Cuba Lifts Ban on Home Computers

ianare writes "The first legalized home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks. The desktop computers cost almost $800, in a country where the average wage is under $20 a month, but some Cubans do have access to extra income. Internet access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and universities on the island which the government claims is due to low bandwidth availability. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is laying a new cable under the Caribbean, but it remains unclear whether once the connection is completed, the authorities will allow unrestricted access to the internet."

This is not news...

I'm a Cuban. This happened more than a month ago. And we are very happy that someone finally came to his senses about it.

What's new, though, is that [startin soon], they are going to be sold without operating systems... No more windows pre-installed. Or so I've heard. Now we only need tons of Ubuntu disks to give away at the sotre.

Re:This is not news...

This happened more than a month ago.

I guess they haven't worked out the latency issue yet.

Re:This is not news...

I'm a Cuban. This happened more than a month ago. And we are very happy that someone finally came to his senses about it.
What's new, though, is that [startin soon], they are going to be sold without operating systems... No more windows pre-installed. Or so I've heard. Now we only need tons of Ubuntu disks to give away at the sotre.

I was over there in 2005, and visited a few folks who already had computers at home, but good to hear it's now legal. In a couple of net cafes I visited in Havana, all the computers had the KDE desktop, but I didn't get a chance to see what was running under it.

Many Cubans access e-mail and net at the post office, Correos de Cuba, and the lines were usually long.

These were just some observations while there.

Re:This is not news...

At $800 for a new PC, I think that Cubans are going to resort to doing what they did with cars; taking pre-revolution ones and keeping them going for 40-50 years.

Unfortunately, I think they'll have trouble getting the valves/tubes for those old 1950s models, and they probably won't be of a high enough spec to run the latest malware.

Re:This is not news...

.I am amazed at how they make some of those old cars still work with no parts available...

Do you realize that is a sign of how far your country has fallen? It was when people said that of your people that your country was great. Now, you rely on exploitative economics and war where once you relied on yourselves, and marvel that a people could take care of themselves.

Re:This is not news...

You'd be surprised at how resourceful Cuban people are...I am amazed at how they make some of those old cars still work with no parts available...

I'm Scottish. My grandfather had a lathe, a welding set, a bandsaw, a circular saw, various soldering irons, dies and taps etc. Parts for engines were made now and then, weights for fishing etc.

My father has it all now.

I dare say it'll be mine one day too, but I haven't a clue how to use any of it.

Re:This is not news...

You don't have to be Cuban to be resourceful.
The clutch actuating rod broke on my motor home while I was in the Welsh mountains once. A visit to the local Ford dealer revealed that they no longer made the part, and scrap yards were a waste of time.
So after buying a portable gas torch, a few brazing rods, a hacksaw and a bolt, I was able to braze the bolt to the end of the broken rod and fix the problem immediately. It was the strongest part of the van after that.
Also, because initially I had to get from the mountains to the town where the shop was, I got the clutch working by stealing about 4 feet of wire from a fence, and winding it back and forth between the pedal lever and the clutch release arm. This I then tightened up using a screwdriver between the strands which was kept from unwinding by being wedged against the vans body. That worked for 3 days before I got to do the permanent repair.
It's not hard to do these things, just takes a little bit of application.
BTW, I consider this hacking in one of its truest forms.

Re:This is not news...

Just because it costs less than 800 dollars in the rest of the world doesn't mean that it will be that cheap inside the country. Any market for importing old hardware is likely to be a black market, so the prices will be steep. It's the right step to allow personal computers in Cuba, but the majority of the people are a long way from it making any difference at all.

Just an idea, since my US government is all about supporting an open and free Cuba, it might not be bad idea to lead some sort of initiative to proliferate computers to the people. I know the government might frown upon something like this, but it would give America the moral high ground, which is something neither side has been worthy of so far.

Re:This is not news...

Just an idea, since my US government is all about supporting an open and free Cuba, it might not be bad idea to lead some sort of initiative to proliferate computers to the people. I know the government might frown upon something like this, but it would give America the moral high ground, which is something neither side has been worthy of so far.

Sorry, but your government is all about supporting a decades old grudge and nothing else - your government deals with and indeed in some cases support regimes far worse than Cuba.

There is no reason any import market has to be a black market, Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world, including Europe, and as such has an open market to exploit.

Re:This is not news...

There is no reason any import market has to be a black market, Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world

The US has tried to threaten companies that if they deal with Cuba, they can't operate within the US. The EU got very angry over the issue. Whether the US managed to frighten companies off, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised though.

As for the "decades old grudge", yes, it is a grudge. When Castro ousted the US-backed Batista, the US lost control, and US Policy towards Cuba has been about control right from the beginning. A condition of the US troops withdrawing from Cuba in 1901 was that they sign the Platt Amendment, which gave the US all sorts of powers over Cuba. It was very much a Godfather-style "offer you can't refuse". Although the Platt Amendment was repealed in 1934, the US kept one of the clauses which was the Naval base at Guantanamo. According to the Platt Amendment clause, it can only be removed with the consent of both parties, which is completely ridiculous.

Re:This is not news...

America certainly has no morales anyway

What does the president of Bolivia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales/ [wikipedia.org] have to do with computers in Cuba?

Re:This is not news...

Ease up with the slurs against the US.

I didn't mean it that way. I meant that from Cuba's point of view, they will not be dependent on a US corporation.

Re:This is not news...

MS is not a US corporation any more than it is a European, African, East Asian or Indian.

Microsoft is absolutely a U.S. corporation. I don't know where you're getting your information from.

Microsoft is a Washington corporation[1], incorporated under Washington law[2]. Its registered office, pursuant to Washington state law[3], is at 920 Fourth Avenue, Suite 2900, Seattle, Washington[4].

While Microsoft may have subsidiary and/or partner corporations in other countries, there is no doubt whatsoever that the "real Microsoft" is an American corporation, based in America, run by a board of American businessmen and an American Chief Executive officer, responsible to a largely American base of stockholders. Any contention otherwise is surely a joke.

[1] Washington Secretary of State, Corporations: Registration Data Search: Microsoft Corporation, http://www.secstate.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=600413485 [wa.gov].
[2] Wash. Stat. s 23B.01.010 et seq., available at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?Cite=23B [wa.gov].
[3] Wash. Stat. s 23B.05.010(1), available at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=23B.05.010 [wa.gov] (requiring that "[e]ach corporation [under this Title] must continuously maintain in this state ... [a] registered office that may be the same as any of its places of business").
[4] Microsoft, Articles of Incorporation, available at http://www.microsoft.com/about/companyinformation/corporategovernance/articlesincorp.mspx [microsoft.com]

Re:This is not news...

Yeah kuz Canonical is a real pure communist outfit too. And those evil US corporations have never ever made any contributions to Linux. In fact... has Cuba ever made any contributions to Free Software of note? For that matter, what about Iran and North Korea, they hate America even more.. so why aren't they the world leaders in free software?

From Cuba's point of view, their only option of not using a US company for their OS is Linux. It is very much a political, and an independence issue, for Cuba, not for me. I personally have nothing against the US.

Re:This is not news...

Editing posts in a forum like this is a bad idea. It means you can post something, wait for a response to criticize you, and then alter your original post to make it look like the replier's an idiot. Perhaps having an edit history log available would mitigate that, except it'd be hard for people to mentally keep track of which version of the post existed at a given time, and know what was being replied to.

In practice, it means that the discussion is a *discussion*, so you can see everything everyone said, instead of letting things get changed and redacted later on. All things considered, not being able to edit is a good thing.

Censorship or bandwidth problem?

According to Cuban supporters, there is no restriction to visit websites, the real problem is that the whole country have a very limited bandwidth so most pages doesn't load at all. And this limitation is thanks to the US who put a ban on export of goods and services to Cuba.
The main problem I see is that they are using mostly unlicensed copy of windows, since Windows licenses can't be acquired in Cuba.

Bandwidth and freedom

The main problem I see is that they are using mostly unlicensed copy of windows, since Windows licenses can't be acquired in Cuba.

Hey, how come Cubans can order PCs and not have to pay for Windows? Heck, they are already once step ahead of us.

If the US was smart, strike and agreement with Cuba, given them decent pipe access via Florida so long as they put 1 million uncensored PCs on it in say 2-3 years. That will reach 1 in 11 Cubans. Free flow of information is a true friend of democracy.

Re:Bandwidth and freedom

Keeping Cuba locked down is critical to our ideological bullshit. Maintaining the embargo encourages others to do so, which depresses Cuba and causes them to be less successful, which we get to blame on ideology and use as a reason why we must go on a holy war to spread Democracy throughout the world (perhaps we should start here first, eh?) We don't actually want Democracy in Cuba, or we WOULD HAVE opened up to them. The real issue is that our government fears free speech. Cubans can actually get health care...

