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Negroponte Offers OLPC Technology For India's $35 Tablet
angry tapir writes "One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government's planned $35 tablet. In a congratulatory note to the government, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the world needs the $35 tablet, and he offered the country full access to OLPC hardware and software technology."
OLPC was always just another bloated passive-anger exercise in futility and marketing. Now the OLPC project failed and opened the doors to better and lower cost consumer alternatives they're trying to cop a slice of the the developing nation action to screw another cheap headline and prove their relevance. Whatever made these indentured academic elites think they had any clue about shipping products people could afford and wanted to buy? Now if the Indians can commoditise the market for well designed cheap tablets that might light a fire under Apple's ass and cut their prices so your average overworked and underpaid worker can afford to buy their way out of the Microsoft ghetto. But that would require the arrogant sociopath, Steve Jobs, to swallow some of his own bullshit pie and that ain't gonna happen, right?
If we see a $70 pad in the next 5 years, I'll eat my shoe.
Steve Jobs would bomb Bangalore before he'd let that happen.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Chinese parts are fine, its the language and OS skills that will grow India long term.
England made sure India could never get too many local hi tech skills during the colonial days, why settle for US digital colonialism?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is just what India needs -- and who better than this joker to show them how capitalism crushes idealism?
Sure, of course, now that india has proved who ever is in charge of the OLPC project was in it just to make a buck himself, and that now they proved him wrong with his designs, he hopes to at least get them to look over some of the materials they still might need and make money by them using his stuff....right, of course, he is thinking of the endless millions of kids needing one of these over there, and is just a too excited for his own good....I think this is just your perfect example how the big wheel keeps turning to help the richer get richer and the poor get poorer (if that is even a word...)...
If students from india could figure out how to make a 35$ tablet , you know these guys could too, quite easily, they had the contacts right off the bat to save money where as these students do not even have contacts, they are just using ingenuity, so they come up with it and show the world that this is possible and that these companies are still just as greedy as they have ever been, I think india's government should just can OLPC and just straight off the shelf make the tablets available to all stores over there with a price cap or sell it themselves online...