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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.
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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.
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!
"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.
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
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
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.
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...
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?
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
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
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.
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!
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 --
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.
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.