OLPC Wins Popular Science Award 74
paulmac84 writes "Popular Science has released their Best of What's New 2006 awards. In the computing section the One Laptop Per Child project took home the Grand Prize. From the article: 'The goal of the XO is simple and noble: to give every child a laptop, especially in developing countries, where the machines will be sold in bulk for about $130 apiece. But the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit, formed at MIT, didn't just create a cheap computer. In addition to cutting costs — by designing lower-priced circuitry and using an open-source operating system, among other things — it also improved on the standard laptop by slashing the machine's energy use by 90 percent, ideal for a device that could be charged by hand-cranked power in rural villages.' The Innovation of The Year Award went to 'the alpha nail that makes your home twice as tough'. Sometimes the simple ideas really are the best."
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The A-test board is likely what LinuxBIOS has, because b-test and the new systems are using an OpenFirmware-based solution.
Abraham Maslow never mentioned laptops (Score:2)
Re:Abraham Maslow never mentioned laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
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Teachers help you learn. Not laptops.
Anything that delivers information to you helps you learn. Books help you learn. Computers help you learn. Looking at the world around you helps you learn.
Teachers are (ideally) people who focus on delivering knowledge in the way that facilitates efficient learning, by adapting the information flow to the level and capabilities of the learner. A perfect teacher would choose between directed and self-directed approaches based on what is best for the particular st
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And for $13,000... (Score:2)
-immunize 100 children against those diseases
OR
-give 100 people the ability to access, share and store enough information that they can learn how to develop vaccines themselves, and immunize as many as they need to, not only against currently-known diseases but many others that could crop up...
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By the way, what does "obsolete computer hardware" mean in the context of a society with no electricity.
And where did you get the idea that these machines were for software development/programming?
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Oh, and you must have missed that whole thing about the view source button and whatnot.
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... ceterum censeo, those are not 'mostly illiterate population' ... they are the guys that are already successfully competing with you, but you don't realize because you still believe the world is still in shambles after WWII and only US of A is left standing, and if some poor schmuck from the sticks is taking your job it means the evil corporation are quitting on you and going for the lower bidder.
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Well, Brazil aready has the widest immunization program on the World (it reaches a bit more than 90% of children). Can we have the OLPC now, or you'll put other priorities?
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Actually, I think that's termed inclusivity.
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It looks to me like a good deal of money and effort is going into this OLPC project. It's non-profit, but presumably people are being paid for their time, and manufacturing so much hardware must cost a lot.
Was this project preceded by a published study that shows that this is the best way to spend all that money in order to benefit the intended recipients? Or did the people running this project just decide to "do computers" because that was the field they happen
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Re:A better goal: One water well per village (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the things we need to realise is that we use computers mainly as tools for dealing with a modern world. We need to do banking, so many of us use internet banking, many shop online because the service is available, we type reports on computers because we're involved in work/studies which require them. None of these things are required by a mostly agricultural society attempting to exist without enough clean drinking water.
OLPC is a great idea, but only because the people who came up with it exists in a world where laptops are a usefull tool. If you want to help their education send them books. I've heard reports form people working on a Christian missionary ship the Doulos and quite often when they arrive in a poor country teachers will go to the ships bookshop and whatever they've got end up being that year's material.
Anyway, there's probably someone on Earth who will benefit from OLPC, and it seems a lot of good engineering was achieved through the project, but I believe it's too early for it to be usefull to most of its intended audience.
Re:A better goal: One water well per village (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't something like OLPC the perfect medium for distributing books? Instead of one book in that volume of space, dump hundreds or thousands on it. Suddenly distributing useful books to the world becomes much easier.
People go on about how useless these would be to the average third world person. But combined with some basic education and the proper set of software, these could be the most incredibly useful things concieved of. Health problems? Pull up the medical journals/textbooks stored on the OLPC. Agricultural Problems? Pull up information on farming, wells, animal husbandry, etc.
The way PopSci described the laptops, they're low power tools that don't share a whole awful lot in common with what your average slashgeek thinks of when you say the word "laptop". But as the parent poster alluded to, they make an absolutely perfect way to get useful information to the third world in a very widespread way.
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My dream scenario: (Score:1)
Give the laptops to the girl children and point out some websites about emancipation, human rights and birth control!
