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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."
You, my friend are an id10t.
The people in the villages have ASKED for these PCs.. They aren't being foisted upon them.. the Jhai PCs are intended for voice over IP as well as internet. The VoIP was the top priority.
Before you make a comment about something, you should learn more about it.
The people in the villages asked for internet access specifically. They have the basics of food, water, schools and medicine already.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
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.