During development these type of hardware devices were not available at low enough prices to make it economically viable. In the future it might very well go this route. Thanks for pointing out the link to me.
Agreed. And to add to this, there are organizations like Translate. They have done proper, high-quality translations for both the OpenOffice.org and Mozilla projects into a number of local South African languages. Whilst doing so, they also employed people from disadvantaged backgrounds, adding lots of value to the community as a result.
A quick Google for similar initiatives in India pulls up a huge number of hits, one good example being the Linux Localisation Initiative in Bangalore. The point is that HP have realised that with Linux one can empower people to do for themselves. Kinda like the "don't feed the man, teach him how to fish" story, but that is exactly what Open Source enables us to do. You should see the look in such people's eyes when they realised that they have just solved a problem not just for themselves, but for a whole community of people. Priceless stuff.
You have to understand that a product such as this doesn't get plucked out of air overnight. This particular project has been going now for longer than 2 years, due to the complexity of it in all it's aspects. Getting the Linux side of it to work is not the only thing, there are other bussiness processes like supply-chain management, capacity planning, call centering, support guarantees and all such things that goes into a typical product's lifecycle projections.
The launch here in South Africa is the first leg of a whole campaign, details of which even I am not aware of. In South Africa HP has an extremely well developed supply chain of value added resellers and other such partners, all of whom are players on this chessboard. So, instead of using another African country where their footprint is not as big, or even places like India or the USA (both having extremely different marketing "climates" than over here), it makes sense to start pilot schemes where you have control over your environment, but still can have a good, positive social impact. Supply chain management is such a critical component that it can make or break a product such as the 441 system. Doubtless, HP has got a lot of other ideas up their sleeves in terms of "where next" or "where else". All I can say is watch this space!:-)
There are some bits that I cannot disclose due to some proprietry code in the system. Anyway, how this proprietry code works from a programming point of view I have no idea, because it was developed in-house by HP (USA) themselves. All I know is that this code actually does the work of keeping USB devices associated with specific users.
Apart from this there are a number of things that I can mention. The sound card issue is not too difficult. Once you pop a USB sound card into a USB hub or USB port, you'll see the device files pop up in/dev/sound/dsp* and/dev/sound/mixer*. From there it would be mostly lateral thinking in tying it to a specific "head". It's challenging, but not impossible. However, sound is the easy bit! You will most likely run into a wall with USB memory sticks, a problem which took us a considerable amount of time to solve, hence the proprietry code.
We did try out ESD, but that was a miserable failure. Because we are, at this stage, bound to using OSS (ALSA doesn't really work well with cheap USB sound devices yet) due to supply issues, we have to use aRtsd to multiplex sound streams to OSS. A nice side-effect is that aRts has a soundwrapper called "artsdsp", which takes care of problem children like Mozilla (with Flash Plugin), Real Player and Xine. Once your environment is bound to a specific set of devices, the artsdsp wrapper takes all that into account and makes things work for you. It's not foolproof though, we had to do some interesting footwork to integrate the whole thing nicely into a stable product.
So, just to clear up the proprietry bit, there is only one specific "daemon" that is proprietry. This is the widget that is used to beat the USB bus into submission in order to be used in ways that it wasn't designed to work . All the rest, even code that we have developed to help with system administration, is either pure Mandrake Linux or licensed under the GPL-2. Currently such code is only available on the HP 441 CD sets, and I have no idea wether HP will make it available for download yet.
Once you start mucking around with multiple USB soundcards you will see that they get ennumerated by devfs as/dev/sound/dsp* where the "*" is the device number. This is true for OSS. Alsa sound is a bit different (alhouth the OSS emulation layer also sort of does it this way).
Since I'm technically a contractor for this project, the responsible thing would be to say that from a 441 perspective I work for HP. Contractually I cannot disclose the company I work for, although I can say that it's the largest Linux-based company in South Africa. The official and only page for the 441 system is the one given in the original post in this thread by Kracs: http://h40058.www4.hp.com/products/desktops/441/pr od_info.html
That's a good question. Most likely you would see that the average per capita income for SA would be a bit higher than Nigeria, but this is based on opinion, not fact. I'm sure a good Googling will clear that up to some extent.
