Venezula Producing Its Own Linux PCs

christian.einfeldt writes "The Venezuelan Government announced the roll-out of four different models of Linux-powered consumer computers, three desktop models and one notebook. Branded 'Bolivarian Computers,' they will be will be produced by a joint venture of the Venezuelan Ministry of Light Industry and Commerce and a Chinese company named Lang Chao. The goal of the project is to jump-start a domestic IT industry and become an IT exporter to the rest of Latin America. At the ceremony introducing the program, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez claimed that the Bolivarian Computers cost 40% less than other commercially available models and come with a 3-year warranty."

Comments

Re:As much as I hate Chavez...

[jcr]

Chavez has an approval rating over 80%.

According to polls conducted by his own ministry of propaganda. BTW, did you know that the repugnant little elvis impersonator who rules north korea is worshiped as a god by most of his subjects?

-jcr

Re:My First ever First Post

[arthurpaliden]

Which is why the United States is pillaging other people countries.

Re:My First ever First Post

[morari]

Oh and that nationalization of their industries have gone really well, unless you like to eat meat. Well, eating meat is pretty distasteful. Not to mention gross from an ethical standpoint in the case of many factory farms and modern slaughter houses. Maybe if human hunting, breeding, production, slaughter and sale was legalized I couldn't scream "hypocrites" as loudly...

I have to giggle

[fat_mike]

That's great! Now he can keep an eye on everybody. I see him as the boss in V for Vendetta, telling his computer how much he loves her.

20 years from now people will be going "Chavez who?" Is that the guy that thought he could be Hitler and Stalin rolled into one. Good thing the people of Venezuela smacked him down.

Well, yes, actually.

[twitter]

would the fanboys like you also praise satan for adopting FOSS/linux to control the fuel delivery and batch-processing of the new arrivals?

Why not? Don't you M$ fanboys preach respect for Mr. Gate's business methods? Just think of this as "cutting off the oxygen" and admire the removal of the M$ tax from one of the richest countries in Latin America.

The rest of us will praise self help and reason where we see it. Is there any good reason people around the world should pay Dell to assemble parts made in China? Free software also has ports to more appropriate hardware, cheap and low power consumption, instead of the eight core monsters M$ is moving towards.

Re:My First ever First Post

[morari]

I'm not some PETA pal that subscribes to the "cute and fuzzy" ideology. Besides, I mentioned "gross from an ethical standpoint in the case of many factory farms and modern slaughter houses". Such situations are hardly natural, and certainly do not promote the food chain or the environment. Such things are torture and genocide. Humans do not promote nature at all however, from the food chain to natural selection. We've all but bred out NATURE from our species and thus are a threat to any other species' way of life. My personal distaste for most meats aside, I see little wrong with going out and humanely killing what you will use. My remark about humans was mainly sarcasm, though I don't see why we should draw a line of difference when genocide is already an acceptable value when it comes to our daily diet of store-bought steaks and foreign wars.

Re:Full featured linux distros

[arpad1]

Guess what, that's the definition of democracy: people get to choose on the issue. If the majority of registered voters LIKE the president's decree, they keep it, if they don't they can repel it. And it only takes 5% of the registered voters to call for a referendum on it. Does the "hated for its demakrassy" "democracy-exporting" US have any similarly democratic way to repel laws? Oh sure, heaps of 'em. Laws are regularly repealed by direct action of the electorate not that it's all that good a way to legislate. The U.S. is a constitutionally-limited republic, not a democracy. Direct legislation is anti-democratic since a pure democracy is always one vote away from a dictatorship. Of course if you're hoping to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat a democracy is pretty attractive.

Tell you what, the first time Chavez has any legislation repealed by "the people" he professes to love so deeply is when he can claim to be an elected representative. Until then he's a Castro, or a Mao, or an Uncle Joe wannabe anxious to become the real deal.

Bush isn't worse than Chavez.

[tjstork]

The left wing tells plenty of lies about George Bush, and vice versa, but you don't see Bush throwing the likes of Michael Moore in jail.

That's the one key difference.

Another other is that socialism as an economic policy has so completely and consistently failed to make really positive advances in the living standards of the world that it really ought to be as wrong to advocate it as much it might be wrong to advocate a return to feudalism and serfdom (which, incidentally, is the same as socialism anyway).

Dicators and socialists have to go. Even Chomskey concedes that tolerance for dictatorships helps sew the seeds of 9/11. Thus, while I do not agree with Bush's USA PATRIOT act, or his handling of the war in Iraq, the application of the Wilsonian idea to bring freedom to the world is a damned good one.