The best way to build a WISP with a WRT54G is using the Freifunk Firmware (based on openwrt.org) which builds a routed mesh network with any WRT54G flashed with the same firmware. It is really simple and totally open and free - unlike the Sveasoft weenies. Some howtos on my blog:
Weasel is awesome, I don't understand why one would use anything else.
Any non-picture book can be represented as a textfile. Copy and paste from a PDF or a web page, or use Clit to remove Microsoft's drm if you are so unlucky. Of course Project Gutenberg is king of books.
Just run the txt file through makeztxt and off you go.
After email, my web browser, and vim, Weasel is probably the program I spend the most time with - and it is reading so what good times they are...
I was in Ethiopia in January . It is a place rich in history, culture, wildlife and adventure. The potential for tourism is great, and the infrastructure to support such an industry is growing. Enterprising individuals are spending their life savings to get a computer and an internet connection so that tourists can check their email from remote mountain villages. Yet they know little about what they are buying or what to do with it once they have bought it.
Every computer I used in Ethiopia was Windows and full of every type of Spyware and "click this button to speed up your computer" program you can imagine. Multiple times I was asked to come in and help fix somebody's computer, merely because I was a Westerner (they had no idea I work on computers for a living). If there was a simple Linux distribution that provided dial up web access with the normal internet cafe type tools (a timer, restricted access rights, etc) a major difference could be made in Ethiopia and indeed all over the tourist trail. If it was in the local language, well even better.
Tourism is a valid way to develop and support a country (6th largest industry in the UK), and is indeed one of the top priorities of Ethiopia. Open Source is a great enabler for this.
Capital is indeed the problem in Ethiopia, as it is with most of the world's poor.
If someone wants to start a shoeshine business in Addis they need a box, some soap and a rag. To get a shoeshine box you need capital. You can get money from moneylenders who often charge upwards 100% interest per day. Even if you do manage to start a business, there is no secure way to save the money you earn. Money under the mattress is still the dominant savings scheme throughout much of the world.
Most development methods have been utter failures, but the concept of Microfinance is a revolution in development that tackles this specific problem. Basically the poor are given loans (on the order of $10 for 3 months) to start small businesses. Loans must be paid back, with interest. Loans are typically given to women, who invest the money in businesses that will make money which then goes directly back to the needs of the family. There are millions of people around the world that are pulling themselves up out of povert thanks to this great idea.
I have never understood the PDF format. I hate it. Adobe Acrobat Reader defines bloatware - it takes ages to launch, and provides very little added value as far as I am concerned.
If you are reading an ebook on a desktop or laptop, read it as html or plain text. If you are reading it on PDA (as I have read many gutenberg texts) use zTxt with the Weasel Reader. The reader is great and the compressed text is tiny.
I believe Project Gutenberg 2 is being run by Michael Hart (and others), founder of the original Project Gutenberg and holder of the trademark. At least this is what I am picking up by the mass of emails flying on the gutenberg developers list. So it is affiliated, though in a messy circular sort of way.
Fascinating quote - Snort coke or fall in love?
on
The Science of Love
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke."
Allow VOIP to be unregulated (you can't really stop this anyway). If it causes the phone companies to start losing money then they raise prices to compensate, and our home phone lines cost more.
I don't know where most of the revenue stream for telcos comes from, but if it is from long distance phone calls - then they need a new business plan. Those days are over. If they are spending too much money to keep the internet working then they need to raise prices on access to the internet lines and the price will rise at our ISPs.
I think the real problem is the stupid white men are seeing their business replaced by better technology and they are crying to Sugar Daddy Bush to help them out. New technology almost always means business die.
I use the IPass network via IAcclaim so that I can work from anywhere in the world - something like 10000 cities if I remember correctly.
I pay about $7/month plus a reasonable per minute fee to be online. Looks like they have software for PDAs now too.
Problem is jacking into phone systems around the world. I have had success in India, Germany, Slovenia, the UK, and the US, but in Austrian and Switzerland I found myself having to twist wires together because they had an odd wall plug.
That said - take the advice already given - unplug if you can, talk to the people around you instead, you and your trip will be better for it.
I just read an article about Creative Commons and how their license is all about creating this sort of thing. Their stuff seems to be the like GPL.
Anyway - found this site with lots of Creative Commons Licensed effects - most of which are professional quality as they were used on the author's radio program.
<snip> Material that is unlawful in the jurisdiction of the server. For instance, if a customer's machine is hosted on Sealand by HavenCo, content which is illegal in Sealand may not be published or housed on that server. Sealand's laws prohibit child pornography. Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright, patents, libel, restrictions on political speech, non-disclosure agreements, cryptography, restrictions on maintaining customer records, tax or mandatory licensing, DMCA, music sharing services, or other issues; child pornography is the only content explicitly prohibited. At the present time, child pornography is not precisely defined; HavenCo is obeying rules similar to those of the United States, specifically a prohibition on any depiction of those under 18 in a sexual context. </snip>
Slashdot Mirror
Check out Baobab Health they do touchscreen EMRs in Africa. It all runs on Linux and is Open Source. You just got leapfrogged!
The best way to build a WISP with a WRT54G is using the Freifunk Firmware (based on openwrt.org) which builds a routed mesh network with any WRT54G flashed with the same firmware. It is really simple and totally open and free - unlike the Sveasoft weenies. Some howtos on my blog:
How to setup OLSR (a mesh protocol) with Freifunk firmware on a WRT54G
Sharing broadband with a WRT54G
Really simple antennas for the WRT54G
Weasel is awesome, I don't understand why one would use anything else.
