Russell McMahon wrote:

> Excellent overview here
> 
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

How they want to curb the black market that surely will develop (since they
are not selling to the general public):

"But then the third one, which I'm doing and I like is to make this machine
so distinctive that it is socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are
not a child or a teacher. Now you can obviously take it down to your
basement, but I hope your spouse will even say: "Oh God! Honey! What did
you do?" OK? you stole from the church. It's like a red cross on something.
So I'm hoping that the distinctiveness of the product will be the third one
that maybe isn't thought of that often."

I don't know many of the target countries, but I'm reasonably sure that
this won't work very well. Laws are broken without any feeling of
wrongdoing for much less than a small laptop computer if the need is big
enough. Possibly not in the USA or the EU, but probably in much of the
poorer rest of the world.

I can already see people present their new shiny green mini laptop to their
neighbors -- which they got from a kid that was begging for money at the
traffic light... and Brazil is not one of the really poor countries.

Gerhard

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