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Linux To Be Installed In Every Russian School
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:38 PM
from the lots-and-lots-of-penguins dept.
from the lots-and-lots-of-penguins dept.
J_Omega writes "According to an article from last week at the Russian IT site CNews, Linux is slated to be installed in every Russian school by 2009. The article makes it appear that it will be going by the (unimaginative) name 'Russian OS.' As stated in the article: 'The main aim of the given work is to reduce dependence on foreign commercial software and provide education institutions with the possibility to choose whether to pay for commercial items or to use the software, provided by the government.' Initial testing installations are supposed to begin next year in select districts. Is 2008/09 the year of Linux on the (Russian) desktop?"
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Developers: IBM Opens A Linux Training Center In Russia 178 comments
prostoalex writes "IBM and Russian Ministry of Communications announced the opening of the first Linux Competency Center in Moscow. Representative of the goverment was quoted saying that such a center will help 'create a Linux ecosystem enabling Russian hi-tech companies to expand into global markets faster. IT solutions based on Linux and open standards will open up great opportunities to businesses in Russia.' This news piece in Russian also quotes Russian government official planning to expand the Linux initiative into provincial cities as well, if the center in Moscow turns out to be a viable idea."
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Great, the penguin goes red! (Score:2, Funny)
Let's teach all the russian kids how to hack. This is what we should be doing in the USA.
Re:Great, the penguin goes red! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great, the penguin goes red! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great, the penguin goes red! (Score:4, Funny)
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Your theories are fascinating indeed.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Once you become proficient in using Linux you are having a better understanding of OS and network internals than your Windows-using peers.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not a balanced starting point (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you become proficient in using Linux you are having a better understanding of OS and network internals than your Windows-using peers.
You're making it sound like most windows users are proficient in using Windows. Just because something is there doesn't mean that it's going to be used. In this case, just because the code is there for everyone doesn't mean that many of these students are going to dig around and play with the code. They're going to treat it just like they do when they use Windows.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tux: Are you trying to DDOS this page?
Me: No Tux go away!
Tux: Here are your options -
1. DDOS attack
2. ???!!?
3. Profit!
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have not noticed, may I remind you that windows have degenerated into a consumer device totally unusable for any computer science education without spending a significant amount of money and effort to install extra software. As a result Windows based computer literacy has long degenerated into mouse driven "button pushing".
Linux ships with 4 high level computer languages useable out of the box in the base install - perl, python, C and C++. The rest are easily available as packages. As a result the environment to teach CS is already there. The likelihood that the kids will have at least some hacking skills is much higher as well.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
C:/Windows/System32/Debug.exe *
* Some assembly required.
Re:Great, the penguin goes red! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's teach all the russian kids how to hack. This is what we should be doing in the USA.
Back when I was teaching, I did exactly that.
I had a standing challenge that any kid who managed to pop any of my servers, and show/prove exactly how he or she did it, got a their overall grade bumped by one letter for that semester. The ground rules were simple: they could only break into a server that I controlled. I did it because 1) kids try for it out of curiousity anyway, and 2) they may as well be challenged to study than admonished into ignorance. I went out of my way to include security into the curricula whenever and wherever I could.
Out of six years of teaching, only one student had managed it... he organized the local (Salt Lake City) 2600 chapter. Last I heard he was running his own security consulting firm.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
he got us so interested in his story but he didnt tell us how it ended properly...
Sorry 'bout that; here's (roughly) how he did it:
He got to the Windows NT Server through his student account, shook out a copy of the local SAM, then spent the next few days brute-forcing it on a different machine. I was handed a printed list of every
Good for them (Score:3, Interesting)
With the hopeful side effect, of course, of a more robust OS for all others involved. Given russia's rather lax attitude towards IP ( which I can't fault them in ), it's questionable whether we will see changes committed back to the tree. But here's hoping!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary source of code improvements is from enthusiasts, and from companies that understand the inherent advantages of building upon the FOSS software and the FOSS community. Both of these groups of people will operate in a lax-copyright regime much the same way they would elsewhere. Enthusiasts contribute to GPL projects not because of copyright law (or any other law) but because of a desire to be part of the process. Russian enthusiasts are no different than those from any other countries.
On the commercial end, I suppose it's less likely that a company leveraging the GPL will appear in a place where copyright law isn't enforced. But, on the other hand, many companies do business internationally, so being based in Russia may have little effect on their code contributions to GPL projects, or their desire to leverage FOSS code in general (and contribute to said code).
At the end of the day, from the "get more code" angle, having more people exposed to open-source software is always a good thing. The more people are involved, the more enthusiast coders you get, and the more community volunteers you get. Not to mention that when a large number of people are using FOSS software, companies will find it in their financial interest to support that software (in terms of hardware, software, and support), and even to support "the community." If Linux were truly widespread in Russia, I see no reason why companies wouldn't actively support FOSS with open-source code.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Informative)
This is a reaction towards this long, protracted and phenomenally stupid lawsuit brought by the Russian branch of the BSA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6499843.stm [bbc.co.uk]
In brief: a school in the middle of nowhere was sold computers with pirated windows and office which they believed to be genuine. Instead of going after the manufacturer and the reseller the Russian branch of the BSA went after the headmaster of the school and tried to make him personally criminally responsible. he case got phenomenal adverse publicity and reached to the level of the both Putin and Gorbachev wading in and asking that the real culprit is prosecuted. Instead of that the idiots continued and even tried to invoke the MAFIAA favourite tool of WTO scaremongering.
At this point the Russians did the very Russian thing of making a point in principle. Is the OS suited or not no longer matters in the slightest. They will simply no longer do educational business with Microsoft in principle and this is it.
