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Wireless Networking Hardware

The Internet by Motorbike 160

Posted by michael from the honda-express dept.
MrHatken writes "An interesting combination of wireless, wheels, and store-and-forward email: 'In Cambodia, motorbikes act as routers for a store-and-forward email system: The New York Times reports on a system that allow remote villages in Cambodia to send and receive email via Wi-Fi-equipped motorbikes. The Motoman system converges in the provincial capital where a satellite-enabled school uploads and downloads email for the remote recipients. The system is funded in part through U.S. benefactors who aren't just sending money; they're spending time there as well, and helping to improve the quality of medicine and people's livelihoods.'"
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The Internet by Motorbike More

The Internet by Motorbike

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  • this is news? (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Clockwork Troll ( 655321 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:02AM (#8143018) Journal
    wi-fi has been a standard features on harley-linksys-davidsons for several years now.

    • Re:this is news? (Score:5, Funny)

      by shadowmas ( 697397 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:20AM (#8143060)
      This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed due to a flat tire. someone@cambodia.net

    • This is *no* news (Score:3, Informative)

      by BESTouff ( 531293 )
      As most of you know, it's been done already [cnet.com] for ages, using pigeons instead of motorbikes. The IP-over-Pigeons technology even has itw own RFC [ietf.org], which of course predates the implementation. Talk about a mature technology !

      • I believe that motorcycles are a short-term solution, until Avian 'flu has been eradicated ;)

      • Re:This is *no* news (Score:2, Informative)

        by Ulven ( 679148 )
        There is a company in Australia that actually uses pigeons to carry data.

        They run tours in some remote caves where dialup is the only option, and even that isn't reliable. Their problem is that they take digital photos of their clients, and want to have them printed before the clients arrive back at the main base.

        The solution? They send the camera's memory sticks by pigeon.

        IIRC, the biggest problem is hawks.

        I'm sure the above was posted here on /. last year sometime.

  • WTF? (Score:5, Funny)

    by asscroft ( 610290 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:07AM (#8143027)
    WTF? Someone just woke up one day and said, "Know what bob? I'm a gonna go to Cambodia. That's right. Cambodia."

    "What are you gonna do in Cambodia?"

    "I don't know. But I think I'm gonna ride a motorbike."

    "A motorbike?"

    nods.

    "In Cambodia?"

    "Right."

    "wow. Why?"

    "I think I'll use it to send email. You know, there's a lack of email in Cambodia. And there are lots of motorbikes. If we could just get a motorbike to help us send email, the people of Cambodia would be able to get Nigerian spam just like we do."

    "You know, now that you've put it that way, it sounds like a good idea. Motorbike, email, Cambodia, spam. Can I go with?"

    "Well of course, Bob. I wouldn't have it any other way."

  • Data Redundancy Plan (Score:4, Funny)

    by maliabu ( 665176 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:07AM (#8143030)
    do they have redundancy plan in case those motorbikes are stolen or damaged in accidents?

  • is this a dupe? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:08AM (#8143031) Journal
    Wasn't this story already reported, like a month or two ago?

    It sounds extremely familiar....

    RS

  • base necessities (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vargul ( 689529 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:10AM (#8143035) Journal
    so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example... or at least the benefactors think so...

    • It is! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kinniken ( 624803 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:22AM (#8143070) Homepage
      so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example... or at least the benefactors think so...

      Two years or so ago I visited Tami Nadu, a poor state in the south of India... Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India), you would find a place offering dirst-cheap internet acces (typically 2 or 3 computers sharing a 33.6k line). People there had taken to using that instead of phone because it was much, much cheaper! It allowed for exemple parents who had a son or daughter studying or working in an other city to contact him at a fraction of the cost of a phone call. It also allowed farmers to have up-to-date information on market price for their product or to ask for the delivery of fertiliser or spare parts for those who had a truck, or to know when one of their relative living in a city had an opening for a temporary job (at a building site, for exemple). It was amazingly useful - and it was not designed for tourists. Though we were happy to use the places, we were often the only foreigners the guy in charge of the place had had for clients this year. And while it was slow, for text emails a 33.6 line is more than enough. You really wanted to kill spammers there though - downloading 50 spam emails using broadband is annoying, but on a shared 33.6k line it's a real pain ;-)

      People who reacts to article like that by saying that internet is a luxury are missing the fact that basic internet services like emails or simple websites are in practice often the cheapest way to communicate - you get far more information out of your phone line. And even poor farmers in third-world countries need to communicate, if only to the nearest city. Internet is more than just a greater provider of pr0n and pirated music...

