decent article on 60 minutes

May 20, 2007 in OLPC, Tee Vee | 16 comments

Not a bad article, all in all. Bit of a personality piece on Nicholas and they used “geek” in the pejorative. But it sounds like they got most of the message. Except they missed the connection of why Intel’s tactics are dangerous to the project. By hiding the true costs of their laptops they are undermining the ability for a huge number of children to receive low cost laptops. Are they really going to dispense laptops at a $100-200 loss each to a billion kids? I think that’s the important question. Actually, ask an Intel shareholder if they would be willing to back that kind of action.

Holy crap, the comments on the CBS website are deeply ignorant. People are pissed that they can’t buy the laptops for the US. Compared to most of the world, the US does not have poor people. Not like that. The what about me attitude of most of the posts makes me very sad indeed.

  1. jef spaleta’s avatar

    jef spaleta on May 20, 2007 at 10:33 pm

    I think you can make a reasonably strong argument for XO’s up here in alaska. But even when you include the homesteaders and other Caucasian kids who are being home schooled by choice in the number of potential precipitants with the indigenous village kids you probably can’t get to a minimum order of 250k XO’s.

    -jef

  2. Pete Zaitcev’s avatar

    Pete Zaitcev on May 20, 2007 at 11:37 pm

    If they (ignorant commenters) demand commercial distribution, I’m right there with them. I don’t care for the hideous government bungholes which power OLPC deployments. I’m impressed by the engineering achievements, but the project comes at a high political cost. So, Jim said at LCA that the overhead of commercial distribution is 50% of the cost (well, roughly, because it’s per-unit overhead, so it is not attached to the price). Fine, XO will be $200 to $300. Sounds like a great deal to me. Especially if there’s no Bitfrost there.

    BTW, at least those commenters saw the TV program, which I didn’t. I still manage to have an opinion :-)

  3. Benjamin Otte’s avatar

    Benjamin Otte on May 21, 2007 at 1:54 am

    It’s nice to see that you are so altruistic that you can give things to others and not give it to yourself even though you want it.
    Myself, I’m probably far too egocentric. I’m all for giving what I’ve done to others, but if it’s cool, I want it, too. In fact, most of the times I do stuff for me first and then give it to others. I wonder why thinking about me first is a bad thing…

    As for the XO, I think your marketing did an awesome job at convincing the public that it is an awesome laptop and really cheap, while in reality it’s a pretty poor general purpose laptop. It has a lot of awesome features that are really great in the third world, but that are completely uninteresting here. I’m at most mildly interested in mesh networking and long battery life, I’m not at all interested in a new user interface or resistance to dust. I am however interested in a big screen, 1GHz+, accelerated OpenGL and 100GB of hard disk for all my stuff.

  4. Frank Ch. Eigler’s avatar

    Frank Ch. Eigler on May 21, 2007 at 6:18 am

    That deep ignorance may result from the deeply mixed messages promoted by olpc marketing. Education project, not a laptop project? Check, we could all use a little more education. Teach kids to learn? Check, sounds good in this hemisphere too. Poverty, ignorance? Check, got it. Interested education ministers? Check.

    What is the minimum level of poverty for which OLPC deems appropriate to support with the laptop? Why does it need OLPC approval anyway, considering that essentially none of the money is coming from OLPC, nor going to OLPC? What are the costs (abstract or literal) that OLPC is trying to *avoid* by skipping over the USA?

    These sorts of questions need better answers than accusations of ignorance.

  5. Jeff Ollie’s avatar

    Jeff Ollie on May 21, 2007 at 7:51 am

    With a little packet sniffing and the help of Tim Müller on IRC I was able watch the 60 Minutes segment (the CBS News’ web video viewer doesn’t work on Linux). I think that you’ll need recent CVS builds of GStreamer, though. This command will download the video to a local file:

    gst-launch ‘mmsh://winmed.cbsig.net/cbsnews/2007/05/20/video2830221.wmv?MSWMExt=.asf’ ! progressreport ! filesink location=cbsnews-olpc-mms.wmv

    It’ll take 13+ minutes to download because it is being streamed in real time. Once the video is downloaded you can watch the clip in your favorite media player. I suppose copyright would prevent someone from converting the clip to OGG and reposting it…

  6. Omega X’s avatar

    Omega X on May 21, 2007 at 11:38 am

    There’s always the misconception that the United States doesn’t have poor people. Its always the reaction of those who don’t see past their front door I guess. I’m not downplaying the charity work of OLPC for poor nations, but to say that Americans aren’t poor is a little ignorant in itself.

