Gates Mocks MIT's $100 Laptop 816
QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. 'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.'
Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers don't make opportunities. Teachers don't make opportunities. Public funding of projects, businesses and markets doesn't make opportunities. Opportunities come when a given community finds that is can accomplish something that others in a market want.
The Internet won't help here -- it isn't here to educate, it is here to help people meet each other's needs. The people using the Internet to better themselves are already living in an economy that enables them to find opportunities to better themselves. That realization is enough to give the average person the desire to make their lives better.
Gates is right -- the $100 laptop is useless. The people it is being built for do not understand opportunity because their community leaders have robbed them of any chance to better themselves. Many of the world's poor live under the thumb of a small group of elitists who think they can help the poor through force. They attempt to provide what their poor needs today, without realizing that just giving someone something doesn't offer any hope for the future. This is especially true if what you're giving them today doesn't really help them enough.
The Bible offers the old fish cliche -- give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever. This is very important when making a consideration towards helping another person. I hate helping others through tax-and-spend wealth redistribution: there is no accountability in how the money is spent. I give all my charitable dollars (in the past few months, over 50% of my income) only to those I can hold accountable. This sounds like a "quid pro quo" situation, but it would be no different if it was my own brother or child or best friend. If the person I am helping is not making attempts to support themselves, then my help is wasted -- time, money, love or support. There are others who want to help themselves but are in a position (for whatever reason) that they just can't. These are the people I help.
I would never fund anyone in another country, never again. When I was younger I funded some Ehtiopian charity group, and a few years later had the opportunity to visit Ethiopia. The charity group's office was luxurious and the people working for it lived a very nice life. They found an opportunity: take advantage of idiots in other countries who can't hold the charity accountable. The people the charity was meant to help received very little of the finance and support promised, and what little they did receive did not give them any hope for the future.
It is this hope that creates opporunities. I've seen poor people climb out of poverty with no help from anyone, just because a simple opportunity opened up near them. I just visited Europe and Asia, and I saw thousands of very poor people taking advantage of opportunities that we in the U.S. would never consider doing. Many of these people realized their time investment could offer them the chance to save for the future, to give their children a better chance, to even save some money so they can better their own lives -- in the future. I would never give a homeless person a home, a car and a credit card. I would never give an uneducated person a computer or an education. I would never give a hungry person money to buy food. I would never fund health care of people who don't care about their lives or the lives of their children.
But I would open my home to the homeless person, if they were willing to make steps to find how they can house themselves in the future. I would (and do) spend time with poor families to give their children a chance to learn in some way so that they could take on
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty sure that's not from the Bible.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure that's not from the Bible.
No, that was more, "teach a man to replicate fish...".
Adage revisited... (Score:5, Funny)
Build a man a fire, and he is warm today.
Set a man on fire, and he is warm for the rest of his life.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
give a man a match, his hand will be warm for 0.37 second. Set a man on fire he will be warm for the rest of his life.
back on topic "adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support."
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Give a man a fish, and he'll have fish for dinner. Teach him to fish, and you've just blown away your entire fuckin' marketbase.
(or something to that effect...)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
All this, of course, benefits society.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
No, the version in the bible goes something like: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, give a man religion and he'll starve to death while praying for fish."
=Smidge=
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the $100 computer would be utterly useless to the millions of poor people -- if it every appeared, which I doubt.
Gates is wrong, all the same. There's a much better reason to mock the $100 laptop: what the "$100 laptop" offers already available throughout the third world, and is, increasingly, being used by people in the third world for the same thing that we in the first world use our computers for: communication. Cheap cell phones are blooming throughout Africa and Asia.
The average cell phone is a pretty powerful computer. With a display. And an always-on wireless link. And a storage system. And a data-entry pad. And, and, and.
Gates' criticism is laughable -- there's a lot of use in a small screen, for instance -- but Negroponte's idea is stupid, too.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
But it doesn't have a good, easy way to enter data. Full-size keyboards do matter. It's also hard to do self-hosted development on a cell phone, though that's less of a priority.
Now, come up with an external, plugin keyboard for a cell phone, and you might have something...
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)
I spent an hour the other day talking to a woman who had recently been in the back side of India, doing radio astronomy work. (yeah, she fucking rocked.) One of their problems was that even though the locals were still cooking on open campfires and drawing water from a comnunal well, they were doing this while chatting on cell phones, and that was causing a lot of interference on their dishes.
These people weren't worried about storing data - they were interesting in transmitting it. How they were doing, what they were doing, and how their cousin in the big city was doing. All this was data transfer, but it was voice. Imagine, needing to stay in touch with your relatives in the big city being more important than clean drinking water and a stove and refrigeration.
While the $100 laptop/tablet might be something, I'd put good money on it being an IM platform and an email client more than anything else. Because I think that we as a race, we are hooked on communication, more than anything else in the world. If it can offer a better communication ability than a cell phone, it will take off like wildfire. If not, it is doomed to failure.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
If these people are poor and predominantly rural, they probably live far apart and don't have adequate transportation to congregate in a central location and hold a community discussion on how they can work together to improve their situation whether it's starting a business, drilling a well, or overthrowing their government. In the case of overthrowing their government, congregating in one location just to discuss the possibility may also be extremely risky. Having access to the internet means they can create forums where problems and solutions can be discussed from home and with a some degree of anonymity, if necessary. Once people have access to the internet, anyone can say something where everyone else can hear it- nobody has a monopoly on mass-communication, and in a well-structured forum the good ideas can float to the top.
It would also give them the ability to broadcast the reality of their daily lives to the outside world and increase our awareness of their situation. As it is, we may know the situation is bad over there, but we know so little that we can ignore it pretty easily.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Most studies into this sort of feild indicate the educational value of IT in schools is minilmal and may actually negatively impact on students. The only app which is generally real world related is the word processor and those who get to the end of an education which leads into an occupation which requires those skills generally requires it at the tertiary level. That mean's they are going to learn it, whether they are taught it or not. Most it related tasks bear no resemblance to those taought in the education system and only the most basic of skills are required.
Secondly, the students in, for example, grade ten wont be moving into an office job for at least three years, if not six. For promary school users it is even further. That means the technology they are currently learning will be SIX YEARS OR MORE OUT OF DATE. In the meantime they are experiencing the degradation caused by spelling and grammar checks.
Thirdly, the students with access to computers at home will succeed in the classroom where they are graded on those skills and those without access will fall further behind. This has the effect of widening the socio-economic gap. This means the laptops for everone (or whatever) will need to be implemented in a way which increases equity. I'd imagine selling your free$100 laptop would be quite profitable.
I think that serious thought needs to go into the education value and expected outcomes of implementing this program. While Bill is right to mock these people, it is for the wrong reason.
Normally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
With that logic, if the $500 MSN/AOL rebates returned to best buy/circuit city, then the $100 laptop goal would be accomplished. those phones aren't $100, their $20-50 per month.
What the $100 laptop would accomplish is 2 fold.
a $100 laptop, with a sip phone/messanger speaker/mike, and wireless is a mobile call center for one, etc. In places without cheap cell phone, setup a wireless network for a lower setup cost, and lower monthly charge, with greater flexibilty, to enter data, answer questions, steal identity, mass produce atm cards,etc... worldwide.
second you don't have to protect those computers as diligently from theft, they got no re-sale value, they would all got a ban-able macaddress to kill the usefullness if lost...
Useless for Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates is just annoyed that this laptop isn't running Windows. Microsoft was originally trying to get involved in this project, but they were not accepted, so now they're FUDing it.
Re:Useless for Vista (Score:5, Informative)
The reality is that Gates is blatantly lying when he says that applications and network connectivity are a bigger part of the cost than the hardware. First, the applications are (big and little-f) Free. Second, the network connectivity is free as well, because these things are designed to make their own mesh network.
Re:Useless for Vista (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Useless for Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bible offers the old fish cliche -- give a man a fish and he'll eat today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever.
Did you mean that cliche literally came from the Bible? I don't think so, but if you want to offer a reference, I'll check.
