However long range wireless solutions might be very suitable for many of these countries for bringing internet access to the cafes
Are there any Internet cafes in the developed world that use long-range wireless technologies? We can't even make 3G cell phone networks a reality here in the US, so I don't see how we can expect that to happen in developing countries. And if you're referring to Wi-Fi, then that's also not feasible, since 802.11b only goes about 10 miles max, even with a line-of-sight high-gain directional antenna. You'd have to put repeaters all over the countryside.
When I served with the Peace Corps in Ghana, some of the "luxury" Internet cafes in the capital were using specially-licensed microwave links to a shared VSAT Internet link, but spreading that kind of access throughout the rest of the (mostly rural) land just isn't economically possible.
What I noticed in Ghana is that any town that had been wired for electricity, no matter how small, was also wired for phone service. Unfortunately, the government-owned phone company (Ghana Telecom) has a monopoly on the entire phone industry, and they aren't interested in competition because they don't want to lose their cash cow. The result is that dial-up Internet access from small towns is already availble but extremely expensive due to the per-minute long-distance charges.
The solution, I think, is not technical but rather economical. Instead of building some fancy wireless mesh network, developing countries should work to deregulate the phone industry and open it up to competition, thus lowering the cost of Internet access everywhere.
I lived there for nine months during 2002 and had a broadband connection in my apartment the whole time. Here are some tips:
Broadband via cable TV is available, but cable modems are a fairly new thing over there and many apartments don't have the cable lines anyway. (Take a look at any apartment building in Japan and you'll see dozens of those mini satellite dishes perched on the balconies.) However, if you want cable TV and broadband Internet, you can get a pretty good deal by combining the two -- about 80 USD/month. You might need a local friend to help you, though, because most cable providers don't have English-speaking customer service.
If you just want the Internet access, a better option is ADSL, which has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years. Before ordering, you first need to decide whether you want land-line (as opposed to cellular) phone service. If you want a land line, get ADSL Type I, which includes phone service and Internet access. If you plan to get a cell phone in Japan, choose ADSL Type II, which provides Internet access only, but for a lower price.
The cheapest ADSL service is probably Yahoo! Japan BB, but they don't provide any English support, not even for sales. You're better off going with a company that has a dedicated English-speaking support line such as Global OnLine or eAccess. Unfortunately, these providers usually serve only the larger metropolitan areas, so if you're in a suburb or a smaller town, your only choice might be good old NTT. All you have to do is call the English-speaking sales line for NTT (the number depends on whether you live in the east or in the west) and tell them you want ADSL Type II. They'll be happy to hook you up for about 25 USD/month, and you can rent an ADSL modem from them for another 5 USD/month. Important tip: NTT will send you a CD-ROM containing PPPoE drivers that only work with the Japanese version of Windows, so you should download the freeware program RASPPPOE before you go and bring it along with you. It's compatible with NTT's ADSL modems.
There's another catch: Because NTT only provides the physical ADSL connection, you'll need to find an ISP that supports ADSL. I got mine through OCN for about 20 USD/month. They offer sales and support in English.
The Macintosh has about the same percentage of market share in Japan as in the U.S. (in other words, not much), so you can expect the same level of support and availability over there that you'll find here. I expect it's entirely possible to hook up your Mac to a Japanese ADSL modem, but don't expect much technical support if things go wrong. (I had no trouble connecting through my Linux laptop once I got the Roaring Penguin configuration set up right.) As for 802.11b, coverage is almost non-existent, although just about everyone over there does email wirelessly through their cell phone. Text messaging and services like DoCoMo are far more popular than the Internet in Japan, at least for now.
You should visit the ISP Japan FAQ for more details. You might also want to check out my Japan page for tips on living and working in Japan.
I think the no retractions policy is to protect eBay from lawsuits.
Doesn't seem to be working, as this very Slashdot article shows.
