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Venezuela Purchases a Million Intel Classmates
An anonymous reader submits news of the million-laptop order from Venezuela of Intel's version of the kid-friendly laptop. The computers are produced in Portugal. "The machines, rebranded 'Magellan,' will also come with Linux pre-installed as opposed to Windows XP. This order alone is 50% bigger than the entire OLPC project has managed to sell worldwide."
If so, maybe give one to Miss Venezuela? I'd guess her IM nick would be WorldPeace69...
Task Mangler
So now OLPC comes with windoze and classmates come with Linux? o_O
Tables have turned I gather!
But despite the quotemarks, this is NOT in TFA. No mention of Linux, or the name "Magellan". Hopefully the anonymous submitter didn't just make it up, it would be nice the source was cited. We all know how carefully Slashdot is in vetting its articles, after all, so I'm sure it's all verifiable.
Technology in education has a great deal of potential when you put a computer in each kids hands. The important part is ~$300 million is being spent on hardware. How much will the national government spend on infrastructure that will make it a success. Teacher training and lesson plans, maintenance and support, internet access.... It could be political, your kid now has a computer, but I doubt it will be a success as an educational tool without spending another chunk of money on making it work. By the way OLPC is the reason the classmate exists, and while some zealots will be angry that it isn't their piece of hardware, the real supporters of the OLPC project's mission will be happy to hear this.
And guess who is to blame for OLPC failing to gain much traction? http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4472654.ece Yes, Intel mostly. Can't allow there to be so many AMD chips out there...
As a Portuguese concerned about the education of the young and concerned about the economy, I must that these Magellan computers (named after Ferdinand Magellan, a very famous portuguese maritime explorer) are nothing but a huge scam based on portuguese tax holders. We are talking about a 900 MHz refurbished Intel Classmate PC that is both ugly, heavy, and marketed as "built in Portugal", which is _not_! And the choice of operating systems is appalling! We can either stick with Window XP or Caixa Mágica, a portuguese GNU/Linux distribution that is horribly produced, horrible to use, horrible to maintain, but thrown around at every state sponsored GNU/Linux deployment. No wonder people dislike GNU/Linux after using Caixa Mágica...
Technology in education has a great deal of potential when you put a computer in each kids hands.
Computers don't change the intelligence of kids, but they may help their motivation.
You cannot educate a congenital idiot into being a genius. You can make him flip burgers faster however.
I think people are hoping that buying computers for kids is the "magic bullet" to somehow turn them all into middle-class level performers.
No scientific evidence exists that shows that will work.
Some useful research:
* The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Stephen Pinker -- proves beyond a doubt that intelligence and personality are almost exclusively heritable.
* The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray -- although the portion about race attracted the most media attention, the real point of the book is that intelligence in populations follows a distribution curve so that only a few are actually all that smart.
You can see why people go into "cognitive dissonance" when they see this evidence. We all like to think we can be anyone we want to be. But just like few are as handsome as Paul Newman, few are smart enough to achieve the kind of results that are desired.
Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole.
Pentti Linkola
Anti-Globalism, Traditionalism, and FreeBSD.
Even though TFA doesn't mention it, it's true that the computer being sold is called Magellan. It's basically a rename of Intel Classmate, with 1/3 of it being produced in Portugal. It was launched a few days ago over here (Portugal). The computer is being given (almost free) to kids in the 5th grade, and sold to the public for ~285 euros. Imo, it's just sad to see what I believe is a waste of public funds! First, the government is pouring cash into Intel's pocket for a sub-product, when it could've allied itself with the OLPC. Second, they think that by throwing fishing sticks at people, they'll learn how to fish. The computers will most likely be used for IM (MSN), social network (hi5) and warez. As for this deal with Venezuela, Chavez and Socrates (portuguese prime minister) are having some deals, and this is just another one. Portugal also has a huge community in Venezuela (around 1 million iirc).
Damn right-wing reactionaries and their mega-corporations! When will they realize that they should be purchasing from friendly non-profits like OLPC. I say we all move to Venezuela and start a socialist revolution!
Although its popular on both left and right to demonise Chavez, I think his rule will have a long term positive effect. Regardless of the current state of Venezuela, the Missions he created are contributing to a healthier and better educated population which is the foundation of future success.
I predict he will be out in a few years, and Venezuela will continue on a roughly social democratic route. The idea that he is turning it into another Cuba is just absurd hysterical screeching from the elite he has pissed off by treating the Venezuelan poor like human beings for a change.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
But you know what. I am inclined to agree with Pinker but it's absolute statements like these that discredit him.
