Slashdot Mirror
Networking Technology At Work In Rural India
abhikhurana writes "Whenever a news item about a plan to offer aid to a poor community in a developing country to set up an Internet backbone or any similar story is posted on Slashdot, there is always a debate among the readers if there is any point in spending so much money on such activities when people in such communities don't have basic amenities like clean drinking water. So when I came acorss this story,
I decided to post it to slashdot. It's about new software developed by Indian Institute of
Technology, Chennai, which allows video conferencing on low-bandwidth connections, and the impact this technology is having
on the small rural communities where it has been deployed."
"Doc? Doc? Hey you there? I've got the kidney in my left hand and the crowbar in my right?"
Doctor on other side of the world..."Hey, iChat a/v went down again, what the hell does 'beta' mean anyway??"
Dude, if a community can't afford water, how is it going to afford e-anything?
...wrote in one of his books about a banana republic where a program was introduced to help every family in the country to purchase and learn to use a helicopter, because it would come out way cheaper than building the network of roads through the jungle between scattered settlements.
So true... Often modern technology is simply cheaper than the "simple" stuff. Think cellular phones in areas without standard phone networks...
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Education
Really, how many teachers are motivated to help the unfortunate, but not so motivated as to live in a poor village?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I understand that utilizing the existing infrastructure is key in these sorts of projects, but I really have one question
Why do the people of rural India need videoconferencing?
It woul be much more suitable for scientific outposts in remote places in the world where the people can utilize the conferencing technology along with other data compression schemes to increase their "connectivity".
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
Maybe you can partner this up with cheap WiFi and some solar powered WiFi repeaters.
You could also have one attending physician in charge of many physician assitants in many small towns, instead of just using it for teaching.
But still, these people still need basic infrastructure, like clean running water, hospitals, electricity, and a working sanitation system.
However, I could see this useful for a doctor who may be visiting a rural community to see a patient. Say this patient has a disease he has never seen before, the doctor could talk to doctors in other cities to get their opinions and even said back pictures of the patient, allowing for a correct and accurate diagnosis of the patient.
So when I came acorss [sic] this story, I decided to post it to slashdot.
:)
Funny how you just up and "decided to post it." Have you discovered some secret way to bypass the editors? If so, please share.
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
You can either go to what appears to be their main page at: http://isee.enmail.com, and register, and get spammed, or you can go here: http://tenet.res.in/isee/ and download it directly without any registration.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
I wish I could be less of a cynic. This certainly seems like a good idea, but people used to think television would save the world too, by making it possible to educate the masses about critical political or social things.
I can easily envision this technology getting used for entertainment. "No drinking water? No problem! Just tune in at a kiosk and forget your troubles for a half hour!" Then available bandwidth starts getting eaten up by mindless drivel instead of important information (like the doctor or agriculture specialist mentioned in the article), and some bright person realizes they can charge people for advertisements to consumers who can't afford anything...
Noble intentions perhaps, but many of the world's problems have nothing to do with technology, so it seems wierd to me to try to use technology to solve them.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
I suspect Lem was being satrical. But it's not news that countries with no infrastructure often leapfrog more developed nations. I'm told that Indonesia never built an earth-based telephone infrastructure, because by the time they could afford to do it, it was cheaper to get their own comsats. And we've all seen the way the Third World has embraced cell phones and text messaging.
IIT, Oops bring the world to village kids
Shobha Warrier in Chennai | August 01, 2003
Half-a-dozen kids sit huddled in front of a personal computer concentrating hard to grasp everything that the face on the monitor is saying.
The tiny kiosk, where these kids are sitting, does not boast of any specialised equipment or high bandwidth. It has just one PC and one Web cam.
Yet every day, children crowd this kiosk to interact with their teacher Meena, who is based in far-off Chennai.
Belonging to Ulakapichanpatti - a small village in Tamil Nadu - and coming from low-income, uneducated families, the face on the monitor is their only saviour.
An innovative software - Oops I see - developed by the engineers of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the Chennai-based Oops Private Ltd, allows these village kids to take tuitions through video conferencing on an Internet connection with bandwidth as low as 20 kbps.
