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Intel Unveils PC for Developing Nations
Poppler writes "Intel has announced it will produce a PC aimed at developing nations, the 'Community PC.' Instead of giving out minimal PCs to as many individuals as possible, Intel wants to sell these machines to 'kiosk owners' who will rent out use to their village. Price TBA. How does this stack up against the $100 laptop, in terms of helping the developing world?"
A. Nothing.
Intel's talking about "Kiosk" PC's - has noone from Intel ever travelled to a developing nation? PC's in Kiosk mode are everywhere allready.
What intel really need to do, is make a cut-down macbook style notebook and take Steve Jobs up on his generous offer to help third world children.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
How is this better than AMD's 50x15 program and the PIC?
My server
Really.
Someone needs to hit these people with 2x4s.
Let's see now. If I want to help people in the third-world.. hmm. Well, they obviously aren't starving, have -spectactular- medical care, there's no problem with HIV, and we made sure they all have clean water and nice 2-story ranch houses. Crime is at an all-time low and there aren't -any- despots or tyrannical dictators that let American corporations in to use their citizens as dirt-cheap overworked labor for pennies.
So, lets get them all cheap, ubiquitous computing.
(You show me a man who can eat a $100 laptop, and I'll show you someone who needs affordable health care)
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
It seems to me that a combination of the two approaches might be the best idea. Although the mesh mode is a great idea in concept, it still needs a way to get out to the greater part of the internet. Enter the kiosk: this could stand as a sort of hub or gateway to the internet for the mesh network, allowing the $100 laptops to reach those services. I don't know if that type of cooperation would be possible, but we can hope.
As regards medical supplies and the like: there is no doubt that this money could be used for other things. I do not venture an opinion as to which is right or better; everyone has their own agenda and beliefs. I suppose the idea behind the computers is education. Many experts think that education is really the only long-term solution to these over-populated countries and that through education we can begin to turn the overwhelming tide. Just throwing money at the problem is not a solution, but that is what is done at first (in the form of drugs and/or laptops) and then the hope is that some sort of training or education will come along with it and remain long after. I wish them all luck
In Vino Veritas
If you're in a market with lots of second-hand PCs, and you have easy access to electricity - YOU'RE NOT THE TARGET MARKET FOR THE $100 LAPTOPS. Is that really so hard for people to understand? The hand crank is there for a reason.
A computer is nothing more than a tool that only matters when an educated and healthy population can utilize them.
Educated how? About what? So your way is that everyone learn to read and write but no computer skills? Nothing beyond basic farming techniues? Tou must think there is no such thing as the EMERGING FUCKING DEVELOPING WORLD? Ever heard of it? Not everyone is starving and dying. This laptop is so that EMERGING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES can gain the skills to enter the economically advance world faster. You comment about cell phones CLEARLY demonstrates you are a dumb fool, because cell phones are being bought RAPIDLY in developing countries. There is a huge demand for them because of the amount they boost quality of life and economic participation.
$2000 laptops should not be made because rich people are better off eating caviar. Any person who believes otherwise has clearly have never hung out with rich people.
I have lived in multiple developing countries and let me tell you're full of shit. Everyone I know in these countries are excited about it. I dont give a crap whether you supposedly did shit for MSF or not. Anonymous Coward. How many times does it need to be said that THIS LAPTOP IS NOT FOR THE POOREST PEOPLE. The poorest people are left to starve and die cause the $100 wasn't going to the ANYWAY (you have people like this AC blocking that money too with excuses like "the warlords take the money"). This $100 laptop is PAID FOR not by your f'ing negativist asshole tax money but by THE GOVERNMENTS THEMSELVES. It's not up to you to force people to spend THEIR OWN FUCKING MONEY according to the way you see fit. Take your negativism elsewhere, and let people who actually want to make a lasting difference do it. I dont see you raising $100 for anybody. If these laptops are so useless why are you afraid of them?
My question is do you have an internal monetary transfer system to the poor regions from the richer ones or an appropriate taxation system in place? We have one in Canada called equalization that transfers money from the rich provinces to the poorer ones(granted we aren't in the same fiscal situation).
Well, this is quite complex, I believe there are programs developed to help the poors. Although the taxation systems are *not* developed to do this (we have a 15% V.A.T.). Also, unfortunately we do have a lot of corruption and usually the people in the government are more concerned in grabbing all they can from the public funds.
As an example, I have a friend that worked on the Transport and Communication Secretary [SCT] (in charge of roads and transpoprt and communication permits through all the counry). He worked as a sysadmin in the secretary office on La Paz, BCS (far south of the California Peninsula near "Los Cabos").
The thing is, there was a hurrican in the state and a lot of roads got very damaged. The governor of the state declared "disaster zone" and was granted a big sum of money from country federal funds. Specifically, some funds went to this SCT secretary. My friend told me that of that money, the director (Secretary) in charge of the state grabbed (read stole) a paert of that money, from the money that was left, the sub-secretary grabbed another part and other high rank members did the same.
The rest was used to make some half baked low quality roads in order to make it appear as the money has been spent.
Oh, and the same happened similarly in Chiapas (the place I told before), where the government asked the Natural Resources secretary for funds to make a "crocodileraium" (lique an accuarium but for crocodiles) and the money given to them again by the federal authority. After some time, the Natural Resources authority sent an inspector (who was my friend doing his PhD btw) to see if the money was spent rightly. To his [not really] surprise the crocodile place was really bad, people had just spent the minimum required to do that thing (I wont go into details but from what my friend told me it was like they spent something like $200 dlls, when the government gave something like $7,000). All the rest of the money of course was stolen by the people over there.
My friend returned and made a report. Of course as it seems everyone in the government has a tail, nobody made anything.
Btw, I have been to Canada. I was in the west side of the country and it was really beautiful. I went to some national parks like Banf (I do nto remember the name of the others). I went also to Vancouver and Edmonton (I loved the underground malls, and when I saw a rollercoaster I was completely astonished).
Also, I remember reading (or hearing) somewhere that in Canada, people that does not have a job still get a check for some good cash and that there are places where they can spend the night and all that.
Also, an uncle told once, when my brother started studying vetrinary something I found may be insighful. He said that, it would be good for my borhter to go to Canada, as, in those kind of countries they tend to spend more money on pets (cats and dogs insurance and all that triviality [triviality for people in Mexico for which having a dog means putting a plate with food rests outside the house so the street dog has something to eat =op]) because over there the government has almost all the social problems solved. In mexico people is more concerned about what are they going to eat so everything else is trivial.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
(I live in China, I used to live in a poor province.)
I have a friend who just finished her bachelors degree in computer science, what's really strange is that she doesn't own a computer -- she never has. I still can't wrap my head about that, I don't understand how you can learn computer science without one to abuse.
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