Report: Open Source Tops Proprietary Code in Quality

PC World (02/24/12) Katherine Noyes

Open source code has fewer defects per thousand lines of code than proprietary software, according to the 2011 Scan Open Source Integrity Report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Coverity. "The line between open source and proprietary software will continue to blur over time as open source is further cemented in the modern software supply chain," says Coverity's Zack Samocha. The 2011 report analyzed more than 37 million lines of open source software code and more than 300 million lines of proprietary software code from a sample of anonymous Coverity users. Coverity says it used a testing platform that was upgraded this year with the ability to find more new and existing types of defects in software code. The report notes that for open source projects, which have an average project size of 832,000 lines of code, the average number of defects per thousand lines of code was .45. For example, Linux 2.6, PHP 5.3, and PostgreSQL 9.1 had defect densities of .62, .20, and .21, respectively. However, the report found that in propriety codebases, which averaged 7.5 million lines of code, the average defect density was .64.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/report-open-source-tops-proprietary-code-in-quality-187169

FLOSS Lebanese Community by cofares

Forum of the FLOSS Lebanese Community by cofares

KVM - Virtualisation Ubuntu

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM

Kvm est le choix de virtualisation d'ubuntu ....

Tweet from TweetCaster

@Canonical: Check out #Ubuntu For Android: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android. We'll also be showing this off at #MWC2012 in Hall 7. See you there!
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Ubuntu in your pocket

Ubuntu sur votre android!!

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1011

Activist-Backed Collaboration Platform Set for March Release

IDG News Service (02/15/12) John Ribeiro

A functional prototype of the Global Square, a social network collaboration platform for activists, will be available by March.  The Global Square will offer an interactive map that lists all ongoing assemblies worldwide, search options for finding squares, events, and working groups, an aggregated news feed, a public and private messaging system, and a forum for public debate and voting.  A year ago, some activists said there was a need for an online global square, and in November WikiLeaks said the global collaboration platform would be the online platform for its movement.  Volunteer programmers were called on to develop features for the open source and multilingual platform.  The Global Square will use Tribler peer-to-peer technology, which its backers say will make it virtually impossible to break or censor the network.  "The content files are not centralized in any physical server, so the network belongs to its users," says the Global Square.  The platform initially will be available as a standalone PC application, and a smartphone app will be introduced later in the year.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224268/Activist_backed_collaboration_platform_set_for_March_release?taxonomyId=18

Facebook is a surveillance engine, not friend: Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation

"You know about the two rules right for interviewing Richard?" a volunteer asks before leading us to meetRichard Stallman, the man who fights for free software day in and out. One, don't use the term Open Source to mean free software.

Two, don't say Linux but say GNU/Linux. Dr Stallman, who started the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to promote freedom to create, share and modify software, is extremely sensitive to whether the goals of his initiative are rightly communicated.

.....

How do you see the recent move by Facebook to go for listing?

I don't care about that. Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook.
Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page. So, Facebook carries out surveillance over visitors to thousands of different Websites, even for people who are not Facebook users. I hope we will have something for free browsers to block Facebook 'like' buttons so that people won't be under surveillance.
In any case, this is why I ask people not to put photographs of me on Facebook, because Facebook collects data about the names of people in photos. It might as well be working directly for Big Brother.
Mark Zuckerberg says the likes of Google and Microsoft are collecting information behind your back.They all do it in a secret way. Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user.

Read the full article

Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains

February 2012 Web Server Survey

In the February 2012 survey we received responses from 612,843,429 sites. Compared to January, this represents an increase of 30M hostnames or +5.2%.

nginx was the only server to experience a non-negligible market share increase this month, gaining 0.27 percentage points. Apache did experience a growth of 19M hostnames, but its market share has remained static, while Microsoft and Google had a small drop in market share despite gaining 3.9M and 450K hostnames respectively.

Within the Million Busiest Sites nginx continued its steady growth; gaining just over 12K new sites. Apache saw the biggest loss this month with a drop of 18K hostnames.

Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains
August 1995 - February 2012

Developer	January 2012	Percent	February 2012	Percent	Change
Apache	378,267,399	64.91%	397,867,089	64.92%	0.01
Microsoft	84,288,985	14.46%	88,210,995	14.39%	-0.07
nginx	56,087,776	9.63%	60,627,200	9.89%	0.27
Google	18,936,381	3.25%	19,394,196	3.16%	-0.09

Réseaux d'entreprise et plateformes libres

Visitez le site de support de cours sur le libre en entreprise, particulièrement l'aspect réseaux. http://reseaux-entreprise.cofares.net

LibreOffice 3.5 Released

The Document Foundation Announces LibreOffice 3.5: “The Best Free Office Suite Ever”

Filed under: Announcements — Tags: libreoffice — italovignoli @ 11:01

Berlin, February 14, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5, the third major release of “the best free office suite ever”, which shows to end users the improvements derived from the development strategy adopted since September 2010. LibreOffice 3.5 derives from the combined effort of full time hackers – the largest group of experienced OOo code developers – and volunteer hackers, coordinated by the Engineering Steering Committee.

During 16 months, an average of 80 developers each month have provided a total of over thirty thousand code commits, introducing new and interesting features:

Writer

- a new built-in Grammar checker for English and several other languages
- improved typographical features, for professional looking documents
- an interactive word count window, which updates in real time
- a new header, footer and page break user interface

Impress / Draw

- an improved importer of custom shapes and Smart Art from PPT/PPTX
- a feature for embedding multimedia/colour palettes into ODF documents
- a new display switch for the presenter’s console
- new line ends for improved diagrams
- Microsoft Visio import filter

Calc

- support for up to 10,000 sheets
- a new multi-line input area
- new Calc functions conforming to the ODF OpenFormula specifications
- better performances when importing files from other office suites
- multiple selections in autofilter
- unlimited number of rules for conditional formatting

Base

- a new integrated PostgreSQL native driver

In addition, for the first time in the history of LibreOffice, we will be enabling the online update checker, which informs users when a new version of the suite is available.
“We inherited a 15 years old code base, where features were not implemented and bugs were not solved in order to avoid creating problems, and this – with time – was the origin of a large technical debt,” says Caolán McNamara, a senior RedHat developer who is one of the founders and directors of TDF. “We had two options: a conservative strategy, which would immediately please all users, leaving the code basically unchanged, and our more aggressive feature development and code renovation path, which has created some stability problems in the short term but is rapidly leading to a completely new and substantially improved free office suite: LibreOffice 3.5, the best free office suite ever.”

“In sixteen months, we have achieved incredible results – comments Michael Meeks, a SUSE Distinguished Engineer, who is also a founder and director at TDF – with nearly three hundred entirely new developers to the project, attracted by the copyleft license, the lack of copyright assignment and a welcoming environment. In addition to the visible features, they’ve translated tens of thousands of German comments, removed thousands of unused or obsolete methods – sometimes whole libraries – and grown a suite of automated tests. Although we still have a long way to go, users – who have sometimes complained for the stability of the software, as they were not aware of the technical debt we were fighting with – can now benefit from a substantially cleaner, leaner and more feature rich LibreOffice 3.5.”

LibreOffice 3.5 is the first release where the contribution of local communities and associations, such as ALTA in Brazil, has been acknowledged. In addition, TDF tried to recognize those volunteers – where we could easily identify them – who put so much into the 3.5 release, with a “hacking” or “bug hunting” hero badge presented the same day of the announcement. TDF is encouraging the development of a global, open and diverse ecosystem where companies, associations, local communities and volunteers share the common objective of developing the best free office suite ever.

The Document Foundation invites power users to install LibreOffice 3.5, and more conservative users to stick with LibreOffice 3.4 branch. Corporate users are strongly advised to deploy LibreOffice with the backing of professional support, from a company able to assist with migration, end user training, support and maintenance. The Document Foundation will soon provide a list of certified organizations providing these professional services.

LibreOffice 3.5 is available from: http://www.libreoffice.org/download. The new features and the improvements are described in the infographic which can be downloaded from: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/116590/lo35-infofinal.pdf.

Is GPL usage really declining?

"In absolute terms, GPL use has increased - any change isn't down to GPL projects transitioning over to liberal licenses. But an increasing number of new projects are being released under liberal licenses. Why is that?

The impression gained from this is that the probability of you using one of the GPL licenses is influenced by the community that you're part of. And it's not a huge leap to believe that an increasing number of developers are targeting the web, and the web development community has never been especially attached to the GPL. It's not hard to see why - the benefits of the GPL vanish pretty much entirely when you're never actually obliged to distribute the code, and while Affero attempts to compensate from that it also constrains your UI and deployment model.

Complete Story

Learning Linux Commands: ls !!

"If you ever tried to work with Linux command line, ls command was surely one of the first commands you have executed. In fact, ls command is so frequently used, that its name is often considered as the best choice to name a Trojan Horse. Even though you use ls command on daily basis, its wast number of options always makes you to reach for ls's manual page. Doing so you learn something new every time you open ls's manual page .

Complete Story

Conférence de Richard Stallman "Pour une société numérique libre"

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Conférence de Richard Stallman "Pour une société numérique libre"

Le jeudi 16 février à 18h30, à l'université Paris-Diderot, Richard Stallman, fondateur du mouvement du logiciel libre,donnera une conférence exceptionnnelle intitulée "Pour une société numérique libre".

http://www.irill.org/blog/conference-de-richard-stallman-pour-une-societe-numerique-libre

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Open Source CAD/CAM Solution

Open Source CAD/CAM Solution – discussion on the much-needed, professional-quality open source CAD/CAM solution was reawakened as other open hardware players have a lead on funding. I personally think that this proposition will be trivial to fund – every designer wants an open CAD/CAM platform. I will continue looking for opportunities to get this moving. An open platform is a prerequisite to delivering the promise of digital, distributed fabrication. To deliver the open CAD/CAM solution, we still need to define a clear problem statement – based on: (1), assessment of existing open source CAD/CAM solutions; (2), assessment of their software architectures; and (3), a proposition of the desired functionality and associated software architecture for achieving that functionality. I am convinced that developing an open solution based on existing work should not require thousands of human years of development, but between 10-100 human years of development if approached correctly. Existing notes on the CAD/CAM solution can be found on the wiki, but this needs work.

A Network of Farmers, Engineers, and Supporters Building the Global Village Construction Set

Open Source Ecologie:

Global Village Construction Set development  is scaling. There are currently 9 projects under active development and 3 full time developers besides me – Aaron Makaruk, Brianna Kufa, and Yoonseo Kang, two of which are currently off-site. The active projects include: theIronworker Machine (build started), open source Tractor (modification field testing), CNC Circuit Mill (build almost complete), CNC Torch Table (build started), Dimensional Sawmill(build to be resumed next week), Heat Exchanger (prototype 1 coil done), Gasifier Burner(complete design, rationale, CAD, cam files- details in next blog post), Modern Steam Engine (parts kit arriving next week), and Backhoe (design challenge is up at GrabCAD). You can download a linked map by Aaron that shows the scope of some of the activity in the USA.

How to add Medibuntu repository in Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot | Via Terminal

Medibuntu is a packaging project dedicated to distributing software that cannot be included in Ubuntu for various reasons, related to geographical variations in legislation regarding intellectual property, security and other issues:

• patentability of software, algorithms, formats and other abstract creation
• legal restrictions on freedom of speech or communication
• restrictions on the use of certain types of technical solution, such as cryptography
• legal restrictions on imports of software technology, requiring for example specific permissions
• etc.

In this tutorial will show you how to add medibuntu repository to Ubuntu 9.10+ and above including the releaseUbuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

1- Install Medibuntu using  command Line (Ubuntu 9.10 and above):

• Open terminal and enter the folowing command :

sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update

Medibuntu’s repository is deactivated by upgrading to a newer Ubuntu release, so you should run this command again after the release upgrade.

• Now you may also wish to add the following packages. The first (APP-INSTALL-DATA-MEDIBUNTU) will cause many apps from the Medibuntu repository to appear in Ubuntu Software Center (Ubuntu 9.10+) or Add/Remove Applications (versions prior to 9.10). The second will allow users to generate crash reports against Medibuntu packages and submit them to the Medibuntu bugtracker.

 sudo apt-get install app-install-data-medibuntu apport-hooks-medibuntu

Medibuntu (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu)

Medibuntu (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu) est un dépôt de paquets ne pouvant pas être inclus dans la distribution Ubuntu pour des raisons légales (copyright, licence, brevet, etc).

