I've lived here for over 15 years. My family has been here for ~50 years. I'm writing what I have seen and continue to see both from my perspective as an employer, as the son and grandson of "white traders" as well as someone who ran the Rez for a couple of years myself. The successes are people who have had to fight "their own" tooth and nail just for a chance.
Back on the original topic: an OSS type solution might work. [...] It would require serious buy-in from the powers that be and it would need to require the tribal government to do something.
Aside from the lack of technical workers to maintain the system and limited funding, I agree the next biggest hurdle is the tribal government. And that's pretty much the story for any infrastructure issue on the rez.
I would posit that a probable solution would include those who have utilities now:
The Grey Mountain Inn
Speedy's
Cameron Trading Post
Tuba City High School
Some if not all of these will have people that can do the work. Add the self-contained wireless devices from OLPC (can't help but continue to point to them. They are extending internet access to the third world which many parts of the Rez resemble) and there is a potential solution.
NACA is managing to get things done by avoiding the tribal government, but I don't think this can be accomplished without buy-in from Window Rock.
At risk of sounding like an apologist, I again have to suggest an open mind here. Considering that the federal government has rarely (if ever) come through on it's treaty obligations with the tribe, I'm not surprised nor would I look down on any Navajo for having such an attitude.
By that logic, they should have a lower expectation that someone else is going to take care of them, not more.
You mean, "Just one, but the bulb has to want to assimilate into a culture that was forced upon it".
I meant and still do mean that if they want anything to be different they have to take steps to make the change. Word it however you want, "The lord helps those who help themselves," if that makes it any better.
I was going to address xenophobia, but I don't think it adds to the conversation.
How can jealousy of other's entrepreneurial success be a significant factor when there's very little entrepreneurial success to speak of?
That's why there is little entrepreneurial success.
I know a woman who opened a laundromat. It took her around five years to get it approved and opened. A couple of years later, she wanted to open a second laundromat and faced the exact same hurdles even though she could show that her business model was a successful one. Most people would just give up. You can't complain that there are no opportunities, yet stifle any attempt to better yourself.
When I brought up the crab bucket mentality, I was basing that on a conversation that I had with a woman who had moved off the reservation with her husband. They were doing fairly well making and selling jewelery. They bought a house. They purchased health insurance because they didn't want to depend on Indian Health Services since they traveled frequently and they felt they could get better care outside of the IHS network. When family members heard about the health insurance they were admonished to drop the coverage because, "you're not better than us". The gist of the conversation that I had with her boiled down to if they couldn't buy insurance for the whole tribe then they shouldn't buy it at all.
Tangent: Navajos and Health care is a strange thing. Where I work we are all covered by private health care (BCBS) and most of the employees make ~$13+/hr. They will take an entire day off of work to drive 50 miles each way to the IHS clinic where they won't have to pay instead of go to a doctor in town and pay their $25.00 deductible (and not have to miss any work)
Back on the original topic: an OSS type solution might work. The reason satellite is currently used is because of the vast amount of land that needs to be covered and the huge distances between users. Putting wireless repeaters on the top of power poles that run along the main roads (where there is actual copper) coupled with OLPC style ad-hoc repeaters and even adding something like the Brisbane Mesh could work. It would require serious buy-in from the powers that be and it would need to require the tribal government to do something. As it stands now, they don't pay their own bill; it's a grant from the FCC, according to TA. This is another problem for them. There is a sense of entitlement that's pervasive. Again, I point back to the "Doing Business" segment. When an on reservation cell tower demands twice the lease what an off reservation tower would run it makes it difficult to justify doing business on the reservation. Running even, or even below, the lease cost of an off reservation tower would be the smartest thing to do if your goal is to provide more coverage to your residents. Cell phone companies are in business to make a profit. It doesn't pay anyone if they cannot afford to maintain the towers on the Rez or if they end up hemorrhaging money and go out of business.
This internet billing dispute has been running for a year now, it's not like the network went dark overnight. They've had a year to think about a different solution, which could include the tribe actually paying for their own satellite connection, instead of the FCC grant. It's not as if the satellite providing service fell out of the sky. Heck, they could even negotiate with the cell phone company that eventually put up towers to throw a wireless repeater on top of the existing towers and create their own mesh network.
The summary asks
While the business mechanisms play themselves into the expected ludicrous snarl, the real question may be: Is there a place for an inexpensive ham/technogeek/FOSS solution that could bypass the antics of the for-pay providers?
