U.S. Fed Goes Brand Neutral

Rollie Hawk writes "The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out notice this week that government purchases, including in IT, need to be open to many brand names. 'We are concerned the use of brand name specifications in agency solicitations may have increased significantly in recent years, particularly for information technology procurements,' according to the OMB. AMD is certainly happy with this news, having long complained of the unholy marriage between the Fed and Intel. Perhaps this will even open the way for Linux and other open-source options being chosen over Microsoft and the like. If this works out, it will lead to a better fiscal situation on many fronts. The increased competition will lower the cost to taxpayers (though the money will still get spent somewhere) and the wider spread of contracts will help competitors to chip away at the dominance of Microsoft and Intel."

Comments

AMD?

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD: Armageddon Nuclear Devices.

Re:From what I've read

[inertia187]

dubya:~ bush$ man nukuler
No manual entry for nukuler

I am anti-brand

[Anonymous Coward]

If I recognize the brand, that means the company could afford advertising, which means the products are over priced.

eMachine baby

[lateralus_1024]

I knew holding my eMachine stock would pay off.

Re:From what I've read

[Anonymous Coward]

That package is just badly documented. If you try:

dubya:~ bush$ nukuler --help

you'll get the following output:

Usage: nukuler [OPTION]... [TERRORIST]...
Execute the attack on TERROIST (values from $TERROR system variable by default).

Options:

-e, --escape abort if $TERROR=""
-c, --conventional-weapons
-d, --depleated-uranium
-f, --force must be used in combination with one of the weapon type options above (c or d)

Waitaminute - Bush is looking to SAVE money?

[JimatForemat]

Who are you and what have you done with Dubya?!

Unholy what?

[Attackman]

"...having long complained of the unholy marriage between the Fed and Intel."
Shhh. With the current administration, that's an "unholy civil union." And don't think you can just talk about it that way either. We'll not discuss how a federal institution and a chip maker are living in sin, thank you very much ;)

Contents of Bush's iPod

[MiniMike]

He didn't choose the playlist, but there's only one mp3 on it anyway. It goes:

"Breathe in ..."
"Breathe out ..."
"Breathe in ..."
"Breathe out ..."

I hope they remembered to have it loop...