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Working Model of MIT $100 Laptop a Hit
capt turnpike writes "The One Laptop per Child association and its chairman, MIT Media Labs's Nicholas Negroponte, unvelied a working model of their $100 laptop at the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) show, and the little laptop that might was a hit. It's got a version of Fedora Linux, is rugged, and each unit will work as part of a wireless mesh automatically. From the article: "However, as Negroponte put it in his address, One Laptop per Child isn't all about the laptops. The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn." eWEEK.com also has photos."
From Negroponte's address in TFA:
Negroponte then went on to say:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I know it's meant for children, but damn that thing screams Fisher-Price ugliness!
Isn't that the $130 laptop? Or did they manage to bring the cost back down?
This isn't trolling or anything, I am still in American public schooling (public uni.), and this quote struck me as odd.
The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn.
I'm in an engineering degree, and I'm shocked at the lack of this ability in college students at american schools! I'm tickled by the fact that we're so set on helping foreign education, when our own educational system is in dire need of....some bloody education.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Seriously, aren't bright reds and oranges supposed to make you a little nuts if you're surrounded by them too much? The orange would make me ill after a while. Are we trying to make the users hyper-active or something?
Everything else is great, but PLEASE TONE DOWN THE COLOR.
This will all be worthwhile when we have first African child get first post on Slashdot (and then gets modded down. Welcome to the interweb, n00b!).
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Also, does it offer USB or a built-in way to control a mouse pointer? I didn't see one in the photo I saw but I got to figure there's a way if they're using a windowed GUI...
I was there at the event and got to try it after Nick spoke. It is definitely not a toy. He said people might be able to buy one in the U.S. next year (paying double so half could buy a kid in another country one). It was very light and the screen (which has two modes) was really nice (1200 x 900). The orange plastic was cool and the little rabbit ears (looked almost like devil horns) move freely to get optimal wi-mesh signal. It's definitely Fedora, but is "skinny" as it has been modified somewhat.
The specs?
500 Mhz chip
128 MB RAM
512 MB Flash Memory
what? this isn't what it was supposed to look like! Where's the 3D holographic interface?
Yes, because we all know that all third-world countries shouldn't be provided with anything that would help their economies move forward. Instead, they should only receive insufficient food handouts, remaining in their impoverished third-world states forever.
I thought is was to reduce the desireability for theft.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
>The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual
>and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn.
So in other words, a global pandemic of people who don't know how to RTFM.
Indeed! While I admire the drive behind this project... I really think it's quite useless when they lack basic drugs, water, food, stable governments, etc. Computers aren't the solution... look at the US... everyone has computers and we still lag behind countries that barely have electricity.
http://psychicfreaks.com/I thought in initial designs this thing was supposed to have a hand crank to generate power for people in areas with no electicity. Is it gone or is it tucked away somewhere in the laptop and wasn't be shown in the pictures?
I've heard it described as the technology gap will, and has already started to push the first and third worlds further apart. More importantly, it is becoming ever more difficult to improve the living conditions and economies as this gap widens.
This device and plan, if it can be pulled off, could be the single most import thing in helping third world populations on a large scale over the long term.
It's not the technology itself, per say, but the communications that it enables. Getting cell phones into places is a similar type of project. Things as simple as finding the market price of lets say rice, can apparently make big diferences in building economies.
Soccer Goal Plans
I say congrats to the MIT team for making this possible. They deserve our support.
So this is not a toy, and I believe it. But why make it look like a toy? And a very ugly toy, at that?
It's cute! It's almost kitsch!
It'll be a hit with the /. crowd which will drive up the price through demand.
Heck, I already want one for the kitchen!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Here's the page where you can pledge to buy one for triple the price, donating the other two.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Oh my god you punched a hole in the brilliant plan of supplying laptops instead of food to the starving people.
How about this: These laptops aren't meant to replace food, and they're not gonna throw them after people that's starving instead of food. But these people also need to LEARN. And that's what these are for. Man, you people just wanna feed those poor kids instead of learning them how to feed themselves.
-- Linux user #369862
How long before we find these on eBay for $200? Money and food probably means a lot more to many of these people's immediate needs then a laptop for their child.
Does anybody else think the demo model resembles a Speak & Spell, with its bright orange color and its handle? :)
All your sig are belong to us.
If you, you know, live in poverty, you probably don't care about the stylishness that much. Also, if you live in, say, Africa, you probably have gotten used to the color orange.
and it's better (and cheaper) than the obvious alternative...
Not everything is about the very bottom of the impoverished ladder.
This is for children that have overcome the daily quest for food.
Why do people insist on thinking this is for children that dont have any food and live in ditches.
Not every poor person falls into that category.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Actually, now that you mention it, Ubuntu would be a perfect fit for this machine just because of the color scheme.
I love Ubuntu, but I hate the colors.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
tell that to the people who live in the projects who drive escalades on 20's
... so that by age 18 they can change their professional name to "Bob" and tell Americans weaned on PlayStations that "WiFi connections do not involve 'gremlins,' sir;" "any software company offering free pornography for each install probably should not be trusted" and "there is no 'feng shui' component on your iPod, and if there were it would not be defective, and if it were defective then no, it would not be covered by AppleCare."
Yay capitalism ;->
Actually, I've heard that orange is on average one of the most annoying colors for human beings. For instance, a room with orange painted walls would drive you nuts sooner than Russian pop music.
Totally with you there. My first thought upon seeing the pics just now was "What, was this funded in part by Ronald McDonald??"
Software is like a goldfish - it'll grow to fit the size of it's bowl...
