Submitted by Nigeria has officially ordered and paid for one million of the One Laptop per Child devices, according to the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper. The deal is the first actual order for the project that aims to provide Linux-powered laptops to children in developing economies. Make the cheesiest spam joke, and you get a cookie.
GREETS Sir,
I be MR Salam Bigujum, I kindly ask for your help and aid in getting LAPTOPS sent to me and my company. Nigeria LTD has currently purchased LAPTOPS from US ONE LAPTOP program. But my COMPANY’s president has died suddenly and tragicly. Now we can not get laptops sent to Nigeria. I ask you to please help us. I will wire 100 MIL USD to your account to help with arranging shipping for me. you will pay shipping from tis money and then wire 50 MILL USD back to me and my company. You may keep remain.
Please write me back if you may help.
May Peace Be with You,
Salam
Not everyone in Nigeria is a scam artist, it’s nice to see some good press for Nigeria and someone to step up and order this OLPC, because it will never happen if people don’t pay for it.
> Not everyone in Nigeria is a scam artist
No, many are simply unexperienced scammers. To become a scam artist takes some practice, ya know.
That had to add some market share.
Hopefully this doesnt mean I will get more mail about winning a million dollars, all i have to send them is $5,000. lol
Now 10,000 *internet marketers* in Nigeria can stay connected without having to vie for access at public terminals.
Its
1) 1 million less machines to fall foul of WGA however dubious this might turn out to be.
2) 1 million more OSS Systems in an expanding and growing country with a lot of potential wealth.
Once these get deployed then I’m sure that some on the undoubted many many PC’s running pirated XP etc will be converted to Linux.
my first thoughts after reading this is that the 419 scams will actually increase, and that itself would suck. However, I’m delighted that at least one African country is investing in 1 million laptops, I think that it will help to improve education and communication in Nigeria and that is a good thing.
Infact, the knock on side effect might actually curb the ‘419’ status that Nigeria currently has.
In the meantime, here’s some very entertaing reading
http://forum.419eater.com/john_boko.htm
cheers
anyweb
Yeh I read that before, its absolutely gutwrenchingly funny. Poor con artists.
My roommate has been telling this obnoxious joke for weeks, so I can’t resist:
“Niger stole my bike!”
It’s from “You’re the man now dog”:
http://nigerstolemybike.ytmnsfw.com/
Heck, after filtering through the corrupt bureacracy, with every layer taking a cut, watch 1,000,000 turn into 100 (or less).
But this is great stuff here: http://www.thescambaiter.com/forum/showthread.php?t=109
The vnunet article is a little outdated, the hand crank is out and a newer pull string generator is in.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17194&ch=infot…
“Not everyone in Nigeria is a scam artist”
Of course not and the fact is that the majority of email scam/spam operations are based in the U.S. The first post is still very funny though.
an african country shows interest in an innovating concept, which shows off the power of linux, and they get panned by you guys.
Opening the door for Linux in one of the worlds most populous black nations, instead of praise they get ridiculed. Thanks.
Hopefully MY people use this oppurtunity to promote computing to a wider range of the population. Maybe even produce a distro in some native languages.
We do e/scam a lot though.
As a Nigerian who visits OSNEWS on a daily basis, I am really DISGUSTED at the response from members of this community.
I’d have expected a more mature response with discussions about changes that this incident could encourage. Instead, I see people being immature and biased.
Nigeria is NOT a country filled with scammer/con artists just like Italy is not filled with Mobsters, America is not filled with KKK members and Germany is not filled with NAZI supporters. England is not….. I could go on forever.
Hope you get where I’m coming from.
I agree wholeheartedly with you. You can never ascertain whether the spammer is really Nigerian or not.
Even if he is a Nigerian, there are a lot more spammers in the developed countries than in the developing ones.
I’d have expected a more mature response with discussions about changes that this incident could encourage. Instead, I see people being immature and biased.
However, the OSNews tagline underneath the headline does say: “Make the cheesiest spam joke, and you get a cookie” so I don’t think you could expect a particularly mature response.
Because people like cookies.
Learn to take a joke kid, seriously:
Make the cheesiest spam joke, and you get a cookie.
turned down the OLPC with rather scathing comments.
On what basis?
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/india-rejects-100-one-laptop-per…