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Open Source in California Government
catfoo writes "California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently posted the California Performance Review Report, a 2,500 page plan to overhaul state government and save $32 billion over the next five years. Part of the proposal: Open Source alternatives. Imagine that..."
The Governator should be applauded for his adoption of Open Source in the government. My only question is whether the Open Source solutions will have to be made in California, because it is my understanding that The Governator is against Hollywood productions saving money by filming up north in Canada. I think this is a *great* move to use Open Source in the government because it will help keep everything much more secure and stable than going with expensive closed source anti-solutions. I only wonder if this will mean that Allnold will be moderating his anti-Canadian rhetoric any time soon? A great deal of Open Source comes from Canada.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The GOVERNATOR wants open source alternatives eh?
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Currently running IIS and an average uptime of about three days. See here.
This is obviously because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are girly-men.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
The Army reading list
Wow... I haven't been an Arnie fan since his desecration of a movie, T3... but this evens the boards back out. Hell, this even puts him back over to the good side.
;-)
Now if he gets a cameo (along with Jessie Ventura) in AvP... that'll put'm both in highest regards in my book
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
BSD. Yes, California should finally use BSD more than just a research project. Finally put their spent tax money to work for them. That's my opinion.
He said he would "terminate" things. He should be disqualified for that.
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
...a serious Republican like Arnold would let something like this out. I figured he and his people would've thought Open Source software was too fast-and-loose appearing, too ideologically different to use.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
http://ihatetheitdesign.slashdot.org/article.pl?si d=04/08/13/1317236&tid=103&tid=117&tid=185&tid =98
Translation: I must suppress my kneejerk reaction to reject out of hand any suggestion made by a politician because said politician is not a member of a political party approved by me.
His political representation has nothing to do with this move. He has gone against the norm and has proposed the use of Open Source on a large scale. I'm not too sure if this is a first, but it is still revolutionary. If this goes into affect, this may mark the beginning of the true war between Micro$oft and Linux
Perhaps they saw what Testra did to get their discounts and they think they can save their money by doing something similar.
I had no idea a government-produced document could be so clear, concise, and easy to follow. If OSS really takes off in California, maybe other states will turn to this justification. I honestly believe that if more lay-people read similar descriptions of open source software, the doors would be opened to Linux users everywhere.
Live free or die
Just by "posting" that, they are guaranteed massive discounts from microsoft who is scrambling now.
Either way, it is a win-win for california...
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I hate the IT Design
/arnold accent
/end arnold accent
ITS NOT A TUMOR!!
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
and now coming soon to a theater near you...
Terminator 4: Rise of the Penguins
Featuring the lovable Tux as the TERMINATORR
"HE IS BACK"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
... the OSS angle has been pushed into government policy by a small number of committed activists, as soon as the debate goes beyond the number of people they can talk to directly it all falls apart. It would be interesting to see legislation written in this areas, but be cautious, it takes a lot more than "intent" for something to become "law".
He's not world famous for saving money is he? look at what he drives, hardly economical :)
California has a really serious debt. So he's not the excellent well-intentioned hero that some might think. He's just smart at looking for solutions, and doing his job.
When they captured and reprogrammed that T-900, they wiped out its OEM install of Microsoft Windows for Androids and installed Linux...hence its change from evil to good!
Ceci n'est pas un post.
"I'll be backup!"
It'll be interesting how that all turns out. I hope the numbers show up as obviously as it should.
IT professionals should be training themselves but if not, training is probably already part of the regular budget anyway, except this time instead of getting paid to eat breakfast and lunch at a Microsoft Sales pitch meeting, they might actually learn something. (The ability to actually learn something new separates the I.T. professionals from the wanna-be button pushers... I know the number of the truly tallented is pretty low, but this will show those numbers in broad daylight.)
One would think that simply switching to free software is a no-brainer when it comes to cutting costs for the government. I guess we'll see how it works out and ultimately into the system.
Part of the proposal: Open Source alternatives. Imagine that...
So.....I take it that the source code to SkyNet and the T-800 series Terminators will be open sourced? Or will it just be limited to T1000 source code?
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
there is such an incredible inefficiency in large corporations, especially governments. there are so many causes of this, it is hard to pick them, but here are just a few:
1. "tenure". once you're on the job a few years, it's very hard to fire people. people realise this and slack off.
2. "gotta spend my budget". if you don't spend this year's budget on something, somewhere, next year's budget will be less than this year's budget, regardless of what next year's budget actually needs to be. people realise this and spend money on non-essential things, to preserve their budget slice for next year.
3. "follow procedure". often large places will have massive procedures for procurement, which end up doing things like making a hammer cost $100 to acquire, desktop computer costs skyrocket, etc.
4. "workplace as a supply depot for employees". people take reams of printer paper home. it happens. ditto blank CD's, pens, you-name-it. computer monitors, desk chairs, all these things go home with people.
5. "croneyism and nepotism". similar to situation #1, you have people who retain their jobs when they are not operating at a good personal efficiency -- or are even downright awful performers.
To fix these things in government, all that is required is (1) absolute transparency of budgets. Every $1 which is collected from taxpayers must be accounted for somewhere. Hundreds of eyes seeing these budgets will find the waste very, very, very quickly. And (2) impartial performance review of employees. Get rid of or "fix" the lazy and inefficient employees -- they are destroying the system in ways that simple material waste cannot even come close to in comparison.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Hehe, check this out for some interesting and funny stuff.
I am not certain that this initiative is about using open source so much as to blackmail proprietary vendors into lowering prices. You have to read till the end to get it, but here is the quote:
"Looking to the open source community for applications that serve the same function as closed source solutions may cause vendors to be more flexible with pricing and licensing structures."
Either way, it will save Californian tax payers money. It's a win-win situation.
..most governments over the world have realized the benefits of OSS.
To have a glimpse of OSS and governments all over the world, just use good ol' google
Interesting to read is CNET on Governments push open-source software
There's even a Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments (GOSLING) Community
http://efil.blogspot.com/
I think the whole point of the report was:
"Here are things we should change in the future"
Not- "gee, look at the cool stuff we are doing now."
It makes perfect sense that they are NOT running open source now, but are supporting a move toward open source in the FUTURE.
No reason to lie.
Second-to-last sentence from the body of the link:
Looking to the open source community for applications that serve the same function as closed source solutions may cause vendors to be more flexible with pricing and licensing structures.
But the rest of the report makes a very strong case for the adoption of Open Source, including a couple of figures naming savings already known to have been made by California state agencies.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Looks like Arnold turns into the Terminator regarding the State's wasting of taxpayer's money on Windoooz licenses. I'm not a replublican, but he's got my vote on this one. Seriously, one can say a lot about Arnold being a Republican and all, but at least he's not one of those party-line drones I see on Fox and MSNBC all the time. Alongside with people like McCain (and few others who's name I don't remember) he represents the few remaining people who have their own personal convictions but don't engage in 'scorch-the-earth' practices daemonizing anyone who disagrees with them. Anyway, back to the real world, I have some taxes to accrue (which can be wasted on killing brown people in poor countries)....
...with Linux installed, it could defeat a newer, stronger machine several years ahead in tech. You must be right!
...I just moved back to Texas TOO!
I don't see no horns
From the site:
FILMED INCIDENCES OF DRUG-TAKING:
REAGAN: Zero.
ARNOLD: One marijuana cigarette ("Pumping Iron").
Someone who once smoked weed living in California? Who'd have thought it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You could make a case saying that even if you were able to pay less for a TCO from a Microsoft offering than for OSS, it would be worthwhile to go with OSS because then you have access to the code and the improvements that the state agencies make can be for the public good. Not that I'd complain if MS decided to charge less money ;-)
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
He doesn't have to read it (but I'll bet he's at least been briefed on it). He doesn't even have to understand all of it -- that is what delegation is all about. Since we use the democratic method to elect leaders, not their cabinets, we might as well elect people who are good leaders and who we think will select and lead a good cabinet. After that, governors and presidents are mostly figureheads, not policy or decision makers. If we could find someone who could completely understand health care, welfare reform, social security, taxation, the military, space research, etc, I'd be all for electing them. But such a person doesn't exist, and if they do likely they have incredible social problems from having spent all their time in the library learning all this stuff.
But I think you grossly underestimate Arnold if you don't think he has some sense of policy, especially this one. He's been talking about the waste in the government for quite some time now, and ran on a platform of getting rid of the waste -- not the programs.
MORTAR COMBAT!
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So SkyNet runs on BSD?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
No one actually believed that Mr. Muscle man had the training and experience necessary to fun the fifth largest economy in the world...
They didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation either.
He was perceived as being a real human, rather than another product of the political machine. Sheeple, for all their stupidity, are still able to recognize that successful politicians achieve their success by favor-swapping and compromise. This means that by the time any given politician arises to a position of real power, he or she is alreay so loyalty-laden that acting independently is outright impossible.
Arnold has no such loyalties tying him down...so he can actually make decisions that benefit the majority and make sense. The fact that his own agenda is actually beneficial to the people at large is, IMO a Very Good Thing.
$0.02
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Looking at the rest of the IT proposals, I'd be surprised if this heralds a huge shift to FOSS in the near future. Given the mention of VNC in section 10, and the intention to create a state-wide help desk in section 30, though, there are obvious areas where FOSS could start appearing.
It is, however, interesting to note the the report does mention both the flexibility and security aspects of software. Quoting the report "In summary, open source is not just about cost savings. Since the code is open, it offers the flexibility for organizations to modify the code as needed for specific uses. Many also feel that open source is more reliable and secure than closed source". I wonder how much the various worm-of-day security incidents cost?
As an aside, is anyone else concerned by the way section 32 seems to be setting things up for later suggesting using digital cameras for crime scenes?
Canada? How about India, Germany, Mexico, etc. Open Source knows no boundaries. Still, it's a Good Thing is, people with l33t sk1llz will be needed to setup, maintain, program, interface, etc. this software so all it does is cut down on initial cost of purchase -- which, when you think about Silicon Valley, may not be too palatable, though they were going ape-sh!t years ago for the H1B visas to bring more people into the country. Workers in Cal. pay taxed, which are state revenues, so there's certainly some work needed in exploring this, though I think most state expenses are of the Microsoft account.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Apply this to your own home.
Let's say you get an allowance of $20 a week from your mom. You buy some clothes, games, etc.
At the end of the year, your mom notes that you have like $200 still sitting around that you apparently didn't need. So she decides to set your next year's allowance lower, to something like $15 a week.
To prevent this, at the end of the year, even if you don't particularly want anything, you buy a few games or something, just to make sure you've spent your money. You've kind of wasted the $200 for this year, but hey, you never know, you may want that extra $200 next year, right?
Replace "you" with "a government department" and "your mom" with "a government agency", and the "$200" with "$200,000".
MORTAR COMBAT!
The 'astroturfing' campaign by Darl has begun and he is utilizing the 14 year old persona.
The only trouble is that sometimes you have this feeling that you might need it next year.
Logically, it is plausible that you would need more next year than you did the previous year.
A fairly simple workaround would be to cut the next year's budget to the actual spending, plus a percentage equal to estimated inflation for the next year.
To avoid end-year spending bubbles, base this on the average amount spent each month times 12 (this doesn't completely eliminate the spending bubble, but would depress it somewhat). This would make sure that people's bad habits were accounted for, and that they didn't have as much reason to rush-spend.
At the same time, it might a good idea for people to have a place where they can list special spending needs that don't normally come up, and have those accounted for in their budget.
Just some simple ideas.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
While I agree with your problems, I don't think "drown them in yet more red tape" is a viable solution.
Honestly, the biggest one to crack is the "got to spend the entire budget" attitude. And there's a simple way of achieving it:
1. Budget allocation meetings are not allowed to take usage of last years budget into consideration. In fact, they won't even be told how much of the previous year's budget has been used.
2. Departments are allowed to keep the procedes of any underspend for 1 year. If they haven't spent it by that time, it goes back to central funds.
This will encourage departments to be frugal with their spending, as everyone knows it is useful to have a bit of money left over in case of emergencies.
It's still too bad they can't open source the INS... then maybe they can do their jobs...