Mod parent so low he never see slight of day please/
once again:
one fish - one lunch
fishing - they come back and wipe out your tuna industry.
I think this is a great humanitarian initiative, showing that there is more to living than just staying alive. I'm not saying we should stop with the food, but this here is very much a Good Thing.
Food? Pffft. You don't need to eat when you own OSS. Especially when it's bright plastic orange bunny-eared/devil horned OSS.
Okay, I can see that argument. No problem. I haven't read up entirely on the subject but past posts on Slashdot have implied it was more designed for completely impoverished areas. I apologize. There is also the misconception that educating Africa and other non-industrialized countries will suddenly make them better. Some areas just aren't meant for human inhabitation. You can only keep them going so long before the environment catches up to them.
I'm assuming this is a joke. It is in very poor taste. Grow up,
you're not shocking anyone.
I guess I would buy one myself, even when I'm not a child left behind. ;-)
Weren't there plans to create one for the western market too? Even an ugly laptop would be worthwhile, for such a low price. But it shouldn't go above 200 euros', otherwise they will just create a black market where 3th world countries (at least, their citizens) will sell it back to rich western dudes.
Ah, well, give it a black color, and put in something which doesn't need the crank always to power it up, and for 100 euros, you have a nice little inexpensive thing for doing minor stuff on, or for your kids to play around with...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Sorry ... forgot to mention this crappy mathematics philosophy is called Everyday Math
Seriously, aren't bright reds and oranges supposed to make you a little nuts if you're surrounded by them too much?
Not really. Colors have different effects depending upon the culture. For example, Americans tend to associate orange with hunger, but in the far East it is considered soothing. Some colors do have cross-cultural implications, like splatters of red increasing blood pressure and stress, but those are usually less prominent. Offering a variety of colors provides options for different regions.
Oh that's right. $800 back in 1997. By Moore's law, that should be about $25 now. So with a color screen, USB, and wireless, $100 isn't bad. Lost the touchscreen though. :-(
Hey genius, have you ever been famished and thought to yourself, "I'm so hungry, I think I'll go read a book"?
Would you please explain exactly how a $130 laptop is supposed to help entire civilizations completely bypass industrialization and help people immediately start producing bountiful and healthy crops?
I personally just don't see how this can help them. The laptops will become bargaining chips. A goat for your laptop. True, their economies aren't doing so hot, if they have anything beyond local barter economies at all. I just think all the effort put into this (and other programs) needs to give these children and adults education they can use now, not 20 years from now. Things like farming economies of scale, farming co-ops, and what kinds of crops to plant where and when. Much of Africa and Asia is limited to a single crop. With the industrialized world backing it, we could easily give them seeds meant for their local environment. Why give them food if you can give them seed and teach them to grow it?
I suppose all of this is moot: any help we can give them is a Good Thing(tm).
You said you could get it done..more than half the world did not believe you. You have got it delivered within such a short span. Its sheer brilliance compared to certain companies promising certain products and the timelines getting forwarded by years. I remember a specific company doing that about a product called Vista :)
Speaking about the OS, great that it uses fedora core.. Open Source for a Good Cause. Way to Go.
BTW, fire the designer for that orangey look..uh..wait..may be this might catch on like the old ibook..keep him for the timebeing.
"The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own..."
As a future warning for Fedora community, expect sudden jump in n00b questions in several different languages. Also keep in mine that those n00bs are mostly children. Please refer "RTFM" as "Read The Fine Manual" and "STFU" as "Stop Talking Fast, User".
And most importantly, every time you use "LOL" and "ROTFL" and "LMAO", just remember; You are laughing with them, not at them.
Thank you,
concern citizen from Softer Gentler Linux community
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I was responding to a racist and immature post that was removed. Now that it is removed, my post makes no sense.
I don't mind now that the post is gone.
This has been addressed many times.
Yes, kids need water, food, vaccinations, a place to sleep, and if they and their communities are to be successful and self-supporting an education also.
Is a $100 laptop extravagant for supporting an education? No,because it's multipurpose tool offering information, tutorials, communications, and soon after distribution locally built & relevant applications. By offering these kids access to the larger world, to an education in their own language, to contribute and distribute materials, it gives they, and their communities, opportunities to break their cycle of poverty.
It's not an either/or proposition between food and education, BOTH are needed, one fills the short-term need and the other the long-term.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Notice how the screen stays frozen on that one calulator app with the window open in the background? They seemed to be keeping everyone from actually USING the device.
"Oh look! The screen turns!"
I'd like to see how fast it boots; what the email looks like; what the networking prefs look like...
*sigh*
JB
They are meant for poor areas, but that term varies quite a bit.
Oh and you are completely wrong about some area's not being suitable to live. Considering Africa has some of the earliest civilizations... they obviously have been there for a while now and the environment has little to do with the problems. Wars, slavery, more war, and psychopathic dictators are why much of the continent is so terrible.
It isnt a misconception, it is a fact of the world. Education = better life. The more education, the more modern development, the better things become.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
this point. He said they never necessarily assumed it would be precisely sub-$100 - rather the media picked that idea up and ran with it like crazy. He also went on to say that it will cost what it costs when it gets built, and there is little they can do to impact the precise dollar amount once down into the $100 range. He does however expect the price to fall as they build more and more - and eventually he expects the range to be closer to $50.
So there :-)
Will this laptop will be shipping with a Vista compatible sticker? How about the lowest version? Maybe M$ could make a $100 version especially for this laptop. :D
Excuse me, but aren't those people starving because they don't have jobs and education?
I have the impression that your idea of third world country is one with overpopulated towns filled with beggars. Seriously, you need to visit South America once in a while.