Medibuntu est un projet d'empaquetage dédié à la distribution de logiciels ne pouvant pas être inclus dans Ubuntu pour diverses raisons, dûes aux variantes géographiques de la législation concernant la propriété intellectuelle, la sécurité et d'autres problèmes :

• brevetabilité de logiciels, d'algorithmes, formats et autres créations abstraites
• restrictions légales sur la liberté de parole ou de communication
• restrictions sur l'usage de certains types de solutions techniques, telles que la cryptographie
• restrictions légales sur les imports de technologies logicielles, requérant par exemple des permissions spécifiques
• etc.

Un grand nombre d'excellents logiciels libres et non-libres sont affectés par de telles restrictions quelque part dans le monde, ce qui empêche donc leur inclusion dans Ubuntu qui, pour des raisons d'économie et de simplicité, considère ces restrictions comme identiques dans tous les pays.

Nous refusons de nous résigner à abandonner des logiciels qui peuvent être légalement utiles quelque part, et nous avons choisi de les fournir empaquetés de manière professionnelle, facilement utilisable dans Ubuntu.
Ce dépôt fourni des paquets pour la distribution Ubuntu.

Il est de votre responsabilité légale de vous assurer que les logiciels que vous installez peuvent être utilisés légalement dans votre pays dans le but voulu.

Weave Open Source Data Visualization Offers Power, Flexibility

Computerworld (02/08/12) Sharon Machlis

The open source Weave project is a platform designed to make it easier for government agencies, nonprofits, and corporate users to offer the public a way to analyze data. The platform enables users to simultaneously highlight items on multiple visualizations, including map, map legend, bar chart, and scatter plot. The benefits of Weave's interactivity go beyond the visual appeal of selecting an area on a chart and seeing matches highlighted on a map, notes Connecticut Data Collaborative project coordinator James Farnam. Weave aims to help organizations democratize data visualization tools, creating a way for anyone interested in a topic to explore and analyze information about it, instead of leaving the task solely to computer and data specialists, says Georges G. Grinstein, director of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell's Institute for Visualization and Perception Research, which created Weave. "Now [you're] engaging the public in a dialog with the data," Grinstein says. "That's why Weave is open source and free." Weave is so powerful that one of the challenges of implementing it is how to narrow down its offerings so that end users would not be overwhelmed with too many options, says the Metropolitan Area Planning Council's Holly St. Clair.

View Full Article

Enterprise Open Source Solutions: Support, Governance, Scanning, Provisioning, and Services

http://www.openlogic.com/solutions/index.php

Piracy and the value of freedom

[ Thanks to Linux User & Developer magazine for this link. ]

"Of course, the 'collateral damage' done leads to protests. It's not likely that you missed the SOPA blackout a while ago. For a day, hundreds of websites went black; openSUSE.org joined in with the protests and so did many other FOSS projects. And, not surprisingly, the US Congress, or at least those within it supporting SOPA and similar things, backed off – for now. Freedom mattered more than the costs of ‘piracy’. Going forward, I will use the term 'copyright infringement', by the way.
"So, good news. The modern, social media-permeated tech world beat the old-style media because it could mobilise people. And if you reach enough people and enough of them care about what you’re saying, you can change things. Freedom is luckily still somewhat important. Unfortunately, when it comes to our fundamental freedoms like communicating privately and without limits, both companies and governments have strong incentives to do the wrong thing and it won’t take long for the next attack to happen."

openSUSE community manager, Jos Poortvliet, wonders if putting a tax on the sharing of knowledge might limit social as well as economic growth…

I think you’ve heard about the piracy happening in the waters surrounding Somalia. Entire ships are captured, and their passengers are often hurt and sometimes even killed.

Interestingly enough, the term often associated with this kind of kidnapping and killing is also frequently used in computing terms for something quite different. Copying something and giving it away for free, without any motive for profit and without taking anything away from the original.

If I were a victim of actual piracy while sailing the seas, I would probably consider the word’s rampant misuse in technology circles as massively insulting. Especially as the victims of the technological form of ‘piracy’ seem to be doing rather well. To protect them against the hideous crimes committed, governments are willing to give up things like privacy and freedom of speech.

Of course, the ‘collateral damage’ done leads to protests. It’s not likely that you missed the SOPA blackout a while ago. For a day, hundreds of websites went black; openSUSE.org joined in with the protests and so did many other FOSS projects. And, not surprisingly, the US Congress, or at least those within it supporting SOPA and similar things, backed off – for now. Freedom mattered more than the costs of ‘piracy’. Going forward, I will use the term ‘copyright infringement’, by the way.

So, good news. The modern, social media-permeated tech world beat the old-style media because it could mobilise people. And if you reach enough people and enough of them care about what you’re saying, you can change things. Freedom is luckily still somewhat important. Unfortunately, when it comes to our fundamental freedoms like communicating privately and without limits, both companies and governments have strong incentives to do the wrong thing and it won’t take long for the next attack to happen.

It is understandable. There are bad things out there – from child pornography to websites spouting crazy things like racism, silly conspiracies around inoculations, scams and much more. And yes, copyright does matter: free software depends on it to be able to go after anyone who is using free code to take users’ rights away.

But some people will always believe crazy things; and copyright lasting well over 60 years is well beyond reasonable and desirable. It’s just not worth it. As The Oatmeal cult online comic put it, SOPA is “like dealing with a lion which escaped from the zoo by blasting some kittens with a flamethrower”. In other words, not only are these measures against copyright infringement woefully inadequate, but they hurt things that we all love.

We are choosing the interests of a specific industry over the interests of society as a whole. While the strict copyright we have might be beneficial to that small industry, it hurts everything else: from universities to companies, from developing countries to developed ones. After all, the more knowledge that is shared, the more new knowledge that is generated. And by putting a tax on the sharing of knowledge, we tax the generation of more knowledge – ultimately limiting economic as well as social growth.

The industries fighting to protect and extend copyright know this, of course. They are losing the fight and, realising that, have resorted to questionable tactics and name-calling. For me that is proof enough that they are wrong. I think we should do anything to stop piracy (actual piracy). I think we should stop going after copyright infringers until the current copyright laws have been adjusted for the world we live in (there is this cool, new thing called ‘the internet’) and the industry which depends on it has ceased using morally questionable tactics to further their financial cause.

Industry-Funded Software Research Goes Open Source

Campus Technology (02/01/12) David Raths

Several large companies that fund software research on university campuses are engaged in open source research in the hope of drawing a thriving developer community. An example is the Science and Technology Centers (ISTCs) launched by Intel at Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of California, Berkeley. "The preferred [intellectual property (IP)] policy is to conduct open research wherein ISTC researchers, whether from academia or Intel, agree to not file patents and to publish all patentable inventions," Intel says. "All significant software developed in the course of conducting research will be released under an open source license." Each ITSC can support 10 to 15 faculty members and as many as 30 students. Consultant Melba Kurman notes that many companies are beginning to consider longer development timeframes, and she thinks open source is a solid solution in instances where patents are not vital. Kurman also lists other potential advantages of the open source licensing model, including its fit with a university's nonprofit, tax-exempt status, the avoidance of publication delays caused by patent applications, no need to haggle over IP terms between university and company researchers, and allowances for the research sponsor to bring in more companies to sponsor open source consortia.

View Full Article

Top 10 Reasons why Android is better than Iphone

1) Browsing

Browsing with Android is much faster, and it has FLASH You can view all flash websites.and yes, you can play Facebook games like city ville, farm ville

2) Desktop
With Iphone you will have a page full of icons. Even if you categorized your apps, it’s still going to be ICONS vs. With Android, you will be able to customize your pages with widgets that have an actual Purpose like : Twitter, facebook: update ur status

3) Connectivity
On android, there is the famous page. where you have 4 buttons

1. Turn on/off bluetooth
2. Turn on/off Wifi
3. Turn on/off Mobile Network
4. Turn on/off GPS

One press and ur’e done. There’s even an app on Android market called Y5, which turns off the Wi-Fi automatically when no known wirless network is available.Now with Iphone you have to go through various options to control connections

4) PC Connection
With Iphone u need to have iTunes to manage your phone. But with Android it’s simple as to Mount your SD card and then just drag and drop

5) Multi-notification
On Iphone, to receive a notification from  a specific program like twitter for example, the twitter program has to be open.

