Slashdot Mirror
$100 PC Pledges Fail To Meet Minimum
bobthemuse writes, "Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop PC was demonstrated back in May, and a PledgeBank was set up: the goal was to get 100,000 people to purchase an OLPC for $300, allowing the project to send two of the devices to the proposed users. Today the pledge ended and only 3,678 people had signed up." It looks like a mention in Slashback a few weeks ago gave a boost to the effort, but not a big enough one.
I saw this when it was announced and tbh was put off by this:
"I will purchase the $100 laptop at $300 but only if 100,000 other will too."
I would gladly sign up for a $100 laptop if it cost $100.
I realise everything about starting up and getting the ball rolling but I cannot waste an additional $200.
Its that simple.
liqbase
Given that there were only a couple of hundred more subscribers after the article and the whole thing fell disasterously short of its target quota.
While the project has its merits I wonder if the lack of interest shown by the public at large and quite importantly by the slashdot audience is an indicator of a project doomed to failure by apathy.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I wonder if there is a special reason that requires 100,000 participants (that is, 200,000 OLPC, 300,000 altogether).
Does that mean they can't produce and sell these laptop if there were only 5,000 orders?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I'd say that this is fairly conclusive proof of a doomed project. Buy a $100 for $300, who on earth would sign up for that ?
You'd say PledgeBank would run into a problem in handling all the applications by all them righteous slashdotters. You know, the geeks that get bullied, kicked and bashed because they read books, are proficient with computers, value educated discussion and surely would want to give poorer people a shot at being educated.
... But they didn't ...
There must a whole bunch of cheapskates here on slashdot.
FYI, I pledged for three. Then, for a short time, I contemplated to let them keep the third PC as well. But that is betrayal because you shouldn't dump second grade stuff onto the 3rd world. I decided to actually use the third one seriously and to contribute at least with bug reports.
Hell, I even convinced my not-so-techie brother to pledge and he did. And also consider that we're not from the USA. We're from a part of the world where USD 300 is a higher percentage of our nett income.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Why doesn't google buy a $200 $100 laptop?
They win by loosing. Also, please note that google had tons of money before the ads. And not that many people ad to google. The ads is a cover-up. Google already had money, which presents as profits to present a shiny bubble.
no laptops for the muds!!
It can't be immediately. It requires some time for people to understand the project, discuss it one with another and then make a decision.
Hide your files and folders from others!
Please, my Lord, I beg you...... really.... take MY money, and spend it on THIS....
Rather, an unrealistic expectation. It's difficult to sell 100,000 of anything, let alone through a grassroots campaign like this.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I feel like I was really out of the loop on this. I don't always have my finger and thumb on the pulse of technological issues, but I make an earnest attempt to. I knew about the $100 laptops from a long time ago, but this is the first I've heard of the $300 charity versions. But you know, I'm not some kind of Everyman here, just one man. Maybe my neighbors knew all about this and each bought two (although after looking at the final pledge numbers, that seems unlikely). So whatever kind of advertising they had for this failed me. Whether or not it failed another 300,000 other people is for you to decide.
Make them and sell the things in stores. People will buy one for $200 quite readily. Of course you have to sell more at that price than if they got $300 for them each, but at least their charity would be getting somewhere alot quicker than waiting for pledges.
...and look out for the stampede.
In other words, the "One $100 dollar laptop per nerd" prgoram is a failure, because the laptop actually costs $300. Because of this failure, the kids in Africa will now be forced to learn with books, paper, and pencils.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/01/ 0321223
Pledging really isn't something that most people like doing. Outside of the wider public this project has been remarkably quiet. I don't even remember seeing the Pledgebank.
Sign up to buy a computer and then a few months later find out later whether you'll be able to buy one. It's really inconvenient. Such a project requires wider grassroots adoption and the support of a lot of people. The amount of money pledged was huge.
100,000 computers at $300 a pop is $30m. Making the effort part of telethon's and charity drives might have been much more effective than just having a website where you can't even buy one.
It's a cheap simple computer. It might have found a good audience in non geeks interested in trading up from old Windows 98 boxes. It's the one laptop per child project. For selling it in the 1st world it was marketed wrong. It might have done very well if sold as something to get your kid for Christmas instead of an Xbox 360 or an iPod where most of the money goes to charity. Meanwhile the iPod nano Red will sell in huge numbers with a lower (but very decent) amount going to charity.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
While the project has its merits I wonder if the lack of interest shown by the public at large and quite importantly by the slashdot audience is an indicator of a project doomed to failure by apathy
Or, could it just be that a large percentage of people who DO know about the project feel that $200 could be spent in far better ways than supplying some third world kids with a stupid laptop. I won't begin to pretend that I know exactly what would be a better use for the money, but I think I know enough to know that a laptop probably isn't in the top 5.
I don't like where you're coming from at all. Hey, congratulations, you are morally superior to us in every way. And don't forget, it is only when you lord news of your own charity over us that we can be shamed by it.
How many places was this publicised? I doubt it even got advertised where it could reach the 10000 caritable people. Hey they could have always gone and asked the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
I think one reason why there's not much enthusiasm about this program is a difference of philosophies in how to educate the world's children. Generally speaking, people would rather spend $100 to buy books for a bunch of underprivileged children rather than spend it to buy one computer for one child. The applications of computers in grade school education in the US are kind of fuzzy, which makes it difficult to see how useful they would be in a less industrialized society.
Besides all that, there are numerous other costs associated with making these laptops useful. For example, there's maintenance, theft replacement, training for teachers, and development of a standard computer-based curriculum. Many of these costs are recurring, which means that in the long run, these kids could be worse off from having so much money being tossed onto the bonfire trying to maintain a computer-based education program.
Ummm... didn't Libya sign up for 1.2 million of them?
At $300 a pop in a first world country where computers are nearly ubiquitous, their failure to sell isn't really anything of note. It's a failed gadget launch (and a highly underpublicised one, this is the first I've heard of the $300 offer, not that I've got 3 C-notes kicking around)
This doesn't say anything about whether or not the $100 laptops are a good way of spending money to benefit the third world. Just look at how successful cellphones have been at connecting communities in Africa. That's been a grass-roots and locally run campaign, but it has the advantage that cell-phones are already priced at an approachable point. I think this project has a lot of merit. Infrastructure can do a lot to turn communities that are only sinks for aid into self-supporting ones.