Some areas just aren't meant for human inhabitation.
You mean like Los Angeles (not enough fresh water)? Netherlands (under sea level)? Calgary (subzero temperatures)? Phoenix (way too frickin hot)? Or does this maxim just apply to Africa? There are actually very few places on earth which meet all environmental requirements for comfortable human habitation, unless we use technology to improve them.I have strange feeling that this laptop will be more popular in western world than in developing countries. I, for one, will definately buy it, just have a nice new gadget. $100 is cheap for any gadget.
:)
But hey! I have an idea. Let's make the price $200 in western world and each computer that we buy, will give one for free to someone in developing countries! $200 isn't much for a working computer. Plus, atleast for once, you get a good feeling for buying something that you don't really need
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Wait, I thought the US computer makers said a $100 laptop was impossible. 8 months later, it's done.
But then, IBM said it was impossible to keep its HD and PC businesses before selling them to Hitachi and Lenovo. Those companies are making big profits continuing the business.
Making money and new products when you're positioned at the top of the computer business is now so easy that it's looped all the way around from "impossible" to "inevitable".
--
make install -not war
Ditto.
As I've done everytime the OSS folks at slashdot have posted these self-serving articles, if you really want to help someone in need, here's a link to the Red Cross. http://www.redcross.org/
I know schools here in the US who can't even put a computer on the desk of any of the kids; many share 5 crummy machines between two (or more) classes. There are many places here that could use these things; I don't understand why there is no interest in marketing them right here. It seems like having electronic books would be cheaper/easier too?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
They will appreciate this when they learn the skills necessary to move up in the global economy and provide for themselves and family.
Think of the large contribution to the global economy it will be to have so many more people educated. This will help under-developed places develope and reduce the burden on developed contries to assist them.
My largest concern is not the potential benefits, but rather the quality of educational resources. Excellent learning material for K-8 level of american schools is most important to give the children using these computers a chance to suceed. I don't imagine wikipedia being as good of a tool as a solid structured book or structured interactive applications/webpages.
I sure hope these come to US schools in the next five years, but at the same time I hope the learning material is done right.
Well yeah, ofcourse all of those things should be prioritized. But there are many organizations in the world trying (and not always succeeding) to do that. Why not spend a little money in another way, try another thing. Maybe it wont help at all, but maybe it will, and at the very least, it can't hurt.
I really think it's quite useless when they lack basic drugs, water, food, stable governments, etc. Computers aren't the solution... look at the US... everyone has computers and we still lag behind countries that barely have electricity.
Then why do we keep getting all these illegal aliens if we have it so much worse?? Your statement makes no sense and contradicts itself.
One of the problems is our goverment sends over aid and food to countries all the time. However, we don't send over people to teach them how to grow it for themselves. These laptops are obviously going to be sent to places that HAVE electric--they're not heading for some remote tent village. But they're places where people can't afford to spend $500, $1000 or more for a computer.
Until these children can have the hope of doing something to make a living, they will be dependent on handouts.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
If they let kids access the shell and hack away... I fully support the laptop initiative. If the idea is that kids will run board-approved educational software... this is a complete waste of time.
The suppliers of educational material are inept. My kid doesn't want a toy cell phone, he wants to play with a real one. He doesn't want a heavily restricted laptop, he wants a real one... not that Leap educational laptop-shaped abomination.
If these units are regular Linux laptops, a bit light on the hardware specs, you can use them for almost anything... albeit, light processing load. I can't help but suspect that the powers that be will restrict the heck out of these units, all in the name of "saving the children" from **fill in the blank here**.
Kids should be encouraged to code, explore, and exploit these units to their fullest potential... otherwise... these are just expensive books that will display the same mass produced content. The calculator app... awesome. Now kids with laptops don't need to learn how to add or subtract in their head. I'd much rather they let kids use calculators, if they write one themselves. When a kid graduates, he/she'd be able to take the self-made "tools" with them.
But no... these will probably be only slightly more useful than the Apple-II's, Logo, and Oregon Trail in my elementary school's computer lab. I got yelled at whenever I started coding in Basic. I can only hope the same won't happen here... that this seemingly good idea will be executed intelligently... not being restricted to book distribution and "approved" web page browsing.
At least then, we'll have the opportunity of finding his parents' house, going up to his teenage bedroom and finding him sat there in front of his PC with one hand on his keyboard and the other on his miniscule shrivelled pecker - and hitting him across the face with a big shovel...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
For example, Americans tend to associate orange with hunger ...
I'm curious as to why. Care to explain?
I'm an American, and the only thing I can think of is Ronald McD's hair. Doesn't make me hungry at all.
Oh, you're speaking of the laptops. I thought you were speaking about Slashdot.
I love seeing poor grammar in a post about education. It's a hoot. :)
You are not the customer.
Nick said that by making them look very distinctive that it would reduce the "gray market". Everyone would recognize it as a child's free laptop and as Nick said, if an adult had one, you knew it had been sold or stolen. He gave the example that people don't steal U.S. Mail trucks because they are ugly and distinctive looking, even though other vans and trucks are stolen all the time.
How many people from developing country's could afford $100 US?? Yes the software initially has a zero cost, but why charge people over 1 years wages for crap (and ugly) hardware. If you put the hardware under a free license that gave the local industries the ability to make their own free hardware and software then I would think this would be a good idea. If you think "RMS free" software is a good thing then you should thing that "free" hardware is also good.
Yay, now that Nigerian prince can email me directly!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
It certainly does, and if you were paying any attention you'd find lots of organizations devoting to addressing those immediate needs.
