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The OLPC in green and white  (Source: The OLPC Wiki)
Nigerian children get caught up on the Internets with porn

One of the aims of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project is to give the underprivileged new opportunities and experiences they otherwise wouldn’t have. Interestingly enough, some school children are using their laptops to browse pornographic Internet sites.

According to a Reuters report, a reporter at the official News Agency of Nigeria discovered pornographic images on the donated laptops from a U.S. aid organization. It is unclear whether or not school children were actually caught in the act of browsing such websites.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," reported the News Agency of Nigeria.

Perhaps in response to the discovery of the OLPC’s side features, a representative for the laptop project said that the computers will now be fitted with filtering software.

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In a country where Aids runs rampant
By PAPutzback on 7/23/07, Rating: 0
By Misty Dingos on 7/23/2007 9:14:42 AM , Rating: 5
Perhaps we could just let them alone and let them realize what is on the web in the first place. Utter anarchy. Sure I can see that blocking the kids from cruising porn sites while at school is a good thing. I can't imagine that having the kids on porn sites while the teacher is trying to teach geography is going to don anything for good academics. But the whole idea of this OLPC program was to put computers into the hands of millions of kids. At some point you are going to have to take off the training wheels and let reality set in.

These kids aren't going to learn how to build IEDs from the internet they will learn that from the local fanatics trust me they have a training program. And they aren't going to sudden increase the infection rate of AIDS in the area. What is more likely is that they will decrease AIDS but increase the level of awareness of how much violence is perpetrated in their world every day. What they do with that knowledge is up to them.

One other thing. You can not take a million kids to a candy store and tell them to keep their eyes shut and their hands in their pockets. It isn't going to work.


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/23/2007 9:16:07 AM , Rating: 1
Yea, and that is of concern. Now your giving internet access to people who have desire to blow shit up. It's really not hard with the aid of google to learn what materials and what kind of detonator would be needed as well as methods and theory for constructing and designing bombs to do some serious damage.

Now on the flip side, its possible those that want to do this sort of thing have long since had internet access, it wouldn't be that far fetched.


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By TomZ on 7/23/2007 9:24:44 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
Now your giving internet access to people who have desire to blow shit up

I don't see why children in developing countries would want to blow stuff up, let alone want to kill people, any more than those in developed countries. It's not like kids making bombs is a real significant problem in the developed world where kids have ready access to the Internet.


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By mdogs444 on 7/23/2007 9:34:51 AM , Rating: 5
I see where you both are coming from. In one sense, getting computers, internet, and modern day technology into the hands of these 3rd world countries is a good thing to help them prosper. However, some of the african places have been in civil wars for a long time, and probably will not be ending soon. So could giving them increased technology be considered a good thing, or just another weapon to use for bomb making & communications. I dont know, but i guess giving an 8 yr old a computer cannot be worse than giving them an automatic weapon right?


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By Xavian on 7/23/2007 9:53:07 AM , Rating: 2
I'm always a believer that if you give any people on the planet enough Information that their society will eventually develop itself.

With most 3rd world countries drowning in Ignorance because of the lack of technology, so pointless wars caused by power-hungry warlords will continue to go unchecked by the populous by and large.

If people in general don't know there's something OTHER than war, warlords, pointless fighting and being displaced from their homes, then the pointless bloodshed will continue.

Sure there's a chance that 0.001% of people in 3rd world countries might want to blow stuff up and this will give them the information to do it, but the benefits of a massive surge of information (via the Internet) to these 3rd world countries far outweigh the downsides.


By copiedright on 7/23/2007 10:05:22 PM , Rating: 2
That is exactly right!

Many of the missionaries going over to third world areas are used to inform people of some basic things we all know, such as keeping sanitation away from the water supply.

Many still believe that the way to cure AIDS is to have s_x with a virgin!

As for the weapons argument, they already have imported weapons and explosives, additional information wont do much because they have no infrastructure to develop weapons.

So lets give them basic information access. In a way we are following the wise old saying: "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. But teach a man to fish and he eats for the rest of his life"

Remember Charity is not a long term solution. Education and teaching of self reliance is!


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By xsilver on 7/23/07, Rating: -1
RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By Exodus220 on 7/23/07, Rating: 0
RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By FITCamaro on 7/23/07, Rating: -1
By TomZ on 7/23/2007 11:25:33 AM , Rating: 1
That's a pretty callous attitude. Just because the leaders in that region of the world are not doing a good job, the problems there are very hard to solve. Even the US, with all its "wisdom" and "power," hasn't been able to crack that nut yet.

And I have to believe that the people that live in the middle East are just like us and just like others around the world, they want to live in peace, raise their families, have jobs, etc. Suggesting they just all nuke each other is a pretty inhumane comment.


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By omnicronx on 7/23/2007 11:57:57 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
I don't think there's been peace in that region of the world for the past several decades if not centuries.


Ya because it was under British rule, and before than ottoman empire. Then they withdrew leaving whoever wanted to be in power to achieve that.


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By Ringold on 7/23/2007 1:53:32 PM , Rating: 3
Keep going further back. They were left to their own devices at times, and were in chaos. The times the region was peaceful was after General Muhammed ripped off the Jews and crafted a religion perfectly suited for mass conquest -- and got all the way in to mainland Europe before the only French man ever to live stopped them cold. That's not an exaggeration or propaganda -- pick up a history book, any history book.

I heard someone say a couple years ago that the world will continue to have grevious problems with Islam until the equivalent of a Martin Luther nails a moderate viewpoint to a mosque door, the religion fractures (again), and the Islamic Reformation runs its course. That took hundreds of years in Europe; we can only hope modern technology accelerates it to just a couple generations for them.


RE: In a country where Aids runs rampant
By bubbacub616 on 7/23/2007 3:42:27 PM , Rating: 2
I would go even further back. Human civilization first developed in the fertile crescent (egypt/israel/jordan/iraq). The development of crops and resultant biodiversity from the amalgamation of european african and asian ecologies has been mirrored more recently over the last 2-3000 years with this area being a crossroads or front were peoples and cultures collide. It is thus unsurprising that the area has been a bloody warzone for most of this time. Its tempting (especially with 9/11 rose tinted glasses) to blame Islam for all of our woes but I don't think this is necessarily the case here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_crescent


By Ringold on 7/23/2007 5:42:05 PM , Rating: 2
Difference is, those that left the area and developed elsewhere have, for the most part, lead a peaceful prosperous existence with a recent historical focus on individual freedom, liberty, etc. I won't blame any of the problems of the 1900s on Islam really (well, they did start their campaign against us then, we simply didnt notice), but since 2001? Definitely; and probably for the rest of this century.


By nah on 7/25/2007 11:53:42 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
General Muhammed ripped off the Jews and crafted a religion perfectly suited for mass conquest


exactly how did he rip of the Jews--and as for crafting a religion for mass conquest---who ultimately ended up controlling most of the world by 1900--the Europeans

this hatred of Islam and Muhammad goes back to the middle ages when mothers would frighten children by using Muhammad as a bogeyman

for a balanced view of Muhammad--read the bio by Karen Armstrong an Oxford Scholar and articles by Wilfred Cantwell Smith of Harvard


By Ryanman on 7/25/2007 2:50:22 PM , Rating: 1
The obvious conclusion is those with religeous fervor are more likely to kill and be killed. You can't honestly say that they're killing each other for any other reason, or at least using religeon as a justification. In Iraq, we kill a bunch of insurgents a day. They kill each other so much more than we could ever possibly do, it's a neat little system that has only the flaw of killing civillians.

Natural Selection FTW.