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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."
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
As another commenter noted in the previous slashdot article, the colors are also a deterrent for potential theives stealing laptops from kids. Anyone who looks older than 18 and is carrying a fisher-price laptop probably stole it from a kid. Easy way to spot.
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.
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.
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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 ;->
No you are thinking of the western POV. You believe that Africa has one class of people, dirt poor, barely surviving and in a constant struggle for food and shelter.
In reality this isnt focused at those people, but rather the ones that have overcome that daily struggle and have what is considered a decent live there, education is the next goal for them.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
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. :-(
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!
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.
Ugly or not, if you offered me a laptop with a keyboard, touch pad and hi-res screen for $300 with some useful productivity apps, I'd buy one like a shot. Whether it looked like a demented speak & spell or not. I hate lugging around expensive, fragile, battery sapping laptops just to get internet access when I'm away for a bit. I hate the small unusable screens on a Pocket PC. These things are meant to be kidproof so you toss them in a backpack without much concern, or whip them out on a train or airline clip tray for practically instant-on computing. It's no wonder Bill Gates is afraid of these things. Who the hell would buy his Origami concept costing twice as much when this thing fits the bill so well? That's assuming a commercial version does appear.
True enough. Teaching millions of kids to run linux, with all those programming tools right there and available, in an environment where you can get the source and piddle with it any time you want, is bound to create a whole new level of computer savvyness.
Also, since they have to be cranked, all those kids will also have Popeye forearms.
I would like to be the first to welcome our future giant forearm/elite hacker overlords!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
[quote]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 [/quote]
Forgive me for saying this, but:
b/c those same kids have PSP's, Ipods and cell phones... If their parents wont buy them a computer why should the public give them one for free.
"I code to the finich, 'cuz I eats me spinach, I'm PERLeye the Recursion Man!" *printf-printf*
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The other big thing I see here is a screen that works under sunlight. Why can't I have that on my $3500 Thinkpad?
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