Surely there are some folks out there with some deep pockets. Is there anywhere I can toss $20 gratis?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
... a tax deduction for the $200 difference would have been a help, at least in the U.S.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Why could it not just be doomed to failure because it was a really silly and poorly-conceived plan by an ivory-tower egghead obsessed with "being digital" to the exclusion of all else including common sense? No one has convinced me of the value of a PC in the education of American and European grade school children, let alone in the third world. Buy them books, pencils, and notepads, and be sure they are fed and loved. Small out-of-pocket cost, huge and time-honored return on investment.
This is NOT a failiure of the project itself. It's a failet net-pledge only. The goal of which was pretty unrealistic anyway. I still signed up though... :) ... one can always hope I thought. Anyway:
This is NOT a failiure of the "One Laptop Per Child" project.
Cheers...
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
At least to your average /.'er.
/. orders at $300 a pop come flooding in!
- First, you announce that the laptop will run with a closed source proprietary OS. The exact one isn't important, though something from Microsoft would be a big help.
- Second, you also announce that it will run a small limited subset of apps.
- Third, you produce the laptops and let them loose in the wild.
- Fourth, it's "discovered" that the laptop can be hacked to run Linux.
- Fifth, sit back and watch those
Sell it to slashdot users for $120 (mfg makes a small profit). That way some of the buyers will end up using it to develop OSS educational SW for it. They should also color code the units; say green for students, blue for teachers, and red for developers (the $120 units). That way if you see a green unit for sale on E-bay - you (and E-bay) knows it's stolen property.
[Insert pithy quote here]
It seems to me that even if the pledges reached 100,000 that the OLPC may have rejected the offer anyways. They have been trying to collect orders in the range of millions, which drives down the cost of manufacturing and overhead. The other problem with this was that these devices seem to be specifically targeted at youths in developing nations, and IIRC they don't want them on the open market to avoid theft and misuse. The designs they have come up with stand out clearly as what it is, and only childeren in developing nations are supposed to have one.
I did sign up for the pledge myself, because I thought it'd be a cool thing to play with and to support the project. But I never thought that they'd reach 100,000 pledges, it seemed like a very high number.
Why buy a crippled laptop when you can, for not much more, get one with a lot more power and compatiblity? The $300 price point was way too high. Even if you want a Linux laptop, it's a lot of money to pony up for a system with so little power and technical specs. Could I even run some of the standard Linux programs like MySql and Apache on it w/o choking? Don't get me wrong. It's an amazing machine, but it was designed for a world where power, money, and network infrastructure are rare and valuble commodities. That doesn't really apply on the Northeast coast of the U.S.
I might like the $100 laptop project, and I may even want one myself, but I don't know if I support it so much to put down a few C notes just to show my solidarity.
Maybe to show my support, I'll get one of those magnetic bumpersticker ribbons instead.
I was waiting to be told when I could buy one. If this was a big campaign, they sure fell short in getting the broader word out. I didn't even realize you could order them yet.
I also didn't realize that, and don't understand why, it's a "limited time" thing. Why not just leave it open? I would have bought one. I'd do it right now if it was still available.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
I emailed them when the OLPC first went public, suggesting a buy-two-get-one thing. I was ready to pledge, but I never heard about it. Nowhere, nowhen, nohow.
If people don't know, they can't pledge.
HAL
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
This "pledge bank" was officially rejected by the OLPC folks. Negroponte's group said they would not be selling them to you no matter HOW MANY people pledged. Why does slashdot keep reporting this? It was never going to happen.
I'm part of the team that runs PledgeBank. You might be interested in this experimental Pledge I just put up for people who still want to be involved with OLPC, but on a more realistic and local level. http://www.pledgebank.com/olpchackers The Pledge is unique because it uses a new feature that isn't in general circulation on PledgeBank yet, cascading Pledges. These are global pledges which you sign up to locally, making a mini version of each pledge with a group of other people who live near you. Take a look, even if you don't sign up, and please give us feedback. This is very much an alpha feature, although the pledge is real.
Many people will claim to care about the suffering of children in the Third World, but as soon as it hits their pockets, they'll go back to discussing Jennifer Aniston.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
So what if it only costs $100, I the ignorant consumer does not need to know this. Do you really think and i-Pod costs anything like the selling price?
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
To all of you morons saying "Why would I purchase a $100 laptop for $300?"; It's charity! Try reading a little (I know reading can be difficult for some of you) and you might actually glean some information.
For those of you that are lazy, the extra $200 was supposed to purchase two additional laptops for third world children.
On a different note, what do these people think starving African children are going to do with a laptop? I think Africa has bigger fish to fry...
Let me be the first to say: if you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
This pledgebank was set up by someone who's not even affiliated with the OLPC project. The OLPC project never aimed to sell laptops to internet users for $300. It aims to sell laptops to developing countries in large batches for $100 each.
The OLPC has a handful of really great ideas. However, it was clear from the very beginning that it was designed specific enough that nobody else should want one.
The half-sized keyboard and bright (orange) color will keep adults from using it, even if they really need the rest of the features of the OLPC.
The small flash drive/lack of a hard drive, and limited ports, will make it of limited usefulness to kids in developed countries as well.
It has a lot of features that would be great on, otherwise normal, notebooks. But in it's current form, there are very few people who can afford it that would also want it. The price of $300 makes it impractical as well, since used notebooks can be found cheaper, and new notebooks aren't much more.
Scale it up to make a 1st world version, and you'll really have something... The OLPC guys could design it, and sell it to HP/Dell/Sony/Toshiba/etc. Using the money they earn from the manufacturer to fund the OLPC project.
Instead of largely useless $300 notebooks, just start taking $100 donations, don't limit it to people who want to buy one.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I would pledge to buy half a dozen, except the lack of hardware documentation means I can't replace the OS with one of my choosing.
Heck, I can't even maintain the installed OS myself.
Why? Because OLPC signed an NDA with the wireless manufacturer.
Almost nobody gives a crap about the developing world.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
So you "show" support. Like a pat on the back, you're willing to do that cause it doesn't take effort or resources from you (!support) but actual support is "just a bit too much". Who are you trying to appear supportive for? Your bumpersticker wont give these kids a laptop.
It's just so wrong on many levels; "I stick a sticker on somewhere to show how much I support something", when you en effect don't support anything then perhaps buying a 1$ sticker.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
11th comment on the site:
I see a small bug in this pledge. Where is the distribution mechanism? If we had some way to say, put our $300 in an escrow account and were able to pay for a super efficient distribution center (and where to put it is another issue) then perhaps interest on the sitting cash could pay to get these things distributed, but we still have no "market based" distro system. The developing nation machines will still end up getting "lost" and end up on e-bay.
If the concept here is to show some distibutor that market demand exists, I still don't see the money, can they track any of us down to collect on this spur of the moment pledge?
