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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."
Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Just send them weapons.
Most of the stuff on
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?
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.
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.
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.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
My web domain.
Here's a a problem for Negroponte: IP infringement.
Describe, in your own words, what IP has been infringed.
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.
Palm trees and 8
"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."
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).
Table-ized A.I.
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.