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The Internet Wireless Networking Hardware

Still More on Connecting Laos 103

Posted by michael from the water-buffalo-barbeque dept.
Rackemup writes "A story on Wired has some updated information on the progess made by the Remote IT Village Project attempting to connect several isolated villages deep in the Laotian Jungle to the rest of the world using wireless networks, pedal-power and Laonux (customized Linux installs translated into the Laotian language). Power surges can be a hassle when the nearest computer store is hundreds of miles away, but they're shooting for a May 18th "go live" date."
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Still More on Connecting Laos More

Still More on Connecting Laos

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  • 802.11b? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tyrdium ( 670229 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:02PM (#5895564) Homepage
    Looks like they're planning on using 802.11b... Wouldn't there be range issues? I'm assuming these villages are a decent distance from each other or wherever they could get a transceiver...

    • Re:802.11b? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:22PM (#5895723) Homepage
      802.11b can handle essentially infinite distances provided (line of sight anyway) if:

      a) you have large-enough antennas at each end

      or: b) you don't have any equivalent of the FCC hassling you if you go slightly above the power limits

      Distances of 70+km have been achieved.

    • Re:802.11b? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Garak ( 100517 )
      With 802.11b standard the sky isn't even the limit in range.

      Even using low powered off the shelf wireless cards you can go over 70km if you use those cheep/free offset parabolic dish's used for DSS tv.

      There are a few problems to overcome. I belive someone said that their is a limit of 48km on most wireless cards because of a timeout in the mac layer. This isn't a problem with some cards because you can change the timeout.

      The general rule with 802.11b is if you got a line of sight you got a link.

  • bicycles? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the first bicycle powered linux computer?!?

    don't they have hamsters in Laos? or are they lacking hamster wheels?

    • Re:bicycles? (Score:3, Funny)

      by mrseigen ( 518390 )
      IANAHT (I am not a hamster trainer), but: The uptime on hamsters and similar rodents is actually disturbingly low. The little buggers abruptly stop for some reason. Someone really should try breeding a hamster that has nothing to think about than running on that little wheel. Then we'll have a great energy source*!

      *As long as we can keep them fed
    • There's prolly some British animal rights group picketing all over the country, protesting thier potential use of hamsters. It is, of course, ok to use people to power computers, as long as you dont harm anything with fur in the process.
    • If you had to pedal 4 miles for every 20 minutes of internet surfing, which websites would you visit? Porn or Slashdot?

      Take it off baby...ooh..shitlow battery...pedal pedal pedal..

      • It's a lot easier to post a scathing diatribe to slashdot while pedaling than to masturbate, if you're male. Females can just lean forward and pedal harder. Perhaps this will lead to a reversal in which gender watches the most streaming porn.
    • no, but they have trained monkeys/orangutangs.

      thus they use linux(instead of having monkeys train them) and use bicycles (small cute looking ones.).

  • Text incase of slashdotting (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Our Remote IT Village project responds to villagers express needs for telecommunications, business opportunities, and enhanced education for their children through the development of a solid-state, low-wattage computer that can be powered by a foot-crank, a high-bandwidth wireless network, and support for village small businesses.

    Farmers in Ban Phon Kam and nearby villages are now able to grow surpluses of rice and other crops-thanks in part to organic farming techniques that Jhai helped introduce. To prof
    • I found it hilarious. Here they are with no electricity and that's supposed to be representative of useful information they can't live without?
      • nut now te can find out how to build a windmill to convert wind to electricity. Hel there are a couple of sites that will tell you how to do it from old parts.
        so now this village has learned how to harness the wind. Now they can improve there irrigation, and power a water purifier.
        mamybe a could of smart kids gett the backing of the community to let them learn programming and computer skills so they can start there own company.
        that could generate revenue to get what they ned to conrinue to impriove there life on there own.

        See? do you understand? or are you sued to having things easy and not starving that you have no clue what it takes to buld a long term solution.
        in short:
        Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a life time.
      • That may be because you come from a situation that is completely divorced from the Lao one. The project was devised and specified by the Lao communities, they know what their communication needs are, they understand their situation, the Jhai system has been designed to meet THEIR requirements. The Lao are not in the habit of wasting their time and resources on useless stuff, if they say they need these tools, we should listen to them and start thinking about how we can provide them with what they need inst

  • Just hope... (Score:4, Funny)

    by c_oflynn ( 649487 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:03PM (#5895570)
    No one posts the IP of these networks to slashdot....

