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Libya Purchases 1.2 mil Wind-up Laptops
An anonymous reader writes "The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2m school children with a cheap, durable laptop computer by June 2008.
The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says One Laptop per Child.
The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya.
Professor Negroponte told the New York Times in an email that the project mirrored Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's political agenda of creating a more open Libya and he also expressed interest in purchasing the computers for poorer African neighbors."
BTW, were these things designed to be sand proof ?
God damn that Muammar Gaddafi, trying to make those African kids better with computers than our American kids. We need to get rid of these kinds of terrorists immediately, with their educating children and what not. What's next a Libyan bill of rights?!?!? Somebody needs to tell them that this is 2006, and the whole concept of a "Bill of Rights" is totally dated.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Look, I think personal computers have proven to be a revolutionary addition to modern life, but poor and hungry kids in third world countries don't LIVE a modern life. They would be much better served by modern medicine, education, and help in removing the dictators who rape their own countries and KEEP those poor kids poor.
Gives a new meaning to "cranking one out".
FLR
Obligatory back to the future quote:
"It's the Lybians!"
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
... about third world countries needing food and medicine more (god I can't stand those comments!), here's a very nice article I found through reddit about what happened when an Indian computer chap put a comp in a slum in the capital city.
Its 6 years old but sure makes for nice reading. Stuff like that makes the OLPC worth it IMO.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
If someone out there cared about US citizens. I am sure there are tons of kids out there that could use a $100 laptop, even some grownups. Were stuck with buying them in pairs of 3s and getting one of the 3 at some undisclosed time in the future.. anyone know if these will ever be sold retail in the USA? I'd take one of these over a PDA any day.
Also I had heard they were going to remove the wind-up power, I guess they changed their mind again? I think these seem really cool and would love to get my hands on one...
A nuclear bomb made from pinball machine parts.
We dont have one laptop per child here, not even close. Why is it that we're not on top of this stuff, yet we're happy to catapult other countries ahead by selling them the laptops?
stuff |
let's see how well this actually goes. personally, i doubt the children will actually be using the laptops. instead i am very certain the parents will either sell it or the kids will get robbed by some local militia that always seems to pop up in every african country. eitherway, the kids won't have the laptops as projected and a black market is going to spawn up.
what i don't understand is, many places in libya don't even have electricity so how will the servers that each school is supposedly going to house, be powered? don't tell me someone will stand by 24-7 foot peddling for some juice...
I never thought I'd say this, but I wish India would follow Libya and reconsider--I mean this is the first time a humanitarian effort has strongly targeted learning tools. Food & medicine are important, but I sincerely hope we can show those we help how to continue to support themselves with tools like this.
My work here is dung.
Sounds like a plan. We need to do something to help us continue to ignore North Korea!
Man. Those Libyians are going to be really pissed when they find out that their plutonium wasn't used to power the laptops.
May the Maths Be with you!
I thought the OLPC people decided that the hand crank was too much stress on the frame of the computer and went away from that model? Does this mean that they are going back to hand cranks, or that the crank is detached from the computer?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank.
Is this more shoddy BBC journalism? I thought this had been dropped from the OLPC spec a while ago?
Please do some reasearch. Libya is a huge thinly populated country with oil. It has the highest or second highest std of living in Africa. Most middle class people speak Italian (former colony). If anyone in a '3rd world' country can make use of cheap computers, it's them.
I'm not a native english speaker. I had to "Google image" for "wind-up crank" (Of course didn't try to read TFA which may or may not contain a picture of the "wind-up crank" and which may or may be not already be /.ed). Anyway, the images that comes up makes me think that somehow a "wind-up crank" is not that much of a tech device ;)
Read the summary:
My work here is dung.
...about time to waste billions of tax dollars and young lives to liberate Lybia from computer addiction... ...hell those poor children might end up playing WOW the whole day!!!
Think of the children and join the army!!!
wait, so these starving frail kids have to do physical labor to operater this thing? doesnt exercise make you more hungry? ...
....seriously though... im glad they did this. i still think that the major problem with america is the fact we still life for the now and not the long term. i mean this laptop purchase wont help the 3rd world countries, until they are smarter then the rich.
america look out... as a fool and his money are soon parted.
educate and we wont be fools.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification -> What makes this system unique?
