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Negroponte Responds to $100 Laptop Criticisms
teefaf writes "Wired News is running an article on the most recent developments surrounding Nicholas Negroponte's (of MIT) $100 laptop project. The project aims to make 'cheap' computers available to children in developing countries. In the article, Negroponte responds to the inevitable criticism from Intel and Microsoft, "When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right", and elaborates on his vision for the future of the project, "He also said the display and other specifications could change as enhancements are made. In other words, he seemed to be saying to his critics: Don't get too hung up on how this thing operates now, 'The hundred-dollar laptop is an education project,' he said. 'It's not a laptop project.'". The article also states that the initial production cost of the laptops is expected to be $135; the $100 price-point probably won't be hit until 2008. It's possible that the cost could drop as low as $50 by 2010."
I think Bill Gates has a lot of nerve to critisize a project designed to help children and educate poor people in villages to do alot of great things.
What exactly has he done to spread technology?
Oh, thats right the project competes with their own Orgami sub $1000 thingie.
Sorry Bill but I dont give a damn about the price of your stocks or your selfishness
http://saveie6.com/
Just wonderin'.
Everyone is very quick to speak ill of Negroponte's efforts here which are all about building a project that works and places computers onto the desks (or laps) of the "have-nots." Based on what I have read of the man he's an original thinker and very creative.
Usually, the entrenched tend to be very frightened of those types.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I thought the most interesting thing about this was Negroponte saying "The hundred-dollar laptop is an educaton project. It's not a laptop project."
Given that, it hardly matters what OS it runs, as long as school systems, educators, and students have the ability to write and run the educational software they need on it.
IMHO, the real value of a machine like this in a students hands (especially if they are taught programming) is that they learn problem solving, not just information.
They are making a laptop that will cost $100, and perhaps $50 by 2010. Who cares about the specs, it will not be a buisness machine.
Even if they stuffed a PII 400 mhz and had a 12" screen, it would be very usefull. People could write reports, surf the web, and compile programs. When I was in school, I compiled Java programs on a PII266 without any problems. Sure, I could not run a fancy IDE, but it was good enough to get the job done.
I think a $100 laptop is important. The poor get screwed, and go without. Many poor families will be able to afford a $100 laptop. Also, if I was a charity with $5000 to give away, I would much rather give away 50 basic laptops than 5 thousand dollar laptops.
skeptics have questioned whether the device can meet Negroponte's goal of inspiring huge educational gains
Why do skeptics decide? Of what value is the opinion of a skeptic? Why do people listen to skeptics at all? Offer something constructive, or SHUT THE FUCK UP.
"Geez, so why criticize me in public?" Negroponte said.
Good question. Why everyone isn't on this guy's side is beyond me.
Microsoft did not immediately return calls for comment.
Wait, wait. Let me guess. A meeting! Right?!?!
In time, Negroponte expects the $100 laptop to be a misnomer. For one thing, he believes the cost -- which is actually about $135 now and isn't expected to hit $100 until 2008 -- can drop to $50 by 2010 as more and more are produced.
This man should be given a standing ovation everywhere he goes. Anyone who criticizes him should be ashamed of themselves and their companies. This is a worthwhile, workable project, and it should be supported.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
If this project really takes off, it would be interesting to see if it gives Linux a foothold (dominant market share?) in developing countries. Ten years down the road we might see people in these countries sticking with Linux over Windows when they get a decent computer because that's what they grew up on. Surely this is the main reason Gates is pissed, that it could lose Microsoft the foothold in these developing markets.
"Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has criticized the computers' design, including its lack of a hard disk drive -- though many people in the tech world believed he was more irked by the laptops' use of Linux, the free, open-source system that competes with Gates' proprietary Windows systems." I tend to agree that a really functional computer needs a hard disk. "Intel executives, meanwhile, have suggested that Negroponte's laptop is a mere gadget that will lack too many PC functions. Last week, Intel announced its own plans to sell an inexpensive desktop PC for beginners in developing countries." Probably true, as well. On the other hand, the specifications will obviously mature as the project continues. The concept itself is very admirable.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Negroponte expressed frustration with Gates in particular, saying that the $100 laptop designers are still working with Microsoft to develop a version of the Windows CE operating system that could run the machines.
"Geez, so why criticize me in public?" Negroponte said.
Because the laptops are running linux, a major sponsor is Google, and it's not about the computer. It's about the education value.
"Aw, F**kberries"
Why do these countries need a widespread distribution of $100 computers?
So they can learn how to read, for starters. Reading is important. It's the reason we know how to build computers in the first place.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I read a related article earlier which was saying Tux needs to go on a diet.
It appears people are making comparisons between linux distributions and MS bloatware.
I tend to agree, I would like to see the consolidation of the best features from all the programs, sort of a best of breed contest without things like 7 different browsers and 43 editors all doing a very similar job but just not quite managing perfection.
heres the article link.
liqbase
What were they expecting? Honestly, DSL or Puppy would be ideal for this situation.
Not every community in Africa is starving and lacking teachers.
Think of what benefits would result if every student in a small Kansas town were given a $100 laptop with Net access.
What about shipping your old stuff overseas?
o n_contacts.htm
http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org/offices/bost
There are plenty of takers for your old equipment. Why fill up a dump?
--
BMO
The power could be supplied by ac adapter, solar panel, windmill, treadmill, or many other alternatives, since it doesn't need a whole lot of power.
THe sole reason why undeveloped countries stay that way is because of the large unproductive workforce that is uneducated.
If Africans (just an example) learn basic computer skills and children use education programs and can learn and connect with the rest of the world and be better informed the result would be tremendous!
Many employers could then setup shops and hire people. One of the reasons India is hot and Sudan is not is because the Indians speak English and are more educated then the Sudanesse.
Computer skills are essential and its silly in the US because any kid knows how ot use a computer but back in the mid 80's here in the first world, it was serious a problem with training. Not everyone knew how to be productive with a spreadsheet for example.
http://saveie6.com/
MS and Intel can say what they want, I mean, didn't Jobs say once there was no market for portable computers or notebooks?
The important thing to learn is not to be an ass just because you don't like an idea. Big companies can find themselves struggling to catch up to the "stupid ideas" that took off like a rocket because they thought they had everything figured out.
R(k)
...maybe Gates is a little bit miffed that someone could get out a $100 laptop in less time than it's taking Microsoft to squeeze out Vista.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
This project is designed to benefit countries as a whole. Some countries have populations with no high-level skills. By providing these cheap laptops (along with a wireless infrastructure) to their citizens, they can prepare them for more high-level work, which will attract business, which will create jobs, which will put bread on the table.
Ergo, $100 laptops will [indirectly] put bread on the tables of those who need it.
You should realize that this Nick Negroponte is the SAME GUY that whored himself to Swatch to promote their ridiculous "Internet Time" initiative.
Where can I get a crank for my laptop? I'd buy just the crank if it could recharge the battery.
"When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right," Negroponte
.. the article didnt really say. I wanna know some of his responses to the specific criticisms of the OLPC plan's effectiveness.
That's his response to the critics? How about responding to some of the specific criticisms instead? Or maybe he did in his speech
In 1990 I was given an old x86 machine that ran DOS off of floppy, and then Word off of floppy. I took to that computer immediately, and 17 years later, after many different jobs, I work in IT. Without that x86, I wouldn't have pushed my parents to get me a 486 for my birthday, or tried to get a job at the college helpdesk before I arrived at college. Maybe I would have still ended up here, but I doubt it. Putting a computer in the hands of a child can be a powerful thing.
Why knock it?
It reminds me of a picture I saw in a sociology book that showed half a dozen people crowded around a T.V., and all of them were poorly clothed, and they were sitting on a dirt floor.
/.?
They talked to the leader of the village and he said how people told him how television was going to bring the village knowledge and information (the weather for example), but now all everyone does with any spare time is sit in front of the T.V. and watch shows (sit-coms).
So, how long before these lap-top users hit
I don't even think it's worth it anymore trying to apply any critical thinking to this laptop situation, at least not here. You'll either be modded down, or be bombarded with the responses of karma whores. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP THE POOR! IT BRINGS KNOWLEDGE SO YOU CAN TRADE PRICES WITHOUT HAVING TO TRAVEL! YOU CAN SEE THE WEATHER!
T.V. can do a lot of things, though no dynamically, that these laptops can do. So can radio. But they don't. And before someone goes off saying about how I can't compare T.V. and radio to the vast expansive future that the internet offers, consider this.
Radio. How long before this turned to shit? T.V. How long before this turned to shit?
Internet? It's shit.
But whatever, I guess Negroponte can do whatever the hell he wants, and spend money he raises anyway he wants, the same as some guy with eleven houses and 12 hummers is free to.
Either way, when it comes down to it, it's not really under our control anyway.
It is just me, or does it seem that this project is much more interested in publicity than in actually producing cheap computers? If it were all about cheap computers for poor nations, just publish the specs and be done with it. Or just collect and ship used throwaway computers overseas. Instead I get the sense that more effort is being spent promoting Negroponte as a wonderful humanitarian than is being spent actually helping the poor.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Actually, rural Kansas (at least Kiowa county) makes pretty good use of that USF surcharge on our cellphone bills. I know for a fact that several folks outthere have DSL at about 1.5mbit speeds, and Haviland telco offers this at least 20miles outside Mullinville, KS.
In addition, I can recall several students discussing the relative merits of PCs vs. Macs in an intelligent fashion, reminiscing about growing up with 2 PC's in their classroom, and a media lab near the library. They were from Greensburg, Kansas. That's near Joy, and Protection. Okay, forty minutes from Dodge.
My point? Not every community in rural Kansas is sans net access and lacking PCs.
-theGreater.
Computer skills are useless. Teaching advanced techniques in agriculture will help far greater than any laptop.
How can you associate the ability to speak English and a better education with computers? Do you think that people didn't learn anything fifty years ago?
How is being productive with a spreadsheet productive? I fail to see the correlation.
Who know what an effecient firm, using commodity parts, can do with a laptop. I mean Apple, which sells in relitively small quantities, and has to pay premium for parts and engineering, can create laptops that sell for under 1K to the education market, yet Dell which gets the best price of everything, can use the cheapest part for the entry machines, and probably end up getting money from MS when all is said and done, can only knock 25% off that cost for a similiarly equipped machine, and still needs to play games with rebates to create the impresion that it has respectible sales?
These ineffecient dinosaurs are in for a rude awakening if even the $200 laptop comes about. Are people really going to pay 25% of the cost of the machines for the OS? I bet if the MS machine is $200 and the BSD machine is $150, the BSD will begin to quickly gain marketshare.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
While Microsoft and Intel are looking to the project as little more than a means to increase their bottom line, Mr. Negroponte is steadfast to his vision of the education and benefit of children.
Most of the work force of any country, including the United States, is more or less uneducated. They know little more then what is required to do their job enough not to get fired. A few years after completing High School, if they did in the first place, the majority would be unable to do so again. Very very few jobs in the world require much of an education.
Computer skills are in no way essential, the fact that you can still find a huge portion of people 20 and over who are afraid of the magic white box is testament to that. The majority of the current work force are not computer literate and the great countries of the world got there before there was universal education and computers.
The idea that you give people a computer and magically their lives will be better is one of the worst jokes currently being pushed on the uneducated public who believe everything they are told. These people have more pressing matters of survival to address before they need to get quick access to porn. A computer is going to let them write a report about what it feels like to die in 12 point Times. Maybe they'll even print it out before they're gone.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Bill Gates gives me the sh*ts. How can he condone criticizing a nonprofit organisation that is going to bring education and knowledge to children who wouldn't otherwise receive it? I think the article is pretty accurate when it claims that Gates was probably more irked by the idea that Linux was being used rather than Windows. But I mean, using Linux makes more sense, because can you imagine how much Microsoft would have asked for for the licensing rights for Windows? This guy needs to be applauded and awared a medal! This program will create a more skilled population in Africa who is able to help build up their respective countries and create better jobs and employment. So go stick your head in the sand Gates, and come back when you've done something as worthwhile as this
Let me get this straight... this laptop is $100, can be manufactured, distributed, and purchased by huge numbers of impressionable, ingenious young people, can form a mesh network with its peers, and comes with a variety of useful F/OSS software.
...I think this laptop idea is brilliant.
So when the kid grows up, and maybe due to his computer fluency perhaps starts living in a "higher" society that uses MS software, overpriced "Extreme Edition" hardware, and ISP's that want to rape their customers and extort service providers while providing service an order of magnitude poorer than can be found in places like Japan... well, perhaps this person will be less inclined to even think of putting up with this crap?
I second what the anonymous guy said. I have tried to use the computer to help educate myself. ie getting help on physics problems, looking at code examples, using online dictionaries for help with foreign languages, whatever it may be. You know what was the best technique as a college student? Opening up a BOOK, starting at page 1 and finishing where it says "The End."
Computers are unnecessary in 99% of jobs. Just today I was reading that the head of our local paper still uses a 1930s typewriter. (pop=80,000+)
"First, they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
It appears that we are currently transitioning from 2 to 3.
While in theory, I wholeheartedly support this, in practice, this could have some unintended negative consequences. One aspect of this that is often overlooked, is whether or not these laptops will be used at all. Remember, $100 in the US (and many other countries) is very cheap. In the countries that this is intended for, it's a lot. Perhaps even several months wages. When you are looking at not being able to feed yourself or your family, that laptop will most likely become a bartering tool, or sold outright to get food on the table. Taking it a step further, you may even see people losing their lives over this. In some under-developed countries, it's nothing to take someone's life over something worth a small fraction of the value of these laptops.
Because teenage pranks are fun when you're about to die!
Gates doesn't have a problem with a sub $100 laptop. His problem is that someone other than Microsoft will receive the praise associated with it.
As Microsoft continues to trip over their dicks geting VISTA out the door, I for one am glad these kids will get these laptops prior to becoming senior citizens.
I'd like to take a minute to remind everyone that there are areas in the US that aren't much better off than the third world, and could benefit from devices similar to this. Here's a parts list if you'd like to try your hand at constructing one :
P III ULV Single Board Computer with 10/100 NIC, USB and I/O riser for IDE and LCD : $65 , these usually come with a power supply.
128 MB SODIMM $30
Linux (free)
LCD : $10 - $15 depending on what you can find on e-bay.
Enclosure : You can use almost anything you want thats non conductive. Get creative.
Throw in a small travelstar drive , keyboard and mouse and you're slightly above the $100 limit, however only by $20 or so. Still much cheaper than conventional. Easy to build.
If you are an educator, you may consider having some of your kids strive to build a project similar to the one featured in this article. I'd love to see Gates go after an army of 12 year olds. Start a pen pal program to go along with it and send their creations where they are needed.. be it Indonesia or Kentucky.
Teach kids to enrich culture, compassion and not (always) their wallets so we limit the amount of future 'Gates' produced.
Is he trying to piss off the world? Or just so self absorbed he doesn't notice he's doing it?
We have people here in our country that cant afford a computer. I guess they dont count?
Not that i think everyone needs one to be 'human' like some people do, but i fail to understand the basic rational of helping others before you help those in your own back yard.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A few more years and economies of scale, the Nintendo DS will be the $100 PC. Just add a $6 usb keyboard and tweek the lcd to a fullsized 640x480.
Plus you'll be able to play mario cart ds over wifi. Sorry to say but all these mit/benevolent groups have already lost the race.
Microsoft and/or Intel have no right to criticize because they are Microsoft and/or Intel and we are doing this for "poor children", and we're using open source and we know that open source is great and it doesn't matter what the outcome is because as long as it "feels good" to us MITers and as long as its open source and....
Not disagreeing with you, but that USF charge will not cover desktop or laptop computers. They fall under an ineligible type of technology for that program. Look here to see what can be used with the program.
I think every school would jump at the chance to provide every student with a laptop instead of making a cart of 24 "normal" laptops available.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Actually, there are many reasons such places stay poor. A good education is useless if you can't apply those skills anywhere because there is no industry at home and you can't communicate with anyone where there is. An entrepenurial drive is useless if warmongering kleptocrats steal almost anything you make and destroy the rest. Your education won't get you far if the Big Man has decided destroy the country's agricultural infrastructure and you're spending your days foraging in the bush for food.
There are many reasons places are poor, but bad government is often a better indicator than average education level of the populace. One of the most valuable contributions that the $100 laptop could make is private communication and connection to sources in the outside world that will demonstrate that things don't have to be the way they are in your country. At least we can work for that outcome, though I realize that there are cases (*cough* Kansas *cough*) where it doesn't seem to have taken hold.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Indeed. In fact, more generally, it's ludicrous to suggest that any single effort can automagically make anyone's life better in poor undeveloped countries. So your statement applies more generally: all efforts to help anyone in any way should immediately be abandoned. They're not magic wands; only a magic wand will be satisfactory.
I don't know, I've had to call a helpdesk - HP and Veritas - the English there is a distant cousin (very distant cousin, from the side of the family noone talks about) to the English I speak.
You forgot to mention under which tree in Africa this book can be found. It can be downloaded, though, for 0 distribution cost, from a postman truck's server when it comes around, and when someone else visits you the copy you have can be given to the visitor. Can you do the same with a physical book, even assuming that you have one?
Computers are unnecessary in 99% of jobs.
Computers are necessary, however, to learn how to do these jobs if there is no teacher. And what are the chances that your village has a teacher for every job that you might be interested in? If you have to rebuild the engine of the only car in the village, would it not be wise to download a video which explains how to do it, step by step and with comments in your native language? A working car might mean the difference between life and death if the nearest doctor is 50 miles away, and the nearest pride of lions is only 5 miles away.
Besides, English (as a foreign language) is learned best in live communication, reading and writing. This is because it exposes the student to speech patterns that textbooks lack. This laptop can be used, if not for real time /. access, for UUCP/FidoNet like messaging - and that was fine for the entire world for many years. Even SMTP email as we know it is not much faster - not all people are online 24/7.
The action in third world countries seems to be in adding features to cell phones, not trimming down PCs. A cell phone is inherently useful; you can make calls. Adding on extra features doesn't run the manufacturing cost up all that much. The niche Negroponte sees will probably be filled by some cell phone based product that looks like a Blackberry or a Game Boy or a Palm Pilot.
Why do these countries need a widespread distribution of $100 computers?
It's aiming to be more than just a laptop, it is being designed for the express purpose of being an ideal educational tool for children in third world countries. Haven't you ever read "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson? Think of it as our primitive version of "The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" based on the technology we have available at our disposal currently. That sounds like a worthy goal to me.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Gates once stood up at a do-gooder tech conference (saving Africa with wifi or some such) and said: These people don't need computers, they need security, clean water and medicine. Bash Gates and MS for their ugly tech all you want, and I do, but he ponies up cash for real health problems. I honestly doupt MS is worried about market share in the Sudan.
Flame away, I can take it.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I don't know about you, but I rarely use the Internet for "shit" anymore. While there are many people like yourself who might choose to use the Internet as a mindless entertainment tool, don't underestimate the rest of us who use the Internet for far more productive purposes.
I understand your argument and I do think you have a number of valid points, but I also think you're too focused on the immediate effects and immediate ROI of a $100 laptop. I don't believe people will immediately flock to using a $100 laptop to learn about diseases, technology, and building communities. Most likely people will use them as toys rather than for pure educational and informational purposes. However, using them as toys (especially programming toys) will have a huge impact in the long run just as the Commodore 64 and Apple had a huge impact on our society understanding/using computers in the long run.
