"I cannot cease to thank you for using your time and skills to help us African NGOs, we cannot quantify your contributions." |
M. Tadros - member of
An initiative of the UN Alliance of Civilizations
Cloud computing and SaaS
At Saturday March 22nd, 2010 on Libre Planet, Richard Stallman announced the publication of an essay on software as a service (SaaS). By my count, it is his first published piece on the subject since Stallman’s controversial comments on GMail a year and a half ago. Readers of this blog will all be interested in reading the new essay if they haven’t already already done so.
In his article, Stallman defines SaaS as, “a network server that does certain computing tasks … then invites users to do their computing on that server.” His basic message is simple: users should reject SaaS network services because SaaS users are inherently disempowered and out of control. Indeed, users should reject SaaS even if a service is implemented using free software!
Communication Rights: Trends to watch in 2010 & the Digital Due Process initiative
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Green IT?
"It takes 1,752 kWh per year to maintain a Second Life avatar." Nikolas Karr [quoted in 7 things to know about Green IT] Green IT simply means using IT in an energy efficient way that is environmentally friendly and sustainable and that is also socially responsible. It has been noted that "when you add up all of information and communication technology's energy footprint -- the increasing need for computational power, data storage and communications -- it amounts to about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, growing to 3 percent by 2020 [The State of Green Business report 2010]. |
While there are trends to watch in terms of advancement in the computer industry and cloud computing, changing the way we interact with our technology, civil society needs to be vigilant about its communication rights. The 
Marlyn Tadros, PhD
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