reading is a great way of developing a young mind, and access to a range of (e)books could go a long way.
This is, of course, only step one. Step two is to apply some kind of testing a few years down the line and take the top n% of the population from the communities that have been given these devices on to a slightly more advanced educational level. They then return to their homes and teach the next generation (and any of the adults who wish to learn).I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The poverty argument is akin to saying because there are poor people in the world we should disband NASA. Clearly economics is not a strongpoint with some posters. This is a fantastic, positive and inspiring initiative by Nicholas Negroponte and its disheartening to see so much cynisism on slashdot. One would think slashdotters would be at the forefront championing the cause.
Instead we have shortsighted speculation about its uses betraying an unbelievable ignorance of our own experience with technology. You can bet recipients will find creative and innovative ways to enrich and improve their lives.
The only problem will be distribution and ensuring the laptops ends up in the hands on the intended recepients which is a perennial problem in developing countries. And if there is demand for these laptops in first world as has already been displayed in some of the posts you can bet an active blackmarket will thrive to divert them back to the first world.
karma
As other posters mentioned, $100 is a lot of money for people in those countries. Unless the developed nations pay for all the costs and do not put these poorer nations in even deeper debt, I won't believe that the intentions behind UN's move, usually a sockpuppet of USA, are good.
--exa--
Just try to find me a laptop that is powered by D cells and a handcrank. Or a laptop without a hard drive. Or a laptop with a screen that switches between color and monochromatic.
The D cell and handcrank thing is probably going to get dropped, and is very likely useless. Anyone without access to electricity probably isn't thinking about laptops. Electricity is more plentiful than people realize. Just take a look at this comment. Like the guy says, these are not going to be used by people in jungles. They'll have power. And why would you want to take the hard drive out? Small ones are incredibly cheap, and good power management software reduces the power consumption considerably. As for the screen, you can hit a button in most OSes and change to monochrome at the software level. I'm not sure what it does for you at the hardware level, beyond powersave, which can be already be done by lowering the backlight brightness.
Why bother with reduced laptops? Because something is better than nothing at all.
That's what used laptops are for.
And in terms of MIT taking credit, they started the whole initiative, did they not? Did they not propogate the idea and get the industry to think about it? Aren't they, in fact, developing some of the technology that will go into the laptop?
In order: Yes, but only by issuing vapourus press releases and photoshopped mockps. Yes, they propagated the idea, but no, they mostly got people outside the industry to think about it. People inside the industry just laughed and went back to work. And no, they aren't "developing" shit, everything is off the shelf or done by someone else. They're even talking about using Quanta to manufacture the things, which is who pretty much everyone else uses. If Quanta were really capable of assembling a $100 laptop, don't you think Dell or Apple or one of their many other customers would have already taken them up on it?
My point about credit is that I easily see the following scenario:
If step 2 comes too soon after step 1, it will look like they had an effect on the industry, even though they didn't. They will be credited with something they had no part in doing.
Free Hans!
All of that is true, but from experience I can say that he has gotten about 3/4 of the work done already. Organizing people for this kind of thing is like herding cats, therefore every announcement of progress for this project is a good thing.
As for the dot commers...excuse me? I can understand hype over a content-free product, but this is hardly "vaporware." Or do you feel the same way about AIDS research which has yet to develop a cure?
why not sell this idea to the general public? All I want is a laptop that is compact and can get online and do word processing and genral apps at a decent speed. But I don't want to spend $600 just to get a basic laptop. Why not sell the general public a version of this for $200 as an basic laptop or one for K-12 students (a starter laptop of sorts).
I'm sure today's $100-200 technology can beat my Pentium II Compaq Armada 7400. I just want a laptop that can word process like a champ, and my PII won't cut it!
Can I get a bulk discount for a Beowulf cluster of these laptops? I'm thinking of looking on EBay.
Just try to find me a laptop that is powered by D cells and a handcrank. Or a laptop without a hard drive. Or a laptop with a screen that switches between color and monochromatic.
