“Once it became clear that Nicholas Negroponte, one of the key originators of the One Laptop per Child initiative, was going to insist that the device use open source software, Linux provider Red Hat became the most likely provider of the device’s operating system. Mike Evans from Red Hat discusses his company’s involvement in the One Laptop per Child project, which aims to develop and distribute a $100 PC to millions around the world.”
While I believe this project is a great idea it’s actually old news. Unless this was meant to attract more sponsors. Anyway here’s a URL http://laptop.media.mit.edu/ to MIT where you can see what the laptop looks like. What is good about the laptop is it provides WIFI for communitees to interact and learn from each other.
Edited 2006-02-04 18:16
Food for thought, or should we be thinking about food for the 1 billion people in the world living on less than US$1 per day (according to the World Bank)? A similar number do not have acess to safe drinking water.
I am very sympathetic to Red Hat, linux & this OLPC initiative, but I wonder whether it would be more useful to provide safe drinking water supplies, adequate shelter/housing, basic schooling, reliable electricity supplies, malaria treatment etc. to “poorer countries” before we think about providing cheap laptops.
I am NOT a tree-hugging bleeding-heart liberal, but I just think you should learn to walk, before you can run……..
Actually, if you see it in another way, think of the amount of foreign exchange revenue any government will save by adopting Linux or linux based PC. All the saved money can be pumped back to building better public amenities, feeding the poor as well as other uplifting work in the society.
Now for each windows OS that the government buys, a greater percentage of the money is going outside the country.
So this $100 laptop is a very viable project if it takes off.
This laptop is NOT intended to be sold in countries where people don’t even have drinking water, it’s thought for those “semi-developed” (sorry I don’t know how else to say that, English is not my native language) countries where people are just too poor to buy any IT stuff, say Brasilia, Egypt, Pakistan, India etc. The people there have food & water, but they don’t have access to the world wide information & IT world.
Tom
Food for thought, or should we be thinking about food for the 1 billion people in the world living on less than US$1 per day (according to the World Bank)? A similar number do not have acess to safe drinking water.
And all it will take is a few of these little puppies out in rural “Thaibrazilistanladesh” to enable the bright minded kids and village elders to y’know, LOOK up information about bettering their water supply, or research that new crop their government wants them to grow, or research a new animal husbandry technique, or, send a quick email asking for information about X/Y/Z.
It’s not intended for the 3rd world.
It’s intended for the 2nd world, to help them NOT become the 3rd world, but join the information age.
And, I think that this is a small but vital step to finding new solutions to getting adequate food and water to the most destitute on our planet.; who knows how many kids will have their genius/talent nurtured because of this little device and come up with new ways of reaching out and solving problems? (Remember folks, poverty and ignorance are not stupidity. [Ignorant means you just haven’t learned something yet. Stupid means you can’t learn.])
And, like I said before, if I were some despot, this is the last thing I’d want my people to have — a device that lets them get information from around the world and then lets them swiftly share it with each other.
Ironically, you answered your question in your subject.
Plenty of different orginazations are set up to give food to the poor. Corporations and governments spend millions, if not billions, each on the problem. MIT understands this, and wanted to focus on something other than what everyone else was already focusing on. The wanted to give developing countries’ kids a better chance at an education, food for thought if you will, so that they can better support themselves later. Because we won’t help developing nations get on their feet by just throwing food at them, they have to get to an educated level as well.
Food for thought, or should we be thinking about food for the 1 billion people in the world living on less than US$1
Places that don’t even have drinking water have serious issues that need to be solved before they can rise and form a modern society. Give a man drinking water and they drink for a day. Teach him how to get drinking water he’ll drink forever. Teach him how to learn everything there is to learn in the world from the internet and he might just get food, drink, shelter, and some self respect for having done it himself.
Organizations that simply shovel food into hungry towns are demoralizing. Stop buying a feeling of doing good at the expense of people’s dignity. Set up a system where they can help themselves. That’s what these MIT people are trying to do. I hope it works out well.
I wonder whether it would be more useful to provide safe drinking water supplies, adequate shelter/housing, basic schooling, reliable electricity supplies, malaria treatment etc. to “poorer countries” before we think about providing cheap laptops.
