Software distribution in remote area's.........interesting point<br><br>It's possible , I've been thinking of the following idea's.<br><br>http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/31/unamplified-wifi-distance-record-set-at-125-miles/<br><br>if you can work with governments to relax their tx power output regulations for ISM bands, then your only limits are the curvature of the earth! nice....<br>It's all done with stuff you can get from pc world.... (el cheapo).<br><br>These require little power, and can be run off solar/battery<br><br>http://www.green-wifi.org/ have some solutions<br><br>more for cities, than rural. however...<br><br>I've done some work in this area, it works!!! (well)<br><br>Also, <br><br>http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/<br><br>I've been toying with the idea of using long range radio, and modulating data<br>over it, it would'nt be quick, but for develiering software update delta's. it<br>may work nicely. It's not two way, but you could archive entire
sites<br>(like wikipedia) and transmit them over long range radio.<br><br>Imagine what you could do with a Satellite HDTV channel, say if sky allocated<br>one HDTV channel to the delivery of data , (files etc etc). then you could<br>receive all the data you even need, using a fairly cheap consumer dish<br>setup and modified gnu radio HDTV receiver. I'm not quite sure how many<br>gig's you can get down a HDTV channel in one day?<br><br>Imagine Cefax, on Steroids!!! ;-) <br><br>Also, just to clear up something that's been bugging me, Free software<br>has nothing to do with price, that's a common mistake by newbies.<br><br>http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html<br><div> <q>Free software</q> is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of <q>free</q> as in <q>free speech,</q> not as in <q>free beer.</q> </div>So, <insert friendly corporation here> can supply 'free (cost)' tools, it doesn't make it free software, you
still can't modify the software, and then distribute<br>those changes to others. The API's are still locked, you can't suggest<br>additions or modifications to those , they are secret. in fact TRADE SECRETS.<br><br>So, Free is about freedom to do what ever you want with the software.<br><br>I think it's very important to send 'free' software to children, it's a good<br>ethos to learn. They can have, however the freedom to run non free software<br>if they so wish.<br><br>Should children at young ages be protected from global brands? Until<br>they are at an age they have enough knowledge to choose on their own.<br><br>If I want to have a look inside my kernel, and see how something works,<br>I can, I think that whole freedom to learn should be given to kids. Not,<br>the current stop asking questions , and trust us ethos. Why should<br>children be told it's illegal (DCMA) to explore 'your laptop'. If I reverse<br>engineer a proprietary kernel, I could be deemed a
criminal, Do we want<br>criminalize children in the third world, when they start taking thier software<br>to pieces....<br><br>Beware of open source, open source is not free software, open source means<br>you can see the source code, but you can't modify that source code, and<br>distribute copies of it, bit it's certainly a step in the right direction. Major<br>players could open source their products tomorrow, it still won't be free software.<br><br>Maybe History will teach us that the only viable free piece of software is actually<br>the kernel and operating system. Perhaps thats what has great value today,<br>will have no 'monetary' value in the future. A device driver is useless without<br>the hardware (you buy the hardware). However, if you have an open kernel,<br>it's much harder to enforce locks such a DRM.<br> <br>a door is either open and closed, can you have a half open door? when it's<br>ajar... GPL is really there to stop people from shutting<br>the
door after you've walked thought it. <br><br>see, you thought the future was about windows, in fact it's about doors.<br><br>Free software might have it's critics, not all aspects of software need to be<br>free, but in education, it's different, it's not an office, it's not a production<br>environment, it's a learning environment. The use of non-free software in<br>education should be prevented, you should let the users choose, not<br>bodies taking backhanders and sweeteners from corporates. <br><br>Cheers,<br>Lee<br>'look ma I only mentioned Microsoft once in this post, that's how irrelevant they are'<br><br><br><br><b><i>Andrew Clayton <andrew@digital-domain.net></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:29:41 -0800, Gary Short wrote:<br><br>> -------- Original Message --------<br>> > From: Robert McWilliam <rmcw@allmail.net><br>> > Sent: 22
January 2008 13:38<br>> > To: dundee@mailman.lug.org.uk<br>> > Subject: Re: [dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!<br>> > <br>> <br>> > Same way the device itself gets there. You send it preloaded with<br>> > useful stuff. <br>> <br>> Of course, but (hopefully) there will be new software added to the<br>> catalogue of available software at regular intervals. Very soon the<br>> first laptops will become "out of date" and after time, there will<br>> (again hopefully) be so much software that it can't all be housed on<br>> the hard drive of just one machine. At that point you have to have a<br><br>That would be the flash memory. There's no hard drive as that would be<br>at least too power hungry and too fragile <br><br>> process whereby new software can be cascaded down to even the most<br>> remote village. If you don't have such a scheme then you run the risk<br>> of creating a two tier community - those with access
to the central<br>> repository (though this repository could easily be distributed) and<br>> those who do not.<br><br>One idea I heard was that updates could be tricked down through the<br>mesh networking.<br><br>Possibly also updates could take the form delta packages whereby only<br>the changed files are shipped not the whole package. Like the yum<br>presto project with their delta rpms.<br><br>Andrew<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>dundee GNU/Linux Users Group mailing list<br>dundee@lists.lug.org.uk http://dundee.lug.org.uk<br>https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee<br>Chat on IRC, #tlug on dundee.lug.org.uk<br></rmcw@allmail.net></blockquote><br><p> 
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