"A light in the forest".

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Tuesday, 10 October 2006
Low-Cost PCs Pose Risk
Dark Reading


OCTOBER 9, 2006 | In the first half of 2007, a new laptop will be on the market. Priced at about $100, it will work very differently from today's laptops, but it will ship in the millions, right out of the chute. It will also pose some interesting security problems -- and some interesting solutions.

You can't buy them for your business -- or even your home. Because the new machines are being developed exclusively for sale to children in developing countries under the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

The OLPC, a technology initiative originally founded at MIT and now backed by companies such as Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Nortel, and Red Hat, is planning to sell the devices in batches of 1 million units or more to foreign governments across the world. Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Nigeria already have expressed interest in buying the machines when they are manufactured in large quantities at the beginning of 2007.

So far, OLPC technicians have cracked the hardware problem, using low-cost AMD processors and giving the machine only limited storage capabilities. They've solved the software problem, building on Linux as the operating system. They've handled the communications problem with wireless technology that lets the machines communicate via an ad hoc, no-cost network.

Now if they can just nail down that pesky security problem......

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[kellamne]

Oh no - more spam scams incoming

[Strongwolf]

So, all is not lost. Great news.

[Daniel ~]

It's really remarkable the way in which opposition arises to every good thing people try to do for others...We are never unopposed in this world it would seem...

[cloasters]

Ain't that the truth? Life would be easier if I stopped opposing myself so often!

[Daniel ~]

Now you've stabbed the very thing right in the heart! LOL

[cadaveca]

"Here ya go! Your own laptop, even though you don't have food, or clean water."

[madcatmk3]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

"Here ya go! Your own laptop, even though you don't have food, or clean water."

Well its a step forward. NExt where trying to give them thier own space program.

[Daniel ~]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

"Here ya go! Your own laptop, even though you don't have food, or clean water."

"If you know where water is or how to purify it please post on our bulletin board and let us know! We are 50 miles out side of "every mans poverty" and need help fast!"

I think there will be posts on this system that will change the world...at lest part of it... for some.

What will it be like to talk to a straving mother...? What will it be like when your wife tells you to say good bye for now and come eat?

[noob]

Its a nice thought to give these laptops to them.
But it may just make things worse.

Imagine not having anything at all - even less than the nothing you had Daniel - then been given this marvelous piece of technology, and you can even speak to other people on it from other countries.

You then realise that other countries not only throw away more per year on items like food and clothing, that you need, and see in your very short lifetime. Not only that but this essentially useless good thought, which you can't use to feed or clothe yourself, lets you know that not only do they throw away all this good food and clothing, they also spend per week, more money you could possibly see in a lifetime, on stuff that they don't need.

How about instead of giving them essentially useless computers, we use that money to produce things like:
sewage treatment plants, education facilities, clean water wells, food crops?

Don't give them the tools to become slaves, give them the tools to give back their freedom.

Isn't the saying: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

Wouldn't it be better to teach them to fish, then you could sell them expensive fishing poles later. Its a very long term investment money wise, and you never know; one of them just may be the next Einstein, Aristotle, or Newton. Humanity may gain so much more than reducing the worlds poverty in which we have the resources to stamp out today.

This is why I give money, not to schemes like this, but to organisations which promote teaching, and infrastructure.

[Daniel ~]

Useless?
How to do a soil test with local ingredients, How to purify water, Weather forecasts, Medical advice, an education, locating the missing, personal hook up with people who come to care about you, powerful people like you and me who can help in a crisis....

Useless like a neighborer when your barns on fire! Like a friend when your sick, Useless?

No one thing can answer every need, but given a choice between a computer with on line access and any other tool in the general crisis of poverty crisis, I'll take the computer with access, every time.

You want them to wait for us to grow kind, for us to get there. These computers will allow them to come to us! To come and get some! To open libraries, medical institutions, legal aid, crop advice, every bit of information we take for granted.


BTW Individuals aren't buying these computers. Governments and large philanthropic organizations are. They will be given to kids and come pre packaged with an entire education! Will connect to teachers aid workers and the world...

I should be so useless! ":O}

[cadaveca]

Sry, but the 1 million laptops, @ 100 dollars a peice =100 million dollars. that money could go to build LOTS of needed infrastructure that would help people in these areas far more than a laptop can. Knownledge may be power, but knowing that you won't starve tomorrow has a much greater impact.

And yes Dan, I've talked to starving mothers, and kids that have died since I heard them speak. It's an unpleasant reality, but it's truth, and forcing technology on such a primitive existence merely creates reliance on that tech.

I'd rather make them free, than a slave to a new monster.

[danrok]

These computers are not intended to be handed out to starving people at the side of the road.

Not sure where that notion is coming from?

Thailand has expressed an interest, for example, they do have food and water in Thailand!

Those living in remote villages don't have access to computers, at present. The idea is to change that, so children can develop IT skills and perhaps stand a better chance of getting a job in a city or town, and not be resigned to working as a peasant farmer for the rest of their life.

[aghastpumpkin]

I have to agree with Dan here. Not everyone who is too poor to have a PC is so poor they can't eat or drink properly.
Places like Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Peru...there are millions of children who are too poor to afford a laptop who can and will benefit to this.
What's so monstrous about laptops?

[Daniel ~]

This will change the world, you either see it or you can be part of the world it changes.":O}

[cadaveca]

Just a puff from a butterfly's wings?

My point is...these laptops...uh...they need them why? To survive? I think not.

You shouldn't need to know how to send an email or post on a forum to obtain the nessecities of life.

Great. Farming villages now have something else to do, instead of tending the farm. Instead of working the ground...they end up staring at a screen.


This is progess? It's oppression, if you ask me. They may WANT laptops, but they don't need it. Those that will get these laptops, bet they know someone going hungry by name. To bad you can't eat a laptop.

[noob]

While I can see the advantages of this for countries like Thailand, Brazil, etc.

What about a similar initiative of like amount spent on infrastructure for developing worlds without enough to eat, clothes, etc.

They want to put 100M laptops out @ $100 each, thats $10,000,000,000 (10 Billion dollars)

Now $10B spent on infrastructure, using 1st world companies to foot most of the bill, and those countries to foot some of it, giving the companies shares as incentive. It gives a boost to the economy, puts in needed infrastructure, pays the workers, and when it succeeds, you will get other companies doing the same on their own as fast as they can.

Thats alot of infrastructure. Food crops, water, education (need educated workers), clothing, and money going into the economy via taxes and wages.

Unfortunately, its better for Bill Gates to open a shop there, and pay a worker while becoming even more wealthy, than for him to give 10x the amount to charity. Creating job opportunities, and people getting paid allows for other businesses to spring up, that 1 person instead of growing his own food now buys it. That farmer with a little to spare can now sell it, with the money from the sale, the farmer can now extend their farm. With the extended farm, they can now sell more, and grows enough to hire someone else to help. Its a cascading effect.

These are the people we need to help.

While it would take longer to have an effect, it would be a much more profound effect on the world.

[danrok]

These people don't need to be farmers, any more than I need to be a farmer. We've already got farming and food production sorted on this planet.

The poor farm because that's all there is. If they had jobs and money, they could just go to the shop and buy food, the same as we do.

The trouble is in some third world countries, if you were to build them a free power station, the local corrupt government would simply take it over, disconnect the villages and hook it up to their weapon factory or whatever. Alternatively, any expensive industrial plant would "disappear" in the middle of the night and be sold for cash to buy guns.

This laptop is just an educational tool. People who are educated are not so easy too crap upon! Help them to educate themselves, and there is a hope that they can sort some of the rest out for themselves.

That's how I see it.

[cadaveca]

Woh there partner. Jobs? Money? those are but tools to control the oppressed. Idle hands make for dirty work, don'tcha know.

[noob]

Sure we have the farming sorted, we are able to grow currently many times more food than could be consumed by everyone on this planet.

BUT, why then do we still have the hungry, the starving?

Yes Education, but also infrastructure. Like I said these would be good for places like Thailand, Brazil, etc. These would never be good for places like Somalia.

As for guns, http://www.amacad.org/news/scourge.aspx.

I can actually find 'legal' arms dealers just by searching google. Maybe emphasis should be on stopping them, as well as the illegal kind instead of this so called 'war on terrorism' and in conjunction help nations disarm, giving incentives on infrastructure.

But giving computers to these people even before they can feed t