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Linux In Africa: Free, But So Far Scarce
Elvis Maximus writes: "Wired News is running an interesting piece on the inroads Linux is making in Africa. The article focuses on the advantages of the 'free beer' nature of Linux, which is good, but neglects the fact that open source empowers people in developing countries to solve their own specific problems. Worth a look." Ironically, if commerical software vendors are vigilant, the advantages of Free alternatives will only be more evident. But licensing isn't as pressing an issue, maybe, when getting access at all isn't easy for most Africans.
Unfortunately your post isn't a troll, because I've seen you spewing the same crap in several other posts. However I plan on addressing your so called evidence for white sumpremacy since I believe it should not be left unchallenged.
First off, the correlation between "prosperity" and white rule in South Africa does not prove causation, in fact it proves almost nothing. With the same logic one could argue 1000 years ago that nothern "white" Europeans were hopelessly backward and had never produced anything of value by comparison to Muslims of North Africa, the Ashanti of West Africa, etc... I presume a white supremacist like you wouldn't go for this?
Also drawing conclusions on the relative superiority of "races" from less than 7 years of economic data strains the imagination to say the least. Perhaps you should do the same thing in the United States in the 1930s, blaming something as complicated as the Depression on the racial mix of the leadership of the US? It's riduculous. Particulary since South Africa is suffering from the AIDS crisis (like every other nation in Africa) which has little to do with the current leadership.
If you want to figure out why some countries or continents are poor and others are rich you are going to have to dig a little deeper. It has nothing to do with racial determinism and everything to do with history, geography, class struggle, religion, politics, etc... Read a little more asshole.
BTW... I think Libya is LY, but I'm not 100% sure.
``We are the people our parents warned us about.''
Famine is generally accepted to be a MANMADE occurrence caused by a semi/deliberate policy of governments.
Got a troublesome minority? No problem, wait for a food shortage and then fail to do anything about it, or alternatively, make it worse through selective policy manipulation.
Elgon
Excellently said! Thank you.
-slams
-slams
It is very important that PCs preloaded with Linux are shipped and sold to the first time home users in African cities. For most of them it would be the first computer experience at all. So it is crucial that this experience is on the Linux platform. Because once you are used to MS, the likelihood to switch afterwards is very small.
Must be working out of the box, must be cheaper than a Windows box, must have excellent documentation going under the hood beneath of the GUI.
Must have no glitches to configure modem dial-ups or whatever wireless access is mostly used. If that doesn't work easily, you can't catch the first time home-user.
Free printed documentation accompanying the hard- and software, to study before the box is set up, is crucial.
You can't make them dependent on critical information from online sources. You can't ship and sell printed documentation independently either. (Too expensive, no one would buy it) The way to go is to ship and sell preconfigured Linux on low cost machines with excellent, printed end-user newbie documentation. That documentation will be the only "textbook" the home-user will have to learn anything about computer in all likelihood.
Publishers and companies who sell preconfigured hardware with Linux should ship books together with the hardware to save costs. I don't see why VA-Linux for expample couldn't ship RedHat's or other distribution's handbooks, with other publisher's Linux books all prepacked in one box.
Geeks out there, just imagine your better halves would go off and study the snakes in the African rain forest. She hasn't really used Linux yet and doesn't know much about computer. What would you pack to help her succeed on her own with a Linux box ? Whatever you come up with, that's the way any African household would need it too. Very simple.
Certainly a GOOD THING. Linux brings dedicatd geeks, dedicated geeks bring computer literacy. Something the Black Continent could use. And you'll soon have hordes of geeks from Africa, it's like in China: only a small percentage may use it, but Africa is huge.
Also, of course there's the co-notation of Africa with Idi Amin's, Abu Sanja's and Mobutu SeSeSeko's, famine, starvation and civil wars. But if you look at Europe in 1700 you'll see just that. Or look at Singapore or China circa 1930. Backwards nations can catch up.
Also, I remember a slashdot poll which asked which continent you were on and they left our Africa, but included Antarctida.
I can see it now. A jeep pulls up in a village and they announce that there is a delivery of free Linux CDs. People misunderstand and think that it's Linux seeds. Now, nobody knows what Linux is, but seeds grow food, and they figure this must be a free UN agricultural handout. So they plow their fields and plant these strange looking seeds in the ground and irrigate them with what little water they have.
6 months later the fields are still barren, but several more jeep loads of well intentioned Linux advocates return to see how they are doing. Oh! the villagers exclaim, that's what Linux seeds grow: Pretentions foreigners. Best crop they ever had. Finger lickin' good.
One of the wise village elders is heard to remark that whatever this Linux is, it's a lot like Unix--difficult to understand at first, and you have to go through a lot of steps that aren't really necessary, but if you wait long enough you eventually get a setup that works.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
He then goes on to conclude the Slashdotteri are not open minded because they all don't share the same uniform views, which he thinks they all should.
Had you actually read what I said, you'd notice that if anything, I'm actually indicating the opposite - we tend to "eschew that which is not [familiar]".
who claims his opinions and beliefs are superior...
Where do I make this claim? We all know his views and opinions are the real truth Or this one?-jerdenn
... but do you know what makes third-world countries third-world? (I am not making a generalization about the entire continent.)
It is not that the people are uneduacated, lazy or religious fanatics. It is simply that their leaders draw out huge loans from Europe and US banks for their election, coup, new mansion or whatever selfish reason. Then these leaders turn around and put that burden on the people.
I remember a discussion at a local college about this very same subject. The best way to lift certain countries out of (impossible) debt is to erase the interest and quite possibly, the principle.
I am all for this (ahh, yes I am a liberal) because I expect none of these countries to pay me back anytime soon. This would go a long way to truly making this world a better place.
This is the third time this week I have heard or read something about technology in Africa. A company who does paperless documentation based out of Dallas has a major office in Nigeria.
ChozSun [e-mail]
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
It seems the situation you have in Heliopolis is the same we have in Jakarta. Here, there is a store you can go to and buy any type of software sold. The price: $2.50 a CD, $4.00 for two - you name it, you can buy it. In fact, I only know of one dealer where you can buy licensed software, but you you have to wait months to get most of it, and forget about getting obscure stuff.
I saw a talk from the country manager for M$ about two months ago. He was talking about piracy. The piracy levels for India and most of South East Asia are from 60% to 90%. A guy I work with is from India and he said his company there had only bought licensed software once.
So, at this time, money is not a factor. But it will be. Here, software, books and movies are vigourously pirated (no legal repercussions whatsoever), but music is not. I have yet to notice any store selling pirated music. From that I can assume that the local authorities have the ability to rid the country of software piracy, but have chosen not to.
At some time in the future the piracy will stop, and a tremendous opportunity for 'free-as-in-beer' software will open. No one will think of paying the $ for a windows install when the Linux install is free. There will be millions of computer users who need quality desktop applications. (On the server, Linux use is already widespread here).
I think the real opportunity Linux desktop development will be in countries like this one.
\begin{gripe}
Africa is a HUGE place. It pains me when people try to describe it as one little country. Most of you do not describe Europe or Asia in that fashion.
\end{gripe}
I am from Zimbabwe. Geeks exist there. Here is my personal view of the free software situation in Zimbabwe (at least when I was there three years ago)
Linux and FreeBSD were expensive. It could be obtained in two ways. One way was to download it yourself. But local calls were charged by the minute, so it cost a lot. The second way was to get an ISP to burn a CD for you, but they were mostly clueless and most likely would only get the kernel, AND bill you a huge amount.
Importing the CD was difficult due to foreign currency restrictions, and the general cost of a US dollar.
The main university there (http://www.uz.ac.zw) was and still has the computer facilities controlled by power freaks with no computer clue, and so getting free software there was hopeless.
The other problem (which is also here in the US) is that you still paid the MSFT tax.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
What if MS gave the OS for free, and made money off the apps like Office, etc? Give away the razor, sell them blades.
