LANCOR v. OLPC Case Continues In Nigerian Court

drewmoney writes "According to an article on Groklaw: It's begun in a Nigerian court. LANCOR has actually done it. Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria."

Comments

Why don't the Nigerians just

[LM741N]

get their money from all those secret accounts that I keep getting emailed about.

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[deepershade]

Why is this post modded as flamebait when in all the other threads about this subject, such a comment would be a minimum +4 funny? Someone needs a sense of humour perhaps?

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigerian moderator?

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[Phroggy]

get their money from all those secret accounts that I keep getting emailed about. Well, we would, but you see, there are a lot of legal fees involved in that kind of transaction. It's actually easier just to transfer the money out of the country, to an American bank account, and then transfer it back. If you'd be so kind as to give me your bank account number, I could just send you the money, and then you could send it back to me. Obviously I'd be willing to compensate you quite well for your time, all I need is to borrow about $5,000 from you up front to help offset the legal fees, and then I'll be able to take care of everything and pay you $100,000 for your time. Let me know if I can count on your support!

(No, I'm not really Nigerian.)

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[Anonymous Coward]

If you made more spelling mistakes and invoked Jesus's blessing, I might've mistaken you for an authentic scammer.

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Sir,

My name is Prince Anonoomosa C'ow-Ard of the Nigerian Royal Family. Recently my family has been driven from power by Marxist revolutionaries. I need your kind help to move my family's enormous stash of TWO HUNDRED MILLION mod points out of the country. In exchange for your help I am willing to offer to you ten percent of this sum, deposited into the comments of your choice. As a gesture of good faith on your part, please mod this comment up.

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[Phroggy]

If you made more spelling mistakes and invoked Jesus's blessing, I might've mistaken you for an authentic scammer. I thought about going back and introducing them, but was really just too lazy to put in the extra effort. Instead, I settled for a simple disclaimer.

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[jimmydevice]

That AC guy FTW

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[aplusjimages]

What would happen if thousands of people just responded to these emails with fake account info? I'm not sure if these accounts are checked by hand, but if they are then a simple fake response by thousands of people could keep that person busy for a while.

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[zyzko]

Some are doing that and there are sites devoted to stories of scamming the scammers. The problem is volume - in Nigeria (this info comes from documentary - I don't remember if it was on Discovery or the National Geographic channel) this is a "real" job for many. Although technically illegal and Nigerian and foreign officials are fighting the crime they literally have to follow phone lines to find them. These are enterprises with people hired (and payed) as call-center workers with benefits and all that like a real job. And there are buttloads of these companies. When you face a professinally run company with full-time employees who are doing the answering job you would need enormous ammounts of "normal" people who had to spend their time scamming the scammers. Best practice is to educate people about dangers of these scams, but as like with other "make money fast" -schemes greed sometimes makes even bright people do stupid things.

-k

Re:Why don't the Nigerians just

[Bert64]

You'd think these companies could bother to write proper english in their scam mails...

But it's not just about people sending fake details, you can write scripts to do the same. I used to do it with phishing sites, I would just submit garbage information to their forms, sometimes tweaking the scripts to make it look more legit in the hope of wasting their time when they try to filter out all the crap.
I started doing it through proxies after i got dossed a couple of times.

Nigeria?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please?

Dollars $ Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

$20 million dollars in damages... Tutorial:

Q: How do you pronounce "$20"
A: "Twenty dollars"

Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million"
A: "Twenty million dollars"

Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million dollars"
A: "Twenty million dollars dollars"

You're welcome.

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[noidentity]

Dude, those Nigerians are way ahead of you. They always include how to pronounce those large amounts. For example, from one of my new partners:

"US$21,320,000.00(TWENTY ONE MILLION, THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND U.S DOLLARS)"

Oh, and don't tell anyone, but I'm getting that much in a few days. Payola!

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Inasmuch as I own the copyright on the use of the term "$20 million dollars" and you have irreparably wasted my time, I am instructing my lawyers to sue you for $30 million dollars. However, you may avoid the costs of a trial by sending $10,000 dollars to me care of Western Union wire transfer.

-- Bogo Mugubwai, Nigeria

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Tablizer]

Pizza Pizza!

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent actually meant to write, "$10,000 thousand dollars".

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Walt Dismal]

No no. See, I knew the American lawyers would advise client to take the better deal. So it is only $10,000. By the way, my wife is available for only $5000 dollars, and she doesn't bitch, moan, or nitpick anywhere as much as the last 10 posters. She has few flaws, and does not require another sex change operation, as she has already had that one. She is perfect for Slashdotters. Act fast.

--- Bogo Mugubwai, Nigeria

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

*whooosh*

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[commodoresloat]

Oh, just STFU up.

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: How does one pronounce "STFU up"? A: "Shut the **** up up."

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Maxo-Texas]

New for 2008!

I, for one, welcome our new "Tutorial" meme overlords.

Re:Dollars $ Dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: How does one, who isn't a damn pussy, pronounce "STFU up"?

A: Shut the fuck up up.

expect anything different?

[timmarhy]

Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.

Re:expect anything different?

[callmetheraven]

Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists.
The silver lining of this truth is that the fewer computers Nigerians have the better off the rest of the world is. It would have been difficult and politically incorrect to boycott Nigeria from the OLPC, with a litle luck they just might boycott themselves.

Re:expect anything different?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's so wrong... but also right.

Re:expect anything different?

[geoskd]

Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.
I'm not sure why someone doesn't simply go down there with $50k and bribe a judge to find the plaintiffs guilty of some truly dispicable crime, and watch the problem go away on its own... It would be cheaper than paying actual lawyers and, if my understanding of the current situation there is correct, this is the traditional method of settling legal disputes in Nigeria.

-=Geoskd

Re:expect anything different?

[e9th]

According to the Boston Globe>,

The founder of Lagos Analysis Corp., Ade Oyegbola, was convicted of bank fraud in Boston in 1990 and served a year in prison. .Maybe that's not despicable enough, but it sure puts a dent in LANCOR's credibility.

Re:expect anything different?

[Eccles]

Hell, how much would Murder, Inc. charge? The world would be better off without such "people" in it.

(Note that I mean scammers and sleazeballs, regardless of nationality, not Nigerians.)

Re:expect anything different?

[nbert]

I'm not going to defend Nigeria's scammers here, but most scams and spam I get still comes from the US (ranked 2nd is Brazil, which is amazing because I live in central Europe and don't even speak Portuguese). Nigeria has become an icon on scamming, even though a very small group has contributed to this image...

On a side-note: Most of my knowledge of drugs comes from US-spam advertising anti-depressants, libido-enhancing drugs or sedatives. Most of the Brazilian spam is about marketing companies, real estate or plastic surgery and I can assure you that my language skills are getting better every day - algumas coisas bacanas...

Re:expect anything different?

[Anonymous Coward]

gee that's funny, I always thought scammers didn't need to be living in Nigeria or connected to Nigeria in any way to send those kind of emails, silly me.

Re:expect anything different?

[Dun Malg]

gee that's funny, I always thought scammers didn't need to be living in Nigeria or connected to Nigeria in any way to send those kind of emails, silly me. Nobody said they did. The fact that the Nigerian 419 Scam originated and from and is still largely dominated by well-organized Nigerian gangs with the complicity of Nigerian government officials, however, makes the point perfectly valid.

Really, you ought to at least cursorily research subjects before commenting on them.

Re:expect anything different?

[corsec67]

Really, you ought to at least cursorily research subjects before commenting on them.

What on earth are you talking about?

This is /., most people couldn't even be bothered to read the article, much less look stuff up on Wikipedia.

Re:expect anything different?

[dgatwood]

Well, they certainly got the article wrong. It should have read:

WE REPRESENT THE ESTATE OF GENERAL ALHAJI ISMAILA "KEYBOARDMAKER" GWARZO. I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS MAY COME AS A SURPRISE TO YOU, AS WE HAVE NOT MET YET, BUT WE HAVE COME UPON ARE SUING FOR THE SUM OF $20,000,000 U.S. DOLLARS (TWENTY MILLION U.S. DOLLARS). IF YOU ARE WILLING HELP US FOR THE SUM OF ONE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS DEPOSITED IN YOUR ACCOUNT."

This will probably not make it past the lameness filter. :-D

Re:expect anything different?

[Lisias]

Let me tell you a little "third world" history. I used to live in Manaus, Amazon, Brazil (where a Free Tax Zone was, one day, promoted by the Military Goverment). That Free Tax Zone gived a lot of power to some goverment officials and, guess what, corruption prospered there. Man, you had to bribe someone for everything to be able to manufacture something there. The situation gone to a point where, even by being 100% legally, you still had to pay a bribe to import your materials - or the official would hold forever your cargo for "further investigations". Well, a friend of mine works in one american company settled there (that one that created ETHERNET and the GUI), and told me this little history: Someday, one official demanded a bribe to allow a cargo full of supriments to be delivered. The company refused. The official holded EVERY single cargo for months, but the company didn't submit itself. The situation deteriorated to a point where higher goverment officials feared a major break on (legal) tax incoming - a company that doesn't have its materials it's a company that don't pay employees and don't sells nothing for no one. Even more, a lot of lateral industries threatened to just send their business to another place, as they aren't making any money. Kiss a lot of taxes byebye. What happened? The corrupted officials just don't mess with this company's cargo anymore. Doesn't worth the trouble. Pay a single bribe to a officer, and you will pay bribes for the rest of your life.

Re:expect anything different?

[ScrewMaster]

If you're concerned about all the cyberdamage being done around the world, the real truth is that you'd be far better off disconnecting from China, Russia and the United States.

For all you people that want to pick on Nigeria, not everyone that comes from there is a scammer or a crook. As it happens, my girlfriend is from there (emigrated to the U.S. about 25 years ago) and is a remarkable individual. I consider myself lucky to have her. As an American, I tend to get irritated at all the foreigners here on Slashdot that like to make uninformed generalizations about the United States and its people. Anyone who's ever read any of my posts along those lines knows that. Conversely, I figure it's only fair not to paint everyone in a given country with the same brush, even if they do it to us with monotonous regularity.

That said, I wouldn't advise answering any Nigerian emails that show up in your inbox.

Re:expect anything different?

[arth1]

Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.

To be perfectly fair, the same can be said about the US, no?

I live in the CT, the Nutmeg state, which called so because people here would carve balls out of wood and sell them as nutmeg. Now it's known as the lawyer state, so not a whole lot has changed.

Re:expect anything different?

[mrchaotica]

As it happens, my girlfriend is from there (emigrated to the U.S. about 25 years ago) and is a remarkable individual.

Exactly: she was remarkable enough to get the heck out! It's not the people who come from there who are the scammers and crooks; it's the people who stay.

(It's the same with all immigrants, by the way. Take illegal Mexican immigrants in the US, for example. Why do they tend to be such hard workers? Because it takes a lot of effort to get here, so the lazy ones stayed home!)

Re:expect anything different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't America run by a well-organized gang?

Re:expect anything different?

[jack455]

Perhaps some would prefer to continue receiving Nigerian scam spam if they could only stop receiving spam about "r0 |_e > Replicas" and "\/|4gr4 meds".

Oh, and US stock tips; here in the US too many of our friends and relatives are the ones clicking on these spam messages, and like the SCO case, this one was started by someone doing business in the US, not Nigeria.

I don't however mean to marginalize the obvious corruption that this case is in danger of and that contributes to the facility of the Nigerian scams. Just remember that those scams are taking advantage of the willingness of citizens of *other* countries being willing to attempt to profit from said corruption.

Re:expect anything different?

[ikedasquid]

It's Nigeria...hire some local guy for $100 to kill the plaintiffs. Given the corruption, I'd bet OLPC could get away with it and they'd be ridding the world of these corrupt bastards in the process. Good for the kids, good for the poor local guy, good for Nigeria, and good for OLPC. Everybody wins.

Re:expect anything different?

[argiedot]

I would agree, simply because so much spam comes from those countries. For me, the arranging by number of spam emails/messages/comments: Russia > China > USA.

Re:expect anything different?

[commlinx]

For all you people that want to pick on Nigeria, not everyone that comes from there is a scammer or a crook. As it happens, my girlfriend is from there I used to root her as well until I worked out my deposits wouldn't result in a prince.

Re:expect anything different?

[Ohreally_factor]

Awesome.

Would it be wrong for me to generalize, and assume most of you F/OSS people are racists?

Re:expect anything different?

[Vadim Makarov]

That reminds me of the opening of a large IKEA store in Moscow. All was set for a high-profile opening ceremony, officials of both Russia and Sweden (like the ambassador) invited. Then, the event was cancelled two days before the date, because IKEA said it could not pass the "safety inspection of the parking lot" with a district official, or something like this. It made to the news, raised questions, the "safety approval of the parking lot" was then granted promptly. I hope IKEA doesn't pay any bribes in Mopscow after that.

Re:expect anything different?

[thatblackguy]

The silver lining of this truth is that the fewer computers Nigerians have the better off the rest of the world is This is what you say on Slashdot and you get modded up? wtf? Talk about dealing with symptoms and not the problems. This is the geek equivalent of that 'uncovered meat' remark.

