Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups

First broadband post! by Compact+Dick · 2004-03-29 22:03 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Internode is just a fucking awesome ISP. Simon Hackett is just a fucking awesome dude.

All hail! And fuck karma!

Cheers, folks! :-)

--
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]

Zzzzzzzzzzing! by ltbarcly · 2004-03-29 22:04 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Seventh POST!!!

Re:Zzzzzzzzzzing! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:55 · Score: -1, Offtopic

When Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft(R) in 1976, nobody could have foreseen the extent to which his vision and efforts would impact the world of technology.

Tired of waiting for the solution, Paul set out to make it happen himself. He hand-picked a dream team of PC industry design and engineering luminaries, whom he pulled together in a top-secret skunkworks at his Seattle-based company.

Fuck You Vlad by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:04 · Score: -1, Offtopic

fr1st raply!!!

SPORKS FOR EVAR!!!

Kuro5hin > Slashdot
You suck Timothy

Re:Fuck You Vlad by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:53 · Score: -1, Troll

Yes, kuro5hit is almots as graet as GNETOO!!!

GEnTOO ROx0rz!!!!

Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by amigoro · 2004-03-29 22:07 · Score: -1, Offtopic

And Open Source will solve all the problems.

Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny

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Nothing to see here

Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by Turing+Machine · 2004-03-29 22:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, it won't "solve the problem", but it's a lot easier to learn about democracy, modern agriculture, and AIDS prevention if you have access to a knowledge base.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by CleverNickedName · 2004-03-29 22:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

Or maybe this has nothing to do with Africa's problems. Just like every piece of code from the States is not concerned with narrowing the rich/poor divide or correcting the problems with a two-party system.

Africa is a large continent; not everything that happens here is directly related to the CNN special you saw on it.

--

Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by zakezuke · 2004-03-29 23:03 · Score: 2, Informative

I have a friend who was part of peace coups in Namibia. Part of his duties did involve HIV education. From what he said I infer that it was difficult for some guy to convience his students about something deadly they couldn't see. I imagine we had the same problem here in the western world when Aides was new.

"We are not clear what AIDS is. We have seen many people suffering from headaches, stomachaches and diarrhoea, and only after they are dead do we hear rumours that they had AIDS. Some lose weight, and only after they are dead, you hear talk that they had AIDS. We do not know what AIDS is." --http://www.fao.org/SD/2001/KN1201a_en.htm

I do believe access to the net could be used as a tool to promote education and the sharing of information... esp on the issue of agriculture. I'd have to hunt up a reference, but there was a connection with HIV and the early death of elders of family farms, and not passing down trade. Modern agiculture is all well and good, but documenting local agiculture I would consider to be paramount.

A recently published FAO report, HIV/AIDS and the commercial agriculture sector of Kenya: Impact, vulnerability, susceptibility and coping strategies, shows that the disease is affecting not only small family farms but also large agricultural estates. Kenya's commercial agricultural sector is losing a significant number of skilled workers, and companies are spending increasing amounts of money on medical expenses and employee retraining. --http://www.fao.org/news/1999/991006-e.htm

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There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by WIAKywbfatw · 2004-03-29 23:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Pop quiz hotshot: you're the honest, democratically-elected leader of one of the poorest nations on the planet. Do you want to spend some of your scarce resources on software licences or do you want to ensure that as little money as possible is spent in that area so that your meagre budget can be as effective as possible in the everyday struggle to feed, clothe, protect and educate your people?

Open source software isn't only for developed nations. On the contrary, it can be more effective in developing nations precisely because they have much greater priorities than software licences to worry about, far more problems to worry about, yet far fewer means of raising the funds to cure all the ills of their societies.

--

"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by WegianWarrior · 2004-03-29 23:37 · Score: 3, Informative

Off course it won't. But by learning to work together, people may stop having civil wars, which means peole have more time to grow food (and not having it stolen by "freedom fighters") and get an education, which in turn leads to (hopefully) a cure for AIDS and a democracy that grows from the bottom up.

When you're trying to bring the better part of a continent out of the dark ages and into the bright new future, you has to start somewhere - and learning to work together seems like a bloody good place to start for me. But, hey, thats my point of view, right?

--
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by heironymouscoward · 2004-03-29 23:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

None of these are peculiar to Africa. They are all, however, made worse by a lack of access to reliable information. Open source is the key to delivering the Internet to African civil society, and on the back of the Internet, the reliable information people need to combat famine, civil wars, AIDS, and dictatorships.

--
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by mks113 · 2004-03-30 00:45 · Score: 1

Simple answer: You pocket half the income from the country and beg foreign doners to feed your people. As long as you get rich, who cares?

And software licences? Why bother -- All you need is one pirated copy of XP to install on all the computers in the country.

Sorry about the cynicism, but in places where corruption reigns supreme, software licencing just isn't that big of a deal.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by kasin · 2004-03-30 01:12 · Score: 1

>and on the back of the Internet, the reliable >information

please mod parent funny +5
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 01:17 · Score: 1, Insightful

Obviously you've never lived in a place where reliable phone calls are a luxury and where the postal service is unreliable, and where the only communication with the rest of the world happens through specialized courier services, word of mouth, and friends who happen to work at the local PTT and can make illicit international phone calls. Compared to that, the Internet is amazingly valuable.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 01:30 · Score: 3, Informative

We Africans do not "have civil wars" like Americans have barbeques. We are for the most part victims of well-funded acts of violence and looting orchestrated by evil men with their eyes on the money. Look at Ghadaffi's 10 year plan to destabilize West Africa and his support for Zimbabwe today. No-one in Sierra Leone chose to get their arms chopped off at the elbows - this was the work of a small band of well-financed hooligans who's mission it was to turn the place into a hell-hole so that it would be easier to install a compliant government and steal the diamonds.

What we Africans need are ways to resist this kind of terrorism, i.e. our strong traditional society and support from the outside world. It has to be asked whether open source would support this, and I think that yes, if we can get computers running in our tribal languages, we will be able to reinfirce the traditional lifestyles that are our heritage and strength.

If I sound angry about this it's because I lost several relatives in Sierra Leone. It is so unfair to imply that we asked for this war. Most wars in Africa hve been over resources, with heavy support from external parties who want control over the wealth.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by mowler · 2004-03-30 01:42 · Score: 1

But it should be illegal for them to produce AIDS medicine?

IP laws suck.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by spectrokid · 2004-03-30 01:45 · Score: 1

Popquiz: you are a ruthless dictator, with a large family asking for your support. Do you leave this whole IT -thing to te techies, or do you take a huge bribe from Microsoft for imposing Windows at your local university?

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10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 04:26 · Score: 0

Whatever you say, Ndugu.
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by WIAKywbfatw · 2004-03-30 06:00 · Score: 1

Places where corruption reigns supreme? What, like the US, where Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc all have strong oil connections and conveniently hand out contracts to their buddies without putting them out to tender?

Don't assume that every developing world nation is run by corrupt dictators. And don't assume that every developed nation is free from corruption and other ills at the highest levels.

--

"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Re:Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. by jasoneyre · 2004-03-30 06:46 · Score: 1

Yeah, d00d.

I'm from South Africa. I know what it's like.
Politicians are corrupt (indisputable fact).

When you've noticed how the money IS squandered in this country, you'd be shocked.

Most of the time I laugh when I read about American laws being passed, oblivious to the fact that worse things are happening here. The Draft Bills being sent through Parliament are just as atrocious as some of those being passed in USofAmerica.

Most of the Election Campaigns are smear-campaigns. ("The NNP is with the ANC. Vote DA", as an example). My Hypocrisy keeps me amused at least, but if you want to see a FUCKED UP country, look at South Africa.

XeeRz,
Jason

--
THSsMCHshrtrTHN160chrs -- And I don't even like to SMS!

Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Thinkit4 · 2004-03-29 22:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

In a region where artificial scarcity of AIDS drugs (patents) kills--any sort of stand against "intellectual property" is a good thing.

--
-I am an elective eunuch.

Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by tomcrick · 2004-03-29 22:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

True, but it's a shame that this is the method of doing it (and then it folds).

Sadly for your example you can't imagine the drugs companies hearing of the open source initiatives and thinking 'shit, we'd better get our asses into gear, or they may do the same with our drugs!'.

Sad but true.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:33 · Score: 1, Interesting

Malaria kills more people than HIV/AIDS in Africa, so how about some cheap anti-Malarial treatments too? Please?
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by azaris · 2004-03-29 23:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

In a region where artificial scarcity of AIDS drugs (patents) kills--any sort of stand against "intellectual property" is a good thing.
It's intellectual dishonesty to claim that Africa's AIDS problem is due to intellectual property rights.
Lack of education, lack of free contraceptives and lack of a properly managed international effort to organize these things are what's causing the problem. And the US policy of only supporting programs that preach abstinence isn't helping either.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by moxruby · 2004-03-29 23:47 · Score: 0

I'd love to agree with you, but if african companies mass produce generic AIDS drugs, there's not exactly a motivation to research new ones.

I'm guessing that a poor african isn't going to make much difference to a pharmaceutical's bottom line, but if generics are made in one part of the world, it's just a matter of time before they flow back to the west.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by hachete · 2004-03-29 23:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

The Americans didn't help by trying to reduce to a minimum the circumstances - proscribed by international convention - in which forced licensing could legally take place. So, whilst the original poster can be described as overstating their case, I don't see this as being "intellectually dishonest". Rather, I see your deflection in this light. The US drug companies were complete bastards in this respect and I can understand the feelings engendered by such a negative, hateful policy.

h

--
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 00:35 · Score: 0

actually in several regions africa many tribes continued the tradition of "wife sharing". hence the rampant aids epidemic. the american policy of teaching them abstinence outside of marriage has been working to prevent further spread of the disease. granted it doesn't help the infected victims.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 01:27 · Score: 0

Are the European drug companies acting any differently than the US drug companies when it comes to Aids treatments for the third world? Many of the largest: AstraZeneca, Aventis, Novartis, ..., aren't US companies.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 01:40 · Score: 1, Interesting

+4 insightful? comeon! This post is crap. AIDS in africa is not about lack of contraceptives. there is plenty. since long ago. oh, and africa is many different places with little in common sometimes. Lack of education? most casualties of AIDS are the educated elite, engineers, teachers, professors... There is no simple explanation to AIDS in eastern and southern africa actually. some of the poorest countries in africa have few aids cases, niger, CAR... no slashdot poster can articulate this topic well, so watch your moderation.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 03:51 · Score: 0

Don't stick it in (or let someone stick it in) if
it's not clean.

Children born with it and bad blood transfusions deserve my sympathy. AIDs is now 20+ years old. If you haven't gotten the fucking message yet, you deserve your fate.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 03:58 · Score: 0

Lack of education, lack of free contraceptives ...

are you for real? The way you make it sound is that the USA and 1st-class countries at large owe these people condoms.

You lower them to animals. Animals who hump each other all day long and carry water jugs on their head. Because thats about all I see on tv.

In a country where half the AIDS cases exist, I'm sure it's known, word of mouth, that in some cases "falling into your primal instinct" can result in death. And yet they still do it.

I'm starting to believe these people are not human. They are animals.. monsters. They don't think at all with their head and only hump. Thats it. Hump hump hump and make 10,000 babies they can't feed nor cure from the AIDS they passed on. Why not let AIDS run its course?
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by RogerBacon · 2004-03-30 04:42 · Score: 1

Educate yourselves. There are several common lies that you are fed by the news media.

First, that AIDS is a massive problem in Africa. It isn't. The "crisis" is a product of completely bogus UN computer models, whcih are regularly diddled with when folks begin to figure out.

Second, that second-hand smoke kills more than a few (if that many) people per year. It doesn't. The results come from fraudulent meta-analyses.

Third, that silicone breast implants cause cancer. They don't, but they do pay tons of litigators.

Fourth, that record industry sales have dropped. They haven't. They have gone up.

Fifth, that AIDS is any kind of serious threat to non-doper non-junkie heterosexuals. It never has been.

And sixth, (as I am increasingly discovering) there is no looming global warming disaster.

In each of the above examples the so-called scientific evidence advances a political agenda, delivers billions in grant money to various agencies and researchers, and creates scientific reputations (and streams of cash) overnight.