It does teach that charity from the church should proceed by the rule that "For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat." (II Thessalonians 3:10) I'd say that allows us to infer the same concept. But the saying itself did not originate there, to my knowledge.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps not, but having a PhD in farming would do wonders for your area. You'd be amazed at how much things like crop rotation, harvesting patterns, fertilizer distribution patterns, and new harvesting machines can have on improving yeild and quality. Having grown up in a farm community myself, I often witnessed farmers from other countries come over to the states to learn how to improve their own yields. Even the stuff being done in genetic testing of livestock can have profound effects on things like milk yeild and quality.
I feel honored by the fact that one of my earliest jobs allowed me to work directly alongside some of the cutting edge researchers in the farming industry. Without them, we'd still have trouble producing enough food for ourselves, much less 25% of the world's supply.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:3, Funny)
That's why I think all of the vaccination efforts around the world as such BS: people need to help themselves not wait for some handout from the rich, and if some of them die in the meantime, well, that makes it easier of the rest of the people around them. A multi-disease vaccination shot for under $5? Why? It will just teach people not to help themselves.
Ditto for clean water efforts, and, really, all public infrastructure projects. Infrastructure and the good health to use
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you consider "less fortunate"? Because they dont have computers? I think a lot of us survived without computers and we turned out just fine and I'm sure there's plenty of people in the US that still dont have a PC and they're surviving without.
Seems we're giving computers to people that would be happier with running water and fresh food. I think they'll play with the computer for a mi
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
I would never fund anyone in another country, never again. When I was younger I funded some Ehtiopian charity group, and a few years later had the opportunity to visit Ethiopia. The charity group's office was luxurious and the people working for it lived a very nice life. They found an opportunity: take advantage of idiots in other countries who can't hold the charity accountable. The people the charity was meant to help received very little of the finance and support promised, and what little they did receive did not give them any hope for the future.
Again, the Bible offers a model here. In the Bible, a church would send support to another church in a foreign land during times of trouble (such as famine), through a trusted person (such as the apostle Paul). The book of Acts relates at least one such church to church contribution, and I'm pretty sure First or Second Corinthians (maybe both) has Paul speaking about how he made sure to take witnesses along with him on such endeavors so everyone could know for sure the money got to the poor people who needed it. Starting point for reading would be Acts 11:27-30.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the world's poor live under the thumb of a small group of elitists who think they can help the poor through force. They attempt to provide what their poor needs today, without realizing that just giving someone something doesn't offer any hope for the future.
"Africa's problem is that its leaders take care of their people"? If only that were true. The problem is that they don't. Instead of investing in education, infrastructure, and economy, many African leaders invest mostly in a comfy life for themselves. If your line of reasoning were correct, Africa would have been a reasonably wealthy continent by now.
Well, you're partially right. One of the biggest reasons the African economy is struggling, is because Europe and the US are subsidising farmers to produce more food that we'll ever eat, and dumping the surplus below cost on the African market. And free or cheap food from abroad means that the local farmers can't sell their products and go bankrupt. So in this case, we're paying money to keep them poor. (And before you ask why African countries don't raise tariffs on imported food: they'd get in trouble with IMF, WTO or similar institutions if they did.)
As for the cheap laptops for developing countries, I support it exactly because it does provide opportunities and helps education.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
These are not delinquent children that simply aren't applying themselves. These are millions of people who are diseased, starving, and desperate.
Now, if we absolutely left them alone, some people might eventually be able to stand on their own two feet. But that would be after hundreds of years, and plenty of famine, war, and the general riding of the four horsemen of the apocalypse across africa.
I'm sure that since you are worried about "actively destroying hope", then you obviously are going to start fighting against taking any african resources our of africa. Since that happens to be a major portion of *why* they're so poor. All the natural resources of africa went to benefit {drumroll please} Europe and the United States! Big surprise. And we're still doing it. Oil drilling operations that pull in hundreds of millions of dollars a year sit right next to people with lifespans of 30 to 40 years, if they're lucky. You konw what "doing it for themselves" would be? Rising up and kicking out sorry asses out of the country.
The mindset of "anyone can create their own opportunities, no matter what" is utterly assinine, and really shows a very narrow, very america-centric world-view. I challenge you to spend 1 year in somalia, or rwanda, or hell, even one of the best off countries like ghana, without taking anything with you. Good luck.
