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Cuba's Answer To the Internet Fits In Your Pocket and Moves By Bus
HughPickens.com writes: Susan Crawford reports on "El Paquete" (the package), Cuba's answer to the internet, an informal but extraordinarily lucrative distribution chain where anyone in Cuba who can pay can watch telenovelas, first-run Hollywood movies, and even search for a romantic partner. The so-called "weekly package," which is normally distributed from house to house contains the latest foreign films a week, shows, TV series, documentaries, games, information, music, and more. The thumb drives make their way across the island from hand to hand, by bus, and by 1957 Chevy, their contents copied and the drive handed on. "El Paquete plays to Cuban strengths and needs," writes Crawford because Cubans are great at sharing. "And being paid to be part of the thumb-drive supply chain is a respectable job in an economy that is desperately short on employment opportunities." Sunday the "weekly package" of 1 terabyte is priced at $ 10, then $2 on Monday or Tuesday and $1 for the rest of the week.
The sneakernet is still in use today in other parts of the world including Bhutan where a sneakernet distributes offline educational resources, including Kiwix and Khan Academy on a Stick to hundreds of schools and other educational institutions. Google once used a sneaknet to transport 120 TB of data from the Hubble Space Telescope. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes hurtling down the highway".
The sneakernet is still in use today in other parts of the world including Bhutan where a sneakernet distributes offline educational resources, including Kiwix and Khan Academy on a Stick to hundreds of schools and other educational institutions. Google once used a sneaknet to transport 120 TB of data from the Hubble Space Telescope. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes hurtling down the highway".
But the latency is a bitch.
On a scale from 'good god, man, kill that vile pustulent mass with fire' to 'AOL user's emachine running win98' exactly how malware poxed do we expect this service to be?
It is possible that the low value of the target nodes offers some protection; but I still have to lean toward "so much cyber-syphilis you can feel the pus ooze out when you try to plug it in".
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of CD-ROMs". That's what it was when I heard it. It goes back further
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
the Cubans sure are rich.
Seriously?
Lets say it costs 1000 dollars. How many people on sunday would have to buy your services to go positive ROI? Hell lets say it takes a month. That means you only need 25 'regulars' on sunday. Everything after that is gravy.
It is in economic terms considered a 'fixed cost'.
Honestly, these days you can (literally) buy a 4 pack of 32GB memory stick in the express checkout at Wal Mart for under $10.
The first time I saw a PC with a 1GB hard drive, we stared at it in awe ... it was about 98% free space, and nobody had any idea of what you'd put on it.
And you can buy a 1TB hard drive for under $100 without even trying that hard.
Now, take a teenager, and try to explain punching holes in a 360K 5.25" floppy so you could flip it and get 720K. They might not even believe you.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is Cuba's answer to the internet?
This is like the US Military calling the Nerf toy company to answer ISIS.
The article wonders why the Cuban government is letting this happen and then goes on to say it makes $5 million a month and no one knows who is running it. At $5 mill a month a lot of government types can make a nice tidy profit while still controlling and observing what goes int El Paquete. As long as nothing that think will cause problems is in it why not run a lucrative media empire? One that is protected from competition, because well, you and your police can easily take care of the competition; besides if you are already bringing it in their is less incentive for someone else to do so and that saves you the expense of tracking them down. If things go south you can always leave and live off your earnings. Just because you are a good socialist doesn't mean you don't appreciate what capitalism can offer you.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This is one of my big fears (kinda feared, not terribly though...) with everything moving to cloud computing. I've definitely considered a future where the ability to store data becomes completely underground and anarchistic... more from a dystopian future POV and one that users let happen more than is forced on us.
I don't really think they could do this, but wouldn't it be terrifying if they could? It'd be like disallowing sales of reams of paper greater than fifty sheets at a time or something.
when i posted this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
but this quaint sneakernet will probably rapidly disappear now
i can't see cuba resisting the obvious benefits of freer internet access any longer. they're paranoid control freaks, but they're not that stupid (i hope)
the political ramifications are obvious too, but cuba's political model died last century
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I want to know where this Walmart is that I can buy a 4-pack of 32GB sticks for $10 (seriously, if it's real I want to know...)
Think of this Cuban sneakernet. Now remember the fact that for the past half-century, the United States has seen Cuba as the biggest threat in the Western Hemisphere. So much a threat that you couldn't even allow Americans to visit there or Cubans to come here. Hell, you couldn't even legally buy a Cuban cigar in the US, so great was the threat from this tiny island nation. And even after 60 years of embargo and sanctions a president says, "What is all this bullshit with Cuba? You think maybe we could knock it off now?" we STILL have right-wing legislators who shit on the floor in fury at the thought of normal relations with them.
It's ironic that the US keeps it's off-shore black site prison in Cuba, so it can hold Afghani cabdrivers who nobody can remember why we picked him up back in 2004. But god forbid we should actually have a conversation with their government, because OMFG COMMUNISM!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Depends on disk density. I know my 1541 would have 664 blocks free per side (the 180k one), but they eventually come out with up to 1MB in the 5 1/4 size.