LWN: Comments on "OLPC hardware details posted"

Some good footnotes on Darfur / East Africa rainfall

xoddam — Wed, 31 May 2006 05:42:35 +0000

are to be found at the bottom of this (otherwise not entirely relevant)
article:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/05/30/the-inspectors...

conflict resolution requires richer neighbours

xoddam — Wed, 31 May 2006 04:00:33 +0000

I reckon crime was a much bigger problem in Glasgow in 1986 than it is
now, too (I lived there 2001-2003). Inequality breeds disrespect;
development permits civility.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/2001/1125inco...

There is no good solution to the Darfur conflict; probably no solution at
all except depopulation, which is proceeding apace. The region no longer
receives sufficient rainfall to support its population without severe
rationing, which it doesn't have a government strong enough to impose, so
violence, famine and mass exodus are the inevitable result. The only
sensible long-term use of such land resources is nomadic, following the
monsoon, but a long wet period in the 1960s led to permanent settlement
and rapid population growth while long-term nomads who failed to settle
are now denied territory in all parts of their range.

The Sahel no longer receives a reliable monsoon, almost certainly because
of global warming. That, and inadvisable cultivation of marginal
near-desert lands, is likely to hinder any reasonable development of most
arid near-sub-Saharan parts Africa for a long time to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel_drought
http://www.eden-foundation.org/project/desertif.html

Congo and Sierra Leone certainly don't fall into this zone though, so
your scenario of constructive 'neigbourly' development may be applicable
elsewhere.

OLPC: A big hurdle in the race to the bottom.

xoddam — Wed, 31 May 2006 02:27:29 +0000

> And why not higher-income countries such as Spain, France,
> Germany, Italy or the USA itself!

Exactly. Conditions in the poorer neighbourhoods of some 'higher-income'
countries are not very different from everyday conditions in the
'middle-income' countries you list. We've all been running the same
'race to the bottom' in recent decades -- and wealthy countries which
have gutted their welfare systems have long overtaken the Taiwans and are
rapidly gaining on the Brazils.

Anyone can benefit from decent educational infrastructure. I think this
project can help.

(Oh and by the way: thugs are people too!)

Laptop for all?

JoeBuck — Tue, 30 May 2006 19:05:32 +0000

Fortunately, the corporations have not yet managed to create a world where selling a cheaper product is a legal offense. Some countries (including the US) have "anti-dumping" laws, meaning that you can't deliberately sell a product at a loss just to put your competitor out of business, and sometimes these laws are abused.

The key enabler to the $100 laptop is a $0 cost for the operating system; Microsoft currently charges large manufacturers like Dell and HP about $50.

A $200 laptop in a retail store is not possible if Microsoft has to be paid $50 for the Windows license. The retailer is going to need a 40% markup, minimum, to pay the employees and the rent and make some profit, maybe more, and the manufacturer needs a profit, plus some overhead to allow for replacement of defective machines. In a few years, Microsoft is either going to have to settle for $20 instead of $50 on low-end machines or lose market share.

what about the thugs?

emkey — Tue, 30 May 2006 18:20:59 +0000

If only that were strictly true.

Idiology is intrinsic to human nature. To elaborate/clarify, we are not strictly logical creatures. You don't have to look very far to see this is true. We have all sorts of "religions". Some involve churches, others involve politics. Where humans exist, so does factionalism. And we don't generally debate our differences in a calm and logical manner. If we did, there would be a lot more consensus in the world.

It is highly dangerous to assume we are logical creatures. In my opinion it is a fallacy of the worst sort. Positive change will come when we acknowledge and work to compensate for our flaws.

Thats my 2 cents anyway.

Laptop for all?

kh — Tue, 30 May 2006 16:17:13 +0000

With all the fights they have been having with manfacturers with the promise to sell them to only a very limited market, I wonder what problems they would face if they stated they were going to offer the thing to anyone. I think you would at least see proxy (e.g. SCO) lawsuits. This may commodize a number of markets away from some very large companies - and they don't seem too happy.

