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$7 USB Stick Aims To Bring Thousands of Poor People Online
dryriver sends this BBC report:
"The USB flash drive is one of the most simple, everyday pieces of technology that many people take for granted. Now it's being eyed as a possible solution to bridging the digital divide, by two colourful entrepreneurs behind the start-up Keepod. Nissan Bahar and Franky Imbesi aim to combat the lack of access to computers by providing what amounts to an operating-system-on-a-stick. In six weeks, their idea managed to raise more than $40,000 (£23,750) on fundraising site Indiegogo, providing the cash to begin a campaign to offer low-cost computing to the two-thirds of the globe's population that currently has little or no access. The test bed for the project is the slums of Nairobi in Kenya. The typical income for the half a million people in the city's Mathare district is about $2 (£1.20) a day. Very few people here use a computer or have access to the net. But Mr Bahar and Mr Imbesi want to change that with their Keepod USB stick. It will allow old, discarded and potentially non-functional PCs to be revived, while allowing each user to have ownership of their own 'personal computer' experience — with their chosen desktop layout, programs and data — at a fraction of the cost of providing a unique laptop, tablet or other machine to each person.'"
It's not clear to me that a thumbdrive is a better alternative than a Google account. But I applaud their effort.
Just like cars, computers are not used most time. In fact, several people could share one computer. We already do this through cloud computing, and did this with mainframes. Now we should make it so that the users have control over their personal data.
Can someone explain to me what dumping piles and piles of computers into Africa is going to accomplish?
In Africa I see waves of ethnic turmoil coupled with basic infrastructure problems, all played by the governments to keep a few powerful folks in power.
Are we trying to turn Africa into our next call center and need to get the kids up to speed with computers? I don't think that is going to happen until something resembling stability (i.e. taking care of food, clothing and shelter for entire years without fear of a machete attack) takes hold.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Who are these people? What is so poor about them?
Are they in poor condition? Did they perform poorly in school? Are they pitiable in the sense of being a poor, poor person? Are they generally inferior to other people, who are superior people?
Or maybe the titles is referring to Kenyan laborers who earn less than $2 a day and live in corrugated-steel shanties in one of the more impoverished districts of Nairobi which only gained access to electricity two years ago.
Maybe not. In any case, I prefer to imagine myself not being one of these "poor" people. Sounds rotten.
You're going to ruin the liberal feel good circle jerk. Yeah someones discarded PII-266 box will boot Linux and get Africa online. Now they just have to fix the other issues like drought, drug trade, poaching, blood diamonds, genocide....
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We have other OS distributions that that live just fine on SD cards or sticks, already. If you want to bring computing to slums as a useful resource, the big problems are probably really:
1) actual hardware, shared or not, to run whatever open source OS you pick;
2) electricity to run the hardware and shelter for the hardware;
3) people to train those who have never used computers before, may have other literacy issues besides, and quite possibly speak dialects you will have difficulty getting localization for; and
4) affordable/free network access if these people want to use the internet.
I'll bet these are not the only issues, but if you don't address these, I suspect your money and time will be mostly wasted.
Get off my launchpad!
People in 3rd world use cell phones for Internet. This is silly idea
Perhaps it is just me, but I fail to see any benefit to this whatsoever. seems completely pointless, everything from windows to many distros of linux already can run on a USB stick and a USB stick doesn't solve the problem of internet access, a computer or more importantly the food and water they lack. I guess at least it gives them something to sell at the markets for a couple of bucks to buy something useful.
Some older systems can't boot usb and other need bios updates to do it.
also what about drivers for all of there hardware?
This is a solution in need a problem. Until the people in impoverished countries have some other things first, a USB stick that can reboot dead computers is kind of insulting.
How about we provide (in this order):
1. Food, shelter, sleep, and sex.
2. Security, employment, health, morality.
3. Friendship and family
4. Self-Esteem
5. Self-actualization
Until all of items in group 1 and most of the items in group 2 are secured, self booting: internet USB sticks is like trying to teach dog to play banjo.
And this is assuming that the local infrastructure can support USB booted computers for internet access.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
These people don't need computer, they need food. The project founders seem to assume a lot: that there's electricity in the slums, that they can pay for it, that the computers won't be taken apart for the little scrape metal they hold, that the slums won't turn into a new dump for e-waste, that people are literate enough to use a computer or do anything useful with one (reading local news, for e.g.), etc.
$7 is almost 4 days of work for those poor people. I would rather see charities spend it on food than computers and training.
