I don't know about the U.S, but here in Brazil we have quite a problem about drug dealers getting cell phones and commanding their gangs from within their cells. If this paint does work on prisons and is cheap, it could avoid many crimes.
To speak of manipulation and then quote Karl Marx is ironic at least... The socialist countries have a terrible record of censorship, brainwashing and the like.
>I don't know of any other religion in the world, that outright preaches violence as >a direct approach to anything offensive.
Scientology?
If that is a religion, that is.
I think this 'Africans don't need laptops, they need food" is absurd, for so many reasons:
1) Yes, starvation is a huge problem in Africa. But it doesn't mean that "the optimal way to help is to devote all resources to this problem". Fighting problems is not always exclusive. Actually, sometimes there are synergies. Also, different people have different abilities. You see, Mr. Negroponte is probably much better at designing a cheap laptop than at organizing a fundraiser for food. Think about it: should we all stop fighting against civil rights violations, corruption, minorities rights and etcetera, because "hunger is the biggest problem in the world and that is what we should fight"?
Also consider that, by creating a $100 laptop that would previously cost 3 times more, Mr. Negroponte is giving a net benefit to society. He created value. I mean, if you give an African $100 dollar worth of beans, that is one thing. But if you develop a variety of bean 3 times cheaper, you can help much more with the same amount of work. Now, the governments of the countries that choose to enter the program will give to children a laptop that could cost $300 , spending $100.
2) The very notion of "starving African child" is also exaggerated. First of all, this program is not restricted to Africa. And, not every child in Africa is starving! Africa is indeed poor, but Africa is not what you see in the Discovery Channel. Not everyone is illiterate or starving. Some children could really use a laptop, lern from it and benefit society. This program won't give laptops to illiterate children or children in refugee camps. There is a stereotype about Americans: that they do not have a clue about the rest of the world. I think it is true to some degree, after all.
3) Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. When a government spends $100 in a laptop, giving a child a better education, which will lead to a boost in the economy and the child propagating knowledge (e.g. teaching his/her parents how to avoid certain diseases), this in the long run might improve the overall quality of life more than $100 worth of beans. Specially considering that the government could save money in textbooks. And that it will help create a market for IT.
4) If teachers are better investment, depends on the situation of each country (and this program respects the coice of each country). In many countries (like Brazil), $100 dollar per child, paid once, is much cheaper than significantly raising the salary of teachers. Again, it depends on the situation. And, as I said before, it is not exclusive. Stop think that we should either spend all the money in teachers or in laptops. We can do both. Here in Brazil, we have some elite universities for the best students, that sink a lot of money, and poor schools in certain areas. Each expensive equipment in the best universities them could pay for many of teachers in the poorest areas. So we shouldn't have elite universities, and use ther money in the poorest ones? Well, the university where I study was responsible for the creation of Embraer, the main Brazillian airplane design company. The exports of Embraer in 2005 were bigger than all money invested in this university sinced it was created in 1950. So maybe, an African country could focus mainly on basic education, but build an elite school or elite university (in which those laptops would help) for the best students in the country.
5) Isn't "This won't help the starving children" very similar to "Oh, please, think of the children! Won't anyone think of the children?"? Instead of real arguments, an appeal to emotion. Very common nowadays, and very dangerous to society.
Sometimes people ask if Ubuntu is up to hype. But if you think about, Ubuntu has little competition. How many distros
1- Are totally commited to freedom 2- Have the sole purpose of helping the community*. Are the real deal, not a crippled version of the paid version (this is specially important, and one of the main causes of the other points) 3- Are serious and professional (no RandomGeekPersonalDistro, please) 4- Are focused on usability("Just works", marvelous default package selection, short release cycle with awesome QA, etc.) , good to newbies and experts.** 5- Have great support both from vendors and an outstanding community*** ?
Ubuntu found an almost unexplored market. Its no wonder it is so successful. There is great future for them.
* Canonical being for-profit doesn't invallidate the point. Shuttlework has made clear that the money is secondary, Canonical won't yield huge profits and he doesn't expect it to make him any filthier rich than the already is. And the management of Ubuntu has flawlessly reflected this.
** The "just work" factor is one of the best, and I only don't say *the best* because I haven't tested everyhing out there. I mean excellent hardware support, tight and careful selection of default installed packages , very simple but efficient installer... even the menus are greatly organized. And of course, the usability and maintainability magic of apt and synaptic, now made even easier with the enhanced "Add Applications" tool. And the great release cycle, providing you the latest and greates without resorting to untested packages or compiling from source (still possible if you like but not necessarry). Their QA is amazingly good but still fits in a 6 month schedule. I could go on and on.
*** Great community. Very helpful forums, great help on the web (like www.ubuntuguide.org), agile developers that fix bugs in a second (which is a pleasure to the geek reporting the bug, and stimulates him to report more). Canonical providing support and calling other companies to do the same is good too. All this and the efforts of Canonical to partner with vendors (the HP deal, the OEM installer...) suggest that there is great future for this distro. This distro is well regarded, see for example the partnership with HP and certain commercial programs having versions for Ubuntu when the distro was in its early days, and, well, all the hype around it.
