[ga-full] RE: [ga] Registration process suggestion

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

At 17:35 4/02/00 -0500, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote:
>First off may I suggest Joop that you take the time to respond to the
>electoral suggestion I had instead of dealing with this certifcation
>question - which is a minor issue.
>
I think the certification issue is a red herring and the electoral process
suggestions are correct. Short of volunteering myself as a collection point
for a Voters' roll, I continue to urge the DNSO secretariat to do this
through its website.
Let's get on with voluntary registration and just challenge multiple
registrations if there is solid ground to believe that they are multiple.

>In short order your analysis of the 286 is incorrect.  I will only offer
>one example of the error.  WACOFF in Vancouver collects 286 machines and
>gives them to people on welfare.  The systems dialup standard unix
>accounts which are used mostly for email.  Vancouver by the way is in the
>first world and the WACOFF initiate is designed to offer some level of
>internet connectivity to the masses who can barly afford to pay the rent.
>

I hope you can also bear to be wrong. I just made the posting to correct
the "myth of the 286 in the Third World" . I know you may see them
collected and shipped from Vancouver, but I also know that they rot in
warehouses where people try to sell them at giveaway prices.  
I have a long and on-going experience with Third World countries. The poor
of Vancouver are not at all in the same situation as the internet users in
the Third World.  It is a totally different situation. In the TW
1. There is a grievous shortage of land phone lines. This determines the
whole picture.
2. Internet users who are poor (mostly students) are doing their utmost to
stay up-to-date and they largely succeed, thanks to the Cafe system. They
are so busy, that you have to wait for an hour to get a place behind a
screen in an avarage 25 -machine business.
3. The totally poor lack the knowledge of English , the Net, computers and
a space to sit down to even think about old clapped-out first world 286's.  
4. There is no charity that fixes up these old machines with Linux and
gives away a free phone line with it.

>I do know of the internet cafe experience - but I prefere a system which
>allows others not as well off as I to access and be a part of the process.
>
I was not talking about preference, but of the current realities in the TW.




--Joop--
www.idno.org