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Solar Wi-Fi To Bring Net to Developing Countries
JLavezzo writes "TreeHugger.com has an article today on a new wifi development organization: MIT and the UN have teamed up to provide kids living in the world's least developed nations $100 laptops, their 2 watts of juice provided by hand or foot crank. Cool, but - and this was one of Bill Gates' criticisms - what's a computer without internet access? Enter Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit that seeks to provide 'last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun.' Their wi-fi access nodes, which consist of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, and a router, can be linked together to extend one internet connection into a larger network. The two guys who started the company - Bruce Baikie and Marc Pomerleau - happen to be veterans of Sun Microsystems. Deployment is set to start in India at the end of this summer."
Now not only can citizens of impoverished countries starve due to gross mismanagement of funds by their governments (who are themselves living very well off of foreign aid intended for the citizens) but they can IM each other about who has more flies.
If they already have problems with power, etc., how will they get a broadband Internet connection? I guess you could use WDS or something to extend the range, but I don't think that's a very practical solution.
They're jusr repeaters that run on solar energy ...
What's with people leaving Sun Microsystems & starting theese great projects to bring people & information together ?
Didn't someone on the top of Googles command chain come from Sun ?
Sun may produce some seemingly "bloated" stuff, but they damn sure produce some fine people also.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Now Indians will have to deal with Indian tech support.
Its hard to believe that anyone who had actually visited some of the least developed countries could post something about computers and WiFi to help them out. When I was in Malawi for example, the people didn't know what electricity was. There was only one water spigot in the entire village, at the whitemans church. The only piece of technology they could recognize was my wristwatch, which they were in awe over. My $1000 digital camera? They couldn't even 'see' it: they had no reference as to what it was, might was well have been a rock.
They dont even have shoes. These people's most valuable posessions are sticks. I'm not kidding. Sticks are fuel for cookfires. They walk all day with a hundred pound of sticks on their back, with no shoes, no roads.
Now, these people cant read either. Can you not see how pretentious it is to expect them to value a laptop with WiFi when they are starving and can't read?
Get them some shoes first. That will help them a lot more.
They need to install a link so that all traffic can be monitored by a government agency.
For both out of range "country" areas (some of the most beautiful lands you'll ever see, btw.); and simple urban expansion. Maybe something similar to this could spur an adoption of solar panels on homes that could take a dent out of our energy use enough to stop rolling blackouts. Imagine if you could, buying/installing a system on your home that would not only cut your energy bill, but give you free high speed wifi to boot. Most states have a buyback system on any energy you produce, and it wouldn't take much energy "sold back" to pay for the cost of broadband and a profit for the maintainers.
~Rebecca
The complaints are coming, so let me just preempt them. Yes, money should be spent on feeding people. Yes, they need food, water, and medical care first and foremost. The problem is that the basic necessities of life are not enough.
The rich nations of the world could divert massive portions of their GDP to feed the impoverished world. Even if you could political find the will to do this, it would solve nothing. Poverty is a symptom of a much larger problem. The core of the problem lies in education. If they can be educated, they can save themselves. Hence, things like cheap Wi-fi while certainly is not a silver bullet, it at least begins to pick away at the problem.
Education is the key. With education and access to information other problems can start be solved. Good democratic governance absolutely demands an education population that is able to vote outside of tribal ties. Educated leaders are need to tackle both social and economic problems, and not just in government, but in business as well. The core of a functional democratic government is an educated population. We can feed the impoverished nations of the world from now until the end of time, but until educated leaders step up they will remain impoverished.
So yes to those that will surely complain about this "waste" of money, these people need food and clean water. Food and water is not the cure though. Education, information, a fiscal boost once good governance is in place are the solution. Throwing money at the worlds poor just to feed them is like pumping blood into a man with a severed artery; the problem isn't that he is running out of blood, the problem is that he has a severed artery.
please refer to any of the past OLPC post. These are not countries in extreme poverty. They have an infrastructure in plance. The projects are designed to break the cycle of poverty. Unless you teach these people to survive in a 21st century workplace, you can give them all the aid you want and it will not help. I repeat, BREAK THE CYCLE OF POVERTY, and the programs are not designed for countries with extreme poverty, but ones with an infrastructure in place
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
What about Wifi Baloons? This may become very cheap, and cover a much larger area.
