Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq

jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."

Comments

Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq

[Lunix Nutcase]

So do they need a bunch of big trucks so they can start laying down the tubes?

Re:Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq

[chemindefer]

No new tubes are needed. The incoming signal uses the oil pipelines already in place. By using multiplexing software, they can bring the signal in between outgoing packets of oil. The software has an AJAX front end, so the signal is very clean when it comes out.

System requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

• Intel based iRaq with blast proof chassis
  
• Emergency generator
  
• Firewall with real fire
  

Re:Running any infrastructural project...

[Jherek Carnelian]

Gee, thanks for that nugget of wisdom. Got any more? Like, "It gets hot in the dessert"?

Not if the dessert is ice cream.

Intriguing

[Chris Pimlott]

Tell me more about how you can get wood from the Internet.

Re:Intriguing

[WillAffleckUW]

No, we use that for parrot perches

Re:Intriguing

[multipartmixed]

Interesting, I always thought you used pine for that.

Re:Intriguing

[e4g4]

No no no, pine is for the fjords.

Re:Need employees

[Lord_Slepnir]

I signed up to serve as a Networking Troubleshooter, but when they handed me an M-16, I realized that they had a different definition of "Troubleshooter" than I was used to.

Re:... and profitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he leave behind a large fortune to his heirs?

Re:Need employees

[Anonymous Coward]

Im actually considering taking myself and my family to iraq; not only to do good works (like bringing the internet where its needed) but because i expect to be able to buy, own and hold land there in the old style feudal sense no longer available in the "modern" world: walk on my land without leave, and DIE.

The little woman says she wants to have the kid first, though. She's uneager to learn to fire heavy weapons while 6 months pregnant.

Re:Need employees

[martin-boundary]

M-16? That's not the standard issue process killer. Go to the armoury and select the BFG 9000 like you trained on, soldier!

Re:Running any infrastructural project...

[darkhitman]

Next thing you know, next year Ballmer will call Iraq a front for cyber terrosim and fight it by sending Vista machines into Iraq without UN approval
Hey, then Iraq would finally have WMD's!

Re:Sensational

[raju1kabir]

I think he meant more along the lines of "why 2:30". Sadly I don't know, its usually 5:30 that they start. You sure your clock isn't screwed up?

Duh, yep, it was screwed up. Flew through Egypt and changed my clock there. Spent the entire evening thinking it was 2 hours earlier than it was.