From 30 May to 3 June, Trento will host the 2nd Festival of Economics. This time the topic is “Human capital, social capital”. Thirty thousand people are expected. So if you want to come to Trento, be welcome! Contact me via CouchSurfing and I’ll be delighted to host you, but please read the campaign for a more open CouchSurfing and sign the petition.
The festival will be open by a talk of Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge about “Social capital as an economic institution” and will be closed by the Nobel prize-winner Gary Becker. Have a look at the entire Festival of Economy program, there are many big names. I have to say I’m not satisfied at all with the program. It is very boring and institutional, while the topic of social capital and relationship-based economy is so interesting, exciting and intellectually challenging. And there are a lot of ministers (6, with the Prime Minister Romano Prodi) and a lot of ex-ministers (5, plus many more politicians). It seems much more the festival of the politics than the festival of the economics.
Anyway, at least there will be the Minister of University and Research Fabio Mussi, the Minister for Public Administration Reform and Innovation, Luigi Nicolais and the Chairman of Microsoft Italia and Vice Chairman of the Microsoft Corporation Umberto Paolucci. So that we will be able to ask them about the monstrous deal between Microsoft and Italy (signed by the 2 previously mentioned ministers). More information about the still-secret deal are available thanks to Associazione per il Software Libero: Spunti di riflessione sulle politiche d’innovazione nel settore ICT and Uno studio approfondito sui recenti accordi tra Governo e Microsoft.
Incredibly cool video about what “Free Geek” is doing. Free Geek is a Non-profit community organization providing free computers and education to those in need through the reuse and recycling of old computers.
This is what we are trying to do here in Trento as well with the “ComputeRinati” association (in general this activity in Italy is called Trashware), but hey we are nowhere near what Free Geek is accomplishing.
Link to “Free Geek” Video
And since I’m there, Microsoft just shipped Vista, the long-awaited operating system that does nothing that was not already possible with MacOSX since some years (and actually also with GNU/Linux with just some extra tweaking). But Vista requires a lot of RAM and resources actually forcing a lot of people to buy a new computer and dump the old one (for example there is a report claiming that “the system’s full range of tools would be available to less than 5 per cent of Britain’s PC marketâ€). Don’t you think Microsoft should be taken responsible for the quantity of e-waste it is causing with the release of this deadly operating system?
Follow my suggestion: take the chance to switch to GNU/Linux, Ubuntu for example. Feel free to ask me suggestions on how to do it, there is surely a Linux User Group close to you willing to help and to share knowledge.
[via an email of Paolo Palmerini in the Trashware mailing list]
After BillGates and Stallman, Sun is working with Trento. “Java Open Business Initiative launched by Sun Microsystems Italia … con il patrocinio dell’Università degli Studi di Torino e dell’Università di Trento, Dipartimento di Informatica e Telecomunicazioni”. Did the world discover this little town all of a sudden?
Today I received a package from Ubuntu. It contains 50 cardboard folders containing both an UbuntuLinux Install CD and an UbuntuLinux LiveCD. And Ubuntu sends it for free. This is very timely since there will be Stallman (father of GNU and Free Software Foundation, the one who started it all) in Trento on February 28, 2005 and the intention is to give away hundreds of CDs with free software (ubuntu GNU/Linux, mandrake Linux, but also free software for Windows such as theopencd and gnuwin2) and creative-commons-licenced music. Most people still don’t understand that copying and giving away free software is totally legal, actually it is what people creating that software want you to do! Anyway, I want to thank Ubuntu, to invite you to order some free Ubuntu CDs as well and, if you feel like, to donate to Ubuntu.
From 30 May to 3 June, Trento will host the 2nd Festival of Economics. This time the topic is “Human capital, social capital”. Thirty thousand people are expected. So if you want to come to Trento, be welcome! Contact me via CouchSurfing and I’ll be delighted to host you, but please read the campaign for a more open CouchSurfing and sign the petition.
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