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First of the OLPCs Built
eldavojohn writes "An announcement came Sunday that the first ten prototypes of the Linux-powered OLPC XO-1 had been completed in China. From the article, 'Quanta, the Chinese computer maker that won the international bidding for the project earlier this year, will assemble 900 OLPC machines that will be used for destructive testing and distribution to our development partners.' Let's hope that these first prototypes do not warrant any design changes and that the testing goes well so that countries that expressed interest (Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Argentina, and Thailand) can start distributing them soon."
Linux- Able to control the universe with just bash scripting!
Those of you who were hailing Khaddafi's deep commitment to freedom when he jumped aboard will be relieved to know that he's not going anywhere anytime soon, though...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
they are supposed to be free, so it's probably government funded. Still, the conecpet is right, how many people will be taking these from the children?
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libya has oil and is not a real poor country.
"These oil revenues and a small population give Libya one of the highest GDPs per person in Africa"
Am I evil for looking forward to picking up my OLPC on the black market (or eBay)?
If I am, I blame the hand crank and high-res black-and-white screen mode for greasing my slide into the dark side...
DN
At least one terrorist video will reveal a OLPC in the background.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
What's an illiterate third world child going to do with a laptop anyway? A pencil, paper, and some basic schooling might be of more use.
Again, Linux uses its monopoly position in the free-OS market to stomp on Corporate America. Companies such as Microsoft cannot compete with the hippy OS because they have employees to pay, hardware to buy, and general overhead that any company has and cannot compete with Linux which is put together in a COMMUNIST style by a bunch of long-haired (Alex, RMS) free-thinkers.
This monopoly position must be dealt with to level the playing field so that American companies (not the Finnish) can pass more of their profits on to people like you and I who hold shares in their retirement portfolios.
TDz.
You forgot no electricity. So they can't even use the laptop.
They can use the laptop for porn.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Destructive testing, eh?
i mages/AmeriILiteGorilla.jpg
Cue the samsonite throwing gorilla. http://www.frankwbaker.com/25grea14.jpg
http://www.packinglight.net/plight/assets/assets/
I think someone decided free laptop was easier than basic schooling.
What's an illiterate third world child going to do with a laptop anyway?
trade it for food or medicine.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In times of trouble, the smell of frying onions usually gives confidence and comfort.
The exit from poverty is education. Give a man a fish and he'll have food for a day. Teach him how to fish and he'll ruin your fishing economy.
Or something like that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The battery can be charged with a hand crank.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The OLPC will do good in countries like Argentina, Chile, where the GDP per capita are the highest in Latin America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America#Econom y). It actually makes sense for the project to be deployed widely in remote rural areas of such nations (Chile and Argentina already deploy computing centers in all schools in urban areas).
As far as other even less developed countries with actual armed/religious conflict, I see the OLPC being put into bad use (i.e trading), and never even reaching the children. Even if they do reach the children, what use is it to them when they have little food, or they are dying from some curable disease?.
Certain computer companies using this as an excuse to push a law through congress that outlaws the distribution of OLPC computers and declares countries that participate in the OLPC project as terrorist states.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First: It's not people buying them, it's governments.
Second: Not everyone outside of the US and Europe is starving in a mud hut. Both Libya and Brazil are modern, technical societies with substantial wealth. Both countries would certainly benefit from increased technical skills among their local populations.
Remeber that the OLPC is designed to replace textbooks in schools, and over the life of the machine will almost certainly provide a cost savings over printed books.
In addition, the project will foster local IT development as more and more people learn to use, repair, modify, and program for the machines. This will lead to free and/or locally produced software and a local IT service sector, keeping money in local economies rather than sending it to Redmond or to other Western software houses and consultancies.
From a development perspective, this is a cheap project with enormous potential -- it could eventually bring an even bigger fundamental change in developing societies than micro credit progams have.
1) give computer to child
2) come back in a week
If computer survives AND the kid didn't get bored with it, the test passes.
---
It's lame but laugh anyways.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
but that raises the obvious question: csn the really poor countries afford OLPC?
CPUs used to be under export restrictions so they would not be used as munitions.
Someone's probably already got design plans to use one of these with a cheap SiRF chip for GPS and various other things, to blow people up.
If they can't get GPS they'll get Galileo. If they can't get Galileo, they'll get whatever the Chinese are cooking up.
Think of it, an open-source, ruggedized platform for terrorism, which aid organizations may even subsidize to deliver into their hands.
I'm looking at you, Libya.
Believe it or not the OLPC people are not COMPLETE FUCKING MORONS
There are lockdown measures to avoid corrupt distribution. A black market wouldn't really work because a stolen OLPC laptop won't work. Not to mention that they're pretty much useless for most other tasks. A geek may want one for the neat factor or for an effective terminal. But you can't exactly play 3d shooters on them, or store gigabytes of movies or whatever (I doubt you could even play a divx on it).
The corrupt market would be to steal the boards and then try to sell them to schools. Which is exactly what they're aiming to stop.
As for the GP, yes, it's COUNTRIES that buy them, not students.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
What about the software stack?
The software could be developed and tested using conventional computers without the expense of building these laptops.
What I fear is that these laptops will be underpowered for the software stack. Just seems kind of silly to not have a good low resource software stack done before spending the money on the hardware.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The problems in these countries are many, but few of them are computer related. Having been to many war torn 3rd world nations I can tell you that having computers is the least of their worries. To those of you that think this is a good idea, all I have to say is that a similarly out of touch rich person once said, "Let them eat cake!"
Evilman
Or have it stolen by an adolescent or adult who will trade it for food, toys, weapons, drugs, sex, or money. Medicine my ass.
Let's be realistic. People are not nice.
Question everything
So you have been to a lot of third world countries? Oh, you haven't? Every time this project is mentioned experts of your caliber start spewing their 0.02$ around. Interestingly, that's approximately how much those expert views are worth. Combined.
:| .. I dunno... But at least I'm also doing something instead of just complaining. I've left one laptop in Gambia and one in Chile before. I'll be on a round the world trip in about a month and a half (hopefully) and I'm packing lots of older laptops to give away. Guess what kind of OS they'll be running. That's my OLPC(ountry ;P).
I've been to a few third world countries. One of them is Thailand (they are among the ones interested in the OLPC). I bet you'll see more poverty and illiteracy in New York than i Bangkok. Can you please get it through your brick wall that _any_ countrys population is not homogenous? Some people may have no use of a OLPC laptop while others will. Just as in the west. Another country i've visited where I stayed with the locals is Gambia. It's a pretty poor country but most of the young ones I met spoke 3-5 languages.Virtually everyone spoke English and French, then their tribal language and one or more of the other bigger tribal languages. How many languages do you speak? How many can you write?
Poverty != stupidity. Poor country != everyone being hungry and illiterate. People in poor countries are often much more motivated to study because they know it's a way out of poverty.
Hmmm... Why do I bother feeding trolls....
Cheers...
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
So why not have the US Government buy laptops for underprivileged kids? They are in need of computers just as much as people in other countries, if not more, to stay on par with their peers.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Prototypes are nice... but do they actually work? I'm very skeptical that this thing can be produced at this price. I'll believe it when a factory is cranking out a few thousand a day, AND THEY WORK. Until then, it's nothing but vapor and PR.
"Let's hope that these first prototypes do not warrant any design changes and that the testing goes well so that countries that expressed interest (Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Argentina, and Thailand) can start distributing them soon." Translation: Lets hope that these units are flawless(which hardly ever happens) and are swiftly distributed to a reputable re-seller on ebay so I can get my hands on one.
"Build a man a fire, and you'll keep him warm for one night. Set a man on fire, and you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life!"
Because that would be communism in the eyes of the average American. Besides, how will the rich get the warm fuzzy feeling from their trickling down wealth if the poor isn't totally wretched?
The median income in Brazil is circa US$8,000 (PPP), but in the south and southeast, where most of the population is concentrated, it is actually US$10,000 to US$15,000. The problem is that in the Amazon and northeast it is closer to US$2,000. So yes, there are loads of people who can afford it, as there are loads of people currently buying US$500-US$1500 desktops.
I think corruption is a bigger problem. Without good governance, change is hard. How soon until one laptop per child becomes one warlord with all the laptops? He'll have to let some children use them (such is the nature of feudalism), but I can't see it being otherwise. Laptops aren't the same as education, anyway. It sounds like silicon snake-oil to me.
I should also say that the corruption is hardly just some internal matter for various African states. These leaders are aided and abbedded by rich nations across the world. Foreign meddling in the affairs of Africa has been intense and ongoing, but no one wants to talk about how they secure their oil rights, fishing rights, the use of their GM crops over local varieties, and so on. It's unpleasant.
Africa needs clean government to have a chance as much as it needs clean water. I can't see the laptop as part of the solution. You could argue that laptops make education easier, and that education drives economic growth. However, the prime examples of that (Japan, Korea, Singapore) all had stable governments and some measure of physical safety for citizens. In the absence of these things, what will stop the newly educated adults from leaving for the US, the EU, India, or China?
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
That would be a great idea, and I sincerely hope it happens. But it won't. Still, the best outcome would be if everyone in the world had a computer like this (or better if they can afford it) - the ability to communicate alone could change the world.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Enough already with the "software stack". Why the fuck is software
on a laptop "stacked". Admit it, you heard some random geek say it
and it sounded really cool, Eh? Eh?
Actually this is interesting.. do we know anything about the Chinese factory that's making these things? It'd be supremely ironic if we were bringing laptops to poor hopeless children that were made by other poor hopeless children, or something.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
May I remind you that Brazil is one of the richest countries in the world?
The problem is distribution, rich south and southeast, really poor northeast and north.
Destructive testing? DESTRUCTIVE TESTING? WOOOO!!!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The OLPC people aren't dumb, but you can expect the theives won't be either.
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Because the US government doesn't have the authority to procure education materials for local schools. Education and school systems are the responsibility of State governments and local school boards.
There are schools in the US that have begun providing students with laptops, but these were decisions made by individual school administrations.
Moreover, looking at the CIA's world factbook entry about Lybia, it seems there's a bit more to the story than you present: Looking a bit further, Lybia has a 30% unemployment rate -- that doesn't sound like a real economic success story to me nor does it argue that the large GDP per capita's value is really spread across the population in any sort of even manner.
Uh, get the software images from http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/devel opment/. They are developed on modern hardware. You can run the images from a livecd, a usb memory card or qemu on a host system but the best test would be on the hardware itself. There is need to optimize and make sure the correct drivers get loaded and that the drivers work. You don't just put software on any old hardware platform and it just works. A lot of engineering goes into it.
The US is something like 10th in the world in education spending in terms of % of GDP. Because our GDP is so large, that puts us way out in front of anyone else in terms of spending on education. Throwing more money at schools - in the form of laptops or otherwise - will not solve our problems in education.
The rich are probably not as culpable in the plight of our urban poor as the "white flight" middle class. And then you have the equally-wretched rural poor... I'm sure a crappy laptop would solve their ills, too, right?
This laptop is not to help the uneducated. It is to help the educated but poor - the ones without access to computers, but who are educated enough not to sell them for meth. I think that most children of suitable education can find a computer in the US if they need to. If not, then maybe there is a place for a program such as this - but I'd be very skeptical.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just to clarify (I'm a developer working for the OLPC) that we've had developer boards for months-and-months now, using them to test the software on. These particular computers are simply more complete. But yeah, speed has been a major factor all along.
-- Kleptotherapy: Helping those who help themselves.
Quanta is a Taiwan company.
Or, if Microsoft had their way, teach a man to fish and you can sell him expensive, proprietary bait for life .....
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Sometimes, some folks on /. are as clueless as a Washington DC politician. Well UFI "Do they really think" that you should not feed 1,000 hungry people because someone will steal the food, or there is not enough to feed the 10,000 hungry in need, or ... more (politician type) excesses for not doing what should and needs to be done AFAP (As Fast As Possible). "RC:" Do it they will Benefit, only the afraid bray like jackasses with nay!
... Best of Best] people in humanity. The US, EU, UN and most other governments have had their heads up their ass with special interest (plutocrats, dictators, corporatist, religious ...) politics. Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Berkley, CalTech, Georgia Tech ... and many EU universities are not failures, but they appear to be disgracefully lacking in ... "What have y'all done for humanity today" policy/agenda.
