French Kids Get OSS on USB Sticks 313
daria42 writes "To help make kids aware of alternatives to proprietary software the Ile-de-France, the political district of greater Paris, will give 175,000 school children and apprentices USB keys loaded with open-source software. With a word-processing program, audio and video playback capabilities, an email client and an IM client, these are essentially computers on a stick. The council touts this as 'represent[ing] for students a tool of freedom and mobility between their school, cybercafes and their home or friends' PCs'." With the prevalence of internet cafes in Europe, that might work better than in the US ... but do you think such a project would work here as well? If so, what software would you want to see loaded up?
Computers on a stick? (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet this USB sticks will be used... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is more.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, how would encouraging kids to use computers be anti-American? Do these USB sticks somehow make the internet "less English" and software "less American"? Also, I do think software is written in other places than America, contrary to your assertion.
Re:There is more.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unbelievable.
This sort of thing is happenning all over the world, including the US and many other English speaking nations.
But suddenly, because its France, its due to anti-Americanism (in spite the fact that many of the distributed apps are written in the US) and anti-English (although all commercial equivilants to the distributed apps have french localisation).
I think someone else how replied to you was bang on the money. Traumatic head injury when young.
Re:There is more.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously - nothing about the language is being mentioned in the article.
Anti-corporation/anti-globalization? Perhaps. Anti-American? Please.
The president of the regional council, Jean-Paul Huchon, is a self-confessed "partisan of the rebalancing of the supply of proprietary and open-source software" who previously welcomed the launch of the Firefox 2 browser and led the support for a creation of a competitiveness hub based on open source.
If anything, I'd imagine that they are attempting to build a competency around OSS.
Copernics called - turns out the US isn't the center of the Universe (and yes, I live in the US).
Re:There is more.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that one of the most important things about the internet is how it helps overcome isolationism. It's becoming a little harder to hide inside one's own culture. I suppose they feel that these incursions erode their own culture, but I think it's for the best that we're exposed to more different languages and cultures, however incidentally.
A few decades back, geography created inherent limits on communication. Now the only barrier is language, and given how many people speak some of the biggest languages (Mandarin Chinese, English, French, etc.), even that may not hold out for all that long as people find more need to communicate with each other...
We Hate France (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is not know-how... (Score:2, Insightful)
...but it is a great program. It is also nice to see open source getting distributed on a mass scale; I would like to see American schools take advantage of open source software rather than license traditional commercial softwares.
More important than software, however, is training how to use the software. Since I know nothing of the French education system, I have no idea what kind of curricular plans go with this distribution. Throwing computers, software, or even computer software on a stick is not going to solve any problems without some human assistance.
Re:We Hate France (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Computers on a stick? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Software is not know-how... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not distribute great software on a mass scale?
I mean Adobe Reader is not OSS, but it is better then the OSS PDF viewers out there.
MP3s are not open source, but how many teenagers prefer to trade OGG files over MP3s?
I cannot even think of an OSS alternative to Flash.
VMWare is not OSS, but I like it better then Xen.
Firefox is probably the best OSS example after Linux, so lets include that on our "Great Software Distribution" USB stick along with the Adobe and VMWare packages already mentioned.
See my point? Why limit your software options based on whether or not the source (which we will probably never read) is available?
Going only open source and excluding user driven proprietary software limits choice for no logical reason.
Re:There is more.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the great irony here is that I'm the one with evidence and all of you who accuse me of
being a Bill O'Reilly fan are without it. (By the way, I'm ultra liberal, and lived in Paris
for many years.)
Yes, there are knee jerk reactionary "France Sucks" types, and I'm not one of them. But to
deny that there is a powerful (Powerful) anti--American sentiment which is alive and well among French
beaurocrats would be painfully naive at best.
The anti-American sentiment has its roots deep in both cultural xenophobia (no headscarves?), a loss of historic
linguistic prestige (ie: lingua franca, lingua diplomata, etc.) and historical contest with their historic
adversary, England. There are many scholarly books on French anti-amerianism, and its (sometimes hilarious)
manifestation in politics, law and popular culture.
