Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Loses Showdown in Houston
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the city of Houston has decided against using Microsoft software. It really is amazing how much it costs to use (and maintain) software. I can't help but wonder if this will become a trend." Turns out they decided on the relativly unknown SimDesk suite, which has nothing to do with The Sims, sadly. Many, many posts about this. In additional news seldo writes "There's an interesting interview on News.Com with Peter Houston. He discusses Microsoft's changing attitude in competing with Linux -- no longer calling it a "cancer" but instead promoting the advantages of Windows."
As goes Peru, so goes the world......
Looking at the "Sim Desk" screenshots, it's all Microsoft products?! Windows Explorer and Outlook are deffinatly there, or are they using some source code?
Think about it. For the first time in a decade, what with all the city and national governments giving the dirty bird to Microsoft in favor of Linux or other alternatives, Redmond has finally realized that it has real competition again. Better, Microsoft can't 'embrace and extend' this competition without a significant alteration of their core business plan.
This means that, for the foreseeable future, MS users will be getting a product that will be the result of a pricewar with Free software, will have features that compete with OSS features, and will have a level of quality that attempts to approach OSS quality.
I don't think that Microsoft will belly up any time soon, regardless of how wonderful that would be. I do see Windows getting very good in the near future since quality and ease of use are the only ways it has left to compete with Linux.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
SimDesk
5450 Northwest Central, Suite 300
Houston, Texas 77092
Houston Area Phone: 713.690.6016
Toll-free Phone: 866.746.3375 (866-SimDesk)
Plus they've GOT to be using MS technology in the SimDesk applications themselves. At least they have Palm versions too.
I'm trying to figure out what the big advantage of using SimDesk would be vs. just installing Office and using Windows? Other than giving MS the finger. I guess it must just be the price difference, they probably got a great deal from the Houston based company.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
I found the last comment in his interview interesting:
"Integration" is the lever that MS uses to generate revenue. Customers are becoming increasingly aware of this and are assessing its value as best they can (given that they've lived in the MS Matrix monoculture for so long.)
Quoting from the Financial Times article that is another Slashdot story, too,
"Provided by the management for your protection."
First, they ignore you.
Then, they laugh at you.
Then, they fight you.
Then you win.
It's not as funny as:
Step 1. Create Gcc.
Step 2. Create Linux kernel.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. World Domination!!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
He discusses Microsoft's changing attitude in competing with Linux -- no longer calling it a "cancer" but instead promoting the advantages of Windows.
3) then you win.
It's starting to look like the US recession will be one of the best things to happen to the Open-Source movement.
No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche
If you look at the CEO's bio, he's some Houston good-ol boy who made a billion at BFI (trash collection), and now is dabbling in high tech.
Since everything in Texas is controlled by good ol boys, I'm sure the decision to use this software was anything but objective.
This means that, for the foreseeable future, MS users will be getting a product that will be the result of a pricewar with Free software, will have features that compete with OSS features, and will have a level of quality that attempts to approach OSS quality.
Have a look at simdesk.com - it's covered in words like "proprietary" and "patented". Houston's decision is neither particularly good nor bad for OSS.
I was somewhat surprised not to see this article posted to /. regarding the court's decision against Mircosoft not including Java in Windows XP.
I'm glad they told Microsoft to F??? off! But to choose Simdesk instead? Sounds like someone went with the local guy since Simdesk is out of Houston I believe I read. They would have been much better off going with Open Office or even Corel.
I'm not seeing anything at the web site that says this is OSS?
;) Wonder if SimDesk is getting any tax breaks from Houston?
They don't need to embrace and extend this software because they already HAVE software that does everything this purports to do, the MS Office Suite. This is just a clone of Office, nothing innovative, I can't download the source, heck I can't even get a price list off of their web site.
I think this is just a case of price. The city of Houston got a great deal from a Houston based company. What's it called when a city practices nepotism, except without the relatives? Oh yeah, politics.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
It's just a cancer to the MS bottom line. Just wait until OpenOffice/StarOffice has come a little farther. The only thing I'm waiting on is Quartz support in OS X.
I have 3 companies that I've converted to Linux in the last 2 years and it saves tens of thousands of dollars.
Now if I could only get sftp to not crash on my raid-0 smp computer at home!!! damn thread model.
From the SimExplorer page on the SimDesk site:
Several patents have been filed for SimExplorer, including a recycle bin available on the Internet. SimExplorer moves deleted data to a virtual recycle bin and allows users to recover or restore that data if it was deleted by mistake. Previously, this functionality was only available on Microsoft© platforms: SimExplorer now makes it possible on all computer platforms.
Sorry, but it's already out there for multiple platforms. All they did was put it behind the familiar "Recycle bin" interface. This isn't so different from the Amazon one-click patent.
"I can't help but wonder if this will become a trend."
:) But maybe now we'll see how MS reacts to competition when it can't just stamp it out. My guess is they'll run around like decapitated chickens for another few months at least.
I think it's safe to say this is already a trend, what with all the stories we've seen here in the last few months. Hopefully a trend that will become more and more widespread as the truth gets out there.
"Microsoft's changing attitude in competing with Linux -- no longer calling it a "cancer" but instead promoting the advantages of Windows."
Well it looks like Microsoft is finally catching onto the idea that it can't compete with Linux using their normal "FUD" tactics. Of course, touting the *cough*advantages*cough* of Windows may not be such a winning solution either.
Think about it. For the first time in a decade, what with all the city and national governments giving the dirty bird to Microsoft in favor of Linux or other alternatives, Redmond has finally realized that it has real competition again.
Unfortunately I have to post this as an AC but I'm speaking as one of the top geeks in a large place of work (~6,000 employees). We're not upgrading to XP and we're tesing a large group of people (~200) on Linux and OpenOffice on machines we've had in storage for a year. Thus far there have been no real technical problems although the user education has been a bit of work. Once they are familiar with an X desktop they spend most of their time using email and "Office" anyhow.
We love it, we love the price and we love the excellent support we get from newsgroups and FAQs/docs.
Outside of getting a word processor and a calculator within SimDesk, what else are they getting? They're still going to need an OS... Most OS's have free/bundled email apps... Am I missing something?
Platform independent bug tracking software
The actual meat of the story is interesting, an a hopeful sign, but so is the lead paragraph. It presents Microsoft as bullying it's clients into agreeing to it's terms.
Nothing new there, but when this is the tone taken by mainstream media, and seen as so non-controversial that it's mentioned and then passed over, then Microsoft have already lost their key battle. Their marketing depends on them being seen as the safe option. If they are seen as the problem, then (as here) people will go looking for solutions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the interview with Peter Houston:
I still believe Linux is an extension of the Unix paradigm. It's a command-line-focused approach that's not particularly designed to be user friendly. The Windows approach is very different.
This kind of shows how clueless Microsoft really is about competing with Linux. Lest anyone forget that Windows was nothing more than a extension of a command-line-focused operating system called MS-DOS that wasn't particularly use friendly? Microsoft just started to hide the command-line with Windows 95. The same is happening with Linux, as it gains more acceptance. More and more tools are being developed that eliminate the need for command-line work.
True, any distro of Linux isn't quite at the XP level not needing to use the command-line, but it's starting to head in that direction. And if more and more companies and, more importantly, governments start to actively look at switching, there will be a big boom in eliminating the command-lind dependence.
I'm definately not pro-Microsoft, but it seems that the cost of the software licenses is almost a non-issue to large corporations. ie, the money saved by using Linux instead is negligable compared to the cost to support it, which would be about the same either way. Professional 3d graphics cards are ridiculously expensive but it doesn't matter because a slower card would cost more in salary to the artists. Am I wrong in assuming that the cost of software licenses is much less of an impact than people tend to think?
Whale
if the "thin-client" is cross-browser complient. If Houston would move from Windows based clients to Linux-based clients or, Doug forbid, dumb-terminals with browsers.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
I'm Brian Fellows!!
I've run into OpenOfficeMS Office export and import problems even with plain Word letters, so I can't imagine a complex spreadsheet with macros will work very well.
The owls are not what they seem
From their web site:
SimDesk Technologies, Inc. (STI) was founded in 1999 to develop a revolutionary way to deliver software applications using the Internet. STI offers SimDesk(TM), an office productivity suite of applications that provide a word processor, spreadsheet, personal organizer, and e-mail client. All SimDesk Technologies' products run on the World Wide ServerTM (WWS), a groundbreaking means for economically and efficiently transporting applications, connecting millions of users to one server.
Using the WWS, SimDesk(TM) disperses the load so that a task can be completed with a fraction of the bandwidth and server power normally needed. Using a patented proprietary transport layer protocol and load-balancing technique, the SimDesk(TM) product suite is able to support millions of simultaneous users with a small fraction of the hardware normally needed in networks today.
SimDesk Technologies is a privately funded company. All products are developed in-house and are protected with numerous patents, trademarks, and copyrights. There are no license fees paid to outside software companies, which allows us to offer extremely attractive pricing models to end users.
Internet Printing:
With SimPrinter, any computer can print to any printer connected to the Internet. This patented process works like this: User A is viewing a file in his office and needs to print it to his client's office for his client to sign. He selects a printer connected to a computer in his client's office. The mainframe computer at the Service Provider then spools the file to the computer in the client's office and instructs the printer there to print the data. Once the printing is complete, the computer in the client's office notifies the mainframe. The mainframe in turn notifies the user in User A's office.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
After reading all this, it sounds like Houstin opted for SimDesk only because they felt trapped by Microsoft licensing issues.
It's not clear to me they will save money, although it does seem clear that by doing this they can at least quantify the amount of money they need to spend. I wonder if these kinds of MS sales tactics can be argued as entrapment or bait & switch? Customers shouldn't need to feel like they must pay millions to get MS off their back, especially when the amount involved is in dispute.
A greater concern for Houstin is where the data will be stored. It's not clear from the website or the marketing blurbs if the SimDesk apps drop documents locally or remotely to the SimDesk server. At a minimum, the patent-pending Trashbin is purported to be remote - which would give you access to this content from anywhere. I sure hope this system is secure!
Of course, the fact that they are looking to partner with Unisys is reason enough to be concerned. Remember GIF? TBPH, Microsoft doesn't look like a bad alternative here -- if anything this should be a wakeup call for MS that license audits need to be approached with extreme caution.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
they switch from a company that makes closed source programs and propietary formats to another. Most of the problems using Microsoft will be still there with SimDesk (with the difference that SimDesk could dissapear and they would not be able to improve the product, work with their own files, etc).
Changing to open source software, open file formats and/or patent/licence free environments would be a lot better.
Check out this Unisys Newsletter. It says:
As an ASP, Unisys will host SimDesk on the Unisys ES7000, the only enterprise server taking advantage of the Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server operating system's support for 32-processor scalability.
Not exactly a "big defeat" for Microsoft. They still make money on licensing servers.
I think it depends what you're doing. If you're sending information to customers, then simply export your OpenOffice docs to PDF. You should be doing this anyway, even if you're using MS Word, because the PDF is the only way to ensure your document will be delivered properly. Heck, even MS Word isn't compatible with MS Word!
If you need to collaborate, then encourage everyone on the team to either adopt an open standard (HTML, RDF, etc.) or get them onboard with OO.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Given the small budgets, byzantine approval processes, and both political and bureaucratic stumbling blocks that affect civic IT departments (and I sadly speak from experience), the most effective place to get cost savings is at the client side.
Only a very few people at the civic level need independent workstations, and the cost of support per user is higher than that of private-sector firms of comparable size. Ripping out the PCs and replacing them with Sun Rays or Wyse terms is a bright solution for cash-strapped cities. However, don't confuse this with a move to open source: as has been pointed out above, it's a fallacy to think that "proprietary" is synonymous with "Microsoft."
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Ok. Sounds good, but what will happen when your ~200 Linux/OpenOffice people will have to communicate with the outside world (clients?) who use MS Office exclusively?
This is the same AC as above
We're science researchers, most of our office work is just text writing, not many spreadsheets or databases. In fact a lot of it is still done with LateX etc etc. We have a lot of IRIX machines and a several Linux Beowulf clusters and a sole OpenMOSIX cluster I'm hacking on.
I'm convinced people use MS crud only because of inertia.
1. They don't know about OSS and Free Software
2. The do know about OSS and Free Software
Now, the people in group 1 tend to do nothing about it, and carry on getting shafted by MS. The people in group 2 tend to think "Yeah, all this new licensing is gonna cripple us. Time to look elsewhere". And end up going down the OSS/Free route. The West Yorkshire Police did it.
So, what made these guys go down this odd, obscure, proprietary route with a company which seems to saddle all their technology with proprietaryness and software patentyness?
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
You can't stop Linux, M$. You will have to pretend it doesn't exist and deny, deny, deny, because attacking Linux only generates more attention FOR Linux and shows how crappy Winbl0wZ really is.
Fecal fingers make pretty pictures.
I don't think m$ totally lost out on this one unfortunately. After quickly visiting SimDesk's site, I noticed they were using asp. Sure enough, after a quick lookup:
The site simdesk.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
Is it just me that this strikes as odd?
From Cooper's interview with Houston on news.com:
[emphasis mine]
And who wouldn't want the ultimate solution? All this talk about ``integration'', IMHO, is just happy talk that really means ``lock in''. When your businees needs change and the Microsoft package no longer fits your needs, you have two option: Keep doing things the way the Microsoft package allows you to do them or you can dump the Microsoft package and potentially have to dump everything because it's all integrated to the pointer where it's really difficult/impossible to separate them (and there aren't any comparable applications from 3rd party vendors because Microsoft scared off any potential competitors). Which one sounds the least disruptive to a businesses future and/or bottom line.
This news.com article was a humor piece, right?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
They say that one reason for choosing SimDesk is that upgrading Office 97 and 2000 to OfficeXP would requirer higher-powered PCs. That's most likely true, but why upgrade if the older versions fit your needs. I mean there aren't any features in OfficeXP that you just can't live without.
This seems to be one of Microsofts greates problems regarding Office. They keep pushing new version, but there are no new features that people really need. Most Office users don't even use half the features. There are no reason for updating perfectly good software just to get features you don't need.
Of cause if Microsoft changes the fileformat in Word or Excel in every version, you will need everyone in the office to run the same version and you can't buy Office 97 anymore. Upgrading all those licences will of cause be expensive. Still I don't see what new features in Office justify the need for a faster computer.
I'm a Houstonian, and while I'm glad to see M$ take it in the rosebud, I've got to tell you this 'SimDesk' thing is a dog. They sprang up at the beginning of the .com bubble, and were handing out sample software disks left and right, yet another start-up that sells 'solutions' to problems that don't exist.
Apparently their goal was to allow all the poor and 'underprivledged' a way to email and do basic computer-type stuff to help them find jobs in the 'hot new internet economy'. My first reaction (as I watched the little marketspeak animations on the disk) was "gee, I doubt people looking for low-paying entry-level jobs need email that badly to find a job, considering I'm a programmer and I still end up faxing my resume to the HR dolt every time". After that I didn't think much of it, since I figured they'd die out with all the other fluff when the bubble burst.
Fast forward to now.. there's considerable controversy in the city government that the SimDesk contract was pushed through with little review, and that there may even have been some hanky-panky on the part of some officials in the city hall, i.e. "you scratch my back and I see to it you get that expensive computer contract with the city". This is hardly surprising, as it's business as usual with Lee Brown's administration. Someone mentioned the 'good old boy' network.. that's pretty accurate, but remember old "Out of Town" Brown is a Democrat, so basically the 'good old boy' network pushes through any pork project they want to enrich themselves, but first they have to make it out like it's helping the poor, downtrodden masses.
In the meantime, firefighters are dying because the city can't afford to put the minimum number of men on a truck. Thanks Lee Brown!
I disagree. If everybody was honest, you'd be right. But that's not the case.
Microsoft has spent years and years outright lying, cheating, and stealing, in order to come to market dominance and stay there. (If you don't believe me, go ahead and review the anti-trust court cases.)
So *any* win for non-MS companies, even proprietary ones, is good. It will help mature the industry, and make it less lopsided. I'm not interested in the complete destruction of MS - that'd probably end up being just as bad as what we have now; a monoculture.
But these *are* wins. Microsoft has less money in its pockets to lie about FOSS, for instance. It has less clout to twist people's arms.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
It seems as they are based out of Houston, so it stands to reason that the local government would support them instead of a huge conglomerate like m$. However, why aren't they supporting their local linux,bsd user group?
I write sig's like I know what I'm talking about.
The biggest problems I see with OpenOffice are with its spreadsheet program. The biggest problem is when the user has macros in his Excel spreadsheet, and OpenOffice can't run those. I don't know how many companies are trying to get away from using Excel for report generation, but for those that do, MicroSoft is not going to be leaving the company anytime soon. And speaking of reports, a good alternative for Acess is needed as well, which means that OpenOffice is out, but StarOffice is in. But again, I see the problem where people are righting reports using VB macros in Acess.
On the other hand, Word support is very good. I've had a couple of graphics that were embedded in Word not show up in StarOffice 5, but they work fine in SO6 and in OpenOffice, and I've had better luck creating complex documents in OO then in Word, mostly becuase of Words "helpfulnes", even when turning off all the auto-"I am smarter then the person who is using me" stuff.
They are using the SimDesk applications but on what OS? Windows or Linux?
Those are probably Win32 apps!
Dodgy patents aside, these guys seem to have a solid suite of apps there. The big attractiveness of ASP solutions to large companies is that the costs for this kind of software boils down to a very small (in comparison to MS software) monthly fee.
They don't have to worry about upgrades or patches, or support, the apps will work just fine.
Coupled with very strict desktop computer policies, they shouldn't need many sysadmins/desktop support heads at all. Just people to build new machines and replace broken mice.
It's very cost effective.
Of course, there is nothing stopping the Open Source community from coming out with something like this.
We have most of the apps. We know linux can do the automatic application delivery. All we need to do is kill Exchange and we're home and hosed.
Does anyone know of any Exchange server killers under an Open Source license?
If you have to market your product by tearing down another product, then your product must not be worth much. He's still right.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
This is the "Hailstorm" issue all over again. But it does have certian advantanges for poor folk who don't own their own systems, which was one of the reasons Houston starting looking at it. An out of work homeless person can put his resume on it, and then access his resume later from any other system he manages to get access too. He doesn't have to haul a floppy around with him out in the elements where he lives. If you read the article, it was tried out in public libraries as a way to "bridge the digital divide", and apparently was wildly successful.
Due to the fact that SimDesk holds your data hostage, they can probably offer a very different pricing structure than traditional software vendors. They can charge peanuts for the clients, and then keep charging you access fees for the server. Think of it as the first MMOS (Massively-Multiplayer Office Suite)
with 42+ Billion in Cash reserves, the loss of city of Houston effect would be the proverbial water molecule in a big ass ocean.
And they didn't consider OperOffice.Org because...?
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
There was local news coverage here in Houston on the SimDesk issue a while back, that went into some more interesting details. Of course first off, it was primarily chosen as a user interface for public-access computer in public libraries and whatnot. I don't think it was chosen for actual city computers, but for the computers they let the technology-less use at the libraries so they can surf and have email and type resumes, basically.
More importantly, there was a big uproar in Houston over how SimDesk got the contract. Apparently whoever owns SimDesk has some insider relations of some sort to the people making the decisions, and there was absolutely no bid process at all (no other local competition, no Microsoft, etc... ). Basically somebody's brother got the contract, and because it flies in MS face it made the news here as a big MS letdown. MS didn't stand a chance no matter who they are.
11*43+456^2
I hate to say it but that was a much better written article than I expected. City politics, threats by Microsoft, that article had everything!
I was disappointed about the lack of OSS but hell at least people are out there proving there's a choice in software. System and network administrator's jobs are going to be FUN in the years ahead. People will have to know more than Wintel to get a job.
This guy is way out there
Why go Open Source when you can funnel millions of taxpayer's dollars to somebody's brother-in-law, so they can kick it back to you. They're based in Houston and the COO is the son of the CEO. The whole thing stinks. Remember, this is the city that bought you Enron.
They save a whopping $1.6 million, and in return they get software that doesn't do spreadsheets, presentations, or small databases. On top of that, all they need is a 100% broadband connection on every machine! Wow! What a deal! Where do I sign up?? I mean, this thing has all of the functionality of WordPad, with the added requirement of a broadband connection! Woo hoo! Who thought of such a great product?
/. should post that, huh?
SimDesk isn't perfect. It lacks many sophisticated features of Office, such as the ability to customize spreadsheets, do slide presentations or work databases. The glaring shortfall: It has no track record, making it risky for companies hesitant to bet on unproven technology.
USA Today. Yeah, that's a great place to get good quality tech news. I think that the Enquirer has a good story about Steve Ballmer being Bill Gate's alien baby. Maybe
Happy Belated Martin Luther King Day, wigger!
Unfortunately, I am choosing to post this as an AC but I'm speaking as one of the top geeks in a large place of work (~6,000 employees).
We are upgrading to XP, as Linux offers us no value.
I write papers in OO.o all the time and take them to work in DOC format to print them on the better printers. I've had no problems. Otherwise, I can use RTF (which MS Office can still manage to mess up).
You seem to be missing the point that people are migrating away. DOC isn't a reliable format for business. Ask any expert, and they will tell you that you should be using RTF or HTML. If you communicate to clients in one, proprietary format, then you are an idiot.
To set the facts straight, simdesk was selected by bid rigging and conflict of interest of a software contract in Houston.
It's about to be thrown out and legal action pursued against the IT contractor.
The funny thing is that Mayor Lee P. Brown has overspent all of the reserve funds in Houston so that any 'savings' from non-MS software will be much more than wasted on higher government spending. This hits everyone regressivly since all of the costs are added to each homeowner's property tax and water bill. This applies to renters since rent is based on direct taxes and water costs.
The reason for the overspending is that Mayor Lee P. Brown wanted to fund/back several downtown sports stadiums (baseball, football, and basketball).
It's very funny how these private enterprises (sports teams) get public funding of their businesses. A double standard since all of them break even (baseball) on their own or make a good profit (basketball and football).
This all ties into the 300+ million 2 mile light rail project which goes from one sports stadium to another. Ridership on the bus line for this route is under 150 people a day. This project was sold as a way to revitalize that area of town. Funny how the sports stadium built in the early 1960s in the same area was sold as a way to revitalize that part of town.
It is almost like a burecrat/politician wants to accomplish some big $$ government project so that they can go on to a job with another city with more pay and do the same thing again.
I am always amazed at how generous liberal politicians are with the taxpayer's money.
it is so very common and so disturbing that companies have machines in storage for over a year.
i realize that some companies and some workstations might have sensitive data. REMOVE THE FREAKIN' DRIVES and sell/give them to employees.
the last place i worked had hundreds of decommissioned (sp?) notebooks and dock stations in a closet. there were plenty of desktops as well. sure, nobody wants the crappy 15" monitors, but the machines can be put to use with or without drives.
the fact that employees are able to and do keep company sensitive data locally on their workstations is another issue that i'll try to stay away from.
computer hardware is a quickly depreciating asset and expense. it really really irks me that companies hold onto this stuff that geeks go gaddy over. imagine a beowulf cluster indeed.
I find it oddly amusing that SimDesk -- a company whose main goal is to dethrone Microsoft -- uses ASP for their web site.
Globe199
I'd much rather have an Ultimate Solution than a Final Solution.
Right! The Windows approach is much *worse* than the command line for high-end server administration. Hard to believe that this guy is in charge of Windows server marketing (or maybe not so hard to believe).
- adam
The USA Today article really glosses over the political battle on this issue and the good reasons for that battle. Many people in Houston are actually quite angry about the adoption of SimDesk, and it has nothing to do with pro-Microsoft bias or SimDesk's "unproven track record" thing.
This timeline would claim Houston spent $42,000 marketing a possible SimDesk contract before the proposal was even requested. This article suggests the City's CIO "had decided on that vendor before the city's mandatory bidding process had even started." I'll leave it as an excercise to the reader to google for more information, but my point is that this is a much more significant issue than USA Today suggests in the article.
I'm as happy about my city using non-monopoly software as the next guy, but I think in this instance there's a strong likelihood that the SimDesk contract was awarded in a non-competitive environment anyway. Surely this is not the way any of us want alternatives to MSFT to be chosen.
Big yips. My guess is that it is using something called IPP: Internet Printing Protocol. Most everything supports it. CUPS supports it, some Jet Direct's support it. The Xerox DocuCenter's support it (not all models, but...), Microsoft Server supports it, Novel Netware supports it (And as it is all based off of the users NDS context, and integrates with NDPS, the user can go to a web page, select from the printers that only they have access to, and if the computer doesn't have the print driver installed, have it automagically installed on the users computer.), and there are 4rd party solutions (hardware and software) that will let Windows 9x only enviroments use IPP. Nothing new here, move along.
Good to see that SimDesk can read MS-Word docs.... but that still doesn't handle the "Upgrade mentality".
///ie/// towards standard XML.
The
" I've got to use the same office package that everyone
else uses in order to be able to communicate with them"
attitude.
Alot of people fail to realize that MS-Word can save documents in other formats, and thus feel that they must have MS-Office in order to be able to read documents from outside sources... I say fooooooyyyy... If the document is that important for you to get...the outside source can get off their ass and use the "Save As" file menu option instead of the "Save".
At least the file formats are going in the right direction
Hmm, and when you consider it can take only one person to affect what happens in even a large city, writing this off as having no effect on Microsoft (won't kill them, I'm certain) is not a good idea.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Cheers...
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Don't get excited guys. This is just Texas politics as usual. Doesn't it seem odd that the CITY OF HOUSTON chose a software product from a HOUSTON ENTREPRENEUR. This is how things is done down in 'good ole boy' Texas.
Think Ross Perot and his software billions.
Think G.W and the whole Enron fiasco.
While I won't comment on the merits of SimOffice, it may in fact be a viable windows alternative, this deal was as much motivated (if not more so) by Texas backroom dealing as it was by technical merit.
"Ned, I wouldn't worry too much about this contract. Seems to me I've already got my boys committed elsewhere. You be sure and thank Maisie for this fine pie."
All your base are belong to us!
Really? The only problem I had once was with pictures. "plain letters" always worked fine.
And 3 years ago when I was still using MS Office I had my share of problems between the different versions of WinWord (hell, often even between the same version on different computers), so I'd say that both MS Office and OpenOffice does NOT work perfectly but usually good enough.
so I can't imagine a complex spreadsheet with macros will work very well.
Sure, but why should you want to send/receive a spreadsheet with a macro to/from a client?
To spread a virus?
I don't know any other application, sorry. But maybe you can.
Working for the houston civic authority doing IT support, I can tell you that many of us are severly displeased with this decision. It boiled down to the 'old boy' network whent he choice was made for SimDesk, and many of us openly suspect a rash of kickbacks in this lowball bid win.
Almost all of us are MS certified types (I have my MCSE), and a few of us use linux at home or as web servers for some of our intranet infrastructure. The running gag is that the change over in hardware in terms of on site servers and bandwith enhancements will cost us more than three times our current agreement with MS for our existing systems. MS had lowballed too, offering us a very attractive licensing and support package that was not only reasonable (by MS standards), but significantly less than their 'going rate' packages.
Alternatives in using pure *nix were also presented, some rather attractive on the face of it, but ultimately they were rejected for training and hardware costs, as well as for the fact that they are not very well known or supported in the kind of environment we have going on here in Houston. Over half of our PCs would have had some kind of driver problem, more than 2/3rds of our existing software and DB systems would have been rendered incompatible, an worse still there were no alternatives for some of our vital statistics and infrastructure support apps. A wash.
This whole thing has us more than a little upset, and some of us laughing as we learn more about SimDesk. It's bandwith intensive, and many of our outlying and important network nodes are on less than a typical home broadband connection (with up to 50 user machines and servers!).
Don't believe everything you read... it wasn't a rejection of MS because it is MS, but rather an old boy deal done by friends and mutal friends.
Do you think they just went to Redmond and asked Bill for the Office source code? Microsoft has a history of guarding it's "trade secrets" like a Mormon girl on prom night, even from it's "partners" who develop all of the interesting products that run on Windows. I'd be less suprised if they were using Open Source technology in their products, because we all know that's never happened ;)
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
So? Quite a few people have absolutely no interest in complex spreadsheet macros: giving, recieving or creating. You're simply describing an artifical problem.
This is simply another example of 95% of people being disinterested in 95% of msoffice features.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
other businesses and public agencies...have agreed to the new licensing deals X a linchpin of Microsoft's growth strategy.
Not Houston.
Fools they are!
Turn your back away the darkside, you can never gain points
Without points, you can never advance to next levels!
Join me and I'll complete your training!
Don't make me destroy you!
(Interesting enough, Microsoft seems to have taken away the license 6.0 guide from its place, and I've to dig up the old pages above from google. Does Microsoft finally realize they are digging their own grave?)
Yeah, it's competition for Microsoft and face it, Microsoft is the monolithic dinosaur with an aging product line. SimDesk, whatever you want to say about them, is the fleet of foot furry little rascal which is prepared for the coming ice age.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So keep a few office licenses around. Upgrade them even. On the rare occasions that OpenOffice or AbiWord/Gnumeric (which are also getting pretty good now) can't read Office files, fire up the real thing via CrossOver Server, or get Wine itself for free, sit down and beat it into submission yourself :)
Anyway, using OpenOffice isn't exactly obligatory. If you have already invested in MS Office and other pieces of Windows software, that's why we have Wine, so you don't "lose" that investment as such.
BTW, to the AC, are you based in the UK by any chance? I work at a scientific institution with about 6000 people and a month or so ago an email was sent around asking for anybody with good Linux desktp experience to step forward for evaluation......
A city has a responsibility to promote the growth of businesses within it's boundaries. There is nothing wrong with the fact that Houston chose SimDesk, a Houston based company, to provide for it's software needs. In fact, the city council is to be commended for finding a way to support this company in a way that benifits all concerned parties.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Go ahead. Ask Microsoft tech support (and Dell) what OS they use. Then ask them why they want to sell you XP.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Where that people who have heard about OSS software and are actually reviewing oss projects to be used in their environment will eventually realize that hey, "If these guys do it for free and things are this good, there might be even better (for them) even if it costs or not when comparing to Microsoft products".
So, it OSS will create competition even thou it might not be gaining market share. Which is good imho.
yush
This thing has all the makings of a good book simply for all the suspicious behavior of everyone involved.
You've got the obvious villan in the bullying, blackmailing Microsoft.
The not-so-obvious villan of the hometown company who claims to be a do-gooder but keeps dropping intersting hints foreshadowing future mischief. ("Several patents have been filed for" {insert obvious technology here})
You've got a large group of victims that are easy to empathize with played by the poor citizens of Houston who desperately need access to an office suite.
There are politics (Houston City Council), big battles (MS vs SimDesk), and accusations of wrong-doing are thick as mosquitoes. The only thing we need now is a love interest and it would be perfect.
Hmmm...a company with little or no history in IT, based in a city not known for business integrity (Enron), employing a former staff member of a presidential administration not known for its ethics (Clinton), founded on dirty (garbage..get it, haha) money, brokered by someone who left as soon as the deal was completed and is now indicted for unrelated embezzling charges, and claiming patents on seemingly obvious technology
Versus
A global software monopoly, sputtering in outrage at the temerity of Houston to scorn MS's blackmail. ("Pay up now or else we'll sue! Hey, wait, where are you going? Damnit! Get back here and respond to our blackmail! Please?")
I can almost see Open Source Man leaping over the horizon in his cape and tights to free the oppressed citizens of Houston.
This should be fun to watch unfold...
Yeah, it's big, monolithic, and evil, but what gives Microsoft the right to threaten an "audit and penalties?"
I mean, if Microsoft showed up at my door (if I were a corporation) and said "We're coming in to inspect your computers," why not just say "Go to hell!"
Does anyone know what the Microsoft audit process is, and how they enforce these penalties?
I guess that this makes Houston the first official SimCity now othat they have chosen to use the SimDesk software? Soon we will see aliens invading, fires, floods, and earthquakes all happening in the city of Houston as stressed city workers press the 'Disaster' button over and over...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
hiring Peter New York or Peter San Francisco !
The contract ain't new (press release dates June 5, 2002), to is there any houston resident to confirm this, or even give us a hands-on report?
It's good that Houston turned away from the brute tactics of M$, but why didn't they choose an open source alternative like OpenOffice.org or a more well-known alternative like StarOffice that does have good presentation software.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the risks of having a chunk of the administrative capability of a city dependent on the availability of remote servers running proprietary protocols and software. This isn't just that the data is unavailable... if I'm reading this right then if SimDesk goes offline (say due to the Backhoe of Death) then you wouldn't even be able to write and print a memo. Web services are cool but they're dependent on the network Always Being There but that can't be taken for granted.
Would it be possible to hack into those servers and pick through tax records, etc? What measures does SimDesk have in place to guarantee availability? Have they been through a security audit that shows they're in compliance with appropriate rules/laws on information security?
Not to mention the issues with having municipal data stored in a proprietary format with proprietary software.
This decision had nothing to do with the fact that Windows is too expensive but with the fact that city Houston is too corrupt. I can't believe that choosing a small company's, closed proprietary solution over a large company's closed proprietary solution had anything to do with cost or for that matter quality. At least M$ will be around five years from now, though probably forcing users to upgrade to the latest greatest version, which doesn't matter since the biggest selling point of SimDesk is that it looks like M$ and can read M$ files. Anyhow I've been around the block in Houston a few times and doing business here is all about who you know, and I don't mean it in the greasy salesperson networking sort of way. Houston is about nepotism, greasing palms, and paying people off. Dig around a little and you'll find a relative, lover, or crony of someone in Houston city government calling the shots at SimDesk.
I am a virus, put me in your
Apparently, the only people who like this software are politicans. The Houston IT community is up in arms about this choice of software. They suggest using OpenOffice instead.
This software has been picked for Chicago and Phoenix, too.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
You know I do not know if Open Office needs to go further. I like it already now. And to be frank I am not simple user. I am a technical book author. As an experiment for this book I decided to switch and it worked out well.
So I think Open Office is already here....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
First they ignore Linux, then they spread FUD, then they attack the GPL and compare it to cancer. All this did was draw more attention to Linux. They blew it completely. They failed to realize that most people hate Microsoft but use it because it is forced on them and they didn't see any alternative. As this frustrated public reads about Microsoft slamming Linux they become interested in what Linux offers. The FREE nature of Linux draws them in and they begin to see the possibilities.
The latest Microsoft strategy is not to slam Linux but to attack it on technical merits. This will of course fail because Linux is much more advanced than Windows in a technical sense. Microsoft claims they offer technical value in integration of software with the OS. In reality this locks the user into Microsoft platforms. Unix integrates just fine, but instead of providing one a mammoth solution with tight integration, Unix provides building blocks that could be thought of as Lego's that snap together and build larger systems. The advantage is that one can buy or build the blocks from other sources and put them together using a more stable foundation. One does not have to use Lego's. Companies like IBM can sell IBM Brand building blocks that integrate with Open Source foundations and alternative blocks. Yet Microsoft will refuse to sell a block that connects with other blocks. They still don't play well with others. In some ways they have been guilty of making blocks that plug into Lego's but the other side of the block will only interface with other Microsoft blocks.
Microsoft will shoot themselves in the foot with this integrated strategy. Apparently they have learned nothing from the Anti-Trust Monopoly hearings and think they have won the battle. Unfortunately they will be caught off guard and will lose the war.
Microsoft may have a ton of money but we have time on our side and very little to lose. Compare it to a midevil siege and realize that we can maintain the siege indefinitely while the walls of the Microsoft fortress begin to crumble. Keep innovating, keep working at your craft, keep up the good fight.
I would not be surprised if Microsoft has secretly been experimenting with Linux internally and most likely have already ported Office/MSIE, etc to Linux. It would be a backup plan. Fortunately MS is so large that the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing and the head is unaware of either hand.
Hmm, actually that would be Piper, the guy who initiated the move from Microsoft:
This is hardly the type of case that one would want to use a poster-child for open source. Particularly as it appears that Sim desk is actually closed source and that this story is yet another bash Microsoft for any reason at all story. You don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
It's nice Microsoft has decided not to use the GPL as the main focus of their anti-Linux activities. But if the new plan is to harp on "it's based on Unix and it uses a command line" then they won't do much better.
- adam
The Chairman and CEO of SimDesk, Mr. Waters, is "responsible for the strategic direction and management of SimDesk".
Mr Waters was founding chairman and CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (BFI) and served BFI from 1969 until 1997, when BFI was sold to Allied Waste for $9 billion in cash. During the 1980s, BFI pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing. More details:
They would seem to have the makings of a worthy successor to Microsoft.
Quite a few people have absolutely no interest in complex spreadsheet macros: giving, recieving or creating. You're simply describing an artifical problem.
IMO it depends on the type of company. In my experience, retail-oriented businesses rely heavily on spreadsheets with macros.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
the computarded of this world, have big dreams, and big mouths, but when it boils down to it, they could all be on PII 333 mhz machines and not know the difference. they just want to type emails or documents and surf the net.
learning anything more would upset their days (learning bad, stupid good mentality) and perhaps make it possible for them to do more work at work. they say, I WANT THE STARS AND THE MOON, but would settle for a trip to the end of the hallway for some coffee in a heartbeat.
ok, there is a point in the rant. X desktop + mozilla + OpenOffice is more than enough these days.
anyhow, m$ is trying to convince the world of the one thing everyone knows is not true. that they could possibly compete on price, quality or up time.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
``GUI: Path to enlightement or straight-jacket?''
Well, I used to keep /usr/local/enlightenment in my PATH. Never heard of straight-jacket, though. Can you get that via freshmeat? Oh, wait... never mind. That's the window manager I have to use at work.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Plus where is the free db?
You've got to buy StarOffice to get the DB Component.
Oh please. Anyone with a little ingenuity can solve this problem. First, you can configure office so that the default file format is RTF. RTF supports most of what people do with Word which is letter writting, memos, and other simplistic documents. RTF importing is actually quite good.
A little procmail scripting coupled with a Windows machine (or 3) setup as automated document converter (a little VB scripting) solves external communication needs nicely.
If this is too tough for you, you can also setup an autoresponder system telling people to resend their documents in a more open format such as PDF or RTF, etc.
The argument that it's the de-facto industry standard so you can't change is a red-herring.
Complex spreadsheets are a little more difficult, but only a small fraction of people use them anyway. You leave them on Windows (or run vmware, crossover office, etc.) If you can convert 90% + of your office to Linux / OO, you win. It's actually amazing how good gnumeric and OO are with excel sheets.
I am sure that the reason they switched was really that Microsoft was really evil, and not that somebodys somewhere knew somebody who partially or fully owns this company based in the same city, because that form of corruption never happens in Texas.
Retraining the users, will be no problem, putting your eggs in an fairly unknown player is no problem. Why not go with Open Office? Or since
they do not care about OSS, why not go with
StarOffice or WordPerfect? You still have to retrain everybody, and at least with WordPerfect some users will have prior experience.
At last Microsoft is starting to realize that competition must be based on the relative quality of the products. This is the first time I've EVER heard a Microsoft spokesperson come close to suggesting that Microsoft should compete based on the merits of it's product.
A promising sign indeed.
Youre making an assumption that the Simdesk business plan doesnt end with:
2. Get bought out by Microsoft.
3. Profit!
This is exactly the reason why a win for ANY proprietary software company is a not a win for Free Software.
I would think they would make a point of including Linux in that list if they actually supported it.
Essential all they are doing is running "office" on Citrix and selling the client really cheaply.
So now the city saves up front and pays for the rest of eternity? Isn't this the Model that MS wants to go to in the future anyway? I fail to see where this becomes a "victory" over MS, since I very much doubt the city of Huston will be implementing a fleet of Macs or WebTV on every desk!
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
In the second article (Peter Houston interview) he makes the point that people would be driven to Windows rather than Linux because of integration. I would argue that this is the reason people would likely abandon Windows. It's an "all your eggs in one basket" approach with poor support from the company. Whereas the Linux world allows you to pick and choose what you need to make the system work the way you want it to. But, I will also say this, people are not going to move over to Linux in droves either. A lot of the reasoning behind moving to one platform or another has to do with how you use the systems. For the "day to day" useless work tasks (Office apps, groupware, e-mail, web) that most corporations follow, Microsoft is fine. And considering that a lot of these companies employ IT staff with lesser skills (ie: not programmers), MS Windows is probably the right choice for them. But, when you have talented admins who understand networking, programming and the OS itself, Linux is likely to buy you a lot more uptime, reliability and customizability than Windows.
Now, from MY perspective, Linux is a win for me personally. I use it at home for server and desktops. I am slowly customizing and building my network into a solid entity that operates my home. It has my personality all over it. You just CAN'T do that with Windows. The other thing is that the interview talks a lot about market share and profit. Again, what difference does that make to me and people like me? We don't do this for money, we do it because we like to and because we can. The point that a lot of these people seem to miss is that the "success of Linux" has nothing to do with money. It has to do with the community of people around it who use it to do things they can't do with Windows. No matter if IBM or any other corporation drops their support for Linux, the people who use it will continue to use it until something better comes along. That something better would have to have some compelling features to pull people away too:
-Free as in beer
-Free as in speech
-Completely customizable in every way
-Lots of support for legacy scripts and apps, etc...
One other note. No one knows what the future is going to hold. Back in 1993 I was still using my Atari ST 1040 machine to write papers for college and make music. I still use it to make music, but if you told me that I would have been using a different OS in only a year or two, I probably would have assumed MacOS. Windows would have been a second guess. And UNIX? I had bought the general industry line at the time: "Oh yeah, that old thing. It'll probably be dead in a year or two." You never know what's going to happen.
Un-news
Sounds like cronyism to me
Why would Houston dump one overpriced proprietary solution for a different one that merely costs less? The city could have deployed Open Office for nothing and put the money elsewhere! Then after everyone was used to Open Office, the switch to an open source OS would have been easy.
As it stands now, Houston is out of one big frying pan, but squarely in the middle of a smaller one. And either way they're getting burned!
I've always wondered which unscrupulous activity would win in a death-match. I guess this proves it.
Nepotism kicks monopolyism's monkey-ass every time.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It's a bad business practice to accuse your customers of stealing. It's even worse to "blackmail" them into buying your new product.
Microsoft had better realize that there are other alternatives out there. This is the worst economic environment to pressure your customers. ANY additonal economic pressure from MS will only result in lost customers.
-ted
However, Microsoft "Embraced and Extended" RTF format, to the point where an RTF created in ClarisWorks, aka AppleWorks, is gibberish to MS Office and vice/versa. RTF was created by Apple as part of the original Macintosh effort.
.PDF works as a somewhat universal document format. And that's read-only unless you are either running Linux/MacOS X/*BSD or have Acrobat on the Windows/Classic MacOS side.
Alas, only
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
Yes, Piper may be a liar, a cheat, and a thief (we don't even have a plea in the case to which you refer), but not in connection with the city of Houston's bidding process. As we see from material you quoted:
"The county District Attorney, in a separate probe, examined Piper's financial records and stumbled into evidence that Piper may have embezzled $200,000 from his previous employer, Reliant Energy." (emphasis added)
In fact, I'm at a loss to explain the newspaper's decision to drag this unrelated scandal into the article. I hope it wasn't to discredit one side in the Microsoft vs. SimDesk contest.
"I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse." -- Groucho Marx
Thats why there are options like PDF. There are many utilities to create PDFs on linux, and Acrobat Reader and XPDF are available.
PDFs can be secured against tampering with a digital signature. Not to say that this is perfect protection, but it is good.
If you are posting MS Docs on your site you should really consider using PDFs. Why do you need to put a document that someone can alter on your website?
"You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
This is over-hype on part of USA Today. The guy who originally worked out the contract with SimDesk was questionably a con-artist on the take with SimDesk. Meanwhile, the guy who replaced him didn't renew the licensing with MS because they couldn't agree on the number of licenses needed, but they're not necessarily dumping their existing MS licenses. Upon review, I think the "Houston dumps MS for SimDesk" slant is sensationalistic. An alternative would be "Houston does the best it can with a bad situation."
I'd say that anything that promotes diversity in software and document formats is good news for OSS.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I would have wished that Houston had gone with StarOffice or OpenOffice, but this is great.
This keeps the IT spending in the city, and encourages a local software industry.
And imagine the service! The company can, if necessary, send a developer to a problem site, analyze the problem, and FIX IT!
You don't have to be as gruff about it as Stallman, but all you have to do is ask:
"In regards to your last email, can you please send this document to me in *insert open format here*? I am not using Microsoft Office.
Thanks,
Your Name"
relativly unknown SimDesk suite, which has nothing to do with The Sims
I wasted ALL that time for nothing?
How is this legal? How is this allowed?
If I owned a company and said hell with Microsoft software, and they walked into my company, I would throw them right out on the curb.
It's just that simple.
WHY are companies/municipalities allowing this!?
Just say no, you cant browse our computers to look for stuff, its private and none of their buisness!
End this madness!
Sure, but why should you want to send/receive a spreadsheet with a macro to/from a client?
The company I work for has occasionally sent to contractors fairly complicated spreadsheets. We have specific tasks to complete, and these have proved the best method to accomplish them. We expect the contract to use the tools we provide to accomplish the task we set.
--Ravensfire
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
And I tend to agree with you with a single exception.
You're right that it's (on the surface at least) neither particularly good nor bad for OSS but if you consider the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" way of looking at things then on some level this kind of thing may help. What's the single biggest obsticle for anyone else in the software universe other than Microsoft? That would be "Microsoft" I think. Anything that competes with them successfully, anything that takes their full attention from what you are doing to compete with them, and anything that demonstrates an ability to win anything against them is good for everyone hoping to do the same.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
All Microsoft has to do is send an small update to change the output of Microsoft Office files. Add a no reverse engeneering to saved format in the licence ageement.
They do but they're making a mistake. IMHO Excel is a terrible tool for anything but the most simple spreadsheets. I can't count the number of macros I've seen which fail (sometimes not in a detectable manner) because someone hid or un-hid a column in the spreadsheet. And learning Excel visual basic is a pain in the butt. Databases should be handled with database software, not spreadsheet software. Similarly, data analysis should be done w/ analysis software (MatLab, Mathematica, etc), not big kludgy formulas and macros in Excel.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Gartner tech analyst Mark Margevicius sees Houston and Chicago as aberrations. He says big tech buyers won't switch to SimDesk because it is so unproven
It's strange. This is what they said when the first incantaion of Windows rolled around in the mid 80's.
Translation: jedidiah isn't smart enough to make macros, so he tells himself that nobody uses them so he won't feel inferior.
Maybe not good for OSS, but it does provide overall competition in the market, which MS is in desparate need of.
Once OpenOffice and StarOffice mature some more, and we see the Linux community develop some if the integrations that MS claims it can't, THEN OSS becomes another, and more serious competitor.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
This is hardly the type of case that one would want to use a poster-child for open source.
e t-again story. Microsoft sent them a letter "suggesting" that they might be audited if they didn't sign up for the new license. Houston told them to jump in a lake. This is a win for everybody, not just Open Source or Anti-Microsoft.
There isn't one word in either the article or the lead-in that says they switched to open source. The entire claim was that they chose against Microsoft.
this story is yet another bash Microsoft for any reason at all story.
No, this is a bash-Microsoft-for-abusing-their-monopoly-power-y
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Legally its not that easy, if you give someone a PC they hakeit home and it shocks (or falls on) their kid you open youself up. We live in a society in which a woman opening up a coffee cup while driving won a case against the people who sold her the coffee and overweight kids are suing fast food places because they eat there 3 times a day and it affects their health..
This sounds like fud. My organization exchanges OO documents and spreadsheets with MSOffice users all the time with no problem.
Have you honestly tried it LATELY?
keep that money in Houston, don't send it off to Redmond...
...some other entity recently chose Oracle over SQL Server. Stop the presses!
I took the liberty of tapping the City of Houston's phones when the negotiations with Microsoft were happening. Here's what I found:
....Hold on a second.
MS: We know you use our software and don't pay for it!
HO: How do you know that?
MS: Because everyone does. If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS (sound of pinky finger going in mouth) we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
HO: Well, actually we have a new company to give us our office software suite.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! That will never work! EVERYBODY uses Microsoft Office, you will never be able to exchange documents without corruption!
HO: We ran into that problem when we upgraded from Office '95 to '97 acutally.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! That is because we love money!! Err... wait. I mean, that is because of all the new features in Office '97!! Ha, ha ha!!
HO: That doesn't sound like a good reason to me.
MS:
MS: Ha, ha ha!! If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
That's it. This isn't a win for OSS or for Linux, it's a win for everyone that doesn't rely on M$ day in and day out. It legitimizes what we do to people that don't understand.
What the hell is the deal with that?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I am not a M$ fan, but sometimes facts need to be taken as facts.
Ah, the Rush Limbaugh excuse machine comes to Slashdot. Let me get this straight- you are saying that a good ol' boy, deep in the heart of Texass, is a Liberal?
give me a break. your so called conservatives are nothing of the sort when it comes to skimming large amounts of money from the public drawer. This dates all the way back to Kissinger- the bigger the crime, the bigger the immunity. That is the Republican way- rape what you can, have the gool ol' boys cover your ass (no pun intended, although Deliverance comes to mind).
I live in Chicago, and we fortunately got rid of our so-called Conservatives, because they pretty much robbed the state of Illinois for the past 20 years that they were in charge of the state.
What is their legacy? A huge, staggering debt. Corruption scandals. Croonie-ism and patronage (hell, half the state politician's last names are Ryan).
And my personal favorite is a State funded daily traffic jam that we call our Tollway system. Why anyone would want to PAY to sit in a traffic jam is beyond me. How they can justify it and call it necessary, and at the same time raise how much they charge... well, its criminal, and hopefully some people are going to jail on this one.
Anyway, please dont blame the problems in Texass on 'Liberals'. It makes you sound like a person who has Rush do your thinking for you.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
there so many MS trolls here. Not only that but thel also mod each up like hell.
Quick!
Somebody mod this guy up!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I have to ask, why was Tatro SOOO against this move? So much so that Piper was investigated for rigging the bid but later nothing was found. This sounds like what the Microsoft sales reps were saying at the beginning( before the contract was actually awarded ). Is/was Tatro receiving funds from Microsoft?
I just loved how the Texas Attorney General backed out of the DOJ/States vs Microsoft case when Dell and another Texas company pressured such a move. You know Microsoft 'asked' these companies to do this.... What did they 'ask' of Tatro??????
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
At least with M$, the software is installed on the local machine, so you don't have to have a connection to the internet, and you have at least some degree of control over it.
SimDesk, however, does not run on the local machine. It is run on some server, and the owners of the software (i.e. NOT YOU) can update, change, or do whatever they want with it.
Also, if your internet connection goes down, so do you. You can't do squat running apps-over-net if your i'net connection goes away. So, there could be thousands of City Workers in Houston just sitting around doing nothing if their 'net connection goes down....
*blink*
ok so that may not be far off from normal... but you can see where this could be a huge problem in a large corporate environment where people actually depend on their PCs and applications.
This is hardly the type of case that one would want to use a poster-child for open source.
.NET ads at the top of Slashdot, they are being paid by both sides.
Who said anything about open source? One second look at the Simdesk front page throws up words like 'proprietry' and 'patented'. See next paragraph.
Particularly as it appears that Sim desk is actually closed source and that this story is yet another bash Microsoft for any reason at all story.
You are waaay off the mark. A big win for a company that is competing with M$ Office is news because breaking the M$ hold on the file formats is important for open source making headway into the desktop market.
At the moment, M$ can change its file format as much as it likes to cut off any competitors. Those offering compatibility have no choice except to play catch-up.
If large government departments and corporations start using "Office compatiable" software then they are going to be upset if M$ starts producing incompatiable WP files. These are the kind of people that M$ have to listen to.
When large segments of markets start using different competing "Office compatible" suites then they will start making their users saving by default to a format that they *know* will work in all the suites (eg Word v.XXX). Once everybody gets locked into this version, and it's difficult for M$ to change it without upsetting too many people, then instead of playing catch-up everybody (open source and proprietary) can concentrate on polishing accurate import and export filters. This would be excellent for consumers.
You don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?
Judging by the
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Simdesk runs on windows machines. MSCE will be needed.
and should be stopped now! before it will ruin our society
What if Lee P. Brown, the mayor of Houston is a Democrat?
Does that still mean that the Tollway system in Chicago proves that all southerners are uneducated homosexual Republican KKK members?
It is kind of hard to get a feel for the capabilities and price when the SimDesk site doesn't have any evaluation downloads, concrete price statements, or 'bigger than thumbnail' screenshots.
Am I just not finding the needle in the haystack here or is this information available elsewhere? I'm hoping there is no need to contact them directly to get this information.
SimDesk's site statement 'Start here. Go anywhere.' didn't seem to apply to me when I was looking for this info.. I 'Got nowhere'!
The more people that use different programs, the more push there will be for people to use a real interoperable document format so tha tother people can read it - if only half the computer users in the US used word then you would get a lot more PDF files instead of DOC, which right now everyone assumes is the best way to send out documetnation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"...it appears that ... this story is yet another bash Microsoft for any reason at all story. You don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?"
Most people here don't like Microsoft for very good reasons. Just because the editors seem to dislike Microsoft (which I would assume) doesn't mean they're being paid, doesn't mean they're posting articles with large bias, or only posting anti-MS articles. The editors have an interest in Microsoft and what happens to them, as do most computer geeks.
Microsoft, AFAIK the biggest software company in the world and certainly the most powerful, just lost Houston. That is news. I'm sure the editors got a smile on their face and said, "Sweet, post it, sounds cool," but that doesn't mean anyone is getting paid off or that the Slashdot editors are largely biased.
This is a site for nerds. Nerds, in a large part, dislike Microsoft for very reasonable reasons. This news is interesting. Quit reading between the lines; this isn't CNN, this is a fun community news site.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Steers and Queers, and you don't look much like a steer to me boy!W WWW!
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAW
Who owns the data? They do.
What happens when Simdesk updates the software, raises license fees?
Pay up or you will lose your data.
> but what will happen when your ~200 Linux/OpenOffice people will have to communicate with the outside world (clients?) who use MS Office exclusively?
You get ~200 people who realize the importance of open protocols and file formats.
Try rewriting your question with vender replacing client.
If you use Microsoft software, they have the right to look. All it takes is one disgruntled employee.
Where do you work by the way? I might have to make a phone call.
Know your facts before you go on a rant next time.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Aaah, right! Because the M$ person's last name's Houston! Right. Nevermind.
That's true, but your average businessperson in retail doesn't have the time to learn database and analysis software. Excel is easy to use, which is why it's so popular with that kind of person.
My point is that people in other companies aren't going to stop using Excel (and its macros), so the idea that it's not a big concern if one company switches to an OSS equivalent and can't read files from outside their organization is wrong.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I live in Houston, and have been following this story for some time. Microsoft had NOTHING to do with this; the real story is that SimDesk has allegedly bribed a former City Technology Manager to railroad the SimDesk software through the bidding process. Allegations include giving an eight day window between releasing the bid criteria and the city council making their decision. Allegedly, only SimDesk had a preview of the criteria and thusly ample time to answer the call. The previous Tech Manager resigned the day after SimDesk was awarded the contract, and moved to (I believe) San Francisco, where he is being investigated for his Houston activities. As I can't read the story, I don't know if the Microsoft spin is from the article or the submitter, but this isn't a Microsoft story, nor is it an Open Source story. This is just another possible corruption story.
>
Shouldn't that read: XXX compatible suits in all offices?
-- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
Maybe it's irrelevant for the OSS, but it's very relevant for the software industry in general: it's the "bug's life" story, if you forgive me this simplification: someone stood up against the all-engulfing MS-integrator/assimilator. I already read posts saying "but how will they communicate with the outside world that uses MS Office?". Sure, there is this risk. And sure, the ants in "Bug's life" would face the risk of opposing the big locusts, even though they outnumbered them. But see, once one of the ants did stand up against a locust, suddenly everything changed, suddenly companies saw the possibility of change!
As for OSS usage, I have to say that sometimes it's more eluding than you people think: I know of companies that are totally against OSS, and if you dreamed of using any OSS component in their products you would be fired immediately. However, these same companies use Linux in the servers on which their products run - RedHat, to be more exact. They use Linux because it's cheap, but they don't see it as free software!!! For them, it's a copy of RedHat Linux for which they pay a tot per copy and a tot for support. I am saddened to see these OSS folks getting excited about companies like these, when (for example) I can't incorporate a fucking Expect in our products.
Sigged!
Wouldn't it be nice to get product information from these people? Sorry, the "product@simdesk.com" email address (from their website) bounces. And such a cutsie message you get back too. Makes an impression - too bad it's a bad impression. See below:
On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 12:07, MAILER-DAEMON@simdesk.com wrote:
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at simdesk.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
product@simdesk.com:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)
seriously, though, political affiliation really has very little to do with how inclined you are to steal, regardless of what one party or the other will try and have people believe. My problem with Republicans, and their proponents, is that there is still this naive belief that big business and the wealthy are looking out for everybodies best interest.
But the generally typical Democratic naivety that people will act responsibly and intelligently; which is not necessarily in contrast with the Republican naivety.
My own beliefs, as a realist, are that
1. big business and the wealthy are only interested in accumulating more wealth, and preferably with the least amount of effort, and
2. people will tend to act irresponsibly, lie to cover their mistakes and insecurities, and try to do as little thinking (or reflection) as possible.
Anything otherwise, while being a good thing, is an exception to the rule.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Put a decent Linux server at every office and let each workstation run OpenOffice.org in an X-Term. Even if the internet/Wan connection went down it would still work on a per-office basis and achieve the same goal with better free software. OpenOffice.org could be installed on each workstation just as the old MS product was, run from a central server and it's free. Doesn't matter if the workstation are running some flavor of Unix or Windows it should work just fine, but of course that would make to much sense.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Hey, we know they are being paid by a Microsoft competitor, VALinux has owned slashdot for years.
The point I am making is that you can argue a case far more effectively if you choose your best points and make only those rather than trying to throw everything against the wall to see what will stick.
A classic example of this was Bob Barr's ridiculous impeachment campaign against Clinton which began before Clinton even took the oath of office. Barr was one of the loonies accusing Clinton of helping Nicaraguan Contras to ship drugs into the US. He also accused Clinton of being involved in the murder of Vince Foster, despite having absolutely no evidence. After six years of antics by the Starrs and Barrs the public were convinced that the scandals were entirely manufactured and willing to disbelieve anything.
This case sounds to me to be the classic example of a story that can easily backfire. The guy who instigated the switch is at the very least a flake, leaving the city in the lurch after pushing the deal through. At worst he is an outright crook.
As for the fact that the AG found 'no evidence' that bribery had played a part in the switch, the fact that the chief instigator is in jail on fraud charges certainly creates a smell.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I just imagine I have an office server for all data (local and abroad). So I walk to my thin client and use my smart card and the pin to login. If I want files from the other side of the world I enter another pin on my cardreader (like cyberjack pinbad usb well supported by linux http://www.reiner-sct.de ). Then I have an optimized protocol and a server especially for compressed office docs and send the data with 1kbit encryption. Any strong demand for that?
...nice
I want a comment rating like that.
The only advantages of windows is that everyone develops for it, so all the apps people use right now are for it. However, that doesn't mean that no one is developing for Linux; i recently fell in love with the Anjuta Development Environment, and I have no reason to go back to Windows, except when I need apps that microsoft refuses to port to linux (those bad, bad people....If Windows is superior to Linux, why don't they make office products for Linux so I can do work for my company on it, and show how bad linux is ... )
The only reason Windows dominates is because it is the status quo. Once people can use MS apps in Linux without emulators, there will be no reason to use bloated windows. I'm sorry, but linux is just better. (Maybe if Microsoft copied linux and got a filesystem that didn't need defragging every week, then I would look at them with a friendlier gaze).
Also, Windows is like AOL...it is for dummies. =P
I own my own business, am a practicing software engineer, practicing managager, and I got my start in the IT/Support world. My company and I use and develop for both OS's (Win2k, WinXP, Mac OSX, Redhat, Gentoo (my fave)). My wife is also an IT Director at a fortune 500 company who has been running experiments with Linux usability as a desktop, so you could say I have unique perspective on this. Once you put the religion aside it gets pretty simple to decide on how to deal with WinXP vs Linux. You decide on the one that is the most cost effective. In many instances my engineers make me money with Linux. I also find that my IT managers also save me money running their servers on Linux. In both of those instances its more cost effective than windows. The illusions of Linux on the desktop isn't cost effect in my company for non-engineers and my attempts at having my IT support it have been to cost effective. My secretary on Linux was a bit of a nightmare. The Linux office apps aren't up to the TEST and she couldn't easily do things to here own desktop without having to have it hold her hand. However my Mac OSX and WinXP tests have shown them both to me quite cost effective. The initial startup costs of both hurt, but after that the yearly maintenance is far far cheaper for than Linux could ever be. My IT people who were intially in support of a free desktop, and opensource. The switched favor rather quickly to OSX and WinXP after a couple of months on Linux however. The main reasin was the compatibilty problems with other companys and the support of software in the open source community is a joke. If you don't pay money they don't have to fix it. Being a large account I can call a Closed Source company up and bitch thereby getting results. With open source I have to hire engineers and do it myself if the OSS teams won't respond to the bug or feature requests. Once we did the cacluations of the engineering costs to support OSS we went back to windows. This is nothing to say with the daily chores of exchanging documents with other companies. The nightmares of allowing them to do simple daily tasks like visit a competitor website and report on it, but not being able to because the plugin isn't on Linux. The employees gave so many thanks to the IT department for switching back it was surprising. The biggest surprise being they didn't complain about Linux till they were back on WinXP or Mac OSX and remembered how much easier they were. Now its almost a running joke in the company. I know longer have a standard desktop in the company. The new rule is its cost effect and makes money or you don't run it. It applies to all other business practices. I am not a MS, Linux, or OSX advocate I am an advocate of making money. Cyanobyte the evil and corrupt.
Lee P. Brown was democrat police chief of NYC and got run out of town due to high crime rates.
How do you know for sure?
People who are liars and cheats who steal $200,000 are rarely liars and cheats on a single isolated occasion. A track record of serving his own interests against the interests of his employers is certainly relevant and has a direct bearing on the subject matter of the article.
We don't know if Piper had an ulterior motive or not. However he would not be the first government employee to take kickbacks in a tender process. The problem is that at this point the guy simply has no credibility. So we can't come to any conclusion as to the reason the city made its decision.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Open-Source will be one of the worst things to happen to the US recession...
and what makes sim desk better then office? the article itself states that sim desk has none of the cool features office has.
/. is going downhill because of that... and nowadays I only see at most a few good posters who acutally help increase the knowledge of others. Constantly seeing MS sucks does not promote any sort of information. These kinds of articles should really be banned from slash dot as I personally am completely tired of seeing such repetitive articles spammed on this site.
the only thing "cool" about sim desk is..
"Its breakthrough was in finding a way to control millions of simultaneous PC users via a single computer server. "
Psh my sub-seven trojan does that for me for free..
Another retarded article posted by retarded linux users who seem to mindlessly follow the mentallity that ms has no good software.
You know what I hope you troll me because obviously you know I'm right. And you know what.. If I wanted a 5 on any of these stupid articles.. all Ihave to say is "MS sucks Linux rules"..
It is a good thing you admit to listening to Rush.
Too bad that we have two political parties in this country:
1. the party of socialism/increasing government size
2. the party of smaller government/more economic freedom
I hope you learn that eventually, when the combined taxe burden is high enough, you will be better off by not earning more money because you can't keep anymore than 10% of it anyway.
Least I forget, high enough tax rates mean that eventually, everyone earns the same amount which means that someone 'smart' will be able to judge that a janitor does equivalent work to a doctor and that they should take home the same money after taxes.
I hope you like it when there is no incentive for people to get better jobs, improve productivity, and raise their standard of living.
"it depends" is the crux of the issue here.
As people begin to feel the bite of Microsoft licensing and the general public sees what kind of ogre Microsoft can be, people will begin to think in terms of actual needed functionality rather than brand identification.
DOS thrived because it had the "killer apps". These killer apps propagated through rampant piracy. Take that away and the predominance of a "killer app" will eventually erode.
So retail companies are in the last 5%...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I think he shot himself in the foot on that one.
This wonderfully brings out the difference between Microsoft and the unix/linux philosophy of "there's more than one way to cat a file". For a long time, I've been of the opinion that Microsoft's attitude toward their customers was pretty much the same as IBM's was in their (pre '80s) monopoly days.
The Linux solution, on the other hand starts with the premise of user freedom.(-: Two different Houstons -- both of whom think that Linux provides the necessary pieces for "the ultimate solution". :-)
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Translation: jedidiah wishes he made more money so he could afford "cool" software
Haines complained to Tatro and other council members, they say, that Piper misled him by not spelling out that the city was looking for an Office replacement. Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake, in a recent interview, called the proposal process "controversial and questionable." She would not be more specific. Haines declined interview requests.
They're so certain that they have their clients in their pocket, they just couldn't conceive that Houston would consider another alternative.
Probably one of the wisest choices my city council has made in years, nay, decades! I shouldn't be so hard on them, there are some good council members in Houston.
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
Cost of acquisition not withstanding, cost of ownership & maintenance really ends up being in the joint hands of management & implementers. Management for business ownership & goal setting, implementers for effective implementation. The worst build OSS system WILL cost you considerably more in the long run and sink your ROI, than a similar payware system correctly designed & efficiently built.
/.ers seem to forget regularly : it's not the technology (unless you're doing something patently idiotic like using Access), it's getting management buy-in.
I think that's the crux of this whole debate that all
Again, so what for Houston. If they have competent techs and it's a solid product, sure their ROI will be better. If their techs are incompetently lead (all too common) or inept (as common) then they won't see an ROI and they'll take the easy route out : blame the product\system\people\OSS.
be0wulfe
Judging by the .NET ads at the top of Slashdot, they are being paid by both sides.
.NET ads of ours.", and Slashdot said "Sure."
You make it sound like Microsoft said "Hey, Slashdot, run some
Slashdot runs Doubleclick ads. Doubleclick supplies ads for thousands of websites, and thousands advertise through Doubleclick. The only reason Slashdot has to show Microsoft ads in its pages is because Microsoft advertises through Doubleclick, and I don't think Slashdot has much say about what Doubleclick ads they show. But thanks for the knee-jerk reaction.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Free software has powerful attractions - which Microsoft exploited when it bundled a free internet browser into its operating system to challenge Netscape.
Yet another indication that attempts to distinguish between free-as-in-RMS-has-a-dream and free-as-in-AOL-CDs are completely lost on the mainstream media.
Marklar: marklar
Yeah, right.
Look at the SimDesk website. Those programs look exactly like their Windows counterparts, right down to the widgets. Especially check out SimExplorer, it's the spitting image of Windows Explorer.
Revolutionary? Right...
Actually, it kinda sounds bad. More diverse document formats means more formats to support.
A single "universal" document format would seem to be better. That way any company/OSS project could make a product that can use the format and compete for market share.
Section 508 only applies to the Feds, but many states also make great effort to ensure that software is accessible to the blind and other people with disabilities. I bet lunch that no one has tried SimDesk with a screen reader!
--puhleeze, junior high level observations of any so called "differences" in the two major political parties! What a hoot!
dems-proponents of big government, bloated bureaucracy, wealth redistribution at the point of a gun
repubs-proponents of big government, bloated bureaucracy, wealth redistribution at the point of a gun
--the differences? About the differences between the russian mafia and the sicilian mafia or the corsican mafia or the triads or the yakuza-basically nothing.
Have the repubs gotten rid of ONE single fed agency? NO have the dems? NO Have either of them repudiated all the soverignty destroying aspects of the various UN "treaties' NO Have either of them stopped the money drain and job drain from the US --> out? NO Have either of them admitted the fiat money system and the federal reserve scam are totally bogus? NO Have either of them closed down the borders to illegal alien invasion? NO
Is the top leadership of both parties comprised of CFR gangsters? YES Does the top leadership consist of corporate jackals who sit on each other's boards and pass laws that favor them? YES Do both parties conspire to help keep any third parties off the ballot and to keep so called "national debates" restricted to just those two gangs? YES Do those two parties top leadership levels consist of people convicted of serious crimes, including influence peddling, trading with the enemy, fraud, accepting illegal campaign donations, vote selling buying and rigging and more? YES
Is it time for the good and honest people in the US to abandon those two parties for the criminal gangs they are, admit it's too corrupt to fix, and become independents again and GET RID of the "professional politicians" as a "career" class? YES,YES,YES & YES
There's plenty of decent people at the lower level grassroots in this nation still "working" for their team. Well meaning and hard working and idealistic, at least they are trying. but it won't work, not when it's "fixed" at the top. It's time they woke up and smelled the corrupt coffee and stop living in denial of the high crimes and misdemeanors their "leaders" have pulled for generations. You saw it with the clintonistas being in total denial, now you can see it with the bushbots. Denial, look the other way on obvious high crimes, deny the evidence even exists. There's enough evidence out there now to show NONE of those well meaning but naieve grassroots efforts will ever make the "system" clean if all that happens is the same gang keeps getting elected, cycle after cycle. all they do is shuffle the same bogus crooks around and keep the rubes happy like if they vote for gang A or B that will automagically fix everything. Scam. The government has been hijacked by this two gang cooperative cartel. It's a SCAM. The only "representative" part of our government is what gets represented by bags of cash.
Web app or not, SimDesk running clients on win98 would be a huge security problem.
Wow, someone with a clue about Houston AND Houston politics got the phursst poast. Or close enough. I'm gonna close this window before the HURR HURRR crowd comes in with "steers & queers."
Note: City o' Houston IT people make Brezhnev-era Moscow shopkeepers look responsive to customer demand. If you'd said that, I'd be sucking your dick right now.
That is all. Please, I've never heard a cowboy joke before. Could you tell me one about oil wells? Maybe a Chimp-in-Chief joke? Kthxby.
The essential component of the technology is an exclusive, first to market, proprietary web-enabled transport protocol. Its patented methodology is unrivaled and is the most groundbreaking and efficient way for applications to communicate data over the Internet.
Exclusive, proprietary, patented. Can they possibly include any more Slashdot synonyms for bad?
YHBT!
You did a partial quote which took his statment out of context then you build a straw man.
The original quote: "Microsoft has spent years and years outright lying, cheating, and stealing, in order to come to market dominance and stay there."
Piper may or may not have done some lying but it is not the same issue as Microsofts lying and cheating with the goal of market dominance.
Very nice straw man.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Microsoft set fall 2001 as a deadline for customers to sign up. Those who did would pay $239 to $380 per copy for Office XP, the latest version.
Those who passed would pay $479 a copy when they did upgrade.
At that rate, and with a promised audit carred out, just about anything looks good. They also realized that the machines they had would not run the new bloated M$ junk. Oh yeah, that and M$'s pathetic 11th hour attempts to avoid being dropped must have left a bad taste too. Anonymous accusations of IP theft are very damaging and M$ should get spanked hard if it turns out they did that. Also, I can only hope that M$ has not been dumb enough to use these dupes to get that embezelment charge against Piper.
This is a half measure. It's nice they found a local, but I wish they had discovered someone that would fix them up with free software. Until people do that, there will always be someone who can pull the rope.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"Working for the houston civic authority doing IT support, I can tell you that many of us are severly displeased with this decision...Almost all of us are MS certified types (I have my MCSE)..."
A bunch of MCMWs (Microsoft Certified Microsoft Whores) are upset, because the flaky software that gives them job security is being kicked out? Tell us something we couldn't have guessed for ourselves.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
"Hey, we know they are being paid by a Microsoft competitor, VALinux has owned slashdot for years."
Aye, I'm aware. I'm sure a lot of any bias has to do with the fact that they're working for a company such as them. I don't see the relationship the other way around. Most folks aren't puppets of their company, at least in my experience.
"The point I am making is that you can argue a case far more effectively if you choose your best points and make only those rather than trying to throw everything against the wall to see what will stick."
Very true, I completely agree. Some of that could be toned down here on Slashdot. I was just being reactionary to the typical, "Oh, it's bashing Microsoft, it must be some thoughtless zombie posting; damn the editors." Your post doesn't fit these trolls, but when I read it, I did get that same "this is just MS bashing" meaning from it.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I say since these interoperability problems are insurmountable, we should just all give up. As soon as I get home, I'm replacing Linux and OpenBSD with Win XP Pro on all my machines.
Only half are homosexual. The other half are bovine. Queers and steers.
How ya like dat?
Well it looks like Microsoft is finally catching onto the idea that it can't compete with Linux using their normal "FUD" tactics.
Well it looks like Microsoft really didn't have the Monopoly everyone said they have.
...their website is all ASP.
OpenOfficeMS Office export and import problems even with plain Word letters
I'll do you one better. I've run into OpenOffice import problems with Word a plain text document exported to RTF! Not being able a simple Word import was bad, not being able to handle it in RTF; that's an open document format.
Wasn't Houston the city where the police went into a KMart parking lot at 3am and arrested 18+ year olds for truancy, even when they had a KMart register receipt?
Man, there were something like 300 people arrested under felony stop conditions. It blew up in Brown's face, and the city is going to pay billions.
Real bright Democrat.
www.602software.com I use it, it's a great MS imitator. Mostly free. Oops, no bribes.
Anyway, whazzup wit da rail line down to da habor? FemiEnviros got der tampons in a twist over dat one.
Here's the RFP that they won.
The details of what Houston was asking for begin on page 10. I don't see how either MS Office or OpenOffice could fit this contract. Take a look at items 7 (a disk explorer that saves deleted files on a remote server), 8 (virtual tape backup via the net), and 10 (MS Access clone...when the hell is OO going to clone Access?) And the whole thing is supposed to "run on Windows-based computers as well as Apple MacIntosh, Unix, and Linux-Based computers and operating systems."
Business seeks more profit (Repubs swim in this pool). The State seeks more power (Dems swim in this pool). Individual consumers seek more value/choice/whatever (the pool is full of junk by now).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I'm interested by the cluelessness of the Microsoft guy's assertions about IBM's relationship to open source and Linux. (Disclaimer: Yeah, I work for IBM, but I'm gonna try not to make this a sales pitch. Obviously this isn't an official statement, it's my opinion, errors are mine, blah blah.)
He says that IBM is relying on proprietary, closed software. He seems to think that you won't see an open source equivalent of WebSphere.
Well, WebSphere is based on Apache Tomcat. The IBM HTTP server bundled with WebSphere is a version of Apache. IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer is based on Eclipse, another open source project.
I don't know what he means by "integration", but IBM has disk images for internal use that have a complete Linux, DB2 and WebSphere install, ready to run. They're used for demos; customers typically have very specific requirements, and want something that's custom integrated with their existing infrastructure. (Contrast with Microsoft's approach, where it's integrated only so long as everything else you own is Microsoft.)
Peter Houston asserts that IBM is pushing for a world of commodity Intel hardware running Linux. Well, not really--IBM has Linux running on iSeries (AS/400), pSeries (PowerPC) and zSeries (OS/390) as well as xSeries (Intel). (Yes, you can run Linux on your IBM mainframe.)
IBM is more than happy to sell you Linux solutions based on any of those hardware platforms, depending on how heavyweight your requirements are. I very much doubt that anyone is being encouraged to move from iSeries or zSeries to Intel; in fact, one recent ad campaign has been selling the benefits of consolidating hundreds of Intel boxes into one iSeries server.
He says that Linux open source makes it very difficult to have a revenue-generating business. Well, IBM generated over a billion dollars of revenue from Linux sales last year, in the middle of a recession. Not so difficult after all?
Single sign-on? Yeah, we do that, with Kerberos, LDAP, JAAS, or Tivoli products on Linux.
IBM a services company, not a software company? That's a surprise to those of us who work in the $12 billion+ IBM Software Group.
And of course, if you really want a slick UNIX OS that's fully integrated and never needs you to touch a command line, and you don't care about how proprietary it is, you could buy an Apple Xserve... Seems to me Microsoft loses that battle too.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Crappy bootlegs? I think not! We have an 8.5 GB rip of a Two Towers **DVD**. It's a special Oscar copy that got leaked... "For your consideration" is overlaid occasionally but it's perfect quality. (No, I'm not the orginal poster)
My post isn't offtopic, the topic is offpost.
I've already solved this issue. It's simple, don't use Word or Excel formats. Use PDF for all communications outside of your organization. Readers for a wide variety of platforms exist and make printing the document a very simple excercise. For documents that are not created electronically we either use the Adobe Acrobat writer which allows you to scan in directly and save the file as a PDF file, or we use ECopy (www.ecopy.com) which does a similar thing. We ask our partners to send us only PDF files in return. We have configured our email system to reject all Office attachments, and to send a reply to the sender to send us only PDF files. PDF can be edited or exported if need be. This has allowed us to slowly remove all M$ software from our environment. Our goal is be be M$ free this year.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
You don't. You can get 6.0e23 molecules, easily:
(18.0 g/mol) * (1 mL/g) * (6.0e23 molecules/mol) / (18 mL) = 6.0e23 molecules / 18 mL
He was just off by an order of magnitude or so.
Living better through chemicals
A good side topic is how Men's Fitness magazine labeled Houston as the fattest city based on many variables unrelated and uncorrelated to being overweight.
Even more interesting is how that was front page news in so many national and international papers.
I guess we should allow everyone to continue thinking Texas is a bad place to live so that they don't move here. Seattle natives say it rains too much to keep out the Californians also.
This is a non-issue. First off if everything you send to clients let's say as a DOC file is saved as a rtf then 99.997% of all word processors can open and read it. secondly, why would anyone do something as silly as send a EDITABLE document to a customer?? under linux it's really easy to print to pdf and then simply email that pdf to the customer.. end of story. finally after my company performed an analysis of all the important spreadsheets that are used in the company 95% of them had nothing complex that did not make the change to OO.o easily... that is 95% of all the spreadsheets that a 2.2 million employee company generates DO NOT USE THE SCRIPTING OR ADVANCED and incompatable options of microsoft products...
it's a non issue... a few users will whine but big deal... macros in a SS or document are asking for Virus spreading and really have no place in the enterprise environment.
in word, save as RTF, oo.o open's it happily. it's really easy to require that from your clients.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah, oops, thanks. 6.022e23. I think I got it confused with 5.98e24 (mass of earth in kg). So that's 6 hundred thousand billion billion instead :), the rest of my comment stands.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
This may have been posted already and I just missed it, but if not, here goes:
The article mentioned that SimDesk was installed on the library's computers as a trial basis and it was extremely popular. Maybe since we're all highly computer literate, we tend to forget that there are many out there who aren't, maybe for the simple fact that they're too poor to own a computer.
Think about it. Suppose you were poor and didn't have a computer and needed to do some kind of word processing, your options would be limited. Not considering typewriters and all-in-one wordprocessors, you could either go over to a friend's and use their computer (assuming you had such a friend who wouldn't mind the inconvenience) or what--go to the library?
Assuming the library had a word processor or spreadsheet or whatever it was you needed to use, you'd still have to get a hold of a floppy disk or a zip disk in order to save your work. By using an office suite that enables you to save your work remotely, you eliminate the need for the user to buy storage media--something that for some could be unattainable.
Additionally, as has already been stated, the average Joe Blow user has no need for most of what M$ Office does. By going with SimDesk in the libraries, the city of Houston has made opened the door for many who were previously shut out. Heck, the article stated that it was their aim to make SimOffice available for every poor person.
"What began as Brown's goal to use SimDesk as an affordable way to give poor residents access to basic computer functions broadened into a plan to use SimDesk as a cheaper alternative on some city PCs, too."
And the results:
"... during nine months of the pilot program, more than 30,000 users had written and stored resumes, school papers, legal statements, poetry and other files on the SimDesk server. They couldn't do complex data sorting or many other chores Office does well. Even so, lines formed at the library's SimDesk terminals. Civic leaders rallied behind it. "SimDesk lowers the barriers for the low-income community," says Brian Stevens, executive director of The Telecom Opportunity Institute, a non-profit that guides at-risk youth."
Like many of you, my first reaction was, "Huh?!" Why didn't they go with Open Office?" Maybe because you have to save your files locally and SimOffice eliminates that need? There's no risk of losing or damaging your floppy. However, to be fair, if SimDesk's network or hard drives fail, where are you? It's a tradeoff, I guess.
Anyway, I think the fact that Mayor Brown was concerned about bringing basic computer functioning to the masses, succeeded, saved money, didn't have to upgrade hardware, and did it all in spite of Micro$oft's corporate extortion is quite a feat. So what if it's not open source? Do you really think that any of the new beneficiaries of the free access to the previously unavailable technology give a rip about that?
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Mr. Norman Nolasco, xxxx asdsdfds sfsdfsdfd, No. yyyy, Houston, Texas 770xx (zzz-zzz- 8886) appeared and presented information to Council titled Detailed Issues with Approval of Ordinance 2002-04601 and reviewed the presentation which related to the SimDesk, Sam Houston Project, until his time expired. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Page 11 NO. 2002-0677-1 06-18/19-02, Page 11 Upon questions by Council Members, Mr. Nolasco stated that he worked for a company called Advarian, Inc., that his software company had been in business since around 1997. since then they had developed all sorts of software for the Internet and for companies like Ford Motor Company and one of their clients was the U. S. Military, that they first heard about SimDesk in August of 2001 when they published an article on some of the software that they were also working on, that the next time he heard about SimDesk was May 28th or June 5th, when the City pretty much approved the project for $9.5 million dollars, that the members of his company were practically stunned that it would cost that much so they contacted one of the City Council Members and then decided to give them this information, that they were in business of providing software over the web, that the software that was currently being used by the military was a medical patient management system, they were also using the system with Saturn Corporation, that he had both corporate and government clients, that they constantly look at the newspapers and all the published things as far as who was looking for this type of software since they were a small company and did wish to try to find as much business as possible, that they were able to look at the RFP and the proposal, that this RFP was at least peculiar, it was very different from other ones they had seen, that if they read the proposal and compared it to the RFP, pages 5 through 10 of the official proposal submitted and compared it to pages 10 through 13 of the RFP, they were practically identical, other than a few words changed, no numbers were changed, the figures were exactly the same, the order of each section was exactly the same, that he was definitely aware of at least one other company that catered to several Fortune 100 Companies, that in his professional opinion, it was superior to this software, that the RFP received one proposal, that that there was no way he could have submitted a proposal because it was drafted so narrowly that there was only one company that did submit the proposal, that he would say there was no way another company would even attempt to try to match what was in the RFP. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Upon questions by Council Member Ellis, Mr. Bibler stated that the drafts were generated by the department seeking the goods or services, that from time to time, they may check with the Legal Department, but did not think that there was any requirement that they do so, that he could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Piper conferred with someone in Legal. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Upon further questions by Council Members, Mr. Nolasco stated that this software was actually available from Microsoft for free for a period of time around 1996 to 1998, and since then had improved it vastly, in fact, a lot of the working innards were what they called this type of word processing software for the Internet, that it was actually built into the Internet Explorer or 6 browser, that they could get it for free, that the tools were available for free to build this, so if they were to go to any software development company anywhere in the world, and pointed them to these tools, it was trivial to make them work, so in a sense, this software was free, that he was not sure what Mr. Piper would have known, that if he at least did a search on the Internet spreadsheet or Internet documents, matches would have come up on the Internet; that SimDesk had a recruiter contact him and offer to look at some of the stuff they worked on, they did not make him a job offer, the recruiter contacted him and he demonstrated the software to the recruiter and basically the recruiter got back to him and said he was not someone they wanted to talk to. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Ellis, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Upon questions by Council Member Edwards, Mr. Bibler stated that he had been asked if the RFP that Mr. Piper submitted was legal and the Legal Department did not prepare or review the RFP, after it was awarded and it came to them after the proposals had been received, they looked at it, but of course they were looking at it basically from the same perspective that Council Page 12 NO. 2002-0677-1 06-18/19-02, Page 12 was looking at it, they had one attorney who had some expertise in computer matters, but for her to know whether or not this RFP was restricted in some invalid manner was probably beyond anybody in the Legal Department and he had spoken with the Division Chief and she said no such issue was raised with them and this was the first they heard about it today, that they were aware that there were a couple of other vendors in the area that might potentially have similar products, that they would not have let the issue go forward without raising it with Mr. Piper or whoever their client was if he thought his RFP was invalid, it would have never gotten this far.
The apps don't run on the server. They run on the desktop. The applications have functionality that uses the server to facilitate mulit-user communication, resource sharing, storage etc.
What did they 'ask' of Tatro??????
They made an offer he couldn't refuse.
Not to mention that on my own work PC, I can save a document from Word 2002 into Word 95 format, open the back-saved version, and see quite a different document. Yes, there are good reasons I'm doing this--it's not just to pick on Uncle Bill.
And OpenOffice can at least load the MacOS Word 6.0 files, the back-saved Win95 files, and Word 2002 files without screwing them up much worse than Microsoft's own office suite does. The ensuing hand-tweaking is what leads me to distribute most of our stuff as PDF these days, but occasionally our other volunteers need documents they can edit in their office suite of force^W choice.
There's your evidence. Yeah, I know, it's only one user, and it's anecdotal. But I'm sure there are others.
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
Slashdot runs Doubleclick ads. Doubleclick supplies ads for thousands of websites, and thousands advertise through Doubleclick.
Well, that all sounds fairly reasonable, until I remember that whenever I visit another site running doubleclick ads, I find the image sourced from "ad.doubleclick.net". However, nary an ad with that URL can I find on slashdot - they all appear to come from images.slashdot.org.
I am running Windows 2000 (Hey it's a work machine - I have no choice) I have Ghostscript and Ghostgum and with these I can create PDFs without needing Acrobat - just print to a postscript file and convert.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
That's funny. Mayor Lee Brown thought he ran as in indepedent. I guess he must be mistaken. Or perhaps you assumed he must be a democrat since he is black?
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
The fact that this is modded up is beyond belief! Have you fucks ever heard of "offtopic"? Slashdot has slipped into being just another ideological mass of shit. I'll grab real tech news and opinions elsewhere....
The context was irrelevant. The poster accused one party of dishonesty but had not bothered to read the article that showed that the other party happened to be in jail facing criminal theft charges.
Piper may or may not have done some lying
The allegations are rather more serious than merely lying. They involve the theft of $200,000. That is grand larceny.
but it is not the same issue as Microsofts lying and cheating with the goal of market dominance.
Dishonesty is dishonesty is dishonesty. Your attempt to draw a moral distinction between corporate behaviour (bad) and personal theft (irrelevant) simply does not work. The fact that Piper is in jail on theft charges is very relevant when considering the significance of the story. This does not sound to me like the unarguable triumph of Microsoft alternatives on the merits. On the contrary it sounds like the sort of shifty deal that takes place in Enron country.
Very nice straw man
You do not appear to understand what a straw man is. A straw man is falsely attributing an argument to the other side in order to be able to dismiss it with ease. I attributed no arguments to the other side, hence no straw man.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Keep in mind that there has been no trial on this case yet. Something about "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" comes to mind.
Funny. I've actually used OpenOffice to repair Excel spreadsheets that MS Excel had corrupted and couldn't open anymore. Just open them in OO and save as, then open the file in Excel and it works perfectly.
I'm in Houston and Lee Brown IS a Democrat.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Actually, sites who are displaying Doubleclick ads have *full* control over which ads they show. Any ads that they don't wish to show they can easily turn off, and those ads will never be shown on their site. Slashdot showing .Net ads means that either Slashdot has incompetent people running their ad department, that they don't care/know they can turn them off, or that they want them there.
Dennis Piper left behind his e-mails before he left for San Diego. http://www.viahouston.com has them available along with a lot of background on Simdesk.
Most people here don't like Microsoft for very good reasons
I would actually like to hear these reasons. I would like people to cite specific examples where Microsoft has used it's monopoly power. It's pricing schemes? Please, PC game developers face very stiff competition and they have an hour-cost MUCH higher than any Microsoft product. People pay $50 for 30 hours of gaming and noone hates game devs, but when Microsoft charges $200 for software that is used for hundreds of hours and is much more useful people want to burn them at the stake. What about Adobe's fees for Photoshop or Autodesks fees for AutoCAD??? Microsoft charges very resonable fees for a professional application with so much functionality (and if you say something about BSODs or constant crashing, etc. I suggest you get over Windows 95 and refer to either 2k or XP).
Perhaps people are angry about Internet Explorer... I fail to see how lowering the cost of web-browsers hurts me as a user. If I don't like the browser bundled with Windows, I've always had the option to get another (for free now, yeah I can remember when NS cost money)if I wanted to.
You prove to me why I should be super-pissed at MS and maybe I'll start complaining too. But when all I hear is "MS charges money for their product and expects people to pay" I'll continue to support MS and leave Lunix users to do the whining.
To set the facts straight, simdesk was selected by bid rigging and conflict of interest of a software contract in Houston.
Interesting... any support for this statement? I'm sure we can find people who say the opposite, why should we believe you?
Basically IAT was awarded a contract for $9.5 million. There are several problems with this contract:
Call me a skeptic but I get somewhat suspicious when organizations start throwing arround $9.5 million contracts to companies that nobody has ever heard of for a product that nodody has ever heard of against a legacy product that can be bought in units of $500 a piece, I tend to think there is something odd.There might be a case for going for the other vendor, but I would want to see rather more of a track record with the city before I voted for spending $9.5 million on an untried product. Like doing a trial of 100 seats or so over an extended period.
The premise behind the contract appears to be that the CIO office will spend $9.5 million making a central purchase of desktop application software and this will save money becuase the departments won't have to buy office. The problem with this argument is that the departments that have already deployed office are not going to switch to a different platform just because the CIO office tells them to, particularly if the order appears to be to facilitate some scam.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
i've had the same problems you have!!!
oh yea one other thing...all systems were microsoft.
why do dumbass people insist on sending word documents?
when will they get it through their thick skulls that word is not a publishing program.
word documents do not look the same from computer to computer. this problem is not a linux problem...it's a stupid user problem. they think that if "it looks great on my screen...my job is done"
format changes incompatibilities because:
*they change because users have different templates
*they change because users have different printers
*they change because users have overrided auto formatting
*they change because users margins are different because of the printer
*they change because they are on different office versions
*they change because they are missing fonts the sender has,and the receiver does not.
My biggest two problems with MS are as follows:
1) Their software sucks compared to what's out there. Don't waste your time replying and talk about something you haven't tried out (more than a brief stint).
2) Their attitude and treatment of other businesses. They threatened to break their contract with Compaq when Compaq decided to remove the IE icon from the desktop. Their bastardization of the Java language. Their FUD. The list goes on.
You'll never understand all of these until you take a step back, become a bit unbiased, dodge all of the useless FUD from anti-MS slackies, and just take a fresh, broad look. I don't really care to convince you, it's something you find on your own by following the news, doing some serious reading up on their trial, and by trying other products and giving them a serious shot (note: just because something is different and you have to adjust doesn't mean it sucks; you didn't 'know' Windows overnight).
If you care to continue this, email me: duckmanins@hotmail.com
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I should note the obvious part to those of you reading this who aren't inclined to take this unbiased: if Compaq lost its license to sell Windows on its PCs, it would likely be reverted to an insignificant company, if it stayed in business.
All over an icon.
Do some reasearch; I believe ZDnet has an article in the archives.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
"You don't think that maybe some of the slashdot editors are getting paid by a Microsoft competitor or something?"
You mean, like VA Software or something?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Well you could read the report. It is basically a whitewash job to save the Mayor's butt, but it can't do the job. As for whether Tatro has a hidden agenda, quite possibly but it seems rather more likely that his agenda is party politics than carrying water for Microsoft.
The report is actually pretty damning. The contract amount was $9.5 million, yet the report states that "Mr Piper did not understand the contract development and negotiation process and the time it would take".
If you have had any experience at all of city politics you know that a statement of that type is horsepucky. You do not get to be CIO of a city the size of Houston without understanding the difference between an RFP and a contract negotiation. The story that he came from private industry does not wash either, anyone involved in corporate procurement knows what an RFP is.
When you see a statement like that in an inspectors report it means precisely one thing, namely the inspector is pretty sure that something fishy went on but lacks the evidence to prove it.
The description of the bidding process demonstrates pretty clearly that the RFP was deliberately written to ensure that only one party could bid. It was written so narrowly that only IAT's application fitted. It was not only the Microsoft sales guy who was frozen out. The IBM sales rep would have bid if allowed additional time - which IAT did not need because they had known about the RFP two months beforer it was issued and in any case it described their product.
Its not just the Microsoft guy who thought the deal was stinky, the BMC guy also wondered why the city would replace an existing exchange installation that was fully functional with 'an untested product for $9 million'.
The Advarion guy also had some pretty good points, the contract was massively inflated from the start, the number of users was overstated, the number of simultaneous users was overstated. It was also plain wrong about a lot of technical issues. Why specify a 5Tb file storage device when it is easy to add extra capacity? "Many requirements do not state a problem to be solved but include required equipment, resources and programming design. Most of the time the City is concerned with solving a City problem, not a programming problem. The RFP includes software architecture and virtually useless features as requirements. This does not encourage proposal submittal but confuses software companies and discourages proposal submittal."
Piper himself admits that the contract price grew by $4.5 million because they had underestimated the cost of bandwidth.
The inspectors report does not actually clear Piper of all charges, the dispute over what was said to Microsoft is 'Not Sustained' rather than 'No'. It is interesting however to read the actual text used to justify these conclusions.
The RFP process is found to have been 'fair' because the vendors who were frozen out failled to complain about the process at the time. The fact that IBM and Centrix 'indicated that they could have entered a bid'. This is pure whitewash, IBM stated they did not enter a bid because the city did not allow enough time and Centrix did not enter a bid because they did not know from the RFP what the City actually wanted.
The inspectors report only considers the issue of whether the process was unfair to the bidders. The real scandal is that the whole project from start to finish was a collosal boondoggle that was a collosal waste of public money. It is typical of dotcom era and enron thinking rather than practical realities. $9.5 million has been spent on an IT infrastructure that we can confidently predict will never be used.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
And where are your references on these "facts" of yours? I'll bet they are where your head is, i.e., where the sun doesn't shine...You obviously don't know crap about real estate economics. Taxes and water/garbage costs are only a small part of a renter's rent. Maintenance and upkeep are a much larger part of the bill than taxes and water/garbage fees.
And the reason we still have a regressive property tax system in Texas is because the White Republicans in charge will never adopt a more fair state income tax because that way rich White conservatives will have to pay their fair share of taxes, unlike the situation today.The city has very little direct involvement with the sports stadiums. I guess you have never heard of the Houston/Harris County Sports Authority The train route is actually 7.5 miles. It begins next to the University of Houston Downtown (and runs on Main Street about 1/2 mile from the baseball park and basketball stadium), runs next to Houston Community College Central Campus, the Museum District, Rice University, and the Texas Medical Center before it gets to the Astrodome area and the new football stadium. It is hardly a stadium to stadium shuttle.This paragraph is so full of errors it is laughable. There is no SINGLE bus line that tracks the train. There are at least 6 different routes, and many of them have massive traffic to the Medical Center and downtown Houston.
As far as your second assertion goes, the whole Astrodome area was once prairie, but now the Medical Center is growing to the point where it almost takes up the whole area. There are beaucoup apartments, office buildings, stores, car dealers, etc. in the area, so it HAS been revitalized!And this ties into SimDesk how? Besides the "connection" in your fevered brain that is...That proves it. This post is full of errors that it cannot be moderated as "informative". It is actually pure Texas-grade bullshit so it cannot considered "insightful". It is really a troll and should be moderated as such.
Moderators, please check the facts before moderating someone as "informative". Someone needs to step up and bitchslap this piece of crap before anyone else thinks there is even a grain of truth to it...
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Oh, plenty, see some of my other posts in this thread. Unfortunately I started from what I thought was the clincher, the fact that Piper, the procurement guy behind the bid is currently behind bars on charges he embezzled $200,000. (actually it was $294,000 but who's counting?)
It was only after I started digging that I discovered that the inspector generals report that 'exhonerates' Piper and the contract in fact does the exact opposite if you read the facts themselves rather than the whitewash conclusions drawn from them.
If you read the report you will find that this was not a Microsoft vs IAT contest at all. IAT was given the inside track against all the other bidders. Basically the contract was written in such a way that IAT was the only possible bidder for the $9.5 million contract.
One reason you can tell the deal stinks is that the whole point of adopting an outsourced model is that it allows you to scale your resources to your exact needs. If you need an extra 1000 seats you simply call up the vendor and send them a check. There is simply no rational justification for committing to purchase 15,000 seats in advance before you know what the demand is going to be. What you would do is to write a contract that allows you to purchase from 1000 to 15,000 seats in increments of 500 seats as required.
I have been involved in outsourcing procurement deals of this type for a very long time. Deals of this type are known as 'sweatheart deals', you know what they are as soon as you read the RFP. If you are not the favored bidder you can be absolutely certain that the only result of making a protest will be a whitewash investigation and your company being blacklisted in all future contracts.
This is not a party matter, the Mayor of Houston is a Democrat posing as an Independent but Republicans have pulled far larger scams in that citty. The biggest scam of all being the billions Enron and its accomplices ripped off California with the active help of Bush and Cheney.
Take a read of the comments in the OIG report, in particular the comments of the BMC and Advarion guys. The conclusions are pure whitewash but its much harder to hide the actual facts.
The contract was clearly a boondogle from start to finish and Piper gave IAT the inside track to win it. It was not only Microsoft that was frozen out, it was also IBM.Lotus (heard of them) and anyone else who could have provided the same functionality.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Very old news : http://www.simdesk.com/pressrelease4.asp
By the way the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was standardized in 1999 (RFC 2565 signed by people from Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Sharp Labs) and is currently implemented in almost all network printers.
Still, it tickled me to see in the article the headline:
Microsoft says it was misled
Waah! Waah! Daddy come stop the big bad man! He's lying to Microsoft!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Much like W is wishing daddy would have finished the job 10 years ago...In 10 years from now we will wonder why the DOJ did not follow through with seperating Office from Windows.
The more I look at the whole M$ stranglehold -- I realize that the real evil is within the application grips. It has been proven many times -- OS/2, Mac, Linux, etc. that a competent OS will be like a car with only 3 wheels without the apps.... But if you control the apps -- you control the OS.
The sad part is that 90% of the people only really use 10% of the functionallity in office suites. And 98% of the people would be fine with the versions of Excel or Word (5.0 & 6.0) that were around during the 3.1 days....yet these suckers keep upgrading....at about 300-600 bucks a pop per license. For big companies -- that is a cash cow. Maybe that is why my (50000 people - Fortune 500) company is still using Office 95. Being fairly high up in the IT side of the house -- I can count on one hand how many people have voiced concerns about not having newer versions.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
What a wonderfully non-informative website. Nowhere does it tell you how to obtain the product, how much it costs, what kind of bulk distribution is available, what platforms it's compatible with, etc. Doesn't it strike anyone else as odd that you have to contact them to find out how to buy it? Maybe I've secretly come to LOVE the multiple PayPal and credit card pop-ups seem to be everywhere...
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
I read the entire article at USA Today and just got my jollies for the day.
I can not begin to express my disgust with M$ and this is nothing short of excellent news.
EVERYTHING and ANYTHING that works towards the total and absolute destruction of the M$ empire and the arrest and conviction of Bill Gate$ for being a scumbag THIEF is GOOD....
By ANY means...
--
--
Registered Linux user number 302172
Registered Micro$oft Hater number 302172
Registered Linux machine number 187566
Interesting biographies of the officers of SimDesk
http://www.simdesk.com/kalil.asp
Rexair is a vacuum cleaner company, by the way.
"You do not appear to understand what a straw man is. A straw man is falsely attributing an argument to the other side in order to be able to dismiss it with ease. I attributed no arguments to the other side, hence no straw man."
Thanks for clearing up that straw man thing.... However, you did attribute an argument to the other side. You misquoted the parent post thereby subtly changing the meaning.
However, straw men aside, it's really irrelevant anyway. What piper may or may not have done is quite a separate issue from his project of moving Houston away from Microsoft's Office project.
It is a fairly common political tactic to attack a the character of an opponent in order to discredit a project that he has undertaken. Some people will be distracted by this and not realize that the project is not "guilty by association."
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
That is not what the project was about. It was about providing free access to software applications through the houston public libraries. The city bought 15,000 seats at a cost of $9.5 million - or $650 a seat so it was hardly a bargain.
It is a fairly common political tactic to attack a the character of an opponent in order to discredit a project that he has undertaken. Some people will be distracted by this and not realize that the project is not "guilty by association."
That is an ad-hominem attack, or argument to the man. Ad-hominem is actually perfectly valid when the question centers on questions of individual honesty as in this case.
For example it is perfectly legitimate to question the current 'Trust us' argument being used to justify invading Iraq on the grounds that the people making it have repeatedly lied to get their tax cut proposals passed. The fact that piper is facing charges over a $294,000 theft charge is very relevant to the question of whether Piper's claimed motives for the contract can be believed.
The OIG report did actually find that the Microsoft sales rep had been misled by Piper but claimed that it had not been proven that this was intentional. If you read the actual report you will see that this was not simply an isolated issue.
This whole slashdot thread has the chronology wrong. The sequence was not Microsoft loses contract, complains, investigation is started. The actual chronology was:
- contract was awarded for $9.5 million,
- Piper resigns,
- questions are asked as to whether the contract was suspect by Tatro and others
- emails were uncovered suggesting that Piper may have had an amorous relationship with one of the parties involved in the IAT bid
- formal investigation started by OIG
- OIG question Microsof
- Whitewash report issued
This story has almost nothing to do with Microsoft. It is the story of a very very smelly contract being awarded under very very smelly circumstances.Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This misrepresents the chronology. The scandal predates the Microsoft statement which was in fact made to the OIG inspector who was interviewing all the people who attended the pre-bid meeting.
The slashdot story is completely off-base, Microsoft was not the source of the complaint and did not trigger the investigation. The source of the complaint and the inquiry was Bruce Tatro, an assembly member who thought that the $9.5 million contract was highly suspicious and has uncovered a large amount of proof to back his case.
The point is that it was not only Microsoft that thought that the RFP had been deliberately written so that only IAT could bid on the contract. Furthermore if you read what the project was meant to do it is clear that the $9.5 million was in any case being flushed down the toilet.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
again, I would really like to stop seeing the Rush Limbaugh/pro-Republican spin stopped, and see people observe what is actually going on.
The Bush administration's most incredible feat is making the executive branch more powerful than it has EVER been, ever before. To just state, without any basis in fact, that Dems are trying to take away your individual rights, when the Republican led Federal gvt is currently holding both American citizens and non-citizens, without disclosure or representation, and without any kind of checks or balances on their power, is quite obsurd. We, as US citizens, currently have less rights now than at any other time in our history.
I have no problems with security, making the country safe, etc, but I really have to object to being able to take a person away, without saying why, without giving the person any rights, and for an indefinite amount of time. This power is just BEGGING to be abused; how long will it be before anyone who speaks against the Bush dynasty will be hauled off without a trace? Can martial law really be farther behind? The implications of what they have done, no matter how they are 'justified', are truly scary, and set dangerous precidents for future abuses (the 'slippery slope').
Individual consumers seek more value/choice/whatever (the pool is full of junk by now).
The problem with consummerism is that you get the Henry Ford/Model T choice- "any color you want, as long as it's black"; meaning that you can only choose what is offered. The pool is indeed full of junk, and we are really just chosing the best of the junk. The only solution is to do what I am doing- accepting less pay and more job difficulties to work in government and try to make a difference.
I wont say it isnt frustrating, having to deal with people who are more worried about inter-office politics and covering their asses instead of the technology and creating solutions (and for less money than I made working in corporations). But, since I always feel compelled to work on the root of the problem, and see government as fundamentally broken, I am trying to do my part to do what I can.
As my father used to say, dont complain unless you can suggest a better way.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
"White Republicans"? How did this crap get moderated as "Interesting"? Are you frikkin' serious? No, let me guess: It's a Black Thang, and all them White folks wouldn't understand, right? Man, step all the way off. Idiot.
Yeah, I'll go to karma hell for this letter, but that author deserves nothing less than to be slapped back with his own racism.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
That's great, but what happens when the company we're rooting for against MS is just as large and powerful, if not more so, than MS? Two elephants dancing come to mind...
We've got some of MS's skeltons out of the closet. We know that they're not entirely playing fair. MS has a legal history of screwing with consumers, OEMs, governments, etc. It's on record now, and we're keeping a close eye on them. It's like having a prior arrest record when the cops come to the door and start handcuffing everyone for any number of reasons. The one with the prior record will get fewer breaks than the first-time offender. Political clout be damned, MS won't get away with bad business behavior as easily from now on. Why go through it all again with someone new?
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
I see what you're talking about and your points are all good ones. I can't help thinking though that there's always going to be someone trying to be the new big-bad and it's just a matter of time before the next one steps up to bat. Then we have to do it all over again. The Devil you know is indeed better than the one you don't but it's a perpetual series of them that we're always going to be facing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
what does working for Clinton have to do with being a liberal?
Oh wait, are you using Limbaugh-speak for Democrat? lets see what www.dictionary.com has to say... liberal ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lbr-l, lbrl) adj. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor. Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes. Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation. Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education. Archaic. Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman. Obsolete. Morally unrestrained; licentious. n. A person with liberal ideas or opinions. Liberal A member of a Liberal political party.
I dont know. I dont see anything wrong with being a liberal. Maybe you object to people who are "Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry". The GOP is the KKK's prefered party, after all. I am not saying that all Republicans are racists, but I'll bet all racists are Republicans.
Or maybe you were just saying that Lee P Brown is a member of the "Liberal political party". Never hear of them, but its nice to see a major city have a third party candidate, especially in the south.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
You don't become or remain wealthy by throwing money away.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A single universal document format superficially sounds like utopia, but I wouldn't ever want to see it come to pass, any more than I'd like to see one-size-fits-all clothing being the only thing available off-the-rack.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Imagine the internet with several different, and constantly evolving HTML formats to support.
Imagine the internet where we only had HTML and didn't have PDF.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Democrats are all about demonizing people who don't share there views. Democrates are not saints in any way as they would have you belive, Al Sharpton? Jesse Jackson? Ted Kennedy? Albert Gore? Hardly people i would ever wanna be seen with. Supporting Democrates means you want the country to be run by Hollywood phonies and Lawyers. The United States would not be in the state its in if Democrates weren't around.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Go look up Texas politics (and economics) on the net and you will see that I am not too far off in my description of what is going on here.
Also, look up the word Chicano in the dictionary. Not all minority issues are black/white...
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Does this mean that every R is a corporate shill? No. Does this mean that ever D is for protecting the individual and the poor? No. But AS A GROUP that is the direction they work toward.
This is not a factor so much of the people that join them as it is of pleasing their disseparate voter bases. The R's are based in rural areas, where people are easily manipulated due to a lack of contact with new ideas and 24/7 broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh and Fox 'Conservative' broadcasting. Somebody who works on a plow 12 hrs a day is hardly going to care about some black kid who is trying to go to college on an Endowment for the Arts scholarship, and kind of understandably so.
D's, however, tend to have more of a power base rooted in minorities and progressive, liberal people (as the true meaning of liberal, not the Bush/Rush Limbaugh meaning).
Also, I think the R's have their fair share of Hollywood phonies and Laywers on their side, too.
Also, why would you be embarassed to be seen with Al Gore? The man won the popular vote, is very smart and educated, and I would say is more of a moral person than our current reformed alcoholic/drug user, failed businessman, sense of entitlement, silver-spoon fed president. The only thing I find admirable about GWB is that he can get things done; but what he is getting done is very bad, just like I felt it would be; his dad was quite an evil person as well. Dont believe me? Read up on ol' man Bush. Noriega, Hussein, Bin Laden- I call these men 'the Sons of Bush', because his actions in the CIA pretty directly led to all of them. He has single-handedly caused the US more harm than any other outside influence could have, and all through being a shill for special interests.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Yes. Couple other things to keep in mind:
- You might want to look at the fonts your users use, pdf converters have trouble with a few. Just disable ones that don't work.
- A standard practice is to have an internal e-mail address where users can send files they have problems with. You can make this little more smarter by say automaticly return mailing any MS formats as converted OO files back to user and then asking if they still have a problem.
- Because it is XML, OO files convert very nicely and easily to HTML.
- Finally, for those users that really need them, you can offer Windows apps from terminal server to Linux desktop. Rdesktop is a simple open source RDP client, commercial programs include Citrix which is sleak but expensive and somewhat painful to administer, and Tarantella which is cheaper and more portal oriented. Generally, Citrix is better for MS environments and Tarantella for nixes.
"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
sincerely, extremely dangerously.
They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used
intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks.
They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They
used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the
bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery.
They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics.
They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
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