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Links to information about this report, unrelated to the open source ideas, basically good information for people in cali. http://report.cpr.ca.gov/ Also a article about how arnalds reform plan "echos" bushes plans. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0809/news-cal if-08-09-04.asp
TruePunk | Games
who says that the use of open source software goes hand in hand with undercutting jobs ?
That is nonsense and the kind of FUD I thought only came from Microsoft. There is absolutely no rule whatsoever that Open Source software is any different from proprietary software when it comes to employing people to do jobs. In fact specifically when it comes to governments, its conceivable that it might create jobs due to the specialist kinds of systems that a government needs to employ and use.
In addition to this I think that it is good practice for democratically elected governments to be using software that they control and can be publically audited; Id rather this than they be at the beck and call of a corporation liable to change its software at any whim. After all, its your taxpayers money that is paying for it.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I live in California and heard about this almost a week ago. Not only is this entire plan causing alot of fights between parties but it is finally putting some good ideas into the air. For the longest time it has almost been like governments have hushed ideas about open source and its uses. Finally we are at a point in society where it is a considerable and productive resource to be taken advantage of. I think if this portion of the plan goes through not only will it make california a bright example of how to make use to a low cost but highly effective alternative, but will reall help the governator's image. ~ Nick
- The Governor should direct the state Chief Information Officer to obtain copyright and patent protection on the code owned by the state to protect this valuable resource as an intellectual property.
While it might look like a plan to simply create a code library, the real goal is, of course, to license this valuable intellectual property:The whole suggestion is mangling of ideas, where the author treats "copyright" and "patents" as if they were the same thing. Here's my favorite paragraph:
- Computer application programs over the last few years have evolved into programming languages that are designed to be easily modified to work in various environments. For example, HTML, XML, Java, LINUX and others are written in modular formats that can be connected in different pieces of code to accomplish a variety of functions.In computer terminology, each computer operating system is called a platform and language code that can be used on more than one platform is called "cross platform code."
Where to begin with that? I hadn't realized that applications had "evolved into programming languages". What "cross platform" code has to do with anything is beyond me.They go on to claim that by using a code library - which will only need four librarians to handle all the code in the State:
- The State Chief Information Officer should issue a directive requiring all departments to follow the standards and submit all code developed to the library
we'll be able to code faster, cheaper, and stop using contractors:Fortunately, we've got a 30 day period for public comment, so folk from California might want to chime in here!
Well, now, with such an intelligent, compelling argument, it's no wonder Microsoft and other proprietary vendors are hurting so bad.....
Oh wait.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Isn't Diebold the company providing those systems?
Doesn't Diebold use a closed source model?
Looks to me like this is a chance to drive a wedge into either Diebolds closed model or Californias acceptance of it.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
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On the other hand, for California a lot of the big OSS projects are "local boys done good," (e. g. someone already pointed out BSD). This will have a lot of weight in Sacramento, especially when compared to an out-of-state business like Microsoft.
While I agree with your problems, I don't think "drown them in yet more red tape" is a viable solution.
/.) who will look over this data -- for free -- and find the waste.
Yeah, it's a problem: "Who's going to Watch the Watchers?"
That's why simply publishing the budget and expenditures in a transparent way is a good idea: there are people with time on their hands (see
MORTAR COMBAT!
4 Integrity of the author's source code: Derived works must not interfere with the original author's intent or work;
:-)
Where'd they get this from? I'm not sure what they mean by interfere, but even so, I don't recall any such part of the GPL, for instance.
I will now go read a copy of the GPL
Infuriate left and right
Basically, it boils down to "where applicable, use it as a bargaining chip for proprietary software instead," huh guys? Good thinking.
But, I don't suspect that this is something to get people like Microsoft to come down. Face it, in order to under bid open source, they'd have to give it out for free. You don't need a MS employee to come and install it, you just need a technician who knows what he's doing; likewise, some random from Red Hat doesn't have to come out and install Linux for you, some guy from MySQL AB doesn't have to come out and install MySQL, etc. You just need a random who knows what he's doing. Or in California's case, a whole lot of said randoms.
Now, that's not to say they'll work for free; they will naturally want to be put on the state payroll. Either way, you HAVE to pay somebody, and I suspect it probably won't be nearly as much as Microsoft would suggest with their "lower TCO" argument that they like to use with their examples of 7-11.
So, we'll wait and see.
And before people spec that CA will reneg on the deal, remember that Munich re-renegged.
This sig no verb.
.... the lower amounts of bribery that are even possible with open source. Governments by and large exist by cash payments, bribes, kickbacks and blackmail. When there's not a lot of money involved in a proposal, it doesn't have the potential to be corrupt.
And I'm not being a pessimist, just a realist about it. Corruption is more the norm than not in government, at any level.
I really don't think the Arnold wants to stop hollywood companies from using Canada not because of any hidden antipathy towards people who put maple leaves on their flags, but rather because of Canada's large movie subsidies. Since Canada doesn't subsidise open source development I don't think California has any reason not to import that.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Apparently moving to OSS on the backend is a lot more palatable. Suggesting that you use Apache rather than IIS is a no-brainer and not very challenging compared to:
"Hey guys! Let's drop MS Office and move to OpenOffice.org instead!"
However, it almost seemed like they were suggesting Linux on the desktop. In that unlikely case, MS Office wouldn't be an option.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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if you were the IT director, you could say
"I can buy 100 servers with Microsft OSes preinstalled, and a year of support"
or you could say
"I can buy 400 servers, have my IT guys throw linux on them, and we buy a year of support for them from Redhat|SuSE|whoever"
Check out my sysadmin blog!
"there are very few "silver bullets" in life"
the silver bullets we have are called "common sense"
the ones we can hire-in are called "experts"
the ones we are looking for are called "silver bullets"
Work that out if you can
blog.sam.liddicott.com
This is the reason why you shouldn't learn about politics from the movies or TV. While I like Moore's movies because I find them to be thought provoking, the problem is that his facts are extremly one-sided.
