Group Set to Drop Computer Tablets From the Sky…Seriously
- Posted on November 4, 2011 at 7:10pm by
Liz Klimas
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One Laptop Per Child will be delivering XO-3 to those in need. (Photo via Extreme Tech)
The One Laptop Per Child campaign, like it sounds, seeks to get computers into disadvantaged children’s hands around the world. But some children are easier to reach than others. How will the group get laptops to needy children in rural areas?
Well, according to the founder Nicolas Negroponte, the group will just drop them from helicopters.
PC World reports Negroponte as saying at an Open Mobile Summit that they will “literally take tablets and drop them out of helicopters.” The tablets they plan to give out are XO-3, which cost less than $100 and are reported to be fine when dropped 30 feet or left in the rain.
And as PC World notes, Negroponte believes the children will be fine learning how to use computer skills without instruction. He even references an experiment that has shown children can learn to use computers well without guidance.
Tech Crunch says that the campaign should begin delivering computers sometime in late 2012 and that the devices will have solar charging capabilities. The computers will be delivered all around the world, including in the U.S., Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Rwanda and China.
Here‘s more about OLPC’s mission:
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Comments (58)
CottonMPG
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 11:49amThis is a private charity doing this? Some smart person will gather as many as possible to resell I’m sure. Hey if they want to do that more power to them. I‘m surprised if the government doesn’t fine them for every one that drops as littering. They have to discourage charity if they are going to make everyone dependent on government. If this is a government thing they need to stop this waste of our tax money, but I didn’t get that from the story.
Report Post »dtbox
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 11:34amCareful, some people will find other uses for them. I bet the’ll improve the production of IEDs some.
Report Post »MUDFLAPS
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 10:38amIf you want to see them run like hell, drop job applications.
Report Post »Goobergregory
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 11:37amLOL… I like that one.. thanks I needed a chuckle…
Report Post »Buddy Ferris
Posted on November 7, 2011 at 2:20pmJob applications? If you’re referring to the residents of developing countries, I’m not sure I understand. Unemployment runs from 50-80% in most such, and the residents are desperate for work. Most lack the needed education and skills for the few jobs available, but generally, they’ll take any employment and work harder than the rest of us while just to feed their kids and survive.
A Maasai friend earns $60/month as a watchman; sends $50 to his family and survives, barely, living ‘outside’ and begging for enough to keep from starving. In the same area, a family operates a little kiosk reselling vegetables and dried fish; they earn maybe $2 a day. A young man mixes concrete by hand for a construction project for $40 a week. They work harder than anyone I know and they’re so far below the poverty line that their governments ignore them and wait for them to disappear (die). Kenya, Djibouti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, … been there to see for yourself?
On the other hand, the air-drop project is idiotic for so many reasons that it doesn’t deserve serious consideration.
Report Post »Sicialian Eyeball
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 9:41amHow about dropping them a bar of soap and a tooth brush?
Report Post »StanO360
Posted on November 8, 2011 at 5:03pmThey would appreciate it more, books, little chalkboards and chalk, antibiotics, mosquito nets . . .
Report Post »America First
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 9:37amWill the taxpayers get stuck paying for these?
Report Post »kat4568
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 11:27amJust the clean up!
Report Post »Anamah
Posted on November 6, 2011 at 12:03amI believe they got trapped in the net of South America government corruption and bureaucracy … Supposedly it were free…. for every kid… to learn how to use it instinctively… But it seems to they have been stopped to grow even more. They adds filters for bribes?
Report Post »Marcia
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 8:46amReminds me of the WTKR episode where they got the bright idea of dropping frozen turkeys from a helicopter! People were running for their lives! Funniest darn show episode I’ve ever seen!
Report Post »wjbtms
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 9:44amThe turkeys were alive, not frozen….the station manager thought they could fly….
Report Post »ednapearl
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 9:45amThat’s funny I thought of the same esipode of WKRP when I read the article. My husband and I laughed so hard when it aired and even to this day we laugh about it, it ususally comes up during the Thanksgiving season. But it wasn‘t frozen turkeys it was live turkeys and that’s when they realized they couldn’t fly. Poor Les Nesman was there reporting, then he said “the humanity of it all” and poor Mr. Carlson “I swear to God I thought they could fly”. It was funny.
