[Archives]
Recent Entries
How’s your Anglophone reception?
Hollywood raises the bar on ethnic authenticity
Culture is a minefield. Tread carefully.
Five words that should be imported into English
The blogosphere across different hemispheres
What’s the meaning of green in Greenland?
Lost in Translation: Strange signs from abroad
When your translator is truly checked out…
Beware of Slippy: For Shanghai, Chinglish is no laughing matter
Lost in Translation: Verizon Wireless
How well do you know your target market?
Is Twitter ready to go global?
In India, Microsoft and Google go local in a big way
It’s Miller Time in North Korea
Global road warriors: learn to fit it all in one bag
In China: All atwitter about microblogging
Does Crowdsourcing have a Place in the Translation Industry?
The Era of Open Standards is here
Translation Tools Without Borders
Content Convergence: Come Together Write Now
Beijing’s Olympic Task: Serving Up Gold-Medal English
India considers its own OS
By Prisma News
Category:
Times of India reports that the Indian government is looking into creating a home-grown operating system (presumably an OS that would serve both personal and commercial needs). This doesn’t appear to be a matter related to spoken languages, because as we’ve reported both Microsoft and Google are working hard to localize their software. Rather, the effort is being framed as a security measure.
“The overwhelming belief among government bosses is that an indigenous low-grade, but clean, software could nix the chances of foreign states infiltrating the computers of key Indian establishments and compromising the country’s security.”
While this initiative may appeal to Indian patriots, tech observers don’t seem to regard the move highly. “A fool’s errand” is how one commenter described it on the popular blog BoingBoing, questioning the feasibility of creating an OS from scratch. Another commenter noted:
“The German military was trying to have themselves a ‘safe’ & ‘unified’ hardware/software infrastructure (safety by obscurity, to some degree - while they wanted to be able to interface NATO partners, they also wanted their very own standards in just about everything else. The project cost 10 billion Euros, and was decreed an ‘abject failure’ just a few weeks ago.”
Times of India: Govt to develop own operating system
(via BoingBoing)
