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.'

Comments

Education starts only with opportunity

[dada21]

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.

The Internet won't help here -- it isn't here to educate, it is here to help people meet each other's needs. The people using the Internet to better themselves are already living in an economy that enables them to find opportunities to better themselves. That realization is enough to give the average person the desire to make their lives better.

Gates is right -- the $100 laptop is useless. The people it is being built for do not understand opportunity because their community leaders have robbed them of any chance to better themselves. Many of the world's poor live under the thumb of a small group of elitists who think they can help the poor through force. They attempt to provide what their poor needs today, without realizing that just giving someone something doesn't offer any hope for the future. This is especially true if what you're giving them today doesn't really help them enough.

The Bible offers the old fish cliche -- give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever. This is very important when making a consideration towards helping another person. I hate helping others through tax-and-spend wealth redistribution: there is no accountability in how the money is spent. I give all my charitable dollars (in the past few months, over 50% of my income) only to those I can hold accountable. This sounds like a "quid pro quo" situation, but it would be no different if it was my own brother or child or best friend. If the person I am helping is not making attempts to support themselves, then my help is wasted -- time, money, love or support. There are others who want to help themselves but are in a position (for whatever reason) that they just can't. These are the people I help.

I would never fund anyone in another country, never again. When I was younger I funded some Ehtiopian charity group, and a few years later had the opportunity to visit Ethiopia. The charity group's office was luxurious and the people working for it lived a very nice life. They found an opportunity: take advantage of idiots in other countries who can't hold the charity accountable. The people the charity was meant to help received very little of the finance and support promised, and what little they did receive did not give them any hope for the future.

It is this hope that creates opporunities. I've seen poor people climb out of poverty with no help from anyone, just because a simple opportunity opened up near them. I just visited Europe and Asia, and I saw thousands of very poor people taking advantage of opportunities that we in the U.S. would never consider doing. Many of these people realized their time investment could offer them the chance to save for the future, to give their children a better chance, to even save some money so they can better their own lives -- in the future. I would never give a homeless person a home, a car and a credit card. I would never give an uneducated person a computer or an education. I would never give a hungry person money to buy food. I would never fund health care of people who don't care about their lives or the lives of their children.

But I would open my home to the homeless person, if they were willing to make steps to find how they can house themselves in the future. I would (and do) spend time with poor families to give their children a chance to learn in some way so that they could take on

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[pizzaman100]

The Bible offers the old fish cliche -- give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever

Pretty sure that's not from the Bible.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bible offers the old fish cliche -- give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever

Pretty sure that's not from the Bible.

No, that was more, "teach a man to replicate fish...".

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[include($dysmas)]

ive always prefered

give a man a match, his hand will be warm for 0.37 second. Set a man on fire he will be warm for the rest of his life.

back on topic "adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support." ... mostly your fault that mate, cheers.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[jdavidb]

The Bible offers the old fish cliche -- give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever.

Did you mean that cliche literally came from the Bible? I don't think so, but if you want to offer a reference, I'll check.

It does teach that charity from the church should proceed by the rule that "For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat." (II Thessalonians 3:10) I'd say that allows us to infer the same concept. But the saying itself did not originate there, to my knowledge.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Gates is right -- the $100 laptop is useless.

Useless to him, certainly not useless to millions of poor people.

Actually, the $100 computer would be utterly useless to the millions of poor people -- if it every appeared, which I doubt.

Gates is wrong, all the same. There's a much better reason to mock the $100 laptop: what the "$100 laptop" offers already available throughout the third world, and is, increasingly, being used by people in the third world for the same thing that we in the first world use our computers for: communication. Cheap cell phones are blooming throughout Africa and Asia.

The average cell phone is a pretty powerful computer. With a display. And an always-on wireless link. And a storage system. And a data-entry pad. And, and, and.

Gates' criticism is laughable -- there's a lot of use in a small screen, for instance -- but Negroponte's idea is stupid, too.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Smidge204]

-1 Troll? I'm pretty sure that's a Chinese proverb or somesuch. Unless someone can actually find a reference...

No, the version in the bible goes something like: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, give a man religion and he'll starve to death while praying for fish."
=Smidge=

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[mcvos]

Many of the world's poor live under the thumb of a small group of elitists who think they can help the poor through force. They attempt to provide what their poor needs today, without realizing that just giving someone something doesn't offer any hope for the future.

"Africa's problem is that its leaders take care of their people"? If only that were true. The problem is that they don't. Instead of investing in education, infrastructure, and economy, many African leaders invest mostly in a comfy life for themselves. If your line of reasoning were correct, Africa would have been a reasonably wealthy continent by now.

Well, you're partially right. One of the biggest reasons the African economy is struggling, is because Europe and the US are subsidising farmers to produce more food that we'll ever eat, and dumping the surplus below cost on the African market. And free or cheap food from abroad means that the local farmers can't sell their products and go bankrupt. So in this case, we're paying money to keep them poor. (And before you ask why African countries don't raise tariffs on imported food: they'd get in trouble with IMF, WTO or similar institutions if they did.)

As for the cheap laptops for developing countries, I support it exactly because it does provide opportunities and helps education.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Thud457]

That proverb has great poetry to it in the original Klingon.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Dr. Manhattan]

The average cell phone is a pretty powerful computer. With a display. And an always-on wireless link. And a storage system. And a data-entry pad. And, and, and.

But it doesn't have a good, easy way to enter data. Full-size keyboards do matter. It's also hard to do self-hosted development on a cell phone, though that's less of a priority.

Now, come up with an external, plugin keyboard for a cell phone, and you might have something...

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[dtsazza]

Correct - it was the Chinese mystic philosopher Lao Tzu who first said it.
 
...and playing Civ 4 pays off again! (It's the quote you get when you research the Fishing tech, naturally...)

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[panthro]

Your comparison of this laptop initiative to giving a man a fish is very poor.

Giving people laptops, without getting into too much detail, is essentially giving people in developing nations access to information that they have no other way of obtaining. It has the potential to have a somewhat analogous effect to the introduction of the printing press in Europe in the middle ages: the common uneducated person suddenly has access to something that traditionally has been controlled by a few elite.

Education is not something you can squander, like a fish or money or even a temporary home. Information doesn't cost anything to give, and ideally lasts forever. The only thing that has an expense attached to it is the means of distributing the information - in this case, $100 per laptop, plus some distribution and infrastructure costs.

Further, playing down the merits of this project simply because there exist better solutions is irresponsible. You are essentially claiming that we should do nothing if we aren't going to completely rework the foreign policies and internal structures of virtually every government on earth. Nothing about this project is stopping you and I from trying to make bigger and better changes (aside from the expended focus, energy, time and money on the part of those who participate in the project - all those things are renewable resources). Mother Teresa is a good parallel to consider.

You are correct, a lack of opportunity is what is holding the 'less fortunate' people down. However, education is opportunity. It is precisely what the common population in underdeveloped nations needs to escape the shadow of their oppressors at home and abroad. Giving them laptops is not like giving them a fish. Giving them laptops is like giving them a library card and a ride to the library; all that's left is for some well-meaning librarian to point them to some books about fishing.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Scarletdown]

One I always liked was:

Give a man a fish, and he'll have fish for dinner. Teach him to fish, and you've just blown away your entire fuckin' marketbase.

(or something to that effect...)

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[tezbobobo]

What the hell, I'm already on negative karma. I am a politics honours student currently doing my thesis on the educational value of IT in education in Western Australia. My research is not limited to that scope.

Most studies into this sort of feild indicate the educational value of IT in schools is minilmal and may actually negatively impact on students. The only app which is generally real world related is the word processor and those who get to the end of an education which leads into an occupation which requires those skills generally requires it at the tertiary level. That mean's they are going to learn it, whether they are taught it or not. Most it related tasks bear no resemblance to those taought in the education system and only the most basic of skills are required.

Secondly, the students in, for example, grade ten wont be moving into an office job for at least three years, if not six. For promary school users it is even further. That means the technology they are currently learning will be SIX YEARS OR MORE OUT OF DATE. In the meantime they are experiencing the degradation caused by spelling and grammar checks.

Thirdly, the students with access to computers at home will succeed in the classroom where they are graded on those skills and those without access will fall further behind. This has the effect of widening the socio-economic gap. This means the laptops for everone (or whatever) will need to be implemented in a way which increases equity. I'd imagine selling your free$100 laptop would be quite profitable.

I think that serious thought needs to go into the education value and expected outcomes of implementing this program. While Bill is right to mock these people, it is for the wrong reason.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[qkslvrwolf]

Consider that everything you have been told is wrong.

