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loband - Killer App for Developing World?
An anonymous reader submits "With recent stories about hardware products for the developing world - namely the MIT Media lab's $100 laptop and the Simputer, its interesting to see a software solution to the problems of internet access. Aidworld, a Cambridge (UK) based organisation specialising in ICTs for the developing world have created a free internet service to speed up web browsing in low bandwidth environments: loband. Using server-side compression and by filtering images, scripts and plugins while retaining content and basic formatting, loband reduces bandwidth requirements by between 5 and 50 times. Its making waves in development circles but it also seems to make for a much leaner browsing experience in this world of heavyweight websites. Could this be a much needed stepping stone for users in developing countries? Do high bandwidth consumers find the sites they view could look much cleaner?"
I'm using Firefox with Adblock extension. This blocks out unwanted images, and in addition, I block out certain elements of my internet banking provider, like uneeded images, and such. This speeds up browsing, as I'm on 56K modem. I don't see how browsing with images turned off or having privoxy or adblock do blacklisting is different from this new service... Seriously, it is not that kind of stuff that is needed. Modem is fine for surfing the web, but not for downloading. So if they want a ISO, loband won't help at all...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
Of course. The thing is, the users would be unhappy if they can't use some buggy GUI browser that can also get their spyware for them.
As someone said, "Those who don't understand Lynx are condemned to reinvent it, poorly".
Too bad, most websites these days are designed as if GUI browsers were the only thing. I found myself going from Links 90%, Firefox 10% to Links 10%, Firefox 90%, with Links being used mostly for querybts -w.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The loband application is available in full gpl compliant form from the parent organisations' website (I assume from loband directly as well, but its /.ed..)
Its written in java and sits on a high bandwidth server acting as a proxy for all narrowband clients.
Heres a link
liqbase
The code for loband is fully FOSS, and complies with the GPL.
If your worried, grab your own copy and run it from your own server.
link here
(I just posted this lower down, but this seems like a better place)
liqbase
It's a misconception that the developing and third worlds are unable to grow their own food and feed themselves. They can, and they don't even need genetically modified crops to do it.
What they need is well run, stable governments. Take a look at Zimbabwe. Used to be fairly stable and able to feed itself. Not anymore, expect to see and hear of famine and death from that region in the near future.
It's a similar story throughout Africa. Corruption, poor government, poor planning all mean that any problems such as drought are massively exaggerated and kill millions.
Of course, import tariffs on food, created by developed countries in order to protect their domestic agriculture don't help even a little bit.
Deleted
On of the key points glossed over in the novel is that computing hardware and bandwidth (which were part and parcel of the same thing... the primer.. in the book) are really seperate things in our world. Cheap hardware and access to inexpensive bandwidth would be absolutely critical to such a device.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It is much better to use a scripting/page language that allows your server to generate a page adapted to each client's abilities: the interface can remain rich *and* optimised for various formats.
And you can achieve a lot simply by using thicker client side (script or other), re-usable style sheets, etc
TODO: 753) write sig.
sure, removing the shit always makes things cleaner.
I'm amazed at the number of web sites that fail to include the most basic of information.
1)Date and time page was updated!(please update your header too!)
2)Means of reporting errors! (asp flumox #sux2000 line #666)
3)Alternate text for images. This is a big deal on a low bandwidth connection because one can leave images at the server, read the text, and only download those those of interest.
4)PLEASE PLEASE do not use fixed width pages!!!
If you must, PLEASE set the minimum at 320 PEL or 40 columns of text.
5)text only site map.
6)text only option for search results. Why the hell anyone would include 1gig images in search results is beyond me.
7)Aside from images a max of 8 color bits!
8)ALternative to FLASH version.
9)Plain text extraction of all PDF documents for which it makes sense and a plain text summary of the others.
10)Plain text version of spoken audio content!!!
Till recently I used almost the same thing, provided by an ISP in Spain.
o .html
The way it worked was like this:
- The ISP sends you html pages compressed.
- The ISP sends you *.jpg files compressed to your own choice of compression ratio.