Perhaps. The real answer may be along the lines of the old joke, How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the bulb has to want to change.
Except that the 60 mile figure is more of a radius not a line of sight when you are talking about the Navajo Reservation. A fiber run might serve a dozen people, maybe as many as 100. Cost wise that is not feasible.
While a FOSS solution might sound like an interesting plan the Navajo Indian Reservation is the largest reservation in the US,
The largest is the Navajo Reservation of some 16 million acres of land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.
which you can see in this map(PDF warning).
They have few utilities which is a combination of the extreme size, distances between "settlements", poverty, cultural differences and good old fashioned greed. NPR ran a whole series about life on the reservation and the so-called border towns. Doing business on the reservation The mp3 on the linked page describes how the tribe (that now complains about the lack of connectivity and phone service) essentially blocked the installation of cell phone towers at nearly every turn; how the tribe wants to collect leases on the land of nearly twice what can be paid off the Rez.
TFA complains that 911 and other important services are not available or might not be available but that has almost always been the case. The Universal Service Fee that everyone pays is supposed to pay for running copper and extending these services to places that it doesn't "pay" for the phone companies to run wire to.
On top of that, anyone who wants to operate a business spends five years or more just for approval for a lease to operate on the land - and forget it if you're not Navajo. Anyone at all enterprising has to move off the reservation due to the crab bucket mentality.
Want a FOSS solution to all of this? The terrain is rugged, hills, etc. obstruct line of sight. That's the primary reason for satellite service.
How about the OLPC project? How about the tribal government lower its barriers to business? Answer those questions and we can move forward.
---
From the border town of Flagstaff.
Just an addition to a file? That only serves the individual who chooses to use that hosts file. Do you propose to hijack everyone's host files? Since we're going to call it a tea party, why not just call them Tea Bagging Bastards?
No-one in their right mind would elect him to public office....he is, is a zealot. That type of person rarely does well in a job where compromise is the order of the day.
I always say that I'd like to meet the Atheist who doesn't say "god damn it" or "go to hell," and he lesbian that doesn't use a dildo... but they both seem to be very elusive specimens.
Atheists will say "god damn it" (noticed you used the lower case "god" there) because we know it riles up Christians - thou shalt not take the lord's name in vain. For us it's just a phrase, kind of like "fuck you"
The board I run doesn't allow anonymous posters (there were too many spam posts) and has simple rules that have to be agreed to (well they show when you create an account).
The goal of this board is to allow a free flowing exchange between project users and curious parties. Exchanges should be mostly ontopic or related to the project in some way. The last word on accepted posts resides with the administrator of this board. Posts deemed inappropriate may be edited or deleted without notice. Abusive posters may be tortured or banned depending upon what kind of day the admin is having. These rules are subject to change without notice.
According to TFA a particular machine (and I'm reading a little into this part) would need to be a specialized device.
A general purpose computer is not a particular machine, and thus innovative software processes are unpatentable if they are tied only to a general purpose computer.
and
Distribution of the process over two general purpose computing devices quite clearly seems to be the key to patentability in the Boardâ(TM)s view...
It's going in the right direction IMO. They just need to more narrowly define what they are trying to say.
Sure, but for anyone coming from the other side, who does have software patents and is thus in favor of keeping them, all I can say is this: You would be nowhere and have nothing if patents had been allowed in the first thirty years of electronic computing. All the sorting algorithms, all the OS scheduler algorithms, all the compiler technology, all the things you take for granted every day, would have been locked up and all the amazing development that required freely taking these basic ideas as building blocks for more ideas would have faced repeated decade-long roadblocks. The environment in which you are creating your software patents would not exist if they had been able to place those roadblocks to progress just as you are doing today.
And countries that look the other way on patents and "IP" would be so much farther ahead than the US that we, and all other subscribers to the concept of patenting numbers, would be third world countries.
You're saying that it's OK to patent the look of the interface? That clearly should be covered under copyright (and be covered for longer than under a patent BTW)
"A particular machine" is used to describe one computer not two connected computers.
The Board concluded that the collection of the two âoephysical computing devicesâ operating together âoeis âa particular apparatusâ(TM) to which the process is tied, not simply a generic computing device for performing the steps.â[19] Distribution of the process over two general purpose computing devices quite clearly seems to be the key to patentability in the Boardâ(TM)s view, for the Board emphasized that the narrower claim covered only the embodiment in Wasynczukâ(TM)s specification that âoeuses two computing devicesâ not the embodiment that âoeuses a single computer.â[20]
Yes please make them make made make up my own question.
