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Gates Mocks MIT's $100 Laptop
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.'
1 - They ignore you
2 - They ridicule you
3 - They fight you
4 - You win
It seems that almost all of the technology that Gates has mocked has come back and bit him on the ass. We all know that the Internet is just a fad, noone needs that much memory, and so on. While some of the claims to quotes are questionable, the pattern still exists. He mocks alot of things he didn't come up with first. I fail to understand the hero worship this asshat gets from the general populace. They assume he is some kind of computer genious. He really is little more than a very good business man/thief.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Actually, in earlier stories on Gates' view of the $100 laptop, he is clearly aware that they don't have adequate telecommunications, and said that what they need is not laptops, but cell phones and the associated infrastructure. He said what we should be making and giving them cheaply are basically cell phones that you can hook up to a TV and keyboard and use as a computer.
I recently acquired a couple of older laptops to send to aquaintances in Zimbabwe. They both run pretty well, except for dead battaries of course. However, DHL wants $300 to send the heavier one to Victoria falls. I paid a total of $100 for the two computers. Parcel Post would only be $80 (for six week deilvery), but you can't send things through the Zimbabwean post office and expect them to reach their destination. Hopefully I can get the cost down by removing and mailing the batteries, paring down the pachaging and just shipping the valuable bits by reliable carrier. But for now, the barrier to me giving away laptops in south central Africa is shipping cost.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
This is of course in rather sharp contrast to most everything else written about him, his company and his company's products. (Some of that is obviously well deserved, I'm just pointing out that despite being critisized a lot, no one blames his donations.)
Sure and my having a PhD in Mathematics in a farm based community has helped my opportunities.
Perhaps not, but having a PhD in farming would do wonders for your area. You'd be amazed at how much things like crop rotation, harvesting patterns, fertilizer distribution patterns, and new harvesting machines can have on improving yeild and quality. Having grown up in a farm community myself, I often witnessed farmers from other countries come over to the states to learn how to improve their own yields. Even the stuff being done in genetic testing of livestock can have profound effects on things like milk yeild and quality.
I feel honored by the fact that one of my earliest jobs allowed me to work directly alongside some of the cutting edge researchers in the farming industry. Without them, we'd still have trouble producing enough food for ourselves, much less 25% of the world's supply.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The grandparent was exactly right, and you are completely wrong. This is the socialist line of thinking that keeps people in poverty, keeps people dying, and is actively destroying hope where it exists.
I'm afraid you're the one who's completely wrong. Africa is not the result of governments taking care of their people. Sweden is. Western Europe is. Africa is the result of colonial powers serving only their own interests, followed by African leaders serving only their own interests, and the WTO serving western interests.
Infrastructure is not the problem. Education is not the problem. And most of all, money is not the problem. It is when we understand this that there is real hope.
Ignorance certainly is a problem. Could you expand on why Africa doesn't need education, infrastructure or money? Money (especially in the form of microcredits) is certainly already doing a lot of good there, and I find it hard to believe that illiteracy is not an obstacle to finding opportunities and taking advantage of them.
For some perspective on how far the software is from done, read this blog about some of the issues the OLPC team is facing.
Thin client:
Only this round, it's Larry Page instead of Larry Ellison. But the song and dance from both sides are the same. Microsoft wants to sell OS and software for Intel fat clients, and Oracle/Google want to sell hosted services for thin clients, so they can hold all the data. Fat vs Thin clients.
Edith Keeler Must Die
But for many people, it's not about entering data - it's about *transimitting* data. Data about how they are, what they like, when they will come home, what the food is like here.
I spent an hour the other day talking to a woman who had recently been in the back side of India, doing radio astronomy work. (yeah, she fucking rocked.) One of their problems was that even though the locals were still cooking on open campfires and drawing water from a comnunal well, they were doing this while chatting on cell phones, and that was causing a lot of interference on their dishes.
These people weren't worried about storing data - they were interesting in transmitting it. How they were doing, what they were doing, and how their cousin in the big city was doing. All this was data transfer, but it was voice. Imagine, needing to stay in touch with your relatives in the big city being more important than clean drinking water and a stove and refrigeration.
While the $100 laptop/tablet might be something, I'd put good money on it being an IM platform and an email client more than anything else. Because I think that we as a race, we are hooked on communication, more than anything else in the world. If it can offer a better communication ability than a cell phone, it will take off like wildfire. If not, it is doomed to failure.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor