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French Kids Get OSS on USB Sticks
daria42 writes "To help make kids aware of alternatives to proprietary software the Ile-de-France, the political district of greater Paris, will give 175,000 school children and apprentices USB keys loaded with open-source software. With a word-processing program, audio and video playback capabilities, an email client and an IM client, these are essentially computers on a stick. The council touts this as 'represent[ing] for students a tool of freedom and mobility between their school, cybercafes and their home or friends' PCs'." With the prevalence of internet cafes in Europe, that might work better than in the US ... but do you think such a project would work here as well? If so, what software would you want to see loaded up?
In what way?
...to store just music or other files.
So, how would encouraging kids to use computers be anti-American? Do these USB sticks somehow make the internet "less English" and software "less American"? Also, I do think software is written in other places than America, contrary to your assertion.
... and then they built the supercollider.
No one should underestimate the amount of anti-Americanism in this "give-away".
Unbelievable.
This sort of thing is happenning all over the world, including the US and many other English speaking nations.
But suddenly, because its France, its due to anti-Americanism (in spite the fact that many of the distributed apps are written in the US) and anti-English (although all commercial equivilants to the distributed apps have french localisation).
I think someone else how replied to you was bang on the money. Traumatic head injury when young.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Wow, do you also watch Fox and worship Bill O'Reilly?
Seriously - nothing about the language is being mentioned in the article.
Anti-corporation/anti-globalization? Perhaps. Anti-American? Please.
The president of the regional council, Jean-Paul Huchon, is a self-confessed "partisan of the rebalancing of the supply of proprietary and open-source software" who previously welcomed the launch of the Firefox 2 browser and led the support for a creation of a competitiveness hub based on open source.
If anything, I'd imagine that they are attempting to build a competency around OSS.
Copernics called - turns out the US isn't the center of the Universe (and yes, I live in the US).
Tant pis.
I think that one of the most important things about the internet is how it helps overcome isolationism. It's becoming a little harder to hide inside one's own culture. I suppose they feel that these incursions erode their own culture, but I think it's for the best that we're exposed to more different languages and cultures, however incidentally.
A few decades back, geography created inherent limits on communication. Now the only barrier is language, and given how many people speak some of the biggest languages (Mandarin Chinese, English, French, etc.), even that may not hold out for all that long as people find more need to communicate with each other...
The primary reason for the current far-right hatred of France is the war in Iraq. When USia was pitching the war, France was one of many countries that said that it was an absolutely stupid idea, destined for disaster. Now that the French prediction has come true, one would think that France would be due a certain measure of gratitude and an apology, as well as an acknowledgment that their advice should have been followed. Unfortunately, one of the defining characteristics of the extreme right is that they are unable to admit mistakes. This has had the effect of deepening the hatred and resentment towards France that is felt in some of USia's more trailer-oriented areas.
...but it is a great program. It is also nice to see open source getting distributed on a mass scale; I would like to see American schools take advantage of open source software rather than license traditional commercial softwares.
More important than software, however, is training how to use the software. Since I know nothing of the French education system, I have no idea what kind of curricular plans go with this distribution. Throwing computers, software, or even computer software on a stick is not going to solve any problems without some human assistance.
I'm the original poster.
And the great irony here is that I'm the one with evidence and all of you who accuse me of
being a Bill O'Reilly fan are without it. (By the way, I'm ultra liberal, and lived in Paris
for many years.)
Yes, there are knee jerk reactionary "France Sucks" types, and I'm not one of them. But to
deny that there is a powerful (Powerful) anti--American sentiment which is alive and well among French
beaurocrats would be painfully naive at best.
The anti-American sentiment has its roots deep in both cultural xenophobia (no headscarves?), a loss of historic
linguistic prestige (ie: lingua franca, lingua diplomata, etc.) and historical contest with their historic
adversary, England. There are many scholarly books on French anti-amerianism, and its (sometimes hilarious)
manifestation in politics, law and popular culture.
The situation has grown so out of hand in recent years, that the French intelligentsia
write books in an effort to understand their own cultural fascination with America bashing.
(I recommend Jean-Francois Revel's "L'Obsession Anti-Americaine", 2002).
But I see sadly that writing such comments on Slashdot are akin to pointing out that the "iPhone has no keyboard
and will probably make a bad smartphone because texting and email are somewhat crucial". (For which I was similarly
modded down as Flamebait)
There are broadcast limits on networks for all languages besides French. English has its own specially defined limits.
Advertisers who use English words (but not the words of other languages) are fined.
France took center stage during the ICANN fiasco in the effort to wrest "control" away from the US. And who
was the proposed entity for transferring the power to (from NSI)? Why, "France Telecom" of course.
French anti-Americanism is very real. The French have a deep resentment for the pervasiveness of the English language
and for the "American-ness" of the Internet. To deny this is to ignore far too much recent history.
Now kids, mod me down as flamebait and go to bed believing that the whole world is in this together, and that America is the
only country that behaves like a dick. Russia plays fair. China plays fair. France plays fair. We're jerks. I know.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The French government may have vested interest in moving towards Open Source and away from (U.S.-centric) proprietary software, due to suspected backdoors planted according to demands by the U.S. government. Same holds true for countries like China, Russia.
Are they getting something like Puppy Linux? http://www.puppyos.com/ This can be used on a flash drive to run Linux on any computer that is capable of booting from USB.
I am a 27 year old guy and have been living in Paris for 17 years.
First I will talk about your post then about the core subject of the article.
