| SolarNetOne is a collaborative effort spanning several continents, organizations, and technical disciplines. The goal of the effort is to develop a feasible, sustainable solution to bring the internet to places that have no connectivity, no phone service and no electricity. |
Scott Johnson, founder of GNUveau:
With experts in open source software, photo-voltaic electricity, internet infrastructure, and true internet pioneers on the SolarNetOne team, we have endeavored to design and implement systems capable of bridging the digital divide under the most difficult of conditions, and in the most open method available.
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| On the wiki, you can see the system running in Katsina State University in Nigeria right now, providing wireless connectivity and “Internet Cafe” like services to hundreds of peopleSee more at thenextweb.com |
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Sydney, Australia–The global economic crisis will provide a boost for open-source software, Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst claimed during a visit to Sydney. |
Whitehurst, who was in Australia as part of a tour of the Asia-Pacific region, said in an interview with ZDNet.com.au on Wednesday that the crisis would cause companies to consolidate their technology infrastructure and reduce spending. |
“So the bad news is when things get tight, people stop investing as much in the future,” he said. “I would expect to see a slowdown in spending for new functionality.” However, the chief executive said this would cause more companies to consider open-source software as an option. |
“What I do know is that open source will be in much better shape coming out of [the financial crisis], that going into it relative to our propriety competitors,” he said. See more at news.zdnet.com |
Its proponents could put pressure on voting-machine makers,
but critics say it’s not a cure-all |
Privacy, Please: Is open-source voting the solution to the
United States’ election issues? |
In the
aftermath of the Florida recount debacle of
the 2000 presidential election, the U.S. Congress
appropriated billions of dollars for state and local
governments to buy electronic voting systems. But in the
years since, a string of problematic elections has led
much of the voting public to join early critics in
concluding that available machines are buggy, easily
subverted, and impossible to accurately audit.
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| So perhaps it was only a matter of time before members
of the open-source movement would enter the fray, with
the claim that their kind of technology can guarantee
free and democratic elections. Already, two bellwether
states, California and New York, have taken notice |
| This
spring, California’s state assembly considered a bill
mandating that new voting systems be based on
open-source software.See more at spectrum.ieee.org |
If you happen to own a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, you already have a robot in your life. (I have a Roomba, and highly recommend it–available at Target.) Roomba is a classic example of how a robot doesn’t have to be humanoid to be useful. In the open source community, though, there are several efforts to develop robots that look and/or act like humans, performing interesting and useful tasks. They’re not C3PO at this stage of their development, but they show tremendous promise, especially if more open source contributions are made to the projects. Here are a couple of good examples to take a gander at. |
| Willow Garage is an open source robotics project that originated at Stanford University. Robots being developed with the project run ROS (Robot Operating System) software. The operating system comes complete with tutorials, a developer’s guide, and more–all at the link just provided. |
| Who says C3PO and R2D2 can’t come from the open source community? |
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