Origin of an idea
The idea to develop an audio video messenger that works on low bandwidth was born six years ago when Karthik Ayyar decided to return to India, giving up his lucrative career in the United States. Ayyar, who did his BS in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, also worked for a couple of years with Unifys.
While pondering on whether to use the ATM protocol (Asynchronous Transfer Mode Protocol) or TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) for the 'product,' one of Ayyar's friends told him that the video conferencing on TCP/IP would certainly take off.
"That was when I decided to work on it," he recollected.
Armed with this unique proposal, Ayyar approached Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT-Madras. Intrigued by the video-conferencing plan, Jhunjhunwala offered to put up a team to work on the idea.
Devendra Jalihal, associate professor at the IIT Madras and an expert in audio compression, was in charge of the research. His colleague Professor R Arvind also joined the team.
This was in 1996-97, and people had only started talking about video conferencing. It was then believed that for good video conferencing, you need a fast computer, a good camera and bandwidth. But all three were expensive in India and 'good' bandwidth just did not exist.
Jalihal admits that had it not been for Ayyar, whose idea it was to develop a software solution that would enable audio-video transmission through low bandwidth, the team would have gone for a developer PC plug-in card.
"In the last six years, we have been trying to develop a tool that will take computer use beyond the keyboard. Since the keyboard is English-oriented, we wanted to develop an audio-visual or some other tools like pen, which can be used instead of the keyboard. Some of our initiatives took off, while some fell flat. But our effort to make audio-visual communication possible on dial-up lines was successful," says Jalihal.
The 'Oops I see' software not only works on low bandwidth, but functions much better than any other broadband solution, the developers claimed.
The software helps one to hold point-to-point, point-to-multiple and multiple-to-point and even multi-point video conferencing through a normal dial-up telephone connection, they added.
Unfortunately, Ayyar failed to find a market for a product that is '100 per cent Indian.'
The turning point
The big moment finally came when the Oops I see team was asked to hold a demonstration of their product in front of an august audience at the national conference on communication and computer networking held in Bangalore.
The video conference went smoothly as the girl who was in charge of the village kiosk successfully communicated with those present in Chennai.
Both Ayyar and Professor Jalihal admit that this particular demonstration was the turning point and the technology soon received wide acceptance.
Today, 150 villages use this technology on a daily basis and more than 500 villages would soon come into th
Wanted : A Signature.
Folks, we seem to be missing the GNAA angle on this particular issue.
I know (hope) you're being Funny, but the article gives surprisingly good reasons. And the two don't have to be mutually exclusive (again, perhaps I'm missing some sort of humor).
Quote the article in case of Slashdotting/laziness:
IIT, Oops bring the world to village kids
Shobha Warrier in Chennai | August 01, 2003
Half-a-dozen kids sit huddled in front of a personal computer concentrating hard to grasp everything that the face on the monitor is saying.
The tiny kiosk, where these kids are sitting, does not boast of any specialised equipment or high bandwidth. It has just one PC and one Web cam.
Yet every day, children crowd this kiosk to interact with their teacher Meena, who is based in far-off Chennai.
Belonging to Ulakapichanpatti - a small village in Tamil Nadu - and coming from low-income, uneducated families, the face on the monitor is their only saviour.
An innovative software - Oops I see - developed by the engineers of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the Chennai-based Oops Private Ltd, allows these village kids to take tuitions through video conferencing on an Internet connection with bandwidth as low as 20 kbps.
Origin of an idea
The idea to develop an audio video messenger that works on low bandwidth was born six years ago when Karthik Ayyar decided to return to India, giving up his lucrative career in the United States. Ayyar, who did his BS in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, also worked for a couple of years with Unifys.
While pondering on whether to use the ATM protocol (Asynchronous Transfer Mode Protocol) or TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) for the 'product,' one of Ayyar's friends told him that the video conferencing on TCP/IP would certainly take off.
"That was when I decided to work on it," he recollected.
Armed with this unique proposal, Ayyar approached Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT-Madras. Intrigued by the video-conferencing plan, Jhunjhunwala offered to put up a team to work on the idea.
