Alabama admits developing country status
One Laptop Per Poor Southern Child
Birmingham, Alabama may soon join the third world.
As reported by the The Associated Press, Birmingham's city council has rubber-stamped a $3.5m deal with the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, ogling 15,000 laptops designed for less-than-affluent children in developing countries, including Rwanda, Libya, and Mongolia.
This is the first time an American city has struck such a deal with the not-for-profit OLPC, but it still awaits approval by the Birmingham school board. According to The AP, some board members voiced concern that "computers designed for the African bush" may not measure up to Alabama's standards.
That said, one board member admitted that her reluctance to purchase the laptops has something to do with the fact that Birmingham schools don't offer the wireless networks needed to get the laptops online. And she's not sure the city can afford Nicholas Negroponte's XO portable.
We'd say this deal makes perfect sense. If the XO wasn't such a piece of junk. Even Nicholas Negroponte admits it's a piece of junk. "We should not be in the hardware or software business," he tells BusinessWeek.
He also tells BusinessWeek that he's looking for someone to replace him as OLPC CEO. "I am not a CEO," he says. "Management, administration, and details are my weaknesses." ®
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COMMENTS
engine testings
so they tested Saturn V rocket engines there, if you think about it there has to be a reason.
NO ONE cares about the dump/state.
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Birmingham Board of Education: Where interpersonal politics is King!
Many years ago, did a goodly chunk of my journeyman computer guy work in the many schools there. (Netware 2.x, IBM PS/2s, and baseband networking.) That experience, plus concern for my daughter's education, is why I moved to a suburban satellite town just south of B'ham proper.
Although the Reg says, "Birmingham's city council has rubber-stamped a $3.5m deal", the AP article pointed to as a source says "Birmingham's school board still must agree to the deal". Personally, I thought the announcement was just a PR move to gloss over other woes such as the recent vote to close 16 schools to avoid state level gov't swooping in to run things, or the report with pages that went missing between being received by the soon-to-be most recent ex-Supertendant of Ed. and his passing the report along to the rest of the Board.
Just a shiny, distracting, feel-good exercise, like most pushes to throw technology into education. It might be interesting to see what good would come of it, but it doesn't seem very likely that they'll actually spend the money.
Hmmm .
Hmmm , one can say Amerika is actually in worse condition financially then many third world countries when you take into account the absolute debt level of both Government and Civil Debt which works out to be over $160K for every man woman and child, which effectively means the average debt exceeds two thirds of the assets and reserves within the country and the average GDP income is a mere $46K so the day of reckoning is not far away and make the '29 crash look like a picnic when she comes .
Further , a previous article pointed out whilst apple fans are raving fanatics and blind to the obvious, that at this point in time for every 25 laptops sold only one is an Apple product , thus they are and will always remain a tiny but irrelevant side player .
Thus the market has spoken Apple will always be a very small minor bit player no matter how hard the fan boys say or do otherwise !
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