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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..."
But of course, choice is slavery, war is peace, love is hate.
Just ask Mr Gates at the Ministry of Network Security!
I can't wait for the next news on the subject : "Darl Mac Bride trip to Brazil"
Right there in the same league with Red Hat and Suse is Brasil's own home grown Linux, Conectiva. Not as well known in North America, yet it is perhaps the most popular Linux in the Southern Hemisphere of the Americas.
"If this was a rich country, it wouldn't matter and we could buy Microsoft products, but we're a developing country and Linux is just a lot more accessible, so we're heading toward a Linux generation."
It is this attitude that probably got them in to the problems they are in now and it is the attitude that got California in the problems it has now. When the State is flush with cash, you still have to find ways to save money. Just because the State has money, it does not mean it should spend it. It should return it to the people who gave it really belongs to, the Tax Payers.
Run Linux, save money, lower taxes. Sounds like a good combination to me.
Linux O Muerte!
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Interestingly, Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice..."
The context in the actual story is:
Although Amadeu insists the government has no plans to mandate open-source software use, Microsoft is worried and is lobbying to prevent the policy from becoming law.
"We still think free choice is best for companies, the individuals and the government," said Luiz Moncau, Microsoft's marketing director in Brazil. "There is the risk of creating a technology island in Brazil supported by law."
Understanding the full context, I believe it's a bad thing to exclude one party and not the other, whether it's Microsoft of Linux being excluded. Yes, it sounds like good reasoning that the government would go with Linux and Open-Source because of the cheper prices. However at the same time they should not exclude other types of non-open-source software. Other than for reasons of anti-competitiveness I don't see a good reason to not allow other types of software to be used.
So MS bad if screwing over local companies/organisations but MS good if screwing over foriegn companies/organisations? Sorry buddy but you can't have it both ways.
Its called a global economy, something the US has been pushing hard over the last couple of decades. Mind you the US version of the global economy seems to think that everyone else should play by the rules except the US.
The main reason why Linux was being adopted outside of the United States was because of its cost, even with $2.50 per copy for Windows XP in 3rd world nations, linux decreases in cost per unit the more machines you install it upon.
The other reason was SuSE and Mandrake, both European and not from the United States. Which plays well in the EU. There is a mentality amoung many leaders in France and Germany that want to see the "United States of Europe" superpower and waining themselves from Microsoft could give Europe a leg up in technology as Linux catches on in SE Asia and the 3rd world.
Now with SuSE in the hands of a NA company, I wonder how that will impeed linux adoption. Oh course, IBM would love to see this happen as the premiums would return to hardware, not software.
I think Linux will be catching on internationally in the next couple years on desktops big time. It probably will be longer in the United States.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"Deseja batata com isso?"
(you want fries with that?)
--Luiz Moncau, Director of Marketing, Microsoft Brazil, 4 months from now.
We keep reading about the yet-another-government that said "oh, dear, Microsoft is sooooo expensive, we should use Linux instead."
And then there's an item in the Wall Street Journal about someone from Microsoft striking a deal with the country's government. They get big discounts, free software, maybe some gifts for the schools, maybe even some investments or jobs.
So if you were running a poor country, why WOULDN'T you threaten to give Microsoft products the boot? It's a negotiation!
Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
I see this is a trend. A lot of people is moving away, if not moving to Linux, from Microsoft.
.NET. That really surpise me as he's working for a all MS s/w house, his entire team knows none other than MS's product, and he's a 100% Microsoft zealot. Turn out they were seriouly considering dropping MS deployment as "Microsoft Server is being too insecure".
A friend of mine called last week asked me for my opinion on choosing J2EE and
I found it amusing: a company who work with Microsoft very closely all these years is being forced to switch, even when they must start from the beginning.
It's odd how software has become akin to daytime television. Every time Microsoft loses a market lately, it's the result of some failure of democracy and Natural Law. If a gas station were to lose it's business to a competitor down the street, would he chalk it up to the oppression of OPEC and chime about how such competition is akin to the spread of fascism in Europe in the 1930's?
I think it goes more to show how Microsoft feels entitled to each and every market they enter, and that they're not trained to respond to the market around them as they're so used to controlling it. If they lose business in some market, it's not because their prices are high and their products are inferior, it's because some other market force "has it in for them."
It sounds to me like the argument you're trying to make is not that the Linux kernel is poorly written, but that it's poorly documented. The two are not the same, and in the case of the latter, I would agree. There are people trying to fill that hole, but there's no telling how long that will take, or if they can even keep pace with the development of the kernel.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
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!)
I love the Orwellian Work Product known as MSFT. Every time somebody say they won't exclusively use Windows, MSFT says, "You Have To! If you don't you're Anti-Choice!"
Isn't it terrible that all that money will go to paying local programmers rather than the Redmond Marketing Machine? How sad it is that Brazilians will now be encouraged to join their own growing national software development and consulting industry.
t'nera semordnilap
Argentina has these things there, too (I lived there a few years). They're basically little stores where people go in and pay to get on the Internet. I can't remember the prices now, but the people there are so poor, that they only charged in increments of either 10 minutes or an hour.
Plus, a lot of the shops are run by the monopolistic telephone company there - Telefonica Argentina. I think they are in other countries as well, but I'm not sure. Their rates are reasonable to get online, but usually it's dialup -- not highspeed, and for theirs you have to pay the phone charges too. It's not free to make local calls, which is a shame.
For people who open up their own shops, who actually have enough money, I can see absolutely no reason why they would want to use Microsoft Windows, when at the very *least* Linux can do everything it can for free, and at the very best ... well, we all know the advantages. :)
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