Devendra Jalihal, associate professor at the IIT Madras and an expert in audio compression, was in charge of the research. His colleague Professor R Arvind also joined the team.
This was in 1996-97, and people had only started talking about video conferencing. It was then believed that for good video conferencing, you need a fast computer, a good camera and bandwidth. But all three were expensive in India and 'good' bandwidth just did not exist.
Jalihal admits that had it not been for Ayyar, whose idea it was to develop a software solution that would enable audio-video transmission through low bandwidth, the team would have gone for a developer PC plug-in card.
"In the last six years, we have been trying to develop a tool that will take computer use beyond the keyboard. Since the keyboard is English-oriented, we wanted to develop an audio-visual or some other tools like pen, which can be used instead of the keyboard. Some of our initiatives took off, while some fell flat. But our effort to make audio-visual communication possible on dial-up lines was successful," says Jalihal.
The 'Oops I see' software not only works on low bandwidth, but functions much better than any other broadband solution, the developers claimed.
The software helps one to hold point-to-point, point-to-multiple and multiple-to-point and even multi-point video conferencing through a normal dial-up telephone connection, they added.
Unfortunately, Ayyar failed to find a market for a product that is '100 per cent Indian.'
The turning point
The big moment finally came when the Oops I see team was asked to hold a demonstration of their product in front of an august audience at the national conference on communication and computer networking held in Bangalore.
The video conference went smoothly as the girl who was in charge of the village kiosk successfully communicated with those present in Chennai.
Both Ayya
WTF??!? LOL!!
I had a good chat with my secondary school classmate about the idea of education voucher, who happens to be an economist, a few days ago. I argued that it is one of the ideas that makes good economic sense, but will fail in the real world. While the schools can introduce say, scholarship, to help the poorer students, the immense feeling of disparity in the society....
The e-education for basic education is not that health. What will the village children think about the teacher? Are we so untouchable that even the teacher do not want to be with us? It is really bad for the children mentally. Although retaining highly qualified teacher is hard for rural community in developing world, you don't really need a university graduate for teach rural primary school either...
He goes around and tells people that the parent article is either a "copy and paste" troll or "article modification" troll. Do not be fooled. He is the one who needs to be modded down.
The census of India 2001 ( a site Site Optimised for Netscape! )came out recently and is covered in India Today ( this article is not free however. Check your local library for a copy of the magazine. Its very interesting)
The 2001 Census data has information on Houses, Household Amenities and Assets in India and has very interesting findings. It seems there are some 2.4 million places of worship in the country, as against 1.5 million schools and colleges and a mere 600,000 hospitals and dispensaries. No wonder there is so much unnecessary religious strife.
The point is, there is a lot of opportunity for growth and innovative technology is greatly needed there to increase the level of education and quality of life there. The question of which technology is most needed first is very difficult to answer.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
MOD DOWN!
You were caught, and now you have to take the karma hit. Maybe this will make you think twice about your anti-social behavoir in teh future.
WRONG.
Before you get all of the above which are very very expensive, as in 100s of millions of dollars. You have to find some sort of way to be productive like sewing textiles or above subsitance farming or factory production, etc. Any successful development story starts with the fact that the country or region in question made something first that people wanted and then it developed. If you build all this infrastructure wherever, as soon as the money stops flowing in, and it would have to flow in permanently and forever, it would all fall apart. This has happened over and over again in Sub-Saharan African and else where.
[ANGRY-RANT]
that we are TOTALLY screwed... if they got ppl coming up with new technologies that WORK over in India... it means corpers and domestics need even LESS of us here in the US... obviously us americans didn't come up with it... which means what? That that's another set of IT jobs that leaves the US to go to those guys. (or at least contracts that we could've had) Face it, we're not falling behind but we're not exactly price competitive these days either.
