Re: Iraqis work to restore Internet service

[Petri Helenius <pete () he iki fi>]

Eric Kuhnke wrote:

> Ironic item of the day:
>
> In many countries which will not admit visitors with an Israeli stamp in their passport (Egypt, Syria, etc), the most 
> popular method of internet cafe uplink is VSAT.  One of the largest mideast VSAT carriers is Gilat - http://www.gilat.com , 
> an Israeli company.  Do the Syrians know their bits are flowing through routers in Tel Aviv?  I would hope they don't 
> care, or have good crypto, but the potential for snooping of traffic does exist.
>  
My passport has both BEN GURION BORDER CONTROL and A.R. EGYPT stamps (in 
that chronological
order) and I have encountered no difficulty travelling.

I cannot say for Syria since I've never been there.

Pete

> At 08:51 PM 5/26/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>
>  
>
> > The nice thing about the Internet is it doesn't require (much) central
> > planning.  All you need are some IP addresses and a willing upstream
> > connection.  The US Government is paying MCI millions for a few cell
> > phones, while the Iraqis are bringing Internet cafes on-line with
> > "salvaged" equipment.
> >
> >
> > http://www.washtimes.com/business/20030525-100937-3873r.htm
> >
> > "The state company's engineers salvaged one of its satellite transceivers
> >    
> >
> > from the burned-out Ministry of Information and winched it atop a
>  
>
> > two-story building in the al-Adel neighborhood in West Baghdad.
> >   After weeks of cobbling and calibrating, the dish was able to send and
> > receive a satellite signal about a week ago. It's a temporary earth
> > station, soon to be an Internet cafe.
> >   "We built it from scrap. We had to weld it and build it manually,"
> > said Mr. Abdullah, a gray-haired man whose fingers fidget over a string of
> > wooden prayer beads.
> >   With 50 computers squirreled away, and security guards and a diesel
> > generator at the ready, the Baghdad cafe will offer the public its first
> > taste of the Internet since early April."
> >    
>
>
>