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SoulSe

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Posts posted by SoulSe

  1. Very of few of the computer-reliant Skype phones are Linux-compatible.

     

    But there is a phone from Netgear that doesn't need to be connected to a computer - it connects to your wireless network and has its on Skype client running on the phone. Nice thing is you can take it anywhere with you, like a mobile. They also have a Skype base phone that is both a normal cordless telephone and Skype phone and also doesn't require a computer. I'd go with one of those.

     

     

    EDIT: This is the phone I'm talking about.

  2. the laptop is not for the poorest kids, but rather the second poorest. For example, in my home country, the philippines, there is no mass starvation or civil war (although we do have guerrilla problems from time to time), but poverty is rife and the educational system is abysmal.

     

    Kids especially in faraway provinces are very poor, but NOT starving (well there are very few cases), so you vastly increase their opportunities with a better education. This laptop will provide both connectivity and education - I once participated in a project to deliver schoolbooks to a remote mountain community there, but I think an OLPC is the equivalent of hundreds of books. In that mountain village, there was no electricity, running water was from the streams - so the OLPC would fit there perfectly.

     

    I know in Africa the situation is much worse, but saying that the OLPC has no place in this world just angers me.

    I didn't say the OLPC has no place in the world. I said it was miss-directed from an African perspective. No doubt it has a positive role to play in your country.

  3. Have they? I know that they have pulled out of the OLPC, but as far as I was aware that was because Intel was trying to compete and collaborate at the same time, I thought that the development of the classmate was still going ahead.

    Sorry - my bad, I was wrong. They have pulled out of OLPC, but are still doing the XO. The guy who told me the story got it all wrong.

     

    Yeah, I did read an article on the BBC about how the laptop fitted into those neads, kinda knocked down what optimism I had for the project.

    In Africa, underprivileged children often live in squalor without running water or electricity. I can promise you they'd rather be able to eat than have an email address. If you gave them any kind of laptop they would try and sell it to buy food for their families.

     

    They are also frequently the victims of crime. Anything they have with them will be stolen by older children or other thugs. If they have a few cent in their pocket it will be stolen - now OLPC wants to give them a neon-coloured laptop that can be seen from a mile away?!?

     

    I'm not saying technology does not have a role to play for kids in a developing country - the digital divide is a huge problem. But there are more serious concerns. Kids should have access to technology, but it should be in a controlled environment where they can learn and explore without having to worry about their situation at home and the crime around them.

     

    Once again, the children of Africa are the victims of western capitalism. Their governments will be convinced by sweet-talking businessman to spend millions on yet another piece of crap they don't need and can't use. They are already at the mercy of tyrants put in charge of their countries by western powers securing resource rights and now they're being attacked from another angle too. OLPC seems to have good intentions, but I seriously doubt that Intel has the best interests of the children on their minds...

  4. I'm signing the petition - but it's not going to help.

     

    Blizzard have said many times that they have no plan to support Linux. Instead, they contribute to making their games work well with Cedega and they always release Mac clients... in fact, they do the best job of Mac games out there imho.

     

    World of Warcraft works really well with Cedega and this has reaffirmed Blizzard's position on Linux.

     

    So it really doesn't matter how many people sign the petition - you won't see a native version of the game... unless there's a Blizzard in hell :P But you can bet it will work very well with Cedega.

  5. Is Mandriva a good platform for Zimbra?

     

    I am speaking to more and more businesses in both the SMB and enterprise space that are displaying an interest in Zimbra. The nice thing with Zimbra is that it does not attempt to be a drop-in replacement for Exchange, but rather offers a whole new approach with some very powerful tools. It also scales nicely to the size of the organisation.

  6. Growth at the moment is very much centered on the mid-market and more and more vendors are switching focus to that market segment. Enterprise is very much a maintenance and services business at the moment.

     

    I'm not sure if that is Mandriva's take on the market, but it makes sense. Red Hat and Novell kind of have the enterprise space tied down with their offerings, I would advise other distros to look the small to medium sized business space.

  7. It's important to note that gOS has nothing to do with Google. It is produced by a third party and bundles a lot of Google apps together, but is not affiliated / associated with Google. From the site:

     

    gOS is an independent operating system devoted to making Google Applications and other free, web software more widespread and accessible to the world. gOS is not affiliated with Google or their partners.

     

    It looks like a neat little OS though, I'd like to try it out. I also think that SaaS is the future of applications, so its natural that operating systems in the future will be like gOS - merely a front-end to a browser that locks into hosted applications.

