Peru Orders 260K OLPCs, Mexico to Get 50K

eldavojohn writes "Perhaps in response to recent news that the lawsuit against the OLPC may be a scam, Peru's government has announced they want 260,000 OLPCs and a Mexican billionaire by the name of Carlos Slim has also asked for 50,000 that he wishes to distribute in Mexico. Things are looking good for the OLPC."

not quite a scam

[l2718]

The lawsuit is Nigerian, but it's not so clearly a scam. It seems to be a claim that a keyboard layout (i.e. which key goes where) is a patentable design. Of course in most of the world keyboard layouts are standardized, denying us the fun of learning a new keyboard layout whenever we buy a new keyboard -- but perhaps this isn't the case there. If anything, I would suspect it to be a harassment tactic. I wonder if this Nigerian company has recently started a strategic partnership with a large American software company ...

Re:OLPC Needs Appropriate Softare

[sick_soul]

They are different things, for different purposes.

"The Eee PC is not a competitor to the OLPC XO-1, another inexpensive laptop computer..."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC [wikipedia.org]

OLPC Language Suite

[dj245]

To me, a language learning software package for deployment in Mexico would be the killer app. Mexico should have a leg up on India and China when it comes to importing stuff to the United States. Mexico is much closer and the time difference isn't much if any. Mexico is getting shoved out of nearly all markets however due to their inability to compete. China is shoving them out of the goods market because of their low prices (and associated poor environmental and human practices). India is beating them on call centers because many Indians are willing to learn English and have a chance to do so- something most Mexicans can not or will not.

Mass adoption of English as a second language could give Mexico the enormous economic boost that India has enjoyed in recent years. Can the OLPC fill this gap in Mexican education? Will Mexicans care to learn English? I doubt it. There may soon be a time when large numbers of Indians stop immigrating to the US because there are plenty of good jobs in India. It would be nice to think that Mexico could get to that point too.

Re:Richest man not just "some Mexican billionaire"

[handsomepete]

What about that would be so jarring? The fact that there are people that don't actually care about or track how much wealth other people have?

Intel should be ashamed

[QuantumG]

Intel and Microsoft should be ashamed for their attempts to poison this fantastic project.

Re:Wha?!

[AmaDaden]

Why else would he be so angry at Intel for producing the Classmate PC?

Because his PC has all Open Source software on it. I remember when I learning about computers as a kid running Windows. There was this brick wall I just hit one day because I was not allowed to learn any more. It was a really frustrating feeling.

Also it seems like Intel is getting in to the game because they are out to make a buck not to help. So once they are the only game in town they are likely to just have the price jump up.

FYI: The TWIT [www.twit.tv] that came out today talked about the OLPC project a lot.

Re:Wha?!

[mrchaotica]

Why else would he be so angry at Intel for producing the Classmate PC? Surely there is a large enough market for low-end, affordable laptops...

He's mad about the Classmate PC because making a "low-end, affordable laptop" is most emphatically not the point. The point is to make a tool for learning, which places the emphasis on the software and the collaboration that the system (as a combination of hardware and software) allows.

In other words, he's mad because the Classmate PC is merely an attempt to indoctrinate a new set of kids into the Intel/Microsoft closed-source and commercial hegemony, while his goal is to give the kids a tool they can modify themselves as they see fit.

Re:Richest man not just "some Mexican billionaire"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates, on the other hand, legitimately gained market dominance by offering a superior product and THEN locked people in and extraced monopoly rents.

Microsoft got handed a near-monopoly on business computers by IBM. The only way you can get to call Microsoft's product "superior" is in the trivial, circular fashion, where you point at its almost complete dominance in the market as proof.

Re:Intel should be ashamed

[QuantumG]

Nah-sayers like you need to STFU and get some education. If you can't see the benefit of giving an entire freakin' library of books to every child in the third world then you're never going to get it.

Re:Wha?!

[insertwackynamehere]

Okay great, but now let's look at the real world where the majority of citizens accept that some form of tax exists in their government and would prefer that their tax dollars, which they already have to pay, are put to good use.

Re:OLPC Language Suite

[ianare]

According to wikipedia, Spanish has the second-highest number of native speakers (after Chinese), and the fourth largest number of total speakers. While I am certainly not arguing that knowing English isn't an asset in today's world, especially for IT and business, I'm not convinced that simply learning English will be an "enormous economic boost" to Mexico. There are plenty of opportunities just by knowing Spanish.

Re:OLPC Language Suite

[hyperball]

Mass adoption of English as a second language could give Mexico the enormous economic boost that India has enjoyed in recent years. Can the OLPC fill this gap in Mexican education? Will Mexicans care to learn English? I doubt it. There may soon be a time when large numbers of Indians stop immigrating to the US because there are plenty of good jobs in India. It would be nice to think that Mexico could get to that point too.

Learning languages for educational purposes, sure. But your comment implies that Mexicans ought to learn English as a benefit to American social and economical interests. Sir, language is one of the fundamental parts of all societies: it can control how people think, or can also give them freedom.

The OLPC project is important because it allows children, in their own language, to have an education that will help develop their own communities and hopefully give them a better life. If anything, learning english would actually promote migration to the U.S. (Nigerians go to England, Congolese go to France)

The "enormous economical boost" comes from education(as in science and humanities), not from learning English(as in call centers and tagging t-shirts).

I understand your perspective on this subject, but please make an effort to understand how things look from a 3rd world perspective - ignorance and poverty.

Re:Intel should be ashamed

[QuantumG]

Nah, see, the problem is massive, and stupid, economic rationalism. People in western societies think everything has a dollar value and everything is interchangeable because of it. Rather than say "wow, look at what these computer hardware people are doing for the third world" they say "imagine what that money could be used for instead." Rather than say "look at what is being done to educate these children" they say "imagine what that money could be used for instead." It's a false assumption of economy.

Add to that the western obsession with silver bullet solutions. There has to be one thing that we can do that will eliminate poverty. We have to summarize the problem otherwise it can't be solved. So when people look at the OLPC they immediately come to the conclusion that it won't solve the problem. They ignore all the things that it does do and focus entirely on what it doesn't do. So you get people asking how an education program is going to help provide food or clean water or sanitary drainage or stable government or any of the many other, unrelated, problems in the third world. What's especially annoying is that some people feel the need to answer these accusations with silver bullet answers. "Education will solve all those problems!" and when they are pressed to explain how, they fail, and the issue becomes somehow about whether or not education is the silver bullet or not and whether some other competing silver bullet solution is better. And in all the debate, nothing gets done.