The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality

[Sasq]

details here

[schmosef]

Funny how early in the article it mentions that they turned down free copies of OSX because it's not open source but at the end the guy behind the project says "The machine will run anything, including Windows."

[Sasq]

yes, that has been commented on over IM.
I shall watch the OS thing carefully, though I suspect the laptop is fairly distinctive, and I wouldn't be surprised if apple offers osx for free on it anyway.

[schmosef]

Actually this reminds me of an initiative my board of education undertook when I was in grade 8.

Every student got a tri fold vinyl duotang. For anybody who doesn't know what a duotang is it's a cheap piece of plastic crap that has pockets so you can put papers in, but it doesn't hold very many and the plastic tends to crack so instead of having a tri fold apparatus you very quickly end up with three separate pockets that you have to keep together with tape. We were supposed to use it for English from grade 8 through grade 12 or 13 (grade 13 was optional and only for kids who wanted to go to University). We were admonished not to lose or damage our duotangs because we'd have to pay for the replacement. We were supposed to keep the same duotang for 5-6 years. They had a whole curriculum centered around these duotangs. They had three pockets and we had to draw covers for each pocket. The left pocket represented writing ideas and notes. The middle pocket was for draft work. And the right pocket was for finished work. I remember spending a long time on my cover drawing.

The board of ed decided that kids weren't responsible enough to keep their duotags over the summer so we were required to hand our duotangs in and the board of ed would ensure that our grade 8 duotangs would get directed to our high schools.

Of course that didn't happen and my immaculately maintained duotang, along with all the writing notes I was told to leave inside went into the ether and I got some anonymous kid's poorly maintained duotang and all his unintelligible writing notes. I'm convinced that somewhere some kid got a hold of my writing ideas and has published a book with them. Damned plagiarist!

Anyway, somehow the board of ed decided to take on this initiative without doing anything to ensure the integrity or viability of their own infrastructure to co-ordinate this logistical challenge.

I suspect, that if this $100 notebook initiative is somehow coordinated by the UN (and I don't see how it can't be) that it will also end up a logistical nightmare. The founders obviously mean well. But the distribution mechanism is just as important as the computers and it will be completely overlooked. Some fat cats will skim off the project in the form of kickbacks, etc. And they'll do nothing to ensure that the notebooks will actually get into the hands of kids. They'll probably all end up in Nigeria networked into the world's biggest SMTP gateway for 419 scams.

Face it, the UN can't even ensure food isn't stolen and sold into the black market.

This is a great idea and we'll all be reading about the UN scandal surrounding it in 10-15 years.

[Kooldino]

Wow, smart move by some of the big players, notably Google, AMD, and Apple.

[agallag]

Schmo, did you go to school in York region? Big red ugly folders right?

I transferred from Peel to York (Brampton to King City) in grade 9. When the english teacher told everyone to get out their "creative writing folders", I explained that I didn't have one, since I had just transferred from a different school board. It took about two months to get me a new one, since the high schools never planned to have any students that didn't already have them from grade 8. Really well planned system there...

[GT98]

I dont understand how this is going to help students in developing countries...Christ they have worry about where their next meal is going to come from and dont most of the schools dont even have electricisty? Are they gonna come up with hand-cranked switches/hubs/ or whatnot next? :lol:

[Nowhere]

Sasq, I doubt the 100$ versions for kids will end up with changed OS. From what I've read about it, it really doesn't have an easy/fast way of installing something big...but we'll wait and see. Anyway, no difference, since the versions we're gonna be able to buy won't be identicall (and I'm personally waiting for e-paper based thing; BTW, what's the rpice of Sony Librie now in Japan?)

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see which software exactly will be chosen for this thing, simply because it'll become one of the most widely used not only in Linux world, but also overall!

Since Redhat engineers are working on it, I'm betting on desktop based on GTK (GNOME - I doubt it; XFCE - would be good I guess...). The rest is gueswork...

@GT98: exactly, hand-cranks :> (look at the picture). And they'll be connected wirellessly in a "mesh". Besides, there are countires where not that many people are hungry, but they don't have acces to high tech stuff anyway...

[schmosef]

Schmo, did you go to school in York region? Big red ugly folders right?

I transferred from Peel to York (Brampton to King City) in grade 9. When the english teacher told everyone to get out their "creative writing folders", I explained that I didn't have one, since I had just transferred from a different school board. It took about two months to get me a new one, since the high schools never planned to have any students that didn't already have them from grade 8. Really well planned system there...

I went to school in North York. And yeah, now that you mention it, I remember a kid who transfered mid-year and had to wait while they got new stock of those "big red ugly" bastards! I of course didn't have to wait, I had to take someone elses messed up duotang. I remember at one point switching to blue. Either we were given the option to buy a new one or they replaced them all one year.

[Nowhere]

http://www.itu.int/wsis/plib/detail.asp?y=2005&n=6265

http://www.itu.int/wsis/plib/detail.asp?y=2005&n=6264

http://www.itu.int/wsis/plib/detail.asp?y=2005&n=6263

It appears those are working prototypes