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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."
My guess is that for 99% of the children in these countries, the laptops will be totally useless, because what those kids really need is food, a clean source of water, and (especially for the girls) a chance to go to school and become literate. On the other hand, it's possible that 1% of them will really be helped, and among that 1% might be some of the future Bachs and Einsteins of the world.
It will also be interesting to see if free textbooks ever really get going in languages other than English. If they do, then it could really start being cost-effective to distribute them to kids on a computer rather than by dead trees. Personally, the first thing I do with a free book, if I really want to read it from cover to cover, is print it out on paper, because reading it from the screen is too annoying. But for kids in third-world countries, printing might not be an option, and screen reading might really be a sensible idea. In some countries, e.g. India, English may be the language of higher education, but for young kids, I think most of them really need materials in their own language.
Find free books.
I think they will be very happy with their new ANUS laptops. http://www.anuslaptops.com/
...return to sender, no longer needed.
WTF is wrong with you?
What good is ANY computer without a network connection? Besides word processing, spreadsheets, reading e-books, making music or writing non-networked software... really, everyone knows computers only became useful when the ethernet card was invented. Prior to that, they were merely status symbols.
Fucking dumbass.
the person who modded this redundant was being either idiotic or ironic
I don't really know which
i am not nigerian but that statement was still neither funny nor kind.
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
How's it Apple's fault that the head of the Roman Catholic Church is a nazi cunt who won't allow people, if they are going to have sex outside of marriage, to at least have safe sex?
Jesus would have used a Durex!
These laptops don't exist. They're theoretical, "feel-good" laptops. No company has agreed to make them yet at any price. There's no actual design or working prototype. This really is nothing but a pathetic publicity stunt until somebody actually makes one of these goddamned things.
Somehow, I really doubt that Dell or Apple are shaking in their boots over a hypothetical laptop.
I find your comments about the South very interesting and correct. On one hand, my highschool in the South was one of the first (if not THE first) in the US to get computers, back in 1978 (after I got out, of course). That was because the president of Apple's father was one of the school's founders and its accountant (Oak Hall, Gainesville Florida). On the other hand, most of the schools in Florida at the time were very poor (we ranked 48th at the time). Much of that was because of the previous 100 years of suppression following losing the War for Southern Independence.
Nice. I can't say I disagree with what you said really. It's a nice overall summary of why humans suck in general.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
fuck your "God"