Granted we don't know how well they work and how secure they are... but guess what? If the technology outsourcing thing keeps picking up (not an *if* anymore is it?) we're gonna lose MORE jobs and they'll get more. In the end the corpers'll have to sell to the affluent here and to everyone elsewhere. It will look as if the US economy rocks on paper but it will hit rock bottom for at least 2/3 of us that aren't well to do, prices won't go down either, they'll go down only enough to be affordable if you forgot to pay rent. It won't happen next year all at once, but how many of us will be unlucky enough to be dead of natural causes that soon? In 20 years the slums we saw in all the futuristic society movies may be the slums many of us will call home.
To old timers among you, I ask this... have you made any breakthroughs lately? If not, I doubt tenure will keep you around these days. Unless you're a teacher. Tenure nowadays just means a higher pay job to eliminate and a bigger bonus to get for some CEO somewhere.
I'm not a doomsayer. I'm just a guy realizing that other than in small semi rural expanding areas here in the USA (where ppl can't afford to outsource offshores because no big corps have taken over yet) everyone else is gonna have a hard time finding jobs once they lose them...) Here at least (I live in a little suburban hell in VA) you can at least start a small company and hope to survive against the big guys... but how long will that be before ANOTHER republican president takes over and completely destroys the tatters of our so called "recovering" economy.
[/ANGRY-RANT]
-Khyeron
It would be a bit like having a do-it-yourself interactive library available. So that when the water filtration hardware arrives, and comes with a set of IKEA like installation instructions, the locals can get on the video-PC and dial up tech support in town, and get useful assistance, quickly.
This way the experts in town can be shared around the countryside without having to waste hours travelling.
Being from a very spread out country myself, where it can take hours to get between two towns and days to get to the capital city, by road or air, something that skips the wasted travel time and works over phone lines or satelite connections would be excellent. Especially when broadband and cable are never likely to reach the outback.
Think about it, every time you show something to a friend or expert to get assistance to make it work or even sit down to coffee together and chat thinking how much better this is than by phone, you get an idea about how good something like this low bandwith system can be in a place where the main facilities are over 1000km (600miles) apart.
Imagine some places that are 5 days by road (from the black top) or 30 minutes by helicopter but it takes a week to get the helicopter within fuel range to start with. And then there's no fuel because the trucks can't get in because all the roads washed away in the wet season. 3 weeks by bulldozer? Also (if you had planned ahead and got the fuel in during the last dry season) it would be nice to get the helicopter repair man on the video conference. It would be really good if you could do it from the phone line in the helicopter garage.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The problem with introducing technology into the underdeveloped countries is not the technology itself, but the way it's applied. Typically, it comes from some industrial-world aid agency that simply doesn't understand local conditions. They'll invent complicated systems that attempt to duplicate features of Western infrastructre, without considering prerequisites that a less developed country doesn't have.
Some years back, there was a big push to build factories in Africa to process Sunflower seeds into oil. This would have connected a resource (lots of African farmers grow sunflowers) with an unmet need (lots of Africans needs to consume more vegetable fat). All the money was essentially wasted: the factories couldn't sustain themselves without huge subsidies. It cost too much to transport the seeds to the factories and the oil to the consumers, especially in areas with bad roads, corrupt local officials, etc.
A better solution came from an inventor in Vermont: a cheap sunflower seed press. Sell them to farmers so they can process the seeds themselves, and sell the oil to their neighbors. The whole process is economically self-sustaining: farmers pay for the presses with profits from their oil, and profits from the presses pay for more presses. The only problem they had starting up was getting a grant to develop the press. It seems that nobody was prepared to fund a development effort that only ran to $30,000...
The bottom line is that technology can solve third-world problems. It just has to be the right technology.
People are homeless.
Gah! If it wasn't for technology like the Internet or TV you wouldn't know they were hungry (probably could by mail, but Americans are too lazy to become involved in mailed communication).
If it were for airplanes, you couldn't drop food shipments.
Priorities are fine. Food versus technology isa not prioritizing. It's basic neanderthal wanking pretending they're better because they're supposedly more concerned.
Luddite morons.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
In Bali, Indonesia I recently visited a hindu flavoured temple dedicated to water for rice paddies (it was on a permanent spring). I was surprised to see in the outer less sacred areas of the temple, were facilities for community social events and possibly school. There was a badminton court set up under one hall (they have roofs to keep off the rain but no walls). Another area was the local bath house and laundry (well downstream of the holy water). The temple had all the facilities needed for weddings, funerals, community meetings, school, sport etc. Around the corner was a marketplace for food, furniture etc.
