OLPC starts production
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) starts the production of their “100 Dollar Laptops”. The final price will actually be more than 100 USD at 130 EUR (about 175 USD). First delivery of the XOB4 Laptops is scheduled for October 2007 and is supposed to be supported by governments and aid organizations. The XO runs with a special Linux System and comes with 1GB Flashdrive, 7,5′ display, 256MB Ram and AMD CPU. You can find all details on the OLPC website.
[via golem]
Portrait on Sub-Saharan Africa
Just found this poll on National Issues, Economy and Personal Well-Being, International Views, conducted in 10 Sub-Saharan countries (Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa) in spring 2007 by The New York Times. Quite some interesting figures, e.g. 54% of Kenyans say, that they are financially better off than five years ago, 17% think that things are about the same while 29% state that the situation is worse. Ethnic / religious conflicts and corrupt political leader are considered a big problem by 78% and 90%.
[via 58’s blog]
Volxbibel - The German Open Source Bible
Volxbibel is a modern German bible translation initiated by Martin Dreyer. Version 1.0 was translated with focus on young people that have no idea of Christian faith and therefor uses modern youth slang. His Vision was to create a Bible that that continues to be updated by the people themselves - the volk. Volxbibel Verlag, a subsidiary of R. Brockhaus Verlag, published the Version 1.0 in 2005 and sold about 100.000 Bibles within about a year. R. Brockhaus is publisher of the Elberfelder Bible, which is well known as a very exact translation. Already before the first publication the publisher house and Martin Dreyer encountered strong protest from wide parts of protestant Christians in Germany, degrading Dreyers translation as blasphemy. Through the strong protests the project gained quite some media presence and popularity in the secular world.
One characteristic aspect of Volxbibel is, that it is published under a dual license, one of them the well known Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA). This license is extended by a special license, exclusively allowing the publishing house commercial use of the bible. Since publication of “the first open source bible in the world”, the translation continues as a process in a wiki - the Volxbibel Wiki*. Editing is open to every registered user who claims to support Volxbibel’s Vision. Since theVolxbibel-Wiki launch in August 2005 more than 500 users registered to the project. In March 2006 Version 2.0 of Volxbibel with lots of input from the Wikiusers was published.
The publishing process does not underlie fully democratic decision. The online content of Volxbibel is seen as draft version everybody can discuss and give input to. Before a new Version of Volxbibel is published a group of theologians around Martin Dreyer audit the changes and verify their correctness. In future Versions all edits and audits are supposed to happen in special spaces within the wiki, enabling simple monitoring of changes and automatic export for future printable releases.
* Volxbibel Wiki was put up by me (zungu - Corporate Wiki Consulting) and officially launched on 5th of August 2005. Volxbibel Wiki is powerd by MediaWiki, the same engine that drives the famous Wikipedia.
zungu Blogbase now on WPMU 1.2.3
I have upgraded the blogs to Wordpress Multiuser Version 1.2.3. Works like a charm.