OTOH, if they don't deal with the longer-term needs of education and economic development -- both of which dirt cheap, mass-produced computers that are nearly universally available can help with -- those underlying problem driving those "immediate needs" that are temporarily alleviated by cash and food will simply worsen, and more cash and more food will be required to acheive the same results.
Fedora, right?
Can anyone tell if that's a Windows key on the keyboard?
To me, "Fisher-Price ugliness" is an oxymoron.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004543.html
I found this bit fascinating:
As always with laptops of any brand, the most important thing which also happens to be the one which is different in every model - the keyboard layout - is unknown, and it seems impossible to find a straight picture of it.
What are you suposed to do with a laptop? Well, type on the keyboard, no? So the accessibility and position of cursor keys, Home/End, Page-Up/Down, Backspace/Delete etc. are important. I want to know where they are and make sure there are 8 cursor keys, not 4. Even if the laptop is only $100 or $130.
And does it have an Alt-Gr key, or are you expected to only ever write in English on it?
Great! He's got one booting!
Now what does it actually DO, besides impress Linux fans?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
damn that thing screams Fisher-Price ugliness!
;-)
Rumour has it that the physical design came about because they were originally considering Windows XP as the OS platform and thought it would be best if the hardware and software were "visually integrated"
I think this is an excellent project, but the silly cover "ears" must go! They will be the first thing to break off. Maybe if they slid down into the cover...? My 0.5 cents worth.
I'm sure what these starving, malnourished children across the third world will enjoy trying to eat these plastic and metal monstrosities.
I am really tired of people attacking this project with this fallacious argument. Let me try to point out the problem with an analogy. Let's say you are born into a third world country and have no wealth. To makes things worse, the country you reside in is economically unstable and doesn't provide decent job opportunities. You regularly recieve free food and medication but your quality of life dimishes because of the lack of anything else usefull. You have the neccessities to live but not the motivation.
Now, in contrast let's look at the author of the parent post. I can assume a few things. The person has a computer and enjoys using it. (They posted on Slashdot) This person also has either a little bit of wealth or benefited from the charity of a family member or other person. (They own a computer) Yet this person tries to argue that the people over "there" don't need such things to get by in thier daily lives. The author only wants to provide them with food and medicine and not foster economic growth and education. The author I assume does not want to help to motivate these people to live fuller, richer lives. Moreover, the author makes this argument sound like it is because the author cares about these people. Well I call Shens!
Also, please try to use correct spelling and grammar (where practical, and excluding 1337-sp33k), as a good example to impressionable young minds.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
uh huh
so they can pocket it and decide who exactly deserves help.......
no way and 'f' the red cross.........
The project organizers never intended it to be bought *by* the students. It is intended to be bought *for* them, by charities, governments, aid organizations, and so on.
I don't know how to feed myself either, unless you count ordering pizza or buying groceries.
And how exactly are these laptops going to be used? We haven't even figured out what to do with computers in our schools. PCs are mostly used to teach how to use PCs. (textprocessing, spreadhseats, mail, etc.)
But most PC users in industrialized nations, who are older than 30, didn't learn that in school either. They learned this on the job or because they wanted to get on the internet.
There are certainly many uses for affordable PCs in third world nations for governements and businesses. But in the classroom?
Typically, people starve in the third world because they lack the skills and/or resources to provide anything to the global economy that can be exchanged for food, and because the subsistence agriculture that they do have the skill to do is inherently risky, threatened by pollution and climate shifts, and often not the way that the people in power can make the most money; further the crop failures are as often the result of bad agricultural methods as they are by actual drought.
Enhancing education helps deal with the underlying problems that cause starvation. OLPC is certainly neither the whole solution, nor the component most related to short-term needs. But there are lots of other groups involved in addression the problems of the developing world, and pissing on OLPC because it doesn't address all the problems, or the one piece you think is most immediate, is idiotic.
The people doing OLPC aren't hurting the efforts of organizations like the Red Cross or Food for the Poor. Indeed, it seems to me like it goes hand-in-hand with the efforts of small business development and microcredit in the third world that have demonstrated that building economic capacity by providing basic assistance aimed at enabling individual productivity can have considerable effects in dealing with the crushing poverty that produces hunger.
This is, really, about helping developing societies develope more of the tools they need -- in terms of human capital -- to feed themselves.
You regularly recieve free food and medication but your quality of life dimishes because of the lack of anything else usefull. You have the neccessities to live but not the motivation.
I'm calling BS on this one. First of all, the very idea that not having an Open Source Laptop means you have no motivation to live is the biggest bunch of nonsense I've ever seen posted on this site (which is saying something).
Second, if a laptop or computer is needed for someone to do their job, the company they work for will supply them with one, just like they do in America. Just like they do in India. Just like they do in China. Just like they do everywhere in the world.
This "cheap OSS laptops for starving children" schtick is nothing but self-promotion on behalf of the OSS community and will do nothing whatsoever to improve the lives of the poor.
When did you get a guy named "Bob" or "Mike" to say anything that even remotely resembles that? Usually my conversations with them go something like this: "Okay, is the power light on?" "No, the thing won't power on." "Okay, please unplug the power for 30 seconds. (waits 30 seconds in complete silence. I swear they teach them not to BREATHE over there!)" "(Thinking I already did this) Yeah okay, that didn't work." "Okay. (silence)" "Can I have an RMA number now?"
Uhm... I believe that Apple already did this 10 years ago. Again, ahead of their time.
And how is that different from long division the way we learned it, exactly?
Lets say you're trying to devide 123 into 24723. If you're doing
long division, you write:
_______
123 / 24723
and then you guess where to put a number above the line. You
put a 2 above the 7, and you write 24600 underneath -- what you've
just done is guessed 200 and found that 24600 is too small,
and that 300 (36900) would be too big.
Next having established that in long division the way we learned it
you subtract out the 24600 part, and work on the rest. But that's
just bookeeping to establish that we have a guess on the digits so
far...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
What a rant. Pay attention. Sheesh
Um, it's not so ugly. Colors and case design can be cleaned up in the design lab. that's easy to fix.
The screen could be larger, but who's really happy with anything less than 17"?
And is that the mother of all touchpads below the keyboard? woof!
Seriously, if this were in some pastel or benign colors, and a little slicker design, I'd hit it. I'd pay $300 or so if it were marginally powerful.
There is a market out there for simple. Of course, here I am waiting for Conroe or better, and plotting to saddle my wife with a Mac Intel Mini...
Never satisfied.
rick
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You're so right! It'll prepare the children for hi-tech jobs that don't exist in their country! Gimme a break. And I never said we have it worse, I was just pointing out that computers don't educate people... good books and good teachers do. That's been proven tima and tima again by seeing the decline in US math and science scores. As for illegals coming here... it certainly isn't to get cheap computer equiment. It's because we have an economy and jobs and we're next door. $100 laptops aren't going to create and economy and jobs. Maybe if we send tons of laptops to Mexico, they will stop coming here. You're a real gem!
http://psychicfreaks.com/I can Google and order food off the internet with my laptop, but I can't afford it because I have NO MONEY.
As I have said before, improve the infrastructure of most third world countries so that every citizen has access to food, clothing, shelter, clean water and medicine, then I will support the idea that children in these countries need a computer.
Children need to eat before they need to learn! MIT doesn't seem to think this is necessary, they even developed a computer that will kill off a child starving of faminie more quickly by forcing them to have to use up what little energy they have to wind their computer up. I think this will be used as a form of genocide. Don't worry about sending in the Red Cross, just air drop cheap laptops, that will take care of all those poor starving children!
Sorry, this will be a gimmick product that will sell well in developed countries but I don't believe for a second they will improve the life of third world children.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
It offers 3 USB ports and there is an oversized mouse touchpad below the keyboard (a bit hard to see)
There's already lots of education in Africa supplied by organizations like the Peace Corp and churches. Trouble is, it's targetted at the best and brightest children, who, after they do well in school, tend to leave and never come back. What 3rd world countries need is broad education that includes adults. The networking aspects of this machine could help with that. The children could be less likely to leave if they are in constant contact with their peers, learning from and teaching them and their parents. Imagine, distributed schools. Imagine a beowulf cluster of them. (:-)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
You need to do more critical thinking on this issue. The reason people are poor is because they lack basic necessities like education, food, clothing, etc. and they live in countries with poor economies run by corrupt politicians. There is no *one* answer, but using money to buy food and clothing won't change the fundamental lack of education & industry. Providing computers will at least help people learn more about the world, more about computing, etc. which is a step in the right direction.
"However, as Negroponte put it in his address, One Laptop per Child isn't all about the laptops. The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn."
Training the 1337_h4xx0rz of tomorrow, starting with the children of today. Way to go, team.
Who else is reminded of the really old home PCs from the 1980's that you could program and whatnot that got kids learning to code way back when? Not that this is a bad thing, I think it's great. Just saying.
No explanation, but I've heard this many times. Supposidly that's why many fast food chains use orange in their colors (burger king, hardees, etc)
Those specs arn't much worse than the old hand-me-down laptop I use when I'm on the road. I would like to buy one of these to replace my current laptop when it dies.
CfkRAp1041vYQVbFY1aIwA== RV/hBCLKKcSTP5UFK3kqsg==
Actually, now that you mention it, Ubuntu would be a perfect fit for this machine just because of the color scheme.
Actually Edubuntu would be better, and it has a Green and Orange/Red color scheme.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
I thought his hair was red?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Ubiquitous computing with on-demand mesh networking also provides a potent information distribution capacity that undermines the ability to control communication on which totalitarianism thrives.
Maybe, if the native americans did, you wouldn't have come in the first place. ;)
Kofi Annan broke it off when he tried the demo model he was shown. But that got them to thinking that kids just don't have enough arm/hand strength to generate enough power. There's a reason why kids bikes have backpedal brakes rather than handbreaks. You're more likely to see some sort of foot power.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
GREAT! :(
That's just what we need, some dude in the middle of a jungle or deep in a desert controlling tens of thousands of zombie windoze boxes.....
LOL (It's a joke..you may now laugh!)
I don't even begin to think of it in those terms. I divide 24723 by 123.
I don't write 24600, I write 246, subtract and then bring down the two to yield 12
I see that 12 is smaller than 123 so I write a 0 up top and bring down the 3.
... or it doubles as a personal floatation device.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
1: Dump the desktop metaphor.
2: Get rid of menu bars, status bars, process bars, window borders, titles etc.
3: Go full screen for every application
Unfortunately we're still getting portable machines, handhelds, pdas with very limited screen real estate ridiculously cluttered by windows, borders, menus, button bars, status bars. Qtopia for instance is a pain in the arse because of this.
Deleted
I'm curious as to why. Care to explain?
I'm not sure why it is and I doubt anyone else does either. Most of the research has been done for practical reasons. What color do restaurants want to paint? I remember orange, yellow, and red were all winners, while blue and to a lesser extend purple were not. Given the same food, with different, tasteless dyes people generally preferred to the taste of and to eat more food if it was orange and disliked blue. Ever notice that hospitals in the US tend to use a lot of green and hotels a lot of beige? Green hides blood almost as well as red, but does not cause raised blood pressure or stress. Beige tends to calm people, sometimes even making them sleepy.
