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Cuba Lifts Ban on Home Computers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hello-computer dept.

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."

5 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. This is not news... by isilrion · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm a Cuban. This happened more than a month ago. And we are very happy that someone finally came to his senses about it.

    What's new, though, is that [startin soon], they are going to be sold without operating systems... No more windows pre-installed. Or so I've heard. Now we only need tons of Ubuntu disks to give away at the sotre.

    1. Re:This is not news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This happened more than a month ago. I guess they haven't worked out the latency issue yet.
    2. Re:This is not news... by explosivejared · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just because it costs less than 800 dollars in the rest of the world doesn't mean that it will be that cheap inside the country. Any market for importing old hardware is likely to be a black market, so the prices will be steep. It's the right step to allow personal computers in Cuba, but the majority of the people are a long way from it making any difference at all.

      Just an idea, since my US government is all about supporting an open and free Cuba, it might not be bad idea to lead some sort of initiative to proliferate computers to the people. I know the government might frown upon something like this, but it would give America the moral high ground, which is something neither side has been worthy of so far.

      --
      I got a catholic block.
    3. Re:This is not news... by Dirtside · · Score: 5, Informative

      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
    4. Re:This is not news... by MrSteveSD · · Score: 5, Informative

      There is no reason any import market has to be a black market, Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world

      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.