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Low-Cost Indian Tablet Project Falls To Corruption

symbolset writes "The first Aakash tablet proposed for India schools has failed. Datawind managed to deliver the $45 Android tablet as reported here previously, but suffering a breach in faith by both their contract manufacturer and the accepting agency in India had to put the project on hold. Facing a loss in revenue it's turning into a disaster for the small Canadian company as they are now proving unable to deliver both the Aakash tablet and the parallel retail product. Senior executives have begun to flee. The company has presold a great many tablets, and delivery failure reports are beginning to mount. Is this the Phantom console of this decade?"

13 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. incomeptent contracts != corruption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    incomeptent contracts != corruption

    1. Re:incomeptent contracts != corruption by HornWumpus · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Even if the sentence is framed correctly you cannot assume the intended information was passed on. Idiot.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  2. what did they expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    India? Corruption? You don't say...

    1. Re:what did they expect? by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Looks like they forgot to factor in the cost of bribes. India is pretty much a 3rd world country by most standards. Money goes a long way towards having things go "right".

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    2. Re:what did they expect? by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have been involved in projects where part of the team was outsourced in India and you often get what you paid for with outsourcing from what I have seen.

      Let me guess

      "I can hire a whole team of educated experienced developers in India for the cost of one American dev"

      turns into a bunch of imaginary billing by people with fake degrees and no experience and no communication so it ends up costing more and not working.

      Analogy: Tenth cost android tablet in India ends up late and doesn't work. Isn't this Just how it always turns out over there?

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    3. Re:what did they expect? by Megane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      turns into a bunch of imaginary billing by people with fake degrees and no experience and no communication so it ends up costing more and barely working but when you fire them you discover that the code is a twisty piece of crap with WTFs everywhere and it would be easier to start over from scratch.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    4. Re:what did they expect? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > 3rd world country by most standards

      By all standards I believe. I don't think they backed the US nor the USSR during the cold war.

  3. Re:Money first by biohazard35 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What? Google had nothing to do with this failure other than making the OS. Just because they make Android doesn't mean they are responsible for every android device that is made. That is like saying Microsoft is at fault if the motherboard of your new computer fails.

  4. Nice try by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know what town you live in (or who is paying you to live there), but to most people, Google and Android stand for options. If you want to save money, you can get a cheap Android device. If you want to pay for quality, you can get a quality Android device. You can put whatever you want on your own device. And I don't think any reasonable person would expect a $45 Android tablet to have the same capabilities or quality as an iPad, and it doesn't need to if you look at what it's designed for: to make technology available in a non-1st world state.

    Of course, the nature of your post and the fact that your ID is almost as high as the National Debt show you are nothing more than a paid (at least I hope you are at least getting paid) astroturfer trying to make Google look bad. The truth is that Google is nowhere near the "bad joke around town". People like you are, though. Subtlety, try it.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  5. Re:Money first by Kotakee · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Likewise, most bluescreens on Windows are/were caused by hardware issues. Yet people on slashdot make fun of Microsoft about that.

  6. Re:Money first by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bad analogy. BSOD is a software issue because the OS didn't trap the hardware failure and crashed.

    The same thing happens on Linux but at a MUCH smaller frequecy. Bad hardware (except for the processor which runs the show) shouldn't crash your system.

  7. Re:Money first by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It can't, not anymore. Its damned near impossible to BSOD a Windows 7 system with a bad driver, it will just silently kill and restart the driver (as a system should) and make a little note in Action Center about it. And while your experience may vary I had a HELL of a lot bigger time with crashing X Server than I ever did with BSODs. it especially didn't seem to like having a video playing while surfing to pages that may have an embedded video or surfing pages with possible embedded video while playing tunes in the background. Hell Firefox won't allow hardware acceleration in Linux because X Drivers are buggy and they don't want to be blamed for X crashes.

    As for TFA it has nothing to do with Android and everything to do with shitty governments wanting a pie in the sky. A $45 tablet and they want milspec? yeah and I want my Alyson Hannigan sexbot for $50 and a pack of Lucky Strikes and now we're both disappointed, while certain things ARE inflated one thing that isn't is how damned expensive it is to make electronics that can take milspec abuse. The reason a toughbook is so damned expensive is because of the amount of abuse it can take and you just can't get the materials to absorb that much punishment for $50, just not gonna happen. And they want double battery life and double CPU for the same price? Again the reason the price was so low was precisely BECAUSE it was using chips not in high demand such as its ARM 11 366MHz CPU. You want something that is going in more high dollar cell phones you have to pay a more high dollar price, that's reality. What it sounds like they are wanting is a milspec iPad for $50 and are using that as an excuse to give one of their buddies the contract who will of course probably come out with something worse than what this guy is offering so they can pocket more profit after bribing officials.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  8. Re:Money first by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, Android recently surpassed iOS as the primary(most popular) cell phone platform(I had no idea Symbian was on top prior to this)..

    http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/14693_Q1_2012_Android_OS_installed_b.php

    So technically, it's the Android phone which is really popular. I suppose it doesn't hurt that there are a bazillion different staged versions of Android out there on all sorts of devices, versus ~5 versions of iOS on a very limited range of products.

    Also, as MacOS is still ~27% behind Windows as the most popular OS, and only 7% above Linux OS popularity, they really aren't as ubiquitous as people make them seem. There is a lot of hype, but significantly less actual progress for the OS/equipment beyond standard-use consumers.

    --
    If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits