[GKD] Linux in India
Dear GKD Colleagues, We have been discussing the value of Linux on this list for quite awhile, and I thought you would find the latest initiative by the Government of India very interesting. Best regards, Ashish *** Open IT - Govt to rewrite source code in Linux NEW DELHI: If the Chinese have IT, get it. The Indian government seems to be taking a leaf out of China's operating system, and is planning a countrywide drive to promote the open source operating system, Linux, as the 'platform of choice' instead of 'proprietary' solutions. For proprietory, read Microsoft, which controls over 90% of the desktop software market. 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. Research establishments would be advised to use and develop re-distributable toolboxes just as Central government departments and state governments would be asked to use Linux-based offerings. Read more about it here ... http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=24598339 Warm regards, Ashish === Ashish Kotamkar ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Mithi Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 302, Mayfair Court, Dr. Pai Marg, Baner Road, Pune 411 045. India. Tel: +91-20-729 3259/58 Fax: +91-20-729 3260 Web: http://www.mithi.com ^^^ Communicate in your own language. Log onto www.mailjol.com. === ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] GKD List Resumes
Dear GKD Members, Welcome back to the GKD List Discussion! We hope that everyone had an enjoyable vacation (and for those List members who were working, that they had a productive couple of months). During the List hiatus, we received many submissions by our members. These will take some time to sort through, so please be patient. Your message will be posted during the next several days, assuming it is still timely. We look forward to continuing the lively debate and valuable exchange of experience and knowledge, which have characterized the List over the last several years. Thank you all for your active participation. Sincerely, GKD Moderators ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] CPSR Conference Brings People and Internet Together
Dear GKD Members, I am sending along my article on the recent annual meeting of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, which focused on issues of ICT and development. Best regards, Andy Oram CPSR conference brings people and Internet together by Andy Oram Oct. 7, 2002 http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/2118 The Internet never looked this way from Harvard Square before. The 2002 annual meeting of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility this past Saturday left the 75 participants enlightened and wildly excited about giving control over information to poor people all around the world. I arrived home at ten o'clock at night and told my wife, You're lucky I didn't sign up to spend a month in Malawi installing Linux. The title of the annual meeting was Shrinking World, Expanding Net, a title that nimbly conveyed the dual (and perhaps dueling) trends within an Internet that is quickly becoming a commodity. On the one hand, Internet access is being extended to geographic regions and demographic groups where recently it was considered unfeasible. As access spreads, the new nodes take on characteristics totally foreign to the original users in the developed world: characteristics adapted to poor connectivity, low bandwidth, problems with literacy, and a diversity of cultural conditions. On the other hand, as people realize the Internet's importance, pressures increase to impose some predictability on it, while the pursuit of democracy and community development online gains support. Here is a summary of the day's events, including the ceremony awarding the annual Norbert Wiener Award to networking engineer and ICANN Board member Karl Auerbach: * Development * Human rights * Global representation * ICANN * Miscellaneous The workshop was expertly assembled and carried off in the belly of the beast, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, by Kennedy School professor L. Jean Camp and a dozen student volunteers. (To their credit, the Kennedy School co-sponsored the workshop.) If anything on this weblog makes you interested in working with CPSR, check our list of topics or membership page. Development Elsewhere, perhaps, debate still rages. Do poor people need advanced information technology? Can they make proper use of it? Is it possible to deploy it in remote areas? At the annual meeting we went beyond these questions. Instead, people who actually spent time in India, in Malawi, in the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere discussed what they learned about the value of communications and computers, and how they brought these things to local residents in meaningful ways. Throughout all the speakers talks ran the critical thread: understand your users and their needs. Work with these needs in creative ways. Liby Levison, for instance, while stationed in the capital of Malawi, experienced frequent telecom failures and pitifully slow connections. She learned here an interesting piece of meta-design: that underdeveloped areas need entirely different technologies for information retrieval. There limitations made it unfeasible to use the information retrieval strategy that we use in the developed world day after day: enter a search term into a search engine, browse a few dozen results, request a home page, follow a link to a resource, etc. In rural Malawi, the Internet connection would be down before you were half done. To respond to the needs of Internet users in these areas, Libby developed a deliberately low-tech system with deep ramifications. Her TEK (for time equals knowledge) system works a bit like Web2mail, making use of the store-and-forward aspect of email to provide robustness in a non-robust environment. A person enters a search term and is emailed the Web pages corresponding to the most promising search engine results. There are more interesting design choices in this system than meet the eye. TEK strips out graphics (depending on the user's choice), information-poor pages such as portals or home pages that have mostly links, duplicate pages, pages in inappropriate languages, and so on. It also deals with lost mail through a protocol that acknowledges received mail and retransmits lost mail after a timeout. Iqbal Quadir, as a financial executive in New York, decided to try to provide cell phone access to the poor in his native Bangladesh. To find a base for action, he approached the Grameen Bank, which is famous for its microcredit for poor entrepreneurs (mostly women). Iqbal persuaded the bank, with some difficulty, that a cell phone could be just as useful as a cow or a generator in forming the engine behind a successful business. Cell coverage is now offered to 30% of Bangladesh's territory, reaching 50% of the population. Across the subcontinent on the West coast of India, Daryl Martyris of World Computer Exchange distributes recycled computers running GNU/Linux to schools throughout the state of Goa. Hardware
[GKD] CFP: IASL Conference on Closing the Digital Divide
Dear GKD Members, I thought some members might be interested in submitting papers/proposals for the upcoming IASL Conference, in South Africa, as key areas of interest include issues involving closing the digital divide and using ICT to bridge the gap between North and South, privileged and disadvantaged communities Regards, Sandy Zinn *** Sandy Zinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lecturer, Dept. of Library Information Science University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, Cape Town, South Africa 27 + 021959 2349 (w) 27 + 021959 3659 (f) 27 + 082374 5789 (c) 32nd International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) Conference - Durban, South Africa, 7-11 July 2003 INVITATION... CALL FOR PROPOSALS The theme of the 32nd IASL Conference is School Libraries: Breaking Down Barriers IASL 2003's goal is to break down some of the barriers that hinder school library development within South Africa, the rest of Africa, and internationally. School librarians, teachers, librarians, library advisers, consultants, educationists, educational administrators, literacy specialists, and researchers are invited to submit proposals on the following suggested themes: * So-called North/South relations -- the creation of constructive creative relationships and connections between the advantaged and disadvantaged sector. * Innovative programmes that demonstrate how school library programmes might be set up in disadvantaged sectors and in remote rural areas. * Programmes that bridge the so-called digital divide. *School library policymaking -- how to influence it, how to implement it. * Breaking the barriers between educators and librarians, personnel working within schools and advisory staff working within school library support services; schools and public libraries. * Information literacy education in the developing world. * The role of school libraries in the struggle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. * Gender issues in school libraries. * The gaps between researchers and practitioners. * The role of literature and reading in multicultural and multilingual schools. There are four types of concurrent sessions in this conference: * Professional papers * International Research Forum * Workshops/Demonstrations * Poster Session CALL FOR PROPOSALS: IMPORTANT DATES 31 October 2002 Closing date for submission of proposal and abstract 31 December 2002 Notification of acceptance of proposal 15 March 2003 Submission of full paper Submissions: By post: Send a hard copy to Sandy Zinn, Department of Library and Information Science, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville, 7535, South Africa. By fax: +27 21 959 3659 Attention: Sandy Zinn, Department of Library and Information Science, University of the Western Cape By email: Please send as an email attachment (preferably in Microsoft Word) to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For the full details of the themes and submission requirements go to http://www.iasl-slo/conference2003-call.html Visit the IASL website, School Libraries Online, at: http://www.iasl-slo.org ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
