OLPC Considering 'Give One, Get One' Offer in Europe
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Europeans interested in the One Laptop Per Child Project's XO laptop may soon have the chance through a similar to one offered in North America last year.
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(InfoWorld) - Some of the low-cost PCs designed by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) for kids in the developing world will go to people in North America. That's the result of a program the group plans to launch on Monday that will let U.S. and Canadian residents pay US$400 for one laptop to keep and one to give to a child in a developing nation. Initially, at least, purchasers won't be able to choose where the second laptop will go. "The idea is to help feed programs in the least developed countries and broaden the community of engagement," said Walter Bender, president of software and content for OLPC. By putting the laptops in the hands of people in North America, the group hopes to persuade more people to contribute content or other developments to the project, he said. The offer will start on Nov. 12 and run through Nov. 26. "We don't want to divert too much away from the developing world, so we'll do a short window," Bender said. Mass production of the laptops is scheduled for October, with the first units landing in the hands of kids around the world in early November, he said. The initial run will generate 40,000 units and production will quickly double and triple that capacity to meet demand, he said. The original plan for the OLPC project was to create a laptop that would cost less than $100, but more recentlyÂ the price has been pegged closer to $190. The $400 deal for two laptops includes some padding for the cost of sending one of the laptops to a remote location, Bender said. Â
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The company may be hinting at going public.
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Easier cross-border business for SMEs The European Commission wants to create a form of company across Europe to make cross-border business easier to conduct for small firms.â¦
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The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally aimed at developing nations to needy students in the United States.The group, which was formed in the U.S. by teachers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came under criticism shortly after forming because its original mission did not include the U.S.Originally, the aim of OLPC was to develop a $100 laptop for kids in poor nations to ensure they don&#39;t miss out on the benefits of computing, and to make sure developing countries don&#39;t fall further and further behind modern nations due to their inability to buy computers, a conundrum commonly referred to as the digital divide.OLPC America already has a director and a chairman, and will likely be based in Washington D.C., said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, in an interview.&quot;The whole thing is merging right now. It will be state-centric. We&#39;re trying to do it through the 50 state governments,&quot; he said.The decision to launch OLPC America came about due to three considerations.&quot;For one thing, we are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America. The second thing we&#39;re doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community,&quot; Negroponte said.The third reason is educational, so that children in the U.S. communicate with kids in developing nations and expand their horizons.The reason OLPC had not included the U.S. in its low-cost laptop program was because of the huge difference in need, Negroponte said. In the U.S., people spend $10,000 per year per child in primary education, but in Bangladesh, a developing country, they spend $20. It&#39;s a huge difference, and many people in the U.S. can afford more expensive laptop PCs for their kids anyway.But although the U.S. was not the focus of OLPC in the beginning, it has always been in the plans.&quot;To have the United Sates be the only country that&#39;s not in the OLPC agenda would be kind of ridiculous,&quot; Negroponte said.
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Competition drive The concept of a European super-regulator has been considered in a report from the European Commission, looking at ways in which competition could be increased in the telecommunications business.â¦
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The EU considers introducing a donor card to address a shortage of organs for transplant across member states.
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Is Microsoft's offer too low, too high, or just right?
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INTERNET security firm Surfcontrol, which has a UK base in Congleton, Cheshire, said it had received a preliminary approach which may lead to a bid for the company.   However, it stressed there was no certainty an offer would be made.  (c) 2006 Daily Post; Liverpool.
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(InfoWorld) - A pro-business think tank in Europe has recommended unbundling Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system from sales of new PCs in order to give customers more choice when buying a new computer. A report from the Globalisation Institute in Brussels urges the European Commission to require that PCs and operating systems be sold separately in Europe to break Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop OS market. "Microsoft's dominant position is not in the public interest. It limits the market and has slowed technical development to the prejudice of consumers," said the report . The report is gaining attention partly because the Globalisation Institute usually advocates a hands-off approach to business regulation. It researches and develops policy options that are sometimes championed by politicians. Its report comes one week afterÂ Europe's second-highest court turned down Microsoft's appeal of the European Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against it, which fined MicrosoftÂ around $600 million for abusing its OS monopoly. That investigation focused on how Microsoft bundles its Media Player software with Windows, which the Commission said harmed competitors such as RealNetworks Inc. It also required Microsoft to publish communications protocols so that its rivals can make their server software work better with Windows clients. The Globalization Institute said the Commission should take its thinking about Microsoft's OS to its "logical conclusion" and force PC makers to unbundle Windows from PCs as well. The report does not mentionÂ recent moves by vendors such as Dell Inc., and Hewlett-Packard Co.Â in Australia, to offer Linux as an option with PCs sold online. Globalisation Institute President Alex Singleton called those offers "a token gesture." "The fact is, when you go into a computer shop, the majority of consumers are not faced with a choice. Just because on the margins you are offered something else, I don't think those choices mean there is real competition." In addition, the report argued, offering a choice of OS is not a practical option for retail stores, where floor space is limited. Therefore PCs should be sold separately from the OS. "We do not believe this would add complexity for consumers. Consumers would simply be asked to insert an operating system DVD when they first turn on a new computer, which would then automatically configure itself," the report says. Such competition exists in hardware, the report argues, with microprocessors and hard drives available from a choice of vendors. But when consumers walk into a store they generally have only one choice for an OS: Windows. "The result is that consumers who, given the choice, would opt for a cheaper operating system, find themselves automatically buying the market leader." The group sent its report to the office of the European Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes, Singleton said. Kroes led the Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft and has called the company's share of the desktop OS market "unacceptable." Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report. Â
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Just buy a license, and do what you will The EU has released a policy document calling for frequencies to be allocated with no restriction put on what they can be used for.â¦
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London Stock Exchange Plc said on Monday  it had received an approach from mainland European stock market  Euronext.