  8. I still have one lying around, but haven't used it for about five years :P

     

    Use the parallel cable - it works perfectly. I'm not sure how you'd get it working over USB.

  9. Linux vendors are often accused of being unprofessional and badly organised. Francois' letter was childish, poorly worded and while I know that English is not his first language and I honestly sympathise with him, just makes Mandriva look unprofessional.

     

    http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3708961

    http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/...-computer-deal/

     

    Microsoft's reactions, by contrast, are cool and calm - which is what you would expect from professional business people. They don't say anything bad about Mandriva, but defend their relationship with the customer. PR 101 - it's not that hard.

     

    Please don't get me wrong, I can understand that Francois is angry and I often overreact to things on the spur of the moment myself. But writing a badly-worded open letter that attacks Steve Ballmer (who probably didn't even know the deal was happening himself, obviously) makes Mandriva look like a bunch of kids.

     

    Compare this:

    Wow! I'm impressed, Steve! What have you done to these guys to make them change their mind like this? It's quite clear to me, and it will be to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve? There is various names for it, I'm sure you know them.

    To this:

    We are seeing strong market demand for Windows on low-cost devices to help governments in the areas of education, local innovation, and jobs and opportunity... Microsoft has a strong relationship with the government in Nigeria and will continue to partner with government and industry to help meet their needs.

    My advice to Mandriva: hire a professional PR person and don't let any communiqué slip past without their approval. Because any businessman reading those two paragraphs is going to side with Microsoft.

  10. A CEO's job is too make as much money as he / she possibly can for his / her shareholders, within the limits of the law. Stop blaming major corporations for trying to make money and start blaming the governments that do not have policies in place to prevent dirty business!

     

    I don't like Ballmer, not even one little bit - and I've told the powers that be at Microsoft as much (I went out for drinks last week with Iain MacDonald - the crazy Aussie who heads up Microsoft's Server BU and was project lead on XP and told him the same). But at the end of the day, and as annoying as he is, Ballmer is just doing his job - same as me, same as you, same as Francois at Mandriva.

     

    If spray painting walls was legal, would you blame kids for doing it, or would you get government to make it illegal? Stop wasting time complaining to / about Microsoft, your complaints are falling on deaf ears. Instead, get involved in policy reform and make dirty business impossible within the framework of the law.

     

    Take the SA government for example - it has a firm policy in place for the adoption of open source. The policy prevents government departments from using any solution that is not open source, unless they can prove that a particular proprietary solution has no known OSS alternative that offers better value. The policy isn't perfect, but it comes from the top and makes things happen - and MS has no leg to stand on.

     

    Of course, that's not to say I agree with said policy - and, of course, Microsoft are increasingly becomming vendors of open source, but that is another story (www.microsoft.com/opensource)

     

    I have just finished an article on the topic, which I will post to the board once it is out of embargo.

  11. Mandriva brings up firewall services by default. It might be stopping your eggdrops there. You can quickly drop the wall in the MCC and then try bring them up. That'd be my first guess...

  12. I have tried wvdial, but the modem keeps resetting! The same problem occurs with network monitor that can be downloaded - it's really weird, this is the only distro that seems to be causing this kind of trouble - i will start reading the logs and post them as soon as i get some time at home.

    Might be something in the Mandriva kernel. I might get lambasted for this - but why not use another distro? Any particular reason why you must use Mandriva?

     

    Th other option is to roll your own kernel for Mandriva using, for example, vanilla sources.

  13. Using the above mentality you will just switch distros eternally, or until you get fed up with Linux.

    The device works with windoze because ITS VENDOR ONLY CARES IT WORKING UNDER THAT OS. Even under MacOSX its a pain.

    The instructions at the above link are quite verbose- did you care reading them?

    Actually it works excellently under OS X :P

     

    And that's why it is usable in Linux too. Just a little perseverance :)

     

    Try using wvdial too - I've found that it has better luck with stubborn modems than other diallers.

  14. The problem with the Huawei is in its versatile design :P

     

    The device is actually two devices - a USB modem and a storage device that contains drivers and other software. If you look in your sd device listings, you will probably notice an additional storage device - that is the Huawei. So the problem with Linux is it only detects the storage element, but not the modem. The idea is that in Windows you plug it in, load the driver off the storage and then it detects the modem. Nice theory, but not too great for Linux.

     

    Apparently if you update the firmware it will fix the problem. You will need a Windows installation to do it in though. Check out the provider that gave you the modem's website for the latest firmware. The Huawei site is useless as this is a total OEM piece of hardware.

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