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Gates Mocks MIT's $100 Laptop

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the at-leat-they're-trying dept.

QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. 'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.'

3 of 816 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not such a saint .... by sandmaninator · · Score: 1, Flamebait


    You nailed it dude. Their culture is incompatible with the environment they find themselves in (deadly STDs, and a global marketplace that embraces scientific methodology). They need to adapt or they will continue to cling to life at the bottom.

  2. Re:Education starts only with opportunity by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    While I think Gates is right to mock these laptops, I don't think he understands the realities of the problems of helping others around the world. The only thing that helps others is letting them find or create their own opportunities to better their futures. Taking care of people today is counter-productive and can destroy opportunities in the future.

    Computers don't make opportunities. Teachers don't make opportunities. Public funding of projects, businesses and markets doesn't make opportunities. Opportunities come when a given community finds that is can accomplish something that others in a market want.

    What a fuckinly assinine yankee viewpoint. Yankees view ***EVERYTHING*** in terms of money; money to be made, money to be lost. Everything in life boils down to a "market", to "opportunities". Outside of the Holy Market, you might as well die. Ever wondered why, with an attitude like that, people are willing to kill themselves while flying aircraft into your buildings just to drive home the point that you suck, big-time???

    Assholes like you are the ones who started the war on terror, and it's a war assholes won't win.

  3. Re:Education starts only with opportunity by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    ... I want to make sure that money is spent with accountability. I am sick of giving money to the UN only to see it taking care of people who don't need help. I also am sick of giving money locally to charities who spend more on their own needs than the needs of the poor.
    It is assholy stupid people like you who insist on Goverments being run as cheaply as possible (well, like private entreprises), causing them to skimp on salaries that is the direct cause of the rampant corruption one can see throughout turd-world countries.

    Your politics are the root source of the problem, not the solution!!!!