[luau] A Mission For Luau

Mark Kellman mark_kellman at hotmail.com
Thu Apr 25 18:19:46 PDT 2002


Scott,

I respect your ideas, but did you account for the amount of support required 
by newbies?  Linux isn't as user friendly as Windows, and I can personally 
speak about the administrative efforts of implementing and configuring 
Linux.

What would be needed is a task force of talent that could train and support 
these new users.  The digital divide is barely bridgeable with Windows, and 
it would be further compounded by the amount of adminstration required by 
Linux.

I'm not discounting your ideas, rather I am attempting to constructively add 
some of the back end proceesses required for your endeavors.

Regards,
Mark


>From: "R. Scott Belford" <sctinc at flex.com>
>Reply-To: luau at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
>To: luau at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
>Subject: [luau] A Mission For Luau
>Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:09:01 -1000
>
>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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