ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

[Stephen Michael Kellat <skellat@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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As an allied professional in the education realm, I disagree
wholeheartedly with the five years out of date encyclopedia approach.
If somehow Christian missionary groups are able to pull off logistics
lines to take more current content into the field, there can be a way.
Unfortunately such does not usually involve mainly tech but instead
human organization.

My experience outside the continental US is working in the South
Pacific.  The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, the lead IGO out
there, has standardized on Windows and PCs.  That I had a MacBook out
there was quite rare in 2006.  The very low connectivity penetration out
there meant using Linux repositories was a non-starter without a local
mirror.  One of the US possessions, the Territory of American Samoa,
even had to use sneakernet for its own television programs as such was
flown in from Hawaii on suitable media for replay on the territory's
cable system.  While this lead to the unfortunate situation of Christmas
shows on TV lasting far longer than the season due to the two week
sneakernet delay, the situation had persisted for years.  Although the
undersea fiber-optic cable should finally have been installed, the
kleptocratic influences of local government have presumably delayed
deployment still.

One of the strategies being backed by the Secretariat there is for the
deployment of very small aperture terminals for satellite links.  There
are complicated beasts that require very good targeting to make
satellite contact.  The terminals are then used in a manner akin to one
of Inmarsat's BGAN terminals to provide a back-end to an Internet cafe.
   The last trial of such that I can recall was in the Independent State
of Samoa.  See for example:
http://www.isoc.org/tools/blogs/policy/?p=136
http://lists.spc.int/pipermail/press-releases_lists.spc.int/2006-August/000018.html
http://www.inmarsat.com/Services/Land/BGAN/default.aspx

If there were a deltas/diffs structure for updating deployed Wikipedia
images, this link possibility might be enough to handle such on whatever
update frequency is best: http://www.iridium.com/support/data/direct.php

SMK

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Stephen Michael Kellat, MSLS
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Rory McCann wrote:
> On 08/09/09 14:20, Stephen Michael Kellat wrote:
>> "Offline wikipedia?"
>>
>> While it still feels compelling to have an equivalent to the
>> Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the problem is keeping it up to date.
>>  This problem afflicts print publications too.  This is why libraries
>> have to count encyclopedia purchases as fixed costs annually.
> 
> Yes it's good to keep an up to date encyclopedia. However it's better to
> have an encyclopedia that's 5 years out of date, than nothing.
> 
>> This area of thought has three parts to it.  The first is having a
>> format to store this data in that is somewhat standardized.
> 
> HTML pages?
> 
>> The third is logistics of
>> updating it after it goes into the wild.
> 
> Just burn the whole thing to a DVD every so often and post it out. DVDs
> / CDs can be copied locally aswell.
> 
>> What use cases do we have in terms of needs of NGOs?  Have inquiries
>> been made with NGO umbrella groups like VOAD relative to this?
> 
> Yes, I've brought wikipedia CDs to schools in Africa which have no
> internet. They are delighted to have a free encyclopedia that they can use.
> 
>> "Ubuntu Add-on CD from already downloaded packages (Say from
>> /var/cache/apt/archives)"
>>
>> How would this be kept up to date?  What about security updates?  Just
>> because there is no routine connectivity does not mean virii and other
>> nastiness are also out of the equation.  Old foes have new life in such
>> settings.  Having no specific release of an add-on CD but rather having
>> it rolling like ffmpeg snapshots would be best, I suppose.
> 
> Yes, keeping things up to date is a noble goal. However let's not cut
> off our nose to save our face. It's better to have *something* than
> *nothing*. The idea is to have a snapshot of various software.
> 
> I don't think the goal is to have a complicated TCP over sneakernet
> system in place with automatic updates, and posts and keeping software
> up to date with minimal lag. The problem is that there's millions of
> people out there with no internet. Something is better than nothing.
> 
> Since we are using open source software, we are free to copy and share
> it. So we can legally send CDs out to people and they can copy the CD 20
> times. This is a great benefit of Ubuntu, and we should take advantage
> of it.
> 
> 
> Hope that helps,
> 
> Rory
> 
> 
> 
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