I wish them luck. In my opinion, using wi-fi for this application is really pushing a technology way past what it was actually designed for. There are so many points of failure and a lot of equipment that comes so close to working perfectly...yet fails for unknown reasons. There are issues with bandwidth and interference from the limited channels (maybe over there with no FCC, they can one-up us on that one?).
I was talking to someone who has also deployed wi-fi just the other day. His honest opinion of his equipment was that the companies selling wi-fi seem to be more interested in selling a lot of equipment than they were in spending the time to develop solid equipment that actually worked and worked solidly.
Of course, I smell MESH networks, and nothing sounds cooler than a wireless MESH network...but in my experience, there is also a lot hype there that also falls flat when you actually try and deploy it.
Of course, some of our problems have resulted in some crappy boards we were sold, but even if they were working 100%, I'm still less than impressed with wi-fi on a large scale like that.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
"One laptop per kid" isn't necessary. Even if there's only a single connected computer in the whole village, it will vastly expand their horizons.
One of the great tragedies of poor countries is that a little knowledge could help them make much better use of their limited resources. If I couldn't afford a pair of shoes, I'd google for information about making some... if I had access to the Net.
The key to advancement is education. Perhaps rather than spending $100 to feed a person for a few months they're spending $100 to teach them how to help themselves. I understand that some areas are too underdeveloped for this to be helpful, but in others this is exactly what they need.
Knowlege is power. I want to see shoes on their feet and food in their stomachs too, but an intermediate step - education - could have a much longer lasting and widespread benefit.
Rule of law and basic economic freedom seem to provide the best means out of poverty, every time it is implemented, and roads might help that effort along.
I know building the Interstate Highway system in the USA seems to have done wonders in a country that was doing well anyhow, but how about it? Aren't roads high tech enough to be sexy?
After all, how do you deliver X (medicine, water purifiers, food, laptops and WiFi set-ups) without roads?
On the other hand, the cynical side of me thinks... if you put solar powered anything that might have any other use... it will get stolen.
Maybe you really do need "rule of law" first.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
at work... It is a variation of something like a drinking game only it doesn't involve drinking. It works like this. Every time you hear someone mention the words "mailbox money" in the same sentence as wireless Internet, you must immediately pull out a knife and jab them in the stomach. Then, as fast as you can, you must find the closest available dumpster and throw the body in it. And hey, it is actually a lot more fun that it sounds. (To stay somewhat on topic, at least the people in India aren't going to be trying to make a profit off of what they are doing). Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Now not only can citizens of impoverished countries starve due to gross mismanagement of funds by their governments (who are themselves living very well off of foreign aid intended for the citizens) but they can IM each other about who has more flies.
Not exactly. The number of flies in each location will stabilize, as the flies travel through the series of tubes that make up the internet. Don't get me wrong: the internet is not a truck. So don't even think that it is.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Unfortunately as many people have pointed out, most people in these impoverished countries have very little knowledge of modern electronics let alone electricity. Why would they spend $100 on a laptop instead of something they could use such as food? If they give people these laptops chances are they will sell them to try and get food. In the end, we could be better spending this research money on food. Get the picture :)?
I find it hard to believe that you made it to a country as remote as Malawi without travelling through areas that had roads, buildings, plumbing and power-- but the inhabitants live in such poverty that access to a computer is an impossible dream and the best job they could hope for is a Nike sweatshop. This program is for them-- the parts of the "Third World" that are 50 years behind, not 500.
I read Spain is part of this, but the infrastructure there is not advanced enough. Here's hoping Spain gets out of their third world status and up to second world like Portugal and France.
Howz about we just forget about bringing our depraved culture to the developing world and strive to eliminate genocide and rampant overpopulation.
1. The metaphysical study of the origin and the nature of the universe.
In my cosmology, I can't find a distinction between mind and soul in the fashion that you do.
According to a recent /. thread India has rejected the OLPC project, so how will a solar WiFi mesh create anything more than the ability for the rich to get access on their Lenovo's, Sony's and Toshiba's when they are doing a visit to the slums?
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
You're exactly right, Wi-fi is a last-meter solution, and people are trying to use it for last-mile and more. It'd be wonderful to see a solar-powered wireless mesh network, but not running 802.11anything!
What's interesting is that the Ricochet network has already been designed, deployed, proven, mismarketed, and abandoned. Metricom's routing protocol was vastly superior to anything else in this space, and now YDI's got the patents locked up.
Airespace was founded by a bunch of ex-Metricom brains, and it looks like they built many of the same smarts into the same casing. Then Airespace got bought by Cisco and they call it the 1500. I wouldn't mind playing with a few dozen of these.
Anyway, if someone could convince YDI to open the intellectual property, that warehouse full of Ricochet poletops could be deployed anywhere in the world. The modems are cheap, the hardware is bulletproof, and did I mention they go a mile on the stock rubber ducks?
Not all nations are so technologically deficient. Some nations, like the Philippines or various Eastern European nations, have some semblance of a modern industrialized nation, but are still, for the most part, extremely impoverished. Projects like this are most important for such nations.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I managed a huge wireless ISP using 802.11b, then later g as well, as well as 900MHz and 5.8Ghz gear. The "weird" problems all our competitors had, and you apparently had are all caused by not knowing what you are doing. Use quality components, including connectors and cable, and install them right and things will be great. Several of our wireless backbone links had better uptime than the fibre we used to connect our network to the internet.
One of the sad things in this note is the implication that the $100 laptop won't have Internet access.
/. without even a brief attempt to look it up. It is not relevant what William Gates Jr. asserts. What is relevant is this: every description of the $100 laptops has repeatedly referred to the inclusion therein of WiFi. Further, Nicholas Negroponte, father of the machines, has for years espoused use of WiFi for ad hoc meshes.
This is pure nonsense, and it is amazing to see this repeated at
. . . along the lines of , "hmmm, the people are poor and upset, hmmm we could give them food, water and shelter, or pr0n....hmmmm, lets go with pron."
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
A man is in the desert dying of thirst. A guy on a camel comes up to him and offers him a jug of water for his diamonds which he gladly trades.
An illterate family is dying of hunger somewhere in a Africa. Someone offers them a loaf of bread to melt down their free solar powered wi-fi station and latop as scrap metal. They gladly trade.
That's the problem in these places where people are starving and illiterate. Any kind of infrastructure you put in is just going to be sold as scrap for food. This might not be the case in India, where people aren't starving to death and are not totally uneducated, but this kind of thing has happened over and over again in Africa. People put in an elaborate desert irrigation system to grow food and all the pipe fittings are stolen and sold as scrap metal.
There are literally billions of people without access to clean water, a secure food supply, basic medicine, reasonable security, etc.
A $100 dollars for a laptop could provide medical care for a family of four for a year in many third-world countries. Which would you rather have?
And by "roads", I do mean literally roads, but also any other infrastructure that we westerners might overlook as "obvious". How about some more phone lines, etc.
Maybe assasinate a few warlords on the sly, while you are at it. You know, basic stuff.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Time to change your password again, "password3" has been compromised. :-)
This is why the people who are promoting Solar Cooking are doing so in third world countries. Solar cooking means they don't have to spend so much time looking for firewood, and they can keep their trees. Plus, it helps stave off global warming a little bit.
A little off topic, but what happens when the RIAA and MPAA start noticing these countries downloading stuff that shouldn't be. Are they going to go after the people and try to do what they do here or are they going to turn a blind eye to avoid a potential public relations problem? Is there going to be a filter? I'd be interested to see how all of that plays out when everything is all said and done in their new 21st century world.
Keeping people from starving in the several ongoing world disasters is not something we should abandon but that has nothing to do with why portable laptops and networks are good for "developing" nations.
The simple justification for these projects is that it's cheaper education. Dead tree based information is expensive and fragile. Think of the tons of material required for every village to have even a rudimentary library. One leaky roof or arson can take it all away. Now realize how easily that library can be replaced with a few hundred gigs of storage and a good network. Think of how hard it would be to do permanent damage to that kind of system. For much less than the cost of libraries in key cities, a country can make the same information available in an impossible to deny way to all of it's citizens. Collaborative tools, like Wikipedia, are the future of knowledge distribution and not just for those of us rich enough to think of our computers as gaming platforms and superfluous additions to "real" research at a library. Educated people can take care of themselves and that's what the world needs most.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, Australia is not exactly a developing country, but in terms of its broadband services it practically is. Telstra seem to be having a bit of trouble getting broadband out to regional Australia http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20003063-1702 ,00.html?from=rss, maybe they could take a look at this!
I may agree with you on some things there, but to say that such a project will not help at all may be too presumptious. I know of experiments in India that were carried out on slum kids (who had never seen a computer). In these projects, they were provided access to a computer without any training whatsoever and were getting online and using the web within a very short period of time. If you want to read more, then google "Hole in the wall".
Having the RIAA sue people in developing nations is like proving P=NP. Seriously.
It would be like the definitative proof that RIAA has no morals.
(I'm hoping that someone out there gets this)
In traditional societies, crafts such as shoemaking are taught to apprentices willing to dedicate several years to the task.
Your shortcut assumes, in rough order:
That the man without shoes is in good health, with no relevant physical or mental disabilites.
That he has the free time to master a skilled trade. That he is computer-literate.
That the craft can be mastered without hands-on instruction. "They laughed when I sat down at the piano..."
That he can afford the necessary tools and materials.
Ever heard of Satellite Broadband? It's not as fast as fiber optic cabling but it works in remote areas.
\
Look at it this way, while helping the developing countries gain technology. Linux will actually gain a relevant desktop install base...lol
Related with this, this book shows how wireless can help to improve things in those countries, apart of being a very practical guide to wireless networking. A few miles bridge can be used to share a VSAT connnection, that would be completly out of budget otherwise.
Not only focuses on technical issues, but also in how to make self-financiable and self-mantenible infraestructures. An excellent read.
Now I can hand crank my way to the web with the tremendous speed of 1.5mbps across the entire network, which is shared with a million other hand crankers. I think I will go back outside and kick the soccer ball around while I wait for my 1kb text file download.
There are places like you describe. Those aren't likely to be the first targets of such projects.
Education is however the only solution. Water. Food. Education. That's about the priority. You can not solve peoples problems for them for ever. You can however help them learn how to solve them themselves. A much much much better use of resources.
There's also the question of network effects: the shoes that an African villager might learn how to make on the internet might not be the ones most appropriate to his environment, and the reliance on the laptop could, in fact, reduce the amount of local cultural transfer by which he could actually learn how to make shoes from a neighbor.
I think that technology can be helpful and integrated well: it's just that the very OLPC model is so wrapped up in a myopic view of culture and society, that I think it is at best destined to fail, at worst could cause more harm than good.
Wizzy Digital Courier is a system that allows internet (email, web scrapes, anything that will move via UUCP) to be delivered - from a place that has conventional access to an isolated system or network. Some pretty pictures for you. The price point moves down to zero, with someone helpful upstream. Bandwidth is not too bad either - a USB stick can hold a lot more than you can transfer using dialup.
Andy Rabagliati
the problem with this project is that it addresses the last mile without addressing the previous 20, 30, 40 miles. remote villages don't have internet connections, so there's nothing to share. what actually needs to happen is these guys need to combine their work with another project at UC Berkeley.
The UCB project has essentially taken off-the-shelf routers and expanded their range to 40 miles.
The 802.11 networking standard, more commonly known as "Wi-Fi", is defined by a set of international standards that limit its range to about 200 feet. (This is why computer-toting travelers cluster in groups at Wi-Fi "hotspots" at airports and cafes, and why a laptop user on the street can horn in on Wi-Fi from a nearby house.)
Brewer and his group first pinpointed the factors that make these standards ill-suited for long distance networking, then developed software to overcome the limitations. Combining their software with directional antennas and routers to send, receive and relay signals, the team has so far been able to obtain network speeds of up to six Mb/s at distances up to 40 miles.
These speeds are about 100 times faster than dial-up speeds and carry 100 times as far as regular Wi-Fi. The technology allows anyone with about $800 for a pair of small computers with directional antennas to network with another location within 50 miles and in line of sight. If there happens to be a hill in the way, no problem: A couple more antennas at the high spot can relay the signal between stations.
I'm surprised that you've been as far afield as Malawi's more medieval areas and not realized that not all poor regions are like that. In the Sahel, cell phones are sometimes used to help coordinate the cattle migrations. In the cities, people do their banking and their bartering, they check the weather, check the prices of food, all on cell phones. Proper computers would probably go even further in helping people lift themselves out of poverty. I'm sure that if you gave the villagers in the place you visited a radio even, they'd learn a great deal to help them out. Give them a computer and the means to get it powered and online and they'd catch on, with training. I think you're underestimating the people and the technology while overestimating the depth of their isolation.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
Hey Green Wi-Fi people, if you're listening, I agree with the parent poster. How about you put the schematics for your designs online so we can all build these? Open Source philosophy and all that, the more of us building them the more eyes and hands to find improvements and bug fixing... I'm helping two community networks in the UK where they are really concerned about ecological issues and they've actually already asked me if they could power their roof top access points by solar energy. I think you could be the solution. Please could you put the designs online, creative commons them, so we can build some?
