From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200409030253.i832r8J18095@augusta.math.psu.edu> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] UN to fund linux for the 3rd world In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 02 Sep 2004 08:26:04 MDT." Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 22:53:07 -0400 From: Dan Cross Topicbox-Message-UUID: dd4e4e82-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 ron minnich writes: > Order of importance, with each thing decreasing at least 10x each time > - non-technical pubs > - technical pubs > - The Cool Table (as in grade school) > - third party apps > - good from a technical point of view > - superior design > > so the last item is 1e-6 of the first item. Now you know how these things > happen. Oh great. ``The Wall Street Journal says it's the next big thing! Quick! Ship it to Haiti!'' Yeah, that's progress. So an anthropology professor who taught at Columbia told me a story about UNICEF in a ``development'' project in India somewhere. They decided to do away with the stair-step system usd to access a well in some remote village because they thought the idea of people crawling down into the well to get their water wasn't very hygenic. So, they walled up the stairwell leading into the well and `purified' the water source with a bunch of chemicals. Patting themselves on the back for this service to mankind, they proceeded to leave --- without putting a bucket mechanism in the well for the people to get their water. It didn't take very long for the wall they'd put up to get torn down, much to the dismay of the local UN reps. She told us about another project where a bunch of flushable toilets were installed *in the middle of a village* somewhere. UNICEF couldn't figure out why no one was using them.... - Dan C.