I would happily put $300 in escrow if anybody can set that up, walking up to a distibutor and saying " I have $30,000,000 US that i can only spend on product X" would probably be a lot more likely to turn some heads then " we did this internet poll thing..."
Why don't they just sell it commercially as a generic device with a healthy profit margin and a one month warranty?
I can see numerous applications for these kind of low cost devices, you could use it as a navigational device, router/firewall, reading books etc.
If they'd just make it look decent without the weird colours, drop the power handle and sell optional car power adapters etc..
The good part for them is that the profit can be used to deliver them to the 3rd world countries. Also, a lot of additional software would be developed for the device.
If it's any good I would buy it for 200 Euro's just for experimenting with it and doing fun stuff.
I think they are aiming much to high at this point.. Also by marketing it purely as a 3rd world equiptment, generates the feeling that it doesn't live up to the 1st world standards.
We in rich countries don't give laptops to every one of our kids, yet we seem to think we can tell poor countries that this is what they need. I think of a dozen things that would benefit the poor way before we start thinking about fucking PCs.
I wish I had modpoints; that made me ROFL.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Currently the price is $130t s-130-due-in-april-2007-177916.php
Pledging for three makes it $390.
This is actually old news so when I saw the pledge site I simply did not take it seriously.
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/100-pc-now-cos
A tadpole is a pollywog
America averages 30B in private donations per year for foreign concerns. That was in 2002, by 2004 the numbers may have doubled.
The key issue he is, how many people actually know about this program and how many of those are already comitted elsewhere?
Me, I don't care for the project. I already donate to specific local charities as I can see the effects of my donations. I don't have to worry about bleed off by the local governments (overseas ones where this money and possibly the laptops would go)
The land of the free is also the land of the giving freely. While it may be PC to portray America otherwise no one can stand in the way of the facts.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
News at eleven.
Man, if capitalist charity did any good to undo the harm done by capitalist exploitation, there would be no homelessness, no hunger, no war, and no preventable diseases (among other things).
The only solution is socialist revolution.
I would have tried to get a few for the school where I work. We wouldn't mind paying the extra 200$. The problem is I never heard about this pledge thing, and as much as I tried to find out how to get my hands on these laptops, all I could find everywhere on their website (and they made it CLEAR) is that the laptops will NOT be sold to individuals or directly to individual schools, but rather sold only to governments, who will then redistribute them to schools. I think they also got this part all wrong. They would have much more success if they open up a little. A lot of schools would be ready to pay the money for it, but If they only rely on governments, It's not gonna happen. Governments don't even know or give a sh*t about it!!
In case you havent been out in the boonies, if you take the chicken bus from any big city in 95% of the countries of the world, out an hour or so, you get to villages where there are no schools, no paper, no pencils, no books, no nuttin!
Those people need:
They do not need: money wasted on what random first-worlders thing third worlders need.
there are many schools with a purely computer based curriculum in the US, and they are very successful. the problem with widespread adoption is the same as the 3rd world: hardware cost and teacher training. only the more well funded school systems can afford to implement such a curriculum, you are basically looking at $600 to $1000 per child (including servers, spares, networking equipment, projectors and smart boards) depending on the classes and software needed. a book based curriculum cost more like $300-$500 per child in materials, and some school districts even have the parents fork over up to $100 in book and lab fees, per year.
from the first time I heard of the OLPC project I thought it was ridiculous, they need to put them in 1st world schools first and develop a working curriculum and efficient teacher training programs that really do end up at that golden $100 mark.
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The point of pledging is that *any* amount should be accepted, not a multiple of the base price. The near-4000 benefactors of the triple-pledge is what most non-profits would consider exceptional pledges. Why wouldn't they accept, or at least make it easy to accept, $100 plus whatever else you want to give towards helping someone?
Even Verizon doesn't ask me to pay triple my bill to help some crack whore with the Lifeline bill.
-BA
- Sixth, ???
- Seventh. Profit!
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
This project was designed to make somebody rich - supplying laptops to underprivileged children is just the excuse to make you all feel "good" about making someone rich. Think about it: What good is a laptop going to do a child if they 1) don't have access to software, 2) don't have access to electricity to charge it (Crank was removed from final model), 3) don't have access to tech support (Unless they are underprivileged children in India - then they just take it home to Mom and Dad), 4) don't have anything worth accessing with the equipment (The cost of internet access in most 3rd world countries is prohibitive and is a luxury afforded only by the wealthy). So, what's the point? A laptop does not make someone more intelligent, nor does it provide them with opportunities where none existed before. Heck, if this project succeeded, I'd start the "A bike for every fish" foundation - see if I could make a little scratch for me.
People seem to like answering the slashdot poll. Make it a yes/no/cowboyNeal pledge signup erh poll.
If i couldnt afford a $100 laptop, then im probably more concerned about surviving than surfing the internet. I fail to see how a laptop would get you out of poverty, more so when you would have to walk many miles just to be able to log on the internet to really make it of any true value. It would almost be better to send them the $5 dollar manual on how to use it, at least this way they would also learn how to read.... I am a college student, I had to take out a loan just to buy my now outdated laptop. As college students go, we typicaly live in poverty surviving off of Ramen noodles and Cheesey Mac. Wheres our free shit!? Opportunities are not earned, they are taken; free $100 dollar laptops are not a good means to opportunities. Give them food, give them education with as close to a one-to-one basis as possible. Don't give them a laptop that wont be used for its intended purpose. Since necessity is the mother of all invention..... I'll leave the rest for you to decide
yeah 1.1 million of future orders is a total failure
Nor do I believe that dumping things that we wouldn't use on the 3rd world is going to make the [technology] gap disappear -- au contraire. I'd rather see them receive one $1000 laptop than ten $100 ones that aren't similar to what the rest of the world use. "Better than what they have" isn't a valid argument, as it serves to keep the gap.
Developing countries cannot maintain a "fleet" of up-to-date computers, as every PC is rendered obsolete by "progress" within 3 years. "what the rest of the world uses" is a con -- p*ss-poor programming and planned obsolescence mean we spend ridiculous amounts of money to continue to be able to do the same thing year-on-year.
I work in an IT support department -- my PC is used for email, word-processing and browsing, and as a Citrix client for connecting to our SMS servers. All this could be done adequately on a Win95-era Pentium. However, my current 2.8 GHz, 248MB WinXP PC continues to grind along far too slowly.
One of the key benefits of the OLPC project is that unlike the schemes that redeploy old corporate kit, it defines a closed platform. It can run word processors; it can do email; it can run a Xterm/Citrix/TS/etc client, and it will never become obsolete as it has an established user base. It would become a reference minimum-spec platform for a great deal of Linux development.