It is a part of Russian character - you may push them for a very long time and they will do nothing. At one point they will go into "Za nami Rodina, ni shagu nazad (Fatherland is behind us, no further steps back)". This is a point you simply do not want to reach when you negotiate with them and it was reached solely through the BSA stupidity.
This also makes a major difference between the Russian case and similar situations in Asia a few years back. There Microsoft managed to defuse the situation through offering seriously discounted Windows and BilliGatus gifts to education and health. In this case this will not work. It is not a matter of money it is a matter of principle from now on.
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
You may have a very good point. However, there's likely something else at work here: the widespread belief in Russia (and a lot of the world) about American software's role in that big explosion of a Siberian pipeline [msn.com] in the summer of 1982.
Add to this the recent stories about Microsoft software that updates itself silently, even when you turn off the auto-update, and MS's explanation of why this is the right thing for them to do. A Russian administrator would have to be really stupid (or really on the take) to approve of anything from Microsoft. Granted, a lot of them may do so, but that's just evidence of how stupid (or on the take) they are. So part of the story might be that at the very top, Russian administrators no longer trust any software made in the USA.
But with the BSA story, it does sorta sound like MS is trying its best to get Russians to buy from someone else.
Time for Linux Penetration WorldMap ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It'd be interesting to see some world maps showing which countries have massive deployments and when you mouse-over, it shows you the # population that is using Linux.
Then we can turn to our bosses and say... "See!"
Anybody up for the challenge?
Adeptus
Re:Time for Linux Penetration WorldMap ? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.listphile.com/Linux [listphile.com]
Re:Time for Linux Penetration WorldMap ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's safe to say that women are completely capable of astonishing cruelty. Of course the above theory isn't necessarily horrible by US standards of living, but most Americans, women included, just don't give a sh*t. I think female generals, would take the position, based on their own inherent ability for waging war, just like female politicians are not hesitant to vote in favor of war. It's a crap-ass-sexist delusion that women are somehow more peaceful than men or are better at raising children than men. Women are often just as volatile, psychotic, predatory and cunning as men. History is full of examples that discredit your opinions. Oh, and btw, women use metaphors for fucking too, not that penetration doesn't have less perverted meanings.
Now for my history, I'm a single dad, my bosses, supervisors, and higher ups (at work), consist of 3 women and 1 man. I have no grudges against these women, nor do I think any of them are unqualified for their positions, but it is disproportionate. I work in a field where I constantly hear about women crying "sexism" (not where I work, thank god). And dating I hear about women that complain constantly about horrible men (bad fathers etc), but often, I miss relationships with women because they go out and FUCK the proverbial epitome of their stereotypical asshole boyfriends they always complain about. Now, I'm a good guy, with a good job, that cares about his kids, honestly looking for someone to settle down with. I've been single for four years largely because I'm not a piece of shit, so please take your condescending feminist bullshit to Myspace where you can post a bulletin and all your 20-something retarded girlfriends can sit around further distancing themselves from the men they really want to be with. Hope I don't come off too confrontational, but you must understand that I have a vested interest in finding women that are nothing fucking like you. Hateful baggage is not something any man wants to carry for you.
I'm very disappointed (Score:2, Interesting)
Cue "Bill and Melinda Gates..." (Score:4, Funny)
Not called "Russian OS" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"The software will be called ALTLinux. It is the typical lack of the use of articles in Russian which seems to be confusing the submitter. If written by an English author, the article would have started "A Russian OS..."
TFA actually
Open Source Really Is Like Communism Now (Score:3, Funny)
this will just play into the hands of our detractors who can now claim that 'Open Source Really Is Like Communism' (never mind that it was invented by an American...
at least i'm trying to be funny...
j
--
open source -- in the long tradition of libraries, liberty, and threefolding [earthlink.net]...
As linux.org.ru readers would say... (Score:4, Insightful)
(The end of Windows is getting closer!)
One solution to copyright infringment suits (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft could have solved this by lowering the price of XP for educators in russia enough so that it could have been meaningfully distributed around the country. But they didn't. Oh well.
Partially due to cost, too (Score:2, Interesting)
Getting Linux into western schools / OpenEducation (Score:3, Interesting)
Is Linux really important? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is Linux really important? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is Linux really important? (Score:4, Insightful)
This anti-piracy move shoud make Microsft happy. (Score:5, Funny)
(*($%^%#%^-crash%%&(
What is that sound from Redmond?
The biggest driver of Linux on the desktop ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Their combination of their recalcitrant anti-competitive behavior and anti-piracy lobbying prompts governments to seek alternatives, which drives wider Linux aw
No way; Microsoft will stop this. (Score:3, Interesting)
What's going to happen, most likely, is that they let the pilot programme run, and then buy sufficient amount of FUD-spreading from those involved to declare it unsuccessful, with a nice side-effect of discrediting the only competitor (Apple is not competitive in Russia - hardware pricing is way too high, and, perhaps, more importantly for education sector, their software is not localized for Russia).
Jokes (Score:5, Funny)
"Lenix" (Score:4, Funny)
Misleading info (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ever mistakenly called an Irishman British - or worse, English? Remember the reaction you got?
Right. Now, you know Finland? You know what they think about Russia? Yep.
Oh, by the way, the Finns make about
Re: (Score:2)
Not all of them.
http://www.oregonzoo.org/Exhibits/penguin.htm [oregonzoo.org] Here is just one example of above the equator penguins. There are lots more.
Even those living in Antarctica live close to the water, not near the pole
Re:Old news? (Score:4, Informative)
You are right - it is related to the teacher. Frankly, Microsoft should have given it a second thought and stopped simulating that it has nothing to do with it especially after both Putin, Gorbi and Zhirik got involved with it. Before that it was a piracy case. Now, after MSFT ignored all political parties from the left to the right end, the current and the past presidents it has become a political issue. It is not a matter of money any more.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)