There is a certain amount of truth in what you say, but I believe things are not so bad, I think you exaggerate somewhat, and I don't understand why you deviate so much from the core subject of the article. We are talking about Free USB keys with OSS for the young.
French people are not stupid and neither are they against English speaking people or American culture. There is of course an amount of xenophobia in our country. For the 2002 presidential election, about 20 percent voted for the racist and extremist right wing candidate Jean Marie Lepen. Also we were very opposed to the war in Iraq since the beginning. That made us very unpopular at the time but see, things change, and time proves we were right, as more and more Americans think it was a bad idea. Anyway most of the countries in the world were opposed to this war and America going against everybody's opinion contributed to anti-americanism everywhere around the world, therefore also in France. I remember USA was more popular here in the Bill Clinton era.
If you read more often French newspapers you would notice that anti-americanism has always been the least of our occupations. We are much more busy with unemployment, health care, education (therefore USB keys), etc.
We do not make general assumptions about people. Also, the fact that our politicians and intellectuals make public declarations or write books that are or appear to be against other cultures does not imply that what everybody thinks here. Quite the opposite, they have always had a reputation for having a big mouth and being big liars, but hey, that is like all politicians everywhere on the planet, am I wrong?
Personally, I love USA. I have an uncle in California, have made several trips there. I like the places, the people, the way they think. And my friends do, too. We know that what Bush/politicians/American companies/"you name it" do or say is one thing, and what you normal Americans think is another. We make the difference.
Of course I happen to meet here from time to time someone that is anti American at the roots. But he/she is always a closed minded persons with severe shortcomings in his/her brain, lacking culture. But don't you find these sort of dumb people in a certain amount in every country in the world? Sure, you do.
We young people here, and many less young ones too are open minded, and welcome you Americans here in our country, and we are sure you will do the same there. I have yet to hear from someone here having had a bad trip to the USA or vice-versa.
To come back to the core subject, teachers and students at our university think it is a very good idea that high school students get a free usb key, even if it were a blank one. Even better with free software on it. We also think it should include a huge batch of relevant web links, a small IDE with a developer suite (at least in java) , and full documentation with it.
The main reason is that it will be easier for everybody to get the work they do on the computers in the library or the laboratory back home, or the homework back to school in digital format, and we strongly believe small portable media like USB keys is going to replace in the future the huge 20 lbs/10kg backpack these poor students often carry to/from school, that I carried myself years ago, curving my back on the trip to school which you know is harmful.
Also, for me nowadays almost all computers look the same, whether they have an OS or another one, a brand or another, a different architecture. So what makes each computer different for me is the data that is stored on it.
Of course an USB key with my personal data is not a computer by itself. But it is the part that the anonymous computer from the Netcafe or the lab or my friend's need to become mine. Once it has my files, my preferences (I can always dream with those nasty Windoors profile
Not to mention I would suspect that most Net Cafes would prevent booting from a USB device because they want you to run the special "cafe" software they usually have that prompts for your credit card, tracks your time, etc.
:)
My own $0.02:
I spent several months over the summer travelling around Europe. To manage my finances, as well as email friends and family, I occasionally had to find net cafe's along my way. Not wanting to lug a laptop around, I carried an Ubuntu liveCD with me. Most net cafe proprietors were reasonable when I asked if it would be alright to use it, although a couple outright refused. Most of the time the only concern (to them) is that they need to know how long you were on for, something which is usually handled by a small Windows app (the client is simply a timer, telling the "admin" how long you've been on. Payment is in cash when you're done). My concern was not transmitting my financial data from a computer running a questionable copy of XP Home used by who knows how many people each day for who knows what purposes.
Again, most people were reasonable with me, if a bit confused, and simply wrote down the time I arrived on a sheet of paper. Other places were more hostile, and these places were, invariably, the places where one would most want *not* to use their computers. As for disabling the use of things like USB, etc., you'd be shocked at the lax security measures in virtually every net cafe I went to. Well, maybe you wouldn't be. The other customers didn't seem to be either, but I certainly was. Most net cafes amount to a small room full of computers (again, running bone-stock XP Home) connected to a cable modem or DSL, overseen by a disinterested middle-aged man. Sure, booting from USB could have probably been disabled in the BIOS but, heck, I'd have been overjoyed if they'd just had some sort of anti-virus software. Or at the *very* least, not running as Administrator. On the upside, I was thus able to wage a one-man Firefox-installing campaign over somewhere around a dozen cities
So, yeah, it would be great for these flashdrives to boot a custom Linux distro. Convincing these kids it's worth their time to use it, that's a horse of a different color.
Rather than me figure out how to set all that up, why don't you just torrent that as 'ultimate usb tools' or chuck it in a rar and throw it on one of those web based filesharing places.
I'm pretty sure that'll get you the final point for the +5 informative boost and I'll get at least a +1 for suggesting it, - it's like money in the bank!
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript .php?storyId=7070098
"By a Frenchman, Bartholdi, who had sold the idea to the Egyptian government to grace the entrance to the Suez Canal. His original vision called for an Arab woman with a veil to hold this torch, and this would serve as a lighthouse at the entrance of the canal. But in 1869, the Egyptian government went bankrupt and Bartholdi was left without a customer for his statue. And in despair he traveled to the United States and he passed Bedlow's Island going in New York Harbor and he thought, that would be a good place to put my statue.
He sold it to the Americans with some French backers, but they insist on replacing the Arab woman with a veil and today you have an American woman holding that torch."
The more you know....