Coulson Filters » Open source

FireFox Rising

coulson — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:17:49 +0000

FireFox’s progression marches steadily on in the Euopean ‘Browser wars‘. The open source underdog has been chewing out lumps of the market from under IE7′s feet for a while and it looks set to continue. A survey carried out between the 5th & 11th of March has shown that FireFox has overtaken IE7 in 14 of the 30 European countries involved. This must be seen as a blow for the Microsoft browser surely, IE7 is a major update and the fact that it’s being shipped out to most PC’s on the planet has still not stopped FireFox climbing the percentages.

The release of the latest browser versions: FF 2.0 and IE7, coincided last October and there was massive interest and downloading on the Mozilla site, at the time it was said that some of this activity was due to the novelty aspect not actual conversions, but the figures are telling a different tale in, Europe at least: in April 2006 FF had a 19.4 % share – in March 2007 FF is up to a 24.1 % share, that’s a foxes whisker away from a flaming quarter! Is it a question of time before IE7 gets outfoxed in Europe?

src | infodunet

Another Internet ‘World’s First’ for Estonia

coulson — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:02:53 +0000

From the Iron curtain to a Net one. Estonia maybe the smallest of the three Baltic States and one of the smallest countries in the EU, but this hasnâ€™t hampered them in writing another chapter for the Internet world record books. Following on from their previous triumph in October 2005, when Estonia became the first country in the world to allow nationwide voting over the internet to elect mayors and city councils. The same system, built on the Linux platform, has been deployed for the March the 4th parliamentary elections and another worldâ€™s first for online voting.

By Wednesday evening over 27,000 Estonians had cast their ballot via the Internet using an e-signature and electronic ID cards. This has exceeded official expectations. Estonia has a population of 1.35 million. Arne Koitmae, spokesman for the Estonian National Electoral Committee, said the three-day online voting period that began on Monday had proceeded smoothly. ”There have been no problems of any kind.â€

via | news.co Estonia’s e-voting site: Valimised.ee(en)
If your mental map of Europe is showing a few holes these days when it comes down to the smaller Union countries, then try Sheppardâ€™s online Europe Level 3 game might patch it up for you (on the left – Popular games list).

EasyGate left open

coulson — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:50:00 +0000

I wrote about the EasyGate ‘box’ last September,(picked up by Slashdot - link) I suppose you could call it a follow up to the French Minitel, designed for Internet access and not much else really. But then, with the whole concept of Web based operating systems taking off, online storage for free etc. what more do you need these days to surf the web and keep in touch ?

Anyway, the news that might interest the ‘pull it apart see how it works’ crew, is that the developing team behind easygate, who have built a custom distribution of the Linux kernel to run the ‘bread oven’ – are publishing there work, source code & whatnot on their wiki (French) – here is the source code access page so the ‘likes to tweek’ can have a nosy.

via infodunet

The Council of the EU says “We cannot support Linux”

coulson — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:31:19 +0000

The Streaming Service of the Council of the European Union – where you can view live transmissions of ongoing public events or browse the archives – can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users due to the WMV format chosen for the videos!

Quote from the Councilâ€™s FAQ page â€œThe live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. ~~We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux~~â€ Update: this statement has since been omitted

Iâ€™ve no doubt there is some screwed up and ill enlightened legislation that could stop support for Linux, they make the laws after all. But havenâ€™t they heard of interoperability?

If the BBC can offer their video services in both WMV and Realmedia formats, why cant the EU?

Shouldnâ€™t all government websites make their content available platform-independent?

First they force Microsoft to market a version of Windows without media-player in accordance with the EU’s antitrust rulings and then they release content that needs that very media player. Only in the EUâ€¦ you would be forgiven for saying.

Stefan Esterer has formed a petition here for those amongst us that have a thing about Open standards, level playing fields, politics for penguins etc.

via generation-nt

HAPPY NEW YEAR by the way