Lastly, a good majority of the countries have the food and drinking water thing under control, but the kids need a good education and need to be exposed to technology. I think this laptop is for them, not the truely horrible countries that have bigger problems.
Yes reading is important but comprehending what you read is of an even greater importance. Have you heard of books by any chance? Books are what people used to read in the last millennium and the millennium before it.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You set up 25 traps for rabbits in 25 different locations (xi,yi). Each trap has a unique probability Pi of catching a rabbit (known and collected over the years.) You are at (X,Y), and the cost of travel between each node of the resulting graph is known (some traps are close, some are far, some are across the river, etc.) You can not visit all the traps in one day, and the more rabbits you carry the slower you go. Now would you please tell me without using a computer what is the best travel plan for today if you want to bring as many rabbits home as you can? And which traps should be then reset, given that you don't want to kill rabbits if you can't promptly collect them later?
Good luck figuring it out without a computer.
I really wanted to refrain from commenting on this because I believe a large portion of Slashdot regardless of how well read and worldly they believe themselves to be; simply are not. That and the fact i'm aware of my own tedencies to turn a logical, well thought out and reasoned answer into a gun battle. However;
A $100 dollar computer in some of these "3rd world" countries won't even GET to the people that would be able to use them for the purposes of learning and expanding because:
1. Those people are being SLAUGHTERED.
2. Trying to save their families or their own lives.
3. Trying to feed themselves.
4. Finding food.
5. Finding shelter in war settings.
6. Looking for water.
7. Fighting disease.
When you are hungry, thirsty and don't have the hiearchy of needs the Maslow theory claims is universal. You are clearly not going to be interested in someone putting $100 dollars worth of equipment in your hand. It is completely useless to you if it doesn't do any of the above. You're going to maybe want someone to put $100 dollars worth of food in its place. What has the UN and the rest of the "civilized" industrialized world been doing in the last couple of years? Nothing. Absolutely, positively, nothing. Most of the food is consistently taken over by local ganglords, you have 3rd party outsiders destabilizing countries for natural resources, most organizations and even the UN peacekeepers themselves are corrupt. Luring small children with the promises of milk and raping them. It astonishes me you have the gall to sit there and talk about $100 dollar fucking computers with exhuberance as some sort of holy grail.
You, Negroponte and all the other "YEAH YEAH $100 dollars will better educational access idiots" need some reality. Reality in the sense that you need to spend some time in the same countries you think you're doing any favors for. I guarantee you, after spending a couple weeks in one of those places the last thing on your mind is going to be some $100 dollar computer. Infact, on your return I suspect you'd fascinate on something as simple as a bottle of water, ice, the variety of food and such.
Want to help with software and technology? Take an example from a project like Vim and donate money for food, clothes, antibiotics and vaccines. Then pray 10% of the stuff reaches the people that need it.
Please, please, don't mod this insightful; it is not. Not even close.
That is so. Computers are not for everyone. However if 5% of those villagers want a computer, they should be able to afford one. Right now the bright kids are lumped together with the stupid ones - and what a pain that is to everyone! There may be someone who is capable of greatly advancing the science, and all she now does is herding cows...
I bet if the MS machine is $200 and the BSD machine is $150, the BSD will begin to quickly gain marketshare.
Only if people pirate windows and install it on the BSD machine.
$50 more is NOT a huge difference to pay for an OS you're comfortable with, regaurdless of the price of the actual laptop.
If, on the other hand, the MS laptop sold for $1000 and a linux or BSD laptop sold for $150, THEN you'd start to see users switching over.
I thought the most interesting thing about this was Negroponte saying "The hundred-dollar laptop is an educaton project. It's not a laptop project."
What I think is interesting is that people are thinking about this like it's philanthropy. Is it? There are 3 to 5 billion people who live outside the western world. A mere profit margin of $1 per laptop is one hell of a lot of money. A $100 laptop times 3 billion people is a third of a trillion dollars worth of economic activity. That is nothing to sneeze at in any industry. Maybe that's why Bill's so mad, he won't get the chance to put the screws to billions of third world needy people like he did to the rest of us.
Other African countries have... well, few things so extreme, but sometimes they have things to prevent their population from being "exploited". And it may just be that a little exploitation is the price of economic success. I have a random column on the matter of Africa by some award-winning economist if you care for a peek.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
There are serious problems with the OLPC program
Yes reading is important but comprehending what you read is of an even greater importance.
Let's start with learning to read.
Have you heard of books by any chance?
Let's start with learning to read.
Books are what people used to read in the last millennium and the millennium before it.
Let's start with learning to read.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
You don't need a laptop to teach kids about unprotected sex. You need to provide them with a school to learn this and other things.
A guy on the street passing out condoms and a lil info booklet on std's would be more effective then laptops.
Hmmm... Pie...
Computers are unnecessary in 99% of jobs.
We know books are better, so we'll take their computers away from them. And then we'll all sit here and pat ourselves on the back and congratulate each other on how smart we are. Meanwhile the poor people go without.
Wow, we're so FUCKIN' SMART.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
So is this targetted at the poor, but not poor enough that they actually have electricity? I was under the impression that the main issue affecting the poorest people of the world is the real basics, like food and water. Only on /. could the critical problem of world poverty be brought down to a windows vs linux argument.
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
The reality is more likely that he's not about charity at all and just using it for political leverage and public relations image.
It probably burns him up to have spent hundreds of millions on PR and have Negroponte steal his limelight with virtually no budget (relatively speaking). Furthermore, it's not just that the open source and open standards on $100 laptop helps break people out of Microsoft's grip, it's also that the publicity breaks the general public out of the mindset of "One Microsoft Way" Simply put, he's probably quite afraid that the public will remember or learn that there are other software and data formats than those provided exclusively by Redmond.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Hardly. Giving them a computer solves none of their needs. Food and medicine and needed there, a basic education would be needed before you give them a little white box, hell maybe you might even want to consider reliable power and communication networks before giving them such a wonderful tool for communication. A computer is pretty high up on a list of wants, the people these are aimed at are still on the beginning of their needs.
When you teach a man to fish you don't hand him a yacht, you give him a small fishing pole. There are far more basic needs that need to be filled, a computer fills none of them.
You want to make a name for yourself by making a show of helping starving people in Africa? How about feeding them.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"You forgot to mention under which tree in Africa this book can be found. It can be downloaded, though, for 0 distribution cost, from a postman truck's server when it comes around, and when someone else visits you the copy you have can be given to the visitor. Can you do the same with a physical book, even assuming that you have one?"
Thank you for that. I'm constantly amazed that people don't twig to the fact that books (and paper-based content in general) are more expensive than digital data. I mean, for heaven's sake, if books and paper are so cheap and effective, how come none of us use them any more?
It's true that there are costs (and often significant ones) involved in bootstrapping a country's communications infrastructure to the point where ICT becomes reasonably accessible to the population at large in terms of cost and quality. It's also true that the cost of implementing a digital communications network is almost always the cheapest option available, no matter what purpose it's designed to serve.
Negroponte's vision is fundamentally good, though I do believe it deserves careful scrutiny, and that its assumptions should be checked and challenged early and often. I say this because these things often take on a momentum of their own, and sometimes end up crushing other alternatives while at the same time foundering under their own weight. The kind of pooh-poohing that Intel and Bill Gates have indulged in is, however, anything but useful.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Computer skills are useless. Teaching advanced techniques in agriculture will help far greater than any laptop.
So take the computer away from them. Right?
How can you associate the ability to speak English and a better education with computers?
There are so many things wrong with that question that answering it would require a thesis.
Do you think that people didn't learn anything fifty years ago?
Yeah, they were learning how to build computers so we could type "agriculture" into a search engine and have access to almost the entire recorded knowledge of the human race on the subject in less than a second.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I couldn't agree more - as a young, poor chld - I took to the power a computer gave more than anything else in my life - despite the fact that many of my friends have either died or ended it up in prison - the draw from my early computer days has lead me to a career in tech that has been beneficial and financialy rewarding.
every problem is a nail.
what good is a cheap shit laptop? To a rich man or a poor man?
Christ.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
People don't get no charity.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
I think why most people are frustrated about this project is because its such a piece of crap. The "have-nots" of the world deserve something better than a hand-crank. The deserve something wonderful as Mac OS.
But Negroponte's intention has never been to provide the best. Its always been going for the lowest common denominator. And for that he deserves all the criticisms.
This is the first time I've heard Dell being accussed of inefficiency in production, as for the MIT laptop, it is wholly dependent on the asian giants like Samsung.
Are people really going to pay 25% of the cost of the machines for the OS?
The reality is that OEM Linux at Walmart is no cheaper than OEM Windows from Dell.
*sniff* I think I'm going to cry...
Nice troll. I'll give it a 3.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Wait a second there ... now, I'm willing to give Gates credit where credit's due, particularly in terms of being a shrewd (one might say ruthless) businessman, but I think it's totally out of line to just hand him credit for the PC revolution. Anybody who believes that is either seriously misguided, or getting a paycheck from Redmond, or both.
If IBM had gone with a different company to make an OS for its computers, nobody would have ever heard of Bill Gates or Microsoft, 90% of the world would be running some other operating system, and we'd still have computers on our desks. In fact, if you wanted to find a single company to give the majority of the credit to, I'd say Compaq is probably the most deserving, for reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS and producing the first clones, thus breaking IBM's pricing structure.
Really I think the only credit you can give Microsoft and Windows is for driving a very rapid hardware upgrade cycle over the last decade; this created sales volumes which led to economies of scale in the past few years which have kept the price of computer hardware on an ever-decreasing spiral.
I don't think there's anything that Microsoft did that you can't argue would have happened anyway, had they never existed or had IBM adopted a different OS. And frankly I can think of several scenarios which might have resulted in better outcomes for the average PC owner than the current one.
