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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."
All Bolivarian computers come fully equipped with a wide selection of inflammatory anti-Bush screensavers
But seriously, sometimes govenment direction can result in good stuff. Just like Brazil and energy selfsuficiancy. They say a problem, no oil, and the govenment of the day said OK, we will go ethynol. Ans now they do not have a relience onf foriegn oil.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
we have to recognize that *THIS* particular action is good.
Too bad he's choosing Free Software to promote his government where personal freedom is gone.
While my personal feelings regarding Mr Chavez are mixed, this is a great idea. He's attempting to grow an industry within his country and using open-source software to do it. It's always good to see Linux moving beyond the nerds into the hands of (for lack of a better term) common people.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
You are delusional, I'm afraid. These "US and European businesses" you refer to do not exist -- multinational corporations have no national allegiances, they do what is best for their quarterly profit.
Besides which, how is a Chinese corporation operating in Venezuela the same as the Chinese government meddling in the oil supply? Furthermore, since when did the Monroe Doctrine apply to Asian nations? And third, where the hell do Americans get off claiming Venezuelan oil for themselves?
$690 is nowhere near 60% of $930. It's closer to 75%.
Of course, 25% wouldn't sound impressive to the masses.
Here: Chavez Hatred Explained to Americans.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
For more information on the context of whats going on in Venezula, check out the docco Chavez - Inside the Coup. It shows how the oil corporates attempting a coup manipulated the public. This is the people that lost their broadcast license not long ago.
Chavez may seem like a bad man to some, but really is a result of the grass roots organising - aka The Bolivarian Circles.
As if Bush would ever support software freedom.
"The goal of the project is to jump-start a domestic IT industry and become an IT exporter to the rest of Latin America."
So they're going to put free (as in beer as well as in "RMS-speak") on commodity hardware that they won't be able to manufacture any cheaper than US companies do. It doesn't sound like a big winner to me.
Cue the FUD comments about Linux and Communism now. :(
Care about privacy? Read this!
Venezuela is in South America but where is Venezula?
:(){
it will be till somebody pokes around the prepackage and finds it able to only load approved state software, calls home, etc.
Then they'll be lucky to be running Linux. They can download a clean install from almost anywhere, blank the state software and start over. Download free tools to monitor their network traffic and watch to see if the hardware or BIOS has been borked.
But their plan was foiled by loading OSS on that machine, otherwise they would have gotten away with it. A fortunate oversight, don't you agree?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I love the Chavez apologists. At the risk of invoking a law that no doubt everyone on Slashdot is familiar with, I wonder if this will end up being the TCP/IP equivalent of Volksempfänger complete with filters to keep comments from more then 100-150 miles away.
It's amazing what people are willing to forget because someone is a enemy of their enemy. Chavez is rapidly militarizing, is the only leader in the entire world who seems not to have gotten the Communism is dead memo, and is now ruling by fiat.
Not good things.
I went to a conference last month that I report on here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/juicing.html. Brazil is also going big into biodiesel using castor seed. The worry about rainforests right now seems to be palm oil while cane will likely expand into existing grazing land (possibly former forest but cut for beef if it is).s -selling-solar.html
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Solar power with no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Politics aside, this shows great promise.
It's far too early to tell how long the Chavez regime will last, but I hope the next government keeps the program alive.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So I am torn on this topic. I love Linux and free open source software and I want M$ to die a fast death, yet I want U.S. exports to remain high.
Eventually, you can only make money by providing a real service. The chips are still Intel, so where there is US excellence, there is US income. There might be more if it were not for M$ proping up Intel at the expense of other US companies like AMD and IBM. Remember DEC and DR? They had some nice export income too. The US might be more competitive at electronics assembly if we could convince the world not to use Chinese slave labor, but we can't so that market has gone.
Money made based on the Windoze monopolies is a pipe dream. M$ really thought they could corner the word's market for something as ethereal as software? Give me a break. The only thing that's interesting about the M$ story is that they pulled off their little scam for so long. It's over because others can and will do better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I am not surprised at the quantity of anti-Chavez invective from the republi-trolls that seem to infest slashdot now. Regurgitating US propaganda as fact.
/free education.
One or two points.
Venezuela is a Democracy. They have elections every so often so the people get to decide who gets to run the place. They have decided that they prefer Chavez to the alternatives.
Chavez was democratically elected. And re-elected. Something like 60% of the populace want him as leader rather than the traditional oligarchies that used to run the place for their own benefit. They of course hate him for this. Almost all of the media in Venezeula are owned by the wealthy elite.
Chavez is not a communist. He is a socialist. There is a huge difference.
His socialist view is that *all* of the people of Venezuela should have affordable healthcare, at very low cost, if not free.
His socialist view is that *all* of the people should have low cost
Ditto with affordable decent housing for all.
And he is well on the way to achieving these aims.
His policies are meant to benefit the whole country, and not just the wealthy elite oligarchies.
So yes, Washington hates this, and him as a result.
Washington is having conniptions with this because I suspect they are frightened that the rest of the world might look at this socialist, benefit the maximum number of the population thing, and think "Hey, maybe there is something in this." Affordable healthcare for all? Affordable Education for all? Affordable Housing for all? Why haven't we got this?
This is why they have tried to back a coup to remove him from power, Against the democratically expressed wishes of majority of the country.
So, for trying to raise the standard of living of the population, he is automatically reviled and vilified. All this crap about spyware installed by the government on Linux, anti-Bush screensavers and the like is ignorant spite.
And one commenter compared him to Satan?
More than one "hate his guts".
I would be interested to know why exactly.
For those with an enquiring mind, there is a good book called "Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope" by Tariq Ali. It is about Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and Morales in Bolivia. ISBN 978-1-84467-102-1. Published by Verso 2006. Read it and you may learn something.
Sigh. Bye bye karma.
Trying to associate Microsoft with "fun" is like trying to associate Satan with aromatherapy. -Tycho
Another venezuelan here
For "ending the contract" as the venezuelan government so euphemistically puts it, there had to be a trial for those allegations (supporting the coup, being "in bed with the imperialists!" and other nonsense) and RCTV had to be found guilty. If there was no prosecution, the contract had to be automatically renewed for 20 years. Now, not only such trial never took place but it was based solely on what Chavez accused RCTV of doing during his TV show. On top of that, the Supreme Court (which was increased in number from 12 to 30 members in order to assure Chavez he will always get it his way) ruled that all of RCTV's equipment was to be used by the new, government-based TVES station with no right to compensation.
Now, if it walks like a duck... you can't call it a cat. This was an illegal closing of a dissenting media outlet AND a nationalization ("stealing", as I'd like to call it) of a company with the highest rating in the country and one of only two with a view different from the regime.
A while ago, a high-ranking government official declared that the CIA and "the gringos" were spying on venezuelans thru their Directv antennas... that's the level of lunacy and paranoia surrounding the guy....
Large hardware makers have consolidated like crazy, been spun off/sold, and/or gone out of business because the margins in computer hardware manufacturing are notoriously thin. Now Venezuela comes in offering computers for 75% (not 60% as Chavez innumerately claims) of the cost of the big manufacturers. What gives?
i cle/2007/02/08/AR2007020801240.html), and more expensive computers than propoganda, state-owned industry, price controls, and cheap computers.
Frankly, they're not really "cheaper" so much as they're just subsidised. If I lived in Venezuela, I'd rather have press freedom, foreign investment, affordable food (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/art
I'm all in favor of FOSS and cheap hardware, but anyone who can't see through this guy's cynical bullshit is blind, stupid, or willfully ignorant.
Diagnosis: you are paranoid. As luck would have it, you're also being followed.
Socialism CANNOT be allowed to be a successful sociopolitical system because it would represent a threat to the profit-making machinery of plutocratic market capitalism. The uber-wealthy folks LIKE being able to game the system for profit. While America's economy is growing and corproate profits are at record highs, the middle class is evaporating and life for the poor is fast heading into the toilet - crappy healthcare, crappy education, and on and on.
Now if someone ever actually manages to prove that there's a better way to do things, well, it could all turn very ugly for guys like Dubya. They can't vilify countries full of successful white people - like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc - where socialism really works. But a country full of poor brown people is an easy target for their brand of rhetoric.
A-Bomb
Here and here you can see comments from Slashdotters in June 2002 supporting Robert Mugabe's forcible redistribution of land from white Zimbabwean farmers to his political supporters and cronies.
Why did the Slashdotters support dictator Mugabe's actions? From their comments, it seems that they dis-believed the coverage of the issue in the international press and instead bought into Mugabe's propaganda: that the press was biased against him, that he was motivated only to correct a historical injustice and that the land would go to poor people who would know how to farm it efficiently.
In fact, the most critical stories were true: the land was seized from some of the best farmers in the country, and given only to Mugabe's wealthy supporters who did not even know how to farm, and a disastrous famine was the predictable result.
These Slashdot comments stuck in my mind because, as I was reading them, I was dismayed that anyone would fall for the propaganda of a corrupt and oppressive dictator. But in truth, the kind of technical know-how which is common at Slashdot doesn't give any kind of economic or geopolitical insight.
That is why many people here are supporters of Chavez. They serve the role of Lenin's "useful idiots".
It seems that in Slashdot many people have some what strange idea on what socialism is and where they think that they are seeing it.
In socialism the people via government own and control the means of production. Communism is not alternative to socialism, but a way to enter socialism via armed struggle. Social democracy is an alternative way to achieve socialism by transforming the state peacefully into socialism step by step. In the world where we are living, there is no country that is practising socialism.
You said that countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark are socialist, that's dead wrong. The countries you cited are free capitalistic market economies. The only difference in Nordic and usually in European countries is that they have set up safety nets for their citizen: i.e. well-fare, public education and health-care etc.. Having these things doesn't make a country socialist, it makes it a well-fare state.
When we look at south America and especially what Chavez is doing to Venezuela, they are more or less committed on idea of national socialism: using the economy of a country and it's means of production to further national agendas and it's manifested destination. That is wrong and stupid. They are only going to wreck their economies and after they have used their national resources like oil and gas, their economies will crumble down. The only way to achieve prosperity is to invest in infrastructure, means of production and to abilities of citizens. Nordic countries nor Europe weren't build in a decade, the prosperity that we have and that takes care of welfare state is the product of hundreds of years work and investment into infrastructure and means of production.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
Also known as taxes. Something any government must collect, if it wishes to defend its people from other governments.
And I, for one, really like the concept of welfare - makes life a lot less stressing when I know that financial difficulties don't lead to starvation.
Please explain why a state-provided - and therefore tax-funded - service would need to compete with anything ? Furthermore, please explain how a state-provided - and therefore tax-funded - service could possibly lose any competition when it can be provided for free ?
Is communism cause or effect there ? Because, historically, it have been bad conditions for people which have spawned communistic regimes; in fact it were the intolerable conditions for industrial workers during industrialization which spawned communism itself.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It actually comes from the concept of personal freedom; the freedom to do as you wish as long as it doesn't harm another. i.e. liberalism, which is ironic because the US have redefined liberal to mean socialist.
You see, you cannot have freedom without responsibility, they are the same thing. If you take away someone's responsibilities you are also at the same time taking away their freedom. A socialist state removes the personal responsibility from the individual and at the same time removes those same freedoms, it cannot be avoided.
Sweden, Norway and Denmark are not examples of socialist states, they are liberal democracies with market economies.
Deleted
1) The Amazon rainforest land is not good for agriculture. ;)
2) Brazil uses sugar cane, not corn, to produce ethanol.
3) Sugar cane is grown in places far from the Amazon forest.
Get your facts right before writing horseshit here.