eStuff » Elseware

June 19 2008 – Blu-ray Wins The Day

Webeye — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:54:55 +0000

Over the years there have been many wars fought, in the entertainment industry, over formats. There was the battle between 45RPM and 33 1/3RPM records. Neither won outright, with the result being both singles and LPs. Then there was the skirmish between cassettes and 8-track cartridges. They were both seen as a replacement for reel-to-reel tape recording. The 8-track cartridge never really took off outside the USA, with the cassette being the more popular of the two formats. A real fight ensued between VHS and Betamax, two different formats for video cassette recording, and even though Betamax was the superior of the two, VHS won. Vinyl didn’t put up much of fight when CDs came along, but lately vinyl seems to be adopting a rearguard action. The DVD was announced as an attempt to replace VHS. The war of attrition has been so prolonged that the DVD is now going to disappear, while VHS tapes still appear in the shops, although in ever decreasing quantities. A replacement for the DVD has been on the cards for some time now, but the champion was only announced a while ago. The two formats slugging it out were HD DVD, a high definition format of the DVD, and Blu-ray, another high definition format, that gets its name from the blue light of the laser that reads the disc.

The majority of readers would be totally unaware that Sony and Toshiba have been trying to convince Hollywood to accept their format for all future movie releases. This spat between the companies has been going on since the turn of the century, and Toshiba finally threw in the towel in February of this year, announcing that they would no longer make HD DVD players. This means that Hollywood will be using Blu-ray, and leaves the path clear for consumers to make a decision about which player to buy, without having to worry about which format will have more discs on the video shop shelves. One problem is that the Xbox from Microsoft was designed with the HD DVD drive in mind, and Microsoft still say there are no plans to go with Blu-ray, leaving owners of the Xbox in a quandary. Meanwhile the PS3, from Sony, is already Blu-ray equipped.

Blu-ray promises the same, high definition picture that some TV programmes already appear in, on Freeview. Of course, not only will you need to replace your DVD player with a Blu-ray player, but also a new HD capable TV is required to get the full benefit. Audio quality is claimed to be much better than CDs. Neil Young, who has always been a critic of CD, and MP3 audio quality, has announced that he will be releasing a 10 disc collection on Blu-ray. Some Blu-ray machines will play CDs and DVDs, so need to worry about replacing your whole collection again.

Two other features that come with Blu-ray are, BD-Live, which will allow connection to the Internet for downloading of content that was not on the original disc, for instance the trailer for a new film in the same series, and BD-Java, which adds an interactive capability to watching films.

A bone of contention, for many, may be the digital rights management (DRM). Each disc contains a virtual machine, software that runs as a small computer within the Blu-ray player. This allows the Blu-ray system to check if the player has been tampered with allowing pirating of the content. Sounds like Hollywood is assuming that every customer is a criminal.

May 8 2008 – DAB+ The Future Of Radio Is Digital

Webeye — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:39:25 +0000

It sat in the corner of the room, on a shelf. A shiny wooden box, 600 by 400 mm, a row of knobs, below a lit dial, that listed names of exotic places like Hilversum, Cologne, Vienna, Luxembourg. It was the family radio, and it was a big part of my young life. As I grew, the radios got smaller, the big wooden box being replaced with one the size of a biscuit tin, then one you could clip to your belt, and now I have one that is no bigger than my thumb. Not only is the thumb sized device a radio, but it also plays MP3s, and is a voice recorder.

I grew up loving radios, and the sounds that came out of them. Now I hardly listen to anything other than the news on National, and find the current programming, provided by the commercial stations not to my esoteric musical tastes. All this could change with the introduction of digital radio.

Coming to New Zealand, some time in the very near future, is DAB+. It may sound like a new, wonder dishwasher powder with added gunk removal, but DAB+ is the format chosen by Kordia, the government-owned transmission company, to be the way we receive radio in the future. It is trialling DAB+ broadcasts in Wellington.

Currently, radio is broadcast in analogue format. Basically the fluctuations in air pressure caused by a sound, move a diaphragm microphone, this creates similar changes in an electric circuit, which are then broadcast through the ether, and a radio receives them, converting them back to sound by vibrating a speaker. However with digital radio, the sound picked up by the microphone is converted into a string of zeroes and ones, and the equipment then transmits those bits to a radio that converts them to sound. The reasons for converting to digital is an improvement in sound quality, and the ability to make more slots available to broadcasters. Where once there was one station broadcasting classic hits and banal chatter from announcers, there can, with digital, be many more. The lucky Norwegians, living in Sørlandet, now have 21 stations instead of 6. There may be many more stations, but the expected increase in sound quality was not experienced in parts of Europe, due to the broadcasting companies lowering the bit rate, so that they could squeeze in more stations. A high bit rate equals better sound. Listeners to the BBC classical station, Radio 3, complained, and the bit rate was increased to 192 kbps, which is, as near to CD quality as can be.

