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Nordic Countries to Promote Open Source
Nordic Avenger writes "The Nordic countries have launched a website to promote open source software to consumers and small businesses. People can submit open source software links as well as exchange information in the forums section. As the website states: 'Nordicos.org is a project of the Nordic Ministerial Council, and addresses the need for a comprehensive overview of open source software available for consumers'. Now, anybody eager to make good suggestions about software that normal people could find useful and live happily ever after in the open source world?"
-jim
Another step in the right direction for humankind.
Open source does not have enough a coordinated information (and marketing) websites that have enough clout. This effort, as long it is kept up and improved with time, would be a precious resource for the average citizen and consumer.
It looks like you are infected with the Programmer.NoJob.FUD32 virus. Please apply this patch immediately.
Regards,
admin@trollingfud.com
getSexySig();
lol
I read that as "redhatted stepchild." It certainly would have been funnier that way.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
Having finally installed Mandrake over my windows partition on my computer, I have to say; What Software?
I mean, Under M$ WIndows, I had to find:
An Office Suite (replaced by Open-office)
A Programming Environment (Replaced by QT Designer)
and about 30 small shareware/freeware managers for Zipfiles, PDF files, MP3's, Instant Messaging, IRC, Decent FTP Client, and A News reader.
Everything was Included in the ISO's for Mandrake I burned. The only problem people switching over will have is trying to understand that whatever it is they need, it's (Usually) already installed!
I'm a concientious
I suppose it's true that prophets are always recognized last in their hometowns.
You do understand, of course, that without a registrations, the forums are necessarily self-moderated; and being the site is mostly frequented by people who are used to confront territorial polar bears while spending the day at the beach, you might be deep in the pee-pee yourself, trolling there.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
One of the first thing these guys need, like som many other sites is a descriptive title! "Welcome to nordicos.org" is *not* a good title - when are people gonna learn that?
"Nordicos.org - Nordic open source software", or if you have to, "Welcome to Nordicos.org - Nordic open source software" is the title to have. Why? Well, not only because it makes for much better tabs, and better bookmarks, but because this is what you see in a search engine.
And search engines also pay quite some attention to the title, especially when it comes to comparing to content and meta tags. Consistency.
Please, ffs, do the world a favour and use informative titles! How hard can it be... sigh.
You're of course inferring the extensive governmental support for open source in, say, the US?
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Enough of this freaking sun and hot weather, in Seattle of all places, which is also why there's no jobs.
I'm going abroad to soak up all those tech jobs that are being shipped overseas!
Most likely the #1 Unfunny Meta/Moderator on
"Normal" people don't give a sh*t about sites like that. What they need is cd's a la AOL filled with OpenOffice.Org, Mozilla Firebird&Thunderbird, a win32 port of Xine (Now THAT would be cool), ect... That and more exposure from mainstream media. I'm sorry but this is the only way OSS will really take off.
I deal with tough NYC gang members every day. That's right, I work at an elementary school. A polar bear wouldn't last 2 seconds in Harlem.
As an American who studied for a year in Sweden, I can say first-hand that the Nordic have always been at or near the cutting edge where software and technological issues are involved.
Sweden in particular is one of the most wired nations on the planet, and has been actively involved in open-source... anyone ever heard of MySQL?
Skal till Norden!
- Barry
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Hehe Habs fans will get so mad about this one ;) Go QC !
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Not a single BSD?
Why?
"What they need is cd's a la AOL filled with OpenOffice.Org, Mozilla"
We're about to distribute a collection like this, called the Windows Toolbox: http://thegoldenear.org/toolbox/windows/
I think that we can thank SCO for all that.
We provide a similar site to what these people offer (tho nowhere near as polished, and only for Windows) in the form of the Windows Toolbox, distribution of predominantly Free software for Windows, and especially its list of software
A good idea, but I'll let you in a secret: all those tech jobs being shipped overseas aren't being shipped to Stockholm.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nice site, admirable idea, but it remains to be seen if they'll be relevant.
radsoft.net
Finally, a site that will pronounce "Linux" the way it was intended.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
So when I first read this headline, I thought it was another government country X decides to convert such and such systems to OSS.
This seems to be more and more common. And why not? It's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying M$ liscenses (as long as you aren't stupid enought to pay SCO).
