Brazil Moves Away From Microsoft

An anonymous reader writes "Citing economic as well as social reasons, Brazil's government is opting to move away from Windows, opting instead for Open Source (read: Linux) solutions. Interestingly, Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice..."

Comments

Microsoft = freedom??

[Avihson]

But of course, choice is slavery, war is peace, love is hate.

Just ask Mr Gates at the Ministry of Network Security!

Re:Microsoft = freedom??

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've found you can find happiness in slavery."--Reznor

Re:Microsoft = freedom??

[Anonymous Coward]

Because all operating systems are written by programmers, I assume that any operating system is much smarter than me. Thus, any good operating system should try to outsmart me by restricting my options at every turn. Linux, like all versions of Unix, is lousy at restricting my options because at the command line virtually any operation can be performed with ease. (For example, 'rm -rf /win' could 'delete an entire mounted directory, with no popup window warnings whatsoever.)

I'm proud to say that there is no such danger in Windows Server 2003. Windows pop up when I want to make a change, and then more pop up to ask if I'm sure I want the change. Thankfully, Windows Server 2003 looks after my computer's well-being by occasionally switching configuration settings from the way I want them to what the OS programmers think they might probably ought to be. Boy, I'm just impressed with how smart they are. Once I learned to live with whatever the default settings are on any new hardware I install, I can't say the number of hours I have saved.

I use that spare time to reboot my Windows Server 2003 machine multiple times a day. Technical support personnel recommend that I do it regularly-- kind of like brushing my teeth. To help remind me of this necessity, windows pop up to tell me to reboot whenever I make a configuration change. By now my machine is minty fresh, I figure.

There is no such useful rebooting in a Linux system. It is as reliable as the sunrise, with uptimes in weeks, months and years. Virtually no configuration change requires a reboot, to boot. Imagine all that plaque in the computer. Gross!

In XP I am prevented from making dangerous fundamental configuration changes unless I use a special "registry editor". I have found it so useful to have this separate editor that I hope in future versions they go all the way and supply a separate editor for each file on the disk-- in that way windows could pop up at every keystroke to warn me that changing any line in the file I am editing could cause the system to not run properly. If this were only the case, people would finally learn that it is best to just stick with the mouse and they would be freed of the need to constantly move their hands back to the keyboard. (If one stops to think about it, the mouse is a much better device to use than the keyboard. Ever hear of someone getting carpal tunnel syndrome from a mouse? No. It's comfortable and ergonomic. Like Morse code devices. That's how long distance communication started, after all.)

Linux, by contrast, requires no special editor to change configuration files. The fact that there is no "registry" in Linux allows the abomination of using any text editor whatsoever to do the configuration. Can you believe that configuration files are usually stored clear text? Talk about dangerous!

I am also happy to report that I have experienced no truth to the rumor that Windows disks become corrupt after improper shutdowns. Indeed, I have been forced to improperly shutdown the machine innumerable times after it locks up, and I have no apparent problems to report regarding the disk. No such claim can be made for Linux. They say something about lack of data points. Excuses are all I ever seem to hear from the Linux crowd.

By sheer size alone, Windows Server 2003 beats Linux hands down. It is so much bigger, it is _obvious_ that it is better. Why would you want a small OS with the large disks and RAM sizes we have these days? For this reason alone, I heartily recommend Windows as a way to maximize resource utilization. Your CPU and disk will constantly be pegged to the limit, the way god intended. The Linux kernel and drivers accounts for only about 750KB. Why, even the Microsoft Win16 subsystem uses more space than that.

It is no surprise that Windows Server 2003 costs $300 on the retail market and Linux doesn't cost anything. People know what they want, and they want Windows Server 2003. Because Linux is free, that means it's basically worthless. The sa

Re:Microsoft = freedom??

[emarkp]

Of course, when I make a significant change in Linux, I have to recompile the FSCK'ing kernel.

Of course it's a movement away...

[LordK3nn3th]

It's a movement away from the freedom and choice of choosing one of Microsoft's fine, fine products!

Re:Of course it's a movement away...

[beacher]

I think it's an interesting twist that a hacker-genre movie would come to name the first full country to attempt secede from the Microsoft union. I wish them well and hope that they contribute back ;) -B

Re:Of course it's a movement away...

[Worldly Iconoclast]

Microsoft gives people free blue screens of death. You can choose between the different blue screens, such as NT's or Win98's. What more could you want?

Great!

[borgdows]

I can't wait for the next news on the subject : "Darl Mac Bride trip to Brazil"

Theres a typo

[Dr Reducto]

"Interestingly, Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice..."

I think the word they were searching for was "Ironically".

My Experience with Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think
I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community
at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source
based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing
as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying
technology.

I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to
back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult
for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our
server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing
fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of
several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high
that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which
were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of
serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.