Kordia has chosen to go with DAB+, despite the fact that commercial stations keep mumbling about being unhappy with having to purchase new frequency licenses, and wanting to use HD radio which can be used on their current FM licence. HD is the digital format used in the USA. The reason for Kordia’s decision is that DAB+ is a relatively new standard that has superior specifications, hopefully making the radio experience more enjoyable.

All this does mean that, some day in the near future, you will have to replace the radios in your house, and your car. Current models in the UK cost around $70. However you can look forward to the new DAB+ radio’s features such as pausing, and rewinding live radio, and an electronic programming guide, allowing tuning stations, by name. There may even be slide-shows to accompany the music, true Radio With Pictures. And don’t forget that better sound-quality. I just hope there is better programme quality.

April 3 2008 – Freeview Vs Sky

Webeye — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:04:02 +0000

Until recently there was only one choice, if you wanted digital television – SKY/Saturn. This has all changed with the introduction of Freeview, and receiving Freeview is about to get a lot easier.

Digital television promises many more channels, and much better picture quality, via the the use of high definition television (HDTV). SKY, along with its partner in Wellington, Telstraclear’s Saturn, have been offering digital television, either by satellite or in Saturn’s case, by cable, since 1998. Freeview came on the scene in May 2007. Both SKY and Freeview require the fitting of a satellite dish and a set-top box. However from April Freeview will also be available by using a UHF aerial, although a set-top box will still be required.

The UHF aerial is the same as the one used to watch Prime, Maori TV, Trackside, or Triangle. So if you currently get a good picture from one of these channels, it is more than likely you will have no problems receiving Freeview.

We all know what SKY has to offer, the many channels of sport, movies, entertainment, news, ethnic content, and audio, but what does Freeview have to offer? Currently available are 12 channels, TV1, TV2, TV3, C4, Maori TV, and some new channels: TVNZ 6, an advert-free entertainment channel for children, family and adults; TVNZ 7, again advert-free, showing documentaries, news and current affairs; TVNZ Sport Extra is sports coverage when available; Parliament TV, allowing you to watch the proceedings from the House live; Stratos, ethnic and educational programmes from around the world provided by Triangle TV; CUE, local news and sports; and Te Reo, a 100% Maori language TV service from Maori TV. Added to this is Radio New Zealand National and Concert. A programme guide, giving full details, is available on the Freeview website.

You will notice that Prime and Trackside are missing from the list. This should not be a problem, because if you are using your UHF aerial to receive Freeview, you can get Prime and Trackside, the same as usual. That is until analog TV is switched off. Did I forget to mention that sometime between 2012 and 2016 the current analog TV service (the way we currently watch television via an aerial), will be switched off, and we will need to have either SKY or Freeview. By this time it is hoped that the Government will have passed a “must carry” law, enforcing both SKY and Freeview to broadcast any free-to-air TV channel. This means that SKY must show TV1, TV2, TV3 etc and Freeview must show Prime.

So what do you need, to ensure you will be able to watch TV in the future? First off you have to decide if you want to have SKY/Saturn or Freeview. It is possible to have them both, if you wish. Secondly, for Freeview, you must purchase a set-top box, and if you do not have a UHF aerial decide if you want one installed, or use a satellite dish. Lastly, should you wish to benefit from the superior picture quality from HDTV, you would need to invest in a new HDTV-capable television and a capable set-top box. It is expected that, later this year, new televisions will have the required electronics included, so that a Freeview set-top box will be unnecessary.

November 29 2007 – The Storm Botnet

Webeye — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:23:25 +0000

Don’t look now, but in the corner of the room there may be a zombie, just waiting to do what his bokor, or master, bids. It is not a reanimated person, but your computer. The latest, great threat to the Internet, is a virus that takes control of your computer.

The idea of a virus spread by email, and taking infected computers under control, is not new. The Storm Worm, which began infecting computers sometime in January 2007, has been exceedingly successful at it. No-one knows how many computers Storm controls, but guesses range from 1 million to 50 million, or more. So many that the combined computing power is estimated at more than the biggest, fastest, super-computer in the world. This collection of controlled computers is known as a botnet.

It all starts with an email arriving in your inbox. The subject title may seem very real, relevant, or even enticing. The subject changes, and has ranged from “A killer at 11, he’s free at 21 and kills again!” to “Fidel Castro dead”. Recently the emails have been offering free mp3s from Britney Spears, The Eagles and others. Lurking in the emails is a nasty little program that installs itself on your PC. The first thing the program does, is run through your email address book sending emails to everyone, in order to spread itself. Now your computer is a zombie.

You may notice the PC runs a lot slower than normal. That’s because your processor is being used to send thousands of spam emails. Maybe it is part of a denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) on a business, or government computer. DDoS is where millions of requests are sent to a computer acting as an Internet server. This volume of requests, all received at once, block real requests getting through, and eventually causes the server to fall over. This sort of attack was used recently against Estonia. You may end up paying for extra bandwidth because of the increased traffic.

The Storm Worm is described as being “patient, resilient, adaptive and invisible”. In attempts to thwart detection, it evolves every 30 minutes, making it difficult for virus detection software to find it. When the servers that control the botnet are discovered by researchers, their own computers become the victims of DDoS attacks, making it difficult to continue their research.

Rumours claim the enterprise is being offered for sale, or rent, to the highest bidder, either in whole or part. Whatever happens it’s scary. I imagine that the “owners” of the Storm Botnet are not worried who buys, as long as they get paid.

The main problem is that Windows is inherently insecure. This means that users end up paying extra for virus scanning software. This software must then be kept up-to-date, by downloading the latest virus signatures. If you want to make sure that your PC is not a zombie, update your virus signatures, and do a scan. Sometimes it may pay to do a complete re-install of Windows, and then install a firewall, and virus scanner.

A switch to an alternative operating system, such as Apple OS X, or Linux, would make it more difficult to become infected. Even these are not completely immune, there have been some rare reports of virus attacks on them.

In the end responsibility rests with you, the user, to be more aware of the consequences of having an unprotected system, and the effect that it has on everyone else connected to the Internet.

September 13 2007 – W32.Deletemusic

Webeye — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 07:24:26 +0000

W32.Deletemusic is a worm, and a new threat that you should be aware of. Similar to a computer virus, a worm is a self-contained, self-replicating program, that usually exploits the file transmission capabilities, found on many computers. From its name you can guess that W32.Deletemusic is not something you want your PC infected with. It will delete all the mp3s it can find.

The good news is, that computer security experts have given the worm a low risk category. That may be because it is difficult to catch. It spreads from machine to machine via removable flash drives, the USB pens, or keys, that are so easy to use, and seem to have replaced floppy discs.

Protection from this beasty is, as easy as, switching the autorun option off. Autorun is an option in Windows which allows a program to be automatically run when a CD, or USB key, is loaded into the machine. This is an option that should be switched off. There will be a link to a website on the eStuff web page, that shows you how to do this. It would also be a good idea not to put your USB key into any machines, other than your own. It is certainly not a good idea to insert your USB key into PCs, at Internet cafes.

It seems an opportune moment to remind readers of the eStuff virus-help, web page. This is a special web page that is available on the eStuff website that has links to important sites you may need in your battle against viruses. In particular there are links to eStuff articles on protecting your PC from viruses, rootkits and Spyware.

The other thing that readers should be doing is backing up their data. This has been made easier with by the growth in remote backup services.

A remote backup service provides PC owners with the ability to backup data, using the Internet. These can usually be set up to run independently, on a scheduled basis, for example, once a day. The backup program will ensure that all files that are new, or have been changed since it last run, will be backed up to a remote site. The data is sent to the remote site in compressed format, and only the changed data is sent. This ensures that bandwidth usage is kept to a minimum.

There are many services available to companies both large and small, and a search in Google produces many hits. Luckily there are also several options available to small home users.

Mozy and IDrive-E will allow you to backup 2GB of data for free, and if you have more data than that, it will cost US$4.95 a month for unlimited backup space. Xdrive has more genourous 5GB for free, and up to 50GB for US$9.95 a month.

If those services do not appeal, there is always the Gspace option. Gspace turns the 2GB of a Gmail account into free, online disc space. There is also a Firefox extension that allows you to access your Gspace files through the Firefox web browser. It should be noted that Google’s Terms and Conditions, for the use of Gmail, may specifically forbid you from using it in this manner. But that doesn’t seem to stop thousands of people from doing so.

