Walter leaving and shift to XP.

[Andres Salomon]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:28:20 -1000
Mitch Bradley <wmb at laptop.org> wrote:

[...]
> 
> Suppose, as a thought experiment, that someone were to propose giving 
> every child in the world
> a device that could do nothing but access the web.  Would you consider 
> that a positive
> educational step?
> 
> I would.

Sure, you can give kids a glorified WebTV, but that's not what *I'm*
interested in.  Also, we're talking about a proprietary stack that
may or may not be locked down.  Who knows what they'll _actually_ have
access to?  I had hoped that at least with Linux, kids would be able to
dig into the internals and figure out ways around whatever roadblocks
their friendly government might put up; I don't see such a thing happening
with a proprietary stack.  Maybe it'll make a nice games platform, though:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/04/intel_classmate_the_rufus_revi.html
(The world needs more obesity)


If you're talking about giving kids a fast internet connection and a
completely unrestricted web browser, I'd agree that they'll benefit.
However, I expect OLPC to cave into whatever demands are made by
governments in order to further the goal of selling more laptops.