Many tribal people who are today 'uncontacted' are in fact the survivors (or survivors' descendants) of past atrocities. These acts - massacres, disease epidemics, terrifying violence - are seared into their collective memory, and contact with the outside world is now to be avoided at all costs.
How accommodating of you. The Universe is maybe about 14 billion years old, and there's maybe about 500 million years between us and 'very simple' fish.
I don't care if we kill the Martian bacteria - once we've studied them, it's no longer humanity's concern to preserve them. Intelligent life (even as intelligent as a very stupid fish) should be preserved, but not bacteria.
Aliens everywhere agree with you! We're not their concern until we're at least as intelligent as a very stupid Narfeneg.
Don't let the big filter hit you on the way out.;)
but if it's submerged, it's still invisible to this.
To rule out detection, you have to consider techniques that combine several beams and remote sensing to identify ship signatures (analogous to sonar signatures). This, as you are most certainly well aware, is what remote sensing is all about. If it can do bathymetry, it is already doing submerged detection.
They are doing detection of ship elements, at 3m resolution. I have no idea what the limitations of quad-pol are and how many signature elements they are picking up/using.
If you're working on your masters in Geography/Remote Sensing and haven't heard of bathymetry, you're not working hard enough. Just kidding. Sort of.
RadarsatII does bathymetry, but it also expressly does 'ship detection' and even, amazingly 'ship classification'.
If I was looking for ships (and classifying them) with a satellite that can generate 3m bathymetry, wave fields and IR data, I'd being using at least those 3 techniques in conjunction.
Not really. It's been under review and mentioned repeatedly in the house over the last month.
The deadline for response by the Industry Minister (there were earlier review phases) was at earliest next week, I believe -- and the early answer suggests that Alliant's bid isn't even close to being satisfactory.
True free trade is generally a net benefit to both parties. Of course, we're nowhere near true free trade and the U.S. federal and state governments seem to have no problem with protectionist policies when it suits there needs (political, defense, or otherwise).
Since it was clear from the outset this was a publicly funded project with national security implications, I think you'll have a hard time showing it to be 'illegal' (By the way, which laws are we talking about? Canadian Federal law?) -- especially since the funds probably came with an express statement to this effect.
Absolutely. The U.S. disputes Canadian sovereingty in the high arctic. The U.S. also disputes Canadian sovereignty over national resources like oil and softwood lumber. Taking our raw resources without letting us cut trees into lumber or refine the oil ourselves (and the associated jobs) is not a good indication the U.S. 'likes you guys' as much as they 'like your resources'. Heck, you even want Canadian freshwater for frig's sake.
Open up NAFTA. Go ahead. See what happens when you actually have to bid on that oil.
Remember AVRO? Of course you don't. So here's the fear: a U.S. company gets ownership of Radarsat2, and the U.S. government prevents them from selling real-time images of the high north that show U.S. boats navigating the northwest passage or otherwise violating what Canada considers to be sovereign territory (territory, by the way, that the US also considered to Canadian-sovereign until the probability of large oil and other reserves became evident).
Countries don't have friends, as we are so often told by your diplomats, they have interests. Selling Radarsat-2 is clearly not in our interest.
Also, selling a finished, successfully launched and proven technology paid for by Canadian taxpayers in a finished form that is literally just coming online (and about to pay dividends) makes no sense at all.
I don't understand. Journals are charging you to submit? They're not charging me -- other than my time of course.
Don't they just become vanity publications then? Isn't this a sign of a really weak journal (and publication, and author)?
If we're going to debate fictional, unenforceable laws, I'd prefer to debate the ones Asimov proposed.
This is no more free-speech-restricting than my picking up a stone and calling it a free-speech restricting rock.
But I know what you're going to say -- "Lisa, I want to buy your rock..."
They are trained to communicate with other scientists, not to just anyone.
Well, broad generalizations about large groups of people (and programs) are almost always simplified, but most of the programs I've looked at at least try to address communication in a variety of contexts. Which one are you talking about, out of curiosity?
Look at a Brief History of Time, Guns Germs and Steel, Fermat's Last Theorem etc.. there have been very good (and very successful) books written by scientists on very complex topics that are arguably understandable by most high school students. Look at SciAm -- they pump a few such articles out every month.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the medium is the message and the content is the audience. In the 'Just do it', 'Post 911', 'Yes we can' era, it's apparently hard to create 'marketable' messages that consist of more than 4 syllables. Look at the average Slashdot headline. That's the message length we're talking about, at best. Try and put context in that.
