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Bill Gates showing is true self
PSI-KILLER
Needs help
in Zocalo v2.0
I think my feelings about him are starting to change into a negative sorta way. It appears that if Mr. Gates doesn't make his "cut" out of something he gets very angry. Hate to be him on judgement day. I honestly belive now that all the Bull shit about helping the poor is just a method to get a write off for tax purposes!!! what a phoney
[url]http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/03/16/gates.100.laptop.reut/index.html[/url]
[url]http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/03/16/gates.100.laptop.reut/index.html[/url]
Comments
Really, Most of the cost is in software? What a Windows pushing bitch...
Putting technology in someone's hands for $100 a pop vs ~$500 for some BSOD POS?
I'm just amazed that people haven't seen through Gates (saviour of the world) mentality long ago?
;)
Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest men in the world by being benevolent to his competition.
While I'm not sure what good a laptop (hand-cranked or otherwise) is going to do to any community that lacks the basic amenities of a modern society, I'm sure it's not going to help Microsoft if it doesn't come with a HDD to store all those critical patches. :D
Not sure why he was being so silly since there are plenty of hand-held devices that run the PPC version of Windows and have an even smaller display.
Even Bill Gates can have a bad hair day.... never mind.
[B]While I'm not sure what good a laptop (hand-cranked or otherwise) is going to do to any community that lacks the basic amenities of a modern society[/B][/QUOTE]
They're for educational purposes. You can provide them with a massive number of electronic forms of text books that a child can use for the entire span of their education. Much, much cheaper than providing physical textbooks to every child. It also gives the children experience with a bit of modern computer technology (it's worth pointing out at this point that these things arn't going solely to people living in mudhuts with no food - Africa and India and places like that do have things like houses and electricity). As infrastructure gradually gets developed in these regions, eventually they'll get some form of internet access, and they'll be ready to use it. Many areas already have some sort of community net access they can use to communicate with the wider area. Finally, it gives the children a bit of [i]hope[/i]. Someone provides them a piece of high technology, and it's [i]theirs[/i]. It gives them hope that they can make a better future by learning than the one they're currently heading towards.
Bill Gates is just pissed because he wants to be the one to do it, and he wants it all to look good for MS. His statement about the software being the bit that costs is perfectly correct in the western world where every full computer you buy has to pay the MS tax.
[B]Good post Biggles. [/B][/QUOTE]
I second that. The microsoft tax. How apt.
[URL=Microsoft unveils Origami, a small mobile PC]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11732808/[/URL]
It's quite a bit more expensive of course and it doesn't come with a crank....
His problem is simple, take a $100.00 laptop and load a Non-Windows OS on it and he gets nothing in return. Of course he's going to badmouth it.
Google acquired or is in the process of acquiring SUN Microsystems which means those laptops may run some form of Unix or Linux.
While these laptops will allow them to get on the internet, there's not much that can't be taught with a blackboard and a few pieces of chalk.
"I'm hungry, here take this laptop, it will give you hope."
"My drinking water is dirty, here take this laptop, it will give you hope."
"I'm sick, here take this laptop, it will give you hope."
"I'm cold, here take this laptop, it will give you hope."
"There's war where I live, here take this laptop, it will give you hope."
I don't want to be sarcastic, but maybe they should include a bible too, because it's the thought that counts.
The way I see it, those $100.00 laptops will only make us feel better but not them.
I don't know if you have noticed, all the hotspots in the world, that we see on the news every day are places where people don't want our help.
I'm not saying I have got the answers, but I'm a bit unsure about our own motives.
I'm not against giving out $100.00 laptops, I'm sure there are many people that will be able to do something useful with them but I doubt that those people are lacking hope to begin with but rather opportunities and infrastructure.
[B]I don't know if you have noticed, all the hotspots in the world, that we see on the news every day are places where people don't want our help.[/B][/QUOTE]
I don't think that you have noticed that all those hotspots you see on the news every day arn't the only places with poorer people who lack the modern comforts of western society. There are plenty of places in the world where there arn't such wars and famines, but people still lack certain things like an education and the ability to communicate easily with the village over the hill.
I have an engineering friend who works as a volunteer helping set up new infrastructure for villages in remote parts of places such as Indonesia and India. From what he tells me, what most of them lack is not intelligence, it's not infrastructure (they have power, it's not great but it's there, many of the villages have basic water supplies), what they lack is education. And while the parents are busy keeping the village alive, the children need something else to keep their hopes up. That thing is the chance to learn. Then, when they grow up, they can help make their villages and local regions better off through better application of things like farming techniques and more reliable water supplies. A laptop helps provide that chance to learn by providing better materials. If the children can go home and learn a bit away from school at night, once it's too dark to do anything else, then the laptops are helping. It doesn't have to be one per child. It could be one per family, or building, or however their society is arranged. But it still helps. Cheap, robust high-tech for those parts of the world are not the whole solution, and they arn't the first part of the solution, they arn't even the most important part of the solution, but they can help.
