2012 August 20 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for August 20th, 2012

Yet Another Government Adopting Free Software

Published by Robert Pogson August 20th, 2012 in technology. 22 Comments

Google’s translation:

“The municipality of Vieira do Minho definitively adopted productivity software LibreOffice”.

Motivations given include compliance with a law preferring FLOSS in Portugal, licensing costs and a desire to be free.

Further, the move is “not only desirable but is essential for a more modern Civil Service and financially sustainable.”

Amen. Having seen what GNU/Linux could do for schools for more than a decade working in education, I believe there are no downsides and plenty of good things about FLOSS in government. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux for general purpose computing.

see Municipality of Vieira do Minho adopting Free Software.

According to Netcraft, Viera do Minho has been using a GNU/Linux web-server since 2004. It’s not a current version however…
“Apache httpd 1.3 has reached end of life, as of January 2010.
No further releases of this software will be made, although critical security updates may be made available as patches from the following website:
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/patches/“

I guess they like stability.

- Robert Pogson

War of the Worlds – In Reverse

Published by Robert Pogson August 20th, 2012 in technology. 0 Comments

H G Wells’ War of the Worlds told of an invasion by Martians but now robotic warriors from Earth pummel the Martian surface with impunity…

“A small, flat rock known as Coronation suffered the wrath of Curiosity’s laser when the Mars rover finally fired up its ChemCam instrument and delivered 30 pulses of energy at the rock over a 10-second period.

The laser pulses, each delivering more than 1 million watts of power for around 5 one-billionths of a second, turn some of the rock’s atoms into a glowing, ionized plasma. By analyzing the light from the plasma, the ChemCam’s three spectrometers can determine what elements are in the rock.”

via Curiosity Rover Fires First Laser Beam at Martian Rock | Wired Science | Wired.com.

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

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.