Big news…
You probably already heard this, but here it is anyway: MIT Media Labs have announced designs for cheap, cheap laptops at less than $100 a throw, and a project to manufacture and distribute them to the world’s schoolkids. The laptops are powered by clockwork (as The Inq put it “crank powered solitaire for the developing world”) and guess what kind of (so cheap it’s free) software they’ll be running?
The news has created some serious interest, with BBC News, The Times, The Boston Globe, ABC News, The Chicago Sun–Times and The Sydney Morning Herald all taking a look. The Times‘ article even suggests that the laptop may be a threat to Microsoft, which, it sagely notes, “does not use open source software.”
Incidentally, in the same paper there was this which made me laugh; the OAP who was ejected from the Labour party conference for upsetting poor sensitive Jack Straw received not just a “hero’s welcome” upon his return, but also “the honour of his own entry on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.”