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Saturday, February 18, 2006 |
On the Horizon (02/17/06).
 What's the best way to bring digital tools to young people in the developing world? One Laptop Per Child? One Cellphone Per Child? One Simputer Per Child? The race to bridge the digital divide is heating up.
The $100 Laptop in Progress: The last month has seen two big developments in the One Laptop Per Child project, also known as the $100 Laptop project (see previous discussions of OLPC here and here, along with Ethan's excellent overview). The first is that the OLPC project has officially teamed up with the United Nations Development Programme to deliver the low-cost computing device to the poorer parts of the world.
. . .
The Microsoft Mobile Phone: Readers may recall that when the $100 Laptop idea was first proposed, my initial take was to suggest that a more suitable networked information device for the developing world might be built up from the mobile phone, instead of stripped down from a traditional computer. Given the near-ubiquity of mobile phones -- and given the growing attention being paid to the idea from groups like the global GSM organization -- I still think that they would provide a better fit, but I was a bit surprised to learn that the major tech player picking up that theme was none other than Microsoft.
. . .
. . . . Although the Microsoft proposal uses a phone as the core of the system, it tries to turn it into a PC, with a big screen and keyboard, rather than focusing on making the mobile unit itself a more useful information tool. Moreover, there's the closed-source/open-source difference: the One Laptop Per Child project is fully dedicated to making the code for the system entirely free, so that users can become developers (a theme we've been pushing from early on: Redistributing the Future). . . . .
The Simputer, Revisited: The dark horse in this race is actually one of the first ones to hit the track -- the Simputer, an Indian-designed handheld computing device. Initially proposed in 1998, they finally hit the market in 2002, but have failed to make a real splash. There are numerous explanations for why that might be, from too-high a price (US$240 to $480 at launch) to internal politics of various international organizations. But the Simputer is still around, and still available. WorldChanging alum Taran Rampersad got his hands on one last year, and has a generally positive take on the device.
What would it take for the Simputer to be a more viable alternative? Aside from a lower cost -- which, frankly, is as much an issue of scale of production as cost of components -- the one feature that I'd sorely miss if I had one is built-in wireless connectivity. . . . .
Leapfrog IT: An Incomplete Overview: Finally, C|Net provides a useful, if incomplete, listing of the various projects underway to bring inexpensive computing hardware to the developing world. The Simputer is mentioned in passing (described as having "flopped"), as is Brazil's effort to distribute a cheap Linux PC. The piece provides some details about the $100 Laptop and the Microsoft cell phone, and adds in some devices that range from "unlikely to be used" to "highly unlikely to be used," such as so-called "thin clients" that combine the mobility of a desktop PC with the stand-alone capabilities of a monitor (as in, essentially none of either of them). But what's missing is in many ways more interesting than what's included.
Nowhere to be seen, for example, is the Asiatotal "iT," which offers a free computer supported by ubiquitous advertising. Neither is the Mobilis, a low-cost tablet computer built for the Indian market. The EELS, a hand-held wireless computer/electronic textbook, is now being tested in Kenya; that it is not currently planned for the broader market is likely a big reason why C|Net doesn't mention it. More surprising is the absence of the Nokia 770 tablet, which costs about the same as a Simputer and is equally as Linux-hackable, but provides WiFi and bluetooth.
Still, it's a good reminder that there's a lot of action in the "low-cost computer for the developing world" arena -- and the OLPC is by no means assured of a dominant spot.
[WorldChanging: Another World Is Here]
6:05:20 AM 
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In Defense of the Culture Clash. When social values collide, the results can be cataclysmic. But for the internet to become a true force of democratization, we must accept that we'll all be offended by it eventually. Commentary by Jennifer Granick. [Wired News: Top Stories]
6:04:14 AM
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spikes in posting.
Look at these spikes in blog posts registered by Technorati compared to major (US) political events:
At the Norwegian blog contest I juried last year less than 10% of the submissions were “political blogs”. I wonder whether there’s any other way of interpreting those spikes than assuming they’re connected to mainstream, political, US news?
And what’s that downward spike just before Hurricane Katrina about?
[jill/txt]
Other causes/correlations? Seasonal cycles, such as holidays and back-to-school. The downward spike? It's so enormous it suggests Technorati was down part of a day or something.
6:03:39 AM
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"Improbable" by Adam Fawer.
On a whim the other day, I bought a paperback called Improbable. Of course, if you read this blog at all and happen to be aware that I enjoy reading quite a bit, you would understand that it wasn't very improbable that I would buy it, even though I wasn't looking for a new book.
When I opened the page after the dedication but before the book, I immediately knew I picked the right book. Here is what I read:
"Okay, let's talk about probability. First up, everybody's favorite topic: the lottery.
The odds of winning Powerball are approximately 120 million to 1. Since its inception in 1997, over 50 people have "defied the odds" and won the jackpot, making them some of the luckiest, and wealthiest, people on the planet. I hate those people. But I digress.
Now let's talk about another low-probability event: civilization getting wiped out by a giant asteroid colliding with the earth. Astrophysicists have calculated that the chance of this happening in any given year is approximately 1 million to 1.
Since our simian ancestors have roamed the planet for over 7 million years, the probability that an asteroid would have wiped us all out by now is roughly 700 percent. In other words, we should all be dead - not once, not twice, but seven times over.
However, as most of you already know, since the recorded history of mankind, humanity has never been annihilated.
So what's my point? Well, it's not that we're all going to be killed by an asteroid. Instead I want you understand something about low-probability events, and that is this:
Shit happens."
The "quote" is attributed to David T. Caine, the (I believe) fictional protagonist of the book. I am only on page 54, but so far so good. (It has another character named Tversky...).
[Spire Security Viewpoint]
6:03:29 AM
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Database Error Causes Unbalanced Budget.
This story of a database error cascading into a major failure has some interesting security morals:
A house erroneously valued at $400 million is being blamed for budget shortfalls and possible layoffs in municipalities and school districts in northwest Indiana.
[...]
County Treasurer Jim Murphy said the home usually carried about $1,500 in property taxes; this year, it was billed $8 million.
Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses $900,000.
User error is being blamed for the problem:
. . .
Three things immediately spring to mind:
One, the system did not fail safely. This one error seems to have cascaded into multiple errors, as the new tax total immediately changed budgets of "18 government taxing units."
Two, there were no sanity checks on the system. "The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million." Didn't the city wonder where all that extra money came from in the first place?
Three, the access-control mechanisms on the computer system were too broad. When a user is authenticated to use the "R-E-D" program, he shouldn't automatically have permission to use the "R-E-R" program as well. Authentication isn't all or nothing; it should be granular to the operation. [Schneier on Security]
6:03:07 AM
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