The situation has grown so out of hand in recent years, that the French intelligentsia
write books in an effort to understand their own cultural fascination with America bashing.
(I recommend Jean-Francois Revel's "L'Obsession Anti-Americaine", 2002).
But I see sadly that writing such comments on Slashdot are akin to pointing out that the "iPhone has no keyboard
and will probably make a bad smartphone because texting and email are somewhat crucial". (For which I was similarly
modded down as Flamebait)
There are broadcast limits on networks for all languages besides French. English has its own specially defined limits.
Advertisers who use English words (but not the words of other languages) are fined.
France took center stage during the ICANN fiasco in the effort to wrest "control" away from the US. And who
was the proposed entity for transferring the power to (from NSI)? Why, "France Telecom" of course.
French anti-Americanism is very real. The French have a deep resentment for the pervasiveness of the English language
and for the "American-ness" of the Internet. To deny this is to ignore far too much recent history.
Now kids, mod me down as flamebait and go to bed believing that the whole world is in this together, and that America is the
only country that behaves like a dick. Russia plays fair. China plays fair. France plays fair. We're jerks. I know.
Re:Computers on a stick? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We Hate France (Score:3, Insightful)
National Security (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:We Hate France (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that's a readonly media and what they want is student saving their files in the key. Don't forget that this key will be distributed in schools, and students will _need_ this tool when at school, as part of the educational means. Sure, they could remove the software and move their MP3s in this key, but that would be as useful as burning schoolbooks to start a fire.
I think it covers a real need, and the solution [framakey.org] seems good. Also, teaching students that there is a world beside microsoft is not a bad idea either, in addition to be cost effective.
Puppy Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There is more.... (Score:2, Insightful)
First I will talk about your post then about the core subject of the article.
There is a certain amount of truth in what you say, but I believe things are not so bad, I think you exaggerate somewhat, and I don't understand why you deviate so much from the core subject of the article. We are talking about Free USB keys with OSS for the young.
French people are not stupid and neither are they against English speaking people or American culture. There is of course an amount of xenophobia in our country. For the 2002 presidential election, about 20 percent voted for the racist and extremist right wing candidate Jean Marie Lepen. Also we were very opposed to the war in Iraq since the beginning. That made us very unpopular at the time but see, things change, and time proves we were right, as more and more Americans think it was a bad idea. Anyway most of the countries in the world were opposed to this war and America going against everybody's opinion contributed to anti-americanism everywhere around the world, therefore also in France. I remember USA was more popular here in the Bill Clinton era.
If you read more often French newspapers you would notice that anti-americanism has always been the least of our occupations. We are much more busy with unemployment, health care, education (therefore USB keys), etc.
We do not make general assumptions about people. Also, the fact that our politicians and intellectuals make public declarations or write books that are or appear to be against other cultures does not imply that what everybody thinks here. Quite the opposite, they have always had a reputation for having a big mouth and being big liars, but hey, that is like all politicians everywhere on the planet, am I wrong?
Personally, I love USA. I have an uncle in California, have made several trips there. I like the places, the people, the way they think. And my friends do, too. We know that what Bush/politicians/American companies/"you name it" do or say is one thing, and what you normal Americans think is another. We make the difference.
Of course I happen to meet here from time to time someone that is anti American at the roots. But he/she is always a closed minded persons with severe shortcomings in his/her brain, lacking culture. But don't you find these sort of dumb people in a certain amount in every country in the world? Sure, you do.
We young people here, and many less young ones too are open minded, and welcome you Americans here in our country, and we are sure you will do the same there. I have yet to hear from someone here having had a bad trip to the USA or vice-versa.
To come back to the core subject, teachers and students at our university think it is a very good idea that high school students get a free usb key, even if it were a blank one. Even better with free software on it. We also think it should include a huge batch of relevant web links, a small IDE with a developer suite (at least in java) , and full documentation with it.
The main reason is that it will be easier for everybody to get the work they do on the computers in the library or the laboratory back home, or the homework back to school in digital format, and we strongly believe small portable media like USB keys is going to replace in the future the huge 20 lbs/10kg backpack these poor students often carry to/from school, that I carried myself years ago, curving my back on the trip to school which you know is harmful.
Also, for me nowadays almost all computers look the same, whether they have an OS or another one, a brand or another, a different architecture. So what makes each computer different for me is the data that is stored on it.
Of course an USB key with my personal data is not a computer by itself. But it is the part that the anonymous computer from the Netcafe or the lab or my friend's need to become mine. Once it has my files, my preferences (I can always dream with those nasty Windoors profile
Re:Boot from USB? (Score:2, Insightful)
My own $0.02:
I spent several months over the summer travelling around Europe. To manage my finances, as well as email friends and family, I occasionally had to find net cafe's along my way. Not wanting to lug a laptop around, I carried an Ubuntu liveCD with me. Most net cafe proprietors were reasonable when I asked if it would be alright to use it, although a couple outright refused. Most of the time the only concern (to them) is that they need to know how long you were on for, something which is usually handled by a small Windows app (the client is simply a timer, telling the "admin" how long you've been on. Payment is in cash when you're done). My concern was not transmitting my financial data from a computer running a questionable copy of XP Home used by who knows how many people each day for who knows what purposes.
Again, most people were reasonable with me, if a bit confused, and simply wrote down the time I arrived on a sheet of paper. Other places were more hostile, and these places were, invariably, the places where one would most want *not* to use their computers. As for disabling the use of things like USB, etc., you'd be shocked at the lax security measures in virtually every net cafe I went to. Well, maybe you wouldn't be. The other customers didn't seem to be either, but I certainly was. Most net cafes amount to a small room full of computers (again, running bone-stock XP Home) connected to a cable modem or DSL, overseen by a disinterested middle-aged man. Sure, booting from USB could have probably been disabled in the BIOS but, heck, I'd have been overjoyed if they'd just had some sort of anti-virus software. Or at the *very* least, not running as Administrator. On the upside, I was thus able to wage a one-man Firefox-installing campaign over somewhere around a dozen cities
So, yeah, it would be great for these flashdrives to boot a custom Linux distro. Convincing these kids it's worth their time to use it, that's a horse of a different color.
Re:well, since you asked.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that'll get you the final point for the +5 informative boost and I'll get at least a +1 for suggesting it, - it's like money in the bank!
Re:We Hate France (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, its because there's no such country as "America." There's the continents of North America (Canada, US, Mexico), South America, and that part where they join - Central America. Mexicans are just as much "Americans" as are USians, or Brazilians, or Argentinians.
Re:Computers on a stick? (Score:4, Insightful)
In what way?
Depends on how they do it.
What makes my computer "My" computer is not the processor, RAM, DVD/RW drive, or the network adapter. If my Broadcom NIC was replaced with an Intel NIC, it would still be "my" computer.
What makes my computer "my" computer is the
It's my personal data ON the computer that makes it uniquely mine, and this particular set of data has been mine continuously since about 1999 or so, despite me having some half dozen computers since then. They are all "mine" when I used them because they all had this dataset on them.
When I last switched from my Centrino 1.6 laptop to my new Intel Core2 Duo, I brought over that
So, if you had all your stuff sitting on a flash drive, that you could plug into anywhere you go, then any computer instantly becomes "your" computer.
It's not a literal statement of "Oh geez! Computer on a stick!" but more of an interpretive statement, "Your computer on a stick".
Don't look at this as a tech weenie - look at this as a more average Joe.
Re:veil? (Score:3, Insightful)
"By a Frenchman, Bartholdi, who had sold the idea to the Egyptian government to grace the entrance to the Suez Canal. His original vision called for an Arab woman with a veil to hold this torch, and this would serve as a lighthouse at the entrance of the canal. But in 1869, the Egyptian government went bankrupt and Bartholdi was left without a customer for his statue. And in despair he traveled to the United States and he passed Bedlow's Island going in New York Harbor and he thought, that would be a good place to put my statue.
He sold it to the Americans with some French backers, but they insist on replacing the Arab woman with a veil and today you have an American woman holding that torch."
The more you know....