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Still More on Connecting Laos
Rackemup writes "A story on Wired has some updated information on the progess made by the Remote IT Village Project attempting to connect several isolated villages deep in the Laotian Jungle to the rest of the world using wireless networks, pedal-power and Laonux (customized Linux installs translated into the Laotian language). Power surges can be a hassle when the nearest computer store is hundreds of miles away, but they're shooting for a May 18th "go live" date."
Simple solution: leave.
Looks like they're planning on using 802.11b... Wouldn't there be range issues? I'm assuming these villages are a decent distance from each other or wherever they could get a transceiver...
the first bicycle powered linux computer?!?
don't they have hamsters in Laos? or are they lacking hamster wheels?
Our Remote IT Village project responds to villagers express needs for telecommunications, business opportunities, and enhanced education for their children through the development of a solid-state, low-wattage computer that can be powered by a foot-crank, a high-bandwidth wireless network, and support for village small businesses.
Farmers in Ban Phon Kam and nearby villages are now able to grow surpluses of rice and other crops-thanks in part to organic farming techniques that Jhai helped introduce. To profit on their surplus, however, they need accurate and timely information about how Trinity dies at the end of Matrix Reloaded.
The expert women weavers in the villages have begun the use of natural dyes-again with assistance from Jhai-and would like to weave textiles for export. They hope to find partners among expatriate Lao who will help them market their weavings and receive reasonable returns.
Technology for harsh conditions
Without telephone lines or electricity, amid torrential rains followed by high temperatures and thick red dust, standard technologies won't function. Many of the villagers whom Jhai is working with are low-literate and do not speak English, so e-mail won't help them, the Internet is inappropriate.
To respond to their needs, Jhai Foundation is developing:
A rugged computer and printer assembled from off-the-shelf components that draws less than 20 watts in normal use - less than 70 watts when the printer is printing - and that can survive dirt, heat, and immersion in water
A wireless Local Area Network with relay stations based on the 802.11b protocol, which will transmit signals between the villages and a server located at the Phon Hong Hospital for switching to the Internet or the Lao telephone system
A Lao-language version of the free, Linux-based KDE graphical desktop and Lao-language office tools
Villagers in five villages and their surroundings will use this Jhai Communications Center to make telephone calls within Lao PDR and internationally (using voice-over-Internet technologies), and for the activities, such as accounting, letter writing, email, that are so important for their start-up enterprises.
Village youth and children will receive technology training and microenterprise training using the Jhai Computer, with some young people joining the project as Youth IT Entrepreneurs. The Youth IT Entrepreneurs will support their elders in the use of the technology and in business operations.
The design team is led by Lee Felsenstein, one of the leading design engineers in the world. Two of Lee's designs are in the National Museum of the United States, the Smithsonian. The implementation team in Laos is led by Vorasone Dengkayaphichith.Lee is assisted by a large international team,about 25 people in all, including notably Anousak Souphavanh, a Linux specialist who coordinates the localization effort and Mark Summers, awireless network expert and engineer, who assists Lee on both hardware and software. All people in thedesign teamare donatingtheir time, a priceless collective gift. The design is meant to meet the specific needs as expressed by the villagers in Phon Kham and associated villages. The Lao members of the team, includingthe villagers,see this effort as a gift from the people of Lao PDR to the world's rural poor.
A sustainable, replicable solution
The Jhai Communications Centers and wireless network will be owned by the villages. Small fees will be charged users to support costs for personnel, paper and other consumables, and telephone charges, making the project fully sustainable immediately upon completion of the training period.
The Jhai Communications Center, with wireless network and youth entrepreneurial support for business creation, will serve as an easily replicable model for the delivery of Information Technology services to poor and remote regions throughout the developing world.
No one posts the IP of these networks to slashdot....
What would you rather have?
The Internet, or a flush toilet and potable drinking water?
I know what you will say: INTERNET!
