Chris Kelley's Weblog

Thursday, October 31, 2002

My colleague Gordon e-mailed me this post, which is from the IndiaTimes. the title of the article is misleading - it's really about the Indian goverment's interest in promoting the use of Linux.

"The Department of Information Technology has already devised a strategy to introduce Linux and open source software as a de-facto standard in academic institutions, especially in engineering colleges through course work that encourages use of such systems."

During my last trip to Belgaum (central India), I visited the local tech college and checked out a nice Linux-based computer lab that used inexpensive black boxes that gave the user GUI sessions that were hosted on a Linux server. The campus had a t-1 connection to the internet.
11:49:39 AM

In this report on the EC Linux migration study from the Register, "Countries represented included: Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain and a representative from the European Commission." Why are they looking at Linux? "Microsoft's recently introduced licensing changes have added weight to this concern but Bleasdale said an even bigger issue was the rate of change that Microsoft is imposing on customers, and many are struggling to deal with it." - Brussels to spend €250k on Linux migration study. Major architectural rethink [The Register]
11:38:24 AM

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

I'm interested in reading the book pointed to in Jon Udells' blog entry. Fighting corruption - and discrimination - by keeping everything open. Transparency. Tools are evolving - like Radio Userland - that make it easier to enforce and observe this kind of openness. A good thing, IMHO.
7:05:48 PM

Monday, October 21, 2002

Nice cost savings on this project - "The user-facing part of the system consists of an ultra low cost machine being supplied by the Telford office of Taiwanese company GCI, price £299, including a smart card reader." They are using OpenOffice for desktop applications and VNC for access to legacy Windows applications.
11:45:46 AM

Thursday, October 17, 2002

This article, which I found on MacInsider, inspired me to create a new blog category called Gov't I.T. to place items that relate to the difficulties governments face when placing information online. This article reminds me of some of the issues we faces when I was webmaster for the City of Austin, Texas. I think governments need to be really careful what information gets out in the public, especially personal ID's such as Social Security numbers. If I were the webmaster of the Hamilton County court's Web site, I'd feel pretty bad if someone used my website to steal someone's identity and to open up seven credit cards and rack up $11,000 debt. Something to follow: "This month, a coalition that includes the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., is to recommend guidelines for states drafting online policies."
10:15:32 AM