[Olpc-open] Re: [OLPC Security] Application bundles and delegation

[xuan wu]

2007/2/14, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com>:
>
> On 2/12/07, xuan wu <wuxuan.ecios at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It appears that the real reason is simply that governments have the
> money and also control their public school systems. I don't see any
> way that anyone other than a government can buy millions of Laptops,
> organize official teacher training, authorize the use of particular
> electronic textbooks in schools, and so on.


The people have the money too, and only if the laptops are really useful and
people can realize that, thousands of them can be easily sold, in the area
where there's already access to Internet. If that can't can't be achieved,
why do you expect the people in the villages to understand the benefits?
So I say, sell them to the people who can afford the laptop first, and see
what their reaction is. The government itself may misunderstand their
people, but the people won't. If the purpose is simply and purely for the
benefits of the people, why don't deal with the people themselves?
I'm now really curious about why to use the government force to make the
people use them and accept them. It seems like to take advantage of the
central power of the developing country to launch a commercial compaign much
more than a charity.


>
> Letting family use the computers some of the time is part of the plan.
> Do you think that parents will keep the computer at home, and not
> allow their child to take it to school and learn? Such parents would
> be regarded as evil and unfit to raise children in the societies I am
> familiar with.


The people who don't understand what computer and network actually do for
them shouldn't be so simply be catagorized as "evil". They want their
children to live a happy life in the future too, but they may not know
computer, or they may see too much negative side of the technology and fear
that this is a lure instead of a gift. The changing of this attitude is not
something the government or any organization will accomplish in a short
time. Go to a village in western part of China, and you may see more.


>
> > > >> Section 8.19.
> > > >
> > > > Simply to shutdown the laptops after the expiration date seems to me
> a
> > rude
> > > > and reckless idea. This gives an excuse to those who don't want the
> > pupils
> > > > to waste time on the laptops.
>
> What expiration date? Why would anybody think that these laptops
> should be made artificially obsolete?


 Line 1003 in
http://dev.laptop.org/git.do?p=security;a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=bitfrost.txt

And what is this about wasting
> time? What should they be doing instead of accessing the pool of all
> human knowledge?


Porno movies, for example?


Past experience has shown that governments that don't like the
> Internet can control it only at the cost of near-total isolation from
> the world. Serbia is a good example, where Internet growth was a
> factor in changing their electoral politics. China is the best
> example. At first the Party said, No Internet, nohow. Then they said,
> Only for the Party (on a need-to-know basis), top business managers,
> and professors. Then the managers' assistants and the graduate
> students. Then, bit by bit, year by year, until they let almost anyone
> on who can show any business or educational reason, but they
> firewalled the entire country against Web sites advocating Democracy
> and other such pernicious outside influences. Never mind. China has
> lost this war, even though it is continuing a rearguard action and is
> not ready to surrender.
>

Excuse me, but do you consider government's cooperation as a victory and all
the rest things should be accomplished by the government, otherwise it's a
bad government? Have you estimated how much the government will pay for the
network destruction for the mountain area where the people are still
struggling for lives? After OLPC sell the computer to the government, it
seems to me just an audience to criticize the usage and maintainance of the
laptops, which may easily give the government impression of
irresponsibility. After all, it's OLPC who give away laptops which seem to
have no net income in the near future, and OLPC can be the "good guys" all
along.

Also, just for you to know, China launched similar program, please refer to:
http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-open/2007-February/000122.html
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