But I think you're talking about retractions in the event that one user objects to another's comments. In that case, eBay would indeed have to make a judgement call on whether the objection is valid. And yes, that could open up a big legal can of worms. But I'm talking about an eBay user retracting his own comments. There could be a simple, automated method for correcting mistakes (in the event typos and similar errors) that would be entirely automated and prevent eBay from becoming a feedback arbiter.
The individual bringing the lawsuit is clearly overreacting, but he does have a point about eBay's feedback policy. Their feedback system has no preview mode, and there is no mechanism to take back one's own feedback comments in the event of a simple mistake or typo.
A couple years ago, I accidentally gave a seller a "negative" feedback rating when I had meant to click on "neutral". eBay refused to let me retract my own comment, and neither the seller nor I was happy with the result.
I suspect the "no retractions" policy is mostly a way for eBay to save money in their customer service department.
Gosh, who'd have thought it; a software company isn't fond of the competition.
Can Microsoft actually be called "competition"? To my knowledge, they don't sell any software or services for Linux.
Yes, they sell Windows, and Linux and Windows are both operating systems, so I guess they're competing for the OS market. But the conference is "LinuxWorld", not "OperatingSystemWorld" or "AnyCompanyInTheComputerIndustryWorld".
If I were running the show, I'd only allow companies that are actually selling Linux products or services.
Re:Look to those who use 'Photoshop' as a verb
on
SVG On the Rise
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· Score: 1
Please read my posts again. Note that I say easily possible. I realize that GIF and JPG rasterized images can be fabricated and modified, but that takes a fair amount of time and effort. The difference with SVG is that it's a vector format, which makes the "photoshopping" you mentioned much easier and quicker. That's because it breaks down the image into separate components and layers. Each layer can be modified or deleted without touching any other part of the image. It's like having the original PSD file with all the layers separated and then doing a photoshop on that - a much simpler task.
Re:Copyright law is good enough
on
SVG On the Rise
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· Score: 1
That's absolutely right, but I think you missed the point of my original post. I was saying that SVG allows users to copy and modify those images in a way that was never before possible with GIF and JPG.
I don't trust any article that calls it a "kernal".
Re:Copyright law is good enough
on
SVG On the Rise
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· Score: 1
What else do you need?
You're not really that naive, are you? I would think Napster alone shows that Title 17 reduces piracy but does not eliminate it. (Note that I said "unethical authors" in my post.)
Things can always be done better. Does it make one a pirate if he sees the point in this?
I wasn't talking about doing things better; I was talking about taking another person's work and making it your own. For example, it's difficult to take a JPG image and change the text of that image. But with SVG, one could easily change the text of a logo from "Your Company, Inc." to "My Company, Inc." -- just do a search-and-replace using a text editor -- while preserving the font, colors, and everything else in the image.
Am I not an artist if I choose to "give" my art to the people to use and learn from?
With SVG, I'm saying you don't have a choice. It forces you to make your code viewable to anyone who views the image, whether you choose to or not.
Does it make me somehow a bad artist if I don't want to get paid for my stuff?
My point is not "art vs. money". I'm saying that if I paint a picture in SVG, the XML nature of that picture allows the image to be modified and decomposed easily by others. This is not possible with other image formats, such as GIF, JPG, or SWF.
What the heck do you mean by piracy anyway?
You're right; piracy is the wrong word. I guess what I should have said was "copyright infringement". SVG makes this much easier than other image formats.
All the great artists have been copied/plagiarized and most of the great artists have done it themselves.
You're talking about stealing artistic styles and ideas. I'm talking about stealing the actual code. One could not easily take the original Mona Lisa and change the background landscape to a picture of a city skyline. But if da Vinci had published his famous work in SVG, then that sort of thing could be done in a simple text editor without altering the original foreground image in any way. Okay, maybe that's a silly example, but I think it gets my point across.
The difference is, nowadays we have big corporations who think they are doing losses because of piracy.
I'm not thinking of big corporations; I'm thinking of myself. Let's say I make a logo in SVG for my webpage and spend a lot of time working on a nice gradient for the background. Then let's say some other webpage author visits my site and says, "Hmm. That's a pretty cool gradient. I don't want to take the time writing SVG code to implement that same gradient, so I think I'll open his SVG code into my text editor, delete the part that draws his logo, and replace it with my logo." So this guy was able to steal my work ("art") and use it for himself, possibly to make money, without any compensation for my time.
Are you an artist?
Do I make a living by creating art? No. Do I make logos and graphics for my web pages? Yes.
Do you want people to enjoy your work, or do you want to cash in by stupidity?
Why can't I do both? I believe an artist should be compensated for his time and effort so that he can continue to make great art.
Re:.SWF Is Not Flash?
on
SVG On the Rise
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· Score: 2, Informative
So when some web site sends me a.SWF file, and pheonix tells me I need to install Flash, its wrong?
No, because Flash is the program necessary to read that SWF file.
I'm not an SWF programmer, but I know enough about it to realize that creating good presentations in Flash is an art form. The Flash author must be a skilled graphic designer as well as a talented programmer. And when these skills are applied to SWF, the results cannot be easily hijacked because of SWF's binary format. It would be like trying to disassemble executable code: possible, but difficult enough to discourage reverse-engineering.
For instance, if the author creates a fancy animation routine as a Flash library and links it in the SWF, other Flash authors cannot easily copy that library and use it in their own projects. With SVG, however, being a pure-text human-readable format, what's to stop an author from viewing the SVG source and doing a cut-and-paste of the library into his own projects? From what I understand of SVG, there is nothing to stop unethical authors from stealing from the hard work of their more talented peers.
This is the one example where SVG's implementation in XML is actually a bad thing. And in my book, it's a huge disadvantage of SVG that Jacek Artymiak's article failed to address. Perhaps it's even the reason why SVG has failed to overtake SWF on the web.
...nerds and stuff that matters? It seems like a "-1 Offtopic" story. At least the submitter could have found this article which is basically the same story but from a software engineer's perspective.
How often have you seen a PC in a village in a third world country?
Lots. I lived in a developing country (Ghana, West Africa) for over two years, and every town and village I went to that had electricity also had computers. And besides, if a village doesn't have electricity, surely you'd agree that getting some would be a higher priority than getting a Simputer?
A PC, from it's basic hardware (and software!) design, is much harder to support than simple compact device like a Simputer.
I disagree entirely. The Simputer hardware is a custom design, so what happens if, for instance, the screen gets a crack? You'd have to replace the entire unit. If a PC's monitor breaks down, you can easily find a replacement. That's the advantage of commodity hardware.
As for software, I don't see how the Simputer's custom operating system and applications would be easier to support. If something goes wrong, there's no one around familiar enough with the software to diagnose the problem. Meanwhile, there are loads of IT people - and yes, there are IT people in developing countries - who have experience and training in the repair and maintainance of Windows-based PCs.
Simple heat and humidity would kill a modern PC in nothing flat
I agree that a handheld computer with no hard drive, fan, or other moving parts is more reliable, but that's true in any environment. For what it's worth, I brought a laptop with me to Ghana, and with the exception of a hard drive failure (which easily could have happened anywhere else over the course of two years), it worked perfectly.
That said, it's still too expensive.
Did you read my post? A full-blown PC with monitor is only $20 more than a Simputer.
The specs of the Microtel PC are so much better, and the price so similar, that I wonder whether a desktop form factor would have been a better design choice. Obviously, the Microtel PC is not portable, but according to the article the computer would be used to "access the Internet, perform transactions, keep track of agricultural prices, and educate children". I don't think portability is a must for those functions.
The only real advantage that the Simputer provides is a built-in text-to-speech feature, but this could be added to the Microtel for free.
I'm not saying that aid agencies should be buying PCs from Wal-Mart and shipping them off to developing countries, but I do think the developers of the Simputer should have put their efforts into producing a similar desktop computer for the villages of, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. The smallest of these villages have no electricity, but many often do, as I learned from my recent experience in the Peace Corps. Thus the benefit of the Simputer's rechargeable batteries isn't really a huge advantage. And if, as the article claims, these villagers want to access the Internet, they're going to need a source of electricity for that anyway.