On the other hand, maybe you were just trolling.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The domestic PC market is middle class, always has been. There is no room at the bottom. Don't believe me? Take a look at Walmart.com.
I lived in Central America (Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama) for two years, back in 1972-74. The literacy rate in Honduras and Nicaragua at that time was around 25-30%; there were no public schools; still, most people had electricity and a significant number had telephones. I knew lots of bright kids and young adults who would have benefitted tremendously from something like the $100 laptop. Using the US consumer price index as a crude measure of purchasing power, a current (2006) $100 laptop would be a $25 laptop back then--and lots of families I knew could have afforded that (and would have leapt at the opportunity).
..bruce..
Interestingly enough, the literacy rate in neighboring Costa Rica at that time was something over 95%, higher than even in the US. The people were well educated, but (compared to the US) poor. I can argue that they would benefit even more from the $100 laptop.
Several posters here seem stuck on a image of giving these laptops to Masai tribes in unelectrified Kenyan backcountry. The potential market for such laptops is global; there are many millions of people who live in countries with the requisite electric infrastructure, who could eke out $100 for one of these laptops, and who could benefit thereby due to poor educational opportunities in their countries.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
We, the people who live in those needy countries do not need cheap computers.
Thank you Nicholas, but we need some other stuff first if you guys want to help us. And our governments are so stupid that they will buy these computers for our people instead of using that money to address some other issues.
The will is ok, but it will end up doing us worse.
In my country (Argentina) all those computers will end up in wrong hands. We dont need computers for education; it seems that americans believe that are helping the world, but from this side of the counter it is all different.
Countries dont need to be invaded to get help... not with your armies, not with your patents, not with your companies that take full advantage of our corrupt governments (as this project)... It is our fault, but please stop "helping" us in those ways because it harms people seriously.
Your banks lend money to our govs, that money goes somewhere else, no-one controls that seriously and we all end up paying that "help" and nobody gets anything.
Nicholas, if you want to help then travel to our country and do something punctual. But SKIP governments; or else you will be feeding corruption and you will never know.
Regards,
AiZ
Food + medicine - education = crazy population growth.
Assuming that all we need to do to help third world countries is give them food and water. Africa is already having too many kids for their own good. An almost surefire way to slow the growth of a country is to make it educated and affluent. Increasing the general education in Africa would likely lead to somewhat decreased rates of population growth while simultaneously helping people increase their standards of living and general health.
Granted, food and medicine aid would be a good supplement, but without education these people will never be able to improve their lot in life.
Hint: it is one of most common applications of linear programming:
(from here)
This subject is heavy on math, requires fluency in matrix (linear) algebra and is usually taught around 4th semester in universities. I dare you to solve such a task using, for example, the simplex method, just in your head :-)
You're right, Gates does do good things for the world. But this is Slashdot... if this were an actual in-person conversation, we would be torn into 5 pieces by now.
Hell, some of these people may not even be real. I could write a script that just parsed the main page for "Bill Gates" and auto-responded with "ZOMG BILL GATES SUCKS ASS WHAT A DOUCHE!" That's usually what happens here anyway... not to say that sometimes it isn't true...
Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like today if Bill Gates never existed. Better, or worse? Would PCs be what they are now, or similar, or still $10,000 business tools? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have a job writing in the language I am, and I'm pretty sure I like the way it is, even if we are sometimes at the mercy of the richest man in the world.
umm.. actually..
Putting a computer in the hands of a nerd can be a powerful thing.
I am sure if the said computer was given to Chuck Norris as a child, the computer would have ended up as a totally shattered thing.
For example:
I wish to lay out power lines from a power plant to reach as many potential consumers as possible. I know:
How much a tower can hold.
How much one costs to build (this includes the costs of transport of materials, builders etc)
How likely any particular line segment is to suffer failure.
Where and by how much suburbs are likely to expand.
A map of places I can't ever build my towers.
So what network should I build to (a) minimise the chance of an extended power outage at any serviced location (b) to minimise building and maintenance costs (c) to allow for probable growth patterns?
This problem (which is awefully close to what you are describing) was a known problem in the 1920's, and was solved using NO electronic computers.
Thats not what happens when you gain a greater ability to communicate. Sure, the laptops will be exploited to some extent, but given that they're so cheap anyway, this really will be minimal.
It's a grass roots approach and like all home-grown campaigns they take time to root. The project is actually pretty ingenious in how long-term the effects will be.
It's this kind of bottom-up approach used in conjunction with short-term efforts that will help stomp out the AIDS epedemic and other world issues.
They fell for:
Anyone who criticizes him should be ashamed of themselves and their companies.
Let me guess. They should.
+5 funny flamebait troll
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Paper
Pencil
Book of Logarithms (when accuracy could be let slide a bit)
Slide Rule (when accuracy didnt matter very much at all)
Human Brains.
The problem listed isnt that hard, and is a pretty simple problem to solve using the Dual Simplex method.
In particular, since you didnt really specify the numbers involved, the solution can be written as a single linear matrix relation.
In the old days we had to deal with matrices with hundreds of rows and columns, and we did it by pen and paper. How do you think such things as power networks, phone networks, factory producation lines etc were designed back before electronic computers became ubiquitous?
How much karma does it need to collect to pass?
Do you think regurgitating parts of other posts that have been moderated+ violate the test?
How is that diffent from our own early childhood training (Props to mom! She was a better moderater).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In any case, none of that applies to villagers in Africa - they can't be expected to grok linear algebra if all they do is hunt rabbits :-) But it will take only one educated person to develop such a software (which is indeed not a rocket science for a university student.) Then many people can enjoy the results.
Sure, but do you think our govs should spend that money on that when you happen to go to a public hospital and you have no bandages? Let them spend U$S 100 on that kind of things, then we will talk about getting computers. Take a look at Maslow's theory of Hierarchy Of Human Necessity and you will find out that before computers, human beings need food, clothing, shelter and health. Education comes after that... and education with laptops comes waaaaay after that. If you were living in third world countries you would see that we got credits from IMF, from several other funds, from the World Bank... and that does not reach "WE THE PEOPLE". This laptops idea is the same thing. And who will pay for that? WE THE PEOPLE. If you lived in a 3rd world country then you will know what half a million dollars mean here. It means A LOT OF MONEY for us, much more than for you. (500k is the minimum amount a govermnet need to "invest" in this project). So please dont sell this idea to our govs. It really sucks to be down here stuck in the 3rd world, paying 21% of sale taxes (instead of 6 or 8 percent as you guys do in the USA) and not having covered even first needs for our population. Regards, AiZ
Hardly. Giving them a computer solves none of their needs.
It really depends on whether you're just dumping a Dell laptop in their lap, or giving them something designed and targetted to be as useful as possible. That is it depends on hardware designed specifically to fit their needs, and what actually gets loaded onto it in the way of software.
a basic education would be needed before you give them a little white box
They would have to have learned to read at least, yes - our technology isn't quite advanced enough to teach children to read yet. Once they can read however the computer could quite conceivably come loaded with a lot of basic educational material such as basic mathematics through to algebra, plenty of reading material (potentially localised to be in their native language), and whatever else people see fit to include. It would not be that hard to provide enough material and software to make the laptop a complete resource for basic education to anyone motivated enough to sit and use it - and there are people who want the opportunity to learn desperately: don't think they wouldn't take advantage.
hell maybe you might even want to consider reliable power and communication networks before giving them such a wonderful tool for communication.
Or you could recognise that laying out massive power and communication infrastructure is going to be not just expensive, but extremely time consuming. With that in mind you cna design your laptop to have low power modes and long battery life to deal with intermittent power, as well as a hand crank to deal with a complete lack of power. You can also design your laptops to automatically create a peer to peer mesh network amongst each other for communication, spontaneously creating a new network wherever you put the laptops rather than relying on the slow arrival network services.
When you teach a man to fish you don't hand him a yacht, you give him a small fishing pole.
And when you want to provide someone who is self motivated with a basic education you give them a book. Or maybe you could give them a complete library of interactive books, access to a communication network, and a device that can expand to fit their needs all in one nice little durable package that they can take anywhere. Thinking that a child with a thirst for knowledge can't make use of a computer loaded with all manner of suitable educational material and interactive software is to grossly underestimate that child. These laptops have the potential to be amazing. Sure, there's still plenty of room for bureaucratic fuckups, or toher failures that ensure what actually gets delivered is far from the potential of what it could have been, but Negroponte and all seem quite determined to make it as good as possible.
This isn't about making a computer cheap enough that you can hand it to a child. This is about designing and building an educational tool that you can hand out and give people access to the sort of education so many of us simply take for granted.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
i'd donate a small amount of money if my email was permanently displayed on each and every wallpaper of the laptops which i paid for. i'm sure a few others would too. $100 isn't that much to help create a better world. spam filters are good enough today so that i wouldn't fear my inbox being filled with junk.
Does it go on forever?
Every time we get a story about technology adoption in the developing world, we seem to get a few people saying stuff like "They don't need cellphones/cars/fax machines/other tech toy we use for frivoulous stuff". Look, just because we use a technology for mundane uses in the west does not mean that people can use it for important things in the developing world. Look, most of the printed publications in the west are trashy tabloids and dime novels, does that mean you would like people in the developing world to go without printing presses?
...
:)
Here is my favorite example of computer usage in the third world: Somali internet cafes
Some quotes from the link to the pictures:
I export livestock such as sheep, goats, fish and camels to Dubai. I am sending invoices to my customers by e-mail, which is much quicker than the phone and you can include more details.
Or this woman: I am a nurse at Bannadir Hospital. I have come to check my e-mails.
Sometimes, I find some interesting new research about nursing, medicines or mid-wifery on the internet. Then I print it out and take it back to the hospital.
So obviously, just because we use it to send pointless jokes and play games does not make computers a useless luxury. They are a tool, just like phones or printing presses. There might even be a Slashdot-type collaborrative news site that gives useful information on how to improve developing communities.