Education is the biggest problem...they need as much knowledge available as possible. And these laptops can help with that. They can help alot. These laptops are about giving people the tools they need to learn - not just to fish, but to fish, farm, hunt, gather, build, heal, and *live*.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
The grandparent was exactly right, and you are completely wrong. This is the socialist line of thinking that keeps people in poverty, keeps people dying, and is actively destroying hope where it exists.
I'm afraid you're the one who's completely wrong. Africa is not the result of governments taking care of their people. Sweden is. Western Europe is. Africa is the result of colonial powers serving only their own interests, followed by African leaders serving only their own interests, and the WTO serving western interests.
Infrastructure is not the problem. Education is not the problem. And most of all, money is not the problem. It is when we understand this that there is real hope.
Ignorance certainly is a problem. Could you expand on why Africa doesn't need education, infrastructure or money? Money (especially in the form of microcredits [wikipedia.org]) is certainly already doing a lot of good there, and I find it hard to believe that illiteracy is not an obstacle to finding opportunities and taking advantage of them.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason they're not is because social programs create the middle class. Corporations would have slaves or indentured servants if they could. They have no incentive in paying for someone's retirement, or making them wealthier, if the wealth could stay with the corporation instead. There is nothing wrong with corporations making money -- that's their role. However, it is the role of democratic government to provide for the general welfare through taxes. Without that, we would live in facism -- a system in which, as Mussolini said, is the merging of state and corporate power.
Where are the shanty towns in Sweden? Where are the poor families (mom, dad, and kids) lierally living on the street in rest of Scandinavia? In Europe? Australia? Japan? Canada? They don't exist. You only find this kind of poverty in countries without social programs.
When you talk about wealth, you should look at the distribution of wealth. Who cares if a country has a high GDP when a few families control most of the wealth, and the average guy is living in the street or in a shanty town.
I apologize for calling you an untraveled American. I made an assumption and I was wrong.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comparison of this laptop initiative to giving a man a fish is very poor.
Giving people laptops, without getting into too much detail, is essentially giving people in developing nations access to information that they have no other way of obtaining. It has the potential to have a somewhat analogous effect to the introduction of the printing press in Europe in the middle ages: the common uneducated person suddenly has access to something that traditionally has been controlled by a few elite.
Education is not something you can squander, like a fish or money or even a temporary home. Information doesn't cost anything to give, and ideally lasts forever. The only thing that has an expense attached to it is the means of distributing the information - in this case, $100 per laptop, plus some distribution and infrastructure costs.
Further, playing down the merits of this project simply because there exist better solutions is irresponsible. You are essentially claiming that we should do nothing if we aren't going to completely rework the foreign policies and internal structures of virtually every government on earth. Nothing about this project is stopping you and I from trying to make bigger and better changes (aside from the expended focus, energy, time and money on the part of those who participate in the project - all those things are renewable resources). Mother Teresa is a good parallel to consider.
You are correct, a lack of opportunity is what is holding the 'less fortunate' people down. However, education is opportunity. It is precisely what the common population in underdeveloped nations needs to escape the shadow of their oppressors at home and abroad. Giving them laptops is not like giving them a fish. Giving them laptops is like giving them a library card and a ride to the library; all that's left is for some well-meaning librarian to point them to some books about fishing.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, just ask the Cornell French Lit major currently engaged in making your copies at Kinkos.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
You misunderstand capitalism. Most of the world's poor is now and has always been under the thumb of a small group of elitists who want to crush the poor and get richer by breaking their backs. Poverty to them isn't something that they want to rid the world of, it's something they want to exploit and exacerbate, if anything.
See also: Coal mines America in 1900, gold and diamond mines in
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
I gave a sizable amount of money to help people who lost in Hurricane Katrina (not approaching the magnitude of Gates' charitable giving of course) but that doesn't make me an expert in disaster relief.
Re:Education starts only with opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
This is of course in rather sharp contrast to most everything else written about him, his company and his company's products. (Some of that is obviously well deserved, I'm just pointing out that desp
Throwing Stones (Score:4, Insightful)
'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk
Fscking rich snob. You know, this git travelled around the world, donates money to fight diseases in 3rd world countries, but seems to have this wild belief that these backwaters are going to have telecommunications to each school and house, let alone broadband.
