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One Laptop Per Child Gets 4 Million Laptop Order
An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com is reporting that four countries have together ordered 4 million low-cost, Linux-based laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each placed the 1 million unit orders."
Well this follows the /. story on skepticism for OLPC in India. Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Nigeria are all substantially more wealthy than India on a per capita basis. India (with a lot more help from the industrialized world than it is presently getting) needs to focus on providing things like basic vaccines for all children. Laptops don't help children who are dieing from measels for lack of vaccination. Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Nigeria all have enough money to provide some basics like vaccines. These are not countries where large scale famine is a great threat. These four countries have a substantial level of economic development and government services. This is not to say the implementation of public health strategies and other much-needed services in these four countries is ideal.
We don't need to count on future Einsteins, that's a plus. Don't underestimated the power of normal people with access to information. It's empowering. See the two USA Today articles below to understand my point (the ones with cell phones). A network is a useful thing indeed.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Nigeria:
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 68%
male: 75.7%
female: 60.6% (2003 est.)
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Brazil:
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 86.4%
male: 86.1%
female: 86.6% (2003 est.)
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Thailand:
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 92.6%
male: 94.9%
female: 90.5% (2002)
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Argentina:
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 97.1%
male: 97.1%
female: 97.1% (2003 est.)
See also:
"Africa's cell phone boom creates a base for low-cost banking"
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/2005-0
"Africa's cellphone explosion changes economics, society"
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/2005-1
The distribution and libraries are all open source, published and out there - and there's already a simulator which can do things like the dual-mode screen. Have a hunt around their Wiki - particularly the software section for you, I'd guess, and you should find everything you want. People to develop software for it is exactly what they want and need from us - go ahead, jump in!
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
For the hundredth time....
They are not going to STARVING KIDS IN MUD HUTS!!!
Please, scroll up and read the responses to the post by bcrowell.
Not all Americans have such a narrow vision of the world. A few of us have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel (as opposed to vacation in tourist areas).
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I don't know if HP has sold a million+ PCs in one sale, but they do a lot of similar charitable work like this. They are pretty giving in comparison to many other corporate giants.
r t/socialinvest.html
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/gcrepo
Btw, Argentina isn't particularly a poor country. They had a nasty financial crisis a few years back, but have been recovering steadily. Nor is Brazil for that matter. Of course poor people are poor just about everywhere, including here in the states. Perhaps this program might do some good here as well.
Anyway, you put a right kibosh on those whiney do-nothing nay-sayers.
That's not official, it's just a pledge. I didn't hear anything about it turning official, but there may have been newer developments?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I remember reading that they need 10 million to even be able to produce them. They are still a long way off.
You remembered wrong:
"The laptop won't be produced unless at least five countries sign up at a million laptops each.
Four out of five isn't that far off.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
The National School Lunch Program Background and Development
http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/AboutLunch/Prog
To summarize: mal/undernourished children don't learn for shit. Since they will only learn a minority of what you teach them, the majority of the money spent on teaching them is wasted.
"Few of us sufficiently realize the powerful effect upon life of adequate nutritious food. Few of us ever think of how much it is responsible for our physical and mental advancement or what a force it has been in forwarding our civilized life." - Robert Hunter (author of Poverty in 1904) wrote that in the introduction to John Spargo's 1905 book The Bitter Cry of the Children
You can read more history here.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
See my comment in 2000 to Doug Engelbart's Bootstrap List at:
... Available in four translucent colors, Cybiko has a full QWERTY keyboard to compose messages, LCD display, .5 MB memory (expandable to 16MB), a high frequency transmitter and Vibration Alert feature. The unit measures 4.8 x 2.8-inches and weighs under four ounces making it light, thin and small enough to carry in a book bag, purse or shirt pocket. ... With Cybiko, kids and teens can communicate instantly with others within a radius of 150 to 300 feet, depending on the environment, creating their very own virtual community.
m 050399.htm
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0754.html
From there [with some outdated links removed]:
I'd love to make a souped up version of this for OHS/DKR use: (Read about in May 2000 Popular Mechanics) "Cybiko Introduces First Handheld Internet Wireless Entertainment System At Toy Fair 2000"
US $149.00 The Cybiko system combines instant messaging, interactive gaming, email and personal information manager (PIM) capabilities in an all-in-one device.
Wow!
Imagine what we could have for $1000 by the end of this year by integrating technology that already exists:
Develop a beefed up version supporting a distributed file system like Freenet...
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Using technology like this 6GB in 14 ounces $500 portable audio player/recorder: [nomad Jukebox]:
And a two mile radio range: [Motorola walky talky]
Maybe with a next generation StrongARM 600Mhz processor:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/e
Like a faster version of: [BossaNova mobile processor]
Running Squeak (and maybe Linux) as an open source OS/Development environment:
http://www.squeak.org/
Using Bootstrap OHS/DKR type ideas for the interface...
Powered by solar energy and/or Baygen radio windup technology and/or fuel cells.
And with a digital camera for fun and creation of educational how-to tutorials... (And on the spot news reporting...)
And remember that in five years this entire thing will cost US$100 each.
As an alternative, this could be a set of HandSpring modules instead: [Springboard]
Consider a couple of these souped up devices given to each village in Africa. Anyone with $1 billion for true development aid to 500,000 African villages? (This is just the cost of one unfinished dam or one shut down nuclear plant.)
Consider millions of these devices airdropped into Iraq and Yugoslavia -- instead of more expensive cruise missiles! Anybody got $1 billion to spend on ensuring democracy with a true defense against tyranny in those places? (This is probably what the U.S. military's spends on gas/oil for a month cruising the area...)
This is like a system I wanted to develop and deploy pre-Y2K just in case... But it still has much value in preparing for any potential (natural, political, economic, biological) disaster, as well as aiding the development of democracy.
It's somewhat like the wearable crystals described in The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix), although the one thing it lacks is easy self-repliaction...
Developing and then deploying this sort of device is the sort of thing the UN or a major foundation should fund (if they were on the ball). But luckily, there is hope from toymakers!
====
Anyway, glad to see six years later this is going ahead at that $100 price point (and developed by other than toymakers). My hat goes off to the dedicated people making this happen.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Since people are arguing over subjective impressions on both sides, I decided to pull in some harder numbers.
_ literacy_rate )
.863 (High Human Development) .778 (Medium Human Development) .792 (Medium Human Development) .453 (Low Human Development)_ HDI.pdf )
WRT education hear are some stats on the literacy rate:
Argentina: 97.2%
Thailand: 92.6%
Brazil: 88.4%
Nigeria: 66.8%
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
Okay, so except for Nigeria, most people in these countries seem to have a decent (though not necessarily high tech) education.
WRT general human development, here are some stats:
Argentina:
Thailand:
Brazil:
Nigeria:
(Source: http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05
Okay, so except for Nigeria, most of these countries seem to be decent places to live (even though life is likely much harder than what north americans and europeans are used to)
How was the parent post racist? Race wasn't mentioned, Nigeria was. Most of the 419 scams I've seen did in fact originate in Nigeria ("419" refers to the Nigerian penal code, remember?) and if their government/society can't or isn't willing to do more to curb these scammers, then they deserve the ridicule they get.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
If there are no working prototypes, how did Kofi Annan present one at the World Summit on Information Society?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The CPU is already designed, and has been in production for a while. (Corollary: that's why it's so cheap.)
It's an AMD Geode, which is an x86 computer-on-a-chip (onboard graphics, io, memory controller). It's a little late to try rearchitecting it to make it work differently.
I'm a mac and pc user. I'd be very happy to see another operating system grab marketshare overnight. It might show end users and companies that they can run something besides Windows! It may encourage competition. Microsoft could use a real dose of competition right about now. Everyone would benefit.
This may be what all of the linux users have been waiting for. It can prove linux is a desktop os as it was intended to be. Apple may get sales out of this too. (more interest in alternatives)
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
As I understand it, this is being very seriously considered... as I recall, they'd like to sell them at 3x cost in order to fully subsidize 2 laptops per laptop sold.
You can't pay $200... but you can pay $300, AFAIK.
If you are seriously interested in this, it's well worth signing this pledge [pledgebank.com].
Contrast that to the "personal responsibility" that the idiot libertarians preach and you'll see why we are soon to be at each other's throats
Libertarians are among the most generous people you'll ever find -- with their own money. Leftists are always willing to help themselves -- to other people's money.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist