Kids Review the OLPC 193
A. N. Onymous sends us to OLPCNews for an account of kids' reactions to the OLPC XO, and comments: "My first impression is, it's just like when you give a kid a box of Lego." The video of a 10-year-old and his younger sister replacing a mobo is pretty cool.
Neato! (Score:5, Funny)
"These computers sure make a cool fort!"
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PS: I want one
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Do I really have to RTFA to figure out WTF this is trying to tell me? IIRC, the OP should actively RTFA and make decoding TLAs a little more fun than being on the receiving end of a DVDA.
Re:Neato! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there any truly common sizes for low-denomination coins around the world?
Mal-2
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You can do this with a Dell even without a quarter.
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LoB
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Needing a screwdriver requires someone to think about what they're doing and not just prod ar
Not in the article, perhaps? (Score:2)
Amazing concept (Score:4, Interesting)
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I remember reading a long time ago that contact with the back of a colour TV tube was "invariably fatal". Mind you from your experience and a bit of Googling maybe they were just being overly cautious -
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_safety.html [repairfaq.org]
"TVs and monitors may have up to 35 KV on the CRT but the current is low - a couple of milliamps. However, the CRT capacitance can hold a painful charge for a long time. "
Elsewhere they mention that if you add a c
Another Amazing concept... (Score:2)
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I can tell you that is false. It could be fatal, I suppose, but having had my share of second-anode contact, I dispute the "invariability" of that consequence.
It invariably isn't much fun, most certainly!
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I've taken apart an old computer monitor (I was ~16), and stupidly took the CRT out and cut the flyback's wires from the CRT (without discharging it, luckily it had been off for a long timeand I was using an insulating knife) and plugged it back in. If you put the flyback's main wire anywhere near its other wires you'd get a continuous arc over a few centimeters, and in the dark you coul
Re:Amazing concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Insightful)
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How about to pump water, the basic necessity of life? Or running a generator for electricity? Without electricity your day is basically over as soon as the sun sets. How about for a small tractor to aid in farming the land? Etc, etc, etc...........
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Not all poor people are dumb farmers that live in mud huts located in the middle of no where.
Bangkok has many poor people and they have power and food but no education. Even in the country side people don't live in mud huts with no electricity. Only first world morons like yourself think and talk about this crap with no idea what they're blabbering on about. KEEP THE POOR, POOR. Well, sorry asshole I beg to differ.
I have personally donated money numerous time t
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True, but you lose more mod points if you mention Americans, which is going to happen as the mods bump this ignorant pig up.
Also the old governments actions don't reflect the actions of the new government. Even under the old government the laptops would have reached the children. It would have just cost them twice as much for the project for no actual reason.
It is also off topic. Sure th
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Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, though, I like OLPC. While I'm not sure it will benefit poor African children much more than giving laptops to middle-schoolers in Seattle, it will still provide some benefits to its target demographic.
Better still, for me, it's inspired tech companies to design similar devices for rich countries, meaning I might have a competent, cheap mobile platform in my future.
Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Informative)
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So, I guess obtaining the two-stroke engine's manual isn't usefull.
You seem to have an inaccurate idea (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Money. In the modern world, everything costs money, including getting water for irrigation, spare parts for those tractors, etc. And this is the root of all the evil that follows in this list.
2. An industry to support that agriculture. Just knowing how an internal combustion engine works, doesn't mean that you can just get a hammer and an anvil and make a tractor in a village smithy. Until this problem is solved, their agriculture is a case of either (A) inefficiently doing it by hand, or (B) importing expensive foreign tractors and spare parts, and see #1: that's money they just don't have.
3. A market where they can get that much needed money for their produce. And not just "market" as in selling it in the next city, but some kind of _export_ market, because you can't import much without exporting the equivalent. If you want to import something that costs US Dollars or Euro, you have to first sell something for US Dollars or Euro. Or you can take a loan, but then you're soon back to square one: you have to export something for US Dollars or Euro to pay it back.
But there they compete with the _massively_ subsidized EU and USA agricultural exports. And they lose.
It's as simple as that: if you and I make the same product, but the government subsidizes more than half the price of mine, you _will_ lose. That is their problem.
4. Some source of credit without all sorts of strings attached. A lot of "foreign aid" or "loans" actually come with strings attached, like "you must use that money to buy grain from the USA" or "you must use that money to buy trucks from Germany." (But when they break down, heh, you better have your own money to buy spare parts with.) Unfortunately while that may relieve a famine in the short run, in the long run it also just does even more to bankrupt the local farms and industry respectively.
5. An infrastructure. You can't have a modern agriculture without water pumps for irrigation, roads, silos, fuel pumps for the trucks and tractors, electricity, etc. And that's just infrastructure they don't have. In some cases they don't even have clean water for drinking, much less water for irrigation. And don't have the money to build an infrastructure.
6. In some cases, they don't have competent or honest politicians either. A lot of economies are run into the ground not because they don't know what an engine is, but because they're run by an incompetent, corrupt, kleptocratic clique.
Basically their main problem is that they're too poor, not that some white man has to come and teach them basic agriculture.
It's damn near impossible to start from zero and industrialize by your own efforts any more. It's a vicious circle: as long as you don't have high-tech stuff to export for the big bucks, you can't buy the machine tools and know-how to get even your basic industry started. Raw material and agricultural products are so damn cheap that you simply can't export enough of them to get some serious industrialization going.
Stalin did industrialize the USSR in the 30's... by starving a few million peasants (a lot of them Ukrainians) to death. Literally to death. That was the only way to export enough grain to be able to buy all the machine tools and blueprints he needed to start a serious industry.
Not only that kind of a solution isn't practicable in most countries, the problem just got much worse in the meantime too.
So, anyway, ironically giving them some computer skills may actually do them a hell of a lot more good than trying to teach them basic agriculture (which they already know.) If they can at least work offshore tech support, or assemble computers in a sweatshop, they and their country might even get _some_ dollars out of that. And, who knows, maybe get at least started on building the industry and infrastructure. The agriculture will follow.
Point number six should actually be #1 (Score:3, Insightful)
The economic friction caused by having to bribe the city police, the port inspector, and the cargo handlers can make small-scale export unprofitable. Or, if you look at the example of Zimbabwe
Dunno if it's just culture (Score:2)
I don't really know if it's just culture, or just the same humans in very different circumstances, though. I'd like to be able to chest-thump and say "we're richer because our culture had better values", but looking around me, I think humans are humans everywhere.
Largely any country's or human group' actions, I think, are dictated by what works well. Whether it's camping in video
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It's also important to remember that corruption is often as much a product of a poor economy as it is a cause. Your country needs a police force, but your government doesn't have the money to pay them. It may make sense to look the other way w
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In an agrarian culture, a two-stroke engine can perform useful work.
Suppose you live in an agrarian culture. You probably can't afford a two stroke engine, but even assuming you have one and can keep it running, you can't make much of a living. You see, the US subsidizes their farmers to produce a surplus, and they do so pretty cheaply since they have the money to invest in technology to start with, decreasing the overall cost. That American (and other first world) is too cheap for you to compete with so you, like most of your neighbors, are forced to give up farming and
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Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course we all know it'll probably be mostly used for pr0n, but that's just a good hook to get kids online and techno-literate. And it's not like you coculdn't say the same thing about us when we were kids....
d
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You can't do this, can you?
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Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Insightful)
From another angle, when the kids saw me replacing motherboards, several of them were fascinated. One of the older kids learned how to do it just because he wanted to, and helped us out for several weeks. Now, I'll admit that it is seems a useless skill, but that's only if you consider learning and enjoyment for its own sake to be useless. No, he won't likely be able to monetize the skill, but honestly he'll be lucky if he can monetize anything. So why not enjoy life in the meantime? And any brain exercise is good for these kids, as it sharpens the mind. There are geeks over there too -- they just don't have access to the stuff we do.
Cheers.
