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MIT spinoff's little green laptop a hit in remote Peruvian village (Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Tribune is carrying a look at one of the first OLPC deployments in Peru. "The children of Arahuay prove One Laptop's transformative conceit: that you can revolutionize education and democratize the Internet by giving a simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the worlds' poorest kids. 'Some tell me that they don't want to be like their parents, working in the fields,' first-grade teacher Erica Velasco says of her pupils. She had just sent them to the Internet to seek out photos of invertebrates - animals without backbones.'"
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Posted Dec 23, 2007 17:21 UTC (Sun) by Velmont (subscriber, #46433) [Link]

You can use bugmenot if you don't want to create a login:

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Posted Dec 23, 2007 17:57 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Is that site requiring people to log in? It didn't ask that of me...

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Posted Dec 23, 2007 18:44 UTC (Sun) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link]

The site does require a login.

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Posted Dec 23, 2007 19:29 UTC (Sun) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

Try this link instead.

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Posted Dec 23, 2007 19:32 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Seriously weird - I know I don't have an account there, and I would not have posted the link knowing that a login was required. I'd like to figure out why it's asking me. Sorry for the trouble.

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Posted Dec 24, 2007 16:36 UTC (Mon) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

If you get into sites that require a login without it asking you, there's a couple of things
that could be going on.

Serving static pages.  Slashdot does this.  When load is high, the webserver begins serving
pregenerated static pages instead of building them with database queries.

Proxy caching.  If a page is marked for public cache then even if it normally requires login
the proxy is allowed to cache it and serve it to anyone.

Microsoft Passport.  If you have an active Passport cookie, then a site that checks for it
gets your login information automatically.

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Posted Dec 24, 2007 16:58 UTC (Mon) by Lennie (guest, #49641) [Link]

Well, it's not the last 2, I don't have a Microsoft Passport thingie and I'm not using a
proxy-server and I've never visited the site.

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Posted Dec 25, 2007 14:32 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Your not going insane. 

When this article first showed up I got a login screen prompt when I clicked on the link in
the article. Now it's gone. Don't know what changed or anything like that.. as soon as I got
the login screen I lost all interest in the article.

MIT spinoff's little green laptop a hit in remote Peruvian village (Chicago Tribune)

Posted Dec 23, 2007 23:50 UTC (Sun) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

Hmmm. Article says: "The higher-than-initially-advertised price and a lack of the Windows
operating system, still being tested for the XO, have dissuaded many potential government
buyers."

If the AP were wikipedia, I'd hafta say {citation needed}. Is there any evidence of the latter
part of that claim, or is it just speculation on the part of the author?

MIT spinoff's little green laptop a hit in remote Peruvian village (Chicago Tribune)

Posted Dec 24, 2007 6:58 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I'd say it's probably speculation, and should probably have been 'due to competition from
Intel's Classmate PC and Microsoft efforts to resist the spread of this non-Windows PC' - all
IMO of course.  

Having said that, this is an amazing article - the OLPC really does seem to be having the
intended effect, unleashing the creativity and drive to learn that is often suppressed by lack
of resources and learning tools.  The OLPC really is an education tool, not a computer, and it
should be judged mostly on whether it improves the education of children in developing
countries.

MIT spinoff's little green laptop a hit in remote Peruvian village (Chicago Tribune)

Posted Dec 24, 2007 16:12 UTC (Mon) by paulnicklin (guest, #28110) [Link]

Surely concept, not conceit. An unfortunate typo

MIT spinoff's little green laptop a hit in remote Peruvian village (Chicago Tribune)

Posted Dec 25, 2007 14:54 UTC (Tue) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link]

"Conceit" also has the meaning of "idea", so the article's usage is correct, if a little
old-fashioned.

MIT spinoff's little green laptop a hit in remote Peruvian village (Chicago Tribune)

Posted Dec 28, 2007 3:56 UTC (Fri) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link]

> they don't want to be like their parents, working in the fields

they'll be cheap offshore programmers instead. now i get the idea of the whole program ;))

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