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?

Comments

I bet this USB sticks will be used...

[Utopia]

...to store just music or other files.

Re:There is more....

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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.

Re:There is more....

[metlin]

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).

We Hate France

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:We Hate France

[ISurfTooMuch]

I have to agree with this statement, but I think it's important to point out that it's the right-wing nutjobs who hate France, not a majority of Americans. I still laugh at the whole freedom fries/freedom toast thing. Morons. These people seem to forget, or they never knew, that if France hadn't helped us during the Revolutionary War, we'd likely have lost, and, had we lost, you can bet that the British Crown would have punished us severely. We have a lot to thank the French for. They've given the world culture, good food, and philosophy, and they helped liberate us from Britain. Oh yeah, and there's that statue they sent us. I'd say they've earned our respect. As for the flash drive project, I don't know. I have a feeling that many kids will simply erase them and use them for storing files. I applaud the effort, but a live CD or DVD might have been a better idea. What I'd do is set the CD/DVD up so that, if the kid runs it, they'll find a link to send them to a page where they can request the flash drive. That way, the drive will only go to those who are interested in using it for its intended purpose. Sure, they can still wipe it, but at least they'll have the chance to experience OSS before they get the drive.

Re:There is more....

[popo]

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.

Re:Computers on a stick?

[timeOday]

Interesting, isn't it? While technically wrong, it shows how commoditized computing hardware has become... apparently it isn't even noticeable to some people. All that matters is the user's data and applications.