Ghandi's "war" wasn't exactly bloodless either. For many of his people it ended with "then they fight you" but for india as a whole it became "and then you win".
It is the reason why people standing up to fight for something are so rare. Because it is so bloody likely that you will be standing all alone when it comes to "then they fight you".
Many westerners are now bitterly complaining about their goverments becoming more like dictatorships. However to take up arms against them means that you better have a lot of people doing the same thing at the same time or instead of a brave freedom fighter of the revolution your just a lone nutcase with a gun.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Catch up? What do you think we third-worlders are? Catch up to what??? To email? to blogs? to what? To have knowledge and education you dont need a computer. You need shelter, you need health... so THEN you can think in something else. Stop watching us from north of texas like we need what you need. Reality is different here. Is there anybody who really thinks that solution lies in laptops?? well... if you do... I guess you are the one who need education, and... oh! YOU HAVE A LAPTOP! Regards, AiZ
Bill Gates has given billions of dollars in charity, so he is not a bad guy, he just likes to play dirty ... check out this article...
"It will use a low-power Intel processor running either the Linux operating system or Microsoft's XP Starter Edition, a stripped down version of the Microsoft OS for poorer countries."
Not to get into the discussions that everyone else is getting themselves into. .
At $100 it isn't "CHEAP" in a 3rd world country and I think I can forsee it being stolen if not violently. I think it's a great idea to provide kids in developing areas with educational tools but not sure why it costs $100.
Why not lower the costs and provide lower resolution LCDS, place a solar panel behind the display for charging (doesn't it already have a hand-crank generator?, if so ignore that last bit) and let it receive text data at low speeds via long range radio.
I think it's a great idea though. And it's target isn't the 19yr old who is hiv positive but rather the 12yr old who hasn't gone to war and can read enough to figure out how to read "poking "this" "there" will kill you"
A guy on the street handing out condoms. Great. Something to fill with rancid water and throw at other people for fun. Educating a people with ultra low cost text based devices. hmm. .
I bet Sally Struthers would be glad to get on TV and beg us all to buy someone a $50 computer.
A laptop is all well and good. However, do we really have the software infrastucture to educate the people using this thing? ESPECIALLY in languages other than english? At the momement I'd have to go with no.
I think what the world needs more than anything at the moment, is a device to connect everyone. Read Steven Baxters "Manifold Time". I much prefer his conception of the global device than the idea of a laptop.
And TBH, that device could be made for under 100 bones. Add in the idea of a kiosk operator and you'd have a winning combination!
This comment I'm writing will likely just fade away, as it adds nothing to the discusion. I just had to salute you. You're rigth on track. My home country would benefit a whole lot more from cheap pc's than anything else, since while it thrives in electrical infrastructure, it's money sucks when trying to buy even second handed technology.
Mu
Sewer systems take education to be able to usefully install and maintain.
Your contact with bowl problem should be solved by using an "elongated bowl" Such things are available in hardware stores like home depot.
If you're still contacting the toilet with an elongated bowl, I recommend selling pictures of yourself on the net, and using the proceeds to purchase a sewer system to donate.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
I'll be in line behind you.
I think we just had a brokeback slashdot moment.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
...why not just install Windows 95 on it?
Negroponte made already a nice commercial showing the educational strengths of the 100$ PC: http://www.mustseeblog.com/?p=58
Pretty please with a cherry on top, sell these things in a consumer model. Load it up with a simple GUI, a word processor, a web browser, IM and a music player and turn it loose. The clamour for these things means you could sell them at $250 and use the profits to subsidize the educational efforts.
He's holding pro-education banners to mask the fact that this is a non-profit cash cow for his darling media lab. Having experience in high volume manufacturing and design in this area, I totally agree optimized systems can be knocked down in price, but they are pitching a way to rosy picture to everyone with respect to features, schedule, and cost. The original releases were saying volume in 2006 targeting $100. Notice how the cost is now listed as 'actually $135', less than $100 in 2008, and the magic crank dropped? Well wait and see cost goes up and features get dropped or schedules get pushed. He's a master at vision and hype, and likely a master of getting away from the fan before reality hits it.
Its got the wind up, a rechargable battery, and solar cell on top. Frankly the thing is awsome, and is near indestructable. However, it is also made in China, like most other things in the world. Since I am in Kenya, if it broke, I'm quite sure that it would not be fixable. I would have to buy a new one. I got this radio through an NGO I worked with. In the field I saw dozens of freeplay radios that had the hand crank broken! They were just sitting in a store room gathering dust. Also about price, I think they come out to around $40 each, in quantity. Anyway, I don't really see why people are against the handcrank computer. If they could have even 1 per SCHOOL, that would be a great achievement. If a student could even just send one email a month to a penpal, or do some simple research, that would be a giant leap. I have worked with Interactive radio instruction programs and from what I have seen, the innovation that the windup computer could introduce would be nothing but a good thing. Radio is last century's technology, its time to move into the future (though it may bruise a few radio egos). IMO
I also notice that you obviously do have access to a computer, and the time to post on Slashdot. What gives you the right of speaking on behalf of all of those that don't have that luxury about what their needs are?
And your idea about the US tax system is completely far out there. Most people in the US pay far more than 21% once you've added up federal income tax, state income taxes (for the states that have them), and local taxes (including property taxes etc.). For most working people in the US the total direct tax burden will add up to more like 25%-30% unless they're on extremely low salaries or live in extremely low tax areas.
the cost is $135 now, right? what about selling it for $140 worldwide?
then for every 27 units sold, one could go for free to charity.
from the posts here, looks like a lot of people would buy it, and it'd also, in some way, prevent the blackmarket.... not to mention that it'd help speeding up the scale towards the target $100/unit...
Man you really under estimate people. Once you give the youth culture a way to connect and mobolize, education naturally follows. Drugs aren't the only need in Africa.
If they estimate that the laptop will cost just 50 in 2010 (down from 130 now), you can expect them to be dollars by 2015 and pennies by 2020. This is effective than drugs becuase you cant take knowledge away.
Probably this combined with an upswing in their economy would be a huge deal.
Bingo! Well said. "Imagination is more important than knowledge", A Einstein (and he should know Exactly. We're already getting hugely creative and useful tools coming from India, why not afrika too. Why not deepest rural India. And the kids looking over the shoulders of the early adopters will be able to think about how to use the new found skills to earn, to solve, to develop... Fingers crossed
Because you can - or because you should?
One of the greatest drivers of economic development across Africa is the mobile phone. It's done more for development than almost any number of international agencies. The mobile phone has enabled people to find out what's happening in other parts of their country, or other parts of the world, without having to go there. It enables farmers to find out what prices are in markets, or traders to find stock. It's even allowed millions of kids to set up their own telecoms businesses, with phone booths providing affordable calls to local people. Affordable computers will enable similar progress. Not everyone needs one - although you'll be surprised how many people will be able to scrimp, save and trade. But many communities will, in one way or another, get one. Typical ingenuity will enable people to do all kinds of things we won't anticipate. Allowing them the freedom to share, innovate, discover and get entrepreneurial will drive incomes up and improve democracy. So much better than the usual well-meaning but ineffectual direct attempts to improve lives in developing countries.
Interesting column, but that's not what the problem is in Zimbabwe. The problem there is that Mugabe disowned the white farm owners and gave the farms to his own cronies, who didn't know a thing about running a big farm. General mismanagement, cronyism, and hunger for short term prestige are the real problems in Africa. They're problems everywhere in politics, but much, much more so in Africa.
But to get back to the subject at hand, I think cheap mass communication (controlled by the masses themselves in stead of national media companies) can help the people identify these problems and deal with them. And isn't that what a cheap laptop with wireless connection really is?
> I tend to agree that a really functional computer needs a hard disk.
I would say a really functional computer need non-volatile storage. How much storage is available matters, how it is implemented does not.
My first harddisk had 20 megabytes, this thing beats this hands down with its flash storage. Plus the flash storage is much more robust. And on the computer that my first harddisk was hooked up to I learned to program C and write texts in latex, among other things. I learned Pascal and 6502 and 6800x assembler on other, much less powerfull machines, so I would say there are definitly some usefull things you can do on one of those cheap laptops.
For the one-hunderth-time! These laptops are NOT for people who are goig hungry or living in a tent in some barren wasteland. You go to any village in China, and you can see what Negroponte etc. are talking about. People who farm, who have gone to schools and are already educated, but don't really make a whole lot of cash. People who would otherwise be left out in the cold as far as a higher education goes.
THOSE are the people who would benefit from these laptops! Oh, I forgot, you gringos don't know a damn thing about the world, as the only thing you know you get from CNN. To you, the rest of the world is a bunch of Somalians living under a tent in some dry field. Well how about using some of that cash of yours and go out and visit the world. And I'm not talking about getting drunk in a Cancun hotel room.
Infact, alot of the people working in hotels in poor countries could really use a laptop, but can't afford one. They already have an income and plenty of food, would they sell it for food?
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
I stand behind the 'take care of your own FIRST' concept. Only after that is done do you branch out to help others.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Good sir, have you recently checked on the price of textbooks? A university level text cost between AU$60 and AU$120. Highschool texts probibly don't cost any less than $40 each. Per subject.
a u ) work very well for teaching texts. In five years, a whole curriculum of international standard could be available for the use of developing countries. For free.
If you do not see the value of having a computer (and the access to cheap media that goes with it) for less than the cost of a single years texts, then you perhaps ought to step back from the issue.
The Open Source Licences (Creative Commons is a great example http://creativecommons.org/license/?jurisdiction=
So, you are perfectly right, computers are not in fact strictly necessary.
You are also an obtuse asshat.
Midnight9
In the maelstrom of the chaos at the center of my mind, I taste the salt of sadness as I feel my soul unwind.
However, giving $100 laptops to children is not the same as giving them education. In fact, a lot of things need to happen first because children in developing countries can benefit from a laptop computer.