If we want better spam protection we should have ISP's that give a damn about abuse of their networks. Or here's an idea, support the folks at sites like http://419eater.com/
Restricting access to computers for the kids will end up punishing the wrong people. Whether the laptops actually end up being used by them is a different matter. Deal with the problem directly instead of screwing over other people in the process.

Re:expect anything different?

[rjames13]

Isn't America run by a well-organized gang?

Let me reword that for you.

America run by a gang isn't well organized.

Re:expect anything different?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're general tone and comments are correct - however you spoil it completely with the "all the foreigners here on Slashdot" part. You do realise the Internet is global, and everyone is a foreigner to someone else?

Re:expect anything different?

[bram]

You are actually reading your spam?

What has the world come to. :)

Re:expect anything different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is racist, we just all hide or suppress it at different levels.

Re:expect anything different?

[mrchaotica]

You should work on your reading comprehension. Try again, and you'll discover that I was making the point that there are not inherent racial differences between (for example) Nigerians, Americans, and Mexicans, but that rather the perceived differences are caused by the fact that we get a skewed sample (immigrants vs. non-immigrants).

Luckily, I don't have to generalize to realize that, because you automatically equate simply mentioning a particular ethnic group with being racist, you're the one who is obsessed with issues of race and is thus racist yourself!

Re:expect anything different?

[Breakfast Cereal]

Would it be wrong for me to generalize, and assume most of you F/OSS people are racists? Yes, because it implies that racism distinguishes F/OSS people from the larger IT community, when in fact the whole industry is really pretty racist.

Re:expect anything different?

[Lord Apathy]

Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.

Thus is

Re:expect anything different?

[Lord Apathy]

Why can't we just pull the plug on countries like nigeria? What do they need the internet for anyway? We used to do this back on Usenet. Usenet death is what it was called. We just simply stopped carrying messages from machine that had this problem. Once they lose their connection to the net then maybe there would be some insentive to clean up their act.

Re:expect anything different?

[Fear the Clam]

Yes, because 'Mexican" isn't a race.

Re:expect anything different?

[bangthegong]

China, Russia and the United States.
Don't forget about Brazil - huge e-banking fraud industry.

Re:expect anything different?

[Danny Rathjens]

Really, you ought to at least cursorily research subjects before commenting on them.

You must be new here. :)

Re:expect anything different?

[LeeMeador]

To be perfectly honest, Nigeria is a whole separate county and isn't really in any state at all.

Re:expect anything different?

[ScrewMaster]

What? My original post made it pellucidly clear that I'm an American, so referring in context to foreigners implicitly means those who are not American, just as an Englishman who refers to foreigners is indicating persons who do not belong to his particular subset of the human population. Are you doing a Ted Turner on me, objecting to the root word "foreign"? Here's how Turner would have put it: "As an American, I tend to get irritated at all the internationals here on Slashdot." Would that have made you feel better? Spare me. I meant exactly what I said.

I have my share of faults but I do not number political correctness among them. Furthermore, I refuse to be intimidated into not using common words because someone else's perceptions are faulty. If you are not American, to me you're a foreigner, just as I am a foreigner to you. This is not complicated nor intrinsically offensive.

Re:expect anything different?

[ScrewMaster]

True, it's a nationality ... but that doesn't make one lick of difference to the average bigot.

Re:expect anything different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha! The karma hit was totally worth it, Mr. Chaotica. If your mind is too impenetrable to recognize any hint of racism in your comment, then I shan't disillusion you. This might be totally going over your head, but some of my best friends are freetards, and they're not all closet racists nor fascists. And guess what? Some of the non-immigrant ones are not lazy. Imagine that!

Nice to see your freetard mod posse out in force. I'm curious: do you really have a gang of freetards watching your back or is it you with a number of finger puppets?

Cut to the chase

[Divebus]

Just send them weapons.

Re:Cut to the chase

[Travoltus]

China is doing that a lot in Africa, most likely Nigeria included.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9557

Re:Cut to the chase

[R2.0]

Excellent - I mean, colonialism has turned out to be a massive short-term/long-term fuckup. Now maybe China can play too.

Re:Cut to the chase

[Alascom]

"Just send them weapons" and modded as "5 insightful"! Hahah Brilliant.

Re:Cut to the chase

[Divebus]

The slashdot mods from Nigeria have responded favorably!

Re:Cut to the chase

[Tablizer]

Just send them weapons.

You mean install Windows on OLPC?

Re:Cut to the chase

[Anonymous Coward]

Or better yet, how about $20M worth of teddy bears named Muhammad ...

Re:Cut to the chase

[oldhack]

Hell, like we don't. Check out the movie called "Lord of War". And the French has been shitting on West Africans for ages. Nigeria has lots of oil.

Re:Cut to the chase

[Anonymous Coward]

..and lawyers and money.

Fuller version...

[nick_davison]

Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria. ...and someone to help them get the $20 million dollars out of the country. They are willing to give 25% to anyone who will.

OLPC defense fund

[Broken Toys]

When I collect my $25 million from the Honorable Juju Majinki, who is holding these funds in trust, I plan to donate part of those funds to the OLPC defense fund.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[willyhill]

No, but hey, at least consider what they're doing and don't be "that guy".

There is probably nothing of consequence here (legally), but the need to defend themselves will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere.

The sad thing is that Nigerian children probably need this device as much as kids in Uruguay or Mexico or Armenia, but thanks to some hardass nigerian scammer they might be negatively affected, because this will certainly put a chill on the OLPC distribution plans for their country.

This whole thing is just a shame.

Die OLPC, Die.

[likerice]

The OLPC is a solution in desperate need of a problem. Here's a a problem for Negroponte: IP infringement. Heaven forbid that businesses in the developing world be allowed to develop on their own merits. Much better to force them into a dependency relationship with the West by selling back to them their own stolen innovations.

Re:Die OLPC, Die.

[Jeremy Erwin]

Here's a a problem for Negroponte: IP infringement.

Describe, in your own words, what IP has been infringed.

Re:Die OLPC, Die.

[betterunixthanunix]

LANCOR is claiming to have a patent on a keyboard that allows the user to type in Nigerian. How can you possibly call that an innovation, and how can you possibly accuse anyone of stealing that? Do you think that Nigerians should be required to pay LANCOR every time they write anything down, or just when they decide to type in their native language? How can anyone claim a patent on a system that follows the already existing rules of any language, or anything at all? They didn't invent anything, they just put into code a long list of rules that already existed.

Here's a problem for you: patent a keyboard that can render all the strange facets of written English: upper case letters, lower case letters, diacritical markings, punctuation, etc. Come back to me when coding language rules is considered to be innovation.

Re:Die OLPC, Die.

[Albanach]

QWERTY was patented by Christopher Sholes in 1874. August Dvorak managed to patent his keyboard layout in 1936.

I'm not saying the Nigerian one shows the same or any degree of innovation, having not read their patent submission, but it is or was at least possible to patent a keyboard layout in the US.

Re:Die OLPC, Die.

[mboverload]

It's just a QWERTY keyboard with a second shift key and Nigerian letters painted in purple.

Not kidding.

Re:Die OLPC, Die.

[TheRaven64]

Describe, in your own words, what IP has been infringed. 127.0.0.1

Re:Die OLPC, Die.

[Fear the Clam]

It's just a QWERTY keyboard with a second shift key

Sounds shifty to me.

Seriously, though, don't most keyboards have two shift keys (and a caplocks key)?

It is about kickbacks

[canuck57]

I guess OLPC didn't pay the kickback moneys in pricing the deal now the corrupt are howling foul. Goes to show us in the free world how well we are off when institutionalized corruption is so rampant.

Or is it the government wanting to keep people dumb and stupid so they don't revolt for a democracy?

Would be interesting to see who bribed who to deprive the children from knowledge. There could be one hell of a story in that.

Re:It is about kickbacks

[LordKazan]

yeah ... because the corporatist religio-supremacist government we have right now in america is really any better at all

Re:It is about kickbacks

[Anonymous Coward]

From talking to people from Nigeria, that seems to be the consensus. Everyone in power is trying to get their cut, and unlike more wealthy nations, there is not enough to go around. But it proves that for some peoples, the problem is large scale systematic corruption. I think I heard that some manufacturing concerns in Nigeria are trying to force the OLPC machines to manufactured locally, even though it will end up costing more.

It kind of reminds me of NCLB here in the states. Officials and large businesses were not getting their share. There was too much small business innovation supplying solutions tailored to particular student populations. NCLB ended that by creating purchasing and testing programs that cut out the innovative local educational concerns, and funneled huge amounts of taxpayer money to primarily four testing companies. That is the norm for the world. The free enterprise business always at the government teat.

Re:It is about kickbacks

[alan_dershowitz]

If every community has a separate testing measure, it's impossible to compare learning nationally. We can argue about the efficacy of NCLB all. But government intervention came because at the local level schools continuously refused any and all accountability measures. Before NCLB, you could hear the gloating, if we all ignore this thing it'll go away. It didn't go away, and now the worst schools are losing their charters, and the others are getting the picture that things have changed. So, I don't think your analogy holds because I don't agree with your original premise.

I have the solution...

[Agent__Smith]

All they need to do is send them the $30M that a dead relative of mine apparently left behind in a nigerian bank account after being killed in a car crash a year or so ago... I have the contact info for a brother in God who will be happy to help them get at it for a small fee... All they need to do is mail him their bank account info, and a few thousand dollars to cover the administration fees...

It would seem to me that Nigerias biggest problem is fatal car crashes as I see this deal about 6 times a day...

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Databass]

Ok, but when OLPC asked "Assuming you aren't saying you own the entire idea of a multi-language keyboard, which parts of your particular keyboard design are you even saying we stole from you?"

They didn't answer but they still want $20 million dollars.

Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[realmolo]

It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life.

You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.

The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Jeremy Erwin]

The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.

So, 3.8 million deaths weren't enough?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Dutch Gun]

Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things. Initially, I couldn't think of any way the US could be exploiting African countries, because we don't have colonies there, they're not in a strategic location, and they aren't worth much as trading partners, unlike China. For the most part, I'd say we ignore them more than anything, except for the extracting Africa's natural resources. One just has to glance at the diamond industry to see mass exploitation in action.

http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=162
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/78084.html

I'm typically not one to jump on protest bandwagons (and I think protesting in front of diamond merchants and jewelers isn't the way to go here - they're not the ones doing anything wrong). But this is pretty damn obvious even to someone as typically oblivious as me.

Still, please don't forget that the US sends quite a lot of money, both official and unofficial, to Africa in the form of foreign aid and private donations. And while I agree that corruption ruins good intentions (and sucks up relief funds), there's not much else that can be done, short of an armed invasion - and the US military is already stretched pretty thin. It's a bit too broad a brush, I think, to say "the US" when talking about exploitation. I think most people are complicit by ignorance (or perhaps apathy) - I'd like to think that no one wants to willingly buy a diamond paid for by someone else's blood, but it just hasn't been a big story until fairly recently.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Fujisawa Sensei]

According to Wikipedia:

The people of Nigeria have an extensive history, and archaeological evidence shows that human habitation of the area dates back to at least 9000 BC."

That means they have 11,000 years of history, so who the fuck are upstarts like us to tell them how to run their civilization?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[jacquesm]

Just speaking for 'the dutch' here (I'm dutch, but I guess I can only speak for myself), if just this one country here would be paying reparations to the Africans for the damage done in centuries past there would be no food here and a very large surplus of cash in Africa. This country basically bankrolled itself on the exploitation of others. Not limited to Africa (where we were in fact not very 'well' represented), but also Surinam, Indonesia and other parts of Asia.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[couchslug]

"Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things."

The Africans who get rich off the exploitation of Africa are not known for wanting to share.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[slothman32]

They are doing something wrong. They are buying from corrutp dealers. Alot of the money may go to the Jewellers but some is still going to DeBeers. If you at least buy non-diamonds then that won't be a problem. You can still use your favorite jewelers but noy support diamonds cartels.
I still like emeralds. Everyone else gets Diamonds or even saphires or rubies, or use Ruby. You can have a ring that has ssphire, ruby, and emerald. No matter what kind of light you will always see somthing.
You could also go for rough diamonds. They are cheaper, though probably not by much, and more interesting, at least to me. And you'd think geologists.

P.S. I just got a wound on my right thumb; for a right-hander that could be annoying though. Did I still type this well for just, except a few keys, with my left hand. It might haveonly taken twice or thrice, I like that word, as long.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[houstonbofh]

I know that may people may find this shocking, but Africa is not a country! Really! It is over 50 countries, and almost as many cultures. And believe it or not, some of the countries are not completely fucked up! However, a lot are, and they make better news...

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[R2.0]

"They can only be solved with armed revolutions"

Hasn't EVERY sub saharan African country had an armed revolution within the last 30 years? Fat lot o' good it did them - they threw off their colonial overlords so that they can have overlords their same skin color.

Great solution.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Serhei]

"The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions."
The question is, once you do that, how are you going to solve the armed revolutions.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lisias]

It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life.

I think the problem is worst than that.