  • What would you rather have? (Score:4, Funny)

    by confused philosopher ( 666299 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:03PM (#5895574) Homepage Journal
    What would you rather have?
    The Internet, or a flush toilet and potable drinking water?

    I know what you will say: INTERNET!

    Once again the Internet is more important than anything else. Do these people even want to be subjected to emails from AOLiens, spam from Japan, and know it all Canadians?

  • I cringe... (Score:1, Troll)

    by NineNine ( 235196 )
    ...when I hear about this kind of shit. Why force these cultures into the modern world before they're ready? What's the point? So they can have cheap access to porn, X-10 popup ads, giant companies, and general ignorance? Is this an attempt at large multinational corporations to market to *every* human on the planet? Yeah, let's homogenize the planet. Let's make every person the exact same Wal-Mart shopping, Gap-wearing drone. Leave no corner of the planet untouched. I mean, they don't have NET acce
    • From the article:

      "After this wondrous event, we all gathered at my co-founder Bounthanh's parents' house," Thorn said. "There her dying father, Pone, told us that he wanted us to launch before June 1, before the rainy season. He said he wanted to talk with his daughter in Canada before he died."

      Yeah, it really stinks when technology is able to give someone their dying wish.

      Did you read the article? (like that's ever happened) This isn't just Internet access, it will also provide phone service as we

    • And I cringe whenever I hear someone trying to keep people from educating themselves.

      ".. I can afford to drop out completely"
      oh really? no telephone, no media? no movies, books, plays? no music? no latte? no going to the store?
      no contacting friend or families unless you can walk there?

      You don't need money to live like these people, thats the problem!

      Feel free to drop out now, get yourself a shack in montana. good riddence.
      • I need money to buy a house free and clear, and then that's it. I'm gone.
        • so your house will never fall down? you won't need water? other people? transportation?

          thats fine, but I can't imagine a life with no human interaction my self.
        • "I need money to buy a house free and clear, and then that's it. I'm gone."

          Plumbing: "I'll dig a well and maintain my own septic tank!" Pumps, manufactured by whom? Tanks, built how? Don't even pretend you'll have an outhouse.

          Power: "It will ALL be solar powered", using panels and equipment manufactured by...

          Emergency Services: Let's see how you feel about that when you are 60.

          Communications: Considering just how fucked in the head you are, mostly due to the crap you've allowed yourself to be fed, I

    • Re:I cringe... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You, my friend are an id10t.
      The people in the villages have ASKED for these PCs.. They aren't being foisted upon them.. the Jhai PCs are intended for voice over IP as well as internet. The VoIP was the top priority.

      Before you make a comment about something, you should learn more about it.
    • My goal in life is to make enough money so I can afford to drop out completely.

      It appears to be quite inexpensive, actually...

    • I've spent a lot of time in third world countries, and the arrogance of this post is outrageous. These people are not "noble savages" who are better left in their idyllic state. They are intelligent and ambitious. They see the advantages our technology can provide, and want it for themselves. I've seen it in Africa, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia. They all want benefits of technology.

      I was in Laos visiting friends in February, and they were crazy about email and the web. Internet cafes are j

  • The Effect (Score:4, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:08PM (#5895616) Journal
    They better hope that their web server isn't running on a server in a remote Laos village - because here we come!

  • Censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:12PM (#5895649) Homepage Journal
    How is the Laotian government reacting to this? Any support or opposition? While I don't know much about Laos firsthand, I do know it's one of the last five remaining communist countries on Earth.

    Other countries such as China and Vietnam have taken measures to regulate and censor the flow of information via the net -- will this be any different?

    • Re:Censorship? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Good question.
      Apparently during one of the recent bus attacks (near the heavily touristed town of Vang Vieng), they shut down all the local internet cafes for a few days.
      However, there certainly were available in most major towns a few years ago. Slow, but functional. Don't know how censored they were.

    • Re:Censorship? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just to help you increase your knowledge about Laos, it is one of the many countries that have been screwed over by the US in the last century.