Wireless mesh: Child-child sharing! OLPC Laptops are full-time wireless routers. Mesh networking reduces the need for dedicated infrastructure (e.g. access points and/or cabling), and extends greatly the areas in which machines may be connected to each other and/or to the internet.
OMG! P2P, RIAA sue these freeloaders now!
Yes, someone has to mention the Beowolf Cluster.....
I think the Lybian leader is still upset with how the US treated him in the 80's. He just wants all these networked together to do some nasty weapons calculations. If he had ordered a lot of standard desktop computers all at once, people would start to wonder what's up.
It has a little windmill that connects via a cable and harnesses the power of the desert winds.... when they rise, the teacher can yell "wind up", so students can get them out quickly and do a lesson while it lasts.....
okay, that was pretty lame. its not worth ruining my average postinthwhoops.asdflksubmit
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
of countries to whom you can't export cryptography? Maybe this gives a new meaning to "open" source computing
Can't type, wind the crank, and wind the crank, all at the same time. An internet ready computer that can't be used for porn? Amazing!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Lybia has 5.7 million people and if you do the math( 1.2/5.7=~0.21) that means that 21% of the population will now have a computer and that logicaly 100% of the population will have access to a machine since 1 in 5 people will have one in their hands. I wonder just how this will effect everyone there? I wonder if they will have internet access? Some of the possibilities are endless. But realisticly I think we are going to have to worry about a new generation of phishers and spammers.
In case you slept thru Social Studies, Libya:
This is not all that basically different from that scene in "Airplane!" where they're showing the natives how to burp Tupperware.
"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"America"
"America who?"
"Everybody Down On The Motherfucking Ground Or I'll Blow Your Motherfucking Heads Off Mothefucker"
The UK has had over 350 years of working at democracy. The US has had over 200. We have had time to get fairly good at it and evolve civil societies. Libya hasn't.
Pining for the fjords
What a brilliant name. It rolls off the tounge nicely.
If was of a really high spec you could call it a tip-top wind-up laptop.
Summation 2
"First of all every people should get rid of of their own dictator."
Gitmo for you
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Africa is not some dust bowl or rain forests full of poisonous monkeys.
It is a rich continent and although technology ("progress?") hasn't reached every corner that does not mean the images of doe eyed children starving to death in the middle of nowhere are emblematic of the entire continent.
Something the computer _CAN_ provide is information. What I mean is you can take all the supplies you like but unless you have a hand book or instruction manual those supplies (unless it is just food aid) are all but useless. Imagine having the biggest reference book ever openly available for you and your tutors. Want to build a damn for hydroelectricity in your village? Search for it. Want to build a wind turbine? Search for it then search for companies that can supply and ship components you can't make.
When you talk of providing modern medicine - yes, great. Now look at who rapes who. The "west" (with its extraordinarily tight grip of patents, trademarks, copyrights on most modern drugs) is implicit in the denial of medicine to these countries. Why? Because the corporations of the west will not sell drugs in those countries at the low prices required.
Libya is certainly not as ravaged as your post would indicate. It's a rich(ish) country with food, oil, medicine etc etc. Although maybe their dictator is a bit loco. Then again, he certainly seems to have grown up a lot over the last 20 years.
Other problems in Africa (Darfur, Ethiopea, Eritrea, Congo Basin etc) are cause by _WAR_. If it wasn't for the gutless inaction of the UN then maybe, just maybe those problems would have been sorted out (or at least the long road to recovery) long ago.
Sorry if it sounds like I'm ranting but.. well.. I guess I am.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Intel's offering is beefier and costs ~$100 more. Also note that Intel doesn't have a minimum order of 1,000,000 units unlike the OLPC project.