These are not delinquent children that simply aren't applying themselves. These are millions of people who are diseased, starving, and desperate.

Now, if we absolutely left them alone, some people might eventually be able to stand on their own two feet. But that would be after hundreds of years, and plenty of famine, war, and the general riding of the four horsemen of the apocalypse across africa.

I'm sure that since you are worried about "actively destroying hope", then you obviously are going to start fighting against taking any african resources our of africa. Since that happens to be a major portion of *why* they're so poor. All the natural resources of africa went to benefit {drumroll please} Europe and the United States! Big surprise. And we're still doing it. Oil drilling operations that pull in hundreds of millions of dollars a year sit right next to people with lifespans of 30 to 40 years, if they're lucky. You konw what "doing it for themselves" would be? Rising up and kicking out sorry asses out of the country.

The mindset of "anyone can create their own opportunities, no matter what" is utterly assinine, and really shows a very narrow, very america-centric world-view. I challenge you to spend 1 year in somalia, or rwanda, or hell, even one of the best off countries like ghana, without taking anything with you. Good luck.

Education is the biggest problem...they need as much knowledge available as possible. And these laptops can help with that. They can help alot. These laptops are about giving people the tools they need to learn - not just to fish, but to fish, farm, hunt, gather, build, heal, and *live*.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Dare nMc]

> what the "$100 laptop" offers already available throughout the third world,

With that logic, if the $500 MSN/AOL rebates returned to best buy/circuit city, then the $100 laptop goal would be accomplished. those phones aren't $100, their $20-50 per month.

What the $100 laptop would accomplish is 2 fold.
a $100 laptop, with a sip phone/messanger speaker/mike, and wireless is a mobile call center for one, etc. In places without cheap cell phone, setup a wireless network for a lower setup cost, and lower monthly charge, with greater flexibilty, to enter data, answer questions, steal identity, mass produce atm cards,etc... worldwide.

    second you don't have to protect those computers as diligently from theft, they got no re-sale value, they would all got a ban-able macaddress to kill the usefullness if lost...

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[mcvos]

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.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Headcase88]

"give a man a fish, and he owes you a fish"

... and teach a man to fish, and he owes you royalties for each fish he catches.

... and if he teaches someone else to fish, take him to court with your army of laywers.

All this, of course, benefits society.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[fredklein]

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Try to teach a man to fish, and he'll bitch you're not giving him free fish.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[Fennario]

"Education is not something you can squander, like a fish or money or even a temporary home."

Sure, just ask the Cornell French Lit major currently engaged in making your copies at Kinkos.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[jonaskoelker]

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Try to teach a man to fish, and he'll complain that "I DON'T CARE!! You take take of catching fish! I mean, you're the sysadmin!"

Throwing Stones

[ackthpt]

'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.'

Fscking rich snob. You know, this git travelled around the world, donates money to fight diseases in 3rd world countries, but seems to have this wild belief that these backwaters are going to have telecommunications to each school and house, let alone broadband.

He SAW the crank handle, what part of "they use this because they don't even have electric" doesn't he understand? It's crap like this that gives the west a worse reputation, never mind invading oil countries, but doing bugger all for poor african nations. Geez, Bill, go back to feeling all warm and fuzzy inside about your Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or maybe you could free up $100B and give people in these developing backwaters with shite infrastructure some electricity, running water and telecommunications. Then maybe the destabilizing wars will settle down, which actually go a long way towards contributing to the diseases you like to fund the fight against, and the people won't be on the move so much and they can all get down to the business of e-commerce.

Cripes... I can just see some kid sitting in an adobe house in a rural village looking at his bright shiny Dell laptop with Windows Vista installed, 2 GB memory, 200G HD, whizzy graphics, and wondering if he could use it as a hard surface to practice his writing on.,

Bill's probably really spiteful because it doesn't spread the market penetration of Microsoft. So where's his effort? If he hasn't got one, he shouldn't be spitting on others.

we give money to underprivileged congressmen to help develping strategies for them to look the other way.

Re:Throwing Stones

[harlows_monkeys]

Fscking rich snob. You know, this git travelled around the world, donates money to fight diseases in 3rd world countries, but seems to have this wild belief that these backwaters are going to have telecommunications to each school and house, let alone broadband

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.