  7. Jeremy Bowers’s avatar

    Jeremy Bowers on May 21, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    It’s not that “America doesn’t have poor people”, it’s that “American poor” != “Mali poor” or “Darfur poor”.

    The idea of an obesity epidemic among the poor would be laughable in most countries.

  8. khiraly’s avatar

    khiraly on May 21, 2007 at 4:01 pm

    Im with Pete Zaitcev(#2), I want a commercial version too.
    I onlycare the technical side of things. Its an awesome integrated stuff, there is no other product in the market which has similar features. So excluding the potential developers are really bad idea.

    However many times I only need a text editor in the middle of nowhere, and this laptop would be the best choice for me. (and with the stylus I could maybe draw some circuit schematic at place). A normal laptop weights from 2 to 4 times as this, and its really hard to mobilise. (my laptop for example is 3.5kg and 0.8 kg the chargeur)

    I could develop some software for it too, so Im highly interested a commercial (but identical) version of the laptop. No modification. Its a tested high volume platform with approximatly no bug. If I find something will be fixed in really short period. No driver issue. Many premade software, etc.

    Im for the commercial version.

  9. Justyn’s avatar

    Justyn on May 21, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    If you enjoyed the comments on the CBS site and would like to read more impressively misguided reader opinions, checkout the response to this Techdirt piece (itself seems to misunderstand Negropontes problem with Intel’s antics):

    http://techdirt.com/articles/20070521/083050.shtml

  10. Nick’s avatar

    Nick on May 21, 2007 at 6:13 pm

    Much of the uninformed discussion about OLPC might come from the name of the project – One Laptop Per Child – and people thinking “oh… just a laptop” and bringing into their thoughts their mental model of a standard laptop. Most people haven’t spend 30 seconds finding/reading the masses of innovations and learning-centered developments that the OLPC people have been working on.

    So in today’s soundbite-level thinking, you’re dealing with “Linux ppl want to sell cheap laptops, Intel wants to sell cheap laptops”. Maybe calling the project “Children’s Learning Machines” or something would be more appropriate in such a shallow thinking society.

  11. Wayan’s avatar

    Wayan on May 21, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    I think its pretty cheeky for anyone who is part of the “$100 laptop” group to talk about others “hiding the true costs of their laptops”. Last time I checked, the $100 laptop wasn’t even close to $100.

  12. Omega X’s avatar

    Omega X on May 21, 2007 at 10:04 pm

    @ Jeremy Bowers

    As far as I know, poor is poor. Whether if its “American poor”, “Mali poor” or “Darfur poor”. It doesn’t make a difference in my eyes. The only thing major difference between “American poor” and “Darfur poor” or “Mali poor” is that help can be a lot closer. But it still doesn’t mean that they are going to get that help in any light.

    I honestly don’t know why it would make a difference to some people. You are either willing to help people or are not willing to help people. Its as simple as that.

    P.S. The poor people that I often see from time to time here are reallllly skinny. No obesity present whatsoever.

  13. randomwalker’s avatar

    randomwalker on May 22, 2007 at 11:54 am

    Totally echo Pete Zaitcev’s comment above.

    Proud to be ignorant and selfish.

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  16. Devine’s avatar

    Devine on July 23, 2007 at 8:49 am

    I’m surprised by some of the comments here comparing “American poor” with “other poor”. We’re talking about children who walk barefoot to a school maybe 5 miles away and whose parents need to walk for 1 hour to get water. Many of these families are living hand to mouth. “American poor” have tvs, dvds, a proper home and don’t have to work for food. There is zero comparison.
    I’m amazed by Chris Blizzard and his colleagues’ vision in focusing on the kids’ education so they can pull themselves out of poverty and move past the crippling debts their various governments have taken from the West to maintain power. This is a long-term project that won’t see results for decades. He’s making history here . . .