Wake up folks. Stop letting Slashdot get hijacked by bogus political interests and screwy science. We have anough of this crap on other sites.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 05:48 · Score: 0

www.boydgraves.com
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by CvD · 2004-03-30 06:24 · Score: 2, Informative

Its also a lack of willingness to use condoms. Even in areas where people have been educated, condoms are cheaply available, they still refuse to use them for various reasons, from religion to saying they reduce feeling.

Another is the adherence to old customs. For instance where if a man dies, his brother will "inherit" his wife and children. So if the man dies of AIDS, his brother will have it pretty soon too.

Of course this is not the way it is everywhere in Africa. But in the regions where AIDS is most prevalent, lack of education and cheap condoms really isn't always the cause.

--
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by aclarke · 2004-03-30 08:29 · Score: 1

Actually it's more than a little simplistic to think that any three sentence comment can in any adequate way explain the AIDS/HIV pandemic.
How much time have you spent in Africa? How many people do you know who have died of HIV related illnesses who would be still alive "if they'd only had a condom?"

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www.clarke.ca
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by mantera · 2004-03-30 08:55 · Score: 1

Add to that an excessive insistence on political correctness. I once heard from an African female that one of the reasons AIDS is so widespread between Africans was that culture of promiscuous polygamy where an African male would have a wife in the village, a mistress in the city... etc etc and would still frequent prostitutes. I heard that it wouldn't be uncommon for an African male to have up to 5 simultaneous sexual partners. It seems okay that the average life expectancy of some nations would drop down to less than 40 years but it's NOT okay to be politically incorrect when discussing these things.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by slipgun · 2004-03-30 09:00 · Score: 1

Second, that second-hand smoke kills more than a few (if that many) people per year. It doesn't. The results come from fraudulent meta-analyses.

There was an excellent website I found a couple of years ago which went into exactly why this whole 'second-hand smoke' thing is questionable, to say the least. It also included a general selection on how people can twist statistics to suit their story - and meta-analyses were certainly one of the things they mentioned.

Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore. I seem to remember it was on a cigar smokers' site.

--
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by slipgun · 2004-03-30 09:06 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore. I seem to remember it was on a cigar smokers' site.

Well, I've just looked again and I found it.

--
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by superyooser · 2004-03-30 09:37 · Score: 1

And the US policy of only supporting programs that preach abstinence isn't helping either.
That's not true. In fact, quite the opposite. Africans find the notion of condoms bizarre and offensive. Most Africans are religious and respond much better to the message of abstinence. African pastors are having a lot of success in reducing the spread of AIDS in their communities by preaching sexual abstinence before marriage.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 15:01 · Score: 0

Um, hello? Humanity is overpopulated as it is. These people don't need computers or AIDS drugs, especially given Africa's abysmal record of self-government.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Wellmont · 2004-03-30 21:42 · Score: 1

The reasons Americans would do something like this is because most leaders in Affrica would rather get money instead of American drugs from the United States. So they spit out propaganda that AIDS was a construct of American Scientists in the first place developed to kill Affricans, and that AIDS is contained in the vacinations and drugs that are used to prevent other more simplistic problems.

There is no "negative, hateful policy" but rather a wish to see the PEOPLE of affrica helped not the rulers. Constantly we see the rulers of the poor nations of Affrica taking food, drugs, and resources donated by other countries and selling them to their people.....the next best thing?: "Just hand money over to them."

Bringing this around back to the Affrican open source issue: I say all the more power to them, the last thing they need is An SCO or Microsoft running around claiming people of the world need to watch out for the mischevious Affricans and their Open Source Software!
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by hachete · 2004-03-31 00:46 · Score: 1

The US Drug companies dragooned the US gubmint into acting on their behalf, trying to force the TRIPS plus policy down the throats of the African governments. Only under extreme moral pressure did the US govt/companies relent. The US Drug companies only want to increase their profits, the US govt only want to see these profits increase. The African people are only coincidental to the whole things, so this callous dis-regard of life is disgraceful.

Even worse, this policy circumvents the agreements of the WTO, which you yanks put so much store in.

BTW, this isn't a US-only thing, but the US started it and seem to be pressuring others into adopting a TRIPS-plus policy.

See
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/advocacy/art539 1.html
http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:DU7KBC r9HisJ:w ww.evb.ch/cm_data/Trips_plus%2520by%2520EFTA_0.pdf +TRIPS+plus&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Some US legal bollocks enabling TRIPs-plus.
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ pharm-policy/ 2000q1/000112.html

It won't take much for the US to pressurise African and South America countries into adopting DMCA-like clauses under similar bi-lateral trade agreements. I give it 10 years. The aim, I suspect, is to make sure US IP policies become the de facto world standard, ensuring that all those maverick countries fall under the spell of MicroSoft.

In this respect, your comment is short-sighted and plainly idiotic.

h

--
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by Wellmont · 2004-03-31 13:01 · Score: 1

" your comment is short-sighted and plainly idiotic "

My comment is not short sighted and it is not plainly idiotic. My comments are based on my beliefs after working in the peace corps in Affrica for a while, after seeing all factors available to me and examining the information i recieved, that is how i arrived at my "plainly idiotic" comment.

I'm Surpised you were modded up, unless a friend modderated for you, your obviously a person who reads propaganda in circles all day and doesn't absorb unbiased information. And at the same time you fight with words like Yank, Idiotic and Short-sighted, showing your 5th grade propensity to resort to simple name calling because you YOURSELF can't bring a better argument with proof to the table, you can only suppose or guess as to the validity of your sources.

As to your referance to the TRIPS + agreements you should also understand that while it is all fun and games to offer aid to other countries and unbiased support, I don't see you jumping up and running to help people in third world countries, and I deffinately don't see anyone in Britain supporting better treatment of these G8 countries if it comes out of their check book. In Fact in 1999 ENGLAND said, and I QUOTE: South Africa "must patent biotech inventions; highest international standards; must undertake to go beyond TRIPS"

PS: if you want to take your childish arguing out of this forum i'm sure everyone in the thread will appreciate it.
Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity by hachete · 2004-03-31 18:58 · Score: 1

And my comments are based, in part, in visting Africa quite freqently in the past.

I am not arguing for better aid, or any aid at all in the long run; I would prefer better trade agreements which didn't force wacky patent policies (whether it be the DMCA or the EUCD, although the US started it...) down the throats of poorer countries.

h

--
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious

Corporations vs. Open Source by jabex · 2004-03-29 22:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's one of the I like about open source. Where a megalo-corporation would do it's best to stay away from a possible African market... people that have the resources the can work together to produce their own products.

