thank you google .Labtec Webcam Plus breezy - Google Search
merci - le coin du fourreux
thank you - ubuntu forums

and yep - i did the same as ZeuBeuBeu - I saw a deal and got the thing without checking for compatiblity (hoping that there was support for it with ubuntu…) - and lo there was!

arnieboy - nice fix.

R

Tonight, I decided to indulge myself in a spot of catching up on the newsfeeds that are ignored a lot of the time - and sadly so…

From Eyebeam reBlog , I linked to this article Lessons from Siem Reap…software is not just a tech issue. Reading just half of this brought on a chain of interesting thoughts… all daisy chained in some random thought stream, (which at time of writing makes sense).

Free Software teaches us new ways of creating and sharing knowledge. It breaks up the artificial divide between producers and consumers. It helps us to deal with intangible products, which can be easily replicated almost at no cost, yet which we have grown used to, in just a generation, being prohibited from sharing under various excuses. Including terms like ‘piracy’. There are lessons to learn which go far beyond the software realm.

With text like it is very hard to not think a little. It is evident that the author, Partha Pratim Sarker has strong views about how the development of free software can further the needs of 3rd world nations, from the ideology of what free software is supposed to represent.

One aspect that he notes, is that there is a need for people to get out to these places, and see what best solutions are available to provide the people there, the best opportunity to develop themselves and learn new skills through the medium of computing. A sort of Exploratory Business Analyst, but in this case, the business side would be replaced by another, more apt, word. Perhaps Exploratory Potential Analyst, the potential in this case would not necessarily financial potential, just the potential of helping a community grow as best it can.

He then gives a description of how free software could make a difference in a schools project:

For instance, in the case of education, Tan Wooi Tong makes an interesting case for Free and Open Source Software in education (lower costs; reliability, performance and security; building long-term capacity; an open philosophy; encouraging innovations; an alternative to illegal copying; possibilities for localisation; and learing from the source code). Tan then briefly zooms in on the requirements of educational institutions — networking, internet connectivity, security, webpublishing, email, file-and-print services, network services, web servers and other server software.

Which in fairness, are the very same reasons that more and more people are moving to Linux for their everyday use, but I diverge.

For me that is really a good set of reasons for wanting to move to free software, especially in areas of limited resources (more on this below). Then there are the technical problems, how are these schools going to provide all these services.

The donation of what we now consider to be obsolete harware is certainly making a difference, (take a look here for an example, at a project at which someone I know is involved with Lindsay’s Africa Project.

But there is also this madly brilliant idea, the $100 laptop by MIT, to solve the hardware problem.

One chain of thought that could come from this - is enable the development of these communities, with rugged machines for developing and educating themselves more than traditional methods, then as these children have grown up, help them to further their education, or business ideas through the involvment of organisations such as mentioned by David Bornstein in his book, “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas”, like the Grameen Bank.

If you have listened to the ITConversations recording of David Bornstein, you will probably have a better understanding of where I coming from wih these ideas (seriously, listen to it).

With these thoughts I retire, but somehow wonder how a plan like that could come off, it will be hard, but I reckon that someday a day will come, when a model very like the above will come to pass.

R

A well described tutorial for setting up a touchscreen under linux, now all that needs to be done is to find a touchscreen!

This article gives you an overview of the steps to prepare to install and configure the LCD (the image screen), the modeline (a configuration line that tells the server how to drive the monitor), and the touchscreen (for input). It also gives you some resources to answer other questions that might come up when you start to integrate a touchscreen.

Install a touchscreen for Linux

This is an interesting idea - a new level for robotics really.

Exploring Caves With Hopping Microbots

Other wise known as - “Why should you should make sure that your heatsink is on…

AMD Duron Vaporizing - Google Video

this seems rather odd

(via Michele), I was just there and did not hear any of that on the news… Granted it is now the 6th of December, but I imagine I would have heard something of it! granted I was also in the process of helping to arrange and finalise and help host my mothers birthday (which was a great success btw), but still.

I got a few techie magazines when I was there (that I have not had time to read yet), but will hopefully do shortly, and see if there is anything in them about that this interestingly scary story. The mags are French linux and security magazines,

Linux France , MISC and Hakin9

Three usually good reads

Tim Bray has more on the matter, and here are some interestingly ominous thoughts such as,

It seems that the aim would be to make free software illegal. I don’t think this is being realistic. Appart from the fact that it would put France back into the dark ages from an IT perspective, it seems also not very enforcable.

The innovations that many companies come up with are often based on free software, and to the stiffle that innovation would really be a throw back for all the effort that has gone into the free software and open source ideologies, and the great results achieved.

Lets really hope that it does not get to that … Perhaps there is a legal avenue that can be taken on a European level, through respective MEP’s, to prevent such laws to come into place, lest some other country get the same notion…

R

today is world AIDS day - worth thinking about

UN AIDS Website
Google World AIDS Day search