Companies are falling all over themselves in order to gain exploration contracts there.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Grandparent is partially wrong, by the way, but he wasn't talking about AIDS. Libya's oil wealth gives rise to a very stratified society -- you're either cut into the oil profits (a socialist regime rewarding supporters and screwing the rest of the country -- stop the presses!), or you're in a situation such that "poor" does not even begin to describe your life. Like many African nations it STILL has a slavery problem. Thats slavery like "I own you and can sell you at will", for folks who are used to hearing the later-day American interpretation "I employ you and don't pay you as much as you'd like to earn". I'll give you one guess as to your likelihood of getting a laptop as a slave that the government (sole laptop distributor) says doesn't exist.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The 2B1 laptop will not be sold on the open market. What I want to know is why not!
Who here would buy this for $100? I would buy one just for the gadget value, especially the green/white one with the funky wireless antenna (If that is the final design).
Why not avoid the black market by flooding the market?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2B1
You mean was on the list. The current list of state sponsors of terrorism is down to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.
If Iraq is a classic example of 'how not to do regime change' then Lybia is a classic example of 'how to do it right'.
Regime change?
So Gaddafi is no longer the boss in Lybia? No, he's still there.
But it's a democracy now, right? No, still dictator for life.
At least, he's not a terrorist, is he? Well, it's been proved that Lybia has destroyed at least 2 airliners.
If the official story about Lybia was true, it would be such an asset for the current administration that they would be talking about it every day. Yet, Gaddafi's "redemption" receives a surprisingly low media coverage.
When you read between the lines, you realize that Gaddafi got an exceptional deal. 1. He got pardoned for his terrorist acts, 2. economic sanctions were lifted, 3. the US has stopped trying to kill him. In exchange for that : 1. he gave up a non-existing WMD program, 2. he paid a token sum to his victims' families, 3. he gave up terrorist activities (which he had not been able to pursue in the latest 10 years because of the embargo). In exchange, US/UK got 1. drilling rights for Lybian oil, 2. a good PR case for their "War against Terror" (TM) brand.
The irony is that, in 2003, Iraq and Lybia were very similar. Both were led by homicidal madmen, both were under UN embargo, both had no WMD, both were rich in oil.
There were just 2 differences. Lybia was actually a terrorist state and Iraq was not willing to give access to it's oil.
Guess which one was invaded...
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Who cares? Waitrose Deliver
I'm pretty sure a catapult would break them.
Have you thought how good idea it is? They have cash (oil) but it's pointless to just give it to people. But if you give computers to kids in 10 years time you'll have a lot very skilled computer scientists. And for quite cheap wage. Think how many western companies will try to invest in country like that. And it's much closer that India.
Question is: Are those kids going to learn something or just ignore those computers? Thing is that there're not many things to play with in Libya. Of course if you don't count sand.
That creates very intresting experiment. You have a lot of kids who have nothing to do except playing with computers. Almost 24/7. And they have friends who do the same... What kind of outcome we can get?
I personally think that Qudaffi is not stupid. That's a great investment in future. And great chance - where else can you buy valuable education for $100? If I'm right, we will see many other contries to follow the suit.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Before this nonsense in Iraq is over we could alternatively have bought a laptop to every single person on the globe. Assume 5 million kids enters school per year in the US. At $100/ laptop we could give each a computer for what the what the war cost PER DAY
Help fight continental drift.
Ok, is Gaddafi a good guy or a bad guy?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
From a stand point of citizen of highly developed European country, Africa looks like, as you said it, a some dust bowl or rain forests full of poisonous monkeys. That is not meant as an offence, but just as an fact.
If you want to make some comparisons, look on Europe, the largest industrial and urban area in the world. There is huge transport infrastructure that connects cities and metropolises together with motorways, railways, air- and sea routes. Most of the population live in large cities and other urban areas. There are large industries from steel and petrochemicals to high tech manufacturing. What there isn't in Europe is wild nature, most of the land in western Europe is in farming use and in north Europe where there are more forest, they are mainly meant for the pulp and paper industries.
The thing in Europe is that geographically it is a very small place with highly packed population and infrastructure. The thing in Africa is that it's just huge continent, with not highly packed population and with almost no infrastructure. That's a fact. And that fact won't change any time soon. Even if the whole continent would get it's things together and make what China did, it would still take from 50 - 100 years before Africa would have gained the developed countries. And just to remember it, the infrastructure that has been build, the governing culture and etc.. have been in works for hundreds of years, and generations after another have build on works of previous generations. That can't be just replicated in a matter of years or decades.
