su·per·cil·i·ous·ness

In other tech news, groups of Australian government departments are charities are going to be trialling One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) projects. These laptops only cost about $190 to produce and are put together by MIT Media Lab in an effort to give improverished kids a chance to access technology. Projects in Rwanda, Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand and Uruguay are currently being developed and while Australia wouldn't be instantly seen as a priority, I can see some great applications for these computers in indigenous communities in the north of Australia.

So what are these laptops like? They are rugged and low-power computers containing flash memory instead of a hard drive and will use Linux as the OS. They will allow adhoc networking so can access the Internet through a single connection at each location. They have sunlight readable monitors, a built-in camera and speakers. This is a very cool initiative.

These things are very very cool.

Interested to hear that the Asian LCC invasion is continuing. On the back of news that Air Asia is costing up flights to Melbourne, Sinagorean airline Tiger Airways will start flights between Perth and Singapore in March. The flight will run four days a week but increase to daily services in November, with fares starting at about $300. Western Australia hopes to get an increased number of tourists from China as Tiger continues to expand into other markets. Having flown from Darwin to Singapore with Tiger before, I think its a scary thought to fly 5h20m on a A320. Kind of cramped.

Speaking of budget airlines, I was interested to be reminded that Qantas contemplated buying a stake in the low-cost airline Adam Air last year. Probably pretty bloody lucky that bombed aren't they? It might have shore up Jetstar Asia a bit, but it all bombed despite Adam Air claiming Qantas was about to buy 20%. With 250 million people in the domestic market, Indonesia is clearly still of interest to QF, but they will definitely have to try elsewhere given the safety woes at Adam Air.

In Crikey today there was an article from Harley Dale who works at the Housing Industry Association who gave the ominous (but not new) news that there housing affordability it as an all time low - even lower than when mortgage rates were at 16 and 17% in the 1980s. The news is that most 18 to 24-year-olds have no hope of getting a home. Indeed, to buy a average $350,000 home (somewhere deep in the suburbs if you are in Sydney), you need an income of around $60,000. Most people don't reach that ever - let alone in their 20s. Single people have very little hope. What are the chances of housing ever being more affordable in this country?