1 Million OLPCs Already On Order 158
alphadogg writes "Quanta Computer has confirmed orders for 1 million notebook PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The article goes into some background on the project, and lays out the enthusiastic adoption that the project is seeing overseas. The company estimates they'll ship somewhere between 5 and 10 Million units this year, with 7 countries already signed up to receive units. The machines currently cost $130, but with that kind of volume the original goal of $100 a machine may be viable. Even with the low cost, Quanta expects to make a small profit on each machine, making charity work that much easier."
I Want One (Score:5, Interesting)
I still want one bad. I want them to sell them to geeks like us. I've thought of a few ideas on that front:
My only hope that I know of right now is a contest [olpcnews.com] to design a game for them in which you can win an OLPC.
I really want one. I want it I want it I want it I want it I want it...
Can't wait to see what kind of cool things people do with these little laptops.
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Why not focus that energy on a Chumby [chumby.com], in the meantime?
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Early on in this project I thought the public would be able to buy one at an inflated price (something like $300), the inflated portion of which would be used to send more laptops to more kids.
OLPC can make mine any color they want and I'd happily give them 3x their cost today. I'd buy two or three for myself at that price if it helped further the project's aim.
Re:I Want One (Score:4, Informative)
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Laptops are distributed to villiage in
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Besides, since these laptops are not being *given* away, who would buy these for the village in your example, if not the warlord himself? The competing warlord from the next village down the road?
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Whereas the article:
These are not countries where the population sits starving in the middle of the desert, like in some Southpark episode, ok? Not every kid in a poor country is a sta
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First of all, as you said: hocking on Ebay will happen whether they're legitimately made available to the general public or not.
Second, that's exactly why people are advocating making the "general public" version a different color: so that the hocked version would be instantly distinguishable from it, in order to shame those who would buy off Ebay. Personally, I think it's a great idea and would work well.
Also, for the record, even though I'm a college student (and therefore don't have much money), I'd bu
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Good news folks: I was mistaken and everything will be fine!
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Why NOT sell them commercially? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the OLPC project is making a huge mistake if they don't throw these laptops onto the commercial market, for anyone to buy.
Why? Because of the economies of scale, and extra funds raised. These laptops get cheaper the more you make. If you can sell another hundred thousand of them on the commercial market, produced numbers go up the same. Whatever number you were producing before, these will become cheaper as a result. Perhaps just a little, but when you're aiming for a $100 laptop, everything helps.
Secondly, you can sell them commercially for more, make a profit, and use that profit to give the charity/education part of the project a boost. Others have suggested to double the (commercial) price, and use it to send an extra laptop to developing nations. I think maybe extra funds would be better used for supporting OLPC's already out there, for example by supporting communication infrastructure, software projects targeting the OLPC, or developing new uses/markets for these machines.
And yes, I'd like one too. And not just geeks, I think this would be a perfect tool for grandma's and some percentage of ordinary home PC users. To many people, a PC is still a massive, complex, and intimidating machine. The $100 laptop is smaller, quieter, energy-efficient, likely more secure, and simpler to use. Limited in power/storage, but sufficient for many tasks. Perfect for young kids, to read recipes on in the kitchen, check your e-mail, look up a word for a crossword puzzle, or play a game of Tetris on the train. Why again are these $100 laptops NOT sold to everyone who wants one?
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I'll have one in semi-transparent purple, with a couple of Gig more flash memory, thanks. Interested to serve as local reseller/support in my area.
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When you order from Dell take a look at what they charge for shipping, I was going to pay 15
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I can understand and agree that the OLPC shouldn't focus on selling these things commerically in the US. That being said, I also think that they should consider a partnership with someone who is willing to sell and support them. They should charge about 3x the cost of hardware. 1/3 to cover the cost of the hardware, 1/3 goes to OLPC and the final 1/3 goes to reseller for customer support. Granted the things are supposed to be rugged, but when it breaks people will want an RMA# to send it back for repairs. O
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OLPC has stated that it doesn't want to get into the commercial distribution game, it's a tricky thing sales and distribution is a big cost for most companies.. You know, they just want to order them from a generic plant in Taiwan/China and then dump them in a container with a big fat "Lybia" sticker on the side. This is very different from the business of delivering and marketing a PC for the masses like DELL does.
