Rapid Internet Growth In Iran

securitas writes "The BBC's Abbas Azimi reports on the rapid growth of the Internet and Internet cafes in Iran, apparently with the tacit approval of the government. Seven million Iranians have Internet access, or 10% of the population - double the rate two years ago. Access costs 60 cents/hour. The article describes how the Internet is used for everything from VoIP phone calls to chat and Web logs. Even Iran's vice-president has a daily blog on a popular site with 'musings about politics and life.' All of this despite the ban on many sites, which is easily circumvented by Iran's webmasters and geeks. An interesting point is that most of the PCs used in Iran are assembled from smuggled parts and run pirated versions of all the latest software (due to foreign embargo?). It sounds like a great opportunity for open source software."

Comments

Re:You know, a thought [OT]

[houghi]

Interesting idea, but there's actually already a Windows equivalent of exactly that.

So what if there is a Windows version. The way you say it is like saying: we don't need an other OS, we already have one.
Naturaly with Linux you could do soething like that with the advantage of not being able to run most virusses. If you only want to give browser access, you could use the Kiosk HOWTO. With some adaptation, you could let it also run the Email client. With the ability of user rights, there should be no risk for the OS, only for the (limited) user space of the individual user.

Re:Computer Language in Iran

[mr100percent]

I spoke to 3 Iranians so far, and they all support the decision. They laugh at the people disqualified, and scoff at their whining and grandstanding by their sit-in.

Guess it's not really as big an issue as they make it in the newspaper here.