Unless a bill is higly controversial, it's pretty much guaranteed to pass once it makes it past appropriate committees, because even though they hate to admit it, the both parties negotiate those things behind the scenes (e.i. I'll pass your bill if you pass mine). In that case, reading of the bill on the floor is merely for following the formal procedure as the vote's already been decided.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Nice way to copy a website. In rebuttal:
# People who use drugs deserve compassion and understanding -- unless their drug of choice is tobacco.
# Children can be exposed to years of violent and sexually-explicit imagery in popular culture with no ill effects, but an adult who is exposed to a racially insensitive remark is emotionally scarred for life.
# Banning abortions will only drive them underground, but banning guns will make them disappear.
# Teaching children about safe sex in school will make them sexually responsible, but teaching children about safe gun handling in school would make them violent killers.
# The Enron accounting scandal is an indictment of free markets as such, but UNSCAM is no big deal.
# An unemployment rate of 5.6% during the Clinton administration was unusually low, but an unemployment rate of 5.6% during the Bush administration is unusually high.
# Successful government programs should be praised and publicized -- unless the program is welfare reform.
# A work of art portraying Jesus submersed in urine is daring and avant garde, but a work of art portraying Mohammad submersed in urine would be bigoted and hateful.
# George Bush invaded Iraq for the oil, but the many profiteers from the oil-for-food program opposed the war out of principle.
# Janet Jackson's breast is protected by the First Amendment, but political advocacy ads are not.
# Scientists and engineers can't build a safe nuclear reactor, but global warming activists can accurately predict the weather.
# Education should be value-neutral, except for values like multiculturalism and environmentalism.
# We need to move beyond 9/11, so we can get back to obsessing over Vietnam.
# The Second Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear arms, but the Fourteenth Amendment mandates race preferences.
# Fetuses do not have rights, but animals do.
# Parents should have a choice over whether their children are born, but not what school they attend.
# American corporations outsourcing jobs to poor foreign workers is bad; taxing American corporations and sending money to foreign dictators who promise to give it to poor foreigners, but actually squirrel it away in Swiss bank accounts, is good.
...no "careers" in government. Elected, appointed or hired on, no full time leading to a pension careers. No exceptions. Make it something like 10 years maximum "service", then back to the private sector, with an additional several years cooling off period before you could lobby or sell or contract to the government in any manner. Put "service" back into "government service", and turn government back into "we the people" not "we the government ruling over them other folks, the people". It's turned into an "us versus them" deal now, with little in the way of accountability, and the election process hijacked by two for-maximum-profit criminal cartels so that they can run government as a jobs and profit center for themselves. That's just nutso to let that go on generation after generation.
"people take reams of printer paper home. it happens. ditto blank CD's, pens, you-name-it. computer monitors, desk chairs, all these things go home with people."
printer paper , pens etc sure. But computer monitors and chairs? C'mon , how the hell would you walk out of the building with one of those without someone noticing?? Besides , if that did happen it would move from being minor pilfering to genuine theft and anyone who got caught would be fired on the spot. Hardly worth it for a $50 chair.
You may not have liked his movies, but I think everyone will agree he had an impact on American culture.
English is easier said than done.
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You are probably right that this will offend powerful lobbyists, however your claim that Open Source, a priori, generates fewer jobs is dubious. Probably the strongest claim that you can make is that it doesn't directly suck the cock of established interests. Vendors that are willing and able to play the open source game will still be able to get contracts for contributing to open source efforts. The thing that will piss them off is that this lowers the barrier to entry so that small vendors can compete for the work.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
who says that the use of open source software goes hand in hand with undercutting jobs ?
Very simple. Oracle. Second largest software company on the planet. Employs more than 40,000 people, most of those Californians. Pays California income taxes, along with most of its employees. Switch to PostgreSQL? Employs 0 people. Pays $0 taxes. That's just one off the top of my head.
Opensource needs experianced admins and engineers, windows only needs moderately trained monkeys. if california goes OS, they will need more IT people with a higher skillset.
You just made an excellent case for OSS being shittier software than proprietary. Congratulations. You just disproved yourself.
If all those people who thought Arnold was too dumb to be governor will change their tune now?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Open source is the way to bring SkyNet online.
And here I always thought SkyNet was Windows revenge for BSOD'
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
... it's the bureaucratic minded people involved.
I was involved in a major California project in the early 90's where my company was a sub to Lockheed. Some of you may have heard of it as "Dead Beat Dad" tracking.
The goal was to automate and establish information sharing between cities and counties in California with the additional tie-in of Federal data sharing.
The result hit the news well after I left the company; I was offered to take over the Project Management duties and I flatly refused. I worked long enough on the project in a support role to see the underlying flaws and why the project would never deliver to goal.
In order to meet the overall goal, it would require some 50+ county and several hundred city governments to literally cooperate on various details. Of course, the Los Angeles Metro area insisted on being treated like its own little kingdom.
You'll never get that many bureaucrats and policy wonks to ever cooperate toward a common goal.
Open Source won't do anything useful toward cost cutting since the technology isn't the cost load factor toward final cost.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
I know that Arnie thinks that he's going to be saving Californian tax payers lots of money, but how much will be left after they pay up their SCO $699 license fees???
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The Governator may think he wants opensource solutions but obviously what he really wants is just cheaper alternatives. The gov't could care less if they can modify or redistribute software. they just want to be cheap.
IMO a government using OSS is almost a waste because even if they do find a bug or add an enhancement, do you think they will release it back into the community? NO.
Big companies and government use the free aspect and dont give anything back.
Kinda defeats the spirit of the OSS community if you ask me.
?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 42
If it's good enough for Clinton.....
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those that know Binary and those who don't.
"# For potential immediate savings, departments should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals in the Fiscal Year 2004-2005 and implement open source alternatives where feasible." yes - immediate savings and finaly my tax dolloars being spent wisely. thank you Arnold
Imagine all the programming power available through senior projects and grad thesis of the University of California and the California State systems. The state of California has an awesome potential to direct that government specific open source software be created or tailored or reviewed to fit their specific needs.
"Tenure"
THe opposite of tenure is that you fire everybody before they reach retirement age so you don't have to give them retirement benefits. Tenure was invented to prevent this kind of abuse.
""gotta spend my budget""
If you didn't spend your budget the state will cut it. If you need the money next year you are SOL.
""follow procedure"."
