1997 called, they want their FUD back.

I am Ghanaian working on a similar idea for different purpose. In Ghana(and most of "third world") , where the average user cannot afford a computer but will be able to afford a few hours of internet access - this idea would be very useful. I am part of an NGO: Ghanathink(http://www.ghanathink.org) that is currently in the design stages of such a concept. The original idea was from Paa Kwesi a Ghanaian student at Yale Univ. Our architecture builds on the oceanstore project from berkeley for data storage. We basically write the open-source desktop environment that the user sees.
Now if only we had the resources that Intel had ...

Thanks, Elena, for sharing the pictures (though I doubt you'll ever read this).

Then being a 6 year old kid in Riga, Latvia (still occupied by USSR at the time) I remember little of the accident or the Soviet way of life and treating their people that partially caused the whole damned thing to happen.

Godspeed and best of luck to you!

Bridging this gap is important and critical because of another buzzword - transparency. I am sure that Bill and Melinda Gates want to know where thier money is going, as I am sure that most people want to know how the money that their governments give to 3rd world countries is spent. With billions being spent on AID - there is only one-way to keep track - computers. Without the knowledge being in the country then Expat Experts are needed to be imported so you get the Kafka situation of a Sys Admin being paid a factor 10 times more than the president. Another Example I know about is a small micro bank ( a bank that lends from $50 to $1,000 USD) that has over a million customers - at the moment it is using Excel to keep the records! Wouldn't they be better served by a proper banking system - the problem is that a banking system from the West would cost about 10 times their yearly administrative costs. And the Western System would not fit the local requirements. The Internet has already changed life in the developing world. Friends of mine, who only earn $100 per month who live in Ghana often, email me. The cost of an hour at an Internet Café is a $1.00. A cost of a one-minute phone call to the UK or the US is $1.00. Before the Internet they had no way of communicating except through snail mail. Another case in point the only way that Foreign Journalists could work out what the Oppositions requirements where in the Ivory Coast Conflict was through the Oppositions web site. The phones had been cut off!

you call that a question?

tcg