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(InfoWorld) - European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy set out his plan for a single approach to patents across the European Union on Thursday, ahead of an Oct. 12 vote on the matter in the European Parliament, winning plaudits from some erstwhile opponents. Previous attempts to introduce European legislation on patents, or to extend existing legislation to encompass software, haveÂ met stiff opposition. McCreevy spelled out his two-track approach in a speech to the Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday. His ultimate goal is a single patent system across the E.U., but he is also pushing for improvements to the existing patent regime, governed by the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich. The EPO sees two problems with the existing regime: the lack of a single jurisdiction for patents in Europe, and the prohibitive costs involved in translating the patents into all European languages. Its answer to the jurisdiction question is the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), which many opponents of patents for software-related inventions abhor. The EPLA would create one patent court for patent disputes in all countries that are members of the EPO, which include all 25 E.U. member states except Malta. In his speech on Thursday, McCreevy appeared to take some of the EPLA opponents' concerns to heart. "I recognize there are legitimate doubts and concerns" about the EPLA, he told members of the Parliament. Florian Mueller, coordinator of a lobby group opposed to software patents, welcomed the Commissioner's approach. Mueller's group helpedÂ defeat a proposed European directiveÂ last year that could have enabled patenting of software. "During that long debate about the software patent directive, our concerns were always ridiculed by the Commission, making us out to be paranoid. Times seem to have changed," he said in a blog posting Friday. "McCreevy conceded that the proposed European Patent Litigation Agreement leaves a lot to be desired in its present form," he added. Mueller, along with many other critics of Europe's patent regime from the open-source and free software communities, and members of the European Parliament from four mainstream political parties, believe that the plans for an EPLA will simply duplicate the approach to patenting championed by the EPO. This regime has granted numerous software-related patents and is considered to be much more lax in the way it hands out patent monopolies than the national patent offices in individual European countries. Opponents of the EPO object to the fact that the EPO would select judges from within its own ranks to preside over disputes, as they believe this will spread what they call the lax attitude to software patents to all EPO countries. At a hearing in July hosted by the European Commission, EPO president Alain Pompidou called for the swift ratification of the EPLA, which remains a draft agreement. "The draft European Patent Litigation Agreement must be submitted to an intergovernmental conference as soon as possible," Pompidou said then. While McCreevy appeared to favor taking divergent views into account, he did stress the need for the EPLA in his speech. Mueller took issue with that in his blog, pointing out that patent disputes rarely involve more than one country at a time. National patent courts are, therefore, sufficient to deal with the vast bulk of cases, he said. "I don't mean to say that it's a perfect state of affairs if a company may have to enforce one and the same patent in more than one country at a time. But the current practice of sue-in-one-settle-in-all works quite well. About two-thirds of all E.U. patent infringement litigation takes place in Germany [about 900 cases per year], and in many of those cases the parties settle the dispute for the remaining European countries after a ruling or settlement in the first country in which they fight it out in court. That's pragmatic," he said. The European Parliament will vote on whether to support McCreevy's approach to patents on Oct. 12.
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Updated competition guidelines mean more outsourcing deals in Europe may have to go to the European Commission for approval.
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Business & money: Europe's mobile operators vie for Christmas launch.
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The EU considers introducing a donor card to address a shortage of organs for transplant in member states.
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The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization has announced a two-week sale from November 12 to November 26, with the objective of catalyzing greater support from philanthropists and generous consumers, as well as emerging nations whose citizens could stand to benefit.