He SAW the crank handle, what part of "they use this because they don't even have electric" doesn't he understand? It's crap like this that gives the west a worse reputation, never mind invading oil countries, but doing bugger all for poor african nations. Geez, Bill, go back to feeling all warm and fuzzy inside about your Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or maybe you could free up $100B and give people in these developing backwaters with shite infrastructure some electricity, running water and telecommunications. Then maybe the destabilizing wars will settle down, which actually go a long way towards contributing to the diseases you like to fund the fight against, and the people won't be on the move so much and they can all get down to the business of e-commerce.
Cripes... I can just see some kid sitting in an adobe house in a rural village looking at his bright shiny Dell laptop with Windows Vista installed, 2 GB memory, 200G HD, whizzy graphics, and wondering if he could use it as a hard surface to practice his writing on.,
Bill's probably really spiteful because it doesn't spread the market penetration of Microsoft. So where's his effort? If he hasn't got one, he shouldn't be spitting on others.
we give money to underprivileged congressmen to help develping strategies for them to look the other way.
Re:Throwing Stones (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Throwing Stones (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in earlier stories on Gates' view of the $100 laptop, he is clearly aware that they don't have adequate telecommunications, and said that what they need is not laptops, but cell phones and the associated infrastructure. He said what we should be making and giving them cheaply are basically cell phones that you can hook up to a TV and keyboard and use as a computer.
Re:Throwing Stones (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I see now. That would work perfectly well at places without electricity.
Re:Throwing Stones (Score:5, Insightful)
How are these cell phones getting recharged?
What about people who don't have a TV and/or Keyboard?
Both TV and Keyboard cost extra. Plus the cell phone won't be free either. And Telcos need to be paid for someone to use their cellphone network too. Many things Mr. Gates does not mention.
IMO, the only reason Bill came up with this ridiculous idea is because he was felt left out by MIT. There is this reputable university that thinks no MS technology is good enough to help the 3d world. Must have hurt Bill's ego quite a bit.
Re:This is because Microsoft isn't involved. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oddly enough, the exact reasons Windows was snubbed on the project. With an open source OS, the applications are free too, and the internet is your helpdesk.
Oh, and hardware IS expensive, especially for the people the thing is targetted at.
The fine line between good and evil (Score:5, Insightful)
You would hope with his experience in the public eye, that he would have learnt that nobel efforts to help the less fortunate should be encouraged. Good luck to MIT and anyone associated with the project.
__
Funny Porn @ Laugh DAILY [laughdaily.com]
Re:The fine line between good and evil (Score:5, Insightful)
And if Billy Boy is one thing, he's a PR man.
Re:The fine line between good and evil (Score:3, Insightful)
I think considering what Gates has contributed to these places that perhaps, just perhaps, we should save the foaming at the mouth comm
Re:The fine line between good and evil (Score:4, Insightful)
These laptops can't run any version of windows let alone Vista.
He has the xbox, what is to say he wont extend it's capabilities
This is his PR to shoot something down that is competition for him somehow.
Hypocrites (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, Gates is mocking the strengths of the idea and shows real shortsightedness. He says the cost is network and software, which is bullshit. The software is to be Linux so no real cost here. The network doesn't need to be broadband, and likely won't be - and the bandwidth can be donated by country using existing data lines, HAM radio and different other really cheap options. A single broadband line for whole school, it's neither expensive nor impossible. The remaining BIG cost is the hardware and only a guy with several $bln on his account can consider it negligible. Gates imagines this: OS: $150. Broadband line: $300 installing, $30/month. Other software (MS Office, antivirus, anti-spyware etc) $200. So why not round it up to $1000 with the hardware. The guys at MIT think: OS: $0. Software: $0. Network: old HAM radio: $0 (donated), old 2nd hand modem $5, bandwidth govt-sponsored. Hardware: $100.
$100 may be a year or two of hard saving for an average family in some countries. $1000 is for most of them completely out of reach.
So either aim at this unrealistic $100 (and maybe laugh with us about how vaporware this is) or just give up.
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Informative)
Just the same as they were were using it for the last 60 years, using the same equipment Africa Corps left in their village during IIWW. Such people are very resourceful and as long as you don't forbid them to solve problems, they can solve them themselves. For most of Africa HAM radio is the primary method of world connectivity, and likely using it for some low-bandwidth connectivity would be quite possible.