Re:Throwing Stones

[A beautiful mind]

"that you can hook up to a TV and keyboard and use as a computer."

Yeah, I see now. That would work perfectly well at places without electricity.

Re:Throwing Stones

[dc29A]

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.

How are these cell phones getting recharged?
What about people who don't have a TV and/or Keyboard?

Both TV and Keyboard cost extra. Plus the cell phone won't be free either. And Telcos need to be paid for someone to use their cellphone network too. Many things Mr. Gates does not mention.

IMO, the only reason Bill came up with this ridiculous idea is because he was felt left out by MIT. There is this reputable university that thinks no MS technology is good enough to help the 3d world. Must have hurt Bill's ego quite a bit.

The fine line between good and evil

[Mattygfunk1]

It's fascinating where the generous and charitable Bill Gates ends, and the ruthless businessman Bill Gates begins.

You would hope with his experience in the public eye, that he would have learnt that nobel efforts to help the less fortunate should be encouraged. Good luck to MIT and anyone associated with the project.

__
Funny Porn @ Laugh DAILY

Re:The fine line between good and evil

[RenHoek]

Well, it goes without saying that they won't ship with Vista. This will add to the Linux market share significantly, even though there are no profits generated by putting linux on those laptops. But it will hurt the graphs though. The PR department will hate it.

And if Billy Boy is one thing, he's a PR man.

Hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot made fun of this. Now Gates made fun of it. Now we will see Slashdot slam Gates for making fun of it.

Re:Hypocrites

[mgblst]

Slashdot is not a "diversity of opinion".
 
Yes, it is. (I think I just proved my point!)

Re:Hypocrites

[timster]

Dude, right on this page we have a bunch of people saying that Gates is right, and we have people saying that he's right of the wrong reasons, and we have people saying he's wrong. And we have you saying that there is no diversity of opinion and predicting that everyone will bash Gates. Feeling silly?

The value of a dollar

[ExE122]

Well of course, its only a couple hundred dollars more... I could've easily afforded that when I was a kid and spent three years saving up for an $80 used nintendo console.

And in other news, victims of Hurricane Katrina have finally returned to New Orleans to find that places of business have shut down and their homes have been destroyed.

When asked how he felt about people that are homeless, Bill Gates commented, "Their house got destroyed? So why don't they just buy another one? Boy, some people are just stupid!"

Gates then proceded to laugh at a little boy who's family was on welfare. "He was so skinny! Why didn't he just eat something? Boy, some people are just stupid".

He then wiped his ass with a 100 dollar bill and lit it on fire in front of a blue-collar laborer.

Urge to Kill ....

[eldavojohn]

... rising ... RISING ....

This article is clearly flamebait. So allow me to participate in the opening salvo.

I think it's interesting how Gates proposes a solution where we need to put people to support the product, thereby charging money indefinitely. Keep your customers dependant, it's his tried and true component to his business model.

Perhaps Gates (and his wife Malinda) are satisfied with vaccinations and hand outs. Things like food, clothing, water, etc. While these things are very helpful in the short run, they unfortunately result in the poor remaining dependant on you for more hand outs. This is convenient if you wish yourself to be seen as a provider.

What's more valuable to you, food or a tool that could possibly help you learn how to procure food indefinitely. These laptops could be very valuable communication devices. Sometimes, it's just an open dialogue with someone intelligent that sparks the learning process.

It seems like Gates is walking up to someone who desperately needs just basic transportation and telling them that a $1,000 junker isn't what they need. They need a high performance Dodge Viper with a personal mechanic to maintain it. Broadband connection? Why? I thought I read that these $100 laptops were going to have radio frequency repeaters so that information could be sent from laptop to laptop and act as routers for each other.

You know, even if these laptops are mediocre or even a complete failure, at least someone tried to provide the tools to escape poverty permanently.

Either Gates thinks that poor equals stupid or he's got something against MIT. These must have been some very hastily made remarks--think before you speak no matter how rich you are. It also doesn't help that the article implied he recommends a Microsoft "Ultra-Mobile" laptop instead (costing 6 to 10 times more).

Re:Urge to Kill ....

[AKAImBatman]

It seems like Gates is walking up to someone who desperately needs just basic transportation and telling them that a $1,000 junker isn't what they need. They need a high performance Dodge Viper with a personal mechanic to maintain it. Broadband connection? Why? I thought I read that these $100 laptops were going to have radio frequency repeaters so that information could be sent from laptop to laptop and act as routers for each other.