      • correction (Score:3, Informative)

        by Kinniken ( 624803 )
        I wrote: Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India)

        I meant: Even in the smallest towns (say, 20k inhabitants which is nothing in India) ;-)
      • kindda funny... i mean in Hungary which is _not_ a third-world country at all there are villages in plenty where one can not get a place such as one you write about in india... and more fustrating, people dont know what they lack there in the sense of cheap and direct communication... it is just like you wrote they think internet is luxury...

      • Re:It is! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mr.hawk ( 222616 )
        I was travelling extensively in Asia between 1998 and 2001 and was awed by the incredible increase in the number of internet places + price drop. Unfortunately, as you say, spam makes it almost impossible to use email on a 33.6 line. Even accessing my mail remotely using pine I'd have to spend about an hour to just clear out all the spams.
        Carrying a laptop on my second trip made a huge difference as I could just drop all my mails into a file, gzip it and download that. Sending mail was just as easy. Just gz

      • Tamil Nadu is not a poor state (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Hi,
        just a correction
        Tamil Nadu is not a poor state at all. It is one of the most prosperous state in agriculture and technology. Just see in US how many indians are from that state. Its capital chennai is also one of the 4 metros in india
  • No, really -- talk about the Pony Express.

  • Spam (Score:4, Funny)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:12AM (#8143040) Journal
    Lets just hope they don't get spam-flooded like the rest of us (unless they're delivering "food"). It'd be a real downer to wait for the iBike to arrive, just to be told how to enlarge your penis...

    Simon

  • Temporary Solution? (Score:5, Funny)

    by maliabu ( 665176 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:13AM (#8143045)
    just hope this is a temporary solution rather than their long-term plan.

    otherwise, they can go as far as providing high speed internet connection at $9.95 per month on a 500cc bike and a low speed plan at $2.95 per month on a 50cc bike. and very soon they'll propose to build better road, maybe highway so that information can be moved around more quickly.

  • Here's the official press release ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sara Chan ( 138144 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:16AM (#8143055)
    The official press release on Motoman is copied below.
    ________________________________________

    MODEL FOR THE WORLD: DIGITAL DIVIDE CLOSED IN CAMBODIAN VILLAGES WHERE E-MAIL IS DELIVERED by WI-FI on a MOTORBIKE

    Thirteen remote, medically deprived and impoverished Cambodian villages are being transformed into healthier, more prosperous and knowledgeable societies thanks to a mobile e-mail and limited Internet linked system which its innovators say "has closed the digital divide."

    The villages in Ratanakiri, bordering Vietnam and Laos and populated by ethnic minorities have no postal system, nor access to phones, radio, TV or newspapers. Per capita income average $37 a year and they is no electricity nor piped water. But since September 1 they have had access to the Internet through an e-mail pick up and delivery service that has introduced telemedicine, e-commerce and participatory democracy to people who have had no contact with the world and even their own country up to now.

    Each village had a school built in the past year through contributions from private donors (www.cambodiaschools.com ) with matching funds from the World and Asian Development Banks. Each school has solar panels that provide sufficient energy to run a donated computer some six hours a day. A computer/English teacher, trained at the Future Light Orphanage in the capital of Phnom Penh, instructs the village children in these skills which enables them to send e-mail to other children on the network in the province, or to anywhere in the world, including the school donors and their children in the U.S, U.K. and Japan.

    The young teacher also acts as the village postman by reporting sick persons to the Provincial Referral Hospital by e-mail with digital photo attachments of digital photos showing a patient's symptoms, ailments or wounds. Such information can also be sent to specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical school who have joined the project to provide diagnoses and medical guidance.

    One of the most dramatic benefits of the "Internet Village Motoman" project as it is coined, is its introduction of participatory democracy. Villagers for the first time are able to connect directly with the governor by sending him e-mail with grievances and requests. The governor who is a strong supporter of this project has linked his office with a mobile delivery receiving unit (Mobile Access Point) so he can receive messages from the villages and respond to them.