If you're interested, there are numerous books on the psychology of color. Most of the research you'll find tends to be most applicable to America, with some surprisingly different results for the same sort of tests in Europe and Asia.
Lag behind... in what way exactly? I'll admit, the US isn't at the top of its game, but I'd like to know which third world country we're lagging behind and in what aspect.
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1) Give them to children.
2) Arrange for the school, at least, to have an internet connection. Maybe out of reach for some areas, but that will change.
3) Use said connection to obtain learning materials for free or at low cost. Lower than textbooks at least.
4) Profit.
And presumably you are in this bad mood because your father's penis tastes funny due to it being your sister's time of the month?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I thought I hit preview, but it submitted it. However with this post, it's been doing preview eash time, so bleh!
I was at this demo, and got to use the OLPC. Negroponte related an extremely funny anecdote. He described a conversation with a flatscreen vendor that went something like this:
NN: "We need to buy some small, 640x480 LCD screens 6" across. They can have poor color consistency and even a few bad pixels".
FSV: "I'm sorry, we're focused on 50" screens with 10,000:1 contrast, perfect color consistency, and no bad pixels".
NN: "We need 100,000,000 of them".
FSV: ".......oh......."
As a side note, this unit was *fantastic*. Say what you will about the look -- in person, the thing was a work of art. It had the weight of a paperback book.
The declared model for their use is to provide portable, non-consumable textbooks in virtual form, delivered over the mesh network at first opportunity. Since it also handles notebook capacity, communications and potentially entertainment, I would say that the device is a cost-saver all 'round.
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India's middle class is larger than the entire US population. I've been to my friend's house in Mumbai. He has an apartment on the third floor of a coop. It's not large by US standards; five rooms (LR, BR, BR, K, Bath), but it's well appointed. No question that they'd want a laptop for little Siddhartha. He's probably just getting old enough to play games on it.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Thief makes off with case of laptops
Thief: Ha ha! I'll eat like a king for..
opens box, throws contents away in disgust
Thief: oh man, these things are so GAY! Back to square one.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Whats the problem with man pages ?
Get help on a certain subject by just typing two words.
Please tell me the OS with an easier to use help system ?
I would be incredibly impressed if tech support were this good. I really would be. Anyone who can speak that coherently and actually seems to know what they're talking about deserves a technical support position. Judging by the dialogue you just wrote, any technical support personell with those kinds of speaking skills would be better suited for the job than about 99% of all technical support personell I've had the displeasure of speaking with in my lifetime.
As for the gremlins, everyone knows that gremlins are too busy screwing up airplanes to sit down and take the time to hack into a WiFi mesh network. At least, I hope everyone knows that.
Let me inform you...
The most powerful thing in the world is an idea.
Some people want to blame guns for violence, but one little book called the "Communist Manifesto" is responsible countless deaths.
Also, there was this guy named Ghandi with an idea. Ever hear of Martin Luther? Or how about Martin Luther King Jr.? All of those were just otherwise ordinary guys who had ideas that changed their countries.
I am not an expert on Africa. However, I get the impression that part of their problem is environmental (climate, drought, etc.) but part is in-fighting, genocide, corruption, and political instability. Education cannot change the environment, but it CAN spread ideas and combat the other problems. History has shown that one powerful leader at just the right time can make a huge difference. If these laptops can help to shape just one child who will grow up and be a leader who promotes peace and honesty, that will be well worth the effort.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
You don't understand. Governments will be buying these for the kids, not taxpayers!
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
isn't always based on one's ability you will see many who should never have gotten in.
You do realize that a good number of kids in colleges today didn't necessarily get there on their academic credentials don't you?
The same idea that is being proposed for children across the world, and for adults as well, with this low end laptop could go a long way in pre-elementary schools across the nation. It would also be interesting to see what children in 1st through 3rd grade make of them as well. That is the one thing that always hit me wrong about this laptop. It needs to be aimed at children in developed countries even more than undeveloped countries. Creativity and curiosity is boundless in children and should be encouraged everywhere and everytime it can.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Guess and check" is common in more advanced algorithms, from Newton's method in high school calculus to non-linear lifting-line theory in undergraduate aerodynamics. One could argue that "guess and check" underlies the field of genetic algorithms. It may seem crude, but interation through semi-random solutions can produce accurate results more quickly than other methods in many cases. Particularly in engineering, the quality of the final result is often more important than the solution method's elegance.
Would the color really matter if you could resell it for a month's worth of food?
So it is going to be used like an overspeced e-book reader? And only one per classroom?
This niche will be filled by these new e-ink e-book readers and an USB stick to distribute the books. Schools use only a couple dozen different textbooks anyway.
Wow. Closed-source fanboy or what?
["You regularly recieve free food and medication but your quality of life dimishes because of the lack of anything else usefull. You have the neccessities to live but not the motivation."]
"I'm calling BS on this one. First of all, the very idea that not having an Open Source Laptop means you have no motivation to live is the biggest bunch of nonsense I've ever seen posted on this site (which is saying something)."
So you're saying that an OSS Laptop is the only thing of any use in the world? Please, learn a little basic logic before flying off the handle.
These kids aren't motivated to improve their lives because, while they know there is a better way somewhere, they don't know how any of it works. Showing them how the better way works - educating them - is the only way to improve their quality of life.
Unfortunately, those who find their way out and into a first world country get their education - and never look back. They could go help educate their old communities, but they don't, generally. Most of them enjoy life in the first world - and that's actually fine. They have no obligation to return, just as you have no obligation to care about the third world.