Report Post »kwolfburg
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 1:33pmLOL
Report Post »http://www.kewego.com/video/iLyROoafYtDe.html
texasfarmer
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 4:48pmThat’s exactly what I thought of, WKRP. Plenty of time to thaw out, and just in time for Thanksgiving.
Report Post »Secessionista
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 7:00amI wonder how a child fares when one of these is dropped on his head from 30 feet?
If these things only cost 100 smackers each, we could cover Tehran to a depth of 30 meters for the cost of a few ICBM’s.
Or, looked at another way, the money lost at Solyndra would buy 5 million of these dirt cheap “computers”. The money wasted bailing out banks would have bought 20 BILLION of these “laptops” – 3 for every man woman and child on the planet. There is no warehouse on the planet capable of holding that many at one time. Amazing that banks had no trouble carting off all that cash. Just one keystroke was all it took to steal America’s future.
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 8:15amRemember… the Treasury FORCED the Banks to take the Money… and it was just a Digitization, where it was added to the Bank Books, and offset at the Federal Reserve… where the Banks paid back the fund (reversed) after the Government allowed them, after the Stress Tests! In other words, there was No Bank Bailout… but the Government kept the designated funds (the Obama Stash)!
Report Post »nelbert
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 6:33amDurable, maybe. And solar powered, probably. But these devices will still eventually stop functioning. Then they are just so much non-biodegradable trash with the bonus of being able to leach heavy metal toxins.
Report Post »Lee_in_PA
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 6:31amTwo reasons not to drop laptops from the sky…
1. WKRP in Cincinnati- the frozen turkey epi
2. the gods must be crazy.. first and second films
Report Post »ChevalierdeJohnstone
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 5:33amThey already made this movie, it’s called “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. And there’s a sequel.
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 5:08amMaybe… they can be used… as Timers for Bombs!
Report Post »loupgarous
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 2:19amDr. Negroponte is right. Our desktop computer hadn’t been out of the box a week when, one Saturday morning, my wife and I were awakened by the sound of it booting up – our four-year old son had figured out how to insert the bootable floppy, turn on the monitor and computer main power switch, and type in the name of the batch file for DigDug, his favorite video game. Those Third World kids will do just fine.
Report Post »SC 11 BRAVO
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 2:25amI’m guess you had ELECTRICITY,, and a MODEM of some nature??
Report Post »John Humble
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 3:03amSC 11 BRAVO, early iterations of the OLPC were equipped with a hand crank generator. This iterator comes with a DC power jack that can be connected to a solar panel or crank generator. I’d imagine that one of these would be included. It’s actually fascinating kit.
Here’s some of the general specs for the XO-3: http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/index.shtml
Report Post »grannyrecipe
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 7:21amWow, a floppy? and Digdug? That had to be in the early nineties. I haven’t heard those words for a while. I wonder how big of a stack of floppys it would take to replace even one of these $100.00 tablets LOL Any geeks out there know?
Report Post »disgustedAmerican
Posted on November 6, 2011 at 2:52am@Granny. Your time frame is a little off. Floppies and Dig Dug were the eighties. Same time as the commodore 64 and 128, I know, I still have both. Best PC game ever from that time frame though was “karateka”… Just saying :)
Report Post »loupgarous
Posted on March 11, 2012 at 8:43pm@SC11BRAVO: we had electricity, no modem. Didn’t need one, all my apps were local and fit on floppies. BUT, as JohnHumble pointed out, early OLPCs were hand-cranked; the handy DC power pack lends itself to power from any number of field-expedient power sources. Actually, the “no internet access” thing’s a “feature,” not a bug – it keeps the little darlings focused on learning, not playing pocket pool.
Report Post »loupgarous
Posted on March 11, 2012 at 8:45pm@GRANNYRECIPE: it was the late 1980s. I had a student job that involved building PCs from parts-up (among other things), so I knew my way around the inside of one and was able to get a good deal.
Report Post »loupgarous
Posted on March 11, 2012 at 8:52pmGRANNYRECIPE: as to how many floppies it would take to replace the mass storage on an OLPC: the specs say the mass storage is a 1,024 Mb (1.03 Gb) solid state drive, so it’d take just over 2,844 360k floppies (quite a stack, that’d be 284 10-floppy boxes, if you remember how big they were) to hold that much data. The 1 gigabyte hard drive in one of my old 386 machines is the size of a sliced-bread sandwich, but I have 16 gig thumb drives that are small key-chain dangles.