      (This information was brought to you by the non-ignorant rest of the world)
      • I second that. I live in a city (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) that is approximately 15% Hmong refugees and their descendants. The Hmong is/was an ethnic group that was "compelled" by the CIA and DoD to help the United States defeat the North Vietnamese. They were a pacifist farming community before we showed up. Now their society is destroyed. The CIA denies most of the atrocities that respected Hmong leaders insist happened...I tend to believe the Hmong. None of them can go back home, and there are still tens of

    • Re:Censorship? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mplex ( 19482 )
      Most Laotians don't even know their government exists.

      • Re:Censorship? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's not quite true: cf Amnesty International's Report on Laos. http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2002.nsf/asa/laos!Op e n

        "Freedom of expression, association and religion continued to be severely restricted. Strict controls on information prevented adequate international and local monitoring of the human rights situation. At least three prisoners of conscience and two political prisoners remained in cruel, inhuman or degrading conditions of detention. People continued to be arrested and harassed for their Chr

  • ugh.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:18PM (#5895696) Homepage Journal
    I can only sit in horror as I realize the idiocy that is to come once Stallman gets a Laotian dictionary and find their word for "GNU/Laonix".

  • waste of money (Score:2, Interesting)

    by YllabianBitPipe ( 647462 )
    Even Bill Gates knows this: you'll get more bang for your buck if you give people in third world countries food, water and decent health care, then decent places to live, then decent jobs, transportation, education, basic human rights, THEN television and the internet. Otherwise I fail to see the purpose of this other than a novelty act so some people can get their project in the paper.

    • Re:waste of money (Score:4, Interesting)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:35PM (#5895878) Homepage Journal
      not true.
      You can educate yourself on how to do thse thing via the internet. WIring to the internet gives people the opportunity to make ther eown money. It enables them to set up a paypal account so more people can donate money for those things. IT allows the users to find orginization to help them get immunization. teach them proper water handling, and purifing techniques.
      They can fight for basic humn rights, they can orginize.

      Have people become so complacent with porn and mp3s that they have forgotten the real power of the internet is empowerment?

      OTOH I suppose this village could host a porn site.
      we got the same thing as all the other porn sites, but your 20 bucks a month helps feed our children. heh.
      • right. how many non-geeks do you know that use the net to actually enlighten themselves? How many folks do you know that when they first signed onto AOL thought, "hey now I can just download all of the federalist papers".

        its my opinion that the last thing these folks need is the corruption of the internet. lets say their lives suck ass. basic sanitation would probably help alot more than JenniCam.

        • Re:waste of money (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @06:32PM (#5896499)
          "its my opinion that the last thing these folks need is the corruption of the internet"

          One mans corruption is another mans.... exercise left for the reader.

          I wonder about this. One of the best ways to motivate people is to piss them off. If all you have in your third world village is state sponsored radio it's entirely possible you simply wouldn't know just how horribly bad you have it. I am convinced that most third world inhabitants are just plain ignorant of their relative condition. Even third world people who aren't dirt poor were staggered when Baghdad fell. They honestly believed Iraq had the means to defeat US forces, because they've been told so all their lives. When McDonalds first opened in Moscow, the patrons were often impressed with the quality of the food! What if the truth is that by providing uncensored access you do the greatest good by way of raising expectations?

          Lord knows nothing else seems to work. The left would have us believe there is some unknown amount of money us selfish westerners are supposed to be using to make it all better. The right offers platitudes about boot straps. Why not give these people something to be angry about by showing them just how bad off they are? Being pissed off is often very motivational.

          • Re:waste of money (Score:5, Insightful)

            by RestiffBard ( 110729 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @07:14PM (#5896993) Homepage
            ...another man's imperialist running dog propoganda.

            First off, people in the third world are quite aware that the US is loaded. Its shoved down their throats to the point that the myths of America told 2 and 3 hundred years ago are still believed. The roads may not be paved with gold but everyone is as beautiful as Jennifer Aniston and has a bitchin' apartment.

            But, what I'm saying, what I'd prefer, is that if we're going to help them in any way lets not help them to be us. Let's help them enough so that they can figure out who they are.