I had the pleasure of working with someone who was from africa. He told me that software piracy there is so great that you have to come here to the USA to understand that it is not the general order of things.
i stics/maps/map1.pdf
If it is on a disk it is "FREE BEER" over there.
You would have to be hiding in a hole to not understand all the economic perils in Africa as well as the political ones. Techies that could have such concerns are certainly lucky to have such freedom from the basics.
Here is a link to the World Health Organization about general health and well being. Most of africa is screwed.
http://wwwnt.who.int/whosis/statistics/whr_stat
PC at its best.
,say, Japan ?
Have you been able to figure out why there is so much difference between Africa and
Have you ?
Please enlighten us, instead of spitting standard lelftis bullshit.
BTW. you completely don't understand my point.
It is not about economical ups and downs (depression) but about complete lack of any advancement that is so characteristic to African continent.
"I presume a white supremacist like you wouldn't go for this?"
And you know what, white supremacy is not a dirty word. I see all kinds of "black heritage/pride" organizations here in US thriving and being pictured as an example of what "diversity" is all about. Why is it so "uncool" for white man to do the same ?
PS. My opinion about SA
Linux is available to most Kindergarten classes, but so far is scarce. Is this just another example of Microsoft using its power to stomp out Linux in our educational environments?!!!
bah. Timothy, you are obviously a troll who has somehow gained story-posting priviledges.
I just came back from a trip to Nigeria, where we're working to implement an e-commerce system. While it's easy and tempting to throw 'Africa' into one basket, wars in Angola, Congo, and dozens of other African countries are as relevant to life in more peaceful countries as is a war in Kozovo to life in Finland. Africa is a large continent, diverse, and supports many large and successful free-market enterprises.
These businesses desperately need to improve their communications, cut costs, and reach their customers and suppliers faster. African companies pay an incredible amount for telecommunications, and cheap reliable solutions such as we're used to up north still need to be put into place, one way or another.
Making life easier for business makes the whole economy work better, makes the country richer, and does actually make life better for the average African.
So, it was curious to debate the merits of Linux - which I did - with some Nigerian IT people. They asked whether open systems were not more likely to be insecure. I explained that the reverse was true. They asked whether support was an issue. I said that it might be, but any kind of support is hard to get in a country where the phone network supports a 9600-baud connection with difficulty. It's quite likely that we will use Linux for most of the e-commerce servers in this project. Unlike many IT people elsewhere, Nigerians (I can't speak for other Africans) are incredibly practical, and very quick to see the benefits of solutions like Linux.
Africans are used to being ripped-off by every passing western businessman, bank, and agency. 'Free', in any sense of the word, is a little bit abstract. It may take some time, but Linux, along with all the other millions of free and OS goodies out there will be appreciated and well used in African IT.
My blog
#3: Africans don't get it Answer: Some of them get it immediately. When John Perry Barlow toured Africa a couple of years ago, he showed a nomad tribesman the Internet from his laptop. Immediately the guy realised he could market his wares (rock salt and animal skins) to anyone in the world using this technology. This from somone who has probably never left his home village in the middle of the Sahara.
An African tribesman want to sell his product at market?? I thought the excuse for Africa never developing was that it is a strictly non-capitalist society??
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Agreed, a $1000 computer would be a problem. So avoid that problem and recognize you don't need to spend $1000 on a computer to run Linux. Sure, a used $200 P200 won't run things as "zippily" as a newer, faster computer, but if you're starting from zero, that used $200 is a damn good first step.
I would bet there is enough excess old hardware (especially from corporations) in the US that a non-profit organization could be kept very busy collecting it and shipping it to those in Africa who want to computerize but can't afford to yet. If Linux was pre-loaded and the computers were going to people who weren't already literate with Micro$oft's products, there would be no conversion issue (except for M$).
No Laughing Allowed!
Perhaps you should read some books, instead of trolling slashdot.
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"The Negroes' rude ignorance has never invented any effectual
weapons of defense or destruction: they appear incapable of
forming any extensive plans of government or conquest: and the
obvious inferiority of their mental faculties has been discovered
and abused by the nations of the temperate zone." --Edward
Gibbon, historian and author of THE DECLINE AND
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, (V.III, pg. 277)
Yeah, you can find this one in your local library.
Linux (as well as other free OSes, such as *BSD) is not really finding the acceptance here that it has found in America. I attribute this to several factors:
* Availability. It's not easy getting a Linux distro here in South Africa, since your options are to either buy it or download it. If you're looking to buy it, you'll have to get it shipped in from overseas and buy it over the internet, since I have yet to come across a South African computer shop that sells any Linux distros - if you're a student, this is a problem, since it's hard to get a credit card without a steady job, which many students don't have. If you're looking to download an ISO image and burn it, you're looking at hours spent watching a progress meter; download speeds of 56K here are regarded as top-of-the-line, and ADSL, satellite access, etc, are still a bit out of reach for the average consumer.
* Attractiveness. MWeb, Vodacom's offerings, and other major ISPs here in South Africa sure as hell don't support Linux! They ship you winmodems, expect you to use good ol' Windows for everything, and don't even make a pretense of acknowledging Linux as existing. So if you're signed up to those services, which many people are, then using Linux pretty much precludes Internet access. Fun, eh?
* Corporate Acceptance. Rhodes University, where I'm studying, recently signed an agreement with Microsoft to be able to get free or cheap upgrades to MS products, an agreement which effectively ties us into being a Microsoft-only shop. Frankly, I don't think some of our tech support guys are capable of supporting a Unix system. Other organizations are just as bad; they're mostly tied into Microsoft licences, and won't accept anything else without a fight - free software is still regarded as shoddy or unsupported.
* Publicity. People here just don't know it exists. And when you tell them that you run Linux, they ask "...but can I run on it?". Technology magazines here don't really cover Linux or *BSD, and when they do they almost inevitably portray it as "the OTHER choice", suggesting that *if you can't use Windows* then you should go with a free alternative.
* Support. Yes, I know you can go to newsgroups, IRC, etc for help. But many newbies don't know the right places to go... and in America, you can call up and get support, but here you've got to pretty much figure it out as you go; when I was starting out, it took me some time to find all the places I could get help from. And of course, even buying support is very, very expensive; Red Hat's price of about $160 (or thereabouts) is just under a thousand South African rands.
So you see, Microsoft really does have a pretty good stranglehold over here. There are a few LUGs around, and students are increasingly getting more frustrated with Windows and Microsoft products, and turning to the free OSes, but changing things will take a long time. The culture here will have to change first; in America, Linux is regarded as a viable choice, but here it's just another computer-jargon word to many people. Given time, though, I think that it will be a success on the African continent.
In short, the only South Africans this hurts are the software retailers. When a continent as bad off as Africa can purchase American goods like Windows 98 for pennies on the dollar, I have a hard time sympathizing with the wealthy corporations who are trying to get tough on piracy.
Hmm. . . Since Microsoft is losing so much to African piracy anyways, why don't they start "donating" their software as a humanitarian service. For the cost of a CD and [optional] documentation, they could get a tax break for the full price of a copy. Heck, they might make more money that way than they do now. [Note: Bill, if you're reading this, remember that IANAL. Run it by your own people first.]
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Microsoft will never make their operating systems free. More people in this world use Windows, and will pay large ammounts of money for site licenses. Many companies willingly do this, and will continue to do so in the future. The only thing I can see happening is just the price dropping, but that still wouldn't justify the ability to make billions so easily.
-PovRayMan
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Check out my blackbox styles
Is the computing world really that boring today. I mean another flame war on kde vs. gnome or how microsoft sucks even microsoft office seems to run a whole lot better than staroffice, and not to mention the wonderful state of the latest browser. Seriously, does it really matter that a continent full of starving people can know sit and contemplate open source software and how it benifits them. The money used to provide the internet or the free cdroms could be much more beneficial, ummmm FEEDING THEM! How in the world did this story get posted. I understand that it does involve linux and that means that for some reason it is always important, but this isn't even funny. Can anyone please give a logical reason how this got posted?? anyone?
