If you're talking about India, well, they have the brain power to figure out the solutions themselves. It's not as though designing a decent computer is rocket science after all. …

If you think that a $12 computer is going to recreate that "golden age" of technophilia, I would assert that your idea is naive. Click to expand... I don't think any such thing…

If you ever programmed you know that given a task there are a number of ways of doing it. Schools seems to teach the one "good" way to do something, and all others are inferior. Wh…

I learned to program in the 80's because my 1st machine (A timex 2068) was orphaned a year after I got it and had few apps. Kids in the 90's could be creative even with games beca…

Kids are treating computers like cell phones and game systems. That has nothing to do with the computers themselves. Rather it has to do with society's attitudes towards computer…

On the subject of constructive discussion, I'd suggest that anyone who is interested should have a look at the real project website and make up their minds from there, ignoring all…

II2II, porter, in a minor way paws: Chill. It is not that important. For those of you who think it's stupid, it won't sell if it's stupid, and it'll die out. For those of you who …

Now. Can we get back to some intelligent, constructive discussion, please? Click to expand... You should be able to do a ZX81 for $12, and solar handheld calculators for about…

^--Indeed. Read "Mindstorms" by Seymour Papert for a cogent critique of everything that is wrong with computer education as it stood in the 1970s and still stands today, and a vis…

Times change, and the skills that people need to survive change with those time. Consider some of the skills currently taught in school: we spend an inordinate amount of time teac…

So if kids use computers at an early age will they (a) all become Nobel prize winners at extreme cleverness and solving the worlds problems in peace and harmony ( B) become spoon…

UPDATE: The MIT design team referred to in this post is basing its design not on the Apple II, but on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which used the same processor chip. We regr…

I don't understand how that in any way, shape, or form constitutes an argument against getting computers to kids everywhere? Click to expand... So if kids use computers at an e…

I don't understand how that in any way, shape, or form constitutes an argument against getting computers to kids everywhere?

Education means nothing when you live in a country with no jobs. [...] Better to teach them how to grow food and sanitize water first. Those are skills they can actually put to use…

And finally: the actual project website http://design4dev.wetpaint.com/page/TV+Computer?t=anon What amuses me the most is that indigenous "third" world entrepreneurship, by unde…

UPDATE: The MIT design team referred to in this post is basing its design not on the Apple II, but on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which used the same processor chip. We regr…

Food prices are going up because fuel prices are going up. Industrial agriculture is highly fuel dependent. Fertilizer is made from natural gas. And fuel price has pushed up the…

I'm hoping it is a II clone myself. The pool of ready made software that would be unleashed is huge. Imagine stock control and accounting software for a small shopkeeper who is d…

These things make the system more resiliant. Click to expand... Until the population increases and you depend on those optimizations, it's like raising the barrier on the high …

Food prices are going up because of poor management, not because optimization makes things brittle. I agree that optimization can make things more brittle. That is particularly t…

Simply put, computers allow us to optimize stuff. Click to expand... The more you optimize and then depend on those optimizations the more brittle you make the system. A resili…

It's not just a matter of saving time, it's a matter of how efficiently other resources are used. Growing food can be as simple as scattering seeds on the ground or a cow in a fie…

So many of the jobs that involve using a computer can be done without them, it sometimes just takes a bit longer or a bit more attention on the part of the worker. Click to expa…

It's a very interesting project, and thankyou for linking it. I'll be passing it on to some OLPC developers I know, amongst others. I think the idea of basing it on an Apple II i…