OLPC (One Laptop per Child) wiki

[Yanni Chiu]

Phillip Qin wrote:
> I don't object to any charity work. But I am wondering if so many kids 
> are under poverty, no food, no place to live, what's the point we send 
> them notebooks? Why don't we just spend this much money helping them 
> surviving first?

It would be a huge target platform for Linux and "open"
software. Also, education-ware, IMHO, is still a segment
that's been poorly addressed. That was my main point.

The politics of the machine are off-topic, so I'll just say
that the "developing" world is developing - not everyone
there is starving. If you just send food, then you'll always
be sending food. If you send the tools that some of the locals
can use to improve the local conditions, then some benefits could
hopefully flow to the impoverished.

> On Sun, 15 Jan 2006, Christopher Browne wrote:
> 
>  > The really dumb part is that they seem to be trying to make these
>  > devices *only* readily available if you are a government educational
>  > ministry buying them in bulk.

I guess the marketplace will answer. They can always
change the policy later. Dealing with something that's
wildly popular, is a "problem" that has lots of solutions.

-- 
Yanni Chiu

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