So education is needed badly in the third world. Whether this is done expensively by conventional means (building schools, providing many many textbooks over the course of many many years) or by innovative methods (of which the OLPC is - reduced costs in providing textbooks while providing a far more useful object than any textbook collection) is a matter of whos got the best ideas and who can get the support.
"This 'cheap OSS laptops for starving children' schtick is nothing but self-promotion on behalf of the OSS community and will do nothing whatsoever to improve the lives of the poor."
Calling this self-promotion is not just showing your bias, but the latter half of that sentence just shows your complete ignorance of how society works as a whole.
As such, I ask that parent be modded troll. He's a fucking idiot.
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Naturally kids and adults need to eat enough food to be well. Then kids and adults would not have destoyed immune systems - and wouldn't come down with ever dis-ease possible. There is more than enough food to feed ever person on this planet. But, the self apponted elite - the Rich, who control the flow of food on this planet - are not the least bit interested in feeding people. In fact they are interested in the reverse - destabilization. Keeps the price of oil/gasoline up!
The $100 communication/learning tool can be a way out for Africans. Not the only tool needed; but, one of the tools needed. An "internet system" is part of the $100 laptop notion. With a well developed "Peer Interdependent Learning" systems approach - people can quickly learn rapidly. An example of a simple outcome:
a) The farmer's kids will then get weather reports via the internet to assist in planting of crops etc.
b) They can also get info via the internet on drought resistant seeds - if need be.
c) They can find out the market price for their crops in the nearest big city via the internet to see if the middle men are screwing them finacially.
Etc.
Just look at the map
Interest seems worldwide.
No problem, the system libraries and development environment is the same as any standard linux distro, just learn to make fast and efficient applications and teach yourself to package RPMs
Nicholas Negroponte, unvelied a working model [CC] [GC] of their $100 laptop
I don't know what that word means, but it sounds painful.
I've heard that these colour effects motivate not just the outside colours of your typical fast food place (McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's all use reds/oranges/yellows), but also the inside colours (often light blue/green). I've heard that they use the "hungry" colours on their exterior and on their menus, so you get hungry, come in and order lots, then they use "non-hungry" colours in the seating areas to encourage you to leave (since they've already got your money by the time you're sitting down).
:)
Of course, they could also be using the light greenish colours to hide blood.
Is it just me, or does this laptop remind anyone else of the short-lived Apple eMate? In fact it seems to me that the concept of the computer was lifted from Apple. Gaudy colors, slimmed down OS and functionality, built rugged for students. Obviously the tech in the machine is a decade newer and as such likely significantly more powerful, but the same principles apply, low power footprint, small screen, readable outdoors.
s tats/emate_300.html
Outside of some modernization of the concept and technologies can someone show me what this device does that the eMate didn't? The eMate even lasted up to 28 hours on a single charge. I don't want to discount what MIT Media Labs has accomplished, but it looks to me like another rip-off of Apple technology.
Here is a link to a picture and the specs of an Apple eMate 300.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/
It gets on the web, from day one. The laptops self-configure into a mesh, and they are working on deals with indigenous ISPs to provide free internet access for OLPC laptops. Once you've done that, you have the world at your fingertips.
"they'd be dependant on us forever"
You are joking here aren't you? Who is dependent on who! African slaves built the entire U.S.A. economy, the entire USA industrial infrastructure, created all of the old wealth - that exists today.The slaves built Europe as well.
And at the same time, the idiots in the fast food burger industry in the USA decided it needed more cheap beef for the super sized burgers. The idiots went to Somalia and convinced the waring factions that they could buy more guns and rocket launchers if they switched from traditional crops to beef grazing. They switched, produced beef - got more guns - which were then used to kill USA Marines! What happened next? The cattle overgrazed - which resulted in a "dust bowl" - no grains to feed cattle - no cattle. Naturally no traditional crops to feed people = starvation.
The USA and other western countries as well as Muslim countries owe countless trillions to the starving Africans for enslavement and for stealing resources from African over several hundred years. It's payback time.
one per CHILD. it's in the project name.
And, no. The text/notebook functionality is just what it replaces in the third-world classroom. You've got every educational too in the OSS landscape available to you. Discuss.
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Changes mind, takes out a can of white spray paint, sprays it
Theif: Now that is better, next I will just put a Apple decal on it and sell it to suckers for $1099+!
Yes, but will they have Tux Paint installed by default? ;^)
Aonymous Coward is leaving? He's our most brilliant and prolific member! Please don't go. We'll change it back.
" The laptops will become bargaining chips. A goat for your laptop. "
;) Besides now we got the hungry kid a goat and someone else a laptop ... see everyone is happy and no one is fighting. Hey, we can all dream a bit, right? ;)
:) ;p
OK, So be it then. It was a heck of a lot easier than mailing them the goat
Sorry , couldn't resist the image of mailing a poor family a goat
Besides can i even order goats online.....ummm, wait...on second thought
There's definitely a place for teaching kids how to find the answers, but the current educational model sometimes focuses too much on that and leaves any instruction in actual facts completely out. (I was a teacher, so I know whereof I speak)
As an example, basic math facts (multiplication and division of single digit integers) should be memorized. If you commit 5 x 5 to memory, the next time that you come across a math problem that entails this multiplication, you won't have to "discover" that 5 x 5 = 25.
"Discovery" is the current hot fad these days, but there are some things that either aren't easily discovered, or where the process of discovery doesn't make sense.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
In here we already have the plentiful crops, we need the idiots to stop sucking up to the demagogue government, do better (technical) jobs and freaking improve the coutry
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
I say let the profits generated by the initial consumer demand (which should be white hot) be used by the OLPC group and not some ebay sharks*.