Windows is installed on most every computer sold, and mostly because people like the way it works with their games. If the computer manufacturers give consumers the option of Linux or dual-booting, not only do they lose the gaming aspect(not in dual booting, though), but M$ charges a lot more for the Win98/SE/ME/whatever license included.
If people would quit screwing around with their toy computers and try to get work done, they might see the benefit of Linux. Or, then again, they might not.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
This was only an example. No, I am not complaining about comics featuring USian (HEY, Americans are people from the *WHOLE* continent, not just US) characters, but about the short-sighted vision they induce: you have a global population of heroes, and for some weird reason 80% of them come from the United States. Isn't that... revolting?
There are another examples, if you must.
BTW. If it weren't for the available markets US companies would not sell anything abroad. Obviously people want this cheap pop-culture and who are you to argue with them ?
Obviously there are people who want Windows. Who am I to argue with them? You have to understand that sometimes people choose the worst option, either because they are uneducated (or manipulated) or conservationist. In this case, I think it is at least a good idea to educate them.
Patola (Cláudio Sampaio) - Solvo IT
IBM CATE
SAIR GNU/Linux Certified
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
I agree with you - it is unequal. However, as I said, educating people only goes so far. Most of the Europe (or pick some other first of secod world country) is already well educated and perfectly capable of making decisions on their own.
Cheap pop-culture is exactly that, cheap, easy going entertainment for the masses.If you wish to engage in something more meaningfull there are options available as well.
Do we want to introdoce goverment mandated culture ?
Why bother worrying about a trendy OS when over 75% of your population doesn't know where its next meal is coming from? Gimme a break! This has gotta be one of the worst stories ever posted on slashdot.
Wait a minute. You mean to say that these two examples are poor because they are created and owned by white africans? Thats the first time I've actually heard a clear-cut racist statement on Slashdot. How disgusting.
You are/were one of the few middle or upper class people living in Africa. How many of your countrymen own a telephone?
There are any number of reasons why Africa will never be anything but a gaggle of third-world 'nations'. Until africa has stable governments, a manufacturing base and literacy little or no economic development will take place.
Hard currency in Africa comes from the export of raw materials such as timber, gold, diamonds, etc. As rich as many parts of Africa are in resources, they will never develop because they must import all but the simplest manufactured goods and tools. Study American history and you will find that former colonies cannot develop into legitimate powers until they develop an intellectual and manufacturing base.
Colonialism is still alive and well in sub-saharan Africa.
That is the truth, you can call me a racist if you wish, but that will not change the facts.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I'd like to observe, just for the record, that not one of these idiots seems to be aware that "The White Man's Burden" is from Rudyard Fucking Kipling, not goddamn Jonathan Swift. HELLO?! (Tap, tap) Is this thing on? Rudyard Kipling, anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, you people are dumb as a box of rocks. The above material was wasted on you fools. GAD!
What a waste. What a sad, shameful waste.
Maybe because there aren't any geeks in Africa?
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Thats his point exactly, religion in any form causes war
Slashdot editors: Are you guys sure this is a valid slashdot article? Come on! Stuff like this doesn't matter!
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Have good ideas? Want good ideas? ShouldExist.org
First, all of human life. Now, Linux.
All the really cool stuff starts in Africa.
^_^
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The Boxer Rebelion, The Holocaust in Germany, The Nanjing Massacre, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Killing Fields of Cambodia: all politically motivated by political ideology.
Political ideology and religious ideology are the _same_ ideology, and the similarities are not clevery disguised. Popes and presidents, Cardinal Richelieu and Congressman Jesse Helms... different costumes, different offices, different excuses, but the same center.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I agree. Not only OSS applications and Linux is the key, also all the online documentation available to students locally in their own countries. No need necessarily anymore to leave to Europe or USA to get access to technological information.
The high telco costs are the only real problem at the moment.
If you can manage low cost connections to the local student community, there is no need anymore to get ripped off by western technical consultants (who need a job as much as you do). You will be able to help yourself. Linux and OSS applications will play a catalyst in that, I am very confident for that.
Unless something commercially viable happens in Africa, they are unlikely to get Internet and Linxu access in the near future.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
The free-as-in-beerness of Linux is something that is touted a lot by Linux advocates in developing countries, myself included. But I had an experience recently that made me wonder whether this would have any "selling" power at all.
I'm studying for my MCSE (don't all spit at once, OK guys?) and though I use NT 4.0 at work, I'm going straight for the Windows 2000 track since the NT 4.0 cert is being phased out. So I wanted a copy of Windows 2000 to play with. I went to every computer shop I knew in town, including the big CompuMall in Heliopolis. Nobody had a licensed copy of Windows 2000 -- or, indeed, any other version of Windows -- for sale. Actually, that's not entirely true; one shop had some OEM-only copies of Windows 95 Arabic they were willing to take out of a hardware box and sell me. Windows is so widely pirated here that nobody bothers trying to sell it.
More striking was the fact that many of the shop owners and clerks did not know that one could buy Windows. Several of them told me matter-of-factly that Windows is not something that is sold ("Windows is free"), but something that you hire a technician to come and install. The copies that technicians install, of course, are pirated.
Some time ago a columnist for PC World Egypt (yes, there is such a thing) wrote that he had seen more licensed software CD-ROMs hanging from the rear-view mirrors of taxicabs than in offices. It's not too hard to see why this is the case: a 25-client license copy of Small Business Server cost my office $2500, which is about the same as Egypt's annual per capita GDP. Not the per capita disposable income -- the per capita GDP.
In short, while I think there are many benefits Linux can offer developing countries, the price argument probably isn't likely to pull much weight.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
One of the major distros (Mandrake/RedHat/Storm), or some other org/group, do something like:
Accept donations to create/send out dozens of CDs of the latest versions of the various distros to universities/business IT departments worldwide, or if some "White Knight" has the resources, send 'em out for free;
Possibly work with one of the "PC Recyclers" that test, rehab, send discarded/obsolete western PCs to third world countries, and have them install Linux.
This would be a great intro to freedom for many of the global populace.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Unfortunately, Eladio McCormick (this is not ad hominem) is in the dark -- s/he seems not be from the US, so I'll excuse his/her ignorance. The media constantly throws around the term "African American" as if it were a given that all AAs were black. In most polls and standardized tests in school, you must answer the Race question by answering "white" OR "AA", as if a person can't be both. I make it a point never to use the AA term because it makes a foolish assumption.
I am very interested. At the moment I'm in the process of writing a paper on the topic. Please get in contact.
The story selection process is fairly simple: the perl scripts scan the contents and go to the hyperlinks. The article must contain one of the following words or phrases (more than one gives a story a better chance): Linux, AMD, SuSE, RedHat, They Might Be Giants, BSD, Apache, DeCSS, MP3, Kevin Mitnick, Apple, CueCat, Dreamcast, ISO, RIAA, MPAA, Quake, Java, Sun Microsystems,
or the following portrayed in the negative: Microsoft, Windows, Intel.All stories not meeting this criterion are thrown out.
The stories which pass the perl script are then whisked away to one of the editors, which do the hard task of actually reading the page while sipping a Samuel Adams in the "include beer,h" beer glass (frosted only on the outside, damnit!). References to any major GNU figures boost the stories chances; bribery from the submitters also helps.How else do you think that damn Linux in Africa story could've passed through?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You forgot Mountain SMS, one of the biggest SMS gateways in the world, a South African company, and Dimension Data (disclaimer: my employer's parent).
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
It beats "monetizing transparent eyeballs" which was my first click...
2 1337 4 u!
Slashdot at it's lowest... reality, as defined by a shoddy TV series.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Availability. It's not easy getting a Linux distro here in South Africa, since your options are to either buy it or download it. If you're looking to buy it, you'll have to get it shipped in from overseas and buy it over the internet, ....
Support: but here you've got to pretty much figure it out as you go...
Wrong, try Obsidian Systems for starters.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
DOH!