Even if the Simputer had hardware just as powerful as a desktop PC, there is still the problem of software. Most software today simply cannot run on a 240x320 display. All of these educational and business-transaction programs that the article talked about would have to be redesigned especially for the Simputer. On the other hand, a desktop computer with a full-size monitor opens up the entire world of existing applications. Also, by learning how to use standard desktop computers (and standard software like word processors and spreadsheets), the user is doing more than just calculating the price of his crop. He's picking up an additional skill - computer literacy - that can be applied elsewhere. That's something I tried to accomplish during my Peace Corps service.
But then, that's the real problem, isn't it? Not computer literacy but basic literacy. Providing a Simputer to developing countries is treating the symptoms of the disease, not the cause. These folks need jobs, skills, and education, not processing power. In the village where I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, the average teacher's salary was around $75 per month. For the price of one Simputer, a village could hire someone to teach reading skills to an entire class for four months.
The Simputer may be a good idea for a few select cases, but overall I think it's a misguided effort.
Like the original poster, I felt that my life as a geek wasn't quite as fulfilling as it could be. Although I had a nice job designing software for medical instruments, I felt that I would never do anything really worthwhile. That's one of the reasons why I joined the Peace Corps soon after graduation. They sent me to Ghana, West Africa, to teach physics and math. I got back from my service last year, and I had an absolute blast. I even brought back a wonderful souvenir.
For pictures of my experiences, see my site. You'll notice that I brought my laptop with me and was able to apply my geek skills by teaching computer classes on the side. You can find more stories about my geeky life in the Peace Corps here.
When I left Ghana for good in August 2001, I still wasn't yet ready to return to the life of a software developer, so I immediately applied for a job as an English teacher with Nova, the largest private school in Japan. As some here have suggested, this is another great way for geeks see the world and learn skills that don't require electricity. For anyone thinking of that route, I've written some tips on deciding whether to join Nova.
If you're building software for a desktop, I agree with you. But I build embedded devices. Here, the argument is not simply a matter of speed. You also have to consider the size of the temporary memory needed for the algorithm, and the size of the algorithm's code itself.
What if you had to build an embedded device with, say, 4KB of RAM and 1KB of ROM (for executable code)? This type of device wouldn't even have an operating system, and with such limited amounts of memory, you'd want to save every byte. With the recursive quicksort, you'd have to implement a stack (very unsafe in this example!). Other very fast sort algorithms might require large amounts of extra scrath memory (such as the bucketsort). In the end, the bubblesort, with its very small implementation size, simple design, and limited memory requirements, might actually be one of the best choices when memory efficiency is far more important than speed.
Slashdot Mirror
Are there any Internet cafes in the developed world that use long-range wireless technologies? We can't even make 3G cell phone networks a reality here in the US, so I don't see how we can expect that to happen in developing countries. And if you're referring to Wi-Fi, then that's also not feasible, since 802.11b only goes about 10 miles max, even with a line-of-sight high-gain directional antenna. You'd have to put repeaters all over the countryside.
When I served with the Peace Corps in Ghana, some of the "luxury" Internet cafes in the capital were using specially-licensed microwave links to a shared VSAT Internet link, but spreading that kind of access throughout the rest of the (mostly rural) land just isn't economically possible.
What I noticed in Ghana is that any town that had been wired for electricity, no matter how small, was also wired for phone service. Unfortunately, the government-owned phone company (Ghana Telecom) has a monopoly on the entire phone industry, and they aren't interested in competition because they don't want to lose their cash cow. The result is that dial-up Internet access from small towns is already availble but extremely expensive due to the per-minute long-distance charges.
The solution, I think, is not technical but rather economical. Instead of building some fancy wireless mesh network, developing countries should work to deregulate the phone industry and open it up to competition, thus lowering the cost of Internet access everywhere.