The key thing to understand about Bill Gates is that he isn't a technologist. Sure, the general populace believes that he's the smartest man in the world, but the truth is that he has absolutely no vision what-so-ever. If you read his books (e.g. The Road Ahead), he proposes mostly fanciful ideas that might have come out of a SciFi article from 30 years ago. Actual concepts about why his ideas are useful, the reasons why the implementation will work, etc. are all missing from his books.

What people need to realize is that Bill Gates is a ruthless business man who knows how to be in the right place at the right time. He made his entire fortune by embracing other people's ideas and extending them to be successful in the market. Everything from the Altair port of BASIC, to purchasing a CP/M ripoff to sell IBM as DOS, to announcing a non-existant "Windows" to compete with VisiOn, to cheating Spyglass out of a web browser to compete with Netscape. He doesn't know what will work until someone else shows him how. Then, and only then, does he make sure he nails the market before anyone else does.

Don't listen to Bill Gates. He has nothing useful or insightful to say. And I sincerely doubt that most people here really want to follow in his footsteps, even if it does mean becoming one of the richest men in the world.

Re:Urge to Kill ....

[serginho]

Perhaps Gates (and his wife Malinda) are satisfied with vaccinations and hand outs. Things like food, clothing, water, etc. While these things are very helpful in the short run, they unfortunately result in the poor remaining dependant on you for more hand outs. This is convenient if you wish yourself to be seen as a provider.

Well, I don't know where you live, and I really don't care, but let me guess: you have never seen poor people with your own eyes, have you?

These things like food, clothing, water and a *very long* etc. may well result in dependency. They are really useful in the "short run", and you know why? Life is very short indeed if you have no access to these "things". Without these "things", human beings die. And, as far as I know, people have no use for computers in the afterlife.

So please, stop making everything about Evil Bill. It may get you quickly modded as "insightful" in Slashdot, but not much more than that.

Re:Urge to Kill ....

[lawpoop]

I spent ten weeks with a poor, indigenous family in Ecuador in a university field study program. They lived on the banks of a river in thatch-roof, plywood floor huts. They farmed food to eat and coffee and cocoa to sell. Some of the men had jobs in the city -- menial jobs. They had no education, and since they were "Indians", nobody is going to give them a decent job. (Because, you know, they are always late, they steal, etc.)

However , if they get sick, they are screwed. They have no money for doctors. All you do is lie in a hut and have a shaman literally blow smoke over you, maybe wave some leaves. People frequently die from illness.

What your talking about is emergency relief. Yes, without food, people die. That's what's needed in famine, earthquake, war, etc. However, poor != desperate. Poor people have some kind of hook-up for food, whether it be the garden, a job, or a relative. However, if you start giving them food, they re-adjust thier strategy -- they might quit the job to be with the children, they might stop working in the garden. Then, when the free-food dries up, they have to re-jigger their life again.

If you give them food, they are dependent on you. They have no control over that part of their life. However, if you give them something like a cell-phone or a fishng pole, they can setup a new 'income' stream in thier life that they are in control of. That is empowerment and improvement.

What did you expect

[Tweekster]

Gates was never a real visionary. Excellent business man right from the very beginning but he never really had the visionary spirit. It brings up the debated comment about memory, it is dumb to most people, but really it isnt that dumb of a comment, just a lack of vision in what could come next. He knows business, not technology, he just happens to be in the tech business. He could have just as easily been in a different business and been very successful

Of course he's mocking the idea

[Billosaur]

They're running Linux on these things aren't they? No market share for Microsoft.

Gates has valid points, but they're overshadowed by his oafishness. And it's really strange given the amount of money he pours into Africa every year. Bizarre.

For real

[gEvil (beta)]

For real. I mean, why hand-crank those things? Why don't they just plug them into the power outlets in the wall? I see about 6 or 7 outlets from where I'm sitting. I would assume that everyone everywhere else in the world has the exact same resources available to them that I do...

Re:I would criticize Gates..

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Yes, the fact that he wouldn't make any money on this laptop, when he previously suggested that windows would be a good idea, has nothing to do with his comments. His comments shouldn't be seen in this context at all. That would be wrong.

Said Gates...