[B]I don't think that you have noticed that all those hotspots you see on the news every day arn't the only places with poorer people who lack the modern comforts of western society. There are plenty of places in the world where there arn't such wars and famines, but people still lack certain things like an education and the ability to communicate easily with the village over the hill.[/B][/QUOTE]
True, but looking back at our own history, we've come a long way WITHOUT digital communication.
Somehow I don't think that the internet is the magical solution to all of our and their problems. Again, there are many people directly involved in helping out, including engineers, dentists, surgeons and they are certainly having a positive impact and those getting that help are certainly grateful for it. I agree that there are many more places where help is needed that are ignored by the media.
I have another example of what I'm talking about, there have been attempts like this before. All those factories built in Africa by Western companies with Western technology were meant to jumpstart the local economies of those countries. Those factories ran for a short while until things (machines, engines, etc.) started to break down and no money was available for spare parts because they were heavily in dept and all they were left with were ruins and depts.
I'm not saying that this new attempt is just a variation of an old theme, but it takes more than just laptops to get education started. I don't believe that a $2.00 paperback is harder to get in those countries than a $100.00 laptop.
What I do believe is that the problems are local and that the solutions are local too.
SciFi has shown similar situations too. Two undevelopped warring factions, the Enterprise shows up and one faction asks for a few crates of those useful Phasers to solve their dispute. Maybe it is comparing apples to oranges, but I am very critical of putting technical solutions to social problems.
What do they do with those laptops when they do break down, because they will, that's a given. Who is going to pay for technical training and support? Who's paying for the necessary communications network? Who is taking care of said network?
[QUOTE][B]
I have an engineering friend who works as a volunteer helping set up new infrastructure for villages in remote parts of places such as Indonesia and India. From what he tells me, what most of them lack is not intelligence, it's not infrastructure (they have power, it's not great but it's there, many of the villages have basic water supplies), what they lack is education.
[/B][/QUOTE]
What they probably need are teachers. Education isn't some kind of dehydrated soup that they only need to add hot water to. Intelligence and education go hand in hand. You can be intelligent without being educated. While the opposite isn't the case. A laptop with internet access will allow them to satisfy their curiosity, but it's also a double-edged sword. While it may give them hope, it may also demoralize them because it will take a long time and a lot of effort to harvest the fruits of their labor. A common misconception about the so-called "have-nots" is that they tend to think what others achieved just fell into their lap. In that we are lucky that we don't have to start from scratch, but we still need to work hard every day of the week. And while they do have to work even harder every day for their own survival, they are not in a position to spend time in front of a laptop. It takes a certain social stability before they can even think about getting educated. "Sorry, I can't do my homework right now, I have to worry about having something to eat tomorrow, my mom is sick and my dad broke a leg last week."
[QUOTE][B]And while the parents are busy keeping the village alive, the children need something else to keep their hopes up. That thing is the chance to learn. Then, when they grow up, they can help make their villages and local regions better off through better application of things like farming techniques and more reliable water supplies. A laptop helps provide that chance to learn by providing better materials. If the children can go home and learn a bit away from school at night, once it's too dark to do anything else, then the laptops are helping. It doesn't have to be one per child. It could be one per family, or building, or however their society is arranged. But it still helps. Cheap, robust high-tech for those parts of the world are not the whole solution, and they arn't the first part of the solution, they arn't even the most important part of the solution, but they can help. [/B][/QUOTE]
Again, I'm sure there will be a whole range of people who will benefit from being connected but as I said above the internet is not going to help if you haven't reached a certain comfort level which is achieved by other, more tangible means.
Absolve all debts, say we're sorry, close our borders and let the people themselves become what they will and can.
This is a horrid scenario in many senses, but nevertheless in my opinion the best, although a bit cruel way, to reach the best outcome. I mean come on, we're producing laptops to people who more or less don't have food? What the hell are we thinking? And since the total death toll of the population is so severe because of all the factors, a generation is rather short-lived. More to the point, if we teach the people in developing countries _our_ ways simply for PR purposes and to look good, we're probably doing them a hell of a lot of damage in the long run. Although it might seem that we're helping them in short-term.
Just look at our Corporations...