    The system uses five donated Honda motorcycles, equipped with a small box on the back seat that receives and transmits stored e-mail through the wireless (wi-fi) system. The Hondas delivering and receiving its mail on five routes, five days a week, begin their route early in the morning by stopping at the satellite dish (hub) located at the Ezra Vogel Special Skills schools that is joined to provincial referal hospital in Banlung. As the Hondas move from village to village they pass the schools which have a similar box and antenna, where e-mail has been stored. When the motorbike passed the school the data moves wirelessly in three seconds two-ways and the school has received and sent its stored mail.

    Most of the equipment for this pilot project (which is about to be expanded to two more regions of Cambodia, Preah Vihear and Siem Reap), has been donated: the satellite dish and Internet link by Thai-Com/Shin Satellite; motorcycles by Honda; solar panels and digital cameras by Sanyo, and startup costs with a grant of $18,000 by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation of Japan. But it can now be replicated in Cambodia relatively economically. The cost of a satellite dish through the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, along with a license to operate it, is $2,500 and a 24-hour 256 Kb/s Thai -Com Satellite uplink is $285 a month. Some 15-20 schools could be linked to such a hub

    The system can be made sustainable by providing the motormen (or vehicle drivers) side income in delivering or picking up equipment and passengers on

  • Why stop? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ratso Baggins ( 516757 )
    Why stop at WiFi, I'm sure they could use PDAs (simputers) and even iPods (Hell I know I could). Maybe they'll be the first with real WiFi iPods? email generally needs a terminal at both ends.

  • Reinventing the wheel (pun intended) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:36AM (#8143095)
    motorbikes act as routers for a store-and-forward email system

    I know a very similar store-and-forward messaging system that has the same kind of throughput and latency, has been working very well indeed for the longest time, and doesn't require people on the non-internet-connected dinky village side to have a computer : it's called the mail. The store-and-forward delivery system is called a postman ...

    • Re:Reinventing the wheel (pun intended) (Score:5, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:55AM (#8143128)
      The problem being, or course, that they have no postal service in the relevant locations.

      Postal service requires the carrying of literally tons of mail, which requires buildings, personel to do the sorting, loading etc, but most of all it requires trucks and the improved roads to carry them.

      A motorbike with a Linksys strapped to the seat can go where where a postal truck can't and only requires a single person to run the show.

      I was once living in a little Mexican village only 50 miles from the nearest post office. It took the truck 14 hours to cover that 60 miles. Postal service was not what you could call regular. A 30 year old Hodaka Wombat could have covered the same route in about 6 hours.

      And that was on what would be considered an improved road in much of Cambodia.

      KFG
    • If the USPO hears you, paper mail service will halt! Imagine post that can be carried by anyone with a standard box, that sorts itself and leaps out of the box on it's own as you drive by. Terrorism? Ha! try to spread anthrax or send letter bombs by email. No, my friend, now that you know how much better and easier this is than regualar paper mail, you can not live.

  • If those bikes happen to be sponsored by AOL I will cry. Way to introduce a third-world (or is it second now?) to the joys of e-mail, namely SPAM.

    E-mail to me doesn't seem a necessity in places where people rarely leave the village, let alone the country. Besides, how are you supposed to GET the e-mail address of someone if you don't have an internet connection? Let me guess, you write them a letter with your address included...

    • Re:Oi Ve (Score:2, Funny)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
      Since they're using an off-the-Internet store and forward system, I wonder if that email address would need a !bang path? (Perhaps a bang-bang path if the motorcycle is running rough.) UUCP lives on.

    • Besides, how are you supposed to GET the e-mail address of someone if you don't have an internet connection? Let me guess, you write them a letter with your address included...

