http://valleywag.com/tech/space-nerds/25m-...this-250831.php

If I were him, I would like to spend such $$$ to those kids in developed countries who desperately need a computer for their study.

How will you put $25 M in good use?

I'd put a Zaurus in the hands of the kids in developing countries.

It won't take that much to do it..people are working on getting one laptop per child in developing countries now at:

http://www.laptop.org/

One laptop per child using totally free linux software...education and micro-business ventures for them to change our world now!

Also see:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC4USA

The units are being tested now...and I believe they can use more committed volunteers to help with the project.

sdjf

yeah... because American schools are sooooooo bloody well funded we can afford more expensive laptops. ARRRGGGHHHHH!!
(sorry, I work in Education, and if roads were funded like schools we'd all be riding mules)

edit: olpc is a good project-- I just wish the US would get behind it. Our support for education is worse than pathetic.... Especially when you look at the tiny trickle that gets past "administrative projects" "Building and maintenance" and the publishing companies.... and DELL.

Yeah, their choice of website name is horribly misleading. The devices come out of work done at MIT I believe, and will run about $100 each.

People all over the world are doing translation for the project, and the goal truly is to make the world a better place for those who are neediest.

They are working on software to provide the kids with good education, and hope to hook them up with international online tutors to help them with their lessons. Learn more by checking out their website.

sdjf

So true...

Those lowest of the low at M$ have to go and spoil things:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/30/windows_on_olpc/

Basically the OLPC device will now support windoze (wince) and instead of costing the original $100 will now cost $175.

"The addition of the Windows capability is not the reason for the price hike. The cost of raw materials, particularly nickel, has pushed the cost up, OLPC explained." - yeah and Mike Tyson will be the next president of the USA.

According to a report on www.basemetals.com - "Average nickel prices will rise for the sixth consecutive year in 2007 and show a sevenfold increase over the past six years, steel consultant MEPS predicts"
Assuming the OLPC project started planning based on the price of nickel 6 years ago, then nickel would have to make up 10% of the materials of the OLPC to account for the $75 increase (assuming other materials and costs stayed the same).

remeber every middle man will add a bit more to there take when somthing goes up in price, even if they dont work any harder

these things are very nice and in fact most of the patches for the kohjinsha are from work with this project. its simply amaving how simmilar they are but the diffrence is thier wifi works

Real bummed out to hear that. Something pretty heavy duty, that they aren't telling us, must have happened to cause such a major change in the plan for totally free software.

I believe the Gates establishment must have been extremely threatened by the loss of a major market the original plan would have engendered. There are many articles linked to by the above, and in one of them, Gates berated the idea of kids having to crank the devices to generate power. Sorry, lost that URL last night in a crash, but that particular criticism may have played a role in his success. But, geez, if the kids are in villages and hand-pumping or carrying water, will they care about having to generate more power while they are reading? The resulting doubling of price is ridiculous.

Gates must have done something that would prevent them from getting some essential hardware component, coercing the change. I have a friend who has been involved with the project a very long time, and I can't believe they dropped the idealism without something fishy happening. I'll see what my friend has to say.

sdjf

aye, it's a shame. Coming from Connecticut, where taxes are disgusting it's hard to swallow the fact that neigh 75 percent of our taxes go to education. The whole thing needs to be restructured. Here, we put in so much money into the system and yet, most of it gets swallowed at the top. They always try ask for more money, but the problem isn't in a lacking of funds it's in uncessesary spending (here, that is. We are spoiled brats education-wise)

--Fish

They probably bought all the nickel futures for the next decade and are now holding OLPC to ransom

Ah, I remember now. The beauty of the hand crank is that these OLPC machines were meant for areas where electricity may not be available or dependable, or affordable. It would mean the infrastructure to help them get on their feet would not be destroyed by a flood, a bombing, or whatever.

I bet much of that cost is total redesign to accommodate our image from the affluent part of the globe, not to fit the reality of these people. What good is an educational system that depends on transportation when the roads are flooded and there's not funding for repairs, on being able to afford books, or batteries for an OLPC, when there isn't even enough money for food?

