SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the wait-until-they-find-out-some-search-results-are-advertisements dept.
A satellite broadcasting company called Outernet wants to bring all this content many of us take for granted to the estimated 3 billion people without internet access. That catch is that, in order to get content to as many people as possible efficiently and cheaply, Outernet's connection goes only one way.
"We want to solve the information access problem as quickly as possible," Outernet co-founder and CEO Syed Karim says.
Outernet sells a simple gadget called the Lighthouse that can connect to a satellite dish and download—but not upload—information such as Wikipedia entries, public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, news, crop prices and more. The device doubles as a Wi-Fi hub, so that users can connect to it and download or browse text on their own devices. You can also build a Lighthouse-style receiver yourself, using the company's open source software and instructions. The service is free, and anyone with the proper equipment can pick up Outernet's broadcasts.
Yay, a new device to capture the spending power of the 3 billion humans who live on less than $2 per day.
Related: Facebook's Internet.org "Platform" Launches
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:17PM
I assume takyon made the comment about the spending power. in any case, I wanted to point out that if their computers literally cannot upload anything, it means they can't order anything off the internet. at most, you could force them to watch commercials for something, but I doubt anyone would be interested in advertising anything to them anyway.
for instance, I assume that if the various car companies knew I do not have a driver's license, they would not pay anyone to show me their silly commercials (be it hulu or tv or whatever).
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:25PM
And you would be wrong - that comment is attributable to the original submitter. You can always look at the 'Original Submission' link to check.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:16PM
The spending power comment was mine.
Oh, but there are. Tobacco companies for one spend a lot of money advertising cigarettes [care2.com] in the 3rd World. Smoking rates are dropping in industrialized countries and they want to replace that lost revenue. Liquor and beer are another common advertisement you see in poor places; even in the most impoverished village in Vietnam you can see billboards for cognac.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:15PM
If we assume advertising is incorporated, then the question would still essentially become: does the benefit of having a local branch of the globe-spanning super-library outweigh the cost of letting the sponsors put up billboards? Having worn out several library cards in youth, I would tend to believe it does - they're fertile ground for avid minds, giving fresh opportunities to a population that had no option of expanding their intellectual horizons other than leaving.