I my opinion, the africans really endorses human rights. The main question is WHO is to be considered "Human", and who is just cattle.

Every single african that raises power "promotes" himself to Human. Everybody else is cattle.

So simply promoting "revolutions" will not solve this paradox: revolutions around there just shifts the "Human" and "cattle" tags. And the new "Humans" will just harvest the "cattle" as the previous ones did.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Dun Malg]

For the most part, I'd say we ignore them more than anything, except for the extracting Africa's natural resources. One just has to glance at the diamond industry to see mass exploitation in action. It's worth noting that DeBeers, the de facto controlling force in the diamond industry, is a Luxembourg corporation with extensive ongoing anti-trust and price fixing actions by state and federal agencies of the US. For many years, the principals of DeBeers could only enter the US secretly, lest they be served subpoenas (and by extension, later arrested for failure to appear) for their trade practices. DeBeers, the owner of 70% of Africa's diamond mines, has no US holdings, because they'd be subject to seizure. "We" are a big market for diamonds, but it can honestly be said that we, the US are definitely not the ones pillaging Africa for diamonds.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Not nearly. What's needed is leadership after the bastards in charge are against a wall. But first you have to take out the trash. Yeah, and the africans will probably have to move the borders around - the current ones are externally imposed. One more step towards post colonial functional countries.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[david_thornley]

I post on /.. I am very happy to tell everybody how to run their civilization, their business, and their computer systems. It comes with the user ID.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and for most of that 11,000 years of history, its been bloody tribal wars. Sure there was iron smelting several thousand years ago -in Africa-... but it was used to make hatchets, knives, arrow-heads, etc. Human slaughter is the African way of life. Aids beats many Africans to the punch. They breed, die of Aids, leaving their children orphans, who then grow up, breed, die of Aids... Africans know about Aids, but don't want to do anything about it. They need so much of everything. They expect the world to help them. Why do they need all the help? Who helps out those who they expect to get help from? Why is it that they can't be self-motivated? Why is it that they aren't willing to help themselves? Why is it that the white farmers Robert Mugabe kicked out of the country could make Zimbabwe an exporter of food, yet on the same land, the very same land, the honorable soldiers he gave the land to after he got rid of the white trash couldn't grow shit? The land was fertile, the white people fled for their lives, re-settled, and have once again been prosperous. Here's the dirty word you didn't want to see: L A Z Y. Why run, when you can walk. Why walk, when you can stand. Why stand when you can sit. Why sit, when you can lay down. Planning ahead can get you through a drought, and save you from a flood. But you have to plan ahead...and not be lax.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Jeremy Erwin]

But first you have to take out the trash

Ah, yes. Kill 'em all, God will know his own.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[quantaman]

It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life. I'm not sure African culture is particularly different wrt the value of human life, it's just that circumstances have lead to some very extremely unstable situations.

Colonialization made countries that deliberately didn't conform to tribal borders. If you create a country where not only do the people not have a shared identity, but many of them identify more with people from a neighbouring country, it's a sure recipe for internal and external instability. Note one of the causes of the two world wars in Europe was disputes over bits of land (which had changed hands in previous wars), it's no accident that one of the main ideas behind the UN is that territory cannot change hands as the result of a war, territorial disputes are extremely destabilizing. To compound this these countries had no real experience forming national governments, without experience running countries rampant corruption is somewhat inevitable. There's also the fact that there's a big Muslim/Christian split going through the middle, of course the US occasionally going in and throwing out stable authorities like the Union of Islamic Courts doesn't particularly help this relationship to stabilize.

That being said there's actually a good number of African countries that are currently peaceful with growing economies. It's just a few bad apples really capture the attention of the western media.

You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.

The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things. One interesting argument I've heard is that foreign aid actually hurts Africa. The basic idea is that when you send a shirt to an African child, you're helping but an African tailor out of business. When you send food the farmer gets a lower price for the food they grew. Plus much of the aid money ends up in the hands of gangs and corrupt governments giving them the funds to stay in business.

I don't know how accurate that argument is but I can certainly see building a strong African business community, who has a serious interest in stability, and the funds to enforce that stability, really helping to form some good stable governments.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Just the ones at the top. Or do you actually think Mugabe is a good leader? How about whoever's currently looting Nigeria?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[maroberts]

Please name country in Africa that is not fucked up.

South Africa is about the best I could come up with, and even there I'm a little dubious about the way it is heading. The new generation of politicians coming after Mandela seem to be midgets following giants.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Urkki]

Ah, yes. Kill 'em all, God will know his own. Isn't that how it has happened just about everywhere? Just think about the the amount of killing done in "the Western World" for example after the invention of efficient firearms... It's either people killing each other inside a region, or "outsiders" killing people of a region as a side effect of imposing their version of "peace". It's pretty universal human history... I'm not very hopeful that the humanity will ever get completely rid of this kind of barbarism.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Dutch Gun]

I'm an American by nationality, but I'm also Dutch by heritage. Both my parents immigrated from Holland with their families when they were very young, so my entire family is of Dutch stock. I agree that there is a long history of exploitation, and it's not something I'm proud of (The Covenant by James Michener was an interesting read - I'd highly recommend it). So yes, Holland has some national atonement to do, but given it's current socialistic leanings, I somewhat expect the country to plunge itself into bankruptcy and/or irrelevancy before too long anyhow.

Well, here's hoping we learn from past mistakes, my friend.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, no, not quite. You see, all the wrong people keep getting killed. If you limited the killing to owners of gold plated AK-47s with "General" or "Saddam" as their first name, it might be more effective.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Dr. Hellno]

They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Revolutions? Fine, I'll buy that. Armed revolutions, though, seems a little extreme. Of course it might come to that in any number of countries, and I'm not saying it wouldn't work. Still, it's a strange mind that goes straight from complacency to armed revolution without seeing the possibility of non-violent uprising tucked away in between

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Sproggit]

...."
lease name country in Africa that is not fucked up.

South Africa is about the best I could come up with"....

Yep
And South Africa is also the last country to abolish white (minority) rule.........
Co-incidence?
YOU decide...

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[TheRaven64]

I don't know how accurate that argument is but I can certainly see building a strong African business community, who has a serious interest in stability, and the funds to enforce that stability, really helping to form some good stable governments. There's a reason the Nobel peace prize a couple of years ago went to the inventor of the microloan concept. Rather than donate food or products to third world countries, you lend a small business (typically a sole trader, like the tailor in your example) a small amount of capital that they need to expand. You don't charge interest and sometimes they can't pay you back, but a lot of the time they do and then you can lend the same money to someone else with the same terms. This encourages local industry, which reduces the need for charity.

Another thing worth mentioning is the harm that 'Fair Trade' has done. By artificially inflating the price of things like coffee they make it less economically feasible for farmers to grow food and increasing the prices of products so that local people can't afford them.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Asic Eng]

I blame part of this on the US education system. There is a strong focus on teaching methods to acquire knowledge, rather than teaching actual knowledge. The basic idea behind this is sound, but it seems to have been taken to the extreme and lead to the widespread assumption that actual knowledge is of no import. Obviously you can not comment on the political situation of Nigeria without knowing anything at all about Nigeria. Have a look at wikipedia at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria#History .

Looks like taking out Abacha was a good thing for the country - but why would you think that killing Yar'Adua would be a good thing? To which people would you give weapons? Why would this not lead to another ethnic war? Why would this not turn into another Iraq or Lebanon? Why is something that worked in the US once in very specific circumstances the one-size-fits solution for every other country in very different circumstances?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[hey!]

You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.

You need to know the relief organization you are donating to, although naturally there is always some parasitism involved in operating in certain places.

I like Mercy Corps' "Mercy Kit" concept. For a $150, you can buy a poor family a goat, into which the family puts practically any green weed and out of which they get milk from which they can produce cheese or yogurt. It will also (provided access to a ram) provide more goats. It's a clear deal: you aren't putting a small bit of money into a large slush fund, you are paying for one goat for one family. Some of that may be skimmed off to pay off the local officials, but that's overhead. There is a price for a specific result, and you decide whether you want to pay it or not.

If you're feeling rich, you can buy a cow, or even an entire village school.

Now with respect to armed revolution, let me remind you that Sadaam Hussein was a revolutionary. So was Idi Amin. Charles Taylor in Liberia was an armed revolutionary against Samuel Doe, another revolutionary.

Just today, there are reports of a church full of people burned to death in Kenya. Supporters of the opposition leader Raila Odinga had set up checkpoints to catch supporters of the president Mwai Kibaki. Rather than pass the checkpoint, the supporters of the president gathered into "safe" places like churches to wait things out.

How would they know who supported who? Simple. When it gets down to brass tacks in Africa, it gets tribal. Revolution tends to be the passing of the club of government power from one tribal faction to another, and so it accomplishes nothing.

The petty corruption you speak of is nothing. In some places officials aren't paid enough to live upon, so of course they extort money as part of their job. The money is there to pay them, but it is siphoned off by the more respectable big time crooks, who make their money selling resources to "morally superior" western businesses.

And there, in a nutshell, is Africa's problem: too much of its wealth is in extractable resources. You'd think it would be a blessing, but it's not. Resources are a prize to be fought over and monopolized, and the means to do so is revolution and division of spoils. Not enough of Africa's usable wealth is in its people, who are expendable as drill bits.

Humanitarian relief and development aid is the best investment there is for Africa.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does this contradict the GP?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

So once again it's the White man's fault. You know how sick I get of hearing that shit? Africa's / Nigeria's problems are caused by Africans / Nigerians. It's time you liberal fucks got that through your thick heads.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[maroberts]

I don't think that I'm ready to don a KKK outfit yet. I felt that South Africa had gained a much better government when it took over from white rule, but the 'second generation' of black politicians don't seem to match the high standard set.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

Surely you are not serious. Revolutions in Africa just replace one bunch of assholes with another bunch of assholes.

Which is exactly why revolutions won't work. The whole system is fucked. There are only two things that will work and nether of them are pretty.

One is armed conquest. The UN sends in the troops an we take over everything south of the Sahara. We totally clean house. Then for the next hundred or so years we re-educate everyone in africa and teach them how to behave in a civil society.

The next is just as bad. We wall up everything south of the sahara, nothing comes in; nothing goes out. Then we let the africans solve their problems in any manner they see fit. In a hundred or so years maybe they will get tired of killing each other and decided to act like humans. That, or, we'll have a nice clean continent to give back to the animals.

Both of them are pretty stupid answers to me but I'll be damned if I can think of anything better.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Fulcrum of Evil]

This is slashdot - I'm not going to struggle endlessly with a problem largely not my own so I look smart in a post. Sure, you need more of a plan than killing the bad guy at the top, and you have to let the Nigerians clean their own house, but this isn't something I can credibly plan and execute, so why go in depth?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Asic Eng]

Uhm - what is supposed to be the white man's fault? The suggestion was made to kill the leader of Nigeria, and I blamed this kind of "facts don't matter" attitude on the US education system. As for the problems of Nigeria - I would still recommend that anyone making suggestions how to solve their problems, would invest at least the small amount of effort to read the wikipedia summary on their history.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

Man: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!

Angry man: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!

Man: Oh! Oh I see!

Angry man: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.

Man: Oh...Sorry...

Angry man: Not at all! (under his breath) stupid git.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

If that wasn't what you where thinking then you have my apologies. But I do get tired of hearing that all of africas problems are because of something White people have done to them. Yeah, that maybe have been part of the problem but that was over 60 years ago. Now I think the last estimate was we have poured 2 Trillion dollars into africa over the last decade and nothing has changed. In fact it has gotten worse.

We need to accept that there is no solution to the african problem and let them deal with it. We stop feeding them, giving them money, and guns pretty soon they will have to wake up. After enough of them die though. Which is the sad part but there pretty much is no other way. We've tried everything else. Once AIDS, starvation, and war kill enough of them maybe the rest will wake up and say "hey, this shit is pretty fucked up."

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Asic Eng]

Well it's kind of questionable if there is a bad guy on the top, relatively speaking. And I think it's relevant that in Nigeria's history the guy at the top has been taken out a few times already. As for solving all their problems - I'll have to agree, Slashdot might not be the prime venue for that ... (Maybe one for interesting discussions, though?) However it's annoying that people so often advocate simple solutions to problems they don't care to make an effort to understand. I believe looking at the Wikipedia site would give a good idea just how complex Nigeria's problems are and really take extremely little effort. I'm ok with looking at this and saying "I have no glue how that could possibly be solved" sounds better to me than saying "let's just kill someone" or "let's just fuel armed conflict".

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Zibblsnrt]

We need to accept that there is no solution to the african problem and let them deal with it.

I dunno, I'd rather people deal with the fact that there is no "the" African problem in the first place, but I suppose it probably is pretty comforting to treat an entire continent as a monoculture.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Sproggit]

Hey I ain't donning any outfits either (I find they don't suit my fine physique).

I just wish people would stop halting any chain of logical reasoning / causal insight for the sake of political correctness.

The black leaders in Africa are (with a very few notable exceptions) exceedingly crap at ruling their own people to the benefit of anyone but themselves and a select group of cronies.