      Well, yes, actually. Only, you wouldn't send it on paper - you'd send it to the designated operator in a particular village, and ask them to ensure delivery to a particular person. Their name and location becomes their address. We had a conceptually similar system in most western countries for decades - only instead of laptops on m

    • E-mail to me doesn't seem a necessity in places where people rarely leave the village

      Yes, and the claim that they were inaccessable to radio doesn't ring terribly true to me. Given the solar cells to drive a computer "6 hours a day", I think they'd be better off using tropospheric scatter propogation and a 5kW radio station in the nearest (up to several hundred km? It's been a while, but IIRC freqs in the 4-8MHz range work well for such) city and pumping out hygenie, argricultural, language, etc educationa

      • Re:Oi Ve (Score:2, Interesting)

        by swiesen ( 747860 )
        Along with the practical applications of such a system, consider also the following benefits...

        School children and teachers will be able to research educational web sites to further their education. Local farmers will be able to communicate with other villages and towns to sell their crops to interested buyers, and vice versa. Villagers that require assistance will be able to order groceries and supplies from other towns that could deliver the goods to the village. Sick people, through the help the vill

  • Not so new... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This isn't such a new idea - in the early eighties email to and from Australia was stored on tape and flown in and out of the US once a week.
  • 1. "Damnit! The internet crashed again!" (motorcycle wrecks into sheep)

    2. Someone carjacks you, along with your signal! (sheep takes your wheels)

    3. Knowing that a bunch of pringles cans would prove easier than motorcycles.

  • The irony here is absolutely phenomenal... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 10101001011 ( 744876 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @06:58AM (#8143136) Homepage
    The equipment that they built for cents a unit ends up being resold to them for huge markup values. Sure they have benefactors but they still have to pay a heck of a lot more than cents a unit. Yeah, this is the thing that this country really needs...how about food, an infastructure that they built - not benefactors, compassion and respect. This is just kind of, well, stupid.

    Bob: Hey Charlie, you know what Cambodia needs?

    Charlie: Doctors?

    Bob: Nah!

    Charlie: Food?

    Bob: No way, they have plenty of rice!

    Charlie: Respect from the global community?

    Bob: Charlie, we are the strongest country i the world, respect ain't in our vocabulary!

    Charlie: Well I give up then!

    Bob: E-mail!

    Charlie: I'm moving to Chile...
    • The equipment that they built for cents a unit ends up being resold to them for huge markup values.

      Well, it wouldn't exactly be the "rural village" with the "occasional ox cart" where they built high-tech parts for a few cents, would it?

    • Re:The irony here is absolutely phenomenal... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @08:43AM (#8143301)
      Charlie, we are the strongest country i the world

      I don't suppose you noticed that they got schools first, all the internet equipment was donated by their neighbor, Thailand, who well understand the local economy, needs, wants and special enviromental issues of the area and also have plenty of rice (which is even what the well to do folk in the cities eat in that part of the world) with additional equipment and monies coming from Japan?

      This is a local show. We aren't part of it. They're taking care of their own, their own way.

      I think we might at least have the decency to leave them to it without poking them with pointy sticks.

      KFG
    • Yeah, I know all of my cheap electronics comes with a giant "Made in Cambodia" stamped on it.

      Come on, cheap electronics is made in a place where you have a highly-educated (compared to a place like extremely-rural Cambodia) technically-minded but still rather cheap populace. This is a place like China, not Bumfuck, Cambodia.
    • I think you're kind of missing the point...

      These are rural farming areas. They're not starving. Most of South East Asia has rich soil (or marsh land) for growing rice, soy, and whatever else they may need to eat. Compare that to parts of Africa where people ARE starving because they're in the middle of a desert where food crops won't grow.

      Adding effective global communication to the mix allows farmers to market their crops more effectively in a global market. It gives them access to weather forcasts a
    • In addition to the other replies, they also sell scarfs over the internet made in these remote villages. Here's where your cash goes:

      The villagers for Robib are deeply appreciative of your support. Local salaries are paid to the weavers and spinners of silk items. The equipment are building where they work was donated (see Generous Supporters). Profits from sales go into a fund that is establishing a modest agriculture project in Robib, pig and chicken raising, to provide more employment for villagers. Th

  • In Cambodia, motorbikes act as routers for a store-and-forward email system

    Did anyone else read the first two words as 'In Canada'?

    • Re:Frightening... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nah, we use the GOOSE option: since the geese migrate every fall we write up a bunch of e-mails and store them until fall. We them have to go and capture a goose with our bare hands and use seal fat to adhere the e-mails (written by hand of course) to the goose. We then have to walk home which is usually 60-70 miles away and it is UPHILL both ways!
  • of the famous quote:

    "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes."
    --Dennis Ritchie (attr.)


