Dear Taran, I agree with your views. My immediate reactions:
It is unfortunate Simputer is not yet recognised, maybe because it does not have a god-father MNC!! But I tried to use it, to integrate our application developed using open source tools, for communication and collaboration. I could not even get a demo piece, and there was hardly any response from them. They asked me to take it from one of their customers, who had not even opened the box!! So much for ensuring utilization!! We have budgets for buying and no audit for utilization monitoring!! Every government shows computer purchase expenses as initiatives on ICT and e-Gov, without actally putting to use fully the infrastructure. Almost 75% of computers are unutilized or grossly under-utilized. We are trying to change all that with our 'e-Administration' tool, where the uilization has been enhanced to say 75%. But the mindset has to change! What I discussed with Lee Thorn, during his Chennai visit, is that we need to have a technology where local people can make / assemble computers at say USD 100-200, using freely available products and technology which can be offered at nominal cost, as nothing comes free. It should enable working for 12-24 hours a day, using RAM and CD/DVD ROM and not hard disk, with or without power supply, work with or without telephone lines, have packages for local use in the local language. It should be a sealed unit with no moving parts and guaranteed for life, unless mishandled. All this means investment of time and money!! I wold like to have your reaction and others, as to how we achieve these on a sustainble basis, to mainly transform the under privileged and deserving. Kris Dev On 12/8/05, Taran Rampersad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Three comments on all of this: > > (1) There was another initiative which garnered a lot of support from > the government of India, and was heralded quite highly. It is called the > Simputer, and it is in production but somehow lost all the supporters in > a few years. Very sad for an open hardware initiative. Of course, > because people don't understand what an open hardware initiative is, > they don't comprehend that the design can be changed... instead, we get > a bunch of different people thinking they can do it better but not > releasing the hardware design as open so that anyone can build it. Quite > sad, and also quite telling. > > (2) Negroponte's gotten a lot of hype. > > (3) This message was written on a laptop that is operating off the grid, > on a wireless network that is off the grid, with the only thing tieing > it to your machine so you get this message is an ADSL line. > > In closing, I'll take one of these machines seriously when someone with > one can do the same as the machine I am presently using, sending an > email to this list from somewhere that doesn't even have a phone line. ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