Laptop for all?

mattdm — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:18:42 +0000

In fact, from the FAQ:

In 2007 we plan to explore innovative ways of financing the laptops peer-to-peer, where kids in the USA, for example, buy them for kids in Africa, perhaps the same age and gender, knowing the specific child. Others have already started a website that sells our laptop for $300, so the balance of money can be used to support the poorest children.

Sounds great!

what about the thugs?

jstAusr — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:10:54 +0000

Maybe your education could be enhanced with one of those laptops.

I believe lack of education is the root of the problem. Education can allow people to see the deception of those that they follow.

Laptop for all?

mattdm — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:07:02 +0000

But why can't the be used to benefit the children of wealthier nations as well, at a non-subsidized price? I'm not sure the artificial restriction of "you instantly know it was sold illegally" is strong enough to be effective. A lot of people won't care, or will rationalize ("that kid needed money for food more than a computer"). Instead, the earlier poster's proposal sounds great -- selling them to anyone at a low price means that there's no reason anyone would want to buy one that's meant for some other child.

Laptop for all?

niner — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:56:51 +0000

The OLPC product will not be marketed normally, but sold directly to governments in high quantities, so they can give it to the children. This has a nice side-effect: if any of these laptops are found in any regular market, you instantly know, that it was sold illegaly.

These laptops are for education of children, not for being sold for money. Ideally, they are unsellable, so they can only benefit the children, in the way that seems most useful

Laptop for all?

tzafrir — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:13:48 +0000

If it will be in mass production, vendors will be able to afford lower margins and hence lower price.

Laptop for all?

eru — Tue, 30 May 2006 12:56:59 +0000

Exactly my thoughts! This kind of scheme would benefit both first-world gadget freaks, and the 3. world school kids. And I'm sure the OLPC people have thought of this already. Wonder what is stopping them from doing it?

Laptop for all?

rvfh — Tue, 30 May 2006 11:20:16 +0000

I can't help thinking that this laptop would be ideal for a number of applications, outside of the current scope, for example in my hands!

That made me wonder if it would not be possible to have scheme, sort of: I buy one of these for $300, which I think is a good price for it, and two computers go free to some children in the world.

After all, a lot of us first world people can afford $300 easily, whereas minimum salary here in Brazil is R$350, about $160...

conflict resolution requires richer neighbours

copsewood — Tue, 30 May 2006 11:12:50 +0000

When my brother visited Ghana to audition music and dance groups to perform in Scotland last year he travelled through rural areas on the local busses and reckoned crime was more of a problem in Glasgow than in Ghana. Most of the people there are dirt poor and determined to improve their lot by legitimate means. When the peaceful neighbours of the few places in Africa which suffer civil war can afford it, these neighbours will want to help in conflict resolution. So maybe the long-term solution to long-standing conflicts in places like Darfur, Congo and Seirra Leone will come from more rapidly-developing neighbours. Currently the UN has the will and the authority to do conflict resolution but not the funding.

what about the thugs?

irios — Tue, 30 May 2006 09:09:15 +0000

You're right. I sadly don't see the government in Congo delivering millions of computers among it's scholars just yet; AK47s seem tragically more likely; but there are many countries where the concept would work, like China, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Senegal, Morocco, Cabo Verde, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Brazil ... even Cuba if you-know-who stops buggering them. And why not higher-income countries such as Spain, France, Germany, Italy or the USA itself!

what about the thugs?

MathFox — Tue, 30 May 2006 08:46:53 +0000

The OLPC project as I see it is ment for countries where government is stable enough to have a working school system, people grow sufficient food, etc. The 90% of the third world that is not in the newspapers.

what about the thugs?

eru — Tue, 30 May 2006 07:55:08 +0000

training materials and recruitment propoganda,

Do these conflicts even involve training materials and propaganda? The impressions I have got from various accounts is that these childs soldiers with kalashnikovs are "recruited" by being stolen from their homes or collected from streets, then brainwashed in brutal camps.

