City Of Houston To Offer Free Email To Residents

Don Symes writes: "The City of Houston is getting ready to roll out 'free' email and web-hosted word processing. First to libraries and fire stations(!?), poorer areas, then to those who can afford ISPs." It would be interesting to compare the cost of Internet Access Technologies' multi-million dollar contract with private ISP access, especially for the dozen other cities considering similar deals.

Comments

My favourite part...

[wrinkledshirt]

In the section on other acts of corporate philanthropy...

* Microsoft. The software giant last year announced it will donate $100 million in cash and software over 5 years to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to build 3,000 centers where kids can use PCs.

Far be it for me to sound cynical, but I wonder how much of that $100 million "in cash and software" is software licenses?

It wouldn't be Government unless....

[EABinGA]

''We expect to have (people) standing in line to use the Internet,'' says Denny Piper, the city's chief information officer.

What would a true government programm be if it didn't involve standing in a line?

Urban Legend, but poignant...

[srvivn21]

An unemployed man goes to apply for a job with Microsoft as a janitor. The manager there arranges for him to take an aptitude test -- (Floors, sweeping and cleaning).

After the test, the manager says, "You will be employed at minimum wage, $5.15 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address, so that I can send you a form to complete and tell you where to report for work on your first day.

Taken aback, the man protests that he has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. To this the MS manager replies, "Well, then, that means that you virtually don't exist and can therefore hardly expect to be employed.

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in his wallet, he decides to buy a 25 lb. flat of tomatoes at the supermarket.

Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 before going to sleep that night. And thus it dawns on him that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes. Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his profits quickly.

After a short time he acquires a cart to transport several dozen boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again so that he can buy a pickup truck to support his expanding business. By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pickup trucks and manages a staff of a hundred former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes.

Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. At the end of the telephone conversation, the adviser asks him for his e-mail address to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he has no e-mail, the adviser is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such wealth without the Internet, e-mail and e-commerce? Just imagine where you would be now, if you had been connected to the internet from the very start!"

After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied, "Why, of course! I would be a floor cleaner at Microsoft!"

Moral of this story:

1. The Internet, e-mail and e-commerce do not need to rule your life.

2. If you don't have e-mail, but work hard, you can still become a millionaire.

3. Since you got this story via e-mail, you're probably closer to becoming a janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire.

4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you probably have already been taken to the cleaners by Microsoft.

Not true in the details, but true enough in concept. Plus, it throws in a little MS bashing. Everyone loves that...

Re:Digital divide

[Anonymous Coward]

Can some one tell how bad the digital divide was before the information age?

It was basically Boole and Turing on one side, and all the other slobs in the world one the other. Things have gotten better pretty steadily since then.

News at 11...

[DuranDuran]

"...and we leave you tonight with scenes from the City of Houston where residents today were up in arms because of a 'bug' in their email. City commissioners last year elected to use Hotmail as their free mail provider only to find some 'hackers' are able to read users' email. Well, Tony, looks like all their base certainly don't belong to them!"