Showing posts with label georgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label georgia. Show all posts

07 August 2009

The Most Hated Man Online?

Well, not quite, but it's clear somebody really dislikes the Twitter user @cyxymu: it seems that the coordinated attack on Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal were to silence him:

A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.

The blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu," (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia) had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News.

"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," Kelly said. "We're actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can."

Sounds pretty incredible, but the chap himself confirms it on his Twitter account:

да, меня ДДоСили

which roughly means "yup, I was DDoS'd", and he also opines:

this hackers was from Russian KGB

Supporting this view is the fact that his LiveJournal blog is still unreachable.

Fascinating, of course, to see how events in the Caucasus - today's the first anniversary of the ill-advised attack of Georgia on South Ossetia, and Russia's gleeful counter-attack on Georgia - reach and affect even global online worlds like Twitter and Facebook. Interesting times.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca.

15 May 2009

Georgia Learns Why Open Source is Better

Georgia has some concerns about closed-source code:

Kaspersky anti-virus, one of the most popular software programmes worldwide, has unofficially been declared a spy programme in Georgia. State organizations are avoiding installing Kaspersky, afraid of information leaks.

“The reason is that Kaspersky anti-virus is projected by Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab, who is of Russian origin. Officials from the Ministry of Defence are afraid that with the help of Kaspersky software it will be possible for the leak of confidential news to occur,” George Kofenlu, Product Manager of UGT, told The FINANCIAL.

Maybe they'd like to start using ClamWin: free and open to scrutiny.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

31 January 2008

Why Developing Nations Love Free Software

How about for these reasons?

- In Georgia, most library management systems are available in English or Russian… any student of eastern European politics will understand why Georgians don’t want to use a Russian-language tool. Open software can be translated and adapted into different languages.

In Bhutan, there’s a great desire to preserve the local language - Dzonghka - against the encroachment of Mandarin Chinese. Local authorities wanted a Dzonghka version of Windows, and raised some money to demonstrate a market for the software, but weren’t able to persuade Microsoft to create the product. But it wasn’t difficult to localize Linux, and there’s now Dzongkha Linux, with support for Open Office, GAIM, Mozilla and other key pieces of software.

- There’s a strong desire in developing world libraries to put digital collections online… which suprises many library professionals in the developed world, as they’re just moving towards digital collections now. Sadler quotes a Ghanaian librarian: “Students in Ghana can view artifacts from Britain more easily tha they can artifacts from their own heritage.” Open source software systems like Greenstone are allowing libraries to scan and preseve documents and share them online. There’s a hope in the future for a pan-African digital library which will allow libraries across the continent to share their resources.