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Mass OLPC Production Begins
eldavojohn writes to tell us that mass production of the first XO laptops has officially started. "The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO to a child in a developing nation for every machine sold online--are expected to start getting laptops in December.)"
...I'll still be around to get mine!
Yes, but imagine a beowolf cluster of... OW! OW! STOP HITTING ME!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
From that article:
However, the latest twist in the story is nothing but positive. T-Mobile is now offering a year of free Hot Spot Wi-Fi access, good at nearly 8,500 public T-Mobile Hot Spot locations throughout the country, including Starbucks coffee shops, Borders bookstores, and more than 70 major airports across the United States.
The offer is only good from November 12 to 26, and considering a 12-month T-Mobile Hot Spot plan would cost $359 on its own, we can see how this could lead to a lot of OLPC purchases. OLPC has set up a Web site, laptopgiving.org, which has more details.
The original generic sig.
After following it's development from concept through revised designs and explanation of the rational for it's features.
Frankly I feel like it's already part mine. Baring unavailability or some weird sales structure, I plan to get one. Or a few.
What choice do I have when my 15 Month old is monopolizing the main desktop at home?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
But a nice troll, nonetheless.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
They do have a donation-only option, so you can do that if you want.
But plenty of geeks could use the XO for more than a toy. It's screen would make a good e-book reader. It's fast resume and long battery life, light weight, and solid state disk make it better than a standard laptop for grab-and-go type uses.
I won't drag my laptop everywhere, and my cellphone is too small and keyboard-less to use for much web/email or ssh. The XO fits nicely between the two. It looks very useful to me.
I remain at a loss as to why so many of my fellow Americans seem to believe
that by being born within these borders they deserve a job.
Having lived and worked in a developing African country I would much rather
see jobs go to people who work their asses off with few educational and
technical resources than to lazy Americans who don't even appreciate
the educational opportunities available here.
Fortunately not all Americans are as such, and those few will remain
competitive, by working their asses off, just as it should be, not by
being born with the national silver spoon in their mouths.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Excellent. I was getting tired of scam email from people in Nigeria. I look forward to the scams that will be coming to me from Uruguay and Mongolia.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Or is anyone else amused that the name for this laptop, the XO, is an emoticon for a frustrated person yelling? Seems like Microsoft would have nailed that name down. I keed, I keed.
Outsourcing is shitty, but the solution isn't to keep third world kids stupid and computer-illiterate. We need to demand that US corporations take more responsibility for the local workers and towns who have carried them this far. Big business will screw over local workers as much as they can get away with, but we can reign them in as a society simply by demanding more than low, low prices. Support local businesses, boycott unethical/irresponsible companies. We don't need to resort to sabotaging the educational systems of other countries.
Yes, I can definitely imagine that. Running a large cluster off the hand-cranks would quite a nice exercise routine.
There are a lot of arguments relating to this in the book Guns, Germs and Steel.
...)
I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't. According to the author it comes
down to geography and (related to geography) the availability of native domesticable
plant and animal species -- which is the one resource that matters most. The Eurasian
continent had them, the Americas, Africa and Australia did not.
It's a fascinating book with loads of information. I understand the difficulty
people have with the question you pose -- it's not at all obvious. While treating
these peoples (Native American, South American, Native Australians, Africans
as inferiors for so long was/is not justified, it's understandable why
so many people assumed they were an inferior subspecies -- it in fact takes a lot
of analysis to figure out why their societies are so behind Eurasian based societies.
Now, I agree the OLPC may not do anything. I think it depends on what is included a lot.
I worked as a mathematics and physics teacher for a few years in West Africa. In my opinion
if the OLPC can serve as a substitute for the relatively expensive school books students
are expected to purchase today it would be a massive help -- and in fact cheaper, OLPC and
co wouldn't need to give these machines away if they could show the value of them. That's
all of course beyond the IT educational component of the thing, which seems to be the focus
at OLPC. From what I've seen on the wiki it looks like the ebooks component of the project
is pretty undeveloped.
If the thing was packed full of 12 years of well made interactive textbooks, it would be
a Godsend. I'm a bit worried though that it's going to be more of a toy that kids play
around with -- IM, WWW, email, etc.
Just my 2 cents.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
It's got a nice processor, the Geode LX-700.
That's a lot of oomph actually. I know we're all used to our 3ghz desktops, but think about how nice 700mhz(equiv) actually is. I've got a refurbished eMachines 650 in my basement. It plays divx video with no problems.
You could use one of these as a portable entertainment center easy. Or how about a router? The thing is designed for minimum power draw. Use one in your basement as a router that works the way you want it to work.
A sub $200 x86 with that kind of horsepower and power specs has hundreds of uses.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
An "entitlement state"? Is this the new buzzphrase that makes a complex situation seem really simple?
I thought the government was paralyzing us with fear, and helping the rich get richer. Isn't "state of fear" that the current anti-government line?
The reason the western world has it better than most of the rest of the world is a complex and interesting one, that can't be boiled down to politicians telling us we deserve something or rich people paying for everything good in our lives. All that matters for your argument is that America does have a very high GDP, as does the rest of the developed world. Because we're developed we're more productive; America isn't a country of people on welfare who are all wealthy for some inexplicable reason, businesses don't thrive in the US because the government is stealing from the rich, China accepts US credit for a reason.
If you don't think we deserve this or that modern convenience then give them up. Don't write on a laptop about how "ohh we are so terrible, we don't deserve laptops and cheese graters, damn government! No Mr Bush I don't deserve this fancy car you say I'm entitled to and that you're willing to pay for at the expense of the rich, give me a horse and buggy like they probably all use in China! I'm going to help the developing world by denying myself the cell phones and cars they manufacture."
On outsourcing, while I'm writing: My experience with outsourcing is limited to freelance sites like rentacoder.com , where people across the world can bid on software projects. I found that the prices for bids quoted by people in India or Romania or China are right in line with prices I would quote. There are no coders living in tents that will write SQL server for a hundred US dollars.
A lot of the outsourcing by Microsoft and the like to India Research is often done because it lets them get more done per day; as Redmond goes to sleep Bombay is getting down to work, as Bombay goes to sleep Cambridge is putting the coffee on, as Cambridge goes to sleep Redmond is checking its e-mail and seeing what progress has been made.
If you're really scared about outsourcing rather than fight the market you should want these countries to develop as quickly as possible so that everyone is on a level playing field. India will have more IT pros, but it'll need them in their own economy.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I'm from Uruguay (the country that has actually gone out and bought the XOs), and... it's not at all like you imagine it.
:)
We have electricity and running water everywhere, better literacy than the US and public education for everyone (better than that of the US if Slashdot whining is to be believed !)
On the other hand, average wages are about U$ 300/month, and so a computer is a luxury item for most, and very especially for parents of school-age children like the ones which will be the recipient of the XO.
You can read at the unofficial Proyecto Ceibal blog (the Uruguayan OLPC initiative) about how this has the potential to be a nice step forward
http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.