The Cuban Memory Stick Underground

circletimessquare writes "The NyTimes has an aticle describing how students and others in Cuba have taken to passing around media on memory sticks, as this is the only way they can get around state-controlled media. Also driving this phenomenon is the fact that there are so few places to get on the Internet. In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban's monthly wages. Local entrepreneurs get the memory sticks from European friends, since they are scarce to find in Cuba through normal channels, and expensive."

sneakernet

[graveyhead]

Great example of the sneakernet in action. Quick RIAA, ban shoes! :-)

This is really smart. Maybe the college kids here in the US could learn a thing or two from this. Why provoke the beast when nobody has to know about your trading?

(I'm not advocating copyright infringement, just pointing out how silly attacks on internet users are)

Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it is perfect unless you have to live there.
Elect Obama or Clinton and we'll be right behind them.. Why liberals want to elect these nanny-stateist leaders I'll never know.

Re:Must be evil capitalist counterrevolutionaries

[Scrameustache]

Yeah, the Castro brothers aren't exactly nice to those who disagree with them

But they are still an improvement over the dictator they replaced [wikipedia.org].

Re:Well at least

[Constantine XVI]

Memory stick: generic term for portable flash media, usually USB drives
Memory Stick: name for Sony's flash media format

The capitalization is important

Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society

[Serge_Tomiko]

Totally false. They don't count a child as "born" in Cuba until it has lived for a week. Since a significant portion of infants die during that time, it should not be a surprise their statistics indicate a lower infant mortality rate.

Re:But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

And all they've given up is their inalienable rights as human beings. Yay!

Re:sneakernet

[SleptThroughClass]

Sounds like an opportunity for propagandizing. Take a few thousand cheap USB keys, fill them with american media, put them in a water tight enclosure and drop them off outside cuban waters.

Actually, toss them in the Windward Passage off the northwest tip of Haiti. Current there tends to loop clockwise around Cuba. Cylindrical containers might be more likely to be urged to the inside of the loop.

Called UUCP

[Colin Smith]

With store and forward for email and Usenet.

Though we used to feed a couple of sites with 10Mb tapes...

If all you have is analog phones, or even tapes, you can still run email and get usenet.
 

Citations for above

[Solandri]

I was curious enough to do some quick googling on the above claim.

Wikipedia entry on disparities between way infant mortality is measured [wikipedia.org].
US News & World Report article on same [usnews.com] (doesn't cite sources, though news magazines almost never do).
Slate article on impact of premature births on infant mortality rate [slate.com].
Boston Globe article on rate of premature births in U.S. [boston.com]

It would appear there is something to the claim that better medical care can skew infant mortality rate upwards.

Re:Handing off thumb drives - The new Cuban Intern

[suckmysav]

Actually, it is more like a high tech version of the old Russian Samizdat [wikipedia.org] during the Soviet era.

Re:Want to bring down the Cuban government?

[Scruffy Dan]

I have been to Cuba, and to a few other totalitarian states, and there was a noticeable difference between in peoples attitudes towards the government. The people in Cuba mostly genuinely support Fidel Castro (it remains to be seen what kind of support Raul will get). In Myanmar it was obvious that the people were genuinely unhappy about their government. Of course non of this should be used as an excuse for denying Cubans proper elections.