    Of course, this is on a slightly smaller scale, but I'm pretty sure that the quote fits.

    ~UP
    • This sort of thing is actually done on a much larger scale than a station wagon in real-life. For some reason Banks and Insurance companies with enormous amounts of data like to move their outsourced data storage facilities from company to company and place to place every so often - usually to cut down on running costs.

      The method usually utilised is along the lines of - how much of the data can they do without for 12 hours? Sync the stuff they can't do without between the old and new centres over a leased

    • "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes."

      --Dennis Ritchie (attr.)

      Or in this case "... a saddlebag full of hard drives."

  • That's nothing! (Score:5, Informative)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:00AM (#8143145) Homepage Journal
    IP over avian carriers was first proposed [faqs.org] in 1990, refined [faqs.org] in 1999, and implemented [linux.no] in 2001.

    Pigeons [bbc.co.uk] were used instead of email in India until 2002.

    Avian carriers are used commercially even today [stuff.co.nz] to deliver digital photographs.


    • Here I go, posting it [slashdot.org] like it's a big joke, and look, it's already been freakin' implelemted!

      So hard to come up with a new killer app these days...:-D

      • Implelelelelelelelmemtde. Blahhhhhhhhh.

        Even "Preview" isn't my friend today.
        • From my personal experience I can say that preview often ain't worth squat if the reason your post is buggered in the first place is because you're dyslexic.

          "Ok, let's proof that."

          Teh quick brown fox fumped over the lazy god.

          "Yep. Poifect!"

          (You have to be a dyslexic touch typist to understand the "fumped")

          KFG

          • Sometimes when not looking I will tube words that aren't even close but start with the same letter or something. It's actually quite odd, I'm not sure exactly what it would be called...

            ..and let's not forget teh Freudian slips to the ex girlfriend when she prings up our relationship and I try to make valid points abou tit...
    • And of course an American pigeon was once awarded a specially struck Croix de Guerre (bearing the image of a pigeon) and damned well should have gotten a purple heart, if not the CMOH. But I guess we just aren't as romantic about these things as the French.

      Cher Ami [k12.ny.us]

      KFG
  • talk about pollution ! If the email can be transported by motor bike, then the distances musn't be much, how much would a simple cable connecting the different villages cost ? People should help/invest in getting them a proper infrastructure (electricity, phones, simple internet terminals). Now that people are switching to flat screens, I'm sure old computer hardware can be useful to such countries.
    • Well, they already have roads, and motorbikes. Why not use the existing infrastructure? The bikes are going to be a drop in the bucket pollution wise and it would take a lot of biker miles to create as much pollution as construction equipment to bury cable or put up poles.

  • Upgrades announced (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:04AM (#8143152) Journal

    REUTERS - Cambodian officials have just announced an innovative plan to upgrade their WiFi/motorcycle based Internet routing system. "We well be focusing on cost, capacity, food consumption, and, most of all; reliability," said the Cambodia's manager of Information and Communications, Sum Gai.

    The new plan calls for recordable DVDs taped to carrier pigeons to replace the motorcyclists. "They eat less and we don't have to pay them, they can go farther and faster and in a more direct line than the motorbikes can," claimed Gai. "Not only that, but they're really cute. I have three and they're darlings." According to Gai, contractors are already lining up, despite the early stage of planning. "3M called us with a very lucrative offer on discount bulk duct tape, and of course all the major recordable DVD manufacturers are squabbling over which format is superior for pigeon-based transit," said Gai.

    Officials plan to release a full proposal to the press next week.

  • The Information (Score:3, Funny)

    by 10101001011 ( 744876 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:06AM (#8143155) Homepage
    Gives new meaning to "the information super highway". In this case that would be a highway in a third world country with pot holes. Gotta say, might have been better if they used 4x4s, I mean at least there you have redundancy systems.