The Apple eMate meets most of the requirements you are talking about. There was even a hand crank for the eMate that I seem to recall reading about on Slashdot.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
No. From what I understand, the model for the $100 laptop is one where the most effecient way to transmit information is electronically. How much do CDs cost again? Once you get a bunch of these laptops out into the hands of interested parties, how much would it cost to give each and every person a literal wealth of texts on agriculture, engineering, history, language, etc. on CD-ROM?
That's the point of the $100 laptop. Not to give them computers. To give them a tool that allows them easy access to information.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Not Winders or Mac OS X. Good ole Linux.
$100.00 is more than some of these families make in a YEAR. How is a laptop going to help that? I can see it now... Little Johnny fires up his laptop, looks up info on his country on a Gooogle search and learns how he is so poor compared to children in other countries and his laptop is not in color. Little Johnny was happy before, now you've made him into a depressed impoverished child.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Oooooo....a $100 laptop!!! Big deal. Here is everything you need to put together a perfectly capable $100 laptop today.
Battary Powered Monitor (Item# E21591) = $33.12
6v Battary powerd Computer that has a HUGE library of educational/business/entertainment software = $24.99
Hand crank generator for charging the battaries = $39.95
Total = $98.06
Now if I can find all of the components to put together a $100 laptop in 15 minutes, I'm sure someone smarter than me could do it better. This is $100 with a huge amount of waste. Extra light, built in radio, siren, and compass. Not to mention the cost that was added for retail profit, and the cost of putting together three seperate packages.
Some may whine that 'It's only an 8-bit computer' or 'It's already outdated'. Well, the $100 laptops that are being proposed are propriotary machines that are also very outdated today. With a C-64 based laptop, at least the end users would have access to actual software. I think these people would be perfectly happy having the standard of living we had in the 80's, and that is what the C-64 would bring.
What this tells me is that there are some people out there that are going to try to make a lot of money by asking for dontation that are way out of line for what they are providing.
With the addition of some good mud, you could morter up a wall with these things. Given the waste and coruption in most charities and the UN in particular, $100 each would make the bricks in this house generally cheaper then most philanthropic, and any UN action would cost to build a house....
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
You're just not getting it, are you?
n ce
Oh well...while you continue to complain, some of us with a little less cynicism will keep an eye out for more news. This has a good chance at improving the quality of life in the third world considerably.
Oh, and for you: http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Invincible_Ignora
This would be my first post to slashdot, even though I have been wading through its contents and discussions for years. What got me motivated to even register a slashdot account was the slush of comments I read about this news posting -- the negative ones. The comments I was upset about all go along the lines of "there are warlords there" and "we should spend $100 on water purification technology instead". Such comments suggest that the commentators did not understand the actual problems the third world countries are facing.
Sure, we've (read as "USA") attempted to bring poor ignorant third world farmers into the new age of technology and mass production to help them avoid famine and sustain economic growth by sending them tens of thousands of modern diesel machinery - but these machines failed as their operators allowed them to run out of diesel fuel while running and missed out on important machine maintenance. Good natured attempts can end disastrously just as history has shown us over and over again. I am not sure what one of the slashdot posters was thinking by suggesting we send a $100 water purifier to "ignorant mud water drinking savages" -- by his logic, they would break it within a week.
No, the root of the problem is being addressed here with a $100 laptop...and that root is : lack of modernatization. Today's problems will still be here tomorrow, and the day after it, and the day after that. But over time, we all (hopefully) realize that problems are fixed through prevention so they don't occur in the first place. Education is the key here, and with that, modern technology being shared with the less fortunate.
And less fortunate they are. I just went to grab take-out food, and as the guy rang up my bill, I said "wait... add this bottle of soda too". He did as I asked.
Driving home, I began to think how $1.19 goes a long way in some places in the world.
I prefer.
Give a man a Twinkie, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to steal Twinkies and he'll eat for ever.
or
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"Why give a computer to a child that has no pure water to drink?"
"Corruption, not lack of computers, is the true cause of poverty!"
"They should give books, not computers, to poor children!"
And a few more similar banalities, usually rewarded by a few "interesting" or "insightful" mod points.
There are some very poor people living in Inglewood, CA, or Harlem, NY that do have access to drinking water and books. By your logic, these people are living in perfectly acceptable conditions. So, why does the USA spend money in Medicare or Medicaid, for example? Wouldn't that money be better spent on people who need it more? Giving computers to poor people who need computers doesn't preclude giving water purifiers to people who need them.
Look, some of the people who will receive these computers live in conditions similar to 13th century Europe. What you are saying is that we should try to get them to a situation like 18th century Europe. Bullshit. If you are truly committed to helping people, help them all the way. Put hand cranks in the computers, because there was no electric power in the 13th century, but bring those people into the 21st century.
The first countries to have more cellphones than landlines were African. I don't for a second doubt that wireless is going to be the cheapest way to deliver internet connectivity too.
Please take a second to sign the pledge to buy one of these laptops at $300. Thanks!
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Are that price now.. For those that dont want to wait, or wil be descrimiated against ( ie, middle class US citizens ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Out of curiousity, why did you fill the form out differently from the last post?.
USD$4000 would go quite far in providing teachers and supplies in developing nations.
I STICS/0,,contentMDK:20420458~menuPK:64133156~pageP K:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html
Worldbank.org stats make some interesting reading...
Let's see what $4000 would buy using their Gross National Income figures with the very handy PPP calculation already figured in...
low income country $0-$825 59 countries (at least 4 teachers)
lower middle income, $826 - $3,255 54 countries (at least 1 teacher)
$3,256 - $10,065 upper middle income 40 countries (maybe 1 teacher)
$10,066 or more high income 55 countries (no teachers)
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTAT
This data suggests that if I spend the money on teachers, the poorest of the poor benefit the most! If you assume 40 students in a class, that means AT LEAST 160 MORE children are educated in the poorest of the poor nations, 40 in low middle income, etc.
If I spend it on laptops, rich or poor the $4000 only buys 40 laptops. If I were King of the World, I would choose educating 160 more kids every year over a laptop.
I do agree that access to books would be the best application and an excellent use for the laptop. Excellent point.
But the rest of it seems very much like the fruitless rush to computerize American classrooms from years ago.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Well ISDN had UN backing...
Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
They should ship computers to Europe equipped ONLY with pads and software in Chinese, and let us figure it out once the economy picks up.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
There are some very poor people living in Inglewood, CA
I agree they don't live in perfect conditions. My sister teaches in Inglewood, so I've heard her stories. That's as difficult and intractable a problem as poverty in developing nations.
Giving computers to poor people who need computers doesn't preclude giving water purifiers to people who need them.
Yes it does. The funds for developing nations are finite. I would choose water filters over a laptop any day.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I just can't believe this is the best use of funds. Something tells me that the orphans in Africa and child prostitutes in Cambodia are in greater need than any child is of a laptop.
Future headlines:
"Cambodian child prostitute uses wireless laptop to contact police"
and
"Text messaging reunites orphan with parents in africa"
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, Negroponte and the people behind this project *are* developing technologies for this. Or, at least, paying other people specifically to do so. My former company (made up of a number of people who knew Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab) was involved in some of this work. I'm not 100% sure whether the development was successful in producing a workable solution, but there's a lot more going on than just taking parts of a shelf and assembling them.
If people in the laptop industry aren't interested in this market, it's because they make better money selling new $1500 laptops rather than new $100 laptops. Negroponte & co have done a lot to encourage development of something that simply would not have been done had they not pushed for it. Pushing the production cost down to that level simply requires development that has not been done. Contrary to your unfounded assertions, if we do find $100 laptops on the market, this work *will* have been an influence on that.
let's see. tons of places in the world with no electricity. And no food. WHY DON'T WE GET THEM SOME DAMN FOOD FIRST?!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
QWERTY? Answer ... the keyboard is designed to be nearly disposable (that's why the motherboard isn't under the keyboard, but behind the screen), to enable non-QWERTY.
... you'd better be a/ a kid or b/ a teacher. There are, however, some more subtle technical means that can be used, and have been experimented with. This, perhaps, is an exercise for the student.
... all the books AND all the supplies AND Internet access AND a phone AND music-writing software AND math/educational tools AND ... for the same aggregate cost. Similarly, most nations have their telephone companies beholden to some kind of universal service mandate. Mostly: this consists of placing payphones in poor villages. At least in one of the countries where the $100 laptop is slated to make its appearance, the local telephone companies have offered/pledged to trade a payphone mandate for one based on supply, logistics, networking support for $100laptops.
