Munich Spurns Steve Ballmer's Software Rebates

Kurt Pfeifle writes "Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Munich to offer up to 90% rebates for the Microsoft Software Assurance and Licenses was in vain. The ruling party of Germans biggest city and self-proclaimed 'technology capital' now decided to migrate 14.000 workstations to Linux and an OSS office suite. A study comparing the alternatives had assigned 6218 (out of 10.000) points to Linux/OSS, while the MS Windows platform only scored 5293. Babelfish translation of the latest newsticker story."

Comments

Good job.

[grub]

When any manufacturer offers incredibly deep discounts like this, it's only so they can get their hooks into you. "Give them the razors, sell them the blades."

Re:Good job.

[GameMaster]

Actually, the other possibility is that they are looking at the over-all PR picture and figure that the loss in profits is worth not getting the bad PR of having a whole nation convert over to OSS. In which case it could be looked at as a great deal from the Munich government's prospective because they could always make the switch to Linux later if MS starts trying to tie them down.

I think it shows even more strongly the wisdom of the Munich government in their decision to take government software out of the hands of a proprietary company.

Re:Good job.

[Jason Earl]

Microsoft isn't worried about PR. They are worried about the thousands of German businesses that are going to be drawn inexorably towards Free Software. Lots of companies have to deal with the Munich city government, and the default formats for dealing with this organization just switched from MS Office to OpenOffice.org.

The trickiest part about using Free Software is dealing with proprietary document formats. Read a review of any Office Suite for Linux and the first thing that the reviewer writes about is the ability to share documents with users of MS Office. When OpenOffice gets a negative review it is almost never because the tools are not sufficiently capable, but rather it is because the MS Office conversion filters aren't up to the task. Companies in Munich now can deal with their city government without resorting to these proprietary MS Office formats. In fact, the bureacrats are probably going to mandate the use of OpenOffice.org formats. They might not even do it on purpose, but you can bet that when the government employees have problems opening up a document that they will point the person towards the OpenOffice.org website. It probably won't be too long before a significant part of the Munich business community uses OpenOffice.org formats as their new lingua franca.

What's worse, there is a good chance that many other German cities will follow suit. Microsoft could very easily find that one of the largest economies in the world is no longer interested in MS Office.

Re:Good job.

[saden1]

Microsoft is in a real catch-22. I mean what is stopping governments/companies from getting those deep discounts by threatening to switch to Linux? If they don't give discounts they may well lose contracts and the pool of people using open source software grows. If they do they aren't going to make as much money and they'll surely have to dip into that 45 billion dollars they are sitting on.

M$ has been ripping people of for year. Now they'll be the ones getting extorted. Like the old saying goes whatever goes around comes around.

Re:Good job.

[twalk]

What really puts them into a spot is their investors. They still think that MS is a growth stock. If they cut prices to compete with linux, they have a bunch of really pissed off investors, because their revenue won't be increasing as expected. If they raise prices to increase revenue to please the investors, then linux wins in the long run.

Re:Good job.

[zakezuke]

They "could" actually release "microsoft office" for linux. That would be an idea!

Seriously... while it is a comercial product, it is one that is actually *used* by a great many people. What better way from profiting from the free software movement then actually releasing comercial products for it. Rather then offering a discount of 90%... offer them a product they will buy.

Assuming the price is the same... city saves money on operating system, but doesn't have to spend money on migrating documents.

Re:Good job.

[A Naughty Moose]

Microsoft only has to offer these deep discounts to those companies that are serious. I mean do you think that a Fortune 500 company is going to say to Microsoft: "No thanks, we're going to switch all all desktop to Linux and OpenOffice", without actually devoting resources to looking into the feasability of such a project? The only way to get MS to give you discounts is to actually mean it. Go into a meeting with Steve, and say: We've done the research, OSS will cost us X to switch, and Y to support each year. After Z years, the OSS solution pays for itself, and after that, we're running a profit in the IT division. Now we really don't want to switch, the short term headaches will be a bitch, what deals are you going to make for us Mr. Ballmar? What if the company didn't do this research or actaully make a comitment to change if the response is: "Screw you, You'll take what we give and like it."? What is the company going to do? The point? You can't use OSS as leverage unless you actually plan on going through with it. Kudos for the German goverment for playing the hard ball game, but this only becomes meaningful once this is in operation.

Re:Good job.

[sproketboy]

The format for Open Office files are OPEN you dimwit. There's no "lock in" here. Read about at http://xml.openoffice.org/ before before posting nonesence.

Re:Good job.

[solidhen]

I could come up with an encoding scheme that converts any binary file to XML and vice versa. XML is no more open than binary is.

Could you tell me were I can find the specification for the schema they are using?

Re:Good job.

[krisp]

Perhaps you should take a closer look at this story. Unless you plan on spending $900 on your copy of office, you don't get XML support. Sounds proprietary to me.

Likewise. from the article:

Text in Office 2003 files stored in XML format might be viewable in other desktop programs, but all document formatting would be lost

Sounds to me like you'd be better off saving it as an RTF then as a MSXML file. Save yourself 100kb.

Re:Good job.

[saden1]

I agree with you about having to mean it but I am confident that M$ would immediately jump and offer discounts if they ever heard company X say we'll do feasibility and cost study on Linux. M$ would offer discounts just not to have the study done. Now companies/governments have some leverage where as before they'd always tell you "Screw you, You'll take what we give and like it." Take the changes they made to their license policy a year or so ago. They made a killing at the expense of their customers/users. I don't think they can low ball people like that anymore. No wonder why they are supporting SCO.

Re:Good job.

[innocent_white_lamb]

Do companies really exchange formatted documents with the government all the time ?

With government offices and agencies, and with other businesses, and among themselves.

Of course!

There are many occasions where I've received a MS Office doc file containing one or two sentences of simple text. "Here is the price that you asked for. We currently have 300 in inventory."

Many secretaries, warehouse monkeys and the like honestly have no idea that you can use MS Outlook to actually type text into. They just use it to send Word attachments.

Re:Good job.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's what's inside that counts. XML is just the facade. The Open Office file format has to be open simply because the source is available, but furthermore the format is actively developed in an open fashion. MS Office file formats on the other hand have to be reverse engineered even when the data comes in XML containers. Even MS doesn't get conversions of old files right. In a normal MS Office document you will find text which was supposed to be deleted and other potentially dangerous junk data. MS Office files are a mess.

Re:Good job.

[jd142]

I know this is slightly offtopic, but at least if something happens to a Word document, you can open it in a basic text editor and get the text out of it. Have you looked at an OpenOffice file? I believe they are stored as compressed files which means that if one part of the file becomes corrupt, like a sector on a floppy, it becomes impossible to get the original text back.

Here an example of what I mean. I opened Word and Writer and made a simple file using the default settings. The file said, "I like to read slashdot." In the word file, in addition to all the binary date, you can actually see the words. In the writer document all you get is binary data and some xml info. There's no way to actually see the text in the document in the default install.

I work for a university and it is not uncommon for students to save their files on floppies. When those floppies go bad, I can get most of a file back for them, losing only the data in the bad sector. Sometimes they just lose a paragraph or two. This would be impossible with the default OpenOffice format. Just coming off exams, I saw this about 5 times in the past two weeks. Usually they have backups at home, but not always, and the stress can really get to some people.

Word's next version will probably have this same problem, based on what I've heard about file formats. Wordperfect has it too; they use a special character instead of the space character to separate words. You can get the text, but you have to do a lot of search and replaces on it to get the spaces back.

Re:Good job.

[Eric Damron]

"n which case it could be looked at as a great deal from the Munich government's prospective because they could always make the switch to Linux later if MS starts trying to tie them down."

My department is 100% Microsoft. We have hundreds of Word macros that talk to our Microsoft SQL server etc. If we wanted to switch it would take use several years to phase out Microsoft. It would be ugly. Worth it in the long run in my opinion but ugly getting there.

Re:Good job.

[Eric Damron]

NO! It's Microsoft's "flavor" of XML. They're at there old tricks of embrase and extend.

Re:Good job.

[mav[LAG]]

They "could" actually release "microsoft office" for linux. That would be an idea!

No it won't and for a simple reason: more than anything else, Bill Gates likes to win. The money is incidental. Yes I am being entirely serious. Go and read Accidental Empires by Robert X Cringlely or Big Blues by Paul Carroll or any other detailed treatise of the early (and subsequent) days of the PC. The overriding impression of Gates is that he wants to win. It's a philosophy that permates the organisation from the top down. Why do you think Microsoft Account directors are being given millions in discounts and orders to "under NO circumstances lose to Linux"? Surely that money would be better spent in the medium term in other ways? But seen in the context of "winning the business at all costs" it makes perfect sense.
Here's the telling quote and you can be really really sure that Gates has read it and knows it:
"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won" - Linus Torvalds. Source here
This is a lovely quote from Linus and I'm sure he knew exactly what he was saying by putting it in terms of the "win-lose" mentality of Microsoft.
Office for Linux would be a huge loss of face. Can you imagine the /. headline (and the next one a day later :): Linus prophecy fulfilled as Gates loses face over Linux Office.
The IT press would be all over it.

Re:Good job.

[Jason Earl]

The difference is that OpenOffice.org is Free Software. You can download the program from the Internet. The city of Munich could even make money selling install CDs.

Re:Good job.

[repoleved]

Well... the file is much smaller, so you could always save it twice to minimize the risk that a bad sector would affect both files... or uncompress it since the format underneath is XML... There is also an option to pretty-print the XML to make reading it even easier. Finally, you could distribute customized versions that install your favorite configuration that deals with this problem.

Re:Good job.

[Metasquares]

Continue to use word format. The conversion is decent as-is and will only improve with time.

Re:Good job.

[bwt]

You've got to be kidding. An open office file is a zipped XML archive. This is a big advantage for OO over MS Office. The better solution to your floppy problems is to stop using floppies. It is no longer reasonable to expect students to have PCs that have floppies (it rules out new PCs from vendors like Dell).

Re:Good job.

[Jason Earl]

Microsoft's $45 billion (or whatever) in the bank is nothing more than a red herring. The truly important number for Microsoft is the price of MSFT stock. Most of Microsoft's executives have a significant amount of cash tied up in MSFT. Not to mention the large investments in MSFT that the company makes, and the fact that MSFT stock options save the company billions in taxes each year.

When investors realize that Microsoft no longer merits their price/earnings ratio of nearly 30 then Microsoft's stock is going to fall out of the sky, and Microsoft's biggest asset, their ever-increasing stock price, will be gone forever.

Re:Good job.

[Eric Damron]

"They "could" actually release "microsoft office" for linux. That would be an idea!"

No! It would come with VBA for Linux and all of the Word viruses would follow!

Oh well, there goes the neighborhood! :-)

Re:Good job.

[zakezuke]

Ummm, why would anyone want that? Cause dispite the rampent hate for microsoft, Office is a good product in many people's eyes. So good, people are willing to pay bucks for it.

Well... let me check my local prices on OEM editions of Office and Windows

Between $94.90 - $139.90 for win98/winxp win2k/xp pro respectifly

$185.90 for Office XP Small business edition
$309.90 for MS OFFICE XP PRO (OEM)

So let's say, just to be lazy.. $100 for the os and $200 for office SBE. That's $300. A 90% discount of that would be $30.00, a kick ass price.

While office typicaly costs 2x to 3x more then the OS (assuming Oem editions) it is a product worth paying for.

I don't presume to judge why this city is going linux, but as an average joe cost saving manover, I see a *tremdious* market for Office for linux. If this wasn't the case, the Wine project wouldn't be nearly so popular.

The very reason it's a marketable product is because of the fact that it's propriotory, and *popular*. I.e. it would be worth it to many businesses and administration bodies to buy a copy of office just to be compatable with everyone else. Plus the fact that people are typicaly trained in these power applications that pretty much justify the expence in the machine and operating system.

"One could say that Munich has decided to use open file formats and can therefore freely choose the operating system and applications"

One could say that, but one can also say people actually choose Microsoft Word over other choices in the market place. One of the reasons I still run windows is because I like Microsoft Word, and i've used a vast number of word processing programs among many platforms. One of the major reasons I switched to the PC was the fact that I wanted to run Microsoft Word. I would not want to run Word Perfect for example, nor am I 100% a fan of Star/Open office.

Microsoft is a software company, who have made a choice, I personaly feel the wrong one, to try to practicly give away their product so people don't make the switch to Linux. If they were actually to sell somthing of value to linux users, they wouldn't have to play that game. Besides, as you say, Office costs more then Windows.

It's only common sence, if you can't get users to buy your os to use your products, make your products for their os.

Re:Good job.

[Foofoobar]

It's not PR. If they get you used to an OS, you won't want to switch. Once you are running Microsoft on your desktops and servers, why use competitors products when Microsoft bundles it all together? Why use Apache when you've got IIS? Why use REAL when you've got Media Player?

Then they want you to use THEIR IDE's and development languages which further gimps you and makes you more and more reliant on Microsoft.

It's just like a pusher and a junkie; the more smack they buy from you the more addicted they get.

Re:Good job.

[PurpleFloyd]

What do you suggest as a replacement for floppies? CD-RWs are cheap, but take forever to format and require special software (unless you're using Win XP, which is a major headache to roll out). Iomega Zip and Jaz are decent, except that the standard is controlled by one company and media is ridiculously expensive ($10 for 100 megs? You've got to be kidding, I can get a cakebox of CD-Rs for $25!). Floppies are still a "lowest common denominator"; they can be found on almost all systems, they're cheap, and have enough room for a few Word documents or similar files.

Although you argue that students shouldn't be expected to have floppy drives, you don't produce any alternative. Floppies remain the cheapest and easiest method for transporting small amounts of data.

Re:Good job.

[DarcSeed]

Too bad Jobs never said that about the Mac :P

Re:Good job.

[bwt]

I suggest internet connectivity as a replacement for floppies. I think USB keychain drives would also work.

Re:Good job.

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Perhaps you ought to look at that story yourself. Several poeple, including me, refuted the core claim as made by the editor and the "original submitter". There is no loss of formatting when you save a document in XML from Word.

The original article was SlashFUD, nothing more, and the original poster is correct.

Re:Good job.

[fermion]

I think the issue might be that Germany has gotten good at looking at the long term effects of their decisions. For example, I believe back in 1991 they enacted laws to make manufacturers responsible for their waste. In Munich, most restaurants pay a great deal of money if they choose to use non-reusable serving products. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the western world where disposal cost for manufacturing and restaurant wastes are often externalized to the tax payer and future generations.

It seems to me that the decision to use Linux, even though discounted MS products might be cheaper and easier in the short term, is consistent with the forward thinking that seems to have become typical of German politics.

(I am sure those of you in Germany will corrects any errors I may have made).

Re:Good job.

[BalkanBoy]

Dear friend- Microsoft may win, but alas, it may be a Phyrric victory. For what good is it to you if you win, after you have lost all or almost all of what you stood for? At least in the sense of operating systems... Microsoft may well be a very diverse company, but Bill Gates would be ill advised to continue fighting something that has the making of a long term loss, rather than a victory... Progess, albeit slow, is inevitable...

Re:Good job.

[rjamestaylor]

• When any manufacturer offers incredibly deep discounts like this, it's only so they can get their hooks into you. "Give them the razors, sell them the blades."

So grow a beard and join the Free Sftware Movement.

Re:Good job.

[AstroDrabb]

Umm, WRONG. Just because the plain text will be in XML doesn't mean anything about being able to read all the proprietary formating Scheme in the XML. MS will NOT release that. So at best you will be able to get only the text from an office doc, which is not hard to do now. MS will not hand over thier cash cow. They are going to keep doing any unethical, monopolistic practices they can to keep MS office and MS's OS'es closed and as incompatible with anything else they can. As someone else said, they are willing to give you the razor, however they are going to kill you on the blades. They are goig to control who can make the blades, sell the blades and use the blades. Are you makiing an MS Razor compatible blade? Oh well, we are going to use some of our $40 Billion USD in cash reserves to sue you over "IP".

Re:Good job.

[GameMaster]

That is a valid point. However, it sounds as though they are already running 100% Microsoft and are looking to make the switch away from it. In which case, they're already defying the difficulties you are describing.

Re:Good job.

[TKinias]

scripsit Eric Damron:

No! It would come with VBA for Linux and all of the Word viruses would follow!

Yeah, and you'd have to run it as root or it would refuse to execute... just so the macro viruses could do real damage...

Re:Good job.

[IDIIAMOTS]

At least they have a P/E ratio, as opposed to SUNW or RHAT. :)

Re:Good job.

[SStrungis]

I have to agree...Do we really give a frog's fat ass whether it's in Times New Roman in .doc format or in courier as plain ol' text?

99.9% of all of my serious correspondence contains NOTHING in it that Word makes "special". If I want page layout, I can use Quark, or Illustrator, or something else, but not Word.

Ascii is for me!

Scott

Re:Good job.

[rainer_d]

My department is 100% Microsoft. We have hundreds of Word macros that talk to our Microsoft SQL server etc. If we wanted to switch it would take use several years to phase out Microsoft. It would be ugly. Worth it in the long run in my opinion but ugly getting there.

Geez. I guess that makes arguing and bargaining with your MSFT sales-rep really easy.
You can be certain that he has allready calculated the maximum price of Office for your site before a switch becomes actually financially viable.
Oh. And don't forget to run every BSA-audit. ;-)

Rainer

Re:Good job.

[Proudrooster]

Why bother porting Office? You can run most of Office under Linux with Wine ala Cross-Over Office.

Re:Good job.

[Sri Lumpa]

"M$ has been ripping people of for year. Now they'll be the ones getting extorted."

No, they are not, it is simply competition in action. Linux and assorted Free Software is good enough for a large enough variety of task to become a competitor to MS that they cannot get rid of easily so MS needs to start competing on price, first step is different pricing for parts of their customer base (the one most likely to switch) and as Linux and co gets better the reduced pricing should slowly become the norm until we have a truly competitive market, which will also be good for MS customers.

Re:Good job.

[Qacker]

Sure that isn't much diffrence but when you have a long (1meg+) book the space saved is a lot. As long as you can save as straight XML why is anyone complaining?

Re:Good job.

[evilviper]

The only way to get MS to give you discounts is to actually mean it.

To Whom it May Concern;
I have determined that switching all my machines to Linux will save me $100,000 every year. Now, to be fair, I thought I'd give you the option of just giving me $100,000 each year, and I will continue to use Windows on 99% of my computers.

Sincerely,
EvilViper

Re:Good job.

[Malcontent]

You don't have to go those lengths. Here is what you do. I mean this, this actually works.

Install a PC in the office of the CIO that's running linux or freebsd. Set a screen that shows a penguin or something like that. Install openoffice, set up a handful of programs like mozilla, a jabber client, and make their icons prominent on the destop.

Also install two or three linux servers in the server room. They don't have to be doing anything but it would be great idea to lable them "postgres server" and "Mail Server".

When the time comes to negotiate the new contract the sales rep will notice the servers (they are trained to look for them) and ask about it. At this point the CIO (and not anybody else) says "We are doing some preliminary analysis about the suitablity of a linux desktop and some servers". when the sales drone asks how it's going just say "it's too early to tell but so far it looks pretty good, Hey let's go to the server room and let me show you that new exchange server we installed".

Bingo!. After touring the server room your company will be offered a substantial discount on your software licenses. The bigger you are the bigger the discount.

Paying retail for MS licenses is like paying the sticker price for a car. Only the most stupid idiot CIO will do such a moronic thing.

Re:Good job.

[buck_wild]

Bah. 14000 licenses are a drop in the bucket. Maybe ONE junior executive won't get a bonus next year.

The monetary value is incidental. The real issue is that Bill Gates wants to come out on top no matter what. It will be very interesting to see what he does next.

Re:Good job.

[citdude]

Corel released a version of their office suite in 2000. in my opinion, their suite is better than openoffice in many ways, can deal with word docuements better, and can be read by ms office . . . but then there is no incentive for people used to ms office to switch to something else and microsoft doesnt take a hit.

Re:Good job.

[Rxke]

What I don't understand, wasn't there a law in Europe that explicitly forbids to sell at a loss? (that's why you see the razors packed with a packet of blades) Wasn't MS attempting to do something fishy? or is selling at a 90% reduced price STILL profitable, if so, they're just telling everybody they are getting ripped off, making HUGE profits on evvery piece of ware they sell...

Re:Good job.

[lateralus_1024]

Rules of Conduct: #1 - The DM is always right. #2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
I always knew Depeche Mode was influential to many other artists, but wasn't aware of their cult-like rules

Re:Good job.

[raju1kabir]

There are many occasions where I've received a MS Office doc file containing one or two sentences of simple text. "Here is the price that you asked for. We currently have 300 in inventory."

And the most annoying thing about that (okay, the second most annoying, after having to fire up another application just to read two sentences) is that the attachment will be 150K, despite containing about 60 bytes of actual information.

Re:Good job.

[Lord Flipper]

The thing is, they aren't a 'growth' stock, at all. In the two years ended 2001, MS showed a net of 21 Billion dollars US, however, they had over $22 Billion in salaries that were paid in (inflated) stock, and options. This 'payroll' was never declared against income, nor taxed, obviously. So...bottom line: They were losing money before the market crumbled.

Also, the fact that their net income was artificially inflated had the side effect of making them appear healthier where financing (bonds, short term corporate 'paper', etc) was concerned. Just like Enron. And Apple, actually, and many others. But with the numbers so high, and the market 'weighting' in the S&P 500 so heavy, Microsoft perpetrated a giant, government-ordained, fraud on investors.

Don't get me wrong, they still have the $45 Bil, but at some point there will be a reckoning. Any one of us, with a small-to-medium-sized company, should be able to easily imagine what the terms of biz loans, credit, etc, would be like if our payrolls weren't part of the 'cost of doing business'. No?

