realistically, i guess there isn't much that can be done other than some hands-on sort of stuff.
the fantasy/dream is that one of the African Governments, or even some of those billions that Africans give to everybody else, could be used to land a medium sized cargo aircraft, carrying a couple of trucks, at Paine Field, load me up, fill the rest of the plane with as much "dumpster tech" as it will hold and transport it to one of those former slave-processing centers. i think that it would be a very strong and very good thing to seek to "repurpose" those spaces into the export of African Brain Power for OUR benefit rather than the export of African bodies for everybody else's benefit.
<shrug> well, i can dream can't i? i know the reality of katrina, but i do keep hoping!
definitely: i have one right here that i am trying to save for usage somewhere. granted, it's a "napkin sketch" prototype, and it is all older than most would care to mess with. but the beauty of that is that it is all simple enough that it will serve admirably to introduce hardware components and subsystems.that's what i was thinking: "collab" on "a [physical] structure" to test out what we would then mirror/replicate into other community LRCs. store front, warehouse, house with basement or an apartment could serve both the need for that testing/incubating space to work out what the thing is as well as to provide me with a space to live and something to do that i could use to keep me enough occupied that i could dump these danged cigs.
medical needs are covered, but that'll be after i get this stuff moved into storage and then go find someplace to live.
the only drawback to the commercial solution is that the commercial solution is designed to disallow exactly what it is that i am suggesting. the way things have been going in this society, there is no longer any incentive to doing hands on stuff since one can always call a tech, or take it to the shop. learning/knowing how to DIY gives an internal "d4mn rights i can do this!" boost to those all important senses of SelfIndependence and SelfConfidence. and it cuts down on repair bills, maintenance contracts, vendor lock-in and waiting until a tech can get to the site. (some repairs can be done remotely, some require that the case be opened.)
my reason for the "quasi-religious debate" is that i am a fanatical fundamentalist true believer in the value of SelfThinking, SelfConfidence, SelfWorth. knowing enough about this technology (as a beginning) that one is no longer concerned about what hardware or software platform one is running on, one is able to do every bit of what ever that one needs to do. it is not so much about "fanatical anti-microsoft/pro open-source" as it is about "fanatical anti-'you don't have to worry, we'll do all the configuring/thinking for you(but we aren't gonna tell ya about any gotchas or hooks)' vs pro-'after you have sweated through configuring it all yourself, it runs the way YOU want it, YOU know about all of the hooks and gotchas, it fits YOUR hardware, and you have the confidence of knowing that you KNOW what is going on all the time'": knowing how to rig a fishing pole and getting your own, or going to the store and getting what they figure is going to give them the best "margins".
actually, behind most of the "open source initiatives" is a geek that had/has something that they want/need, so they built it. i guess you are seeing the bit after they've worked through the thing to where it is functional enough that someone wants to buy/market/squash it. you are correct in the sense that venture capitalists are cut-throat; but they didn't write the code, most may not even know how to code or care about the relative merits of this chip over that chip. nor care anymore about various PCB layout patterns.
again, i'm talking about being able to implement the layer of knowledge that must exist before there is something that business, venture capitalists or marketers will even pay attention to.
begging your pardon, but this sure sounds a lot like the justifications used ever since the first viking hit these shores! the only thing that these dollars are doing is messing up this planet, dividing communities into "gots to provide for my family vs sorry to see your family failing, but i gots to gets mines" and maintaining a "dog eat dog cut-throat" environment. an LRC of this nature is one of the first steps toward devising that replacement system.
dollars are required to keep everything just the way it is with all the environmental and human rights issues.