Broadband via cable TV is available, but cable modems are a fairly new thing over there and many apartments don't have the cable lines anyway. (Take a look at any apartment building in Japan and you'll see dozens of those mini satellite dishes perched on the balconies.) However, if you want cable TV and broadband Internet, you can get a pretty good deal by combining the two -- about 80 USD/month. You might need a local friend to help you, though, because most cable providers don't have English-speaking customer service.
If you just want the Internet access, a better option is ADSL, which has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years. Before ordering, you first need to decide whether you want land-line (as opposed to cellular) phone service. If you want a land line, get ADSL Type I, which includes phone service and Internet access. If you plan to get a cell phone in Japan, choose ADSL Type II, which provides Internet access only, but for a lower price.
The cheapest ADSL service is probably Yahoo! Japan BB, but they don't provide any English support, not even for sales. You're better off going with a company that has a dedicated English-speaking support line such as Global OnLine or eAccess. Unfortunately, these providers usually serve only the larger metropolitan areas, so if you're in a suburb or a smaller town, your only choice might be good old NTT. All you have to do is call the English-speaking sales line for NTT (the number depends on whether you live in the east or in the west) and tell them you want ADSL Type II. They'll be happy to hook you up for about 25 USD/month, and you can rent an ADSL modem from them for another 5 USD/month. Important tip: NTT will send you a CD-ROM containing PPPoE drivers that only work with the Japanese version of Windows, so you should download the freeware program RASPPPOE before you go and bring it along with you. It's compatible with NTT's ADSL modems.
There's another catch: Because NTT only provides the physical ADSL connection, you'll need to find an ISP that supports ADSL. I got mine through OCN for about 20 USD/month. They offer sales and support in English.
The Macintosh has about the same percentage of market share in Japan as in the U.S. (in other words, not much), so you can expect the same level of support and availability over there that you'll find here. I expect it's entirely possible to hook up your Mac to a Japanese ADSL modem, but don't expect much technical support if things go wrong. (I had no trouble connecting through my Linux laptop once I got the Roaring Penguin configuration set up right.) As for 802.11b, coverage is almost non-existent, although just about everyone over there does email wirelessly through their cell phone. Text messaging and services like DoCoMo are far more popular than the Internet in Japan, at least for now.
You should visit the ISP Japan FAQ for more details. You might also want to check out my Japan page for tips on living and working in Japan.
Doesn't seem to be working, as this very Slashdot article shows.
But I think you're talking about retractions in the event that one user objects to another's comments. In that case, eBay would indeed have to make a judgement call on whether the objection is valid. And yes, that could open up a big legal can of worms. But I'm talking about an eBay user retracting his own comments. There could be a simple, automated method for correcting mistakes (in the event typos and similar errors) that would be entirely automated and prevent eBay from becoming a feedback arbiter.
A couple years ago, I accidentally gave a seller a "negative" feedback rating when I had meant to click on "neutral". eBay refused to let me retract my own comment, and neither the seller nor I was happy with the result.
I suspect the "no retractions" policy is mostly a way for eBay to save money in their customer service department.
Can Microsoft actually be called "competition"? To my knowledge, they don't sell any software or services for Linux.
Yes, they sell Windows, and Linux and Windows are both operating systems, so I guess they're competing for the OS market. But the conference is "LinuxWorld", not "OperatingSystemWorld" or "AnyCompanyInTheComputerIndustryWorld".
If I were running the show, I'd only allow companies that are actually selling Linux products or services.
Please read my posts again. Note that I say easily possible. I realize that GIF and JPG rasterized images can be fabricated and modified, but that takes a fair amount of time and effort. The difference with SVG is that it's a vector format, which makes the "photoshopping" you mentioned much easier and quicker. That's because it breaks down the image into separate components and layers. Each layer can be modified or deleted without touching any other part of the image. It's like having the original PSD file with all the layers separated and then doing a photoshop on that - a much simpler task.
That's absolutely right, but I think you missed the point of my original post. I was saying that SVG allows users to copy and modify those images in a way that was never before possible with GIF and JPG.
I don't trust any article that calls it a "kernal".