Anyway, I started thinking, why doesn't the US do this? We have a $4.5 * 10^11 deficit; M$ liscense payments can't help that. Well, there are many reasons the US gub'ment doesn't go Open Source, but foremost is a powerful lobby. I have an in with a democratic presidential candidate (I won't say who).
I plan on writing up something as to what's wrong with IP law, especially the DMCA. I'd also like to include a rough proposal for U.S. government adoption of OSS.
Does anyone know of any numbers as to much the government would save by doing this? I couldn't begin to estimate how many Windows boxes the federal government runs or what the pay for the liscenses (surely not full price?). Any help would be appreciated.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
The chef is swedish and he says "Bork! Bork! Bork!" not Mork. You must not read slashdot enough.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
"Be unpatriotic. Increase unemployment! Avoid all-American software and use OSS!"
Business is business. Competition is good. Suck it up and deal! That's the American way, right?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It has worked on every machine I have tried it on...
Some almost 10 years old, and the latest laptops...
It's virtually the "AOL Users" linux distro.
It's also likely the easiest way to get Debian installed. (knx-hdinstall)
The following trolls completely miss the point:
The main cost of software is SUPPORT.
Linux will require support.
The money simply would not go to Redmond, but would be spread far and wide across the US.
As it is for the US government, offshore support would be a no no... Strictly home grown support staff would be mandatory.
If you buy the BS that "Linux costs MORE to support" from Redmond, even better to help support the economy, right?
(Everyone knows that's BS, but stay with me)
I use Linux, have used NetBSD... I could not care less what gets used, but the concept of my tax money getting pissed away on MS year after year has always burned me... Especially when there are free alternatives that would work better in most cases.(Not all.yet... Buy that would likely change quickly)
Lets not get into the file format BS...
Would you be referring to the DARPA support (some of the BSD projects have had DARPA support for instance, linux too--in case you didn't know, Rob Watson, core FreeBSD member and on Fbsd Foudation board of directors is a DARPA Principal Investigator ), NSA funding, or something else?
- A standard way to add drivers for : Audio, Network, Video, videocapture. Ok, so video usually works. Now the rest please. /Dread
- A Mediaplayer that runs it all.
- Video Capture and recording software that just blows away the freebies from Pinnacle, hauppage like winttv etc. That should be easy.
Is this the same outlook that gets targeted by dozens of viruses, that takes someones list and sends out copies of the same virus?
>Zipfiles builtin to windows xp
I wonder does zip have better compression then say bzip, or gzip? Last I checked I saved more space using bzip than windows zip.
>PDF files isnt the acrobat reader plugin instamagically downloaded when you first browse to a pdf?
Good old Adobe PDF. I love the way it jacks up my processor in Windows, I guess this could be your reason to like it too, I mean who the hell needs free ram space?
>MP3's WMplayer
Oh man oh man, I loooove WMplayer spyware. I like the way it decides to just check up on album information when I'm playing it. I mean its not like the server that it's connecting to is snooping my information. Checking what I'm listening to maybe even putting together a massive list for the RIAA that says "Hey look at user foo, he's listened to 10,000 albums this month.
>Instant Messaging MSN messenger
How did you know another one of my favorites. I love getting a zillion 'Stop this Pop-up' ads from MSN. Yay "MS: Who do you want to spam today?"
>IRC telnet =P
Oh boy you're the best I mean why not use telnet and let everyone using a sniffer see my information coming down the pipes. Can I have your rocket science knowledge?>Decent FTP Client ftp.exe IS a decent ftp client. i thought we linux freaks enjoyed working with the console?
FTP on any OS is rather dumb nowadays considering sftp is freely available under both OS'.
>and A News reader. Outlook express?
See above.
MoFscker
Dead matey. Dead.
Yesterday as I was restocking my kitchen, I thought, "hey, I want the kind of software that supermarkets use" (possibly without the RDIF tags, though whenever my cousin visits, bottles of gin mysteriously vanish, so even those might be a good idea).
Then, why not a serious financial management package for my money (the $232 that I've managed to save since the dot-com boom, and which has not yet been converted into gin)?
The list goes on. Even "huge" packages like SAP are basically just dumb data-entry applications with lots, lots, and lots of options. It used to be that the entry point for building something like this was huge. You needed:
- serious hardware
- licenses for the OS, for tools,...
- Oracle or something similar
- dozens of developers
- huge management structures
I know, I've worked in many companies that produced this kind of software.
Now, today, almost all of these costs have been eliminated, even the huge management structures, as developers have learned how to use tools like CVS, wiki, and even simple email.