High school: I went to several schools in several cities and even countries.
Maiden name of my mother: You have no need to know that. You want my data, OK. I am not giving you my parents data as well.
They already have your mother's maiden name. They just want to see if you are who you claim you are.
I usually have to reverify my computer after each upgrade of Firefox:(
I never said anything about liberal vs. conservative. What I did say is this:
"protection of marriage" = voters voting to take away the legal rights and protections of a group of people based on their sexual orientation.
In fact, it is the conservatives that should be fighting AGAINST "protection of marriage." You know: KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES! Isn't that what a true conservative believes?
No. Conservatives do not think that way at all. They think that God should rule every thing that we do and that this country was founded on religious values. It was really founded by people running from the government and a religion that they didn't believe.
The same way that torture was just thrown out in the Gitmo Osama's driver's case. It's unconstitutional. It didn't stand up to scrutiny. Just saying that it was constitutional didn't change that. Saying that something is unconstitutional will not make it so either. The law did not fit within the confines of the state constitution and thus was unconstitutional. The ruling by the state supreme court just makes it "official".
reckÂless Audio Help/ËrÉklÉs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rek-lis] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
â"adjective
1. utterly unconcerned about the consequences of some action; without caution; careless (usually fol. by of): to be reckless of danger.
2. characterized by or proceeding from such carelessness: reckless extravagance.
Only ditto heads know what you mean by that.
(Or those of us who aren't ditto heads but are subjected to listening to someone else's radio turned up too loud.)
Officials also said they feared that although Childs is in jail, he may have enabled a third party to access the system by telephone or other electronic device and order the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents.
Authorities have searched Childs' home and car for a device that could be used in such an attack, but so far no such evidence has been found.
So are they looking for a modem or NIC? What kind of "device" would he need to connect?
Maybe then we wouldn't have software vendors taking weeks, months or years to patch remotely exploitable bugs (yes, I'm looking at YOU, Microsoft)
Sure you would; and the blame for any damage would be blamed on who made the disclosure.
There is nothing wrong with how this was/is being handled. Limited disclosure with a solid and "reasonable" deadline is a perfectly fine way to balance the myriad issues with security threats.
Except Microsoft doesn't handle things this way. If this had been only a Windows issue we would have never heard about it. The fact that Open Source is vulnerable as well means that we will eventually know what the problems were and be able to look to see that it was fixed in the Open Source versions.
Slashdot Mirror
I would posit that a probable solution would include those who have utilities now:
Some if not all of these will have people that can do the work. Add the self-contained wireless devices from OLPC (can't help but continue to point to them. They are extending internet access to the third world which many parts of the Rez resemble) and there is a potential solution.
NACA is managing to get things done by avoiding the tribal government, but I don't think this can be accomplished without buy-in from Window Rock.
At risk of sounding like an apologist, I again have to suggest an open mind here. Considering that the federal government has rarely (if ever) come through on it's treaty obligations with the tribe, I'm not surprised nor would I look down on any Navajo for having such an attitude.
By that logic, they should have a lower expectation that someone else is going to take care of them, not more.
You mean, "Just one, but the bulb has to want to assimilate into a culture that was forced upon it".
I meant and still do mean that if they want anything to be different they have to take steps to make the change. Word it however you want, "The lord helps those who help themselves," if that makes it any better.
I was going to address xenophobia, but I don't think it adds to the conversation.
How can jealousy of other's entrepreneurial success be a significant factor when there's very little entrepreneurial success to speak of?
That's why there is little entrepreneurial success.
I know a woman who opened a laundromat. It took her around five years to get it approved and opened. A couple of years later, she wanted to open a second laundromat and faced the exact same hurdles even though she could show that her business model was a successful one. Most people would just give up. You can't complain that there are no opportunities, yet stifle any attempt to better yourself.
When I brought up the crab bucket mentality, I was basing that on a conversation that I had with a woman who had moved off the reservation with her husband. They were doing fairly well making and selling jewelery. They bought a house. They purchased health insurance because they didn't want to depend on Indian Health Services since they traveled frequently and they felt they could get better care outside of the IHS network. When family members heard about the health insurance they were admonished to drop the coverage because, "you're not better than us". The gist of the conversation that I had with her boiled down to if they couldn't buy insurance for the whole tribe then they shouldn't buy it at all.
