[tt] NYT: Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience

[Premise Checker]

Frank Forman here:

Why do you think there still isn't a global mesh protocol, Eugen?

And why is existing educational software so awful? Is it because doing so 
is next to impossible? What about the free-market test? As long as folks 
shell out hard cash for software, it's good enough for them, I should 
think.

I'm not so sure that surfing the Web is a total waste of time, though it 
can be a waste of *my* times, that's for sure. I'll merry hyperlink and 
find a lot of interesting stuff, but a great deal of it just reports 
incremental changes. Indeed, a great deal of postings on Transhuman Tech 
are of this variety. I do wish I could get a fix on the *major* 
developments in the past five or ten years! None have struck me as being 
anywhere nearly as important as Mozilla, the first graphics browser, which 
came something more than ten years ago.

Maybe cellphones have had as great a social impact as the Web, but I'm not 
sure about that.

Such things as truly usable speech recognition software seem to be forever 
five or ten years ahead.

Ditto for smart drugs and many, many other things.

On the other hand, a good hand-held readers for books does seem to be 
developing along. Still, there had better be a lot more available content 
before I'll get one myself. AND I'd demand to be able to get books at 
used-book prices!

On 2007-10-05, Eugen Leitl opined [message unchanged below]:

> Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:09:16 +0200
> From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
> To: tt at postbiota.org
> Subject: Re: [tt] NYT: Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience
> 
> On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 04:13:11PM -0400, Premise Checker wrote:
>
>> The NYT article says that the $100 laptops will be able to connect with
>> each other in a school. So all third-world  schools need is an Internet
>
> We still don't have a robust, global mesh protocol, after all those 
> years. PV-powered wireless routers can link up single villages across 
> many miles of terrain, assuming free line of sight.
>
>> connection and educational software. I don't know how good free 
>> educational software is, but satellite Internet will be necessary in 
>> many
>
> Educational software is uniformly horrible, and the free kind is even 
> worse. There needs to be authoring software which individual teachers 
> can use, publish under a suitable license to be globally shared.
>
>> places in the third world. Here's an idea of the cost, based on Hughes 
>> Net's charges.
>>
>> Dnload/Upload  Satellite  Monthly
>> Kb/sec         (one time) Fee
>>
>> 700/128        $300       $ 60
>> 1000/200       $300       $ 70
>> 1500/200       $300       $ 80
>>
>> 1500/300       $600       $100
>> 2000/500       $600       $180
>>
>> http://www.nationwidesatellite.com/hughesnet/?g4100
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuraya
>
> http://www.thuraya.com/content/thuraya-coverage.html
>
> http://www.thuraya.com/content/high-speed-data-services.html
>
>> What other barriers to making every child in the world proficient in 
>> reading and mathematics remain to be discovered.
>
> In absence of qualified teachers, current computers are worse than 
> useless. Letting kids surf the Internet unattended will have roughly the 
> same effect as planting them in front of a TV.