Is this endemic to African culture?
Is this endemic to post colonialist culture?
Is this a symptom of a people thrust from (barely) iron age into a industrial aged world without the benefit of several thousand years worth of social evolution that Europeans underwent?

I really don't know, and any or none of the above questions may hold some truth.
I do however have a problem with people insisting I can't ask the questions because that makes me prejudiced...
I ask the questions ENTIRELY because I'm POSTjudiced and am judging much of African culture from the 'coal face' (or the firing line, pick your metaphor).

Once we understand the problem, we can go about fixing it.
Not being allowed to investigate the problem means we will never fix it, and millions of people will live in abject misery and privation.

Logic and truth should be allowed to regain their rightful places as the tillers guiding human destiny.
All this other crap is beginning to get on my nerves.

The Sproggg

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Sproggit]

HEY!!
I'm south of the Sahara, you insensitive clod!

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Sproggit]

Insightful post.....
Are you suggesting that minus the natural resources, African countries would, on the whole, be as advanced and productive as say Japan (with FA extractable natural resources worth mentioning) ?

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

Sucks to be you then. Yes, I'm asshole.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

Might as well call it The African problem. The whole place is a fucked up shit hole no matter what. I'm reading on CNN about fucked up elections in Kenyan. If its that its just something else. Might as well roll the whole fucked up mess in to one bag. Saves time and effort.

You know what the really sad thing is? I used to give a fuck about africa. I don't any more. Fuck'em.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[maroberts]

Part of the problem is that the borders of current nations are not along tribal lines, but along convenient straight lines. Voting in politics in Africa is more a matter of voting for the candidate from your tribe rather than voting for the person with the best policies. This is not such a problem in most 'developed' nations, as with minor exceptions, each nation consists of only one tribe. There is voting along class lines e.g. working class is more likely to vote Democrat in the USA, but this is not region based voting and thus generally still gives fair results.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Sproggit]

First step in solving a problem is admitting it exists...... :)

BTW
North of the Sahara ain't doing so fookin great either...
Why not build a big wall around ALL of Africa, it's just one big homogenous country anyways innit?

PS:
With the building materials left over, you might consider the middle east and eastern Europe, a load of those annoying Pacific militant states...Russia, them damn commie Chinese... flipflopping Australians....

Hang on, why not just build a wall around whichever utupia you're at.
Save some bricks that way....

The Sproggg

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

Yeah, we did that once but them damn europians had to start trying to kill each other. Then there was that little incident with fucking german bastard trying to kill all the jews. He was doing a pretty damn good job of it if I remember my history. You know, it might have been a damn good thing we didn't finish that wall. They might be speaking nothing but german in britan and Japanesse in Australa.

There is a major difference in africa an all those other places you mentioned. There people seem to listen and really care about "getting with the program." That is a very bad choice of words on my part but I can't think of anything else that fits.

In africa though, from the ass to the nose all people seem to think about is fucking each other over and every one else. You see in china and russia when we told them that AIDS was caused by a virus and sex people listened. In africa we told them the same thing and, screamed BULLSHIT and said it was evil spirits. In africa a common way to get rid of AIDS is to fuck a child after the witchdoctor tells them too.

In 2005 when the world showed up with food and aid to help the people from that tunsnumi, can't spell it not even going to try, it got to people that needed it. It doesn't work that way in africa does it? It goes to who ever has the most guns.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Sproggit]

Scary thing is.. I agree with you.
I'd fuckoff in an instant if I didn't have so much invested here (family, time as well as money).

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Lord Apathy]

Yeah, that is scary. When people start agreeing with me I start to worry.

This is the way I see it. Right now africa can't feed itself and can't cope with a modern civilization. They are simply not educated enough. I don't mean what most in the west consider basic education, reading, writing, and math. I mean basic basic, as in not to foul your own water supply and fucking over your neighbor isn't the best way to live.

African civilization just isn't compatible with western civilization. Now the real question is what is the west going to do about it? Nothing, this isn't our call. We have to put the responsibility in the hands of those it affects, the Africans. There are voices in Africa that are saying just that. Stop giving us aid and let us deal with it. Those are the voices we need to listen too. Not some jackass in the UN or someone selling cheap ass laptops to people that barely understand the problem.

Africa is a pit and its dragging the whole world in with it. They can't feed themselves much less build a modern society. My ideas are pretty fucked up. It basically amounts to cutting Africa off and letting nature take its course. Millions will die. But the alternative is much worse.

What happens if we maintain the status quo? We keep shipping boat loads of food over there and medicine to combat AIDS extending the lives of people. They breed and that means more food, more medicine. There will come a time when we can't do it any more. We will run out of surplus food and medicine. When that happens the deaths will be in the hundreds of millions. People will die that should not have been born.

Pretty fucking cold isn't it? But the cycle has to be broken now.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Ham1337]

Are you serious?

"It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life." Think you used a big enough brush there? You just simplified the world's second largest and second most populous continent of 61 territories and roughly 900 million people into a single culture. There are well over 1,000 languages spoken in Africa; it would be difficult to make any accurate and meaningful remark about "African culture" as a whole. Although, Africa is home to more Christians than North America, so perhaps this explains its "culture of death."

"Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them." So, we're supposed to believe that if the leaders of a country are dishonest and callous to needs of their people, somehow the whole population is corrupt and doesn't value human life? Geez, that won't paint America in a pretty light. Thanks for getting me angry enough to make my first comment.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Watson Ladd]

Africa has been in contact with Europe since antiquity. Unless you are forgetting about Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt. Asia was even more isolated then Africa from Europe, but has mostly turned out better. The big difference was in the 1950's: The Green Revolution affected Asia more then Africa, and so Asia could feed itself. Africa was involved in very brutal struggles for independence at the time, and so did not benefit. Because of this they remain dependent on imports, and so are forced into making policies that do not benefit their own nations. The best example is subsidized fertilizer. Subsidized fertilizer makes a big difference in the amount of food a country can grow, and in the wealth of the rural poor, but a lot of donor countries put pressure for them not to subsidize fertilizer, even when the donors subsidize farmers a lot.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[hey!]

Not necessarily, but they'd have a better chance if their extractable wealth was more modest.

Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

So? they chose to turn their country into a sh*thole. Who are we to tell them otherwise?

Re:No Reason to Pity

[BeanThere]

Putting a bunch of Nigerian-language characters onto a keyboard doesn't qualify as an "invention"; it's exactly what's been done for hundreds of other languages around the world since before Nigerian-language characters were in the Unicode standard even (which, I might point out, that same generous West put in after working hard to create those standards in the first place and then giving them to poor countries like Nigeria for free). Perhaps the West should demand royalties from this company for using its technologies like Unicode and keyboards in the first place, haha, right.

I'm afraid this is just how things go here in Africa, and as someone else pointed out, why it'll probably remain 3rd-world indefinitely. Try give a hand to Africa, and it will demand an arm, and then try kill you for not giving the entire arm. Mod me whatever, but I've lived here all my life and seen this kind of thing over and over, facts are just facts, I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't lived here to get it.

Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Dutch Gun]

If you do read the article, it's a complicated case (as legal cases always are), that essentially boils down to this: Nigeria's officials, including their judges and politicians, are still perceived as being hopelessly corrupt, and by all appearances this is nothing more than attempted legal extortion. The legal claims by which the lawsuit is proceeding is on shaky ground at best. Even if the claims are legitimate, it still is a sad day, when an organization like this is sued by the very people it's most likely to benefit.

Maybe they aren't ready for a mass introduction of technology - they certainly have shown a compunction for abuse so far. Nigeria is already synonymous with Internet-based moneymaking scams. Does the third world have other, more important priorities instead of laptops, such as basic infrastructure, and a stable and responsive democratic government (most of the world's poorest countries are still ruled by dictators). Complain if you will about the governments of first-world countries such as the US, but if so, you likely haven't seen the corruption of others up close. Visit Mexico for a fine example of what happens when a country with significant potential is rife with corruption from top to bottom. Corruption tends to poison and overshadow even the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as it tends to keep power concentrated in very few hands.

On the other hand, perhaps an opening of information can help to educate the next generation - to give them more options, and more information, more hope. Just as wireless technology is leapfrogging the old, expensive landline-based infrastucture in many countries, perhaps an infusion of technology can help jump-start an economic surge in places that need it most. I just hope they choose to use it wisely.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[kcbrown]

Complain if you will about the governments of first-world countries such as the US, but if so, you likely haven't seen the corruption of others up close.... Corruption tends to poison and overshadow even the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as it tends to keep power concentrated in very few hands.

Exactly. Which is why it's right for people to complain about it. We must keep corruption out of the U.S. government to avoid the positive feedback loop that ultimately results in the concentration of power in very few hands.

Ooops. Too late. That cycle started quite some time ago, and I don't think there's any stopping it at this point...

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Wonko the Sane]

Ooops. Too late. That cycle started quite some time ago, and I don't think there's any stopping it at this point...

Our culture at one point had an answer to that:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

But now, quoting Thomas Jefferson is likely to get you put on a suspected terrorist no-fly list.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get them to stop shitting in their drinking water first. No kidding.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Hao Wu]

when an organization like this is sued by the very people it's most likely to benefit.

Who says the kids will stay innocent? History says they won't.

History says they will grow up and use whatever knowledge and skills they possess to better themselves by scamming and extorting others.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[sumdumass]

Most people have a point where they are satisfied. Have you noticed that the crime rate in developed countries loosely follow the unemployment rates. Have you notices that most bank robbers are generally poorer working class or worse off people? If isn't because of the inteligence differences between richer people. It is that when the basic needs of a person is met and they have some disposable income, what they are willing to do in order to survive raises to higher levels. They usually wouldn't think about swindling someone or scamming them. They are less likely to break the laws concering theft.

Now don't confuse a richer person with a person who got rich by cheating and swindling others. They will likely keep it up until they get caught. And there are countless poor people who would never steal intentionally. It sort of turns into a risk to benefit ordeal. The more someone has to lose, the more they think about doing things to lose it. The less desperate someone is, the less they think about breaking laws and committing crimes in an attempt to alleviate those situations. And then there are others that won't fit this mold like Teen Shoplifters looking for thrills and shit.

But for the most part, the scammers would go down and more people would/might be making legitimate incomes that puts them in a real middle class. Sure I'm over simplifying things but the basic of what motivates theft points to less of them acting on it. It might be a a few generations before real progress is seen though. That is unless something violent breaks out like in other african countries and everything reverts back to the big stick mentality.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Dutch Gun]

Both sets of my grandparents immigrated to the US and had only a few dollars to their name. My dad's family lived in a chicken coop for a time. Even when I was growing up, the money was always really tight. Neither my grandparents nor my parents would have ever considered turning to a life of crime, even when they had nothing. It would have been too dishonorable for them to even contemplate. On the other hand, there are plenty of wealthy CEOs, lawyers, politicians, and other folks who don't bat an eye at committing larceny on an impressive scale beyond what our family ever had to spend, even when they already lead comfortable lives.

So, forgive me if I don't buy the simple and convenient answer that poverty leads to crime, or that it's some simple risk/benefit analysis that people are making. I think that's making an excuse for a breakdown of moral standards and civilized behavior. The problem is that civility is not a natural instinct for many - selfishness and thuggery only takes a single generation to re-assert itself. Morality and civility, on the other hand, takes a near lifetime of work to impart, and only happens when both parents and society make it their highest priority. It's the most important prerequisite for democracy and civilization to work.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

A corrupt system on close systems, just think about it, when an open source network is introduced in their midst. Informed children will be armed with more knowledge and will be less of an asset to criminals of the country. Since it's corruption is so ingrained in their economy it would be a blow to the cash flow. So yes laptops are needed. Badly!

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[sumdumass]

The majority of crime is committed by a minority of people. CEOs lawyers and politicians aren't all criminals. Neither are all poor people. I addressed that somewhat in my previous post. I didn't intend to write an entire study on why people commit crimes.

Your idea that morals and society's implementation of them are only part of the picture. All they do is raise the bar for some people. Sure, as long as your grandparents were able to put a roof over their head and food in their stomach, they never would entertain the idea of theft. But take that away and let one of their kids die from starvation, and if they still thought that everyone around them with more somehow deserved to keep their possession that could save their lives, while they are dieing, and I would say there would be mental problems if they didn't consider theft.

Do you see hoe I took that to an extreme? That's because extremes are what people deal with in theft. It may be that they are stupid or whatever but it crosses a point where they think they can get away with the crime or that the punishment isn't as bad as how they were currently living. Each person's mental capacity and ability to refrain from theft will be different. But it would be at an extreme for them when they decide to break a law and steal. Like I said in the previous posts, this isn't everyone, people steal for other reasons. But the majority of the people wouldn't entertain the idea if they had what "they" thought was reasonably enough. At that point, it is more of the immoral people and the thieves who got what they have by theft (larceny).

