On Friday 19 March 2010 14:40:12 Joseph Apuzzo wrote: ... > With this political crowd “open” means “Some level of transparency” or > “communicate with our constituents” not in the same sense that we view > open.
This is one of the reasons RMS really hates the term "open source" -- because the term is misleading. Unfortunately, though, so is the term "free". And explaining it as "free as in beer" is even slightly misleading itself, because there are some beer recipes that are freely available. :-P http://freebeer.org/blog/recipe/ ... > The talk on “Citizens Expectations for Access in the Digital Age” was > presented by the best and brightest speakers. It took about 10 minutes to > introduce the three listing all the massive achievements in the field of > computer science. They like most academics seemed to show that they live in > there own world and at some points seemed to poke fun at us common folk. This sounds like a form of "academic elitism". ... > Currently this may not be an issue > since the Linux community currently has the tools necessary to access > government and interact. Unfortunately it's not across-the-board. As an example, try using your Ubuntu desktop and try to have a look at a few patents at the USPO site sometime. ... > I'm sorry that I did not cover all the Liberian discussion, but this is not > a library list. Oh, you meant /librarians/. Up until this point I was confused as to why activists from Liberia were there. There's been rumor of consideration of cutting off funding from the library system on a federal level, similar to what was attempted in Philadelphia September last year, which thankfully was averted: http://boingboing.net/2009/09/21/philadelphia-free-li-1.html I'm personally interested in whether there were any discussions along those lines. Additionally, considering the fact that we all MEET AT THE LIBRARY and that many libraries are often involved with various LUGs in some way, I don't consider this to be off-topic. ... > - Government gets that there needs for privacy and security ( > implementing it is a different thing ) > - Government is deploying on the face book and twitter platforms Is there such a thing as "basic privacy" on Facebook? ... > - Unfortunately there just is no support for diversity of platforms, I > did not see any speakers understand that there was anything other then > Windows and the Smart Phone. Consider what monetary incentive companies have for implementing it. With the popularity of Android they probably do now, but concerning Linux or BSD-based desktops they probably don't. Generally speaking corporations are focused on profit, which raises several simultaneous issues, such as an incentive to be predatory and deploy platform-specific solutions that would most benefit themselves. So when corporations are used to steer the direction of projects, it is not terribly surprising for the results to be along these lines. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Apr 7 - Nagios May 5 - Android Jun 2 - June 2010 Meeting