They could let Quanta sell them to a third party vendor, that could distribute them
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The more they get out the door and the more generally available they become the more the prices will drop and a whole bunch of other good economy of scale type of things too (more people writ
Laptops Disabled Once Stolen (Score:2)
Part of the spec appears to be that the right to connect can be recinded, and the laptop disabled, so the incentive to steal one is small. Add that commercial ones (if any) would be a different colour, and it would be obvious that your laptop wasn't kosher, unless you had a direct link with the OLPC.
The OLPC could make things even easier by making sure that helpers got the adult/commercial version, so that there was no ambiguity.
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a lot of folks do (Score:2, Interesting)
I know I'd like to have a low energy usage, built tough, self pow
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Don't worry. As soon as they drop, thousands of them will be up for grabs online. When unscrupulous persons discover that the "free" computers are worth $200-$300 USD or more to Americans geeks, they will find a way to cash in. Given the exchange rates in some of the OLPC countries (e.g. 1 US Dollar = 133.236 Nigerian Naira), there is no question. It's sad, but inevitable.
I'm not admonishing people that want one, or OLPC for "not doi
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Given that the keyboard is made for children (i.e. it's small), I'm not sure that it would be a good computer for adults..
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It has USB ports, so add a full-sized keyboard for serious work. When that's not possible, you can console yourself with the knowledge that most notebook keyboards suck.
No, you likely want an N800 (Score:2)
http://www.nokiausa.com/N800/1,9008,feat:1,00.htm
cost breakdown? (Score:1)
Has anyone done a cost breakdown of the machine components?
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Eureka! The Missing Step! (Score:2, Funny)
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Spam (Score:4, Funny)
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
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The Equal Opportunity World of the Future (Score:4, Interesting)
What age are these targetted at? I honestly feel that, at least here in the US, computers are already too prevelant at the elementary level. Teaching kids computer skills is a noble goal, but IMO, not one they're ready for until, say, grade 9-ish.
What ends up happening is they teach the kid to use a crutch. Instead of practicing arithmetic, they let kids in grade 3 (!) just use calculators. My kids only know the times tables because I *made* them learn it. Flashcards and practice, just like I did (I had a hard time with it too). They already forgive me for it. My son is seen as a "math prodigy", to use his teachers words - and quite frankly (not to denigrate him), his abilities are what I would consider average for his age. He isn't like moved on to precalculus on his own, or anything like that. He can add, subtract, multiply and divide simple numbers in his head. This makes him a prodigy in the modern US education system. ouch.
Repeat for spelling. The school could give a shit. Here's how spelling is taught - "OK KIDS, CLICK SPELL CHECK". They're, there, their, who cares.
Eventually, yes, computer skills become important, fundamental even. I just worry how they're to be used in class, that's all. I sure hope they aren't going to be expected to replace teachers, and I hope budget-strapped schools favor good staff over 100 dollar laptops.
"One Laptop Per Child" just sounds so much like "No Child Left Behind" the mere association makes me raise an eyebrow.
In the long run, though, it could be good for the US, if we can make the rest of the worlds children as stupid and ill-prepared as our own. The question is, how to instill that false sense of entitlement in kids around the world.
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Perhaps you need to stop hanging around so many stupid people. That, or learn a little patience and tolerance.
Think back to your school days. How many of your cla
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Look, you laugh (I hope your post was just a joke and meant as a valid point), but it's true.
I can't spell all that well, I've always known that. My grammar skills are similarly lacking. But I can do math.
My little sister (14) can't. She can't spell (a family trait compounded by computer use since she was little thanks to the "computers are the magic bullet" theory of modern education). I suspect her grammar is similar (I haven't read a paper she has written in a long time).
But her Math skills are terrib
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Are you better off knowing how to divide 72 by 9 in your head? Sure, when it comes up in daily life it's handy not to have to reach for the calculator.
However, with the energy that you and I once applied to rote memorization of multiplication tables, some of those kids could be learn
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I agree that the computers in the US are largely wasted. But there are a few things to remember. First is that computers are taught as something you need to get a job. You won't get a job if you can't use Word and Outlook and Powerpoint (so the theory seems) so they teach them. They are basically the replacement of the typing classes that they gave in the 60s and 70s. In the areas where these are going to be distributed that's not the case (I'm guessing). Computers in education in the US exist so little Joh
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Did you read the story yesterday on Slashdot about NASA's former World Wind project that is now Open Source? It would be incredibly useful in teaching kids about weather, geography, and topology. And I mentioned it to the technology director (who is also the head of middle school curriculu
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I had to memorize the "times tables" in grade school. I came away from my education grasping about as much meaning as the kid with a calculator. All the finger-wagging old farts have been fucking up math education for more than a hundred years, so I can hardly see how technology could do more damage.
