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"This makes me wonder how the various third-world countries will start treating the various physical problems that come from computers. I bet most people in the target areas are not used to sitting hunched over a screen and there will be bad backs, bad legs (from the foot pedal), bad hands from the mouse and small keyboard, bad eyes from late night computing. Should be interesting in few years after launch to see how the native medicine peoples go about treating these."

Oh my, my. I'll try to put this gently. In one village I visited recently, people walk a few kilometres up a mountainside (often very muddy from rain), work all day bent double in the garden, then walk back to the village laden with up to 50 lbs. of produce, firewood, etc. on their back. Sitting down and pedalling a computer for an hour or so in the evening is luxury.

For an idea about the physical condition of people in the country where I live, see some photos here. The paramount chief of Loltong village, who's in in early seventies, took me for a 3 hour walk around his mountainous area that left me staggering, then cooked me lunch. He didn't seem to worried about RSIs when we talked about putting computers into the local youth centre. This chief from Koiovo village danced a very energetic custom dance (incidentally answering the 'boxers or briefs?' question all too frankly) and didn't even break a sweat. How many people in your town look like this in their fifties?

The younger folk are more or less the same. This guy was my project officer. Having a lazy desk job doesn't excuse you from cutting wood every day for the dinner fire.

(Sorry guys, no photos of the female physique. Very conservative society here, so I'd probably be deported if I started pointing my camera at beautiful young women. Put your hands back on the keyboard.)

To summarise: Don't worry, sore backs are the least of people's worries, where I live. 8^)

"This makes me wonder how the various third-world countries will start treating the various physical problems that come from computers. I bet most people in the target areas are not used to sitting hunched over a screen and there will be bad backs, bad legs (from the foot pedal), bad hands from the mouse and small keyboard, bad eyes from late night computing. Should be interesting in few years after launch to see how the native medicine peoples go about treating these."

Oh my, my. I'll try to put this gently. In one village I visited recently, people walk a few kilometres up a mountainside (often very muddy from rain), work all day bent double in the garden, then walk back to the village laden with up to 50 lbs. of produce, firewood, etc. on their back. Sitting down and pedalling a computer for an hour or so in the evening is luxury.

For an idea about the physical condition of people in the country where I live, see some photos here. The paramount chief of Loltong village, who's in in early seventies, took me for a 3 hour walk around his mountainous area that left me staggering, then cooked me lunch. He didn't seem to worried about RSIs when we talked about putting computers into the local youth centre. This chief from Koiovo village danced a very energetic custom dance (incidentally answering the 'boxers or briefs?' question all too frankly) and didn't even break a sweat. How many people in your town look like this in their fifties?

The younger folk are more or less the same. This guy was my project officer. Having a lazy desk job doesn't excuse you from cutting wood every day for the dinner fire.

(Sorry guys, no photos of the female physique. Very conservative society here, so I'd probably be deported if I started pointing my camera at beautiful young women. Put your hands back on the keyboard.)

To summarise: Don't worry, sore backs are the least of people's worries, where I live. 8^)

"This makes me wonder how the various third-world countries will start treating the various physical problems that come from computers. I bet most people in the target areas are not used to sitting hunched over a screen and there will be bad backs, bad legs (from the foot pedal), bad hands from the mouse and small keyboard, bad eyes from late night computing. Should be interesting in few years after launch to see how the native medicine peoples go about treating these."

Oh my, my. I'll try to put this gently. In one village I visited recently, people walk a few kilometres up a mountainside (often very muddy from rain), work all day bent double in the garden, then walk back to the village laden with up to 50 lbs. of produce, firewood, etc. on their back. Sitting down and pedalling a computer for an hour or so in the evening is luxury.

For an idea about the physical condition of people in the country where I live, see some photos here. The paramount chief of Loltong village, who's in in early seventies, took me for a 3 hour walk around his mountainous area that left me staggering, then cooked me lunch. He didn't seem to worried about RSIs when we talked about putting computers into the local youth centre. This chief from Koiovo village danced a very energetic custom dance (incidentally answering the 'boxers or briefs?' question all too frankly) and didn't even break a sweat. How many people in your town look like this in their fifties?

The younger folk are more or less the same. This guy was my project officer. Having a lazy desk job doesn't excuse you from cutting wood every day for the dinner fire.

(Sorry guys, no photos of the female physique. Very conservative society here, so I'd probably be deported if I started pointing my camera at beautiful young women. Put your hands back on the keyboard.)

To summarise: Don't worry, sore backs are the least of people's worries, where I live. 8^)

"This makes me wonder how the various third-world countries will start treating the various physical problems that come from computers. I bet most people in the target areas are not used to sitting hunched over a screen and there will be bad backs, bad legs (from the foot pedal), bad hands from the mouse and small keyboard, bad eyes from late night computing. Should be interesting in few years after launch to see how the native medicine peoples go about treating these."

Oh my, my. I'll try to put this gently. In one village I visited recently, people walk a few kilometres up a mountainside (often very muddy from rain), work all day bent double in the garden, then walk back to the village laden with up to 50 lbs. of produce, firewood, etc. on their back. Sitting down and pedalling a computer for an hour or so in the evening is luxury.