Would this have been counted as a temple but not a school?
Have them help setup the Indian communication network so they can also find new 'sales' since they will be out of work soon here!
It's not about the application, it's about the infrastructure.
It's a poor country. What better way to improve the economy than to provide them with technology that allows them to be productive and earn a living even from such remote places?
A bit of training and you have potentially thousands of Google Answers researchers, or chat-room moderators, or whatever jobs suitable for large amounts of low-qualified, low-wage work force who can work remotely online.
It's the logical step following the call-centres movement.
Why do the people of Slashdot ask dumb questions without reading the article?
Since you're probably long gone I'll summarize for you:
0. In rural India, it's often really hard to get to places due to very poor roads, that get washed out in the rain, and the population is very broadly distributed on farms.
1. A teacher in the city can educate children in a rural area. (viz., telecommuting)
2. Doctors can run virtual clinics for villagers to give them medical advice.
3. Scientists can have meetings with local farmers to give them crop advice.
All of these things are IN DEMAND by the people who had a chance to try them out.
simon
home page
I would be happy to email you some food.
Oh wait...
When you're living on a dollar a day, copper is a VERY valuable substance. It's pretty trivial to extract and melt down the copper, once that's done you can't tell if it's stolen or brand new. Easy to launder it back into the normal economy.
South Africa is running a lot of fibre now because, unlike copper, it has no resale value.
simon
home page
One of the successes of "microcapital" in developing countries is AKASHGANGA which provides computer aided milk collectors in rural India. Automating milk tabulation and analysis in milk collectives has reduced queue times, thus decreasing milk spoilage, and provides more accurate assesments of milk contributions.
Whenever a news item about a plan to offer aid to a poor community in a developing country to set up an Internet backbone or any similar story is posted on Slashdot, there is always a debate among the readers if there is any point in spending so much money on such activities when people in such communities don't have basic amenities like clean drinking water.
Longest. Sentence. Ever.
No, I'm not new to Slashdot, and yes I know the answer already...but goddamnit people. One of the most important points in the article is that the villagers spoke with an agricultural scientist. They were so thrilled and learned so much that they requested MORE meetings with other scientists/doctors. This is knowledge that the villagers are receiving. I'll rehash the over-used but very wise phrase "Give a man food and you feed him for a day. Teach him to grow it, and you feed him for a lifetime." The most powerful thing about the internet over say...water...is that you can teach the villagers how to get their own water!!! Imagine that! A learning tool....as opposed to sending smart westerners in to fix all their basic needs without them learning how to take care of themselves. Afterall, wasn't the internet supposed to be about the proliferation of knowledge? Seems like a good thing to me.
I said, no message!
Do so about China. We want to know more about China.
For example:
Pentagon Report: China's Space Warfare Tactics Aimed at U.S. Supremacy [http://www.space.com/news/china_dod_030801.html ]
In Rural India, Internet videoconferences YOU!
"It has two good aspects. The villagers can go to the kiosks to 'talk' to their dear ones, while the person who runs the kiosk can earn too. For the last two years, the villagers have been sending voice and video mails from the kiosks," Jalihal said.
OK you (we) guys in the US who have been failing to deliver mass market videophones for decades... here is an Indian guy who does it over a crappy dial-up line. And they have a business model too. Now do you understand why your jobs are disappearing to India?
At least in respect to that story I'm talking about. :) :)
Lem was VERY satirical in it and calling that imaginary country he described "banana republic" is about the mildest thing that can be done
Just to mention crocodiles being an important part of official divorce and government changes at least twice a month
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I weep.
How is it that they can afford to set up video conferencing for students and teachers...is it cheaper than sending the teacher to the students?
I found a site on the "hole in the wall" computers. Enjoy the site while it lasts, it doesn't look too promising.
