From: jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in
Use a gprs / cdma cell phone. You can never hope in hell to get a better price, availability and service which would be the exact opposit of any custom 802.11 device which a person has to carry merely to find dirctions that he may require occasionally.
Devilish thought.
I can just see thousands of liberated visually handicapped people roaming free in the city - and becoming totally helpless the next time some babu decides to shut down cell services because some cop discovers there is a village in Maharashtra named Pakistan Pada, and they fear a riot.
Essentially, any switch-based service is at the mercy of a central controller. I don't know how the wifi/rfid concept will pan out, but it has the enormous advantage of being unstoppable.
I do believe we are debating new ideas, not old ideas in a new wrapping.
--- Vickram
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On Sunday 03 September 2006 03:16 pm, Vic Cris wrote:
From: jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in
Use a gprs / cdma cell phone. You can never hope in hell to get a better price, availability and service which would be the exact opposit of any custom 802.11 device which a person has to carry merely to find dirctions that he may require occasionally.
Devilish thought.
I can just see thousands of liberated visually handicapped people roaming free in the city - and becoming totally helpless the next time some babu decides to shut down cell services because some cop discovers there is a village in Maharashtra named Pakistan Pada, and they fear a riot.
HA HA. Agreed. But the local rail is providing information to navigate independent of everything else. What it isn't providing is interactivity or in this case extremely detailed directions to YOUR detination. Wihch is obtainable from the central site. Even if Babu-E-Alam blocks access user can proceed to destination.
The reason i raise the cost bogey all the while is personal. I see two blind vendors on Dadar station selling bag lock chains. Will they afford a handheld - very unlikely. Who subsidises a purchase if at all. There Babu-E-Alam in the shadows again. Do they have cell phones - yes with fm ;-). I had also interacted very closely with an organisation of visually impared persons several yrs ago. 99% of the members would never have afforded a handheld given their educational and work skills.
The reason i raise the cost bogey all the while is personal. I see two blind vendors on Dadar station selling bag lock chains. Will they afford a handheld - very unlikely. Who subsidises a purchase if at all. There Babu-E-Alam in the shadows again. Do they have cell phones
- yes with fm ;-). I had also interacted very closely with an
organisation of visually impared persons several yrs ago. 99% of the members would never have afforded a handheld given their educational and work skills.
The Situation is quite different from your several years back experience. I don't know how many years ago you are talking about. but due to my research work I have been all over India and today the computer litrecy of blind persons is ironically highest in asia and our country is amongst the highest in the world. secondly, not just the skillsets the payment capacity of these people have also n\ increased. just looking at two lock chain venders we can't conclude. secondly for a device as important as we are talking about, let me inform the list that organisations like lions club do a lot of donations to blind people in masses for life important things. rather just 2 months back 150 seloron computers were distributed with talking software (screen reader) to 150 blind people by lions club. and I am giving only one such example. today almost every college has more than 15 blind students on an average. and at the pg level it is even more. think about their basic skillsets? Krishnakant.
On Monday 04 September 2006 11:15 am, krishnakant Mane wrote:
The reason i raise the cost bogey all the while is personal. I see two blind vendors on Dadar station selling bag lock chains.
The Situation is quite different from your several years back experience. I don't know how many years ago you are talking about.
96.
but due to my research work I have been all over India and today the computer litrecy of blind persons is ironically highest in asia and our country is amongst the highest in the world.
Are u talking of "85% of the blind in India are computer literate" or of "4% of blind Indians are computer literate which is the highest in Asia" which means that everyone else has less than 4 % of their blind citizens computer literate.
secondly, not just the skillsets the payment capacity of these people have also n\ increased. just looking at two lock chain venders we can't conclude. secondly for a device as important as we are talking about, let me inform the list that organisations like lions club do a lot of donations to blind people in masses for life important things. rather just 2 months back 150 seloron computers were distributed with talking software (screen reader) to 150 blind people by lions club. and I am giving only one such example. today almost every college has more than 15 blind students on an average. and at the pg level it is even more. think about their basic skillsets?
agreed. Could u point out some place on the web where i can find stats about India's visually handicapped? Looks like i am shooting in the dark. But apart from that u will be excluding ordinary people from the benfits of the system by mandating special devices.
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jtd -
krishnakant Mane -
Vic Cris