Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq 230
jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."
Need employees (Score:5, Insightful)
We take a lot of our technology for-granted. Bringing modern technology to a war-torn, outdated country could be both a dream and a nightmare.
Re:Sensational (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sensational (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Need employees (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He sounds like he working in Oakland, CA.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Asshole!
WANTED: People who like Dollars more than sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Need employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe due to my left-wing political views, I don't understand this question. You seem to be talking about something entirely different than supporting our troops. It seems like there are several different actions you can take, including
Re:Sensational (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't know if you do, but I live in America, and I've yet to get that impression from our media. It's a whole lot of "Oh dear lord, we're stuck in a quagmire" - and I don't think that comes from an anti-war slant so much as a consistent barrage of bad news there's no way to spin in a positive way. The closest to "everything is fine" that we get is Fox telling us things are bad, but not nearly so bad as everyone else says.
Re:That's what it's all about for US companies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internet in Iraq (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sensational (Score:3, Insightful)
Ask yourself some tough questions, and maybe you might come to the conclusion that just as Americans not in the war might get an overly negative view of the war, those getting their news from propaganda central might be getting just the opposite. The truth is somewhere in between.