I'm not so sure this is valid any more (and maybe it never was). Generations of scientist are trained to communicate from the earliest parts of their training -- believe it or not, lots of emphasis is placed on this.
What scientists are not good at are sound-bites that fit nicely in on shows like Crossfire or Lou Dobbs where the 'we were attacked!' or 'we're losing jobs' or 'NAFTA!' 10 second catchphrases that feel awfully good but don't stand up to scrutiny generally prevail. But that's ok, science isn't meant to be good at that. It's meant to be able to say 'we're not sure', 'this is our best available knowledge' and, oh yeah, 'our previous best theory was wrong in several respects'.
The public isn't good at listening to tempered, well-balanced arguments. And when 'luminous minds' DO speak up -- say, a bunch of nobel laureates put together a one page ad against economic folly (remember that one?) or Jared Diamond writes a book titled 'Collapse' -- who listens? And more importantly, who listens enough to suffer short term financial hardship because those minds tell them they'll lose more in the long run.
The liver alone gets rid of maybe three quarters of the medicines ever invented. Infinitesimal doses of even some pretty toxic stuff don't really get to do much damage or addiction or whatever, before they're neutralized or filtered out.
Filtering out is precisely the problem.
Those which do cause addiction... well, those don't matter either when measured in parts per trillion.
You take this for granted, but it is not at all evident. Particularly when you consider their is no 'normal' for the population at large. Fetus, devolping child, a senior, a baby boomer, someone on contra-indicated drugs -- they are all consuming the product. Also, a major issue here is the byproducts. We're not exactly sure what these chemicals are turning into, how they are interacting, and the implications. Check the 2008 WQ journals.
The moment when evolution happens is when there's a clear advantage in having a particular mutation.
This is precisely wrong. You're thinking selection, maybe?
What's scary about this? Particularly the unknown -- we're just beginning to get results on e.g. membrane removals and wetland removals of the pharma compounds we look for. Adsorption is significantly complicating the issue. Secondly, the known -- these are drugs designed to last on shelves and in environmental systems, and to act upon the biology of humans. Every indication is that these chemicals will be hard to remove and may well have significant effects.
In addition to the lab and staff fees (typically in engineering), there's also things like running the co-op office, setting up case studies and other services (specialized library). Most business schools have a lot of those costs too. And I know of a few business schools that package hardware/software into their tuition fees now as well.
If it's profitable to obtain raw metals in this fashion, why do they need to charge a fee to do it?
MRF's need to make money to operate, and it can either be through material recovery or from funding/fees/deposits or a combination of both. So in many cases, MRFs are only allowed access to the aluminum in blue boxes on the condition they recycle the glass (little profit) and paper (no profit, really) as well. It's not really worth their time. In the same way, I suspect that while some PC components are quite valuable and recoverable in a marketable form, others involve less profitable and probably more haz mats that now need landfills, permits, etc.
This is one reason why in most places hauling aluminum cans out of blue boxes/recycling bins is usually illegal -- you're stealing money from the system.
If nobody's willing to pay you for your old computer components, then trying to recycle them is a pretty dumb idea.
Well, given the current state of metal reserves, it's probably not, actually.
[..] a job a science graduate gets while waiting for a better one. The pay is much lower, and people really take the job for the health benefits while searching for a better-paying job.
You could probably say the same about most jobs in most fields. People want/look for better jobs (better everything, really). If you think people are fundamentally happier as a result of being better off elsewhere than in the US, I'd urge you to re-evaluate that premise.
If you want to compete for the smartest people in the United States, you have to pay them more.
How about just people who do their jobs? The job that's not getting done, by the way, amounts to doing literature review, patent examination and using Google and a bunch of in-house custom research tools to find prior art. Do we need the smartest people in the United States doing that?
Given their apparent difficulty in finding 'prior art' for a wide variety of patents, it seems the USPTO is probably full of "Unqualified Apoint[ees]".
Nevertheless, other than the abstract possibility that such a disconnect could be occurring [..]
Since I specifically discussed the possibility in the post you are responding to,
You dismissed it. Unduly, I feel, but whatever. I raised it again, but as less of a caricature. Whenever any product goes from A) to B) dollars are spend and margins can be made. And in such cases, whenever there's a possibility of someone making a buck, there's also a probability of it. If you want me to provide evidence that it will happen, well your about a year too early.
So? Access to food and water isn't a problem for the vast majority of the people for whom these computers are being purchased.
It's the problem for the vast majority of people, period. And it should be a priority for anyone trying to 'help'.
