LANCOR v. OLPC Case Continues In Nigerian Court 281
drewmoney writes "According to an article on Groklaw: It's begun in a Nigerian court. LANCOR has actually done it. Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria."
Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
My name is Prince Anonoomosa C'ow-Ard of the Nigerian Royal Family. Recently my family has been driven from power by Marxist revolutionaries. I need your kind help to move my family's enormous stash of TWO HUNDRED MILLION mod points out of the country. In exchange for your help I am willing to offer to you ten percent of this sum, deposited into the comments of your choice. As a gesture of good faith on your part, please mod this comment up.
Re:Why don't the Nigerians just (Score:5, Funny)
(No, I'm not really Nigerian.)
Dollars $ Dollars (Score:5, Funny)
Q: How do you pronounce "$20"
A: "Twenty dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million"
A: "Twenty million dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million dollars"
A: "Twenty million dollars dollars"
You're welcome.
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"US$21,320,000.00(TWENTY ONE MILLION, THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND U.S DOLLARS)"
Oh, and don't tell anyone, but I'm getting that much in a few days. Payola!
Tutorial: Colloquialism (Score:2)
A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or paralinguistics. Colloquialims denote a manner of speaking or writing that is characteristic of familiar "common" conversation.
Source [wikipedia.org]
A colloquialism, whilst not correct in formal speech or writing, is absolutely correct to use when conveying local speech and writing styles.
Colloquial English from Nigeria, as evidenced my a ton of spam, tends to use the "$20 million dollars" format all the time. It's entirely likely that the litigant in question used that phrasing in his demands. Though not used in formal speech, it is nonetheless absolutely appropriate in reporting his cultural tendencies and demands accurately.
Much as we'd love
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No.
Q: What do you call someone who does the above for no reason other than to attract attention and cause disruption?
A: A troll.
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Should tutorial be the new fad?
A: Yes.
Q: Does it seem weak and unimaginative?
A: Yes.
Q: Then why persist?
A: In the mere hopes that it offends at least one person.
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Is "it offends at least one person" a single hope?
A: Yes.
Q: Should "hopes" therefore be "hope"?
A: Yes.
Q: ??
A: Profit!!
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"Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes."
-Good catch.
"Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No."
-Why not? In fact, some of the articles need to have their grammatical standards raised. I want to be able to read article comments without the jarring, annoying, and to me, hugely distracting grammatical flaws that take away from what might otherwise be an insightful and valuable thought. Wait, d00d, i think ur not f33lin
Re:Question Mark (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: Should you place a comma in the sentence "Tutorial, continued..."?
A: Yes.
Q: When using the dash as a separator for an unordered list, should you place a space character between the dash and the first character of the list item?
A: Yes.
Q: Should the sentence following a sentence ending in ellipsis be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Can someone "trend towards perfectionist"?
A: No. One can either trend towards perfectionists or trend towards perfectionism, the latter presumably being your intended meaning.
Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.
Q: Are there any exceptions to the above rule?
A: No. Exceptions exist for exclamation or question marks (depending on whether the mark applies to the quote alone or to the whole sentence), but never for commas or periods.
Q: Are any of the above rules relevant to Slashdot comments?
A: No, as I stated previously. The objective of communication rules is to facilitate maximally convenient communication between parties, and the rules vary depending on the medium and circumstances. In the case of Slashdot comments, the time required to analyze and correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and stylistic errors is unjustifiably high compared to the meager benefit it provides to the readers. Slashdot articles themselves, which are more formal than comments, have a greater time period to be written and checked, and are read by more people, have a justifiably higher standard applied to them. Still, they will have a lower standard than a formal academic paper. Similarly, in cases where communication speed is much more important than rigorousness, such as instant messaging or online game chat, it is perfectly acceptable that the sentence "lol kthxbye" has a better cost-benefit ratio than the sentence "That was amusing; all right, thank-you, and good-bye." The very definition of a "Grammar Nazi" is not simply one who uses formal grammar, but one who expects its use in situations where the expectation is not justified.
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Besides which, let's not pretend that other languages don't have some messed up rules, too. I know it's popular to think that westerners are ignorant of other nations, but I speak two languages fluently, and can get along in two more. The German tendency to stick together words into huge uber-words is a heck of a lot stranger than any aspect of the Eng
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I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards. And, no, I am NOT an American.
