OLPC To Be Distributed To US Students

eldavojohn writes "The One Laptop Per Child Project plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 , to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally intended for developing nations to needy students here in the United States. Nicholas Negroponte is quoted as saying, 'We are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America. The second thing we're doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community.'"

Can't touch this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hammertime! [thepounder.com]

Patriotic???

[iamacat]

A patriotic thing would be to offer OLPC in US before elsewhere in the world. I am not saying it would be the most practical thing to do, but turning home only after selling everywhere else and some may say after failing to realize the volume is certainly not patriotic.

Re:Is it like the pilot project?

[nyekulturniy]

Why don't you go back to Stormfront, you jackass?

US loves wasting money

[jorghis]

It actually is a good strategy, US State/municipal/national governments are notorious for wasting money. There is a chance they will actually be able to push their laptops over commercial products which give a better cost/value ratio. They could never sell it to a commercial enterprise because they actually have to answer to investors/shareholders who dont like to see money being wasted unnecessarily. As long as he hires some good lobbyists he has a shot.

America's education system

[HandsOnFire]

...to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally intended for developing nations to needy students here in the United States.

Wouldn't it have made sense for him to have started in America, seeing as the education system is similar to that in quality of the systems in the developing nations? :p

Re:America's education system

[timmarhy]

i know you intend to jest there but it's actually the truth. there are plenty of 3rd world students more educated then americans, mostly because they know what it's like to starve in the streets and know the value of an education.

what the hell...

[diewlasing]

...is with the messed up tag: "onelaptopperblackchild"? Am I the only one who thinks that's slightly wrong?

Re:The SW experimenter's kit

[jd]

Garage developers are an essential step to producing inventors. Inventors are an essential step to producing genuinely new ideas and new products. (Generally, "innovation" - as opposed to invention - seems to involve stepwise improvements at best, more often just slightly better eye candy and a thicker manual.) The same mindset that produces inventors also produces "deep science" (radically new work, as opposed to filling in the gaps) and other important original work. Originality is the key element, here, because it is both rare and potent. A lot can come from original work. As originality declines, the return on invested effort declines, but the return will always decline faster.

zigactly

[mckwant]

Someone will have to explain how artificially limiting your market to those least able to pay makes ANY sense whatsoever.

Sell them in the US for $250, and let that drive your product for the first year. Asus shipped hundreds of thousands of the eee pc last quarter, so the market is there. Buy one get one was just a little more altruism than the market could bear.

OLPC is a terrific idea, but the implementation is an unmitigated mess.

Re:US loves wasting money

[Kingrames]

It's not that America is wasteful. It's that skilled workers are VERY profitable for your country. There was a time when most of the most skilled workers in the world were American. People are finally starting to realize that it's a very bad thing to keep the trend going as is.

Much like globalization/free trade, it's a sort of globalization of education. Finally these people in other countries are getting this opportunity. It would be wasteful to make it equal between America and the rest of the world.

Re:Cue the OLPC griefers

[s_p_oneil]

Version 1.0 is never the best, but you have to start somewhere. The OLPC has already driven development for a number of other ultra-cheap computers, which is not a bad thing. And perhaps the next version of it really will be $100. As far as people not using it in the way it's promoted, it'll take time to find the best uses to put it to.

Re:what the hell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably. Is it slightly wrong because it's true or because the tag actually says it?

*now* he thinks of the economics?

[theantix]

If the project had offered these laptops for sale to the general public from day 1, they would have sold quite a few (look at how the EEE did at twice the price). This would have helped get towards the production economies of scale they wanted and they'd be able to sell these things to their target market.

Now I think it's too little, too late.

Re:My own personal OLPC project

[porkThreeWays]

Don't forget standard setup/os. You can't exactly get 30 used computers with OS's ranging from OSX to Win 95 to Win XP and expect to use them all in a classroom. Instruction would be impossible.

Explain why exactly?

[VValdo]

Well, now I feel like an idiot... ...for buying one for my 2nd grader last November with the Give One Get One program.

So wait-- you spend $400 for one computer given to a kid in Afghanistan and one for your 2nd grader- who up until this announcement would have had almost no chance of finding anyone in his school to communicate/collaborate/share with (a major feature of the Sugar UI).

Now that some OTHER American kids will also have the opportunity to use an XO... how do you lose out exactly? How does your kid?

I don't get it. What are you complaining about?

W

Re:Cue the OLPC griefers

[VValdo]

it costs too much and isn't being used in anyway that it keeps being promoted as being.

Rufus disagrees [bbc.co.uk].

W

Re:Patriotic???

[jorghis]

Every time someone tries to sell something to the government they spin it as "patriotic". When Halliburton sells to the government they make noise about how "patriotic" it is that they are selling to them. The same is true of everyone who builds anything from roads to aircraft carriers to now laptops. Maybe I am being cynical, but I do get tired of seeing the word "patriotic" used so many different ways for so many different reasons that it really doesnt seem to have the meaning that it used to.

Re:Patriotic???

[fictionpuss]

It's an education project, and giving a computer to a child who may not have even seen one previously has more impact than giving it to some inner city kid who would be able to access a computer at school or a library. This is also an example of why doing things because it is patriotic, is sometimes a quite short-sighted approach.

Re:what the hell...

[callmetheraven]

Cry and cry until you ruin it for the rest of us.
That tag was the best laugh I had all day.

Re:Patriotic???

[fictionpuss]

I grew up on an 8bit Z80 128k Spectrum (+2). I learned more from that and its single instruction book (no internet) than I would have from an 'industry standard' computer of the time - because I could poke and peek inside it, because it was designed to be explored and played with - the ROM/OS even had little messages inside to reward the curious.

The point is, that these kids will be able to learn more about computers and technology with the OLPC because it comes from the same sort of heritage, than they could with a box which has any other existing commercial OS (or even just plain Linux) shoved inside.

Re:Patriotic???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for summing up the major problem with the Western world-view in a single sentence.

Does EVERYTHING have to fit into an "industry"? Why do the corporations get to tell everyone what is and isn't worth pursuing?

Re:what the hell...

[CodyRazor]

You all missed the point entirely. Its not implying that people are poor BECAUSE they are black, its pointing out the gross disparity in the ratio of black people to white people that live below the poverty line. It is then your job to consider why this is and possibly what can be done about it.

Re:Patriotic???

[Anonymous Coward]

Also for several years, Halliburton was losing money in Iraq, only recently did they finally manage to make a profit.

Oh sure they were. A little creative Enron style accounting goes a long way.