If only open source could produce food... hmm.

--
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.

Re:Corporations vs. Open Source by isopossu · 2004-03-29 22:39 · Score: 1

When Indian software industry is outsourced to Kongo, some capital may follow.

Computers for developing for software next to nothing, at least compared to the starting costs of almost any other industrial branch.
Re:Corporations vs. Open Source by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:53 · Score: 0

If only open source could produce food... hmm.

Take a plant and cut a bit off, get some seeds, whatever. Stick it in the ground and give it some stuff and it will grow. Repeat. It's open source food production.

Oh but wait! What's that? You don't know what the fucking chemical reactions are inside the plant? Oh well fuck! You can't eat that shit then. Until plants expose their chemical properties you must boycott them. Never know what those bastards might be doing.
Re:Corporations vs. Open Source by akaiONE · 2004-03-29 23:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

It may be so that Open Soruce not will solve the problem of Aids directly, nor make foreign corporations invest in Africa. But, in a continent with loads of civil wars, and a problematic infrastructure it is very promising that people can get together and create positive things! As many of us will never set foot on the African continent all we can do is help out the way we can:

Through Open Source projects the rest of the world can aid african Open Soruce developers in their efforts to bring Linux to the desktops and homes of millions. Donations, project development and the likes comes to mind.

--
"-Who said sit down?!"
-- S. Ballmer @ MSDC 2003.
Re:Corporations vs. Open Source by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 23:17 · Score: 1, Informative

Where a megalo-corporation would do it's best to stay away from a possible African market

This is not entirely true. Companies like Microsoft have a strong presence in the African market. Finding open source companies however is close to impossible

How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:13 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by amigoro (761348) on Tuesday March 30, @05:07AM (#8712311)
(Last Journal: Monday March 29, @06:53PM)

And Open Source will solve all the problems.

fagorZ by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:14 · Score: -1, Offtopic

others what to YOUR SPARE TIME tu8ned ocver to yet correct network

How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:16 · Score: -1, Offtopic

How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:13 (#8712335) Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. (Score:-1, Offtopic) by amigoro (761348) on Tuesday March 30, @05:07AM (#8712311) (Last Journal: Monday March 29, @06:53PM) And Open Source will solve all the problems.

The missing African OSS project. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:19 · Score: -1, Funny

An GPLed email scam generator.
Including the famous all caps and "An urgent business proposal" options.

How the fuck is that NOT MODERATED???? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:19 · Score: -1, Troll

How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2004-03-30 12:16 (#8712343) How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:13 (#8712335) Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. (Score:-1, Offtopic) by amigoro (761348) on Tuesday March 30, @05:07AM (#8712311) (Last Journal: Monday March 29, @06:53PM) And Open Source will solve all the problems.

How the fuck is that NOT MODERATED???? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:28 · Score: -1, Offtopic

How the fuck is that NOT MODERATED???? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:19 (#8712350) How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2004-03-30 12:16 (#8712343) How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:13 (#8712335) Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. (Score:-1, Offtopic) by amigoro (761348) on Tuesday March 30, @05:07AM (#8712311) (Last Journal: Monday March 29, @06:53PM) And Open Source will solve all the problems.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 released by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:34 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Get it before its slashdotted!

Insightful? Hardly by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:45 · Score: 3, Informative

If only open source could produce food... hmm.

Because as we all know, Namibia is suffering a huge food shortage. I have lived in the Southern African region for a long time (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana) and know of no such food shortage. (Ok, Zimbabwe is now an exception, but that is a man-made problem and also a fairly recent problem, historically Zimbabwe/Rhodesia has always had a large food surplus).

Re:Insightful? Hardly by mks113 · 2004-03-30 00:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Almost all famine is caused by people. During civil wars (e.g. Sudan) any crops found are either confiscated or destroyed to prevent them from feeding the "enemy". Both sides do it.
Africa is just beginning to get connected to the world. While the cities have had communication for a while, the rural areas tend to be very isolated.
I think this is fertile breeding ground for open source. The problem is the microsoft is the only thing that seems to be known. With any computer training being "how to used windows" and pirated copies of windows readily available, it is hard to take a moral high ground, particularly in cultures where morality doesn't hold much sway -- read widespread corruption, AIDS.
Open source has a place, but only as part of a wider campain to get internet to rural areas.
And of course the question: Why do rural people need internet? I believe it is all about finding answers. If somebody wants to have a better life, they need access to information. Better farming techniques? Better building methods? How to avoid scams?
I'm going to Africa later this year for two years. I hope to play some small part in giving people a better life through access to information.
Michael
Re:Insightful? Hardly by dabadab · 2004-03-30 01:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

"particularly in cultures where morality doesn't hold much sway"

Umm, hello? Small communities are the places where morality is VERY important and often strictly enforced.

Don't confuse "no morality" with "their morality has nothing against copyright infringement" (as most probably the latter is the case and that's no suprise as copyrigth is a concept that is far disconnected from the everyday realities of many Africans).

--
Real life is overrated.
Re:Insightful? Hardly by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 02:34 · Score: 0

Um... yeah...

I'm african, lived here all my life... Africa is'nt what you see in CNN, try research it.

I don't live in a Mud-hut
I don't ride elephants to work

South Africa has the best telecounication infastructure in africa, all runs on Linux (Slackware), BDS and Solaris... So /.ers be happy

Now excuse me I have to go beat my slaveboy, he's not pedelling fast enough to drive the modem...
Re:Insightful? Hardly by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 05:08 · Score: 0

Trying to research it doesnt help much since the available research is so politicised that no musungu can make heads or tails of it.
Re:Insightful? Hardly by mks113 · 2004-03-30 07:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

You make a good point: Morality is relative to the culture in which you live.

And that is the reason that westerners can not impose solutions on the third world. The best that the west can do is to provide the tools for the third world to come up with their own solutions.

Internet connectivity is a tool. It does not come with moral baggage or western decision making. The users have to make their own choices. They can participate in a forum on agricultural practices, they can accept one-sided advice on just about anything, or they can look at porn.