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[Dutch Gun]

Your idea that morals and society's implementation of them are only part of the picture. All they do is raise the bar for some people. Sure, as long as your grandparents were able to put a roof over their head and food in their stomach, they never would entertain the idea of theft. But take that away and let one of their kids die from starvation, and if they still thought that everyone around them with more somehow deserved to keep their possession that could save their lives, while they are dieing, and I would say there would be mental problems if they didn't consider theft. Unfortunately, I think you just invalidated your own argument. May I ask what percentage you'd guess of criminals in the United States need to steal to prevent their children from starving to death? In case you missed the point, my grandparents couldn't put a roof over their kids heads, which is why they were living in a chicken coop. I'm not sure how much poorer you expect someone to be before they qualify as being desperate enough for a life of crime, but I'm pretty sure they qualified.

Naturally, when you talk about extreme circumstances, such as starvation, people will justifiably do what they need to in order to survive, or make sure their children survive. But you're talking about a nearly non-existent circumstance nowadays in 1st world countries. No one, unless they deliberately choose to shun assistance, need starve to death or go without shelter. As such, one can say that morals can "raise the bar" to a point where such a consideration is never given, because those desperate choices need never be made. I agree that morals are only part of the picture - but I just tire of the simplistic notion that "poverty causes crime", when the issue is so much more complex than that. I'm guessing we agree more than disagree here, but I think I was just reacting to that particular issue.

Re:Does the third-world really need laptops?

[sumdumass]

Unfortunately, I think you just invalidated your own argument. May I ask what percentage you'd guess of criminals in the United States need to steal to prevent their children from starving to death? In case you missed the point, my grandparents couldn't put a roof over their kids heads, which is why they were living in a chicken coop. I'm not sure how much poorer you expect someone to be before they qualify as being desperate enough for a life of crime, but I'm pretty sure they qualified.

I think your missing the point. There isn't a binary magical "this makes you a criminal" thing out there. It isn't what you or I perceive to be the case, it is what each and ever individual person perceives their situations to be. So it wouldn't be how many criminals steal to feed their family but how many of them think they wold have to steal to support their family. I only bought up the idea of food and your grandpa to show that there is a tipping point that is comprised of many factors. The easiest to manipulate is wealth and when all is tied together, it moves this tipping point that seems to be different with everyone. My great, great grandparents lived in a barn for the better part of 50 years before building their house. It used to be something that was commonly done, you took care of the live stock by building a barn first then building your house (a lot of times over the barn). Your grandparents living in a chicken coop isn't far off from this concept. They had a roof over their head which was more then some could say and it might have not been too different from where they came from. Unless your going to say this was five days ago, I wouldn't press on it too much.

Naturally, when you talk about extreme circumstances, such as starvation, people will justifiably do what they need to in order to survive, or make sure their children survive. But you're talking about a nearly non-existent circumstance nowadays in 1st world countries. No one, unless they deliberately choose to shun assistance, need starve to death or go without shelter. As such, one can say that morals can "raise the bar" to a point where such a consideration is never given, because those desperate choices need never be made. I agree that morals are only part of the picture - but I just tire of the simplistic notion that "poverty causes crime", when the issue is so much more complex than that. I'm guessing we agree more than disagree here, but I think I was just reacting to that particular issue.

Well, like a said, starvation was just an example or how being poor can bring about a tipping point were a person would think about theft. It is easier to have morals when you don't have to think about food or shelter or disease.

But please don't take what I'm saying as a blanket "poverty causes crime". That isn't it at all. Crime is caused by a number of factors which more are typically present with poverty. There is still no excuse for theft. The thing is, less people would consider it as a choice when they aren't lacking something they consider a necessity. More people would be in this situation where they could better their lives to a point where theft stops becoming a choice they even consider. Of course there are other elements but the better people are provided for the less come around. If you were to examine things on an equal footing, say 2 men with wives and two children, making the same wage at the same job with houses and the same mortgage payments, it would come down more to morals but if you examine their lives, you might see that one has an expensive drug habit or massive gambling debt. "Thou shall not steal" starts dropping in the rank of importance when the house is going to be repossessed by the bank or you lost your job. Whether it reaches a tipping point or not is another story.

keyboard in dispute not used in production devices

[RichMan]

It appears that the disputed keyboard layout was only used in the development devices and not in the production devices. By this there should be no injunction on the distribution and likely no/minimal payment for infringement.

From Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071203061340580#c652659

----
If you examine the OLPC Wiki's edit history for the West African (Nigerian) keyboard you can see what Adé Oyegbola is on about. To save you trawling back and forth here it is in a nutshell. Note that where I write "create" I am referring to the Wiki entires - these dates may not correspond to the physical devices.

      1. 2006-08-07 OLPC buy KONYIN keyboards
      2. 2006-11-13 OLPC create Nigerian layout based on KONYIN layout
      3. 2006-11-13 OLPC Nigerian image updated; layout unchanged
      4. 2007-03-02 OLPC image updated to show Beta-3 model; layout unchanged (Original Image March 2nd)
      5. 2007-08-?? LANCORP sends OLPC Cease & Desist Notice
      6. 2007-08-20 OLPC B3 layout revised completely, no longer looks like KONYIN (Revised Image August 20th)
      7. 2007-08-21 OLPC replaces B3 with B4 Ng-MP-Alt layout (more dialect symbols) and new image.

So this boils down to prototype XOs that used the KONYIN layout. I'm not sure how many prototypes were made with the Nigerian keyboard (I'd guess not many more than the 300 used at Galadima primary school, Abuja) but the total quantities were B1: 875, B2: 2,500, B3: 100, B4: 2,000, C1: 300 (see Development Schedule.

Since August 2007 with the C1 (pre-production) the West African (Nigerian) layout has been as you see it on the current Wiki page.

So the crux is that LANCORP are upset over those beta prototypes but the production XOs (and all XOs made since August 2007) have not used the KONYIN layout.
--

Nigeria

[BigBadBus]

I was born in Nigeria, and spent the first 7 months of my life there, so sadly I don't have any memories of the place. My mum and dad have regaled me with tales of corruption (everyone from the gardener to the police it seems) and it sounds like a horrible place in which to live and work. I have no desire to go back.

Re:Nigeria

[mboverload]

Do you know of any places where I can read more about Nigeria's challenges? (other than randomly picking books from Amazon)

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a trend here?

- "Linux stole unix code!"
- "Oh really? Which lines, exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."

- "Linux infringes 235 of our patents"
- "That's likely, you patented the obvious. We'll see when IBM starts complaining about their patents you likely infringe upon. BTW, Which ones?"
- "I'm not telling."

- "OLPC steals our patented keyboard input method"
- "Oh really? Which ones exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."

I'm reconsidering the real cruelty of the good ol' times where justice was administered by the king, and if you looked like you were making him lose time on useless technicalities you were going to be hanged.

Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi

[Cassius Corodes]

I'm not a lawyer but if they sent them a cease and desist letter, and they stopped infringing then they don't have much of a case. The best they can hope for is to get all the infringing models destroyed.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[sortius_nod]

I haven't lived in Africa, but I have lived in under-developed nations a large portion of my life. To be honest, you hit the nail on the head, and it's not just limited to Africa. The problem with aid agencies is that they are just as corrupt, if not more, than the governments they are trying to protect the citizens from.

Aid agencies need to be a lot stricter on their staff members and have stiffer penalties for any transgressions - you know, like a bit of gaol time in a dingy cell rather than painting them as a Martyr like the "Chad Children Thieves".

Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi

[eebra82]

From a RIAA lawyers perspective, this is just fine. Add a little immorality (deprived children), do some simple math (300 * $66,666 = $20,000,000) and voila!

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as the OLPC doesn't infringe but does in fact build on multilingual keybard designs predating the LANCOR stuff this is in fact a case of sheer blackmail pursued by a greedy US based businessman who one can only hope shall soon be bankrupted...

Patent Filing

[nowhere.elysium]

Has anyone actually found a copy of the patent that Lancor are claiming has been infringed? I've searched for about 40 minutes, and can't find it anywhere. Apparently, it's registered as patent number RD8489.

Re:Patent Filing

[Peter Simpson]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071201221628452

Re:No Reason to Pity

[nbert]

I totally agree that this doesn't qualify as an invention - it is just a matter of common sense to add some chars for the local market.

On the other hand I think there is nothing wrong about letting US-based institutions experience what their government has been supporting since the cold war - even if they are non-profit. It's not because I love preventing people to help, but because I believe it would encourage legislation to abandon a flawed system, because the odds of said system become rather obvious under such circumstances...

Does the third-world really need education?

[QuantumG]

'nuff said.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[jfim]

Putting a bunch of Nigerian-language characters onto a keyboard doesn't qualify as an "invention"; it's exactly what's been done for hundreds of other languages around the world since before Nigerian-language characters were in the Unicode standard even (which, I might point out, that same generous West put in after working hard to create those standards in the first place and then giving them to poor countries like Nigeria for free).

Their keyboards don't really seem that inventive once you give them a look. They seem to use a shift^2/Ng key which probably does the exact same thing as AltGr, which is present on a lot of multilingual keyboards, although not at the same location.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not, that would be unethical.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[msuarezalvarez]

the Unicode standard even (which, I might point out, that same generous West put in after working hard to create those standards in the first place and then giving them to poor countries like Nigeria for free).

Wow.

I am not Nigerian, but as a citizen of another under-developed country I surely appreciacte that pre-20th century attitude!

Question Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: How do you pronounce "$20"
A: "Twenty dollars"

Tutorial:

Q: How do you end a question?
A: With a question mark.

Q: How do you end a statement?
A: With a period.

Q: What do you call a grammar nazi whose mock questions don't end in question marks?
A: Dumb.

Re:Question Mark

[SamP2]

Tutorial:

Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes.

Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No.

Q: What do you call someone who does the above for no reason other than to attract attention and cause disruption?
A: A troll.

Re:Question Mark

[Cylix]

Tutorial

Q: Should tutorial be the new fad?
A: Yes.

Q: Does it seem weak and unimaginative?
A: Yes.

Q: Then why persist?
A: In the mere hopes that it offends at least one person.

Re:Question Mark

[iowannaski]

Tutorial

Q: Is "it offends at least one person" a single hope?
A: Yes.

Q: Should "hopes" therefore be "hope"?
A: Yes.

Q: ??
A: Profit!!

Re:Question Mark

[alshithead]

Tutorial continued...

"Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes."

-Good catch.

"Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No."

-Why not? In fact, some of the articles need to have their grammatical standards raised. I want to be able to read article comments without the jarring, annoying, and to me, hugely distracting grammatical flaws that take away from what might otherwise be an insightful and valuable thought. Wait, d00d, i think ur not f33lin me...

"Q: What do you call someone who does the above for no reason other than to attract attention and cause disruption?
A: A troll."

-Let's try to be a little more generous. How about we call them a little anal or perhaps trending towards perfectionist? Trolls lurk under the bridge causing havoc and chaos when someone blithely comes by. Grammar Nazis have their place, especially in a forum such as Slashdot where we discuss "news for nerds". Who better to dispute grammar than nerds? It may be off topic in most cases but I can say that I have more than once learned something new from grammar Nazis and I really appreciate that. I take pride in trying to write and speak English well.

Re:Question Mark

[SamP2]

Tutorial, continued further...

Q: Should you place a comma in the sentence "Tutorial, continued..."?
A: Yes.

Q: When using the dash as a separator for an unordered list, should you place a space character between the dash and the first character of the list item?
A: Yes.

Q: Should the sentence following a sentence ending in ellipsis be capitalized?
A: Yes.

Q: Can someone "trend towards perfectionist"?
A: No. One can either trend towards perfectionists or trend towards perfectionism, the latter presumably being your intended meaning.

Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.

Q: Are there any exceptions to the above rule?
A: No. Exceptions exist for exclamation or question marks (depending on whether the mark applies to the quote alone or to the whole sentence), but never for commas or periods.

Q: Are any of the above rules relevant to Slashdot comments?
A: No, as I stated previously. The objective of communication rules is to facilitate maximally convenient communication between parties, and the rules vary depending on the medium and circumstances. In the case of Slashdot comments, the time required to analyze and correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and stylistic errors is unjustifiably high compared to the meager benefit it provides to the readers. Slashdot articles themselves, which are more formal than comments, have a greater time period to be written and checked, and are read by more people, have a justifiably higher standard applied to them. Still, they will have a lower standard than a formal academic paper. Similarly, in cases where communication speed is much more important than rigorousness, such as instant messaging or online game chat, it is perfectly acceptable that the sentence "lol kthxbye" has a better cost-benefit ratio than the sentence "That was amusing; all right, thank-you, and good-bye." The very definition of a "Grammar Nazi" is not simply one who uses formal grammar, but one who expects its use in situations where the expectation is not justified.

Re:Question Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Short tutorial...

Q: Is "Tutorial, continued..." a sentence?
A: No.

Re:Question Mark

[WaroDaBeast]

Q: When using the dash as a separator for an unordered list, should you place a space character between the dash and the first character of the list item?
A: Yes.
It's nice to give little grammar lessons to people, but you need to learn to make the distinction between a hyphen and a dash.

Re:Question Mark

[Esteban]

Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.

Q: Are there any exceptions to the above rule?
A: No. Exceptions exist for exclamation or question marks (depending on whether the mark applies to the quote alone or to the whole sentence), but never for commas or periods. I thought when I saw "Only in America" follow-ups, this would be addressed. It wasn't.

