You may want to look at Scratch programming environment. While Scratch is a programming tool which lets kids make all sorts of stuff (animations, games, etc), there is a large number of kids who build science simulations with it. For example, you can look at this gallery of physics simulations and animations, all of which were created by kids. Most of the projects on the Scratch website have been created by kids and all projects are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, so kids in your class will be able to download the projects, examine how they have been built, and build their own projects upon existing work.
There is also a website for educators who want to use Scratch - you can ask for ideas and suggestions in the forums in that website.
[Disclaimer: I am a graduate student in the research group which develops Scratch]
At this point, people began wanting to use GNU Emacs, which raised the question of how to distribute it. Of course, I put it on the anonymous ftp server on the MIT computer that I used. (This computer, prep.ai.mit.edu, thus became the principal GNU ftp distribution site; when it was decommissioned a few years later, we transferred the name to our new ftp server.) But at that time, many of the interested people were not on the Internet and could not get a copy by ftp. So the question was, what would I say to them?
I could have said, âoeFind a friend who is on the net and who will make a copy for you.â Or I could have done what I did with the original PDP-10 Emacs: tell them, âoeMail me a tape and a SASE, and I will mail it back with Emacs on it.â But I had no job, and I was looking for ways to make money from free software. So I announced that I would mail a tape to whoever wanted one, for a fee of $150. In this way, I started a free software distribution business, the precursor of the companies that today distribute entire Linux-based GNU systems.
Please do continue selling the software - as long as you provide the source code to anyone who demands for it, you are within the limits set by the GPL, legally, morally and ethically.
Last September, I bought myself a Compaq Presario 2203 AL notebook (Centrino based) and it came with a customised version of Mandrake 9.1 preinstalled. Of course, most of the stuff (modem, frequency scaling, suspend to disk/RAM) did not work. I installed Ubuntu on it - and with a custom compiled kernel - everything is working perfectly. I close the lid, and if the system is on AC power, it goes into Suspend to RAM mode, and if it is running on battery, it suspends to disk.
Guess what - WinXP SP2 will be providing support for Bengali (and IIRC - Malayalam).
Wrt out of the box Indic support - you won't even have to install a 10 MB dll file - get a uptodate distro like FC2 or MDK 9.2/10 - and things should work out of the box. With WinXP - you need to enable ctl support - and then you get only support for a few languages. With KDE 3.2 (or GNOME 2.6) - you get support for Indic languages without any kind of extra voodoo magic.
And as far as localised interface is concerned - in GNOME 2.6 you get support for Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi - and with KDE 3.2 - you get a similar number of supported languages. With WinXP - you just have l10nised interface for only Hindi (and that too - partial - no translation for Messenger/parts of the Cpanel etc).
The OP is right in pointing out that in some cases - the FOSS community is there before Microsoft. Example - Bengali - we had reasonably good fonts for Bengali since late 2002 - Microsoft has not released a single font yet.
Actually, Evolution is in its 1.5x (unstable) series. You can check out the latest news from the evolution front here. There is also a roadmap at here. I have been using the unstable branch (from CVS) for quite sometime now, and it is quite stable for me. It is now integrated by default to Spamassasin - so it does spam filtering quite nicely.
I have been using the base Morphix system for a Bengali l10n Live CD project (which was mentioned at slashdot a few days back). I am really amazed by its capabilities - if you want to have a LiveCD of your own - this is probably the best starting point.
For documentation, you may want to have a look at the Morphix Wiki.
A major problem with these new voting machines is that they do not allow you to cancel your votes without letting others know. If you want to cancel your vote (in case if you don't like any of the candidates), you will have to fill up a form and submit it to the officer in charge.
During the ballot era - you could put the mark beside two or more candidates, and your vote would get cancelled automatically.
Of course, one can abstain from voting altogether, but in that case, chances are that the local politician's pet goons would cats the vote in your name:-).
I do not know about all the Asian languages - but I am actively involved in the Indian language scenario, and I would try to answer your questios from that perspective. 1. We cannot do anything inthe text mode, as text mode only supports "fixed width" fonts. This won't do for Indian languages. However, some developers have tried to modify the kernel and other hacks, but the results are not very interesting. 2. Fonts are a real bottleneck. We cannot work with plain old TTF fonts - we use a new format called OpenType (search microsoft.com). That adds a lot of complications - and usually each font works with one language. For example, you may check ot http://www.nongnu.org/freebangfont which works with Bangla (the 4th largest language in the world in terms of the number of people speaking it). I am the coordinator of this project - and working on this can be really troublesome. Recently, there has been proposals on a grand unified Indian font - let's see what happens. 3. Hardcoded software has to be changed - nothing doing - no alternative way exists. 4. Input method (IM) is yet another problem as a result of lack of proper well publicised standards. X has a fairly good Input mechanism - and GTK2 has one of its own too. You are free to choose whichever you want to use.
Simputer from India has support for the complex Indic languages. However, for Japanese and Arabic (with bidi support), I guess the best option would be to run gtk2 - whose pango text layout engine supports complex scripts. I don't know what PDA has gtk2 based apps, you'll have to find out for yourself.
well, if u ppl want to volunteer as editors, why don't u approach the authors directly?
i'm a minor LDP author myself and i find it really painful to go thru my doc again and again.
and as for outdated stuffs, yes, definitely i agree. however there is a call for new mainatainers for really outdated docs at the LDP site itself
things are really changing with the LDP having a big database for authors and editors (www.gldp.org) weekly call for maintainers of unmainatained docs and things, and let's hope for the very best
Slashdot Mirror
You may want to look at Scratch programming environment. While Scratch is a programming tool which lets kids make all sorts of stuff (animations, games, etc), there is a large number of kids who build science simulations with it. For example, you can look at this gallery of physics simulations and animations, all of which were created by kids. Most of the projects on the Scratch website have been created by kids and all projects are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, so kids in your class will be able to download the projects, examine how they have been built, and build their own projects upon existing work.
There is also a website for educators who want to use Scratch - you can ask for ideas and suggestions in the forums in that website.
[Disclaimer: I am a graduate student in the research group which develops Scratch]
Both versions of the XO laptop (1.5 as well as 1) have dual mode screens (the backlight can be turned off to enable reflective mode).
This is from http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html - and the person referred to is Richard Stallman.
Please do continue selling the software - as long as you provide the source code to anyone who demands for it, you are within the limits set by the GPL, legally, morally and ethically.
Get a BSNL connection - you'll get 2 Mbps at the same rate as Airtel.
Last September, I bought myself a Compaq Presario 2203 AL notebook (Centrino based) and it came with a customised version of Mandrake 9.1 preinstalled. Of course, most of the stuff (modem, frequency scaling, suspend to disk/RAM) did not work. I installed Ubuntu on it - and with a custom compiled kernel - everything is working perfectly. I close the lid, and if the system is on AC power, it goes into Suspend to RAM mode, and if it is running on battery, it suspends to disk.
My comments on their Live CD - here and here.
Guess what - WinXP SP2 will be providing support for Bengali (and IIRC - Malayalam).
Wrt out of the box Indic support - you won't even have to install a 10 MB dll file - get a uptodate distro like FC2 or MDK 9.2/10 - and things should work out of the box. With WinXP - you need to enable ctl support - and then you get only support for a few languages. With KDE 3.2 (or GNOME 2.6) - you get support for Indic languages without any kind of extra voodoo magic.
And as far as localised interface is concerned - in GNOME 2.6 you get support for Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi - and with KDE 3.2 - you get a similar number of supported languages. With WinXP - you just have l10nised interface for only Hindi (and that too - partial - no translation for Messenger/parts of the Cpanel etc).
The OP is right in pointing out that in some cases - the FOSS community is there before Microsoft. Example - Bengali - we had reasonably good fonts for Bengali since late 2002 - Microsoft has not released a single font yet.
Jorge Castro, one of the Ars Technica writers has written a very nice article refutng Petreley's claims at his site.
OK - Here's a mirror that should work properly - sorry for the initial goof up http://www.clai.net/sayamindu/GNOME-2.6/GNOME_2_6. html
Actually, Evolution is in its 1.5x (unstable) series. You can check out the latest news from the evolution front here. There is also a roadmap at here. I have been using the unstable branch (from CVS) for quite sometime now, and it is quite stable for me. It is now integrated by default to Spamassasin - so it does spam filtering quite nicely.
. ics.
The roadmap is also available at webcal://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/roadmap
Just get the GTK rpm from the Ximian Unstable - don't worry - the GTK in the Ximian unstable is stable enough.6 /gtk2-2.3.1-0.ximian.6.1.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd-unstable/redhat-9-i38
I have been using the base Morphix system for a Bengali l10n Live CD project (which was mentioned at slashdot a few days back). I am really amazed by its capabilities - if you want to have a LiveCD of your own - this is probably the best starting point.
For documentation, you may want to have a look at the Morphix Wiki.
Actually, I remember seeing a gconf setting in Nautilus which puts a limit on the number of files which it would handle. :-(
Forgot where it is though
Ho - I uploaded the pages at a. http://bengalinux.sourceforge.net/Writings/GNOME_2 _4.html
b. http://bengalinux.sourceforge.net/Writings/GNOME_2 _4.html
-hth-
Sayamindu
A major problem with these new voting machines is that they do not allow you to cancel your votes without letting others know. If you want to cancel your vote (in case if you don't like any of the candidates), you will have to fill up a form and submit it to the officer in charge. During the ballot era - you could put the mark beside two or more candidates, and your vote would get cancelled automatically. Of course, one can abstain from voting altogether, but in that case, chances are that the local politician's pet goons would cats the vote in your name :-).
I do not know about all the Asian languages - but I am actively involved in the Indian language scenario, and I would try to answer your questios from that perspective.
1. We cannot do anything inthe text mode, as text mode only supports "fixed width" fonts. This won't do for Indian languages. However, some developers have tried to modify the kernel and other hacks, but the results are not very interesting.
2. Fonts are a real bottleneck. We cannot work with plain old TTF fonts - we use a new format called OpenType (search microsoft.com). That adds a lot of complications - and usually each font works with one language. For example, you may check ot http://www.nongnu.org/freebangfont which works with Bangla (the 4th largest language in the world in terms of the number of people speaking it). I am the coordinator of this project - and working on this can be really troublesome.
Recently, there has been proposals on a grand unified Indian font - let's see what happens.
3. Hardcoded software has to be changed - nothing doing - no alternative way exists.
4. Input method (IM) is yet another problem as a result of lack of proper well publicised standards. X has a fairly good Input mechanism - and GTK2 has one of its own too. You are free to choose whichever you want to use.
Simputer from India has support for the complex Indic languages.
However, for Japanese and Arabic (with bidi support), I guess the best option would be to run gtk2 - whose pango text layout engine supports complex scripts.
I don't know what PDA has gtk2 based apps, you'll have to find out for yourself.
So, since you are an expert about the Internet, how do you feel about pop up ads and about the ads from "Yahoo Personals" (tm) like this?
1. Bengali - www.bengalinux.org, www.nongnu.org/freebangfont, www.banglapenguin.org
2. Hindi - www.indlinux.org
Latest driver is 0.9.1 little buggy..but works (www.peacefulaction.org/sayamindu/pctel.html)
well, if u ppl want to volunteer as editors, why don't u approach the authors directly? i'm a minor LDP author myself and i find it really painful to go thru my doc again and again. and as for outdated stuffs, yes, definitely i agree. however there is a call for new mainatainers for really outdated docs at the LDP site itself things are really changing with the LDP having a big database for authors and editors (www.gldp.org) weekly call for maintainers of unmainatained docs and things, and let's hope for the very best