And if parts of africa could develop more technical expertise and infrastructure, it would be another building block in the world economy.
Re:Insightful? Hardly by fiddlesticks · 2004-03-30 08:25 · Score: 1

> particularly in cultures where morality doesn't
> hold much sway -- read widespread corruption, AIDS.

wtf has AIDS got to do with morality, or corruption?

It's a disease. Oh, unless you mean 'dem homosexuals or 'dem drug addicts gone done something wrong

You don't mean that, surely.

so what did you mean?

--
http://milkshake.dexy.org

.mob softwar gangsters fire blindly into crowd, by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 22:52 · Score: -1, Offtopic

whilst demanding applause? sheesh?

all is not cost/lost.

consult with/trust in yOUR creators..... finally, a safe wager that everybody can win.

you must mean payper liesense hostage applaws? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 23:03 · Score: -1

yes, that must be just what you meaNT?

Those darn kids... by JohnGrahamCumming · 2004-03-29 23:15 · Score: 4, Funny

Damn you and your Open Source Kiswahili spell checker. Five years ago I poured my entire life savings into secretly building just such a spell checker. It was due to be released tomorrow and I was set to make my fortune by selling a copy to each of the 50 million Kiswahili speakers for $100.

Damn you Open Source scoundrels!

John.

Network latency... by MosesJones · 2004-03-29 23:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

One thing I would love to see being developed out of OSS would be some software comms stack work to develop a low-bandwidth, high-latency stack that can shift service and data load as required.

Some architectural and design patterns that could be published on this would also help. I know from my experience of doing a global system for a large logicistics company it was a seperate system for Africa due to the restricted networks. Thus rather than shipments from South America to the Southern Middle East stopping in central africa they went to Europe as it was easier to track. Cost wise it would be better to use Africa, but without a decent infrastructure... or better yet a standard approach to poor infrastructure, it wasn't business effective.

Africa has a real reason to concentrate on the wireless and mobile sectors. It could already be ahead of the US, and by coping with its infrastructure issues OSS could provide a real platform for new tech companies to come from Africa.

The cluster stuff is cool... the dictionary is neat... but what here is going to make life better for people, and start bridging the gaps ?

--
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi

Re:Network latency... by ScaredSilly · 2004-03-30 05:15 · Score: 1

See the Berkeley TIER Project and the Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group"
Re:Network latency... by douglashunter · 2004-03-30 05:20 · Score: 1

Africa has a real reason to concentrate on the wireless and mobile sectors.

SchoolNet Namibia is working on some interesting projects. They set up the network and a network-connected cluster of thin-clients for the Africa Source conference, and are working to deliver wireless networks and computers to schools across Namibia.

wire.less.dk has also done much work setting up wireless networks in African countries.

In many African countries the state internet infrastructure leaves much to be desired. I'm sure that there are many other projects that folks are working on in an attempt to remedy the situation, but these are a couple that I know of.
-- Douglas

How the fuck is that NOT MODERATED???? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-29 23:25 · Score: -1, Offtopic

How the fuck is that NOT MODERATED???? (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:28 (#8712363) How the fuck is that NOT MODERATED???? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:19 (#8712350) How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2004-03-30 12:16 (#8712343) How the fuck is that OFFTOPIC???? (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 30, @05:13 (#8712335) Famine, Civil Wars, AIDS, Dictatorships. (Score:-1, Offtopic) by amigoro (761348) on Tuesday March 30, @05:07AM (#8712311) (Last Journal: Monday March 29, @06:53PM) And Open Source will solve all the problems.

Re: Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups by manavendra · 2004-03-29 23:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

Its heartening to hear about pan-African open source initiative. The implications of this are enormous.

This shows there is a fairly large developer community, which is informed and competitive enough to be a part of the open source initiative, as against merely working to earn.
That, the efforts from these developers shall sooner or later bring revenue for the African economy. With the outsourcing initiatives already filling coffers of other econonomies all over the world, I don't see why stable African countries should not be benefited.
All such initiatives provide an example and direction to the youth - not all of them have the guidance and help they need, and such initiatives provide some inkling that perhaps there might be some prosperity in software.
This further chips away at the belief that Africa is about poverty, aids and civil wars only. I agree all these exist, but education can help eradicate these to a large extent.
Finally, such initiatives may prompt the government to provide more funding to the software companies association/education institutions to develop and promote the industry, attracting foreign investment (read outsourcing)

--
http://efil.blogspot.com/

Open source, localisation by heironymouscoward · 2004-03-29 23:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

Africa has easily the most complex localisation problem of any market, with more languages than the rest of the world combined but a market that can hardly afford traditional localization costs (e.g. the top down model used by commercial vendors).

Open source makes it possible to build entire packages - OS, Office, Web - for groups that are not even on the commercial software radar.

It's true that for many educated Africans, a European language is a necessary skill - French, English, Portuguese. But for a schoolkid in Kasai, it has to be Chiluba or Lingala.

Long after the problems of internetworking and materials have been resolved, open source will be the basis for widespread adoption of software in African society.

--
Ceci n'est pas une signature

Re:Open source, localisation by mks113 · 2004-03-30 00:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

My experience has been with Kenya. There are about 40 different tribal languages. Business is usually conducted in English or Swahili.

School children learn english and swahili at the same time, early in primary school.

Status seems to be a very important thing in Kenya. It is seen to be "better" if you have a western education, and speaking english is part of that, so english has become the language of much of the establishment. You speak english to look good, you speak swahili to your friends, and your tribal language (in private) only to your close family.

I wouldn't say that the tribal languages are dieing, but there is very little link between them and computers. I'm not convinced that that is a good thing.
Re:Open source, localisation by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 01:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

What better way to introduce a community to computers and to educate a generation of kids than to translate - say - OpenOffice from Kiswahili into Kikuyu? After spending months doing this huge project, kids would both have learnt how to use PCs, and would know a lot more about what they can be used for.
Re:Open source, localisation by RogerBacon · 2004-03-30 04:49 · Score: 1

As the prime minister (president? dictator? strongman? whatever) of Nigeria said only a few weeks ago, Nigeria has over 150 languages, LANGUAGES, mind you NOT DIALECTS. How the hell can you call yourself a country, a society or a nation when there are over 150 mutually unintelligible ways of communicating, each one supporting typically a few thousand speakers, and the vast majority not even written down! God bless 'em, aboriginals need all the help they can get.
Re:Open source, localisation by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 07:07 · Score: 0

Considering that Nigeria has something like 80-120 million people, 150 languages is really quite OK. Remember that most Africans are at least bilingual and often trilingual: for instance a typical Nigerian will speak his native language, plus Yoruba or Ebo or Hausa, plus some English.

heh by SinaSa · 2004-03-29 23:37 · Score: 1

"...to running a MOSIX cluster"

Imagine a beowu-- wait...hmm...