Whether or not it's proper for periods (or commas, etc.) to go inside or outside the quotation marks very much depends on where your editor (or puler) was trained. If you're writing for some Brits (or Anglophiles), periods (or commas, etc.) must be outside the quotation marks.

Re:Question Mark

[jimmydevice]

The AC is kicking ass tonight.

Re:Question Mark

[91degrees]

Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Should it? I mean certainly it should be if you're referring to the National Socialist German Workers' Party of Germany in the 1930's, but we're not. It's a general term for people who are fanatical about spelling. Do any style guides actually go into detail about this sort of thing?

Re:Question Mark

[Kashgarinn]

Actually, I kind of like the in-depth grammatical corrections where the error itself is abstracted away from the content, i.e.

Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.

I don't like corrections where it is specifically hinged upon the content itself, i.e.

Q: Should you place a comma in the sentence "Tutorial, continued..."?
A: Yes.

this just begs the question, why should you place a comma in the sentence specified? what condition outside the content itself is being corrected?

K.

Re:Question Mark

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.

But this depends on the quotation. Relatively short sentence-end quotations are better served with the period outside for clarity. (Says me; you know, "this is Slashdot after all".)

Re:Question Mark

[jc42]

Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.

Actually, the correct answer is "It depends on which publisher's guidelines you're following." (or '".' ;-)

In the UK, most publishers put periods outside the final quotes. In the US, most publishers put periods inside the quotes. In both countries, there are a few exceptions. If you're trying to simulate Nigerian phishing spam, you'd probably want to go with the UK convention.

Also, some publishers have different rules for periods and question marks, which often makes sense. Sometimes it helps to use two punctuation marks:

1. Did he really say "They weren't there."?
2. Did he really ask "Were they there?"?
3. He really did ask "Were they there?".

This convention makes it clear which of the two nested sentences is a question and which is a statement. To my knowledge, no publisher recommends a period both inside and outside the final quote.

[One of my favorite t-shirts in my closet is the one that reads "Does anal retentive have a hyphen?" And to people who try to answer it, I like to say "Actually, the correct answer starts with 'It depends ...'. And the t-shirt does omit the quotes around 'anal retentive'. ;-]

Re:Question Mark

[alshithead]

"The very definition of a "Grammar Nazi" is not simply one who uses formal grammar, but one who expects its use in situations where the expectation is not justified."

Ah! Perhaps I see part of our difference of opinion. Where did you find a definition for "Grammar Nazi"? I couldn't easily find one using Google. The first hit is Wikipedia which redirects to "Linguistic prescription" and seems to provide no value pertinent to this discussion. The second hit is at "www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Grammar_Nazi" and describes it as "The standard response of the functionally illiterate when taken to task for their sins against the mother tongue is to label the offending party a grammar Nazi.".

What about my main issue?

"I want to be able to read article comments without the jarring, annoying, and to me, hugely distracting grammatical flaws that take away from what might otherwise be an insightful and valuable thought."

While you very effectively dissected the grammar of my post, can you honestly say that my usage was flawed to the point of being jarring, annoying, or hugely distracting? I'm not asking for perfection and while I grudgingly concede shortcuts are appropriate in some cases due to a desire for speed, is it asking too much to hope for and desire a slightly higher standard on Slashdot than might be found in some teen chat room? Hell, I'd be happy to see sentences capitalized and "their", "they're", and "there" used correctly.

Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi

[BeanThere]

It's also very hard to see how this could've damaged them either way, since OLPC doesn't compete AT ALL with their keyboard - you can't exactly buy an OLPC laptop and plug it into your computer to use as a keyboard? Even if you could, it would be stupid to spend $200 on a tiny keyboard instead of $20 on a proper one. It seems pretty ridiculous to claim OLPCs might cannibalise their market, unless you can prove that somebody receiving an OLPC laptop would've bought an entire computer with their keyboard instead.

Actually, OLPCs are more likely to *grow* their market, since more children growing up who know how to use computers are eventually going to buy proper ones, and then will naturally need a Nigerian keyboard to go with that --- so actually, if OLPC used the Nigerian keyboard layout, it would encourage sales of their keyboard even more, since apart from a much larger market, all these new users would also be used to their particular layout and thus not want to change.

I suspect that sales of this keyboard are probably horribly low, so now they want to try another 'business model' (i.e. sue comparatively rich Western organisation to make a quick buck).

Just another example of the poor exploiting the rich.

Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi

[Cassius Corodes]

Just another example of the poor exploiting the rich
It always breaks my heart when I see it happening.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[R2.0]

Well, when you consider that most "under-developed countries" still haven't made it to the 20th century in political, social, or economic terms, maybe the attitude is appropriate.

Don't want to be treated paternalistically? Stop acting like children.

Re:Don't do business there

[Anonymous Coward]

Very racist, but oh so true.

I once worked for a bank taking calls from overseas clients seeking loans. We were told to hang-up as soon as someone said they were from Nigeria.

Apparently over 90% of loans we had previously sent there were never re-paid. It was by far the worse country to deal with.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Frosty Piss]

So, are you saying that the Nigerians are pulling a "Microsoft Scam"? Or that Microsoft has been pulling a "Nigerian Scam"?

Re:Don't do business there

[Planesdragon]

Very racist, but oh so true. Nope. Not racist at all.

"Don't deal with black people" is racist. "Don't deal with African Countries, unless they're white" is racist. "Don't deal with country X that has a history of corruption, and happens to be black" is no more racist than "don't go down Johnson street, there were fifty murders there last year."

Re:No Reason to Pity

[fmobus]

It is funny that they market "south american" keyboard with letters like , , ð and diacritics like and . AFAIK, there is no currently-spoken language in South America using those symbols.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Tablizer]

I don't know why you say this is a "3rd-world" problem. We in the US have crap like One-Click-Buy patents that are laughable (although it looks like it is finally getting overturned). Or, letting MS be the annoying monopoly it is and make every PC pay the Windows Tax even if you want another OS. Organizational stupidity is not limited to the 3rd world. Rationality is the exception.

Further, countries still have their pride, and for us to come in acting like they "need help" is a kick in the ego. By roughing up the westerners a bit it restores a sense of control over their world (even if it may harm them in the longer run). Even starving people want a sense of control (and those doing the activity may not be the starving ones).

Re:Don't do business there

[deftones_325]

What if it was "Jackson" street?

Re:No Reason to Pity

[BeanThere]

Are you denying that it is true though? The very existence of a "Nigerian keyboard" is only thanks to *incredible* amounts of work put in to create things like keyboards and the Unicode standard and software for easily creating IMEs and so on - countries like Nigeria have basically gotten a major free ride being able to simply directly import and use all these technologies, to massive benefit. Do you have ANY clue how much work and money went into creating Unicode alone, just one tiny component/aspect of such a system? It's mammoth, and all free to use, and yet when last did you hear one "thank you"? On the contrary, it's always just complaints about how it's not enough.

Anyway, I'm not going to convince you, let me say this instead: Dedicate your spare time for the next few years to trying to help Africa, then we'll talk again.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to what, a post-20th-century attitude being that people in first world countries are EXPECTED to give and work freely for the 3rd world? Isn't that just slavery/colonialism in reverse?

+1 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, *I* got the joke.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[easyTree]

The last thing some scammer needs is some inconsiderate bastard from outside the country to enable rapid exchange of information amongst his target group.

How could we make this cooler?

[A10Mechanic]

RANCOR vs OLPC. Two go in, one comes out. you know, like Mad Max, without the accents...

Re:Only in America

[c6gunner]

And by "only in America", you must have meant "Only in America, England, Canada, Australia, and every other English speaking nation in the world", right? :)

Besides which, let's not pretend that other languages don't have some messed up rules, too. I know it's popular to think that westerners are ignorant of other nations, but I speak two languages fluently, and can get along in two more. The German tendency to stick together words into huge uber-words is a heck of a lot stranger than any aspect of the English language, and French spelling seems to be every bit as arbitrary as English spelling.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[MMC Monster]

This is taking place in a Nigerian court.

A hanging (ie: corporate death penalty) may not be totally out of the question. If I recall correctly, LANCOR has to pay court fees if it turns out to be a waste of court time.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the world has had enough of it being run forwards, don't you?

Re:Only in America

[Anonymous Coward]

And by "only in America", you must have meant "Only in America, England, Canada, Australia, and every other English speaking nation in the world", right? :) Well I can't speak for England, Canada and other English speaking nations, but in Australia at least solder is spelled phonetically (like "older" prefixed with an 'ess' sound). So clearly the rest of you don't know what you're talking about. ;)

Foreigners in their own country

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, almost all elements used to build these laptops are belonging to somewhere else.

The components are possibly Chinese. the ideas are possible brewed from open source (a good concept, but a salad in the end, for this very same argument explained in here). Many of the "teaching contents" ain't local (with this, you know, local is "Local" in every place is a different culture-animals-religions-traditions-dictators-martyrs-heroes-ECONOMY).

After all, you start trying to give people a better education, but in the process, transform them in aliens, individuals separated from them own reality, and context (i think their context is being abused, since centuries, and robed, and being utilized, and being the last defecating end of giga-planet monopolies-mafias).

So, what happens if you "create" a "global" child in that medium?? usually chaos (think some of those lands are in chaos at this moment), and the necessity of "global people" to rescue them. (finally you generate a Trojan, more chaos, and local monsters that defend their land from the foreigners (attacks they think)).

So, in the end, OLPC, can do, to its maximum extent, provide a "transparent structure", to which, every land would fill with their history, and what they got in their blood.

BUT, HOW.

how can you override the material from which the laptop is made?, necessary evil some will say?

Most directly, people in the countries DON'T need, (nor needed in the past), computers.

They need peace.

They need the time and space to learn from their elders, to heal, and to cultivate the land. to learn from it, to recall what is which this land produces, and how you should take care of it.

All that, is not in a computer (although you can document it, its not advised), is in their will.

Introducing a big factory, the marked economy, in this lands that CANT TAKE THEM, that dont have that history.

Or SENDING THEM WEAPONS, WONT HELP, them achieve the reconciliation, the healing, or the sustainable growing their own land needs.

Even complaining and cursing, saying they ain't good people to do business with, is NOT WHAT THEY NEED. I mean, that does only harm.

In the end, interventionism, generates a monster.

But.. why is the aggressive reaction occurring in this lands? why is people "hunting" each other there?
Is it because of interventionism and the aliens "global culture" generates? (read: we are all living in america)
Is it because of the big factories emplaced in this poor lands? (poor in currency)
Is this because of the social strait stairs that the big factories/market economy generates to be able to "participate" in this economy?
Is this because of the intervention of mafia/monopoly interfering them to consolidate and consume those lands/people?
is this because they are CONSUMING PRODUCTS THAT ARE NOT FROM THEIR OWN LAND? (which generates another type of alien).

In part, those are stuff negroponte didnt took into account, when tracing his plan.

and are stuff market economy will never think about. If they would think of that, they couldnt destroy and colonize new lands. (read some resentment there).

Re:Foreigners in their own country

[alba7]

After all, you start trying to give people a better education, but in the process, transform them in aliens, individuals separated from them own reality, and context (i think their context is being abused, since centuries, and robed, and being utilized, and being the last defecating end of giga-planet monopolies-mafias).

Well, I am from Austria. In 1908 it was governed by an emperor that valued military virtues above everything else. Enter WWI.
Between 1919 and 1934 there was some kind of democracy (the opposition never came to rule).
Anyway, in 1934, after a brief civil war, a dictator took power.
In 1938 the German army marched in, with an awful lot of cheers. During WWII Austrians fight in the Wehrmacht.

So in hind sight I am extremely glad that my ancestors got a better education, alienated themselves from their authoritarian, militaristic roots, and stopped the abuse, robbery and misuse going one for centuries.

They need peace. They need the time and space to learn from their elders, to heal, and to cultivate the land. to learn from it, to recall what is which this land produces, and how you should take care of it.

As long as every generation has more children than the land can feed, every generation will have poverty and war.
Any culture that values a high number of children more than high education for children will permanently have poverty and war.
If you consider the culture of sub-Saharan Africa worth preserving as it is, then you want to preserve poverty and war.

Africa needs to change. Africans need to change. A lot.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[digitalchinky]

Insightful? Maybe in opposite land. Perhaps you just missed the memo, it's every person for themselves. I think you need to visit a few of these under-developed nations and take a look at how the other half actually live. What you so outwardly judge as infantile, I see with my own eyes as truly identical, first world, and absolutely no different to any other country on the planet. Corporate greed in America has the same underpinnings the world over. The people at the top want more money and power, they will do whatever it takes to get it. End of story.

I think I prefer to live in one of these countries you appear to despise, I actually have significantly more freedom and a far better standard of living than I could ever have in my country of origin (Australia), and it all comes at a fraction of the price.

How do you spell SCO in Nigerian?

[DrJimbo]

LANCOR.

Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.

IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the same company that funded the SCO fiasco.

