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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?
I guess that means that my K-Fed CD is a a CD player on a CD.
...to store just music or other files.
http://theopencd.org/programs
Still, it looks pretty exciting. I'd love to have that stuff on the go. If France can break out of the grip of Microsoft, then perhaps the end of the monopoly is near.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
French kid 2: "You got USB stick on my OSS!"
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
s/anti-Americanism/Communism/
France has fallen to the Bitskrieg! Long said to be secure behind the impregnable Maginot-soft Windows line, the French will now have to face the humiliation of watching Richard M. Stallman parade down the Champs d'USB.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Perhaps in the near future I'll decide that I've had enough of Slashdot.
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.
Hey! Bring back freedom *cough* fries *cough* *cough*!
Giving away software instead of buying quality American products from Microsoft. F**king commies! Even copied the flag then try and tell me they had red white and blue first!! I'll show 'em. From now on I'm gonna salute the brown, baby poo green and brown! That'll show those hippy pinko snail eating hole sniffers! That'll teach 'em for trying to punish us for killing a few worthless Arabs by giving free software away to kids!
Scum!
--That, people, was not feeding a troll, that was shitting on a troll and it felt really good!
I don't therefore I'm not.
...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 just looked into something like this for myself and found portableapps.com. You can load up your standard OSS on a USB stick and then use them on any windows computer. I went out and bought the fastest USB stick I could find and loaded a few of my favorites on there (Firefox, 7Zip, OpenOffice and a few others). It's been really helpful to have the software I want when I am in a variety of locked-down university computer labs and I can do things with this software that the other students around me can't like open some obscure types of compressed files, save documents as PDFs, and browse the internet ad-free. Highly recommended if you often use public computers or work on other peoples' machines.
Mandriva Flash - A 3D Desktop in your pocket.
From the link:
Core and SoftwareKernel 2.6.17
Glibc 2.4
X.org 7.1
KDE 3.5.4
GCC 4.1
OpenOffice 2.0.3
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6
Flash®Player 7.0.68
RealPlayer® 10.0.8.805
I would not force Linux on them, but there is a lot of Windows OSS;
AbiWord first of all.
Gnumeric spreadsheet
VideoLAN Client (VLC)
GAIM multi-protocol IM software
GZIP file compression tool
wxBASIC BASIC Interpeter or similar
Games! This whole list; http://osswin.sourceforge.net/games.html
I think this would about do it and still fit on a modest USB stick.
What do you think?
Dog is my co-pilot.
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
The poster obviously doesn't understand what a computer is and the relationship between a computer and its software... Calling a USB stick preloaded with software a "computer on a stick" is like calling a filled gas can a "car in a can".
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
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).
Exactly!
Damn French! Most English people have been anti-American for ages but all of a sudden, along come the French, gain all the credit and manage to make it look cool in the process!
I demand other nations, beyond the French, get equal credit for loathing the current American administration.
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 : )
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.
Any idea how much space this software all takes, or how large the drives will be? The operation is said to cost about $3.4M, or under $20/student. Some of that will be administrative costs, too. Nonetheless, I'm impressed it can be done for so little.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
What software would I like to see loaded up? Well, here's what's on MY USB stick:
Accesories
Calcute, Converber, Convert, Guillotine, Launchy, Boot Floppy Creator, WinRAR, Rejar, XN Resource Editor, Resource viewer, decompiler & recompiler., Universal Extractor, Allway Sync, pathsync, Batcher, Bulk Rename Utility, DataTool, XpAssociate,
Internet
mIRC, Miranda IM, qm - Quick Mailer, Thunderbird Portable, Opera , read_IE_proxy, VNC server for Win32, VNCViewer, ChrisControl, GreatNews: the intelligent rss reader, FollowMeIP (Show External IP),
File Transfer
Quick 'n Easy FTP Server 3.0, Portable WackGet, FTP Wanderer, HTTP File Server, utorrent,
Scanners
Network Stumbler, Angry IP scanner, MozillaCookiesView, IPNetInfo, HTTP Get Headers, SuperScan 4 Beta 1, SmartSniff, CurrPorts, NetStat Live, trout (Trace Route), WhoisThisDomain,
Uniform Server
Start Main Server, Stop Main Server, Start SlimFTPd, Stop SlimFTPd,
Media
CD / DVD
DvdReMake Pro, DVD Shrink 3.2, IFO-file editor, MuxMan, Windows XP Virtual CD, PowerISO, CDex CD-Ripper, BonkEnc Audio Encoder, Nero InfoTool, DVDINFOPro, Alcohol 120%, Standalone CD/DVD Burner, DeepBurner, EasyDVDBurner,
Graphics / Imaging
IrfanView, XnView, PaintStar, Portable GIMP, Resize, animagic32, Analyzer, LiquidIcon Editor, FSCapture, SnIco Editor, ColorCop, SmartMorph,
Audio
XMPlay, coolplayer, 1by1, Foobar2000, Easy MP3 Alarm Clock, mpTrim, WakeMeUP,
Video
Ant Movie Catalog, VLC Media Player, VLC Media Player - no skins, Media Player Classic, VirtualDub,
Office
Notepad++ : a free (GNU) source code editor, TED Notepad for Windows, UltraEdit-32 Professional Text/Hex Editor, ICEReaderRetail, Foxit Reader Pro, PdftkBuilder, TreePad Lite, Spell Magic, Total Organizer,
OpenOffice
OpenOffice.org, Writer, Calc, Base, Impress , Math , Draw ,
System
pstools, MyUninstaller, Autostart program viewer, Dependency Walker, DiskRecon, DiskImage, PassWordRenew, RegEdit PE, RegScanner, Registry Monitor, TreeSize Professional, ImageExplorer, Tola's patching engine v1.8, AbsoluteShield File Shredder, Removes hard to remove files, WhyReboot,
HD Tools
HDHacker, HDD Temperature Monitor, HDSpeed, HD Tune, Partition Table Doctor 3.0, Partition Table Editor for Windows, PartitionInfo Windows NT Version, Symantec GhostCast Server for Windows, Symantec Ghost Explorer, Symantec Ghost,
Info / Benchmark
Game XP, ClockGen, CPU-Z Application, aida32, everest, USB Browser, Parmavex WinAudit, RightMark Memory Analyzer, ServiWin Service and Driver manager,
Copy / Undelete
ActiveUndelete, Restoration, Unstopable Copier, BadCopy - Disk & CD Data Recovery Utility, raid,
Maintanance / Repair
Windows XP SP2 TCP/IP patch, ClamWin Portable, CCleaner Portable, xp-AntiSpy, Norton WinDoctor, Norton Disk Doctor, Ad-Aware SE, JkDefrag, Disk Analysis and Cleanup Utility, WinsockFix,
Security
TrueCrypt, Keylogger Detector, KeePass Password Safe v1.05, Omziff, Internet Explorer Passwords Viewer, WirelessKeyView, pcANYWHERE password, PasswordsPro, SAMInside, SAMInside, pwdump2,
Windows Shortcuts
edit_lmhosts, System, Add or Remove Programs, Computer Management, Services, Performance, Display, Network Connections, Printers and Faxes, Sounds and Audio Devices,
Games
lwwin, zetrix, rh, Bridging_the_Gap_v1, Process Explorer, My Computer, DSynchronize, DM2, Firefox, x2 - explorer replacement,
And all of it menued under PStart.
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.
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.
Well the french use two different terms
anti-mondialiste and alter-mondialiste
And if about 10 years ago many where "anti" now most (who do care about this sort of thing, and not only about "what's on tv tonight") use alter.
Free software is not "anti" globalization but for an alternative globalisation.
The current trend is toward: cash and capital can travel around the world at the speed of light, but the unwashed masses are requested to stay put in their current cesspol.
And if the capital they need to clean up a little bit their environment can be used more efficiently somewhere else, tought luck, better times are comming (somewhere, sometime, don't hold your breath, or do we don't care).
The alter-globalization stand on Free Software is that it gives more people control on their own environment, and it makes it somewhat harder to fully control the transmission chain from content provider toward end-user.
For instance compare what kind of "permission" you need to develop a game on Linux as compared to a game on an Xbox.
Unfortunatelly the real understanding of the issues at hand is only very partial, and for instance in the current USB tick example, the real "need" is just for a mobile student "work space", this enables the school administrator to freeze the school PC's configuration and removes the need for a shared managed "student storage place".
Adding some free software on a memory stick is really a way to NOT put Linux on the PC.
The discussion goes like this:
- you should not be a slave to a monopoly, nor should you provide a system to students that they cannot really study but only use as a black box.
- ho, hem, ha, heuu, well, its very complicated and difficult, but we are allready doing something, we are ta da.... using Firefox !!!
- Of course you are, but you use it on Windows, and it really doesn' mean mutch by itself
- Well we are also moving toward Open Office (well a little, sometimes, but not for the Accountant he has 20 lines of Excel macro that he doesn't remember how they happen to work, so porting them, you must be kidding..)
- This is still ChickenS.... and you know it.
- Well we will make a big program with Free Software for All
- Ok seems cool
- Hello dear provider, we need 50 000 USB sticks
- Ta daaa...!
- So what ?
- We copied the nice demo CD you gave us last year on the stick
- With the 2 years old versions ?
- Yess isn't it cooool.
- MS sales rep to BG (hello, finally no need for EDGI funds)
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
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.
(unless the school put out some dough--every OSS system I've used required some shady means of enabling mp3 playback)
Since money is not charged per copy of Linux, they do not include software that requires a payment to be made per copy. MP3 decoders and codecs require a payment. Detailes are here;
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/
Once you download a codec or decoder, getting it licensed is a problem.. They won't take your money. From the Q & A;
1) Do you license mp3, mp3PRO and mp3surround software to end users?
No. We license mp3/mp3PRO software and patents to developers and manufacturers of software applications and hardware devices.
They don't want to deal with retail, they want to deal with wholesale. The minimum annual payment is $15,000.
See the minimum royalties on the bottom of this page; http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
every OSS system I've used required some shady means of enabling mp3 playback
It's because they provide no way to properly license it. We've tried.
The truth shall set you free!
and renaming the "USB" sticks the "FrenchB" sticks . . .Take that you darn Americans!
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein
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....
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
Maybe if you hadn't been trying for first post, and had spent as much time on your original comment as you did on this one, the original would have been modded like this one was, even though it and this are still far, far off topic. Cry me a fucking river. You know exactly what you did and why you were down-modded.
You can say anything you want on Slashdot and get modded up for it. Just refrain from being an asshole.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> Advertisers who use English words (but not the words of other languages) are fined
Wrong. Advertisers can use English words if they like, but they have to provide a translation for these words somewhere on the ad (often in a footnote in small print).