Re:Hypocrites (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it is. (I think I just proved my point!)
Re:Hypocrites (Score:5, Insightful)
I would criticize Gates.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:4, Informative)
I think [searchenginejournal.com] they [pocket-lint.co.uk] maybe [yahoo.com] already.
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I think they are dumb comments that show Gates is completely out of touch with the realities of education in developing countries. So he gives money to charities? So what. Is that such a big deal for someone who has so much of it?
A little personal story about MS. I used to work for an educational organisation in the UK. We were working with Microsoft on a project to demonstrate Microsoft software to schools, in return they were giving the org I was working for some free software. In discussion with their head of marketing to the education sector, I raised the point that the demonstrations weren't actually very good from a educational perspective. He said to me condescendingly - "Microsoft is not interested in education, we just want schools to buy our software". That kind of sums up MS for me.
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:5, Informative)
Now that the organisation making this laptop has rejected Microsoft, it's crap? Forgive me for being paranoid, but I don't think that's genuine concern...
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be tha Bill Gates regards infrastructure problems as the jurisdiction of governments, but if I had $50
Re:I would criticize Gates.. (Score:4, Insightful)
x 3rd world country Government
x |||software |
x |||maintenance XXX not enough money for hospitals
x |||contracts v
x V
x Microsoft --charity---- > Poor kids
x || marketing |
x || investments | food
x || taxes | medicines
x V |
x U S A <--------------------+
Of course charity gives good publicity.
The value of a dollar (Score:4, Funny)
And in other news, victims of Hurricane Katrina have finally returned to New Orleans to find that places of business have shut down and their homes have been destroyed.
When asked how he felt about people that are homeless, Bill Gates commented, "Their house got destroyed? So why don't they just buy another one? Boy, some people are just stupid!"
Gates then proceded to laugh at a little boy who's family was on welfare. "He was so skinny! Why didn't he just eat something? Boy, some people are just stupid".
He then wiped his ass with a 100 dollar bill and lit it on fire in front of a blue-collar laborer.
Urge to Kill .... (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is clearly flamebait. So allow me to participate in the opening salvo.
I think it's interesting how Gates proposes a solution where we need to put people to support the product, thereby charging money indefinitely. Keep your customers dependant, it's his tried and true component to his business model.
Perhaps Gates (and his wife Malinda) are satisfied with vaccinations and hand outs. Things like food, clothing, water, etc. While these things are very helpful in the short run, they unfortunately result in the poor remaining dependant on you for more hand outs. This is convenient if you wish yourself to be seen as a provider.
What's more valuable to you, food or a tool that could possibly help you learn how to procure food indefinitely. These laptops could be very valuable communication devices. Sometimes, it's just an open dialogue with someone intelligent that sparks the learning process.
It seems like Gates is walking up to someone who desperately needs just basic transportation and telling them that a $1,000 junker isn't what they need. They need a high performance Dodge Viper with a personal mechanic to maintain it. Broadband connection? Why? I thought I read that these $100 laptops were going to have radio frequency repeaters so that information could be sent from laptop to laptop and act as routers for each other.
You know, even if these laptops are mediocre or even a complete failure, at least someone tried to provide the tools to escape poverty permanently.
Either Gates thinks that poor equals stupid or he's got something against MIT. These must have been some very hastily made remarks--think before you speak no matter how rich you are. It also doesn't help that the article implied he recommends a Microsoft "Ultra-Mobile" laptop instead (costing 6 to 10 times more).
Re:Urge to Kill .... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key thing to understand about Bill Gates is that he isn't a technologist. Sure, the general populace believes that he's the smartest man in the world, but the truth is that he has absolutely no vision what-so-ever. If you read his books (e.g. The Road Ahead), he proposes mostly fanciful ideas that might have come out of a SciFi article from 30 years ago. Actual concepts about why his ideas are useful, the reasons why the implementation will work, etc. are all missing from his books.
What people need to realize is that Bill Gates is a ruthless business man who knows how to be in the right place at the right time. He made his entire fortune by embracing other people's ideas and extending them to be successful in the market. Everything from the Altair port of BASIC, to purchasing a CP/M ripoff to sell IBM as DOS, to announcing a non-existant "Windows" to compete with VisiOn, to cheating Spyglass out of a web browser to compete with Netscape. He doesn't know what will work until someone else shows him how. Then, and only then, does he make sure he nails the market before anyone else does.