You are a bit out of step, but that's ok. I'm an African (admittedly white) geek who still lives here. Things have changed dramatically on a grassroots level.
The CD-Rom drive is obviously shared, since there is only one of them, similarly the floppy drive. The HP solution has USB keyboards with built-in 2-port USB hubs, so each user has a port for a USB memory stick. Under normal circumstances, if a user pops in a stick, all users will be able to see it. With the HP solution that problem has been solved, so the stick is private to each user. Since there is only one floppy drive, a USB stick would be the best way for students to carry their files around.
These days you can even get rid of all the wiring and do screens/keyboards/mice/VGA over 802.11g. I'm actually playing with some kit like that at the moment, very unproductively of course, since my brain keeps on going off someplace imagining a huge number of people connected to my little Celeron! Seriously tough, one can think of many applications. I'm toying with some ideas re Point of Sale lanes sporting this kit. Hmmm...
Where do you live? Do you really know what is going on in Africa? Doesn't seem like it.
Yes, there are mud-strune shanty towns aplenty here in South Africa, never mind the rest of Africa (where things are even worse). Mobile computer centers does feature now and then, but what you don't know are the teaching methods employed. Yes, a truckload full of computers won't make a difference in the case where a kiddy who can only speak Sepedi or Setswana, because Windows doesn't come in anything even close to their language. However, since Open Source has become a Big Thing (tm) in Africa as a whole, people now have the power to localize things for themselves.
So, it's not the government shunting busloads of computers at schools, trying to convice people of their bleeding hearts, far from it. It's actually the people from the shanty towns themselves that have decided to help themselves.
Yes, computers does cost vast amounts of money. However, with Open Source, even old "throwaways" are being refurbished and put to work. Another thing, accusing an Open Source programmer for not caring about multilingualism is a severe slap in the face, so I suggest you go out there and check your facts. Some of them obviously do not care, but please don't say that too loudly in the company of the KDE developers, they might just nail you to the wall...
How do you create an environment where you don't have crime, corruption, pollution and aids? This cannot happen overnight. You cannot make people stop believing in pagan gods overnight. You HAVE to educate, and you can also only effectively educate when they want to be educated in the first place. It's easy to point fingers at Africans and say "what a bunch of barbarians", because you do not live under the same circumstances. I do live here, and have to see these things for myself every single day. The way to change things is to educate. To educate, you need education methods other than slates with markers. To teach teachers, you need to educate communication, values and "having an open mind". Therefore we need computers and things like Internet access. Companies like HP are doing that for Africa in a constructive way.
Speaking of phones, it's possible for me to take my cellular phone, and drive from Cape Town (southernmost city in Africa) to Cairo (capital of Egypt for in case you don't know) and only lose signal in a couple of places. Can you do that in the US? 'Fraid not! Only under very special circumstances can you roam with your cellular phone outside your home-state borders. Also, there are more GSM cellular phones in Africa (as a whole) in active use (granted, some are stolen, but that can only attribute to about 5% of active phones) than there are people in Australia. Most are used by the typical "couple-of-dollars-a-month" people, because it makes economical sense for them. It liberates them in terms of communication. And with communication it's only a couple of steps to education.
So, yes, there are more important things in life than computers. There are also more important things in life than putting misguided, anonymous posts like these on Slashdot. It would have been better if you actually knew what you were talking about, but sadly you don't. So why don't you send your old computer gathering dust in your attic to Africa? Be progressive for a change and help the next generation build a better future for themselves. So how about it, eh?
I'm the tech lead on the HP 441 development team in South Africa. Here is some background info on what has gone into it and where HP is going with this.
