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one laptop per child
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One Laptop Per Child
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open source
Free software zealot Richard Stallman's hairshirt of a laptop
The Mengloong from Chinese manufacturer Lemote is a fairly exotic machine — designed to be widely affordable like the One Laptop Per Child project's XO-1, its Loongson-2 processor couldn't run Microsoft Windows if you wanted it to. So it's the machine of choice for Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman, who felt so "betrayed" by OLPC's capitulation to Redmond he's willing to put up with the Mengloong's quirks, he told a Computerworld reporter: More »
one laptop per child
Mary Lou Jepsen's eye patch proves more popular than many of Negroponte's ideas
Arrrrrrrrr! Readers who watched computer-display innovator Mary Lou Jepsen yesterday had only one question: WTF with the eye patch. I guessed at Jepsen's email address and asked her. It turns out we'll be seeing much more of Jepsen, but not the patch. The engineer, trained at MIT's Media Lab, left Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project to start her own for-profit venture, Pixel Qi, making affordable screens for all kinds of cheap, portable computers. She recently moved from Massachusetts to San Francisco. Jepsen's eye patch story: More »
one child per one laptop per child
One Laptop Per Child project proves to be about ego, not education
MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte had a vision: Millions of third-world children lacked laptops and therefore the means to learn of his greatness. He founded the One Laptop Per Child Project with a singular vision: He, Nicholas Negroponte, would bring laptops to these children, so that they could know that he, Nicholas Negroponte, brought laptops to them. An effort founded on egotism has foundered on egotism. Like attracts like; Negroponte brought other narcissists into the fold, only to see them leave to find more room for their self-loving to expand. Mary Lou Jepsen, OLPC's hardware chief, left in January to start a for-profit company, Pixel Qi; now Walter Bender, OLPC's former head of software who left in April, has started a rival for-the-children effort. More »
one child per project
Negroponte to OLPC developers: Pour some Sugar on me!
Nicholas Negroponte, the nutty MIT professor who has championed the idea of cheap laptops for Third World children, is feuding with his own programmers. Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child is best known for its distinctive hardware — the candy-colored, devil-horn-antennaed XO notebook computer. But he's turned his attention to Sugar, the Linux-based software which runs on the XO. Negroponte, cozying up to Microsoft, wants Sugar to be rewritten for Windows. Great idea, says OLPC developer C. Scott Ananian — hire 10 Windows developers right away, suspend all other software development, and maybe it will happen. More »
one laptop per child
You can't spell OLPC without CEO, kind of
Nicholas Negroponte has come to his senses and realized that he is not a businessman and has no place running the One Laptop Per Child project. "I am not a CEO. Management, administration, and details are my weaknesses. I'm much better at the vision, big-picture side of the house." Yeah, leave the minutae like making a profit and shipping products on time to someone else, and focus on things like going to conferences and schmoozing with Bono. Negroponte's ideal CEO? Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will "view the world as a mission, not a market." Ah yes. When I think of successfully run, profitable businesses, I immediately think of the UN. Bravo. Whatever. This guy is an academic, what do you expect? Next thing you know, he'll be asking Al Gore to come on board. OLPC critic and Steve Jobs impersonator Dan Lyons has much more to say about this latest development.
one laptop per child
PC World editor is still waiting for his OLPC
PC World's Harry McCracken ordered an XO laptop from the One Laptop For Child charity on November 12. He gave a $400 "donation" — half to buy himself a laptop and half to buy a laptop for a "deserving child" in a developing country. After many emails back and forth and 35 minutes on hold, McCracken still hasn't received his laptop. Neither has a colleague of his. OLPC claims that they don't have a mailing address for him because he paid with PayPal. More »
macworld 2008
For bloggers, the hottest computer at Macworld isn't a Mac
We stopped by the Blogger Lounge within the Microsoft booth on the Macworld Expo floor. Inside, it was rather comfortable, considerably more so than the press areas at CES — except the internet didn't work. While we were there though, we found M&M's graced with the Microsoft Office, Word and Excel logos, comfy leather couches. And a computer that everyone in the lounge was very interested in — but not the one you'd suspect. More »
lawsuits
One Laptop Per Child sued in Nigerian court
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project may be better named "No Laptop Per Child," at the rate it's going. Back in November, the Wall Street Journal essentially labeled the project a failure. Now, the group is being sued for $20 million by a Nigerian company for patent infringement. Let's hope OLPC doesn't get hit for the full amount. At almost $200 each, the judgment would be equal to more than 100,000 laptops — laptops that the OLPC can't give away, never mind sell. A copy of the lawsuit, obtained exclusively by Valleywag, is after the jump. More »
"Think of how cool it would be! Think of how many families will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the world's problems, knowing that some poor tribesman's child has a laptop? What African kid doesn't want access to Slashdot?" — Professional contrarian John Dvorak on MIT do-gooder Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project. But John, think of the potential new readers for your column! [PC Magazine]
one laptop per child
Why Negroponte's $100 laptop failed -- the 100-word version
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal devoted nearly 3,000 words to the saga of Nicholas Negroponte's plan: "Design a $100 laptop and, within four years, get it into the hands of up to 150 million of the world's poorest schoolchildren." What went wrong? "Mr. Negroponte's ambitious plan has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea." Huh? More »
price wars
$399 Dell notebook sale to kneecap One Laptop Per Child
If you weren't so ahead of the curve that you don't read newspapers, you'd know that Dell is underpricing Negroponte today, with a $700 laptop knocked down nearly in half. I'll leave it to the fanboys to comment whether or not it'll boot Leopard or Ubuntu.
exits
Brazilian Minister of Culture retiring
Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Minister of Culture, is retiring. Medical tests revealed a polyp on his vocal cords which could threaten his musical career. Gil needs to quit giving speeches while the polyp is being treated. Which is unfortunate, because he has quite a bit to say. Gil is the man who turned down Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project in Brazil. We got the chance to meet the minister at the EmTech conference in September. I was struck by how, unlike many politicians who promise the world and deliver nothing, Gil seemed aware of the significant shortcomings of the OLPC project. We wish him the best.
Chinese manufacturing firm Quanta has started to mass produce a 
great moments in public relations
Fake Steve impersonated by One-Laptop PR shill
A few weeks ago, Forbes editor Dan Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, wrote a devastating analysis of the One Laptop Per Child project. On Tuesday, Wayan Vota, a blogger who follows the OLPC project, responded in essence, that while he agreed with Fake Steve, he still agreed with the project's aims. That would have been the end of it, except for a comment left on his post by "Fake Steve Jobs." The problem? Lyons didn't leave that comment. Vota compared the IP address that left the comment to others that he'd received and tracked it back to the Racepoint Group, the PR firm that reps OLPC. The commenter has since apologized, but the damage is done. To Kyle Austin, soon-to-be-fired flunky at Racepoint Group we say: great spin control. Proof after the jump. More »
politics
Why Brazil's not buying Negroponte's laptops
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — The chasm between Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project's lofty goal — putting computers in the hands of children across the developing world — and its actual achievements is staggeringly wide. Instead of millions of computers, it's struggling to put in an order for a hundred thousand or so. And rather than commanding larger orders from third-world governments, Negroponte is now trying to get first-world consumers to donate laptops instead. A speech by Brazilian culture minister Gilberto Gil Moreira at the EmTech conference gives a pretty good idea why no laptops per child is today's reality. More »
Intel joins Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child charity, should no longer "be ashamed of itself" [Web Pro News]