Those don’t really sound like services that RedHat is qualified to provide.
It’s amazing how much corporate America is afraid of developing countries getting hold of this technology.
* Apple offered a custom version of OSX, despite saying they would never license the OS to other manufacturers.
* Microsoft offered a open source (ish) version of WindowsCE, breaking a 25 year tradition of never offering open source anything
* Microsoft poo-pooed the idea saying that an MS designed Mobile Phone device would be better
Left right and centre Corporations are completley breaking personality to get a piece of OLPC.
And Good. Linux is the only choice for this situation.
As for food. Let’s not miss basic task of software companies: they should produce software. If Bill Gates or another rich man gave lots of $$$ to poor people, it would be great, but Microsoft is not a charity organization.
If they wan’t provide cheap laptop for everyone, so be it. Laptop != food.
They won’t sell these in developed countries – why not ? You could sell them at twice the price, $100 for the device and an added $100 which will buy one for a child somewhere. It could even be tax-deductable.
BTW does anyone know what the handcrank is for ?
Re: “Does anyone know what the handcrank is for?”
Hand crank generator.
http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html
They won’t sell them here because they wouldn’t sell.
Would you purchase a laptop with a 500MHz processor? No.
What about a laptop with 128MB of OLD OLD memory? No.
What about a laptop with a 4 or 5 inch screen? No.
These laptops may be great educational tools, but they can’t do what you’re thinking. No matter how MIT tries to spin it, it won’t be a normal computer. It won’t run Linux as you know it. It will run a highly-specialized version of Linux built to serve certain functions. This is a laptop that is going to have the computing power of modern PDAs – only in laptop form with a keyboard and such.
Frankly, you’re going to want a real laptop. One with processing power well over 4 times this model a hard drive of many gigabytes (rather than 500MB of flash memory), a screen of at least 12 inches, DVD/CDRW, etc.
And you can have a laptop like that for around $500 (just check dealnews.com – they constantly have ones for $500, sometimes lower).
The fact is that you don’t want a PDA with a keyboard.
Would you purchase a laptop with a 500MHz processor? YES
What about a laptop with 128MB of OLD OLD memory? YES
What about a laptop with a 4 or 5 inch screen? YES
These laptops may be great educational tools, but they can’t do what you’re thinking. No matter how MIT tries to spin it, it won’t be a normal computer. It won’t run Linux as you know it. It will run a highly-specialized version of Linux built to serve certain functions. This is a laptop that is going to have the computing power of modern PDAs – only in laptop form with a keyboard and such.
Are you saying PDAs don’t have enough CPU power to browse the web, get email, run an IM client, and do light word processing (er, not at the same time,of course
)?
Second, it will be 100% open. Highly specialized? Maybe. But how long do you really think it will be before non-RH distros are made for it? Something with the simplicity and usefulness of Beatrix would be sweet, IMO.
If PDAs weren’t so small, with styluses, and generally lacking in USB ports, I’d have one (or if Librettos didn’t cost a fortune
). This laptop would be my ideal mobile device.
Frankly, you’re going to want a real laptop. One with processing power well over 4 times this model a hard drive of many gigabytes (rather than 500MB of flash memory), a screen of at least 12 inches, DVD/CDRW, etc.
Why? I already have that stuff. It’s in a desktop computer. All I would need is an easy way to hook them together (Samba, maybe?) and transfer files, and that whole issue is solved.
I won’t lug around something bigger than a notebook and weighing several pounds. That’s not portable enough. A PDA is portable enough, but I’ve yet to see one that isn’t designed like an organizer. AFAIK, there is no bridge between PC laptops and PDAs. This thing is exactly that.
And you can have a laptop like that for around $500 (just check dealnews.com – they constantly have ones for $500, sometimes lower).
It’s going to be big, heavy, and noisy, too. Even the Pentium M laptops I’ve used have not been portable enough for me to consider it. But, I don’t need to replace my desktop computer–I need a portable thing with an integrated keyboard and mouse/glidepoint to do things like writing this post, and USB ports for trasferring things, adding functionality (sound card, FI, or a real mouse), or moving to types of networks not supported by the hardware.
The fact is that you don’t want a PDA with a keyboard. You mean YOU don’t want a PDA with a keyboard
. I absolutely do.
On top of all that, I hope this thing gets made on time and succeeds here as well as elsewhere in the world, because there is still a digital divide in parts of the US, however much many people don’t like to think so.
The hand cranked radio was for the developing world, it is sold here in Canada as well.
The hand cranked flashlight was for the developing world, it is sold here in Canada as well.
I see no reason not to expect the laptop to become available here sometime as well.
You can spend to money on food or water if you wish. But sooner or later if the investment is wrong they will run out.
Give them a computer with access to the internet and they can find out information on growing thier own food better, and information of find/pumping/processing their own water.
Give a man a fish and you have feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you have feed him for life sort of an idea.
You think these people are poor because they can’t fish or grow food? I sure hope not…
The reason is they can’t compete with huge companies from rich countries, to a large extent even subsidized by their respective governments.
Let’s not spread any more colonial era type myths about stupid or lazy 3rd world people.
>>>You think these people are poor because they can’t fish or grow food? I sure hope not…
The reason is they can’t compete with huge companies from rich countries, to a large extent even subsidized by their respective governments.
Let’s not spread any more colonial era type myths about stupid or lazy 3rd world people.<<<
Absolutely right. Teach a man to fish in the desert and he will still starve. Most of these people are not ignorant of how to live, instead, their means of making a living has been taken away: by war, overpopulation, and yes, first world rapacity.
Poor countries with stable governments are slowly improving their lives — that’s the market that the $100 laptop can work for. The truly starving, however, don’t need to learn how to fish — they need access to the sea, and freedom to fish.
Edited 2006-02-06 21:31
The simple fact that the UN is involved in this DOOMS it to failure. Have we learned nothing from Oil for Food and the money skimming criminals who run these programs?
When will we learn? I thought those at MIT were smarter than getting involved with these crooks.
Your assumption is the UN has done little to nothing besides Oil for Food.
It shows a brash ignorance for who and what the United Nations is. I’m no fanboy, it has many flaws and is far from perfect.
It is far more, however, than you give it credit for.
Go do your homework before you start bashing, it’s unnatractive.
Sir:
Your assumption is that I do not understand the UN. I opted not to bring this to political discussion, and was trying to maintain brevity with a short example, while keeping this thread on topic.
I did enjoy your the typical leftist reposnse of attacking the messenger when the message is unliked. I understand why you defend the theiving UN.
Sadly, you turned it into a political discussion with your first comment. It seems to me that your “brevity” is based more on a lack of facts than an desire to keep on topic. It also appears that you prefer to be propagandized than to actually research for yourself.
With that being said, I applaud the MIT, the U.N. and the others involved in this program because they are actually doing something to bring technology to those poorer countries that can truly benefit from it.
I hate to think of all this money being spent to popularize the most corporate distro of all.
I’m down with linux on the $100 laptop, but Redhat is more a company than a software community.
If Redhat agrees to donate a billion, I wouldn’t be so annoyed with the idea of Redhat on all these machines.
I just don’t trust the motives of companies that get past a certain size.
Redhat would be okay, but really, the amount they should invest should be a lot because they stand to gain a lot from the outpouring of money into this project which would popularize their OS a great deal and lead to huge profits. I’d rather see them commit to re-investing a proportion of profits earned from this investment.
On the other hand, Steve Jobs’ offer of free OSX made me laugh out loud. What a joker! Doesn’t he know better?
But what is this, News Corporation is donating?
“Red Hat — Google, AMD, News Corporation, Nortel, and Brightstar, have committed $2m (£1m) each to fund the project.”
Isn’t News Corporation owned by Rupert Murdoch? Also, Negroponte has an evil brother who ran death squads in Nicaragua and now runs death squads in Iraq. Could this be part of some kind of nefarious corporate-backed propaganda scheme? Does News Corporation hope to use these machines as a content-distribution network?
Am I paranoid or what?