First of all, there is a pyramid of human needs, and safety and food should come first. It is a shame for mankind that children die of hunger while we debate what resolution their laptop screens should offer!
I still believe a $100 laptop project can be useful, but only as part of a more holistic educational effort.
Perfect. Costa Rica is one of the vaguely committed participating countries!
It's funny how us old folks got a decent education while relying on our sliderules or (gasp) pencil and paper. But we had an advantage - we were fed reasonably well, and lived in a stable society that put some emphasis on education and hope for the future. Concentrate on a real education and a safe place to live for people and seems to me the rest will fall in line eventually. And the kids will be a lot happier than they would be with a new electronic toy.
Yeah, those knuckleheads are wasting their time trying to keep people alive. Silly bastards.
i seases/
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalHealth/Pri_D
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This thing isn't just a normal laptop like a replacement for a typewriter. Its got some wifi capability. In other words you can call this a Short Distance Packet Radio Transceiver Digital Data or whatever...
Throughout history radios have proven to be of enormous value. Extreme of these cases are warfare. Its been proven time and time again that radios improve the way people do things. I'm sure with a bit of mod these things could have a module for voice communication. Then all you need is somebody clever that could provide trunk links between pools of wifi communities.
I have personally been to a situation where laptops like this would have been of enormous value. I've been to this place where the locals didn't have continuous electricity or even clean water. There were a lot of aid agencies operating there. The adults were poor and stank a lot and looked like they only had one set of clothing to wear (although many of them were highly educated). The kids on the other hand were different. They had clean clothing to wear and even uniforms, rucksacks (probably filled with books and stationary) and looked better fed (thanks to aid agencies?). One thing they didn't have was access to computers. There were computer shops dotted around but there was no way ordinary locals would be able to afford these. Most of their customers were foreigners sent to help them. Now a laptop like this would have certainly helped a lot, especially those kids. They seemed to show a keen interest in technology, too. I remember when I opened up my laptop (running SuSE by the way) on a lay-by. These locals were staring at it in fascination where normally they would give us bitter looks or even spit in the ground on one occasion.
At the least I see this situation as a geek helping other not so fortunate geeks. If it helps non-geeks then that would be a bonus.
I dont focus entirely on providing just the basics. What I said is that that need to be covered in a better way that is being covered now, and there are many things in the middle between food, shelter... and laptops. You have the point of view for a developed country, 3rd world does not work that way. People is not uneducated, is what you dont seem to get... the problem in 3rd world is not ALL the people, is the breach that exists between the groups. You have very well educated people, and then you have people that is not educated at all and live of paper recycling... then i dont understand who computers are for. For investigators or educators? They will be pissed off... having the govnmnt invest in such a thing when they dont even get U$S100 a month, and they've been asking for better salaries since I remember. What gives me the right to speak on behalf on those? perhaps because I live in a 3rd world country, and I go out to the streets everyday and see what people is suffering. Believe me, when I enter the subway they are not asking me for nickel batteries for their old laptops... when I stop in a traffic light they dont come close to my car to ask me about changing their screen resolution. Then, since I live a reality which is full of this kind of problems everyday I can speak from what I see. Regarding taxes, I said SALE taxes. If you want to compare the same way, including the rest of the taxes here you end up paying around 45%. Believe it.
They have educational problems... SEND THEM BOOKS! No, nono... it does not work that way. The problem is not the lack of books... the problem relays in culture. You are viewing everything from a theorical point of view. Deny the choice? which choice? Arent governments supposed to pay for all that? Do you have any idea what corruption is?
WiFi needs an infrastructure. If it's not there, WiFi is useless. Are we also talking about setting up free WiFi everywhere and granting free accounts to everyone that gets a $100 laptop? No, I am not saying we shouldn't (in fact we should, if we can afford it), but there is a lot more to this than just handing people the nifty plastic box. A ham can talk to the rest of the world on a few watts of power and a $50 radio set with a wire strung out as an antenna. This may be a stretch, but it seems to me that a good rule of thumb is that the more advanced the technology, the less useful it is to developing countries.
That is 100% the reason gates is pissed. They didn't choose his OS as the primary OS. But it makes obsolutely no sense to do so!!!! Linux was an easy choice because of RedHat's early involvement and its freeness. However, if RedHat hadn't been involved, it could just as easily have been a BSD or even FreeDOS. I don't think they are too hung up on the OS as long as it's free and not obscure.
However, you still have the fact that tens of millions (dare I say hundreds of millions?) of people are going to be using Linux. This will take its share up from the low single digits to at least 25% in just a few short years. Long term it could push Bill out of the OS market. If most of the school children around the world are learning and using linux, what do you think they'll use when they grow up? So you could see the generation of college grads in 15 years push up linux use past 50%.
Think about how many people can use a calculator other than Texas Instruments' for advanced calculations. It's because it became the de-facto standard in schools. In fact, many high schools would require a TI series calculator. The 100 laptop is going to become the TI calculator of the next generation, and its OS will determine what millions of people know how to use.
Whether the above becomes a reality depends of a lot of factors. If MS and Intel didn't have their FUD machine rolling, it could easily become a reality. However, MS and Intel have a lot of friends and loud mouths. They basically have to sabotage it before it even gets rolling. If MS has a whole generation of school children learning on another OS, Windows is history.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Wow, I can't believe that this got modded flamebait! The entire fsking thread gets off on a tangent about whether dropping laptops from a C5 over the Horn of Africa will cure HIV/AIDS (!), and someone pointing out that nobody in this project is suggesting that giving people a laptop will cure their hunger or disease gets modded flamebait?
Maybe we'll get it right when they post the dupe on Friday.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
In my experience, it generally costs more than $100 to train a teacher. And it's easily possible for a laptop to contain more information than $100 worth of books.
These two things are not connected. What you just said is semantically equivalent to "It generally costs more than $100 to build an apartment building, and it's easily possible for a shed to hold more juice than $100 worth of oranges."
Teaching is a problem not of information, but of intelligence. You can sit people down in front of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and read it to them until they learn to read it themselves, but they won't learn anything useful from it with no contextual framework to hang it on. Talking about how much information a laptop can hold, or proposing that the laptop reading to people is a substitute for a teacher, is just wrong-headed and betrays a lack of understanding of what teaching really is. If it were all about data we'd just turn kids loose in a library when they learned to read.
I would be seriously surprised if these criticisms were anything that the clever folk at MIT hadn't thought through in great depth.
I wouldn't (though I'm not saying they didn't, just that it wouldn't surprise me given some of the mind-bogglingly stupid things I've seen otherwise intelligent people do for the sake of a pet project).
-- Old Man Kensey
Most adults in the first world need a mechanic to change a tyre of their car. In Afrika, people fix totally worn-out cars endlessly, and they don't need western mechanics to teach them how. This will happen with the laptops: people will soon understand them, and teach themselves how to fix it when it's broken.
You're missing two things:
1. Those worn-out cars that shade-tree mechanics fix forever (both here and there) are the older cars with simpler engines and controls. No fuel injection, no clutchless shifting, nothing like that. They're simpler cars from the 70s and 80s, not the latest Mercedes and BMW luxury sedans.
2. Computers are thousands (millions?) of times more complicated than a car. Most of a car's failure modes boil down to "car won't go" (or in the case of brakes, "car won't stop"). You can listen to it and have an idea what to look at, and open up the hood and actually look. You can pull a carburetor out, clean it, adjust it, put it back and see if that fixed the problem. You can duct-tape a hose together to get you to the next town where you can get a new one. None of that really applies to a computer. You can't open up a computer, watch how it runs, and get an idea of what does what from basic mechanical principles. You can't pull the cover off the CPU and hand-crank it to see how the gears mesh.
So how are these people going to just learn how to fix their computers from scratch? They're not. Somebody is going to have to teach them what to do, which adds a huge cost to the project.
People keep assuming you can essentially air-drop these things on remote villages with a label on the crank-handle that says "Turn me" and everything will fall into place. It won't. Without proper knowledge infrastructure, any project like this is doomed.
-- Old Man Kensey
You can't sell those. The green shell is Not For Sale and if found sold that would be a sure sign something illegal happened.
Right. Things marked "not for sale" never get sold on the black market anywhere. Just ask anyone who ever traded food stamps for cash (oh right, you can't do that...).
-- Old Man Kensey
Throughout the History of Humanity, education started with litteracy. Learning how to read and write.
What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?
Explain to me how a computer can teach a child to write. Curious minds wish to know... You can draw the characters on the screen but you can not validate the input. Feedback is critical to the learning process: therefore the computer fails at teaching the children to write without some form of feedback (a watcom pad, etc... not included at the now-over-$100 sticker price).
Does your whining instantly *POOF!* turn into a tent full of food for every starving boy and girl? No. Did you donate every penny you can to all of these causes? No. Does Negroponte have an idea to help the world that he is actively working on? Yes.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Computer kiosk in a slum. Also, here.
So the idea that they need a teacher is moot. Negroponte subscribes to that idea as well, "Teachers teach the kids? Give me a break," he said. "Give any kid an electronic game and the first thing they do is throw away the manual and the second thing they do is use it."
Also Dell is selling a Intel Core Duo laptop (for University students only) for $570 or so. I can buy, in Canada, a basic desktop computer for $299 from them. This tells me his $100 price point will be met, as prices continue their downward trend.
Vip
No, actually, Bill Gates offered to help on the project, he offered free copies of a lite version of Windows along with technical help. Negroponte blew him off, making several rude comments. That started this whole publicity debacle.
Are people really going to pay 25% of the cost of the machines for the OS?
We're talking about middle-class (americans/europeans)? Sure. that's what, 1-2 hours of labor? That's nothing to get an OS you are familiar with that will run the applications you already own. You are being penny wise and pound foolish, I have a closet full of software I have accumulated over the years, you think I will throw it away over a $50 difference in price over 2 computers? Now yea, I can use wine, but my parents cannot, and I don't have time time (And buying me a plane ticket to set it up is more than $50) so it is a win to buy the Windows box.