* ebay sharks: buy low and sell high on consumer demand. Evil = no. Legal = yes. Moral = yes. I just want OLPC to beat the sharks on this one.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
- Get high, do nothing all day long,
- Learn, get a degree OR
- Suck the state's tit?
(Combine options at will)Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
What? Oh... you typed most of the first sentence in the subject line. I bet you do that with your emails to.
Has an actual breakdown of manufacturing costs been made public yet or are we all just assuming the numbers the Media Lab is coming up with are realistic? As an engineering student I can easily see the situation where they're costing the parts out and say "this keyboard costs a total of $20 in parts to produce now, I guess it'll cost $10 when production really ramps up and forget about labor since it'll be robotic." If they do actually make their price point what will the quality of the units be? They don't have any budget at all to throw into good materials or quality assurance, both enormous costs.
If I could ask Mr. Negroponte one question it would be: How long do you expect one of these laptops to function? I've seen some amazingly cheap things come out of Chinese factories but few of them have been worth the price paid.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
English is not everybodys first language, and attacking people for grammar is a cheap shot when you do not know if english is their first language.
-- Linux user #369862
Because that's all we see on TV, thanks to relief organizations. I've never seen "Prosperous Africa" on TV or in the news. Like it or not, what we casually see on TV while getting our SciFi channel fix does affect us.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Why are we calling college students children? Why, why why?
Or, for that matter, high school students. They're young adults. Not children.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The laptop works, bleh! Nobody ever doubted that one could build an orange laptop. The question is if one can build a usable laptop today for less than $100. So far all he has produced is a model produced at a cost of tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even at mass production rates, the cost of the LCD alone remains over $100. Yes, by the cost will go down with time, but by that measure you can already buy my original Toshiba laptop today for less than $100, or even my original IBM PC/AT for $30.
Everything I've seen about Lenovo the last few months says they lost over $100 million the first quarter of calendar year 2006 and are facing a tough market in China and North America.
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
... why everybody's so infatuated with this project. It's not because it will benefit millions of third-world children, though that's a definite plus. It's that we're all so sick of the bloated, power sucking laptops we use now.
Or does this maxim just apply to Africa?
I think you'll generally find that it applies to any area that:
1) has an average standard of living lower than the speaker is used to
2) is not where the speaker currently lives
It's official. Most of you are morons.
..."moo!" The Windows user says, "Linux? The Mac user says, "I wish it cost more so I could feel special!" The Linux user says, "C'mon, guys...it's got Linux!" And the kids say, "Hooray! Myspace.com...here I come! Woo hoo!"
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
Nooooooooooo
s p
"We are also talking to Microsoft. They're going to make a Windows CE version" for the machine, Negroponte said. "We're going to help them make a Win CE version, so geez, why criticize me?"
from
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1945984,00.a
Exactly - If I had points I'd mod you up.
How about we use the money we'd spend on these to put a breakfast and lunch in these kid's bellies, and buy the teacher a few used textbooks. I know it's sacrilege to say it on /., but on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for millions of kids on this planet, a Plastic Pal That's Fun to be With (tm) is a little further down the hierarchy than some basic vaccinations and a malaria control programme.
As a small child I used to play with my mother's old pedal sewing machine, and it could deliver a surprising amount of mechanical power with little apparent effort. Also many years ago a remote area education program was carried out using pedal radios in my country with a great deal of success. The School of the Air in Australia is still going, but electricity is much less scarce in remote areas now so the pedals are not used anymore.
I thought I read that they were going to be sold in the US, etc. for $300, the extra $200 going to donate more to the third-world kids. ------- 100% genuine handmade sig.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Not only that, but when we send food over to Africa, for example, the corrupt governments get it and do God knows what with it and people stay hungry.
With these laptops, isn't that even more likely?
If Charles Taylor or someone of his ilk gets a touch of conscience, he doesn't have to waste it on withholding laptops from hungry, sick children!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Beowulf cluster anyone?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Or is there another kind of Russian Pop music?
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
Personally, I think that we should flood the world with [they really need a better name than 'the $100 Laptop']. On a side note, perhaps someone could write a wikiHow on subsistence farming.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
will a cracked black market copy of Windows Vista run on it?
Oh well, what the hell...
In addition to the color, the designers wisely chose to equip the laptop with only a small flash drive, in order to deter theft by adults and teenagers who have no use for a computer that can't store a decent collection of porn.
I put it up on the internet at: http://wcitvideo.com/?p=16 Full 28 minute keynote of the One Laptop Per Child chairman at the WCIT in Austin texas last month.
But if laptop and an internet connection to wikipedia they would be able to find out more about malaria, how to avoid it, where to go for treatment and a google maps lookup of nearest clinic.
As a westener, I have learnt far more via the internet than I learned in school. OLPC will IMHO have a large impact, on education, culture and democracy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Some people want to blame guns for violence, but one little book called the "Communist Manifesto" is responsible countless deaths.
That book is fairly low on my list of All-Time Killer Books. The two known as the Bible and Koran are still fighting it out for first place.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Am I the only one who thinks this thing looks like a TI Speak&Spell?
p e5.jpg = en&q=speak'n'spell&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
http://www.antiquetech.com/pictures%20thumbnail/w
http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -- Voltaire
LOL. Google maps can't even give me a map of Tel Aviv or even tell me where Mexico City is.
I guess he faded in the sun. I'm colorblind anyway, dammit.
Orange is not appetizing, except for a real orange. That's why they call it an orange -- everything else is just a cheap fake.