Not that I actually think this is a great idea, but if we really want to bring people online, why not aim for a device that can actually get them online rather than a USB stick that requires a complete PC with network connectivity to do so. By contrast, a low-end smart phone can:
1. Be had for ~$100 USD in quantity 1 ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00CKUBLFQ/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1399770265&sr=8-1&keywords=windows+phone+unlocked&condition=new ). Call it $75 USD in large quantity
2. Can get online without any other equipment
3. Can be practically recharged with a cheap solar panel
4. Can be used for mobile payment networks that are very popular in the developing world
Yeah, I know that $75 is an order of magnitude greater than $7, but it seems like a far wiser use of funds if you feel the need to buy and supply electronics instead of clean water.
As a geek I love the idea, but to the dirt poor and especially in the third world $7 could go towards more pressing needs like sanitation, clean water and medicine. There are many problems the poor of the world face. We can fix more than one problem at a time, but lack of Internet access is no where close to the #1 position - unless those kidnapped Nigerian girls can adapt a USB stick into an improvised weapon. Problem when the only tool you know how to use is a hammer every problem looks like a nail, and geeks are geeks.
PS Saw a funny motivational of this pic lamenting the poor kid was being deprived of the joys of facebook and twitter: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
As we all know this is Slashdot and what the summary says can radically differ from what they are doing or trying to do. If your going to criticize you might want to read the article first, and second, I damn well know there are few people here even trying to make a difference. While there are some obvious problems it's gotten farther than most projects. Just raising the $40,000 or so is a significant step in the right direction. There are many projects with dedicated people that barely operate with little to no resources. How much did you contribute to ANY effort this year? Yea- I didn't think so.
I could think of two ways this could "revive" a computer. First, a computer with a no-longer-updated version of Windows that is incapable of running Windows 8.1 may be capable of running Xubuntu or Lubuntu or Puppy. Second, a computer with a dead internal hard drive may be capable of running an operating system from USB storage. True, 24 MB per second (Hi-Speed USB effective data rate after various overheads) isn't very fast for sustained transfers compared to something more SATAnic, but flash still has the seek time advantage.
libraries and Internet cafes often won't let you boot from your own media for security reasons.
What security reasons? If this stick catches on, there won't be much need for internal hard drives in an Internet cafe anymore.
Yes, Internet access gets information useful for acquiring "food and potable water". It gets how to MacGyver up a water pathogen trap out of cloth. And it gets learning materials for how to grow an effective vegetable garden.
Give the people the knowledge and they will take their lives into their own hands, away from the governments, so-called "revolutionaries" and less-than-helpful charities.
Seriously.
LIVE USB stick.
What a great new idea!
Free OS! What a great new idea.
Promises of being able to use an old PC. What a great new idea!
Fact is running OS from USB stick is slow as fuck and if you already have a PC why not install it on the HDD in said PC? Now they said personal and fine. Are there a requirement for that? Maybe they could store their files on the USB stick instead? both is ok.
How do they get actual Internet connection?
What about electricity?
If they have limited electricity then something more modern would likely be better.
Also how do they take care of old electronic goods in Africa? Environmental safe recycling? ..
If we in the west really want to help Africa, there are a few things we can do right here that will make a difference. Eliminate agricultural subsidies, stop buying African diamonds, and stop using cheap African-sourced conflict minerals. Right now food prices are so artificially low that African farmers can't afford to grow food for their own countries. It's quite literally cheaper to buy food from abroad than to grow it locally. And the US is happy to give Africa food. In exchange for favors. Food quite literally has become a weapon and it's certainly part of what keeps Africa in a cycle of poverty and abuse. Meanwhile China has been buying up farm land in China to raise food that will be exported from Africa without really benefiting Africans themselves, except for a few that directly benefit.
Conflict minerals, including diamonds, also concentrate a tremendous amount of African wealth in the hands of just a very few who are quite happy to use this wealth to buy whole governments. Most times they *are* the governments. But hey, as long as we can get cheap goods made in China with cheap African resources, life is good, right?
But I guess my idea to not buy diamonds and kill the farm bill has about as much merit as handing out usb sticks after all. I doubt western policies that hurt Africa are going to change any time soon. Good luck to these folk. I'm personally quite skeptical.
So we can dump our old computers on them soon? Cool!
Slashdot problem in a nutshell.
Seriously though: Libya and Egypt are in Africa (OK so Egypt is also in Asia, bloody showoff). Africa is not one single monolithic entity. And actually apart from a couple of states - DR Congo being the most obvious, the Central African Republic being another - it's developing, progressing and solving problems at a rate literally unseen in human history (even China, which was really only temporarily held back by a revolution). Huge chunks of Africa doesn't match your stereotype of 'fear of a machete attack'. Can you say that most of America goes entire years without fear of a family member being in a mall shooting, a school shooting, an office shooting?