  • Industry anybody? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is the lamest idea that I have ever heard. Is e-mail really what Cambodia needs? No. What Cambodia really needs is some non-agrarian jobs. It needs some industry. When it has some industry then it will have the money and incentive to build some infrastructure including better transportation and the Internet. Then they will have to power to do it themselves which will make it much better for them anyway. So next time that somebody considers outsourcing your job to India, maybe you should suggest
    • I'd say that as simple and relatively inexpensive as the scheme sounds, it should certainly be worth at least a try. I'm sure it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the current Rover mission, for all *that* does to directly benefit the third world.

      Communication and education are necessary ingredients in the transition to an industrial society. One of those emails could include a whole lesson on some vital skill or area of interest to a young Cambodian child, prepared by a volunteer school system in Paris or New

  • Sounds like the way APRS works... (Score:4, Informative)

    by ivi ( 126837 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:12AM (#8143165)
    The nifty AX.25 packet radio based Auto Packet Reporting System (APRS) enables each station in a network to act as a packet repeater, so that stations that can't communicate directly, can do so via other stations [& digipeaters], as necessary.

    C.f. the White Paper at:

    http://vk6.aprs.net.au/ukaprswp.pdf

  • I want one for National Parks in the US (Score:3, Funny)

    by AnotherSteve ( 447030 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:32AM (#8143194)
    Someday, I want a motorhome, so that I can tool around to National Parks in the US and still be able to have refrigerated salsa and my Playstation 2. And in this dream, I also have wireless networking between my motorhome and other motorhomes in the campground, and there are hotspots at the dumping station and at ranger stations and at nearby truckstops, so that as I'm cruising around the country, I can keep getting email, do a little surfing, and for the webcam mounted on the dash to send updates out to the blog. And if the folks in the next campsite have the same system in their motorhome, then we can have a lan party, until it is time for the Park Ranger to talk about wolf ecology over at the campfire.
    • In a few months, you may get your wish. Looks like the AARL has finally realized that ham radio is dieing because most hams are dead and doing something about it.

      Here [arrl.org] is an article highlighting the proposed licensing changes. Finally, we can get rid of the stupid code requirements for HF bands. Maybe now we can get enough new users to set up some high speed long distance radio links.

      • That'd be cool. My Grandad and my uncle are both hams, but it never appealed to me. Grandpa is the reason I want a motorhome anyway, because I cherish the memories of camping with them when I was growing up. He always used to bring his portable radio unit along when he came to visit. He ran some wire across the peak of our roof for his antenna.

        But if I could push data through the night sky instead of garbled, squawking chit-chat with my uncle, I'd be into it. Thanks for the link!
    • WiFi at campgrounds is already happening [wired.com]. Cool stuff, too.... :)

      SB

  • Cool! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31, 2004 @07:37AM (#8143202)
    This is great.

    When I order pizza, it comes by motorcycle. Now the same bike brings the internet too. My dream of ordering pizza on the internet has finally come true! Wait a minute...
  • I got a feeling of deja vu reading this - I'm a Science Fiction writer, and I have a system in my universe where spaceships/planets handle communications the same way. Communications between star systems aren't possible, but ships carrying packets of data (duplicated across multiple ships) arrive, disgorge, load up and somehow the whole mess of data resolves itself.

    Even though my books are humour, and I don't explicitly detail the comms method above, that's what I have to abide by. It does lead to worka
  • Wow the implications! Think of it! Instant Messaging... Errh wait...

    "Sorry, I sent the email but it ran out of gas... You'll get it tomorrow."
  • or even better how come I cant walk around and connect to the internet anywhere in the country? Isn't it time that we should be able to watch dvds, play video games, watch tv, listen to satellite radio, talk on our cellphones and surf the internet all while driving down the free way?

  • Cambodia - Cheap Fun (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WittyName ( 615844 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @09:00AM (#8143338)
    I spent seven months there last year. It was fun and CHEAP. For instance, rent was $60/month in Sihanoukville (port city on the coast, with beaches, etc.) and included cable TV with HBO etc. Meals are about a buck, for local food, 3-4 dollars for western food. Beers are 50 cents, pack of cigs is about the same. Internet cafes run about 75 cents an hour. Total bills about 400 a month, with rent, food, repairs, gas, beer, weed, cigs, ladies, etc...

    There are 4 paved highways in the country, creatively named Highway 1,2,3,4.. The rest of the country is dirt roads. Most of the motorcycles are Sanyangs, and Citi's all made from honda plans, in chinese factories. I miss my Sanyang 90. Many people think moped looking things are lame, but they do go for a week on a dollars worth of gas. And they do not break much. There are many places to fix them.. Imagine an Indy 500 pit crew. You pull in, explain what is wrong and six guys with wrenches descend upon your bike.. 20 minutes later a new piston ring is in place.

    Bigger bikes are usually dirt bikes. Knobby tires etc. The roads are BAD. During the rainy season (June - Oct) whole roads disappear. Nothing but mud. I loved it! Dirt bikes are a lot of fun, until you have an accident and the nearest hospital is 100km away.. I recommend spending 1500 on a dirt bike. Less than that you will fix it a LOT. All are stolen from japan, and none have a working lock..

    Weed is legal to buy, and many bars/restaurants have a jay or two being passed around at all times. Language is not a problem as 30% speak english, and Mandarin/cantonese. All places tourists are at speak GOOD english. Not like Thailand for instance. The people are friendly, IE a huge downpoor and I pulled over, and spent the night at thier place. They scrounged up a mosquito net and a bed, etc.

    Food is OK. I like Vietnamese, and Thai a lot better though. Seemed too sweet, and rarely spicy.

    sExpats seem to like it a lot, as everything goes, and cheaply. Going into a bar is good for the ego :) 20 Women on you in a second saying "Oooh, handsome man" and grabbing you.. $5 goes a looong way here. University girls wanting some extra cash. Go to the ports and the price is much lower I hear.

    Beware the expats running bars, etc. All of them are losing money subsizing backpackers from Europe and the scams are rife. Oddly the locals, who are indeed very poor, are quite honest. They will "scam" you by charging an extra 10 cents for a beer, and they love to haggle, but really, the expats are the problem.

    Not sure if this makes any sense as I am currently drunk in Xiamen China..

    ps. If you lose your job, go to asia. You can live a LONG time on very little money here, and with a VOIP box, you could do phone interviews for 10 cents a minute.

    • Very nice to get the inside dirt, as it were.

      I'm heading to the Phillipines in a few years, and preparing now by researching what its like to live there, etc.

      Any chance you can email me privately about this topic?

      Thanks for the info!

  • Nice idea but not what Cambodia needs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mart!n ( 747344 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @09:19AM (#8143388)

    I spent a month in Cambodia in 2001 and while an scheme like this has some merit its just not what they need.

    They have only one real road in the entire country from Sihanoukville (the only port) to Phnom Penh (the capital). People in remote areas have almost no access to medical care unless they are able to make a long (up to 10hrs) journey in the back of a pick-up over the worst tracks you have ever seen.

    A better use of the money would have been to fund road building programs, teams of visiting doctors / nurses and mobile clinics.

    As a side note if you *had* to get email out to the provices I would have thought expanding the countries mobile phone network coverage (which is already pretty good) would have been cheaper in the long run and no matter how slow the connection would still be faster than waiting for the bike to show.

    If you're interested in the type of projects that do work in Cambodia you may like to take a look at http://www.starfishcambodia.org [slashdot.org]

    • Yeah, sure it isn't a grand gesture and it isn't infrastructure you can put your hands on. On the other hand, look how much bang they're getting for their buck: The press release above says they spent $18,000 from a grant and they've got monthlies of a few hundred bucks a site? So call it $30,000, even $40,000 a year. You're not going to get much road for that, and only the village that gets the road is going to benefit. You might be able to fund one visiting team of clinicians for $40K, but again, tha
    • A better use of the money would have been to fund road building programs, teams of visiting doctors / nurses and mobile clinics.

      At least now if someone has a medical problem, they can email a doctor about it, and doctors can distribute medical advice to rural areas. As for roads, you obviously don't appreciate how phenomenally expensive they really are.

  • "First Mile" solutions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quixote ( 154172 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @09:35AM (#8143430) Homepage Journal
    Here's a website [firstmilesolutions.com] of interest. I don't know if it is mentioned in the article (what? this is slashdot! we don't RTFA here! ;-) ).

    I'm hoping this website isn't sitting on some guy's motorbike. Please be gentle, folks: we don't want to slashdot a biker.