Re:Amazing concept (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the older kids learned how to do it just because he wanted to.... Now, I'll admit that it is seems a useless skill....
In the long run, possibly about as useless as writing a 386 kernel just for the fun of it.
Nope, nothing good ever came of doing tech for the sake of loving tech.
Mod parent up,
pww
Re:Amazing concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Because at the moment my mother will not use a computer, because almost every other action you do you will get a pop-up, asking you to decide on a technical question, with lots of choices. If you are not computer literate, this is a HUGE barrier to start. And what's up with the clicking. Sometimes you right-click, sometimes you left-click, sometimes you have to double click, sometimes you have to hold the button pressed. My mother asked me when you have to double-click and when not. Say, in the start menu, one click will be enough to start an application. But on the desktop, you'll have to double-click.
I hope the OPLC will be a bit like that, removing the non-obvious computer behavior that has settled itself into almost every desktop GUI around. As for your example about the kid, he was doing something technical, working with foreigners, getting used to the kind of work that is done with computers. Those skills start you up and get you somewhere. As a 16 year old I brought the newspaper around, how is that for a useless skill? But you learn how to deal with angry costumers, get responsibility (early starts!), and lots of things you add to your the luggage that make you who you are.
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Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you have any clue how things happen in 90% of the world? You don't pay someone $100 per hour to repair for you, you do it yourself.
Remember that 90% of the world is NOT the US of A. I live in one of the most developed countries in Asia, Hong Kong, and we commonly pay people to fix things. From changing lamps (not the bulb, but the fitting) to doing the wallpaper and fixing your toilet and hinges in your kitchen door. DIY is barely heard of. And we pay roughly HK$50 per hour (about US$5). Computers I do myself of course but then that's my hobby.
About half of the world (India 1 bln, China 1 bln, and half a bln or so in the rest of Asi
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Technically true, but developping a love for computers will help them in other ways.
I mean, by old skills with ZX-81 BASIC or (one year later) converting assembly to hex by hand because you couldn't fit even an assembler in 1K RAM, are technically worthless today too. Noone would pay you to convert to hex by hand, unless it's as a drunken dare. But the fact that
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If you stopped at that point, you'd have had a good post. The rest is -1 Flamebait because it's generally from a very narrow view of politics, and not very helpful in a thread about how our capitalist economy has destroyed the Third World.
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Actually, it's the Third World that's trying to be capitalist, but they can't compete with the government-subsidized agriculture of the First.
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Lichtenstein? Saudi Arabia? It would be economically, demographically and environmentally catastrophic for some countries to become self-sufficient in food production, just as it would be to have New York City do so.
Still OT: it was more complex (Score:2)
Much of England's motivation to expand its colonies _fast_ at that time was precisely overpopulation, and the fact that it was starting to have serious problems feeding its population any more. So in effect, the most successful colonial empire was built by those _least_ able to feed their population. Spain, France and the Dutch (which at the time also included the fertile lands of Belgium, plus the trade power to get all the grain they needed), couldn't compete with the desperation of th
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In the late eighties and nineties, at least here in the US, you hear
Re:Amazing concept (Score:5, Insightful)
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What makes you think it can't? In fact, that is exactly the point of OLPC: to be used as an educational tool. What you can teach a person with a general purpose device like a networked, self-powered, open source computer platform is pretty much limitless.
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With help from an adult... (Score:2)
A cute video but not very scientific evidence that this is transferable to any two children anywhere in the world. For all we know the two kids are complete hackers and spend all their days messing around with lego, meccano, taking things apart and putting them back t
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They have used computers before, but they weren't geeks. I didn't ask them if they played with lego, etc. That would have been a good question.
And yes, in the trials around the world there have been suitations where groups of students have learnt how to repair the XOs for others in their schools. They set up small XO "hospitals" to fix broken laptops. Also, it is worth noting that as the design has progressed through the 4 diff
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Umm, actually I didn't see them pull the mainboard out. They pulled out a lot of screws while an adult supervised, and I didn't see them actually get it back together and functional. It looked like as much of a pain in the ass as disassembling a regular laptop. Taking it apart is the easy step, getting everything back in working order is a much larger one. I think the kids looked interested enough to do it though.