Everybody loves the Ronja guy for putting his optical networking designs online....
you not see how pretentious it is to expect them to value a laptop with WiFi when they are starving and can't read? Get them some shoes first.
My father smoked for decades and he didn't get cancer, so how can you say that smoking causes cancer?
My brother's laptop never caught fire, so that brand must be reliable.
I went to a third-world village that wouldn't benefit from networking, so it can't be any use anywhere in the third world.
Same argument, same fallacy. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Now i can get nigerian bank fraud emails from all over the world!
Seriously though, i think its fine and dandy that everyone should have access to the information on the internet but why the heck cant i get a $100 laptop and why doesnt the rural area i live in have wireless access yet. What are they going to use the computers for anyway,, to swat flies with?
So the next step would be self-organizing networks of microscopic, autonomous, solar-powered network routers. And with them, a new toxic waste problem with all those routers slowly becoming obsolete, eroding, and lying around. Just like one of my favorit Sci-Fi authors, Vernor Vinge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge) described in "Fast Times at Fairmont High". With an interesting solution, too.
When I was last in India, I met up with Jitendra Shar, who was leading a development of an indian version of Linux http://www.indictrans.org. This not only involved localizing applications such as openoffice, but also having to create new fonts and support for RTL (right to left) languages and deal with extra quirks of the various indian languages, such as combining letters (there are over 20 major languages on the sub-continent).
They where also involved in setting up a computer lab in a village on the outskirts of Bombay, and teaching them how to use computers. One of the major excuses employers use for refusing to hire people of lower castes is that they don't know how to use a computer. Another issue facing the villergers is that in many nearby villages, there had been forced evictions to make room for new building projects - the people where suppost to get compensation, but this was often not paid out and the census information was very poor (its hard to get compensation if you don't exist in the goverment records). The villagers where using the computers to help create a census of who had been evicted and use that data to help claim some of the money that was owed to them.
"one of Bill Gates' criticisms - what's a computer without internet access?"
Now that Scott's gone Bill is stealing his lines...?
Wouldn't it make more sense to get these people some FOOD?!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
They don't really need shoes. I think one of them is capable (no shoes and 100 pounds of sticks in his back) to walk longer, go faster and in places where you couldn't go, using the best shoes money can buy. The things that will help them are TOOLS and knowledge, not things like shoes.
Let me share with my experience with India, then you have some ideas whether selling laptops to people there make any sense. I lived in Mumbai, India for two months doing humantarian work as a health care worker there in both the city and villages. In the city, internet cafe is quite accessible and affortable. You pay about $0.5 USD to surf the internet on an ancient window 95 computer for an hour, but of course, dont expect a constant, speedy connection like in United States here. Few people do have mobile phones and I was a little surprised to see my taxi driver wearing a bluetooth headset for his mobile, as he picked me up from the airport. However, you do see LOTS of people living on the street. Seeing people showering, cooking, and dining literally on the highway are very common. Cows, dogs, goats are everywhere, and they have no problem whatsoever with cows crossing the highway at all. It is, however, a little different in the village, which is just three hours away from Mumbai. Buildings / homes are made of hay. Mangoes trees are everywhere, and they get their water from wells. Electricy is available, but only for half a day. People there do not speak english at all, so I do need some help when I obtain medical history from my patients. I asked my friend to write out all those questions down in Hindi so I can just point to a piece of paper. I thought that was a smart idea, but guess what? Not only do they not know how to read those questions in their own language, they do not even know how to write their name in hindi ! Now do you think it will work if you give them laptops for $100 USD? First of all, $100 USD may not be a lot to us, but that's huge amount of money to them. Let me give you some numbers: a typical meal cost about 50 Rupees (1 USD = 50 Rupee), and it cost 1000+ Rupees for a room in a hotel. Of course, it is impressive to build a computer in $100, but for those people in the village, that is totally not affortable. I heard they will have to starve for a day in order to hop onto a train to go to the city for medical care. Second, when people do not even know how to write their name, how do they use a computer? Nevertheless, I was quite impressed by a local program organized by a NGO. What they do is that they loaded a dozen old used computers on a bus, and they came by every week. Kids will then hop onto the bus, learn how to use computers. By the end of the day, after the kids go back to their home, the bus will drive to another village. I thought that was indeed very good idea, and that's quite an effective way to bring technology to these people. In a way, I don't see computer are that important. You can actually learn a lot from books. Having a computer is just a luxury. Instead, spending money on electricity, basic medical care, and education (so they can at least now how to write their name) is a much better idea.