I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in
VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't
believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go
just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code
that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the
system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to
increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3
machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say
the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't
even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was
supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The
3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that
they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise"
environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had
experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted,
Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in
their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full
fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that
the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled
filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that
since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with
some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour,
we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't
a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines
instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server
pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the
Linux boxes.

Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my
clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the
free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the
old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have
also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that
we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks
of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the
same freedoms as the GPL.

As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to
compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming,
but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows
98/NT/2K are your only choices.

thank you.

sorry in advance...=)

[Anonymous Coward]

i, for one, welcome our new brazilian overlords...

Re:When should a stock holder start to worry

[tarquin_fim_bim]

I have been seriously considering removing Microsoft from my portfolio, SCO seem to be doing rather well at the moment, but I think a lot of clever money has already gone there, over inflating the stock value, so I may hold off for a while, I'm sure Microsoft will come up with some cunning licencing plan to thwart these rogue states.

Does that mean...

[KoolDude]

...we'll get more people working on Samba ?

A McDonalds, somewhere in Rio, 2004

[morelife]

"Deseja batata com isso?"

(you want fries with that?)

--Luiz Moncau, Director of Marketing, Microsoft Brazil, 4 months from now.

New PR hire?

[mcpkaaos]

Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice...

Since when did dubya work for Microsoft?

Re:Well written? Well understood?

[pilot1]

Oh please, anyone can understand what Sii3112A is!

Let me explain how to read it.
First, the S designation means that it was added to the kernel in September 2003. If it was a little "s" it would have been added on June 23rd, 1996, but that's not important.

Next comes two little i's. Alan Cox put them there because he thought they looked cool, but since they're the IP of SCO, they'll have to be removed in a later revision.

Next is a "3112". This means that there are 31^12 transistors on whatever this Sii3112A thing is.

And last, there is a big "A". This means that in the count of 31^12 transistors, purple transistors were NOT counted. This was because Alan Cox was feeling tired of the color purple at the time of this things addition to the kernel.

See how easy it is to tell?
Now to find out what a Sii3112A is, you only have to find out which component of your computer has 31^12 transistors! (Not including those purple transistors, of course!)

Brazil

[kesler]

They are going to change from the land of Samba and Carnival to the land of Samba.

In other news

[l0ungeb0y]

President Bush made a national address today regarding the freedom hating countries who are in alliance against the US and hate us because of our freedoms and democracy.

excerpt:

"Freedom loving citizens of the United States, I would like to thank you for your sacrifices since September 11th. Today I bring you news of an even greater peril to our safety and our freedom. We have become aware that terrorist evil doers have infiltrated the Governments of countries such as China, Germany and now even Brazil. Our intelligence has found deep ties to Al Qaeda, Iraq and the Axis of Evil in these countries who have turned against us.

We have appointed Steve Balmer as "Special Ambassador of Freedom" to meet with and talk to the leaders of the Brazilian Government and their IT infrastructure. However, they have shown little interest in making a return to freedom and may leave us with no choice but to call upon a coalition of the willing to help restore freedom to those noble people of Brazil so that they may once again enjoy Freedom and Democracy. The evil doers must be shown that we will not tolerate those who would stand against us and stand against freedom... Compulsatory Registration with the Department of Homeland Security Required"

So when is Microsoft stock going to tank?

[xeo_at_thermopylae]

Governments are committing to open source software, IIS is losing server market share, programmers are abandoning .NET tools, etc. So at what point will we see an effect on Microsoft's stock?

It's as if Microsoft is the very last of the dot-coms (although it never truly was a dot-com), and, until MSFT falls to a final reasonable level, the market and economy won't truly be able to restructure and recover. Reason being, so many huge mutual funds are so heavily invested in MSFT. A stock that does not react to either bad or good news is not a reasonably-priced stock, but is an exercise in the optimism of mass market behavior.

Re:context people

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, and people love to understand how their software works, which is why I always draw a crowd at parties other social gatherings when I start explaining how my latest algorithim works.

Good News For Some, Bad News For ...

[Anonymous Coward]

An anonymous reader writes "Citing economic as well as social reasons, Brazil's government is opting to move away from Windows, opting instead for Open Source (read: Linux) solutions.

Great - just great. Now all the .br-based servers spewing all the spam into my email box will NEVER break down.

Re:Well written? Well understood?

[AJWM]

What does the Windows source code look like?

Hungarian notation. Need anything more be said?

Land of samba?

[iantri]

Silva's top technology officer wants to transform the land of samba and Carnival into a tech-savvy nation where everyone from schoolchildren to government bureaucrats uses open-source software instead of costly Windows products.

Ahh.. but there's no Samba in a Windows-free environment!

The Onion

[Craig3010]

I just want to see The Onion with the headline "Microsoft Moves Away from Microsoft: All Internal Software to be Linux-based from Now On"