It's another punch in the face for the OLPC.

According to a report from the outskirts of Huancayo, Peru, three armed robbers stole sixty-six OLPC XO computers in the middle of the night, adding another setback to the OLPC project. The laptops were being stored at a public school in a poor neighborhood (with two security guards on watch) and hadn't been delivered to the kids yet. Thankfully, the OLPC and the local government likely will work together to replace the notebooks.

While the OLPC includes top-notch security features, like an anti-theft system that's supposed to make stolen laptops useless (on top of a hacker-proof platform OS), they may not be enough to prevent a human error.

Before an XO laptop is deployed, each one is assigned an encrypted "lease" that is monitored by a closed server defined by a 'manager' (like the country or region deploying them all). The lease is monitored and the laptops are not supposed to be turned on until they have been individually marked for its individual user. So if a laptop is stolen and then connected to the net, the database will turn off the connection and shut it off completely.

However, there was already one instance where a shipment manager did not follow the activation protocol -– some OLPCs arrived ready to boot up, without an activation key prompt or anything. If this is the case with the latest setback, the laptops that were stolen may not have been registered and may not be found.

Without the lease, they will also probably turn off and prove useless to the perpetrators, but that doesn't mean they can't sell them off on the black market.

OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte had previously claimed that the laptops were not likely to be stolen because they were going to be delivered by the postal office, which are, on average, among the safest systems of delivery and not usually a target of bandits. This has largely been proven to be true.

Unfortunately, desperate criminals will take anything that might have a resale value, even if the OLPC platform bricks them.

But let's give the OLPC and its makers some credit -- they have still placed thousands of the durable little notebooks in the hands of children in impoverished areas. That's nothing to sneeze at.

We just wish that the deployment, the price, and missed deadlines hadn't been so badly mismanaged.