It used to be Russia that was in Cuba’s corner in the “old days”. Now it seems China is taking a greater role. It’s particularly interesting that China has committed to aid Cuba with technology. Since both China and Cuba use a lot of GNU/Linux in information technology, this could be good for FLOSS as well. Since, M$ officially does not do business with Cuba, China can likely ship PCs and servers with GNU/Linux preloaded quite readily. This is also a further sign of the decline of USA in influence in the world, in politics and IT.
“On Thursday he met President Hu Jintao and signed several co-operation deals.
China pledged to aid Cuba with a new credit line and with health care and technology.”
On the IT used in the discovery of the Higgs Boson (the last key particle scientists needed to explain just about everything…)
“In terms of data analysis, Windows could be used in principle. We could also use some type of device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a simple table of rules. Linux is used because it is most appropriate for the job. Linux is ubiquitous in HPC and we use a lot of computing power in LHC physics, so the arguments for the use of Linux in HPC are very similar to the arguments for the use of Linux in LHC physics analyses. Naturally, it’s important to have an operating system that is free, open source and reliable (Scientific Linux is basically Red Hat Linux)”
It looks like LibreOffice will have something for Android/Linux soon. They have the basics working now.
“As part of the Google Summer of Code, Iain Billet is working hard at building a Java viewer UI for LibreOffice, that will integrate nicely into the platform, and provide fast pan / zoom / page-flip browsing, and all that good stuff you expect. Tor meanwhile (modulo having just left for vacation), is working on tiled page rendering to textures. That will allow us to quickly render portions of document content at any scale, asynchronously in a background thread, to suit the viewer. This is going reasonably well.”
Nuclear weapons are often designed to explode high over a target in order to maximize the effects on the ground. San Diego put on a fireworks display that had a puzzling effect on the ground. They “fired all of their guns at once…”.
I did something like that once when writing a control-system. I had to complement all the bits going to the output registers to fix the problem. I lighted every lamp on the display except the ones I wanted. Bugs happen.
It would be interesting to know how this system failed. Presumably fireworks are automatically controlled with fail-safe systems. It would be especially interesting if this was that other OS failing spectacularly… or it could be testing of a new air-defence system by the US Navy…
Walmart is selling 15 tablets in the $50-$100 interval. e.g.
Pandigital R7T40WWHF1 Novel with WiFi 7.0" Touchscreen Tablet PC Featuring Android Operating System, White at $59.98
Does anyone believe Wintel is holding its own against this tide? Wintel can hardly sell a CPU or a licence for the OS at the price of a complete system yet four of these are the best sellers for all tablets at any price.
Tax inspectors found invoices for advertising from M$ in various investigations that lead them to raid M$ in France. M$ said it was routine to be raided by accountants and police at dawn… I guess they know about that because of their use of the BSA to harass customers.
“"We confirm that on June 28 an inspection by tax authorities took place at the headquarters of Microsoft France in Issy-les-Moulineaux. This was part of a routine check and, as for any administrative or tax procedure, we remain at the disposal of the authorities," said the statement.
The check involved 67 tax inspectors accompanied by 30 police officers, and lasted from dawn to well into the night, according to a report in French investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchainé, published Wednesday.”
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.
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