... (Gandhi) but give a hungry man a computer and you've solved neither problem. HOWEVER: it's apparent that sending money, through official government channels, is nearly useless. Why? Imagine you're sending $100M to xxx, a fictitious poor and corrupt country. What fraction immediately goes to Swiss bank accounts? What subsequent fraction buys fancy cars for government officials? In some cases, the 'shrinkage' between donor and intended recipient is very close to 100%. In contrast: just what percentage of shiny green machines would be stolen? 10%?
... Western nations. We pay western consulting companies to take western planes and stay in western hotels ... or deliver western goods (trucks, etc.) made in our own western factories.
Will it have WiFi? Yes.
Why does green protect against theft? Because: if you're seen w/ a shiny green machine
"Why do this when their basic biological needs aren't being met?" Some posters have noted that the Rest of World isn't a single, drab 5 billion starving souls. In many countries, what I, in a naive way perhaps, consider the global middle class, where GDP/capita is $3,000/person/year (PPP), the amount already spent on text books and school supplies exceeds $30/year. Insofar as this is true, there's a pretty simple ROI calculation
The arguments above DON'T work for the poorest countries. Here: dig into your pockets. I agree with all that note that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish
Further, much of the aid from Western nations goes to
Last: to take an analogy from British history - "royalty" used to assuage their guilty consciences by flinging coins to beggars. Alas, the most consistent result of reliably flinging coins to beggars is creation of more beggars, when peasants realize that there's better ROI in begging than tilling fields.
In these regards, perhaps, the HDL is not just a green machine, but a harbinger of a different way of spreading the benefits of the world we enjoy to those who don't enjoy the same wealth we all do.
Dunno. Can't remember the context of the previous discussion.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
When you consider different orders of magnitude, the funds are essentially infinite. A laptop computer costs $1000, a water filter costs $10. Having a $100 laptop means you can buy 90 filters and one computer for $1000. Let each of the 90 kids with filters bring a glass of water to the kid with a computer.
Slashdot reaction: "God bless Bill Gates! He is truly a philanthropist for our time!"
Microsoft donates eight computers to Botswana
Slashdot reaction: "I'm going to petition the Pope to canonize Bill Gates as a Saint!!"
Microsoft donates ten computers to citizens of Philadelphia
Slashdot reaction: "I take it back! He's not just a Saint, he's an ANGEL SENT DOWN FROM HEAVEN!!! All I want to know is where's the line so I can get in it to kneal and KISS BILLY'S HOLY ASS!!!!!"
MIT undertakes to put a Linux computer in the hands of every disadvantaged child in the entire world.
Slashdot reaction: "WHA-A-AT!!! THAT'S AN OUTRAGE! THAT'S AN ABOMINATION! HOW DARE THEY! flameflameflameflame....."
Why isn't anyone making the brotherly connection here between MIT's Nicholas Negroponte and the United States' UN Ambassador John Negroponte? Clearly some connection here.
Pretend that instead of MIT doing it with Linux computers to help the entire world, Bill Gates is plugging eight Winduhs boxen into a ghetto school to brainwash yet another generation of userslaves into the One Microsoft Way (you know, those stories that appear on Slashdot all the time?). Your reaction is now:
( )throw a ticker-tape parade
( )canonize Bill Gates as a Saint
( )Bypass the Saint thing and replace the Pope with Bill, period.
( )Flame/ mod down anybody suggesting BG is anything less than Mother Teressa reborn, claim "they're just commie hippies who hate rich people."
Bullshit. Billy Gates sticks his big Windows dick up your ass and all of a sudden a free computer's the most wonderful thing in the world. Or do you retract your fawning praise you made over Microsoft's charitable donations all those times in the past?
We'll do that after we nuke Bill Gates the next time he's standing in front of two computers he's given to an inner-city school with people taking pictures of him and handing him awards.
As well as the new Intel Macs *currently* do.
(No, really)
One of the objections (?) currently raised here is that they will just be used for windows as soon as a $3 pirate CD can be obtained.
