i dont think it works. a few laptops doesn’t mean much if the resources were taken from the same pool that could have been used to pay teachers and build infrastructure. if the olpcs were all donated sure, but they aren’t.

as for the flow of information, look at the middle east, they get satellite tv and internet, and nutty beliefs and conspiracy theories are still rampant.

mainly, the widespread access to pc’s in western countries has not created a flood of super literate math genius’s. the magic bullet view of technology is incredibly flawed, and that they can’t see the evidence just shows how naive or ideologically blind the olpc people are.

Really though, there just isn’t a particularly good way to do this. One idea though would be to geographically limit the operation of the units - maybe via GPS - so at least units originally destined for a specific area of the Congo won’t work in San Francisco (or anywhere else for that matter). Or you could simply create RFID security tags keyed to individual laptops that the laptop must be within range of to boot. Deliver these tags completely separate of the laptops. These ideas have some obvious flaws though and, like most security measures, wouldn’t stand up to a determined and even moderately skilled hacker with physical access to the unit. Not to mention that you are still stuck with the same initial problem - no assurance that the items ever get to the intended destination. The best fix for this would be establish a deployment group and actually give them enough money to get the items where they need to be - of course this would be expensive and probably push the price of the OLPC up quite a bit… which kind of defeats the purpose.

A determined thief can steal anything, but my rationale here is that any sort of deterrent will cut out a large amount of theft. It could be a false premise but I’m interested to know if you guys can think of anything…

For example - how about a power switch fingerprint scanner that only looks at the size of the finger? It wouldn’t work for older children and some people with small hands could operate it, but ces’t la vie. Or can you determine the age of someone from their retina?

(Sigh) If only there was a company making custom laptops. There are plenty that allow minor modifications to their basic design- but not start from scratch.

So, no 11″ touch screen machines, with IBM Thinkpad-style butterfly keyboards. Still- a man can dream, I suppose.

Sorry to be rather pessimistic about it all, but I’ve been out with an aid officer working in the forests on the Thai-Burmese border. The work was community and commercial development; specifically helping local women set up their own businesses. Not to trade overseas and produce ‘ethnic’ trinkets for westerners, but simply trade within their region. Basically a one-person TAFE & business college. It was scary how little actual, tangible “aid” filtered through; at every level someone took a cut, and this was actually in an organisation that has a deployment division! The most heartbreaking, soul-crushing depressing incident was Christmas - presents collected by kids back home went to kids of embassy /aid office staff, not kids out in the jungle. Their rationale was “Thais don’t celebrate Christmas anyway”.

A question - who did the localization at OLPC? Who was their linguistic expert for Uganda/Peru/Upper Nowhere? I hope they remembered that little step!

i question the real need for a deployment department. i think that maybe it’s more important to build vast numbers of cheap laptops and sprinkle them around the globe like faerie dust than it is to carefully ensure the proper operation of each delivered laptop. the shotgun approach will get them out there, and then if they’re interconnected well enough they will facilitate the spread of knowledge. damn the man, save the empire. i know if i grew up some dirt-eating somalian or whatever i wouldn’t give a shit whether or not my olpc came with deployment support or not. i’d just need it to work at least a little bit. the rest will follow. people are capable.

Somewhere in Democratic Republic of Armpit:

10:00am - truck with laptops makes it through to village.

10:15am - laptops distributed

10.16am - first laptop screens broken in sibling fights

10.23am - first laptop bios corrupted

11.47am - all laptops in local wifi-mesh permanently destroyed by malware downloaded from warez/pr0n site.

11.48am - Game over, man, GAME OVER!

Or in this case - happy, educated, tech-savvy, third-world child programmers!