Please don’t become a victim of viruses. Ensure that you secure your PC, practise safe computing, and backup your precious data.

August 23 2007 – ODF Vs OOXML

Webeye — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 07:14:55 +0000

On display, in The British Museum, is an unimposing chunk of rock known as the Rosetta Stone. Discovery, and later translation of this stone, enabled a better understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. There may be a time in the future when archaeologists struggle to read our digitised documents, trying to break through the secret, patented, propriety format they were saved to disc, with.

In our own time-line we have all used software to create documents, whether they be spreadsheets, word processing documents, or something else. We save the file, and think no more about whether we will be able to read them in the future. Some of us may have experienced the headbanging anguish of trying to open a document many years old. It was written using a piece of software that is no longer installed on your computer. Microsoft Office will not open it, and the hunt through the drawers, and cupboards, for the old install discs proves fruitless, and, in most cases, the discs fail. That is assuming you still have a floppy drive on your new, 21st century PC.

Then there are the problems of sharing this data with other computer users. A document written in the latest Microsoft Office format is often not readable by PC users who have older versions of the software. It is one way Microsoft can force everyone to upgrade their software.

Can we ensure that the priceless information stored on all the computers in the world will be able to be read in the future, if not by archaeologists, at least by future employees in the organisation, and those they share the documents with? Several states in the USA, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, California and Oregon, have legislated that all State Government documents must be in a open document format. They are joined by countries such as France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Malaysia and India.

Luckily file formats exist that will suit their needs. The files are stored in Extensible Markup Language (XML), basically a format that self defines the contents. It is like each file is its own Rosetta Stone.

There are two, main, competing methods of using XML, available. Open Document Format (ODF), is an open format that any software company is free to use in their products. The development of this format is guided by an organisation called the Organisation for Advancement of Structured Information Systems (OASIS). It is currently available in products such as OpenOffice.Org and Star Office. The list of companies behind ODF is impressive, Red Hat, IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems, to name a few.

Microsoft is behind the other format, Office Open XML (OOXML). As with all Microsoft products this is protected by patents, and therefore can hardly be considered an open format in the true sense of the word. To use this format, a license fee would have to be paid to Microsoft.

Microsoft is currently waging a campaign to ensure that it is OOXML that wins this format war. They are, of course, worried about market share. Microsoft has always tried to lock users into their products, and using proprietary file formats is a good way to achieve this aim.

Microsoft is not making it easy for users of ODF to share their files. They are being very slow to support this format in their Office software, so much so, that a plug-in for Microsoft Office is being provided by the OASIS group. It remains to be seen which of these formats will win the battle. It is more than likely that both formats will coexist.

June 14 2007 – Estonia, Cyberwarfare, and Internet Dependence

Webeye — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 07:18:35 +0000

Estonia is a small country nestled between Russia, Latvia and the Baltic sea, with a population of 1.3 Million. The country has had centuries of foreign rule by the Danish, Swedish, German, and Russians. It briefly gained Independence after the First World War, but was swallowed up by the USSR in 1940. It finally regained its freedom when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Relations between Russia and Estonia have never been cordial. Recently the Estonians moved a memorial, a statue of a Red Army soldier, that was erected in memory of the Russians who died during World War Two. This action provoked riots by the ethnic Russians, who make up 25% of Estonian’s population. The Russian Government has also complained about the removal, and has retaliated by delaying the delivery of oil. Ostensibly due to maintenance on the railway.

Estonians are very well connected – to the Internet that is. Estonians bank on-line, communicate with government offices on-line, even vote on-line. Since April this became increasingly difficult as many companies, and government offices, are under attack from mysterious hackers. The denial of service (DDoS) attacks make it near impossible to carry out any business on-line. Estonia is blaming the Russian Government, and nameless Russian hackers for the attacks.

You can imagine the situation here in New Zealand, where we also perform much of our business on-line. Despite the hurdles put in place by Telecom, it is easy to function nationally, and internationally, on-line.

The Internet owes its existence to a US Defence Department project started in 1969. The whole idea being to develop a communications network that would withstand a nuclear war. It wouldn’t matter where the bombs fell, the network was distributed, and the remaining sites would still be able to communicate.

It is ironic that the Internet is now being used as a weapon itself. More and more countries are becoming dependent on digital technologies. VOIP, email, web pages, on-line banking, we all, either, use these, or at some stage, will use them. Even the media is moving on-line. Traditional newspaper sales are dropping as more people read the news on-line. Radio and TV are going digital, it is possible now to listen to radio stations, and watch TV, on-line.

What if our reliance on the Internet became our weakness? During warfare the first things that get bombed are power stations, water works, and any centre of communications. How much easier if you don’t have to send planes, or have your infantry invade the country? In the future will warriors simply sit behind a computer, and program viruses and trojans, which they will send off with a press of the enter key, and bring a nation to halt?

In 1909 the English writer E.M. Forster wrote a short story called “The Machine Stops”. In this story people on earth have become dependant on a global machine that provides all they need and require. the population live underground, each person in their own “cell”. They no longer travel, and they communicate to each other via the machine. Unfortunately the machine develops problems, and stops, but life goes on because some people have rejected that way of life, and choose to live on the surface, dependant on nature.

Science Fiction often carries visions of the future that are frighteningly close to real events. Lets hope that fiction remains just that, and despite the obvious benefits of a global connected “machine” we still remain able to live a life without dependency on its existence.

April 5 2007 – Wellington City Council’s Broadband Vision

Webeye — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:12:44 +0000

The Wellington City Council has a vision – “by 2012, all of Wellington city will have affordable access to an open broadband network“.

Wellington has been luckier than other New Zealand cities. Past Councils made many decisions ensuring a technological infrastructure was put in place. They started, in 1990, with free connections to the Internet via City Net. Later they helped establish City Link, stringing broadband cables, on trolleybus wires throughout the central city.

Through the 2020 Communications Trust, they were involved in the “Smart Newtown” Pilot Project and Wellington Community Net (WCN). “Smart Newtown” bought computers, and the Internet, to the Newtown area, while WCN acts as a free website host for community groups. Since then, the 2020 Trust have been involved in other projects.

Of the current Council’s vision, Mayor Kerry Prendergast has said “Outside of the Wellington CBD there is limited access to high-speed, cheap broadband. This is extremely frustrating for many businesses and residential customers, many of whom work from home and are trying to compete in a global market.”

This is very true, but since the ground-breaking early days this Council hasn’t exactly made decisions that have put Wellington on the right path. First of all, in 2005, they turned down the chance to re-invest in City Link. Then in 2006 they ignored the Government’s Broadband Challenge. A Government scheme making money available to increase broadband utilisation. While it’s gratifying to hear of their “vision”, it would be more so to witness some action.

In order to achieve their vision, first the Council will put in place about 100km of cable around the city. This will connect major buildings, libraries, medical centres, schools and businesses. The second stage will extend the network out to the suburbs, completing the “last mile” with copper cable to each home. The cost of this will be in the region of $40 million. A third stage would see the installation of a much faster, fibre-optic, cable, which would increase the cost enormously if every house were to be connected.

One method the Council is investigating, is hanging the cables onto the trolleybus wires, which is exactly the method used by City Link, before the decision not to continue the Council’s investment.

Perhaps Wi-Fi may reduce the cost of the vision’s third phase. Wi-Fi requires no cables to connect to the Internet, you just need to be close to a Wi-Fi connection point. Worldwide, there is a growing number of cities that realise Wi-Fi is an important part of their infrastructure (1, 2). In New Orleans after the devastation by Katrina, a Wi-Fi network, utilising lamp-posts as connection points, allowed emergency services and businesses to continue to communicate, while the conventional network was restored (1, 2).

Before finalising their vision, the Council must ensure that Wellington doesn’t have an out-dated network paid for, at the rate payers expense. It must be rugged enough to survive the “big-one”, so that after the earthquake Emergency Management can utilise the network. It must also take into account the fast pace of change in the world of information technology and communication, blink, yawn, stop for a cuppa, and you’re behind the times. When 2012 rolls around, who knows what we will doing on the Internet. Five years ago, who would have thought that we would watch video via the Internet, or make phone calls using Skype.

January 25 2007 – Take A Look Back

Webeye — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:16:46 +0000

eStuff has been running in The Wellingtonian, and its predecessor, since April 2001. A lot of the old articles still have relevance today, and are still available in the eStuff Archive (on the left). Now seems as good a time as any, to revisit some of the more interesting of them.