Says me, currently (and as always) in Africa, on the internet, running a Linux web server at a startup with commercial potential.
Africa is a continent not a frickin' desert island. There are 40 million people in this country alone (South Africa) & that's not the largest.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I would suggest you to get in touch with NGOs involved in Africa (then again, Africa is *huge*). There's also some UN-related agencies working very hard to bring education and tools to developing countries, even in remote/agitated/devastated places (which Africa isn't as a whole, far from it). Most of them are based in Geneva, Switzerland, just in case. Contact them, I'm sure they'd be very happy to get some help. You can probably gather some info at http://www.oneworld.org/ and on the United Nation Development Programme on http://www.undp.org/
/. seem to forget the African continent is several orders of magnitude larger than the USofA and carry almost a billion people. If the "Western" world stops using Africa as a dumpster and testing ground for chemicals and actually starts redistributing its [financial and educational] resources, many African countries could start experiencing strong growth in the tech domains, just like South-East Asian countries did.
If education was more widespread in Africa, you can be sure there'd be much less wars, epidemics and other catastrophies.
Some moronic posters here on
Now, tell big companies to give away their old computers so they can be shipped to developing countries... But most of them don't give a shit and most of all don't want to spend a penny for getting rid of their 3 year-old PC junk...
Good luck,
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
It was a rhetorical device, but if you want to overanalyze, fine.
1. I did not claim that every college-educated Slashdot read only O'Reilly books throughout their lives.
2. I urged them to read a book, an imperative which urges a future action; their prior reading habits never came up.
3. Your argument is weak.
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OK, now, could somebody explain to me exactly how not sending large amounts of money to a foreign software company hurts a nation's ecconomy?
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
geeze, you're condoning apartheid? Remember, 90% of the South African residents are black, so don't be saying this out in the Transvaal.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Yes, I am very aware that there are quite a few African countries that are not in such miserable shape. S. Africa is the first that comes to mind, followed by places like Egypt, Ghana and Morocco. But how much help do these countries need for IT? I'm sure the Egyptians don't have the access to reliable broadband that would be ideal, but it is pretty stable and moving along at a decent pace. Rushing off to help countries that are already making decent progress is like helping the little old lady that's already made it more than 1/2 way accross the street; noble but not really necessary.
I strongly believe that helping people in dire need of assistance is far more important than helping those who just need a small boost to get their living standards up to Western levels.
One example is the way Pharmaceutical companies send researchers to talk to local healers, isolate the active ingredients from the herbs they use, patent the result and claim it as their own. Another is the efforts of Western Agri-business to get African farming addicted to hi-tech machinery and expensive fertilisers which their own economies can't supply. It isn't a huge leap from there to issues of software copyright and - oddly enough - many Africans are capable of making it.
I work for an Overseas Development Agency. Our African partner organisations campaign extensively on issues of trade, economic and international law (which may come as a surprise to the many contributers here who seem to think they should all be too hungry to understand or care). Paying for technology is an issue they understand all too well.
Some of the posters here have their bigoted heads so far up their own arses I'm surprised they can still breathe.
I have actually taught several classes on Linux and its use in science and education in Africa. Working with ICTP in Trieste Italy, we have helped to set up wireless networks, servers and computer labs using linux.
In both west and east Africa there is a huge amount of interest in the use of Linux to support distance education and distance science efforts. The will is there and we are trying to help them through our Collaborium effort (www.collaborium.org) to give them the technical support and guidence that is hard to get in Africa. (plus an email to web gateway service)
The feeling of isolation from the day to day news, patches and other information we can obtain in only a few seconds is one of the biggest issues. This is where the email to web gateway helps so much.
Another is that once trained in computers, business snatch up poeple from the labs and universities very fast because they can pay so much more (don't even mention the pre-university situation).
Wireless is all over in Africa due to the extreamly poor wired telecomm infrastructure. So working with them to get them experience in that area is extreamly important.
Working with these people in Africa is extreamly rewarding and I would love to hear from other who might be interested in helping.
Nonono... If he *really* got it, he'd want to write up a business plan for selling rock salt and animal skins on the Internet and then get rich off of venture capital.
Seriously, though, would selling rock salt like that be competitive? It seems that there'd be tremendous effort in mining the salt and dragging it to somewhere that you can ship it from. Sounds like the sort of thing that a company with a technological advantage (i.e. infrastructure for moving rock salt around, nearby fleet of trucks for shipping, etc.) would win out on.
However, to be fair, I do think he was on to something with the idea of selling the animals skins. Animal skins are a lower availability item, and unless they're being raised in captivity, still require the same human effort of manually hunting down an animal. Furthermore, unlike rock salt, you can have a substanial amount of value contained in a moderate amount of weight. So I think there's definite potential there.
But mainly I felt I had to chime in on the rock salt issue. It seems that no one is immune from the "if we sell it over the Internet, it must be profitable" mentality. However, IANAMBA so take my words with a grain of (rock) salt.
We also need to realize that "economic development" is not the panacea for all problems, and that we don't need to push it on everybody like a corner drug seller. Lots of problems are cultural and internal. No amount of money or food will solve them, and we just need to help foster a environment friendly to resolving these problems without sticking our nose in. "Progress", manifest destiny, to some intangible yet glorious and definite end is a peculiarly Christian and European idea. Ancient civilizations existed in perfect happiness and harmony without what we would today call "progress". Yes, on a global scale economy certainly plays a large role...we just need to realize that to helping people really means helping them help themselves, not forcing them to institute solutions to problems they don't. Open Source is an attractive proposition because it is both money-free and Free in the sense that communities and governments can customize it to their own ends...so I guess I agree that Open Source is a good compromise between people who think Palm Pilots will solve everybody's problems, and those who think that participating in technology is mutually exclusive with helping real people.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
When John Perry Barlow toured Africa a couple of years ago, he showed a nomad tribesman the Internet from his laptop. Immediately the guy realised he could market his wares (rock salt and animal skins) to anyone in the world using this technology.
I hope John Perry Barlow explained him that spamming is not the way to sell his wares.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
First of all, you mean "African USian"; America is a landmass occupied by over 30 countries, only one of which is the US.
Now, it is trivial to see that "African USian" does not cover the same ground as "black". Take a randomly picked Haitian. She's not a USian, yet she's black. Thus, your equation is falsified.
So your whole "riddle" departs from an obviously false assumption, which you impute upon "liberals". The fact that liberals are an easy target, but yet you need to revert to ad hominem to bash them, does not reflect very well on your intelligence.
All this time I though the US' biggest problems were huge income disparities, horrible health care, violent crime, a growing prison-industrial complex, destruction of natural resource and corporate rulership! Good to know that they've gotten all that taken care of and now they just have to deal with developing stable web servers.
There is a relevant quote from the New Testament about seeing stuff that's gotten in other's eyes but not in yours, but I don't know it in English. Anyway, the point is that your (implicit, sarcastically expressed) argument can be applied to the US (which I presume is your country. If it isn't, my most profound excuses.)
I of course meant the Kalahari desert. My bad.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
naa most wars are about money or power. religion used to be the cover story is all. even stuff like the crucades was more about power and the pope giving bored warlords something to do instead of fight each other.
Yes, I admit that I've been sucked into a world where people care about things other than money. It's my peculiar weakness to believe that Good is better than Evil. Honestly, I don't know what came over me. You waved the smelling salts under my nose, and now I see how foolish I was.
You can't talk about Rights in the same breath as you're calling Goodness and Justice bullshit. I don't care how cynical and relativist you are. You wouldn't have any rights at all if someone hadn't shed their blood for you. Were they just pompous and self-important? Are you glib about the people that died for your freedom? What do you value? What is important to you? Don't just say something is bullshit without saying what the Truth is. What's your side of the story, eh? Riding on everyone else's coattails while you snicker at their struggle. How many times did your mommy and daddy bail you out? How many times did you let somebody else do your work for you?
I think it's past your bedtime.
More like "your gilded hardcover copy of Linux Kernel Hacking." Some people just never learn. Linux is not the answer to world famine. Would you give a sepulcrally famished Ethiopian a stinking computer with Linux? He'd die of starvation while trying to get it to boot!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Anyone realize that 2/3rds of that comment was devoted to how great Carnage4Life is! I agree, to think that there are not geeks in Africa is a bit ignorant but common lets have some modesty old chap.
You forgot corruption- There's plenty of resoureces in africa, only in the wrong hands.
It's not a question of bringing up living standards to so-called Western levels. What do you think your great Western quality of life levels are anyway ?
It's about getting access to technical and scientific information and access to instant communication from very remote areas to anywhere in the world. Online documentation reading is great for anybody, but especially important for people who are poorer and live in remote areas, where you can't ship tangible items easily and at
low cost.
If you think the computer enriches your quality of life socially, think again...
From another perspective, the value of money is dependent upon political stability and mutual trust amongst the members of a society. It's value is a measure of the faith we have in our collective future. If I select one brand over another, it is because I have faith in consistent quality. I trust that regulatory agencies will make a reasonable effort to ensure that I will not die of food poisoning when I eat a hamburger at McDonald's. The actual cost of the hamburger pales in comparison with the value of the stable political and economic substrate which makes the transaction possible.
Money quickly becomes unimportant if the streets are full of vigilantes killing each other. What could you spend money on? Why would you care about comparison shopping for operating systems? This is the situation African countries are in. There is human and political chaos at every level of society.
Being cynical doesn't help anyone restore the balance between Love, Power, and Justice that keeps families and countries from falling apart. Making blunt (as in not sharp) remarks about people's motives prevents us from seeing that even in chaos, people's sense of Goodness and Justice survives. You're making things worse for them and you're showing how fully you have succumbed to despair.
with apologies to Paul Tillich
Developing Countries to Benefit From Collaboration Among the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Corel Corporation and Rebel.com
Ottawa, Canada-- August 10, 1999-- Two Canadian information technology (IT) corporations announced today that they are donating computer software, hardware and services worth over a million dollars to UNDP's Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP), an initiative born of the Earth Summit that helps developing countries gain access to information on the environment and sustainable development through local and regional information networks. The donation will help strengthen computer and Internet capacity in developing countries where SDNP operates. The two corporations are Corel Corporation, an internationally recognized developer of award-winning graphics and business productivity applications, and Rebel.com, a leading manufacturer of computer appliances and thin servers using Linux®, UNIX® and Intel® platforms.
The SDNP supports information networking programmes in some 40 developing countries and trains nationals to operate and participate in them. The contributions by Corel Corporation and Rebel.com will strengthen the information and networking systems in these countries, and expand the contribution SDNP makes at the local level--whether it be in helping to quickly access information on disaster relief in Honduras in the wake of Hurricane Mitch or finding rare matching blood types to save lives in rural Pakistan.
Beginning this month, Rebel.com will provide their Linux-based NetWinder group servers to a number of local SDNP programmes, which will facilitate the use of the Internet and intranets in these countries. "Participation in this initiative reinforces Rebel.com's role in the international field," said Michael Mansfield, president of Rebel.com. "It is also very rewarding to know that our technology is assisting in making a positive impact on sustainable development while we help to provide cutting edge information technology to developing countries."
Corel Corporation will provide Corel® WordPerfect® Suite 8 for Linux® in several languages to the 40 developing countries along with Corel's Linux distribution (presently in development); and the WordPerfect® Office for LINUX® suite, which is expected to be available in early 2000. "It gives us great pleasure to bring our state-of-the-art technology to these developing countries and to aid in their sustainable development efforts," said Dr. Michael Cowpland, president and chief executive officer of Corel Corporation.
Eimi Watanabe, Director of UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy, underscored the importance of such partnerships between UNDP and the private sector. "The global challenges we face in promoting development that is sustainable and more equitable are immense," she said. "Access to IT can make a significant difference. This kind of public-private collaboration can trigger mobilization for change at the individual, community, national and international levels."
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Yes, hackable free OSes in a place where, more likely than not, people probably don't know how to read, much less program in C or Perl. And, hey, cheap PCs, who can argue with that? I mean, the article itself says "In a continent where the average annual per capita income is less than US$250". I can see the legions of African geeks now...
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
If you want to use computers for computing, as opposed to writing wanky presentions then you don't need much at all, ok compile times might be high, always a pain (rememering days when I wrote html pages 5mins to make an alteration, 30 minutes to load it in netscape [386 4M])
There are a few charities recycling old corporate/donated PCs to 3rd world countries, IIRC they ARE shipping linux with them as well, only makes sense, anyone want to post a few links? good karma in both the real sense and the new capitalist /. meaning of the word, you can't lose!! :)
~ppppppppö
A lot of the posts so far (and whenever the subject of IT in developing countries comes up) are in the "how can we talk about IT when people are starving/at war/sick -- give them food/peacekeepers/medicine, not Linux" vein. Many of these are trolls, some are not.
Africa is not monolithic, but it's certainly true that there are basic and pressing problems in many parts of Africa. What is guaranteed not to solve those problems in the medium- to long-term is food and medical aid. In many cases such aid is necessary, but it is never sufficient. The roots of the problems need to be addressed, and the real roots of the problems are almost always economic. The long term answer can only be economic development, and in the early 21st century, IT has to be an important element of economic development.
Open source software has the potential to be a boon for IT in the developing world. Good development is about empowering people to solve their own problems, and so is open source. With open source, things like language localization are no longer the exclusive province of far-off Western software developers unconcerned with suboptimal markets -- local programmers can do it themselves. There are now Linux distributions aimed at the Thai and Russian/Ukranian markets, and I know there is an Arabic localization project going on now.
No, Linux is not going to feed a starving Somali kid today. But a bag of surplus Iowa wheat is not going to feed him tomorrow.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Wow, that sure is something to be proud of! Let's kill more people in less time! What a great country you must live in, where the biological weapons were probably used against the African majority to keep them in line. I am almost as proud of South Africa now as I am of the good ol' US of A!
Perhaps, being located in South Africa, you are oblivious to what is happening on the rest of your continent, which is what I am actually referring to. Have you heard of such countries as the "Democratic" Republic of the Congo? Or maybe Angola? Or perhaps Rwanda? You just live in the most privilidged part of Africa. So don't get so indignant.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
WWI had some religious undertones at the beginning, but it was very minor compared to the other factors. The major belligerent nations had been preparing for conflict for many years. An intricate set of alliances that automatically triggered when diplomatic efforts failed.
In the past, great wars were fought because of religious differences. However, religion had a greater control over politics centuries ago. Now national interests supercede religion when it comes to conquest and war.
Jacob Bronowski put it best in the old PBS series, "The Accent of Man." Wars and conflicts happen when humans believe that they have absolute knowledge. This may be due to religious dogma, but it can also happen because of secular reasons (e.g., Hitler). Finally, the various skirmishes that characterized the Cold War (e.g., Angola, Vietnam, Afgahnistan, Korea) were ones of non-religious ideology.
I was about to tell him that they also hate the Finnish, Czech, and other eurogeeks out there, but vulgarly put, he's right.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
What the hell is wrong with you? Who actually thought this was _funny_? I don't mind racist jokes. They have their place. Stereotypes are funny. But, this isn't that. This is offensive, as it makes africans out to be stupid. The joke would have been fine.. "Gee, wouldn't all those penguins die of heat stroke? ha ha ha!" THATS funny. This is offensive. Who the hell moderated THIS up? *sigh* I guess this is why metamoderation exists...
"How do I shorten my code!?" "Delete some of it."
Apartheid was not that bad for blacks since there was constant illegal immigration from bordering countries.
It is hard to escape conclusion that blacks prefered apartheid to their native "free" countries.
I can appreciate a good joke and hope that you are not as stupid as your comment makes you look. 50$ says you have never been anywhere outside of West Virginia or possibly Arkansas as we know that they are real rivals for third world countries and produce true morons like you on a daily basis!
Well, I stated the truth. SA was prosperous when it was run by white people. We can argue about apartheid and related issues but economically it is very clear that since blacks took over, SA is going down fast ( what's funny, there are no more sanctions to deal with and still ...)
Draw your own conclusions.
Racism ? You know what racism is ?
If I state that blacks never managed to create advanced civilization and you can clearly see this being true ( point me to one ) then is this racis comment or simply stating the fact ?
Maybe they are happy with their current status and maybe they DONT need western style prosperity to be happy but if we gonna judge them by our standards then they are complete failure.
probably the only time I ever agreed with you, and it's marked flamebait ? Strange world.
What about U.S. girls of Brazilian descent? Or Venezuelan descent?
I don't know how good they would look like, and I just could not guess. But based on the people I've seen on the city streets, on buildings et cetera, I have concluded that. I don't know what makes women from that place more attractive than that other place, but I know, when I see them, which ones are most attractive.
Anyway, I think you should come to Brazil and... er... taste it for yourself :P (really, I doubt you'll ever disagree when you come here)
Also, thanks for pointing out to me, that I am unaware of the street kids of Sao Paulo, or the bastard children of Bucharest, Romania.
That's just not what I've been talking about when I mentioned geography. It's not a matter of 'knowing about bastard children of Bucarest'. It's a matter of understanding the world aroung you, the geopolitics (which is one of the most prominent topics of geography), how are the social interactions made and so on.
To the rest of the world, it always look like the USians have a very short-sighted vision of the world, and it looks too that they think their country 'is' the world somehow. You can quickly perceive this reading informal culture, like comics, e.g., Marvel or DC, where 80% of the heroes and villains are from the U.S., like if the rest of the world were just... guests on earth, I guess.
I bet you would say 'Oh, but we KNOW that we are not the world', but knowing is different from perceiving; your own culture lure you into subconsciouly thinking that, after that much pervasion -- a lie said a thousand times, for you, ceases to be a lie.
Patola (Cláudio Sampaio) - Solvo IT
IBM CATE
SAIR GNU/Linux Certified
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
But, anyway, even not ever been in Africa, I have some stuff to say. People from some developed countries (mainly from the USA, where history and geography in schools aren't good -- e.g, they abandoned all marxist avalysis of history even it being the most enlightening analysis) do not have a clear picture of life in developing countries.
Most times, they don't bother thinking very much about i, really. They don't want to think about misery. And so, they generalize certain things and stick to the cartoonesque version on others: people living in huts in the top of trees, unplugged citizens, dirty stone streets and roads, low tech, and so on.
Ok, low money can lead to some of these things. But the problem with most developing nations is not simply the lack of money - but the distribution of it. In fact, countries like Brazil (my country) and the middle-eastern petroleum countries are rich or very rich. But they have large quantities of people who are starving or in bad economic situations.
When economy is a necessity, they have the need to stick to what is less expensive, like Linux. But it does not mean that we don't have technology. There are a lot of people from the middle- or higher classes which use computers.
In Brasil, we have at last a major Linux software company: Conectiva. It provides a very good redhat-based distribution and support for linux.
That said, I hope I don't find any more posts saying "FUD" (hehehe) about developing countries. Hey, we can live well here too!!! And you betcha, the girls here are a lot more beautiful than most of the countries I've been to (with the exception of Venezuela. And the US is where the girls are uglier!).
Patola (Cláudio Sampaio) - Solvo IT
IBM CATE
SAIR GNU/Linux Certified
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
SA is quickly joining rest of the continent.
Already value of local currency is 50% of what it used to be in 1994. This country is doomed ( as just about every other run by communists)
Well, pyramids were created by Egyptians which were basically white ( or weren't neggro.)
However, your explanations is a bit flawed since there were other civilizations ( Indians in Asia, Aztecs in America, Arabs) which lived in similar climate and yet managed to create quite advanced civilizations.
> I just wish many Americans would realise that US methods of doing things don't often work here. What does work is a willingness to exchange information and work together - something the Internet has been really brilliant at doing.
Which explains why so many American corporations are so damn paranoid about the internet.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As an African and a regular reader of slashdot, I never fail to be dismayed by the responses to stories about Africa. My belief is that they stem simply from lack of knowledge not malice. Hopefully as internet technologies spread this kind of ignorance will be greatly reduced. Other people have already posted refutations of the naysayers so I will not go into that (check out this and this) When I think of the disconnect between the complex reality and the simplistic beliefs of many it's quite startling.
Lastly, anyone interested in my country(Tanzania) check out these sites:
biggest news site:www.ippmedia.com,
portal:www.start.co.tz
university: www.udsm.ac.tz
and there are lots more....
I believe that Africa's main problem has been isolation from the technological innovations that occurred in Asia and Europe over the last 500 years. With the internet this isolation basically no longer exists, so we can expect that a lot of changes will occur in African societies over the next 100 years. It will be very interesting to see.... For a nice summary of this line of thinking check out Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond : here
Mugizi Rwebangira
rweba[at]hotmail.com
PS: I know that last paragraph isn't really well developed but I do have a life outside slashdot!
Yeah but SA is really an European country ( if one ignores geographic location, of course.)
At least it was run until recently by Europeans and its infrastructure was not much different than it is in Europe or US.
It is very interesting (and scary) to see SA being basically destroyed by new, local goverment.
For some reason black Africans haven't managed to develop right social skills or whatever it is that makes western civilization constantly push ahead.
After all, Europe was almost completely destroyed after last war and pretty much had to start from scratch and look where it is now.
Everywhere else in Africa most of infrastructure ie either of colonial origin or run by outside (western) contractors. For the last 40 or so years, since most of colonial powers left, not much have changed there..
Sad but true.
Answer: It's very hard to roll out water/housing/food projects without a proper communications infrastructure. Basic computer training goes a long way towards ensuring people are skilled anough to help themselves in this regard. The precedents are there to show that better communications and computer literacy are good for economic growth and living standards.
#2: What do Africans know about Linux anyway?
Answer: More than you might think. I personally know people on this continent who:
If the US is so well off, how come it keeps poaching skills from countries like South Africa all the time? The main problem is non-Africans tend to lump together the whole big land mass into one. When I was in the US last, friends asked me whether the land invasions in Zimbabwe were a cause for worry. I asked them in reply whether Quebec wanting to go its own way was a cause for worry. "Ah but that's a different country," they said. Bingo.
#3: Africans don't get it
Answer: Some of them get it immediately. When John Perry Barlow toured Africa a couple of years ago, he showed a nomad tribesman the Internet from his laptop. Immediately the guy realised he could market his wares (rock salt and animal skins) to anyone in the world using this technology. This from somone who has probably never left his home village in the middle of the Sahara.
#4: Price is not really the factor
Answer: Price is THE factor on this continent. As some posters have already pointed out, your typical MS Office bundle can be worth a year's salary. More important is that many people just can't afford the constant cycle of upgrades to hardware that new software releases demand. Linux is free - tough to beat.
I am an African, linux programmer and user since 1993. I wrote about free software for a major national newspaper in 1994 - long before it became trendy to do so. I've travelled - quite extensively in the US. As a country I love it. I just wish many Americans would realise that US methods of doing things don't often work here. What does work is a willingness to exchange information and work together - something the Internet has been really brilliant at doing.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
mbendi.co.za
iafrica.com
Oh, I'm sorry, you are a mindless bigot. Not only do I know Africans quite capable of this, I know ones who can spell it, too. How would you know? You don't have the slightest chance of bumping into it.Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
"If you wanna stop world hunger, then stop sending them food, don't send these people another bite folks. If you wanna send something you wanna help? Send them u-hauls and some luggage and a guy that goes hey it occured to us that there wouldn't be world hunger if you people would LIVE WHERE THE FOOD IS! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT, NOTHING GROWS OUT HERE! See that? Yeah its sand, and 100 years from now its still gonna be sand. We'll take you where the food is."
Gotta love that guy.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Yes you missed something: the reality in the third world is that nearly all computers run on "free" software, you only pay for the CD-R and the trouble of copying..... :))
So the source does not matter, Linus or Bill, the price of a copy is the same
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I can't think of any tool more subversive to an oppressive dictatorship than a computer hooked into the Internet. If you can, what is it?
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Even in North America, the software industry's claims that every pirated copy reduces sales by the MSRP is stretching the truth. In Africa, it's got to be close to an outright lie.
The glamourous Silicon Valley lifestyle is being sustained by the self-satisfied complacency that intellectual property protection affords. They call us pirates for copying their work, but they don't realize how much they depend upon racketeering for their good fortune. We vastly overvalue knowledge workers in the same way we overvalue sports figures. The money that accrues to those undeserving recipients is stripped from sectors of the economy which should be more profitable, such as agriculture.
The economic importance of information-widgets becomes clear when you imagine Disney airlifting 2,000,000 Fantasia video cassettes to Eritrea. No one would care. Why then do we place so much value on these things?
This is not intended to be a rhetorical questions. I really wonder what makes people think that artists and authors and inventors and programmers are so much more valuable to society than farmers or plumbers or auto workers.
yeah, it's going to happen when there are to many people in an area without the resources to support them. is the answer to throw food at them? no. they need to stabilze their own society. if they need help doing so fine, great, help them out if they ask.
but, just saying "everyone in africa is starving!", is just ignorant and stupid. there are also people in the US who are starving. but, do you see people with commercials to feed the people of the united states? no.
africa is also an amazingly vast area. and it's not a single country. the countries there all have different situations and rules, just like any other place in the world. it's not even all the same type of environment, not even close. do yourself a favor, and look at a map somtime.
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"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
Maybe because there aren't any geeks in Africa?
This is probably one of the stupidest things I have ever read on slashdot.
I am African, lived there most of my life and was a geek there and am a geek here and will be a geek when I go back. I know 9 programming/scripting languages, I'm familiar with 4 RDBMS systems (Oracle, SQL server, DB2, Interbase), I'm into distributed computing (Java-RMI and CORBA), if I was graduating from college today I'd do so with highest honors, I am an avid Chinese history buff, I played D and D as a kid (in Africa), I owned an Amiga as a kid, I TA two different programming classes(C and Java), and have already turned down several employment opportunities from Fortune 500 companies because they didn't feel right. In all honesty, I almost flunked out of high school in Africa and most of my friends were a lot more geeky than I was, IMHO I'm nowhere near as smart or geeky as a lot of the people I went to school with, who I am in constant contact with via email and instant messenger (didn't think they had that in Africa huh?).
Anyway as for the article, Linux being free as in beer doesn't mean jackshit. Copyright laws are not enforced in most third world nations. I've seen pirated CDs for Windows NT SP 4, Starcraft, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle 8, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, etc. for $5 to $10. I also saw a lot more people using Windows than *nix, in fact very few people even knew what *nix systems were while everyone knew Windows.
"Open Source, Closed Minds" - This phrase never meant to much to me, until now. After all, I considered Geeks as part of the 'enlightened'. We are the Digeratti - those blessed with an understanding of all that is digital. It is a shift so fundamental that it threatens the foundation of current society and the its' artificial constructs of Intellectual Property. Geeks "get it".
Or so I thought.
And then, I was introduced to slashdot, and I realized that as a group, we are as any other. We cling to what is close to us, and eschew that which is not. The great Soundcard conspiracy? Very important... Our Geek Brethren in another continent? Not.
Some points that particularly bother me in this whole discussion:
To my fellow americans - there is indeed an entire world outside of our borders. Spend some time reading about it. Even better, use some of those IT mega-bucks and visit it. It is an eye-opening experience, if you allow it to be so.
To the world - Africa is not a country, but a continent. One can no more make a generalization about this continent and its' societal structures than any other, yet we all seem to assume that the entire of Africa is inhabited by a geneologically and ideologically homogeneous people. This is anything but the case.
To the slashdotteri - Please keep your minds open not just to source, but to ideas. What is source, but the communication of ideas - from human to human, and human to machine.
-jerdenn
This is an fairly obvious troll. A significant part of the population of SA is of Dutch descent.
Hou jou bek... flipping chorb muncher.
Seriously, yo, why would you want people posting Funny stuff to an online forum? Heck, there might even be some satire an' some opinions an' commentary an' shit in dere, and you *know* we can't have that! Heck, then people might even start thinkin' fo' theyselves an' shit. Don't take it all so serious, dawg, slashdot's been dead fo' a long time, I'm just tryin' to liven it up a little.
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
I'd think affording the $1000 computer would be the problem - a free OS would be nice, but without a computer it's not much good!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
This is not the interesting group for Linux, at least, not more interesting than anywhere else: businesses investing millions of dollars in IT budget can pay for Microsoft licenses as well.
The real strength of Linux in Africa is for the home users: all they have to do is pay for the hardware and since the requirements are much lower, the hardware can be much cheaper too. And if they just start out with Linux, businesses will soon follow since all they can recruit are Linux-experts/developers :)
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Well, black Africans were always behind the curve. .)
This is precisely the reason that for other cultures Africa was basically, source of raw resources ( natural and human
For everything else, there's elks.
Interesting. ... this is just a guessing game.
I would push it even further. Since Europeans were forced to live permanently in hard and unforgiving climate their society had to advance even more then peoples in southern asia. But
Do you have any pointers to some research being done as to the problem why there is so much disparity between races ?
Yeah,when SA was run by white people. That was the only reason for its prosperity. ... Do you call that progress ?
Look what's happening now
does anyone care what OS people are using in Africa? Millions of people in Africa don't even have clean drinking water! Do these people a REAL favor and get them stable homes, with plenty to eat and drink, then worry about making sure they don't use "evil" Microsoft software.
This is incredibly petty -- take your evangelism and zealotry somewhere else.
Geeze, my Ask Slashdot submission on the upcoming soundcard monopoly is about ten thousand times more relevant than this. Good thing it hasn't been rejected yet; it seems as though CmdrTaco is scraping off the bottom of the news barrel right now.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I guess avoiding the Microsoft tax by using Linux is a minor issue, when you're facing the prospect of a $10,000 per patient per year Glaxo-Welcome tax for 20% of your population.
What are you going to use to avoid that? Bill Clinton has threatened to unleash the seven plagues of Egypt on South-Africa, if they use patent-infringing alternatives.
At least 45 million Africans are slated to die over the next 5 years for Glaxo-Welcome's intellectual property patent on AZT.
You, sir, are either a troll or a moron.
(Off-Topic)
Riddle for liberals (US): Since you define "African American" == "black", what do you call an African American who is white?
However, racism has no place in this century. Go on and post copies of a certain bird. It's adolescent, but it doesn't offend people who are insulted about these things every day of their lives.
Africa has no heavy industry or major export. The only thing that is exported are minerals such as diamonds and gold, which doesn't take a lot of brains to mine. I'm wondering about the growing their own food statement, you never responded. I agree that maybe you should get rid of those civil wars, aids, and famine before you start worrying about computers. Computers don't help grow food or stop the spread of aids.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Are there any such organizations that would ship systems to underdeveloped countries? I would be interested in getting involved with something like this.
- Toby
The word is 'dreamer'
~ppppppppö
Yeah, before the white doctor came with his strange religeon everyone was peaceful athiests.
stupid.
I hate to interupt the bigots, trolls, and everyone else convinced that every African is a starving disease ridden child, with something usefull, but here's a little info on the state of the telecomunications network in Africa.
Internet Connectivity for Africa
Connectivity Data for Africa's Information Infrastructure
Resourcery's African Telecom Links
The Acacia Initiative
Eric Henry
"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose."- Don Marquis
I did some work in Africa this Summer for 2 months and went to a few banks for work related stuff and one bank in particular was using Red Hat. The used it instead of the costlier UNIX variants that companies like IBM, HP, etc. sell.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
"But once businesses get to trust the Linux platform, it will catch on like bush fire."
That Is Probably The Scariest Quote Possible For MS.
Who cares about geeks? There are hot female zebras in heat in Africa !!!!!
no sig
Here's another use for those old 486's and pentium 75's other than Yet Another Firewall: send them to a charity which can get them to a third-world country! Install Linux, and include the install media, since bandwidth for downloads can be expensive. Africa is one place where this kind of thing could make a big difference, but there are also some big chunks of Asia, South America and the Carribean where some old hardware and some help could go a very long way.
Why Linux, by the way (other than advocacy)? After all, so many posters have already pointed out that Windows is free there too. Everyone already knows how to run Windows, so there would be less training required. There are two very practical reasons:
First,the charity would need to keep on the right side of the law back here, where it gets its goods.
Second, there is little training required (or even possible) with Windows. CTRL-ALT-DELETE, then reinstall, is most of the technical know-how you need to M$ successfully. Not exactly a great learning system for folks whom you want to go on and build infrastructure.
So: does anyone know of such a charity? One that could get the hardware into the hands of folks who could use it, and give some training, and would absolutely insist on the use of libre software to avoid lisensing issues?
See what I've been reading.
They were free first, then they were not free, later they were free again, and when things got really bad for them they even made the source free...
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
The world we live in is one which is driven by the distribution of money. That's all modern government is - a huge bureacracy dedicated to distributing money. Collect money here, drop off money there. That's all most of them do. Our legal system is modelled around this. Infact one might argue that money is more important than people - steal someone's car, you go to jail. Beat them up and you probably won't. Even then, beating someone up isn't generally a felony, but stealing their car is! Or how about this one - copyrights - after the author dies, the copyright doesn't expire.. it sticks around for another 50-100 years. More examples of protecting money, not people.
My point is this - in the world outside the room that you're reading this in does not concern itself with ideals or morality. It deals in money. If you make a good product for free, and give it away, it can be insanely popular.. but people don't care why you did it... they just see $0.00. RMS, for all his boasting about the GPL, seems to miss this basic point. Everyone points at ideals.. it ain't that at all. It's money. Sorry guys..
On the flipside, if you try hard enough, you might be able to crash the whole damned system by replacing every piece of moneyware (new buzzword - take note!) with freeware. Imagine that.. high quality free software. Bastard anti-american communists. Now you see why people fight the adoption of open source so hard - not all of them are so nearsighted. Fortunately, after all these years of being blind consumers.. one does not need to explain to the majority. Just say "FREE BEER!" and they come running. :)
Cheers,
~ Signal 11, jaded and cynical as ever.
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In this entire article, there's nobody stealing copyrighted works, nobody hacking some company's software/hardware, no mention of Napster, DeCSS, CueCat, RIAA or the MPAA.
That's right, nobody is cracking anything there. The article is about the spreading of the community and its culture in a country that has recently been starting to move out of the troubles it's been having for centuries.
I read the article with great interest. There is a certain shift towards more freedom in the working-culture in the US and other parts of the world through Internet- and Open-Source-culture. During the last few months, the african economy has been recogniced to show promising signs of growth even though it is, of course still small. If it could learn from the Insights the western world has had and take up some new paradigms from the start there would no doubt be a tremendous benefit to Africa, but also to the community as a whole.
Bringin' Linux back to de mutha'land...
...ain't all 'dem penguins gonna die fum de heat?
I know 'dem penguins be hardy, but... de mutha'land be HOT!
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Barbados, Trinidad and at least one of the nations that make up the lesser Antilles.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
All this time I thought Africa's biggest problems were mass starvation, AIDS, and civil war! Good to know that they've gotten all that taken care of and now they just have to deal with developing stable web servers.
First of all, neither of the most common two web browsers are free as in free speech
Is Mozilla MPL a "free as in free speech" license? Is GNU GPL? The latest version of the #2 browser (Netscape Communicator) is now mostly MPL with a growing number of dual-licensed MPL/GPL modules.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
you lead an immoral life and you catch AIDS, then so be it; you brought it on yourself.
How can a child born with HIV have led an immoral life or brought it on herself?
Children are born with AIDS; they aren't born with Micro$oft.<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you have never lived there you wouldn't know.
It is total war, or total peace. Too bad we only see the total war.
Africa is the mother land of us all, and she is wise, tender, brutal and beautiful. The same goes for her inhabitants.
You come upon a barefooted child that can speak six languages,shoot pool like a champ, then excel at math, you lose some preconceptions of the people of Africa.She was nine years old. Her English was better than mine, and she could do math that was beyond my abilities(I saw her homework). At bumper pool, she couldn't be beat. The Italian men would sit around and place bets on her next rivals' chances. She would just smile and take their money.
She was the only Ethiopian allowed in the GS Asmara, other than workers and athletes.
photosMy Photostream
(or "what I really learned in Slashdot")
Apple is suing an employee for spreading rumours about it's new computer. This new computer, called the Y-tetraedron, comes with Mac OS X, which is GPLed, but you have to pay US$ 30.00 for it anyway. RMS is sueing Apple for not releasing the source -- but lot's of Slashdotters are saying he is being cynical, since he infriges musicians copyrights by using Napster to download musics in the universities where it's still not banned.
I also forget my homework: Windows sucks because it slow and buggy, but everyone loves a C-64. Weird.
Missed anything?
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This space left intentionally blank.
Amen. Glad you spoke up.
I don't expect that much from slashdot in terms of non-technical understanding among it's readers, but I think this is a new low. Instead of basing your opinions of an entire freaking continent on I don't know, sitcoms or MTV videos or wherever you get your erroneous views of the world, why don't you try reading a book? And I don't mean one from O'Reilly.
--
Lucent and some other company which I cannot remember is wiring Africa.They are putting an optical fiber network offshore, around the continent.
There is a market, and there is more wealth there than you think. They know how to thrive even with the constant sorrow around them.
photosMy Photostream
Did you know that nearly every war on this planet had some religous background were everybody instantly forgot about not killing someone else but started killing everyone they saw that did not have the exact same religion as they had? And here you go start a few wars again by sending them even more religious stuff to fight about.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
>>Remember, South Africans hate the Dutch. It's easy to see that Linux has almost no place in Africa
Assuming that was more then a flamebait, mind to explain that a bit closer? What has Linux to do with the Dutch people????
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Algeria : DZ
Angola : AO
Benin : BJ
Botswana : BW
Burkina Faso : BF
Burundi : BI
Cameroon : CM
Canary Islands : ??
Cape Verde : CV
Central African Republic : CF
Chad : TD
Comoros : KM
Congo Democratic Republic (Formerly Zaire) : CD
Congo Republic : CG
Cote d Ivoire (Ivory Coast): CI
Djibouti : DJ
Egypt : EG
Equatorial Guinea : GQ
Eritrea : ER
Ethiopia : ET
Gabon : GA
Gambia : GM
Ghana : GH
Guinea : GN
Guinea-Bissau : GW
Kenya : KE
Lesotho : LS
Liberia : LR
Libya : ??
Madagascar : MG
Malawi : MW
Mali : ML
Mauritania : MR
Mauritius : MU
Morocco : MA
Mozambique : MZ
Namibia : NA
Niger : NE
Reunion : RE
Rwanda : RW
Sao Tome and Principe : ST
Senegal : SN
Seychelles : SC
Sierra Leone : SL
Somalia : SO
South Africa : ZA
Sudan : SD
Swaziland : SZ
Tanzania : TZ
Togo : TG
Tunisia : TN
Uganda : UG
Western Sahara : EG
Zambia : ZM
Zimbabwe : ZW
Whew!!! Looks like there's quite a few, no?
``We are the people our parents warned us about.''
The unfortunate situation is that most of the countries on the African continent are brutal racist dictatorships. Now look at the internet through a despot's eyes: is it really in your interests to open up your people to such corruption Western ideas as democracy, human rights and market economy?
Clearly no, so they just keep their people in ignorance and kill off any IT inroads. Good for business.
--
Kiro