Jesse Sinaiko, You have hit the nail right on its head!! Yes, you are right, most, stand taken by the big and mighty are more to support their own interests than the common interests.
I think, pushing junk P1 and P2 to Asia and Africa is also, more to get rid of these antique pieces from the afflunet West, more towards disposal than with a concern for the third world. On top of this, they charge for the refurbishment, shipment, etc. Surely there must be a double motive, like sending chemical waste ships to third world for destroying!!! I refused to have anything to do with such junk!! while many fell for it!!! I would prefer a open source, local technology for manufacturing / assembly and something like the foot pedalled sewing machines we now-a-days see in our street corners, with least security or care. Do you have any thoughts on this? Kris Dev. I would be curious to know where Mr. Barrett gets all this information about what poor people want and/or will accept. Not that he's necessarily wrong, but for me it gets tiresome listening to the Great and the Good pontificating about what the third world and/or economically excluded populations want or need. It's like that suit that MS brought a few years ago against that guy in Australia who was loading Win 95 and 3.1 into ancient 486s to send to Timor right after the war ended. He said to MS "you guys no longer sell or support these systems and the donated machines I have will not take anything newer." MS said "we have a great NPO program where you can get up to date OSs for very little." He replied "again, these computers won't take Win 98 or XP, and anyhow, I don't have the "very little" you charge. See you in court. Let's see what a jury has to say." Of course MS backed down. My point is, could Mr. Barrett be trying to sell some pricey P-4 dual-core chips to Timor? This sounds more like fear-based marketing than any sort of statement based on fact or experience to me. This debate has gone on for months on this list. It has been one of the best and most relevant - not to say impassioned - conversations I've seen in a long time. Maybe it's the Simputer. Maybe the MIT $100 laptop. Maybe old refurbed P-IIs. Maybe some or none of the above. This much I know: everyone who has posted has had valid points to make. And I would venture that everyone who has posted has more experience, more understanding and far more knowledge of the issues that surround computing and associated fields of any sort in the economically and socially excluded parts of our globe than Mr. Barrett. Jesse Sinaiko - Chicago, IL _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