Knock-on effects? Maybe the developed world would break out of the continual upgrade cycle. With a fixed minimum-spec machine for office tasks, maybe network computing would finally take off, with every office deploying application servers for the (rare) processor intensive apps. Perhaps we'd see more efficient, non-bloat software. Perhaps the developed countries would say "That's neat -- I bet I could fit that in a palmtop" and finally bridge the gap between desktop and handheld computing.
HAL
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I would be more inclined to give 500 dollars to HP or Dell to eat the rebate costs to send underprivileged kids a laptop that actually has function.
The tax writeoff aspect needs to be emphasized. While we can all get a warm fuzzy in the midriff about the kids, it's that pleasure jolt in the wallet from getting mugged by the taxman that affects behavior.
This was my big question. How do you write the $300 off as a "donation" when you're getting a laptop out of it? It seems like you wouldn't be able to do it. I'm not sure how the IRS would feel about a quasi-sale like that. I suspect that, just like buying a Newman's Own can of salsa (or other product where "all profits go to charity") you wouldn't be able to take the purchase price as a tax deduction. As far as the IRS is concerned, you're just buying an overpriced laptop, and the company you're buying it from is making a donation.
If you're getting something back, it doesn't seem like it would be a donation. Maybe some good tax lawyers could figure out a way to do it, but the way it was being done didn't leave much room, at least that I could see, for how I'd be able to write it off.
The ability to take it as a tax deduction is basically like getting another 20-40% off, depending on how you do your taxes and what kind of bracket you're in, and could be a big incentive to certain people (those with disposable income).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It looks like a mention in Slashback a few weeks ago gave a boost to the effort, but not a big enough one.
It's disgusting and misleading to see how much slashdot editors pat themselves on the back. I highly doubt the slashdot articles on this played into many people's plans to support this.
This place sucks.
Maine is trying to.
Much of the criticism against the project has been of the "let them catch up, then give them technology" variety. I think Negroponte's whole point is third world countries will never catch up if they don't have technology. I think he's onto something.
This system specs seem more like an updated version of the old HP Jornada 820 I've used for the last 6 years. A tough little Laptop with no Spinning Harddrive, I've added a CF WI-FI and a 4 GB PCcard Flash drive card. Only thing I had to replace was the battery a couple years back.
HP Jornada 820 Specs
OLPC Ver 1
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Please send $1800.00 each for order.
No, private schools suck too.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I can read,and I read that, so I never signed. That was my reason, that and my secondary reason I couldn't (didn't want to) afford to donate two for one, but one for one I would have. I like the whole idea of it, and the tech angle with the instant mesh, very low power, etc, just when they keep saying they will never sell them-I believe them.
anyway, I am building my own slowly as prices drop for components. I got a mini itx board, now waiting for lcd screens to keep dropping in price and for flash drives to drop some more, then I'll assemble it in a small case with dual batteries (from home depot, cheap drill batteries) and a 12 VDC input power supply. I want a diskless low power but good enough system to use when the power goes out, which happens frequently here.
I admire his altruism, but I think he is full of crap.
No one needs to catch up. That is silly. What people need is to figure out how to build a basic functioning society that is self-sustaining.
Now, I will not get into the issues as to why some cultures can't provide for themselves (too controversial for me to get into). However, I believe that the best effort would be to get these people on their own foot. Humans have done this for hundreds of thousands of years without laptops and industrial facilities.
It is some sort of perverted and twisted ideal in my mind, to assume that we need to continue to perpetuate and spread a globalist culture of technology worship to people to "save" them.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
And it's not really a normal laptop. It could be used in situations where a normal laptop would be useless (i.e. no power).
The fact is that you could get one for just a little more than it's worth and at the same time help out two third world children.
...can it play WoW?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Bad, bad idea. My Cambodian friend put it well, "They would have to improve the infrastructure and change the society to make this project feasible. Third-world nation aren't ready to receive something like this. It's arrogant western thought that they have the end-all solution for everything."
Sort of reminds me of England's attempts to "civilize" India a while back. The west does not know what it is doing and will probably end up wasting a lot of everyone's time, money, resources, and environment.
The One Laptop Per Child project announces that it will be trying to produce a laptop with certain specs for the price of 100 US dollars to be sold in large orders to certain nations, mostly those who are in that limbo state between wide starvation and other shames of the human race and prosperity.
Learning off this, noting the interest by westerners for this cute simple but highly effective laptop design (it is to me so much better then the crap we can actually buy) someone decided that a charity drive might be an intresting way to both help the project and get westerners who can afford laptop this device.
The main project has no interest in selling these devices commercially, they want to deal in bulk orders and with goverments.
But what if they could get a small bulk order of 100.000 units but at 3 times the cost of production.
This is nothing original. Plenty of charity sells you something for a far greater price then its worth. It gives the buyer/charity giver something to hold and gives the charity the money left over. It works and has worked for ages.
But do most slashdot readers in this age get it?
no they mention how this dooms the entire project. Wich it does not since there have already been orders from the nations intended as customer.
They mention that 300 dollars US is just to expensive. Eh no, this is charity. A local charity gives you a little sticker to wear/display when you give a donation to a collector. Last time I gave about 10 euro's. Would you say that is one damn expensive sticker (less then a centimeter diagonal and of cheap paper)
And every time this project is mentioned on slashdot you get the same idiots who complain that a laptop means nothing to a starving child, despite the fact that every time it is mentioned that this project ain't aimed at these regions.
or even more stupid stuff like complaining that it won't be any good with access to the internet despite the fact that one of the innovative features is that these laptops would make their own network grid.
I wish for a new moderation option or "friends" option. Label posts/users "Idiot".
No army for Nell then
And yet here you are wasting your time ranting on
Seriously, get over it. People give what they are able to give. The people who started this project don't know how to get potable water to the middle of a desert or properly distribute condoms and sex education to AIDs-ravaged Africa. Nope. They know how to make computers. That's how they can help.
So quit bitching about other people not offering the right kind of help to the poor. You are not the arbiter of what sort of help is best to offer. Spend your time examining your own charitable works. Make improvements there and, for God's sake, stop criticising others who are actually doing some good in the fucking world. You aren't helping things.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Walmart will soon be selling a real Compaq 2GHz laptop for $349. Why would somebody pay $300 for this other untested thingy?
My pledge...If 6.5 billion people (world population) all agree to live in a single Utopian society, I will too.