;)
[B]Absolve all debts, say we're sorry, close our borders and let the people themselves become what they will and can.[/b][/quote]
This is what I think we should do for many parts of the world. There's too much trying to force western ways onto people with other concepts of how to run a society.
[quote][b]I mean come on, we're producing laptops to people who more or less don't have food?[/B][/QUOTE]
Why do you people have this fixation that only parts of the world with massive famine or war are poor? Providing laptops to people who are starving or being shot at every day would be pointless, but there are large parts of the world where food and water supplies are suitable and there arn't warlords running around with their private armies.
[B]True, but looking back at our own history, we've come a long way WITHOUT digital communication. [/b][/quote]
Does that mean that others shouldn't get its benefits as soon as possible?
[quote][b]Somehow I don't think that the internet is the magical solution to all of our and their problems.[/b][/quote]
I never said it was. You're fixated on the internet idea. Not to mention that being able to communicate with other areas around you doesn't require world-wide internet access.
[quote][b]I have another example of what I'm talking about, there have been attempts like this before. All those factories built in Africa by Western companies with Western technology were meant to jumpstart the local economies of those countries. Those factories ran for a short while until things (machines, engines, etc.) started to break down and no money was available for spare parts because they were heavily in dept and all they were left with were ruins and depts.[/b][/quote]
That whole idea was fundamentally flawed. There's too much corruption in the world for something like that to work. (These laptops are likely to face similar problems in many places without care, particularly cities, I think, - and that's a major issue I doubt the people behind it have considered yet.)
[quote][b]I'm not saying that this new attempt is just a variation of an old theme, but it takes more than just laptops to get education started. I don't believe that a $2.00 paperback is harder to get in those countries than a $100.00 laptop.[/b][/quote]
At the moment, they're both equally hard to get. But provide 2 or 3 $100 laptops to schools with all the books they could want on them and your logistics are much simpler then trying to provide them with dozens or hundreds of large heavy textbooks.
[quote][b]What I do believe is that the problems are local and that the solutions are local too.
SciFi has shown similar situations too. Two undevelopped warring factions, the Enterprise shows up and one faction asks for a few crates of those useful Phasers to solve their dispute. Maybe it is comparing apples to oranges, but I am very critical of putting technical solutions to social problems. [/b][/quote]
Why are the laptops supposed to be solving all their social problems? They're not. They just help the children move up a little. As you say, you can't fix social problems with technical solutions (well, other than annihilating them via weapons technology...), but again, not all of the 3rd world is wrapped up in warfare and social strife.
[quote][b]What do they do with those laptops when they do break down, because they will, that's a given. Who is going to pay for technical training and support? Who's paying for the necessary communications network? Who is taking care of said network?[/b][/quote]
I don't know how they plan to fix them when they break, but at $100 I wouldn't be surprised if it's something like "if it breaks, send them a new one." As for the communications network: why is it necessary? It's a benefit, but it's not vital. Just like the laptops arn't vital.
[quote][b]What they probably need are teachers. Education isn't some kind of dehydrated soup that they only need to add hot water to. Intelligence and education go hand in hand. You can be intelligent without being educated. While the opposite isn't the case. [/b][/quote]
In most places I'm talking about they have teachers. What they lack are more resources to teach with.
[quote][b]A laptop with internet access will allow them to satisfy their curiosity, but it's also a double-edged sword.[/b][/quote]
There you go with your internet fixation again.
[quote][b]While it may give them hope, it may also demoralize them because it will take a long time and a lot of effort to harvest the fruits of their labor. A common misconception about the so-called "have-nots" is that they tend to think what others achieved just fell into their lap. In that we are lucky that we don't have to start from scratch, but we still need to work hard every day of the week. And while they do have to work even harder every day for their own survival, they are not in a position to spend time in front of a laptop. It takes a certain social stability before they can even think about getting educated.[/b][/quote]
You think social stability is just going to magically appear if you [i]don't[/i] educate people? What do you think brought about the increasing social stability in the western world over the past few centuries? A part was increasing spread of education to the lowly plebs (before you start putting words in my mouth, note that I said "a part" not "all"). By educating people you can help them increase their means of survival. Education doesn't have to mean going to university and getting a commerce degree. It can mean something as simple as "here's how you read, here's how you count, here's why plants grow, and from that here's how you can figure out when the best time to plant your crops is."
[quote][b]"Sorry, I can't do my homework right now, I have to worry about having something to eat tomorrow, my mom is sick and my dad broke a leg last week."[/b][/quote]
There are plenty of people in western countries in the same situation. Should we not bother trying to provide them with education, too?
