An anonymous reader writes "The '$100 laptop' Negroponte is hoping to put in the hands of millions of kids in developing nations may actually be more like the '$900 laptop.' From the article, 'Jon Camfield says...once maintenance, training, Internet connectivity, and other factors are taken into account, the actual cost of each laptop rises to more than $970. This, he says, doesn't even take in to account the additional costs associated with theft, loss, or accidental damage. Camfield contends that such an expensive undertaking should at least be field-tested in pilot programs designed to establish the viability of the project before asking countries to invest millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars.'" Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

A large number of readers wrote in about IBM suing Amazon over commerce patents. The Ars Technica coverage linked is one of the few sources that goes beyond the brief AP or Reuters stories that everyone is running. Here is IBM's press release. Some of the patents in question go back to the 80s and they do seem to pretty much wrap up the idea of online commerce, if they prove valid. IBM says many others are licensing the patents but Amazon won't give them the time of day on the subject.