Re:Censorship or bandwidth problem?

The main problem I see is that they are using mostly unlicensed copy of windows, since Windows licenses can't be acquired in Cuba.

How's that a problem? Cuba's a classic example of the kind of place where Microsoft would far rather people pirate Windows than use Ubuntu legitimately - get 'em hooked then tighten the anti-piracy screws later.

Cuban here... Censorship?

I would say, both parts are true. Cuban bandwdith is severely limited, thus, it is obviuous that certain key areas are prioritized (oddly enough, universities aren't - we have a 1mbs for 10 thousand users at mine).

On the other hand, that doesn't explain why don't we have conectivity even within our countries (it is faster to download Debian from the internet that it is to download it from the cuban mirrors [softwarelibre.cu]). There is even one law to address this issue [mic.gov.cu], that has been largely ignored except on the part of giving monopoly-like powers to our phone company. And it even seem they find cheaper to use satellite to connect two places within the city, than to lay a couple hundred metters of fiber to the nearest hub.

With that, though, I'm willing to call (the ministry of informatics and communications, the phone company, whatever), ignorant rather than evil. I do accept that the reason for that is technical (that we are forbidden to hook to the fiber optics that go around my country). But, there is censorship. Over time, I've collected a set of domains that seem to be banned. No one never confirms it, and the banning works as if the remote server was not working, but routing the request through a proxy server, you find out that it is indeed working. And more recently, we got this other law [mic.gov.cu], that was publicly mentioned by this guy [vivirlatino.com], and forbids chats, formus and mailing lists.

So, we have everything. We have serious technical difficulties caused by the US (internet access). We have serious technical difficulties caused by who-knows-who (intranet access). And, we have censorship. I have high hopes that if the first one is solved, the rest will follow. However, for the sake of my country and our socialism... I do wish that the last two are solved first.

It's called a satellite uplink

It would be possible to string up a wireless link, indeed the current record is 238 miles (383km - link [blogspot.com] ), so it is possible.

Maybe for 802.11*. But people routinely bounce signals off a radio repeater placed 35,000 km off the ground [wikipedia.org].

I think the bigger issue is the legality of doing this. The embargo on Cuba does not only apply to the governments, but to citizens of both countries. You setting up a wifi link is a violation of that embargo, and could get you in serious trouble.

Is the United States of America the only country in the western hemisphere with satellites? Might some Spanish- or even Portuguese-speaking country be more willing to help out

Re:Offer them free I2/NLR connectivity!

You of course are aware that Cuba has way better medical care for its citizens than the US does?

Think they'll like to pass on getting US style medical.

Re:Offer them free I2/NLR connectivity!

You are sadly misinformed. i have relatives in Cuba an the medical care there is very bad. yes the doctors and free but there is no medicine or supply's to help the public, my nice had a baby just recently and we had to actually provide all the sutures and thread to close her c section, not to mention when your taken to a hospital you need to bring your own sheets towels Etc. the only ones that get quality and cheap treatment are foreigners which pay. By far the worst care here is 10x better than what they have there.

Stop believing the Lies a few socialist nut jobs are perpetrating.

Re:Offer them free I2/NLR connectivity!

Their facilities and services for foreigners is among the best in the world

More bullshit from someone who has never even been to Cuba let alone used their medical care for foreigners. Where do you people come up with this stuff? I used to live there. It is not true. Their medical care, even for foreigners is about what you would expect from some poor country in Central Africa. I wish they would at least stop reusing needles.

Re:how this works for the Empire

Basically, the American restrictions on Cuba are total bullshit, and the rest of the world knows it. however, due to longstanding imperialist policies (like the Monroe doctrine) Cuba falls under the geographic hegemony of the USA. This was challenged by the CCCP from 1959 - 1991. When the Russians collapsed, Cuba had some "special times", like super special shitty times, that the draconian and retarded embargo by the USA only enhanced.

There are no American restrictions on Cubans. The American restrictions are on Americans (with a few even more bullshit extensions attempting to extend the embargo to non-American companies who deal with Americans; even Canada won't put up with that shit) . And calling an embargo "imperialist" is pretty rich... what would you call it if the US had normal relations with Cuba and there was a Starbucks and a McDonalds on every corner in Havana? Oh, right... you'd call it "cultural imperialism" or something similar.