Tangent: Navajos and Health care is a strange thing. Where I work we are all covered by private health care (BCBS) and most of the employees make ~$13+/hr. They will take an entire day off of work to drive 50 miles each way to the IHS clinic where they won't have to pay instead of go to a doctor in town and pay their $25.00 deductible (and not have to miss any work)
Back on the original topic: an OSS type solution might work. The reason satellite is currently used is because of the vast amount of land that needs to be covered and the huge distances between users. Putting wireless repeaters on the top of power poles that run along the main roads (where there is actual copper) coupled with OLPC style ad-hoc repeaters and even adding something like the Brisbane Mesh could work. It would require serious buy-in from the powers that be and it would need to require the tribal government to do something. As it stands now, they don't pay their own bill; it's a grant from the FCC, according to TA. This is another problem for them. There is a sense of entitlement that's pervasive. Again, I point back to the "Doing Business" segment. When an on reservation cell tower demands twice the lease what an off reservation tower would run it makes it difficult to justify doing business on the reservation. Running even, or even below, the lease cost of an off reservation tower would be the smartest thing to do if your goal is to provide more coverage to your residents. Cell phone companies are in business to make a profit. It doesn't pay anyone if they cannot afford to maintain the towers on the Rez or if they end up hemorrhaging money and go out of business.
This internet billing dispute has been running for a year now, it's not like the network went dark overnight. They've had a year to think about a different solution, which could include the tribe actually paying for their own satellite connection, instead of the FCC grant. It's not as if the satellite providing service fell out of the sky. Heck, they could even negotiate with the cell phone company that eventually put up towers to throw a wireless repeater on top of the existing towers and create their own mesh network.
The summary asks
While the business mechanisms play themselves into the expected ludicrous snarl, the real question may be: Is there a place for an inexpensive ham/technogeek/FOSS solution that could bypass the antics of the for-pay providers?
Perhaps. The real answer may be along the lines of the old joke, How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the bulb has to want to change.
While a FOSS solution might sound like an interesting plan the Navajo Indian Reservation is the largest reservation in the US,
The largest is the Navajo Reservation of some 16 million acres of land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.
which you can see in this map(PDF warning).
They have few utilities which is a combination of the extreme size, distances between "settlements", poverty, cultural differences and good old fashioned greed. NPR ran a whole series about life on the reservation and the so-called border towns. Doing business on the reservation The mp3 on the linked page describes how the tribe (that now complains about the lack of connectivity and phone service) essentially blocked the installation of cell phone towers at nearly every turn; how the tribe wants to collect leases on the land of nearly twice what can be paid off the Rez.
TFA complains that 911 and other important services are not available or might not be available but that has almost always been the case. The Universal Service Fee that everyone pays is supposed to pay for running copper and extending these services to places that it doesn't "pay" for the phone companies to run wire to.
On top of that, anyone who wants to operate a business spends five years or more just for approval for a lease to operate on the land - and forget it if you're not Navajo. Anyone at all enterprising has to move off the reservation due to the crab bucket mentality.
Want a FOSS solution to all of this? The terrain is rugged, hills, etc. obstruct line of sight. That's the primary reason for satellite service. How about the OLPC project? How about the tribal government lower its barriers to business? Answer those questions and we can move forward.
---
From the border town of Flagstaff.
Just an addition to a file? That only serves the individual who chooses to use that hosts file. Do you propose to hijack everyone's host files? Since we're going to call it a tea party, why not just call them Tea Bagging Bastards?
Offshore drilling was enacted under Bush Sr. (The rest of this post would be flamebait)
No-one in their right mind would elect him to public office. ...he is, is a zealot. That type of person rarely does well in a job where compromise is the order of the day.
And this is different from GWB how?
I always say that I'd like to meet the Atheist who doesn't say "god damn it" or "go to hell," and he lesbian that doesn't use a dildo... but they both seem to be very elusive specimens.
Atheists will say "god damn it" (noticed you used the lower case "god" there) because we know it riles up Christians - thou shalt not take the lord's name in vain. For us it's just a phrase, kind of like "fuck you"
The first amendment only means that the government cannot infringe your freedom of speech. A site administrator can.
The goal of this board is to allow a free flowing exchange between project users and curious parties. Exchanges should be mostly ontopic or related to the project in some way. The last word on accepted posts resides with the administrator of this board. Posts deemed inappropriate may be edited or deleted without notice. Abusive posters may be tortured or banned depending upon what kind of day the admin is having. These rules are subject to change without notice.
