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A Child's View of the OLPC
Finallyjoined!!! sends us a BBC account of a dad who traveled to Nigeria and brought back an XO laptop for his 9-year-old, Rufus. Here is Rufus's review, a child's view of OLPC. "Because it looks rather like a simple plastic toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas - enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored. Instead, it seems to provide enduring fascination... With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy rather too much of his time."
America scams Nigeria!
"With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago."
The kid has made such a fast advancement that he has already been offered a job by Chris Hansen.
Something smells...and it aint my pants
It's your pants. Totally.
>> I returned from Nigeria with a sample of the XO laptop
That's nothin'. I returned from Nigeria with my late uncle's ashes and 30% of his $20,000,000 estate.
"a BBC account of a dad who traveled to Nigeria and brought back an XO laptop"
So...did he scam a Nigerian?
Name...That...Autocomplete!
All of those third world kids will finally get up off their butts and away from their Xbox 360's and Playstation 3's!!!!
Marge: Lisa, you got a letter.
Lisa: It's from my pen-pal Anya! [reads]
Anya: [voice over] Dear Lisa, as I write this, I am very sad. Our
president has been overthrown and
[voice changes to that of a man]
replaced by the benevolent general Krull. All hail Krull and his
glorious new regime! Sincerely, Little Girl.
So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries.
Sounds like Rufus is a lot smarter than your kid. Figuring out all this stuff on his own. Before you know it, he'll be like his Dad, buying goods off the black market.
Your 3-year old is advanced. My 3-year old always clicks the right mouse button and ends up with the "display properties" dialog window. Then he smears his fingers on the LCD.
>I found int intriguing
Why yes, signed 32bit integer values can be very interesting from many points of view!
The OLPC is just an amazing machine, not only is it able to connect with any Wi-Fi network (no matter how far away or how secured), instantly make your child a programming virtuoso, make them a math whiz it can also make them instantly fluent in any language. Merely possessing the machine enables them to read and speak the language of the person they're chatting with. Not even Apple is so insanely cool.
Hahahahahaaa.. look at this country.. U R GAY!!!
[/obligatory Simpsons quote]
which is totally what she said
Well, of course it reports all of your credit card details, fingerprints, blood type (those sharp corners aren't just due to low production costs you know!), and also all your thoughts using the built in brainwave scanner. Better not let your firstborn near it either, because they're programmed to fire out CDs to decapitate firstborns as a proper sacrifice (to help amortise costs).
which is totally what she said
Please tell me your uncle is Bill Gates.
Yeah, my daughter just turned three, and it's already difficult to get her off the computer once she starts. She's normally on the Disney website, but lately she's also been on Wikipedia a great deal. Usually you'll find her browsing articles on Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants, though we recently caught her making edits to Nickelodeon after noticing that some shows the latter hasn't shown in years were still listed as regulars, and also reverting a vandal who changed Nickelodeon's owner from "Viacom" to "Halliburton".
We were somewhat surprised too to find her on Mozilla's Bugzilla, reporting a problem with Firefox frequently hanging if the Flash 9 plug-in is used under Ubuntu GNU/Linux. This was somewhat embarrassing as it turned out the bug had already been reported, and Isabella hadn't made even the slightest attempt to search for similar bug entries before submitting her's.
It's somewhat difficult to drag her away the computer, especially if she's on one of the game sites. She's another Soduku addict, and if she's not playing that or browsing Wikipedia, the chances are she's playing a multiplayer Unreal Tournament 2004 Deathmatch. My wife is somewhat concerned about that, given its violent content, but to me it's all more or less cartoon violence so I'm not sure I'm that bothered. I'm more bothered by how difficult it is to drag her from the computer.
*sigh* Kids.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
South Africa, The Iraq, and the Asian countries still need a lot of help from our education over here before they're ready to get XOs and build up our future.
Actually, I think they just need more maps.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Let them eat laptops.
You expected a Brit to go to Africa and NOT exploit the local population and natural resources?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I've just dispatched a courier on an autogyro to the Belgium Congo to obtain me a gross of them in exchange for trinkets and cheap food. Merry Christmas!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's really not as bad as it sounds. The kid always tries to snipe, but he sucks at hiding so he usually gets pwnd pretty early. I've tried to teach him the finer points of camouflage, but the little bastard just keeps yelling about "fucking campers" and complaining that he keeps getting killed because his ping time sucks and he just won't listen. 3 year olds can be so stubborn sometimes.
Are you kidding me? The poor innocent kid will be warped. Everyone knows Source is just a perversion of the true Counter Strike.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?