Insofar as food and water (and electricity, healthcare, roads, physical structures for schools, etc.) are problems in the target areas, most of the countries involved are spending resources to address them already. In many cases, there is a point of diminishing returns where there is a limited amount that can be done efficiently at a time, and you have to complete that before moving on to the next project. These problems can't just absorb more resources efficiently to cut down the time to solve them. [...]
Uruguay has a 98% literacy rate. Argentina about 97%. Libya, Brazil, and Peru above 80%. Getting "classrooms with at least pencils and papers so kids and adults can learn to read and write" is quite simply not a fundamental pressing need in most of countries that are involved in the OLPC.
So the target group you mention includes people who can read and write (a minority in many countries), probably only in the roman alphabet. Hopefully these people have sufficient means to meet the basic necessities of life, but they are not yet purchasers of IT-related goods.
So the goal is not necessarily to help the most needy, but to develop a taste for tools, interfaces, and brands in a developing market. It sounds an awful lot to me like car companies giving away toy cars to kids during the depression.
Also, these types of projects have a history of being abused or counted towards 'aid' commitments. What "type"? Examples?
Phantom aid includes over-priced technical assistance, tying aid to purchases from the donor countries own firms, high-cost consultants, excessive administrative costs, and double counting of debt relief.
Sound familiar?
Anyhow, I'm not saying it's a bad project, but people need to ask and keep asking these questions.
All OLPC does is work with countries that decide they like the idea to meet their needs, and sell them computers
I'd refer you to the history of Eritrea and Ethiopia, Uganda, or countless others. It's not uncommon for regimes, or even benevolent governments to have priorities different from the populace (this even happens in North America, but since we're talking about 'developing'). And if you don't think governments can be coerced into buying specific products through purely economic methods, you haven't been paying attention.
Where governments maintain populations that can't eat adequately, that itself generates quite a bit of resentment. The marginal resentment resulting from giving those same people computers would probably be small.
Which is my point to start with. Spending -any- money on a computer for someone that doesn't have access to food or water is ridiculous. Imagine watching your son die from hunger and the next day getting a lovely plastic computer - for free! How would that make you feel? Spend the money on food or water first. Then maybe on basic healthcare, or classrooms with at least pencils and paper so kids and adults can learn to read and write.
Also, these types of projects have a history of being abused or counted towards 'aid' commitments.
Anyhow, I'm hardly the only one saying these things and I know a lot of these and related issues (like security) are being discussed by the OLPC, but they've yet to really be answered.
I know it's off-topic (sorry), but (s)he asked, so here goes....
For starters, you're talking about houses that are built on the assumption of a centralized water supply system, which doesn't currently exist to any meaningful degree. The same can also be said for the new schools and nurseries. In addition to assuming water will be supplied, the builders assume an availability and usage rate of water that while reasonable in North America or Europe for instance (and we use LOTS of water, btw) is simply unrealistic and prohibitively expensive to run -- it becomes a burden. It's like driving a SUV when you can only afford gas for a moped.
It's not a simple issue, but to provide some context even a family that manages freshwater sparingly (saltwater for bathing, etc) will spend about 30% of their household income on water. Aside from the potential losses in the house itself (from e.g. higher flow rates than would otherwise be used), the very nature of centralized systems (which are typically leaky and lossy even in modern North American and European cities) raises the expense for a user, even before factoring in excessively leaky pipes and the repercussions from a lack of metering.
If you're interested/curious about other aspects, let me know and we can talk more about it in a more appropriate forum.
It's a great idea and a noble goal. But there's still a lot of valid questions about how good an idea this specific project is. Aside from the clear opportunity for people, government and corporations to take advantage of good intentions, there's a consistent theme of imposing western/northern hemisphere values for the wrong people place/application.
It's not unlike the good intentions that led to rebuilding of "better" houses in Sumatra for instance after the great Tsunami. Modern, western style housing just doesn't make sense there. It uses and demands much more freshwater than traditional homes and no-one can afford to run them. As a result the population has typically abandoned the new homes, which remain unoccupied, in favour of traditional homes.
In fact I would argue that corporations (and governments who use money to buy these computers) will likely breed more hostility and resentment than anything by disseminating computers to people who can't afford three squares a day.
Slashdot Mirror
From a link in TFA:
Many tribal people who are today 'uncontacted' are in fact the survivors (or survivors' descendants) of past atrocities. These acts - massacres, disease epidemics, terrifying violence - are seared into their collective memory, and contact with the outside world is now to be avoided at all costs.