Any non-picture book can be represented as a textfile. Copy and paste from a PDF or a web page, or use Clit to remove Microsoft's drm if you are so unlucky. Of course Project Gutenberg is king of books.
Just run the txt file through makeztxt and off you go.
After email, my web browser, and vim, Weasel is probably the program I spend the most time with - and it is reading so what good times they are...
Happy reading!
I was in Ethiopia in January . It is a place rich in history, culture, wildlife and adventure. The potential for tourism is great, and the infrastructure to support such an industry is growing. Enterprising individuals are spending their life savings to get a computer and an internet connection so that tourists can check their email from remote mountain villages. Yet they know little about what they are buying or what to do with it once they have bought it.
Every computer I used in Ethiopia was Windows and full of every type of Spyware and "click this button to speed up your computer" program you can imagine. Multiple times I was asked to come in and help fix somebody's computer, merely because I was a Westerner (they had no idea I work on computers for a living). If there was a simple Linux distribution that provided dial up web access with the normal internet cafe type tools (a timer, restricted access rights, etc) a major difference could be made in Ethiopia and indeed all over the tourist trail. If it was in the local language, well even better.
Tourism is a valid way to develop and support a country (6th largest industry in the UK), and is indeed one of the top priorities of Ethiopia. Open Source is a great enabler for this.
Capital is indeed the problem in Ethiopia, as it is with most of the world's poor.
If someone wants to start a shoeshine business in Addis they need a box, some soap and a rag. To get a shoeshine box you need capital. You can get money from moneylenders who often charge upwards 100% interest per day. Even if you do manage to start a business, there is no secure way to save the money you earn. Money under the mattress is still the dominant savings scheme throughout much of the world.
Most development methods have been utter failures, but the concept of Microfinance is a revolution in development that tackles this specific problem. Basically the poor are given loans (on the order of $10 for 3 months) to start small businesses. Loans must be paid back, with interest. Loans are typically given to women, who invest the money in businesses that will make money which then goes directly back to the needs of the family. There are millions of people around the world that are pulling themselves up out of povert thanks to this great idea.
If you are interested in Microfinance check out Opportunity International, or read this excellent book: Banker to the Poor
I have never understood the PDF format. I hate it. Adobe Acrobat Reader defines bloatware - it takes ages to launch, and provides very little added value as far as I am concerned.
If you are reading an ebook on a desktop or laptop, read it as html or plain text. If you are reading it on PDA (as I have read many gutenberg texts) use zTxt with the Weasel Reader. The reader is great and the compressed text is tiny.
I believe Project Gutenberg 2 is being run by Michael Hart (and others), founder of the original Project Gutenberg and holder of the trademark. At least this is what I am picking up by the mass of emails flying on the gutenberg developers list. So it is affiliated, though in a messy circular sort of way.
"Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke."
Allow VOIP to be unregulated (you can't really stop this anyway). If it causes the phone companies to start losing money then they raise prices to compensate, and our home phone lines cost more.
I don't know where most of the revenue stream for telcos comes from, but if it is from long distance phone calls - then they need a new business plan. Those days are over. If they are spending too much money to keep the internet working then they need to raise prices on access to the internet lines and the price will rise at our ISPs.
I think the real problem is the stupid white men are seeing their business replaced by better technology and they are crying to Sugar Daddy Bush to help them out. New technology almost always means business die.
RIP phone companies.
I use the IPass network via IAcclaim so that I can work from anywhere in the world - something like 10000 cities if I remember correctly.
I pay about $7/month plus a reasonable per minute fee to be online. Looks like they have software for PDAs now too.
Problem is jacking into phone systems around the world. I have had success in India, Germany, Slovenia, the UK, and the US, but in Austrian and Switzerland I found myself having to twist wires together because they had an odd wall plug.
That said - take the advice already given - unplug if you can, talk to the people around you instead, you and your trip will be better for it.
I just read an article about Creative Commons and how their license is all about creating this sort of thing. Their stuff seems to be the like GPL.
Anyway - found this site with lots of Creative Commons Licensed effects - most of which are professional quality as they were used on the author's radio program.
http://www.leoville.com/sfx.shtml
Hmm - I wonder if asking people about how to get noticed will actually end up getting me noticed...
Too bad this now won't work for everybody - so yeah how does one do this?
From their legal page it still sounds like a pretty good data haven to me:
http://www.havenco.com/legal/aup.html
<snip>
Material that is unlawful in the jurisdiction of the server. For instance, if a customer's machine is hosted on Sealand by HavenCo, content which is illegal in Sealand may not be published or housed on that server. Sealand's laws prohibit child pornography. Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright, patents, libel, restrictions on political speech, non-disclosure agreements, cryptography, restrictions on maintaining customer records, tax or mandatory licensing, DMCA, music sharing services, or other issues; child pornography is the only content explicitly prohibited. At the present time, child pornography is not precisely defined; HavenCo is obeying rules similar to those of the United States, specifically a prohibition on any depiction of those under 18 in a sexual context.
</snip>
Watch her here: http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/ellenfeiss.html
I can hardly imagine AP news reporting: At 5:32PM and 38 seconds Mir splashed down. Hence I will keep to nice round numbers... 2001-03-15 18:00:00