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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?
Yup. When I was a lad back in elementary school many years ago, they gave us all copies of the New Testament. A friend of mine carved through the pages of his to create a secret compartment.
You can lead a kid to the gospel, be it Christianity or OSS, but you can't make him use it. At least not as you might intend.
Loose lips lose spit.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the point here be to boot fromthe USB to run the OS that is pre-loaded on the stick?
If it's just OSS apps, and you're still requiring Windows OS, then it's not that revolutionary. Why would the user bother with te USB stick if the computer is already booted into Windows and has popular apps loaded?
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.
Now, if an entire university had a bunch of computer labs with absolutely no pre-installed OS, and gave all their students these USB sticks (with an OS to boot from), then that might be something.
-David
You're almost right.
But "France" was not more against the war than other countries. In the vast majority of countries of the world, a clear majority was against invasion, particularly invasion without a UN mandate.
The difference in the case of France was that one man, Jacques Chirac, made the democratic and rational decision to go along with what most of the population (especially the Muslim population) wanted. The common folk of France deserve neither condemnation/vilification nor praise/gratitude for the good action of one man.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
If the French are so enthusiastic about being open source and/or moving away from Microsoft, why is their France24 video stream on their website Microsoft-only?
France24 is supposed to be the bastion of everything French to the rest of the world and you can't watch it online unless you're using IE, running Windows, have WMP, etc.
You have no idea how French and American visions of state differ. French people have since royal times kept the vision of a powerful and impersonated state, which is trusted and where people expect the state to be a moral person, reponsible and present along everyday life (think welfare state for example). Even since the French revolution has the State kept its (although recent is more geared towards a reduction of role state), even if the economy has always been quite liberal.
Government is as much out of place encouraging Free Software as it is encouraging any philosophy or idea : of course governments should promote ideas (even anarchic ones), that's why it has been chosen over some other one. Even having and enforcing free markets IS an agenda, because sometimes it naturally leads to monopolies which needs state intervention to keep market free.
Besides, what do you mean free software is not Libre ? Aren't you free to use/modify it? Aren't you free NOT to release the software you write under a Free license ?
There, now I feel better.
"Hehe .. the French weren't hot about it because it wasn't in their fucking interest."
Maybe the french weren't hot about it because:
Or you could look at the latest polls http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/client/act_dsp_pdf.cf m?name=mr070122-2topline.pdf&id=3334
The majority of the US doesn't like Bush. It's not a "French thing." Get over it.
let's be honest though, a large part of France and Russia's vocal objection to the war was that they were making a ton of money brokering oil-for-food programs that would go away when Saddam went away. they were right for the wrong reasons