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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."
Are we handing them out at the border or something?
Since Slim owns CompUSA, maybe he's creating new customers.
If people had bothered to read the "OLPC Lawsuit-Bringer Has Past Fraud Conviction" (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/03/0526202) article, they would have seen that it mentioned Peru's and Mexico's purchasing plans.
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
The lawsuit is Nigerian, but it's not so clearly a scam. It seems to be a claim that a keyboard layout (i.e. which key goes where) is a patentable design. Of course in most of the world keyboard layouts are standardized, denying us the fun of learning a new keyboard layout whenever we buy a new keyboard -- but perhaps this isn't the case there. If anything, I would suspect it to be a harassment tactic. I wonder if this Nigerian company has recently started a strategic partnership with a large American software company ...
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.
Peru's government has announced they want 260,000 OLCPs [CC] and a Mexican billionaire by the name of Carlos Slim has also asked for 50,000 that he wishes to distribute in Mexico.
In other news Colombia has proposed to help the OLPC organisation respond to the increased demand by manufacturing hundreds of thousands of OLPC laptops and shipping them to the USA, thereby only letting the non-profit organisation take care of the worldwide distribution of the laptops.
You just got troll'd!
I thought they swore that taxpayers would never pay for OLPC? That was one of the main selling points, originally. WTF?
I suggest you read Slashdot
They are different things, for different purposes.
"The Eee PC is not a competitor to the OLPC XO-1, another inexpensive laptop computer..."
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
Carlos Slim recently surpassed Bill Gates as the world's richest man. I found it sort of jarring that whoever wrote the summary hadn't seemed to have heard of him.
Carlos Slim is not Mexico, in much the same way as Bill Gates is not the United States.
To me, a language learning software package for deployment in Mexico would be the killer app. Mexico should have a leg up on India and China when it comes to importing stuff to the United States. Mexico is much closer and the time difference isn't much if any. Mexico is getting shoved out of nearly all markets however due to their inability to compete. China is shoving them out of the goods market because of their low prices (and associated poor environmental and human practices). India is beating them on call centers because many Indians are willing to learn English and have a chance to do so- something most Mexicans can not or will not.
Mass adoption of English as a second language could give Mexico the enormous economic boost that India has enjoyed in recent years. Can the OLPC fill this gap in Mexican education? Will Mexicans care to learn English? I doubt it. There may soon be a time when large numbers of Indians stop immigrating to the US because there are plenty of good jobs in India. It would be nice to think that Mexico could get to that point too.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
They'll find they can run a lot more programs concurrently. Don't believe all that '640k is enough for anybody' bumf.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Could the poor children get some Macs instead... please save the world!
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.
Intel and Microsoft should be ashamed for their attempts to poison this fantastic project.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Kirby
>> But of course not. This is just another lame FOSSie attempt to force people into using Lunix... which realistically nobody wants
Excactlly!!!! What it really needs is AmigaOS4!!!! Yeah Baby!!
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=764
I've seen the OLPC and I can assure you that it works.
The OLPC is a (non-profit) response to the need to educate children in developing countries. Intel's Classmate is a (for-profit) response to an inexpensive PC that doesn't use Intel's CPUs. Microsoft's $30 Windows/Office package is a (for-profit) response to a free operating system that is "making the news". Can you see the difference? Neither Intel or Microsoft would have created their responses if OLPC did not exist. Why would they?
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
...by the name of Carlos Slim.
Uh, just the richest man in the world. Funny how no one ever hears people refer to Bill Gates as "An American Billionaire by the name of Bill Gates".
Dear eldavojohn... you must be very ignorant.
### The XO is not a computer. It's a teaching tool.
I don't think so. If anything its the software that teaches, not the hardware. The XO is much better for book reading, outdoor use and such as the Eee, but that doesn't make it a teaching tool, it simply makes it the better hardware for such environments.
only one of the richest men in the world link [ wikipedia.com ], richer than Bill Gates.
>> But of course not. This is just another lame FOSSie attempt to force people into using Lunix... which realistically nobody wants
Yeah, of course! why should any child in the world learn on a system which is transparent, and can be explored, when they can be brought up thinking that computers ARE Windows, and that a computer system is something that will ALWAYS be purchased from a single American company and never to be shared, discussed, or cracked open to learn from?
Oh wait, but that will give third world children *more* opportunities than American children! kill the OLPC!
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a PDA killer in the sense that the Zune is an iPod killer.
Hello? They have been speaking English in India for a very long time. And installing a language tutor isn't going to instantly create a population of fluent English speakers. Extensive fluency in a population requires a that they converse in that language.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
I was going to jump in with the inevitable, "Mexican billionaire? So about $34 American?" Then I remembered the peso's worth slightly more than the dollar now. So... uh... yay... Go him!
How much, do you really think that the raw materials and the cheap underpaid, overworking employee cost the Chinese manufacturer ?
I really doubt that such cable could any way cost more than 1$ to the factory, and I think that I'm still grossly over-estimating the price.
A couple of cents may be a very close to reality figure.
I mean, Chinese companies can make whole DVD players which are sold, including the scart cable (at least as much complex as a parallel printer cable), for not more than 50$ in the shop and everyone along the chain makes profit (they can't sell at a loss something for which they can't apply the same technique as for inkjet printers).
Do you genuinely think that the cable cost 10$ to produce ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
> So please... tell us again the OLPC isn't, like Lunix
Please, get it right: It's called Lunizzz
OK. But it was not designed to be used the same way we use our computers - That's not its primary design goal.
In that sense, it has as much in common to the notebook I am typing this as this notebook has with the Playstation downstairs.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Speaking of which, how useful is the OLPC to a child in an environment where there aren't any other similar machines? I was thinking about getting one to give to a friend's 5yr old child and was wondering how useful it would be. It would be that they would have the only one in the area, so the wireless mesh networking & chat wouldn't be used. They have a wireless network in the apartment, so they could use it to play games and browse some websites. But what else? Are there websites providing educational content just for these machines?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The OLPC project requires the laptops to go to children, and become the property of the child. There is also an excellent security system called BitFrost which makes stolen laptops essentially useless.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I can't figure out if that's 266,240 and 51,200 or 260,000 and 50,000. Oh, it has something to do with computers, so it must be powers of two, right?
If the laptops actually cost $200, then the cost of 50K is $10M (I seem to recall them being slightly under $200, but maybe the dollar has plummeted a bit more recently). According to Wikipedia, Carlos's income is roughtly $27M/day. In other words, it takes him a little under 9 hours to be able to afford to make this donation. I don't wish to belittle the gift - if used correctly it is likely to make a huge difference to a lot of lives - I just want to put it in perspective. Someone in the UK earning the national minimum wage would have to work for just over 17 hours to be able to afford one at that price.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I thought it was Knieu/Lunitzz ?
The Eee is much closer to a cheap subnotebook than a PDA. Why? Try running Mathematica on a PDA.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Currently this article is tagged 'tobadsosadms'. Personally, I like the snarky comments people leave in the form of tags, but this one is bad in many ways. Most important, and I hope you all thought the same thing when you saw it, it's not even intelligible English. "To bad so sad"? To what? To infinity and beyond? To be or not to be? What is the tagger talking about? Did he mean "Too"? Seriously, once you're past first grade, the difference between To and Too should be abundantly clear. For the sake of the tagger's brain, I really hope it was a mistake and not a misunderstanding.
There not going to be stolen, they're going to be 'borrowed' by the adults who live with or near the children, which means the anti-theft software won't do a thing.
I think the OP has a reasonable concern. Just the chat and camera functions of these little widgets could make them very valuable to adults in certain very poor communities. Even worse, some of those who can most easily buy off (or threaten) the children and/or their parents, and who might want to use these widgets to conduct business, are the unpleasant types who run local criminal gangs.
There's ample precedent for donations to Third World countries ending up in entirely the wrong hands, unfortunately.
You think this is irrelevant?
Well you're right! It was meant to be posted in "Dinosaur Fossil Found With Preserved Soft Tissue"
Damn those tabs!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
IIRC sony were planning to ship the PS3 with linux so it could be used as a general purpose computer as well as a games console but they bottled out at the last minuite (they let you install linux if you want but don't preload it or provide media for it).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Or, ya know, maybe the child will go to school and the teacher will say "where is your laptop?" and the child will say "umm, I lost it" in an attempt not to get their father into trouble for stealing it and selling it, and the teacher will push the "lost laptop" button on the management app and enter the child's mesh identifier and the laptop will brick itself instantly as it is always connected to the mesh.
Just because you don't know something, doesn't give you the right to assume that the worst thing you can imagine is reasonable to expect. It's not like this stuff is hard to find out either. Sheesh.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Preach it, brother! and the N810 firmware is amazing.