As you might imagine, deploying Internet kiosks in economically backward parts of India is not quite simple. Besides the lack of infrastructure, the other challenges include providing a low-cost solution that can withstand harsh conditions like dust and extreme temperatures, and a kiosk that can be remotely administered. These and other similar requirements have led to the design for a Cognitive Kiosk for Rural, Outdoor, Tropical Environment (patent pending).
Internet Connectivity
Input Device
Administration
Heat and Dust
Security
http://www.niitholeinthewall.com/kiosk.htm
Backward, possibly even barbaric, societies are characterized by skewed priorities in spending. The Indians spend hundreds of millions of dollars on atomic-weapons research. Witness the recent attempts at building missiles with the capability of delivering a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile, the population engages in massive female infanticide or abortions targetting female fetuses.
Identical comments apply to China. Millions of dollars are spent on atomic-weapons research and on sending astronauts into outer space. Meanwhile, the population engages in massive female infanticide or abortions targetting female fetuses. Instead of spending millions of dollars on weapons research, why do the Chinese refuse to spend those wasted dollars on education programs that improve their backward culture?
The evidence for this anti-female atrocity is overwhelming. Please read "Mystery of the missing women" by the "Toronto Star". The normal male-to-female birth ratio is 1.05. Japan, Canada, the United States of America (USA), and even Vietnam have this ratio. By contrast, India, China, and South Korea have a ratio of 1.15. Further, the ratio of women to men is, normally, 106. Japan, Canada, the USA, and even Vietnam have this ratio. By contrast, India, China, and South Korea have a ratio of about 95.
It really is a big joke to read about how Indians or Chinese are bringing high technology into remote parts of India or China. They have their priorities completely backwards. First, introduce modern culture and modern notions of morality; then, worry about whether the Indian or Chinese boy can surf the web. By the way, having a modern notion of morality is unrelated to the degree of wealth in a nation. Look at impoverished Vietnam. It has a normal ratio of women to men. Look at wealthy South Korea. It has an abnormal ratio.
The female shortage in China and India is extremely severe. It is so severe that even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in 1999, did a front-page story on the problem in China. According to the WSJ, Chinese men kidnap Vietnamese women and force them to be brides. When they try to escape, the Chinese men cut their Achilles tendon.
Agreed. It's funny that people presume some kind of ordered hierarchy of tech. A must beget B must beget C must beget D, etc...
Movement outside of that hierarchy seems to make us uncomfortable, as if it's a natural progression: "They can't use computers, for they have no toilet paper!"
But imagine what one random piece of "high-tech" gear, transported a couple thousand years back in time, might have accomplished. What if the Romans had been able to videoconference? Would it have mattered that they had no internal combustion engines or pasteurized cheeses?
Whatever perception we have that the natural order of things is being violated, it's ultimately far less interesting than the possibilities involved when mixing things up.
You often hear the economic and social libertarians saying, "Government is the problem, not the solution. If you want you want more goods and services, let the marketplace take care of itself." I guess these two examples prove that this is actually true -- but when taken to extremes, the price of this approach can be pretty high.
No India will find a way of employing tech that will be radically different than the West. You can bet that they will learn from our mistakes caused by dot com stupidity and greed. No dot com debacle for them. The gold rush is over, we are about to lose out because we do not know how to be realistic in our commerce. We do not see the importance of the changes in the world economy.
The concept of a GNP is not a concept of economic growth, and to say that growth in GNP is a measure of developement is a falacious assumption, especially in countries like India of China.
To assume that this tech is expensive is rediculous, the cost of sending messangers, sending teachers to remote areas, Doctors, technicians,
administraters, health nurses, more than offsets the cost of the tech and equipment. Our problem in the west is that everything computer has to have bells, whistles, video candy, and super fast expensive communication tech. Funny but simple video communication that we have been able to do since the early 1990s will catch on and be a great boom for India. We ignored it because we didn't care to use it for anything other than goofy web garbage cam and it did not entertain us sufficiantly. We are becoming a shallow silly
over endulged bunch of brain dead consumers and it shows. Most of the rest of the world doesn't envy us, they fear, and some pity our greed.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Don't bother posting such stories - they don't warm people's hearts on slashdot because most of these geeks have never been to India or have a clue what it's like there. Most have some preconceived notion of "backward culture" and a lot of poverty, corruption....blah blah etc. Obviously imparting education to folks in underdeveloped countries is a problem to the western countries - it takes their jobs away. Anyway, it's good to see India slowly (but surely) progress after 3 centuries of being sucked dry by these colonial pests. Sonner or later you guys are gonna get it back...