You can't just have anybody order whatever they want and expect the state to pay the bill. You have to have a beuracracy.
""workplace as a supply depot for employees"."
People take pens and paper, no big deal. It'd be pretty damned hard to take a chair or monitor because those things are tagged with asset tags. We do give away old stuff sometimes to employees sometimes though.
" "croneyism and nepotism". "
This is actually harder in govt then private industry. First of all it's actually against the law in govt hiring whereas there are no laws against hiring your son, father, or buddy in the private industry. In fact the vast majority of people that are hired in the private industry are hired because they know somebody in the company already (keep in mind small business hires over 75% of the people in this country).
evil is as evil does
So... we'll need to recompile the kernel for you huh...
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
It's good to see this AC can post rationally, and objectively. Why don't we all post our favorite stereotype and preach it as gospel? This kind of rhetoric turns political debate into a punchline rather than thoughtful discussion.
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
No, Clinton trained all his life to be president. Rhodes scholar, governor, first reelected Democrat since FDR. When actually called on to act, telling a white lie about a blowjob on camera, he wasn't able to pull it off.
You apparently didn't like Clinton, and believe that his performance as president was just that: a performance. Clinton's gone. Why aren't you as unhappy about Schwarzenegger doing that, when he's here to stay?
--
make install -not war
But jobs *are* created because of PostgreSQL. My company, for example, is currently working with a major Oklahoma state agency to migrate all of their data away from Oracle and SQL Server into PostgreSQL. We're getting paid quite handsomely for it too and we'll pay income tax on that income. I have five other projects waiting in the wings to see if this migration is successful. If it is, they want us to migrate them too. Each of these contract will come with a six figure fee. All of which we'll pay income tax on.
So PostgreSQL as a company might not pay U.S. income tax. But it sure has its hand in helping others generate a lot of tax revenue.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
...more like a win-linux situation.
I'm certainly an OSS advocate, that's all I run, and all I have run for the last two years.
I do agree with using the best tool for the job in Government, be it open or closed source.
However, I really think a prerequisite, in the case of close source being the best tool, is an open data format. It shouldn't be acceptable to have government, and therefore the public's data locked away inside a file that only one application can process.
Yes, I know that OO.org can handle Word documents, for example. However, it shouldn't be necessary to reverse engineer the file format each time MS release a new version. That isn't an open data format, and so I don't think government should use MS word.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Almost, not quite a solution. What happens when 'waste' is found. Its not as if there are simply '$500 widget processing fee paid to Xcorp.' type items that can be snipped without a second thought. Waste comes from inefficient processes, and inadequate oversight, and it can only be solved by people who know and work with the system. Publicizing the budget would be good to put pressure on legislators and inspire workers to be more thoughtful as they incur expenses, but it's certainly not a silver bullet.
I post more conservative comments on slashdot and I often get modded down. I think anything that could be considered offensive by anyone is suddenly modded down, not because the moderator finds it personally offensive, but because he/she is afraid that someone else might not like it.
I agree though. I totally don't get the Flamebait part. The parent actually has some valid points.
Personally I would never vote Republican or Democrat anymore. Both parties are the same these days and don't represent my interests at all. Most "liberal" politicans are just providing lip service to get liberal Joes and Janes to vote for them. The same goes for "conservative" politicans.
What's so conservative about allowing communism to spread through Asia and to deny a request for aid from countries that are about to get absorbed into China? So much for our a "conservative" president. In my opinion Bush isn't conservative enough.
And don't get me started on his(bush) poor performance when it comes to environmental issues. I bet you didn't know real conservatives are for clean air, clean water so people can have places to fish, hunt or take cub scouts on field trips)
To wrap up my political rant I beg you. Never vote for republican or democrat as long as they continue to put complete schmucks on the ticket. Quite frankly it doesn't matter which major party you vote for, both are going to screw up the country. Might as well vote for some indepedent, libertarian, green, whatever as a way to send a message that you don't support whichever schmuck gets elected this year.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
But computer monitors and chairs? C'mon , how the hell would you walk out of the building with one of those without someone noticing?? Besides , if that did happen it would move from being minor pilfering to genuine theft and anyone who got caught would be fired on the spot. Hardly worth it for a $50 chair.
Especially not the kinds of chairs most companies buy. Maybe some people here are lucky enough to have gotten Aerons or something, but at my Fortune 50 company, our chairs totally suck. They'd have to pay me to take one of these things home. I could get a far better chair for $80 at OfficeMax.
What's even worse is how they pay so much lip service to ergonomics around here, and try to claim these chairs are highly ergonomic. Lies, all lies.
Ok so a farrari mechanic gets paied 5 times more that a chevy mechanic. acording to your argument chevys are better than ferari's Because something need a more sophisticated and more capable admin does not mean that it is a worse product. it means that it is more powerfull and more capable. out of the box. OS software can easilly do what MS software requires an extra 20K to do. also O.S. has a higer degree of granularity. in essence. you couner argument may look good on the surface but it falls apart under investigation. but then again you probably think pintos are better cars than Mercedes Benzez
True, I never liked Clinton to much, and he did some things that I question (the 11th hour pardons pissed me off) but that is just my opinion. I try not to fall into the 'left' or the 'right' to much if I can help it. I think both parties have some good points(and bad points). I am happy about Arnie being the Govenator. It is refreshing to see someone who is not a career politician make it into office (which I believe is what our forefathers had in mind). To bad it usually has to be an entertainer! I also tend to get really tired of hearing the views of 'actors' spew their political views (which tend to be highly on the left) like Ben Affleck discussing the importance of raising the minimum wage (when is the last time Ben Affleck's been paid minimum wage??). Anyway I'll get off my soapbox now....
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those that know Binary and those who don't.
"This is your Controller speaking! All Microsoft Reality-Realignment Commandos to their disembarkation tubes!"
"This is not a drill. I repeat - this is not a drill. We have identified a Clear and Present danger to our Cash-Cow-Money-Factory (TM) scam of charging for operating systems and commodity applications!"
"The Governor of California is a threat to Capitalism! Parachute in there and give away a bunch of our crap, while pretending it has more value than free alternatives. Those techno-schmucks will never know the difference. We know what is good for everyone, everywhere."
