Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> wrote on Tue, 22
> May 2007 06:17:54 +0100 <31bai4-2ov.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
>> How long would the Classmate survive? Five minutes? Good luck
>> getting your Classmate serviced in the middle of the jungle.
>
> Actually, the Classmate looks to be fairly rugged, according to
>
> http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/chile/olpc_and_classmate_pc.html
>
> so I wouldn't worry unnecessarily about that particular subaspect.
Useful link, thanks.
I watched the video too, where they appeared to throw something at the
Classmate while it was sitting on the floor ... the equivalent of a
"drop test" I suppose, only less revealing. Any standard laptop would
likely endure such treatment. That tells us nothing about how well it
bears up to conditions like sand, dust, moisture, heat, and sticky
little fingers.
> Battery life and such, I'm not as sure on. It's a 256 MB RAM 2 GB
> NANDflash unit, with 900 MHz Celeron M. Interestingly, the Wikipedia
> entry suggests Intel will be selling them preloaded with Mandriva
> 2007. They are attempting to sell them to Mexico and Brazil.
Well just to prove that my dissent is not specifically with Windows, but
with the Classmate initiative as a whole, I do not support even *Linux*
powered Classmate PCs undermining the OLPC project.
Negroponte *depends* on large scale orders to make this initiative work.
By undermining his efforts with direct sales to schools, Intel is
effectively sabotaging the OLPC project, and of course they are well
aware of the fact. They simply don't care. It's all about the money.
If you read the article again, you'll notice that although the Classmate
*can* be ordered with Linux, many are opting for Windows instead, since
Microsoft have adopted a predatory pricing policy ($3 IIRC) in order to
sabotage Linux standardisation across school's curricula.
The poor countries of South America were eager and willing to migrate to
Linux (something *especially* important in education, since schools
should teach *principles*, not promote commercial products with
taxpayers' money), and the OLPC had a real chance of displacing the
current propriety Intel Educa curriculum with a more agnostic FOSS based
solution (amongst younger schoolchildren).
But now, thanks to the sabotaging efforts of Intel and Microsoft, the
OLPC project is in real danger of failure, especially in South American
countries.
Like I said, Negroponte is offering a non-profit solution to the global
problem of poverty and poor education, but Intel and Microsoft decided
that this "problem" was actually a business opportunity for them to
exploit the weak and poor for profit. It's one of the most vile and
disgusting acts of the 21st century.
--
K.
http://slated.org
,----
| Amarok Now Playing: "/mnt/sky/The Sad But True Story Of Ray Mingus,
| The Lumberjack Of Bulk Rock City, And His Never Slacking Stribe In
| Exploiting The So Far Undiscovered Areas Of The Intention To Bodily
| Intercourse From The Opposite Species Of His Kind, During Intake Of
| All The Mental Condition That Could Be Derived From Fermentation.ogg"
`----
Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux) on sky, running kernel 2.6.20-1.2312.fc5
21:13:37 up 35 days, 18:45, 1 user, load average: 0.23, 0.12, 0.12
|
|
