Slashdot Mirror
Cuba Lifts Ban on Home Computers
ianare writes "The first legalized home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks. The desktop computers cost almost $800, in a country where the average wage is under $20 a month, but some Cubans do have access to extra income. Internet access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and universities on the island which the government claims is due to low bandwidth availability. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is laying a new cable under the Caribbean, but it remains unclear whether once the connection is completed, the authorities will allow unrestricted access to the internet."
Editing posts in a forum like this is a bad idea. It means you can post something, wait for a response to criticize you, and then alter your original post to make it look like the replier's an idiot. Perhaps having an edit history log available would mitigate that, except it'd be hard for people to mentally keep track of which version of the post existed at a given time, and know what was being replied to.
In practice, it means that the discussion is a *discussion*, so you can see everything everyone said, instead of letting things get changed and redacted later on. All things considered, not being able to edit is a good thing.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The US has tried to threaten companies that if they deal with Cuba, they can't operate within the US. The EU got very angry over the issue. Whether the US managed to frighten companies off, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised though.
As for the "decades old grudge", yes, it is a grudge. When Castro ousted the US-backed Batista, the US lost control, and US Policy towards Cuba has been about control right from the beginning. A condition of the US troops withdrawing from Cuba in 1901 was that they sign the Platt Amendment, which gave the US all sorts of powers over Cuba. It was very much a Godfather-style "offer you can't refuse". Although the Platt Amendment was repealed in 1934, the US kept one of the clauses which was the Naval base at Guantanamo. According to the Platt Amendment clause, it can only be removed with the consent of both parties, which is completely ridiculous.