For an idea about the physical condition of people in the country where I live, see some photos here. The paramount chief of Loltong village, who's in in early seventies, took me for a 3 hour walk around his mountainous area that left me staggering, then cooked me lunch. He didn't seem to worried about RSIs when we talked about putting computers into the local youth centre. This chief from Koiovo village danced a very energetic custom dance (incidentally answering the 'boxers or briefs?' question all too frankly) and didn't even break a sweat. How many people in your town look like this in their fifties?

The younger folk are more or less the same. This guy was my project officer. Having a lazy desk job doesn't excuse you from cutting wood every day for the dinner fire.

(Sorry guys, no photos of the female physique. Very conservative society here, so I'd probably be deported if I started pointing my camera at beautiful young women. Put your hands back on the keyboard.)

To summarise: Don't worry, sore backs are the least of people's worries, where I live. 8^)

"Google is seeding clouds! Is this the end of Microsoft due to a massive hurricane Google is developing in the Pacific?"

I think I have your answer. 8^)

...Perhaps I can offer a little bit of background.

I've been living and working in Vanuatu for the last two years, and have some experience in the IT sector here. So let me try and provide a little perspective.

First, the vanuatugovernment.vu website is NOT the official government website. It was put together by some less-than-reputable individuals who took advantage of their connections with certain politicians to try to sell 'honorary consulships' to 'independant businessmen'. Basically, this is a way of making money from the sale of diplomatic passports. Among the people found to be using Vanuatu diplomatic passports are a Northern Irish 'contractor' working in Sierra Leone and a convicted member of a Chinese triad.

Second, the information on wikipedia.org is far from complete - and in some cases, inaccurate. And yes, as another poster has mentioned, The capital is Port Vila (one 'l'), so the summary is mis-spelled.

Third, Vanuatu has for quite a long time been associated with businesses who need a more flexible set of business rules than they might find in the US. Kazaa, for example, is incorporated in Vanuatu. As a gesture of appreciation, we now have the Kazaa Cricket field, which will be hosting international competition in the next couple of weeks.

There are some seriously large online betting operations interested in setting up shop in Vanuatu. Without telling tales out of school, I can confirm that one operation recently received approval to install one 7m and one 4m satellite dish, giving it total bandwidth capacity of about 40 Mbps. This in a country that currently has a national total about about 4 Mbps for voice and data combined!

Shades of Cryptonomicon, there actually is a 'bunker' here - a hardened server room with independant everything that is being used to manage data more or less along the same lines that Neal Stephenson suggested in his book.

Vanuatu has some of the most expensive Internet services in the world. I'm composing this message on a 56k dial-up line shared with 6 others computers. Unlimited dial-up costs a paltry USD 200/month, and dedicated access typically runs about USD 1000/month when bandwidth is factored in.

Vanuatu was once a site of significant money-laundering activity. Since 2001, the regulatory regime has been strengthened significantly. And yes, it was because the US 'pressurized' the government to act. They simply informed Vanuatu that if they didn't conform to certain minimum standards, they wouldn't be able to buy US dollars. Very persuasive.

Vanuatu is still a major tax haven, and is increasingly of interest to Australian investors. As I write, the private yacht of the richest man in Australia (Kerry Packer) is anchored in Port Vila Bay.

There are over 100 native languages in Vanuatu, but the language of commerce here is Bislama, a pidgin English that is really interesting to learn. Here is a quick and amusing sampler.

As far as WinMX is concerned, I've heard nothing about their arrival in Vanuatu, but some people are fairly secretive about the business they do here, so maybe I shouldn't be skeptical....

Some explanation seems to be in order.

I deliberately chose two photos taken under less than perfect conditions, in order to compare the shortcomings. Each one is shot with the same telephoto lens at about the same distance, using ASA 100 film under poor lighting conditions. While neither one is optimal, there is a clear difference between the two. The colours in the first one look washed out, and as you astutely point out, the contrast is much poorer.

The second photo has much more saturated colour and contrast. While it's still grainy, it's much better than the first. Whatever fuzziness exists is because of optics and film.

For reference, here is a studio shot that shows what kind of quality you can get with the same film scanner. The actual print is 20" high by about 14" wide. At 300 dpi, it gives continuous tones that are almost indistinguishable from photographic prints.

"Using a flatbed scanner with Slide Adapter just doesnt produce great results."

Indeed. I've used both flatbed and slide scanners, and the differences are pretty clear. Here's a photo taken with a Nikon F80 using a 70-300 zoom lens that I scanned with a fairly expensive HP flatbed scanner and slide attachment.

And here's one that I took using the same camera and lens, but scanned using a CanoScan FS 2710, a slide scanner that I got on sale for less than USD 400.

Note also that the FS 2710 scans at very high optical resolution, meaning that I can print a 20" x 14" print at 300 dpi without enlarging the image. All these 150+ MB files do make storage an issue, but I'm happy to live with that in exchange for significantly better quality.