No, he really meant "Only in America" (Score:2)
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--- Bogo Mugubwai, Nigeria
expect anything different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:expect anything different? (Score:5, Insightful)
The silver lining of this truth is that the fewer computers Nigerians have the better off the rest of the world is. It would have been difficult and politically incorrect to boycott Nigeria from the OLPC, with a litle luck they just might boycott themselves.
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Well, they certainly got the article wrong. It should have read:
WE REPRESENT THE ESTATE OF GENERAL ALHAJI ISMAILA "KEYBOARDMAKER" GWARZO. I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS MAY COME AS A SURPRISE TO YOU, AS WE HAVE NOT MET YET, BUT WE HAVE COME UPON ARE SUING FOR THE SUM OF $20,000,000 U.S. DOLLARS (TWENTY MILLION U.S. DOLLARS). IF YOU ARE WILLING HELP US FOR THE SUM OF ONE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS DEPOSITED IN YOUR ACCOUNT."
This will probably not make it past the lameness filter. :-D
Re:expect anything different? (Score:5, Insightful)
For all you people that want to pick on Nigeria, not everyone that comes from there is a scammer or a crook. As it happens, my girlfriend is from there (emigrated to the U.S. about 25 years ago) and is a remarkable individual. I consider myself lucky to have her. As an American, I tend to get irritated at all the foreigners here on Slashdot that like to make uninformed generalizations about the United States and its people. Anyone who's ever read any of my posts along those lines knows that. Conversely, I figure it's only fair not to paint everyone in a given country with the same brush, even if they do it to us with monotonous regularity.
That said, I wouldn't advise answering any Nigerian emails that show up in your inbox.
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Exactly: she was remarkable enough to get the heck out! It's not the people who come from there who are the scammers and crooks; it's the people who stay.
(It's the same with all immigrants, by the way. Take illegal Mexican immigrants in the US, for example. Why do they tend to be such hard workers? Because it takes a lot of effort to get here, so the lazy ones stayed home!)
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You should work on your reading comprehension. Try again, and you'll discover that I was making the point that there are not inherent racial differences between (for example) Nigerians, Americans, and Mexicans, but that rather the perceived differences are caused by the fact that we get a skewed sample (immigrants vs. non-immigrants).
Luckily, I don't have to generalize to realize that, because you automatically equate simply mentioning a particular ethnic group with being racist, you're the one who is obse
Re:expect anything different? (Score:5, Informative)
Really, you ought to at least cursorily research subjects before commenting on them.
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What on earth are you talking about?
This is
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(Note that I mean scammers and sleazeballs, regardless of nationality, not Nigerians.)
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On a side-note: Most of my knowledge of drugs comes from US-spam advertising anti-depressants, libido-enhancing drugs or sedatives. Most of the Brazilian spam is about marketing companies, real esta
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To be perfectly fair, the same can be said about the US, no?
I live in the CT, the Nutmeg state, which called so because people here would carve balls out of wood and sell them as nutmeg. Now it's known as the lawyer state, so not a whole lot has changed.
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Cut to the chase (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cut to the chase (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9557 [cfr.org]
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Thats just it (Score:2)
Re:Thats just it (Score:4, Funny)
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Fuller version... (Score:5, Funny)
OLPC defense fund (Score:3, Funny)
It is about kickbacks (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess OLPC didn't pay the kickback moneys in pricing the deal now the corrupt are howling foul. Goes to show us in the free world how well we are off when institutionalized corruption is so rampant.
Or is it the government wanting to keep people dumb and stupid so they don't revolt for a democracy?
Would be interesting to see who bribed who to deprive the children from knowledge. There could be one hell of a story in that.
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Corruption is part of the culture of Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.
The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.
Re:Corruption is part of the culture of Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
So, 3.8 million deaths weren't enough [wikipedia.org]?
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Ah, yes. Kill 'em all, God will know his own.
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Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.
Initially, I couldn't think of any way the US could be exploiting African countries, because we don't have colonies there, they're not in a strategic location, and they aren't worth much as trading partners, unlike China. For the most part, I'd say we ignore them more than anything, except for the extracting Africa's natural resources. One just has to glance at the diamond industry to see mass exploitation in action.
http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=162 [ihscslnews.org]
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/78084.ht [indymedia.org]
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I still like emeralds. Everyone else gets Diamonds or even saphires or rubies, or use Ruby. You can have a ring that has ssphire, ruby, and emerald. No matter what kind of light you will always see somthing.
