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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."
...the feelings of the OLPC project owners right now:
Cha-Ching!!!
Sigs are for the weak.
I really like that these countries have the determination to use linux laptops to help increase there education levels, it will benifit everyone. In the short term the production lines get busy making the laptops ready to be uses, and it will promote using open source software and Linux which could mean more and better tools out there for us eventually. But it could also breed us more scammers, damn them wasting so much of out time.
Is it just me or won't this mean Linux gains a significant user base that basically never have used anything else than Linux and will never have any reason for using anything else? This must be a big thorn in both Microsoft and Apple's (remember they offered to give away software for this project) side...
Actully, most the targeted countries have water and food already. its a sterotype that too many people buy into.
the real reason for this laptop is to turn a second world country into one that interacts economically with the rest of the world. i really wish people would look closer before condemning the whole project, such ignorance.
To recap the responses to this kind of argument when it came up the last three or four times stories about the $100 laptop appeared on
Also, did you notice the part where the governments of not one, but four poor nations are buying the computers? That would seem to indicate somebody thinks they will be useful.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
That is good news but there are still lots of challenges to this. I remember reading that they need 10 million to even be able to produce them. They are still a long way off.
Now I am usually an optimist and i do believe that the OLPC project is at its core a good project but the competition is heating up with China, AMD and Intel with their own programs and china's project being almost competitive on price. Also the OLPC project relies on AMD and indirectly china's production capabilities to make it a reality.
Also in my opinion (and mine only - don't want to start a flameware) it is too much of a one man crusade. I think that there is way too much emphasis and publicity surrounding Negroponte and what he thinks that people (like me) will start to wonder if this is really a group effort or just one man's dream. There are times that the distinction between non-profit and corporation are blurred and the line between philanthropy and publicity are not clear.
However I think idea is sound and I think that the OLPC project has served notice to corporations that there is a very underserved market that can further the adoption of computers and thus overall help everyone out (like the Intel's and AMD's of the world). I think that a few years from now the lasting legacy of the OLPC project may be the fact that it spurred companies to serve this market.
And regardless of what people may say about computers and learning it does let me slack off and post on slashdot all day so they can't be so bad.
Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
^^This is what gets me.
This whole 'foreign countries are mud holes' theory that people like you in the US (you're in Cali, i did a little digging) share.
I am from Nigeria, and sorry to dismay your lively opinion of Nigeria and the other countries, but I did not live in a tent, hut, nor was my house supported with bamboo sticks.
I have been to Brazil and Argentina and it is the same as it is here in America, several cities bursting with industrial, urban life, and yes like a few places here in America (Central plains, deep south) ther are places that missed the technology bandwagon and could use all the cheap technology they can get (there are a lot of elementary school in the south that have no computers). My point being these are not third world countries, they are first world.
But back to the thread's main focus, this will be an ideal kick in these countries behind to help them catch up to European and Western countries. If 4 million computers can produce just one more person who can go to college and stand on his feet, then everyone wins.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
When can i buy one?
Just be patient - once they've been delivered, it probably won't take long for them to start popping up on eBay...
Gosh, I wasn't aware that poverty was endemic in Argentina and Brazil. I know it's too much to expect people to RTFA, but you could at least finish the summary before going into knee-jerk response mode.
But, let's assume that by 99% you mean 25% and we're just discussing Nigeria. It still doesn't make the OLPC program "totally useless". The thing to understand here is that just because the news channels only show you pictures from Africa when there's a drought or a famine, that doesn't mean that the entire continent is in a permenant, continuou state of starvation.
And yes, clean water and better educational facilities are sadly lacking in many parts of Africa. But that doesn't mean that clean water should be the only problem anyone is allowed to address. We can do things in parallel.
Four million kids, some of whom might never get a chance to see a computer, are going to grow up with marketable skills for the 21st century. They're going to get a chance to bring some money into their countries, and maybe get a chance to fix some of the other problems themselves.
And that can't be a bad thing
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Even if we assume that the corruption which normally gets in the way of everything in countries such as this will not be a factor this time, I don't think these computers will make a bit of difference in these countries. Computers require both infrastructure and previous basic education to make them worth anything. Just handing a computer to somebody who doesn't have the background to understand the tool's context isn't going to make any difference. Some people seem to think that computers somehow make people smarter and better-educated all of a sudden, but real education can happen far cheaper with much more basic and traditional tools. I love technology and I'm all in favor of progress, but I see zero evidence that computers in U.S. classrooms are making education better. I see even less likelihood of it making education better in Nigeria. Of course, as I said, I'm in the minority with this opinion. Since it runs Linux, most geeks think it's cool enough for them to want one, so it MUST be good for impoverished kids in mud huts. David
You talk like most people in these countries (Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand) have never seen food in their life or something like that. What these (and other) countries need is not food sent from industrialised countries (which often hurts the local economy more than anything), its means to improve their own economy. This is done (partly) through improved education and that's where OLPC can help. There's no single solution to complex problems. You can focus only on food, just as you can't focus only on computers. But saying OLPC is unnecessary because there are other (possibly more important) problems is missing the point.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Do you even realize just which ones "these countries" are?
Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand. Not Somalia, Bolivia, and Laos.
These are among the most economically developed countries on their respective continents. Hell, Brazil is a country that manufactures jet airliners that are operated by major U.S. airlines.
The computers are not going to naked starving kids in mud huts! These countries' governments know full well what it is that people in such circumstances (which all of the countries probably do have nonetheless) really need. They are likely going to cities which are relatively poor, but with a minimally sufficient economies, and working-class children (boys and girls) who would benefit most from education and the economic mobility it provides. And they've decided that cheap computers are the way to implement that.
These kids can't afford computers, and that's a problem. Because in the very cities they live in, people use computers every day.
How many places are going to ever want to place an order for that many machines, other than OLPC-participant countries?
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Sorry but no, Steve Jobs offering OS-X for free was nothing but a kind gesture. His product is so out of range of the audience who would have gotten these machines it would be very hard to imagine any generated sales. Unless the project is super succesfull and instantly gives these kids western style incomes. Upper western style incomes.
Windows is an entirely different matter. MS has near dominance of the computer OS and 4 million new users who use non-ms software is nasty. Not horribly nasty but MS is often claimed to keep its dominance because it is dominant. In short you have to use windows, because everyone else uses windows. If everyone else doesn't use windows. Neither do you have to use windows.
It is the reason MS doesn't come down all that hard on piracy and is so willing to offer cheap (by western standards) versions of its OS in high piracy areas. MS rather loose a billion in sales then loose its dominance. Munich showed that MS is basically willing to give its software and services not just away for free but actually offer money on top of it just to make sure some other OS is not used.
Apple competes on quality, MS competes by being the only game in town. Oh and don't forget that linux users will have little difficulty switching to OS-X wich is after all based on that linux wannabe BSD. /me runs for it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Also, one should point out that without economic development in these countries, the problems of hunger and poverty will never be solved. And without some form of education and entree into the high tech world, that economic development will never happen. The ONPC project is aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty over the long term.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
the "world" terminology is largely irrelevant in the first place, its a purely social construct. In this case, I fully agree with Wittengenstein, meaning is how a word is used. The origin of "first world," "second world," "third world" as a descriptor for groups in the cold war is only significant in a historical context, it has come to refer to the relative economic strength of Nations. Generally, it refers to the value of GDP/(nation's population), those with a high value are "first world," those with a lower one, "third world," with occasional references to borderline "second world" nations. That these groupings largely line up with their cold war counterparts is again only of historical significance.
Just because we're outside the US doesn't mean we aren't enough intelligent to operate a computer. Well, they have food, a clean source of water, a chance to go to school, they only need a teacher.
Hi.
Still nothing on the $100 in food, clean water, shelter, and clothing per child project.
Right, because all possibly avenues for relief and charity dropped what they were doing to work on the laptop project.
Oh, and last I checked, Bob Geldof and Sally Struthers weren't making the world a better place-- and that $1 a day to "feed the children" doesn't seem to be doing much to provide for their future. Maybe a combination of current huminatarian efforts, with the access to education and knowledge that the laptop project will make possible could help some of these kids grow up to make their societies a better place.
You know, "teach a man to fish" and all that.
- you sponsor a village
- they set up correspondence with a child of a family in the village
- they send reports on how the community is doing
- the kid sends you some drawings and pictures
If you did this, you wouldn't say things like 'all they need is food and water'.8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Unfortunately, our main man George W. Bush withdrew all US funding from foreign health clinics which advocate for or distribute birth control. So don't look to the US-of-A for any population control leadership any time soon.
someone needs a "How to be funny and not just stupid" guide book. Oh! Here's one lying around. Should keep you amused for ages. Cheerio.
'tis but a scratch.
The OLPC website says they will only be available to schools and governments. How will anyone ever develop software for it? Why can't I pay $200 for one and have $100 of that go towards subsidizing a laptop for some other kid?
... is figure out how on Earth you use them!
I agree. Brazil, for example, has a history of investing wisely in its development. They turned down President Bush's megamilliondolllar abstinence^W AIDS funding because it tied their hands on how to spend money to fight the HIV epidemic.
And Argentina may be an otherwise "rich" country, but with a ~30% unemployment rate brought about by World Bank/IMF policies, it will definitely be a while before it gets back on the wagon.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
It wasn't hyperbole, it was hyper-bollocks.
Do you think the children should not be tought in school because they are starving? They could be working on the land, making food, couldn't they.
Or do you agree that teaching them will make them better able to lift themselves out of the gutter?
