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The Go-Anywhere Cyber Cafe In a Shipping Container
nk497 writes "UK IT charity Computer AID has come up with a clever idea to use shipping containers to house thin-client-based, solar-powered cyber cafes, which can be used to bring connectivity to rural communities in Africa. The £20,000 boxes use a single Pentium 4 PC split out using thin client devices to offer computing to 10 people via local wireless access or mobile broadband. The solar power created from a single panel is enough to power the PC, 10 monitors, lighting, and also to charge mobile phones. Computer Aid founder Tony Roberts notes, 'The power of this idea is that we can drop that container anywhere in the world, literally in the middle of the Sahara desert.'"
20 grand?! Must be some pricey solar panels... Containers aren't that expensive...
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
A Pentium 4 powering ten web browsers? I hope everyone doesn't go to YouTube at once.
They should have went with a more power efficient (and faster) core 2 duo. It's not like the cost difference would have been noticeable given the cost of the shipping container, solar panels, etc.
They make everything in convenient container sizes now:
- servers
- internet cafes
- anti-ship missiles
- nuclear reactors
- nuclear bombs
Shipping containers are the "in" thing to do nowadays.
why not use amd?? more cores at less power then intel.
and a P4 with HT? Dual core? doing 10 VM like systems?
How much ram does it have 256? 512? 1g 2g 4g?
Dropping this container in the middle of Africa is a good way to establish a new cargo cult.
Seriously, though - why are these people so intent on providing Internet access to countries and people that need many more basic things in life first (including proper hygiene, medical care, food, clothing, development of civic society, business, infrastructure, etc etc). Providing internet without these other things results in proliferation of "Nigerian scams" and very little else.
Lets go haul a big empty shipping container around for giggles? This thing looks like it could be condensed down to 11 netbooks and the solar panels to power them, figure 4k for the lot vs 20k for this. Aside from the solar panels your talking about 20kg of netbooks than can be stored at night and carried by a single man to the destination on his back. Want something permanent get the locals to build something or reuse an existing building. This just seems like a me to me to see we have shipping container stuff isn't it cool.
No sir I dont like it.
More 419 spams.
OK, so lets put a metal shipping container (i.e. a big metal box) out in the desert and have people sit in there throughout the day - won't that get awfully hot?!?
I print, therefore I am.
Maybe one solar panel can run a PC and ten monitors, but how do you power the Cappuccino maker?
Three Squirrels
... by throwing a fishing pole into his face.
Basically, this is yet another fruit from the tree of philosophy of "if only Africanians had the KNOWLEDGE they would fix all their problems by themselves".
Like the missing infrastructure - they would learn how to build roads and how to grow crops using only their hands by reading wikipedia.
And maybe playing Civilization. And Farmville. Clean water would be provided from similar sources.
Also, they would use the internet to study medicine and become doctors.
In their spare time, between building roads, feeding themselves and getting their medical degree, they would figure out that whole economy shtick and kick ou.. no BUY OUT the foreign industries that keep exploiting them and their countries' natural resources.
They would also inherently gravitate towards a free democratic society.
Schools and hospitals and (clean industry) factories would simply pop-up everywhere when enough people learn enough things.
There would be no corrupt politicians, no criminals, no dictatorships or interracial hatred or conflict.
Really... All these people need to pull the Utopia up from the sand by its umm... cables?.. is The Internet.
Then they would have the same wonderful system that all the remaining people in the world have - only better, cause they would have it "ready-made".
No need for pesky experimentation and all those nasty revolutions when you have all the knowledge of the world at your fingertips.
Right?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
How in the hell will this alleviate poverty?
Let's take Nigeria for example.
I KNOW FOR A FACT that they've got both Internet AND a working postal system there. I've seen the evidence.
How will the "Internet in a box" magically alleviate poverty there? You can't just have the whole country running 419 scams.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yes, the box itself can work in the middle of the Sahara, but how much is a satellite link and the ground equipment for it going to cost? I'm guessing it doesn't provide enough power to run that as well as the unit itself. So, you probably also need a power source for the ground station.
It might be more usefull in a village with no power, but close in to a city with wireless connectivity that could be accessed with a good directional antenna.