We, in rich countries, can afford to buy books. We, in rich countries, can afford teachers. We, in rich countries, have families which can afford computers. We, in rich countries, can go to the local library and access computers and the internet trivially easily. We in rich countries have school computer labs that we have access to. etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You have to wonder about how many other pledges they dropped. Perhaps not 95,000. But honestly, if they can't handle just simple web/email transactions there's a very high probability they wouldn't be able to handle shipping 100,000 OLPC systems.
This effort needs to examine where they failed and try to improve things if they want to succeed. I do hope they try. And I'd pay $500 for each of these, just to be able to play with them.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
What about selling these on http://w00t.com/ or something similar? or ebay? Aside from at this "movement's" inception, I barely saw anything about this, and I completely forgot about it. I'd be really sorry to see this project fail on a larger scale; I think it's a great idea.
(( (CRAYON) )) >
I want to buy one of these just so that I can have a disposable laptop for tabletop roleplaying. My gaming club meets in a space with folding tables that sometimes collapse, and I'd hate for a real lappy to fall and break, but this thing is rugged enough to take a fall, and cheap enough to be disposable if it breaks. And all it has to do is display PDFs.
So, what I want is to just BUY ONE, say off of Amazon or TigerDirect.
I didn't bother with this petition because I'm not interested in a potential laptop, I want to know that an actual laptop will soon be in my hands.
Does anyone know if there is a place where you can do this, or if such a thing is planned?
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
But I don't see what impact signing some silly poll / pledge site will do to change anybody's willingness to produce such a thing. Either the thing is commercially viable or it isn't. The likes of AMD have scads of money. Some of the OEMs have scads of money. Perhaps they should be quietly pitching the idea to OLPC of selling a commercial version and then doing their own market research to see what form it should take.
this is not like trying to westernize India, this is giving people a tool. nobody is insulting their cultural beliefs, making them change their clothes, eating habits etc etc.
i think the laptops are designed to work without a stable infrastructure? maybe that is the point? some places that have constant turmoil at the government level mean the infrastructure is going to be a mess. the last thing we need is the UN or USA to go "fix it". if the more rural places get these laptops, and they work out, then it is giving them a chance to survive through the turmoil periods and still have some functioning educational system. they do not require internet access to work. they were to be pre-loaded with educational materials. that's a lot cheaper than textbooks and workbooks, and completely reusable as long as the machine is functional.
honestly, the people really behind the $100 laptop program are pretty much computer nerds, right? they are not the UN, or a nation's government. they are a group of people that happened upon this idea and got some help to try to make it happen. these are not the same people that would otherwise be teaching villagers sustainable farming techniques or passing out malaria vaccines. they are applying their own expertise to help out people less fortunate than them. in a way it's not so unlike Dean Kamen working on that simple to maintain water pump + purification device. i am sure somebody else could say that he should be spending his time and money to fight (insert disease), but that's something he chooses to do.
the $100 laptop obviously won't help the people in the world's worst conditions, but when people have food and shelter and a somewhat stable life, i don't see harm in giving them tools for an education.
Would have been better to start by convincing a forward thinking school district to issue these to all students starting in a certain grade. Contract with manual printers to put their books on it. Sell them for $110 a child and use the extra to fund foreign aid.
There's enough interesting bits to these that it would drive a fair bit of innovation... The automatic meshing, epaper display mode, etc. The halo effect from sample boards has already forced a fair amount of open source changes to improve performance.
Darn good idea, but perhaps a bit to ambitious initially.
http://www.pledgebank.com/olpchackers is a much more reasonable pledge, only asking 10 local hackers to but a laptop(and, from what I understand, provide 2 to needy kids somewhere with the extra 200$... I think...) in order to start a local olpc hacking group in your comunity, I'm more than willing to pay 300$ for a laptop that is provided, as a charity, for 100$, just so I have one, this is not a replacement for your laptop, its a new toy to hack. The 100$ price is not its retail price, its the cost this CHARITY can provide them for to kids in developing countries, asking to buy it for 100$ is like asking to buy your car at production cost, stop being alll ignant n'tshit bout dis. Only reason I didnt sign the other is that I didnt know it existed. 100,000 users is a bit much, but 10 power users abusing one of these in each city should help OLPC find at least one or two bugs to patch. Sign up for this one folks, I want one of those cool new green toys.
Cease the crapflood, motherfucker.
i think it's quite possible a percentage of your donation would be eligible for tax write off. i am speaking about the USA btw. i am pretty sure the organization would have to set up some of that nonsense first, and when you donate/buy you would get a form and receipt for your donation. groups have to apply to get/give those tax break incentives. has to do with being a non-profit and whatever else. it's quite possible that you can not apply all $300. as somebody else said, when you donate to a group, like PBS or NPR, you may get a tote bag or some CDs and at least a portion of that donation is eligible as a tax write off.
basically if you had given them $300, it might not actually be $300 less you owe the government.
the article said they need orders from at least five countries at 1,000,000 units each to make the price breaks. it implied that at 5,000,000 - 10,000,000 units the cost would actually be more like $140/unit. none of the $ includes distribution costs either. it's a lofty goal to get to the $100/unit level.... but they think it's possible.
i am assuming part of the reason they need 1,000,000 minimum per country is that the specific keyboards/software for the location. the main guts will be universal, but obviously the keyboards and software have to be location/language specific.
the 100,000 donation thing is something else i think? there is no intention to commercially sell these in the US or other countries, so maybe that group of people struck a deal to offer a sale to the general public if they were going to pay for the production of 300,000 of them. i guess at initial startup costs it is really more like buy 2, get to keep one and send on to a needy kid.
how many millions of dollars was wasted on this project? Yes it would be great for everyone to be able to get online and have a pc but there are more important issues that need addressing first. Adequate power and water, food and jobs, those are the things that need to be fixed before we start handing out laptops. The sentiment is great but misplaced. A very old saying comes to mind, If you give a man fish he eats that night but if you teach him to fish he will eat for the rest of his life. These laptops are just fish being handed out to the hungry. it will give them something for the moment but not extremely helpful in the long run. How many of the people that are intended to get them even know how to work a pc and who is going to teach them? There are bigger fish to fry than cheap electronics for people that don't have power and some cases even clean running water.
WTF?
You need good communications infrastructures to help build basic, self-sustaining functional societies.
Villa El Salvador started out as a squatter settlement (est. 1971) of destitute and landless peasants 10km outside of Lima Peru, who took a barren plot of desert (and this is not Nevada desert, this is sand and nothing else desert) and built it into an economic engine for that whole southern cone of Lima. They did this on their own, often refusing government patronage systems. Key to this success? Their building a communications center that evolved into a radio station in the 1970s and a UHF TV station in the early 1980s helped them build not only a sense of community but also strong governance and solid economic institutions. People in the 1970s said "what do they need radios for?". In the 1980s they said "what do those poor people need TVs for, shouldn't they be spending their money on food?". That misses the point.