Once again the Internet is more important than anything else. Do these people even want to be subjected to emails from AOLiens, spam from Japan, and know it all Canadians?
Why slashdot? Why not?
...when I hear about this kind of shit. Why force these cultures into the modern world before they're ready? What's the point? So they can have cheap access to porn, X-10 popup ads, giant companies, and general ignorance? Is this an attempt at large multinational corporations to market to *every* human on the planet? Yeah, let's homogenize the planet. Let's make every person the exact same Wal-Mart shopping, Gap-wearing drone. Leave no corner of the planet untouched. I mean, they don't have NET access!! What's wrong with these people??
Leave them alone, for christs's sake. They'll seek out the Net when and if they're ever ready. I envy any culture that's not exposed to this rathole of commercialism and crap called "The Media". My goal in life is to make enough money so I can afford to drop out completely. These people have been spared, so leave it to some stupid "welldoer" to fuck it all up.
They better hope that their web server isn't running on a server in a remote Laos village - because here we come!
Yeah.... ...why can't they gt instant wireless... ... unless they die of starvation.
Fix the rice and corupt government in Laos... fix the wireless later guy.
How is the Laotian government reacting to this? Any support or opposition? While I don't know much about Laos firsthand, I do know it's one of the last five remaining communist countries on Earth.
Other countries such as China and Vietnam have taken measures to regulate and censor the flow of information via the net -- will this be any different?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I can only sit in horror as I realize the idiocy that is to come once Stallman gets a Laotian dictionary and find their word for "GNU/Laonix".
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Even Bill Gates knows this: you'll get more bang for your buck if you give people in third world countries food, water and decent health care, then decent places to live, then decent jobs, transportation, education, basic human rights, THEN television and the internet. Otherwise I fail to see the purpose of this other than a novelty act so some people can get their project in the paper.
I found it hilarious. Here they are with no electricity and that's supposed to be representative of useful information they can't live without?
Who the fuck cares? Wow won't it be great when some folks who live in a jungle can use linux? I'm sure they will know exactly what to do with it and the Laotian jungle will be the next India
compression is Laosless.
buda b=ing, buda boom.
I'll be here all week!Tip the wait staff.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Atta blow your mod points on this clever troll folks.
Next time, try reading the post before just modding something up because you catch a few words you like in there.
check it yo
</golf clap>
...of me not caring.
Does this mean we will have a whole new developing country to IP blackhole spam from?
MODERATOR, you missed the parent AC. It was Flamebait too, and was racist.
Oh come on, compared to an old IBM 286 (the one with the Warning! Lift carefully! 43kg! sticker on the back) games consoles are fragile. I bet that my 286 could survive a drop from the top of the empire state building - put your SNES in the way and all you will get returned is dust.
:o)
Mind you, mild steel tends to rust rather well, I suppose the plastic in a games console tends to make them last a bit better.
However, I really feel that you should be using the XBox as part of the Nintendo consoles for Laos programme - that way by buying them in bulk (and getting a discount that makes the sale even more of a loss for MS) then installing Linux you can help Laos and stamp out your number two competitior at the same time
Beep beep.
Quit modding this guy up. Just 5 months ago he worked for sega. Do a google, hes been a usenet troll for awhile. I'd hate to believe that slashdot's mods are that fucking stupid.
Hmmm... that last part sounds familiar... oh wait it was taken word for word from one of your other
posts.
Seriously people check your friggin sources before you moderate...
Favorite Shutdown Method?
Has this story been sitting in the queue long enough for the poll to be made? No, the poll is almost a week older than the Wired story.
So the new poll people are both pre-scient and don't care about CowboyNeal? Mommy, I'm scared.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
...these guys actually knew what they were doing.
I first heard about these guys on slashdot last year. I went and worked with them in Laos. And, what I thought was a bad situation went from bad to worse.
Sure, Laonux is cool -> anything to make technology accessible to more people. But the whole remote IT project was fundamentally flawed.