Take a look here for kidz stuff for the OLPC... http://squeakland.org/
Fair question. In general I'm opposed to the idea of a security system that can lock the legitimate owner out of their machine but in the case of children, I think you have to have a bit of a different point of view. It certainly is cause for concern if BitFrost starts to be abused.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Nope, it's a big PDA
errera hunamum ets
I'd love to try out the OLPC software on my ThinkPad, but I've futzed around with couple of Virtual Machines and image files all weekend and only got as far as a plain white window. If OLPC want their play and learn machine to take off, they have got to get their software into the hands of the world's education administrators, the target audience, and the parents and teachers thereof.
So, which VM and which image file should I d/l to attempt to make a LiveCD so I can show this off to my grandaughter's teacher and school administrator?
Anybody got an OLPC emulation to actually go?
They only did it for tax reasons in Europe, where general purpose computers are taxed at a lower rate than "entertainment systems"
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
You can get them in the hands of (y)our schoolchildren right now, all you have to do is buy one for your kid under the OLPC program wherein your buy two - you get one and one goes to a kid in one of the countries where they are trying to get these things distributed. The government of (Canada|USA) does not need to be - and most definitely should not be - involved. I don't know how things are where you're at, but government involvement in education is fouling things up here in California pretty well without further help. Per-child spending on education in California is over $11,000/year and we have teachers buying classroom supplies out of their own pockets and regularly holding class sales and other fund-raisers to help make ends meet. Money for things like field trips is raised just by our PTA. The school has no money for that at all. And all this while the state is still getting record property tax revenues. If taxes were
any higher, I couldn't afford my house.
It's hard to figure out where the money is going, but several things are sure: 1) It's not going into teacher salaries; 2) An awful lot of it's not getting to where it's needed, thus the fundraisers, teachers buying their own supplies, etc; 3) The system, overall, is doing less with more.
When I was in grade school in California, I don't recall my school ever having any kind of bake sale. Classroom supplies came from the supply room, not from teachers buying them out of their own pockets. And there were far fewer remedial programs in those days, too.
What's really hard to tell is exactly where all this money is going, but clearly, not enough of it is getting down to the local schools.
But guess what: in absolute numbers, today more people in the USA speak English than ever before. What the hell are you complaining about, then?
No, you don't. Did you read what I said?
The Spanish menus are for people who speak Spanish, regardless of whether they speak English or not. In fact, many companies that market their products in Spanish are primarily trying to reach Spanish-dominant bilinguals and full bilinguals. Why? Because the bilinguals as a group have better jobs, and thus, more money to spend than the ones who only speak Spanish.
Do you seriously think it's easy to live in the USA without knowing a fair amount of English? And care tell me, why are the Spanish-language TV networks so full commercials for home courses in English? (The latest one I saw, the course is in MP3s, and they throw in a cheap MP3 player for you to play the course in.)
You know, American xenophobes think we live in a fantasy world where recent immigrants that move into the USA and militantly refuse to learn English or assimilate to American society. At the same time, they believe that in the glory days of past, when their own immigrant ancestors came to the USA, they integrated trivially and effortlessly into the USA. Neither of these is true.
Are you adequate?
You can connect to a jabber server over ordinary wireless to "mesh" with distant computers if you don't have nearby XO's. There is quite a bit of interesting software packaged with it even in prerelease versions that you can try out on a vmware image to see what you think. The other reply about squeak is right on. Also see the tutorials about squeak etoys at this url: http://waveplace.com/movies/
Yes, I'd like a screen readable in sunlight and with a resolution of 1200x900 pixels (in black and white, even if the resolution in color is closer to 400x300). A waterproof laptop would be great.
wow, I think we found the idiot who wrote the "tobadsosadms" tag. I think you need some education.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hey Mr Troll, in Mexico, you too can be a peso menunaire!
Go ahead, indulge in refried chorizo tacos with a dash of medium-rare pork's ass.
Then have a blast with whatever comes out the other end and report back to us.
(BTW, if any mexican geek out there caught the Santos vs La Tetona Mendoza reference, I salute you!)
> Things are looking good for the OLPC
On-Line Porn Collection? Let's hope things are looking good!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
PS3 doesn't have enough memory to be a credible computer. It makes an OK thin client though. Shame about all that processing power you can't really use for anything but games or HPC due to the low memory.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
256 is a bit low by modern standards but provided you avoid the big name megabloat desktops and applications (KDE, GNOME, openoffice etc) it should be usable as a desktop.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
where is that vmware image? at the sqeakland.org site? Thanks for the response.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
You can get the vmware image here: http://dev.laptop.org/pub/virtualbox/ I haven't tried the latest one, but had success (minus the sound) with the next most recent when I downloaded it and ran it under vmware server. But you don't need vmware to play with etoys. Follow the instructions in the waveland tutorial (essentially install what's at the first link -- versions for windows, os/X and linux are there) and then fetch the second squeakland link to be executed by the program installed when you download the first squeakland link).
