
Google offering free Chromebooks to Indian schools - kshatrea
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/hardware/Google-offering-free-Chromebooks-to-Indian-schools/articleshow/28000046.cms
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winterswift
I see there's a mini-shitstorm going on here, but let's say Google is in fact
a business acting in its own self-interest to some degree, which seems
reasonable. Let's say they're giving away Chromebooks because a) they wish to
do good in the world, _and_ b) they'd like to get more people using Google
services, and this seems like a rather effective method of gaining long-term
users. Now, ignoring the fact that you can indeed use crouton, enable dev
mode, or otherwise "hack the platform" so to speak, where's the actual issue
in having these kids using Google services? Google's offering them _free
computers._ Does we honestly think that a poor kid in India wouldn't eagerly
give written consent to become a user of Google's services, letting Google
benefit from that as they do from any similar user, _especially_ when they're
not being forced in any way whatsoever to continue doing so in the future?

I'm a goddamn middle-class American, I believe I have a reasonable knowledge
of what Google will get out of this deal (as they do every day from my heavy
usage of their services), and _I_ would accept the free computer. Even at
that, poor kids without regular access to the internet aren't your average
highly tech-literate, open-source-aware HN user, and I really doubt they care
about Google's relatively responsible* use of collected information in
exchange for a rather nice free netbook, even if they _were_ fully aware of
its implications.

*Sure, I understand this is an arguable definition, but in the larger scheme of things, it seems fair to say that Google doesn't have a malicious use of the data in mind.

~~~
diadara
I love quoting RMS. "What schools should refuse to do is teach dependence.
Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco
companies distribute free cigarettes to minors: to get children addicted. They
will not give discounts to these students once they've grown up and
graduated."

Surely this applies only if you consider chromebooks as free and this not true
atleast by RMS standards.

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bowlofpetunias
It's interesting that Google is hardy being scrutinized for using exactly the
same tactics for which Microsoft was vilified a decade ago.

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salient
This deal was probably made pre-Snowden revelations. I doubt any of the
world's governments are so eager to deploy US-controlled machines in their
institutions and schools, especially if they are "cloud-only".

~~~
rational_indian
But it's free!!!

~~~
louthy
So was the Trojan Horse.

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shimon_e
It must be so different going to school these days. I feel excited for our
future kids!

~~~
psbp
I remember going through the majority of my primary education in the 2000's
and being dismayed by the gap between public school education and the
resources of the internet. It was such a weird, and unfortunate, period of
denial. Maybe we're still experiencing that chasm between the way that society
functions and the power of the internet to enrich our lives, but it seems like
we're definitely inching closer to my childhood idealizations.

~~~
blubbi2
I'm currently doing my A levels in a small school in the Upper Palatinate. The
problem is - at least in Germany - that some schools have to invest the money
they get in fundamental thing only, like sanitary facilities. The school I'm
attending doesn't even have WARM water AT ALL! NOWHERE! On the other side,
there are new built schools that can invest their money in Smart Boards and
video projectors. Another point is that most of the "old" teachers simply
don't know how to use these fancy new things (including computers in general)
and there are also teachers that are so fascinated by Facebook and
BayernMoodle ([http://www.bayernmoodle.de/](http://www.bayernmoodle.de/)) that
they more or less force their students to use it on weekends in order to give
them exercises. More or less, when I tell my mother about the lessons (she
went to the same school as I do), I often realize that sometimes neither the
teachers nor the way eduction is being done changed all. I would be happy
about new books, some on mine are far older than myself. Maybe others have
different experiences, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

~~~
eru
Don't waste your time worrying about school too much. Make sure you get into
things like [https://www.deutsche-schuelerakademie.de](https://www.deutsche-
schuelerakademie.de) or [http://www.deutsche-
juniorakademien.de](http://www.deutsche-juniorakademien.de).

