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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 countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each placed the 1 million unit orders."
Dear Mike,
Thank you once again for finalizing the order. You will know that this transaction is 100% Guaranteed.
We will send our certified funds after the customs are paid by you. Please send the customs fee of $37,000,000 ($37*1 Million Units) via wire transfer to:
Barrister MUGO Gy PAN Oguami
419 Scam DEC
Lagos, Nigeria
>>Hi Mugo,
>>We have approved your order and are ready to ship. You mentioned a custom's fee that we are very ready to pay. Please let me know how much per unit we will need to send.
>>Thanks again for the business!!!
>>Mike Undundrum
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
...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.
What's next? Outsource to malnourished kids. All they get is a little cookie (or several, depending on their privacy settings.) You can pay them even less than the Indian & Chinese programmers since these kids don't need money for food. They can just eat the cookies without getting any cache.
Bill Gates has just announced a whirlwind 4 nation third-world tour. Currently in Africa, supposedly on a safari . . . . .
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I have a lot of respect for this project and I'm glad to see it's working out seemingly well.
Random Thought:
Wonder if any of the large PC vendors are paying attention, When was the last time Dell or HP sold 1 million+ Windows boxes in one shot?
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
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...
Each of those countries has more than 1 million children. In order to fit their "one laptop per child" criteria, there will be a lottery. The winners get the laptops. The losers get to choose a method of execution.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
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.
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.
Now this would be a nice toy for my own daughters (says father, who wouldn't mind taking this thing apart). Too bad they don't take orders below one million pieces.
Considering the low specs of this thing how about releasing the distribution and libraries that will run on this? It should be trivial to build a VM that allows you to play with developing software to run in this kind of environment.
To ensure that this project doesn't flop right from the start -- I presume that they would like people to develop some software for it.... (visions of US$ 100 doorstops all over Asia)
Last time cheap laptops went on sale/given away there were so many rioting and fighting people that several were hospitalized. I wonder how a 3rd world country would deal with giving away these laptops, and how long they'll stay in the hands they are given to.
They come standard with wireless mesh and connection sharing, IIRC. The idea being that the school can get at least one of them connected, then they all are. Things they all need still only need to be downloaded once, then shared peer to peer over the much faster wireless connection, so it should be quite useful.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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
The laptops are part of Nigeria's "leave no scammer behind" initiative.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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
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
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.
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.
Now how long before someone starts a "be the first to install Mac OS x86 on this machine" competition?
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.
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.
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.
What are you talking about? They will probably be forced to use OO.o and the Gimp.
Joke! Joke! I'm totally kidding!
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.
I don't have a handy link from the CIA Factbook, but (using the time honored tradition of pulling a number out of my ass), I'd say that the literacy rate here on slashdot was around 47%.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
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.
- 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.
I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say, but if it involves cutting off David Spade's balls and sending him to a third-world hellhole, I'm all for it.
Like others said, these countries aren't third world and starved, but quite prosperous. The project is not aimed at helping only starving impoverished countries, but also helping countries that need to take the next technological step.
They have food and water (ever been to thailand? Food's the last thing they need help with), but they don't have access to technology.
A day's eating in Thailand can cost around $1. A good salary is anything over $200/month. Not much to you and me, but it's plenty for all of life's (biological) essentials there, including health care.
But $200/month limits people's access to technology. Sure, you can get broadband access and they seem to have more mobile phone shops than the rest of the world combined, Bangkok even has one of the world's largest computer shoping centres...but outside the cities, technology and salaries are more limited.
Therefore the OLPC project will help bridge this gap.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
I am glad that this opens up opportunities for many children to learn about computers and grow up using them. All my life, I've had a computer around, and since everything is run by computers these days, it will do a couple things for those nations. Education of such a powerful tool will help them to get better jobs, and hopefully it will increase the market power for the countries.
I for one welcome these laptop weilding children of the world!
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?
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.
... 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!
* how easy is it for geeks meet women? Were trying to spread geekdom, right?
* how much longer will it take these people to meet the opposite sex if they are laptop obsessed ?
* now we just need some really involved mesh network games.
* if they get educated, they will want to stay in school longer, and again delay reproductive activity.
ITs win, win, win...
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)
Reduce, reuse, cycle
for some reason I don't expect "every child shot into space" would be very popular. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
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.
This is a pretty interesting idea, I think.
If you're going to turn out a few million identical machines to people who don't have a whole lot of backwards-compatibility requirements, you can suddenly do a lot of things that mainstream PC manufacturers can't. I'd really like to see them blank-slate design the architecture, within the requirements of cost (i.e. using off-the-shelf parts).
I guess the only problem is that you don't want to stray too far from 'conventional' PCs, because you want the experience that kids get working on these machines to be easily translatable to what the rest of the world uses; however, maybe using a slightly different architecture will teach a valuable lesson about the benefits of writing agnostic code for standard toolsets.
I'll be perfectly honest here: I'm rather cynical about the OLPC project ever actually accomplishing its goals. But despite that, I think it's a noble effort and I wish them well, if just because it's a hell of a technical question, and the engineer in me thinks that any project that really puts a lot of minds to work on a problem like that is pretty neat. Even if the majority of the laptops end up getting sold to us First Worlders on eBay, the fact that they will have designed such a machine and produced it -- provided they can do it, naturally -- will keep me from calling it a total failure. Regardless of the outcome, OLPC is going to be a case study for anyone thinking big in technology.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Dunno, perhaps they'll use them for the million things that were done before the internet was widespread?
My government spends 100 million dollars in notebooks and there isn't even a mention in the newspaper? WTF?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
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.
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
Why buy $100 laptops when you can buy UMPCs? They do twice as much at six times the cost!!!
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Assuming this is the same project mentioned in last month's Wired magazine, the laptops can be recharged using (among other things) physical labor (i.e. pulling a string, similar to how you start a lawnmower).
Really, sending something more practical like the parts to build a power plant, or tractors to grow food...might just be a better idea than a laptop
Seems like the World Bank has been trying things like that since the 1960's, and in many cases they didn't improve the situation much for anyone other than the government in power and their cronies. So why not try something new? Perhaps the problem has been that the things that would seem practical to a naive westerner aren't so practical after all.
We'll see what happens -- either these laptops will make a difference, or they won't. But don't be so quick to cast judgement on a program you don't know very much about. It's not like MIT is just jumping into this on a whim... they've given it several years of thought, and consulted with many people familiar with the areas they are trying to help.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
"Didn't realize the pentagon had anything to do with Qana." Where do u think those GBU's come from? Also, what do u think they mean by opposing cease fire and instead advocating for sustainable peace, while the whole infrastructure (including power plants, roads, hospitals, damns etc) of 3 million ppl nation is turned into ashes and while 800 civilians die under rubbles. You my friend need to seek for a news source other than Faux news, fair and balanced (TM)