--
--
The last digit of pi is four.

Glad to see more of the real Africa by MrIrwin · 2004-03-29 23:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Africa is a big country. National Geographic shows a lot of film of a few select nature reserves. CNN et al show us lot's of footage from a few troublespots.

And yet I know there is a lot more to Africa than that. Africa is were the human race was born, and today there are millions of people who lead a very straightforward lifestyle where the biggest problems have been caused by outside influences.

IMHO, Africa can make important contributions to OSS, not just use it as cheap software. And conversely I would hope that OSS will allow Africa to develop IT orientated to it's own requirements and objectives rather than being shoehorned into accepting what is there.

I wonder how many of the /. posters reffering to Dictators and AIDS actually went to look at the links. What I saw was frustrated talent, they can do things but they don't no how to deploy it, or how to talk to thier own authorities about what they have to offer.

It would be nice if /. er's could give them some positive encouragement and advice. Perhaps links to case studies of simple effective OSS deployment in areas that could be of use to developing countries were PC's are often community resources rather personal possessions.

--

And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)

Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 00:03 · Score: 3, Informative

" Africa is a big country. "
No, it's a continent with quite a number of quite different countries.
Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa by MrIrwin · 2004-03-30 00:11 · Score: 1

"No, it's a continent with quite a number of quite different countries."
So Europe should not be reffered to as "The old country" by americans?

--
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 00:43 · Score: 0

actually... when most OLD american's say "the old country" they mean a specific place like Poland or something... they aren't referring to Europe as a whole.

moran
Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa by MrIrwin · 2004-03-30 01:20 · Score: 1

Right. I stand corrected........for what it's worth.

--
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa by dustmite · 2004-03-30 07:33 · Score: 1

"Africa is a big country"
+3 insightful, WTF? Africa is NOT A COUNTRY! It's a continent larger than the US with dozens of countries on it.
Re:Glad to see more of the real Africa by lims · 2004-03-31 03:54 · Score: 1

Continent. Africa is a big country

Cue the racist comments.. by heironymouscoward · 2004-03-29 23:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Africa is just war and famine"

"Africans can't even stop killing each other, WTF do they need software for"

"Clean water first, then software!"

Even in 2004, some people still don't realize that humanity is largely identical, everywhere. There are tens of millions of African nerds who simply dream of getting their hands on PCs, software, Internet links, hundreds of millions of businessmen who are frustrated by the lack of modern communications, hundreds of millions of students who could contribute seriously to the world economy if they had even minimal access to the online libraries. If it wasn't for the curse of mineral wealth that encouraged local and foreign politicians to treat the continent like a slash-and-burn buffet, Africa would be stable and prosperous.

To a large extent the population of Africa has been held hostage by war and violence waged by those who profit from the rape of the continent. Look at Congo, which until recently was occupied by the armies of no less than 11 different countries. These wars are sustained by keeping the populations intimidated, ignorant, and poor. No-one cares about the locals when the ground is rich with diamonds, oil, and other minerals.

Technology like GSMs and open source are possibly the best chance that African civil society has of creating communities that can escaping and resist the trap of bad local and international politics.

Kiswahili and Lingala are vital starting points because these two languages join the whole belt of central Africa from Congo to Kenya.

--
Ceci n'est pas une signature

Re:Cue the racist comments.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 00:57 · Score: -1, Flamebait

not a single post brought up the issues you did until you did. what the fuck is your problem man? you're the racist apparently, since no one thought of it until you. sad little life you live.

Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by chris_notts · 2004-03-30 00:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm surprised that the spell checking code in Open Office is flexible enough to cope with Swahili spell checking, given how different the european languages it was designed to handle are from the bantu languages (eg swahili) in structure. European languages generally have rather poor derivational morphology, and nouns and verbs inflect by taking a single suffix only. Compare this to Swahili, where verbal derivational morphology is quite rich, and the verb takes a tense prefix along with subject and object concord prefixes, and a mood suffix... I would have expected the spell checking code to choke when they tried to specify which prefixes a verb can take in which order, etc. An example to prove my point, with the english and swahili sentences broken down into their constituent parts: English: I read it (the book) Cannot be broken down Swahili: nakisoma ni-a-ki-som-a I:subj-simple:present-it:ki:class-read-indicative English: He who leaves He who leave-s Swahili: anayetoka a-na-ye-tok-a 3p:subj-present-3p:relative-leave-indicative And so on. There are very few english, french or spanish (languages I speak a little of as well) words which approach this level of agglutination, the obvious example being antidisestablishmentarianism.

Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by mks113 · 2004-03-30 00:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes, but swahili is regular enough that the infixes can be readily isolated based on a few simple rules.

On the other hand, I really question the need for a swahili spell-checker at all. Pronunciation is so consistant that if you can say it, you can spell it.

Swahili has to one of the most exception-free languages in the world.
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by tupambao · 2004-03-30 01:01 · Score: 2, Informative

There are different dialects in Kiswahili. the pronounciation differs from region to region for example the Kenyan pronounciation differs from an East DR Congo (Zaire) resident or Tanzanian pronounciation. If everyone wrote what they spoke... "l"s and "r"s are mostly interchanged... reading such documents is time consuming for the different parties involved. I think the next best step would be too introduce regional versions of the dictionary.
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by Tin+Foil+Hat · 2004-03-30 01:04 · Score: 1

A spell checker is just a dictionary with a few extra tools. Language semantics do not enter into it at all. As long as the spell checkers dictionary is reasonably complete, in that it contains all common words and their permutations, it can work for nearly any language that can be written in discreet words. I should think a spell checker for Kanji symbols would be much more difficult.

A grammar checker, on the other hand, may be much more difficult in Swahili than in English if the syntatic rules are really that much more complex.

--
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by joonasl · 2004-03-30 01:21 · Score: 1

You probably mean indo-european language family (French, English, German et cetera) not european languages. For example, Finnish and Estonian (which belong to the Fenno-Ugrian language family) have a pretty complex verb derivation rules.
Ok, so I'm nitpicking, so shoot me :)

--
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by joonasl · 2004-03-30 01:32 · Score: 1

On the other hand, I really question the need for a swahili spell-checker at all. Pronunciation is so consistant that if you can say it, you can spell it.
I don't think that the only usefor a spell-checker is to "check" how a word is spelled if you don't know it, people also make mistakes when they type and it is nice to have a tool to spot those also.

--
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by chris_notts · 2004-03-30 03:17 · Score: 2, Informative

Not necessarily... to take the example nakisoma "I read it", if the dictionary listed only the verb "soma" and the affixes "na" and "ki" separately, and didn't contain any information on how they were combined, then it would be fairly useless, since it either wouldn't recognise "nakisoma" as correct (since it doesn't know they can be glued together) or it would also recognise "kinasoma" which is meaningless (since it wouldn't know the rules about the order things can be fixed together). Any spell checker must also know derivational rules (and thus some grammar), such as in english any regular verb takes -s in the 3rd person singular, unless you list every possible derivation in its word list (difficult in swahili, less so in english).
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by chris_notts · 2004-03-30 03:19 · Score: 1

I did, and as linguistics is my hobby I probably should have said indo-european. Never mind though... Finnish is about as agglutinating as Swahili, I know.
Re:Problems with Swahili Spell Checking by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 07:17 · Score: 0
I would have expected the spell checking code to choke when they tried to specify which prefixes a verb can take in which order, etc.

You are confusing the functions of a spell checker, with the functions of a grammar checker.

The easy way to create a dictionary for languages with noun classes, and a plethora of concords, suffixes, and prefixes, is to start with a hyphenation dictionary. For example:
- a-di-ya-ku-thet-ani.
- [ isiXhosa: "I am not walking". ]
Have the spell checker look at the initial character, then check each syllable, to ensure that it is "correct". Of course, the downside of this approach is that one might type a class two pronoun, with a class five noun, and a class three suffix. With open source, one can write a grammer checker that will flag such combinations.

What is really needed is a grammar checker. (As to why I don't write one, the only reason I passed Xhosa, was that I had a very good vocabulary. My grammer, OTOH, was atrocious.)

I was there... by nicc777 · 2004-03-30 00:34 · Score: 5, Informative

...to present the clustering workshop :)

We actually played with ClusterKnoppix and CHAOS. I have made my presentation and other notes available at itfirms.co.za for those interested.

I just want to say thanks to everyone for making it a great experience. I made a lot of new friends, and I look forward to the next event.

--
Need an ISP in South Africa?

Re:I was there... by douglashunter · 2004-03-30 05:02 · Score: 1

We actually played with ClusterKnoppix and CHAOS.

D'oh! Sorry, Nico. It was late when I submitted the article ;-)

-- Douglas
Re:I was there... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 11:22 · Score: 0

I like those pics man. Keep-Up making the world a better place.

Re: Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups by manavendra · 2004-03-30 01:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is even more important from the OSS community perspective.

Being the first to market, as they say in business, is half the battle. I don't know much about the software usage scenario in Africa, but if there is a fledgling open source initiative there, it will provide an early insight about the principles and thought process behind open source, the alternatives available to the mainstream (and sometimes expensive) commerical software and the presence of a worldwide, large, helpful OSS community.

With this early presence and awareness, there will be more and more converts to OSS at an early stage, which will go a long way in contributing to OSS over time.

--
http://efil.blogspot.com/

How would it handle this phrase... by gatkinso · 2004-03-30 01:33 · Score: 1

...Death by bunga-bunga!

Hmm?

--
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.

Re: a better life through access to information by andyr · 2004-03-30 01:50 · Score: 2, Informative

You might want to check out our project :-

Wizzy Digital Courier

Bypass the monopoly Telcos with a uniquely African solution.

Cheers, Andy!

--
Andy Rabagliati

Umm.... by renjipanicker · 2004-03-30 01:57 · Score: 1

A Swahili "spell" checker? Its a joke, laugh.

You are an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 02:02 · Score: 0

Racism is denouncing another race.

By the way those natural resources, oh yes, i'm sure the africans were getting so much use out of them.

Mabey once idiots like you stop blaming the west for all of Africa's problems [look at the african country of south africa - founded by europeans - is the richest there] it's not europe's fault africa is a dump, it's theirs.

Once they realize that, they can work to fix their own problems. Asia and Europe build themselves up, they can do the same.

Re:You are an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 02:36 · Score: 1

Those jungles... I'm sure the Amazon Indians were getting so much use out of them.

That gold in Australia... I'm sure the Aboriginals were getting so much use out of it.

The diamonds in Botswana... in Sierra Leone... in Congo... The oil in Nigeria, in Sudan, in Guinea Bissau, in Angola, in Cabinda... The ivory and rubber in Congo... The slaves in West Africa... The gold, the cocoa, the bauxite, the tantalum, the hardwoods...

Yes, you are right. When armies converge on Eastern Congo and massacre an estimate 1m people in order to clear the way to extract minerals such as tantalum, this is certainly the locals' fault.
Re:You are an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 04:11 · Score: 0

Save your breath. The person you're responding to is either a moron or a kid no older than 11 or 12. Or, maybe a high foreign policy official in the Bush administration...

Some Pointers by tupambao · 2004-03-30 02:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

Everytime the topic of Africa crops up I always realise how many people are ignorant of Africa. To borrow a line from this site which I would recommend for anyone who wants to know something about africa to read first,

"By concentrating on Africa, we hope to correct the predominant image of a uniform, monolithic landmass wholly lacking in perspectives. We want to help break down prejudices and to show the positive developments in Africa. At the same time, however, we do not intend to remain silent about the problems facing the continent."

So please guys, Africa is NOT a country but a continent!

There are conflicts at the moment I only know of 3 actual ones being covered by the media: Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ivory Coast. The interesting fact is that you can travel to the capital cities of this countries (for example Khartoum in Sudan) with the same risk involved as travelling to Tel Aviv in Israel.

There are other places with a history of ongoing conflict mostly natural resources propagated or land and border disputes and at the moment are enjoying some sought of peace: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ethiopia-Eritrea and the Central African Republic, Angola, Mauritania and Algeria. Then there is the politically motivated violence here at the moment only Zimbabwe is experiencing this. Then there is the lawless Somali. All this countries add up to 11... Africa has 50 countries and a little math leaves 39 countries WITHOUT conflict. Are we now to say that this countries are not safe to visit or invest in?

There are 300 million Swahili speakers in the world. That is far more than the German speakers. Swahili qualifies as an International language. It makes sense to create Swahili software translations.

Instead of shouting about the conflicts, famines and drought we should be looking at Africa the Indian way. India has an ongoing conflicts; border disputes and religious tensions, has a huge poor population, but is able to send satelites to space and create software solutions that are recougnised worldwide. This is so because no one keeps on rubbing their noses and holding huge placards infront of their faces with the conflicts and poverty problems everytime they want to try developing technical solutions!

Re:Some Pointers by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 03:52 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Except India is by definition an Indo-European country (the "indo" stands for India), the swastika is their holiest symbol, sanskrit is the precursor to languages like German and Indians are Aryan. Apart from that, I guess Indians and Africans are the same.....
Re:Some Pointers by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 04:43 · Score: 0

Nobody can guess who our forefathers were a few billion years , my guess is they all belong to the negra race, it took 10,000 years for negra people to change color to become white during the ice ages.
And ofcourse the aryan invansion is as much a fabrication of lies to spread the nazi propaganda
Now it is proved beyond doubt there was no aryan invasion.

Friest pso7 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 02:06 · Score: -1

backward and said of the GNNA I clear she couldn't And suggesting

3-3.5 million dead in Congo? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 02:42 · Score: 0

You need to read a little more.

This is about what Africans want, remember that! by Fluidic+Binary · 2004-03-30 04:07 · Score: 1

While I understand the low amount of attention this story is getting since most /. readers are not African and don't care too much about the continent or its people except in the standard humanitarian fashion, I find what is being posted here borders on appalling.

A few here have actually mentioned the fact that people across the world have a love of technology and communication and therefore Africa Source 2004 is a very cool happening.

I personally look at events like this with keen interest. The people of the world all deserve a chance to learn and explore, hardship in a land does not mean the people of that land should be denied any form of education; education is a necessity not a luxury for the elite. Tragically virtually all American's are rather rich compared to many of the worlds citizens, and this is coming from someone who has spend quite a bit of his lifetime in America living below the poverty level. My point is, even if you are dirt poor you still have access to some basic utilities and resources unless you are on the very lowest 'rungs of the social ladder' in the USA.

I am an American by birth but have had many teachers who either visited or are natives of Africa and I can tell you that events like this are wonderful and deserve our full support.

These sorts of efforts deserve our support because of what the African people think about them, NOT because of our judgments of them. Who the hell are we to tell the Africans whether or not they can learn about computer science before their nation is perfect?

The United States, Europe and Asia are far from perfect...

Hurray for African technological growth.

In response to a comment about the greatness of south africa I read, I write: The nation is great, but not for the reasons the writer mentioned.

mo3 u4 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 04:22 · Score: -1, Troll

clear she couldn't FrreBSD project,

Great!!! by frank_adrian314159 · 2004-03-30 04:25 · Score: 1

Another developing place to offshore jobs to!

--
That is all.

Re:Great!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 08:05 · Score: 0

> Another developing place to offshore jobs to!

I agree it's an excellent opportunity, whether you were attempting to be sarcastic or not.

Outsourcing is a symptom of disparity of global wealth, which is part of a general trend of movement of wealth from south to north. That Indian, Chinese or (hopefully) African programmers become economically viable to multinational corporations is an indicator of a bastardised system of corporate profiteering readjusting itself. Unfortunately what isn't considered is how freely these corporations have operated with impunity in the past until their victims become white-collar professionals.

Rather than decry the main victims (intellectually equipped but economically devalued non-U.S. programmers), I'd do a bit of reading and see that the concern of outsourcing is part of an historical labour struggle. In the past blue-collar workers and their unions at first denounced foreigners for their job losses, only to realise overseas workers are used as scapegoats to hide the profiteering and wage reductions of corporations.

Minus 5, Tr0ll) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 04:48 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Fuck the BabVy

mo3 up by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 05:01 · Score: -1, Troll

but wiTh Netcraft

Kiswahili Kursing by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 05:38 · Score: 0

Damn you Open Source scoundrels!

I believe the phrase you're looking for is 'kulu mimi, kukukuku!'

nice to see good news from Africa by Easy2RememberNick · 2004-03-30 06:18 · Score: 1

That's nice seeing some news from Africa that's positive for a change. All you ever hear about is murder and carnage from all over the continent. Nice to see some sort of get together where learning and sharig is involved. It is amazing that so little good is said in the news for such a large part of humanity!

Re: a better life through access to information by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 07:08 · Score: 0

Very interesting and encouraging project! Nice to know that Linux and other GNU and OSS projects are being used to offset the high cost of Windows in a school setting. I've come away with quite a bit mor perspective on my broadband, always-on Internet connection =)

Ever been to South Africa?? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-30 18:42 · Score: 0

I agree. Not all of Africa is about civil war, famine etc. I am from South Africa and it just kills me the way lots of Americans talk about "Africa". You would have thought that "Africa" was one country. Egypt is as different to South Africa as The Mexico is to the US.

I am sitting typing this on a 3.0GHz pentium 4 with 512MB RAM with a digital Internet connection. We are NOT all ignorant and uneducated and live in huts. We don't have lions walking around in the streets. And NO, we get along just fine without having Americans coming in to "educate" us.

Yes, there are many problems, and America provides valuable aid and assistance to many african countries, but let's not stereotype "africa" as gloom and doom.

I wish all those posting negative comments would spend a year in South Africa before posting about how backward everything in africa is. They would probably be surprised how many "africans" are better educated than they are. I think they would also be surprised at the number of people from South Africa ("africans" - "nogal!") working at Microsoft.

Geographical distribution of languages by Estanislao+Mart�nez · 2004-03-30 20:06 · Score: 1

Africa has easily the most complex localisation problem of any market, with more languages than the rest of the world combined

Not at all. In fact, Asia has more languages than Africa; though the distinction that page makes between "Asia" and "Pacific" is kind of sketchy, since Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are in different categories despite sharing an island...

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Are you adequate?

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