            How sad would it be that all the world is America? How boring? I'm in no way saying that I want them to remain a quaint village we can all visit and take pictures of. It would just be nice if they could remain the people they are at the core but be able to reap those benefits of technology they deemed useful.

            America is like crack. We use peer pressure to push ourselves on the unsuspecting masses. "See, America is great, cold icy drinks come out of a tap in the wall! you need to be just like us to enjoy the benefits of the almighty slurpee."

            I'm not a self-hater. I love America. I think of myself as a patriot in the unperverted sense of the word. I think America is great for me. I just don't think America is great for the rest of the world. If you want to come here fine but, don't clone our world. Don't make a doppleganger of Britney. Do your own thing. If you need a hand ask, I'll gladly help out.

            Don't destroy your world to be like ours. Part of being American is being able to enjoy other worlds. It would suck if all the worlds were the same wouldn't it?

            didn't mean to get off on a rant there.
  • compression is Laosless.
    buda b=ing, buda boom.
    I'll be here all week!Tip the wait staff.

  • Poll connection? (Score:4, Funny)

    by GQuon ( 643387 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @06:21PM (#5896372) Journal
    Slashdot Poll
    Favorite Shutdown Method? [slashdot.org]
    • Start/shutdown
    • Ctrl-Alt-Del
    • Press button on box/power strip
    • shutdown -h now
    • Ctrl-Command-Option-Power
    • Wait for power outage
    • Cat chews through cord
    • Just stop pedaling


    Has this story been sitting in the queue long enough for the poll to be made? No, the poll is almost a week older than the Wired story.

    So the new poll people are both pre-scient and don't care about CowboyNeal? Mommy, I'm scared.

  • It would be so much better if... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by image53 ( 543653 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @06:26PM (#5896420) Homepage
    ...these guys actually knew what they were doing.

    I first heard about these guys on slashdot last year. I went and worked with them in Laos. And, what I thought was a bad situation went from bad to worse.

    Sure, Laonux is cool -> anything to make technology accessible to more people. But the whole remote IT project was fundamentally flawed.

    No planning to speak of. No actual understanding of the conditions. No testing. No risk analysis. And a manager with a head so into marketing he couldn't get his nose out of it for long enough to realize that he was biting off more than he could chew. All he saw was an opportunity to make money off of it for his foundation.

    It was essentially conceived as a vehicle to do a couple of things:

    Obtain fortune for the techies working on it. Obtain fame for the JHAI project in lao to get it more funding. Turn into a business opportunity for everyone when it was hugely successful.

    The first launch was a complete sham (and a failure) -> there were invites sent out to everybody and their cousin months before the launch date. At that point, nobody'd even bothered to try out the software involved on the eventual hardware. It failed essentially because they hadn't bothered to test it out. And, because the "lauch date" was so all important, instead of finishing it, everybody went home!

    This would have been a cool idea if:

    It had been planned in an effective way by people who had a clue.
    It had been made to benefit the Lao people instead of the people making it.
    If it had been built as something to last, instead of the best that they could come up with.

    Now, they're trying to do it again. But, they still haven't spent the adequate amount of time planning and testing, and yet they're setting a launch date and inviting all the relevant people. And it's going to fail.

    My guess, is that they'll have the whole thing work, limpingly, on the launch date. Then, nobody will be around who can actually maintain it, and it'll all break down within 4 months. All that effort wasted, and everybody who's been a part can put it on their resume and say "look, I've been selfless." Because they've put no resources into training people, or into any kind of backup. They're just doing like the dot com's... waiting for the crash, but completely surprised when it happens. Either that, or it'll be so buggy that nobody will ever bother using it.
    • Man that is so disappointing. My dream is to do a similar thing, either in Laos or in this Tibetan village in Nepal.

      So cool you went to Laos, I love that place and would go back in a heartbeat to work on something cool like that, but for the right reasons. This one village I stayed in for a while there I just informally taught english at night cos I had made a few friends and they would bring a bottle of Lao Lao and a small textbook and we would just hang out and teach each other.

      Magical times.