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I don't know about the U.S, but here in Brazil we have quite a problem about drug dealers getting cell phones and commanding their gangs from within their cells. If this paint does work on prisons and is cheap, it could avoid many crimes.
To speak of manipulation and then quote Karl Marx is ironic at least... The socialist countries have a terrible record of censorship, brainwashing and the like.
>I don't know of any other religion in the world, that outright preaches violence as >a direct approach to anything offensive.
Scientology? If that is a religion, that is.
>I don't know of any other religion in the world, that outright preaches violence as >a direct approach to anything offensive. Scientology? If that is a religion, that is.
I think this 'Africans don't need laptops, they need food" is absurd, for so many reasons:
1) Yes, starvation is a huge problem in Africa. But it doesn't mean that "the optimal way to help is to devote all resources to this problem". Fighting problems is not always exclusive. Actually, sometimes there are synergies. Also, different people have different abilities. You see, Mr. Negroponte is probably much better at designing a cheap laptop than at organizing a fundraiser for food.
Think about it: should we all stop fighting against civil rights violations, corruption, minorities rights and etcetera, because "hunger is the biggest problem in the world and that is what we should fight"?
Also consider that, by creating a $100 laptop that would previously cost 3 times more, Mr. Negroponte is giving a net benefit to society. He created value. I mean, if you give an African $100 dollar worth of beans, that is one thing. But if you develop a variety of bean 3 times cheaper, you can help much more with the same amount of work. Now, the governments of the countries that choose to enter the program will give to children a laptop that could cost $300 , spending $100.
2) The very notion of "starving African child" is also exaggerated. First of all, this program is not restricted to Africa. And, not every child in Africa is starving! Africa is indeed poor, but Africa is not what you see in the Discovery Channel. Not everyone is illiterate or starving. Some children could really use a laptop, lern from it and benefit society. This program won't give laptops to illiterate children or children in refugee camps. There is a stereotype about Americans: that they do not have a clue about the rest of the world. I think it is true to some degree, after all.
3) Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. When a government spends $100 in a laptop, giving a child a better education, which will lead to a boost in the economy and the child propagating knowledge (e.g. teaching his/her parents how to avoid certain diseases), this in the long run might improve the overall quality of life more than $100 worth of beans. Specially considering that the government could save money in textbooks. And that it will help create a market for IT.
4) If teachers are better investment, depends on the situation of each country (and this program respects the coice of each country). In many countries (like Brazil), $100 dollar per child, paid once, is much cheaper than significantly raising the salary of teachers. Again, it depends on the situation. And, as I said before, it is not exclusive. Stop think that we should either spend all the money in teachers or in laptops. We can do both. Here in Brazil, we have some elite universities for the best students, that sink a lot of money, and poor schools in certain areas. Each expensive equipment in the best universities them could pay for many of teachers in the poorest areas. So we shouldn't have elite universities, and use ther money in the poorest ones? Well, the university where I study was responsible for the creation of Embraer, the main Brazillian airplane design company. The exports of Embraer in 2005 were bigger than all money invested in this university sinced it was created in 1950. So maybe, an African country could focus mainly on basic education, but build an elite school or elite university (in which those laptops would help) for the best students in the country.
5) Isn't "This won't help the starving children" very similar to "Oh, please, think of the children! Won't anyone think of the children?"? Instead of real arguments, an appeal to emotion. Very common nowadays, and very dangerous to society.
Sometimes people ask if Ubuntu is up to hype. But if you think about, Ubuntu has little competition. How many distros
1- Are totally commited to freedom
2- Have the sole purpose of helping the community*. Are the real deal, not a crippled version of the paid version (this is specially important, and one of the main causes of the other points)
3- Are serious and professional (no RandomGeekPersonalDistro, please)
4- Are focused on usability("Just works", marvelous default package selection, short release cycle with awesome QA, etc.) , good to newbies and experts.**
5- Have great support both from vendors and an outstanding community*** ?
Ubuntu found an almost unexplored market. Its no wonder it is so successful. There is great future for them.
* Canonical being for-profit doesn't invallidate the point. Shuttlework has made clear that the money is secondary, Canonical won't yield huge profits and he doesn't expect it to make him any filthier rich than the already is. And the management of Ubuntu has flawlessly reflected this.
** The "just work" factor is one of the best, and I only don't say *the best* because I haven't tested everyhing out there. I mean excellent hardware support, tight and careful selection of default installed packages , very simple but efficient installer... even the menus are greatly organized. And of course, the usability and maintainability magic of apt and synaptic, now made even easier with the enhanced "Add Applications" tool. And the great release cycle, providing you the latest and greates without resorting to untested packages or compiling from source (still possible if you like but not necessarry). Their QA is amazingly good but still fits in a 6 month schedule. I could go on and on.
*** Great community. Very helpful forums, great help on the web (like www.ubuntuguide.org), agile developers that fix bugs in a second (which is a pleasure to the geek reporting the bug, and stimulates him to report more). Canonical providing support and calling other companies to do the same is good too. All this and the efforts of Canonical to partner with vendors (the HP deal, the OEM installer...) suggest that there is great future for this distro. This distro is well regarded, see for example the partnership with HP and certain commercial programs having versions for Ubuntu when the distro was in its early days, and, well, all the hype around it.