edward.popoola
Opinion. Work. Places. Ideas. People. etc
Open Source Activity Map for Nigeria
In: Linux| Open Source
22 Apr 2009I just came across this map by Red Hat on open source usage across the world. It profiles usage by Government, Industry and if there is any active open source community within a country.
I was not too surprised to see Nigeria rank low in all the measuring yard sticks. Infact we rank 73 out of 75 in overall measurements in Open Source Activity, in comparison to South Africa that ranked 30 overall. Worse Still, in the Open Source Environment map, we are 75 of 75 while South Africa made 52 of 75.
The only reason for this poor Open source source usage as I see it is because of lack of a strong Industry voice campaigning actively for open source adoption. Well, you have a point to think that Open source should market itself if it was so good…Well time will tell.
I wont also completely rule out the fact that probably, those that can decide for open source in the country are not as informed on why it is a viable alternative for both Government and Enterprises. I suppose the Government has never even really given it a thought (Well except for the Mandriva/Microsoft/OLPC/ Palaver some few years ago).
I also see tight business-as-usual links with proprietary software vendors in the country, particularly the Big blue M, that even has the Government by its balls, making it pour our millions of dollars in License fees. Even our local software developers are feeling the heat on the Government’s one-big-vendor-software strategy.
I do however have a strong belief though that before the recession/financial crises is over, open source software would be considered more than never before in Nigeria. If not by Government, by Enterprises frantically out to save costs and optimize their business process.
Facebook is recruiting.
I saw this video PR about working at Facebook and I was tripped at their super clean data center.
They have stored over 40 billion photos of different sizes! They have just around 900 staff??
Considering the rate at which their need for more infrastrucure grows, more servers, more storage, more racks..its incredible how they have managed to keep this datacentre so clean. This is considering the fact that the data center would have like n+whatever level of redundancy for each single component or equipment.
I have been in a few datacenters in my young career and I know how ugly things quickly get when suddenly the need for more infrastructures arise.Weldone guys. They could as well have cleaned things up for the video anyway…or just data center company policy working fine.
Memories of the 80’s
In: Uncategorized
1 Apr 2009I remember watching this Orlando Julius’ video while growing up on our black and white Television and for days and weeks after, I hoped all day that the Nigerian Television Authority would show the video everyday. I remember having it as one of my favorites songs as a kid.
Also top on my list was Majek Fashek’s Rain Maker
In later years, I fell in love with songs by Eva Edna Ogoli, (Ririovara, Jelousy, Oghene Me) Funmi Adams, Christy Essien Igbokwe. Call me old school, but today I still love these songs and I can play them over and over. I can’t seem to get tired of great songs from my growing up years. When i listen to them, I just long to be a kid again.
I found this post detailing the great artists during that period.
Campaign for Open Source gets fiercer
In: Open Source
25 Mar 2009Enjoy this video from the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2009.
OSBC2009 - Welcome Video from Matt Asay on Vimeo.
Phishing Attacks on Nigerian banks
In: IT Security
20 Mar 2009Hackers are here. Be careful what you click!
Yesterday, I got an email from supposed security team of GTBank. The mail was colorful, with the GTBank logo, orange color and stuffs. They claim to be having issues with my account login details and they want me to click a link to reset my password.
If the above sounds familier to you, then you already know what this means. Its a phishing attack. Wikipedia defines phishing thus
“In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”
I didn’t bother following the link, but I have a clear idea of what I would see if i did. It would be a page looking exactly like the GTB online banking page…the difference there is just that , this fake page will be hosted on another illegal server. Unsuspecting victims type in their account details and then…they are redirected to the real GTB page, meanwhile their records would have been stolen.
I forwarded the email to the GTB security team, they replied saying they are aware of the phishing attacks and that they have pulled down the particular server the scam I got uses. Apparently they have been pulling down a lot of phishing servers in the last few months. Here is a part of the response I got.
” The number of scams is on the increase and we are having to shut down
fraudulent sites on almost a daily basis. It is likely we have
shutdown the one in your email as well”
I wonder how many other financial institutions in Nigeria are actively monitoring issues around phishing. Its good they all have scam alert on their websites, but what that does is to give the hacker another opportunity to change strategy.
And for those who don’t really understand what all this is about. Read the GTB scam alert for how to protect your money
[Update on this post]
Find below an Interswitch phishing page.
Recession is killing the Sun?
In: Unix
18 Mar 2009Sun is dying….I mean Sun Microsystems, the (once) mighty company behind Solaris, Java, Openoffice and Mysql!
IBM is said to be in talks about acquiring Sun. Some industry watchers are for the deal, while others feel SUN is now so very worthless…
Late last year, SUN cut close to 6000 jobs!
Its so sad when mighty companies collapse under their own weight. The deal is not done yet, so lets hope SUN can weather the storm. But I do hope Sun stays around for some more time… I hope it will pursue a more aggressive Open source strategy. I hope it will come up with its own distribution of Linux?? that is much like a shadow of their dying solaris. Such distribution might be to lure its current Solaris customers (in telecommunication and other industry) who are already looking at migrating to Linux.
But its hardware line? SPARC? Uh! I’m really sorry for Sun. I feel this is a hard lesson for companies that deal in products for the high end segment of any industry. There is always a consistent value in volume business…like Linux for the common x86, the area companies like Red Hat are feeding fat on right now.
Eventually, this same fate befalling Sun would come after companies like SAP that target the very large businesses only. Companies like Salesforce is offering ERP SaaS alternatives to small and medium sized business. Because of the volume sales involved in Salesforce’s business model, I feel it will be around for longer than SAP, except SAP enters the volume segment of ERP too…That would be difficult owing to the mere size of SAP product lines.
Thats why Microsoft is still one of those businesses to bet your money on. They just don’t care, they go after all and every business opportunity, whether is for high end customers or low end customers.
Linux for Mainframes
In: Linux
17 Mar 2009Linux is already in the mainstream. Today, some 15 years after kernel 1.0 was publicly made available, Linux is being used for mission-critical applications. From web servers to Banking applications.
One of the good things about Linux is that it can run confortably well on commodity servers. It can run on almost any hardware. From mobile phones to the least of laptops. This is one of the key selling point for the OS, and the fact that enterprises do not need to buy high end servers to deploy it, as is the case for IBM -AIX and Solaris. Though some of this unixes have been ported to the x86 platform, nothing beats Linux being able to work out of the black, low end box.
I Just read this document from the Robert Frances Group (RFG) about how Linux is being considered for the high end servers that have been dominated by Unix for a long time.
“RFG believes enterprises must consolidate data center servers to enterprise-class servers such as
a mainframe or a Superdome to satisfy the business demands for greater availability,enhanced business continuity, improved flexibility, energy efficiency, cost reductions, and increased productivity. Consolidation and virtualization are mainstream concepts today as is the desire for energy efficiency. As part of these initiatives the notion of moving Linux from x86-based servers to a mainframe Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) or an enterprise server is an option being pursued by many enterprises”
I consider this a good sign for Linux in the Enterprise. Gradually, Linux is becoming the OS that is going have the best of both Worlds. Both on the high end mainframes and the low end x86es. This is bad news for the Unixes that never thought the x86 platform was ready enough for the enterprise.
And today, the IBMs and the SUNs are worried Linux is taking the center stage.
I’m a PC, I’m a MAC, We’re Linux?
In: Linux
15 Mar 2009
The popular campaign for PC and MAC is about to get a Linux run. The Linux foundation has thrown a contest for an entry that would represent the face of Linux. Tagged ‘We are Linux’ bacause of the community nature of Linux as against ‘I am Linux’
According to CNET news “The contest started on January 26, and submissions will be accepted until midnight on March 15. The grand prize? A trip to Tokyo, Japan, to join the Linux Foundation’s Japanese Linux Symposium”
Falling in Love with China
In: General
9 Aug 2008Despite the press being awash of China’s human rights records of recent, particularly as the Olympics was starting, I have a feeling China is getting succesfull at showing its otherside to the world.
The Opening ceremony has been one of the most glamorous. The theme song is cool too. Though you barely pick any other word apart from Chin, Chon, Shin, Shun from the song, the melody is warming. Watching the video, you’d want to doubt if really China is as worse as the media paints it. The human rights arguement are very convincing though and i hope China amends her ways.
Beijing 2008 Olympics theme Song Video
But really, Im begining to fall in love with China. I’m considering travelling to China???? The chances of that happening is like 1 of 100. India shares border with China, but its far up North in places around New Delhi. Im down south of the country, making the chances that slim.
An Indian Wedding Ceremony
In: Experience
26 Jul 2008Have you ever attended an Indian wedding ceremony?
Sure i have. I had some fun yesterday attending the wedding ceremony of a relative of the owner of the house i’m staying in, in India. Since I came to India like a month ago, i havent really had time to look elsewhere other than the exams and training I came all the way from home to do.
It was at night, the colourful event started around 8pm at a well decorated hall, and you can trust Indians with colours, flowers and curtains. Seeing the groom makes you want to marry an Indian so you could be dressed up like one of them.
The groom is a moslem, so not much apart from the prayers. Pictures and well wishes followed the prayers as people moved on to the ‘reception’. Unlike a typical wedding ceremony, no music, no sound system, nothing…just the clicking of cameras, and everybody wishing the groom well with a hug.
The Groom
The event for the bride was at a different venue, i didnt have the opportunity of seeing that, I guess the Indian-moslem wedding tradion has it that the while men and boys celebrate with the groom, the women and girls celebrate with the bride at a different place. i also figured there would be time to bring them together for the final matrimony but we didnt wait for all that as it was getting late into the night…we had to leave. all the same it was so much fun
Food was in excess, eat as much as you can….as you clear your table, you are again served with more, for as long as the party was on…
About this blog
Hi, welcome to my blog. I write about what interests me. Be warned, I'm an occasional blogger. I love Literature, Linux and Music. I do Linux and Open source for a living. That might change soon, depending on how deep the recession goes...:-)(kidding)
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