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Peru Orders 260K OLPCs, Mexico to Get 50K
eldavojohn writes "Perhaps in response to recent news that the lawsuit against the OLPC may be a scam, Peru's government has announced they want 260,000 OLPCs and a Mexican billionaire by the name of Carlos Slim has also asked for 50,000 that he wishes to distribute in Mexico. Things are looking good for the OLPC."
Since Slim owns CompUSA, maybe he's creating new customers.
Dude, you're comparing apples and washing machines. One is a laptop to teach third world children, the other is a PDA killer. Just because they're both small, cheap and run Linux doesn't mean they're aimed at anything like the same market.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It would be great if at this point we started thinking how to evaluate the laptops' impact. Surely there won't be enough for *all* children, so starting a data collection effort on the children, maybe assigning them randomly to schools or towns (otherwise, how to ration them?), and comparing results down the line could be an interesting project. Negroponte should think of funding a few data collection efforts, I think.
I travelled briefly in Peru in 2005 and saw the crushing poverty both in and out of the cities. It's worse out of the cities, and not uncommon to see houses with no electricity and water delivered from wells.
In Cuzco begging is rife, and the kids usually try to sell something to justify giving them money. Postcards are pretty popular. These kids are smart too, learning enough English to have a conversation and show their sense of humour. I think that giving them an opportunity to learn valuable skills can only be a good thing for them and for their country.
The XO is not a computer. It's a teaching tool.
The EeePC is a very inexpensive and small notebook computer.
they are entirely different beasts.
The Eee has ha UMPC screen (480x800) while the XO has much higher resolution one designed to consume less power and to be readable under direct sunlight. It also sports a next to indestructible design and mesh networking hardware. The Eee is just a low-power (and underpowered) notebook.
Not to say I don't like it. In fact, I would like to have both.
But the EeePC's technology points towards the present - there is nothing new in it except the price. The XO points towards the future. And we all know the future is a much cooler place.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The title "Earl of Northumberland" is, per Wikipedia at least, a subsidiary title of the Dukes of Northumberland since Hugh Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766 and his heirs to this day retain that title; the present Duke had, as of sometime in 2005, an estimated wealth on the order of 300 million GBP, which is something like two orders of magnitude less than Carlos Slim's fortune.
(As for the City of London, I was under the impression that it had been a corporate city for many centuries, and not "owned", even the sense that a purely titular feudal holding might be said to be "owned", by anyone, save, in the sense that this is true of all land in England, the Crown.)
The rates of English adoption by immigrants and their children in the USA are at all-time highs. What the hell are you talking about?
The reason there's all that much Spanish language stuff isn't because immigrants aren't learning English. It's because the first generation immigrants will always be better at Spanish than English, and you get a competitive advantage selling them stuff if you use Spanish.
Are you adequate?
And that someone is Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies