The good news is that a group called the Digital Partnership is organizing the distribution of thousands of surplus PCs to developing countries. The bad news is that Microsoft is supplying them with Windows XP and Office XP free of charge.

It’s good that they are finally agreeing to give licenses away to the needy after earlier situations where they tried to prosecute charities for piracy. However, I fear that most of the PCs that are discarded may not be powerful enough to run XP effectively. Alas Microsoft seems to have little interest in actively supporting older computers, most of which are more than powerful enough to run useful applications on earlier versions of the operating system.

If this continues (and I see little sign of change in attitude from MS) this may end up penalising them in the long term as people in countries with older machines will find they just can’t run Microsoft software unless they pirate older versions (since MS won’t sell or support them after a while). It might even encourage developing countries into the Linux camp…

According to a UN report summarised by the BBC, the number of Internet users in Asia and, encouragingly, Africa rose by more than 40%, and in Latin America and Europe the number rose by 33% in 2001. In North America the number only rose by 10%, perhaps indicating that there is a plateau of interest which Europe will start to reach soon.

Of course, this probably over-states the importance of the Internet to non-English speaking people and the developing world – my guess is that the average American Internet users uses the Internet a lot more than the average African one because of the greater amount of relevant content and lower relative (and absolute) cost.stroke 2 ringtone8100 sprint ringtoneringtones 24 phone mobile ctu3595 free polyphonic nokia ringtonefree ringtones for crickets absolutely149 south barrington7250 nokia polyphonic ringtone freeadult proof download rington Mapfree nude moviesnude movie trailersand young older porn moviemovie pantyhose clips pantyhose moviesmpegs movies pantyhosemovie free hilton parismovie paris sex hiltonsheel pumping high pedal movie Map

BBC News Online working alongside Go Digital, a World Service programme, has produced a series of profiles of how people in Bangladesh and Senegal are putting new technology to use to help the disadvantaged. Not all of these technological experiments will make sense in the long term, but it is good to see people trying…ringtone free nokia polyphonic 228551 squad ringtoneringtone 6010 nokia polyphonicnokia ringtone 6260 polyphonicfree download nokia ringtone 3285ringtone free polyphonic 2260 nokiaring actor ring funny ring ringtonesa55 siemens ringtone Map

A clever bit of lateral thinking to help close the digital divide in rural India – villagers request Internet information from a technician on a motorbike and a day or two later, he returns with the information that he has downloaded.porn 50aim sexporn amatervideo adriana lima sexa tape sex night paris in3d animal sexsex mpegs amateursex 101 great of nights Map

Wayne Marshall, who has been involved in development work in Africa, writes about his experiences. He has some important lessons to impart about building skills instead of parachuting in equipment and about the need to provide clean water before bandwidth in desperately poor regions.

I have my doubts about his belief that Linux is a suitable operating system to provide to needy Africans, however. It may be “ideologically pure” and, more importantly, useful on low-spec systems, but I imagine that because it is still not fully user-friendly it may be difficult to train non-computer literate (or indeed semi-literate) people to use. I also worry about whether the skills Linux users learn will continue to be useful once they have to inter-operate with the wider world of Windows PCs.