Many people still cling to the notion that Linux is for 30-year-old male geeks. While that may be true, there are plenty of other people of all ages, ethnicities, and genders who enjoy Linux and other free and open source software. For the most part, the operating systems a child uses are determined by the child’s parents and school.

I finally managed to get a child in front of the XO PC from the One Laptop Per Child project. I thought I would share my observations from watching her interact with this interesting tool.

Thank you for your interest in One Laptop Per Child. Our mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have little resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 a year per child.

Give One Get One initiative. T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary T-Mobile HotSpot access to people who donate an XO laptop to a child in a developing country through the campaign.

Any parent who comes to the realisation that his or her child is gifted generally feels conflicting emotions: happiness and confusion. Happiness over the fact that one has an unusual child and confusion over how one is going to deal with this child.

"This news got me thinking about the potential child abuse risks inherent in the One Laptop Per Child initiative and other "$100 laptop" projects. These well-intentioned efforts plan to give computers to poor children throughout the world, to facilitate their education and fuel economic development."

It's taken a remarkably short time for the One Laptop Per Child project to change from positioning itself as the saviour of children in developing countries to becoming a toady for Microsoft.

The Digital Divide -- there isn't a nation where it doesn't exist, yet it seems so relative. In one place, a child going online via dial up using a PII seems at a disadvantage. Elsewhere, that child has a tool that could change his life.

Nicholas Negroponte, the head of the One Laptop per Child project, is in the news again, this time trying to rationalise the appearance of Windows XP on the laptop manufactured by the project.