Displays of ignorance

[Sedders]

Exactly. And notice how the tired jokes about scammers, or those talking about the backwardness of Nigerians as a whole, are modded up. I think only ignorant people make generalizations about a country or continent, and they often do so because they're plain lazy/supercilious. Corruption is not part of the 'culture of Africa' - as if it's all one culture, how scintillating. I see evidence of incredible stupidity on the parts of, say, certain Americans, but I've never seen that as a reason to abuse America's culture or all Americans. Of course, for Africans, any available stereotypes are okay to use, right?

Re:No Reason to Pity

[WindBourne]

I guess, they SCOd them.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[sumdumass]

But a keyboard in South America could be used to communicate outside it. Taking those unneeded characters away might make it more difficult to communicate with someone in the US, France, Germany, or some other country.

But it is probably a universal design or something similar that only changes the stuff needed to localize the keyboard.

Re:Only in America

[techno-vampire]

French spelling seems to be every bit as arbitrary as English spelling.

I've heard that French used to be pronounced the way it's now spelled. As the language shifted, scribes insisted on keeping the old spelling because they were paid by the letter. Don't know if it's true or not, but considering other things I know about France, I wouldn't be surprised.

Re:Only in America

[Architect_sasyr]

And by "only in America", you must have meant "Only in America, England, Canada, Australia, and every other English speaking nation in the world", right? :)

Actually, Australia says it more like soul-jer or sold-e-er.

--
I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards. And, no, I am NOT an American. Oh the irony...

No, he really meant "Only in America"

[Joce640k]

Everybody else says "solder".

Re:No, he really meant "Only in America"

[c6gunner]

Not quite. In Canada it's pronounced more like "sawder". At least, it was when I went through basic electronics :)

Re:No, he really meant "Only in America"

[AvitarX]

I'm and American (US) and that's the only way I've heard it too.

sodda I have only heard to refer to the stuff you drink.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[mboverload]

MOD PARENT UP.
These are freaking QWERTY keyboards with PURPLE PAINT ON THEM and a second shift key. That's it.
See this image from their site http://www.konyin.com/products/NIG/KB-201PW-NG(Large).jpg

What the hell? I could understand if it's some novel layout...but a painted QWERTY keyboard? Jesus.

20 mil and an injunction?

[iminplaya]

Sounds reasonable in today's post 9/11 world.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[BeanThere]

(Note I'm not the GP poster here), are you saying you live in Australia, or are from there but don't? According to your homepage, do you. Australia is not an "underdeveloped country"; it's another Western country, and as such has more in common with other Western countries like the US, UK etc. than other nations/cultures/countries. I very much doubt Aus is one of those 'childish' countries being referred to.

Re:Only in America

[qweqwe321]

And by "only in America", you must have meant "Only in America, England, Canada, Australia, and every other English speaking nation in the world", right? :)

You forgot about Soviet Russia.

LANCOR has a point

[tjstork]

Basically, the idea of OLPC is that we'll just flood Africa with a bunch of practically free notebooks using massive economies of scale.

When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing. It's always fun to look at free trade and say, geez, look at what the third world is doing to the USA, but, sometimes, you have to look the other way around.

Re:LANCOR has a point

[Forbman]

Hmm... what about the possibilities of people developing new and creative hardware for use with the OLPC? If it has an open interface bus, maybe a clever farmer could utilize several of them and wire his farming operation, and do things that cost US farmers significant chunks of change. No, not a GPS-guided ox plow (really straight rows you got there, Ngebe!), but maybe the farmer being able to use an OLPC to grid out different crop areas.

Is the keyboard maker suing the OLPC maker going to try and support the OLPC, or is their bread buttered by the few who can afford western computing equipment?

OLPC should just refuse to respond to the issue, and not sell them to Nigeria. Will Nigeria then refuse any well-funded NGOs from distributing them in Nigeria, as opposed to selling them? If they are, then Nigeria's government is simply stupid.

So let them be stupid. It's not worth fighting about. Let one of its neighbors benefit greatly from OLPC and start reaping some other benefits from it that Nigeria pissed all over.

Re:LANCOR has a point

[tjstork]

So let them be stupid. It's not worth fighting about. Let one of its neighbors benefit greatly from OLPC and start reaping some other benefits from it that Nigeria pissed all over

I think Nigeria might in some ways be better off, by developing their own indigenous computing industry. Look at what the Chinese are doing. They basically are using protectionism, gradually decreasing, to build up their own indigenous manufacturing, and it worked.

Re:LANCOR has a point

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I know. The advanced semiconductor industry in Africa is being brutalized by this! There were at least 40 million PhD's in Nigeria doing electrical engineering work (some of it involving advanced versions of the Cell broadband engine, coupled with working prototypes utilizing cold fusion), but instead of this miracle technology being allowed to come to fruition, the degenerate western civilizations are flooding these promising interplanetary leaders with disgusting charity laptops. Unbelievable! Apparently Taiwan manufacturers and those in Silicon Valley of California are shaken to their cores by the technological advances in semiconductor design happening in Nigeria. Instead of trying to 'dump' this "OLPC" technology into Nigeria, they should just let those bringing suit, provide their own solutions (and free computers) to the children of Nigeria. At last, African technology not interfered with by those lousy meddling outsiders! Good Job!

Re:LANCOR has a point

[Chris Burke]

When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing.

Well there isn't any now, and in the future when a generation of tech-savvy students grow up (or long before), they may want to do things that are beyond what are lets say the modest computational capabilities of the OLPC.

Computers aren't like food crops, which minus flavor preferences are essentially identical everywhere and unchanged for centuries as far as the end-user is concerned. Unless there's a never-ending cycle of upgrades being planned, flooding Africa with low-power laptops is going to do anything but obviate the need for indigenous computer industry. The bigger question is whether the economies of these countries will grow enough to support such a high-cost industry in that time.

Of course there are precious few places on earth where actual computer hardware manufacture (especially the silicon chips) takes place, which hasn't stopped the rest of the developed world from growing local tech industry. So even to the extent that computer manufacture may be stunted by OLPC, tech industry in general is enabled, because a pre-requisite for that industry is having computers around in the first place.

No good deed

[ISwearNotmyPorn]

goes unpunished.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[tjstork]

ork and money went into creating Unicode alone, just one tiny component/aspect of such a system? It's mammoth, and all free to use, and yet when last did you hear one "thank you"

And, why does Nigeria need Unicode, any more than most Americans need something more than ASCII.

Tutorial: Colloquialism

[nick_davison]

A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or paralinguistics. Colloquialims denote a manner of speaking or writing that is characteristic of familiar "common" conversation. Source

A colloquialism, whilst not correct in formal speech or writing, is absolutely correct to use when conveying local speech and writing styles.

Colloquial English from Nigeria, as evidenced my a ton of spam, tends to use the "$20 million dollars" format all the time. It's entirely likely that the litigant in question used that phrasing in his demands. Though not used in formal speech, it is nonetheless absolutely appropriate in reporting his cultural tendencies and demands accurately.

Much as we'd love to get the Grammar Nazi S.S. to kill every last one of them, they're busy planning the deaths of the American undermenschen that think "Y'all" is acceptable. Until that campaign is complete, they couldn't possibly attack Nigeria.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[alshithead]

"Their keyboards don't really seem that inventive once you give them a look. They seem to use a shift^2/Ng key which probably does the exact same thing as AltGr, which is present on a lot of multilingual keyboards, although not at the same location."

Let's take another step in that direction. Do typewriter manufacturers have to pay royalties to someone who owns the patent to Nigerian keyboard layout? I doubt it and I see no difference.

OGPC?

[tmjva]

Of course in areas near Western Africa, they don't issue One Laptop Per Child, they issue One Gun Per Child:

http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hello-kitty-ar-15---evil-black-rifle-meets-cute-and.aspx

Nigeria = Corrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to be the one to state it first, but Nigeria (all of Nigeria) is corrupt. I would be quite cheerful if the OLPC stopped trying to send computers to Nigeria (actually none have yet been sent). But this law suit comes in advance of any actual damage. Its pre-emptive. No problem. ATTENTION WORLD CHARITIES: Nigeria wishes to be a pariah state, looking the gift horse in the mouth, swatting the hand that is trying to help it. Please stop giving any and all aid, donations, social work, charitable work, sending books, supplies, relief, etc. to Nigeria "in advance". There, hopefully boycotts on goods coming from Nigeria and a cessation of aid to Nigeria will help them with their corruption and/or greedy-bastardism problems. Its not mean-spiritedness on my part, merely an opportunity for them to check reality.

Why is LANCOR asking for damages?

[listen_to_blogs]

It doesn't seem right to ask for money on Lancor's part. But why are they asking for damages to begin with? I would really like to know that before I buy into OLPC's side of the story. listen_to_slashdot

hehehe

[Anonymous Coward]

THis IP has been covered here before. The patent is for work that was done 20 years earlier in the states. All in all, this WAS an ip infringement in the original place, but is not even close at this time. The fact that you scream about this, says taht you are most likely just a MS FUDer.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[mrchaotica]

If I recall correctly, LANCOR has to pay court fees if it turns out to be a waste of court time.

So what? You can't get blood from a stone; I'll bet this "LANCOR" scammer doesn't have any assets to pay if it loses anyway!

Thats just it

[WindBourne]

I see a number of posts about how America has screwed with Africa, but the reality is, that EU has been there for several hundred years. America has done relatively little. Sadly, we have backed some dictators, and that has to stop. China is now in there in a big way, and there is ZERO scruples in how they are going at it. Money, guns, and women galores to some of the worst leaders there. In return, they want guarenteed access not only to the minerals, but to dirt cheap labor. That later part is the worst of it. They are looking to pay a fraction of what the open market pays.

Re:Thats just it

[ErroneousBee]

I've done some careful research on this, and I believe the Africans got to Africa before the Europeans.

Re:Thats just it

[Ruud Althuizen]

Give that sig back to me you bastard!

Re:No Reason to Pity

[BeanThere]

WTF? You could've at least spent three seconds Googling before posting: Nigeria has an estimated over 500 languages, many of which need special characters or [combining] diacritics (or tone markings in some casings) that can only feasibly be represented and rendered using Unicode. IMEs cater for Unicode, so this keyboard "techology" is, seemingly, nothing more than an IME that outputs certain Unicode characters or combining diacritics etc.

ASCII? Fu-gedit! That is almost as ridiculous in Nigeria as it would be expecting the Chinese to type Chinese with ASCII.

Check out Languages of Nigeria at Wikipedia. It already becomes clear even with e.g. "Oyo" on that very page that ASCII ain't gonna cut it; follow a few more links further to others e.g. Yoruba, Edo, Hausa (also note Arabic 'ajami' representation) - these are just the simple ones.

LANCOR has no point

[BeanThere]

You are technically correct, but your point has nothing to do with this LANCOR situation, since their claim is specifically about illegal use of "their" keyboard layout - nowhere does their complaint say anything about being harmed by cheap laptop dumping, nor do they represent any group of people who might have such claim.

Anyway, there is a crucially important difference between this and other forms of dumping which are actually more wrong: This is basically PRIVATE charity, it's not e.g. the US government dumping cheap computers on the 3rd world to subsidise their own industry; rather, it's private individuals using private money.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi

[igorlord]

I am not a lawyer either, but it seems that when infringement is willful (ie not by mistake), you may be liable for the damage you've done even if you stop when slapped with a C&D Letter.

Since the facts state that OLPC actually bought one of their keyboards with an implied intention to copy the layout, the infringement, if any, was willful.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[jack455]

Their IP protection in the patent apparently applies only to industrial and commercial applications. While I'm not generally a fan of TFAs groklaw is actually worth reading. Try it.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[aussie_a]

will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere. Your post needs a "thinkofthechildren" tag.

IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that the "IP" that's been infringed is something someone imagines to be property when it's nothing more than an idea (and quite possibly a vague one at that).

Well, that is why some of us call it "imaginary property" after all...

But is OLPC the best way to get them education?

[mdmkolbe]

... or even an effective way to get them education compared to other methods? Even in the USA, computers in the classroom haven't exactly been a resounding success; other methods of improving education can be more effective.

Re:But is OLPC the best way to get them education?

[QuantumG]

Yes, but the people from the MIT media lab are not the ones to do that... and yet they're the only ones stepping up to the plate.

Re:Only in America

[zcat_NZ]

Huh?

I think we're talking about the mixture of tin and lead used to connect components on a circuit board (solder) not a member of the armed forces (soldier)

OLPC can't handle external keyboards?

[mwvdlee]

Seriously, does LANCOR sue all laptop builders that provide their own keyboard on their laptop? Surely the OLPC has some means of attaching an external keyboard just like other laptops? OLPC could even be a new market for them.

Corruption grows at home too

[LandruBek]

I guess that depends on your definition of the "free world." Personally I am troubled by the corruption I see in America, which was once considered a member of that club. In global terms, the integrity of the American government(s) was ranked 20th by the Global Corruption Report. Judging by your nick, you probably are glad to know Canada is indeed ranked less corrupt. I don't know if the level of American corruption qualifies as "rampant," but it is real and does affect its citizens. Look at the chilling effects of the media-purchased DMCA, the Florida recount debacle of 2000, and the wrist-slaps administered to Microsoft in 2001 and to Sony-BMG in 2005. Microsoft smothered Netscape and WordPerfect in front of everyone's eyes, and where is their punishment? Sony-BMG did on a grand scale the same sort of thing that earned federal prison sentences for the wunderkind hackers of the 1980s. But who in Sony-BMG went to prison? Why is Sony-BMG still permitted to conduct business in the USA? They are just going to do it again someday. Not much justice here bro (or sis). Large scale corruption, we gots that aplenty.

Now, I think know what you mean I guess -- I've lived in some of those countries way below 20th place also, and I've seen plenty of the "usual" brand of corruption too. At least I don't get shaken down for bribes, or outright robbed, by the local police here. But, I also pay much, much higher taxes and the police get much, much higher salaries. Frankly I am not sure that there is any substantial difference in the perniciousness of corruption in the USA compared to the developing world.

Re:Corruption grows at home too

[Ohreally_factor]

There's actually something to be said for good old fashioned two-bit third world corruption: it's egalitarian. Everybody can potentially participate at whatever their economic level. In the U.S., only the super-wealthy and super-connected get to play.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Adm.Wiggin]

They didn't answer but they still want $20 million dollars. Speaking honestly, who doesn't want $20 million? I want $20 million, but I'm not going to try to weasel it out of a group of people trying to do the right thing. I'm not quite sure how this kind of thing should be handled, but certainly not by paying up. If they get the $20 million, it will only cause more problems. It's like giving the whining kid the sucker just to shut him up. Give him the stupid sucker enough times, and he'll move on to something bigger, believing he is now in control. The parent-child analogy is a bit of a stretch, but I think someone needs to teach them a lesson, even if I don't know who.

Mod parent down

[Esteban]

Holy moly. I just realized I chimed in with a grammatical comment on a post about OLPC and Nigerian "courts.".

Obligatory contact information:

[Angostura]

http://www.lancorltd.com/contact.htm

Re:Don't do business there

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it'd probably be unsafe for children.

Moot Point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the OLPC is a scam, and none will really ever end up released... isn't an injunction preventing them from shipping the OLPC to Nigeria kind of useless?

BTW, I'm sure the irony of the OLPC scammers being sued, by a scammer, in Nigeria (!!!) is lost on nobody. If it were any more divorced from reality, it would tear a hole in the space-time continuum.

Re:Moot Point?

[rjames13]

Since the OLPC is a scam, and none will really ever end up released... isn't an injunction preventing them from shipping the OLPC to Nigeria kind of useless?

BTW, I'm sure the irony of the OLPC scammers being sued, by a scammer, in Nigeria (!!!) is lost on nobody. If it were any more divorced from reality, it would tear a hole in the space-time continuum.

The word scam is not on the page you linked to.

Seriously, WTF?

[Invidious]

These Nigerian retards claim it took nine years of work to come up with meta-keys? I've typed on keyboards with two meta keys for typing what'd normally be alt-characters.

According to the drawing...

[Douglas Goodall]

I looked at the drawing on the groklaw site of the alleged keyboard and from what I could see, it looked a lot like a plain old IBM PC keyboard. The quality of the drawing was so poor I couldn't tell much beyond that. I realize that I am no where near as compassionate at HHDL but there are lots of countries in the world that could benefit from the OLPC and if the Nigerian Government doesn't want it, I suppose that would be their decision. I think the people at OLPC must have a real sense of humor and will deal with this in an appropriate way. Maybe the display design lady will move to Nigeria and go to work with the keyboard folks...

Open source a Threat to Nigeria?

[Anonymous Coward]

Allot of Scams comes from there on close source systems, if an open source network like the OLPC program would set foot in the country it would a threat that closed economy! Children are exploited to commit crimes education is also a threat there.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get blood from a stone; But you can get blood from a scammer...

I'll bet this "LANCOR" scammer doesn't have any assets to pay if it loses anyway! So, it's in blood then, eh?

Re:Only in America

[RobNich]

I have never heard an American pronounce it as "sodda" though I do not live in the New England area, where they leave off the ending "r" of every word. I've lived on the west coast (California), east coast (Philadelphia), Florida, Montana, and midwest (Ohio), and I've only heard it pronounced "sodder".

On top of that, the word comes from Old French soudure, so it was always pronounced without the "L". Those that add the L are mispronouncing.

I'm waiting for Microsoft...

[advocate_one]

to announce that they've licensed LANCOR's patent for use with the Windows version of the OLPC when it becomes available...

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

everything i learned about compassion i learned from The Secret of NIMH:

sullivan: we have urgent matters of our own to attend to; let the lesser creatures fend for themselves!

Standard business practice

[Anonymous Coward]

It's normal business and engineering practice to purchase examples of any relevant equipment on the market (especially competing equipment) while you are engineering your own product. This is how product engineering progresses, with each new generation of equipment improving on what came before. Very frequently it goes far beyond mere visual inspection of products, and into full reverse engineering, which is a fully protected (and respected) activity.

If some aspect of a purchased product is a copyrightable work (but this does NOT extend to ideas, as ideas are not copyrightable works) and was directly copied then it is possible to sue for copyright violation. This rarely applies to anything other than code and documentation though. Maybe layout is copyrightable too, but it's a fringe area and would need to be legally tested.

If some aspect of a purchased product embodies a patented idea (but this does NOT extend to copyrightable works like code or documentation or possibly layout) then there is no need for reverse engineering, since the patent is an openly published document. A patent holder need only demonstrate that his patent covers the ideas embodied in someone else's product to be able to sue for patent royalties. This is one of the reasons why competing products are sometimes purchased during R&D: to ensure that there is sufficient design distance from products of other companies in order to stay clear of litigation.

In this instance though, LANCOR appears not to know exactly what they are claiming.

If it's copyright violation, then they have no claim if OLPC changed their design before selling any units, since copyright law doesn't come into play in respect of lab prototypes as they have no commercial impact on any party.

If it's patent infringement, then they need to show that such infringement exists in the commercial product (since patent royalties are per unit), which they have not done. However, claiming additional damages will be nigh-on impossible since the OLPC is not a competing product in LANCOR's keyboard market. Claiming royalties is still possible though, whether or not there are additional damages.

We know what's really going on here of course (a 2-bit parasite outfit just having a go in the supportive environment of their massively corrupt country), but if they are at least pretending to adhere to legal process then they need to be clear on what they're claiming, and to distinguish between copyrights and patents.

They're far from being clear on that at the moment.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Paul Fernhout]

While I'm not specifically disputing what you say, for a little context, Africa was (and to an extent, still is) the site of hundreds of years of brutal European colonialization (including by European and American slavers), which broke apart pre-existing family and tribal traditions in Africa. While in some ways not as bad as what happened in North America (where the indigenous population was mostly wiped out and displaced by various means), clearly there is historical reason for anger in Africa towards the West. See for example:
    "Africans on Africa: Colonialism"
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4653125.stm
"Take corruption, the great scourge of Africa. For historians like Stephen Morrison, Director of the Africa Programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, this modern day curse has its clear roots in the colonial era. The colonial state was "inherently authoritarian", he told me. "If you held power, it allowed an ability to skim and award contracts and the like - it promoted a corrupt form of government in many places," he added. There have long been arguments about the pernicious effects on Africa of colonial rule. But it is a complex picture. ... The post-colonial era was still in its first decade, but already all over the continent, things were falling apart - partially because, when Africa was split up between the great imperialist powers in the nineteenth century, the map of Africa was arbitrarily redrawn. Families and whole tribes had been split up into separate countries. Rival kingdoms, who had for centuries shared borders and warred with each other, suddenly found themselves redefined as one people. "

This post isn't meant to justify people being bad to each other, just to provide some context for understanding the emotional roots of it, in the interest of moving forward. As that article (Africans on Africa: Colonialism) continues:
"All the same, nearly 50 years since the end of the colonial era, is it time perhaps for us to stop blaming the trauma of that encounter for all our problems? Who truly is to blame for this? To my mind, many of Africa's most profound problems stem from the way Africans look at themselves: all too often, Africa suffers from low self-esteem. All too often, Africans see themselves mirrored in the eyes of the west - of those rich former colonial powers who like to regard Africans only as victims. And, all too often, Africans become the distorted images reflected in these mirrors. ... Clearly, Africa does need the world's help. But Africa's destiny can be changed for the better only by Africans themselves. To borrow Benjamin Franklin's words, we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. We must come together, not in a sentimental but ultimately pointless spirit of nationalist phrase-making, but to pull ourselves, together, out of this mess we're in."

Computers not just used in computer manufactoring

[microbox]

When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing. It's always fun to look at free trade and say, geez, look at what the third world is doing to the USA, but, sometimes, you have to look the other way around.

The cost-benefit analyse is obviously in favour of having the OLPC. An educated society is much more valuable than the potential of developing a computer-component manufacturing sector.

Education is the most precious thing in society. Even in wealthy countries, those who are uneducated are effectively sentenced to a life of poverty, hardship and bad health. The wealth and benefits of our modern society can, to a large extent, be attributed to mass education.

Whenever you have money...

[s_p_oneil]

...there will be dogs trying to steal it from you and parasites trying to bleed it from you. It is a very sad fact of life, and probably the primary reason the Libertarian party exists. I'm not Libertarian, but it's easy to see why they can't stand the government taking so much money in taxes to be stolen or pissed away. Some see it as a necessary evil (so we can have roads, bridges, public schools, a military), while others see it as not so necessary.

Either way, we should've clipped Bush's wings before he invaded Iraq by forcing him to adhere to the balanced budget amendment. This deficit spending is going to destroy the US.

Re:Whenever you have money...

[soundhack]

Government has another vital role that you alluded to in you "sad fact of life."

Sure, if there were no government then it couldnt take "so much money in taxes" But without a police force and laws, there will be "dogs" and "parasites" taking as much, if not more from you.

I'm sure people will say "well if I had a gun I will protect myself and my property" but there will always be someone bigger carrying a bigger gun.

I know you said you aren't libertarian, so this isn't directed to, but to deluded libertarians.

Re:Whenever you have money...

[s_p_oneil]

Exactly. I'd mod you up if I hadn't already posted. ;-) Although it's not usually a bigger gun. It's usually someone who gets 20+ of his friends together with guns to come kill you, rape your wife and/or kids, and take your stuff. People who think you can eliminate the need for police (or military) by having everyone buy a gun are morons. I blame things like cowboy movies, and perhaps the state of Texas (which seems to perpetuate the "cowboy" mentality), for making people think this would be a good thing. I can't imagine these gun-toting individuals picturing themselves in any other way, unless they really want to be "dogs" but are scared of going to prison.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[billcopc]

What is pride without something to be proud of ? There's nothing glamorous about watching the world die every day.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reconsidering the real cruelty of the good ol' times where justice was administered by the king, and if you looked like you were making him lose time on useless technicalities you were going to be hanged. That's an interesting idea. Power of summary execution (instead of those useless ruling someone "in contempt of the court") should go hand-in-hand with life-term judges in strengthening the judiciary branch against encroachment by the executive branch or corporations!

Re:Don't do business there

[novakyu]

Very racist, but oh so true. Nope. Not racist at all. What the parent poster should have said was "very prejudiced." Racism isn't the only kind of prejudice/discrimination (let's see, what are the standard criteria: gender, age, nationality, or sexual orientation), and an unqualified "Don't deal with Nigeria" sounds like it is based on a strong prejudice.

I'm not saying whether this prejudice is right or not (I know nothing about Nigeria), but it can certainly be hurtful a long way down the road---especially if this ... reputation/prejudice persists even after Nigeria takes care of the corruption problem.

Re:Good.

[alba7]

Programming is pointless without a computer.

I'm a little disappointed...

[hoppo]

I expected to see more Nigerian scam e-mail jokes in this discussion.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[inviolet]

I'm afraid this is just how things go here in Africa, and as someone else pointed out, why it'll probably remain 3rd-world indefinitely. Try give a hand to Africa, and it will demand an arm, and then try kill you for not giving the entire arm. Mod me whatever, but I've lived here all my life and seen this kind of thing over and over, facts are just facts, I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't lived here to get it.

In our world there are two ways to get things: make it or take it.

Western culture blossomed once legal systems arose to reward those who "make it" and variously punish those who "take it". Meanwhile African culture, or perhaps African genetics, seems optimized for "take it".

Re:Only in America

[Architect_sasyr]

Humour. Was making a joke at the expense of pronunciation and accents.

Of course now that I've slept and I look at it again I see just how obscure the joke was!

in other news, Nigeria has courts

[Anonymous Coward]

who knew?

Perls before swine

[quenda]

What does it matter? Go elsewhere.
Anyone who seriously thinks the OLPC is going to change anything in a place like Nigeria is living in fairly land.
There are other poverty-stricken places on Earth that have a much better chance of benefiting.

Re:No Reason to Pity

[Tablizer]

What is pride without something to be proud of ? There's nothing glamorous about watching the world die every day.

You are looking at human nature through somewhat idealistic goggles in my opinion.

Re:Only in America

[zcat_NZ]

itym ;)