You are not seeing the big picture in this project. If each child has one laptop, they can all be interconnected with one another, and with the rest of the world. The Internet is the greatest communications device ever invented. With such a level of communication, third world children could take it upon themselves to create their own means.
Take, for example, the new-evolving web 2.0 boom. This is a time where web software runs king, that is, software that is globally accessable, promoting a free exchange of information. There is a ton of money flying around this universe, moving from one great idea to the next. Where will the next great idea come from? Africa? South America?
If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. The $100 laptop initiative is handing out fishing poles, who is going to collect?
You're right. Without taxes, we wouldn't have such wonderful things as:
* Welfare, for people who don't feel like workin'
* Social Security, for people who don't feel like savin' for retirement
* Pork projects, for politicians who don't feel like campaignin'
* A war in the middle east, for presidents who don't feel like diplomatin'
* FEMA relief debit cards, for people who didn't feel like evacuatin'
The list goes on. I'm not saying that taxes should be abolished, but if we had some sensible spending, we'd be paying a lot less in taxes.
Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin. One of the finest mathematics books ever written. If you read and understand the whole thing, you will be a better person for it.
Although it is best to do this on a Friday. Statistics have shown that if you shoot down your neighbor's helicopters on a Friday, there's less chance of an incident. But I must say, that is an excellent way to fix the glitch.
I used to work at a private high school in the Northeast. You can probably figure out what one by looking at my user name. Anyhow, we (read: I) tried a rollout of Linux on our file servers and routers. Here's what happened:
The Linux file server worked beautifully. We had a simple NT4 domain, setting up Samba with proper permissions was easy. It was easy to administer, very reliable, and fast.
The Linux router(s) worked well, too. I had a nice collection of scripts run with cron that would turn off internet access to the dorms at a specified time, and then turn it back on in the morning (remember: this was a high school).
I was even in the process of developing a grading system with the LAMP stack, since at the time, teachers did their grading manually, and often complained about it.
Everything was running beautifully for months, until politics entered the game. Some higher-ups bought software without consulting the IT department (me and one other guy) that of course only ran on Windows. They also decided that we were going to go with FileMaker for a grade database, that was maintained by some high-price consultant. In the end, they wanted everything to be Windows for some reason or another (misinformed about how Open Source works, you know, the whole deal). My wonderful little Linux environment disappeared, and eventually, so did I.
Moral of the story: technical challenges aside, your project can always be torpedoed by someone who is self-important and more powerful than you.
New York Times v. Sullivan is a good precedent here.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, stating that "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open".
OpenOffice still has its issues. I use it exclusively ( MS Office is not installed on my computer ), and I have noticed that a few of the niceties of MS office are missing.
Although, both OpenOffice and Microsoft have gotten the same thing right in their office suites - it should be a colossal pain in the ass to edit equations and insert them into a document.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, the blog in your sig is really spammy. I like the pseudo-content - that adds epsilon worth of legitimacy (and pagerank, I'm sure).
You are not seeing the big picture in this project. If each child has one laptop, they can all be interconnected with one another, and with the rest of the world. The Internet is the greatest communications device ever invented. With such a level of communication, third world children could take it upon themselves to create their own means.
Take, for example, the new-evolving web 2.0 boom. This is a time where web software runs king, that is, software that is globally accessable, promoting a free exchange of information. There is a ton of money flying around this universe, moving from one great idea to the next. Where will the next great idea come from? Africa? South America?
If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. The $100 laptop initiative is handing out fishing poles, who is going to collect?
Yes, but they've messed up! There are serif fonts! They run the risk of being disbarred from Web 2.0.
You're right. Without taxes, we wouldn't have such wonderful things as:
* Welfare, for people who don't feel like workin'
* Social Security, for people who don't feel like savin' for retirement
* Pork projects, for politicians who don't feel like campaignin'
* A war in the middle east, for presidents who don't feel like diplomatin'
* FEMA relief debit cards, for people who didn't feel like evacuatin'
The list goes on. I'm not saying that taxes should be abolished, but if we had some sensible spending, we'd be paying a lot less in taxes.
I call it an excuse to have a few drinks at lunch.
7/10 people prefer to make estimates on things they know nothing about.
Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin. One of the finest mathematics books ever written. If you read and understand the whole thing, you will be a better person for it.
But the NYT says it's the 'laptop that will save the world'. Because computers are apparently more important than FOOD and MEDICINE now.
Grammer tip: 'Effect' is used as a noun. 'Affect' is used as a verb.
Spelling tip: it's spelled 'grammar'.
I prefer ctrl-D. No rounded box corners or pastel colors, but it works. To each his own, I guess.
RIAA math is a specific case of Enron math. Theoretical sales * theoretical prodcuts * greed = $profit!
From TFA: No buyer was actually able to pick up the phantom shares for 1 yen due to market rules designed to limit price fluctuations...
i love sensational media.
Step 1: Write better content.
seriously.
Could you, uh, point us to some, uh....evidence? I would like to review the legitimacy of the case...yeah...that's it.
Who's to blame? MS? Google? Both? None? You decide.
George W. Bush, clearly.
Although it is best to do this on a Friday. Statistics have shown that if you shoot down your neighbor's helicopters on a Friday, there's less chance of an incident. But I must say, that is an excellent way to fix the glitch.
s/average/median/
and spell intelligence correctly.
Government Pork: not just for defense contractors anymore!
I used to work at a private high school in the Northeast. You can probably figure out what one by looking at my user name. Anyhow, we (read: I) tried a rollout of Linux on our file servers and routers. Here's what happened:
The Linux file server worked beautifully. We had a simple NT4 domain, setting up Samba with proper permissions was easy. It was easy to administer, very reliable, and fast.
The Linux router(s) worked well, too. I had a nice collection of scripts run with cron that would turn off internet access to the dorms at a specified time, and then turn it back on in the morning (remember: this was a high school).
I was even in the process of developing a grading system with the LAMP stack, since at the time, teachers did their grading manually, and often complained about it.
Everything was running beautifully for months, until politics entered the game. Some higher-ups bought software without consulting the IT department (me and one other guy) that of course only ran on Windows. They also decided that we were going to go with FileMaker for a grade database, that was maintained by some high-price consultant. In the end, they wanted everything to be Windows for some reason or another (misinformed about how Open Source works, you know, the whole deal). My wonderful little Linux environment disappeared, and eventually, so did I.
Moral of the story: technical challenges aside, your project can always be torpedoed by someone who is self-important and more powerful than you.
New York Times v. Sullivan is a good precedent here.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, stating that "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open".
OpenOffice still has its issues. I use it exclusively ( MS Office is not installed on my computer ), and I have noticed that a few of the niceties of MS office are missing.
Although, both OpenOffice and Microsoft have gotten the same thing right in their office suites - it should be a colossal pain in the ass to edit equations and insert them into a document.
The killer feature of Office would be a contextual menu item "no seriously, don't fucking autoformat this."
I'm with parent on this one. What about, instead of giving poor countries these laptops, we give them things like food an electricity?
Try as you might, you can't eat a laptop.
The internet was invented by Al Gore, an American, so it belongs to America.
end of discussion.
Do you mean in the same sense that oil and its consumption wastes are "natural"?