[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

[Gary Short]

Lee Hughes wrote:
> Actually someone else regarded you as a troll. it was not me.

I know, but I believe that you referred to my posts as trolling, which 
is odd because I said "pay for teachers not laptops" and you heard 
"Linux sucks!". But hey never mind.

> but if your going to come in with widely off the mark opinions,

In what way is my opinion of "teachers not laptops" off the mark? I mean 
do we do that here? Do we say don't increase the number of teachers in 
our schools, instead have laptops? No, we don't. Is any country in the 
developed world advocating reducing teacher numbers and increasing 
laptop numbers? If there is I can't find it. Even if you think laptops 
are better than teachers, you can't really describe my opinions as 
"widely off the mark", can you?

>  have you
> actually watch any of the video's, or done any home work on this, I did
> keep asking you, so have you? honestly?

I keep telling you, I have no problem with the technology behind OLPC, 
its the concept I believe to be wrong.

> okay, it may be a laptop vs teacher debate..why can't we have both?

Damn good question; I agree both would be great, but that's not what's 
on offer.

> your attitude may be you would rather not act, than give something ago.

That's not true. I'm not saying do nothing; I'm saying send teachers not 
laptops.

> This can be seen as an experiment? unless you try , then why don't
> we sit here in the western world, recoding our application's into the next
> Microsoft buzz word technology.  Just the same regurgitation of  the 
> same technology just with a different front end.

I'm still not understanding why you think Microsoft is an issue here. 
Its not about technology.

> 
> I'd like you to review this, and see my argument.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI

Okay, I've watched the video and I think its fair to say that whether we 
ship laptops or teachers to the developing world its going to have 
little or no effect on global warming either way. Though I do accept 
that there is a slight possibility that I'm wrong here and that shipping 
laptops to the African poor is the answer Al Gore's been looking for. ;-)

> so, it may not be a linux vs microsoft scenario after all.

It never was Lee.

> I'd rather seem some kind of change, rather than just say, well that's
> the way it is. Nothing changes like that. Open source is about experimenting
> with technology and ideas. Being a microsoft developer , you don't have
> that chance, your technology is fed to you, you have no control of it's 
> path,
> if you don't like it, you can't lump it either. Only dead fish swim with 
> the Stream,
> and I feel like that every time I boot into Visual 'whatever' studio. In 
> fact
> I'd say that your a consume API's? Your a consumer, you consume Microsoft
> products
> 

Okay, I'd make an arguement here, but I think we both know I'd be 
wasting my time, so I'll just ask you this one question; when you leave 
university and you go into full time employment, do you think you'll be 
working in the open source community full time? Even if you work in that 
community in your spare time, you should probably be sensible enough to 
realise that you'll only be able to do that because you get a salary 
from your day job, and the balance of probability is that your day job 
will be working with closed source software; whether you end up working 
in an MS shop (I know you don't think you will, but I started out coding 
Smalltalk under Linux for IBM) or whether you go into a games company 
and you are working with PS3 game dev consoles, its all closed source.

> so, what your saying in a nutshell, is laptops are a bad idea, you need
> to employ teachers.

Its not a bad idea per se, just not the best use of the money IMHO

> Saying that, your saying the only structure that works is that teachers are
> the only ones we can learn from?

Not the only structure, just the best one. That's we have teachers not 
laptops in our schools here.

> I believe olpc will work best with mentors,  mentors are always so so 
> much better, they don't force feed you information, you do that, you 
> spend time
> researching stuff, learning stuff, and your mentor guides you, helps you
> over difficult concepts  and that's true knowledge.

So if you have a mentor to guide you, what will you use the laptop for? 
What is the difference between a teacher and a mentor in your arguement?

> What it we found, after all this time, we'd be learning the wrong stuff?

How can you learn the wrong stuff? What would the wrong stuff be?

> But don't get me wrong, I'm not out to toast you.............

You can imagine how relieved I am to hear that.

> stop selling out with all this microsoft bullshit,

Again, I never mention Microsoft but you feel the need to attack me 
because I use MS products to earn a living, why is that? What open 
source software will you use to earn a living when you leave university? 
How will you earn a living using open source software?

> If you make money from microsoft, that's fine, go and make some money
> with microsoft.....

Hey I'm sorry that the fact I use MS products and that I actually take 
money for the software I create offends you so much, but I'm afraid the 
stark truth is, at the end of the month the bank want my mortgage paid 
and Tescos et al want paying for the food me and my family eat. If you 
can tell me how I can do that using open source tools, then I'll gladly 
go back to coding Smalltalk on my linux box. If you can't, then could 
you get off my back about it?

> This is a linux list,  I'm sure I'd get flamed to death if I signed up to
> a microsoft lists (do such things exist) deep with the msdn website,
> and said..hey .net is rubbish. 

The sad thing is you wouldn't. I know this 'cos people on the list do it 
all the time. It seems like that sort of thing only happens on open 
source lists. Oh, and I never said linux sucked, in fact, I never 
mentioned linux at all.

> now, I'll wait to be called some money hating , communist scum...

Why on earth would I call you that? Your ideas are naive I believe, but 
I'd never attack you personally for holding them. Why would you think I 
would?

> at least it a start, at least I can say I'm contributing to something, that
> might make a difference, rather than sitting at my desk all day, 
> reinstalling
> another windows server that has 'had  a <insert long list here> problem'

You can try as much as you like, you wont draw me into a MS vs OS flame 
war, life is just way too short. Like I said before, I said "Teachers 
not laptops" the fact that you chose to hear "MS is better than Linux" 
is up to you. I'll debate that point with anyone who wants to, but 
you're not going to get me say MS is better than linux or vice versa. Sorry.

-- 
Cheers,
Gary
http://www.garyshort.org