Firstly, it's extremely similar to the Brazilian effort (which is totally based on Backstreet Ruby, which is a multi-headed solution that has been around for more than 2 years now), and has been designed with the same basic ideas in mind. Both South Africa and Brazil can be termed "developing countries", and both countries are most definitely not the poorest in their respective regions. Linux , and Open Source in general, has had quite some time to bed down and influence the local market, so it would make sense that things like these would develop and happen at around the same time.
Why South Africa? Simple answer: HP has one of only two of their iCommunity centers here (url for the SA iCommunity site is http://www.hpicommunity.org.za/), the other one being in India. At the iCommunity they have intensive training programmes for the local residents ranging from job creation, culture preservation right through to computer refurbishment and even computer programming. So, the 441 system has been a logical "extention" to the ideas that they were working on at the time. Needless to say, the HP 441 system are being tested in India as well, although India has it's own challenges for such a project (over 200 official languages, go figure...).
One major item that puts the HP 441 system apart from similar efforts is work that has been done in the USB device department. As you know, the system consists of 1X AGP (using PS/2 k/b and mouse) and 3X PCI (each with it's own USB k/b and mouse). With the 441 system we have added the capability for each user having their individual sound card as well, so that they can listen to their own audio. Each user also have access to their own USB Disk-On-Key devices, ensuring privacy of personal files and so forth. Apart from this it is pretty much the same thing as done by the Uni in Brazil.
A last comment, this time on HP's commitment to Linux and Open Source in general: I'm not an HP employee, so this is not a "shameless plug". I'm employed by another company who has been contracted to help develop the HP 441 system. So far, it has been an absolute blast to work on this project, and under no circumstances can I say that HP was not committed. This product is actually on a massive "tangent" to what they normally do, so they are also in uncharted waters here. However, the commitment that HP employees have shown to us, both from the local HP offices in South Africa as well as from head office in Palo Alto, is nothing short of "absolutely bloody amazing". Let's hope that other large companies like Big Blue and others take notice of how HP pushes Open Source, sometimes at their own expense with no return at all, but doing so to invest in the developing markets. Now that's a "Way To Go" if there ever was one. One may critisize HP on a lot of things, but one thing that you cannot accuse them of is a lack of balls!:-)
Personal thanks to HP for giving me and my team the opportunity to work on this project. If you are interested in more technical info and product propaganda, here is the product page again: http://h40058.www4.hp.com/products/desktops/441/pr od_info.html
Slashdot Mirror
During development these type of hardware devices were not available at low enough prices to make it economically viable. In the future it might very well go this route. Thanks for pointing out the link to me.
Since I'm the only one with UT2k4 in my homedir, hell yeah!
A quick Google for similar initiatives in India pulls up a huge number of hits, one good example being the Linux Localisation Initiative in Bangalore. The point is that HP have realised that with Linux one can empower people to do for themselves. Kinda like the "don't feed the man, teach him how to fish" story, but that is exactly what Open Source enables us to do. You should see the look in such people's eyes when they realised that they have just solved a problem not just for themselves, but for a whole community of people. Priceless stuff.
The launch here in South Africa is the first leg of a whole campaign, details of which even I am not aware of. In South Africa HP has an extremely well developed supply chain of value added resellers and other such partners, all of whom are players on this chessboard. So, instead of using another African country where their footprint is not as big, or even places like India or the USA (both having extremely different marketing "climates" than over here), it makes sense to start pilot schemes where you have control over your environment, but still can have a good, positive social impact. Supply chain management is such a critical component that it can make or break a product such as the 441 system. Doubtless, HP has got a lot of other ideas up their sleeves in terms of "where next" or "where else". All I can say is watch this space!
Apart from this there are a number of things that I can mention. The sound card issue is not too difficult. Once you pop a USB sound card into a USB hub or USB port, you'll see the device files pop up in
We did try out ESD, but that was a miserable failure. Because we are, at this stage, bound to using OSS (ALSA doesn't really work well with cheap USB sound devices yet) due to supply issues, we have to use aRtsd to multiplex sound streams to OSS. A nice side-effect is that aRts has a soundwrapper called "artsdsp", which takes care of problem children like Mozilla (with Flash Plugin), Real Player and Xine. Once your environment is bound to a specific set of devices, the artsdsp wrapper takes all that into account and makes things work for you. It's not foolproof though, we had to do some interesting footwork to integrate the whole thing nicely into a stable product.
So, just to clear up the proprietry bit, there is only one specific "daemon" that is proprietry. This is the widget that is used to beat the USB bus into submission in order to be used in ways that it wasn't designed to work . All the rest, even code that we have developed to help with system administration, is either pure Mandrake Linux or licensed under the GPL-2. Currently such code is only available on the HP 441 CD sets, and I have no idea wether HP will make it available for download yet.
Once you start mucking around with multiple USB soundcards you will see that they get ennumerated by devfs as /dev/sound/dsp* where the "*" is the device number. This is true for OSS. Alsa sound is a bit different (alhouth the OSS emulation layer also sort of does it this way).
Since I'm technically a contractor for this project, the responsible thing would be to say that from a 441 perspective I work for HP. Contractually I cannot disclose the company I work for, although I can say that it's the largest Linux-based company in South Africa. The official and only page for the 441 system is the one given in the original post in this thread by Kracs: http://h40058.www4.hp.com/products/desktops/441/pr od_info.html
That's a good question. Most likely you would see that the average per capita income for SA would be a bit higher than Nigeria, but this is based on opinion, not fact. I'm sure a good Googling will clear that up to some extent.
Admittedly there would be a few "flat spots". :-)
You are a bit out of step, but that's ok. I'm an African (admittedly white) geek who still lives here. Things have changed dramatically on a grassroots level.
The CD-Rom drive is obviously shared, since there is only one of them, similarly the floppy drive. The HP solution has USB keyboards with built-in 2-port USB hubs, so each user has a port for a USB memory stick. Under normal circumstances, if a user pops in a stick, all users will be able to see it. With the HP solution that problem has been solved, so the stick is private to each user. Since there is only one floppy drive, a USB stick would be the best way for students to carry their files around.
4 video cards, 3xPCI 1xAGP. 4 screens, 1 PS/2 kb with PS/2 mouse, 3x USB keyboards with built-in USB hubs for USB mice, USB sound and USB flashdisks.
Nope it's not. Nigeria has a larger GDP than South Africa by far, thanks to oil.
These days you can even get rid of all the wiring and do screens/keyboards/mice/VGA over 802.11g. I'm actually playing with some kit like that at the moment, very unproductively of course, since my brain keeps on going off someplace imagining a huge number of people connected to my little Celeron! Seriously tough, one can think of many applications. I'm toying with some ideas re Point of Sale lanes sporting this kit. Hmmm...
Yes, there are mud-strune shanty towns aplenty here in South Africa, never mind the rest of Africa (where things are even worse). Mobile computer centers does feature now and then, but what you don't know are the teaching methods employed. Yes, a truckload full of computers won't make a difference in the case where a kiddy who can only speak Sepedi or Setswana, because Windows doesn't come in anything even close to their language. However, since Open Source has become a Big Thing (tm) in Africa as a whole, people now have the power to localize things for themselves.
So, it's not the government shunting busloads of computers at schools, trying to convice people of their bleeding hearts, far from it. It's actually the people from the shanty towns themselves that have decided to help themselves.
Yes, computers does cost vast amounts of money. However, with Open Source, even old "throwaways" are being refurbished and put to work. Another thing, accusing an Open Source programmer for not caring about multilingualism is a severe slap in the face, so I suggest you go out there and check your facts. Some of them obviously do not care, but please don't say that too loudly in the company of the KDE developers, they might just nail you to the wall...