You're not really that naive, are you? I would think Napster alone shows that Title 17 reduces piracy but does not eliminate it. (Note that I said "unethical authors" in my post.)
I wasn't talking about doing things better; I was talking about taking another person's work and making it your own. For example, it's difficult to take a JPG image and change the text of that image. But with SVG, one could easily change the text of a logo from "Your Company, Inc." to "My Company, Inc." -- just do a search-and-replace using a text editor -- while preserving the font, colors, and everything else in the image.
Am I not an artist if I choose to "give" my art to the people to use and learn from?
With SVG, I'm saying you don't have a choice. It forces you to make your code viewable to anyone who views the image, whether you choose to or not.
Does it make me somehow a bad artist if I don't want to get paid for my stuff?
My point is not "art vs. money". I'm saying that if I paint a picture in SVG, the XML nature of that picture allows the image to be modified and decomposed easily by others. This is not possible with other image formats, such as GIF, JPG, or SWF.
What the heck do you mean by piracy anyway?
You're right; piracy is the wrong word. I guess what I should have said was "copyright infringement". SVG makes this much easier than other image formats.
All the great artists have been copied/plagiarized and most of the great artists have done it themselves.
You're talking about stealing artistic styles and ideas. I'm talking about stealing the actual code. One could not easily take the original Mona Lisa and change the background landscape to a picture of a city skyline. But if da Vinci had published his famous work in SVG, then that sort of thing could be done in a simple text editor without altering the original foreground image in any way. Okay, maybe that's a silly example, but I think it gets my point across.
The difference is, nowadays we have big corporations who think they are doing losses because of piracy.
I'm not thinking of big corporations; I'm thinking of myself. Let's say I make a logo in SVG for my webpage and spend a lot of time working on a nice gradient for the background. Then let's say some other webpage author visits my site and says, "Hmm. That's a pretty cool gradient. I don't want to take the time writing SVG code to implement that same gradient, so I think I'll open his SVG code into my text editor, delete the part that draws his logo, and replace it with my logo." So this guy was able to steal my work ("art") and use it for himself, possibly to make money, without any compensation for my time.
Are you an artist?
Do I make a living by creating art? No. Do I make logos and graphics for my web pages? Yes.
Do you want people to enjoy your work, or do you want to cash in by stupidity?
Why can't I do both? I believe an artist should be compensated for his time and effort so that he can continue to make great art.
No, because Flash is the program necessary to read that SWF file.
For instance, if the author creates a fancy animation routine as a Flash library and links it in the SWF, other Flash authors cannot easily copy that library and use it in their own projects. With SVG, however, being a pure-text human-readable format, what's to stop an author from viewing the SVG source and doing a cut-and-paste of the library into his own projects? From what I understand of SVG, there is nothing to stop unethical authors from stealing from the hard work of their more talented peers.
This is the one example where SVG's implementation in XML is actually a bad thing. And in my book, it's a huge disadvantage of SVG that Jacek Artymiak's article failed to address. Perhaps it's even the reason why SVG has failed to overtake SWF on the web.
...nerds and stuff that matters? It seems like a "-1 Offtopic" story. At least the submitter could have found this article which is basically the same story but from a software engineer's perspective.
Review: Where we've gone before: 10th "Star Trek" film looks a lot like the second one
What makes a 'Trek' fly? Just beam up a good bad guy
On Screen: Trekkies know how to hit the escape button
Time to retire the Enterprise?
Trevor
Shouldn't that be "Windows users would be worse off if the Mac didn't exist"?
Lots. I lived in a developing country (Ghana, West Africa) for over two years, and every town and village I went to that had electricity also had computers. And besides, if a village doesn't have electricity, surely you'd agree that getting some would be a higher priority than getting a Simputer?
A PC, from it's basic hardware (and software!) design, is much harder to support than simple compact device like a Simputer.
I disagree entirely. The Simputer hardware is a custom design, so what happens if, for instance, the screen gets a crack? You'd have to replace the entire unit. If a PC's monitor breaks down, you can easily find a replacement. That's the advantage of commodity hardware.
