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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:
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~ |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
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?
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
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.
>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.
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
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.
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
... 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 ;->
From the article:
"This working model sported many differences from the early prototypes that were seen previously. The biggest change is that the laptop no long features a directly attached crank for powering the laptop in areas without electricity--the crank has now been moved to the power supply."
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. :-(
As initially envisioned, the laptops sported a hand crank on the side to generate power, but Negroponte has scrapped that idea because the twisting forces that would be bad for the machine. Instead, some form of power generation device, likely a pedal, will be attached to the AC power adapter, he said.
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.
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.
So there :-)
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
Actually, the crank idea seems to be trashed now. Plans seem to be for a foot-pedal device. I will of course do the hamster-in-a-wheel mod.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Oh, you're speaking of the laptops. I thought you were speaking about Slashdot.
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.
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.
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)
The screensize is not that much of a problem, if you reduce the number of applications. We are working on a system for senior citizens, and I guess we reduce the number of apps to 20 or less.
Use multiple desktops, and your screen could look like this:
Seniorix desktop.
Sorry, only available in German yet, since we only cooperate with local retirement home yet...
For the fifty millionth time, not all of them are starving! This isn't for the kids you see on the adopt-a-child commercials, this is for the semi-stable states that would hopefully, through the education of its children, begin modernizing and bring wealth, prosperity, education, and infrastructure to the entire region. If, say, 7 African nations were truly on their way to becoming first world nations, imagine how it would affect their neighbours.
If all we did was feed starving people, they'd be dependant on us forever, and would have rampant overpopulation and disease. By educating the parts of the continent that is slightly better off, they can help themselves, and then help their neighbours help themselves.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Hm, buy one for three times the price and give away two... What a great idea! Go here and promise to do just that.
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