Favelas in Rio de Janeiro set up websites to provide a report on their own lives and conditions, outside of mainstream media, which not only helps them in terms of knowing what's going on but helps build that sense of self, of place, of identity that is basic and fundamental to building the governing structures that let a group of people provide for themselves.
Saying that the spread of technology to developing regions is a westernist, globalist imposition of a some kind of "perverse" model is historically blind -- technological development is not an exclusively western phenomenon. It's just that we tend to think only of the late 20th century when we think of technology, not of the looms built in the pre-columbian years by inhabitants of this hemisphere to facilitate the creation of textiles that were traded for food/sustenance.
I think all this boils down to many of us in the West not really understanding poor people -- the assumption that poverty always takes the shape of the extreme (the starving, fly-addled swollen-bellied kids of We Are The World) rather than the more common form of poverty, which involves people who work, who try to make it happen but who don't have the resources or institutions around them to help that work pay off.
***Foucault is watching you..***
Where? List all the *purely* computer based curriculum at the elementary school, middle school or high school level.
I call shennanigans!
30B is nothing compared to America's GDP. The US government donates less than the public, but let's say the total is 60B. The UN target for government donations is 0.7% of the GDP, which is 90B for the US. Several countries meet this target and many are near it on government donations alone. The US doesn't make it to the topten of generous countries, even if the private donations would be added to the government ones.
However, because there are 300M americans, they do give the largest absolute sum. That does not mean Americans give exceptionally freely, just that there are a lot of them.
"And it's not really a normal laptop. It could be used in situations where a normal laptop would be useless (i.e. no power)."
Nope, the crank option was scrapped. You still need "holes" to use this laptop.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Nope, the crank option was scrapped, but they replaced it with a yoyo-like charger that has two parts that you pull apart in order to generate power - it's external.
What was that about holes?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We in rich countries can afford to buy books that cost more then this laptop...
I was vaguely aware of some scheme that might happen that would let people in the west buy an OLPC for 300, which would mean I would get 1 and 2 children in the 3rd world would get one each. I was not aware that this had anything to do with pledgebank, I was only aware that some people (whom I assumed to be the people behind OLPC) were connected with the idea. Perhaps it failed because very few people were aware of it's existence (I thought it was something that would happen after the release of the OLPC and so I put off worrying about it till then as I am actually interested in the idea). Seeing as the only concrete reference I have seen is to a slashback article, I'm not surprised it's failed.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
>Africa and the Third World aren't just poorer versions of your hometown, they're places in deep
>distress with a profound lack of the basic neccessities of life, and sweeping plagues which are
>taking an enormous toll.
Why is this? This is a serious question, not a troll. Our country (the USA) has gone from sustinance living to superpower in the last 500 years. Why have parts of the rest of the world stagnated so?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Which of those things can be done by computer geeks from their homes?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The OLPC is not intended to *replace* any other aid or development effort,and I have no idea how that meme got started, it is meant to *compliment* it. It is the "educate the children" angle to go along with anything else, food aid or medical aid, etc. If you go to their wiki and read the purposes it becomes clear. This IS the "basic education" deal for those folks, starting with the children so that they can leapfrog into civilization-normal status in one generation, do it quickly (quicker anyway) and efficiently.
the old adage-give a man a fish or teach him to fish
And the primary reason for making it a laptop is because dead trees books cost so much, ebooks are much cheaper and easier to push out, they can be transported electroncally, don't require trucking, etc, plus it is valuable to have real time good quality net access, everything from fast weather updates for the local farmers and fishermen, to news to better educational software, etc. the instant wirelessmesh aspect is an important point of the design here as well, along with the alternative power angle to keep it all running. You can put hundreds of ebooks on a single laptop, whereas purchasing and shipping in hundreds of books per kid, even at donated copyright no royalties paperback prices, is just beyond the resources available in a lot of the projected demographic market.
They are in effect asking for a $200 donation. That is more than a lot of people have. I bet there are a lot more people with an extra $50 then with an extra $200 in their pocket. So why not sel them for $150 each? I hate it when there not for profects get greedy ad start hitting you for "only a coule hunderd bucks" Not only thaat bu you don't know where the $200 goes not do you have much control over it. What they need to do is be specific. Make a web page that says "We want to send 1,000 computers to THIS school. and have a picture of it. quotes from the people who run the school saying what they wil do with the compters. Show a plan about how they will be integrates into the classworks and so on. Then offer the sell the computers at much less then 300 percent markup. I think such a plan would work.
I have no use for a laptop, but I would have gladly donated $200.
This is not an option tough.
The way I see is "pay $100 for the privilage to donate $200". That is absurd, no surprise it failed.
goggle a bit to get my joke. (hint: i'm not actually the first to say that)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Hi, I'm a real user (as opposed to an OSS zealot) and I want software that works and is well documented. I don't care if it's proprietary or Open. I don't care about the source code. And most of all, I don't care to listen to the monomanical rants of people who confuse politics and utility. If it works well and it's free, great. If I have to pay for something proprietary to get a product that does what I want in the way I want it, I'm ok with that too. Whatever it take to get the job done, and your software-as-politics nonsense be damned.
/. which is really saying something. It's almost as bad as the guy who was arguing that a copy of Wikipedia on 50,000 OLPC computers would solve all of Africa's ills. Let me rephrase that for you so you can see how idiotic it is: "your doors and windows are insufficient without legislation to protect you" so when you get robbed, don't bother calling the police. Yes, any change in wealth distribution during armed robbery will harm some people, but you have a responsibility to submit, since it's for the greater good.
/. land would think about how arrogant, annoying, and generally ignorant you come across posting crap like this. It makes anyone reading wary of installing software that's apparently been written by socipaths.
Furthermore, the "your skills are insufficient without legislation to protect you" thing is about as silly an arguement as I've heard here on
And just so you know, the whole "produce something and get paid for it" model has been working quite well for that last couple of thousand years, and it ain't going anywhere based on the wishful thinking of a couple hundred closet communists.
I wish all the irrational OSS supporters out there in
We already made some thoughts on this since we are involved in building the OLPC Children's Dictionary ( http://wiktionaryz.org/OLPC ) ... and there is so much to consider. I wrote about it - it is a very long consideration ... so that would be a bit long for slashdot. Who is interested can read it on my blog: http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2006/11/olpc-wh o-would-buy-laptop-at-which.html.
Thanks, Sabine.
Good idea. Go Bears ....
