WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) 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. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) 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.

“Hardware is a small part of the cost” of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support.

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new “ultra-mobile computer” which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen.

Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week.

“If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type,” Gates said.

Gates described the computers as being for shared use, but the project goes under the name “One Laptop per Child.” A representative for the project did not immediately reply to an inquiry seeking comment.

Earlier this year, Google founder Larry Page said his company is backing MIT’s project. He showed a model of the machine that does use a crank as one source of power.

“The laptops … will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data,” according to the project’s Web site. […]

http://today.reuters.com/

Here we see the TRUE face of the ‘philanthropist’ Bill Gates. Here is a man worth billions, but who will not give money to this vital project, simply because they will not use his crippleware OS.

The kernel of true nature of generosity is sacrifice. Giving away money, even in the hundreds of millions is not a sacrifice for Bill Gates, no matter how useful that money is to the recipients.

A sacrifice for Gates would be for him to pump hundreds of millions into the GNU Foundation, to  put his legion of developers at work on bolstering Linux and Open Source – to actually give something away that matters to him, ie, domination of the worlds desktop operating systems.
Gates obviously doesn’t care a damn that millions of children will have internet access on these exxcellent computers, whose screens by the way, whilst being small, are much bigger than the screen of a GameBoy, which takes up the time of millions of children to no good end.

Applications cost nothing when they are licenced under the GPL. This is anathema to Bill Gates. If the price of every child on earth becoming not only literate but computer literate, would it not be an act of greatness, philanthropy, charity and sacrifice for Microsoft to support this project and the free software that is going to be run on it? Or would he rather that all those children remain illiterate, cut off and impoverished, all for the sake of transient market share?

I think the answer is pretty clear. Anyone who is against this project is against literacy, learning and impoverished children.

And that my friends, is pure evil.

And just to correct this article, the laptps will NOT be shipped “without software” , they will also not need a hard disc, since ultra reliable flash drives will do the job of storage, and finally, just what is ‘a huge amount of data’? The smallest flash drives can hold an entire dictionary; if this project can get a laptop into every child’s hands that has an OS, some networking tools and a dictionary, that would be a very cool thing indeed. And of course, when you can get online, the whole internet is your storage medium, so this statement is totally irrelevant to the utility of this device.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Geekn, Money.