I have a creepy supiscion that what you pay in the US for a OLPC is the actual cost for getting you that Laptop. Or at least 80% of the cost is for your laptop, I hope I'm wrong.
GPL v3 protects your right to tinker, and OLPC is supposed to have , if it is in in the final version I don't know.
PS you can use the id in too link within a page.
PS you can use the id in div id="muu" too link within a page.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He is not just a Mexican billionaire, he became the richest man in the world this year.
Amongst many businesses, Mr Slim owns Telmex, the Mexican telecoms monopoly (bought from the government at a bargain price).
Most Mexicans pay the guy some dosh daily, depending of the goods and services you get, but anybody with a phone is paying him.
Makes the MS tax pale in comparison.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Some of them are immensely rich, but the balance of wealth as moved to entrepreneurs, oligarchs and a few pop and sport stars.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He got the company lawfully.
It is disgraceful that politicians literally handled it to him in a silver plate, but the guilty party is Mr Carlos Salinas and his corrupt government who were the people responsible to ensure proper privatization should have taken place (i.e. ensuring fair competition would arise at some point).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You could have paid US$30/month for ADSL and then got yourself a calling card.
But I agree, that price is comparable to the ones paid in developed countries, a real rip-off in relative terms.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The Spanish speaking people will have enough muscle (cultural and political) to be able to keep their culture inside the US if so they wish.
At some point Hispanic culture will be so overwhelming than nobody will make a fuss about it. The US will become part of the Latin sphere of influence and that frankly would not be a bad thing (you know, we are tired of the US trashing our countries every time it feels like it).
Being now the biggest minority (at least in the derided way in which minorities are counted in the US, in which "Hispanic" related mostly to a shared common language is treated in a similar way to African-American, which is a racial stereotype), Hispanics should not trouble themselves much with integration. They have never been welcomed anyway, so they can as well get on with life on their own.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mexico has had a ministry for the environment for ages. Although it is far from perfect it has real teeth and promotes numerous environmental projects and is willing to listen to ecological organizations (several development projects in places where endangered species would have been put at risk have been stopped, this includes protecting whales in Baja California, Monarch butterflies in Michoacan and teporingo rabbits in Mexico City).
In recent years also unleaded gasoline was forbidden and the conversion of cars (in the government and public transport) in Mexico City has progressed as fast as possible. Mexico City was in a siuation similar to the one in Beijing now but people got of their asses and tried to do something about it.
As for human rights, you surely are joking. Although Mexico's record in human rights is not as good as the ones of some EU countries, we don't execute people like China (or the US), have a free press (unlike China), levels of censorship have been steadily falling (I don't think there has been a movie or book banned in Mexico for at least 20 years) and have an independent Human Rights commissioner ensuring that the governments respects them.
Mexico is signatory of all kind of treaties regarding the protection of Human Rights, unlike China (and in some cases, unlike the US).
So yeah, Mexico is not perfect, but it is ludicrous even to attempt to compare it with China in these two topics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Honestly. Take a trip down to Mexico some time, it is not that far.
Which exploding birthrates are you talking about? Birthrates in Mexico have been falling since the 70s, as well as life expectancy has been rising.
Lack of natural resources? We have oil, gas, coast, silver. I could go forever.
The only valid points you make are capital and health and sanitation (up to a point, all Mexicans have accesss to a lesat basic medical services now, provided by the state).
So now, pray tell me, who would want to invest in Mexico (the capital bit) if there is not an educated population to take those new jobs?
China and India are creating thousands of Engineering graduates, in Mexico out of 100 only 4 or 5 students get an University degree, forget about relevant disciplines to allow the country to grow its exports (sorry, but a degree in history or philosophy, although important, will not help much to bring the bread to the national table so to speak).
Medium to highly qualified jobs go vacant in Mexico for months, that is a problem that only education will solve, but education starts at the very bottom. Many people of my generation still find computers puzzling and technology threatening, having a new generation of kids comfortable with technology, independently of their economic situation (not all are in abject misery, and even those that are may benefit from this) is a huge plus.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.