You could also go fo
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For the most part, I'd say we ignore them more than anything, except for the extracting Africa's natural resources. One just has to glance at the diamond industry to see mass exploitation in action.
It's worth noting that DeBeers, the de facto controlling force in the diamond industry, is a Luxembourg corporation with extensive ongoing anti-trust and price fixing actions by state and federal agencies of the US. For many years, the principals of DeBeers could only enter the US secretly, lest they be served subpoenas (and by extension, later arrested for failure to appear) for their trade practices. DeBeers, the owner of 70% of Africa's diamond mines, has no US holdings, because they'd be subject to sei
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The Africans who get rich off the exploitation of Africa are not known for wanting to share.
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It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life.
I'm not sure African culture is particularly different wrt the value of human life, it's just that circumstances have lead to some very extremely unstable situations.
Colonialization made countries that deliberately didn't conform to tribal borders. If you create a country where not only do the people not have a shared identity, but many of them identify more with people from a neighbouring country, it's a sure recipe for internal and external instability. Note one of the causes of the two world wars in Eur
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I post on /.. I am very happy to tell everybody how to run their civilization, their business, and their computer systems. It comes with the user ID.
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Surely you are not serious. Revolutions in Africa just replace one bunch of assholes with another bunch of assholes.
Which is exactly why revolutions won't work. The whole system is fucked. There are only two things that will work and nether of them are pretty.
One is armed conquest. The UN sends in the troops an we take over everything south of the Sahara. We totally clean house. Then for the next hundred or so years we re-educate everyone in africa and teach them how to behave in a civil society.
The next is just as bad. We wall up everything south of the sahara, nothing comes in; nothing goes out. Then we let
Does the third-world really need laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they aren't ready for a mass introduction of technology - they certainly have shown a compunction for abuse so far. Nigeria is already synonymous with Internet-based moneymaking scams. Does the third world have other, more important priorities instead of laptops, such as basic infrastructure, and a stable and responsive democratic government (most of the world's poorest countries are still ruled by dictators). Complain if you will about the governments of first-world countries such as the US, but if so, you likely haven't seen the corruption of others up close. Visit Mexico for a fine example of what happens when a country with significant potential is rife with corruption from top to bottom. Corruption tends to poison and overshadow even the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as it tends to keep power concentrated in very few hands.
On the other hand, perhaps an opening of information can help to educate the next generation - to give them more options, and more information, more hope. Just as wireless technology is leapfrogging the old, expensive landline-based infrastucture in many countries, perhaps an infusion of technology can help jump-start an economic surge in places that need it most. I just hope they choose to use it wisely.
Does the third-world really need education? (Score:2)
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History says they will grow up and use whatever knowledge and skills they possess to better themselves by scamming and extorting others.
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Re:Does the third-world really need laptops? (Score:4, Insightful)
Our culture at one point had an answer to that: But now, quoting Thomas Jefferson is likely to get you put on a suspected terrorist no-fly list.
keyboard in dispute not used in production devices (Score:5, Informative)
From Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071203061340580#c652659 [groklaw.net]
----
If you examine the OLPC Wiki's edit history for the West African (Nigerian) keyboard you can see what Adé Oyegbola is on about. To save you trawling back and forth here it is in a nutshell. Note that where I write "create" I am referring to the Wiki entires - these dates may not correspond to the physical devices.
1. 2006-08-07 OLPC buy KONYIN keyboards
2. 2006-11-13 OLPC create Nigerian layout based on KONYIN layout
3. 2006-11-13 OLPC Nigerian image updated; layout unchanged
4. 2007-03-02 OLPC image updated to show Beta-3 model; layout unchanged (Original Image March 2nd)
5. 2007-08-?? LANCORP sends OLPC Cease & Desist Notice
6. 2007-08-20 OLPC B3 layout revised completely, no longer looks like KONYIN (Revised Image August 20th)
7. 2007-08-21 OLPC replaces B3 with B4 Ng-MP-Alt layout (more dialect symbols) and new image.
So this boils down to prototype XOs that used the KONYIN layout. I'm not sure how many prototypes were made with the Nigerian keyboard (I'd guess not many more than the 300 used at Galadima primary school, Abuja) but the total quantities were B1: 875, B2: 2,500, B3: 100, B4: 2,000, C1: 300 (see Development Schedule.
Since August 2007 with the C1 (pre-production) the West African (Nigerian) layout has been as you see it on the current Wiki page.