Brilliant idea, although maybe the internet connection doesn't have to be always on - this is good for getting information in, but it could be expensive. Would basic needs be better met by just having a lot of recycled computers set up in a MAN sized wifi network - so that for example a doctor or local council could have a database of people and could therefore use this for planning things out and just co-ordinating local work? GnuMED?
Refusing to acknowledge trade-offs is the height of political naivete. If you have $100, you can't have both the health care for four and the laptop. You have to choose. You can't get away with just saying "both", because now you are spending $200 (and could have health care for eight or two laptops!). In reality, you have a set amount of money, and need to choose what is best.
I doubt someone who is suffering from malaria or starving in Somolia is lying there thinking "God, if I only had a laptop". You have to start with basics first. All else is window dressing.
Many of the children (and most of the girls) do not even have a chance to go in many places. I think learning to read might be a bit more useful than receiving a laptop that you can't even use because you can't read, and your body is wracked by the pains of hunger and disease.
Currently WiFi is the best technology we got for broadband internet access in remote regions. It is the only mass-produced high-bandwidth wireless standard around. And of course any mass-produced complex consumer grade electronics will have a low MTBF. But you have to pick and choose your hardware carefully whatever your project is and plan your maintenance strategy accordingly.
Seems like you've had trouble with 'MESH networks'. MESH network is just a concept - you need to make an efford and have the engineering skills to apply it in reality. And quit whining about FCC limitations on channels and powerlevels. You have to plan around those. For example having multiple radio-interfaces in one accesspoint/router with sector antennas for clients and line-of-sight antennas for trunking will give you managable and predictable performance.
I would start with something like Soekris embedded-linux board with mPCI/PC-card radio-interfaces and custom antennas for each purpose. One radio acts as the accesspoint with omni-antenna and other two are used for trunking with parabolic antennas. That'll give you a basic building block for your network. Then you just loop them around the area you need coverage for and at junctions and high-traffic areas you co-locate a couple hooked together via the eth0 - its all flexible and managable with linux running on the boxes. This wont exactly be a 'MESH-network' (more like a semi-hierarchical mobile-phone tower network) but it will have the same flexibility of coverage and reliability (because of the looping).
You have a better idea?
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
You can't assume that given a bit of medicine, food and water, everything will suddenly be a.o.k. That approach has been tried again and again. An informed populace is the prime requisite for a healthy economy on the macro scale. Furthermore, this populace will need an infrastructure for communications and one for transport of people and goods. If they can figure out for themselves what's good for their society, how to go about making things happen and just do it, this will be infinitely much more worth than a few planes of aid.
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
That having been said, I mean no disrespect to those that work providing food, drink and medicine for the poor - only that we need to consider both the short- and long term.
No, you got it wrong.
The fact that each church is contradictory about which is the "saving-one", means only one thing :
there's no way to be safe. The only question that matters is who is going to be eaten first once the older gods come as the stars predicted.
(And remember : vote for Cthulhu as president).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Here's a hint: the RIAA is in business to make money. Suing poverty-stricken inhabitants of the third world isn't even on their radar.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If this short-range mesh networking is to work, the internet software needs to be adapted.
Anything that your neighbor has pulled down from anywhere, or which has been forwarded through that system, should be cached for nearby users to get without going dozens of hops. This will be complicated by self-healing/dynamic routing of the mesh (i.e. content may be pulled down via different routes - splitting individual files).
Combine that with a common portal that everyone goes to first, to increase the hit rate on the cached information that many in an area use.
Half of them can't even READ the laptop because they have no schooling. In reality, these laptop projects are not going to the poorest of the poor. They are going to countries that are one or two steps ahead, with better infrastructure and political, health and education systems. While it is nice to help people in these countries, there are people even in greater need.
We have tried providing people around the world with the basics - and it has worked. The fraction of people living in abject poverty has steadily fallen for the last century. Counter examples exist, almost always due to political instability (which the laptops are not going to end).
Thanks for the info.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I have to agree with Gates here - please shoot me later.
Unless Internet Access is secured for the $100 laptop project is almost everywhere it is to be used then learning potential is highly restricted. The other alternative is having a school content server, that could contain a small section of useful information students could access from their laptops via the Zero-Config wireless.
The Wikipedia CD anyone?