I have just had a really really interesting lunch – with a person from MAF. They are the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, and have interesting requirements for communications and tracking. Most of lunch was speaking about how satellite terminals are changing their world totally.

Some missionary stations which used to need six months to get letters each way to the rest of the world now have email with a four hour turn-around. Others are getting satellite terminals which allow very cheap live voice calls over the internet. I was told that missionaries actually cried when they got their first email message reply since they had been out of touch for so long.

So much is being done to improve communications around the world. I also heard that ‘Last Mile solutions’ are providing ‘store and forward’ email access by placing a ‘Web Cafe’ in a remote village. This might even be pedal power. But the village will not have any communications, but might have a daily truck to pick up crops, or a bus. So what Last Mile does is place a device on the bus or truck that exchanges email with WiFi whenever it comes into range.

This creates a ‘network’ that is similar to the old dialup communications. Then when the bus comes into internet access it sends and receives all the email.

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The Dumb and Dumber criminals in the USA have been sent to gaol. They are now spending about four years in the clink.