How accommodating of you. The Universe is maybe about 14 billion years old, and there's maybe about 500 million years between us and 'very simple' fish.
I don't care if we kill the Martian bacteria - once we've studied them, it's no longer humanity's concern to preserve them. Intelligent life (even as intelligent as a very stupid fish) should be preserved, but not bacteria.
;)
Aliens everywhere agree with you! We're not their concern until we're at least as intelligent as a very stupid Narfeneg.
Don't let the big filter hit you on the way out.
I'm a new professor at a Major Research Institution, part of a Large University You Have Heard Of That Begins With H.
Hawaii Pacific University?!?!?! WOW!
i've heard of bathymetry
I would certainly hope you have.
but if it's submerged, it's still invisible to this.
To rule out detection, you have to consider techniques that combine several beams and remote sensing to identify ship signatures (analogous to sonar signatures). This, as you are most certainly well aware, is what remote sensing is all about. If it can do bathymetry, it is already doing submerged detection. They are doing detection of ship elements, at 3m resolution. I have no idea what the limitations of quad-pol are and how many signature elements they are picking up/using.
Anyhow, good luck with your Masters'.
If you're working on your masters in Geography/Remote Sensing and haven't heard of bathymetry, you're not working hard enough. Just kidding. Sort of.
RadarsatII does bathymetry, but it also expressly does 'ship detection' and even, amazingly 'ship classification'.
If I was looking for ships (and classifying them) with a satellite that can generate 3m bathymetry, wave fields and IR data, I'd being using at least those 3 techniques in conjunction.
Not really. It's been under review and mentioned repeatedly in the house over the last month. The deadline for response by the Industry Minister (there were earlier review phases) was at earliest next week, I believe -- and the early answer suggests that Alliant's bid isn't even close to being satisfactory.
True free trade is generally a net benefit to both parties. Of course, we're nowhere near true free trade and the U.S. federal and state governments seem to have no problem with protectionist policies when it suits there needs (political, defense, or otherwise).
Since it was clear from the outset this was a publicly funded project with national security implications, I think you'll have a hard time showing it to be 'illegal' (By the way, which laws are we talking about? Canadian Federal law?) -- especially since the funds probably came with an express statement to this effect.
Absolutely. The U.S. disputes Canadian sovereingty in the high arctic. The U.S. also disputes Canadian sovereignty over national resources like oil and softwood lumber. Taking our raw resources without letting us cut trees into lumber or refine the oil ourselves (and the associated jobs) is not a good indication the U.S. 'likes you guys' as much as they 'like your resources'. Heck, you even want Canadian freshwater for frig's sake. Open up NAFTA. Go ahead. See what happens when you actually have to bid on that oil. Remember AVRO? Of course you don't. So here's the fear: a U.S. company gets ownership of Radarsat2, and the U.S. government prevents them from selling real-time images of the high north that show U.S. boats navigating the northwest passage or otherwise violating what Canada considers to be sovereign territory (territory, by the way, that the US also considered to Canadian-sovereign until the probability of large oil and other reserves became evident). Countries don't have friends, as we are so often told by your diplomats, they have interests. Selling Radarsat-2 is clearly not in our interest. Also, selling a finished, successfully launched and proven technology paid for by Canadian taxpayers in a finished form that is literally just coming online (and about to pay dividends) makes no sense at all.
I don't understand. Journals are charging you to submit? They're not charging me -- other than my time of course. Don't they just become vanity publications then? Isn't this a sign of a really weak journal (and publication, and author)?
If we're going to debate fictional, unenforceable laws, I'd prefer to debate the ones Asimov proposed. This is no more free-speech-restricting than my picking up a stone and calling it a free-speech restricting rock. But I know what you're going to say -- "Lisa, I want to buy your rock..."
hope in hell of being enforced, or are at the very least enforceable.
They are trained to communicate with other scientists, not to just anyone.
Well, broad generalizations about large groups of people (and programs) are almost always simplified, but most of the programs I've looked at at least try to address communication in a variety of contexts. Which one are you talking about, out of curiosity?
Look at a Brief History of Time, Guns Germs and Steel, Fermat's Last Theorem etc.. there have been very good (and very successful) books written by scientists on very complex topics that are arguably understandable by most high school students. Look at SciAm -- they pump a few such articles out every month.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the medium is the message and the content is the audience. In the 'Just do it', 'Post 911', 'Yes we can' era, it's apparently hard to create 'marketable' messages that consist of more than 4 syllables. Look at the average Slashdot headline. That's the message length we're talking about, at best. Try and put context in that.