I think it's a
AT&T Star(?) did this (Score:2)
Re:Amazing concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this real world testing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Once the OLPC is distributed, there will be a growing population of kids who have "used computers before".
And I don't think the plan is to limit the maintenance teams to 8 and 10 year old kids. Even if your assumption is correct, and unprivileged kids in poor countries can't fix things as well as these Canadian kids can, do you think that maybe unprivileged 14 and 16 year olds might be
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Guided step by step by some hipster-looking amish geek dude in the background. If I stood behind someone and told them exactly how to disassemble something I'm sure they could take apart an iBook G3 and put it back together perfectly too even though it's very complicated. Honestly, to me, that OLPC seemed like a major nightma
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Re:Is this real world testing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, some of those people are quite rich and would only need your assistance with getting vast sums of money from their corrupt countries...
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12-year-old post (Score:2, Funny)
Then twelve year old "SG" made a surprisingly well-written literary statement about the $100 laptop" on Freedom to Tinker: My expectations for this computer were, I must admit, not very high. But it completely took me by surprise. It was cleverly designed, imaginative, straightforward, easy to understand (I was given no instructions on how to use it. It was just, "Here. Figure it out yourself."), useful and simple, entertaining, dependable, really a "stick to the basics" kind of computer. It's the perfect laptop for the job. Great for first time users, it sets the mood by offering a bunch of entertaining and easy games and a camera.
Damn! I've gotta work harder on my posts from now on!
New World Meet the Old World (Score:2, Funny)
Chinese kids are even cheaper. (Score:5, Informative)
Information Age (Score:3, Insightful)
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You say "slave" like it's a BAD thing. (Score:2)
It'd be just like the stoopid UNICEF collections we used to do as kids, except we'd actually be doing something directly applicable, and learning something in the process, not jus
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uh oh (Score:4, Funny)
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"guided" disassembly (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only thing any adult provided me with was the money for the parts and a good amount of faith in my ability (thanks, Dad).
Kids can actually do quite a lot. The only instruction I had was from a book [amazon.com]. If these kids can't read, they can probably get enough instruction from a video.
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Because we never ever have some kind of older person teach, help or guide children? I mean, if some adults were actively paying attention to these kids and helping them to learn they might be stifling them. These hypothetical long arms could be protecting them from harm or providing h
missing the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I want to know is whether kids can actually do anything useful/interesting on these laptops.
Re:missing the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kids being able to put the thing back together again in a working state shows that thought has been given to the design to make it kid-proof (or at least kid-resistant.)
Worst music ever (Score:3, Insightful)
Soft jazz: neither soft nor jazz.
Child labor (Score:5, Funny)
Think Back.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If I hadn't had occasion to do things like this as a child, my mechanical and computer aptitude would probably be nothing like what it is now. I commend these folks for what they are doing. The fact that there is an adult in the video "helping" doesn't mean anything to me, as I can see the value in this that goes beyond our "television reality challenges" expectations when we read something about a challenge with kids.
The real challenge is that they got two kids to sit still in one place long enough to even take instructions like this and still manage to accomplish the task.
On another note, I'm tempted to buy one of these things for myself, looks like a great platform for DamnSmallLinux.
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If you didn't believe it before... (Score:2)
Re:spare mobo's (Score:4, Informative)
http://wiki.laptop.org/images/1/10/Proto-a-front.
Note the near-absence of electrolytic caps, especially the junky through-hole ones you find on your typical motherboard.
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No eletrolitic capacitors, very few and small inductors and a battery, that will be the point of failure of the system.
Ok, now I want one of those.
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If and when they have OLPCs there, there will be.
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Er, why would you think that? I doubt your average Ethiopian computer user buys a brand new machine everytime a component fails, so logically they'll be a lot of dealers in components.
Ethiopian Apple Store (Score:2)
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