But with Android you receive all updates in the blasting notification bar for all your social activities in oneplace. Whatever it’s an e-mail, tweet, facebook, new SMS, missed call.

6) Personalization
Using Iphone, you have to stick with what apple says when it comes to personalizing your Iphone looks and settings.But with Android, you can customize your phone look and setting to match your lifestyle. If you’re a social network power user, you can have a screen for Facebook, one for Twitter, one for texting, and one for Flickr. Or if you are a business user, you can have a screen for contacts, for your calendar, for GMail, for email, for RSS, and more.

7) Market
With Iphone, its the Apple app store. But so does android. The Android Market, one of the most active markets. you can find apps for everything. very easy to install though. and if ur’e interested to pay for an app you like to get all features, you enter your information on the Google Market one time and you’re done. I assure you there are Billions of free apps that’s gonna be useful depending on how you can make use of it. Keep Checking in as i will publish a post for the best apps you can have and it’s features.

8) Google Integration
We’re talking about Google, Do you have a gmail account? You will get surprised when you see how Android and Google are so close and easy to communicate with all its services.

9) Open Source
There are lot of developers working every minute on Android’s software and upgrading, tweaking to best performance. So when there is weakness it is fixed. iPhone Open? u’re kidding me.

10) Android Lets You Choose Your Hardware
This is my best Option. Apple keeps saying “think different” but when it comes to hardware, they don’t give much choce. Either black or white, 16 GB or 32 GB, u’re also stuck with 3.5 inch, 320×480 pixel display with 256M RAM and 600MHz processor. Now with Android they fit it to any hardware they want like the Nexus One (with 3.7-inch, 480×800 pixel display, 512MB of RAM and 1GHz Snapdragon processor) or the Motorola Droid which has a physical keypad.

Google Open Source Blog: Google Summer of Code 2012 is on!

Google Open Source Blog: Google Summer of Code 2012 is on!: I am proud to share the news that Google Summer of Code 2012 was announced this morning at FOSDEM . This will be the 8th year for Google ...

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide 

version:	6.4
author:	Mendel Cooper, <thegrendel.abs(at)gmail.com>
last update:	Aug 2011
available formats:	HTML (read online) HTML (read online, single file, 2.3M) HTML (tarred and gzipped package, 656K) PDF (2.6M) PostScript (1.4M) text (495K) PluckerDB (677K)

Open Source Tackles Healthcare In Places Microsoft Can't

"At one hospital in Kano, Nigeria, 50 babies are born each day. And it’s not exactly prepared to handle them all. “We’re talking about one midwife taking three deliveries at a time,” says Evelyn Castle.

"Nonetheless, Castle aims to create digital records of those births and the hundreds of others happening across northern Nigeria each day — even as she and another American ex-patriot, Adam Thompson, are working to digitize the health records of adults across the region, including polio cases and expectant mothers who’ve tested HIV positive. It’s an enormous task, but the size is only part of the problem. Castle and Thompson are introducing western technology to facilities that aren’t familiar with it — and may not have the resources to handle what they are familiar with.

"'This is one of the most difficult places on the planet — in many ways,' says Andrew Karlyn, who spent three years as the country director in Nigeria for the Population Council, a nonprofit that seeks to improve living conditions in places across the globe. 'If you’ve got a barely literate medical technician, who only knows how to use a microscope to look for Malaria and fill in a form, you can’t just put a fancy computer in front of him and expect him to use it.'"

Complete Story

US Government And Military Prefer Android

The US government like Android so much they are adopting it ( a modified, security-heavy version of course) for the military and various federal agencies and contractors. Some US troops have already gotten their hands on it with  about 40 phones already sent to troops overseas a year ago, with the Army planning to ship 50 more, along with 75 tablets to soldiers abroad in March. The phones used are normal commercial ones with the specially adapted and secure version of Android running on them, which will help keep costs down and allow the government to stay up to date with the latest phones on the market. A version of the software has already been completed that can store classified documents, but does not transmit them over a cell network. And Android Smartphones cleared for top-secret dispatches is being worked on and due to be ready in the next few months. Each individual version of the Android OS will be certified once for all federal agencies, rather than having each agency perform its own independent security testing. Can Android win the war on terror?


Source: http://www.droidoid.com/news/122/us-government-and-military-prefer-android