"That is all. For now."
Someone else pointed this out but is modded down too low.
Take someone with a $24K budget who only needs to spend $1K a month. In December there's a spending bubble, he spends $13K in order to use up his allocated budget.
The average monthly spending is therefore $2k, and the new yearly budget he's assigned is $24k. Taking the average monthly payment doesn't depress the bubble at all.
What is needed is to do what is often down when working with statistics, and highest X numbers and the lowest X numbers. This was discrepencies are eliminate and a more typical of usual type average is found.
If you didn't spend your budget the state will cut it. If you need the money next year you are SOL.
That exactly what the parent is complaining about. The government has a rather silly system for determining budgets. It solely uses past data to determine budgets instead of using past data in combination with expected future requirements. The whole system needs to change.
You can't just have anybody order whatever they want and expect the state to pay the bill. You have to have a beuracracy.
True. Kinda. There need to be rules, but too often in places like government and universities the rules are stifling. People have to have some freedom in order to get things done efficiently and to make decisions that find a good solution for the problem at hand.
Hasta la vista, Windows! Or, Windows is the sickness. Linux is the cure.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
CPR.CA.GOV http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=cpr.ca.g ov
OPR.CA.GOV
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=opr.ca.go v
PHOTOS.GOV.CA.GOV
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=photos.go v.ca.gov
"tenure" - Yes, it's so motivational to be walking on eggshells, waiting to be fired. I don't know how the hell you plan to pay your mortgage, but my plans don't involve living in fear of missing the next payment because my boss is having a bad day.
"gotta spend my budget" - As opposed to not spending it? If you underspend and underperform on your contract, guess what? You're gone. I'd rather spend my budget to be extra sure things get done, and keep my job, than try to save money nobody is going to miss anyway to satisfy some quaint philosophy.
"follow procedure" - Yes, let's let everyone break the rules, do things how they like, and watch the chaos that ensues. Can you imagine the bloody carnage a lack of procedures would cause in a government department? We need them. They keep everyone coordinated.
"workplace as a supply depot for employees" - This one I will agree with, because I hate employee theft. But short of strip-searching everyone on their way out of the building, I don't see how you could stop this entirely.
"croneyism and nepotism" - This is the fault of the people, not the system.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
The original #9 on Mr. Perens' website("The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software.") is longer, and clearly GPL friendly; he goes out of his way to state that the GPL is in fact compliant with #9.
The report version is shorter with no explanation, and actually uses different phrasing: "License must not contaminate other software".
Sound familiar?
...it's working now is such a resounding success story? Really? You believe that?
Nope, we've been doing it your way for a long time, and it's broken, broken to the tune of trillions in debt and crappy C- government at it's best. It's because we have career bureaucrats and career professional politicians, and little practical way to remove most of them, even when they screw up.
I would add an incentive to get people to WANT to serve in government, besides old fashioned actually WANTING to make government better, or maybe you forgot that in civics class, if you even took it. End the fiscal hypocrisy and huge layer of redundant busywork jobs created by taking tax money to pay for government, then turning around and taking taxes back away from the workers. Pay them a fair wage with some minimum benefits while they are in, but no taxes on them from the federal level. Then when they get out, there would be a huge incentive for them to vote for politicians and policies that would lead to continuation of cheaper more efficient government, and for maintaining jobs inside the US that actually pay well and have benefits., instead of what we have now, which is exactly the opposite in both design and outcome.
I'll repeat--we're DOING it your way now, I doubt you could find a dozen americans who thought the system was just swell now if you asked them. I have yet to meet a single human who thinks government is just great, everyone I know or have ever met thinks it's broken-because it IS. The system as it stands is broken, and only radical constructive change will fix it. The founders in no way, shape, manner or form envisioned a perpetual class of professional politicians and unelected edict spewing faceless bureaucrats and shuffling mostly busywork drones, that's one of the things they rebeled against. they also were totally against a large standing army, especially one being lead by a dictator. We fought against what we have now! Nuts! And they also weren't too happy with the idea of perpetual political parties hijacking government for that matter. We got warned against that, and it's unpatriotic to persue goals like that. It was supposed to be government SERVICE, not the government (our taxes) serving some class of people removed from any responsibility. The alleged "oversight" now is a big fat joke, it's corrupt, inefficient, and overstepping it's constitutional bounds by the hour. It is not fair and it's illogical to put even the unborn into lifelong debt to support this crooked bloated monstrosity we have now. Enough's enough.
I think this is great. Not only will we be saved money in the state not having to buy really uneccessarily expensive software, we will have a higher quality of service by the State of California. Furthermore, there is no room for foul play: I really hope voting machines go this route.
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
Your post is somewhat humorous, yes, I'll give you that. But I'd just like to take this opportunity to contrast this with Gray Davis' democratic $95million bribe to Oracle. That's enough for every California government employee to have their own licensed copy of Oracle, including janitors, street sweepers, every teacher, etc.
see my comment on having social problems :)
also... knowledge and wisdom do not necessarily always coexist. there are 6-year-old girls who have memorized all the presidents, state capitals, world capitals, and world leaders. I wouldn't necessarily want her writing energy policy!
MORTAR COMBAT!
Have you noticed that the Republicans are the party that runs these actors, like Sonny Bono, Loveboat's Gopher, Reagan, and Schwarzenegger
Hollywood is the machine that runs the actors and they are very, very far left. If you are going to split hairs with Gohper, Reagan and Arnie you need to also point out the majority of actors or Hollywood industry people who give and donate (aka activists) like the following:
Now that Kerry is the party's likely nominee, activists showed their acceptance of the Massachusetts senator Tuesday night at Greenacres, a 5-acre hillside estate built in 1927 by silent screen comic Harold Lloyd in Beverly Hills. Nearly 1,500 stars and executives from movies, TV and music paid $1,000 to $2,000 a ticket to mingle with Kerry. The guest list included Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Lee Curtis and Steven Spielberg.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nat ion/president/2004-03-30-kerry-hollywood_x.htm
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those that know Binary and those who don't.
I hadn't thought of it that way, as to preserving the license. That is probably what they meant, good catch. I also am impressed with the document cited, a clear understanding of free source software.