[bcarl314]

'...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.'

You forgot to add "from his Windows CE powered PDA IM message"

So it is a good idea then?

[db32]

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.

Re:I would criticize Gates..

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the $100 computer people want to have the last laugh, they can stop issuing press releases and giving each other awards and start making the damn things.

No Kidding

[KarateExplosions]

If these people are so damned impoverished, why don't they get off their lazy asses and go to the ATM machine and withdraw $200 in twenty dollar bills? And these children are starving to death? Here's an idea for them: Go to McDonalds and order a Double Quarater Pounder Extra Value Meal. That's, like, a half pound of meat. And as for these kids needing computers, I think it's high time they pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, went to newegg, and built a decent computer for around $500. Jesus, how else are they going to manage their stock portfolios?

Re:I would criticize Gates..

[pubjames]

I think he's expressing genuine concern.

No, I think they are dumb comments that show Gates is completely out of touch with the realities of education in developing countries. So he gives money to charities? So what. Is that such a big deal for someone who has so much of it?

A little personal story about MS. I used to work for an educational organisation in the UK. We were working with Microsoft on a project to demonstrate Microsoft software to schools, in return they were giving the org I was working for some free software. In discussion with their head of marketing to the education sector, I raised the point that the demonstrations weren't actually very good from a educational perspective. He said to me condescendingly - "Microsoft is not interested in education, we just want schools to buy our software". That kind of sums up MS for me.

Not really.

[Vo0k]

Slashdot didn't make fun of the computers, it was more of disbelief - the project is very ambitious and $100 price tag seems to be unreachable. Lots of us, /. nerds would love to get that thing, but we see it as vaporware, a dream that won't come true.

On the other hand, Gates is mocking the strengths of the idea and shows real shortsightedness. He says the cost is network and software, which is bullshit. The software is to be Linux so no real cost here. The network doesn't need to be broadband, and likely won't be - and the bandwidth can be donated by country using existing data lines, HAM radio and different other really cheap options. A single broadband line for whole school, it's neither expensive nor impossible. The remaining BIG cost is the hardware and only a guy with several $bln on his account can consider it negligible. Gates imagines this: OS: $150. Broadband line: $300 installing, $30/month. Other software (MS Office, antivirus, anti-spyware etc) $200. So why not round it up to $1000 with the hardware. The guys at MIT think: OS: $0. Software: $0. Network: old HAM radio: $0 (donated), old 2nd hand modem $5, bandwidth govt-sponsored. Hardware: $100.

$100 may be a year or two of hard saving for an average family in some countries. $1000 is for most of them completely out of reach.

So either aim at this unrealistic $100 (and maybe laugh with us about how vaporware this is) or just give up.

Re:I would criticize Gates..

[babbling]

That's a load of crap. When Microsoft was trying to get involved in this project, he thought it was great.

Now that the organisation making this laptop has rejected Microsoft, it's crap? Forgive me for being paranoid, but I don't think that's genuine concern...

Bill Gates is now officially a bitch

[mwvdlee]

Gates is just spreading the usual FUD. He seems to "misinterpret" the simple facts and spins till they're dizzy.

Shared: It's "One Laptop per Child"; no sharing.

Diskless: The machine has peer-to-peer networking built in; disks would be slower.

Tiny screen: It's a bigger screen than my PocketPC. And I bet 6 of those screens are bigger than his 6x more expensive "alternative".

Network cost: It's got builtin wireless networking; no network expenses needed.

Application cost: That's why they didn't choose Windows.

Support cost: It's a total package; if it's broken in either HW or SW, replace the entire machine and fix the broken one centralized.

Broadband connection: Because these educational systems are meant to be used for downloading the latest movies? Besides, the wireless network will probably be a lot faster than the 56k6 modems a lot of people are still using.

Reading what you type: That's where the dual-mode LCD screen comes in; something a "decent computer" hasn't got...

Crank: ...and being able to actually power it without an outlet would help readability too. The crank is only one of several ways to provide power, it can also get powered just like a "decent computer".

I think that debunks all of Gates' lies.

Useless for Vista

[babbling]

Well, yeah, it's useless for Vista. It turns out that poor people don't need eye-candy or bloat.

Bill Gates is just annoyed that this laptop isn't running Windows. Microsoft was originally trying to get involved in this project, but they were not accepted, so now they're FUDing it.