[quote][b]Again, I'm sure there will be a whole range of people who will benefit from being connected but as I said above the internet is not going to help if you haven't reached a certain comfort level which is achieved by other, more tangible means. [/B][/QUOTE]
Internet fixation again.
[QUOTE]The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.[/QUOTE]
So, if I understand this correctly the whole point of this operation is to teach them how to type on a keyboard???
Wow, I didn't know becoming a typist was such an inspiring proposition. Let me try to remember, when I was in my teens I dreamed of becoming a.... secretary? Come one man, I don't believe that was on anyone's mind in that age. Most of those kids dream of becoming a professional soccer player, or doctor, or pilot, a musician....
You must admit that removing the internet from this project would significantly reduce the educational potential of handing out laptops that don't come with HDD's and software.
That's like handing out cellphones without a way to making a call.
Education is not possible if you don't have certain social conditions that allow this to happen. Education is doing just fine in say, Cuba. I've seen a documentary about their educational system there and it's quite different from what you'd expect since it differs quite a lot from our Western standards, yet it seems to work quite well for such a contained community. It's not the one-size fits all approach we are so used to. Their system tries to identify early on what the child's abilities are and tries to channel those abilities to a profession that the child will most likely be best at. I don't know if you've noticed, but our own educational system is not really about getting people excited. On the contrary and it takes a lot of endurance for a student to get to the point where he or she can actually study in his or her field of interest.
As an example, it was Charles the Great who made education mandatory in Europe. If you let people do as they please, that includes children, I'm not sure you'll get a society that we have now.
[B]Now you're just purposefully ignoring much of what I've said all along. [/B][/QUOTE]
Am I? You came with the internet fixation. I'm saying what's the point of having a glorified digital typewriter if you can't communicate?
Need i say more?
[B]Books. Lots and lots of books in a tini space. From the Classics to psychology to self improvement. An offline snapshot of the wikipedia. cookbook. accounting. How to build things better and cheaper.
Need i say more? [/B][/QUOTE]
Exactly, but without the internet, how would they get those digital books? The internet connection must be part of the solution. That laptop doesn't come with software or a hard disk drive to store anything on it and judging from the picture there isn't much of a way to connect much else to it.
Upgrades would also be unneeded - a solid operating system would need no patches and most of the information wouldn't become out of date.
I don't hear much about them anymore...
Been thinking of learning how to make one and then do a few issues of various subjects.
:)
I will add to it, though, on a couple of minor points:
Lack of upgradability, a hard drive, and various other points means the OS can be very, very simple and thus very, very reliable (they're using a very stripped down Linux). Because every laptop is the same, you can configure it heavily to work well and then not worry about whether it will run on other hardware.
Flash memory, from their website: "with 500MB of Flash memory." Considering you can fit a stripped down Linux OS into tens of megabytes (if that), that's a fuckload of textbooks, with lots of space for anything else the kid will want to do.
Internet: just because communications isn't vital and isn't the only application, that doesn't mean you can't take advantage of it if it's present. Try not to be so black and white on the idea. You'll note I'm saying "communications" here, not "internet." Being able to send messages around your local area of villages would be a great thing for kids, as well has having a concrete benefit for the rest of the people: you can do things like send a message to the other side of the valley asking them to send over the doctor. Kids in cities would also find it useful. There are many projects in India (the one I know of specifically from talking to one of my lecturers who worked on it was in northern India, in a mountainous region) that set up simple, robust communications links between isolated villages. Their robustness means maintenance is not needed as often, and apparently the government was involved in helping maintain the networks. There was another that went through slashdot last year about a guy who set up a robust wireless network (as I recall, hand generators were used in places) between six villages in South America. And, from the laptop website, "The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network."
[B]on a side note (since we are on education), are ebooks a thing of the past now, or are they still in play?[/B][/QUOTE]
Sony has a very nice ebook reader using electronic ink that they're releasing this year (very soon, in fact, I think). It will apparently go for 17 books on a single charge (since e-ink only needs power when changing the display), and will read all the major ebook formats - PDF, Sony's one, and a few others. Whether it will take off remains to be seen.
e books 9and anything digital for that matter) seems to naturally support the little guys more than the big ones. I can see smaller publishing houses be able to offer texts and compete head to head with the big boys in the digital format. Then again the profs who love themselves would make the class read their own 'unpublished' texts.
[B]As an example, it was Charles the Great who made education mandatory in Europe. If you let people do as they please, that includes children, I'm not sure you'll get a society that we have now. [/B][/QUOTE]
You do know that Europe isnt one country, right?