My guess is that the Germans are more spooked by 'backdoors' in the OS, and the cozy relationship between MS and the DOJ (read: white house, oil-based oligarchy, etc), than saving a few bucks. Although, with the current US efforts to let the dollar fall (and Europe, Japan, and Asia go 'belly-up', in terms of currencies and trade) saving a few hundred million marks isn't such a bad side effect of German attention to their own security, sovereignty, etc.

Re:Good job.

[qortra]

That makes a good deal of sense, and you are probably right (in that Gates will probably never release Office for Linux). However, it seems to me that given the mentality you just described, Office for Mac OS should never have been released. How do you explain that? Now, I realize that Mac OS isn't the same kind of threat as Linux, but once upon a time, it was probably the biggest obstacle to MS in terms of totally owning the consumer computer market.

respectfully, qortra

Re:Good job.

[mav[LAG]]

However, it seems to me that given the mentality you just described, Office for Mac OS should never have been released.

Because Office for MacOS has been around a long time - Word for the Mac was already at version 3.0 in 1988 - before Linus even went to university. Microsoft was in the process of getting market share in those days - it had very strong competitors in the form of Wordperfect, Mac Write II and WriteNow. The Mac was (and I suppose is) just another applications platform to which Microsoft applications could be sold to paying customers. Today it has an installed base and I guess a big enough revenue stream to continue being viable.

Now, I realize that Mac OS isn't the same kind of threat as Linux, but once upon a time, it was probably the biggest obstacle to MS in terms of totally owning the consumer computer market.

Remember the context here is 1988. The rift between Microsoft and IBM hasn't really arisen yet. Windows is not really being pushed much by Microsoft. Paul Carroll in Big Blues (pp. 181-182) says that all the real energy at Microsoft was put into getting a version of OS/2 out by the end of that year. Operating systems were the company's main revenue - which is easy to forget today when we look at how much of a cash cow Office is for Microsoft. When it came to applications in the late 80s, Microsoft was just another player in the IT market and a small one at that. Developing Office for the Mac was just another task in the applications team which itself was fairly small compared with the 200 or so bodies engaged in the OS/2 deathmarch.

Re:Good job.

[dash2]

You wrote a one-line comment denying it. That hardly counts as a refutation, especially given that the original story was from a reputable news source, and you didn't mention which version of the Office 2003 beta you were using.

Re:Good job.

[jd142]

An open office file is a zipped XML archive. This is a big advantage for OO over MS Office.

I forgot to ask: Why is it a big advantage? I will grant you that an uncompressed XML file is an advantage, but why is a zipped archive an advantage? Just because it shrinks the file? You can store 3 uncompressed text novels(100,000 words) on one floppy, more than most people will ever write in their lifetime, so space can't be much of an issue with text files.

Re:Good job.

[jd142]

Yes, your number 1 is exactly what I've been looking for. Store it uncompressed by default and if someone really wants to save a few kilobytes on a 10 page paper, give them the option.

Number 2 should actually be implemented at the operating system level. Most of the time, Windows will happily write to a bad sector of a floppy with no errors. It's only when the file is read back in that the errors become apparent. I haven't used bad floppies on a mac or linux box to know how they handle it.

Re:Good job.

[jd142]

Cool. I got moderated as a troll because I had the audacity to question the effectiveness of the darling program in certain situations.

I have finally arrived. ;)

Re:Good job.

[CKer]

Yes, Gay....Meaning better..

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

Okay. Then which standards are OpenOffice.org native file formats based on? I am not talking about 'what standard is beneath the format' like the XML that's beneath some of the latest-generation MS Office formats.

I am saying: What tool besides OpenOffice itself (Star Office doesn't count, for any smart alecks who try that...) can open and readily manipulate the OpenOffice documents?

Whoops! I guess it's just another defacto standard, not really any different from the MS Office defacto standard. The proof that it's a 'standard' will come when there's a competing office suite that can open, edit, and save OpenOffice native files. Will that day ever come?

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

I think Microsoft Word for DOS was up to about version 3.0 by then, too. The 'great merge' of the DOS/Windows and Mac versions of Word hadn't happened yet, though. Lotus was still king of the spreadsheets, and Wordperfect was still king of the Word Processors. Word and Excel were DOS/Mac things that goofy renegades ran.

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

I've often thought that Microsoft would be wise to offer binary drivers that offer native support for Ex2fs and the other popular Linux filesystem partitions. Without any security features, of course.

A few nice plugins like that, maybe even to work on an MS-DOS boot floppy that Johnny Kracker can take into any server room he has access to.....

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

An open office file is a zipped XML archive.

Wow. You just validated what he said. How do you get anything useful out of a corrupted 'zipped XML archive' using a text editor?

Also, your anti-floppy-disk snobbery just kicked up a duststorm of dissent. Don't try rhetoric like that when you're trying to convert people.

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

'as long as you can save from Microsoft Word to RTF format, why is anyone complaining?'

Pot.

Kettle.

Black.

Re:Good job.

[q.kontinuum]

What tool besides OpenOffice itself ... can open and readily manipulate the OpenOffice documents? Whoops! I guess it's just another defacto standard ...

Show me the free available specification of the so called MS-document standard and I will show you the specification of the OOo-document format. Deal?

Hint: specifications for proprietary formats (like MS Products generate it) are not provided for everyone!

Re:Good job.

[bwt]

XML is verbose, which makes for good readability, but large file sizes. Standards based compression is used to minimize the file size. The savings can be dramatic over the full XML: 5-to-1 tyically, as much as 20-1 in certain cases.

The OO format actually is both archived and compressed, and are obviously influenced by the success of the java archive .jar approach. RPM also uses this approach. You are starting to see more file browsers that can transparently drill down into an archive, treating it just like a directory.

Also, I'm not sure that the statement up the thread that compressed files are completely ruined if one sector of the file media is trashed.

Re:Good job.

[bwt]

Also, your anti-floppy-disk snobbery just kicked up a duststorm of dissent.

So. Complain to Michael Dell -- he started it by simply stating the obvious: floppies aren't worth the cost or the space they take up. They're god awful slow and only have a few somewhat obscure use cases. They need to die.

The original post describes using them as an asynchronous networking device (aka sneaker-net). This use is actively harmful.

Re:Good job.

[bwt]

It just occurred to me how bizarre it is for somebody advocating using a 1.44MB capacity limited storage media to be questioning the value of smaller file sizes.

Re:Good job.

[fymidos]

That's a 50% compression and it's not important for you ?
besides *my* "I like to read slashdot" was 24 bytes -- 50 bytes after gzip compression.
i made two points in the last sentence, by the way.

Re:Good job.

[fymidos]

Cool. I got moderated as a troll because I had the audacity to question the effectiveness of the darling program in certain situations.

You are arguing that the .doc format is better than the OO xml format, which is from all views *not* right. That is the reason you get the moderation, not the questioning of openoffice...

let's see, how you could rephrase it.. perhaps "i wish OO files were not compressed? "

Let's see another example:
" but with monarchy i can declare war any day of the week in freeciv" (troll)
try this instead:
" i wish i could declare war with no consequences with democracy in freeciv" (interesting)

Re:Good job.

[jd142]

Considering that a 100,000 word novel fits in around 300-350 k, you can get around 4 full size text novels on a floppy. That's more than most people will write in a lifetime. That's why I'm questioning the value of compressing files. And I'm not even necessarily questioning the value of a compressed file, I'm just saying that losing 8k out of the middle of a compressed file makes it useless, where as losing 8k out of the middle of a file that preserves the text let's you get at the rest of the text.

Here's the experiment I did. I zipped and lha'ed a web page. Then I opened the file up in a hex editor and replaced 16 characters out of the middle of the file to simulate a lost sector. Some utilities wouldn't decompress the files at all because they failed crc checks. Those that did had errors scattered throughout the document. While only 16 bytes had been altered in the file, there were easily a hundred errors in each file. Now instead of 16 bytes going bad in the original, imagine if 8k had gone bad. Much more than 8k would be altered.

That's my only beef.

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

It's now time for a Mac advocate to chime in about how Dell was just copying another Apple initiative. The iMac had no floppy drive long before it became the default Dell config.

Re:Good job.

[SN74S181]

So you're conceeding the arguement. Okay. We agree that neither Microsoft Office or OpenOffice use a non-proprietary format for their default save format.

It would help if either Office Suite had a readily available switch in it's config to set the default save format to RTF or some other non-proprietary format. But since both office suites are fighting a 'holy war to dominate the desktop' neither does.

Re:Good job.

[mbogosian]

Yeah, and you'd have to run it as root or it would refuse to execute... just so the macro viruses could do real damage...

Except the installer would require that you run it as root, and then it would install a bunch of root-owned setuid executables....

Then there would be a MS Office for Linux, but who in their right mind would want to run it (except maybe in a chroot jail or in a vmware sandbox)?

Re:Good job.

[mbogosian]

Cause dispite the rampent hate for microsoft, Office is a good product in many people's eyes. So good, people are willing to pay bucks for it.

Huh? People have no other choice. Remember, the fact that MS is a destructive monopoly is no longer a debate. OEMs are stuck. Consumers are stuck. If you want to use a computer and trade documents with other people, you have to use/support Office. That means you either have to build a compatible product or buy MS Office at whatever price they set.

Re:Good job.

[Nederlander]

Seems Reasonable. However, Munich is in Europe. And we do have some legislation here which prevents Microsoft from decreasing its prices.
The European Union forbids Market Leaders (which Microsoft for Office Suites unmistakebly is) to decrease its prices. Therefore, Microsoft is not able to convince organisations financially.
This is great news for Open Source community.

Re:Good job.

[Sri Lumpa]

It may not be market in action in a traditional way but it is still market in action.

Think of it that way, the market is composed of providers of goods and users of these goods. Now there existed a demand that was not fulfilled by the current market for a good quality OS that was cheap. The part of the market that created that demand didn't consider Windows good enough or traditional Unix cheap enough.

Due to the absence of a good solution the users themselves provided one (Linux and then *BSD) which could be explained as Adam Smith's "invisible Hand" and some organised themselves as providers (RedHat...) thus filling the supply for which there was an initial demand. The users working hand in hand with these new providers did such a good job that it allows for the new products to compete even in other markets for which the product wasn't geared to at first and it is even starting to introduce competition in a monopoly market (desktop) although in a small way, thus increasing competition overall.

This may be an unusual way for the "invisible hand" to happen but it seems to me to be the best example that such a force can exist given the right conditions: that the means of production of the goods are not restricted to a few big players... sound more communist than capitalist though; maybe capitalism can only work with a bit of communism (i.e. with some things not being owned by anybody).

Ok, maybe that line of argument is a bit far fetched but still interesting to think about I believe.

A sign of things to come?

[Mistlefoot]

Is this a sign of things to come as more and more jurisdictions move to Open Source?

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-Americanism is *everywhere*. I'm posting from your number one ally, the UK, and people here grimace when you mention the US.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[rseuhs]

Sure is. After all, most cities are quite similar - when all applications the Munich government uses have been ported to Linux, migrations of other German and European cities will become a lot easier and faster.

Also, millions of people will communicate with their government using OpenOffice formats, which essentially means that OpenOffice will become the "must have" office suite while MS Office will be the redundant "why should I use that when I already have.." Office suite in these regions.

This of course will make it easier for companies to migrate to OpenOffice and possibly Linux themselves.

Ballmer interrupted his skiing trip for a reason. He knows how important such a migration is and that just one large-scale migration is needed to start the landslide.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Angry White Guy]

I think that, rather than anti-americanism, it is a pro-germany stance. How many OS companies are in Germany? How many MS programming jobs are in Germany? How much economic runoff is there going to be in Germany in both scenarios?

If the Germans go with Suse, they have programmers in the country, administrators in the company, technical support in the country. Conversely, should Germany go with Microsoft, they only have administrators.

It just makes sense to go with Suse in this case. The technical barriers can be overcome, and interoperability only comes into play based on install base. You replace the whole load, compatibility problems go the way of the Moose.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not right. Various parts of the German government, especially the federal government, are considering Linux since quite a while. Munich's recent decision is just another step.

The major argument have probably been the high costs of MS systems, which in this case have also been accompanied by a general matching of the open source ideals with the ideals of the current government of Munich (liberal and social).

Oh, and by the way: The decision clearly wasn't driven by anti-Americanism. You can see that because IBM got the assignment, which is, as you know, also an American company.

And just about your opinion that Anti-Americanism was quite big in Germany now: According to a recent poll 70% of all Germans still consider Americans to be their friends (the number didn't change due to the latest events). The Germans just have a different opinion about world policy, that's all.

Kind regards,
Chris

Re:A sign of things to come?

[rseuhs]

In all other areas windows is usually better.

Sorry, but the only area where I found Windows to be better than KDE/Linux is gaming. And that's only because there are too few games, not because of any technical limitations.

Also, the roots of this decision lie long before the Iraq war.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[heby]

so what is it when the american government favours american firms over foreign firms for contracts or decides to buy american-made stuff for all their needs? even if this was not a technical decision, how would this be different?

Re:A sign of things to come?

[razvedchik]

Not to mention that SuSE is headquartered in Nurnburg (originally, Furth), which is in Northern Bavaria. So why shouldn't they be in a perfect position to support fellow Bavarians, with Munchen (Munich) being only about an hour's drive to the south?

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Corporate Troll]

The only way Linux really outperforms windows is price and freedom.

Wait a second... Isn't "Freedom" what the United States is so proud of. And now suddenly it is "a bad thing". Where did I miss something?

Re:A sign of things to come?

[netdudeuk]

Yes, and some of us don't ! There are surely more of us who do like the Americans. Why shouldn't we ?

And some of us guys like walking around in pairs wearing women's clothes and yet again, some of us (including me) don't. So what's your point ?

Re:A sign of things to come?

[flacco]

Anti-Americanism is *everywhere*. I'm posting from your number one ally, the UK, and people here grimace when you mention the US.

This actually gives me another reason to support the war in Iraq - it's pissing off foreign Microsoft customers!

There is that "the rest of the world hates you" thing, but I can deal with that.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[A_Non_Moose]

...compatibility problems go the way of the Moose.

Phew!

For a moment I was worried all those problems were coming my way.

It's A Non issue, apparently.

{bah-dum-bum}

Re:A sign of things to come?

[molnarcs]

haha ... so price and freedom (!) would not justify the move, unless they are anti-american. It is somewhat puzzling to see that while 'freedom' is always compulsory in official US rhetorics, when it comes to others placing a value on freedom, it is discarded as irrelevant, no cause enough for a switch..

Re:A sign of things to come?

[praedor]

I'm all for it and hurray for Germany. It is great for Germany to go SuSE. I would like to see France go for Mandrake, and the US (never happen, especially with GW Crackheaddrunk Bush in office) go Redhat. Why? To push money into native software companies that adhere to open standards and at the same time drives innovation (unlike certain closed source, monolithic monopolies that I wont mention).

Germany pays money that helps keep computer expertise (programming, administration) local and at the same time helps an international company (IBM) that helps world trade (and the USA). If France went Mandrake, the same thing accrues to them. China goes Redflag Linux, India goes...well with whatever as it doesn't really matter because if any country goes linux, it serves to keep computer expertise local and fuels innovation globally.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Strudelkugel]

I'm not so sure the parent post is not right.

Germany has a huge unemployment problem, and continuing to farm dMarks out to foreign companies is not going to be popular. Of all the distros out there, why SuSe? Why not RH?

Shifting the majority of the info-tech base to Linux will be a boost to the local software community in Germany. Now all they have to do is figure out which desktop they are going to use!

Re:A sign of things to come?

[TheRaven64]

I guess we are in for a nuclear holocaust then...

Cool. I've found the best place to watch a nuclear war from. Now all I need it a few billion in VC funding to set up a colony there...

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember, please, that blaming every American for what its government does is like blaming every German for what Hitler did. Do some support the government? Yes, of course. But there are many who loathe it, and many on this board that are American who cringe every time they hear the term. Take it from an AC afraid to post this under his nick.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[xutopia]

Actually no it isn't anti-Americanism. It is for freedom and to save money.

Believing that people are anti-American won't get you anywhere. Sure they have aprehension because of bullish actions Bush take or M$ take but they don't hate Americans.

The Bush administration would love to see you believe that outsiders are jealous of America so you see our voiced concern as anti-Americanism. Read a Noam Chomsky book such as 9-11 and be enlightened.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[sapgau]

I agree.
Is it too late to mode parent up?
thx.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[MAurelius]

Sorry I have no mod points to mod you UP for a clear presentation of an opinion different from my own.

We as Americans have a gut level hatred for the sort of regime that was Saddam Hussein's. He had to go. Likewise, the Germans benefited 53 years ago from the same American determination.

Einige meiner besten Freunden sind Deutschen.

As an American, I treasure my German friends, but Germany as a nation seems unable to use military force for any reason. Because of the Nazi time, it appears that Germany has lost the ability to see that sometimes the violent overthrow of a brutal, inhuman dictator by military action is necessary.

Military invasion is not always evil.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[MAurelius]

OK, my math is off, no more Chardonnay for me with dinner. Hitler's regime fell in May, 1945. He made it twelve years into his "Thousand year Reich."

Re:A sign of things to come?

[TKinias]

scripsit Strudelkugel:

continuing to farm dMarks out to foreign companies is not going to be popular.

Neither would continuing to farm out euros.

That's why they chose SuSE, a German firm.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[sdokane]

I think it a good thing that Europe avoids any dependency on the US, particularly in IT - it's one less way the US can stomp it's feet and demand that you with are with us or against us. Linux doesn't belong to america!

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Angry White Guy]

Whoops, stupid me for using a colloquialism on /. Go the way of the Moose -> Northern US (Michigan) South Western Ontario. To dissapear. The deer population has effectively extripated the moose from the location (Brought on by brain worms from the moose and deer co-habitating) Way of the Buffalo -> Thank Buffalo Bill Way of the Caribou -> Ask an eskimo Way of the stick -> Ask beryllium, Still haven't figured it out myself.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Angry White Guy]

Let me try this again, with proper formatting.

Go the way of the Moose -> Northern US (Michigan) South Western Ontario. To dissapear. The deer population has effectively extripated the moose from the location (Brought on by brain worms from the moose and deer co-habitating)

Way of the Buffalo -> Thank Buffalo Bill

Way of the Caribou -> Ask an eskimo

Way of the stick -> Ask beryllium, Still haven't figured it out myself.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Strudelkugel]

Right, Euros, that is. (Let's not get started about Eurodollars, though...)

So it sounds as though we agree that Germany is trying to better its employment picture (and trade balance) with Linux. Not necessarily a technical decision, but not an illegitimate one for a government...

My guess is that they will have to keep some Windows desktops around for a while to run Office macros and legacy apps. Sure would be interesting to be able to monitor the usage patterns on both systems after they make the switch.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[hhnerkopfabbeisser]

As a German, I respect your view, but I have a few points.

Over here, pacifism is not just in people's heads, since WW2 it's so deeply buried in our constitution that we couldn't have joined that war even if we had wanted.

You certainly had your role in the european part of WW2, but the Nation that played the most important role certainly was the Sovjet Union. From a military point of view, the Sovjets freed, Germany. AFAIK, the eastern front bound about two thirds of the Nazi armed forces.
Of course you brought us Democracy (West Germany, at least), and for that, I can't thank you enough.
Recieve praise where you deserve it, but don't claim it all for yourself where you don't. Did you know the movie U-571 is based on actual events, but that is wasn't American soldiers who did it, but Tommys?

The last time people over here saw war rage through our country is less than 60 years ago. America hasn't seen a war from close up for almost 140 years.
People over here tend to believe that this made you at least slightly ignorant of the terrors of war, because your memory (historically) of them is not as fresh as ours. We tend to believe that you resort to violence too quickly.

People over here don't really think a war is always wrong, but that it can only be a last resort, not a common tool of politics, and have the impression that you, or at least Rumsfeld and the like, seem to think otherwise.
The way the Bush administration desperately searched for excuses to wage a war instead of trying to prevent one, and the frequency with which you send your soldiers out lately gives people over here the willies, or makes them just angry.

Most Americans are so upset by anti-americanism because you don't understand how the world percieves you, and that trying to bully the world around when they don't do what you want is not really a good way to make friends (here I refer to what your government seems to regard as 'diplomatics').

Re:A sign of things to come?

[petman]

Let's continue to fight together islam terrorism ...

You were sounding pretty coherent, up to the point you revealed you blatant bigotry with your last sentence. Are you really a German? What have you got against Islam? I'd understand if you are American or Jewish, or French, even. But I don't recall any Islamic "terrorist" ever attacking Germany.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[saforrest]

This actually gives me another reason to support the war in Iraq - it's pissing off foreign Microsoft customers!

There is that "the rest of the world hates you" thing, but I can deal with that.

It's a lot easier with a global superpower at your back, eh? :)

Re:A sign of things to come?

[stpats]

You aren't posting from the number one ally of the USA unless you're posting from Canada. Not the 51st state, and more of an ally. No support for the war on Iraq the way it went, but friends are allowed to have differing opinions.

There may be some good natured fun had at the expense of Americans in the great white north, but people here don't grimace when you mention the US of A.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[twaltari]

> migrations of other German and European cities will become a lot easier and faster

Exactly. This is the beauty of OSS; if tax payers' money will be used for porting software and polishing the Linux desktop for the City of Munich, the city could as well mandate all the work to be published as open source. Once Munich has migrated, most of the other major cities in the European Union can simply reproduce their software environment.

If I were Microsoft, I'd be very scared of the likely results of Munich successfully migrating to Linux.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[mrscorpio]

Maybe the problem is with your box speed, or Debian itself?

I'm using Mandrake 9.1 with KDE 3.1.1a and it's at least as fast as Windows 2000 Professional (which I also have on this system dual booted). Running an Athlon XP 1700+ w/256MB PC2100 RAM, nothing spectacular for this day and age.

