New York Red Cross Needs Tech Help

zosa writes: "The New York American Red Cross is in dire need of technology equipment and services. The field workers and sites have little, if any, means of communication and the central office is processing way too much on completely paper systems. Your help in acquiring these resources would be greatly appreciated." You can read more over at this page. Finally something that the average Slashdot reader can do to help.

Comments

Advocacy Later

[bentini]

Note: If you do help...
Leave advocacy for later!
Do not push Linux. If people can't use it, it won't help right now.
There probably won't be 802.11b links. This will probably networking Pentium class machines so people can do data entry. They will almost certainly run Windows.
This is good, because this will make sense to the people who can directly help. If you go there, be prepared to deal with these systems and don't bitch about it.
Not to mention, you'll give Linux a bad name if you still push it in this time of crisis.
-Dan

Re:Advocacy Later - PLEASE!

[Soko]

The last thing anyone needs is a stupid religious type scuffle when stuff just needs to be done. If Linux is the tool you need, use it. If Windows/Mac/BSD/whatever is what will do the job best - use it. Don't think - just do.

(Aside - isn't a stupid religious battle at the root of this evil?)

The Red Cross needs technical smarts on the ground right now - you're not in a board room, not in a data center. If you volunteer, just do the job and move on to the next. Concentrate on the users - now is not the time for training, so use what they're used to, or as close as possible to it. Heck, you may even learn something about other systems by deploying them.

I just wish I could get on a plane right now. :-P

Soko

Re:All we can do?

[Zwack]

The average Slashdot reader can't bleed into a syringe? Can't donate to Red Cross? Hmmmm

INSIGHTFUL My Arse! I'm deeply offended by this comment. I would imagine that I am a fairly average Slashdot reader, and I can't "bleed into a syringe." I'm not allowed to. There are several categories of people that the US just doesn't want blood from. In my case I just happen to have lived in the UK for more than six months.

Please don't claim that giving blood is something that everyone can do. I'm not obese, I'm not underweight, I'm healthy... but I'm a Brit in the US.

Z.

Re:What about the rest?

[ichimunki]

Although I hate to get into partisan nonsense at a time like this, I feel it's important to note that half of the items on the request list appear to be licenses for expensive, proprietary software. Considering that MS made $7 billion in profit last fiscal year, I'd say $10 million is the least they could do. And there should be none of this having to ask for licenses-- that's ridiculous (and wouldn't be the case if the Red Cross was using Red Hat or most any other Linux, now would it?).

As for Sun, they had offices in the WTC and at least one executive on the plane that went into the building, so please have a little respect. Sun have bigger problems than how much they are donating to rescue efforts.

As for VA and RH? I dunno. Maybe just as soon as they have a monopoly on overpriced software and turn a profit, we can expect those companies to donate headline sums as well. In the meantime, consider that Slashdot provided news to a lot of people during this past week and a forum to discuss the events. Slashdot is a free service provided by VA at considerable expense in terms of hardware and bandwidth.

If you want to act three flavors of righteous, first do something yourself, and then take quiet pride in being a good person instead of bitching about what others haven't done. Sheesh.

Re:Microsoft Licenses ??

[Invisible Agent]

Love to see MS try to sue the Red-Cross in their time of need.

Pull your head out man. You say that you would "love" to see MS sue the Red Cross? So they'd get egg all over their faces, right?

At a time of national disaster, maybe you should stop worrying about petty shit like this. Of course MS won't mess with the Red Cross over this, and they've given a ton of aid money and resources out of compassion. Guess what - the people who work at MS aren't actually inhuman monsters, but people like you and me. You should be ashamed at taking this opportunity to mock them.

Re:And the Cheap Bastard Award goes to ...

[tshak]

Considering that M$ will easily make back that $5M in software replacement sales I think they should get the Cheap Bastard Award. This makes me ill.

I simply can not STAND people who judge other charity givers. I personally make a large income for my age, and whenever I give people ALWAYS comment, "Well, that's not much for him". How dare you even have a thought of critisism against a donor. How much have YOU given? Why don't you get a part time job (on top of your full time job) so that you can donate more money. You're not doing enough. Why did you upgrade your computer? You could've donated that money. What, you bought an MP3 player while people go hungry?
What makes ME ill is your arogant attitude. You feel that you have some God given intelect that allows you to determine how much is the "right amount" for an organisation to give to the "right cause".