Open Source Government

Kazakhstan’s #1 Tech Support Rep?

June 7th, 2007

How does one patch KDE under FreeBSD?

Here is an interesting article regarding an upcoming internet interview, with Kazakh president Nazarbayev, his first. From the looks of it, this may end up being Nazarbayev’s toughest dialog to date.

ALMATY (Reuters) - He may be experienced at fielding questions on geopolitics but when the Kazakh president logs on next week for his first Internet news conference he will have to tackle some more bizarre matters.

Just a week before the June 7 webcast, most Kazakhs who wrote in wanted President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s advice on how to set up a piece of complicated software on their computers — as well as his mobile phone number.

The cryptic software question — “How does one patch KDE under FreeBSD?” — appeared to be the most popular query posted on the webcast site, with more that 11,000 people asking for it to be forwarded to the 66-year-old leader.

It especially seems interesting that it appears to be a Digg-like social promotion site that the Kazakh government is using to allow citizens to post questions and community members to vote on their favorite query. Of course, just like Digg (or IdeaStorm), some suggestions are wittier than others:

More than 9,000 people wanted to know “when the authorities will start chopping off civil servants’ tongues for lying to the president in the most outrageous way”, was the portal’s second-most favorite question as of Friday evening.

One user, backed by more than 2,000 votes and identified as Aizhan, asked: “What is your mobile phone number? Can I call you directly?”

Entry Filed under: Kazakhstan, Interview, Digg