It's now feasible (and has been for several years) to foresee a possible next step for OSS, namely to provide domestic/personal/small-business versions of software applications that until today have been considered only "big business".
I'm thinking of stuff like accounting systems, stock-control systems, ERP systems, financial planning systems, currency management, and so on. I'm sure you can add your own favourites: content management.
I'm not quite sure whether I want my fridge to be equipped with a "supply chain management system", but that might be the best tool for the job.
OK, I _know_ that one day, maybe ten years from now, Siebel Systems, or SAP, or PeopleSoft will decide to donate their source code to OSS, much as Sun donated StarOffice. Maybe it's simplest to wait.
But this seems to me to be one of the greatest gaps in today's OSS offering, and one that it should be relatively easy to fill, given modest state support.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Yes, stuff like this.
But needs lots and lots of work. I would guess that the only way a decent OSS ERP system will come into being is if it is (a) subsidised by the state and (b) actively used by many businesses. If I had the political power I'd definitely find this a good investment of money. Damn, it's a great idea: how much would a small country like Belgium or Sweden save per year if they could find a workable alternative to SAP, for instance? The mind boggles... Perhaps one day we will see governments simply buying software companies. It could make good economic sense.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Sorry, no polar bears in Nordic countries.
Here is a map of their distribution.
Open-source programmes for small language areas have the advantage over license-based programmes that the users are allowed to adapt the source code. This means that the programmes can be translated and play an important role in the struggle by small countries to maintain their linguistic and national identities.
And boy do we need that up here in Ultima Thule. Lets count shall we? On the surface, we have swedish, danish, norwegian, icelandic and finnish to take into account - thats five major launguages (allthought norwegians, danes and swedes can understand eachother - we just choose not to).However....
In sweden, sami is an offical second language. In Norway, we have bokmal (mainstream 'wegian), nynorsk ('new norwegian', based on the dialects) and sami as official launguages. In Finland, you have both finnish and 'finlandssvenska' (finlandswedish) to cope with. The danes and icelanders are easily the best off, with just one launguge each. So that gives us a total of nine launguage-variants that the writer of software ought to cater for... in a region with just over 25 million inhabitants. Can we seriously expect the big corps to cater to this marked? Not really, and that makes OSS the best alternative in order to make sure we get software in our own language.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
No. America is losing jobs because of big corporations going out running like mad.
And why would people in the nordic countries even bother careing about that? It is not the responsibility of the nordic goverments to make sure you has a job - it is the responsibility of your goverment. Despite how much you may wish for it, it the world isn't here to provide the softwaregiants of the US with a ready marked for their badly translated programs.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
The Nordic countries? So what are they? The three Scandinavian countries? The three Scandinavian countries and Denmark? The three Scandinavian countries and Iceland? Two Scandinavian countries and Denmark but not Iceland?
Apparently according to their page, it's the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Iceland and Groenland. So that's okay. But please mention it, because I'm European and I only just found out about this Nordic Council of Ministers.
It's really irritating when people use mindlessly generic terms like that. "Other countries like Europe--" GRR!
I thought you left slashdot? Why ruin our peace and quiet?
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
It is NOT a generic term. The nordic countries is a very old term and means Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland -- the Western Europe countries surrounding the Baltic Sea.
Scandinavia is a broader term, including all the Nordic countries plus Iceland, Groenland and the Faeroe Islands... (though I'm guessing the spelling of the last ones)
Maybe it's the responsibility of Nordic governments to guarantee jobs to their citizens, but it's never been the job of the US government. If that's what you're looking for, maybe you should move to a worker's paradise like China, North Korea, or the USSR (this one will require travelling back in time).
It is strange how this "polar bear" idea have come to become some kind of truth.
However, there isn't polar bears in any region of Norden exept of a remote island group north of Norway and on Greenland.
Where I live we have ordinary brown bears, not white. The bears is also smaller than the North American grissly bear. Actually, they are quite harmless since they are very shy - I have never seen one live in nature.
The most dangerous large animal in most of Norden is actually ordinary elks since they have a tendency to put themself in front of cars on freeways... not a good combination.
Finland is only partially covered by glaciers, and polar bears and penguins are uncommon in the southern part of the country. The arctic region is called Lapland, the home of lap dancing. Natives travel by wolf or husky-dragged sleds, even though one guy persistently uses reindeers. Natives are on alert from the flesh-eating reindeer that hunt the penguins nesting in the arctic coconut palmtrees. Pohjanmaa ("the Northern Land", ridiculously flat plains of Northwestern Coast in the central Finland) are under water for three months at every spring when the damns broke, killing thounsands. Local houses are built on top of poles, and all the families still alive own boats.
Polar bears have excellent sight and sense of smell. They are also very curious and always trying to find more food. Surprisingly, there is no record of a polar bear attacking a living human in Finland in the last 35 weeks. Loud noise, firecrackers and fire are commonly used to scare polar bears away, and a mere $699 for an official ABP (anti-bear-pack) including a multitude of bear intervention measures. Polar bears can be differentiated from the gray and black bears by their subtle color differencies. The easiest to differenciate is the local polar bear variant, the finbear, from its blue striping on otherwise white fur (ed. most laps still think it is white stripes on blue, even though a Swedish scientist has genetically proven the striping, giving an indication of the stubborn nature of the Finns).
Tornados, blizzards, snowstorms, and earthquakes are more common in the spring (up to June or even early July), glacierquakes a bit less frequent at that time, but a couple feet snowfall in a few days is not uncommon even on other times of the year. Spring blizzards typically last for a week or so, during which time it is impossible to travel anywhere. Snowfall records for a single day is 3.14 metres, but about 1.41 meter is usual.
The English word finish is originated by James Cook meaning the end of the Finnish winter, which usually comes a bit late, but in some years well before the start of the next winter. All the Finns, including young children and hospitalized (ed. if there was a hospital in Finland) elderly, drink plenty of potato-vodka poisoned with ammonium chloride as an anti-freeze measure, surprisingly inaffecting their marvelous, most definatly world-class sled-driving skills. Helsinki, hosting the only school, shopping mall, and museum in Finland, is also the Capital city hosting the King of Finland, Urho. Only noblemen and their huskies can vote.
The phone system is based on mobile phones, since the native people steal any copper wiring and use it for snow shoes repair and jewelry for the huskies. The national computer is running Microsoft Windows 3.11 for workgroups, making the country only of its kind in being a 100% Microsoft market.
Please consider, that there is absolutely no sunlight during the long winters. The natives navigate using ever-light bon-fires, which are now considered to be banned by the EU due to the planned cut in CO2 pollution - possibly leaving Finland completely dark during the winters.
-- Imperial units must die --
America Losing Jobs?
How could that be possible?
A quick whip around finds him here and here.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
If you read the Council pages, you will notice that these states and territories communicate and co-operate, often in a cultural and economic context.
Arctic Cirle != Polar bears
Waiting for "Insightful" moderations...
What strikes me even more is the difference in size between Win95 (500MB) and XP(3,5 GB). Win95 had it all (albeit crappy): multitasking, application windows, network, support for periferals. With an OS 7 Times the size on computers 20 times as fast I'd expect the OS to talk to me, write my letters by itself, do my tax report, and keep my elderly mother busy on the phone and all of that at lightspeed. I can't see any justification for the WinXP bloat.
But well Linux starts bloating too... By 2005 tax reports are probably a kernel module.
Very funny :)
Although I think you're doing Finland a disservice since some Americans would believe it's true.
Found this in their forums:
IMplement forum registration, Quick!
Author: CmdrTaco ()
Date: 08-31-03 08:08
Slashdot is coming! Run for your lives!!
Reply To This Message
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Faroese
I think that makes at least 10!
Yeah, in the US you can always flip burgers for $5 an hour. Ah, the joy of capitalism.
The Dutch government has started a similar initiative some time ago, providing governmental agencies and other interested parties with information about Open Source and Open Standards. The site: OSOSS.nl
We provide something similiar to the Windows Toolbox, except we don't charge any money for it, and we don't taint it with non-Free software. FOSS for Windows.
We currently distribute a collection like this, called FOSS for Windows
It's written in ASP and it gives a mysql error if make http://www.norden.org/webb/news/news.asp?id=3054&l ang=6 into http://www.norden.org/webb/news/news.asp?id=30'54& lang=6
It won't last long :(
to say Nordic rather than Scandinavian.
Germans are also considered "Nordic", so this is probably a misnomer. Scandinavian indicates non-German Nordic peoples who speak northern/western germanic languages with the exception of the Brittish Isles.
Yet another example of sacrificing accuracy for the sake of brevity.