I look forward to all the (possibly) new software that will ineveitably come down the pipe if these babies go out preinstalled with linux + docs. That is all, provided that they are not just used to write spyware for my favourite OS.
* I know that Intel Macs will eventually boot windows so I am not holding my breath here. *
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Well, those were just the specs that I remembered off the top of my head, there were more :P Such as built-in wireless, 500 mhz processor, 128 mb of RAM, a real color screen, etc
:P
But that's cool, I didn't know the eMate existed
Ok, lots of interesting points, but still quite a bit to reply to.
And why would you want to take the hard drive out?
Hard drives fail more easily than flash. They wanted the laptops to be fairly durable.
As for the screen, you can hit a button in most OSes and change to monochrome at the software level. I'm not sure what it does for you at the hardware level, beyond powersave, which can be already be done by lowering the backlight brightness.
Lowering backlight brightness is not quite the same. Can you actually see what's on the screen when you lower the backlight? I'm sure working like that and will cause you to go blind eventually. They wanted the screen to be actually readable like electronic paper.
That's what used laptops are for
They wanted something durable, something that can be made in very large numbers, serviceable on location, etc. Used laptops are not durable, do not come in large numbers, and are in general not serviceable even if you're in a modern industrial country and unless you're willing to pay hundreds of dollars, and even then its pretty difficult due to the nature of the laptops being old and unsupported. Then there's the fact that batteries themselves can cost almost $100.
People inside the industry just laughed and went back to work
That's because people in the industry have different goals. As I said before, no one in the industry is trying to accomplish the same set of goals. Furthermore, if they're laughing now, how can you expect them to eventually produce a $100 laptop as you argue later on in your post?
Eventually, completely independently and not as a result of anything these people did, laptops get really cheap, especially used ones. One day, they get below $100.
I doubt that new laptops will ever get below $100 anytime in the near future, if at all. Realistically speaking, people are willing to pay for new technology, so why would prices ever go down that low? Who in the right mind would sell something at $100 when they can make a lot more money selling it at $1500? In addition you state that the industry is laughing right now, I doubt they have any plans for the near future.
For the sake of argument, maybe in a few decades from now it'll get that low. Maybe. But why wait until then to start thinking about improving people's lives when you can try and do it now?
In addition, you speak in terms of eventually. "This is something that would have happened anyway eventually." However, the project aims for an actual product within several years. I really doubt that you'll see independently developed $100 laptops in several years.
Old laptops are in general crap. The good ones are in very limited numbers.
People hare happy to have them that cheap
As I said before, the laptops that this project will produce will be very much underpowered, especially when compared to present technology. The people who would be happy to have such laptops when others are available will be in a very small minority.
If step 2 comes too soon after step 1, it will look like they had an effect on the industry, even though they didn't. They will be credited with something they had no part in doing.
Assuming that step 2 comes soon after step 1. Of course, there are absolutely *no* indications that it will.
Suppose that the $100 project succeeds. Should they not get credit for initiating a project to develop a laptop that no one else was developing or even thinking about at the time?
As for the idea itself, the information economy is the biggest game in town, and only the computer-literate (yes, Windoze users are included) get to play. The personal computer is a piece of business capital as well as the toy most people use it for in the home... it's something one can use to make money with once one has acquired the basic skill set.
Poor people LIKE to make money.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Firstly, your figures are annual salaries - you assume that the laptops will only last one year. I would assume that they are intended to last at least the educational life of a single child; 5-10 years as a minimum. Secondly, you are assuming that a teacher is all that is required. Teachers are not much use without teaching materials. You can't teach someone to read without books very easily, for example. Using the laptops, they can be a substitute for teachers in the first generation and then a resource for teachers in the second.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
From the article
Negroponte wants to start shipping the cheap laptop, which is to have wireless network access and a hand-crank to provide electricity, later this year. The aim is to have governments or donors buy them and give full ownership to the children.
Negroponte, who is also chairman of the MIT Media Lab, has said he expects to sell 1 million of them to Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria.
Gee I wonder where the 'donor' money will come from. I can see Brazil telling them to get stuffed based on past experience.
There they are a conga line of suck holes. On the conservative side of Australian politics. - Mark Latham