Infuriate left and right
I work for a state agency, and it's not quite the free-spending croney fest you envision:
1. Tenure. Off the top of my head, I can name two people I work with who each had over 20 years in who got canned. And quite a few more who hadn't been here as long.
2. Spend the Budget. Let's reverse the scenario. We'll buy all the nice shiny equipment we'd like to have at the beginning of the year, so when unforseen crises occur we'll have no money to deal with them. Good plan! I do agree it makes sense to be able to carry some sort of emergency funds over from year to year so you don't have the year-end blow out. Fortunately, our accountant makes that happen, but talk about pulling teeth!
3. Follow Procedure. We have contracts with vendors who want our business. I'll bet I get a better price on office supplies and computers than you do.
4. Pilfering. I suspect that happens everywhere. If you get caught here, it's grounds for termination, no matter how much "tenure" you have.
5. Croneyism. Welcome to the real world. In my last job at a small business, the manager was the owner's brother-in-law. Believe me, there is way less croneyism in government than in business. Not to say there's none, but it's not endemic, and there are policies in place to prevent it.
I agree with your solutions. In fact they've already been implemented to large degree. Do you know who has the least transparent budget in the US? The Pentagon. Every year billions of dollars go unaccounted for. They used to be required to release a report showing where they spent their money and how much of it "disappeared", but it was so embarrassing that they stopped producing it a couple years ago, even though it's required by law. 60-Minutes has done a couple stories about this.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Listen to me now and believe me lata. If you ver a marshmallow, no von vould roast you. A'll be back...vith zee open-source solution that vill terminate...terminate the competition.
The problem with using the public to find "waste" is that "waste" is a subjective thing that depends on what you consider important. It's bad enough when you have to defend your actions to a PHB who doesn't understand how to do what you do. Now imagine having to defend them to the pointy-haired public who understand even less. "Hey! what's with all this time spent on administrating the legislature's website?? I mean come on - I run a 'blog - it's not that hard - what are these people doing???"
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The point Ruby was trying to make, I think, is that the Republicans have a tendency to draw their candidates from Hollywood, not their money. That's a bit more scary, to me.
WWD4D?
Let's say that burning a gallon of gasoline in a hummer produces N cubic meters of carbon monoxide. We don't even have an idea how to undo this in large quantities, let alone an idea of how much it might cost.
We are like the snake who ate all the rabbits in the area, and only when the snake began to starve did he wonder "where did all the rabbits go".
MORTAR COMBAT!
Stars don't run Hollywood. Hollywood is run by movie and TV studios/networks, and their corporate owners. Like Disney/ABC, TimeWarner/CNN, NewsCorp/Fox, GE/NBC, and Viacom/CBS. Actors, like other rich people, can donate to whomever they like - unlike other rich people, they're the minority who donate to Democrats, and get press coverage for their politics. The media corporations are ignored by their press, as they create these national politicians. And the sense that a raise in the minimum wage is very, very far left, while 2 billion Chinese people are communists.
--
make install -not war
Snipped from www.dictionary.com (capitalism)
accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained
The unfortunate truth in our 'capitalistic' societies (North/South America, Europe, Australia), is that the bulk of 'profits' are not reinvested, but rather withdrawn and squandered - either by shareholders, or by executives.
The implications of a switch to F/OSS are related to a single industry that did not exist in it's current state until 20-30 years ago. The suggestion is that instead of trading dollars/euros/etc., you are trading your investment in development. Time spent working becomes the currency vs. a theoretical world economy dollar.
If I work for one hour coding in Canada, and you work for one hour writing the same code in Hungary, should it not be traded on the basis of equal value in this global environment?
IMHO, the move to F/OSS may indeed cause fiscal harm to a single industry that has extorted a great deal of wealth without a proportional reinvestment in the market that created it. Such is the price of progress.
My 2 cents Canadian
Ditka was football, its the Chicago Bears, not the Bulls.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Long time no see. I thought you had quit Slashdot. Never may anyone else have the last word in a thread again, eh?
Thanks for the correction. It's too easy to confuse the Bears with the Bulls in this economy ;).
--
make install -not war
You have sinned against groupthink. May you be scourged a thousand times with RMS's beard.
Psst... he coached the Bears. Otherwise, I'm with ya.
Sean
actually, it seems that only the report server is iis on windows. Others higher up in the tree are apache on frebsd (www.cpr.ca.gov) and netscape-enterprise/6 on Solaris (www.ca.gov)
Not a sentence!
2 or 3 years later, people forget about it. (Of course, I'm referring to surplus stuff).
Why exactly? Should it not be, if technology allows it, state health care? Or even more local, towards city health care?
If government can do something better than any other institution then I think the government should handle it; but because the entire nation is such a diverse population, I doubt a federal government could convincingly manage health care. It is a much more local thing, adaptable to local conditions since each region will have a different climate, culture, and population.
GPL Deconstructed
The "reams of paper" issue is not a big deal. Compared to staff costs etc, it's peanuts. Solutions I've seen like getting secretaries to have stationery books just wind up the staff.
Procurement is ridiculous in some places. Delay in purchase, project budget charged double the prices we could have got it from off Amazon (because the purchasing department levy a cost of them finding the worst price). Give project managers budgets and let them work with it how they wish. If you trust them with the project, give them the budget.
The real answer is to outsource as much as is reasonably possible, and where it isn't, give staff some control.
I run a small business and don't spend money on anything crap, because it's my money I'm spending. I'm unbribable by suppliers, because that $100 dinner is ultimately going to get paid for by me, where an employee in a large corp gets it paid for by the stockholders.
As the saying goes, he's got bigger fish to fry. The California state budget is always a headache, but it is a major one right now, with massive cuts in all sorts of politically sensitive areas like education already taken, there isn't a lot of areas left to cut from. This was a big part of his campaign coming in, and he bought some time with a huge loan that was approved by voters, but reducing the deficit is a much higher priority for him then protecting an out of state companies profits (and come on, you can't exactly paint MS as feeding starving babies on the stump).
It's a win-win situation.
Er win-win-lose situation would be more precise.