I'm not so sure this is valid any more (and maybe it never was). Generations of scientist are trained to communicate from the earliest parts of their training -- believe it or not, lots of emphasis is placed on this. What scientists are not good at are sound-bites that fit nicely in on shows like Crossfire or Lou Dobbs where the 'we were attacked!' or 'we're losing jobs' or 'NAFTA!' 10 second catchphrases that feel awfully good but don't stand up to scrutiny generally prevail. But that's ok, science isn't meant to be good at that. It's meant to be able to say 'we're not sure', 'this is our best available knowledge' and, oh yeah, 'our previous best theory was wrong in several respects'. The public isn't good at listening to tempered, well-balanced arguments. And when 'luminous minds' DO speak up -- say, a bunch of nobel laureates put together a one page ad against economic folly (remember that one?) or Jared Diamond writes a book titled 'Collapse' -- who listens? And more importantly, who listens enough to suffer short term financial hardship because those minds tell them they'll lose more in the long run.
The liver alone gets rid of maybe three quarters of the medicines ever invented. Infinitesimal doses of even some pretty toxic stuff don't really get to do much damage or addiction or whatever, before they're neutralized or filtered out.
Filtering out is precisely the problem.
Those which do cause addiction... well, those don't matter either when measured in parts per trillion.
You take this for granted, but it is not at all evident. Particularly when you consider their is no 'normal' for the population at large. Fetus, devolping child, a senior, a baby boomer, someone on contra-indicated drugs -- they are all consuming the product. Also, a major issue here is the byproducts. We're not exactly sure what these chemicals are turning into, how they are interacting, and the implications. Check the 2008 WQ journals.
The moment when evolution happens is when there's a clear advantage in having a particular mutation.
This is precisely wrong. You're thinking selection, maybe?
What's scary about this? Particularly the unknown -- we're just beginning to get results on e.g. membrane removals and wetland removals of the pharma compounds we look for. Adsorption is significantly complicating the issue. Secondly, the known -- these are drugs designed to last on shelves and in environmental systems, and to act upon the biology of humans. Every indication is that these chemicals will be hard to remove and may well have significant effects.
We look at who said what and why it's FUD.
And that's your first mistake. Never heard of confirmation bias?
In addition to the lab and staff fees (typically in engineering), there's also things like running the co-op office, setting up case studies and other services (specialized library). Most business schools have a lot of those costs too. And I know of a few business schools that package hardware/software into their tuition fees now as well.
If it's profitable to obtain raw metals in this fashion, why do they need to charge a fee to do it?
MRF's need to make money to operate, and it can either be through material recovery or from funding/fees/deposits or a combination of both. So in many cases, MRFs are only allowed access to the aluminum in blue boxes on the condition they recycle the glass (little profit) and paper (no profit, really) as well. It's not really worth their time. In the same way, I suspect that while some PC components are quite valuable and recoverable in a marketable form, others involve less profitable and probably more haz mats that now need landfills, permits, etc.
This is one reason why in most places hauling aluminum cans out of blue boxes/recycling bins is usually illegal -- you're stealing money from the system.
If nobody's willing to pay you for your old computer components, then trying to recycle them is a pretty dumb idea.
Well, given the current state of metal reserves, it's probably not, actually.
[..] a job a science graduate gets while waiting for a better one. The pay is much lower, and people really take the job for the health benefits while searching for a better-paying job.
You could probably say the same about most jobs in most fields. People want/look for better jobs (better everything, really). If you think people are fundamentally happier as a result of being better off elsewhere than in the US, I'd urge you to re-evaluate that premise.
If you want to compete for the smartest people in the United States, you have to pay them more.
How about just people who do their jobs? The job that's not getting done, by the way, amounts to doing literature review, patent examination and using Google and a bunch of in-house custom research tools to find prior art. Do we need the smartest people in the United States doing that?
Given their apparent difficulty in finding 'prior art' for a wide variety of patents, it seems the USPTO is probably full of "Unqualified Apoint[ees]".
Nevertheless, other than the abstract possibility that such a disconnect could be occurring [..] Since I specifically discussed the possibility in the post you are responding to,
You dismissed it. Unduly, I feel, but whatever. I raised it again, but as less of a caricature. Whenever any product goes from A) to B) dollars are spend and margins can be made. And in such cases, whenever there's a possibility of someone making a buck, there's also a probability of it. If you want me to provide evidence that it will happen, well your about a year too early.