... and many others are doing wonderful things for humanity and US with little recognition and no significant support from any of the US, EU, UN ... Butt-Head leaders.
... OKI/OCW ...) from MIT are supported more by philanthropy and individual donations then corporations and governments. Well again the people of the world are proving themselves far superior to the white-color-trash dejure/fiat leaders of today. USA democrats and republican politicians are still unaware that it ain't all about the gucken war, USA Citizens (except the mostly illiterate) are not that superficial.
...) should annually award significant recognition to many folks and organizations that truly serve the public good. Governments should fund (not control) Open Projects at all levels (OSS, GPL, Open Content, Open Standards+Research+Development+IPR+Government+.... We need to financially support all these things for long-term survival, development, and for human ideals, honor, and ethics.
Something great is being done by damn good [AKA: Right Stuff
I do not know what MIT feeds professors and students up in Massachusetts USA, but I wish all our politicians were raised on bellyfuls of that MIT stuff. Rick Stallman, Nick Negroponte, Phill Zimmerman
Efforts like the ones (FSF/GPL, OLPC, PGP/PKI
I did not use Linus Torvalds and Linux above, because I was using MIT for my rant. NOTE Though: Linus Torvalds, Linux, and the whole global OSS community including money/property donors/contributors is proof that MIT does not stand alone is providing to humanity many things that are greatly needed in all parts of our global community.
The USA & International organizations and leaders (Nobel Prizes, Papal Blessings, Presidential Medals
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The point is to remove the worth.
It's a 300MHz x86 board with a gray-scale display (the colour is faked), 128M of ram, 512M of flash, no cdrom, no advanced GPU, very small keys, and the host OS is designed for small children. Perfect for reading, playing simple learning games, and browsing the web. Sucks for games, videos, music and the like.
I seriously doubt there will be a huge black market for adults to hack them and turn them into a standard Linux PC. Selling them as is to children won't be really productive either. I'm not saying people won't try. I just doubt it will be very successful.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
That's not Ironic! It's just mean!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Well said.
Every time a OLPC history is published on slashdot we get a a series of "omg! people outside the US or EU live in mud huts and do nothing but starve all day long!!!11" comments.
I will simply point you to the human development index map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HDImap2006.png
Notice how the only country of the list of buyers (if you can locate them in the map, that is) under YELLOW is Nigeria.
And how Argentina is actually in GREEN.
That will be all, thank you.
You got TR'ed for that, and I'd make an argument that you shouldn't have been, becuase it's friggin' true. It's gonna be real interesting what happens when the Third World hits the interweb en masse.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
High GDP per person doesn't imply that the high GDP is actually distributed per person. The wealth of the country is likely controlled by a small group of people, while the rest of the country could be very poor.
The colour is faked?? Shove me some proof of that. All I see is:
. html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5734583728
Display -- 7.5-inch "dual-mode" 1200 x 900 pixel display
* Mono display: High-resolution, reflective monochrome mode
* Color display: Standard-resolution, quincunx-sampled, transmissive color mode
Doesn't sound very 'fake' to me... Just lower resolution.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
...provides neither stick nor fishing line. Seriously. A good almanack could have provided the educational content of the $150 computer for $5 or less.
So are they going to outsource their IT and helpdesk support to that 3rd world country, the US?
Yes, and not only that, but that Taiwan is NOT China is really important to its 23 million citizens. Taiwan is a democracy that has its own armies, controls its own borders, directly elects its own president, legislature... Sure, there are some reasons, unrelated to the fact that China constantly blares that it owns Taiwan and will p8wn Taiwan if Taiwan or anyone else says otherwise, but they are not good ones, and if there was ever a good guy--bad guy David vs. Goliath if you ever saw one situation, Taiwan is it. So please. Taiwan is NOT China. Quanta is a Taiwanese company that may happen to do a lot of business in China. Still, it is not the same thing and it's an important distinction to make.
The point is to remove the worth.
These devices will be stolen and you just have to deal with it when it happens. If they don't have value or worth and aren't worth stealing, then they aren't worth having in the first place. Removing the worth should not be an objective. Police and schools simply need to deal with stealing when it happens. Simply to deprive millions of students of as much functionality as can be squeezed out of the device, simply because we are paranoid about theft would be part of an alarming trend to sacrifice too much for security. The point is not to remove worth, but to make them so inexpensive as to be able to replace them easily.
The point is to separate cost and value, so that people are paying for the cost to manufacture and not the value it will bring to them. That is the difference between the profit motive and non-profit motive. Doing this for profit would mean that worth and value might be disabled to try and up sell to those who have the means.
How long would they last anyway? To expect an average 3 year lifespan seems reasonable, with an upper end of 5 or 6 years. Theft is simply one of the many things that could happen to these devices, along with dropping them, getting them wet and just plain wear and tear. Schools have had to deal with text books for years with many of the same problems.
All you have to do for phase 2 is kill all but 10 children.
Mod parent up.
Also, no one seems to want to talk about the non-manufacturing costs of OLPC, either. Assuming you find a non-corrupt government as a participant, it seems to me that the entire distribution cost is being foisted on that government. I don't think that's trivial. What about training? I haven't been a big fan of the TCO school of thought, but that's because in the (US) corporate world, I've seen it used mainly as a justification of bigger IT budgets. But in this case, I think we do need to factor in lots of things that will make the cost much higher than $100.
Who says this has to have anything to do with schools?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
My, what a well-reasoned, thoughtful argument you present.
most interesting post in thread.
Remeber that the OLPC is designed to replace textbooks in schools, and over the life of the machine will almost certainly provide a cost savings over printed books.
except for the fac that the professors that write textbooks are greedy bastards and will try to find a way to either keep the textbooks from being e form for these devices or add some kind of stupid DRM to time out the books.
Textbook's should only be allowed to have a copyright for 3 years and then forced into the Public domain in all forms.
Second: Not everyone outside of the US and Europe is starving in a mud hut.
Look at Canada.
I looked at the software available.
Where are the educational programs?
I see nothing that teaches reading or basic math skills?
Squeak/EToys is nice but I saw no traditional educational programs. I have to love the idea of giving kid VIM. That will help kids. They will all want to be farmers after that.
You could deliver content from the web but who will develop it? Does the Sugar browser support rich Internet sites like Google maps and yahoo maps?
Honestly I would love to see more educational software for Linux. Where is the School management package for the OLPC? You know the one for the teachers and school administrators?
Where is the authoring software for the teachers so they can design lessons for the OLPC?
I think what is missing from the project is teachers.
Has anyone tried to bring in some elementary and secondary educators and ask them what they would want from the OLPC?
I am afraid that the OLPC is at the "If you build it they will come" stage.
The OLPC is missing authoring tools for teachers. Something that will let them build lesson plans that the Children can then download onto the OLPC.
Imagine if a child could study any subject they wanted for at least part of the day using the OLPC. They could pick a class and download the textbook and class material for any subject that interests them.
The key here is teachers and the supporting software. VIM will not cut it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
A good almanack could have provided the educational content of the $150 computer for $5 or less.
That's a good point... I'm sure all the people in the world working with poverty-stricken third-world nations have never thought about providing books!
Sarcasm aside, $5 books aren't known for being chock full of useful information, reliable information, or a wide variety of information. Also, once a book is printed, the content can't be changed, updated, or corrected.
The OLPC program is intended to provide an alternative to schoolbooks. Schoolbooks are expensive, heavy, and are quickly outdated. The OLPC program has a potentially better solution. The networking features can provide access to new information, local, regional, and world news. They also provide a means of communication between students and between students and teachers. All of these things can be very useful for an education in non-computer topics, but students who want to learn about computers will automatically have a computer in their hands to learn about programming, IT, and other computer related topics.
If you want to help solve world problems, bring good ideas to the table, not disparaging remarks.
Why? Poor people should not be given jobs?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Also stop thinking I all can spell acrynym.
As a gig of flash is pretty cheap, one of the big uses of this should be to bring libraries of information to people at no cost.
