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

OH HA HA HA HA HA HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

WooHoo you some kinda funny!

My pants are brown! HAHAHAHAHA!

As usual, Slashdot doesnt know anything

[t0ny]

I work for a local government in a major city. I can say that what MS is proposing sounds like a great thing. If you knew what you were talking about, you would know how hard it is not just to get money for *anything*, but especially IT stuff (and especially x10 IT stuff for security). Reasons we use MS- they are reliable, they have great support, and you dont have to hire either a 12 year old kid or a bullshitter consultant to support their stuff (like is the case with linux). Face facts, there arent enough qualified linux people to go around, while there are millions of *qualified* MS people; this doesnt mean every MSCE knows what they are doing, but there are definitely more qualified MS people than Linux people.
ALSO, if MS is willing to do the work and set up New Orleans as a model of what can be done, good for them. I hope their plan works out well. There are always lots of things we would *like* to get done, but there is only so much time and so many resources. For MS to do this is really good of them; I dont see Debian going to a major city and saying they will hook them up. Do you?