(Their Alumni organisation ([http://www.cde-ev.de/](http://www.cde-ev.de/)) is
actually open for everybody, and I can only recommend joining. [https://mind-
hochschul-netzwerk.de/](https://mind-hochschul-netzwerk.de/) is also worth a
look.)

~~~
blubbi2
Wow! This is great! I've already been to a so-called "Ferienseminar für
besonders begabte und interessierte Schülerinnen und Schüler", an event I've
been invited to and which I can only recommend, but these links are great!
Thank you! Since I'm doing an additional test, I'll try getting into some of
these programmes.

~~~
eru
Oh, none of these programmes are tests. If you a into that kind of thing, you
should also compete in the Mathematik-Olympiade (and physics and chemistry
olympiad, too). There are also Bundeswettbewerb Mathematik and
Bundeswettbewerb Informatik, that are fun to take part in.

Drop me a line (email in profile), if you want to learn more. I grew up in
Germany, but ended up all over the world, currently I'm in Singapore.

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xradionut
I think a much better ethical investment would be XO laptops from OLPC,
Internet-in-a-Box devices, and grants to train local teachers on how to use
both.

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rwbt
I commend Google for it, but my inner voice is somewhat skeptical that this is
a great way to get kids hooked on Google's services. Then again, having a
Chromebook is way better than some crappy linux machine/cheap windows laptop.
So I think its a win-win for both parties.

~~~
josteink
_Then again, having a Chromebook is way better than some crappy linux machine
/cheap windows laptop._

Why? It's a much more limited device with much less potential for learning
essential skills.

A Chromebook can only be used to surf the web. It's the polar opposite of what
an educational institute needs.

~~~
rwbt
It depends. A regular laptop can do more things, but most of the time students
just need a laptop to research and write articles and the Chromebook does that
very well, without exposing the internals of a traditional desktop system.

If I'm a college student, I really don't want to deal with OS upgrades,
malware and other things. I just want something that works out of the box and
Chromebook does that perfectly. If I really want to tinker, it's not that hard
to install a linux distro in a Chromebook and not everyone desires to tinker
with their computers.

~~~
pavanred
Say you use Windows, 1\. Turn on automatic updates (default option, I think)
2\. Use something like MS Security essentials

And, if you use Linux, 1\. Update regularly, again I guess most distros have a
default option to check for updates on boot. And, you don't need to upgrade
your OS unless you want/have to.

How much more do you want to dumb it down? For basic use as you mentioned, to
research and write articles, you are almost doing nothing already with
windows/linux

~~~
eitally
ChromeOS is dumbed down so much more than that, insofar as nothing ever
breaks, update reboots only take a few (<10) seconds, behavior encountered is
always 100% predictable, and with a browser being the only available
interactive display mode, WYSIWYG. My wife has a MacBook and I have a cheap
Acer Revo mini-PC, but she also has a new HP Chromebook and I spend most of my
time on either the Pixel in my office or the Samsung Chromebook I'm typing on
now. Except for things like needing a traditional OS for random third party
hardware support (e.g. Fitbit sync, printer, scanner) or extremely rare
requirements for MS Office or photo management, we'd function very well with
just browsers.

I know this is an aside, but one of the things that irritates me most about
the modern web, and Google's "solution" especially, is photo management.
Picasa on the desktop is simplistic but generally 100% ok, but Google+ Photos
leads to horrifically unpleasant workflows, and god help you if you want print
anything or share on non-Google properties.

~~~
fidotron
I can't upvote strongly enough about the photo stuff.

Recently I discovered that Google+, Facebook etc. all like to interpret
"sharing" a photo to mean sharing a link to the page with the photo on it, not
to actually share the photo, which is what the user really wants to have
happen, not to mention the PITA this is to automate because it suddenly means
these photos are behind authorisation walls. (This is on top of how
aggressively Google tries to get any photos you take, or send via Gmail, into
G+ in the first place).

Quite honestly I've had it with any cloud service that acts like this, and now
choose to spam them with irrelevant nonsense of no consequence.

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eitally
They're probably hoping for something like this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ipm3fDU60](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ipm3fDU60).

