Bill Gates is such an a**hole. He's so frightened of Google or anything Google touches, it's almost funny. MIT is doing a good thing here, but leave it to f*ckwad Bill to chime in with his negative comments. Of course, he IS an expert at "things that don't work".
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"][a href="vny!://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-03-16T081431Z_01_N15248895_RTRUKOC_0_US-MICROSOFT-GATES.xml"]Bill Gates mocks MIT's $100 laptop project[/a]
By Joel Rothstein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. 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. 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. (Ummm, Bill? Your fancy new "Origami" gadget has a [span style="text-decoration: underline;"]smaller screen than the MIT laptop. But let's not get bogged down in details!)[/span]
"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. (Yeah, and I'm sure Bill would like the third-world countries to buy his piece of shit computer for $999 rather than MIT's design for a [span style="text-decoration: underline;"]tenth of the price.)[/span]
Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week. ($999? That's so much more affordable than MIT's laptop...errr, wait, no it's not. It's ten times as much!)
"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. (Geez, Bill, stop saying things likke "Geez", you sound like a geek. Oh, wait, never mind. lol)
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. (Ooops, quick, rename that project to something warm and fuzzy or you're fired!)
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.
