[luau] A Mission For Luau

[R. Scott Belford]

Several weeks ago I spoke with Jon Fujiwara at the University of 
Hawaii's College of Business about taking all the computers they trash 
and doing something with them.  The idea came from observing this heap 
of hardware that sat under a staircase for weeks while everything good 
was pilfered.  Eventually it was all trashed.  I am convinced that a lot 
of that could have been used.  Jon tells me that the few charities who 
accept hardware only want stuff "fast" enough to run windows.  This 
leaves a lot of "trash".  Charles described to me another pile of pc's 
outside of UH's Physics department.  I think that if we want to 
positively influence the community's impression of Linux/*bsd, the 
conversion of old PC's for the poor and disenfranchised (of which we 
have much in Hawaii) should become our mission.  It would create great 
press for linux in general, and it would generate networking 
opportunities for you guys who want it.  Perhaps a non-profit company 
could be created to facilitate this.  I have a second phone line that 
could be used to field interested calls.  I am sure that we all have 
space to store some hardware; I have a large garage I can donate.  You 
each could help hunt down "junk" from our local universities, etc.

Every day there is good stuff going to waste here.  There is a 
tremendous digital divide on the islands.  I would imaging many of Sandi 
and Dustin's neighbors in the Kahaluu area could benefit.  There are 
churches, senior citizens, etc., that are waiting for your efforts and 
creativity.  We as the local linux community can do something about this 
that demonstrates our capacity to affect real social change with this 
open source linux thing.

I have been waiting for when I had time to delve into this to post it to 
the group.  The post below that I saw on Slashdot is inspiring.  Here in 
the land of Aloha we can do something special.  Let's find a way.


http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/25/0515220&mode=flat&tid=99

An Anonymous Coward writes "Out in Oakland, CA a group is taking donated 
PC's and breathing new life into them with Linux. They turn around and 
donate the computers to schools, build POVRAY render farms (with MOSIX) 
and generally promote Linux."

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