May 29, 2010 5:32pm GMT
I recently came back from Ghana, Africa after speaking at the Idlelo conference there. Ghana is one of those “emerging economies” that I sometimes discuss, with people trying desperately to get ahead and utilizing Free Software to get there. Ghana has more problems than just trying to decide whether they should use Free Software. The Internet backbone to their country (and surr... more »
maddog's Keynote for the Idlelo 4 conference in Accra, GhanaMay 23, 2010 12:41pm GMT
I was fortunate enough to do a keynote at for the Idlelo 4 conference in Accra, Ghana, right before their Minister of IT gave his speech. Here is the text of my speech: Mr. Minister, Honorable and honored guests. It is a great pleasure and honor to address you today, and particularly right before the Minister. I was asked to bring a small present for the Minister, a... more »
TuxificationMay 16, 2010 12:28pm GMT
As you might have guessed, I have a lot of Linux-based T-shirts....a LOT of them. And I enjoy wearing those T-shirts. From time to time wearing the image of Tux encourages strangers who would normally never say anything to strike up a conversation. The number of security people at the airport that know about Linux and Free Software, for instance, is fairly amazing. On the other hand,... more »
The customer is (almost) always rightMay 01, 2010 2:17am GMT
There is the old adage that “customers are always right”, and while this is true 99.999% of the time, I have run into at least one situation where the customer was wrong..... It was in the late 1980s, and I was working for Digital Equipment Corporation. We had gone to a DECUS convention, where users of DEC's equipment would go to learn more about using these wonderful machines. We had prod... more »
A little knowledge is dangerousMay 01, 2010 1:19am GMT
From time to time I advocate that every programmer learn at least one assembler language. Not that I would ever advocate writing in assembler language when a higher-level language would do, but because assembler allows you to see how the machine really works, and can help you understand other topics such as operating system architecture and compiler design. In fact, I advocate that program... more »
Project Cauã: Vertical Markets: Help neededMay 01, 2010 12:17am GMT
A couple of months ago I mentioned Project Cauã in my column in LinuxProMagazine. Without repeating the whole article here, Project Cauã's goals are to create large numbers of private sector, entrepreneurial jobs as the owner and administrator of thin client/server systems and to make computing easier for end users of all types. Project Cauã would do this by having a trained, licensed, and... more »
IV ENSOL - A FOSS conference in João Pessoa, Brazil May 6-9th.Apr 30, 2010 6:48pm GMT
I have been to many conferences in Brazil, but few have the line-up of speakers that the IV ENSOL conference will have this coming May 6-9 in João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. With three tracks, a discussion area and a vendor area it promises to be an action-packed event. There will also be sub-conferences, such as the I PHP-NE - Northeast Meeting of PHP, held partially in honor of Lerd... more »