I also can understand that it may seem unethical of west to hold on patents of medicine and not sell them cheaply in undeveloped countries, but there is a reason for it. If the pharmaceutical companies would sell medicines to undeveloped countries with lowered prices, it would A) cause uproar in population of developed countries that have to buy the same medication with higher prices and B) it would certainly cause illegal trafficking of cheap medicine from undeveloped countries to developed countries. Even in the B scenario is happening, in example pharmaceutical companies sell their drugs little bit cheaper to Greece which has a lower standard of living, and from there some buyers from other EU countries buy them and transport them to their countries selling them with a bit lower price. If this same would happen in a global scale, with bigger price differences, the pharmaceutical would have a very big problem and development of new medicines would come to a halt. The current situation may seem unfair, but at least new drugs are developed actively and every year patents of many drugs expire, that undeveloped countries can use freely.
I also do think that information and having access to it is important in undeveloped countries. I thought do feel that it won't solve the basic problems there is, which basically are lack of transportation and production infrastructure. You do not have any value with information if you can't use it. So yes, shipping computers to African children and government employees is good, but even better would be if in the developed countries would open our markets to African agricultural products, and many undeveloped nations would understand that having import taxes to high tech and production utilities is not a good thing, then we really could get some results. Sorry too for ranting, but I just wanted to remind of the facts.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
(sorry)
Here's how you negotiate with terror sponsors: "The Soviet Union responded to the [April 14, 1986] raid by canceling scheduled talks between Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Secretary of State George Shultz that were intended to formalize plans for a summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who promised Gaddafi that the USSR would help Libya strengthen its military defenses. But Gaddafi, described by Reagan as the "mad dog of the Middle East," was strangely subdued in the aftermath of the raid. According to Secretary Shultz, the administration's leading proponent of strong action against Libya, Gaddafi "retreated into the desert." An Arab diplomat told Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice-President George Bush, that when Gaddafi was seen "carrying the body of his dead child out of the wreckage, he lost all stature because it as shown that he couldn't protect his family." For whatever reason, Gaddafi acted with uncharacteristic restraint in the years that followed. According to a 1989 Department of State Bulletin, while terrorist activity continued on the rise in 1987 and 1988, Libyan-sponsored terrorist acts declined significantly."
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
An Internet ready computer that can't be used for wanking while typing. Which is possibly the best thing that's ever happened for IRC users everywhere.
Mod parent down -20 for speling.
It's Libya you douchebag.
In Soviet Russia, computer winds YOU up!
Exactly what SORT of connectivity are we thinking about here? It's all well and good for Libyan kids to have crankbooks, but what are they going to access? Is it really a good thing if Libyan schoolkids can do nothing more but read illustrated passages of Gadafi's Green Book?
The Libyan regime continues to be repressive and illiberal; the simple addition of a few handcrank laptops will in itself do nothing to change that. I know it's not popular to say this on /., but technology does not solve all problems. It's silly to believe that all you have to do is add technology and stir, and suddenly modern liberal democracy will happen, complete with vapid suburban kids expressing themselves freely on Myspace. Technologically advanced societies can be oppressive, too: Nazi Germany was a technologically advanced society that used all of the tools at its disposal--engineering, chemistry, information technology--for the brutal repression of its people. The USSR did the same.
I, for one, hope that Libya is opening itself up and becoming a free society. But I'm not holding my breath.
Does anyone know which variety of Linux these machines run? All I can seem to find is the term "Linux-based."
A good majority of the stuff running on it is python based....looks like we could have
some more coders joining the ranks before long.
Got Code?
Slightly OT (very heartily approve of the wind-up laptops though) but a few years ago (maybe about 7 or 8 I guess) I was on a training course at Sun with some unix sysadmins from Libya's only ISP -- if memory serves they were a major and two lieutenants.
Although there are now several commercial ISPs operating in the country I believe they're all still heavily monitored by the military. Providing ready access to the Internet for all your nation's school children is highly empowering -- potentially a very positive sign for future liberalisation of their communications.
...before you see these on eBay? I bet that many of us would pay more than $100 just to toy with it. That will create a demand for the product and will make the price go high.