That would be a big step in solving one of the biggest problems humanity faces.
And it would realy annoy the fundamentalists...
Re:A better goal: One water well per village (Score:5, Insightful)
I do think processing power is an important part of that, because it makes possible small businesses and social organization (unions, churches, even soccer leagues), thus creating a stable society where it plainly doesn't exist now. Most significantly, masses of laptops are more likely than individual valuable items (like wells) to escape seizure and monopolization by those with the means to just take things. Even if One Laptop Per Child only allowed teenagers to mass-produce copies of current movies and sell them downtown, that's a move into the direction of equal distribution of wealth, and a stable society.
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In the short term, this is true, and those sorts of needs can't be ignored, but things like the OLPC project are aimed more at the long term. If we don't give these countries the intellectual resources to become self-sufficient and use their natural resources well, then the weste
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This argument is repeated over and over again. Yes, there is no doubt there is a need for clean water in many areas of the world, but there is also a need for education and basic access to information technology. Why is there a problem that some people are trying to mitigate t
How to dig wells (Score:3, Interesting)
So, why are these laptops different? Because of two fundamental things. First, no m
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Cost Cutting Methods (Score:1)
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The OLPC are very low end laptops, not remotely like a full featured one.
They serve a minimal purpose, they are just a first step.
You might read the specs and find the PC your using is better than a OLPC unit.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification [laptop.org]
On another note to get PC parts cheap, you might hit Ebay.com and www.pricewatch.com
This Nail ... (Score:1)
CC.
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Too bad children won't be able to view the videos- (Score:1)
So how long till Jack Thompson... (Score:2)
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laptops in developing countrys? (Score:1)
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OLPC is a great supplement to helping developing nations. They are not edible, but over time they might be helpful in putting food on a few tables.
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cover him with gasoline and strike a match over him, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I just don't get the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I just don't get the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly young kids are amazingly tech savvy. Secondly the most important use case for this laptop is as an electronic book reader. In an environment where paper text books the ability to share electronic copies of reference material is very valuable.
In any event, we will know how this went in a year or two. I can't wait to find out how it goes.
The point is they'll be able to read slashdot... (Score:2)
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- RG>
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As it currently stands, there are already people who have used and know computers, just very few of them, and their job opportunities are limited by their general lack. Once these start coming into use, the population segment that is most tech savvy (many children, some adults, pretty much anyone who is already familiar with computers) will start developing its own inf
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Have you ever sat down in front of your computer by yourself
and gone online and learned something ?
I think the best lesson is teaching ppl to teach themselves,
until recently that required shipping tons of books all
over the planet and cutting down entire forests.
Also understand this is not the final version/incarnation of OLPC,
better things are to come, this is in truth just phase 1.
Wifi via stratosphere based solar powered balloon platforms may be next, etc et
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It's powered by a hand crank. That's why they had to cut the power consumption by 90%.
Nobody in the so-called 'developed' world would buy one of these. Read the specs.
One of the concurrent avenues of program development was in open-source e-textbooks. The recipients of these machines will be getting an ebook reader with a whole scholastic curriculum and then some. It can hit the net, but most of these places won't have net access for quite a while.
Incidentally, packet
I dig the tape (Score:1)
Sorry, I saw Borat tonight, I'm a little punchy.
table has turned (Score:1)
It's an investment in communities & their chil (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, Children need housing, food, water, medical care, parenting, etc.
Nobody has ever argued against this.
But children also need an education.
They need it, their communities need for them to be educated, as a global society we need them to be educated.
Furthermore, not all developing nation children are starving refugees in camps. Many are rural children living in stable housing, going to school part of the time. Or urban children in comparable circumstances, with water & food but facing little up
Re:It's an investment in communities & their c (Score:1, Funny)
-A MA resident
Alpha Nail... (Score:1)
Yes, simple ideas are best... LIKE USING SCREWS INSTEAD OF NAILS.
You'd think for hundreds of thousands of dollars, construction companies would spend one second longer to actually make your house hold together... But no.
Tell all the libertarians, this is their system (no goverment forcing them to improve safety/quality), at it's best.
linux weenies (Score:1)
Logging in and running X (or equivalent) as root.
Stop with the WATER WELLS (Score:1)