begin oe_protect.scr
High Plains Thumper <hpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> B Gruff wrote:
>
>> Well.... maybe....
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/08/olpc_and_microsoft/
>
> Okay, here is what it says:
>
>> Microsoft has challenged an altruistic scheme to get
>> pared-down computers into the laps of African school
>> children by preparing its own software for sale on the
>> machine.
>>
>> One Laptop Per Child, intended to help bridge the digital
>> divide between rich and poor parts of the world, is soon to
>> release a trial version of a computer developed in
>> collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of
>> Technology (MIT). It is expected to go into production in
>> the first quarter of the new year and sold for a little
>> over $100 a piece. It is to be shipped with a tailored
>> version of Red Hat Linux, a free open source system.
>
>> "That's not what we're doing. What we are doing is a Linux
>> distribution - open source. What Microsoft are doing is a
>> port of Windows. We'll work with anyone who wants to port
>> their software to our machine," he added.
>
> Well it is competition. Perhaps each will come with RedHat
> installed and Windows CEx on a separate distro USB stick?
> Then Linux will have market share, heh!
>
> Also, it is a way to keep the antivirus security companies
> employed, once someone writes a virus for the poor things, no?
>
> As Hadron Quark says, "It boggles the mind". :-)
>
The point is that Microsoft are wondering whether to give away Windows
with these machines in order to continue their prevention of anything
other than Windows as the pre-install.
Once OLPC goes out, assuming that it does so, it'll be the first truly
mass-market computer (not pda) which has been distributed with linux as
the standard pre-install.
These machines will make it back into the bigger economies, of course.
How many schoolchildren developing and industrialised countries would
benefit from such a machine? A lot, I'll wager.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody
else has thought.
|
|