And the Bell Curve has not only been criticized for racism but also methodology.
I wouldn't consider him "popular science," since he uses hard science in the book and his research is about anything but a popular topic.
Stephen Pinker: Research
The entire point of his book is that intelligence and personality are heritable, in contrast to the "blank slate" theory which suggests human beings can be shaped or educated into having certain intelligence and personality traits.
Every book has been criticized for its methodology. Criticism alone debunks nothing. Do you have a valid counterargument, or are you just trying to insult away the problem?
Anti-Globalism, Traditionalism, and FreeBSD.
The OLPC is a nice toy and Negroponte gets credit for creating the netbook category, but that's it. Face it, the hardware is slow and not really special - oops sorry, the case has pretty kiddie colors. You could make the case that the OS is something new, but I don't see a huge clamor to bring it into every classroom everywhere. My kids use whatever OS is put in front of them. They take a while to find how to do stuff, then they do it. Where's the demand for the OLPC? They want to put nonstandard hardware and software in the hands of kid's in the 3rd world. Apparently, Secretaries of Education everywhere are scratching their heads wondering why they would put their kids on a different track than the rest of the world. And somewhere down the road the kids would have to be retrained to use standard PC's. Why?
The OLPC project should return to it's original vision of giving one laptop per child and get out of the hardware & software market. Change the mission to helping fund computer acquisitions. If they took all the money they wasted on hardware and software development they could have put more laptops out there by now.
OLPC is a classic example of why the market is better at developing and bringing products to market - better, faster, cheaper. Don't put the blame on Intel.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I'm not sure what country you are hailing from but it is IUD. Intra-uterine device.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
and in the interviews i've watched of Chavez, he comes off as a surprisingly intelligent person--i had no idea national leaders could be like that.
Funny, I've watched some interviews of him, too. I think he sounds stark raving mad. I had no idea national leaders could be like that, either. XD
Since when was an x86 cpu and linux "nonstandard hardware and software?" I'm going to assume you've never actually used an XO.
The hardware is "special" for several reasons. Mesh networking mitigates the lack of networking infrastructure in most of the places these are getting deployed. The absurdly high resolution screen also supports dropping into transflective grayscale for use in sunlight. Under normal load, it pulls around 4w, and goes below 1w in ebook mode (cpu, wifi, and backlight off). Of course, theres also the sealed keyboard, rugged design with no moving parts, LiFePO4 battery, security LEDs on the webcam and microphone, and so on. All of these things add up to show the key difference between the XO and the Classmate. The Classmate is a laptop made as cheaply as possible; the XO was designed from the ground up for education in the developing world.
You've also contradicted yourself about the software. On one hand, you say kids will figure out how to use whatever is on front of them, but then it must be some huge effort to retrain kids to use Windows down the line? Beyond the obvious contradiction there, you are also assuming that the XO exists to teach kids how to use computers. That is a secondary goal at most. The goal is to provide educational tools. I agree that Sugar is far from perfect, but it is improving every day. (And I mean that literally, the development builds seem to be released on a daily basis). The OS was designed largely to maximize the benefit of networking for collaboration. Pretty much anything that exists on one laptop, from Activities to content, to specific sessions done in an Activity can be shared with other XOs on the network. In addition, many Activities allow for multiple kids to be using it cooperatively.
Regardless, politics seems to come into play more than the merits of either program in bulk orders like this. In this case, Venezuela would much rather make friends with the Portuguese government than an American non-profit.
eclecti.cc
As someone who has relatives in Venezuela, and who has been there before and after the Chavez regime. He is hardly a good leader. Crowd control with rubber bullets and Cuban interregators for those who choose to protest, again that makes a good leader? I was born in the US but have lived in several south american countries. I hold citizen ship in Colombia and Panama due to family ties. Venezuela is much worse for the wear than it was 10 years ago. Chavez funds Farc in Colombia, and as someone who has been on his knees, assault rifle at his head, explaing why he spoke spanish with an american accent, I cannot say anything good about the man, or his peers. Colombia is taking a stand against the guerillas, they are bringing themselves up, and Chavez does not want to have his people see prosperity in democracy when it is right next door. Go to both countries, and tell who is better off.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
god forbid Venezuelan people actually get to eat.
Ever since his price controls went into effect, certain staple foods have become harder and harder to find. Milk is hit or miss, same with eggs and the like. Hugo is a weird case, he seems to be trying to do some good things, but unfortunately his actions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and economics, much in the same way that opposite end of the spectrum small government no-regulation types do.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.