Userful will report at LinuxCon 2011 that the deployment of 500K GNU/Linux desktops in 50K schools in Brazil has been completed. That’s a multiseat X system.
MrPogson.com is at 112005 in Netcraft’s site ranking today. We were around 300000 a couple of years ago. At this rate, in ten years we will be really big…
A large French energy supplier uses a super-computer built on Debian GNU/Linux beowulf diskless nodes combined with some non-free software for networking and a file-system. This system is 43rd in the Top500 list of super-computers. With 1454 nodes, they saved a bundle on licensing and got improved performance.
Intuit has an app in Android Market for Quickbooks. This tool is used by many small and medium-sized business for all kinds of accounting. The port to Android/Linux will allow Quickbooks to run on any PC with an Android port. e.g. Android-x86 and dozens of smart phones and tablets. This breaks one more barrier to adoption of GNU/Linux by businesses. It will be particularly attractive to on-site or other mobile usage and allow accounts to be more up to date and accessible. Imagine a consultant being able to update his accounts on the plane or to answer questions more promptly.
The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been found to have knowingly allowed smugglers to purchase 1900+ firearms including AK-47s, hand-guns and nineteen .50 calibre rifles in Phoenix, AZ and deliver them to cartels in Mexico. Several of these weapons were used in crimes including downing police helicopters and killing Mexican citizens and a US border patrol agent. The stated objective of the operation Fast and Furious was to track the weapons to obtain convictions of higher-ups but the operation went on far longer than that would have required. The operation was hidden from ATF agents in Mexico and their traces put on weapons at one point were stonewalled. There is suspicion the real purpose of the operation was to heat up alarm about gun smuggling to increase ATF’s budget… It is also possible the ATF was penetrated by the cartels. Nothing else makes sense.
At this time, Congress is looking for ways to trim the budget and the $billion budget of the ATF could well be on the list.
A draft of a report from the oversight committee is available here.
What I would like to know is why charges haven’t been laid against the idiots who conceived and implemented this project which led to death, mayhem and an international incident. Both ATF and US DOJ were involved. Was president Obama? If so, this could be the last nail in the coffin of his ambitions for re-election. It could be the last nail in the coffin for the ATF.
There could be valid statistical or data-collection reasons for this operation but surely they must have been overruled in the minds of rational beings when the danger of causing serious widespread harm was so real. They could have included electronic tracking devices in the weapons but they did not. They allowed them to vanish into the terrain, only to be found at great cost in money, manpower and death.
My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.
My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.
I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.
17478
12794
206
3
2
23930 
11872 
11723 
4658 
4267 
1642 
198 
14 
2 
0 
0 
0 
Recent Comments