There is much information on math, medicine, science, computer science that is 'available for free', 'open source', or 'creative commons' that could be freely included in such "personal libraries".
Being in several grades school around the country (and not in rich areas), I realized that there are plenty of "third world" type of realities in middle America. Underfunded schools, unmotivated students in depressed areas, many of them with huge literacy problems (reading deficiencies). From experience I can tell that what those kids need is motivation, something that they can get excited. So, why not deploying the OLPC in these communities/schools? It seems that people here are talking of the US as a very homogeneous country. They are not. Very poor areas exist, and kids there are no different (unfortunately) with their pairs in Brazil.
I agree; where's the love, man?
I was just thinking, why doesn't this make sense for a rich country in Europe, like Denmark? Or any other developed nation. We currently don't seem to have the will to equip each child in the public schools with a computer, but if the price is right...
OLPC doesn't sell to individuals.
OLPC sells to government ministries of education. Several nations have already committed to large buys, I think Libya is the only one who has committed to enough to meet the goal of one laptop per schoolchild though, and Libya has apparently also been discussing the possibility of subsidizing purchases for poorer African nations.
Is it, at $100 per recipient, expensive for developing nations? Probably. Those that are willing to spend the money are willing to do so because they see it as an investment in education that will pay off in a combination of savings in other expenses and long-term economic performance.
The colour is faked and isn't as crisp as a good LCD or CRT. it's good enough to entertain children but is definitely not something you wan't to work on if you have to look at pixels.
:-)
The mono mode is much better and made to make looking at text a pleasurable experience
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I think its rather clear that "someone" (i.e., the ministries of education that provide basic schooling in the countries that have elected to participated) decided that buying laptops was a useful and productive way to improve the provision of basic schooling.
The goal is to make them very single purposed. That doesn't mean what it does has to be crappy just that it can't do a lot of things very well for cost and safety.
I wouldn't take "theft" as a light issue though. When these things get stolen in the field, it's usually because the person delivering them HAS BEEN MURDERED and the delivery looted. So making them "feature deprived" isn't just a function of being cheap.
Remember the idea is to bring information and interactiveness to children. I remember playing games on an Apple ][ when I was a kid. This thing definitely packs more punch than that. Sure it's not a multimedia godsend that we're used to, but if us 1st world kids can use a 6502 with a monochrome low res monitor, I think some 3rd world kid can make use of a 350MHz x86 processor and a high-res wide screen display...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
A screenshot of the fake color.
Looks pretty real to me. Perhaps you can clarify what you mean by 'faked'.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Okay, setting aside worthiness or difficulties of the OLPC project[1], what other technological device could really help people in such straits then?
A while ago, I suggested a modular ``Safety core'' which would be a 10 x 10 foot cube which would contain solar cells, a water purifier, a pedal-powered generator, lights, radio, hydroponic garden (to at least provide for vitamin C needs), sleeping facilities a composting toilet and sink and water fountain and a pantry w/ say a 6 week supply of food staples and an assortment of seeds and gardening tools --- drop one off per family in a disaster area and one could be certain that each family would have food, shelter and security --- the question is, could they be produced affordably enough to make it feasible?
Or, how about a smaller cube which was just a hydroponic garden which could also generate electricity and condense water from the air?
Or perhaps Heifer International has the right idea?
http://www.heifer.org/
William
1 - I think it's a worthy idea so long as it doesn't detract from funds for immunization and basic medical care &c.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Probably until, e.g., Brazil goes through a radical collapse and turns into Somalia.
No one said they are. They are a tool for education, nothing more. OLPC doesn't pretend that laptops replace education, they suggest that investing in the laptops and associated infrastructure (like the satellite downlink station being developed specifically for rural villages to provide network access; free satellite time is also being donated) will be a cost effective investment in tools to improve the quality of education and the ability to deliver educational materials.
I can't imagine many more powerful parts of the solution to bad government than a distributed medium for information sharing and storage that is widely distributed in the population.
You could, and you'd be right, but the laptops have the potential to affect bad government other than through economic development.
The immigration policies of the target countries, for one thing; the fact that many of the OLPC countries already are offer as good or better economic opportunities for educated natives than they would have in India or China is also a factor, though.
