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Monthly Archives: February 2007

Cuba: ¡Viva Open Source! (Abajo con Windows)

I couldn’t really come up with a pithy headline. Sorry.

Cuba’s government has decided to switch to using an open source based operating system to give Microsoft the finger (and one supposes, the United States, too). As the Associated Press reports:

“It’s basically a problem of technological sovereignty, a problem of ideology,” said Hector Rodriguez, who oversees a Cuban university department of 1,000 students dedicated to developing open-source programs.

Other countries have tried similar moves. China, Brazil and Norway have encouraged the development of Linux for a variety of reasons: Microsoft’s near-monopoly over operating systems, the high cost of proprietary software and security problems.

It’s not like things are swell for Microsoft at home, either, if sluggish sales of the new operating system Vista are any indication.

[AP via Slashdot]

It seemed like a good idea at the time

But alas, it was not. Wonkette’s got a funny post this morning about a restaurant near Congress trying to capitalize (or is that ‘capitolize,’ yuck yuck) on new House ethics rules that require food served on toothpicks and of “nominal value.”

Of course, the new ethics rules are intended to keep lobbyists from plying hungry and underpaid House staffers with fancy, expensive meals which might then distract from the work of the people.

I imagine the restaurant was just trying to be clever, seeing a market shift and trying to take advantage of the change. Now they’ll probably end up all over the cable news programs as an article of derision.

Although…the fact that I’m writing about it, and you’re reading this, perhaps means that the press release is having impact on a much greater magnitude than originally intended so…

Perhaps it was a good idea, after all.

Anthropologist on Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Apologies for not posting in the first five weeks of 2007. It has been a busy but good period….Given the reason for my busy state, it is appropriate that I make my first post in 2007 about Web 2.0. Here’s a video I found on BoingBoing that quite succinctly captures the evolution of what Web 2.0 is, what it means, and how it is really changing the way people communicate with one another.

To underscore this last point, note that it was made by an anthropologist, no less!

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