One laptop per child

I grew up in a “developing” country. I am lucky I grew up in the capital city of my country and my parents were able to put me in a pretty good school where computer education was easily available. There are children in my country who have never seen a computer and may never have heard about it.
Annual income of Nepal is very low. Most of the people earn existential income, that is they earn to live, they don’t have any extra money to spend on technology and other stuffs. Most of them do farming for living and they don’t get a chance to earn money to spend on educational stuff for their children, leave apart personal computers.
Programs like “One Laptop per child” may not sound that revolutionizing in US but it may act as a very big step to make children in countries like Nepal educated with recent technology and help them keep with technology. I am lucky I got to play with computer since my fifth grade, but most of the children in my country are still not fortunate enough to have a computer.
For an average American income $399 is not a large amount to pay for a computer but for an average Nepali person $188 can be his gross annual income. If an average American parent buys his children with that price in that program he will be educating one other child from a developing country. I want every parents here in US to look at the link below and think about buying a computer with this program.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312877,00.html

Outsourcing: An international Perspective

Since my childhood, I had a impression that USA is a land of innovation and opportunity. Whenever I saw white tourists in my neighborhood, my eyes had a different view of looking towards them. I had the impression that he must be really rich, as his single unit of money was worth nearly eighty units of my money. I had heard about people getting rich just by guiding tourists around the city. Then I kind of decided to earn my wages in dollars, luckily my education and my dad’s economic condition was good enough to bring me to USA for college education.
I come from a developing country to US to get a “US degree,” which is very renowned all over the world and can sell for a very good price. Whether I am in USA or any part of the world, US college degree works it magic. If I was in my country and earning the same amount of money I am earning right now (even as an intern), I could live a very high standard of living with that money in Nepal . The cost of living is very low in developing countries than it is in USA. But on the other hand, income is ridiculously low for the same degree in the developing countries. This fact is very well known by American companies, so they are buying the cheap labor of developing countries in a wise manner, which Americans call Outsourcing.
Outsourcing is mutual. The wage that US based companies offer people of developing countries is reasonable for both parties. Suppose a US based employee asks a certain wage for doing some kind of job. If the company outsources the job, the overseas employee is very happy to take a fourth of what the US based employee had asked. With that money he can live a very good life there, as it is almost four times the wage he would have got from a company in his country.
Thinking from a different angle, American companies are using all the innovative people of other countries to work for them. Though all the hard work is done by a person of a different country, the credit goes to the American company. So is it leaving a positive or negative effect in the US Economy?
I think outsourcing is only a practice of open international market. We import cheap electronics from China; many clothing stores import their product from different parts of the world. If somebody thinks outsourcing is putting a negative effect on US Economy, they should also think twice before buying any product that is not made in USA.
I think outsourcing doesn’t take away the jobs from US job market, but it provides more free time and resources to US based companies to spend on innovative ideas and new inventions. If the manpower in US companies were stuck in the same old job that could be done by a cheap employee offshore, the technology wouldn’t grow as fast as it is right now. So the people working for American companies offshore are not really invaders, but are helping hands to make America always on the top in the field of technological innovations.

My mp3 player

I love listening to songs, especially in my car, I want it banging in my ears. I had an ipod, I got it for free by opening a checking acount at a bank. I gave it to my sister on her birthday. Since then I am without a mp3 player. I could live without mp3 player for almost a year, but now it is such a necessity, I had to get one. I didn't want to spend much on an mp3 player so I ordered a mp3 player that looked exactly like an ipod. It took it one month to get to me, it broke the day I got it. I googled my problem, people recommended to upload the firmware, I did, now the mp3 player doesn't even turn on.
I listen to a lot of mp3 songs, I get whatever I want to listen from the internet and honestly I have never paid to get the songs. This time I have been benefited by the weak copyright rules. But at the same time, the Ipod like thing made me suffer. It cost me 40 dollars to get the mp3 player, it doesn't have a brand name and I know it hasn't bought any copyright from Ipod to make it alike. If they had bought the copyright, the player wouldn't be that poorly designed as they had to follow certain specifications.
Analyzing the two things I figured out that the weak copyright enforcement has done more harm to me than benefit. If I had bought all the mp3 songs I listen to I wouldn't have spent 40 dollars in total which I lost in getting a crappy mp3 player.