The Icebrakers

Finally it looks like the project in Macedonia to bring cheap internet connection to 95% of its people and computer labs to all of its schools is becoming reality.

The project started with computers donated by China (diplomatic token to woo them away from Taiwan, I guess) and free software based on Ubuntu Linux. Since then Microsoft jumped in and donated 6,000 free licenses to keep Macedonia away from pesky free software.

Today, 300,000 children and students benefit from free internet access and USAid recently agreed to expand the project to bring 50 municipalities online in remote rural areas.

On another matter dear to my heart, apparently there are not many Albanians of Macedonia, if any, contributing to Wikipedia in Macedonian. There aren’t many of them in the one in Albanian either, but it’s a pity that such a great tool is not used for interethnic communication and agreement on key historical events for the country.

Hello, guys and girls, I would like to invite those of you who speak Macedonian to contribute to the [Macedonian language Wikipedia http://mk.wikipedia.org/] and please feel free to insert your point of view or the appropriate data wherever you find it necessary. I would very kindly ask you to obey the Rules of Wikipedia and avoid conflict, and the same we will try to do too, although I cannot promise it will be easy for any side. We would gladly contribute to the Albanian version too, but unfortunately none of us speaks Albanian. My nick is Комита, I speek good English and I am willing to listen to your arguments. Please, feel invited.

Another dude breaks down and admits that he doesn’t speak any Albanian and doesn’t actually have any Albanian friend. I even sensed a feeling of embarrassment in his reflection that he is over 20 but doesn’t know a single Albanian from across the Vardar. These guys are supposed to be the educated and open-minded ones. You can always guess that with the rednecks away from Skopje the situation is much worse. Let’s hope that now that Macedonians and Albanians have cheap internet, they will use it to talk to each other more often.