As to the uses of the device, it has a WLAN, which is not a long-range radio. It would reach other units inside a school or maybe a village, but certainly not over several kilometers of jungle or hilly terrain. So it would be useless for organizing guerrilla units. Inexpensive walkie-talkies that are already readily available all over the world work much better for that, they are more rugged and do not require their user's to be literate.

what about the thugs?

filteredperception — Tue, 30 May 2006 07:36:07 +0000

No, not trolling.

I agree with your way out.

No, I don't __WANT__ to bog down the system.

In my scenario, the warlords are giving the stolen laptops with replacement OSs (perhaps same distro, but the wikipedia replaced with maps and survival manuals, and tools for connection to the internet replaced with tools that only allow connections to their own networks. And silent keyloggers so they can watch what their underlings are doing).

While the troops given such stolen laptops might get some computer literacy education that might inspire them to think they have more options in life, the more likely scenario is that the laptops are given to the field commanders that are already completely corrupt and ruling over their child soldiers with ruthless means.

I am not trolling at all. The problem of food aid given to countries without stable governments is a real one, vis a vis the warlords stealing the aid and using it for themselves or selling it.

If you think somehow this problem doesn't apply to the OLPC project, and needn't be seriously addressed... well, I hope your right, but I disagree.

what about the thugs?

The_Pirate — Tue, 30 May 2006 05:21:01 +0000

I'm sorry, but are you Trolling?

The seemingly only way out of the evil circle of wars, child soldiers etc. is education: Openness. Respect for others. Knowledge.

You seem to want to bog the system down with every badness that exist in the upcoming Vista - if it ever shows. No sharing. No openness.

What these warlords fear most of all is teachers and education. If they give their troops these computers, they will give them precisely that.

what about the thugs?

filteredperception — Tue, 30 May 2006 03:52:17 +0000

Simply stealing and reselling, ala existing issues with food aid is one concern. However, with only a little imagination, I can easily see either guerilla, or institutionalized military uses for this hardware configuration-

- ebooks and emaps, i.e. having a library of survival and training manuals and maps in one rugged package. I was about to concede that in the guerilla case you might be right, but I think easily passing along training materials and recruitment propoganda, is a huge issue, along with communicating institutional information (slow communications that propogate through the p2p net).

And don't discount the usefulness of a highly configurable 'com unit'.

what about the thugs?

AnswerGuy — Tue, 30 May 2006 03:27:04 +0000

Clearly you can't just blindly put these anywhere.

Luckily there aren't many military uses for these things. I could see them used as digital "walkie-talkies" (using chat or audio/VOIP over the wireless mesh). For low tech guerilla warfare there isn't much other value to computing devices.

JimD

what about the thugs?

filteredperception — Tue, 30 May 2006 02:57:01 +0000

A few years ago I spent a week in the congo (DRC, kinshasa, kisangani), and though I had no little time away from work to really observe things, the one impression I came away with was this-

The country is run by 15 year olds with ak47s. Obviously this is not a strictly accurate impression, but it's not strictly inaccurate either.

So the primary concern I have reading about the OLPC project, and envisioning it's deployment in such an area is this-

What is to prevent primitive barbaric gangs (sometimes more powerful than, or effectively, the local government), from just stealing all of these laptops, and reprogramming them for military field use?

It's akin to the whole fiasco with shipping food and other aid to countries without responsible stable governments. I.e. the thugs and gangs steal the food, sell it to the people who were supposed to get it for free, and thus are able to fund their warlording activities.

I admit, I haven't done the homework and read everything up on this project, but it seems to me that if the linked page is going to tackle the practical issue of dust and rainstorms kids encounter while walking home from school, they should at least pay lip service to the rogue militias that the kids will also be running into.

Do we need trusted computing, a closed bios, and fingerprint authentication? Is it just an impossible problem to solve? I don't know. But I'd feel better if at least an attempt was made to address it.