Yes, there are conflicts. The solution to which (coincidentally also the solution to overpopulation, disease, malnutrition) is education.
Entirely wrong.
UK supermarkets stock quite a lot of food that is grown in Africa. Broccoli is routinely grown in Ethopia, which is actually a green and enormously fertile country for most of the time. We also buy new potatoes that are grown in the sand in Egypt. Fruit generally (not just exotic fruit) comes from Morocco and Tanzania.
There are large scale food exporters in Africa doing pretty darn good business in Europe.
Once again: "Africa" is a continent. It's freaking enormous. Fortunes vary wildly.
Kinda pointless to do this other then make people feel like they are doing something good. It is just as likely to make them stupider then smarter>.> looks at reddit
It isn't in the interest of an internet cafe, which charges for time logged in, to allow you to bypass their log-in environment
PCs designated for use with bootable USB mass storage would have a different billing infrastructure that could be as simple as putting the display's power supply on a timer. It could be as simple as putting coins in a coin mech, in much the same way that dryers at a coin laundry work. There would be a cost to make a transition to this sort of billing, and I admit that cafe operators' willingness to pay this cost would depend on sufficient demand for use with bootable USB mass storage. But the featured article is about an organized effort to create such demand.
The Egyptian potatoes are a case in point. Egypt is by no means starving, so that is not a reason not to buy. But the potatoes are grown with water from an aquifer, which is presumably unreplenishable in any meaningful timescale.
I don't buy those. Ethiopian broccoli is a more nuanced situation. (It tastes fantastic, for one thing.) Ethiopia _is_ a breadbasket country, and famine is a relatively infrequent situation; exporting food is economically important. I don't feel it's unethical to buy it. I do feel it is unethical to let it go to waste if I do buy it, but that's a general concern.
WOW, Did they just invent Puppy Linux? pfffffffffffff
In Africa I see ...
Like, you've actually been to Africa and seen something there? Your post sounds like that of an armchair quarterback. The '94 Rwandan genocide was an understandably super-publicized "machete attack". But all of North America isn't judged by the extremes of, say, Honduras (which has a higher murder rate than any African country). India isn't judged by the extreme poverty of its poorest 200 million, and Mexico isn't judged by the lurid violence of its drug cartels. Why is all of Africa so often judged by its extremes? Such casual liberties are the domain of deeply ignorant yet deeply held opinion. You don't "see" anything, you just have an opinion fed by our media's appetite for sensationalism.
So yes, Africa could use the Keepod. So could much of India, southeast Asia, and Central and South America. Increasing computer literacy is important for the future of poor areas, just as it would help in poor rural and urban areas of the USA. The benefit of the Keepod is that it leverages the near-junk computers that are already there, making the most of them, just as African cars and bicycles are used almost forever, somehow. The project doesn't involve "dumping piles and piles of computers into Africa". The point of the pilot project is to determine any practical obstacles to success, and apparently there aren't big ones.
Old, discarded computers in Africa don't have USB drives. Let alone be able to boot from them. And does anybody remember the rates on USB1.0 anyway?
feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish...
All the charity in the world isn't going to help Africa as long as they're plagued by civil wars and the countless number of warlords wreaking haboc. This problem can only be solved with force and lots of it.
Are there viable solutions to simply sending my old computers to Africa?
Anybody?
Why are white people having to help useless, sub-70 IQ Africans? Oh, wait...
With no way to use it. How many of these 'poor' have a TV and network access ( assuming that these can be used standalone in some way like most every other generic USB android device )?
Worse yet, how many have anther computer to plug it into as its being pushed in the BBC article? And if they did, why spend 7 dollars more which might be a 1/2 a year wage in the area?
While a flawed idea, at least things like the OLPC came complete and functional out of the box and wouldn't be a huge disappointment to the child.
Clueless do-gooder idiots.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's also not clear if this is just another get rich quick scheme using poor africans as fodder. When they start talking about selling "inexpensive" devices that are "affordable" your bullshit detector should go off. A while back someone was flogging a solar powered usb battery used to charge cell phones that was going to "revolutionize" etc., these poor african communities for the low low price of $125 or whatever. A quick check of amazon.com revealed a product with identical specs retailing for about half that much. Hence actual cost was probably 30% or more lower.
In this case, puppy linux has had this capability for several years and thumb drives bought in bulk cost pennies. Exactly whom does this project benefit the most?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
bad ice cream 3
You make a generator using your 3D printer.
Warn that nasty dictator man that if he's naughty again Elon Musk will smack his bottom good and proper.
Shit, am I the only one that can think around here?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
FTFY