- The ISP sends you *.gif files compressed without animations.
The html pages, are sent compressed, you localy have a program that acts as a proxy or something like that, then it decompresses it. The program also lets you set image compression ratio and all that.
It even compresses pictures inside flash files!
The result?
Much quicker browsing with less browsing.
If at any time you want to see the original picture you can just quickly change settings.
You can view a presentation of it here:
http://www.wanadoo.es/acelerador/micrositi
(in Spanish)
Slashdot looks like it should.
I'm currently teaching high school kids in London, which in general is a pain in the arse, as the kids tend to be brats who have little or no respect for their teachers (or any authority). A couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a teacher also working in London, but originally from Kenya, where she taught beforehand. She was saying the difference was mainly that in developing countries, the students absolutely, truly want to learn, and at school give everything they have, knowing that education is the only way to make their life easier. But many classrooms lack, oh, boards, floors, etc...
Jump back to London, where every second classroom now has an interactive whiteboard, computers are being rolled out as fast as a media circus forming around Prince Charles, and the kids use it for... games. Fuck that: don't give developing countries $100 computers, give them the $1000 ones that are being wasted on the so called developed countries - hey they're already developed, so they shouldn't need them, right?
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
Because, it's not about text-mode browsing. It's about low-bandwidth. Loband lets you see images if you have to (and recompresses them for you). The issue isn't having crappy hardware, it's having a flaky 12kbps satellite internet connection and having to use banking software full of javascript, imagemaps, and other accessibility-destroying oddities.
I think you have a pretty naive image of the world. You seem to believe that if poor people only knew how good it is to be rich, they will start making changes to become rich? So, what do you suppose they are doing right now? Do you think the problem of starvation is due to lack of motivation for agriculture?
I'm sorry for bashing you this hard, but I often meet people in western countries who seem to think that the developing world could become rich if they only knew or only tried harder. I believe there are quite a few structural hurdles as well. Western companies' interest in keeping a low-pay workforce for coffee, shoes, cocoa etc. is one of those hurdles. Tax barriers in developed regions is another hurdle. And lacking economic strength makes it in itself hard to develop a stronger economy (ironically), because it makes it extremely hard to defend your currency, interest rate and your companies from hostile foreign takeovers.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Loband users are not easy to identify in web server access logs, at least by user agent string. Loband apparently echoes the original client browser's user agent string, with a request-specific (possibly random) floating-point number appended.
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 0.8801681055082656"I guess you can look for the (Perl 5) pattern \s0\.\d{16}$, but why not just identify yourself as loband?
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Pardon me, but you missed the point I was trying to make.
It's not about the third world suddenly wanting to become suburan American-type consumers. It has nothing to do with that at all.
What I mean is, for example:
A man who currently lives in a shack sees an article on the net about brick houses and adobe. He looks at his shack, looks at an adobe house, and thinks "That might be better". So he reads about how to make adobe or brick, digs clay, makes a kiln, and puts a better home together. Without spending money. Without any help from the West. It's HIS, he built it, all because he saw an idea he found interesting. Other people in his village find it interesting and do the same thing themselves.
So they are having problems with their crops. They want to know how to get more rice, or corn, or sweet potatoes, out of the same area of land. So one of their kids looks it up. They start trying different agricultural methods. Their food output gets better, they try more things, and it gets better again.
Or, they're having trouble with some kind of wild animal coming into their farm and killing their animals. They look up designs for different kinds of traps online, and catch the animal.
I am NOT talking about them suddenly wanting televisions, or to be rich. I'm talking about them being able to learn things that actually HELP them. Useful stuff. That's one thing the web is extremely good at providing, you know. Pretty much anything you might want to do has a "how-to" article somewhere.
During THIS decade, it would probably be only the kids using the computers, because along with the computers would be some kind of reading/writing/arithmatic education. But those kids grow up, and teach their kids. And so on.
Within a few decades, you have a country of people who are VERY self-sufficient and capable, who are used to the concept of researching solutions to problems. And THAT is the point of all this.
Understand where I'm going, now? I'm talking "How-To", not "MTV".
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!