Don't listen to Bill Gates. He has nothing useful or insightful to say. And I sincerely doubt that most people here really want to follow in his footsteps, even if it does mean becoming one of the richest men in the world.
Re:Urge to Kill .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I don't know where you live, and I really don't care, but let me guess: you have never seen poor people with your own eyes, have you?
These things like food, clothing, water and a *very long* etc. may well result in dependency. They are really useful in the "short run", and you know why? Life is very short indeed if you have no access to these "things". Without these "things", human beings die. And, as far as I know, people have no use for computers in the afterlife.
So please, stop making everything about Evil Bill. It may get you quickly modded as "insightful" in Slashdot, but not much more than that.
Re:Urge to Kill .... (Score:3, Insightful)
I spent the first 20 years of my life below the poverty line on various forms of social programs. College was my escape route. While this was in the United States, I am aware of the severity in other countries. My friends regularly go to Tanzania to teach children and show me pictures. I do not have the luxury to spend that much money to help people.
Re:Urge to Kill .... (Score:5, Insightful)
However , if they get sick, they are screwed. They have no money for doctors. All you do is lie in a hut and have a shaman literally blow smoke over you, maybe wave some leaves. People frequently die from illness.
What your talking about is emergency relief. Yes, without food, people die. That's what's needed in famine, earthquake, war, etc. However, poor != desperate. Poor people have some kind of hook-up for food, whether it be the garden, a job, or a relative. However, if you start giving them food, they re-adjust thier strategy -- they might quit the job to be with the children, they might stop working in the garden. Then, when the free-food dries up, they have to re-jigger their life again.
If you give them food, they are dependent on you. They have no control over that part of their life. However, if you give them something like a cell-phone or a fishng pole, they can setup a new 'income' stream in thier life that they are in control of. That is empowerment and improvement.
We are at step 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
2 - They ridicule you
3 - They fight you
4 - You win
Re:We are at step 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
What did you expect (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course he's mocking the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
They're running Linux on these things aren't they? No market share for Microsoft.
Gates has valid points, but they're overshadowed by his oafishness. And it's really strange given the amount of money he pours into Africa every year. Bizarre.
For real (Score:5, Funny)
No Kidding (Score:5, Funny)
Said Gates... (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot to add "from his Windows CE powered PDA IM message"
So it is a good idea then? (Score:5, Interesting)
bill melinda called. (Score:3, Interesting)
she spends all that time trying to make him a decent human being and he throws it back.
you know what would have had wow factor if instead of mocking this project he put some money into it.
so what if it doesnt run windows surely there's no need to assimulate or destroy everything.
now that would have been good publicity and maybe improve microsofts image.
wonder what mr jobs take is on the 100 dollar laptop..
Bill Gates is now officially a bitch (Score:5, Informative)
Shared: It's "One Laptop per Child"; no sharing.
Diskless: The machine has peer-to-peer networking built in; disks would be slower.
Tiny screen: It's a bigger screen than my PocketPC. And I bet 6 of those screens are bigger than his 6x more expensive "alternative".
Network cost: It's got builtin wireless networking; no network expenses needed.
Application cost: That's why they didn't choose Windows.
Support cost: It's a total package; if it's broken in either HW or SW, replace the entire machine and fix the broken one centralized.
Broadband connection: Because these educational systems are meant to be used for downloading the latest movies? Besides, the wireless network will probably be a lot faster than the 56k6 modems a lot of people are still using.
Reading what you type: That's where the dual-mode LCD screen comes in; something a "decent computer" hasn't got...
Crank:
I think that debunks all of Gates' lies.
Are you kidding me? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is for 3rd world and 2nd world countries where they can't afford "real" PCs with "real" OS's and most likely don't have a phone line to use dialup internet or even be able to call up Dell or HP or whoever. This needs to "just work" and by "just work" be able to relay to others who have net access, be able to work without batteries or mains power and be able to perform its tasks without spyware and viruses corrupting the OS.