For a new consumer? I give BSD a little better than mac's share: 5%. People know Windows. They've used Windows. $50 isn't that much anymore.
The best part was that the reason it's called "Open Apple" is that there was a "Closed Apple" on the other side of the keyboard.
I don't recall ever using it for anything, but it was there. And who doesn't want an extra function key?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The point is to make them ubiquitous so they have no resale value.
You're essentially saying drug lords are going to bust into your house to steal your pencil, or your lightbulb. It's supposed to be a commodity, not something the people pay for themselves - almost none of the target audience could afford it.
Education is the silver bullet.
Please mod parent up.
Education is the silver bullet.
That sounds like the sort of thing we would have done using a pencil, ruler and graph paper when I was doing my O-levels. You plot each variable against each of the others, shade in all the obviously unacceptable regions, and anywhere within whatever is left is OK.
Having said that, if you already know somehow which traps are least likely to be catching rabbits, the most logical thing to do is move them! Viewed in this light, this is an example of an Unrealistic Problem.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Another noteworthy thing about this project is that it's going to be based on entirely free software. Free as in beer, and free as in speech, right down to the BIOS (LinuxBIOS in this case). And seeing how LinuxBIOS + GNU/Linux breaks their dreams of controlling everyone's machine via "Trusted Computing" (Or whatever they're calling it these days) I doubt Intel and Microsoft are very fond of the deployment of this machine on a grand scale. Their own greed has caused them to be cut out of the picture like a cancer.
;-)
OLPC is on the virge of doing what the fossils in these companies and in governments have only been able to talk about for the past several years--Bridge the digital divide. I'll bet the FSF people are happy they can now have their 100% free software+firmware laptop, though maybe not in the form they were expecting it
"Right. Things marked "not for sale" never get sold on the black market anywhere. Just ask anyone who ever traded food stamps for cash (oh right, you can't do that...)."
Ok, you're right. Let's just forget about everything and stare in one point all day long. That's accomplish more.
I know they say "don't feed the trolls", but that's some 24 carat trolling, so here, have a cookie.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
In case anyone remembers, the Tandy 100 was the first "laptop" with a small black/white display and ability to run on AAA batteries for weeks. It had a 300 baud modem that could be used nearly anywhere (ears that would connect to a payphone). It was one of the last programs that Bill Gates worked on prior to becoming worth gadzillions.
My cousin was a reporter for a US paper working in Central America and she one. She could write reports of the wars from nearly anywhere and send them back to her office. She didn't have to worry about 2 hours between charges, keeping the laptop overly safe in a $50 protected case, finding a power source, etc. She didn't have to worry about power or even having a hotel with a non-dirt floor. She could use just about any pay phone to send her reports back home.
The bottom line, the T100 was a good, very low-power device that served a good purpose just about anywhere but didn't have much memory (hence no e-book, limited education software, etc.). Now 20 years later we have the $100 laptop. The world is ready for it and it is ideal for education: able to run graphical applications, serve as an e-book, support wireless networking, and not even need batteries or connecton to the mains because of its hand crank. The timing is right with wireless networking, the Internet, cheap but powerful hardware, good low-power hardware, etc.
The downside is that it doesn't run Windows or have an Intel processor -- oops, as so many have mentioned on this thread, that is most likely Bill's objections.
The main risks to the laptop are political (Microsoft and Intel, their lobbies, etc.), and cultural (will they sell it for food or guns).
The non-industrialized world (and poorer parts of the industrialized world) need health care, clean water, food, communications, and education. A Jewish friend mentioned that during WWII, they could take your house, business, job, etc, but couldn't take your education, hence after the war many Jewish could rebuild -- they had the foundation. Edumacation and speling are very impotent.
And by declaring so are already wrong. It may be better to have 10 poor traps nearby instead of 2 excellent traps far away. That's the whole point of the analysis - to find out which setup is best for given conditions. If you are a marathon runner you may find two far traps working better for you, but if you injure a leg then the constraints change. This problem is for real, and it has no obvious empirical solution (unless you can imagine numerically defined objects in many-dimensional space. But then you have other problems :-)
To use the "giving someone a fish vs. teaching them how to fish" cliché, Microsoft et al want to teach people to fish -- but only as a reason to sell them bait. Negroponte's initiative starts out with teaching people how to fish and ensuring they can get their own bait.
No, thats where you are wrong. They want to create a means to educate. See, huge, vast libraries of educational software exist under Windows. Even educational frameworks that are adaptable to new educational software exist and are available for free or cheap. Such offerings DO NOT EXIST under linux. This is an area Linux is very weak in, and has been acknowleged, and is trying to be worked on - Edubuntu, k12linux.org, etc. But it still doesn't match the 15+ years of Windows software that has accumulated. While Negroponte has a device, he doesn't have the software yet. Had he picked Windows, he'd be almost there with the software. I thought we were trying to educate the children...
If they estimate that the laptop will cost just 50 in 2010 (down from 130 now), you can expect them to be dollars by 2015 and pennies by 2020. This is effective than drugs becuase you cant take knowledge away.
More likely by that point it will still be $100 (more likely 60-70).
Found any good deals on a 386 chip lately?
Negroponte has I believe said IIRC from one of his presentations that as tech improves, the $100 pricepoint could be maintained but keep improving the machine. To me, this means that as an economy improves the machine will appear cheaper while becoming more powerful.
People used to laugh at him about even being able to do it for $100, the key I think he had said was a $30 LCD. Looks like he did it.
Consider there are perhaps the same number of geniuses (in literature, chemistry, particle physics, politics, whatever) born per million in population in the third world as in say the U.S.A. or other countries. The number of Nobels handed out would seem to speak more of the educational system. What if there is no way for geniuses to get more than grade school teaching?
Imagine the same exact you was born in the third world. If you are a slashdot geek maybe you are a self-starter and just need the machine in your hands. Personally I used Pascal, 6502 Assembler and two flavors of Basic on my Apple ][ and it was great. But I was so frustrated having hear a whisper of something called the Internet (not public then) and being able to figure out how to reach it. Got stuck in BBSs and finally the Source (Compuserve). They were not really the gateways to knowledge I was trying to find but I used what I could get to. Screw politics and economic systems. Tell me you wouldn't want that machine. I used to dream of something called a Dynabook described in the World Book Encylopedia's Year Book, in which you could make a character move around using Smalltalk commands. I saw it in my sleep. Of course these kids need medicine and food, this assumes that is available for at least smart kids.
I helped support a Cambodian school for children with no parents called Future Light. A friend who started it got Apple to donate a bunch of Macs, and it is growing perhaps the next generation of Cambodia's leaders, at least as that friend believes.
A representative from Nigeria at a conference I remember said you cannot solve everything with IT - there is a problem finding firewood, and the worst problem is the brain drain from rural to the city. Maybe these machines would help support the rural populace too. Assume the smartest people you have ever met live in an economically disadvantaged locale. Are you telling me they couldn't do anything with a laptop like this which makes its own grid lan?
Every day i discover at least a half-dozen things that i don't know, but should, and i just ask my computer. And thanks to the magic of unsecured routers, i can do that just about anywhere with my PDA.
My life is infinitely enriched by the Internet. The further i get from a computer the stupider i feel.
Given the amount of valuable information i download to my cerebral cortex every day, it's difficult to even imagine the exponential value to the target market of this device.
NTM the Internet represents the essence of freedom; this device could help spread "democracy" more effectively than costlier forms of invasion.
I'm just pointing out that any scheme that depends on items not getting sold because of special colors or markings is doomed to have a hard impact with reality. It would be better to assume they will get sold in the black market and try to make that infeasible for some reason other than "the color tells me not to."
-- Old Man Kensey
And by taking away the source code, you diminish the possibility for education. Sure, cute little animated rabbits teaching basic addition are great, but after the kids master that, what then? Supplying a system with source code and documentation allows people to gain real computer skills, rather than simply learning how to make Windows do what you want it to.
in the future everyone will be a nerd
I think one thing a lot of people are not understanding is that people need help at all economic and social levels that are sub-standard. Sure, people who are starving can't afford this, and people who use their computers to play the latest 3D game won't want it. But it misses the point that there are people who do fit the profile this project will help. If I donate to a local food shelf, am I an idiot or heartless bastard because some of the people who receive services there aren't dirt-poor and on the brink of starvation? Of course not.
For writing, that's where the teacher comes in play.
However, it could be conceivable that a fine touch-screen (à la pen/tablet computer) could play some role in that, but you're probably exceeding the realm of a $100 computer.
But handwriting input on a computer could be a fine way to teach people good calligraphy skills, though; classroom computers ought to be used like that.
And in the same philosophy, why not have palm computers recognize shorthand input? This always can be a valuable skill to learn for those days when all you have is a pad and pen to take "high-speed" notes.
But is any of that software localised to these people's languages? Chances are no, in which case it's going to need to be re-compiled anyway. And it's not a lot of extra effort do that for an Open Source OS such as GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs.
Actually, language isn't the only localisation issue. I can't quite see anybody in the Third World needing to know the capitals of the states of the United States of America or the names, birthdays and inside leg measurements {divided by 2.54 at that} of the past US Presidents.
And that's even assuming they would open up the Source Code. Because without Source Code, it would be useless; the dependency on the Developed Nations would still exist. {Obviously, people will be dependent on experienced programmers from the Developed World in the beginning. But in an Open Source environment, they will be able to apply everything they learn, and one day not be dependent on the West anymore.}
That software will still be useless without proper localisation and Source Code. And it's going to take a lot less than fifteen years {more like 25 years: the BBC Model B, standard educational microcomputer in the UK, came out in 1982} to re-create it. Plus, I'll guess most of it is obsolete anyway -- there's probably a maximum of three years' work, including overcoming the particular challenges imposed by the hardware.