So? Access to food and water isn't a problem for the vast majority of the people for whom these computers are being purchased.
It's the problem for the vast majority of people, period. And it should be a priority for anyone trying to 'help'.
Insofar as food and water (and electricity, healthcare, roads, physical structures for schools, etc.) are problems in the target areas, most of the countries involved are spending resources to address them already. In many cases, there is a point of diminishing returns where there is a limited amount that can be done efficiently at a time, and you have to complete that before moving on to the next project. These problems can't just absorb more resources efficiently to cut down the time to solve them. [...]
Uruguay has a 98% literacy rate. Argentina about 97%. Libya, Brazil, and Peru above 80%. Getting "classrooms with at least pencils and papers so kids and adults can learn to read and write" is quite simply not a fundamental pressing need in most of countries that are involved in the OLPC.
So the target group you mention includes people who can read and write (a minority in many countries), probably only in the roman alphabet. Hopefully these people have sufficient means to meet the basic necessities of life, but they are not yet purchasers of IT-related goods.
So the goal is not necessarily to help the most needy, but to develop a taste for tools, interfaces, and brands in a developing market. It sounds an awful lot to me like car companies giving away toy cars to kids during the depression.
Also, these types of projects have a history of being abused or counted towards 'aid' commitments. What "type"? Examples?
Here's a few:
http://www.cbc.ca/onthemap/fullpage.php?id=93
In particular, note the following passage:
Phantom aid includes over-priced technical assistance, tying aid to purchases from the donor countries own firms, high-cost consultants, excessive administrative costs, and double counting of debt relief.
Sound familiar?
Anyhow, I'm not saying it's a bad project, but people need to ask and keep asking these questions.
All OLPC does is work with countries that decide they like the idea to meet their needs, and sell them computers
I'd refer you to the history of Eritrea and Ethiopia, Uganda, or countless others. It's not uncommon for regimes, or even benevolent governments to have priorities different from the populace (this even happens in North America, but since we're talking about 'developing'). And if you don't think governments can be coerced into buying specific products through purely economic methods, you haven't been paying attention.
Where governments maintain populations that can't eat adequately, that itself generates quite a bit of resentment. The marginal resentment resulting from giving those same people computers would probably be small.
Which is my point to start with. Spending -any- money on a computer for someone that doesn't have access to food or water is ridiculous. Imagine watching your son die from hunger and the next day getting a lovely plastic computer - for free! How would that make you feel? Spend the money on food or water first. Then maybe on basic healthcare, or classrooms with at least pencils and paper so kids and adults can learn to read and write.
Also, these types of projects have a history of being abused or counted towards 'aid' commitments.
Anyhow, I'm hardly the only one saying these things and I know a lot of these and related issues (like security) are being discussed by the OLPC, but they've yet to really be answered.
I know it's off-topic (sorry), but (s)he asked, so here goes....
For starters, you're talking about houses that are built on the assumption of a centralized water supply system, which doesn't currently exist to any meaningful degree. The same can also be said for the new schools and nurseries. In addition to assuming water will be supplied, the builders assume an availability and usage rate of water that while reasonable in North America or Europe for instance (and we use LOTS of water, btw) is simply unrealistic and prohibitively expensive to run -- it becomes a burden. It's like driving a SUV when you can only afford gas for a moped.
It's not a simple issue, but to provide some context even a family that manages freshwater sparingly (saltwater for bathing, etc) will spend about 30% of their household income on water. Aside from the potential losses in the house itself (from e.g. higher flow rates than would otherwise be used), the very nature of centralized systems (which are typically leaky and lossy even in modern North American and European cities) raises the expense for a user, even before factoring in excessively leaky pipes and the repercussions from a lack of metering.
If you're interested/curious about other aspects, let me know and we can talk more about it in a more appropriate forum.
It's a great idea and a noble goal. But there's still a lot of valid questions about how good an idea this specific project is. Aside from the clear opportunity for people, government and corporations to take advantage of good intentions, there's a consistent theme of imposing western/northern hemisphere values for the wrong people place/application.
It's not unlike the good intentions that led to rebuilding of "better" houses in Sumatra for instance after the great Tsunami. Modern, western style housing just doesn't make sense there. It uses and demands much more freshwater than traditional homes and no-one can afford to run them. As a result the population has typically abandoned the new homes, which remain unoccupied, in favour of traditional homes.
In fact I would argue that corporations (and governments who use money to buy these computers) will likely breed more hostility and resentment than anything by disseminating computers to people who can't afford three squares a day.