Obviously he wants to pitch a solution with XP or CE because that's where he makes his money... hell, even if hardware were a minor cost - which apparently it ISN'T since there is a huge difference between a standard laptop and this one - is he really going to give away XP/CE and Office? Hell no! He wants his piece of the pie and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that he doesn't understand that the target audience for this laptop are people who have probably never seen a laptop, much less used a computer.
I'd hate to be there when the villagers are using their HP notebooks and the battery craps out. They would probably use it for kindling after that.
Shipping Cost (Score:4, Interesting)
Way to slip that one in there Bill (Score:4, Insightful)
Applications don't have to have big [koffice.org] costs [openoffice.org] associated with them.
I'll tell you something (Score:5, Insightful)
I reckon if anything that Bill is scared because if these things ever did become consumer devices that his shitty Origami project would go down the tubes just like all their predecessors. After all, how many would buy some lousy pen device costing thousands when something costing a tenth could do all they need.
It's not just consumers either. I can well see these things being useful in warehouses and other places where you need computer access but not the bother of having devices on charge all the time.
When he says 'costs' (Score:3, Insightful)
Hubris before the fall (Score:5, Insightful)
It is we who are the dinosaurs, Mr. Gates.
Valid Point (Score:3, Interesting)
Hardware is an insignificant part of the problem. The infrastructure should be where the focus is.
If we could get cheap electric generators, water purifies, and telecommunications (sat uplink?) then I'm pretty confident we could find them some hardware to take advantage of those things.
There are millions, make that billions, of old computers laying around that can be donated or sold for far less than $100, and why do they need laptops anyway? So they can carry them to their big business meeting? A schoolhouse with some desktops and an electric generator is much more useful.
I really can't see the purpose of getting people these $100 laptop when there is no communications infrastructure. What good is the computer if they can't get online. The huge benefit of getting them on the web is so that they can have access to piles of information that was otherwise completely inaccessible to them. Books, news, events, all uncensored and up to date.
Without the communications infrastructure they can use the computer for what? Typing? Why would they need to make nice documents or excel files when they don't even have electricity? Couldn't they just use paper?
Re:Valid Point (Score:4, Informative)
Umm... (Score:3, Insightful)
lol. Did old billy gates just slander one of his own products unintentionally?
They just announced something just like that last week... of course they don't want $100 for it.. more like $1000
If it's so useless then why did he offer Windows? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe Microsoft is ticked off with MIT because they were too insistent on OSS, and they view that as a threat.
Gates Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
What he's really saying is this:
"Hey, this has the potential for bringing computer use to a large population that cannot afford the current solution model. Microsoft is not part of this answer! Worse, Linux IS part of it. I better crank out some FUD or this idea may catch on elsewhere.
First off, 'poor people need broadband and a proper machine to run it on...' Yeah, that sounds good! Now, what else..."
Thin vs Fat clients round XXVII (Score:4, Interesting)
Thin client:
Only this round, it's Larry Page instead of Larry Ellison. But the song and dance from both sides are the same. Microsoft wants to sell OS and software for Intel fat clients, and Oracle/Google want to sell hosted services for thin clients, so they can hold all the data. Fat vs Thin clients.
Where is the 'shared use'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill does know that OLPC stands for One Lapop Per Child right? Where's the shared use there?
Re:Talk is cheap Mr Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Talk is cheap Mr Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not such a saint .... (Score:3)
When everyone has a master's degree, they are almost worthless.
The reason these people are starving and in poverty is their culture. Until their culture changes, they are likely to remain starving and in poverty. They are just as smart as the rest of the world but they have values and beliefs which are destroying them.
He tried to help... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gates offered his advice and help with the $100 notebook. (this was on
I agree with you to a point, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the context of spending money on dumbed-down laptops, your idea is tops; howe
100% flame (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything you've seen calling this an attempt to "solve the problem of 3rd world technology and computing" was market speak. This is no different to anything else - a step forward.
Infrastructure? These laptops are infrastructure. And I can't think of anything more "from the ground up" than KIDS.
Wireless broadband infrastructure? And what do you propose they connect to this wireless broadband? Sounds like your fantasy world is a step ahead of the rest of us.
I'm sick to death of smug Slashdotters pissing on this project as if they know better than MIT and the UN.