If so, why not with a laptop? One small laptop can hold an awful lot of tectbooks, copied for practically free, unlike paper copies...
I imagine we can reasonably expect a higher degree of maturity and restraint from third world children than their western "adult" counterparts. Something about real hardships to put things in perspective comes to mind...
Dunno, perhaps they'll use them for the million things that were done before the internet was widespread?
Words matter as much as bandwidth; this too was a publicity stunt:
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
But read to freezing volunteers on the banks of an ice-cold river, on the eve of the first victory in the American revolution, these words mattered as much as technology, as much as bullets and powder.
For example I ask if you believe that virtually everyone in America has a cell phone? CBS reports that 43% do not--while neglected pay phones vanish from the hands of people who need them most.
The measure of our civilization is our treatment of the poor, the weak, and the friendless. Technology without conscience is a rusting bucket of scrap iron.
Shame on you and others for mocking the goals of this idealistic project.
No, my friend, I'm sorry. No one deserves any ridicule any more. Kids don't fail, they have deffered success. Scores aren't kept at soccer or baseball games. We live in a world scrubbed clean by the PC bleach that we have been force-fed over the past two decades.
So please, a little love for the Nigerians, who, just like everyone else, were at some point harmed due to something that I as a white christian male did, and are thusly kept down and deserve the same diversity respect that everyone else does. They are not responsible for their actions any more than parents that allow their children to play GTA, thank God for our lawmakers.
So please, understand that just about anything negative you say about anyone, if they are anything besides a white christian male, will be construed as *ist or *phobic, and rightly so.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Are you sure about that?
And even so, you can give each family 100$ and they can eat for a month from that. That's what organisations have been doing for decades now and keep on doing. But there will be new children, uneducated, unable to provide for themselves, in need for medical care, food, clean water, shelter.
Are you going to give another 100$ for the next generation or a factor of that cause the past generation is still starving? OR would you ensure education for all, so they can build their own economy and provide for themselves, create solutions and have the next generation being independant?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Okay, here's the deal:
If we all rely on ourselves for our well-being, as the "idiot libertarians" preach, then those who are less directly powerful lose to those who are more powerful. We're all very well aware of this, but a lot of us choose to ignore it.
If we all rely on each other for our well-being, then those who are less manipulative and charismatic lose to those who are more manipulative and charismatic. We're all very well aware of this, but a lot of us choose to ignore it.
All extreme competition and extreme cooperation do is change the fitness criteria for the population; either way, you'll get assholes exploiting the system. All you can really decide is what KINDS of assholes you want exploiting the system - and if you're smart, you pick a system that you're more likely to exploit than be exploited by. But then, if you're capable of making that choice, you're generally either powerful enough to be just fine with the way things are now, or you're in the middle of a violent coup d'etat.
Summary: In a libertarian ideal, man exploits man. In a socialist utopia, it's the other way around.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
First, let's assume that the laptop really offers nothing in terms of helping kids program or learn anything that they couldn't before. While I don't believe this is true, I'll grant you that for the sake of argument.
This being the case, you can think of the laptop as a dynamic textbook and nothing more. Over time, with most of the material that children need to learn available online for free, you've saved money on textbook purchases. They can work the same way as textbooks always have in education where the teacher says "read bla bla bla and come back to me and we'll talk about it." Is that really such a bad thing considering the possible other benefits of the system?
But what are the other benefits of the system? People say that it'll enable kids to do new things like program and whatnot. Others say that they'll draw ascii porn, share it, and jerk off all day. I think, though, that while some of these kids will likely be exchanging porn or other equally uninspiring material, there will be many who will actually use them for do something really interesting.
And about your comment about how the kids who would actually do something useful probably have a computer already anyway, I think is simply false. I like to think of this whole process as bootstrapping. They're investing in the intellectual capital of their youth and hoping that something good comes of it. In all likelihood, there will at least be one or two hundred people who really benefitted and end up contributing back into their communities to get more and more people motivated and capable to contribute and compete in the global information economy.
These things don't happen over night. I don't think you're giving these people enough credit.
You're wrong. Part of the OLPC program is sustainability, so as the project scales up, there will be less and less subsidy involved. At some point the project will benefit from economies of scale and the goal of being able to make this laptop for $100 will happen.
Let's stop using the term "Third World". It's not very accurate or meaningful, and in certain cases is completely wrong, i.e., China is not and has never been a third world nation since we began using the term. "Third World" is a vestige of 20th Century geopolitics, where a nation was either aligned with the Western Bloc, aligned with the Communist Bloc, or non-aligned.
A better set of terms is "Developing Nation" and "Least Developed Nations". And even then, it's more useful to actually look at the infrastructure and capacities of a nation to understand what is going on. For example, the PRC doesn't need OLPC because they already have the high tech manufacturing infrastructure to build their own.
At any rate, what do you propose instead that would be a better solution to developing nations that want to advance technologically?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.