      Man what a
      • Well, if your dreams include Mongolia, you could check out Geekcorps, and see if they wanted people in your areas. I'm working with them in Ghana right now, and it's pretty cool. Check out:

        http://www.geekcorps.org

        or, for what it's like:

        http://www.geekhalla.org

        Cheers,
        Liam
        • That's funny, I'd heard you'd gotten kicked out of Accra after some of the shit you'd pulled in Vientiane. At least that's what the Site/Project leads said they were going to do when they called us about you.

          • Hmm, at least I don't have to make up crap to post on slashdot, Steve. What shit that I pulled? I don't even know WTF you're talking about. AFAIK, the only thing I did that got Lee Thorn's panties in a bunch was tell him he didn't have a clue technically (which he doesn't), and have a Lao girlfriend. And, I'm having a great time in Accra, thank you very much. I've also been invited to stay longer, 'cause they like having my expertise around. It's actually rather nice working on a volunteer project where pe
  • HANK: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
    KAHN: I live in California last twenty years, but first couple, Laos.
    HANK: Huh?
    KAHN: Laos. We Laotian.
    BILL: The ocean? What ocean?
    KAHN: We are Laotian. From Laos, stupid! It's a landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It's between Vietnam and Thailand, okay? Population 4.7 million.

    HANK: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
  • I see a new meaning for "all-night LAN party marathon"
  • Sorry Guys I been working on IT in Laos on and off 2 years and only know this
    Story from the Slashdot spin, but if true I hope that the pure Laos guys Get to learn English as the lao keys are not to be found any ware on the net, btw most
    Far located jungle towns in Laos has a general issue with reading in the first place.

    Anyway Welcome to some hundred more targets for SPAM and radical Sex ads.

  • Just got back from Laos (Score:3, Informative)

    by dracocat ( 554744 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @09:12PM (#5897803)
    I just got back from Laos a couple months ago, and I have to say I am surprised they even know what a computer is outside the Vientiene. If they can pull this off, then I'll be really impressed, and will even want to go check it out next time. But seriously, there is NOTHING in Laos, and while I applaud the effort of starting to build some sort of information infrastructure, and doing it a clever way at that, these villiges need more than Internet.

    Ok, some viliger starts a business and decides to start selling something, the roads aren't even drivable half the year! How will they get it out of the country!

    Now, this is an interesting read for its technical merits, and on that alone I am interested in it and wish them luck--but this isn't going to change the country like I thought the author of the article was trying to imply.

    So will somebody being posting a map to this place? When is the next user's meet? We should all go show our support and vote with our kip, baht, or dollars.
    • Are you American?
    • If you dig down, they've got maps on the site... It's actually not that hard to get to, partly because it's only an hour and a half drive out of town. There's a stretch of bad road for 4KM to Pohn Kham, but that's no big deal.

      The thing is, this is not a needy, remote village. This is a right village in a rich province of Lao. They even have electricity now -> the wires were strung up earlier this year, so the Pedal Power is almost irrelevant (although, with electricity what it is there, having the bat
    • But seriously, there is NOTHING in Laos

      Perhaps because the US dropped thousands of tons of bombs on them? Google around. What the US did to Laos was absolutely unconscionable.

  • not to lose all credibilty here, but i must know - how much of the Laos population has a) a computer, b) the knowledge to use said computer, and c) the will/$$ to use that computer. I freely admit I dont know much about that country at all, but if its anything like I think of it, this is gonna be a waste. thoughts people?
  • It sounds like they needed to use a hardware engineer as well as the software folks. A properly designed supply should have protected the hard drives from the power spike. A bicycle powered generator does not generate reliable 120 volt 60 cycle power. I wonder if they were trying to run the whole thing off a car alternator. Without a battery to buffer the output, rapid changes in RPM do cause rapid swings in output voltage.
    A properly designed power supply for this application would include a battery, a

  • Power surge? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NaveWeiss ( 567082 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @06:13AM (#5899776) Homepage Journal
    The article didn't explain what kind of power surge was that.. I mean, I'd have understood if it was a normal power surge due to an electricity grid problem or a lightning, but the guys are using a bycicle as a generator. How can you make a power surge with that?

    I think that powering it with a bicycle is a silly gimmick anyway. They should use solar power like normal humans do.

    Btw: I am looking for a girlfriend.
  • The .la [www.la] country code domain for Laos is now claiming for marketing purposes to be the domain for Los Angeles...

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