  • ...don't read The Phnom Penh Post's Police Blotter [phnompenhpost.com] much. Otherwise, they'd know that the most dangerous place to be in all of Cambodia is "on a motorbike". Seriously, it's crazy stuff. Watch out for people wielding axes over there, too. Yikes!
  • Two years ago I had no Internet connection at home. All my email was transferred on floppies between home and office. I wrote four scripts for this purpose -- two for tar/split/tar of messages and another two for mount/cp/umount. Floppies are extremely unreliable these days, I've used two disks for redundancy.

    All of my neighbours had no Internet too, I planned to "connect" them too. And then things changed. We got broadband connections.

    Long time ago I heard rumors that some organizations transferred their
  • ... you insensitive clod!

    Nah, seriously, that's really cool. Cambodians rely almost exlusively on small, 100 cc, 4-stroke. Mainly Daelims (Korean) and Honda (Japan) or Ssangyang (China methinks), like the one shown in the article photo (yeah, you should really RTFA). Silent, rugged, solid as hell, and you often see 4 adults on one moto.

    There are lots and lots of "motodops" (as they call them there) riding throughout the country, and in remote places, they are the only means of transportation. Plus, most d
    • Your wish is answered... :-)

      The box, which we referred to as MAPs (Mobile Access Points) and FAPs (Fixed Access Points), were actually little kits that were made by a company called Sokres (sp?).

      Each one of them (MAP and FAP) have a small 200Mhz processor inside it, and expansion slots for one Compact Flash and two PCMCIA cards.

      We put the entire boot sector on the compact flash as well as the storage partition for the email files. Each box has a 256 MB card, but can be upgraded if needed (excepting the
      • Thanks! You are one of the guys in charge of this project? I had a call from my step-father in Cambodia, and, amazingly enough, he knows the guy that has provided some of the computers to these schools. (that guy is probably the sole Apple distributor for the whole of Cambodia, and my step-father is into macs... Whatever, there's an iMac on one of the pics, so I guess we're talking about the same project). That guy's name is Payee, if you need a mac in Cambodia, he's the guy! (and at no extra charge, thoug
      • Soekris [soekris.com] makes a variety of little boxes and boards, mostly for low-power small applications. Based in Santa Cruz California.
  • but the ping rates were pretty bad. ;-)
  • Never underestimate the bandwidth of a motorbike full of... oh, wait.

  • Steve Roberts did it in 1983... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jay L ( 74152 ) <jay+slash @ j ay.fm> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:32PM (#8144372) Homepage
    For BYTE magazine, on his Winnebiko!

    http://microship.com/bike/winnebiko/across.html

  • The submission graf was written by me (Score:3, Informative)

    by eggboard ( 315140 ) * on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:55PM (#8144539) Homepage
    Very small point, but the text that describes this story is actually from my site, Wi-Fi Networking News. We're not claiming to have written deathless prose, but the text of the submission is from here [wifinetnews.com], where we wrote about this event on Jan. 25.

    I'm not asking for traffic, apologies, or whatever, but when you write something and see someone else's name attached to it, it feels strange.
  • Hey everyone, A friend gave me this link so I thought I'd check it out and give my two cents. I was one of the three people who worked locally on this project in Cambodia to install this system, which BTW is called the DAKNET system. (Dak means "post" in India). Like I mentioned, there were three of us installing the network in the remote villages in the Ratanakiri province, close to Vietnam and Laos. I live in Boston and travelled there to install the system with one collegue whom also lives in Boston
  • It might even be possible to set up permanent connections using a similar method to the proposed stationary airship solutions being tested in the US, Japan and UK.

    For cheapness go for tethered hydrogen balloons carrying a wifi unit up to 1000m which talks to the ground and to other balloons flown from nearby villages. Configure it as a routed network but keep with the store/forward technology like email and usenet much like the Internet of 15 years ago for robustness. Mail and news comes in at a reasonable
  • Hello,

    I have provided technical support to these and related projects, which were initiated by journalist and MIT Media Lab member Bernard Krisher, in Cambodia from Japan for several years. However there is a limit to what I can tell you since I did not make Motoman myself and have not been to the site. Perhaps someone else on the project is seeing this, I'll also mention to the project leader.

    In the past I have mentioned this project in Slashdot threads and made I think the first public presentati

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