In order to save money, you need to do one of two things: one way is you donate enough to push yourself down into a lower income-tax bracket, thereby lowering the tax rate on all of your salary income. This can be big savings, but only if you happen to be right near the edge of a tax bracket cutoff.
... so it means that the net cost to you of the $100 donation was $70. You still end up with less money at the end of the year than if you hadn't made the donation, so it's not an investment. But it does mean that under some circumstances, charitable donations are "cheaper" than regular expenses, by the amount of your income tax rate.
The other way you can get some tax advantage is if you donate more than the "standard deduction." If you file and don't itemize donations, you still don't pay taxes on all of your income; the government subtracts out an amount that they figure is about 'average' for a person's charitable contributions in a year. I have no idea if it varies with age or any other demographic information (I suspect not). If you donate more money in a year than the standard deduction, then it's worth it to itemize; if you don't, then it's not worth doing. Only donations made in excess of the standard deduction are really worth counting -- which is why your $800 didn't appear to save you that much. Most of it was probably used just getting you up to the 'standard deduction' level.
Generally, you won't make money by giving it away; a $100 donation (in excess of the standard deduction) will at most mean that you don't pay taxes on that much income, so if you're in a 30% tax bracket, that's $30
However, I've found that some people have an exaggerated idea of the importance of charitable contributions for tax purposes. Unless you're very aggressive about keeping records and doing your taxes, most young single people with a few hundred bucks in donations are better off taking the standard deduction. (At least I've always been.)
Still, $300 is a big contribution for a lot of people, and I don't think that the OLPC-donation people were very good about explaining to people how the donation could be structured for the lowest cost to them.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Given that they are kids, and therefore should be LEARNING, how do you teach them? Buy 50 books to cover most of the primary/secondary school education every three years and have 1 copy per 3 children.
Or, download a single copy of the 50 books on PDF, have 1 laptop per 3 kids and copy the PDFs to those laptops.
Do you think everyone is Africa lives like they do in the B&W Tarzan movies?
The real reasons this failed:
1. Not officially sponsored by the OLPC project.
2. Lack of public awareness, I'm one of those people that always says "Give me a chance to buy 1 for the price of 3" but I didn't even here about this pledge drive. I can't pledge if I don't even know about it!
I dont think Nick ever recovered from his wannabe investment in Wired. Gee didnt Lou and that "well known internet humerist" Lore what-ever-his-name-is want to make a pitch for their onetime bud?
I would participate by buying $100 worth of food/medical supplies for $300. Who needs computers when the infrastructure isn't in place to sustain a basic foodchain?
A better idea might have been to try to sell 200,000 at $200. For $200 I might have bought one, used it as an eBook reader or some such, but for $300, I could buy a high powered PDA for that purpose. I know, this is a full computer, not a PDA, but for an eBook reader, the PDA is great with an even smaller form factor... I already own laptops. I do not own a good eBook reader. Had it been $200, I would have bought one, and they would have had one to donate, instead someone on eBay got $150 of my money for a PDA with a VGA screen.
I reject your reality
I'm a former teacher myself, and I agree that a computer (and Internet access) can provide a lot of assistance with content, lesson plans, etc. I think the GP point isn't that teachers don't need a PC, but that putting a PC in the hands of each and every child is not, as yet, a proven boost to learning. In fact, I found that even just five PCs in my classroom made things more complicated, rather than less. I was an early proponent of computers in the classroom (before I was actually teaching) and I was the first teacher in my school to have a set of computers in my classroom. As usual, practice turned out to be different than theory, and the computers didn't wind up being the wildly successful educational tool that I thought they would be. The laptop on my desk (my personal laptop) was a positive tool, but introducing those additional PCs to the room was a mixed bag.
I, too, question the benefit of putting a computer on every desk in a "normal" classroom setting. However, I think that in situations where children are in a mixed environment (one-room schoolhouse) or where children can't get to school regularly, there could be a benefit.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
...I seriously doubt there is an integrated spellchecker available in those laptops (or otherwise) for the language the target audience uses...
WiktionaryZ (http://wiktionaryz.org) is a project developing an open content Wiki style dictionary in every language of the world, working with the University of Bamberg (http://www.uni-bamberg.de) to identify relevant word lists and develop needed applications. We are specifically working on a dictionary for children, to be included on the OLPC laptops.
I think it will have a spell checker...
Those kids wii sell them for $50-60 and I'll get mine from ebay for $100.
So, nobody should ever work on concurrent problem solving. Since any really bad problem has a worst component, and we need to tackle the worst problem FIRST. Solving a problem we can actually solve now is bad, because we should throw all our resources on a more pressing problem that we know we can't solve now.
What a sickening, morally bankrupt argument.
"It looks like a mention in Slashback a few weeks ago gave a boost to the effort, but not a big enough one."
/G
Sounds reasonable, since Slashdot is still the only place where I've heard about this project.
So, you are actively involved in providing this stuff, right? How many kids have you adopted so far?
Or are you just interesting in criticizing other people's efforts on slashdot?
If you actually did your research you'd know Negroponte spends most of his time in the place you are describing, and has pretty good credentials for knowing what he's doing. How many 3rd worlders do you personally communicate with on a daily basis?
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, probably after reading a blurb (but not TFA) about OLPC and a "$100 laptop," said that he'd support the idea of buying them for Massachusetts students.
Mitt, it's not for you!
Someone pledges to pay $300 for one so that needy children (and he himself) can get one.
Hacker dude, it's not for you!
The project's goal, as I heard Nicholas explain it, is for governments to buy these computers on a LARGE scale, so the funding is not an issue. After his speech at LinuxWorld Boston, someone proposed a similar "let me buy one for $200" idea. Negroponte said that it's great that you want to help, and the best way you could do that would be to do something similar in your own neighborhood. Buy a cheap laptop from Ebay and give it to a local needy student. Negroponte and his wife had been buying used laptops for years and bringing them to a needy village school (in Africa, I think?) where they were used in education.
Something else he said was that there definitely are other basic needs in some places, such as water, food, etc., and that there are organizations that work on that, and if you want to support those organizations, then that truly is wonderful, and you should do that.
We in rich countries don't give laptops to every one of our kids
If they cost $100, I'll bet we would.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Have some of your more liberal friends who deonate to the DNC every quarter, pony up a few bucks.
I don't think anyone benefits from fucking PCs...
*ducks*
Defining Statistics and Social Research
In rich countries you can get computers for $100. Or even for free because people throw them out and buy new ones.
Um, no. Some people believe, after studying the situation, that this would help developing countries, so they set up a project where developing countries are able to buy inexpensive laptops. No one is forcing these on developing countries against those nation's will. It's the education ministries of the countries involved that make the decision.