The first eStuff article, in April 2001, was about Broadband and Streaming. While the majority of readers will now know what broadband is all about, back in 2001, that was not the case. Broadband was also the subject of three articles (1,2,3) in 2006. In these, broadband is explained, and the alternatives to Telecom are discussed. These are of more interest, now that the Act forcing Telecom to restructure has been passed.

Two of the most important things that PC owners should do, is to backup their data and to ensure that they have adequate protection against viruses, spyware, and rootkits. An article from 2001 explains about backups, and eStuff has a special page to ensure that readers are aware of the perils of uninvited guests.

eStuff has tried to expand readers knowledge of the range of software available for their computer. There have been articles on Instant Messaging, and Gtalk (1,2), both ways of using the Internet to communicate with people. In 2004 there was an article introducing Skype, or VOIP, now phones are available that allow you to use this service. Articles, on alternative web browsers to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) have introduced you to Firefox, and Opera, and also an alternative to Outlook, in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Another article attempted to help readers manage their finances with personal financial software, such as Quicken and Microsoft Money.

Trying to keep readers at the leading edge there was mention of RSS and news aggregators, back in May 2003. This innovative way of reading your news, and keeping up with the latest updates to your favourite websites, has still not reached mainstream use. There is hope that the Live Bookmarks feature in Firefox, and IE 7, will ensure more people are aware of this helpful feature. Podcasts were introduced to eStuff readers in March 2005. Once again an innovation that has yet to reach the mainstream. Although with the growing ownership of iPods, or equivalent mp3 players, Listening to podcasts may yet become more popular.

I can say that, since starting to write eStuff, technology has certainly advanced, but not perhaps as fast, or in the direction predicted. Where will be in five and half years time?

October 5 2006 – Bridging The Digital Divide

Webeye — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 07:04:14 +0000

The digital divide separates, mostly, Third World nations from access to existing and emerging technologies, making their journey to self-sufficient, thriving communities, even more difficult.

Several projects are giving these nations a leg-up, helping them to bridge that gap.

The Simputer, started in India in November 1999,is a small hand-held device that provides simple computing functions. It’s based on the Linux operating system, and looks like a PDA. A browser developed especially for the Simputer, creates a simple interface. A touch-sensitive screen allows handwriting recognition, while a speech synthesiser, in conjunction with images, displayed on the screen, make it possible for the illiterate, and non-English speaker, to use the device.

Unfortunately the uptake of the Simputer has been slow. According to Wikipedia, only 4000 of the, approximately US$200 machines, have been sold. It has been used to process land sales in one Indian state, and for education in another. Several industries have also adopted it for various functions, ranging from automobile engine diagnostics, to Electronic Money Transfer.

Another system, this time developed in Cambridge, England, is The Ndiyo Project. Ndiyo is the Swahili word for “yes” and is pronounced ‘nn-dee-yo’.

The Ndiyo Project has been setup to answer the problems that surround networked computing. They believe that the original concept of one user/one PC is flawed, because it’s too expensive for most of the world to afford, damages the environment, and is too complex. As they put it “… although it has worked for the first billion people on the planet, it cannot be the long-term solution for providing IT to the world.”

Their answer is an “ultra-thin-client”, a little box called “nivo”. About hand size, the monitor, keyboard, and mouse are plugged into it. The nivo is then plugged into the local network. Sitting in the local network is the server computer. This server provides access to computing functions for a number of nivos.

The project have developed the “Internet Cafe in a Box”. This allows several nivos, to be connected to one PC running Ubuntu Linux. Only one computer, where there would have been many, the cost savings are obvious for a small office, school, or home.

The Ndiyo Project hope that in the future, the nivo will be be an integral part of the monitor, allowing it to be directly hooked into the local network.

Getting a lot of coverage in the media lately, is the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). Announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2005, the projects aim is to get laptops to Third World children at the cost of US$100 each. It is being driven by Nicholas Negroponte, a computer scientist, and ex-director of MIT’s Media Lab. Several organisations are backing this, including Google, Red Hat, AMD, and News Corporation. Each of these have donated US$2 million, this has to be the best funded of all these projects.

You may have seen the prototypes on the news, a green plastic case, with a large yellow crank handle. After all there is no electricity in most of the places the OLPC is destined to end up. A lot of criticism has been thrown at this project, because it is not answering the need of basic housing, heath, and education. It is difficult to see why anyone living in a shanty town with no running water, sewage system, or electricity, would give high priority to a laptop computer for their children. Yet the first systems are expected in Thailand towards the end of this year.

Wikipedia: