For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate

[Christopher Browne]

On 11/30/06, Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Rick Tomaschuk wrote:
> > Yes I know a poor African boy/girl desperately need a laptop. How else can the carry water from the stream to their hut?

> OLPC is not going to replace irrigation and low tech needs, but it
> serves a very different purpose. Education and literacy improvement is a
> very important component of lifting societies out of poverty, and
> technology does have a role to play. For example: the introduction of
> the cellphone, together with the concept of microcredits, have increased
> revenue for rural African farmers by eliminating (often corrupt)
> middlemen in finding buyers and conducting price negotiations.

And part of what this is doing is to help *SOME* Africans.  Sure, it
may not be helping everyone, but if it helps in the establishment of
some "liberal society" zones on the continent, that helps there to be
more instances of "functioning civil societies," which is what is
needful for things like "freedom" to be of much meaning.

> Many developing countries look to India and want a piece of the IT
> outsourcing pie. The OLPC is a good step in helping increasing basic
> literacy and computer literacy. Some countries -- notably Brazil -- see
> OLPC and related efforts as a way to make their countries more
> self-sufficient in IT and not dependent on the US.

Unless you're in the market of "empire building," this seems a pretty
good thing.

> So if the World Bank is willing to help this happen, that's fine with me.
> > How about looking at what drives this lunacy. Big banks, the 'New World Disorder'.

> Sorry, but that doesn't wash. The convenient scam inherent in conspiracy
> theories is that reasonable efforts to disprove them are met with
> accusations of being part of the conspiracy.

Ah yes.  "If you claim the conspiracy might not exist, that proves
both: a) that you are part of the conspiracy, and b), by virtue of
your involvement, that the conspiracy clearly exists."

> Anyone who tells you he has _the_ truth, surely doesn't. And bankers are
> people too.

Did you misspell "banksters?"  ;-)  That seems to be the word that
sort prefers to use.  "Bankers" being the codeword that they use when
they think they're more 'in public,' and want to malign a certain
cultural group without actually using a word starting with the letter
"J"...

And with one of the banks I had the misfortune to do some work with
back in yesteryear, I can't say I'm sure that the upper management
actually were people.  Whatever the cultural background they came from
(varied), they all seemed to be trained to be complete asses...
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"...  memory leaks  are  quite acceptable  in  many applications  ..."
(Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists