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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.'
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
Slashdot made fun of this. Now Gates made fun of it. Now we will see Slashdot slam Gates for making fun of it.
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).
My work here is dung.
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...
This guy's the limit!
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.
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...".
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.
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?
ive always prefered
... mostly your fault that mate, cheers.
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."
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.
-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=
Gates is just spreading the usual FUD. He seems to "misinterpret" the simple facts and spins till they're dizzy.
...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".
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:
I think that debunks all of Gates' lies.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
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.
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.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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.
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.
That proverb has great poetry to it in the original Klingon.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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...)
My, that was a yummy potato!
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.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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.
"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.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
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.
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.
"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.
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!"