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These laptops can connect to the net, sure... but I think the main network they'll be acessing is the mesh network formed by the other kid's laptops.
Also, they access internet trougth a gateway placed at the local school, a simple content filter for squid-proxy like Dans-Guardian or Chastity will do the trick. They can filter who can access the internet by filtering MAC or IP addresses, so the laptops owned by children under a centain age wouldn't pass.
These laptops won't be directly connected to the i
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Yes, they will. Those kids will come to the house of friends that have net acess. Or if that is impossible, they'll learn to break the system.
There is no bored sysadmin that can't be beaten by a well motivated child.
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It's hard to learn how to spell when there's one dictionary every 20 miles...
It's hard to learn to learn arithmetic when your school can't afford to buy more than a handful of math books.
It's hard to learn about a lot of things, when you don't
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It's really easy to learn things as a small child, and it becomes progressively more difficult as one gets older. If we held off teaching basic pre-algebra until people were 16 years old, only the most utterly brilliant people would ever learn calculus.
On the other hand, with the way you're putting down computers, you might be one of the people who thinks that Math is overrated too. I've heard people say "I can't think of any reason I'd ever use Algebra, much less Calculus. We should cut Math budgets in sc
Charity or Profit Center? (Score:2, Interesting)
Quanta expects to make a small profit on each machine, making charity work that much easier.
Can it still be considered Charity [wikipedia.org] if one is making a Profit [wikipedia.org]? Does it count as charity if you're just not making as much profit as you'd like?
Seems to me that they're confused.Depends on where the profit goes (Score:5, Insightful)
Key phrase "the profit" not "some of the profit" (Score:2)
Wal-mart does not put all of its profit back into R&D or other products, etc. Much of the profit (probably most) goes to share-holders, etc. Hence, it's a non-profit. Of course, as others have pointed out Quanta is not necessarily claiming to be a charity. It's the OLPC program that's the charity. I have no idea if Quanta actually is a charity, but making a profit on a single item does not mean you're not a non-profit organization. Presumably, the Girl Scouts are also a non-profit, despite their profits
Making things for a nonprofit doesn't make you one (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, if Quanta wasn't making at least *something* on each, there would be a solid business reason *not* to build them for OLPC.
I can use a small stack at home (Score:4, Informative)
-Universal remote
-home automation
-kids games
-nursing room monitor
-Entrance door camera/display/speaker/mic
-Asterisk PBX
-Picture frame for grandma
-etc
An even Better Use (Score:3, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6364301.stm [bbc.co.uk]
They're cheap, take a lot of punishment, automatically form ad-hoc wifi meshes, and can be recharged via hand cranking or solar power. With a firmware add-on and an emergency mode switch they could be used for emergency broadcast, first responder requests, and local disaster coordination.
Toss on a dirt cheap low power cellphone GPS for location awareness, and implement traffic control (and using compressed text messages) t
incoming compulsory post: (Score:2)
The Right Way To Use Moore's Law (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not really. Once the silicon gets very cheap, you will find that the cost of the packaging (plastic, pins, etc) will become as expensive as the silicon itself, if not more so. Also, you can only shrink the silicon down so far. The die still has to be big enough to put the pads on it. In this case, shrinking the transistors just means more unused silicon area. It will probably be mor
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So did a four-function calculator, a few decades ago.
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Who cares about a profit motive - if you can make 512 megs of RAM for $20 and 256 megs costs $25 because of low volume, you'll just stop making the 256 because it's pointless.
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It's pointless if you could sell them twice the capacity in a compatible RAM module for 20% less money.
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Even if the OLPC specs stay the same (which they won't - the guys involved will happily accept free upgrades), the high volume mainstream computer market will keep advancing and producing higher specced kit for the same or lower prices. Try buying a 32 Meg SIMM today - it's more than twice the price of a 256 Meg DIMM.
