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OLPC a Hit in Remote Peruvian Village
mrcgran writes "The Chicago Tribune is running a feel-good story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru. 'Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed.'"
Considering all media outlets in the USA are owned by one of three mega-conglomerates, I must have failed to see when the US acquired a "free press". With all the sound and fury over the "liberal media" which fails to take conservatives and their hardcore corruption and plundering of America to task, I must have missed when the press became "free".
BTW, the OLPC is a flop. The device is buggy, it can't carry non-Latin character sets, which I guess is irrelevant since the keyboard is too small even for a child's fingers. And, the boobs in charge can't even get any devices produced, much less sold. The device went from $100 to $200 to it's current price of $400 for two (one being purchased by a future disappointed customer in America, the other "donated"... allegedly).
There was recently a big article on teh OLPC which lays bare the entire failure. Not surprisingly, it didnt get any play on Slashdot, since they are tied to the OLPC failure.
Then there is also the Washington Post's piece which likewise exposes that mean old reality.
Reality just seems to be biased against both conservatives and FOSSies. Not surprising, since they have the same selfish and unrealistic mindset.
My kid wants a OLPC. But you can't just buy one. My kid isn't a good, African kid, she's a bad, American kid. So the units aren't available at Fry's or Toys'R'Us. There are maybe 4 or 5 of 'em on eBay. And if you want to buy from the manufacturer, not only is there no promised delivery date, but you actually are forced to buy two of 'em and donate one of 'em to good, African kids.
So I think I will get a used WinMe laptop, port Linux onto it, and give it to her until the supply of eBay OLPCs improves.
Oh, and another get-this: There are, intentionally, no support or service facilities for bad, American kids.