[luau] A Mission For Luau

[R. Scott Belford]

On Thursday, April 25, 2002, at 03:19 PM, Mark Kellman wrote:

> 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.

It is because the newbies need support that I pose this mission for 
luau.  Who knows better the support a community can lend than linux 
users?  How many Microsoft users would have worked so tirelessly to 
resolve your dhcp issue?  Exactly.  So yes, we need a force of talent to 
train, wait, we are a task force of talent already.  We just lack a task.

Because of the age of most of the hardware, terminal implementations 
would be most common.  This still serves an end-user need, possibly 
provides some sysadmin jobs for the server, and more screens are 
available for users.  Aren't there a lot of organizations with the money 
to buy one computer, but in need of many (ACLU)? This sounds like a job 
for terminal services.  I would argue, and many of you know best, that 
one computer controlled by few offering access to lots of terminals 
accessible by many is possibly more stable than a windows enviroment 
where it is so easy to break your local machine over which you have 
virtual root access.  Email, word processing, and the net don't take all 
that much expertise.  On free computers, few will ask for more.

Maybe it is not time.  But, if not now, when?


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

Add away.  The strength of this initiative will lie in how well we can 
tear it apart
.
>
> 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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