No planning to speak of. No actual understanding of the conditions. No testing. No risk analysis. And a manager with a head so into marketing he couldn't get his nose out of it for long enough to realize that he was biting off more than he could chew. All he saw was an opportunity to make money off of it for his foundation.
It was essentially conceived as a vehicle to do a couple of things:
Obtain fortune for the techies working on it. Obtain fame for the JHAI project in lao to get it more funding. Turn into a business opportunity for everyone when it was hugely successful.
The first launch was a complete sham (and a failure) -> there were invites sent out to everybody and their cousin months before the launch date. At that point, nobody'd even bothered to try out the software involved on the eventual hardware. It failed essentially because they hadn't bothered to test it out. And, because the "lauch date" was so all important, instead of finishing it, everybody went home!
This would have been a cool idea if:
It had been planned in an effective way by people who had a clue.
It had been made to benefit the Lao people instead of the people making it.
If it had been built as something to last, instead of the best that they could come up with.
Now, they're trying to do it again. But, they still haven't spent the adequate amount of time planning and testing, and yet they're setting a launch date and inviting all the relevant people. And it's going to fail.
My guess, is that they'll have the whole thing work, limpingly, on the launch date. Then, nobody will be around who can actually maintain it, and it'll all break down within 4 months. All that effort wasted, and everybody who's been a part can put it on their resume and say "look, I've been selfless." Because they've put no resources into training people, or into any kind of backup. They're just doing like the dot com's... waiting for the crash, but completely surprised when it happens. Either that, or it'll be so buggy that nobody will ever bother using it.
Later this year, the villages are supposed to be connected to the power grid. Then they can select "Wait for power outage".
Got me thinking of a job for world class amateur cyclists: "Oh, when I'm not participating in competitons, I work as a Non-Interruptable Power Supply in my village. If the power goes out, I have to go to work to charge the batteries."
I bet you are a fat fuck who lives in your parents basement and jerks off to your white trash sister fucking some guy in her side of the room. God I hate you. I hope you die... you are the worst troll ever.
You probably smell funny too, bitch tits.
HANK: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
KAHN: I live in California last twenty years, but first couple, Laos.
HANK: Huh?
KAHN: Laos. We Laotian.
BILL: The ocean? What ocean?
KAHN: We are Laotian. From Laos, stupid! It's a landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It's between Vietnam and Thailand, okay? Population 4.7 million.
HANK: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
I see a new meaning for "all-night LAN party marathon"
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I bet hes gay too. Its not his sister hes jerking off to, its guy shes fucking (probably their dad).
And don't forget the pets... I bet he has the dog lick up after.
I wonder if he stores shit in his bitch tits? Maybe like hide a ham in their or something...
"Hes not stealing a ham, hes just a fat kid".
First of all its "there" you fucking idiot. I'm so sick of you fucking slashdotting fucks not knowing when to use words.
Then again, gotta love the Family Guy reference.
"I need an adult, I need an adult". Haha...
or how about that "Anthology of Interest 2" from Futuruma? The one where Bender becomes a person and hides a grilled cheese sandwich in his folds of fat.
I bet this guy does that too.
What the fuck is Furturuma? Its Futurama... maybe next time you give advice on grammar you use a fucking spell checker you twat.
I also would of used "fat folds" instead of "folds of fat" but thats just me.
Wait what was the original post anyway? Oh yeah that fucking Gumpta troll... god he is a joke of a troll. Stupid 15 year old fat fuck... maybe like that "Big Fun" person in that movie Heathers.
See now hes down to +2 troll, instead of +5 stupid I mean insightful. Good... then our job is done. I think we should make sure this troll never does anything well again... he gives us trolls a bad name. Stupid dumb fuck... if I knew who he was I'd fucking leave an anonymous tip about him being a terrorist. Let the FBI give his ass a good pounding for awhile.
Only on Slashdot can you tell someone they smell funny, call them bitch tits and get moderated up. :), I'm proud!
