Microsoft Sinks Teeth Into New Orleans

An anonymous reader writes: "The New Orleans Times-Picayune is reporting that Mayor Nagin is considering letting Microsoft upgrade the city's computers free of charge. The catch? New Orleans eventually has to buy the software and Microsoft gets to use the city as a marketing model to push this on the rest of the country." According to the article, a similar system Microsoft developed for Oklahoma "is expected to expand into accident reporting, video arraignment and automated pawn-shop-ticket tracking." So don't worry about privacy -- it's all taken care of. Open bidding's taken care of too: "Because these services are considered a gift, the city won't have to publicly bid the project." Sounds like dirty pool to me.

Comments

Open Source

[Retype]

Tim O'Reilly said that if we try to force government to use open source Microsoft would do the same. Now you see, they are trying to force their software now, and we don't have a law yet. Here in my state in brazil, you have to give Open Source preference, so here and I think in Germany people are not concearned with this kind of shit. Well but you americans still sentence people to death...

Re:Open Source

[Nicolas MONNET]

Yes, we still put people to death. People who murder, rape, and unfortunately has exhausted the grace of the people.

And it's well known that in the US, justice is fair and not biased towards the rich. For example, OJ Simpson was really acquitted because he was innocent, not because he was rich.

And the poor black dude whose state-appointed lawyer was sleeping while he was sentenced to death in Texas, well, he was really guilty anyway.

I know why I despise christians. They keep moralizing and thumping their bibles crying "thou shalt not kill", but man, when they really want to kill someone, they have the PR.

Re:Open Source

[eddy]

I know why I despise christians. They keep moralizing and thumping their bibles crying "thou shalt not kill", but man, when they really want to kill someone, they have the PR.

Most Paulists will say that 'kill' and 'murder' are two different things, and that their little cookie-cutter love-christ-manufacture was really only against murdering, not killing, which can be Just in the mind of ignorants.