And the "informative" parent from "reporter" should go down.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
And is that why they kept taking me off "tech support"? I gave useful support (and then suggested the customer would be better off with a different email client or even different O/S).
Never mind the boss, so long as the customer is happy. I suppose those who provide ikea like assembly instructions wouldn't follow up with decent phone or video conference support either. But those of us who do provide useful help will have more customers available without having to travel. If only I could speak Hindi.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
All these things can be accomplished with RADIO.
Blar.
Fuck India. It is quite simple. The more we help to wire India, the faster they will put us out of a job.
As far as I'm concerned, I would love to see corporate execs say:
"Holy shit! We outsourced every last good job to the point where no one is left who can afford our product! We've got to bring those jobs back home, and hopefully the sysadmins who've been flipping burgers for 5 years can remember how to login!"
But that will never happen, will it.
So, in the mean time, pray for war.
The article from the "reporter" is very informative. Now, I realize the dire state of women in India. Her article is quite interesting and to the point.
The facts are very shocking. Indian culture has a fundamental problem that cannot be solved by technology like the proposed low-bandwidth Internet connection, nuclear missiles, illegally obtained multiprocessor technology, etc. Apologists point to the level of poverty in Indian. However, look at Vietnam. It is even more impoverished than Indian, and most of the Vietnamese are farmers. Guess what? Vietnam has a normal ratio of women to men. The Vietnamese do not have low-bandwidth Internet connections, nuclear missiles, or illegally obtained multiprocessor technology, etc. Yet, the Vietnamese do not practice infanticide or abortions targettng female fetuses.
The observations about Indian culture also apply to Chinese culture. In fact, view statistics about female-to-male ratios at " Populations.com ". Compare the ratios for the United States of America, China, India, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea. There is an endemic problem in India, China, and South Korea. Technology will not solve this problem. Why? The problem is one of morality.
It's interesting that you spend so much time discussing a statistic that you don't not even specifically detail in your post. The site indicates that the female-to-male ratio in India (as well as China, your other favorite target) is 94:100. Ok, but how do you infer that infanticide and targeted abortions are the only way to account for this? Latvia has a ratio of 119:100, so should we assume that in Latvia, they practice infanticide and targeted abortions against male babies?
It's not the first or best low-end video conferencing software - CU-SeeMe from Cornell University is older, and does an adequate job even over 28.8kbps modem lines, though you get more frames per second at higher speeds. The early versions were free, and the later versions were commercialized by White Pine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Prof. Jhunjhunwala and his team at IIT Chennai are also the people who invented WLL (Wireless in Local Loop) cellphone technology.
...
Their high bandwidth cellphone technology has been sold and deployed in both China and Brazil, but here in India our largest WLL cellphone network uses Qualcomm's CDMA2000 protocol..
funny the way the world works
shooting is not too good for my enemies
... and we can outsource even more customer support jobs to them.
That is all.
All we are succeeding in doing with high tech in North America is making a sows ear out of a silk purse. We take a wonderfull thing like internet technology and the best thing we can think to do with it is download mp3s and play shoot em up games, so our collective brain stagnates while those less priviledge who see the real potential, have the common sense to use it.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
yes i agree with. lets all fuck monkeys in hell with little bells on them
Perhaps you haven't been around groups that still use "tenure" as a term to refer to how long someone's been with a company.
This form of "tenure" as opposed to a that of a teacher means little nowadays though old timers might recall a time when americans who had stayed with a company for nearly a lifetime were regarded as "guys we can rely on" as opposed to "guys we can fire so I can get my executive bonus" as they are known today.
(and yes I have friends in lots of places including the educational field).
-Khye
The answer is India has around 40% illiteracy. In general people are more receptive to sensory cues - speech, video than with test and data.