Stuuuppppiiiid, totally stuppppiiiiiddd.

sdjf

The funding presents its own problem. Every asshole in the country wants to siphon that river of cash--from local garbage contractors to the admins to the publishing houses and universities. All of them have more clout than the pinko bastard lazy unionized teachers (which is pretty much what they get called when they negotiate for compensation adequate to their training and situation, or staffing adequate to the task, or really--not kickback based- suitable materials budgets). Policy tends to reflect this. At the same time, I seriously doubt a teacher in connecticut can afford the cost of living outside maybe a few of the worse parts in New London. Certainly no one teaching in Cos Cobb lives anywhere near the place; ya gotta bus 'em in like maids and toilet cleaners, or other domestic servants. Nothing would induce me to put up with that. I wonder what the actual affect on the quality of education is?

Hey did you guys get in on the laptops for the 6th graders program? I forget the real name.

Actually I wouldn't know. We have some kind of intel incentive program going in a few places (that for some reason requires dell laptops and very expensive magic blackboards).

We did move a bunch of our win servers to vmware on a linux server farm, though--so there is some hope

Yea, we're consolidating some of our servers to virtual machines. We're looking at getting 1 or 10 gigabit fiber between our main office and the high schools. We'll then be able to pull some of the their file servers down town to us and consolidate some more. The next school year is going to be fun, all the teachers are getting new laptops and we'll have to move their data to the new machines...

The Register article was blatantly wrong. Quoting OLPCnews:

" In short, there is no existing collaboration between Microsoft and OLPC aimed at outfitting the XO laptop with Windows." This excerpt is hot off the presses from:

http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operating...xp_clarity.html

For more details, check out the above and other articles on the OLPC news site.

The hand crank idea died long before Gates commented on it because the cranks weren't durable enough.

And the price hike was made because the governments involved wanted to spend the extra money in order to have more memory on the OLPC devices.

OLPC has no intention of abandoning the concept of totally free software on a Linux platform.

sdjf

Sorry for the slight misinformation, at the time I did check and the story was carried by other news sites.

My impression was that a number of the governments were still balking at the original $100 price, because the moq is 1m pieces, they would have to splash out a minimum of $100m. Well at least the price increase seems to have bought more storage, more memory and a faster cpu - all required (but probably not enough) to run a crippled version of XP - looks fishy to me.

Hopefully. Just have to wait and see.

Didn't mean to berate the news you shared. oLPC made prototypes available to M$ in the spirit of open source competition. Someone probably said something about M$ testing feasibility, and it got garbled into rumor that the OLPC units would run a M$ system.

Here's another article discussing the open source aspect and competition.

http://www.olpcnews.com/software/operating...pc_testing.html

I think the same as you, that they may be pricing themselves above availability to the poorest of the poor nations, although my friend who volunteers for the project may have other explanations for why some countries decided against committing to using OLPC. IIRC, I remember him saying India needed to put money into immediate educational needs and not some future equipment. With that kind of thinking, they might not feel it wise to even spend $5 per unit, let alone $50 or $100 or more.

Here's another interesting article on decision-making in various countries:

http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/india

sdjf

we need them here. badly. we don't need overpowered overpriced winmacdellbooks in small numbers. we need 1 olpc per student here in the us. I'm not sure if I can convey what a difference this could make (even in simple savings vs. overpriced textbooks). I bet we won't be funded for it either---exxon will need tax relief or something.

It's sickening that however dire the circumstances and whatever the government, money can always be found to fund a war. Trivial things like health and education can always take a backseat when it comes to funding. Here's some food for thought:

http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1274

Assuming the illegal Invasion of Iraq has cost the US Treasury 1 trillion dollars so far, that's the equivalent of about $150 for every single person in this world. Assuming children of school age makes up half the world's population, that is $300 for each of them - easily enough to pay for an OLPC plus any associated infrastructure, training etc. Assuming the US is not so benevolent in sharing this money amongst the world, assuming that half the population of the US consists of children, then 1 trillion dollars is the equivalent of over $6000 per child - plenty enough to buy a top of the range notebook or three.