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Low Tech Gutenberg?
Peace Corps Guy asks: "I have a friend who recently left for a two year Peace Corps stint in Mozambique. While there she has limited access to electricity, no technology, and not a lot to do with her 'off' time. She's a big literature fan, and many of us here at home would like to send a care package - but how best to ship pieces of free online text like Project Gutenberg to a developing nation? We can print it (high shipping and printing costs), print it very small and ship her a high quality fresnel lens (awkward), or put it all on a cheap PDA, which would be a high theft risk en route and in situ. High shipping costs on weight and volume are another major limiting factor. What alternative solutions can Slashdot readers suggest for shipping a freely available byte-stream to someone without a computer?"
You've got the right idea, but let me build on it. A relatively new development you may not have heard of has been created by some industrious Germans several centuries ago. This new method of presenting byte-streams is highly affordable, portable, and contains an embedded reader which does not require an external source of energy. While the initial selection of material was limited, I understand that the idea of the Gutenburg press has taken off to some extent in the following centuries, meaning that you should be able to ship any number of Dungeons and Dragons paperbacks to your friend.
Amazon delivers to Mozambique (linky). Just order some actual books and have them delivered. Some nice Penguin Classics paperback edition or so would probably be more practical to read than any of your ideas for delivering a Gutenberg text as well, I would think.
(Possibly giving this answer makes me a total moron because I obviously forgot about a number of problems with it, and it's not even an answer to the question. If so, kindly explain why it won't work. Ta)
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Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I have a friend with a similar problem.
He is going to Namibia for a year trek into the deep jungle. He will have a lot of down time. He is an avid musician, primarily playing the Harmonica. He currently creates music using GarageBand on his Mac, sticky solely to his sampled harmonica sounds. He is wondering how to bring his Macintosh, multiple CinemaDisplay LCD screens, and surround-sounds speaker setup into the jungle since he has to carry everything in his backpack and there will be no electricity.
He can't bear the thought of not making or hearing any Harmonica music for an entire year. I was thinking I could ship him a PDA and he could write down the sheet music, ship it to me, then I would enter it into GarageBand for him, create a Harmonica song, cut it to MP3, download it to his PDA, and ship it back to him. But this would be difficult and expensive.
Can anyone think of anything else that might work?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Forget breaking down the PDA.
Go buy a big Bible or other book but Bible has advantages. Make sure to look for something that is shrink wrapped. The One Year Bibles I believe come like that. You take and cut a spot in the middle of it for the PDA. Reshrink wrap it, get a cheap Royal brand type PDA, a cheap calculator or something and put em in the same box. Now you can etchically say misc small electronic devices and a bible. Ship it off and it should make it. The other 2 pieces might not, but hopefully the Bible will since in most countries people don't steal Bibles.
In addition, she can store the PDA in the Bible once she gets it which might be a way again to help keep it safe.
At least an idea of a way to do it, don't know if it will work.
The Houkster "Oh yeah brother, what you gonna do when Houk O' Mania runs wild on you? Besides wet your pants in laughte