Report Post »SC 11 BRAVO
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 2:19amIn the U.S.,,, REALLY?? and as for the other places,, RWANDA?? better drop salt and pepper with them,, because the NEED FOOD, not facebook. Perhaps they should consider Methane power, with the lack of indoor plumbing in that nation. Starving children, with STARVING FLIES drinking the moisture out of the STARVING CHILDREN’S EYES,, and this GENIUS thinks internet access is the solution. SHEEEZ,, I give up. good night.
Report Post »loupgarous
Posted on March 11, 2012 at 8:57pmThere are plenty of places not as badly off as Rwanda, etc., where giving kids laptops would give us a generation of kids who didn’t learn how to think in a madrassa; thus less likely to have the gut feeling that blowing themselves up for Allah is the thing to do later in life. My fear is that Mom, Dad, or Uncle Taliban Member would just confiscate or smash the things as “immoral American influences,” so a lot of those OLPCs would be wasted money. But maybe not.
Report Post »chamo99
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 2:04amWe could call it for what it really is — a really good marketing gimmick!
Report Post »Mr Sanders
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 1:00amMotion powered… umm… possible but not likely? Solar… umm.. don’t see that here and solar panels are not durable in a 30ft fall… but I’m no “smart guy” just going by observations on this.
Report Post »Pasco
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:58amFlying turkeys http://youtu.be/ST01bZJPuE0
Report Post »SC 11 BRAVO
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 2:09amwkrp,, never will forget that one,,
Report Post »ZaphodsPlanet
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:58amJust had another thought. These will come in really handy in 3rd world nations ….. families can take pictures of their kids and try to sell them to pervert liberals.
Report Post »Pasco
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:57amhttp://youtu.be/ST01bZJPuE0
Report Post »Mr Sanders
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:57amOh boy. Batteries only work for so long…. but go ahead and keep giving them cake.
Report Post »ZaphodsPlanet
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:55amSure it will be really understandable …. to kids who can’t read or write. Kind of like giving a blind man a camera and saying, “You look like you could use this”….
What a joke.
Report Post »pamela kay
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:37amUhmmm. don’t they have to have access to the internet? I would have to wonder what has been programed into these tablets. Do they think that the children will actually be the ones that get them? Who will get them and for what purpose? Maybe food and water would be a better choice to help out these kids.
Report Post »dr_funk
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:46amHow will the children in Africa charge their batteries?
And why will they give more than 20 minutes of attention to this exercise in futility when they have to go help mom or dad work the fields or feed and water the few pack animals they own?
Do-goodery run amock…as usual…
Report Post »Findalis
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:17amWhy bother? Third world children (especially girls) have no real future. Their nations don’t encourage the “masses” to learn. Keep them dumb and they can control them better.
This is just a waste of money.
Report Post »Grumpy old Flight Nurse
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:11am“The Gods Must Be Crazy”
Report Post »donottreadonme
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:04amI can’t even drop one off of a table without breaking it. Hope they do not injure anyone.
Report Post »Cold War Vet
Posted on November 4, 2011 at 11:16pmGood luck getting 4G/high-speed internet access out there! Outlets for charging?
Report Post »COFemale
Posted on November 4, 2011 at 11:26pmI was thinking the same thing. Liberals are such idiots.
Report Post »Brooke Lorren
Posted on November 4, 2011 at 11:54pmI think they’re solar powered.
Report Post »SonOfaCommunist
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 12:07amHere kids, watch the news from MSNBC and CNN to see who are the bad people that are taking everything away from you….now go cut their heads off!
I’d give this group a little more credit. Hitler had to get the kids to like him first.
Report Post »Ex-Democrat
Posted on November 5, 2011 at 5:23amIt‘s the same liberal thinking that Green Peace applied when they painted baby seal’s coats red in an attempt save them from hunters. Unlike an adult seal, baby seals are not quick enough to run away from danger so their white coat provides camouflage. More baby seals were killed and eaten by bears than would have ever been killed by hunters. Brain-dead liberals.
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