[ Thanks to Michael Cole for this link.
]
“Today, thanks to a government-sponsored course that has taught
information-technology skills to more than 100,000 of São
Paulo’s poorest citizens, she knows how to write e-mail, surf the
Internet, and create basic documents.“The fact that so many people like Ms. Pereira are taking the
first tentative steps toward computer literacy is remarkable, but
it is not the reason these classes are newsworthy. The unusual
thing here is that the students are using Linux, an inexpensive,
open-source software platform increasingly popular with
governments, especially in the developing world, who see it as a
cheaper, safer, and more flexible alternative to Microsoft
Windows…”