Border Amputation

Take this Negroponte 'puter and Shove It

The Negroponte (nɛgroʊˈpɑnti) brothers, sons of a Greek shipping magnate, have a Dark and a Light side: John Negroponte, the London-born godfather of right-wing paramilitary death squads and his younger brother, Nicholas Negroponte, Upper West Side-born founder of MIT's Media Lab.

In a bid to repurchase the respect for his family pawned by John, Nicholas announced a $100 computer to edumacate the third world. E-Week reports that Nicolas' computer is merely a Tonka Toy --that even the poorest nations in the world are uninterested in a crank-up gadget.

Intel Chairman Criag Barrett is probably correct in his assessment:

"It turns out what people are looking for is something is something that has the full functionality of a PC," he said. "Reprogrammable to run all the applications of a grown up PC ... not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power."

As if to prove a point, Intel is involved in a project in Sri Lanka to "set up south Asia's first long-range WIMAX wireless network."