OLPC Cost Rises To $188 Per Laptop

In a slashdoted article

- http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/15/0332225

the author asks, Is this the end of the OLPC's newsworthiness, or should  
we continue to hope that it will make the difference that so many have  
said it will?

/Klaus

El 9/15/07 2:54 AM, "Klaus D. Witzel" <[hidden email]> escribió:

> In a slashdoted article
>
> - http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/15/0332225
>
> the author asks, Is this the end of the OLPC's newsworthiness, or should
> we continue to hope that it will make the difference that so many have
> said it will?
>
> /Klaus


Well, for poor countries like ours without the wi-fi infrastructure out the
main cities and used computers with similar perfomance and more software
available I said OLPC is only a dream.

Edgar

Yes, I'm afraid third-world countries will probably avoid paying for these
in US Dollars and the dream will die, just as when crude oil went above $35
a barrel and the auto industry collapsed.  <G>

Seriously, the quoted $188 price relates at least as much to currency
exchange rates as to intrinsic cost, and I don't believe the OLPC was being
built in the US anyway, nor is it being made to be sold in the US.  Let's
see what the current cost is in Pulas or Escudos or Dalisis or the currency
of whatever other target markets exist and consider the issue on that basis.

Gary


----- Original Message -----
From: "Klaus D. Witzel" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 1:54 AM
Subject: OLPC Cost Rises To $188 Per Laptop


In a slashdoted article

- http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/15/0332225

the author asks, Is this the end of the OLPC's newsworthiness, or should
we continue to hope that it will make the difference that so many have
said it will?

/Klaus




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8:59 AM

Indeed. The "magic" $100 figure comes from the projected cost of  
printing 5 years worth of text books. This is the actual cost OLPC  
wants to meet, independent of currency issues.

- Bert -

On Sep 15, 2007, at 14:09 , gafisher wrote:

Sorry but that statement have only the chance to be true *if and only if*
the OLPC is seen as a hardware project.

Fortunately that point of view is far from being the one which has conceived
and powered OLPC project. As clearly Negroponte stated and states again and
again in it's conferences, OLPC is an educational project that uses
hardware. I'm sorry but forgeting that is thinking miserably small.

Sebastian Sastre

El 9/15/07 3:14 PM, "Sebastian Sastre" <[hidden email]> escribió:

> As clearly Negroponte stated and states again and
> again in it's conferences, OLPC is an educational project that uses
> hardware. I'm sorry but forgeting that is thinking miserably small.
>
> Sebastian Sastre


And what stop us use available old hardware for education?

Squeak (and many more) run on as low as Pentium II computers.

First we should be sure kids don't starve to dead as you know happens in
Argentina.

Edgar

 

Nothing stops you to use old hardware or whatever you find useful for
education. In fact I found it clever until better resources where gained
somehow.

Now.. anybody that puts that making sure kids don't starve to death in
whatever country is indispensable, I mean a requisite, for whatever action
they want to promote, I'm pretty sure that people which are honestly
thinking like that will be facing a challenge so big that they most probably
will be paralized and they efforts turn fruitless. How much hapiness and
social richness you may extract from satisfying stomachs? How long it may
last? Where it will lead? What are you proposing?

You'll excuse me but I'm on the position of thinking that is prioritary to
develop brains more than stomachs. And OLPC hepls feed brains.

Sebastian Sastre

On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:24:38 -0700, Sebastian Sastre  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> You'll excuse me but I'm on the position of thinking that is prioritary  
> to develop brains more than stomachs. And OLPC hepls feed brains.

You can't develop your brain on an empty stomach. (Not the starvation  
degree of empty.)

But the line of thought--repeated =every=single=time= the OLPC is  
mentioned on Slashdot--shows how poorly we think of grand schemes to  
improve the world. Every time the starvation issue is raised on Slashdot,  
there's a rebuttal of how there are many parts of the world where  
starvation isn't widespread and yet the educational infrastructure is  
poor. This rebuttal often comes from someone in that part of the world.

But it's not like this was a hastily implemented monolithic plan to  
blanket the world indiscriminately with laptops. I sommehow doubt that the  
information we pick up fromm a few articles allows us to intelligently  
comment.

Blake <[hidden email]> writes:

Yes, but the root cause of starvation is a poverty of knowledge.  Food
aid helps with immediate crises, but if they are to be prevented in
the future, the populace needs to know what is going on.

Further, even leaving aside the possibility of big changes in the
local society, better information helps in more immediate ways.  If a
person checks out wikipedia and learns about germs, their life will
get much better.


Lex

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 04:14:52 -0700, Lex Spoon <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yes, but the root cause of starvation is a poverty of knowledge.  Food
> aid helps with immediate crises, but if they are to be prevented in
> the future, the populace needs to know what is going on.

Actually, I'm prety sure starvation these days is caused by bad politics  
and just plain evil. Not that knowledge doesn't help there, too.

> Further, even leaving aside the possibility of big changes in the
> local society, better information helps in more immediate ways.  If a
> person checks out wikipedia and learns about germs, their life will
> get much better.

I'm not particularly prepared to debate it (and it's not really  
appropriate here), as the closest I've come to starvation is a 4-day fast,  
undertaken as a sort of experiment.

My main point is that I'm quite positive the OLPC crowd has researched the  
topic better than those of us who are casually monitoring the process.

Jared Diamond has spent some years researching and documenting the question.

    http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/



On 9/23/07, Blake <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Tue September 25 2007, Chris Muller wrote:
> Jared Diamond has spent some years researching and documenting the
> question.
>
>     http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

really good book.