I think you may have earned the title of "Best abusive troll killer for alltime. All other trolls just suck on your ass because they all fucking suck. Everyone one of their incestual-homo asses. God I hate those fags, especially the BSD/Apple is dying fuck. I hope he gets hit by a truck."
Sorry Guys I been working on IT in Laos on and off 2 years and only know this
Story from the Slashdot spin, but if true I hope that the pure Laos guys Get to learn English as the lao keys are not to be found any ware on the net, btw most
Far located jungle towns in Laos has a general issue with reading in the first place.
Anyway Welcome to some hundred more targets for SPAM and radical Sex ads.
I just hate bit SPAM, (www.netnoise.com.kh)
I just got back from Laos a couple months ago, and I have to say I am surprised they even know what a computer is outside the Vientiene. If they can pull this off, then I'll be really impressed, and will even want to go check it out next time. But seriously, there is NOTHING in Laos, and while I applaud the effort of starting to build some sort of information infrastructure, and doing it a clever way at that, these villiges need more than Internet.
Ok, some viliger starts a business and decides to start selling something, the roads aren't even drivable half the year! How will they get it out of the country!
Now, this is an interesting read for its technical merits, and on that alone I am interested in it and wish them luck--but this isn't going to change the country like I thought the author of the article was trying to imply.
So will somebody being posting a map to this place? When is the next user's meet? We should all go show our support and vote with our kip, baht, or dollars.
not to lose all credibilty here, but i must know - how much of the Laos population has a) a computer, b) the knowledge to use said computer, and c) the will/$$ to use that computer. I freely admit I dont know much about that country at all, but if its anything like I think of it, this is gonna be a waste. thoughts people?
It sounds like they needed to use a hardware engineer as well as the software folks. A properly designed supply should have protected the hard drives from the power spike. A bicycle powered generator does not generate reliable 120 volt 60 cycle power. I wonder if they were trying to run the whole thing off a car alternator. Without a battery to buffer the output, rapid changes in RPM do cause rapid swings in output voltage.
A properly designed power supply for this application would include a battery, a regulated charging circuit, and a regulated DC to DC converter which would protect the downstream electronics and hard drives from the voltage spike.
The truth shall set you free!
The article didn't explain what kind of power surge was that.. I mean, I'd have understood if it was a normal power surge due to an electricity grid problem or a lightning, but the guys are using a bycicle as a generator. How can you make a power surge with that?
I think that powering it with a bicycle is a silly gimmick anyway. They should use solar power like normal humans do.
Btw: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
Perhaps because the US dropped thousands of tons of bombs on them? Google around. What the US did to Laos was absolutely unconscionable.
The .la country code domain for Laos is now claiming for marketing purposes to be the domain for Los Angeles...
--Dan
Web Tips
I've spent a lot of time in third world countries, and the arrogance of this post is outrageous. These people are not "noble savages" who are better left in their idyllic state. They are intelligent and ambitious. They see the advantages our technology can provide, and want it for themselves. I've seen it in Africa, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia. They all want benefits of technology.
I was in Laos visiting friends in February, and they were crazy about email and the web. Internet cafes are jammed with young Lao people trying to get educated about the interent. They know that they will be able to earn enough to invest in sanitation, hospitals (taxes pay for that stuff, you know), and education.
One of my friends there works for the Lao government, and she makes US$17 per MONTH. Her best-paid friend works for a bank and makes a princely US$95 per MONTH. Yes it's cheaper to live there, but to get themselves to a place where their lives are comfortable WRT basic health care, sanitation, housing and education they want and need this technology!
Would it be better for them to go through an industrial revolution first? I doubt it, most of the problems we're having in the environment and politically come from the industrial revolution and the attitudes it created (war for oil, anyone?) If they can adopt the technology, but learn from our mistakes, maybe they can avoid the tragic blunders we've made...
because you're not the "greatest" dumbass