As for software, I don't see how the Simputer's custom operating system and applications would be easier to support. If something goes wrong, there's no one around familiar enough with the software to diagnose the problem. Meanwhile, there are loads of IT people - and yes, there are IT people in developing countries - who have experience and training in the repair and maintainance of Windows-based PCs.
Simple heat and humidity would kill a modern PC in nothing flat
I agree that a handheld computer with no hard drive, fan, or other moving parts is more reliable, but that's true in any environment. For what it's worth, I brought a laptop with me to Ghana, and with the exception of a hard drive failure (which easily could have happened anywhere else over the course of two years), it worked perfectly.
That said, it's still too expensive.
Did you read my post? A full-blown PC with monitor is only $20 more than a Simputer.
Trevor
Specs for Microtel PC with 15-inch monitor:
The specs of the Microtel PC are so much better, and the price so similar, that I wonder whether a desktop form factor would have been a better design choice. Obviously, the Microtel PC is not portable, but according to the article the computer would be used to "access the Internet, perform transactions, keep track of agricultural prices, and educate children". I don't think portability is a must for those functions.
The only real advantage that the Simputer provides is a built-in text-to-speech feature, but this could be added to the Microtel for free.
I'm not saying that aid agencies should be buying PCs from Wal-Mart and shipping them off to developing countries, but I do think the developers of the Simputer should have put their efforts into producing a similar desktop computer for the villages of, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. The smallest of these villages have no electricity, but many often do, as I learned from my recent experience in the Peace Corps. Thus the benefit of the Simputer's rechargeable batteries isn't really a huge advantage. And if, as the article claims, these villagers want to access the Internet, they're going to need a source of electricity for that anyway.
Even if the Simputer had hardware just as powerful as a desktop PC, there is still the problem of software. Most software today simply cannot run on a 240x320 display. All of these educational and business-transaction programs that the article talked about would have to be redesigned especially for the Simputer. On the other hand, a desktop computer with a full-size monitor opens up the entire world of existing applications. Also, by learning how to use standard desktop computers (and standard software like word processors and spreadsheets), the user is doing more than just calculating the price of his crop. He's picking up an additional skill - computer literacy - that can be applied elsewhere. That's something I tried to accomplish during my Peace Corps service.
But then, that's the real problem, isn't it? Not computer literacy but basic literacy. Providing a Simputer to developing countries is treating the symptoms of the disease, not the cause. These folks need jobs, skills, and education, not processing power. In the village where I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, the average teacher's salary was around $75 per month. For the price of one Simputer, a village could hire someone to teach reading skills to an entire class for four months.
The Simputer may be a good idea for a few select cases, but overall I think it's a misguided effort.
Trevor
For pictures of my experiences, see my site. You'll notice that I brought my laptop with me and was able to apply my geek skills by teaching computer classes on the side. You can find more stories about my geeky life in the Peace Corps here.
When I left Ghana for good in August 2001, I still wasn't yet ready to return to the life of a software developer, so I immediately applied for a job as an English teacher with Nova, the largest private school in Japan. As some here have suggested, this is another great way for geeks see the world and learn skills that don't require electricity. For anyone thinking of that route, I've written some tips on deciding whether to join Nova.
Trevor
If you're building software for a desktop, I agree with you. But I build embedded devices. Here, the argument is not simply a matter of speed. You also have to consider the size of the temporary memory needed for the algorithm, and the size of the algorithm's code itself.
What if you had to build an embedded device with, say, 4KB of RAM and 1KB of ROM (for executable code)? This type of device wouldn't even have an operating system, and with such limited amounts of memory, you'd want to save every byte. With the recursive quicksort, you'd have to implement a stack (very unsafe in this example!). Other very fast sort algorithms might require large amounts of extra scrath memory (such as the bucketsort). In the end, the bubblesort, with its very small implementation size, simple design, and limited memory requirements, might actually be one of the best choices when memory efficiency is far more important than speed.
(Never say never!)