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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.
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.
Er...
The article didn't mention Mexico ordering any. Someone ordered them to be distributed in Mexico.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
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!
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.
No, in fact, the whole point of the project from the outset was the main market was going to be direct, bulk sales to governments (specifically, national ministries of education) who would distribute them on a one-per-child basis in their educational systems, the reasoning being that only by selling in that manner would (1) they get big enough orders, and (2) the laptops being fully integrated into the educational system to give the most advantage to students and educators.
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.
Also it seems like Intel is getting in to the game because they are out to make a buck not to help. So once they are the only game in town they are likely to just have the price jump up.
FYI: The TWIT that came out today talked about the OLPC project a lot.
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.
He's mad about the Classmate PC because making a "low-end, affordable laptop" is most emphatically not the point. The point is to make a tool for learning, which places the emphasis on the software and the collaboration that the system (as a combination of hardware and software) allows.
In other words, he's mad because the Classmate PC is merely an attempt to indoctrinate a new set of kids into the Intel/Microsoft closed-source and commercial hegemony, while his goal is to give the kids a tool they can modify themselves as they see fit.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
Okay great, but now let's look at the real world where the majority of citizens accept that some form of tax exists in their government and would prefer that their tax dollars, which they already have to pay, are put to good use.
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.
And that someone is Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies