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EU Studies Linux Migration
LeftOfCentre writes "The Register reports that the European Commision, the executive arm of the 380 million population European Union, has decided to spend 250,000 Euros on studying how government computers in EU states could be migrated to Linux and open source."
I bet 100 that Microsoft or similar companies will put a lot more than 250'000 into a study _against_ a Linux Migration as we've seen quite a lot in the past.
However, many persons in the EU are aware of the perils of depending upon a single vendor and their propietary formats, and also how ill-served we are when pushing documents around between PCs configured for different languages.
Just wait until it flies back north, then get out the hunting rifles.
Stop the presses, 250,000 euros. :)
Microsoft's next step: Economic brutality to devalue the euro, decreasing the amount of research they can accomplish.
hehehe. jeez its probably almost true.
Why stick up for big business?
Migrating computers is easy enough - the hard part is migrating users.
As much as I hate M$ this will eventually impact American jobs and world dominance right?
Or is M$ already engineered in India like all software seems to be headed?
Watch as the Elegant Linux penguins migrate from Finland down into central Europe for the harsh winter ahead. Linux Penguins are unusual as the only northen hemisphere penguins in the wild, this documentary shows they unusual mating dances and how they manage to move their young thousands of miles by transporting them as small ISO images.
Truely one of natures great wonders.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I think more and more business' will be considering this, faced with the soaring costs and big-brother-esque EULA clauses that go hand in hand with the likes of windows/office etc. Maybe this will cause the number of jobs in the intustry to soar, esp regarding Linux know-how. All in all this seems to be a good thing :)
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
This is the perfect place for open-source software in the government, compared to, say, branches of the armed forces.
Even though the transititon is probably more of a money issue than an advocacy one, the pyramid effect might just trickle down and help us out in the long run, if they're satisfied with Linux desktops. Who says the government won't pitch in?
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
The EU has no love are large US Companies, they are after all the competition. There is less lobbying in the EU (though loads of corruption) and at the end of the day do you think that the French, Germans, Italians, Spanish etc etc would prefer to see a US Monopoly or something else ?
Or put it another way. If MS had been French, the DoJ would have remedied them out of existence by now.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Take that.
Does anyone else get the impression that this will be yet another area where, yet again, Europe is going to be WAY out in front of the US. Europe and progressive social policy (or, if you live there, I guess you'd just call it "social policy" :) ) are practically synonymous and the US is once again made to look like a country run by bankers... Government is a public institution. Therefore, in my mind, it makes perfect sense for a government (a democratic one at least) to setup it's IT infrastructure based around a platform created by the people for the people rather than a platform that lines the pockets of a monlithic corporation (and, in this case, a foreign one at that).
Chris
in a world of american companies trying to force the world to use their software america created the FSF.
France is helping to create a Europe that doesn't require MS's permission to go to the washroom.
The commission is forcing no one. It gives recommendations that the states of the new Europe take or reject based on wether or not it gives them advantages.
Grow up.
As much as I hate M$ this will eventually impact American jobs and world dominance right?
That's right. I suggest the best approach for America is to try to stifle Open Source and other such innovations. After all, stifling innovations is what made America great.
(Sarcasm!)
did anyone take MS paid studies seriously?
I know most European nations are generally socialist at their core and tax their citizens quite heavily. Is a migration to Linux going to mean lower cost of government operation and lower taxes? Or is the money that they save just going to go to some other bloated government program?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
do penguins fly?
Best Slashdot Co
I know what, or rather whom, this person is talking about. There's this guy that, to put it lightly, frequents the /. discussion boards. He basically post meaningless, thoughtless stuff to: /. (he has like 1500 or something)
1) get attention
2) see how many posts he can get on
He basically fills the boards with noise. Anyway, it's a little disturbing that this poster actually took the time to write this, but I can't say that I don't agree with him.
Spending money to find out how to stop spending money...
Granted, you won't find a professional anything in the world who will invest money without research, but it still seems funny to make a big annoucement about spending to reduce spending.
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
is 250,000 Euro really needed to educate and research on migration from Windows to Linux? Personally, but I know this will not happen, I would take advantage of resources on the Internet (i heart google :-)) based on migration for the systems and the users. Of course, later on, the money can be used to train users how to use linux, but with KDE 3.0 and so many more easier window managers and distributions popping (LibraNet a personal favorite for me).. it really won't be too difficult to install it and use it. There would be no reason for them to even use the console.
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
The UK government recently (relatively) spent a lot of money with microsoft to introduce a "gateway" system for several things for use by the UK population (I dont know if it is implemented, but a good example is tax returns)
I wonder if how to solve "initiatives" like that will be taken into consideration - since afaik there is no OSS solution for the existing implementation, and their gateway would have to be rethought/designed/implemented to move to OSS
When governments and large corporations use Free Software, the chances of Palladium and other "Digital Restrictions Management" software being able to work against Free Software are very low, meaning that we as individuals maintain more of our software freedom. Hardware manufacturers cannot afford to lose the whole EU as clientele even if Microsoft can.
Whitin a Union (speccially the Comission) that spends milions with employes (read friends of politicians) and translators that don't do nothing (litteraly) >> spending ï½ 250 thousand is just a joke to shut up many of the European free software advocates.
Would this be an informed opinion..?
>Al Qaeda isn't running a terror campaign in the Europe either.
You really don't think so? Mmmh, ok then, if you really want to keep your head in the sand, don't let me stop you.
(free clue: the vatican is in europe, you really don't think that's going to be a target some day?)
I guess this is good news. For a start, it is quite important to us European what the EU recommends. A well-funded, unbiased and "robust" study of Linux and free software should be welcomed. To start with, it will provide Linux with plenty of limelight. It will also point out things which need to be sorted out, and it will give more clout to people in European (or elsewhere) organisations that need pretty PDF documents with "this page is left blank intentionally" in order to be convinced. :-)
It would be great if this study actually comes up with reasonable comments and maybe a HOWTO. If you speak Spanish, you can see what I guess is the desired output of this project (as applied to one of Spain's ministeries) here.
Also, note that this is mainly a desktop study, not a server or file format study (the EU has already carred out a number of these in the past). So someone is taking Linux seriously!
...They could just go ahead and DO it. No study required...
I am alone, yet I also surf the universal backwash of undifferentiated Being, which is LOVE.
You forgot:
3. Profit
they resigned because of corruption charges against 3 commission members. The *entire* council resigned, and was replaced by new people. How's that for accountability?
Seen any U.S. politicians resign lately?
250,000 doesn't seem much to me for a task this size.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
3. Profit!!!
Oh, no! AAAARRRRRGHHHHHH!!!! *splat*
For all I care, all the religious institutions can fight each other to extinction. It might actually bring us closer to the world peace.
That they've only budgeted 250,000 euros for a study really shows that they are complacent with a Microsoft dominated IT scheme. That rather insignificant amount of money could easily be blown on six months of a consultant's time and stock research reports from Jupiter, Ovum, and Gartner.
I'm glad to see this happening.
I've been pretty turned off by some of the sales practices that I have seen by large software companies. I think that it makes much more sense for governments to pool their resources and develop free software instead of licensing commercial packages.
MS licensing fees are not unreasonable but they do add up when you are talking about so many users. At least I haven't seen them selling 2 licenses for every govt employee.
A couple of years ago, an Oracle reseller sold the state of CA more licenses than they had users to use. I've seen it happen with other software companies. I'd love to see CA move to an open source database and tell Oracle to kiss their butts. It would serve them right.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Wouldn't Linux waddle or swim in migration?
Those gnomes had it all figured out, eh?
you've got no clue, do you? how the hell else is the research going to get funded?
repeat after me: "the world of Harry Potter is not real."
So a valid point about american business is a "flamebait", while a snideful, untrue and uneducated remark about the Euro currency (first post) being worth 25 cents and not worthy of being compared to the mighty dollar is "funny"?
The spreading american jealousy I find more funny.
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
You know, I'm normally a fairly reasonable person as I hope my posting record will support.
Despite that however, would anyone mind if I personally came over and strung up the next person to post a "3. Profit!" mail? Anyone...?
No. Didn't think anyone would mind.
Cheers,
Ian
I think I might have a small reason to complain.
And my mother might not like it too much either if you killed me for one bad joke.
Last I checked the law might care too.
That sounds a lot like the Sun Ray. I can't find any info GCI from Taiwan (those who can read Chinese could look here to see if GCI==gci.com.tw. It looks like an ordinary retailer.) Does GCI sell Sun Rays, or do they have a new solution?
US $467-per-box seems surprisingly high (conversion by xe.com/ucc/) for a thin client. Thin clients (at least the ones I've seen) are usually built around stripped-down architectures -- essentially, a USB controller, a video card, a NIC, and the minimum that's needed to tie them together. Then again, if you toss in the price of an LCD monitor (space concerns) and a smart card reader, $467 may be reasonable.
Does anyone know what GCI sells? The Oracle of Google doesn't reveal anything about GCI and "smart card" or "thin client". (It does reveal a page saying that there is a "ANSWER GCI LTD", originally from Taiwan, in Telford, but supplies no details beyond the fact that they're in "computer sales.") If they're a reseller, reselling thin clients, I would be intrigued to discover which ones.
Actually OSS has been subject to several studies from one or the other eu comission. There are some strong promotors for OSS like Germany and several special interest groups which include some distros and smaller OSS companies.
;-)
Further more, the recent cooling down of relations between the US and Germany inflicted fear upon several EU parliament members who suggest that it would be wise to look into OSS software to make sure the EU is not too depending on software of American origin.
I can understand their sentiment given the alleged fact that information aquired through echelon was abused to give American companies an advantage. So they are afraid that using "American" software could give them the same problems. Aside from the fact that the EU too does not like vendor lock-in there is also a growing resentment of how Microsoft is going about it's bussiness without even the slightest hesitation because of it's legal battles and the ongoing investigation of it's practices by the EU.
Besides.. they'd rather spend all that money they could save on licensing costs on farming subsidies anyway
Well...if you're being picky about it...
And my mother might not like it too much either if you killed me for one bad joke.
Err...
Last I checked the law might care too
Detail. Trivia...
Oh all right then, since you came back to fight your corner so nicely I'll let you off :-). But please, fifty Profit! jokes an article is slowly turning me psychotic...
Cheers,
Ian
SOLDIER #1: Are you suggesting linux migrates?
ARTHUR: Not at all. It could be carried.
SOLDIER #1: What? A swallow carrying linux?
ARTHUR: It could grip it by the shrink wrap!
SOLDIER #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound linux distribution.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
say 150k in sterling so enough to pay for a co-ordinator, 2 researchers, a tiny office and some kit for one year.
want to imagine what the entire EU pays to microsoft each year right now?
why does it cost them 250 big ones? why don't they just download it?
but what they will have to contend the most is the migration of users to a new way do doing things in the linux os and any and all the applications that will run on it.
I work for a large City (municipal) government and let me tell you just changing from windows 95 to windows 2000 caused chaos and havoc in my department. There are ppl here that worked for the city for more than 30 years and are so bloody entrenched in doing things their own way it is unbelievable.
Now the EU has a good chance of migrating since (and this an assumption) the workers didn't have much time to get set in MS way of doing things
a) 200,000 Euro's is chump change--holding a conference or two for a couple dozen people to study/debate the matter would eat up most of that
b) you acknowledge that no professional would invest money without research, so what, you're suggesting that government should be run by amateurs?
c) supposing we accept your notion that they shouldn't spend any money on it, how, precisely do you propose to develop the arguement for adopting OSS at the government level?
If the EU embraces TCPA and Linux at the same time, do you think they will tolerate a TCPA platform that does not play fair with Linux?
Oh absolutely! Smashing British Rail into smithereens and a bankrupt infrastructure company was a master stroke.
Where else in Europe can you still get a sense of danger and adventure when riding the train?
Ah nostalgia: The service level and efficiency of what remains from the English rail system is now comparable with the one in Bulgaria in the 50s.
Yeah, your Ms. Thatcher sure had a clue...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Most users have so little training in using computers, the hardest thing for them to learn in migrating to linux is to only single-click the desktop icons, and to give it a second because the browser isn't 90% pre-load during boot-up. My estimate is power-users will adapt quickly, and most of the rest will hardly notice. Teach them how to copy and paste and change screen res on the fly and most people will think Linux is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You didn't answer the question.
>all the religious institutions can fight each other to extinction. It might actually bring us closer to the world peace.
Ah! Eurologic at work. Love that "Peace == War" style.
only 17% Not only is 17% a whole hell of a lot, but isn't even the total cost. When you take into account benefits for retired soldiers and their spouse's benefits it grows even larger. We spend more on just the Veterans Affairs office than Germany spends on it's entire military. We could afford to spend 2-3% and still feel very safe. If they cut that budget they could lower payroll taxes, pay the federal public dept, pay back the dept to Social Security, and send a paltry 30 billion to OSS a year. In 40-50 years when the baby boomers start to drop, they might even have a little left over to refinance some of the State and Local debt at inflationary rates or even shock lower taxes in for the long term. If we had any sense we'd try to reform the UN (more democratic, voting bonus for democratically elected representitive, elimination of the veto, etc.) and sell parts of our offensive military to them to police the Bosnias and Rwandas of the world.
1. Kill people for bad jokes
2. Letting them turn you psychotic
3.
4. Pro...
No, I just don't have the heart.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Users are much easier to move. My wife has had no problems using either Red Hat or Debian systems running Gnome, KDE and Window Maker. The only desktop that really makes itself difficult to master is Microsoft. The less they actually do the easier they are to migrate. Those that do more might complain at first as they will require the most support getting their work out and much will be lost but that should not last long. They will quickly realize the power Linux has to offer them and wonder how they ever tollerated the confines of comercial software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I sure hope it doesn't turn into a migraine in stead of migrate.
"It usualy starts with some screaming. Afterwards there is much running around."
looks like somebody needs a generous donation of software and equipment from microsoft!
Whenever someone has done a poor choice and implemented part or all business logic somewhere proprietary, migrating becomes hell. One example would be databases where you rely heavily on the procedural language that comes with your particular RDBMS. Another example would be use of macros in MS Office products.
Sure, if you have all your systems implemented in a Java-based GUI or as a webapp, then you're in luck. Otherwise, tough luck.
Stop the brainwash
They don't have much money but they have a huge need for computers, so Linux is their best choice.
And they are going to enter EU pretty soon.
I would agree with your statement. I am also European, from Spain, but currently living in the USA. Here, I am paying around 30% of my salary with no benefits (I do not include here the health insurance, vacations, umployment insurance, etc.). With the same level of salary, in Spain I would be paying around 35% but getting many more benefits that here I cannot even think about.
Ah ha! You can't think about the benefits because the CIA is controlling your mind, and so therefore you don't miss those benefits!
Ok, let's put down the Linux fanboy suit, and look more deeply at this.
EU is (slowly) getting out of the shadow of the former superpower. Euro, 9/11, New Economy burst, US & Japan economic crisis, all "helped" the Union to find back their unity, identity, pride and strength.
I won't debate the good or bad of these events, I'm not up to it.
But, I'd like to point out that in such "self awareness" phenomenon, the last thing you'd want to concede to your competitors is to have one of their major companies practically rule the information and communication infrastructure of your own national system(s).
Would any american citizen rather have all of their phone lines be run by a German monopolistic private company? Or all of their power plants run by a French monopolistic private company? Or all of their run by monopolistic private company?
So why so many arms thrown up when we Europeans start looking around for other suppliers of (most of) our government and in the end strategic IT infrastructure?
I believe if we in the EU had a powerhouse software firm similar in size to M$, we'd be already switched over it. Proprietary or not, it'd not matter (much) from a strategic point of view.
Cost is a factor, but not as much as putting your own computer-related balls in the hands of a private company of an allied-but-competing country.
One such example is KDE. I like KDE a lot, but it is still immature compared to Windows/Office. If only there was a company with full of programmers who work continously on KDE, then we would have a really competitive application.
Also more integration is neeeded. X Window is not the real answer for that particular job. It is designed to be way too strong. User interface is the number one issue.
I use Linux at job, but at home, it is Windows. When I think about it, Linux would cost me too much time if I had used it. For productivity and fun Windows is still way ahead of Linux.
we've got windows ex-pee and office ex-pee at university. It's shit. I hate it. windows ex-pee is..soo..s.l..o....w...it takes a full 10 seconds for the start menu to appear. I hate the way i can't configure anything my way "because i don't have permissions". I hate those big ugly icons that appear in the left on each folder. then when i get rid of them by using the "list" option, they re-appear the next time i log on. i hate it i hate it i hate it. and that green and blue task bar...Lordy! it looks like the teletubbies have gotten their hands on it. yuk.i hate it. fortunately, all the PC's are dual bootable, and have redhat installed as well...phew!
-- Fuck Beta
The biggest anti competition organization on earth, the EU. Is still chasing that socialist dream. The EU will get its first Linux box up and running about the same time the EU implodes from its collective silliness. The EU is about as relevant to Linux and the open source movement as, to borrow a phrase, bicycles are to fish.
Ya, your country is just so progressive that in a 1000 years you haven't thrown off the thugs who invade you in 1066. They still run and control the whole country.
I have never meet a 'british' person unless they are related to your ruling mafia.
I have met a lot of English, Scotts and Welsh.
Your country is awesome, yes I love it. However, don't ignore your history of tyranny and explotation of first your own people and then everyone else.
Eurologic at work. Love that "Peace == War" style.
You might want to pay more attention to your own President, dipshit. I think you'll find that Peace == War is exactly the bullshit the Head Retard of the United States has been spewing for the past couple of months.
Hey, dimwit - free as in beer doesn't mean free as in integration, as in development, as in all supporting software being free, as in support.
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
This is a true story. I think it illustrates nicely how fucked up the privatisation of the railways is.
At Bristol Temple Meads station, the clocks are currently still running on British Summer Time. Although the clocks are all run from a single master clock, the master clock is housed in a building which is owned by Railtrack, not First Great Western (FGW run the station itself). The First Great Western staff do not have access to the Railtrack building, and Railtrack have not sent anybody to the station to set the clocks back.
Its a wonder that trains arn't smashing head on into each other at every available opurtunity.
Muslims have ideological reasons for ignoring their utter dependence on American technology, but Europeans probably have more benign ones- namely, American technological dominance is so pronounced (50%+ of the scientific Nobel Prizes each year go to Americans or scientists working at American universities) that it becomes taken for granted, kind of like the air you breath.
But if it weren't for America's unprogressive social policies many of the technologies the world takes for granted would not exist, such as new drug treatments (would AIDs cocktails exist right now without America's for-profit health industry making new research profitable?), computer hardware & software (the Internet was created for the American Department of Defense, almost all new chips are designed by American hardware firms, the modern computer GUI was developed by Xerox... yada, yada, yada).
So please have some perspective about where all your technological goodies come from. And as a parting shot I'd just like to point out all the foolishness that's been committed recently in the name of progress. During the '70's, for example, it was hip to be a Maosist and in case you think only a minority of people fell for this ideological dead-end why did the Beatles have to warn against it in the choruses of one of their songs?
[The] European Union, has decided to spend 250,000 Euros on studying how government computers in EU states could be migrated to Linux....
:)
Heck, why don't they just spend the quarter million on actually doing the migration. You could probably get most of it done for that....
(This was meant to be funny, not a troll.)
moto411.com
I think the CIA think doesn't work on me, because I am well aware of how little I am getting for all the money I pay in taxes ;-)
Not that I give a rat's ass about MS's EULA's, but j0n katz.... Yes, you - j0n katz at 1313 Mockingbird Ln in Tennessee.... You violated the EULA by posting that document on your own website.
:)
Here, look:
NOTICE SPECIFIC TO DOCUMENTS AVAILABLE ON THIS WEBSITE
Permission to use Documents (such as white papers, press releases, datasheets and FAQs) from this server ("Server") is granted, provided (yada yada...) (2) use of such Documents from this Server is for informational and non-commercial or personal use only and will not be copied or posted on any network computer or broadcast in any media, and...Violators will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible.
Good god man, you swiped the document including the link back to the TOS. At least delete the footer shit when you thieve.
Also, notice in that footer that the document was created December 99, last review date of Oct 10, 2002. Interesting.
Have a nice day
The commision does not have "all the power". While they have the power to present proposals, the power to approve or deny those proposals are completely in the hands of the European Parliament and the Council (member states).
Does anyone else get the impression that this will be yet another area where, yet again, corporate america is already WAY out in front of socialist Europe governments ? (or, if you live here, I guess you'd just call Corporate America "business" :) )
IBM made Linux adoption one of its top goals a few years ago and announce a billion dollar Linux budget. HP is in there also, having hired Bruce Perens, and hell, the great Linus himself was hired out of Europe by Corporate America. Intel was early with a Linux port to Itanium. Google runs on it. American corporations fab almost all CPUs on which Linux runs.
Therefore, in my mind, it makes perfect sense for a business (a private one at least) to setup it's IT infrastructure based around a platform created by volunteer programmers for any individual or institition willing to accept the terms of the GPL. Its a smart corporate strategy which lowers costs by reducing software licensing fees.
Europe is once again made look like a continent run by catch-up socialist regulators, who follow in distant pursuit of trends set by US corporations.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
1. Opportunity (People get annoyed by people spamming "3. Profit!")
2. Hard Work (You start stringing up people who post "3. Profit!")
3. Profit! (Grateful Slashdotters send massive amounts of money to fund your efforts.)
Next step: A Beowulf cluster of these!