Yeah, well, good for you. You are welcome to start a project to provide any of those dozens of things, and to try to convince people to donate to and work on your project, and to try to convince developing nations that what you are providing is something they need.
I bid $300 and the bid was rejected. ? Got me, but something is fubar if the story is correct.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
In rich countries you can get computers for $100. Or even for free because people throw them out and buy new ones.
Even in rich countries, it's pretty hard to get a laptop for $100 that's small enough for a kid to carry back and forth to school and be powerful enough to be useful (e.g. WiFi, hi-res display, etc.)
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I dunno which "rich country" you live in, I'll presume USA.
Where I live, we do infact do this. Infact most kids have in their daily life access to multiple computers and will own like 5 of them before they become adult.
Pretty typical is for example:
Summary: Here (in Norway) the average kid has access to a *lot* more than a single $100 laptop troughout his childhood and schoolyears.
Say I deploy ComputerApplication 2006 today to the entire company. Next year, installs for new users/PCs will have to be ComputerApplication 2007, as most software companies don't sell licenses for out-of-date software versions. The year after, it'll be ComputerApplication 2008. By ComputerApplication 2009, if not sooner, staff will be using so-called "enhanced features" that mean their files aren't backward-compatible with previous versions of the software. At this point, team by team the business starts falling apart and requiring urgent upgrades.
This is exactly what the software companies want. Force one to buy the new version and you force the department to buy it, even though they produce the same stuff in the end.
When it comes to high-end software (such as CAD), a three-year-old business computer (and few businesses ever deploy cutting edge) rarely meets the minimum spec, so .... "tech refresh"!
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I don't think any insult you took was needless; I'd call it deserved. You can't convert butter to guns, or vice versa.
.vs. butter imaginings. It appears you have done no research whatsoever on this project - especially given your comment "What the heck is a starving 13 year old going to do with a windup notebook in a place with no other electricity, or network?. One of many answers to that question is "generate electricity, a network, and an income to buy food".
There are no resources being diverted. There is nothing being "used up". No project anywhere in existence to help people in the target area is being hindered by OLPC. None of the target children are going to starve due to any factor involving the project.
The leaders of the project (as you would know if you were doing something more useful than criticizing good works) have pre-tested the concept. They provided used laptops gathered from eBay to information-deprived schoolchildren in the target areas. They documented the results, which were astonishingly good and reached far beyond your simplistic guns
If you wish to FORCE people who WANT to wind laptops to do something else with their time, you are advocating SLAVERY, regardless of how noble your think-of-the-starving-children arguments may seem. If you think the target for the project does not WANT to wind laptops you are UNINFORMED.
You do have a point, but I believe I've got one too ;-). Worldwide, and mostly even locally in poor countries, there is enough food for everyone. The problem is it isn't distributed fairly, and how could it, in a capitalist setting like this when the poor people are uneducated and don't necessarily have good farming grounds just waiting there to be worked on.
Point is, the third world cannot buy food from countries that have extra. Why not? Because nobody wants to hire mr. Cant-Read. For example in Nepal, an army is the only thing might hire them. The British one for 20 years service for example, and that's the best thing you can end up if you start as a farmer. Or then there's the Indian army or the Nepali one. Those are the options for boys..
Obviously, to succeed, even modestly, in the global trade system, one needs education. LOTS of it. And it takes equipment and it takes capital. The yak farmer that can browse for market information and trade online is better off than the yak farmer who needs to walk two days just to talk to someone. The other yak farmer who learned online to make cheese can probably sell it better. The remote villages that don't have educated teachers can probably do some kinds of remote learning. They can get contacts. Don't underestimate this - half of the mountain dwellers have never been to the nearest city because it's too far away. I could go on an on.. =).
AFAIK, most dying-of-hunger kind of thing happens when shit hits the fan: Crops fail, tsunami strikes, they get drought or something. Even when volunteer-working in Nepal I never saw hunger but I did see people who didn't exactly have any opportunities they could actually achieve.
I'm not saying that giving food, refrigeration, better toilets etc wouldn't be valuable, it is. What I'm saying is that for heaven's sake don't stop helping in other ways too, because one can't provide the necessities of life without actually helping poor people earn it themselves. Yes, they are a part of "our economy" and yes, they need to adjust to it.
Ah, do check http://www.nepalwireless.net and http://www.himanchal.org if you're interested :)
Sounds a lot like "let them eat cake." Brazil, Nigeria, etc. "lining up for the laptops"? Ever heard of the word "kickback"? Or of the governmentes stealing and then selling humanitarian aid?
An African child from a family going hungry day to day "learning" something on a free laptop instead of selling it on a market for their year's household income?
You Americans obviously are totally disconnected from reality.
And school textbooks (you know, "treeware") do not cost $60 each to print - they cost that much because the publishers want this much money. And then there are writers with their "intellectual property rights."
Want to help out? Fine, do it. But do it realistically. This whole "one 3rd-world child per laptop" looks like scam in order to shake up the (1-st world) taxpayer money, not like any real "help."
You are continuing to talk without doing your homework, and that's one of the reasons your comments about "North Americans don't know deprivation" pushed my button. For example:
/. has to be backed up with something if you want your ideas to carry weight.
You say "..the solution they had was aimed at the wrong problem". The solution they have is not meant to be the solution for your problem definition. You clearly haven't looked at what the project is intended to accomplish.
You say "the windup laptop project might have done some good in..." The OLPC project, which is not a "windup laptop project" any more than Habitat for Humanity is a rose gardening project, is not targeted at any area where there is no food to be had. Again, you didn't bother to see what the project is about. And yes, Habitat has planted at least one rose garden, I was there personally.
You say "Why did the OLPC project fail...". It hasn't failed, in fact so far it is succeeding beyond expectations. The idea (which you still aren't understanding) of improving educational opportunities in the 3rd world through the grass-roots introduction of mesh networking in a receptive population (children) has taken off and is winning mindshare. The only thing that "failed" was a dumb petition with a totally unrealistic goal that had no connection with the OLPC project other than wishful thinking by the petitioners.
I'll certainly agree with you that technology alone isn't the answer to social inequities, especially those caused by geography. It can be, however, a key part of educational efforts that allow people to build their own "fishing pole", without giving them either fish or poles.
When you say that I (since I'm a North American who has lived only in this country) cannot comprehend the needs of the third world, with the clear implication that you can, and I say "well, what's your cred? How did you get your position of authority? What are you doing to solve the problems you are on about?" that's not a diversionary question. It's telling you that pontification on