If you've already got a place with a hard wired connection or a ground station, then the PC's and power source are likely already available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvcUe_yPHdg
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jun/15/20060615-122003-3483r/
I bet you've never seen the inside of a shipping container. You can get them with wooden interior walls, floor, and ceiling. Air them out, slap on a coat of paint, and you're good to go. People are buying them to make work sheds, etc., you can get a 40' for $1500 0 $1700 without even trying,
I worked for an NGO in Cambodia (http://www.kapekh.org) that implemented a similar program with thin clients powered by solar panels, but without the cargo container.
The program saw these thin clients installed within high school computer rooms, and had the simple goal of teaching office skills to impoverished high school children. Prior, we had a dozen or so standard computer labs that had endless issues with maintenance, misuse (video games, vcds, etc) and the expense of electricity. Thin clients ended up being way easier all around. Prior to getting USAID funding, we were sourcing them directly from a Chinese vendor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7OYQzv75Pk - A video of one of our first labs being opened and an overview of the idea. I believe there are about 20 of these labs now.
One of the issues we found with solar panels and the battery banks was the misuse of electricity perceived as "free". Charging mobile phones using high-end solar panel batteries was an issue, especially when our networking equipment was unplugged to allow for more charging devices.
I can't, for the life of me, imagine why Africa needs cyber cafes. In all seriousness ... there aren't internet cafes in rural Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah or Idaho - places I drive through or hike in. Do those folks want internet cafes? Can you order something from Amazon and have it delivered there? If they go to news sites all they see is how bad their continent is compared to the rest of the world, at least if the BBC, Reuters, CNN, etc ... have anything to say on that.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Internet access helps alleviate poverty in the same way that cell phones: by removing intermediaries and giving farmers access to up-to-date pricing information and buyers.
This is what that "internet access" (which was actually a broker and micro-loan program) did:
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-122219-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5877.html
The epilogue to this project is not good. One year after the follow-up data were
collected, the exporter refused to continue buying the crops from DrumNet farmers since
none of the SHGs had obtained EurepGap certification. DrumNet lost money on its loan
to the farmers and collapsed, but equally importantly farmers were forced to sell to
middlemen, sometimes leaving a harvest to rot. As reported to us by DrumNet, the
farmers were outraged but powerless, and subsequently returned to growing what they
had been growing before (e.g., local crops such as maize).
As for the "cell phones" link, you don't have to go farther than the article itself:
Most of these unconnected masses live in rural areas that are much poorer and more remote than Muruguru.
Now cell-phone makers and service providers understand that they can make money by bringing cell-phone service within reach of people who live on $2 a day.
Users buy new phones for as little as $20--and secondhand models for far less--as well as airtime in increments of just 75 cents in Kenya, enough for nearly 10 minutes of off-peak calling.
.
They increased their profits by an average of 8% after they began using mobile phones to find out which coastal marketplaces were offering the best prices for sardines. Yet consumer prices for fish dropped 4% because the fishermen no longer had to throw away the catch they couldn't sell when they sailed into a port after all the buyers had left.
"That's what economic efficiencies are about--everyone is better off," says Jensen.
It is simply wonderful seeing such selective blindness.
A mobile phone costs as little as 1000% of your daily costs.
10 minutes (charged by a minute, so that is less than 10 calls) of mobile-credit costs you 37.5% of your daily costs.
And to even that out, your income has increased by 8%.
So, on average, that one 10-minute charge eats up that 8% increase in profit five out of seven days a weak.
But all is not so dark and dreary - if they work 7 days a weak, they will earn 0.32$ of extra profit each weak.
That way, they get to pay off that 20$ phone of theirs in only 1.2 years. Not accounting for interests.
After that - the sky is the limit!
Sure. For some people in developing nations mobile phones are providing A phone for the first time.
For some even a way of long distance communication of any kind for the first time.
And there are bound to be benefits from that as well as some measurable increases of quality of life.
But attaching the "it alleviates poverty" label on the mobile phone is way off the target.
Only people whose poverty is alleviated are mobile-phone merchants and local telecommunication companies (that practice the best kinds of monopolies - uncontrolled and rampant).
For a "regular Joe" they are more of a resource drain than a "poverty alleviation".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There are a lot of people to cure or help and no money to cure them with. Hence it's much more important to invest in wealth creation than charity.
I've seen your proposed way of doing things and it didn't work well for us:
A Zimbabwean.
This is all just my personal opinion.