I find it funny that a page "helping" people de-install linux (the 'bashdot.org' link in your article) is shown in a format that gets garbled on browsers people are likely to be using under linux (I tried with mozilla, and it ended up writing lines of text on top of each other into a scribbly black mess. making much of it unreadable.) Now, I realize Mozilla has had html compliance before so I double-checked the site against w3.org's validator, and it generates about 100 errors - andI tried all the version of html the page had, XHTML, HTML4.01 both transitional and strict), HTML 3.2, HTML 2.0 - They all said it was messed up. (what confused mozilla is the plethora of cases where a closing tag exists for which there was no opening tag (it has a about four times, for example.)
And it's not even that complicated a page. It's just one page with some numbered lists and some paragraphs and bullet points and header size changes. All generic simple stuff that it shouldn't be getting wrong.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Why on GAWD's green Earth would anyone with a high level of intellect want to FIGHT for a government job? Jesus Christ. Talk about a waste of resources. Smart people deserve high wages, fame, and or fortune, not a life of drudgery serving the unwashed masses!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Finally they managed to think about the beautiful Open Source sollutions... instead of the M$ sollutions... I hope that the Belgian government (here) will also give a good move to Linux ;-)
I'm a proud Linux (NERD) and i know its a great adaptation to move from Windaz to Linux... but if you try, you're in ;P
Now, you might have gotten the idea that I like labor unions from the above rant. I DON'T. Let me make that perfectly clear. I'm just trying to point out how the reason they are bad is IDENTICAL to the reason a monopoly company is bad, for the hard of thinking who seem to believe it's impossible for a company to do any wrong in a free market.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
For the record, the previous comment was inspired by an example from Marvin Minsky illustrating what is known in AI as the qualification problem.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
Lucky I can't read that in Linux then, what with the text all overlapping in Mozilla... :-)
That was a joke son. -- F. Leghorn
Finally they managed to think about the beautiful Open Source sollutions... instead of the M$ sollutions... I hope that the Belgian government (here) will also give a good move to Linux ;-) I'm a proud Linux (NERD) and i know its a great adaptation to move from Windaz to Linux... but if you try, you're in ;P
As it looks, the EU remains the last chance to break the MS monopoly on computing that it already has worldwide. Computing is nowadays needed by everyone, everywhere, and no matter if the MS OS is good or bad, it is bad to have no choice. It is foreseeable that the no choice situation will get worse with MS embracing DRM and TCPA. So I would say that the EU should do far more to establish Linux as a European alternative and competition to MS-OS's. The Airbus initiative from the 60s could serve as a rough model: intense funding has broken the then-monopoly of the US in the passenger airplanbe market and established Airbus as a competitive alternative. Doing the same with Linux-based companies and providing a market in the public administrations would be a great step in getting the OS and computing market back into something where you can choose. There would be added benefits: after all, MS Users have no control over what they actually get, a Linux-based administration could pay Companies not for Linux, but for tailoring and adapting it to their needs. Hopefully the EU will not fall to its knees towards MS as the US does ...
Correction: 15 first world countries. Otherwise I agree with what you said.
(Some people even recommend to stop supporting WinDos and offer help for Linux only
Did it for a friend a month ago and the result is: WinDos is used to play games now, Linux does WWW, mail, multimedia etc.
Time for linux games now, then i can claim some more space for ext3
Same case here.
And don't even get me stated in the huge difference in vacation time (2 weeks in the USA, 1 month in Spain). Nor the food quality ("quality food in the US" is an oxymoron.)
The "benefits" that I get are some of the best around here, or so I've been told. But they are a P.O.S., comparing to what I was getting in Spain.
If I had been out of work in Spain, I would have had some kind of money from the unemployment insurance. In the US, when you are out of work, that's your problem.
And, if you dig in the cost of Healthcare around the world, you'll discover:
- The cost for Healthcare in the US is more expensive than in Europe. But it's not better.
- Less people gets healthcare coverage in the US than in Europe. Where's democaracy?
- In the US, people expends more % of their paychecks in Healthcare than in Europe.
- With insurance and all the stuff, visit the E.R. and end paying at least $300. Again, this is with insurance. No cost of E.R. visits in Spain.
See? There's something wrong. I'm so ready to go back!
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support: "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...