A general purpose computer is not a particular machine, and thus innovative software processes are unpatentable if they are tied only to a general purpose computer.
and
Distribution of the process over two general purpose computing devices quite clearly seems to be the key to patentability in the Boardâ(TM)s view...
It's going in the right direction IMO. They just need to more narrowly define what they are trying to say.
Sure, but for anyone coming from the other side, who does have software patents and is thus in favor of keeping them, all I can say is this: You would be nowhere and have nothing if patents had been allowed in the first thirty years of electronic computing. All the sorting algorithms, all the OS scheduler algorithms, all the compiler technology, all the things you take for granted every day, would have been locked up and all the amazing development that required freely taking these basic ideas as building blocks for more ideas would have faced repeated decade-long roadblocks. The environment in which you are creating your software patents would not exist if they had been able to place those roadblocks to progress just as you are doing today.
And countries that look the other way on patents and "IP" would be so much farther ahead than the US that we, and all other subscribers to the concept of patenting numbers, would be third world countries.
You're saying that it's OK to patent the look of the interface? That clearly should be covered under copyright (and be covered for longer than under a patent BTW)
The Board concluded that the collection of the two âoephysical computing devicesâ operating together âoeis âa particular apparatusâ(TM) to which the process is tied, not simply a generic computing device for performing the steps.â[19] Distribution of the process over two general purpose computing devices quite clearly seems to be the key to patentability in the Boardâ(TM)s view, for the Board emphasized that the narrower claim covered only the embodiment in Wasynczukâ(TM)s specification that âoeuses two computing devicesâ not the embodiment that âoeuses a single computer.â[20]
Yes please make them make made make up my own question. High school: I went to several schools in several cities and even countries. Maiden name of my mother: You have no need to know that. You want my data, OK. I am not giving you my parents data as well.
They already have your mother's maiden name. They just want to see if you are who you claim you are. I usually have to reverify my computer after each upgrade of Firefox :(
Setec Astronomy
I never said anything about liberal vs. conservative. What I did say is this:
"protection of marriage" = voters voting to take away the legal rights and protections of a group of people based on their sexual orientation.
In fact, it is the conservatives that should be fighting AGAINST "protection of marriage." You know: KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES! Isn't that what a true conservative believes?
No. Conservatives do not think that way at all. They think that God should rule every thing that we do and that this country was founded on religious values. It was really founded by people running from the government and a religion that they didn't believe.
It's a pun at best. It's the difference between
reckless and wreckless.
The same way that torture was just thrown out in the Gitmo Osama's driver's case. It's unconstitutional. It didn't stand up to scrutiny. Just saying that it was constitutional didn't change that. Saying that something is unconstitutional will not make it so either. The law did not fit within the confines of the state constitution and thus was unconstitutional. The ruling by the state supreme court just makes it "official".
reckÂless Audio Help /ËrÉklÉs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rek-lis] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
â"adjective
1. utterly unconcerned about the consequences of some action; without caution; careless (usually fol. by of): to be reckless of danger.
2. characterized by or proceeding from such carelessness: reckless extravagance.
Wreckless means he did not wreck.
It was unconstitutional when he handed out the licenses, it just hadn't been ruled that way by a court yet.
Scott Adams made lots of money off this attitude.
Or it could be that their 6 month certificates are expiring
Only ditto heads know what you mean by that.
(Or those of us who aren't ditto heads but are subjected to listening to someone else's radio turned up too loud.)
Officials also said they feared that although Childs is in jail, he may have enabled a third party to access the system by telephone or other electronic device and order the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents. Authorities have searched Childs' home and car for a device that could be used in such an attack, but so far no such evidence has been found.
So are they looking for a modem or NIC? What kind of "device" would he need to connect?
Maybe then we wouldn't have software vendors taking weeks, months or years to patch remotely exploitable bugs (yes, I'm looking at YOU, Microsoft)
Sure you would; and the blame for any damage would be blamed on who made the disclosure.
There is nothing wrong with how this was/is being handled. Limited disclosure with a solid and "reasonable" deadline is a perfectly fine way to balance the myriad issues with security threats.
Except Microsoft doesn't handle things this way. If this had been only a Windows issue we would have never heard about it. The fact that Open Source is vulnerable as well means that we will eventually know what the problems were and be able to look to see that it was fixed in the Open Source versions.