If the kids don't sell them themselves, then bigger kids will take them off their hands to sell them.
I don't know exactly what USD $100 represent in Lybia but must be a lot of money for a kid, anywhere.
Sad, isn't it? Well, don't buy one of these when they hit eBay.
Where, oh where is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?!? If they were really innovative, they would have already announced the OWLPC* program by now. Of course, this would have to be followed up with the OAASRSLPC** program.
*OWLPC: One Windows License Per Child **OAASRSLPC: One Anti-virus, Adware-removal, Spybot-removal, Rootkit-removal Software License Per Child
Why do we have NGOs and independent monitoring bodies? Because we know how much we can trust governments.
Pining for the fjords
Most likely he just wants to be able to communicate with his troops when the US takes out his fixed assets
We can't even have a non-controversial election but we're gonna destroy IRaq's infrastructure and tell them how to run their government? No wonder it is such a failure.
Cue the conservatives crying that no 'good news' ever makes it out of Iraq into US Media. What good news? That the juice is only on 4 hours a day still...when Saddam kept it on 24/7? That MORE people are being murdered now than at the height of Saddam's killings? Oh boy, did you clods build a school! Hooray! That makes 25% of the schools destroyed repaired. You'll get your fucking news story when you rebuild everything you blew up.
Meh.
Blar.
Although pressured for a years, Gaddafi only gave up on December 19, 2003 after seeing pictures of Saddam Hussein pulled out of his rathole by US troops on December 13, 2003. Correlation is not always the sign of causation, of course, but you just can not brush this one off as a mere "coincidence"...
False dichotomy... Enticing carrots require credibly threatening sticks to be effective... Bush's treatment of Saddam's regime (what Clinton should have done years earlier) put that credibility back into our threats.
Liberia's Charles Taylor is another example of how useful that credibility was, until undermined by setbacks in Iraq and anti-American backlash world-wide.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you reply to flamebait, then the terrorists win!
Either way, I think "Libya Purchases ... Wind-up Laptops"
wins the "Best Headline of the Month" award.
Okay, maybe this will help some of you:
4 064134 063094 06149
The country is LIBYA, not Lybia.
The people are LIBYANS, not Lybians, Libyians, or anything else you idiots keep thinking up.
And in case you have been turning a blind eye to the horrors (HORRORS, I say) that have been going on, here is the tip of the iceberg:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=200341&cid=16
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=200341&cid=16
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=200341&cid=16
"Yank your Crank"
First he brought AIDS to hundreds of children through the bad conditions in hospitals,
a /
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_scandal_in_Liby
now he's buying laptops to those children..
Great work!
Considering that the President of the United States would not spend a single U.S. dollar for American children, I would say this is a very nice thing. Of course whats a U.S. president to do when he needs gun, bombs and dumb people that will fight his wars for him? Educated people are not going to go over there to die for him.
Don't criticize this! It would be like criticising THE Church! And that could get you lightning bolts up your arse!
n te_to_critic.html/ technology/tec314092006.html
What ignoramus marked this as Troll?
You are obviously not aware that Nicholas Negroponte himself, of OLPC, claimed that, "I don't respond to such criticism. Because criticising this project is like criticising the church, or the Red Cross.".
http://www.olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/negropo
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features
If you are ignorant, don't moderate.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
The irony of it all is that the US claims that it is invading countries to spread "freedom" and "democracy", for the betterment of the local population.
...etc.
...
The case of Libya proves that this is just hypocrisy, since the population of Libya has not been more free nor more democratic when Gaddafi gave up and relented his hardline. There are still no elections, and the Green Book quasi-ideology is still in effect, not liberal democracy.
Gaddafi's son is presented as a young and progressive voice and slated to take over from dad. Very little has changes since Gaddafi Sr came to power 1969 as a young army lieutenant.
Western companies rushed in to establish offices for oil drilling, supplying goods,
The only benefit is that the chaos of Iraq with the bombing and sectarian strife is not happening. But this is like a person who has a failing hart being thankful he does not have cancer
The message here is: mercantilism and corporatism drives this, and US/UK say it is driven by morals, yet in actuality, the average Libyan people be damned.
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