Monopolists Dropped Off At The County Line

An anonymous reader submits: "In this discussion thread members of PLUG (Phoenix Linux Users Group) may have come up with a way to pressure governmental agencies to switch to software other than that from Microsoft. County purchasing policies in Maricopa County, AZ prohibit purchasing from companies or persons convicted under state or federal antitrust statutes. At least one other county, Coconino, that I have checked so far has similar requirements. I think that it's time to make the government follow their own rules and stop spending any more money with criminals."

Comments

i thought

[eric6]

monopolists should be dropped off on baltic avenue. nobody wants that piece o' crap.

PLUG

[Launch]

.... I think it should be noted that the domain that hosts the discusion list they have is mybutt.com. I don't know wheather to laugh or cry.

Re:This seems like a REALLY intelligent law.

[halftrack]

Anyone know how the weather is in Redmond?

I want to take them seriously

[Dr. Awktagon]

But I'm having a little trouble getting past this URL:

http:// pluglist.mybutt.net

I think if I was on a list hosted at pluglist.mybutt, I would expect it to be about something else besides Linux..

Re:I want to take them seriously

[Fone626]

The real address of the mailing list is lists.plug.phoenix.az.us. I setup an alias a while ago of "plug.mybutt.net", and later "pluglist.mybutt.net" mainly because it was incredibly funny. I guess it's been catching on a bit :)
I know people have a hard time remembering the real one and a hard time forgetting plug.mybutt.net :)

Aww, c'mon

[Rogerborg]

It's not practical for us to stop using Microsoftware, because it's simply too pervasive and dominant, and the costs and penalties for switching are too high.

What? What do you mean "That's the definition of an abusive monopoly!"? But it's so hard to switch away from Microsoft. We know that's the point, but, uuh, we don't wanna. We'd have to learn stuff! We're civil servants, that's not in our job description. And don't get us started on the long term career risks of being in the same room where an actual decision gets made to switch from the biggest, safest option... [etc, ad nauseum]

re-post?

[Discopete]

How about a full re-post of the highlights of the discussion thread for those of us behind extremely restrictive firewalls?

pluglist.mybutt.net is blocked as a sex site here.

tke dukes of redmond

[OpenMind(tm)]

Monopolists Dropped Off At The County Line

I'm sorry, but this title makes me think back to the old days of the Dukes of Hazzard. I can just picture Bill and Co. sneaking into the county to sell some copies of Windows, and then hauling ass for the county line to get away from Boss Hog. Then they'd taunt him from the other side of the county line (considerately rendered in white paint).

Of course, at least the Dukes were "good old boys, never meaning no harm".

Re:Skeptical

[ScottKin]

Are you smoking something?

This "decent helpdesk" wouldn't need training in Linux as well? Or, would you propose to fire all of the existing, well-trained helpdesk & support techs and hiring Linux hackers? That would really be an intelligent decision: letting a bunch of Linux hax0rs loose or a corporate LAN, replacing their Windows NT/2k Servers with Linux because "it's so much more '|337'" - which brings productivity to a standstill while everyone tries to figure out how to get to their favorite applications? I can imagine the scenario perfectly:

THE PHONECALL OF DOOM!!!!

User1: I need help!! I went to start using EXCEL, and my EXCEL icon, along with WinWord and Access icons are GONE!!! WHERE THE HELL DID MY EXCEL ICON GO TO!?!?!"

HelpDesk: "Oh, well - we're running Linux now (User1 didn't notice, because someone sneakilly installed Linux with a Win9x-looking theme), so you can't run Excel...but we have this |337 replacement for that money-grubbing Bill Gates' closed-source software abortion called MS-Office - it's called StarOff..."

User1: YOU DID WHAT!?!??! YOU JUST DESTROYED MY ABILITY TO WORK!!!! I'M CALLING THE IT DIRECTOR AND YOU'RE LOSING YOUR JOB!!!

HelpDesk: Well, I'm afraid you can't call him - he was fired along with the rest of the l@mer Winblowz support staff. The new IT director's name is "kInG-H@x0r" - but you can't speak with him right now because he's busy hacking into the Company's PBX syst

If THAT'S the future for US Business, you can say that Finnland sucessfully invaded the US with the aim of destroying it by ruining almost every American business by having their brightest mind (yes, mind) write an Operating System that Hackers would fall in love with because of the sheer geek-appeal of requiring the user to have the equivalent of a BS/BA degree in Computer Science to even make it work right - thereby destroying the IT infrastructure of most American buisnesses and bringing US productivity to a screeching halt.

KILL THE PENGUIN!!!!