Bill Gates mocks $100 laptop

[Roon]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google Inc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

"The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen," Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=086951e4-0abe-421a-01f5-8f9e1c19c5e5&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

[LSK]

1. nooooo, not something that will benefit the poor

We cant allow such programs in the world!!! :sarcasm:

[AlienGirl]

11. Yes, Bill Gates is such an enemy of the little guy in the developing world

What's he got against mosquitos anyway? And why does he want to stick people with needles?

Tucker

[LSK]

12. tax writeoff

[laheina]

15. agreed. nt

[AlienGirl]

21. Is that why Bono does things like that, too? Taxes?

[LSK]

22. Bono isnt a US Citizen

And Bono doesnt make jokes about cheap laptops.

[HERVEPA]

23. Tax writeoffs still cost you money

People can be multi-faceted.
Though he may be scum in the business world, he is highly engaged in health problems in Africa, not just with money but with his own time.
Excellent article about this in The New Yorker about 6 months back.
Not everything is black and white.

[LSK]

24. agreed, i just have a grudge against him because of Netscape

[no name no slogan]

28. Netscape screwed itself. MS just pushed it over the cliff.

NS thought it could actually charge people for products that was no better than the freely available ones that were already on the market (cf. Mosaic, Apache). To top it off, their software was poorly written and didn't scale well, the company poorly managed, and its officers full of bravado and BS.

If MS hadn't killed Netscape, it would have run itself into the ground by 2000.

[LSK]

30. kinda hard to compete with a browser that comes with the OS

And a company should have a right to run itself into the ground or to right itself. MS should not have used its OS MONOPOLY to drive it out of business.

[no name no slogan]

32. The browser, yes. But their server couldn't touch Apache

I used to run a couple sites on Netscape Enterprise 2.0, and it was the biggest POS around. All the user-friendliness of Apache 1.x and the security of IIS 3.x. Thankfully it wasn't my $5,000 that purchased that thing.

[laheina]

14. While I agree with your point,

those programs don't do anything that might threaten his income. He is ruthless when it comes to that.

[Orsino]

2. No, that absolute last thing a developing country would want...

...is a machine burdened with an overpriced, shoddy OS pimped by a monopolist.

[DS1]

3. Heh. Hey, DICKHEAD, Google will no doubt be making gigs of space

available for anyone who wants it. You won't need HD space other than the OS.

[DrGonzoLives]

4. I would think

that developing countries would need things more important than computers for the time being - say, home-grown industry, good agricultural practices, you know, important things.

[Richardo]

5. Let's start with clean water, for God's sake.

I'm with you, DrGonzo.

[laheina]

19. Those things generally start,

imho, with either a handout, or an education. Learning to use computers isn't a bad start.

[Ravenseye]

6. I mock it too

You know how much food 100 bucks can buy for some of these people? Instead lets give them a crappy laptop with no support that will be in the corner collecting dust within weeks.

How bout food, clean water, vaccines, hiv prevention and drugs, infrastructure, and other stuff first. Just a thought.

[DrDebug]

7. He mocks because you can't put a $100 OS in a $100 computer

So the tiny computer is probably going to Linux.

It's been done before though...


Edit:Hotlinking was not allowed

[everythingsxen]

8. *cry*

Memories...

I had a Sinclair.

[DrDebug]

9. Started with a ZX81 as well

Still recall the frustration of the memory pack suddenly falling from the computer while you were writing a program :rofl:

I bought the kit as well, so I even assembled it myself :)

[no name no slogan]

17. Me too-- but it was called a Timex/Sinclair 1000 in the US

I even had the 4k RAM expansion pack, for another $100. I even had a flight sim program on it, which loaded from a casette. Neat little machine.

[DrDebug]

26. It was the start of my computer skills

I first started out programming in Basic, but soon you moved on to assembler programming.

Still think it was a brilliant computer as far as simplicity goes, it was just a little bit of electronics and it was a fully functioning system. Do you know that the only real difference between the US and UK version was the modulator for the television (upper left corner of the screen). The computer itself was entirely the same. The same with the powersystem, it needed a 9V feed and used 5 Watts. You could repair that computer if something broken. And those are all kinds of things you can't do with a modern day computer. It's like comparing a car from the 60s with today's cars. You can understand the car from the 60s, but you can't understand today's car.

I was 13 when I assembled my first computer (I did have a basic understanding of electronics), but I am now 36 and I can't assemble the computers of today. They are way to complex, but that Sinclair computer wasn't... I'd love on of those $100 laptops...

[no name no slogan]

31. That's funny, I'm the same age (36)

and I build my own computers all the time. Of course, the components are all pre-assembled and go into the box with little effort, too, but I could never imagine building a computer from scratch 23 years ago.

I got my programming start on a time-shared mainframe with a dial-up connection, using an old teletype machine. God, those were fun times. Graphics? No way! If you couldn't do it in ASCII art, it wasn't worth doing at all!

Good times, good times, eh old timer? :hi:

[Richard Steele]

10. Yeah, people living in mud huts should pay $2500 or do without!

Gee, sorry, Bill...someone is actually HELPING
some folks who aren't rich enough to be a 'target market'.

The REAL reason Bill is opposed is simple:

The machine uses an open-source OS.
These folks are going to learn with this, and learn ABOUT it.

Some years from now (and I'm very certain Bill
has research which pinpoints the likely date)
these people WILL have improved their economy
to the point that they will be a nice lucrative market
for Microsoft to enter.

But after being raised with open source,
there ain't a damn one of them gonna buy
any of the product Bill is selling.

That's Bill's fear; he's looking 30 years down
the road at an entire 'developing world'
that he won't be able to make a nickel off of.

So he wants them to suffer in the dark ages until
they become useful to HIM.

Fuck Bill.

[meegbear]

13. $2500 for a Mac sunshine ...

A Windows machine is cheaper (and it shows).

[no name no slogan]

16. He's got a point re: disks

No matter how hard they've pushed it, "networked computing" has not taken off with consumers precicsely because they don't have a local storage device. Non-business consumers have typically distrusted "the network" because of privacy fears and a sense that they don't have direct access to "their stuff".

The whole reason "personal computers" took off was because they could be run independent of any network-- you didn't have to connect up to another machine to be productive. People also liked the idea of controlling what programs ran on their machine

The only way something like this will work on a consumer scale is if it has some sort of storage medium-- even a small floppy drive would work. People still like to have physical access to their files, no matter what Scott McNeily and other NC advocates say.

[Redstone]

18. Of course he would! It doesn't run Windows. The poor people wouldn't

have a chance to add to his $40 billion, so it would be worthless.

Redstone

[alcibiades_mystery]

20. Let me be contrarian here and agree with Gates

I would also be contrary to everything in my being, since I despise Gates and the Microsoft empire generally.

That said, he's right. The other concern is that you'd be setting up a two-tier system.

It would be better for large donations of computers to be made, and all, of course, equipt with user-friendly Linux software. (both the donations and the user-friendliness of Linux would be gargantuan tasks!) ;-)

[SofaKingLiberal]

25. .

[alcibiades_mystery]

29. I see your point

;-)

[SofaKingLiberal]

27. Then he should donate some of his billions to buy real computers

for developiong countries so they wouldn't have to use $100 ones.

Or does he see this as some sort of threat to his empire?
Will the new system put in place by using these cheap computers (without windows) eventually develop into something much larger that has no use for Microsoft?