How do you create an environment where you don't have crime, corruption, pollution and aids? This cannot happen overnight. You cannot make people stop believing in pagan gods overnight. You HAVE to educate, and you can also only effectively educate when they want to be educated in the first place. It's easy to point fingers at Africans and say "what a bunch of barbarians", because you do not live under the same circumstances. I do live here, and have to see these things for myself every single day. The way to change things is to educate. To educate, you need education methods other than slates with markers. To teach teachers, you need to educate communication, values and "having an open mind". Therefore we need computers and things like Internet access. Companies like HP are doing that for Africa in a constructive way.
Speaking of phones, it's possible for me to take my cellular phone, and drive from Cape Town (southernmost city in Africa) to Cairo (capital of Egypt for in case you don't know) and only lose signal in a couple of places. Can you do that in the US? 'Fraid not! Only under very special circumstances can you roam with your cellular phone outside your home-state borders. Also, there are more GSM cellular phones in Africa (as a whole) in active use (granted, some are stolen, but that can only attribute to about 5% of active phones) than there are people in Australia. Most are used by the typical "couple-of-dollars-a-month" people, because it makes economical sense for them. It liberates them in terms of communication. And with communication it's only a couple of steps to education.
So, yes, there are more important things in life than computers. There are also more important things in life than putting misguided, anonymous posts like these on Slashdot. It would have been better if you actually knew what you were talking about, but sadly you don't. So why don't you send your old computer gathering dust in your attic to Africa? Be progressive for a change and help the next generation build a better future for themselves. So how about it, eh?
I'm the tech lead on the HP 441 development team in South Africa. Here is some background info on what has gone into it and where HP is going with this.
Firstly, it's extremely similar to the Brazilian effort (which is totally based on Backstreet Ruby, which is a multi-headed solution that has been around for more than 2 years now), and has been designed with the same basic ideas in mind. Both South Africa and Brazil can be termed "developing countries", and both countries are most definitely not the poorest in their respective regions. Linux , and Open Source in general, has had quite some time to bed down and influence the local market, so it would make sense that things like these would develop and happen at around the same time.
Why South Africa? Simple answer: HP has one of only two of their iCommunity centers here (url for the SA iCommunity site is http://www.hpicommunity.org.za/), the other one being in India. At the iCommunity they have intensive training programmes for the local residents ranging from job creation, culture preservation right through to computer refurbishment and even computer programming. So, the 441 system has been a logical "extention" to the ideas that they were working on at the time. Needless to say, the HP 441 system are being tested in India as well, although India has it's own challenges for such a project (over 200 official languages, go figure...).
One major item that puts the HP 441 system apart from similar efforts is work that has been done in the USB device department. As you know, the system consists of 1X AGP (using PS/2 k/b and mouse) and 3X PCI (each with it's own USB k/b and mouse). With the 441 system we have added the capability for each user having their individual sound card as well, so that they can listen to their own audio. Each user also have access to their own USB Disk-On-Key devices, ensuring privacy of personal files and so forth. Apart from this it is pretty much the same thing as done by the Uni in Brazil.
A last comment, this time on HP's commitment to Linux and Open Source in general: I'm not an HP employee, so this is not a "shameless plug". I'm employed by another company who has been contracted to help develop the HP 441 system. So far, it has been an absolute blast to work on this project, and under no circumstances can I say that HP was not committed. This product is actually on a massive "tangent" to what they normally do, so they are also in uncharted waters here. However, the commitment that HP employees have shown to us, both from the local HP offices in South Africa as well as from head office in Palo Alto, is nothing short of "absolutely bloody amazing". Let's hope that other large companies like Big Blue and others take notice of how HP pushes Open Source, sometimes at their own expense with no return at all, but doing so to invest in the developing markets. Now that's a "Way To Go" if there ever was one. One may critisize HP on a lot of things, but one thing that you cannot accuse them of is a lack of balls! :-)
Personal thanks to HP for giving me and my team the opportunity to work on this project. If you are interested in more technical info and product propaganda, here is the product page again: http://h40058.www4.hp.com/products/desktops/441/pr od_info.html