Calling All Latin Americans Dept: Help us understand this one, because a lot was written by me and others about AMD’s attempt to sell PCs to the poor, and one of the target countries was Brazil. I think we all agreed that the cost was too high especially for the lame hardware involved, and yet, here is a report today from Reuters, showing that while countries like the US with heavy broadband use are seeing great growth rates of around 40%, Brazil is seeing an incredible 50-100% growth in broadband subscribers.

Some Theories, and then we want to hear from real people living in those countries (and let us post your replies on this story if we can):

1. People are skipping dial-up and going to straight broadband. We saw this in many eastern European countries with the cell phone. Instead of waiting years on a waiting list for a landline, people said the Hell with it and went right to the cell phone.

2. This is only for the very wealthy. In the US we are used to even the very poor having access to an array of surprisingly affordable products like $39 DVD players at WalMart and inexpensive stereos, phones and so on. When I went to Santiago, Chile I was struck by how there was no visible middle class. People were either very poor or very, very wealthy. I saw this also in Bangkok, Thailand too, where my hotel had high speed wireless and people outside were eating food for under $1 served in less than ideal conditions from street vendors. Maybe, the wealthy of Brazil are simply adding in this high speed luxury as a matter of course and there is enough market there to show this kind of growth and the interest to make it worthwhile.

Now here are the numbers from the Reuters piece: “Brazil has become Latin America’s No. 1 market in terms of the number of users, with over 1.5 million subscribers in June, according to a study by Point Topic, a provider of broadband market research. The three main operators expect to reach a combined total of almost 2 million broadband users by year’s end, with the number close to 2.6 million in 2005.

“Telefonica, currently the largest provider with just over 700,000 high-speed clients, sees its figure growing by 50 percent to 60 percent in 2005, while Brasil Telecom and Telemar, which expect to have 280,000 and 450,000 users by year-end, respectively, see 100 percent growth next year. By comparison, Mexico has nearly 400,000 broadband users, while Argentina has a little over 350,000.”

And yet….

“Despite the hefty investments expected in the sector, the government has made few strides in disseminating the Web in the country, where only 15 percent of the 180 million population has access to computers. To recover lost ground, the government plans to spend 3 billion reais ($1 billion) next year to offer computers and training in poor communities.”

Our Take:
Sounds like the government should buy up those AMD boxes, insist on Ethernet ports and send them out for $20. Or am I missing something here?

Thoughts?

So who’d a thought that within the space of just a few days we’d be panning a D-Link product twice? (See Alice’s thoughts on the D900.) This time, however, we’re really talking about a bomb –or at least the appearance of one.

A guy in New South Wales, who shall remain nameless for reasons that are about to become obvious, decided to buy a D-Link 2100AP wireless AP and yank the guts out of the case, epoxy them into plastic PCB case, stick it out where the sun does shine, and, within 10 hours, out come the cops to dig up the wires from his lawn and grill the guy. Somebody in the neighborhood reported that it was a bomb.

We live in tough times, right? Well, they guy is miffed and a half at the police for the way they handled the affair. Says they could have been more sensitive.

Does this look familiar?

Acccording to the BBC a new virus is out in world and causing a lot of problems. “The new variant is called Bagle.AT, Bagle.BB and Bagle.AU and the attachment bearing the virus code is labelled as either ‘joke’ or ‘price’. The body of the virus usually contains nothing but a smiley or emoticon.

“The virus can strike computers running Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. Users will be infected if they open the attachment that travels with the e-mail. As well as plundering Microsoft Outlook for e-mail addresses to send itself to, Bagle.AT also tries to turn off the firewall and security centre services on Windows XP machines.”

All we can say is: :(

Friday’s Guest Rant from Cyrus, Our Intern: Yesterday it was genetically modified cats, and today rats are flying planes. Researchers at the University of Florida extracted neurons from rat embryos then placed them on a grid of gold electrodes. The cells grew, creating a “live computation device”. The completed grid of over 25000 neurons was then attached to a flight simulator, where algorithms written by the researchers were used by the cells to determine the status of the plane in different conditions, issuing corrections if the brain “felt” they were needed.

I like this in one way, as anything that can save a human life or save us time or money is a great advancement in technology. However, I am repelled by the fact that we are close to entrusting things to “rat brains” that were previously handled by humans. It seems that we are just making our own species obsolete, making it so that we are never needed, never required. Also, how effective can any algorithm written by a human truly be? I would hate to be the person with my life on the line, when the “rat brain” makes the wrong decision. Our brain is not perfect, but I would rather lose my life to a real human mistake, rather than spending my time in the afterlife wondering if my life would have been saved if the rat had been running Linux instead of Windows Rat.

While advancements such as this are welcome, we need to take the time to really think out the consequences and decide if we truly want to trust something important to a rat´s brain controlled by algorithms written by fault-prone humans.

What do you think?

With all of the fear and panic that revolves around e-voting, where do you think you’d find the safest equipment to use? If you’re Dean Heller, Nevada’s secretary of state, you go to the gambling casinos. Okay, so after he lost the state’s FY2005 budget at the slots it occurred to him that those things were all electronic! So why would casino owners mess around with on-premises e-gambling equipment if someone could tamper with it –as everyone claims can be done with e-voting machines?

So Heller went to the state officials who test the machines for fairness and popped the 60 million dollar question: “I know this isn’t within your responsibility, but could you determine, in your best estimation, which are the most secure machines available today to use electronically?”

It seems as if it wasn’t all that difficult in Nevada. “Once it gets down to the real heart of the matter, a processor is a processor, it is only the interface that makes a difference,” replied Marc McDermott, chief of the electronic services division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. “On a slot machine the interface is the spinning reels or the video display, on a voting machine you have different buttons.”

According to Nevada officials, voter turn-out should be high this year and they expect no problems with the electronic voting machines. Of course, someone has already spread a rumor that they pay 2:1 on Democrats and 6:1 on Republicans.

In an age of technology, where computers create dazzling animation and computer animators are spinning off high-priced IPOs, a sad and startling fact has crossed the table here at aliceandbill.com: The Sponge Bob Square Pants Movie is hand-drawn! Oh the ignomy!

Sitting there with all this tech equipment and not really knowing how to justify it, researchers have opened a new and wonderful page in medical science: they’re doing brain scans to see what makes Democrats and Republicans different from each other. Why? Do they suspect some clinical reason for partisanship? Well, yes, but the reason they want to find out is so they can help political consultants get straight to the heart, er, um, brain of the matter and, perhaps, literally, change your mind.

Imagine if you will, you get a warm fuzzy feeling about John Kerry and up pops a little thought balloon with Bill Bennett explaining how wrong you are. Or, have a good thought about George Bush and, shazzam!, there’s Bob Beckel in your head with his soundbyte of the day! Called “neuromarketing,” the techniques is already used as a marketing tool for cars and is being used to determine if the choice between Coke or Pepsi is a matter of culture or taste. It’s also raising ethical hackles. (Now there’s something else they can scan for…)

Think it stops at politics? Nah… Google the words, “the brain” and you come up with this:
The Brain
Huge selection, great deals on everything.
eBay.com

Sad, sad, sad….

In preparation for Election Day, news.com has done a round-up on how the various candidates favor (or not) technology. It’s an interesting read but don’t go look if you’re carrying any preconceived notions. You may find out you’re wrong.