It's not a traditional LCD. The colour elements, as I was explained by an OLPC staffer (hint: I'm writing their BIOS security code...), are not stacked, and that you didn't have three elements per pixel. The filtering is REQUIRED to make it look aesthetically pleasing.
I imagine if we had close ups of the REAL screen and not the simulator you'd see what I'm talking about.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
One of the highest GDPs per person in Africa, isn't that like saying one of the coolest people on slashdot?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
can it run Doom?
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Lovely hardware, more flexibility with the peripherals and a more recent Geode LX core: Linutop. Free Software -based, of course. It even uses LinuxBIOS. Me wanna!
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
I thought they ditched the hand crank?
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
Not every damned country in the world needs rice and water because thousands are dying of starvation every day.
And what the hell is giving only food or water purification going to do but make countries dependent on foreign aid. This is a great project because it helps self-sustained development for countries with limited capital.
I am currently in Kumasi, Ghana, setting computer networks and teaching desktop computing and will be teaching people how to setup linux and other free tools. OLPC is extremely interesting to me as it may be a viable way to get computing to be affordable in more schools here.
Yes you can buy a pentium 3 computer for about 200 dollars here (monitor, keyboard, etc). Ok, now power it, electricity is more expensive here, the power is unstable and kills our hard drives constantly (ok we bought some power stabilizers, oh that also means we have to hire an electrician, which isn't cheap). Ok, now get legal software, anti-virus, the internet (Our 128K ISDN over radio costs approx $600 a month), networking equipment, cabling, and the expertise to set all of this stuff up.
The OLPC is PRECISELY what I would like to setup at this school (http://www.jwms.org), because mesh networking makes a lot of things simpler. Even with the donated bay networks 100mb switches, hundereds of feet of networking cable, and 70 odd computers, it still would have probably been cheaper/easier to deploy OLPC systems despite all of that equipment being "free." We already had a $1000 USD a month electricity bill before I came here and that was with 5 working computers. By the time I'm done just getting the lab setup it will end up being at least 2.5 times as much.
And this is an exceptionally well off school for a nation that is very well developed (Better k-8 education here than anything I saw growing up in Boston), that has access to capital, and a linux/windows/mac guru nephew from the states who will volunteer himself for IT projects. I think I can safely say that a OLPC based setup (including their satelite link central server setup) would cost less than 1/5th of what our "free" donated PCs and networking equipment (which need massive amounts of support) within 1 year, and less and less as time goes on.
Sleep is for the weak.
Exactly, One Laptop Per Scammer
Every year, more than two million children die of diarrhea and other sicknesses caused by dirty water and a lack of "access to sanitation." That is the common euphemism for the reality that more than a third of the world's people -- 2.6 billion -- have no decent place to go to the bathroom, while more than a billion get water for drinking, washing and cooking from sources polluted by human and animal feces.Toilets Underused to Fight Disease
Thanks to zakat terrorists can afford descent notebooks...
Forget about the warlord who confiscates the laptops. How about the Education Minister's brother Abdul who decides to "accidentally" drop these computers into a shipping container headed for Amsterdam instead?
The corruption will start at the top, and there is no legal means to prevent these computers from being resold in 1st world countries. The only way to stop that sort of behaivor is to flood the world market so shipping them to 1st world countries will cost more than you can possibly sell them at. Even then minor corruption will still occur, but at least some of these education ministers will get these computers where they were supposed to go in the first place: the hands of kids eager to learn about the world.
Let's give some of these to the really needy: College students
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Because of school computer labs, libraries with internet access, etc. Even the poorest schools are able to afford textbooks for all their students (even if somewhat outdated) which is the main function of OLPC. And telephone coverage in the US is nearly total, eliminating the need for the wifi capabilities of OLPC.
Get over it, it wasn't designed for the 1st world.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give a man the ability to communicate beyond his local community and access the sum of all human knowledge (the internet) and you see him do far more interesting things than catch fish.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_myths#The_laptop_w
The crank was found to be both too fragile and too energy wasting. It has been replaced by a yoyo kind of system that is designed be used by pulling and a third party is working with a foot pedal kind of system.