It's also at least as graphically unified if not more than my Win2k partition, because I'm using Open Office/Mozilla/Winamp/Trillian over there, and Open Office/Mozilla/XMMS/GAIM over here, the rest are basically the KDE/Mandrake apps. My gripe with Linux, the fonts, has been solved with Anti-Aliased fonts and now Mandrake has made getting the Windows fonts easy, giving a three-click install process to obtain them in the control panel.

The configurability is way better whether speaking graphic tools or console, and of course everybody knows that the Windows console (AKA DOS) cannot compare to Linux. I've been using Linux for a year and a half now so I think I'm out of the "gee wiz" phase too (have used Mandrake 8.1 - 9.1, Red Hat 7.3 - 8, Gentoo 1.2).

Mandrake automagically installed my printer and graphic card drivers in the install, a first with any distribution for me. It also installed the rest of my hardware problem-free, leaving only my scanner which was a three-click process with Scanner Drake through SANE.

The install process for Linux has been as good or better for a year. Office tools have been as good or better for 6 months. But with the newest crop of releases, I feel (and many agree) that Linux is really ready for the desktop now.

Chris

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Cthefuture]

I disagree with Microsoft's licensing scheme and Microsoft's business practices.

However, the main reason is security. I'm a consultant and I have to plug into different networks all the time. Linux provides me with more control than Windows can. Sure, there are firewall products for Windows but I've never been convinced those truely work (eg. there have been exploits that go right past some Windows firewalls).

Re:A sign of things to come?

[Cthefuture]

I never said Linux wasn't ready for the desktop, I just said that it needs some work to catch up with Windows. I never mentioned the install process either.

It's not the speed of my machine (2.2 Ghz, 1GB RAM). But would that matter? I'm comparing Windows and Linux on the same machine.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[FurryFeet]

At least they're not calling it "Freedom OS".
Glass houses, you know.

Re:A sign of things to come?

[FlyGirl]

There may be some good natured fun had at the expense of Americans in the great white north, but people here don't grimace when you mention the US of A.

Unless, of course, they are traveling and someone calls them "Americans." :-)

Re:A sign of things to come?

[mrscorpio]

Sorry, I forgot about my actual point :) My point is that on my box, Mandrake 9.1 is as fast or faster at everything except opening Open Office.

Chris

Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[moonbender]

... Berlin is. Berlin has got a population of approximately 4 million, compared to Munich's approximate 1.5.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Libor Vanek]

Who cares? Main point is that MS was f*cked out of the city. (OK - at least a bit of...)

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Well, it takes over 90 minutes to drive right around Berlin on the Autobahn, assuming no traffic jams. Munich does not have a ring-road, but is far smaller. Hamburg is 50% larger than M but around half the size of B.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[tekunokurato]

oh, whatever dude. He's demonstrated that at least one direct claim of the submitter is blatantly wrong, and you should be thankful for that. Wouldn't you rather the news out of slashdot be accurate?

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[AT]

I believe, however, that Munich is the capital

Berlin is the captial. Before reunification, Berlin was the the capital in the east, and Bonn was the capital in the west. Munich has never been the capital of Germany, although it is the provincial capital of Bavaria.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[dipipanone]

I believe, however, that Munich is the capital...

Let me guess, you must be an American, right?

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[moonbender]

As others have said, Munich is not and never was the capital of modern Germany. It also wasn't the biggest city (ranked by population) before the reunification, in fact the reunification didn't change anything in the ranking: (Western) Berlin, followed by Hamburg, followed by Munich, followed by Cologne, and so on.

Also, I have to correct myself, my approximations in the original post are both a bit too high, it's more like 3.6 million for Berlin and 1.25 for Munich. Numbers are a bit dated, from 1990, but you get the point.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[grungeman]

The interesting thing is that Munich would be the last German city to be expected to use OpenSource. If they do you can bet that many others will follow, and Berlin for sure.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[moonbender]

And both are also cities. It's not exclusive over here. Nobody around here would say Munich is the biggest city in Germany.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Black Copter Control]

heh.. well, in this case, I'll just say "close enough".
I couldn't remember which german city was the capital, but Munich seemed like a not-too-bad guess. That's why I put the modifier on it. On the other hand, (last ditch effort at saving face!) what percentage of Europeans can properly name the capital of Canada?

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[fwr]

Hmm, All I know is that Munich was one of the cities in diplomacy for Germany. Or, at least I seem to remember so.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Corporate Troll]

Uhm... As a European... isn't the capital or Canada "Ottawa" or am I mistaken somehow?

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[zulux]

I believe, however, that Munich is the capital...



Actually, it's Brussels is Gremany's new capital. Germany owns europe, just 60 years late.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Black Copter Control]

Uhm... As a European... isn't the capital or Canada "Ottawa" or am I mistaken somehow?

hey: I'm not trying to claim that there aren't a reasonable number of Europeans that do know the capital of canada (btw: Yes, you're correct). I'm just trying to point out that I deserve to be classified as a moron (as opposed to idiot) for getting the capital of Germany that far off. It's not like I couldn't have known better, or anything.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe, however, that Munich is the capital...

Let me guess, you must be an American, right?

Nope, we Americans would assume Toronto is the capital. As well as the capitol, for that matter. And an Ottawa is a small, sea-dwelling mammal. Remeber, once ketchup is a vegetable, all things are possible! :-)

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[dasunt]

I believe, however, that Munich is the capital...

Let me guess, you must be an American, right?

No, Americans know that the capital of Europe is London. :)

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Old Wolf]

2.500 square libaries of congress.. that's what Nasa Earth Surveyor said anyway

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Old Wolf]

You could say they're Munchen up the microsoft executives

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Old Wolf]

Hey, the rest of the world isn't as dumb as Americans (no, really). It seems to be a culture thing. I saw a show once where they went to a Florida beach and asked general knowledge questions to random people on the beach. It went something like this:

"What's the capital of France?" "Italy"

"What's the capital of Italy?" "France"

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[ewg]

Munich is the capital of Bavaria, a large and influential state inside the German Federal Republic. So the outcome of this decision will be carefully watched by IT decisionmakers all over Europe.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You ain't a moron either.
You just didn't have a look at the world map.
Ask me for something on a different continent and I'll be lost.
My geometry teachers always had a favorite trick question: What's the capital of america?
Correct solution of course was, that america is a continent containing more lot's of states like USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and so on... and therefore there is no capital of america.
It was a real catcher. A bad one.
(And I just realized that the capital of canada is Ottawa and not Toronto... ;) )

HAND
Stephan

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[he-sk]

Hamburg is the second biggest city after Berlin. Munich only comes third. At some point in the future, the Essen area will be bigger than Munich.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[he-sk]

You're my hero for the day.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Sri Lumpa]

"I believe, however, that Munich is the capital..."

"Let me guess, you must be an American, right?"

"Let me guess, you must be a pompous ass, right?"

And they say germans don't have a sense of humour.

Being Freedom (oops, I mean French) maybe I should take it badly whenever I am called a surrender coward?

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[golgotha007]

at least the American's know that it's not Paris...

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Black Copter Control]

Also, Americans are notoriously bad at geography if it doesn't involve their own country or select allies.

I was in WaltDisney World, and I ended up talking to a guy from Texas. He asked where I was, and I told him "Alberta ... Canada".
"What state is that Next to?" he asked.
"We're right on the border with Montana".
"What?" he replied, incredulously, "I thought Montana was right next to Texas!".

This was around 1979, and he was a bit too old to have been GW Bush.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Paul Komarek]

On the other hand, the Deutsches Museum is awesome. I believe it's the world's largest technical museum. IIRC, it has a full-scale coal mine model in the basement.

And admission is very, very inexpensive.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Daimaou]

Actually, there are shows like that in nearly every country I've been in (Japan, India, US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, etc.)

The US has not cornered the market on ignorance. It is pretty even around the world.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[moonbender]

Of course, the Deutsche Bergbaumuseum (German page, sorry) has an actual coal mine in the basement. :)

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[pezking]

how many americans know the capital of canada?

by americans, I mean `from the united states'. (we don't have many other options, you realize. `united statesian'? `USers'?)

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[Lispy]

Personally id say: Munich is the greatest City in Germany ;-)

Just to start a little Flamewar with all the other Germans around here...

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[KlausBreuer]

And compared to job opportunities, growth and general well-off-being, Berlin is a major dump compared to Munich. The Berlin position used to be a punishment for moronic politicians, and thus you still find Germanys worst up there. And they cost a LOT of money.

I should know. I used to live in Berlin (as a freelance programmer), and my brother still does. I'm in Munich now, and my brother is seriously considering coming down here, too, although he likes Berlin itself.

So, IT-wise, Munich is much bigger than Berlin.

Re:Munich isn't Germany's biggest city ...

[3247]

No, the biggest city of West Germany was Hamburg. Well, that is if you only count municipialities. If you'd define "city" differently -- the largest metropolitan area is the Rhurgebiet, which consists of several large neighbouring cities.

Math

[Nexum]

Anyone want to do the math on this one?

If we assume Linux never existed, and therefore the 90% cut price offer never made, making Munich pay full whack for 14,000 copies of Windows, how much would this cost (on this scale - obviously i doubt they would pay the full ~$300 permachine?)

Or put more directly... how much has this shaved off the MS bottom line for this financial quarter? If anyone knows what the purchase rate for both WINDOWS and OFFICE on this scale... please... let us know the math!

-Nex

Re:Math

[djupedal]

The math that's worth doing is not what this incident alone will or will not cost...it is the cost over many, many quarters when MS can't 'project' earnings from another fish on the hook.

Re:Math

[Teckla]

I think it's one human soul per Windows/Office seat, as well as your first born.

-Teckla

Re:Math

[TC (WC)]

Of course, you've looked at the costs associated with an installation of this size and done a cost analysis before stating that, right? I mean, you wouldn't just make statements up on Slashdot, would you?

Re:Math

[Spellbinder]

no no no it's just your third son they want...

Re:Math

[Nexum]

I've not stated anything in my post - go back and read more carefully.

I'm asking for more information from people who may be privy to such things exactly what this is likely to cost Microsoft.

-Nex

Re:Math

[Anonymous Coward]

when you click a few links, you get to the story about the actual study, which says:
Microsoft-Kunden müssen jetzt jährlich für Software-Lizenzen bezahlen. Bei den 10.000 städtischen PCs käme eine Summe von zirka 4,5 Millionen Euro zusammen.
in english:
Microsoft clients now have to pay a yearly software licence. with the 10000 PCs that would be around 4.5 million euro.

exactly why this article talks about 10000 computers, and the other one about 14000, i don't know

Re:Math

[TC (WC)]

Hehe, then you appear to have forgotten the question part.

You wrote a statement in the form of an inequality. It would have helped if you had actually put a question there somehow.

Re:Math

[Nexum]

Well it's lost on me... perhaps you could tell me what my supposed statement is?

Re:Math

[jcast]

He's not replying to you. He's replying to the troll who replied to you.

Re:Math

[jcast]

You're talking about Munich. He's talking about M$. Even if TCO of M$ were less (which it's not), M$ would still lose money when Munich goes Linux.

Re:Math

[TC (WC)]

It turns out I wasn't even replying to you... I assumed you were actually the person I replied to when you took offense at what I said. Dump your filter down to see, since he's since been modded Troll.

Re:to the editors of slashdot

[grub]

Dear Mr. Gates,

Please don't take it personally. I'm sure you're a nice man.

Regards,

grubby

Would that be . . .

[acceleriter]

der W00t, die W00t, oder das W00t?
</font>

~~~

the decision hasn't fallen yet

[Anonymous Coward]

as the article says, may 28th's the day.
(though it looks likely)

Re:oh christ

[stevejsmith]

Next time you know they'll be capitalizing nouns. Crazy Germans... You'd think that the language that branched out of the modern American dialect of English would be more respectful of its parent language.

List of Switchers?

[vivIsel]

Is there anyone out there who mantains a list of countries, cities, companies, &c who have made the move to Linux? If not...well, it would be useful for making Open Source pitches to prospective switch-ers in government, business, and the like. To be sure, Munich isn't alone, but how much company does the city have? I imagine something like one of those push-pin maps, sorted by distro, perhaps, and by the size of the switch (citywide, countrywide, corporate). Would be neat. Does it exist?

Re:List of Switchers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll get right on that, sir. SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP ORDERING ME AROUND! No shit it's like YELLING, Slashdot...otherwise I wouldn't have done it...

Re:List of Switchers?

[rkz]

We could use mappoint!! Lets start it ASAP
More info

Re:List of Switchers?

[innocent_white_lamb]

There's canopener.ca but it appears to be Canada-only.

preliminary decision

[tholti]

Note that it is still a preliminary decision. But as you can read from the article if it comes to the final decision there probably will be 43 (SPD and Gruene party) to 33 (CDU and FDP) votes for Linux. :-)

Re:preliminary decision

[tholti]

The idea of deploying Linux at Munich's administration is an older one and in the course of discussion it turned out that most politicians of CDU and FDP will be against the Linux solution.
But it's politics, who knows ...

Wow!

[togofspookware]

14 workstations! Good work, guys!

Seriously, if slashdot starts using "." and "," interchangably, it could get confusing. We ought to decide which notation we like better and stick with that. Personally I don't see why we need to stick in a <whatever> every 3 zeroes at all.

Re:Wow!

[corsec67]

yeah, and there is also putting a space every three numbers, like 7 000 000 000. that causes a problem when I have a computer with 2 X 900 mhx processors, for example.

You are right, they should stick to some standard,

Re:Wow!

[CableModemSniper]

Yes I know, complaining about mods is like screaming at god but...

I don't think this is a troll at all. Its not the most important thing in the world, ofc. but he does make a valid point, and it hardly deserves a troll mod.

Re:Wow!

[TheRaven64]

Or better yet, actually use those nice facilities built into CSS2 for that kind of internationalisation. Of course that would make the site not work properly in IE (which doesn't support that part of the CSS spec) but hey, no one cares about a few MS users, right?

Re:Wow!

[zoloto]

I'm not sure if this is just a EU thing or a german thing, but the period is a delimiter for numbers with greater than 3 digits. ie: 3.000 00 and did you notice the space after the first 3 zeros? that's supposed to mean the cents value (or at least in the old german monitary value a pfennig (spelling??))

Don't quote me on that exactly, but it's what i remember learning a ways back in school.

Re:Wow!

[daniel23]

Your spelling is flawless, 100 Pfennig equalled 1 Mark in the days before the euro.

On the other hand, the decimals are separated by a comma, not by a space. However, sometimes thousands are separated by space instead of a dot. Ie, a milliard could be written as 1.000.000.000 or 1 000 000 000 or 1000000000.

This isn't just a German thing nor limited to Europe, it's rather the US being the exception here. However, in countries influenced by Chinese culture there is a habit to separate groups of four digits.

~dp

Re:Wow!

[zoloto]

thanks for the correction and a bit of education there in your expansion of my origional comment.

too bad the money is worthless, i have about 1,000 marks and franks left over. - eh, collectors items perhaps?

Re:to the editors of slashdot

[cheesybagel]

Maybe.

But pray tell me how is this story unrelated to Linux? Did you even bother to notice that Linux actually won the contract? Since Linux is OSS this is an OSS related news story.

So there.

Security issue ?

[Krapangor]

With OSS they can see the source and verify that it's frre of any backdoor. So they can protect their precious secrets about the Oktoberfest and what Bavarian beer is really made of.

Re:Security issue ?

[gmhowell]

what Bavarian beer is really made of

The same thing as all German beer: barley, hops, water, yeast.

The actual law.

Re:Security issue ?

[ShadyG]

It's PEOPLE! Bavarian beer is PEOPLE!!!

-- ShadyG

Re:Security issue ?

[Exatron]

Hmm, needs more dog.

Re:Security issue ?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

The same thing as all German beer: barley, hops, water, yeast.

What, no Barvarians?

Re:Security issue ?

[Dr. Spork]

Jaaaaah! Open source bier! Now if only I could get it free...

Re:Security issue ?

[3247]

So they can protect their precious secrets about the Oktoberfest and what Bavarian beer is really made of.

The University of Technology Munich tells everyone: They offfer a study programme in brewery.

Better translation

[akruppa]

I had the same story submitted, along with a cleaned up translation, but it was rejected.

Anyways, here's the corrected translation, hope it helps.

Alex

Munich City Hall's SPD decides in favour of Linux

In today's meeting, the SPD faction of the Munich City Hall spoke out in
favour of using Linux on the PCs of the city's administration. Thus a
preliminary decision has been made, spokesman Jürgen Bühl said. The Munich
city administration migrates from Windows NT to Linux as the client
operation system and to an office suite from the Open Source domain.

The transition to Linux guarantees greater independence of suppliers and
greater "flexibility in the design of the future IT landscape of the city
administration". Additionally considerably lower cost are created.
Considering the tense budget situation in the states [Bavaria] capital, this
is an aspect that "supplements the strategic-qualitative advantages," says
the note from Munich.

Town councillor Christine Strobl, deputy leaders of the parliamentary group
and SPD spokeswoman in the personal and administrative committee, states:
"At the same time we provide for the further shaping of the technology
location Munich. For development and support the city will purchase
services. Thus we promote high-quality jobs in the region. In this context,
the Technical University of Munich's support during the migration underlines
the outstanding position of the science location Munich."

The migration of the 14,000 PC systems and Notebooks with over 16.000 users
is to take place "gently". In particular departments with extensive
specialized applications are to be able to plan on a long-term basis. The
final decision will be made by the city council in the plenary assembly on
May, 28th. For over one year SPD has held 35 of the 80 seats , the CSU 30,
the Greens 8 and the FDP 3. The other parties account for the remaining four
seats.

"We are fully conscious that our decision has a signal effect", says Strobl.
"That's why we have investigated the matter intensively." The consulting
firm Unilog initially rated the impoved offer from Microsoft as advantagous.
But open questions had remained and finally a new offer of IBM was present.

The new total evaluation of capital value and qualitative-strategic criteria
led to a draw between both solutions, continues the town councillor. As the
combination of Linux and an Open Source office suite
"qualitative-strategically clearly comes out in front, the SPD parliamentary
group decided for this option as the long-term direction".

Heard at M$-HQ

[netcongestion]

"How many shares shall I sell today?"

Re:Heard at M$-HQ

[geeklawyer]

you joke, but blow-hard Balmer sold stock recently.

probably just co-incidence. I mean if it wasnt he'd be insider trading and that would be illegal. And nobody in Microsoft management would ever do anything illegal would they?

Re:Heard at M$-HQ

[Angry White Guy]

It wasn't insider trading. He just needed enough cash to cover the 90% discount.

Re:Heard at M$-HQ

[Ost99]

Balmer sold shares in Microsoft for the first time in 12 years today...

- Ost

Re:Heard at M$-HQ

[rseuhs]

It's funny.

First Ballmer interrupts his skiing trip to talk to Munich officials.

Then a Microsoft memo gets leaked in which it is stated that "no matter what, don't lose against Linux"

Then Ballmer offers a 90% discount

Then Ballmer sells 10% of his MSFT-stock.

And finally Munich uses Linux anyway.

Re:to the editors of slashdot

[Neil Watson]

This is not an article about just Miscrosoft. It is an article that offers me a faint glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, greedy mega-corps do not control the entire world.

Not yet

[rainer_d]

This decision must still be finally confirmed by the city council, the original Heise Newsticker article does mention this, though.
The ruling SPD-party does not have a majority in there, but it should not be a big problem to get enough votes from other parties.

Rainer

Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[crivens]

90% discount?! Now THAT'S a monopoly! I don't see Steve Balmer rushing to offer me a 90% discount on any MS products. Then again I'm not a city so no wonder!

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[bstadil]

90% discount?!

I am surprised that this was offered. Microsoft is not out of the legal woods in Europe and a discount of this magnitude can almost only be construed as an attempt to leverage a monopoly situation. There can be no other rational business reason for this discount.

On an aside this is a huge blow for MS. The knowledge of the offered discount is probably worse than not getting the biz.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Then again I'm not a city so no wonder!"

Must... resist.... yo mama... joke....

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[rseuhs]

I am surprised that this was offered. Microsoft is not out of the legal woods in Europe and a discount of this magnitude can almost only be construed as an attempt to leverage a monopoly situation. There can be no other rational business reason for this discount.

The reason was that under no circumstances Microsoft wants any publicly visible large migration to happen. They would have paid Munich to run Windows if it wouldn't look too stupid!

Hell, they DID pay a lot for the Bundestag to stay on Windows at least on clients. They invested over 5 million $ for a PR-campaign, which translates to 1000$ for each of the Bundestag's computers.

Money is not the issue here.

The issue is a big organization showing the world that Linux is viable on the client.

The issue is that now a lot of applications are going to get ported to Linux and Linux will be an even better deal for other cities.

The issue is that now millions of people are going to communicate with OpenOffice file formats with their government.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[Angry White Guy]

I just see it as Microsoft blatantly stating that their products are gossly overpriced.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[GammaTau]

90% discount?! Now THAT'S a monopoly!

The irony is that even after that discount they lost. Since Microsoft is starting to get some serious competition, I'm not sure how long it will be proper to accuse Microsoft of abusing its monopoly position.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[Spellbinder]

one of the previous heise.de articles told me it was about 15% discount
i can't see where this 90% number comes from

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[moncyb]

We'll just have to say they're abusing their customers and everyone they come in contact with.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[bussdriver]

You forget the SCC report. MS makes over 500% on windows. 90% discounts will not break them.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[crivens]

*chuckle*

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[Richard_at_work]

So what does that say about boxed versions of Redhat, Mandrake, Suse, blah blah blah?

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[cabalamat2]

The knowledge of the offered discount is probably worse than not getting the biz.

And what's even worse is that MS offered a 90% discount and still lost the contract. I doubt they'd be able to give away their software to Munich!... though perhaps they could try paying Munich to use it :-)

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[beta21]

This doesn't sound like a rationale to make money, more to stall for time. Sounds like MicroSoft is just stalling the acceptance of Linux.

Maybe they have something in the works...who knows

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[Narcissus]

It says that if I am willing to go to the effort to download it or find a friend with it, instead of going to the shop to buy it, then I can pay for the convenience.

There would be no change in deliverables from Microsoft when they reduced the price, so one may be able to say that the original price is inflated.

It's to do with convenience.

There's also the fact that those boxed sets provide support, which neither the downloadable versions or an originally priced MS product, let alone one whose price has been reduced by 90%, do.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[mindriot]

I don't know where that number actually comes from, it's nowhere in the article. But assuming it is true, and considering Munich has decided that the Linux-based solution is still the cheaper offer, I think it tells you something about what a Microsoft operating environment really costs you, in comparison to a Linux-based one. And it might just be a hint that those TCO-for-MS-is-better-than-for-OSS studies could be far from reality.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[danila]

Bullshit. The marginal costs of one copy are negligible. Even more so with corporate licenses, where you don't need to provide packaging, etc. Pricing in software can be completely arbitrarily and there is nothing bad about setting it at any level or even giving a 90% discount. Such discounts are common for academic users, for example. And in some cases certain groups of customers get the product for free. So MS has the right to give MS Office away - they are not dumping.

BTW, in the past courts (in the US) agreed that setting the price below average costs but above marginal costs is not dumping (I don't remember where and when the decision was made - read about that 2 weeks ago in a Macroeconomics textbook).

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[mindriot]

Actually, This article says:

Microsoft has lowered its price offer by 15 per cent in order to prevent the city switching to Linux

That would be a bit less then. So I still wonder where that 90% is coming from, and if that's a 90% discount on the complete price... more likely, some components were reduced by 90% so that the overall discount is closer to 15%.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[jpetts]

I am surprised that this was offered. Microsoft is not out of the legal woods in Europe and a discount of this magnitude can almost only be construed as an attempt to leverage a monopoly situation. There can be no other rational business reason for this discount.

Has everybody forgotten this article already. It quotes Orlando Ayala, who was top sales executive at MS, as saying "under NO circumstances lose against Linux"

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[Narcissus]

I wasn't talking about dumping. And you can't even say that corporate licences allow them to cut the price that much: unless, of course, they weren't providing corporate licences to begin with.

What I was talking about was in reference to the parent post comparing MS cutting the price by 90% without a change in product to free downloads of Linux distributions, which are a different product to that which you buy boxed.

My point is that they would have been getting a corporate licence *before* the discount. Discounts for academic users are different, as they are a different product, with regards to licencing, anyway. When I purchased Visual Studio in uni, the licence stated that it could not be used for commercial applications. Hence, a different product.

My only point was regarding a change in product when there's a change in price.

So tell me: if the price is not inflated (and I never said that it was, just that some people can argue it) what has been the product change to reflect the price change?

Nothing. That was my point, entirely to counter the reference to Linux based products. There was no malice intended towards Microsoft: I was merely deflecting that heading towards the Linux companies...

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[smallpaul]

I am surprised that this was offered. Microsoft is not out of the legal woods in Europe and a discount of this magnitude can almost only be construed as an attempt to leverage a monopoly situation. There can be no other rational business reason for this discount.

I would say that monopolies do not have to discount that much. They will use this as evidence that they are under pricing pressure just like a "normal" company. Obviously if it were not for the competition of Linux they would not slash their pricing this much.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[ealar dlanvuli]

Bullshit. The marginal costs of one copy are negligible.

Holy shit dude, have you put a software package on the shelf recently? Jesus I knew slashdot had some idiots, but that takes the cake.

40$ for a home user package, sub 25$ for packaging and distribution (if not more, really depends on how large their sale volume is [hint: higher = cheaper]). Sub ~5$ for support costs (depending on call volume, I'm assuming the average RH box needs about 10 mins of phone support, with most needing 0). I seriously doubt they are making a killing on low end boxed solutions.

Jesus christ, I swear some people will talk out of their ass no matter how little they know about the topic.

"Enterprise" boxes offer all sorts of support and extra goodies that cost a lot more. While they are making cash, they probably aren't rolling in the boxes you get from Best Buy.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[tbradshaw]

Actually, I would consider this proof that Microsoft is *not* a monopoly. They attempted the tried and true method of price-gouging, and they were still defeated by a superior product. I'm elated that GNU/Linux, OpenOffice, and the essential support contracts from IBM, SuSE, etc, have gotten matured to the point that they can truely compete in a free market. If this rate of improvement in linux technologies and the related support contracts can be kept up, the dream of a true MS competitor may be in out midst. I don't consider MS a coercive monopoly myself (not quite anyway, pretty borderline), but I've been waiting for the day that a worthy competitor could be groomed to take on MS in the public and private sector. I hope those contributing and profiting from gnu/linux keep up the hard work. Once the battle for marketshare really begins in earnest, the competition is only going to get harder and faster. gl

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[3247]

The issue is a big organization showing the world that Linux is viable on the client.

And by offering large discounts, Ballmer actually shot himself into the foot: Munich will not only show that OSS is viable -- and cheaper. Ballmer also provoked press releases from the ruling parties of the town council which say that Linux is also the qualitatively and strategically better solution. That's a huge PR accident.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[SN74S181]

You should have seen the sour look on the woman from Red Hat Marketing's face when I asked her, back in the day, if I could just make copies of my Red Hat 5.0 CD set and give them to my friends.

I understand they have gotten even more business oriented since then....

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[fymidos]

Actually, I would consider this proof that Microsoft is *not* a monopoly.

Ok, it is proven then.

Seriously, overall linux is doing great, but the MS monopoly is still there for the people who are actually trying to make a *living* from linux. Linux is mature, and it's ready and great blah blah, but MS is *still* a monopoly, and it *can* use anti-competitive tactics (again).

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[danila]

You don't have to change a product. You can provide discounts to anyone. Practically any discounts and practically to anybody. You can give the product for free to people who have a birthday today. You can give the product for free (or at different prices) to academic users, to students, to citizens of a particular country/region (even a non-existing country), to people of a specific gender, etc. (I can give legal examples for every one of this possibilities) Why can't MS give a huge discount to a goverment in one particular city?

And again, you can't speak about inflated price in regards to the software. If it sold for more than the price of the media, it is legal.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[danila]

Don't be ridiculous, taking some fake numbers out of your ass. 25$ for packaging and distribution? What have you been smoking? How comes some software is sold for much less? Do they get their packaging and distribution free? And have you been checking the MS Office prices recently? 40$? Are you nuts?

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[ealar dlanvuli]

Well, since I've put a product on the shelf recently, and our first three months cost more than 25$/box for P&D, I think I'm justified in making that figure up.

Some software is sold for less because it gets worse spots on the shelf, is sold in fewer stores, and isn't marketed nearly at all.

We were talking about a boxed version of RH, not a copy of MS office.

Please grow up, feel free to reply to me again when you have some experience behind your claims.

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[danila]

Oh, thanks. I just became a day older, may I try again? Some software in some countries is sold for 3 dollars (legally distributed jewel boxes). While they might not be very profitable, presumably, these 3 dollars cover the packaging and distribution. That is the lower bound.

Then may I kindly remind you that in my original post I said "Bullshit. The marginal costs of one copy are negligible. Even more so with corporate licenses, where you don't need to provide packaging, etc." Apparently, you was so excited that you managed to read only the first sentence of the post, took it out of context, and replied to it alone, saying how expensive the packaging is. Duh!

Also could you please avoid including marketing costs in the P&D, ok? As well as the costs of agreements with the stores. We are talking about marginal costs of one copy (see your favourite economics book for the definition).

Finally, I hope you realise that MS has a significantly higher gross markup on its products. To understand why, you need to think about their retail price (which for the MS Office is 10 times higher than for RH CD), about their net profit margin (ridiculous), and their cash reserves (Billions and Billions, (c) Carl Sagan).

Re:Now THAT'S a monopoly!

[ealar dlanvuli]

Yes, I know MS has insane markeup, but the origional post was comparing the cost of Boxed RH to the cost of downloading RH. Something so inherently flawed it disturbed me greatly. ...

90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[AvengerXP]

Why did they turn down that? Seems like a good deal to me, Linux or no Linux in the equation.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

several reasons:

to strengthen the 'technological capital' thing
free is still cheaper than 90% off, which is important in the current german economy. also, most of the cost that does exist will stay inside munich, instead of giving a foreign company the money
it creates 'real competition'
it gives greater flexibility
the change will create jobs for qualified people (which means more off them come to munich)
not dependent on a single company

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[rseuhs]

Linux is more efficient in administration, vendor-neutral (= competition) and KDE offers more features than the outdated Windows GUI.

Once you are used to multiple desktops (no, that measly 4 add-on powertoys desktops don't count.), Unix-style copy-paste and much greater flexibility and configurability, you will never go back to Windows.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[grungeman]

Missed business opportunity for Munich

1. Buy those 14,000 licenses with a 90% discount
2. Sell them on ebay
3. Profit

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[chrysrobyn]

Once you are used to multiple desktops (no, that measly 4 add-on powertoys desktops don't count.), Unix-style copy-paste and much greater flexibility and configurability, you will never go back to Windows.

I was handed a quad processor machine with 2 gigs of RAM as my only computer in 1999. It ran Unix (AIX, all jokes aside about how "Unix" that is...), and I was very happy. I got used to a number of things, but the least of which was the file management. I'm very fluent with ls, rm, mv, etc, but it is still nothing compared to a real GUI file manager. Maybe I could have installed one, but AIX didn't have one that compared to MacOS or Windows. But I loved the multiple desktops, remote machine abilities, real honest-to-god use for a three button mouse, etc.

Almost two years ago, I switched jobs within the company. Lost the Real Machine. Got a Thinkpad-- and suddenly the only applications I wanted to run were supported on Windows only.

Sometimes it's not about the right tool for the job, but about the tool the job allows to have. I went back, but not by choice. File management got much better. Stability, on the other hand, is not always as good on Win2k installs as some would lead you to believe (despite a lack of installed software).

Now if only IBM would release a Notes version 6 for AIX...(4 is no good to me)

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[barawn]

Er? GUI file managers are nice, but efficiency really comes with commandline tools if you're scatterbrained like me. Want to create a new folder with all of the PDFs in one directory? No problem: mkdir pdf; mv *.pdf pdf, and you're done. The number of clicks that it takes to do that in a GUI file manager is really insane. In Windows I'd bring up a commandline interface in a heartbeat to do something like that.

Half the problem with Windows is the fact that the file management development really has only been on the GUI side. Cygwin's the first thing I install when I get a new Windows machine, and THAT makes it usable.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[buddha42]

Unix-style copy-paste...

The one where copying and pasting between two different programs works "more often than not"?

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[grahamlee]

Once you are used to multiple desktops (no, that measly 4 add-on powertoys desktops don't count.),

When I'm in Windows [.NET server rc2] I use Litestep, which has four nice proper virtual desktops. It also has a much smaller footprint than the usual Explorer.exe GUI. As you could probably guess I use Window Maker everywhere else (including XFree for Windows ;-)

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[Error27]

90% off the initial cost is less than 40% off the TCO.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[Jack Comics]

You mean the Unix-style copy-paste that often doesn't allow you to copy & paste information between various Linux applications, unlike Windows?

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Why did they turn down that?

I guess the Munic Government has these things called 'principals'. Maybe you're heard of them? Also, they are essentialy investing the money into their own country instead of sending it to the US.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so obviously a n00b who's excited about using something different.

Linux is getting there, but it's not as good as Windows on the client side. Not yet anyway.

Multiple desktops, UNIX cut and paste, yeah they're neat, but after the newness wears off then you'll see.

Use Linux for a year or two then go back and try Windows. You'll be surprised at some of the crap you put up with in Linux. And don't get me started on the slowness of KDE... ugh.

Linux will get there, and things like this Germany deal help but it ain't there yet.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[HuguesT]

Hi, I don't particularly like GUIs either, however your example is not good:

Bring up file manager,

0- make new folder - 1 click, type name, return.
1- List directories details - 1 click
2- Sort by extension - 1 click
3- Click the first PDF file
4- Shift-click the last PDF file
5- Drag to new directory.

5 clicks, one drag, done. People do it in their sleep. You can do it in Konqueror too, BTW.

Now try to find all the files that have changed
between two directories from the File Manager. Good luck if there are hundreds or lots of sub-directories. There are other still more convincing examples I'm sure.

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[orcrist]

0- make new folder - 1 click, type name, return.
1- List directories details - 1 click
2- Sort by extension - 1 click
3- Click the first PDF file
4- Shift-click the last PDF file
5- Drag to new directory.


One small correction: Are you sure step 0 is one click? I'd be fascinated to see how you a get a new folder with just one click. Unless you've put a new folder button on the toolbar (which I assume is possible, though I couldn't find the button for it in W2k), it's either 3 clicks or click, wait (for the nested menu), click again.

Of course Konqueror isn't any better in this regard, which is why I even prefer: ctrl-t (for a terminal opened to the working directory), md [directory-name] (the SuSE alias for 'mkdir -p'), ctrl-d to close the terminal window. In fact I find the ability to switch back and forth from graphical to clt control one of my favorite things about konqueror, since I'm of the rare (at least it appears rare) camp that likes to combine gui and command line instead of preaching about the glories of one or the other. From your arguments, it appears you are also a fan of the middle ground :-)

-chris

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[fymidos]

He was posting as an "Anonymous Coward", why on earth would he expect to get modded up ????

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[fymidos]

yeah they're neat, but after the newness wears off then you'll see
see what? that using one desktop is better ?? that pressing ctrl-c,ctrl-v all the time is actually better?

Use Linux for a year or two then go back and try Windows.
I don't know anyone who has done that, really, do you?

And don't get me started on the slowness of KDE
Oh, come on now, please get started, but you won't, you are an AC, what am i saying ..

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[fymidos]

only (surprise!) with the latest microsoft licensing, TCO includes from a monthly deposit on their account. They did manage to lower the initial costs of course :>

Re:90% isnt considered a rebate anymore

[barawn]

No. Because you lose information there, and it's NOT always possible to do this, nor is it easy. What if you have 50 PDF files? OK, click the first one... great. Now... scroll down to find the last one.. damn, not yet, not yet, not yet, ah, there it is, shift click, wait five minutes for the graphical update... oh wait, can't just drag to the folder as the folder has to be in the VIEW of the window. Might as well click edit, go to copy, scroll down to the folder, enter the folder, click paste.

There's about twenty extra clicks there. Plus you're not counting the extra clicks to restore the previous sorting.

It is nowhere NEAR as easy to move many things in a GUI as it is from a commandline, and that's probably the most used feature when moving files around. "I want all of these, there."

A good day for German Linux users...

[Anonymous Coward]

First LinuxTag issues SCO with a cease or desist order, and now this. Godspeed you! Germans.

Developers

[birdman666]

I wonder if Mr. Ballmer learned how to say Developer in German before he went.

Re:Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Entwickler, Entwickler, Entwickler, Entwickler!

Wer sagte "hinsitzen"?

Ich habe vier Wörter für Sie: Ich liebe diese Firma!

Re:Developers

[Tumbleweed]

No, but he probably learned the German for 'Innovation' - it's the only word Microsofties know how to say.

Re:Developers

[s20451]

I wonder if he called himself a jelly doughnut. Then again, he was in Munich, not Berlin.

Re:Developers

[Gropo]

Don't you mean Kolonel Ballmer studied his mid-Twentieth Century German history for his ideas on 'successful cultural proliferation strategies'?

Hmm... I'm getting a vision of a "Hogan's Heroes" parody with Steve Jobs as Hogan...

J-obbbbs!

Re:Developers

[ojQj]

Of course Amerikaner is also a word for a German pastry -- it's a round and made out of a sugary white dough and frosted typically with butter or chocolate frosting. When Clinton visited Aachen in 2000, they were selling Amerikaner with his picture in frosting on top of them.

A few months ago while the Americans were renaming French Fries, it occurred to me and a few friends that maybe it would be a good idea to rename the Amerikaner. A few of our ideas:

• Französer
• Freiheit Sandbrötchen

OK. None of them was great. Anybody with better suggestions?

Re:Developers

[easter1916]

Entwickler[n]?

Re:Developers

[easter1916]

How about just leaving the name as is? It doesn't sound like that pastry/bun is anywhere near as delicious as the other wonderful German confections... so it would be insulting to leave the name as is!

Deutchland...

[Anonymous Coward]

Deutchland Ousts Windows Alles

Deutchland, Deutchland,
Ousts Windows
In comes Linux
Good and free!

Hear the howling
And the gnashing
From afar
Redmond across the sea!

Deutchland, Deutchland,
Wise technologists
And politicians
who've listened to thee!!

Re:Deutchland...

[JeffTL]

If this weren't anonymous, I'd suggest it be modded up for being the best filk of "Deutschland Uber Alles" I've seen in weeks.

With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Realistic_Dragon]

This is selling it below cost, which is dumping, which is illegal. The EU competition commission should take note of this (along with other infractions 1 through 97bn) and throw the book at them.

If it's a lead plated copy of War and Peace, hurled at 1,000 m/sec, all the better.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, economically, the cost of an additional windows copy is virtually zero. As this is the case for all software, the ability to offer 90% discounts doesn't qualify as dumping but as price discrimination.
Microsoft is - what is called - a natural monoploy, a side effect of the software business.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is selling it below cost, which is dumping, which is illegal.

It's not either. How does this shit get modded up? Is it because of the "throw the book at them" anti-Microsoft dig?

There are circumstances under which selling goods below cost can be part of an anti-competitive practice, but the simple act of doing it is not illegal. Microsoft sells the Xbox below cost every day. Hell, the Gillette company sells their razors below cost in order to drive the sales of blades, which are immensely profitable for them. Selling one thing below cost in order to drive sales of another thing is (1) not illegal, and (2) common and smart business practice.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[jellomizer]

Well these are 90% rebates. So basicly Germany will have to fork over to Microsoft the Full Price of the product. Then Microsoft hold on to the cash for a couple months and invests it and makes more money. Then after some time they give them 90% they gave them back. So say in this period of time they make 10% interest on the cash. Then they are still making a profit. You are assuming that Microsoft will just hold the cash and not do anything with it, which is furthest from the truth.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[bigdavex]

I don't think it's "dumping". It's just a reality of selling copies of information. Microsoft, when faced with the prospect of collecting $0, will be happy to collect $x. Dumping laws are meant to prevent a well-funded company from driving out its competition through low prices, and then raising prices in the long term. It's not like OSS is going out of business. And geez, the OSS folk are giving away the software, so I don't think it's fair to fault MS for their low prices.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[ArmorFiend]

If we were talking about Xboxes or cars, then yes this would be dumping. But since linux is constantly being given away at below cost, I don't see how we linux zealots can really get grumpy about this.

"You MS Bastards are selling your OS for $30 dollars, which is less than it cost for you to make! You're dumping."

`What about linux?`

"It costs $0 retail and cost gazillions to develop"

So how is Linux not dumping?

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[dipipanone]

Nonsense, economically, the cost of an additional windows copy is virtually zero.

Quite. Now would you remind telling Microsoft, FAST and the BSA of that fact, the next time they start whining about their huge losses to warez piracy?

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Kwil]

Gazillions to develop? Really?

Let's see your pay-stubs.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[ender81b]

Gazillions to develop? Really?

Let's see your pay-stubs.


Well think about it. How much do you value the time of the programmers working on the code? How much does it cost to have all the equipment necassary to work on linux (mirrors, bandwith, compiling machines, etc, etc). Linux (and OS) is not *free* software, it does cost something but the cost is just not factored into the price since the work is voluntary - in most cases.

I have no idea what Linux, in general, costs if you factored in time, bandiwth, etc but I would not be suprised to see it in the tens of millions.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Ed Avis]

Of course it's not selling below cost. The cost is zero. You could download Windows XP and Office XP from some filesharing network, install them on every PC you own, and it wouldn't cost Microsoft a penny.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[deranged unix nut]

...so, since OSS has no costs, it could be considered "well-funded"...is giving OSS away for free "dumping"?

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[loucura!]

Which is more complicated and expensive? Razor blades which require R&D, not to mention swivels, goo-strips, and metal, or a bit of plastic which only serves to hang said razor upon?

The reason razor blades are more expensive is that they cost the company more to produce, due to R&D, and also the cost of materials. Razors themselves are just cheap bits of plastic to hang the blades on.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[aallan]

I have no idea what Linux, in general, costs if you factored in time, bandiwth, etc but I would not be suprised to see it in the tens of millions.

Oh, much more than that! See this article for details...

Al.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[ArmorFiend]

[Linux developers] just give away the fruit of their labors

And MS is giving away the fruit of its labors, too. The only difference is: Linux charges the same to every client, while MS charges differently depending on who you are (joe consumer vs munich vs student). I don't see how one can be a criminal offense (dumping) while another is not.

I'm not trying to troll. In fact I have given away the fruits of my labors a few times too.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Kwil]

Congratulations on completely missing the point.

I wasn't questioning the worth or value of the time and resources put into it. I was questioning how someone can consider Linux being "dumped" into a market when there are no defined costs of its production.

Windows on the other hand, has very defined costs in R&D, programming, and (of course) marketing.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[Ed Avis]

I didn't consider cost to reputation (though it's hard to see how it could damage MS's reputation if pirated software doesn't work correctly) but only monetary cost. And I assumed that someone pirating software would not be so dumb as to call for support.

Given the huge pirating of Microsoft software that happens in many countries (eg China), it's clear that the cost to MS must be zero, otherwise they'd be losing huge amounts of money.

Anyway the point I wanted to make was that if Microsoft 'gives away' copies of Windows, it doesn't cost them a penny. All it requires is for a Microsoft representative to write a letter saying 'you are now authorized to install Windows on your PCs', and the cost of a stamp.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[edxwelch]

In some countries there are laws which make below cost selling of certain goods (such as food for instance) illegal. However, this does not apply to technology, which is why MS can sell Xboxes below cost without any problem.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[ArmorFiend]

I enjoyed your reply. It does deserve better than score 0.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[fymidos]

But since linux is constantly being given away at below cost
come again?

"It costs $0 retail and cost gazillions to develop"
huh?

You are not making any sense, it is free software.
And yes it costs $0.
(i really don't understand why any real person would have a problem with that, maybe you forgot to click the "post anonymously"?)

So how is Linux not dumping?
You kinda sid it yourself, it is *constantly* given away for free. While MS office, for example, is *NOT*.

Re:With an 84% profit on each copy sold...

[ArmorFiend]

So Linux is dumping constantly, while MS only dumps sometimes.

Linux is *not* free. People have to write it. This takes computers, time, and education. That its authors choose to give it away out of the niceness of their hearts, is happy coincidence, and the only way MS can really hope to compete is by doing the same.

14.000 workstations

[sstory]

14 workstations running Linux is fine, but what's with the significant digits?

Re:14.000 workstations

[Little Brother]

I know most of you know this already, but for those who don't the USA is one of just a few countries that use a point only to seperate whole numbers from decimal numbers, in many countries, including Germany if memory serves, you use the point as an American would a comma in a number, and a comma to seperate whole and decimal parts of a number.

I just wanted to submit that story...

[rseuhs]

Now that I have picked out all that links, I may as well post it:

Munich will be the first city with over 1 Million inhabitants that is run by Linux

Heise has the story (Babelfish may help you)

Short facts are: The actual vote will occur on wednesday, but the SPD and Green party hold 43 out of 80 seats and have both committed to vote in favour of Linux to be used in the government of Munich, a city of about 2 million inhabitants.

The main reason for the migration was "strategic-quality reasons" and to support competition in software, not cost, which was said to be about the same for Linux and Windows.

About 14000 client computers are involved.

The used distribution will be SuSE, but IBM is also involved. OpenOffice will be used as office suite.

The earlier happenings are also quite exciting:

• Study suggests that Linux is cheaper than Windows for Munich: - story, Babelfish
• Microsoft CEO Ballmer interrupts his skiing trip to talk to Munich politians: story, Babelfish
• Suddently a new study says that because Microsoft gave huge discounts, Windows is now better than Linux for Munich: story, Yoda
• IBM also modifies their offer (see main story above)

Re:I just wanted to submit that story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer skies? That I would pay to see, in light of his monkey boy antics.

Fat lil turd

Re:I just wanted to submit that story...

[ctishman]

I've got four words for ya...

Re:I just wanted to submit that story...

[BroncoInCalifornia]

Is this a crack in another Berlin Wall?

Ballmer should have done his Monkey Dance for the people of Munich!

Re:I just wanted to submit that story...

[Ignominious Poltroon]

Munich will be the first city with over 1 Million inhabitants that is run by Linux

They've voted Linux to be mayor?! Wow, that IS is a big step for open source software!

Re:I just wanted to submit that story...

[RealUlli]

Short facts are: The actual vote will occur on wednesday, but the SPD and Green party hold 43 out of 80 seats and have both committed to vote in favour of Linux to be used in the government of Munich, a city of about 2 million inhabitants.

In short: the vote is over, Linux won. :-) story, Babelfish

Cheers, Ulli

free software in Munich?

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as it comes with free beer.

Now you know why Ballmer was selling shares

[DailyGrind]

Went to Germany got owned came back and started selling his MS shares....

Which office suite?

[Fished]

Does anyone know for sure which office suite they are using? I'm guessing OpenOffice (since in one place Babelfish calls it "Open Source Office". But it's never stated.

Re:Which office suite?

[mindriot]

The article really states nothing more than "an Open Source office package." This article seems to suggest OpenOffice, but any other articles I have read do not give a definitive answer. I would expect them to use OpenOffice, though... there are not really any alternatives, especially when it comes to dealing with MS Office documents, are there?

Re:Which office suite?

[mrscorpio]

AbiWord + Gnumeric for word processor and spreadsheet documents, can't think of any others off the top of my head that incorporate filters for MS format documents. I know KOffice is starting to incorporate some limited import abilities.

Chris

Re:Which office suite?

[svachi]

What are you talking about? Of course they use TeX for documents, and use CSV files and perl scripts to process them as spread sheets!

Faint hope?

[serenemy]

So long as they don't control me I will continue to consider the world free. Who is "they" anyway, just people and systems, all changeable.

Re:Faint hope?

[Gumshoe]

So long as they don't control me I will continue to consider the world free.

That's a fair view point I suppose (just a wild guess, you're a middle aged Caucasian male, yes?). I just hope you realise that if you don't stand up for the people who are being persecuted right now, then there won't be many people left to stand up for you when your time comes

Who is "they" anyway, just people and systems, all changeable.

And how do you propose the systems be changed? I can assure you, overwhelming them with apathy won't work.

Re:oh christ

[stevejsmith]

Yes...I know...that was the point of the joke. And then there's the fact that English is a direct descendent of German, only becoming modern English somewhere around the 15th century (not sure of exact date, but it was somewhere around there) when it was mixed with French. Before then English was VERY closely related to German.

Oh, so you're getting free crack cocaine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comment from one sysadmin when MS offered us free software...

Re:Oh, so you're getting free crack cocaine?

[Capt. DrunkenBum]

The first taste is always free kids.

Re:Oh, so you're getting free crack cocaine?

[TheRaven64]

Microsoft have been giving out free copies of .NET studio. I'd heard some good things about .NET, so I thought I'd give it a go. The installation crashed every time I tried it (in the pre-requisites section, no less) so I gave up.

Re:Oh, so you're getting free crack cocaine?

[rutledjw]

I dunno, the MS-dummies where I work swear by it.

Thier battle-cry is that it "has the best debugging and dev tools I've ever used". IMHO, this is a joke. Most of the developers I know who depend on those kinds of tools can't code their way out of a wet paper sack. Maybe it's different outside of the J2EE world, but within I'm always leery of those who are dependent on dev/debugging tools...

In the end, the very thing that makes MS popular with so many developers (a trained monkey can use it) may be their downfall. Those same "trained monkeys" struggle with complex issues that require a greater understanding of technology.

That may be a "flamebait" comment, but it's what I've seen...

Re:Oh, so you're getting free crack cocaine?

[AstroDrabb]

I agree 100%. The fortune 100 company I work for has just chosen J2EE over .NOT (I am very glad). All those against it are the worst developers there and are only capable of developing in VB and ASP. MS has lowered the bar for programming too low IMO. It is fine to do that with a desktop for the average user, however do we really want softare developers of such low calibur? They obviously become MS zelots because MS is the only place they can look to where they do not need real programming skills.

At work we did a very detailed evaluation of the two products and .NOT offered nothing over J2EE. .NOT does not run on any other platform other then winders and MS will do everything they can to keep it that way. Sure there are efforts like MONO, however it will always be a step or two behind .NOT becuse that is how MS will keep it. So with .NOT you are right back at vendor lock-in and proprietary crap. .NOT offers no speed advantage over J2EE. And the big kicker for our enterprise is security. J2EE is encredibly secure with no know expliots that I have ever heard of. .NOT will be just like every other MS product and will have tons of security holes. J2EE has also been proven over time to be very solid and secure. .NOT has not proven anything yet. MS's marketing engine tries to make customers think .NOT has a much bigger following then it does. The only people using it are MS shops that are littered with sub-par programmers. In an enterprise of any size, J2EE is the only real option IMO.

Re:Oh, so you're getting free crack cocaine?

[Tony-A]

Microsoft, where mediocrity is an aspiration.
Regarding the security of J2EE, why do you think Sun keeps as heavy a hand on it as they do? There's lots of ways to add "neat stuff" that doesn't quite keep the security intact.
Personally I do not "like" java. Smells too much like gaggles of mainframes. But it's probably the only feasible way to bring massive COBOL systems into the current millenium.

Heh!

[FyRE666]

Well, anything that stops Balmer dancing about like a happy, sweaty monkey sounds good to me. I'm only surprised Windows scored so highly!

As an aside, we use Star Office at work on about half the Windows machines, but the people using it do seem to be envious of the staff with MS Office installed. Problems with printing multi-page spreadsheets/images, problems opening files etc, and lack of speed seem the biggest problems.

Although, since the sales/service people are still mostly using PIIs with 64-128MB of RAM, it's little wonder. I recently built OpenOffice on my Gentoo box to see how it compared, and it does seem a lot faster, even though my Gentoo machine has a slower CPU (Athlon 1.4ghz) than my office machine (2.4ghz P4 - although the office machine has a shit SiS onboard graphic chipset).

I doubt the management would like all the PCs building OO from source for 3 days though ;-)

Re:Heh!

[Jord]

In a corporate enviroment I would not put Gentoo on the desktop. Don't get me wrong, I happen to like that distribution a lot and we use it on our servers. However we use SuSE on the desktop to avoid the build times.

Re:Heh!

[Markus Registrada]

fYreGGG wrote, "my Gentoo machine has a slower CPU (Athlon 1.4ghz) than my office machine (2.4ghz P4...)".

Run some benchmarks. Those machines are about equivalent for most work. It's partly because Athlons rock, but more because P4s suck.

YMMV.

Re:Heh!

[horza]

I doubt the management would like all the PCs building OO from source for 3 days though ;-)

If they are all on a network, then you could check out distcc which will use all available machines to compile the source for your one target machine. Should cut compile time down drastically.

Phillip.

Re:Heh!

[mrscorpio]

Have you checked out either of the Star Office 6.1 betas (or the Open Office equivalents, for that matter)? Speed is drastically improved for me, I'm talking 1/4 - 1/2 the load time, it's great. With PDF and Flash write capabilities, it's going to save a lot of companies a lot of money who are willing to make the switch too. I am highly impressed with it.

Chris

It pains me to say it but...

[hillct]

Microsoft has actually learned a lot over the past decade; particularly in the area or recurring revenue streams.

At this point a significant portion of the company revenues are derived from subscription services. Even if they waive all future upgrade license fees, they still have support contracts, MSDN and other subscriptions to services many large organizations will rerquire. It'll be vary interestingto see what Balmer is willing to offer to get this contract/deployment. There has got to be a point below which they will refuse to go. 'Under no circumstances, loose to linux' must have a limit. I just wonder where it actually is.

--CTH

Re:It pains me to say it but...

[greg_barton]

Even if they waive all future upgrade license fees, they still have support contracts, MSDN and other subscriptions to services many large organizations will rerquire.

Golly. Sounds familiar. Isn't this the...*wait for it*...open source business model?

Re:It pains me to say it but...

[10am-bedtime]

that point is (quite obvious when you think about it) when usloth actually does lose to linux. that point is when all their efforts amount to pouring money (and any remnants of goodwill from their locked-in userbase) down the drain. that point is pretty much w/in the next half year or so.

of course, there will be localized dingleberries here and there (e.g., united states government) but most of the world will wise up pretty fast.

besides, greenspan already read the tarot: a "growth economy" based on "intellectual property" coercion is the bigger bubble that makes stuff like dot-bomb small in comparison. hopefully the bubble will seep instead of pop, but all these extra squeezing by elected bribe collectors don't help the situation much.

Re:It pains me to say it but...

[Gumshoe]

He never said it was Open Source, but that the suggested business model is one advocated by the Open Source people. The same business model that MS advocates say can't work.

Wow. The figures speak for themselves

[gazbo]

6218 (out of 10.000) points to Linux/OSS, while the MS Windows platform only scored 5293

Under the Munich government's scoring system, one would generally expect scores around 6000, based on the extremely popular Novell system they had running for many years before they decided to "upgrade" to Windows after being given the hard-sell by MS. To score 6218 shows that Linux is well ahead of the curve; I believe that when they looked at a Solaris installation a couple of years ago, that managed slightly lower at about 6100 (I forget the exact number, but it was somewhere around that).

The most interesting figure is Windows at 5293. AFAIK, that is the lowest score they've ever given out. Certainly the lowest one I've seen that they published.

Go Linux!

Hey just a second

[Battle_Ratt]

Didn't this guy just sell 10% of his stock in the company. Bet he knew it was going to break this way weeks ago. Insider trading anyone?

Re:Hey just a second

[rseuhs]

That would be illegal and we all know that a) a Microsoft executive would never do that and b) MSFT-shareholders are such a dependent, spineless bunch they would never complain about it.

Re:Hey just a second

[BrainInAJar]

Or, perhaps it's because HE CAN'T LEGALLY SELL HIS STOCK ANY OTHER TIME. And you can't buy shit with stock certificates

Re:Hey just a second

[vadim_t]

Hmm, could you please explain how can a CEO engage in insider trading? Isn't s/he inside by definition? And how would Ballmer sell stock otherwise, when he manages the company and probably knows pretty much all that's going on?

Re:Hey just a second

[Daniel Phillips]

Hmm, could you please explain how can a CEO engage in insider trading? Isn't s/he inside by definition? And how would Ballmer sell stock otherwise, when he manages the company and probably knows pretty much all that's going on?

The full name for this crime is "trading on inside information". That is, it's not illegal to be an insider, it's not illegal to be an insider who trades, but it is illegal to make those trades on information known to the insider, not the general public. The timing of a trade would be a key factor in determining whether someone acted on insider information or not. This crime is as old as the stock market, and lots of rich people have done jail time for it, some of them have lost their fortunes as well.

Re:to the editors of slashdot

[Dimensio]

Just wait. Microsoft will lobby US congresscritters to impose sanctions for this injustice.

Coincidence?

[djupedal]

Ballmer's pitches fail... Ballmer sells shares....

I'd give it a 74....catchy ditty, but I doubt Steve likes to dance to it. Let's see how it does in next week's rankings.

Pilot program?

[Doppler00]

I hope they actually did a pilot program with say 100 users to make sure this was a good decision. Remember, there are a lot of applications that simply do not run on Linux. They are probably not doing this to be anti-Microsoft, but simply to save money. Most of their users probably just use standard office applications, so standardizing on one platform that is open source probably gives them substantial savings.

Re:Pilot program?

[leomekenkamp]

Remember, there are a lot of applications that simply do not run on Linux.

It is not about the applications. It would be about the applications if they were only playing games. It's about data; civil servants get input, process it, and create output. Some only create output, <funny>an again others only have input</funny>.

100 years ago some civil servant documented the birth of my grandmother. Now I can still have a look at the birth certificate of my grandmother; I do not need the civil servant that wrote it down to tell me what is written down. In 68 years all applications we use now will be long forgotten; my (great)grandchildren should not need some ancient version of a closed source proprietary application to read (electronic) documents about my birth; they should have the means to read the documents no matter what.

You may fire when ready

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news...

"Today Bill Gates announced that Germany has been added to a group of 'rogue nations' that constitute an axis of evil. When Mr. Gates decided to test the full power of his newly built Microsoft Deathstar 2003 on the rogue nation, the machine had an internal segfault which caused a massive nuclear reaction which destroyed the Redmond Washington based companies R&D labs. Mr Gates declined to comment, but a spokesman has told us that Microsoft is still committed to developing world dominatory machines, and that their new model, to be released in 2005, will feature new 'twirly thingies and flashy lights' which will without a doubt improve destructive capacity exponentially. The Apple corporation has taken a similar approach to bring industrial strength 'shiny gunz' to the market, but has recalled that initiative because of blinding resulting from over-used chrome polishing and photo-realistic ammo that take hours to fire once the trigger is pulled."

Another Domino

[Tancred]

Just another domino in a long line of them. Lots more in the future than there are in the past, but it's unstoppable now. Regardless of pricing, no nation wants to be dependent on a private entity.

History may mark this point

[TerryAtWork]

as the beginning of the end for MS...

Do the Math

[moncyb]

If we assume Linux never existed, MS would still have a similar problem--except with FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BeOS, or whatever.

Also, the value lost to MS is much more than monetary. The fewer people running Windows, the more trouble they will have pushing people into their Palladium Censorship OS. ;-)

If you want to understand more, listen to the song Do the Math by Mannequin Porn. Just substitute M$ where they say Juliet, and you'll have the solution!

Re:Do the Math

[fymidos]

I have to argue that if linux never existed BSD wouldn't be a problem for them...

Obviously *something* would have emerged but it would have to be gpl to make a difference.

Re:Do the Math

[moncyb]

Why would it have to be GPL?

Re:Do the Math

[fymidos]

for many reasons, the spirit of the GPL is that the code is somehow protected from "abuse". A company cannot just grab linux kernel, fix some bugs let's say, and sell it (or give it away) as a superior product. The changes have to be available for the public, and the main kernel tree.
BSD kernel is the other example, the code is good, so good that many many companies have used it, but developers got nothing in return (ok, maybe some gonverment funding). So it never managed to rise and has never been able to challenge commercial solutions the way linux has.

Just for that...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Microsoft is removing Munich from its next version of Flight Simulator.

Re:Just for that...

[TheRaven64]

Why? So it can only be used to train future pilots to fly into American buildings?

(-1, extremely bad taste)

Re:Just for that...

[egork]

Well, it might be actually introducing Munich in there, but in a new role, who knows... now when high precision munition is finding its way into computer games :)

Re:Just for that...

[Vegan Pagan]

But Uncle Sam is paying them so much to keep it in so hijackers will know where to aim!

Re:Just for that...

[blibbleblobble]

"Just for that, Microsoft is removing Munich from its next version of Flight Simulator."

Replacement

Scenery

Re:to the editors of slashdot

[cheesybagel]

Yes there are many people in the Linux community who do not like Microsoft (in fact there are several people who dislike Microsoft regardless but I digress).

Yes the user submitted a bombastic headline for this story. Heise.de actually used "SPD Munich goes for Linux" which is not quite this bombastic.

However you really should learn to read stories behind headlines. Headlines are usually meant to be bombastic. There is indeed a mention to Linux in the news summary.

Regarding Windows XP vs Linux there are several things which can be said.

For desktop purposes indeed Windows XP is superior for several reasons: common look UI, proper crossapp DND, multimedia support, better hardware management GUI tools, etc.

For server purposes Microsoft OSes lag in several respects: You do not have as many built-in facilities for automation of batches, the fact that UNIX devices are character streams make things like backup trivial, etc.

For something like this desktop win at the German government it is very obvious license costs are important. These are 14,000 machines we are talking. It is a tidy sum. Microsoft may be willing to lower prices *now* but they could well recover their investment later on with upgrade fees after customers are locked in using data with proprietary Microsoft file formats. This way the German government also promotes the local software industry.

What would *you* do if you were in their place?

well, we've got it

[RestiffBard]

Now we just have to keep it. That's the hard part.

Faulting MS is fair on many, many levels....

[djupedal]

...and we all know it, so stop the whitewash already.

Dumping laws are meant to protect the local economy from running dry when tons of imported steel, etc. (whatever) are sold locally for less than cost, etc. in order to control said local market and local competition, raised prices or not.

This isn't about software...free or otherwise. It is about not being on the hook for something, and in this case, the locals have decided in their own best interests. Good for them.

cowards

[moncyb]

Is it just me, or are ACs getting more and more crazy?

Re:cowards

[fymidos]

indeed, a preference to *not* see AC posts would be a wonderfull thing ... Or at least they should *seem* different, grey or something like that, they can be really annoying ..

Re:cowards

[moncyb]

I have them set to -6, but I usually check below my threshold for replies to interesting posts. You set it under the preferences, in the comments area. The setting is called "Anonymous Modifier". A value of -6 will guarantee ACs get a -1 rating even if they are modded up.

90%? they would have gotten it back anyways

[Hellasboy]

just some thoughts on the situation...
first, it's been said before that by going w/ Linux it will help the German economy more than by going with windows.
second, 90% is a great rebate discount. But what happens 5 years down the road when MS decides to not support the piece of software that they have already sold and instead tells the people of Munich that they have to buy new versions of the software at full price?
Third, this is a good way to bring Linux to people's homes. Didn't the x86 processor (and subsequent MS OS) become popular due to the fact that it was all over the workplace and people wanted to use it at home? not exactly like that but i hope you get my thought.

and just so people don't think i'm some Linux zealot, i use winxp and beos. i've tried several distributions of Linux and don't like it... yet. As more people use it, it will definitely get much better for home use.

Re:90%? they would have gotten it back anyways

[Jord]

That is exactly how windows got into people's homes. They used it at work and then wanted to use the same at home. I remember when Windows "migrated" into the workplace and people didnt want it (too slow, etc.). However the push was made and other office products were pushed out. At the time, the GUI was a great new thing and everyone started to like it.

Looking back at it now, it was probably a bad move :)

Re:Where's Your Nationalism Now?

[grungeman]

First I have to say that you nationalist whining kinda pisses me off.

Second: Did you read the article? IBM will make the deal instead of Microsoft. You know what country IBM is from, don't you?

political vs. cultural

[chocolatetrumpet]

While it is not the political capital, I would say it is the cultural capital, featuring the Deutsche Museum, Hofbräuhaus, and Olympiazentrum.

Re:political vs. cultural

[grungeman]

Even that isn't true. It's the beer, pretzel, and soccer capital.

Re:political vs. cultural

[egork]

This evil German things like militarism, discipline are Prussian, while Bavaria hates them.

Come on, give us a break!

Re:political vs. cultural

[Old Wolf]

And fat men in leather shorts burping to the tune of "She'll be coming around the mountain"

</BLACKADDER>

Re:political vs. cultural

[he-sk]

You want to insult me? Come over and fight! Berlin is the cultural center of Germany. A distant second are Hamburg and Cologne. Munich is even in the same leage.

Re:political vs. cultural

[fredrik70]

nope in swedish it's called bayern as well ;-)

Re:political vs. cultural

[3247]

This evil German things like militarism, discipline are Prussian, while Bavaria hates them.

Prussia also had some positive contributions wrt to administrative las. On the other hand, Munich was the centre and "capital of the [Nazi] movement" -- that's definitely an "evil German thing" that's not Prussian.

Does anyone have a link to the criteria?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a link to the criteria used between the two solutions? Although a score was provided, I would be interested to see how Linux scored in each of the areas.

Image of Microsoft

[Luzumsuz Lazim]

It's a pitty for Microsoft that it damaged its image so bad by using its monopoly power and producing so buggy software in the past. In recent years, it was only a bunch of people around me at MIT, and many (not all) slashdot people who didn't aprove what Microsoft was doing. Now, it became a common knowledge that even our secretary realized how Microsoft agresively marketed its products, and how bad they were.

It's pitty, because it finally improved (not perfected though) its operating system that can be considered stable now. But, its too late for most of the people I know. I can tell that ALL science related machines (PCs) we have today use Linux instead of Windows both here in our department and in the part of the Los Alamos National lab. I know, and I'm proud that I was one of the few who started using it, and probably had some effect on this move.

On the other hand Linux is not suitable for everything. I need a decent/mature interface and a machine which requires little maintanence at home, at which point I picked MacOS X instead of Microsoft because of the past experience. Which works pretty well for what it's supposed to do and more... So, again Microsoft lost one more individual as a customer. That's the primary term for Microsoft, instead of the user.

Compatition is good. Now, they improved their products significantly (we must be fair!), and they're trying to reduce their cost, at least, the initial cost. That's also an improvement. Let's be naive and wish that it's not a trick to tie the costomers to rip them later. Actually, that's exactly the pshycological behaviour of most people when the Microsoft is involved. We do NOT trust them anymore...

I do not wish that Microsoft disappears forever, but just wish that it can understand what they did wrong in the past, and try to repair the damage they did. However, it does not seem what is happening here.

Better discount in Spain ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Ballmer came a few weeks ago in Spain in order to prevent a town switching to GNU/Linux.
According to the news, Microsoft promises :

* Gift of software for 25 millions of Euros (nearly the same in dollars)
* Investment of 5 millions of Euros for educational projects
* Possibility to downloading a software to translate Windows XP into Catalan (a spanish dialect)
* And somme others stuffs.

Better than the German discount, isn't it ? The deal is not already done, but it shows that Microsoft can go very far to keep its monopoly. The link, in Spanish (sorry, I don't know Spanish language) :
http://www.5dias.com/articulo.html?xref=2003050 9cd scdiemp_10&type=Tes&anchor=cdsemp&d_date=20030 509
Another link from Wired :
http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,58764,00. htm l

90% number not backed up by article

[nniillss]

In the Heise article, the rebate offered by Ballmer is not specified. In fact, the details of the offer seem to be secret. The 90% number seems to originate from earlier discussions (not linked to Munich) about an internal Microsoft order not to lose to Linux at any cost.

Munich vacation in the works.

[small_dick]

A breath of freedom in a world owned by Microsoft.

If this goes through I'm going on vacation to Munich later this summer...maybe rent a nice bike (BMW F650?) and bask in the freedom. Sounds like fun.

Great job, Munich. I know OpenOffice has it's share of problems (it really isn't all that compatible with Word documents), and there will be some hiccups, but just seeing a government stand up for freedom is a breathtaking thing in these sad times.

Re:Munich vacation in the works.

[NilsK]

A breath of freedom in a world owned by Microsoft.

But you should have in mind, that the headquarter of Microsoft-Germany is located in Munich.

Nils

Re:Munich vacation in the works.

[Jason Earl]

Munich is a government. If they tell you to send them an OpenOffice.org document, you won't send them an MS Word document. Bureaucracies don't have to be flexible.

That's the reason that Microsoft is pushing so hard not to lose government contracts. Microsoft knows that governments are the one entity that can force people towards new document formats.

Re:oh christ

[Spellbinder]

i prefere swiss german
the very cool thing is there is no orthography
everyone writes how he likes or how he pronouces it
at school we learn standart german and use this too for business
but the cool thing is the whole internet and sms brought us back to writing swiss german
sometimes it's a little confusing
especially if someone speaks a verry strange dialect!!

LPI

[njvic]

Does this mean I really should go out and get certified as a Linux Professional?

It does NOT cost them anything

[Great_Geek]

If you do a detailed business-case, I think you will find that Microsoft should be willing to charge nothing.

Recall that if Microsoft loses the account, they get ZERO dollars. On the other hand, per-license cost (to Microsoft) is essentially ZERO as well. So whatever they can charge is extra profit. All of the talk of slush fund to pay for the discount is just accounting wool to pull over people's eyes (and may be keep bonuses straight).

Also, if you look at the Market Share or Network Effect, that also argues for "do not lose". Indeed, as Microsoft (and other companies) has demonstrated, it is often worthwhile to pay a customer to take it.

Yup

[MAXOMENOS]

Bingo. The difference is, when you deploy Microsoft technology, Microsoft practically owns the support business. When you deploy Red Hat (for example), there are other competitors that the customer can choose from, including IBM, to support their systems.

Deep discounts and future business

[just fiddling around]

Microsoft did what any hungry business does to open doors to a good market: undercut every other. This ain't illegal anywhere.

I just finished selecting a company to make a custom eLearning system at my job. The winner had the best technical offer (it had 10% more points than no.2) AND their price was 50% under the second best price. Moreover, there were about 10 bidders and the eLearning market is young and competitive. The winner was NOT the biggest, baddest, most deep-pocketed; they wanted to take over the bid to get visibility in the corporate structure (yes, we are THAT big).

In this case, Microsoft did what they could and did not win. Which shows the value of the alternative!

Re:Deep discounts and future business

[Daniel Phillips]

Microsoft did what any hungry business does to open doors to a good market: undercut every other. This ain't illegal anywhere.

You're sure? You've never heard of dumping? Or predatory pricing then?

Advice for you: think hard about what you just said, or you're likely to make some remarkably poor decisions in the future with respect to ethics and the law, if you ever get into management.

Re:Deep discounts and future business

[Paul Komarek]

The European Union has laws governing discounting. Microsoft is currently under scrutiny for offering possibly illegal discounts in the past. If the Munich discount wasn't already known, then it's almost certainly going to make things worse for MS.

-Paul Komarek

Don't forget Oktoberfest!

[MsGeek]

The "party on, dude" capital of all Deutscheland from September until November! "In Muenschen ist ein Hofbrauhaus...ein, zwei, zuffe!"

Re:Where's Your Nationalism Now?

[sloanster]

Huh?

Did I miss the part where it said american companies will not be allowed to provide the linux software?

Not quite...

[Kircle]

When OpenOffice gets a negative review it is almost never because the tools are not sufficiently capable, but rather it is because the MS Office conversion filters aren't up to the task.

Not quite. The No. 1 complaint of OpenOffice I hear is its inablity to "word count" when compared to MS Office.

Re:Not quite...

[anagama]

I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean count the words in a document, open a document, select [file][properties] and then select the "statistics" tab in the popup. You get word count, paragraph count .... 8 different counts in fact. This with OOo 1.0.2 ... I don't actually find this useful so I have no recollection whether prior versions did this.

Re:Not quite...

[Planesdragon]

There are two problems with that.

Firstly, and most importantly, it's imprecise and overdone. Sometimes you don't want to count an entire document--sometimes you just want to count how long a single paragraph is, or a few phrases. Or a page or two. (And, at least in 1.1b, it's way off--OoO just counted a 17k word paste as 101 words.)

Secondly, and this is the really annoying part--it's buried. The standard location for word count is under the Tools menu, near the Spelling (and grammar) functions are. Spellcheck, Thesaurus, and Hypenation are all there--why not Word Count?

You don't use it, so you won't push it--but I do use it, and so do many others. OoO's word count is not up to par--which is sad, really, as it's the last (latest) major roadblock to me switching over.

Re:Not quite...

[DarcSeed]

I dunno about you but, when I was using OO to type up my 5 page exam paper, I needed to make sure I had at least 1500 words, so I asked my friend (who has always used Word and windows, etc.) where the word count was, figuring that the developers of OO had cloned more-or-less the whole interface. It's in the same spot that MS Word has it. File-> Document Properties -> Statistics.

Re:Not quite...

[TKinias]

scripsit Planesdragon:

(And, at least in 1.1b, it's way off--OoO just counted a 17k word paste as 101 words.)

You filed a bug, right? I know complaining is easier, but that won't get things fixed.

Re:Not quite...

[TKinias]

scripsit DarcSeed:

when I was using OO to type up my 5 page exam paper, I needed to make sure I had at least 1500 words...

Let me let you in on a little secret. Teaching assistants have much better things to do with their time than count the words in your paper by hand. If it feels about the right length and satisfactorily meets the requirements nobody is going to give a rat's arse about the exact word count. (Unless your university's teaching assistants have way too much time on their hands...)

Re:Not quite...

[Minna Kirai]

What if he submits his paper electronically to TAs who use Microsoft Office's word count feature?

Re:Not quite...

[TKinias]

scripsit Minna Kirai:

What if he submits his paper electronically to TAs who use Microsoft Office's word count feature?

I thought about that, but didn't think anyone would actually want electronic submissions except for an on-line class. I sure as hell prefer papers on paper -- I'm not going to mark them without printing them, and I spend enough on paper and toner without printing 300 pages of students' work for every assignment...

Re:Not quite...

[Planesdragon]

You filed a bug, right? I know complaining is easier, but that won't get things fixed.

I'll see if I can reproduce the bug at home, and then vote for the bug.

Thanks for the reminder.

Re:Munich: The city where the Nazi party started

[mangu]

Linus is not exactly of pure Aryan stock.

How so? I would say Swedish-Finnish is "Aryan" enough...

Could this also be a result of the Iraq war?

[Martin Marvinski]

Before the war, there was an article on how the US was spying on countries to see how they would vote on the war resolution in the UN.

http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,905 936,00.html

Because of this Germany may also be moving away from software that may have potential secret backdoors written in for the NSA. No matter how much you get in rebates, it will never give a government the peace of mind of having compiled and inspected the code yourself.

Re:Could this also be a result of the Iraq war?

[praedor]

I don't think this theory really washes because Germany could have easily gained access to windoze source via M$'s abortion of a program called Shared Source. Of course, billions of lines of spaghetti code would render such viewing pointless but the source would be there (for a fee).

I think they are just going with the cheaper alternative that allows computer science expertise to remain and grow locally rather than feed the beast in Redmond to no benefit of Germany.

Re:Could this also be a result of the Iraq war?

[Gumshoe]

I don't think this theory really washes because Germany could have easily gained access to windoze source via M$'s abortion of a program called Shared Source. Of course, billions of lines of spaghetti code would render such viewing pointless but the source would be there (for a fee).

True. Moreover, how would you ever know that the source you're looking at relates to the binary that you've just bought. From what I can gather, the Shared Source thing doesn't allow you to make your own binaries.

Re:Could this also be a result of the Iraq war?

[vinsci]

Actually, security is a major factor working in favor of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) for governments around the world, according to the research report Free as in education: Significance of FLOSS for the Developing Countries by Niranjan Rajani, published last week. See the section Security and Technological Independence for details.

Note: the first link above has more information and additional material. The research was sponsored by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland.

Your suspicion of secret back doors are not off the mark. If you familiarize yourself with the upcoming security technology from Microsoft, called Palladium or more recently NGSCB, you will find that backdoors are likely to be mandatory in it. Furthermore, such backdoors in crypto-processors are already patented, see for example the patents ep1059578 Secure backdoor access for a computer or us5970246 Data processing system having a trace mechanism and method therefor.

Re:Could this also be a result of the Iraq war?

[Bartmoss]

No, not really, but kind of. First of all, we're talking about a muncipal gov't here - a large city, but nothing more. Espionage from the United States against Munich specifically should be a minor issue.

That said, Germany has been pushing several issues in this direction for many, many years. Remember the Bundestag (German parliament) examining Linux as well - Linux lost, marginally, against Windows then. There are other examples, also in the private sector. I can tell you that a certain large German corporation that shall remain nameless looked at adopting Linux on the desktop as well. The reason was simple: Money. Windows simply cannot beat Linux' licensing fees, even if Steve Ballmer offers even more discounts. And many corporations but especially the public sector has a huge problem with shrinking budgets.

Now about the "Kind of" thingie. The German government has been advocating the use of encryption and other security measures for a long time. In fact they were pressured by Albright and co. to cease this policy. The reason was economic espionage, in which the United States excels, but other countries do it. So, the bottom line is: Yes, using open source has security implications too, but it's mostly a money decision.

Re:Could this also be a result of the Iraq war?

[EinarH]

because Germany could have easily gained access to windoze source via M$'s abortion of a program called Shared Source.

They already have access to the sourc code through NATO and EU programs.

Re:oh christ

[Little Brother]

Um Old English is directly Branched from old Low German, (Old low German would still be understandable to most native German speakers) So unless you want to say that modern English isn't really based on Old English (if you want to make that point go ahead, I'll follow up) you pretty much have to admit that modern English is derived from German. Or I suppose you could say that old Low German isn't really german, but that would be equatble to saying that the KJV bible or the works of Shakespere arn't written in English.

Is there a linguic scholor who can tell me how many places I messed up? I'm trying to remember stuff I learned in High School.

Re:Wow. The figures speak for themselves

[mangu]

Exactly what is the scoring system? Do you have any links to how those points are counted?

I like to imagine...

[frozenray]

...that on hearing news like this, Bill Gates locks himself in his office, puts on a strangely shaped black face-covering helmet and starts breathing heavily.

Ok, I admit it, I probably have seen too many Star Wars movies. Still, nice win for Open Source.

Just a strategy to promote local tech industry

[mulp]

"I think the real reason they have so much support is because of anti-american sentiments."

A major reason given in countries outside the US is the advancement of a local software industry.

The first country within an economic zone to switch to make Linux the preferred government business platform will probably be the first to develop Linux applications required within the zone. Germans are unlikely to develop applications for a South American country and vice versa.

Most important, the US is least likely to develop Linux applications for use in countries outside the US. That means that a local preference for Linux gives the local software industry a competitive advantage.

Produce for the US, then for the rest of the world is built into nearly all intellectual property marketing strategies. On the one hand, the US expects that the world will all speak American, but on the other, US companies want to control the release of IP outside the US separately from the US release. For DVD this was hardwired, the same is true for software as well.

All programmers should welcome signficant Linux development. Even if you only know Microsoft, the demand for programmers for Linux projects will make the pool of MS Windows programmers smaller increasing your probability of keeping a job.

Re:oh christ

[Samari711]

i think any linguists reading slashdot would have had a stroke a long time ago....

The Capital Is Bonn/ Free software a comunists.

[acomj]

Bonn would be the capitol of west germany. East germany (DDR or the commie half..) has a different capital.

This is acording to my map.. Which might be a LITTLE out of date

Of course this whole using free software thing might be the fault of those anti-capitalist East Germans.

Of course I might be kidding

Re:this is good

[hellswraith]

If you don't agree with my statements, feel free to prove me wrong with real facts.

Send me a message with the code your using, let me give it a shot.

Re:Wow. The figures speak for themselves

[gazbo]

Well, I don't know the exact breakdown, but I believe that it is a rather over-complex system, but which seems to work well.

The first strange thing is that two teams are assigned to work independently, each of which will ultimately produce a score out of 5000 (hence the 10000 total). The logic is that should there be any different approaches taken (especially during the TCO analysis) then they should smooth out somewhat.

Then, the 5000 points are split into "distinct" sections; the reason I quote distinct is because in fact they are anyhting but: security, transition cost, and TCO. Of course, really TCO covers everything, but they chose to extract the first two as different sections because they can be measured in a much more direct way (transition cost) or must be measured in a far more heuristic way (security). TCO on the other hand is an amalgamated figure of ongoing support costs (minus security concerns, of course), training, and initial software cost, amortised over a 5 year period (the standard life-cycle of their system).

I think the 5000 is divided into 900 for security, 1200 for transition costs, and 2900 for TCO. Within each of these, the actual figures they come up with are fit to the appropriate maximum score through a sigmoidal squashing function, that is attenuated at the low end, such that there is not much difference in score between the very cheapest solutions, but a huge difference between expensive solutions. Doesn't help Linux (cheap) look good, but on the other hand it does help Windows (very expensive!) look extremely bad.

Then the scores are simply summed across the two teams to get an aggregate out of 10000. As I say, I don't really know the specifics, but that's more or less how it works.

Re:14.000 Workstations? Big Deal.

[rjamestaylor]

see the link: _ in my original (and NOT redundant!) post

In fact, it's not even close

[Ethelred Unraed]

Not by a long shot. Berlin is largest with roughly 3.5-4 million, Hamburg second at 1.8 million, Munich is third at 1.3 million.

Still, great to see that OSS won there...free Paulaner all around!

Cheers,

Ethelred

Does OpenOffice1.1beta2 help the problems you saw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend OO on anything less than a good 750MHz PII with 256MB RAM. (Those 900 MHz Via Samuels with non-DDR shared memory graphics built into the motherboard are too slow, too.)

I'm very interested in the non-speed problems your folks have been encountering. OpenOffice 1.1 beta 2 is out; it would be good to know what issues still remain. Perhaps a few of them can be addressed before 1.1 final is out. See my page on the subject. If you have any documents that can't be opened in OO1.1beta2, please send me a copy, I'll light a fire under the developers. Or file your own issues if you're motivated.

Re:babelwhat?

[gbjbaanb]

yes you do - its translation of German to English is way, way, way better than my ability to read German.

Wrong headline!

[Qbertino]

You meant:
Could this also be due to closed source software being potential spyware?
The answer is: yes.
Yet that has nothing to do with the Iraq Invasion.
Germans throughout society can very well differentiate between a nations gouverment and a software vendor.
Your headline is missleading when you look at it that way.

Ironically, the German word for "innovation" is...

[Ethelred Unraed]

...tada! "Innovation"!

It's "die Innovation", if you're wondering...

FWIW "developer" is "der Entwickler". Not that it matters. Plural is "die Entwickler". So Ballyboy was saying:

Entwickler Entwickler Entwickler Entwickler!

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:interconnection

[sloanster]

Your message is somewhat nonsensical -

1. The slashdot community does NOT hate microsoft. Since the the slashdot community is composed chiefly of users of microsoft windows, your statement makes no sense.

2. When microsoft does badly, the "entire tech industry" does not do badly, quite the contrary. Those who depend on microsoft stock do badly - period. "the industry" is actually much better off if software companies are able to freely innovate without the fear that the 1300 lb gorilla is going to smash them with monoploy hardball tricks.

3. The mainstream adoption of open source does not mean fewer jobs for programmers, but quite the opposite - what on earth gives you that idea? open source opens up many more opportunities for programmers.

Being a programmer, I find this delightful!

Call me picky, but 6/10 is a good score?

[Gldm]

When the winning software basicly scores 6/10 and beats out a competitor scoring 5/10, what does this say about the suitability of current software for what users want to use it for?

Yes I know it's fun to watch linux vs windows and cheer from the sidelines etc, but how about this bigger picture?

Maybe it's just me but software seems to be doing less and less of what we as users want and more and more of what marketing departments want. Useless features, obsolete features that are never pruned, tons of time and money spent dealing with ways to push advertising or find more ways to milk the consumer... Whatever happened to looking for ways to make doing everyday tasks easier and faster? Open source projects don't seem to be entirely immune to it either. I see lots of development in trying to keep feature parity or adding new things to invent new buzzwords for, but I haven't seen anything moving towards ease of using for some time now. All apps are now using "skinable" interfaces that make using them inconsistent with each other. Some apps have such complex configurations they're harder to learn to use than the average OS. I think that's a problem.

So what were the almost 4000 points that weren't awarded based on?

Re:interconnection

[praedor]

Really? All the linux coders are unemployed? I didn't know they couldn't find work. I didn't know that they worked for alms on the street corners. Do they sit on the sidewalks of the world with their laptops on their laps coding away with an overturned hat next to them to catch stray cash people drop for them as they pass by?

Linux adoption is GOOD. It means less likelihood of DRM. It means open standards that anyone can make use of (government documents that are readable to any and all regardless of whether they run Linux, Windoze, or MacOS). It means you can buy apps if that is what you want/need OR it means you can choose to use free/Free apps that work well for you. It means real, honest choice. It means cost savings for corporations because they do not HAVE to pointlessly upgrade ALL their office suites with every OS upgrade because you can be CERTAIN that a document produced by linux wordprocessor X will be readable to various other wordprocessors regardless of version.

Yay for linux, but...

[AArmadillo]

This is sad for Microsoft. Prejudices aside, I simply cannot understand how open source software can compete with Microsoft's software on a large scale. MS has the resources to hire the best, brightest, and most innovative minds in the industry, but it is losing ground to software written as a hobby. Its like some guy making movies in his backyard for fun -- and competing with Hollywood. Sounds like Microsoft has a seriously flawed R&D department to me...

Re:Yay for linux, but...

[sloanster]

You have no clue -

IBM, SAP, Oracle, SuSE GmBH, Nec, Fujitsu, Red Hat Software et al are not hobbyists -

Whatever you're smoking, it must be potent...

Re:Yay for linux, but...

[!Squalus]

Right answer, but the request was wrong. Should be: Whatever you are smoking, don't bogart it my friend, pass it on!

Re:Yay for linux, but...

[leko]

Most of the best and brightest I know would never work for microsoft out of principle.

Re:Yay for linux, but...

[xutopia]

Blair Witch project, Jackass and the like!

Re:Yay for linux, but...

[DF5JT]

"MS has the resources to hire the best, brightest, and most innovative minds in the industry"

Why don't they do it then?

Their other alternative?

[blair1q]

"Attacking France and making them do all the typing," garnered 7012 points, until someone pointed out the German constitution forbids it.

Re:oh christ

[stevejsmith]

i think any linguists reading slashdot would have had a stroke a long time ago....

No no no, that should be would of had a strock.

Typical politicians

[tundog]

I just read through the first half of the article. The funny part is when Christine Stobl (sauerkraut minister general) starts talking about how this decision is somehow pivotal in creating new jobs. I'm a big linux fan and all, but I somehow fail to see the logic that results in one OS creating more jobs than the other. Instead of MSCE's you need Uni sys-admins...

Re:Typical politicians

[sloanster]

hmm, you fail to see the logic? seems clear enough to me -

Let's say the city had been buying it's cars exclusively from an automaker who welded the hood shut and made it illegal to open the hood. Now the city has switched to a vendor who allows the hood to be opened, and provides tech manuals for the engine, electrical systems and whatnot.

The local automotive tech geeks rejoice, now that they will be able to maintain the city's new fleet of cars, and so they immediately begin eagerly familiarizing themselves with the tech manuals.

Meanwhile you say "I fail to see the logic of how this would help the local automotive techs"....

Re:Typical politicians

[xutopia]

Well in a perfect world she would be right! The town would spend a fraction of what they saved to hire a few full time developers to fix bugs in OpenOffice! :)

Never understood MS math and TCO

[Hamster Lover]

Microsoft had, until recently, spoke of Linux and threw around a lot of numbers and FUD about the total cost of ownership with Linux and how Microsoft was so much cheaper. So, if Microsoft is that much better why offer a discount at all? I realize that MS no longer makes this claim, but what does it say about a product that to sell it must be discounted by nearly all its selling value? It's a case of paying 10% now and 100% later when licensing expires or upgrades are required and then required again and again.

This attempt by Ballmer to sell its software smacks of desperation.

Re:Can't be...

[lowieken]

Great job, Munich. I know OpenOffice has it's share of problems (it really isn't all that compatible with Word documents)
It's MS Word that isn't an Open Standard, not OpenOffice that isn't compatible with MS Office.

What about Mexico City?

[Vainglorious Coward]

Munich will be the first city with over 1 Million inhabitants that is run by Linux

I would have thought Mexico City has a stronger claim to this title.

Re:What about Mexico City?

[Old Wolf]

Make that 1 million non-destitute inhabitants

Deutschlandlied

[Qbertino]

The first two verses of the german national anthem actually are illegal in germany. Singing or reciting them in public is an actuall criminal offense(!!).
The one line you refer to "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" (Germany, germany over everything...) is the first in the song. It was well and purposefully abused by the Nazis to express supriority of the german 'Übermensch' and his realm ("Reich"). Thus the somewhat rigid and humorless approach of the german authorities, and germans in general, with this issue.

The actuall meaning comes from a much earlier date, where the nation of germany as a union of a bazillion small shires and earldoms was to be formed and the anthems composer (his name evades me just now...) wanted to express his notion and emphasise on the formation of the nation of germany. 'Germany, germany over everthing' ("including petty interrests of local lords").
Another interressting example of how goodwill and meaning can be abused.
Anyway, don't get caught singing the first two verses of the Deutschlandlied in germany, we'll give you a hard time. :-)
The third verse is perfectly ok, though, and sung at any official occasion (International Soccer match, for instance):

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
Für das deutsche Vaterland
Danach lasst uns alle streben
Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
Sind des glückes Unterpfand
Blüh' im glanze dieses Glückes
Blühe deutsches Vaterland.

This verse is also the one best reflecting the actuall initial intention of the german national anthem and offers no chance of Nazi-misinterpretation.

Re:Deutschlandlied

[softwarekalteis]

You are wrong here.

Most people (apart from a few stupid and undereducated teenagers) will be quite offended if they would hear you sing the first verse.

I don't know in which company you were when you did this but I can definitely tell you that it was certainly not the best.

And by the way: I am German.

German press is running with this one

[Nice2Cats]

For those of you who need the Fish to read German, let it be noted that this story is spreading fast in the German media, having been quickly picked up by none other than Der Spiegel, Germany's counterpart to Time and Newsweek rolled into one. If nothing else, this is a big publicity win for Tux.

Re:they should have taken windows

[sloanster]

For someone who "lubs" linux (whatever that means) you are pretty clueless about it - anyone who has worked for a living maintaing both windows and linux /unix systems (moi for instance) knows that windows is a _lot_ more work to keep running.

Der Spiegel has 15% rebate, not 90%

[Nice2Cats]

I'll second that one: In fact, an older article by Der Spiegel on this has the rebate at 15 percent and made fun of the ruling Socialist party in Munich for being that easy to buy out. Their title on the 21th of May: Microsoft kauft München -- "Microsoft buys Munich". Der Spiegel is the 600 pound -- uh, make that the 300 kilogram gorilla in the German press. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if this sort of reporting didn't change a few politicians' minds.

Re:Der Spiegel has 15% rebate, not 90%

[kris]

Also, Bavaria is the home county of SuSE, the makers of SuSE linux.

Can you imagine what would happen if some politician in bavaria would drive up to the parliament while NOT sitting in a BMW? Similar situation here with the software, I presume.

Another Reason Microsoft Did This -- Developers

[Travis Fisher]

I've seen several reasons cited above why Microsoft works so hard to keep clients like the Munich government:

• Like a crack dealer -- willing to give things cheap now to get you hooked
• They don't want the PR black eye of being rated below Linux
• Governments set standards for things like documents that are used by everyone

Here's another reason: open source users are (often) developers, causing a snowball effect in the quality of the product.

Figure 14,000 computers at maybe 100 computers per competent sysadmin. That gives 140 new jobs to Linux sysadmins. Figure maybe one in ten Linux administrators will contribute to coding/bug fixing/documenting products. Poof -- 14 new developers. Not to mention all the other admins and users contributing general knowledge.

So what does huge Microsoft fear from a few more coders? The thing about the free software movement is that it has a history of producing Davids to the industries Goliaths.

Linux v. Windows

[SphynxSR]

I can see it now. Linux is run in the government = Government won't colapse Windows is run in BMW cars = Buy another car. scary. Smart move on that government.

Re:interconnection

[pair-a-noyd]

"1. The slashdot community does NOT hate microsoft."

Wanna bet??

"Since the the slashdot community is composed chiefly of users of microsoft windows"

Wanna bet??

seen shattered in a bar.

[twitter]

After the deal was lost, he was seen crying in his beer at the Hofbrau. It was hard to make out what he was saying, none of it was coherent but some fragments are reproduced here:

More beeer, Shot-zeee! [this might have been an attempt at German, but could have just been a drink order.]

Damn communists, bolshovicks! I should have known ...

The GPL is the natural enemy of Microsoft and must be destroyed. [A few other tourists nodded their heads at this, but most had no idea what he was talking about.]

We shall fight them in the air, on the sea, on land and in the streets and we shall never, ever surrender. [This cleared his table and several others.]

Monkeydance, I'll get those bastards and make them pay. Where's my camera? [The police were called, ruining everone else's night. No camera was found.]

On his cellphone, "sell, sell, sell, damnit!"

Evidently, his last thought was the stongest.

Re:In other news...

[vinsci]

and in other news... every other city on the planet is using Microsoft.

No, that's not true. A couple of other cities running Linux:

• Turku, Finland (Linux continues onward march in land of its birth)
• Largo, Florida, US (Secretaries use Linux, taxpayers save millions)

By the way, a lot is happening in developing countries. On May 22nd, I had the opportunity to attend the publication seminar of the interesting Free as in Education research report by Niranjan Rajani, sponsored by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Other writers published in the study are Cesar Brod (Brazil), Frederick Noronha (India) and Nico Coetzee (South Africa). Also attending the seminar, among many others, was Edgar Villanueva (Congressman, Peru), who sent the famous response letter to Microsoft, giving a talk on "Legal and Other Experiences in Promoting FLOSS in Peru".

But cities are not the only ones interested in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), of course. For example, what do you like the government of South Africa open source software web site at http://www.oss.gov.za/? Their Government OSS Strategy Document (in PDF format) could be interesting reading.

First Iraq, now this!

[TheLastUser]

Oh those snooty Europeans with their stinky cheeses and assorted languages. Why can't they just play ball and buy our nice software?

perfect clients.

[twitter]

As an aside, we use Star Office at work on about half the Windows machines, but the people using it do seem to be envious of the staff with MS Office installed. Problems with printing multi-page spreadsheets/images, problems opening files etc, and lack of speed seem the biggest problems.

Ugh, you know that the underlying OS is the problem. Those machines would be great clients. Just get one nice little machine for documents and load it with Star or Open Office. Ohhh, imagine raid and easy find/tar based backups. Star Office runs OK on Woody if you don't want to take much of your work time maintaining a Gentoo box. Printing works great with CUPS/KDE. You could samba share out the document directories to those poor devils left running windoze, with it's latency and crash problems. The clients could have it through ssh X forwarding, and I promise the clients can be made faster than windblows.

wait some more.

[twitter]

Bet he knew it was going to break this way weeks ago. Insider trading anyone?

Wanna bet there's more to come?

Re:getting the text out

[macjohn]

You might be able to get the text out in your example, but try it on a long document that's been edited a lot. The text will be all over the place, because when you make an edit, it adds editing info to the document instead of changing the original text.

doesn't sound so bad ...

[timothy]

If I were to draw up a map of all the things I'd like my computer to be able to easily do (*easily* that is, since most of these are possible, just not as easy to achieve as they should be), I don't think any available OS would score a 6/10 or even a 5/10, and not for want of trying -- just because human desires are for practical purposes infinite.

I'd like a computer to:

- work seamlessly (open, edit, save, convert format) with all my current documents
- feature well-designed apps for recording and editing video and audio
- come with an actually useful, contextually flexible help system -- man pages *and* For Dummies -style tutorials, and a searchable index linking to sections of both
- never need the help system, since it's so intuitive
- run on sunlight (or moonlight)
- feature perfect voice recognition and synthesis
- autodetect, configure, and if necessary, create new drivers on the fly for all my current and future peripherals
- know what *I* want when I click a certain spot on a window.
- (etc, etc)

That the Munich gov't drew up high standards is smart on their part, recognizes the imperfection of software (as part of the imperfection of all human systems) in meeting all desires.

A high standard partially met is more useful long-term than a low-standard which would have been met by a warehouse of C64s :)

timothy

Re:doesn't sound so bad ...

[Gldm]

Some of these are doable and I wish someone would do them. I would but I think it's futile to try and introduce a new OS at this point without some major support.

- work seamlessly (open, edit, save, convert format) with all my current documents

This should be doable. Why isn't it being done? Is it really so hard to standardize a format for tasks that have been mostly unchanged for a decade, like word processing and spreadsheets?

- feature well-designed apps for recording and editing video and audio

This should be done. Apple is leading the way here and nobody else is even looking in their direction let alone following. Windows is having API problems because DirectShow is unsuited for certain tasks (I hear video editing is a major problem with it), and the only alternative is Video for Windows, which is so obsolete the last book still in print was written in 1994. On linux, the problem seems to be more of getting all the hardware out there to work with things. There needs to be a bigger push towards a standard multimedia api that's more integrated to the system.

- come with an actually useful, contextually flexible help system -- man pages *and* For Dummies -style tutorials, and a searchable index linking to sections of both

This should also be doable but isn't being done. Part of the probem is feature creep sabotages this. Developers want to ship on time and they don't care about "trivial" things like documentation, and the documentation has to keep pace with all the new features. If people wrote decent documentation with their apps this might be doable, but the thinking here seems to be "If you can't figure out you need to fetch app2.3.2.1.beta-omicron.build4173.tar.gz and update your kernel to 2.2.1.3.alpha9, and then make -f -q -g97 -i23 -^& on your own you're a worthless n00b who needs to RTFM and nobody will help you cause it's obvious."

- never need the help system, since it's so intuitive

This is REALLY unlikely unless you keep the interface perfectly standard for a long long time. It's doable in the long term though, it's done for simple interfaces all the time, like games.

- run on sunlight (or moonlight)

Doable for low power systems. VIA Eden systems use what, 4W?

- feature perfect voice recognition and synthesis

Unlikely to be perfect, and I never saw what the big deal was about voice recognition. I'm much happier with a keyboard and mouse. Maybe for handheld systems.

- autodetect, configure, and if necessary, create new drivers on the fly for all my current and future peripherals

Umm no, it's unlikely this would be possible given there's no way of knowing what kind of devices there will be in the future. =)

- know what *I* want when I click a certain spot on a window.

I hear thought interfaces are making progress but this one's a long long way off. :P

Re:interconnection

[sloanster]

Sure I'll bet -

Show me the server logs - you'll find the majority of slashdot posters are ms windoze users.

And if all the pro-microsoft bs here doesn't tip you off, I'm not sure what would...

Shared Source often useless.

[dmaxwell]

Shared Source does not permit a participant to compile it and see if it makes the same binaries his install CD's have. This is the simplest integrity check if you want to answer the question "Is the this full and correct source to the binary we are using." I also don't believe that participants have access to the dev teams that created the source in question. Its basically nothing but a huge wodge of look-but-don't-touch.

The most obnoxious Open Source licenses only allow project leaders to distribute modified code. Its not uncommon to distribute patch files which must be applied to a separately downloaded pristine source to make modified versions of things like djdns. Shared Source doesn't begin to aspire to even that level of utility. You can't patch it, verify binary identity, or reimplement it. At best, it can be used to answer specific questions about how a piece of software functions provided one believes it is the unabridged source to that software. I can't see it being useful for any sort of true code auditing and only of limited utility for code troubleshooting.

Re:Shared Source often useless.

[rainer_d]

Shared Source does not permit a participant to compile it

I've read an interview with some MS-rep that said that they are now offering "build-kits" so one can more-or-less build one's own release of W2K.
I've got no source to back up this claim, though.

and see if it makes the same binaries his install CD's have.

You'd also need the source of the compiler anyway...

Rainer

Re:Anti-MS? Get real.

[sloanster]

> Really, OSS is fine in academia but for the
> administrative needs of a governing body !?

Wow, there seem to be so many ms shills here today, this must be killing microsoft...

IBM, Oracle and SAP will be happy to explain to you about open source - oh, and welcome to the real world!

How Goliath was slaughtered.

[Lurleen_Lumpkin]

The move was on; the horse had bolted; Around the world, the mob revolted. Then the news sites all reported How Goliath had been slaughtered. Microsoft is dead! Long live open source!

Re:interconnection

[pair-a-noyd]

Well, I don't have access to that information but how about submitting this to "askslashdot" and see what churns up.

I see far more anti-M$ stuff here than I do pro-M$ stuff..

Could it be that you are seeing things through "Redmont tinted glasses" ????

Consider the Data.

[ChrisS-99]

The point about proprietary formats, is "at what point does a format become a (de-facto) standard"!

Initially MS (and others) provided import/export filters, hence it was possible to edit a document virtually irrespective of the original product used to create it. Once a threashold in terms of market share was reached, then compatibility with other products was quickly dropped.

Lets face it, on the desktop, MS exploits its customers by levering its document formats. The migration from MS is not a fallout of poor quality office software. The sooner more customers stop themselves from being exploited, then the sooner MS will be forced to compete fairly or be forced from the office market.

One day MS will either be forced once again to share standards, or if it doesn't, its own incompatible formats will work against it.

MS has plenty of options for the long term:
* Share standards and play ball with competitors
* Create a Linux varient of Office
* Stop screwing the customers

Until MS is forced below its "de-facto standard" threashold, it will never take one of these options.

Nice math

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice assumptions you're making.

I've been happily using gnu/linux for over two years now. The benefits are NO crashes, unbelievable uptimes, and an incredible collection of software, just to name a few things. But I'll stop at that, because to the non-believers, this is preaching, and you've heard it all before.

Let's go back to your math. A couple hundred bucks? That's a pipe dream. Your math is way off. I have two desktops, 4 server/desktops, and a laptop in my home, for two computer users. While I'm not a typical or average user, your heavily discounted $200 would cost me $1,400 for your software description, not counting the server applications I use. Either that, or I'm a thief, a pirate of the high seas, and should be jailed according to Jack Valenti and his cronies at the mpaa/riaa/bsa.

You conveniently left out the fact that a home user can't copy the operating system or office application from microsoft to another computer. You have to buy a separate "license" for each computer.

While I'm not the typical user, I'd say that a majority of users have at least one fairly new desktop, one laptop, and possibly an older desktop that they either 1. threw out, or 2. don't use, because the new software from microsoft doesn't run well on older, but still usable, hardware.

And the previous paragraph also brings up another point. Was a hardware upgrade required to use the new software? Did you have to buy more memory to make the os/applications usable? Faster processor? Completely new computer?

Factor in hardware upgrades, and your minimized $200 is much higher.

I know small business owners who like office, and either purchased one copy of the os and the office suite and copied it to other computers, or they didn't even pay for the single copies. With product activation, that's all over now. So I know small business owners that are using older versions of windows and the office suite on some computers, and will never pay for legit copies for each computer. Is it going to cost them your $200 figure? Hardly.

When faced with the option of even just paying your $200 per computer, on multiple desktops, or paying nothing/one copy of gnu/linux and openoffice.org, for all their desktops and bringing their companies back into legal land, guess which path they choose?

I know small business owners still using 486 computers, 386 computers, old versions of wordperfect, and several companies that even have the old 8088/8086 boxes running dos/basica for some light calculating work, because they won't pay the prices microsoft demands for their software, and they are getting by with what they have.

I'm no expert, or sys admin, or anything like that, but I'll be setting up a network for each of these companies running a file/print server on gnu/linux, and the older computers will be used as terminals to log into the file server that will also be running openoffice.

What's the cost for the companies? I don't do it for a living, so they're getting my help and advice for free. They already have some networking equipment and knowing their requirements, all they'll need is one or a few small switches, some ethernet wire, and cards in one case, and in another case, they have cards (the owner wastes time on ebay regularly, so he picked up a lot of cards in one auction), so he'll need wiring and a switch. Besides that, the cost of one distribution if they want documentation, or a copy of my disks if they don't want dead tree manuals.

So for $200 in minor hardware purchases, these companies will be equiping a couple dozen computers with gnu/linux, and will be amazed with what they get. Instead of spending your minimal $200 x 24 = $4800. And that's not including the file server software for each company. And also, I know what they'll be using for their file servers. They in no way would be able to run windows 2000 or xp as a file server on their boxes. They would have to spend, what, another $800 or $1,000 a piece for a minimal file serv

Re:Nice math

[zakezuke]

Well, if you were actually reading into it, you'd note that that is the going rate for a single copy of windows oem edition, and ms office SB... which is typical. And yes, a user would have to multiply it among additional machines, and I made sure to point out that my price quotes were comming from a local shop.

But yea, just because you don't want Microsoft Office for linux doesn't mean other people wouldn't enjoy it. I have a copy of Open Office, I sorta lump star office / open office.

And as far as not having a fundamental misunderstanding GNU/linux users... I believe Linus him self has been quoted as being a user of Microsoft office. And what of this Wine project? I think you are stereotyping GNU/linux basicly lumping them some sorta group. I use linux because I quite like it. I like apache, I love samba, sendmail is adquate, and I love having spiffy commandline support. My only reason for keeping a win box around is for Office. I prefer word over open office, and if I had a linux version of microsoft office, I really wouldn't have any reason to run windows.

Not every Linux user is fundimentaly anti-microsoft, though at times it seems like the vast majority of them are. I my self respect some of the decent products they produce, and dislike the (MSN) crap they produce. They have produced alot of crap, esp ms-basic for the amiga that was generally a bugridden piece of filth. I find that this attutide of "gnu/linux community" to be one of the stifling factors why linux isn't more often accepted for what it is, a *viable platorm* rather then some exclusive club. This is the primary reason why I'd support the idea of Office for linux, because it would validate linux as a viable solution to a great many people. And hell, microsoft might make a buck too, which being a business is what they are in the business for.

In the case of MS Office, sure it's a propriority standard, but one which is in such common use that it's become the de facto standard like it or not. If you support *choice* you wouldn't protest any user who makes the choice to use a product you don't like.

And you can protest all you like, but *I* would enjoy seeing some power applications for linux. Like Photoshop, which was very spiffy under Solaris BTW. While you might dislike adobe, you have to admit it's is a power application.

Don't loose to linux

[IpsissimusMarr]

Doesn't this exemplify what we read in a recent article about an internal Microsoft memo saying "under no circumstances loose to linux"? Even if they had to give MS products away for free?

Re:In other news...

[vinsci]

Just found out about this:

• Schwäbisch Hall, Germany (German City Goes Entirely Linux)

Even better for OpenOffice

[carlmenezes]

Linux almost grows by itself. This is nothing short of absolutely sound decision on Munich's part. However, who would benefit the most from this would be OpenOffice. Like the Linux wave, I think Munich might have just given OpenOffice enough energy to start it's own wave.

Now corporations have a GOOD reason to use OpenOffice. This is going to mean a huge increase in OpenOffice usage and, if things go well, the eventual shift to an open office standard.

This could not have come at a better time.

True friends will tell you if you're screwing up.

[Chuck Chunder]

You need those checks more than you need yes men.

I'm a citizen of two out of the three countries that entered Iraq (Australia and England) and I think the war was probably necessary and ultimatly carried out as well as a war can be.

But for me the scariest thing seems to have been the ease with which America appeared to fall into a sea of groupthink and propaganda in the name of patriotism. One single terrorist act, carried out by a small number of men, seems to have so greatly shifted America's perspective that I fear what could happen if something truly devastating happened.

Re:What a shock - the Krauts want...

[sloanster]

Yes, in the past it was customary for the microsoft pee cee fanboys to launch into yet another frenzied rendition of the monkey dance whenever microsoft drove yet another american company into bankruptcy -

But no, I don't think the ms fanboys are doing the monkey dance over this one...

Re:Ironically, the German word for "innovation" is

[daniel23]

It didn't help him in Munich, I guess he failde to master the bavarian intonation.

~dp

Re:Anti-MS? Get real.

[that _evil _gleek]

Gee, couldn't Germany just employ a couple dozen programmers and have them make any improvements that were necessary? If they are necessary? Is ever wise to be that dependent on anyone? I'd say any goverment wants multipler suppliers for anything mission critical, and if not they want it themselves, wars have have started over supply problems...
*laugh* World War III starts when Europe invades Redmond to ensure security updates are done in a timely manner ***
Seriously, long before there was and independent software industry, companies that used computers, wrote their own software.. sometimes their app ran on the baremetal, meaning they didn't have an OS, sometimes they made a system so big it was basically its own OS....
Anyway, opensource puts power in company and goverment computing departments,
and frees them from being dependent on only 1 company for solutions.

Ok ... think a minute ...

[fygment]

a) IBM, Oracle, SAP have in their employ _literally_ thousands of tech oriented employees incl. coders (They're tech/software giants for ----sakes!);

b) IBM, Oracle, SAP have budgets comparable to many small nations let alone a large city;

c) IBM, Oracle, SAP answer to a bottom line, with their _own_ money i.e. _not_ a taxpayer's;

d) IBM, Oracle, SAP as businesses are necessarily oriented towards a certain amount of risk and are organized to manage it; and

e) Neither IBM, Oracle, or SAP run their business on OSS.

No governing body I know has those resources (not even USofA). Nor could they afford them without significant expense. Governance isn't business ... welcome to the real world.

Re:In other news...

[fredrik70]

Also Korea seems to be interested as well!

Re:True friends will tell you if you're screwing u

[MAurelius]

The Ozzies stood up with the US to Saddam, and I agree, it had to be done. I am heartened we did it with help from down under.

As regards your nationality and your comment on groupthink: tell us about 'groupthink' among the English during the Blitz. They were all like-minded because the provocation and the argument for fighting back were compelling.

Likewise, all of America changed because we recognize a)this is war and b)if we do nothing or just send in a few token cruise missiles the next attack will be much worse.

Like the English during the Blitz, we Americans recognize a battle to the death when we are in one.

As usual, the Americans did not start this new kind of war, but we're sure as bloody hell going to finish it.

Hope this helps clarify things for you.

You think that's bad?

[leonbrooks]

Lots of companies have to deal with the Munich city government, and the default formats for dealing with this organization just switched from MS Office to OpenOffice.org.

Wait 'till all of Europe cascades across to OOo formats for everything, not just wordprocessing and screadsheets.

Re:In other news...

[vinsci]

There's lots more... see Frederick Noronha's status of Free Software in Asia broken down by country. The same page also has similar reports for Latin America (by Cesar Brod) and Africa (by Nico Coetzee).

9/11 ain't the blitz

[plierhead]

The Ozzies stood up with the US to Saddam, and I agree, it had to be done. I am heartened we did it with help from down under.
As regards your nationality and your comment on groupthink: tell us about 'groupthink' among the English during the Blitz. They were all like-minded because the provocation and the argument for fighting back were compelling.

Likewise, all of America changed because we recognize a)this is war and b)if we do nothing or just send in a few token cruise missiles the next attack will be much worse.

I agree with you and with the parent - this war had to happen.

Not, however for the reasons you give. You say "the next attack will be worse". Unfortunately for this argument, it has not yet been proven that Saddam was behind the first attack. I think maybe it will be proven in the future - but right now, you can't claim that avoiding the "next attack" was the reason for taking out Saddam.

Another point is that your comparison with the blitz is bogus. During WWII, the English were under immense, ongoing, nightly attack from an easily identifiable, large, rich, technically sophisticated nation, which had invaded an entire continent and was literally within sitght of Britain, and which built hundreds of planes that were flown over Britain by thousands of highly trained pilots and released tens of thousands of bombs. Thats to ignore pilotless bombs and rockets.

9/11 by contrast was a single attack (or at least, a single day's worth of attacks) launched by a handful of fanatics armed with boxcutters.

There is simply no comparison. Thats why I agree with the parent - the US groupthink IS a little bit frightening, because on the scale of things - number of people killed, sophistication of attack - the 9/11 attacks were simply not that significant. Even though Saddam needed to be taken out, and doing so has probably made the world a safer place, it is simply BS to claim that it was justified as a direct response to 9/11. As your message seems to say. Be honest enough to say that the reason was just to make the world safer. Period.

Re:9/11 ain't the blitz

[MAurelius]

I agree with your assessment that 9/11 is not directly comparable to the Blitz, for all the good reasons you mentioned. However, that was not my point. My point is that 9/11 has galvanized American public opinion in a way analogous to the way the Blitz galvanized England in 1940. I made the point to help you and others understand what it is like for us and how the events of Sept. 11 have changed our perception of the world. If you think this is not a battle for survival, I would politely invite you to rethink that.

At least the English knew precisely who they were fighting. The current war is against terrorists who could be anybody, anywhere. This makes the current war more difficult in this respect. But we will win nonetheless.

You are mistaken: I did not (and can't) tie Saddam's regime directly to 9/11, because to date no strong link has been publicized. He was simply a very evil man, running an evil regime, and he pissed off the US government for the last time. It was in our interest, and Iraq's interest, and the world's interest that he be removed.

Cheers

Well, I hate them...

[PotatoHead]

I hate them for a lot of reasons. All of which have been posted before.

I would question the win32 user base at /.

#2 is one of the primary reasons for said hate. Microsoft has done more to harm innovation than any other company has. Though SCO is a wannabe ;-)

#3 I agree with this.

Munich is the biggest hearted city

[Crass Spektakel]

Munich is the biggest hearted city of germany, therefore its nickname "Stadt mit Herz", but not even close to the biggest city in germany which should be the Ruhr-Area or Berlin.

From what I guess the sozies just tried to test how far Microsoft may go. As Microsoft went very far they knew Linux would be a great choice :-)=

Actually Microsofts desperate attempt in avoiding Linux was Microsofts Doom. There is only one thing which might backfire: Microsoft also has a big department in munich with lots of workers, so lets hope they dont pack up and run to some Microsoft-Village next door.

Wrong analogy

[SaDan]

I think you need to compare what the wackos did on 9/11 to Pearl Harbor, not the Blitz in England.

We were attacked on our own soil. The end result has been the same in both situations.

Linux is not perfect, it's different

[ledestin]

I also have found that windows is easier to configure. There is a GUI for changing windows resolutions, adjusting monitor settings. Windows related configuration options are available in one centralized control panel. I have found the configuration is easier in Windows. I bought a new Wireless card a few days ago. I just plugged it in, and Windows went to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, downloaded the driver and installed it. Then it found the correct channel, and automatically configured my internet connection, and notified me with a little balloon. Can you please explain the simliar steps to use the internet with a wireless card via the distribution you use? How about SMB Sharing? I just click on "My Network Places" and a list of all the available computers pops up. How about just using a floppy. If I put in an unformatted floppy and click on its icon in Windows, Windows will ask me if I want to format it. In Linux, you have to mount devices. And yes I have used automount, and it did not work properly. And please feel free to respond with "you aren't smart enough for linux", which really means "i refuse to admit windows can do something better."

You say familliar things. I have experienced them myself. But I think now that Debian is overall better than w2k (dual-boot). Things are done differently with Debian, you have to know what you're doing. If you don't, you RTFM, ask people around. After the "training", you become more proficient, you've learned something useful.

Point in case:
I've learned to use apt-get, now installing (and searching for needed things) is really easy, not as it is considered easy on Windows. Apt-get really makes difference for me. Yesterday, I have configured Sawfish, mapped certain keys to increase/decrease volume (aumix) and next/play/pause/prev (xmms). That makes listening to music easier.

I don't use windows explorer equivalents (they're buggy I agree) on Linux, I use bash, and I recently migrated from jEdit to VIM.

If you don't want to know how things work, don't want to go "native", you're better off with a system that doesn't require you to know how things work. If you don't work much with computers that should be fine for you. If you do, however, spend much time with something, it is more pleasure to have deep understanding of it. Sometimes you'll have to do something you don't know much about. If you click your way through or find and execute some obscure steps to resolve the problem, you're exacly where you were before, no knowledge gained. Next time this problem arises, you do similar steps...

OTOH, my bash & vim configs don't need to be re-clicked through on a new machine, I have copied them from my work machine to home one. You get the picture.

Re:hey fuck you

[dr_blurb]

by Anonymous Coward:

... earns you the finger. Fuck off.

And you must be American.

:-)

Re:Sometimes it backfires

[Technician]

Sometimes the free razors could be used for something else and users never subscribe to get the blades. Two examples come to mind. Free Cue Cats from Digital Convergance, and (dicounted) Microsoft's X-Box. Between all the mods availiable, the subscription to the original business plans are a little off.

Digital Convergance is just about history as the users of the bar code readers didn't flock to the service so the advertising dollars (selling Cue Codes) dried up. Their website has an interesting note. If you have a Cue Cat, hang on to it. They have future plans for it. They still have hope for the blades end of the business. From their website:
If you have a Cue Cat, save it. The patents and technology created by DigitalConvergence will again be available for business and consumer use.


X-box is fighting mod chips which permit copied games to be played and using the console as something other than a game console. (Linux Box & media center)

Re:True friends will tell you if you're screwing u

[Chuck Chunder]

It is not a war and it's that sort of escalatory speech (amoung other things) which frightens me, especially when coming from someone who otherwise seems thoughtful. Most of us have never experienced one (and CNN doesn't count) but actual war is something very different to this.

Comparisons between the Blitz and September 11th are frankly absurd.

That's not to suggest this isn't bad or plain evil. But it different to war and needs to be thought of as such if the problem is to solved intelligently. The response needs to be thoughful and practical, not emotional.

The competitive price of ONE license

[ghum]

is zero.

That is not communism. That is market economy, lesson 4.

In perfect competition the price of ONE good is exactly as high as it's marginal costs.

"marinal costs" = what does THE ADDITIONAL UNIT cost.

And for all practical purposes: Changing "you get 2000 licenses of XXX" to "you get 2001 licenses o XXX" costs zero money units.

Don't believe that "fixed cost distribution" bullshit. That is correct, but has nothing to do with market prices. In the short run, fixed costs are irrelevant for decisions, in the long run, there are no fixed costs.

Given that English is his second language...

[leonbrooks]

...I'd say that his intent was "Let's continue to fight together militant zealotry". I'm guessing he'd not be on the side of the Crusaders against Islam, nor on the side of the Atheists against everyone else in the French Revolution.

The violence you see out of Islam is the fault of a relatively few idiots, not of Joe Average Muslim in the street. Joe has his own problems, but violent militancy generally isn't one of them. Another thing to remember is that like Christianity (and Atheism, Jainism, Bhuddism etc), there is Islam as she are written, Islam as she are preached, and Islam as she are done, and they are all different.

Yanks, Poms, Brazilianos, Singaporeans, Chinese, Zimbabwians, Germans can all be stirred into violence by a relatively few energetic zealots. Race and religion have very little to do with it.

Hijacking

[leonbrooks]

I don't recall any Islamic "terrorist" ever attacking Germany.

Hijacking is an interesting indicator. Hijackers prefer American craft, because if they pick on (say) Israeli vehicles, they're dead - guaranteed.

BTW - terrorist attacks - Germany cops one and another, and a German citizen is killed by hijackers, Germany fights hijackers and so on. They get their share, you just don't hear about it because you're not German.

Re:Hijacking

[petman]

I checked the links you provided, and except for the third one, none of the others suggested that the attacks were done by Islamic militants, or anyone associated with any Islamic groups. Even in the third one, the German death was collateral damage, the attack was directed at the US.

I agree, terrorism in general is bad, and I would not have minded if the grandparent AC poster had said "Let's continue to fight together terrorism ...", but there's no reason to insert the word islam there. Bad English is no excuse. Islam is a specific word. How could he have confused it for militant etc.?

Anyway, we're getting offtopic here. Let's not waste time arguing about the posting of an AC who might or might not be German and might, for some reason, or might not, have some kind of grudge against Islam.

This is not about Linux vs. Microsoft

[ites]

Read between the lines. The only reason that Munich went with Linux/OSS is because IBM is backing it. If Microsoft were offering a 90% discount to try to keep their hooks in place, how much do you think IBM was offering to install _their_ hooks instead?

It is a little naive to assume that a city government (or any large group) would switch to Linux simply because it is "better" or "cheaper". There is only one rule to understand politics and business: follow the money. In this case, and I believe it's the same in many "switches" to Linux, we are seeing Linux/OSS used as a trojan horse by interests that just happen to be competing with Microsoft.

Personally I admire IBM for having seen in 1999 that Linux aand OSS was their best weapon against their biggest enemy, namely Microsoft. Remember, this is the company that thought OS/2 would beat Windows... It has taken them four years, but now it is starting to pay off.

Expect IBM to downsize their Linux/OSS sales pitch once they have the formula working.

Don't look so shocked...

[troff]

... they turned down 90% rebates!? How could they!? ... 'cause this way they pay 0%...?

(oh yeah, and all those other pesky things like stability, configurability, modifiability...).

Keep cool ...

[haraldm]

Keep cool, folks. The final decision is going to take place tomorrow May 28. I've seen too many changes in the decision process lately to cheer to soon.

German city sizes

[DarkDust]

Well, fortunately Munich is not Germany's biggest city. That's Berlin, with 3.5 million people, followed by Hamburg with about 1.7 million and then Munich with about 1.5 million...

Capital of Canada...

[pommiekiwifruit]

Washington DC!

Funnily enough

[pommiekiwifruit]

Microsoft released a version of flight simulator on 9th november 2001 in europe, with a double page poster saying it was coming out "09.11.01". At the time I thought, umm are they serious with that ad???

Cool, I'm from Munich

[lleo]

Can I now scp my tax return to them?

Re:Wow. The figures speak for themselves

[solferino]

Well, I don't know the exact breakdown, but I believe that it is a rather over-complex system, but which seems to work well...

...[Highly detailed answer]...

...Within each of these, the actual figures they come up with are fit to the appropriate maximum score through a sigmoidal squashing function,...

...[more highly detailed answer]...

...As I say, I don't really know the specifics, but that's more or less how it works.

~ ~ ~

Tell me, have you ever noticed people chewing off their own arms in boredom when you do know the specifics? Or sinking in to a catatonic trance?

No really, that was fascinating, and you have confirmed all my preconceptions about german people :)

Exactly.

[bcaulf]

Microsoft's market cap is presently about $260 billion, down from a high of about $630 billion. About 17% of the company's stock is held by company executives; Gates alone holds about 10%. So the executives personally hold $44 billion in stock, down $62 billion from the stock's peak. If the stock were ever to reflect more modest (some might say realistic) prospects for future earnings, those executives stand to lose tens of billions more. And of course all the Microsoft millionaires and ex-millionaires in the company are presently less motivated to stay and could become more demotivated by future declines.

Jason Earl has it right; Microsoft's $45 billion may be a handy thing to have but it is only a rounding error compared to the stock market losses the company has eaten, and the losses it could face.

MS needs Apple

[DrSkwid]

As a credible, non-open, competitor.

MS owns Apple stock, don't ever forget that.

Re:MS needs Apple

[alannon]

Microsoft sold their Apple stock years ago. And made a tidy profit on it as well. Don't spread junk like this.

Re:If he did this, the SEC could come down on him

[Daniel Phillips]

That's insider trading. You can't do that. You can go to prison for it in the United States and most other civilized countries in the world.

Yes, well, in theory that's true, but remember which administration is running the country.

If you want to see a nice example of insider trading, look at the movement of SCOX in the three weeks *before* the suit was launched against IBM. You might want to compare SCOX against other technology stocks as well, which were mostly headed the other way.

MS Linux

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

Maybe MS will cut their losses and do a red hat? I've often wondered why MS don't take over Linux and offer (expensive) support for a red hat type product. In fact, why not buy Red Hat, stick a Microsoft label on it and offer it to Munich et al at a much cheaper rate?

It would blunt the effect of a lot of the threats of Linux to MS. Support is big money if you do it right, and it's what IT managers get nervous about over Linux.

Of course, it would encourage the use of Linux, rendering Windows less of a player.

I'd be interested to know why this would be a bad idea from MS's point of view.

Frankfurt sticks with Microsoft

[Woffle]

Heise Newsticker reports http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/anw-27.05.03-0 01/ that Frankfurt (Germany) sticks with Microsoft products and just signed contracts to use MS products in the future. I consider this perfectly timed. The Munich Stadtrat hasn't decided yet on going the Linux way (so far it is just a recommendation) and another big city in Germany stays on Microsofts side. Wonder how far Munichs decision will be influenced by that!

get a better friend - Tools .. Word Count

[DrSkwid]

& you can put it as a button on the toolbar if you like

99% of users only know about 1% of their applications

Go into almost any pffice and see if their default document template is set up. I used to make extra money going into businesses and setting all that stuff up for them.

Word is oversold, simple and plain.

Re:getting the text out

[jd142]

In long documents, the edited text is usually in a separate part of the file. There's a small amount of binary data separating it. Yes, it does mean the user has to cut and paste and of course reapply all formatting, but the text is there and is better than nothing, which is what you get from OOo.

tnx for the info

[DrSkwid]

oops

Re:Anti-MS? Get real.

[NullProg]

Really, OSS is fine in academia but for the administrative needs of a governing body !?

I think the city of Largo, Florida might have something to say about that :)

Enjoy,

Re:Munich: The city where the Nazi party started

[softwarekalteis]

If you only knew that this post was quite the most idiotic one I have ever read on /. !

To post such crap shows quite a lot about you. The fact that you prefer to be anonymous does so, too.

This is disrespectful if you think of the many victims the nazi regime caused in Germany.

I am German. And I am NOT proud of this part of my nation's history.

Re:interconnection

[Junks Jerzey]

The slashdot community does NOT hate microsoft.

C'mon, do you honestly believe that?

100,000 words=350k?

[goldfndr]

Considering that a 100,000 word novel fits in around 300-350 k, you can get around 4 full size text novels on a floppy. That's more than most people will write in a lifetime. That's why I'm questioning the value of compressing files.

What kind of math is this that allows 100,000 words to fit into 350k without compression? This is using really small words?

My suspicion is that you've never tested your theory - Microsoft Word has a lot of overhead if you're doing anything other than plain text (in which case plain ASCII would be adequate).

A brilliant oportunity for MS.

[jotaeleemeese]

Open your damned standards, or even better, use published ones and enhance them (without enbracing them, MS style please).

Show the world that MS can compete based in features, user support, and merit.

Every new obstacle is an oportunity for improvement. OSS could be the best thing that happened to MS since they barely managed to jump into the Internet band-wagon.

Re:A brilliant oportunity for MS.

[Jason Earl]

The real problem is that Microsoft has structured their company around huge markups for Windows and MS Office. They can't really afford to have these products become a commodity.

Think about it for a moment. Microsoft does not have a very good history of treating their customer well. In fact, most Microsoft customers (even the large customers) feel like Microsoft has put a ring through their nose so that Bill can yank them around with a cord. The reason that they put up with Microsoft's antics is that they have seen what has happened to Microsoft's past competitors. No one wants to risk their business on software that isn't going to exist in 18 months.

Now put the shoe on the other foot. Let's imagine a world in which Microsoft actively participates in a commodity market. Let's imagine, just for a moment, that Microsoft published their specifications for their document formats and made it easy for OpenOffice and Corel PerfectOffice to read and write MS formats perfectly. All of a sudden one of the major reasons for buying MS Office disappears. If file compatibility issues go away then the largest differentiator between the office suites is price, and Microsoft's product is more than twice as expensive as Corel's PerfectOffice (and OpenOffice is essentially free).

This trend would almost certainly hurt Microsoft's bottom line, and MSFT stock would drop out of the sky. Microsoft is supposed to be a growth company. Any shrinkage in revenue growth will send investors scrambling to sell. It is very likely that investors would push the price/earnings ratio from up around 30 to just under 10. In that sort of an environment, where MSFT stock had fallen out of the sky and where non-Microsoft software was gaining marketshare Microsoft would soon find that most of their leverage with companies was gone. Microsoft would no longer be able to force new licensing schemes on their customers, or bully the PC makers. Instead it would be Microsoft's customers and partners who would begin to play hardball.

In short, the last thing on the planet that Microsoft wants is the commoditization of office suite formats. Microsoft beat Netscape in the Internet game because they could afford to give Internet Explorer away. Microsoft can't afford to give MS Office away. Doing so would destroy the company.

Very true, but they can do something else.

[jotaeleemeese]

Use open standards for document formats.

That way they can keep producing MS Office for Windows, adding features and improving support to their users (at a price if they want to, but it is good time that they really support the people using their software).

I see no reason why MS can't have a slice of the IT pie. It would just be a slice based on merit, not on bully anticompetitive tactics.

Too late. Everybody hates MS.

[jotaeleemeese]

I was extremely surprised when a friend bought a new Windows machine and the registration experience was so draining that he began to look around for Linux.

This is a 60 year old person which you would not class as daring technologically speaking. But he has enough as do many regular people out there.

Count them.

[jotaeleemeese]

You need:

-People to check code.
-People to adapt and expand code.
-Development work in general.

All this was done in the US, now most probably will be done locally thus helping the local economy.

The 80%-20% Pareto Law

[mickyx65it]

Another key issue about transfering to Linux are applications. Most bureaucrat terminals don't need a config meant for gamers and just need the OS, wordprocessor, spreadsheet, email, internet browser and almost nothing else at all. Except maybe a taylor made database based application that they may easily ask their supplier to adapt to Linux terminals. So transfering to Linux is not really a major headheach in at least 95% of the cases, once the client computer is properly configured and current doc files converted by the Linux supplier. Just putting 6 icons on the desktop will be enough for most people to keep going on with the new OS.