What he's saying is that a lot of code, in the past, could only work on one platform. He mentions HTML, XML, Java, LINUX (ok that's a little stretchy, as it's really an OS, not a programming language). Yes, none of these are true programming languages except Java (HTML and XML are both ML = Markup Languages). But that point is moot.
"The government has a rather silly system for determining budgets. "
It's not silly, it's just that it's pretty hard to guess a year or two ahead how much you need to spend. THe federal govt is constantly passing unfunded mandates and the populace is always screaming about potholes, and the weather is unpredictable. You have no choice but to budget a ton of money.
BTW no state has enough money to do the things they want. No school district is overfunded, no health care system has excess money, no DMV has too much money. You don't think your school district wants to hire more teachers or the DMV does not want to open another office? Sure they do but there isn't enough money to go around.
There does always seem to be lots of money for farm subsidies and other corporate welfare though.
evil is as evil does
It's a joke. It's funny. I giggled.
Which is why I voted for Camejo! Davis was an ass, and Mr. Arnold hasn't pissed me off that much. And I consider myself a liberal.
Flamebait? No. There is noting inflammatory about asking for proof. Grow up people, and quit being so damned defensive of your precious open source software.
you could start by looking at his voting record. Which IS much more "left" leaning than most senators. That's not a criticism, just a statement of facts. The question isn't how far left of right a politician is, the question is do you agree with how he/she voted in the past and is likely to vote in the future.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Political Parties are very nebulous entities whose members are NOT of a uniform opinion on every issue. The are a very loosely affiliated group that tend to agree more often than not. They don't all march in lockstep. That's why even though I might call my self a Democrat, Republican, conservative, libertartian, or socialist. Not everyone who shares that label will have the exact same opinion on issues. Opinions on issues, even the highly devisive abortion issue run the gradient from legal no matter what to illegal no matter what. The fact is that there are all sorts of people in between those positions who want varying degrees of restrictions from few to many.
It's not nearly as cut-and-dried as the partisans make it look.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Making the use of OSS a legislative law is about the worst thing I can think of that could happen to OSS.
OSS needs a free market to flourish, and I don't see how a law regulating its use would facilitate this.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
The problem isn't that there aren't enough moderates, the problem for you is that you don't see any candidates who agree with you on (almost) every issue. But that's not a reasonable expectation, unless YOU run for office.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Well, both parties are guilty of using the "jobs" meme rather than productivity. They do it because it gets votes from people by "sounding right", espeically if you are relatively ignorant about how the economy works.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I'm not saying the Rupublican's don't have some big rich donor's too, but this myth that all the big corporate bosses are all republican donor types is silly. They are all as divided as the rest of the country (though I'm sure there are tendencies with the CEO crowd, just like every other demographic group).
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
You're right it's hell on earth. I work in a National Health Service hospital in the UK and the process takes forever. We choose what we need from a catalogue. We then need to write a required specification which matches it. Then we need to see if anything cheaper will meet the specification. This whole process can take an age.
Some people are just turned off by any discussion of politics, and obviously those people who disagree with what he is saying may feel like they paid for entertainment and got screwed by having to listen to a political rant. But there is one other reason, and I think someone in the NYT said it best.
"Somehow this glitzy world of risque dresses, pseudo-transgressive stylings and velvet ropes the celebrities showing up at these Democrat parties, has precisely the opposite effect on a huge swath of the American public. They hate it, and they hate everything that Hollywood has come to stand for. After all, Hollywood stars are as close as America comes to an aristocracy, and being instructed on how to be kinder and better people by pseudo-rebellious aristocrats can't help but rub people the wrong way."
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
You know, it's people with your attitude that make politics such fertile ground for the demogauges. You don't like Bush or his policies? Then to you he's a neo facist (or nazi, or worse than Saddam Hussein). You can't just disagree anymore on issues. I'm not talking about questioning the truthfulness of people you disagree with, I think someone does need to hold politicians accountable. But the lengths to which it is taken really has gone beyond the pale.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
As the other guy hinted at, why would Arnold want to give MS money? They don't get taxed in CA. And Reps are (at least supposed to be) about saving money in govt, not spending it - thats the Dems job. :^)
-bZj
.sig
That's not exactly how a non-profit works. Non-profits are allowed to 'make' money. It just has to be put back into the project. Think of private universities. I went to USC, and their financials are available online (too lazy to go looking again, but they are there). USC pulls in something like $2.5B/year - including funding from govt contracts. Their expenses do not equal $2.5B/yr. The reserves of cash are used for building new... buildings, and for paying into scholarships funds, etc. CA could make money (which is just taxing w/o immediate spending - the actual generation of revenue would only come if they produced something for sale), as long as it eventually goes into paving roads or building schools - at some point. So, saving money now should equal better freeways/public education, shorter DMV lines (HA!), etc., in the long run. Saving money doesn't equate to blowing the remainder in another area just to make the books balance to zero right now. In the short term, it's not a zero-sum game, only in the long term is that supposed to be to true.
-bZj
.sig
Just to toss some random things out there, re: CA = IT center:
Berkeley is in CA (BSD)
Santa Cruz is in CA (SCO)
IBM is in CA
Sun is in CA
All major open source players that could benefit from this.
-bZj
.sig
well, Reps are publicly about saving govt money, but realistically? they're about saving big corps. money and making as much money for themselves along the way. I wouldn't be surprised if M$ tried to bribe Schwarzenegger to not go forward with that move.
But then, that's just me.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
That still doesn't speak to my point, which was that Reps are (supposed to be) about saving the govt's money. Who else saves/makes money along the way is irrelevant.
-bZj
.sig
oops,
wow, i barfed on that one.
I know that there is a way to do this properly, but I know that there is a way to do this. Perhaps a better solution would be to use a median score or a weighted average (hey folks, we have a serious outlier in these twelve months, maybe we should eliminate the outlier and start over?)
Re-reading my post, here is something I meant to say, but didn't, is that the average should be calculated _without_ including the final month. That way it would be a person spending $1k a month, not $2k. That would eliminate the bubble as I intended.
Next time, I'll use preview instead of submit.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
You didn't really demonstrate too well the idea that Moore's movies are one sided, given that Moore wasn't suggesting that only the Republican's bills are passed without having been read.