

A Linux proud history – 15 years ago and the Brazilian ATM - rbanffy
http://www.heliocastro.info/?p=187

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th0br0
Yikes. Another fake-scrolling page that makes you unable to scroll at all with
a good adblocker...

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ryanlol
I don't think your adblocker is very good if it blocks the scrolling code
(which isn't an ad).

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facorreia
It's interesting how in the screenshot the message has 3 letters missing. They
were supposed to be the accented letters "Á" and "É", but they were replaced
with spaces by the GUI.

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TheRealWatson
Yay, Linux!

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icebraining
Not really, Linux supported them just fine; it's probably a problem with the
actual application.

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emersonrsantos
Brazilians use Linux in commercial/government IT projects like this one to
avoid licensing software, rather than to contribute to open-source software.
General public is completely unaware of Linux and GNU.

I worked as a Linux for enterprise teacher in 1998 and I see today that the
business interest on open-source didn't took off as it did in almost every
country out there.

Also, Brazil always lacked a strong hacking and programming community, and
this is hurting the country technological development.

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dhekir
Hardware cost and availability is definitely a factor: even a Raspberry Pi is
ridiculously expensive. Without disposable hardware to try things "just for
fun" (and without fearing that, if you break it, it will take lots of
time/money to get another one), the hacking mindset is much harder to develop.

One of the best (and sometimes only) way to obtain reasonably-priced hardware
is to import things from DealExtreme and hope that customs won't block it. If
all goes well, you just have a 30-day (at best) lead time between wanting to
try something and actually being able to do it.

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kbar13
Giant headers are :( [http://imgur.com/bT77LeK](http://imgur.com/bT77LeK)

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ricardobeat
Nice story. I was a client of Banrisul at the time, and remember being
(happily) surprised by the penguin one day. Was probably the first time I ever
saw anything 'powered by linux' in public.

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ananas1212
The company that sponsored that project is known for giving it's employees
really poor job conditions. I'm amazed they are still alive and didn't broke
due to the amount of lawsuits.

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rbanffy
Brazilian IT companies have, in general, a bad reputation. More than a decade
ago, when this happened, the bad reputation was very well deserved (I know
nothing about the company mentioned, BTW). Even today, few companies pay
overtime and most of them prefer to hire people as if they were small
companies because that allows them to avoid paying what they'd have to in
accordance to local labor laws (and allows them a higher "salary").

Of course, judges see through this, but until someone gets a favorable
judgement, often many years have passed.

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outworlder
The bad reputation is mostly well deserved, even to this day.

That said, there are nice companies out there. Just forget all "software-
factory" types (specially the ones who actually call themselves that, or that
won "great place to work" awards).

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sdsk8
As a brazilian IT worker i agree with all of that, working in IT here in
brazil is a constant pain in the ass.