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There's only no large scale distribution of obsolete systems because there's no financial advantage - more modern stuff is cheaper. Even if a customer requested it, the manufacturer would probably refuse because keeping open obsolete fabs is a waste of resources.
to just have (Score:1)
just call it the 99 EUR laptop (Score:5, Funny)
Poor guys, where so unlucky, who would have thought back then that Bush would sunk the dollar with his toy wars? I'd recommend them to switch their pricing to a solid, stable currency which enables them to express their price in the usual x99 format. For example the Euro. According to Saint Google:
130 U.S. dollars = 99.3807813 Euros [google.com]
Meaningless currency notes (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, this kind of comment is rather meaningless for a product that will ship to countries outside of the US. The rise in relative price from $100 to $130 could just reflect the decline in the $US [x-rates.com] on International exchange markets.
Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight? (Score:3, Funny)
A brilliant plan and a wonderful machine (Score:2)
For the "it's better spent on food" argument, please ee this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=423735324 4 338529080 [google.com]
Inform yourselves before commenting, lest you look like fools. The machine is wonderful - it can be restored from ROM, there are servers in schools which back up when they are in range, mesh networking is great. And don't get me started about energy efficiency - there is more innovation in the OLPC machine than the entire IT industry has sh
Serious Question: Why don't /. posters get it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as in the US, there is a huge range of material wealth everywhere in the world. There are a few pits of horrible moral and material deprivation, and there are a few globules of excessive wealth, but, just as in the US, most people live in the in-between.
The OLPC is intended to fit into this in-between. People and their children who have sufficient, but not an excess of, food, and a simple roof over their heads. The OLPC is NOT primarily intended to be used to teach children how to use computers. It is primarily to be used as an extra to, and to some extent a replacement for, good old fashioned printed books, which are, for the target communities, extremely expensive. Your 99 Euro machine is about the same price as the books needed for a child for only a year or two. After that you are saving money.
Exactly what is it about the above that is so difficult to understand?
And yes, I do think that the OLPC should be sold unsupported on ebay, with anything over the basic $130 being counted as a charitable donation. ebay ones should be any colour as long as they're black. Don't worry about support. That would grow organically as needed, and the network wireless mesh would fix the 'last kilometre' internet access problem.
Sell 'em in America (we're poor/illiterate too) (Score:2)
We're 12th in providing Broadband access, and frankly, New Orleans looks more impoverished than some third world areas. I think the OLPC program is needed here in the USA, where half the schools have kids who can't read or do math and this is part of Bush's No Child Left Behind program. And yet we call ourselves a first world nation, an economic superpower, and the leader of the free world. And yet, in a small village
no subject (Score:2)
I can see great things the open source community can develop for this machine provided we had access to it, even at a higher price.
They can use the extra money they made to either make more or donate it. Either way, they are donating something to these kids.
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You're right. Just think of all those Bank of America accounts waiting to be robbed. Or the PayPal accounts. Or...
I don't think this will be a big problem. I don't think these children would be good phishing targets when relatively rich Americans, Europeans, etc are such easy targets.
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Targets? (Score:2, Insightful)
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I don't agree with most people's numbers. Not
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
These laptops aren't for areas where there is mass starvation. It's for areas where people can, generally, feed themselves and get by okay but that's about it. Educating these children with computers so they can get a bit of a leg up on their parents would serve them to help areas in their country that *do* have starving people.
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Ok, lets forget starving children.... Lets take me for example. I want to raise vege's in my back yard. It's not as simple as walking out back and throwing seeds at the dirt. I have to know how to create nutritious soil. I have to know when to plant what seeds. I have to know how to care for them as they grow. Etc etc etc. I wasn't born with this knowledge. I got it from people around me and a whole lotta good books.
What the OLPC is aiming to giv
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I don't get it.
That makes me think you haven't traveled much.
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The XO is powered by either a hand-crank or a pull cord. It doesn't need a power socket.
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Ways that computer educated masses will help their more unfortunate brethren:
1. Some societies actually -help- one another if they have the means. I know it may seem like an alien concept, but it does happen.
2. Forget the altruism
If you have a bunch of kids that were never trained in computers during adolescence, they're less likely to develop computer skills that could actually get them employed in the future. Even if
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He may have been a bum, but he damn sure wasn't starving. He may have been hungry, but he wasn't starving. He may not have eaten in days, but he wasn't starving. If you saw him on a street in the US, he wasn't starving.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
In most areas in the world where children are starving and/or are illterate, it has nothing to do with people "not possess[ing] enough basic intelligence to feed themselves or create schools".
