I wasn’t enthused with the project at all. Despite all the flash, it didn’t promise to really revolutionise the computing. Primarily, it would be assinine to expect families with $1 per day meagre wages or less to buy; there was some kind of a subversive pressure on the governments to subsidise which would have led to huge amount of outgo of public funds; organised gangs would have made sure that intended benefits for the “impoverished” would never reach them; the whole system wasn’t designed to plug in leakages et al.
The investments in public health are more urgently required. If the government is serious about spread of computing, let them abolish the taxes for five years, allow more manufacturers to set up manufacturing plants (but not the silicon as it’s environmentally very damaging) and encourage cheap unlimited broadband. Unfortunately, the policy makers need to get their heads out of sands and breathe some fresh air.
However, it was MIT’s decision to load up Linux which probably irked Microsoft; as if it thrust a whole pound of chilli paste up theirs in public view. It hurt them and this project seems to have been embroiled in a controversy.
The reason I post this here is because India is the intended beneficiary; while the technology demonstrator concept sounds good in theory; we’d be much better off minus all these public stunts.
Anyway, the above mentioned story was first reported on New York Times. (link via Rajeev Srinivasan.) Later on it was picked up byDigg.
Given the huge amount of money at stake, Linux popularity and bruised egos, it’s not hard to imagine the Bill Gates and his cahoots could sit back and lie down. Hence they tomtommed their own version of “cell phone with Internet facility”.
Craig Mundie, a Microsoft vice president and chief technical officer, said in an interview here that the company is still developing the idea, but that both he and Gates believe that cell phones are a better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing nations.
We all know what horse crap is this all about. Here’s one of the world’s richest men making such a statement! Brains and money don’t go together. The problem is that they aren’t afraid to be the laughing stock of the entire world! I mean, imagine Gates grinning about Windows and saying that it’s the “best”!
Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project sounds phoney in the first place. Incidentally, I believe they were the same group who wanted to start something in India; the exact details elude me though.
Some business and development policy specialists have raised questions about Negroponte’s laptop, pointing to the price of Internet connectivity, which can cost $24 to $50 a month in developing nations. But Negroponte said networking costs would not be an obstacle because the laptops would be made to connect automatically in a so-called mesh network, making it possible for up to 1,000 computers to wirelessly share just one or two land-based Internet connections.
Not a good idea in my opinion; would someone enlighten me as to what would be the end user speed in this case? Secondly with almost next to nil investments in localised content creation and excessive zeal to block Internet resources, would this really benefit?
Something that we really need here is a thin client server model which would make sense. The laptop runs Internet wirelessly; we all know that intended countries have their telecom networks in shambles while BSNL gets abused like an overused slut who , linguistically speaking, cannot be raped more.
The intended beneficiaries are :
Thailand, Egypt, Nigeria, India, China, Brazil and Argentina.
To round it off, I would concur with the following statement by some worthy fellow:
Stuart Gannes, director of the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, said a better way to bring computers into poor countries would be to put them into the hands of entrepreneurs and make them revenue generators. “We need to look at technology as a way to bring cash into the poorest communities,” Gannes said.
All we need is some common sense and freedom from tyranny of Governmental control.
Is WiMax the wireless tech they are referring to here ?
It’s early days still but it sounds promising. The problem with it is that as usual it will be oversubscribed to, to increase profits naturally, so the effective speed won’t be any faster than dialup- unless you pay much more. But then you could still get connectivity without a cable being installed.
There might be other WiMax installations with faster throughput, but as a way to connect more ppl to the net this might be the only feasible way.
The other idea, cellphone with GPRS, thing is what is the fastest you can get ith it now ? I would think this might be a better way since we are told that 70million ppl have cellphones in this country already. I’m talking as cellphone for internet not internet+computer. Heh that would take some serious tech in the form factor of a cellphone. But its an interesting idea nevertheless. If they can install WinCE on it then its only a matter of time before youc an install some OSS on it too.
Is WiMax the wireless tech they are referring to here ?
It’s early days still but it sounds promising. The problem with it is that as usual it will be oversubscribed to, to increase profits naturally, so the effective speed won’t be any faster than dialup- unless you pay much more. But then you could still get connectivity without a cable being installed.
There might be other WiMax installations with faster throughput, but as a way to connect more ppl to the net this might be the only feasible way.
The other idea, cellphone with GPRS, thing is what is the fastest you can get ith it now ? I would think this might be a better way since we are told that 70million ppl have cellphones in this country already. I’m talking as cellphone for internet not internet+computer. Heh that would take some serious tech in the form factor of a cellphone. But its an interesting idea nevertheless. If they can install WinCE on it then its only a matter of time before youc an install some OSS on it too.
Frankly, I have no idea whether it’s Wimax or something esle. For most of us, it’s hard to believe that Wi Max would debut in the barren lands of Africa; for that matter can you imagine a state of the art gigabit ethernet in Bihar?
Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope. As blr_p rightly pointed out, unless Wimax comes with faster speeds, the end user experience maybe frustrated. But then again, its looking from our own prism. In the good old days, getting 3k from my dia up meant that my internet is top of the world! Now I bitch about lousy 256k but nevertheless working internet connection for all practical purposes.
As for the cell phone OSS, I believe Linux is “embedded”. Again, I am not enthused by the overt media hype about the whole thing being hunky dory. Let’s wait and watch and see how things fare up.
Frankly, I have no idea whether it’s Wimax or something esle. For most of us, it’s hard to believe that Wi Max would debut in the barren lands of Africa; for that matter can you imagine a state of the art gigabit ethernet in Bihar?
Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope. As blr_p rightly pointed out, unless Wimax comes with faster speeds, the end user experience maybe frustrated. But then again, its looking from our own prism. In the good old days, getting 3k from my dia up meant that my internet is top of the world! Now I bitch about lousy 256k but nevertheless working internet connection for all practical purposes.
As for the cell phone OSS, I believe Linux is “embedded”. Again, I am not enthused by the overt media hype about the whole thing being hunky dory. Let’s wait and watch and see how things fare up.
“Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope.”
I bet there are more mobile owners than landline owners in the country !!
In the same way if WiMax offers similar advantages, this may be the way to expand internet coverage whereas it would have been economically unfeasible in the past (we don’t see enough ROI). But its a very big IF.
The better speeds/preformance will continue to be over wired connections, but 56k or 128k might be good enough for ppl that want to browse.
“Laugh your guts out but minus the infrastructure, there is little hope.”
I bet there are more mobile owners than landline owners in the country !!
In the same way if WiMax offers similar advantages, this may be the way to expand internet coverage whereas it would have been economically unfeasible in the past (we don’t see enough ROI). But its a very big IF.
The better speeds/preformance will continue to be over wired connections, but 56k or 128k might be good enough for ppl that want to browse.
i’ve done a couple of serious studies on WiMax myself. but to my discontent its a flawed technology for everything except the idea. for one thing its backed by the big butt intel. and secondly, wimax is more of a distance implementation compared to wifi. so the key goal is to have sustained bandwidth topologies at much greater distances compared to wifi. i’ve even worked on a small project that tried encapsulating this tech, but it wasnt for our small startup. the idea is(was) great. but with intel’s hungry pigs, it might pour our from their vaults as a plague.
and about gprs, its gruesome SLOW. some will argue that its good enough for browsing. they can fancy themselves with that piece of tech. UMTS seems very promising for me as a telecom engg. more open than wimax and well implemented by a dozen chip makers. the drawback is that it sits tightly on cellular and cdma protocols and in its present form, its highly integrated on the hardware thus causing an array of dependencies. all that will change for sure.
i’ve done a couple of serious studies on WiMax myself. but to my discontent its a flawed technology for everything except the idea. for one thing its backed by the big butt intel. and secondly, wimax is more of a distance implementation compared to wifi. so the key goal is to have sustained bandwidth topologies at much greater distances compared to wifi. i’ve even worked on a small project that tried encapsulating this tech, but it wasnt for our small startup. the idea is(was) great. but with intel’s hungry pigs, it might pour our from their vaults as a plague.
and about gprs, its gruesome SLOW. some will argue that its good enough for browsing. they can fancy themselves with that piece of tech. UMTS seems very promising for me as a telecom engg. more open than wimax and well implemented by a dozen chip makers. the drawback is that it sits tightly on cellular and cdma protocols and in its present form, its highly integrated on the hardware thus causing an array of dependencies. all that will change for sure.
Great info Sachin!
I wasn’t enthused about Wi Max either. Specially when Indian Telecom firms and Indian media started taking active interest in promoting “Wi Max”. Heck, I don’t fancy WiFi either; it’s too insecure.
Wireless hasn’t come off age. Why not stop calling this as a “killer app” and make everything else work?
More details on UMTS Sachin? You seem to be involved with the Engg. firms designing this kind of stuff….
Great info Sachin!
I wasn’t enthused about Wi Max either. Specially when Indian Telecom firms and Indian media started taking active interest in promoting “Wi Max”. Heck, I don’t fancy WiFi either; it’s too insecure.
Wireless hasn’t come off age. Why not stop calling this as a “killer app” and make everything else work?
More details on UMTS Sachin? You seem to be involved with the Engg. firms designing this kind of stuff….