Being mainly Closed Source, the software you're talking about probably is quite sloppily written. Will it run well on what is, by necessity, a lean machine? Really we come back to the same argument against equipping users in the Third World with our cast-off computer equipment; it sounds like a nice idea but it's unworkable in practice.
We'd do better to start again from scratch. New machine, clean slate. Reprogram according to the machine's strengths and weaknesses. Make it all Open Source, so that anybody who discovers they have an aptitude for programming can "get up and have a go". Eventually, there will be factories out there; making the new, improved versions of these things, more locally to the point of use, and providing decent jobs.
It's really a massive project. If it's twice as much effort as shipping out a few containers of used PCs and software, we'll have got off lightly. The returns on that investment are going to be staggering. What we are looking at is potentially the end of the Economics of Scarcity, and the ushering in of a new Age of Plenty -- which was always the logical conclusion of IR1.
One of the goals must be to break the dependence of the Developing World on the Developed World. Otherwise, they will never be playing anything but second fiddle. And we've already made all the mistakes, so they should have an easier time than we did.
Educating people includes teaching people how computers work. Not just how to change the font in Microsoft Word or draw bell-ends in Paint Shop Pro or prevent chip pan fires with Welephant. How to create their own software. For that, you need a programming language and you need to read other people's Source Code. Please don't think this is cheating. You learn to be a writer by reading other people's books. You
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I expected this reply.
However there are larger trends that will heavily reduce the cost of electronics manufacturing. In 2015, silicon runs out of steam. By this time the industry has already been ramping up nanotechnology and practicle molecular comptuting is in sight. In 2020, nanotechnology will be fully mature and immensely cheap.
So for this kind of proposed computing, a cost in the cents is entirely concievable.
You're not trying to make kernel hackers. You are trying to teach them the basics. How to read, write. How to avoid STD's. How to raise crops. Economics. Government. Kernel hacking and computer science IS NOT THE POINT!!!
I often wonder why I bother to post comments as they normally just make me sound as stupid as the rest of you. But I feel like plucking some shit from my ass and smearing it across your intellectual black bridge over the great divide.
Simpler, a 100MHz pentium, 68000, or ARM ~1.5M transistors, should be sufficient for most applications.
Expandable, storage, communications, and display
Interfacing, think what other uses can be made, weather/crop/medical/water/energy how could these be controlled/monitored what sort of interfaces would be required.
Communcations, would a longwave or multiband reciever be useful for one way data comms, what about packet radio for longer distances.
Economics, how can the systems be made to pay?, can we get the third world to decode captchas for us or work as a typing pool using the systems?
As regards power 1.5M transistors on a .2micron die running at 100MHz at 2.3V should draw average .5W if properly designed. It's possible to get north/south bridges processor and a basic gfx adaptor in 1.5M transistors.
About 3 three years ago I bought a palm iiixe for around £28 brand new, so according to moores law a pentium spec handheld should be available at the same price now, where is it?.
Would a computer be useful for monitoring the environment in an effluent digester controlling PH and chemical additives to optimize the system for producer gas generation. Can crop production be improved on a small scale farm by monitoring the weather or the soil condition?. What type of control systems can be cheaply produced and interfaced to the computers that would improve third world techniques?
I don't think we should just give computers with no idea how they can best be used and how they can benefit us as well as the poor we are giving them to. If we can give something that can be used to earn and learn then there will be something the poor can offer to trade.
I do like to see people trying to do things whether they are right or wrong progress is always made by those who try something new. I am sure there is much more to say but I don't think I should say it, make your own minds up. Don't let the bastards grind you down, do what you enjoy, etc...
embedded linux
And it's not a lot of extra effort do that for an Open Source OS such as GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs.
... I've said it before and I'll say it again, the venture is gonna fail. He's already had to compromise on the hardware-there IS NO HAND CRANK, its now a "foot pedal that a four year old will have to crank while the 10 year old is using it", and its a "$135 notebook" ... but that's not the real reason why, its the software. He only has half the equation. And he's 35% over budget on that.
I take it you've never taken an app from MFC to linux before. And that's assuming they let you at the source. Didn't think so...
Being mainly Closed Source, the software you're talking about probably is quite sloppily written.
Holy flamebait. I've seen both closed source and open source. Most of the closed source I've seen is a lot prettier than the open source I've seen.
Educating people includes teaching people how computers work. Not just how to change the font in Microsoft Word or draw bell-ends in Paint Shop Pro or prevent chip pan fires with Welephant. How to create their own software. For that, you need a programming language and you need to read other people's Source Code. Please don't think this is cheating.
No shit. I have nothing against open source. However if you want to expedite the process you use what already exists. There are plenty of non-regionalized pieces of software that teach generic knowlege. There are plenty of frameworks that can be utilized, that have been utilized. No need to reinvent the wheel because "linux is cool!!!! omgz!!!!"
That's why the idea is to put computers in the hands of thousands or even millions of children. Some of them will shatter them Chuck Norris style, but a few will be real nerds, and grow up to be IT leaders who create jobs and spread education etc. in their communities.
It has to be Open Source. That much is non-negotiable. Anything proprietary will only keep the Developing World dependent on the Developed World -- which in turn will keep them from ever truly joining the Developed World.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It has to be Open Source. That much is non-negotiable.
Again, you are putting ideologies before the mission. If closed source does it quicker, better, cheaper... you should choose the road that helps them the most effectively. Ideologies are blindsiding the project (And you... you ignored my post. My points must be valid enough that you couldn't argue them.)
I'm studying and working in International Development and there's a concept we talk about in class and the literature called "Inappropriate Technology". The idea here is that a country may have problems (i.e. too much labour) and the government, in its want to develop, imports labour-replacing technologies (i.e. assembly lines, or even lawn mowers), causing people to lose jobs and actually making it harder for the economy to grow.
This is how one can view the $100 laptop for Africa. Technology like this won't solve problems like ethnic tension, the taboo of discussing HIV/AIDS, or any other social and political ills. What will? Human interaction and discussion. In a continent where teachers go unpaid in many countries, you can't expect a government to buy laptops, even at $50 in 2010.
There's a reason why most of the interest (as far as I understand) is from South America.
---
Initiative for Interdisciplinary Research: http://i2r.blogspot.com/
Five Minutes to Midnight: Youth on Human Rights: http://www.fiveminutestomidnight.org/
No. Closed Source doesn't do it better, and that's the whole point. What these people need includes the freedom to develop software for themselves, precisely in order to break their dependency on us. As I mentioned several posts above, there's no point in teaching someone to fish if they then depend on you for the bait they use. Open Source is the only way to set the users free, and it's the users we should be concerned about. The mission is not to get people turned on to existing software as quickly as possible but at the expense of some of their freedom. The mission is to end the Age of Scarcity and usher in the New Age of Plenty -- where there will be no place for Closed Source software. Then and only then will the First Industrial Revolution be finished.
As to the rest of the points you raised, I didn't bother to respond because frankly, they're mainly irrelevant. Prototypes often don't look anything like the finished design. The price will come down over time, once local factories are established.
And there's actually a very good reason to reinvent the wheel, sometimes: if somebody else has already patented the wheel, and seeking to hold you to ransom by demanding royalties, then it might be better in the long run for you to invent a different kind of wheel; at least, until the patent on the original expires.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
To bring down the initial price of $129, just also offer the laptop in developed countries. I'm sure most parents will want to get one for their children (or themself), as it is
:-)
a) much cheaper than even an entry-level laptop
b) more powerful than all those "educational" toy-laptops
c) powerful enough to run most kiddy-games and educational software
d) has a lot of hack-value
Heck, I'm willing to buy one for $150 - $200 just for d)...
I find it interesting that your ideology is dictating your stance on what can be considered education.
you missed the point ... I can't help you anymore.
The real value of this "laptop" is "can I barter this fancy toy to take care of some REAL needs like food, clean water, and vaccines so I can live a little bit longer." Seriously, have you ever stepped outside of your own neighborhood, much less your own country?
Yes, I have lived for years outside the US, in places like Cali, Colombia; Yuroslavl, Russia; and spent time travelling around small towns in Mexico and Brazil, and to villages deep in the jungle of Colombia reachable only by boat. I speak Spanish fluently and am married to a woman from a poor barrio in Cali, where her family still lives and we visit regularly. So I'm pretty familiar with live in the third world. I haven't lived in the slums of Mexico City or anything silmilar, so I'm less familiar with the plight of the desperately poor, although I'm sure I've had more contact with them than the average American.
You mention a few random "insolvable" problems: lack of rain in Nigeria, religious intolerance, and despotism. Negroponte and company seem to have decided the best way to deal with problems in the world is to give the people that face them the same tool that they use to deal with theirs: information and reasoning. Sure, they use money, too, that's a very important tool, but education dramatically increases your ability to get money.
I don't think the plan is to hand out laptops instead of food in refuge camps. I've somehow gotten the impression they were a little smarter than that, they seem to be planning on providing these to school systems where children are already gathering to learn (yes, they have those even in poor villages). Already many poor families do everything possible to acquire education for their children, because they understand it's a way for them to escape, giving them access to modern tools may help improve that.
What point am I missing? The point that you are making seems to be that you want to keep the Third World dependent upon the West for handouts, forever.
The point I am trying to make is that we have to break that dependency. Of course, this means that one day these countries will no longer be poor; and people like you won't be able to achieve a hit of instant gratification by merely throwing a bit of loose change at the problem.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Putting a computer in the hands of a nerd can be a powerful thing.
I am sure if the said computer was given to Chuck Norris as a child, the computer would have ended up as a totally shattered thing.
Or Chuck Norris woul've grown to be a computer scientist, and we'd been spared from Texas Ranger.
Cheers,
CC