Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Providing Access to Info in Developing Countries

Posted by michael on from the bandwidth-of-a-747-full-of-dvds dept.

matt writes "Widernet is a program run at the University of Iowa to provide developing countries access to information. Most of the universities they work with (mainly in Nigeria) have no internet access or have a very expensive, limited one. So Widernet ships hard drives with a data dump of about 100G to place on the local network. Students have access through the eGranery. Some the of the problems they are dealing with are how to provide updates to the already distributed libraries, how to provide the eGranery such that it can be setup with little or no IT knowledge, and how to stretch a limited budget and donations. I sadly had to turn down an internship with them, but would still like to contribute. Surely we can help with time, resources, and/or knowledge." And you thought sneakernet was dead.

9 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Sneakernet dead? Definitely not. by Moderation+abuser · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's the easiest way to get 1.3TB from here to there.

    --
    Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
  2. Nigeria has a lot of money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This article is lying. I know several people in Nigeria that have Internet access, they send me messages every day. They also seem to have a lot of money to send me, so Nigeria is not really developing country.

    1. Re:Nigeria has a lot of money by Teun · · Score: 4, Interesting
      You are right. And yes it is funny.

      But also very sad, it seems Nigeria has the IP rights (SCO-style) on corruption (and is clearly not able to enforce them).
      It is such a rich country in many aspects, diverse cultures, fertile nature and lots of oil and gas.

      Yet as long as the western world does not act against these utterly corrupt leaders Nigeria will remain in its present state were even universities have difficulty to, for example, accessing the internet.

      It is nice to see projects like this were the needed information still reaches the students.
      But knowing Nigeria I wonder for how long these hard disks will remain at the university.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  3. This is a good thing for developing areas. by big+tex · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that they have the granary, they won't loose all of their food every time the city goes up a level.

    Either that, or I've been playing too much civ.

    --
    I think I need a new sig here.
  4. TeraScale SneakerNet by Ann+Elk · · Score: 4, Informative

    Jim Gray (Microsoft researcher, grand Poo Bah of transactions, etc) cowrote an interesting paper 2 years ago entitled TeraScale SneakerNet: Using Inexpensive Disks for Backup, Archiving, and Data Exchange. (Word .DOC file) which analyzes the economics of transferring huge amounts of data by shipping hardware.

    (Insert obligatory "never understimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of 9-track tapes" reference here.)

  5. Give them info, and teach them to USE it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Give them info, and teach them to USE it. Having one without the other will just lead to a duplication of the situation we have here. Wired 100% of the time, unprecedented access to so much information... but still lead down a path of war by a bible bashing president and allowing our own government to turn over and beg for the RIAA, MPAA, ignoring our own rights at home AND those of prisoners of war overseas.

    Information is one thing. Using it is something else entirely.

    1. Re:Give them info, and teach them to USE it by flimnap · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know someone who went to Nigeria (and other nearby countries) as part of setup for an Africa-wide online learning university (computer science components). It was a miserable failure because none of the Nigerian universities were able to meet the requirements for computing, most notably steady electricity supply.

      Rather then shipping developing countries information, it is much more important to get them set up with infrastructure so that they will eventually have the access required to retrieve the information themselves.

      Information is one thing. Using it is something else entirely.

      Part of using information effectively is learning how to get it properly, and extract effective information from it. That's what we do every time we use Google: filter the wheat from the chaff, if you will.

  6. Broadcasting data. by dinodrac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to work for an ISP offering one way satalite internet. Needless to say, it was rather difficult to support, usually not because of problems with the reciever, but because of the dialup issues and TCP/IP stack problems courtesy of whatever spyware the users have downloaded.

    As most of the issues that make one way satalite data delivery problematic for consumers don't exist for this type of application, it would seem like satalite technology is a good answer to the data delivery problem.

    Time could be leased on commercial communications satalites, or maybe some sort of agreement to use idle capacity at reduced rates could be reached.

    The reciever hardware for one way satalite systems is relatively inexpensive, in the $200-$500 range, so it would seem financially feasable as well...

  7. Optical drives!!! by JaF893 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Surely the best solution is to install a DVD drive and then simply post them a load of DVD-Rs. Perhaps it might even be cheaper to use a CD drive and a load of CD-Rs. As long as sufficient instructions are provided the installation of an optical drive should be fairly straight forward.