So the crux is that LANCORP are upset over those beta prototypes but the production XOs (and all XOs made since August 2007) have not used the KONYIN layout.
--
Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi (Score:2)
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It always breaks my heart when I see it happening.
Re:keyboard in dispute not used in production devi (Score:4, Funny)
Nigeria (Score:5, Insightful)
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How do you spell SCO in Nigerian? (Score:3)
Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.
IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the same company that funded the SCO fiasco. [news.com]
LANCOR has a point (Score:2, Interesting)
When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing. It's always fun to look at free trade and say, geez, look at what the third world is doing to the USA, but, sometimes, you have to look the other way around.
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Is the keyboard maker suing the OLPC maker going to try and support t
LANCOR has no point (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, there is a crucially important difference between this and other forms of dumping which are actually more wrong: This is basically PRIVATE charity, it's not e.g. the US government dumping cheap computers on the 3rd world to subsidise their own industry; rather, it's private individuals using private money.
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There is probably nothing of consequence here (legally), but the need to defend themselves will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere.
The sad thing is that Nigerian children probably need this device as much as kids in Uruguay or Mexico or Armenia, but thanks to some hardass nigerian scammer they might be negatively affected, because this will certainly put a chill on the OLPC d
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't answer but they still want $20 million dollars.
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Interesting)
- "Linux stole unix code!"
- "Oh really? Which lines, exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "Linux infringes 235 of our patents"
- "That's likely, you patented the obvious. We'll see when IBM starts complaining about their patents you likely infringe upon. BTW, Which ones?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "OLPC steals our patented keyboard input method"
- "Oh really? Which ones exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
I'm reconsidering the real cruelty of the good ol' times where justice was administered by the king, and if you looked like you were making him lose time on useless technicalities you were going to be hanged.
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A hanging (ie: corporate death penalty) may not be totally out of the question. If I recall correctly, LANCOR has to pay court fees if it turns out to be a waste of court time.
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So what? You can't get blood from a stone; I'll bet this "LANCOR" scammer doesn't have any assets to pay if it loses anyway!
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Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Informative)
I'm afraid this is just how things go here in Africa, and as someone else pointed out, why it'll probably remain 3rd-world indefinitely. Try give a hand to Africa, and it will demand an arm, and then try kill you for not giving the entire arm. Mod me whatever, but I've lived here all my life and seen this kind of thing over and over, facts are just facts, I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't lived here to get it.
Re:No Reason to Pity (Score:5, Interesting)
Aid agencies need to be a lot stricter on their staff members and have stiffer penalties for any transgressions - you know, like a bit of gaol time in a dingy cell rather than painting them as a Martyr like the "Chad Children Thieves".
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On the other hand I think there is nothing wrong about letting US-based institutions experience what their government has been supporting since the cold war - even if they are non-profit. It's not because I love preventing people to help, but because I believe it would encourage legislation to abandon a flawed system, because the odds of said system become rather obvious u
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Further, countries still have their pride, and for us to come in acting like they "need help" is a kick in the ego. By roughing
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Their keyboards don't really seem that inventive once you give them a lo [konyin.com]
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But it is probably a universal design or something similar that only changes the stuff needed to localize the keyboard.
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These are freaking QWERTY keyboards with PURPLE PAINT ON THEM and a second shift key. That's it.
See this image from their site http://www.konyin.com/products/NIG/KB-201PW-NG(Large).jpg [konyin.com]
What the hell? I could understand if it's some novel layout...but a painted QWERTY keyboard? Jesus.
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Let's take another step in that direction. Do typewriter manufacturers have to pay royalties to someone who owns the patent to Nigerian keyboard layout? I doubt it and I see no difference.
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Wow.
I am not Nigerian, but as a citizen of another under-developed country I surely appreciacte that pre-20th century attitude!
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Describe, in your own words, what IP has been infringed.
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I'm not saying the Nigerian one shows the same or any degree of innovation, having not read their patent submission, but it is or was at least possible to patent a keyboard layout in the US.
Re:Die OLPC, Die. (Score:4, Informative)
Not kidding.
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Sounds shifty to me.
Seriously, though, don't most keyboards have two shift keys (and a caplocks key)?
Re:Don't do business there (Score:4, Insightful)
"Don't deal with black people" is racist. "Don't deal with African Countries, unless they're white" is racist. "Don't deal with country X that has a history of corruption, and happens to be black" is no more racist than "don't go down Johnson street, there were fifty murders there last year."
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