nubae's Habari | Linux and Education

To limit my exposure for getting sued, I've obviously used acronyms for various parts of the telecom names in question. This article really started forming itself in the back of my mind over the last 6 months to a year. But like all politically motivated pieces (the ones I tend to shy away from because they seem to have litte to no effect on the status quo of the telecommunications industry. This old boy's club seems quite impenetrable by an ordinary citizen like myself.

But I digress. My current beef is really with just one provider, although that is not to say I haven't had problems with all of them. (To date, that would be Jazzzzztel, Vodaphlone, movlisun,and even I-and-go (yo-i.....)

One would think that with competition comes innovation, better customer service, and an overall more respective attitude to the clients that are lining their pockets with ever increasing funds, while they (quite successfully I might add) sell us a whole new set of plans and gadgets that have a life expectancy of about 3-5 months.

The recent smartphone craze hasn't helped much, with people prefering to go hungry and beg in the streens in order to get a piece of technology that has been touted by technophiles and futurists as the only way to stay plugged into the sprawl.

For me, the sprawl is an extension to web 2.0, where apps no longer need to live on web browsers of sorts or proprietary systems like AOL, or Prodigy (the now seemingly daft ideas about how a small group of people could control something as big as the Net itself), but could be a lateral amalgamation of different commuication methods via different hardware designs (usually closed and not open source) but driven by the market forces of pure capitalism itself.

You don't have to look far to understand what might seem jiberish to some. We have Facebook to keep us in contact with our immedate, and more and more distant surroundings. For parents it gives them a sometimes false sense of security knowing what is going on with their sons and daughters, their friends, the friends of their friends. Indeed Social Networking is quickly becoming the number one pass time in America, with the rest of the planet following suite. Then for those who cringe at these new terminologies like web 2.0 (yes, I am one of them) we have our own underworld of controlled bits and bytes, encrypted, anonymised, and usually located in places where 'piracy/borrowing' are generally accepted. The only rule being, if one mentions even the name of such a location you'll be banned from the entire "scene"

So what is this "scene." Well believe it or not there are approximately 500-1000 scene groups all focusing on archiving what to them seem the most interesting topic for them. It more ore less evens itself out, with film, video, tv, documentaries, self help, music, and even magic all being carefully extraced from whatever medium, be it a satellite feed, scanning of a book, ripping of a CD, or recording straight to .avi

This is by no means an easy task, and the organistation isn't far from the efficiency and work ethic found by people wokring in a nuclear power station. Most of these people range between the ages of 15-40. Of course there are still some old school folks, you know, the one who coud create animation sequences in assembler that fit in less than a couple of KB.

I grew up just as computers were beginning to be conidered items of necessity. But by items of necessity I mean, spreadsheets for formatting and storing paychecks, letters written in a wordprocesser threatening others of pneding legal suits, and large sets of tools that fit under a corporate brand that promised to alleviate the stresses of yesteryear. No more secretaries requires (the computer was supposed to do that. No more invenory checks and salary handouts. No no.... the computer did that all magically for you.

Of course it didn't take long for that famous phrase FUBAR to hit the computer jargon (Fracked up beyond all recognition.) But like so many things that seemed to be here to stay, the entire Informtation Technology infrastructure changed, with monopolies taking over, which in turn dropped prices and increased quality of service.

But once more, here we are again in soething akin to the wildwest of telephony, the netbook and smartphone era. And make no mistake, if you thought the "web" was what everyone thought was the informtion super highway, I'm afraid that was just a taste of th real super highway.

The best way to think about it is that pretty much every new gadget that haseven the slightest piece of hardare in it, has or will have, the capability of communcating with another pieve of hardware. The common language isn't even important anymore. There are abstraction layers (translation devices that translate from one component to another) and this then brings us a step closer to total internationalisation, meaning, a child in Bangladesh can perfectly communicate with an American boy.

What this means for entertainment and education is a total marriage, that can really only be seen as something positive. Of course, resitance for such technology is only natural, but I really do believe, that with time, it wiill be embraced like all techonological adances.

I have really digressed about my inital complaint though, Eves though it seems we are light years from really serious tehcnolical breakthroughs, we advance both quickly and enthusiasyically. Why then... is is that customer service from the 5 telecom oligopolies really hasn't advanved at all, Perhaps this is different in other counties...

If you are still reading now, at least you get to read the juicy part. I bought a HTC Tattoo (A smartphone with the google Android OS on it) which for the most part, I was reallly quite amazed at what that little phone can do. Really, we should be calling it a mini computer, because it can do more than your average 4-5 year old desktop or laptop. The othe great thing was that almost 70% of the apps were free... showing that the open source solution lives on viably and healthily on these little computers.

Of course, there are still teething problems, but at least I can make a skype call without having to be in a wifi cafe (take that I phone) or run more than one app conccurently (again, take that iphone.) So... away I go using it in such a way without imagining what would happen if something happend to it. Of ocurse. 2 months in, my worst fears came true, when the touch screen stopped working. I went straight to the shop, where they told me theyd have to send it to the central to get it replace. After much screaming and shouting over the phone, I still don't have my telephone, and I really don't know what to think anymore. Vodaphone has always had relatively good rates and customer service. But this is just unnaceptable. I'm going to paste my order so its obvious how long I have now been waiting for a phone. They did of course give me a replacement phone, but it was a 2 euro alcatel phone that can do about as much as a calculator.

Well... here's hoping
David Van Assche
IT Specialist

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