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Macs Ostracized on Capitol Hill
jonerik writes "Wired News has an article today on the last Apple holdout on Capitol Hill, Ngozi Pole. Pole, the office and systems administrator at Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-MA) Boston and Washington D.C. offices, argues that the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms (SAA), which makes technology recommendations to senators, wants to make its job as easy as possible by pushing Windows-based applications as much as they can. According to the article, 'The SAA allocates $250,000 per six-year term to each senator. The department had hoped Pole would use the budget to replace aging Macs in Kennedy's offices. Instead, Pole will spend the remainder of his budget through 2003 filling Senator Kennedy's Washington office with new flat-panel iMacs.' Unsurprisingly, the SAA declined to comment."
I am the head of the custom applications department at a 100-person company. I am also the department's sole employee, so I can call myself anything I want :-).
When I was first employed, we had a Windows-based system that did contact management, a clunky order entry system used only by clerks, and a half-done cold fusion application that was supposed to be used for online ordering, but in practice simply did not work. (It took 4 seconds to search for a part).
I was hired to shepherd the online ordering application to completion, but I quickly realized that you could use one for internal ordering as well. So I rewrote it in Linux, made it efficient, and added design features so both salespeople and customers could easily enter orders. But the contact management system was still not working well, and it integrated poorly with the new ordering system.
So I eventally convinced the company to bite the bullet; I wrote a contact management system for the salespeople that was browser-based and (of course) integrated perfectly with the online ordering system. So now salespeople have their contact management and ordering done with one integrated system that works very well.
Unfortunately our IT person (who handles the Windows machines) can't be convinced to switch away. But all they do is run a browser anyway, so his administrative load is significantly reduced. They also use Outlook for email, but that was his choice, not mine.
So now we have mainly happy employees running a system that's based on Linux and can be updated and improved continuously without strain. Believe me, I couldn't have single-handedly developed the same thing under Windows. It could have been done, but it would have taken a lot more time and a lot of help. (Can you imagine installing the silly thing on 70-odd PCs?)
In short, a browser-based application is faster to develop, more efficient to deploy, and just plain works better than what Microsoft is pushing. And I'm proud to say I haven't used one piece of Microsoft software to develop the system - it's strictly gcc, perl, mySQL and a little PHP.
I may be prejudiced - heck, I am, of course - but browser-based software using a Linux back end just plain works. There's no reason in the world not to use it, and it has the nice bonus of being compatible with any platform on the planet - I've used it with Linux, MacOS 9, MacOS X, and even an SGI.
And oh yes -- Windows, too.
D
boxen
The word is boxes. (No, I don't care what it says in the jargon file) Websters has the following to say about boxen:
Made of boxwood; pertaining to, or resembling, the box
I.E. It's not the plural of anything.
I'm even going to waste karma posting this at +2, since the word bothers me so much. (Irrational, I know)
That would be true for general usage. But, obviously, for the specific jargon of *nix geeks, the word "boxen" is the correct word to use when referring to more than one computer.
Subcultures often invent or redefine words in ways that the general culture would fine confusing. That's part of what defines a subculture.
So, if you want to be part of a given subculture, you have to learn its jargon. That's just the way it is (and appropriately so).