Hanoi : Action for the City Green Transport

From: ************

Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 3:35 PM
To: *************

Subject: Green Transport Day

We at Action for the City are launching a Green Transport Day on May
16th and invite you to join us to make Hanoi a quieter, cleaner and
greener city. On this day, we ask that you walk, cycle, or use public
transport instead of private cars or motorbikes. In so doing, you join
students, teachers, professionals, and communities across Hanoi in
raising our voices to say that together we can make an impact.

We ask that you get your entire organisation or business involved and
in turn get your name put on our website. Please visit
http://www.giaothongxanh.org/en for more information and resources for
you and your organisation.

Working together for a greener Hanoi,
Action for the City Green Transport team



Save The XO

Save the XO

RMS : Can we rescue OLPC from Windows?

We don’t use Free Software because it is convenient or cheap… We use it because it “decolonize” software. Did Mr Negroponte did forget the reason why the XO was supposed to be free (like free speech) ?

Food supply crisis and riots

Thanks to http://www.crisscrossed.net/ to pass me the following on twitter with this presentation, things got suddenly scarier.

SlideShare | View | Upload your own

The flight of the - free - Heron

Everybody knows I’m Ubuntu user,  and like most Ubuntu users I got excited by the release of the latest installment of the most popular Linux distribution. Ubuntu is not the goal it’s only the accidental best medium for Software Freedom to take on the proprietary world, I’m saying it but Mark Shuttleworth the father of Ubuntu is also saying it. Ubuntu is just the result of the work of hundreds and hundreds of project, from the linux Kernel to firefox, gnome or gcc

Thanks everyone who have ever given 5 minutes of their time to the Free/freed/open source Software project. You made my life better.

Finally replacement is arriving

I’ve been involved with the NGO resource centre  for a long time now (3 years), assuming as much as I can sysadmin duties that my other job was letting me do. As I’m preparing to leave vietnam, someone just arrived to take over at the NGO resource centre.

The name of the guy is Paul Griffiths, luckily is going to take the job full time, so it will give him a lot of freedom to do ICT4dev and finish long overdue things I should have done before
My prediction is that if you are in an NGO in Vietnam, that you are interested in Information technology and development, you will hear and read about Paul soon.

I wish him the best of luck

server install workshop LVM + RAID, Saturday april 5th at CAI 9h30 am

This saturday (april 5th) at 9h30 am some hanoilug members will be installing a server meant to become a backup and log server. The idea is to learn how to install a basic server with LVM and/or RAID, and document the process so people can do it later by themselves in the most easy way.

There will be at least one server to experiment on. If you have one spare computer on which you can experiment please bring it so we can experiment more with more people.

Place

Centre d’accès à l’information (CAI-AUF) -  (IFI)
Nhà D, Ngõ 42 Ta Quang B?u
Quan Hai Bà Trung, Hà Noi

Suggested reading (more to read ?) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/  
http://www.planamente.ch/emidio/pages/linux_howto_root_lvm_raid.php
http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_software_raid
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html

Your document is corrupted II

Report of corrupted process in the adoption of MS OOXML as the second standard for office document format are becoming more frequent in Europe.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

I’m wondering what’s happening now in  other countries !!! In Vietnam where public officers are really “sensible” to corruption and demonstration of power…

For an overview of similar story in September read the following

 http://blog.ngowiki.net/2007/09/23/your-document-is-corrupted-do-civil-society-organisation-cares/

Do something practical !

Save the planet big excerpt from http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/pwr_mgmt.html :

  • Limit screen-saver use. A screen saver does not save energy. In fact, more often than not, a screen saver not only will draw power for the monitor, but also will keep the CPU from shutting down. Instead, set your computer to turn off the monitor first, then go into standby mode after a longer period of inactivity.
  • Keeping your Virtual Private Network (VPN) connected may limit your system’s ability to enter standby mode. We recommend you disconnect your VPN when not actively using your corporate network.
  • Many popular computer games and other third party software packages that run in the background will not allow the computer to go to sleep – even if they are paused or the active window is minimized.
  • Some web sites or pages that have active banners and or animated advertisements will not allow the computer to sleep on its own and must be closed, or the computer put manually into a sleep state.
  • Advanced users may wish to establish multiple power schemes to address different usage models. For example, you can create a power scheme for playing music CDs that shuts off your hard drive and monitor immediately, but never puts your system into standby mode.
  • To maximize the battery life of your laptop computer, consider setting even more aggressive monitor, hard drive and standby/sleep settings for battery mode.
  • To further reduce power consumption, turn off computing and peripheral devices that are not being used or being used for an extended period of time such as overnight.
  • Plug all your electronics into one surge protector, so you can easily switch them all off when you leave the room or go to sleep. Most power supplies (such as your cell phone charger) continue to draw power and generate heat even when not attached to a device.

Switch off one hour

See the difference you can make 8pm March 29

http://www.earthhour.org/

dot.org Vs China ? Really ?

I’m always dubious about people claiming they are being attacked by cyber-vandals for political reason. It looks like they want their 15 minutes of fame. However this time, there’s a stream of story that can raise some eyebrows. Here are the stories :

Although it impossible to deny the role (whatever it is “really” happening to be) of china in both conflict, it is a long shot to trace it back to an official chinese action, here’s why and also why it’s also scaring anyway.

  • Chinese computers are, like all computers in developing countries, not very well protected (unmaintained, unpatched full of viruses) so the attacks can come from China but could simply be a redirection from anywhere in the world.
  • Since it is very likely that some Chinese hold a grudge against any who is complaining about their policy in Tibet, we could see some local geek head taking side with the establishment :  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/03/tibet_the_cyber_wars.html.
  • I find a little offensive to see Chinese based “cyber warriors” using plain English to carry social engineering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security))  attack against Tibetan groups. Should I remind my reader that Tibetans have their own language and script:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_script. Would it be more efficient to use the local language ?

The scary part.

  • Using wide bot-nets of viruses infected computer is normally the trademark of organized crime. Am I alone to be scare to the thought of the organized crime taking side of crypto-fascist / rogue states like China or Sudan ? Whatever alliance using bot nets to carry politically motivated action worries me a lot.
  • NGOs and non-profit, take this on my word, are easy target. Even the big international ones have very little savvyness for computer security and for anything related to IT. Local offices are probably even more vulnerable. Everyday I see a lot of uninformed people taking very uninformed decision about their IT system, most definitively a fertile ground for anyone who wants to get inside the systems using good faith.
  • Once someone got the idea of using viruses and malware to attack human rights association, then it will happens, people will try it, the not so good guys, the bad one and anything in between. At the end it will disrupt communication and whoever wish to spread misfortune against civil society organization will win