Now the Italians will want to be called Romans.
What ?
The goverment responsibility is to ensure that all people play by the same rules. Everything else is left to the players.
Of course, that only applies to free societies.
To me, Scandinavia is the limp phallus-looking peninsula at the top of globe and doesn't include any islands or even Denmark. Others take a cultural, rather than geographic, view and consider "Scandinavia" to include the islands, Denmark, and maybe Finland, but I call that "The Nordic Countries".
I should say that I'm Icelandic and perhaps comon usage here is unusual. We don't talk much about Scandinavia, it's always "Nordurlond" ("The Nordic Countries").
BTW, what is the meaning of this crap with Slashcode mapping perfectly valid characters like eth and o with umlaut (which I typed above) to the closest ASCII characters?
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Windows Toolkit looks interesting... I haven't completely RTFWS (the Web Site), but how does it compare with GnuWin ?
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Ha, now that's funny.
For those who don't know: the Quebec Nordiques were the "other" Quebec hockey club, before they were *sob* sold.
Sad to see you've been moderated a troll...
Iceland is not considered a part of Scandinavia. All the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) are mutually understandable without any training.
Icelandic is pretty close to medieval Norwegian (called Norse). Icelandic is about as different from modern Scandinavian as medieval Anglo-Saxon is from current English.
I know this first-hand. I am Norwegian, and I have collegues from Denmark, Sweden and Iceland. I speak Norwegian to the Danes and Swedes, and English to the Icelanders who haven't learned Norwegian.
People! Think what you're advocating here! These are the same tribes that raided open-source coastlines and raped,robbed, and pilliaged propriety villages during pre-medieval times! THEY'LL DO IT AGAIN IF WE LET THEM!!!
Please mod the parent down - it is wrong and therefore not informative.
Scandinavia is Denmark, Sweden and Norway and sometimes Iceland (the ancient lands of the Norsemen), while the Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland.
See here for more info.
In the Netherlands, a similar site has been set up, supported by the government. It is the Open Source Software Lab, http://www.ossl.nl/ . It aims to lower thresholds for using open source software by finding, evaluating, reviewing and, if neccesary, translating open source software into Dutch. Also, there is a discussion forum and a wiki board for exchanging information.
The fact that the Nordic countries have also such a site is another sign there is a real need for platforms like these, and I think it's a good sign that governments are supporting and starting these initiatives.
Is that penis shaped icon used for the this thread for GNU or Nordic subjects?
Actually, the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour in the US. In a purely laissez-faire capitalist system, you could flip burgers for $0.01 per hour and your employer wouldn't be liable if it refused to pay to fix a leaky gas pipe which exploded and caused your untimely demise. The US is no more purely capitalist than Sweden is purely socialist or China is purely communist. They're all compromises.
I never said capitalism is a great system. It seems to work better than most others, but it does allow for plenty of abuses. I wouldn't want to live in any one of a purely capitalistic, socialist, or communist state. It's not as if you can find any "pure" examples anyway. Since governments are inevitably corrupt, I believe that government should be kept to a minimum.
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Last time I checked the Danes dominated the Viking era. Cutting 'n' pasting from the execelent resource that is state.gov:
During the Viking period (9th-11th centuries), Denmark was a great power based on the Jutland Peninsula, the Island of Zealand, and the southern part of what is now Sweden. In the early 11th century, King Canute united Denmark and England for almost 30 years.
Danish Queen Margrethe I succeeded in uniting Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland under the Danish crown. Sweden and Finland left the union in 1520; however, Norway remained until 1814. Iceland, in a "personal union" under the king of Denmark after 1918, became independent in 1944. [...]
Denmark's provinces in today's southwestern Sweden were lost in 1658, and Norway was transferred from the Danish to the Swedish crown in 1814, following the defeat of Napoleon, with whom Denmark was allied. [...]
After the war with Prussia and Austria in 1864, Denmark was forced to cede Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia and adopt a policy of neutrality. Toward the end of the 19th century, Denmark inaugurated important social and labor market reforms, laying the basis for the present welfare state. [...]
The rest is history - the world wars and such.
Anyway, I believe the Swedes were reaching out towards the East during the Viking era, and dominated there. Norwegians went further Northwest out to sea if I remember correctly. The Danes went West (also out to sea) and South, and established the Danelaw.
The Faroe Islands (for now) and Greenland have home-rule governments under normal Danish rule.
Thanks for listening.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me