If not troll, then flamebait or "insensitive clod" (which is being overly nice) might apply.
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Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
People think of "all the starving children" in Africa (and yes, there are many) but neglect to think about all the not-starving-but-not-getting-ahead children in developing countries. The OLPC gamble is to raise up the standard of living that part of the population and hope that trickle-down economics will raise the standard elsewhere. If the OLPC makes education easier (or more compatible with the 21st century), the result might well be a general improvement in standards of living in the developing world.
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(I actually do hope they will take advantage of people in the rich world. Sadly I'm guessing almost all of these children are to decent for that)
That's right, you don't (Score:1, Insightful)
OK, though I find this whole effort of limited usefulness, I'm getting a bit tired of these simple minded retorts. The point of the laptop isn't to give one to a kid living in a tribe that doesn't have electricity and farms and hunts for food. There are millions of kids that sit in that in between area of being in a mi
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If a child is starving and illiterate, because he lives in an area where the people do not possess enough basic intelligence to feed themselves or create schools, what good is a computer?
Not many communities are made up exclusively of starving illiterate children.
The kids that are terminally ill and too weak to benefit from a computer usually die sooner rather than later. It is the kids who are doing a little better, merely impoverished and frustrated, who will benefit from the education programs
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Anyway, I think the most powerful and wonderful possiblity of these devices is having access to the larger world of knowledge that we take for granted on the internet. Even if all they had was
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God damn.
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NOOOOOO!!!! Oh, no... please god, no... what have I done to deserve this? How long will we see these ignorant arguments about this subject? And what disappoints me more is to see it on Slashdot. And to make the disappointment even bigger, it was said by somebody with a karma bonus and a low ID.
Mod me troll, flamebait or whatever, I don't care anymore. Burn my karma along with my disappointment. Bye, Sla
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Instead of yelling TROLL TROLL TROLL whenever you see a comment you don't like, how about you back up your opinion? Nigeria, for instance, has a per-capita income of somewhere in the range of $300-$400 per year -- a OLPC is going to be worth a third to a half of that. The other countries on the list are in better shape, but not by all that much.
Do you seriously think that governments can distribute millions of these things for free, and th
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Some perspective from the field (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see your misunderstanding here is that you're not seeing the range of development that exists throughout the world. International development efforts that have been going on for the last 60-70 years have produced some results. Here's an example of that range of development: one of the countries who has signed up is Brazil. I don't think I've heard any news lately about starving in Brazil. And for other parts of the world without as many resources as Brazil, the level of development, be it food distribution, levels of employment or availability of education varies greatly depending on what part of that country you might be in.
I'll give an example from Malawi, a country that's been in the news lately because of Madonna. I have been there a couple times and have family and lots of friends there. A child in the lower Shire valley may have parents who are subsistence farmers, be very susceptible to food shortages due to fluctuations in weather and not have a very functional school, or not be able to afford school fees.
However, a child in or around Lilongwe, Blantrye, Limbe or Mulangi may have one or more members of his extended family with a steady job, and enough money to put food on the table and live in a house with clean running water. The child is likely to go to a school Monday through Friday and Saturday mornings, too. Problem is, the education materials are not available to give this child a very good education. There may not be enough books to go around. The books might be poorly written or just too old to have good information in them. The school might not teach certain subjects because the materials are not available. Forget about a library. And, the school certainly doesn't have a computer lab.
This is where the OLPC computers shine. They're text books, research tools, communication and collaboration devices and, a technology education. I think the cost-benefit ratio makes them a good deal. They're not getting air-lifted by the Red Cross to Darfur refugees. But they are something a Minister of Education can put into his budget, along with proper funding for training and maintenance.
I hope this helps put their efforts into perspective.
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Just to complement you, a few years ago (3 if I remember correcly), the brazilian goverment made a HUGE research to discover how many people where startving around here*. It concluded that near 3% of brazilan people were starving, what is very near the developed countries average.
Now, we have a profound need for education. Not just the kind of education people learn at scholl, but also spreading some common sense (like don't beliving everything one sees at TV) and political education (that one can only get
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You're just pessimistic (Score:2)