Re:Useless for Vista

[mrchaotica]

so now they're FUDing it.

Exactly. He's just pissed that the computer is going to run only Free Software.

The reality is that Gates is blatantly lying when he says that applications and network connectivity are a bigger part of the cost than the hardware. First, the applications are (big and little-f) Free. Second, the network connectivity is free as well, because these things are designed to make their own mesh network.

Re:Useless for Vista

[mrchaotica]

Wow, not only are you wrong, but you're also an asshole! According to the slashdot summary, Gates mentioned 3 things: network connection cost, application cost, and support cost. He said these separately, meaning that he claims there is a per-copy cost to BUY the software. This claim is false. I made no mention of the third part, which is support cost; you're the one who read something in my post that wasn't there!

Re:Useless for Vista

[natrius]

For some perspective on how far the software is from done, read this blog about some of the issues the OLPC team is facing.

Re:This is because Microsoft isn't involved.

[Mac Degger]

Did you see how he's saying that the hardware is cheap, but what is costly is connectivity, applications and support?

Oddly enough, the exact reasons Windows was snubbed on the project. With an open source OS, the applications are free too, and the internet is your helpdesk.

Oh, and hardware IS expensive, especially for the people the thing is targetted at.

Re:I would criticize Gates..

[WolfWithoutAClause]

He would get future sales off products like Microsoft Office, and it would give people a clear upgrade path to desktops and more expensive laptops which run XP etc.

I'll tell you something

[DrXym]

If these handcranked machines were selling for $200 tomorrow in a consumer model, I'd buy one like a shot. Bill can scoff, but a rugged device with a keyboard that requires no power supply and can do wireless and simple productivity tasks is a KILLER DEVICE. I can well imagine these things becoming almost the iPods of the the computing world. The likes of Starbucks would be filled with people using these things, taking them out of their bags, cranking them up for instant browsing goodness with just enough juice for a coffee or two. The great part is they're so cheap and sturdy that you wouldn't need to carry them around like newborn children - just throw them into the bag with your other stuff and away you go.

I reckon if anything that Bill is scared because if these things ever did become consumer devices that his shitty Origami project would go down the tubes just like all their predecessors. After all, how many would buy some lousy pen device costing thousands when something costing a tenth could do all they need.

It's not just consumers either. I can well see these things being useful in warehouses and other places where you need computer access but not the bother of having devices on charge all the time.

100% flame

[caffeination]

Dumbed down? These machines are a work of networking genius. And they run fucking Linux, which frees them up completely.

Anything you've seen calling this an attempt to "solve the problem of 3rd world technology and computing" was market speak. This is no different to anything else - a step forward.

Infrastructure? These laptops are infrastructure. And I can't think of anything more "from the ground up" than KIDS.

Wireless broadband infrastructure? And what do you propose they connect to this wireless broadband? Sounds like your fantasy world is a step ahead of the rest of us.

I'm sick to death of smug Slashdotters pissing on this project as if they know better than MIT and the UN.

Hubris before the fall

[Craig Maloney]

If Mr. Gates thinks kids won't sit typing into too small a screen, I'd suggest he take a look at the kids texting madly into their phones.

It is we who are the dinosaurs, Mr. Gates.

If it's so useless then why did he offer Windows?

[jacoplane]

From Wikipedia: "Steve Jobs had offered Mac OS X free of charge for use in the laptop, but according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders, the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with: "We declined because it's not open source"[4]. Therefore Linux was chosen. Microsoft's Bill Gates has attempted to convince Negroponte to use a version of Microsoft Windows on the laptop, but Negroponte turned him down. Some of Negroponte's friends told him Microsoft might then attempt to craft its own version of the laptop, but he responded such a development would be "great", as it would speed up the process of delivering cheap laptops."

Maybe Microsoft is ticked off with MIT because they were too insistent on OSS, and they view that as a threat.

Normally...

[Belial6]

Normally, my opinion is that complaining about spelling is a sign that a person has nothing of substance to argue, and thus is really admitting defeat in a debate. I think that when the original poster gives the "I'm right because I'm educated" argument, and then specifically discusses how they would solve poor spelling, AND makes spelling errors, we have an exception.

Adage revisited...

[Glove d'OJ]

I have always preferred:

Build a man a fire, and he is warm today.

Set a man on fire, and he is warm for the rest of his life.