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French Military Police Switches to Firefox
Oslo_the_CKC writes to tell us that French Magazine Linux Pratique recently published an interview with General Brachet of the Gendarmie Nationale. In the interview he discusses why they have moved over 100,000 personnel over to Firefox and Thunderbird (70,000 and 45,000 respectively). This follows on last year's switch to OpenOffice.org so it seems like the French Military Police are enjoying the success of open source.
Honestly, the reason why firefox is the preffered choice is not only because of it's security, robustness, and general workability, but also because it's so damn customizable. Honestly, I can do anything I want on any operating system, if I have my handy dandy firefox.
.. it's pretty sweet.
Anyway, check out this kickass firefox extension that allows users anywhere to chat with other users viewing the same website as them. (It'd be cool to see a few slashdot.org people!) =)
Try the QuickChat extension out
Am I the only one who is amazed that the French Military Police Force has 100,000 personnel working for it? The United States has approximately 840,000 police total, including military police, state police, county police, and federal law enforcement agencies. France's population is only 60.5 million compared to the US' 296 million. Is the military police force in France used for more than just policing members of the French military?
This slashdot story says, the French Department of Culture have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." And "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should a bill proposal passes in the Parliament.
A lot of U.S. Soldiers use Firefox exclusively. Thanks to websites like portableapps I can get Thunderbird and Firefox installed on my flash so I don't have to go through the bother of dealing with out backwards and semi-retarted IA department to get it installed on the machine I use. After showing it off to most of the people I work with and letting them see all of the great plug-ins and extensions that you can add on, plus custom skinning the browser, these guys were sold.
As to the Army as a whole accpting it, your guess is as good as mine. I only showed the more tech-savvy guys Firefox, some of the dudes around here didn't exactly sign their contract as much as put a bite mark on the dotted line, if you catch my drift. I really don't think that they're the ones that are targeted by Firefox - and that very well could be part of the problem. Most IT/IA soldiers that are outside the Linux / Open Source world see things like Firefox as a waltzing bear. Right or wrong, that's a perception that is going to have to be overcome before this is accepted as a standard, or even as a useable piece of software by those outside "the know".
hi mom!
"Without the French there wouldn't be a USA!"
1. That French government went the way of the dodo bird when they executed the monarchy. Plus, even then, they were doing it as a way to sxtick it to the English.
2. The only times French governements have stepped in to help the USA in war is when they could stick it to England.
3. Many brave French citizens died resisting the Nazis. Unfortunately, just as many were assisting the Nazis. The rest were just ducking for cover.
4. We also saved their nation in World War I.
5. I've despised the French government ever since they pulled out of NATO (for the first time). I've despised Parisians since I was 7. When my family visited the city, attempted to speak French and treated rudely for not speaking French perfectly.
France is extremely protectionist
You mean like the 80% tax on steel imports ?... Uh.. no, this was the US, sorry.
Seriously kicked the Romans Butts many times as Galacia.
Did so again under Charlemange.
Kicked the English's butts under William the conqueror.
Kicked the English's butts again several times during the 100 years war.
Supported the rebels during the American Revolution.
Nearly united europe during the napoleonic wars (then foolishly tried to invade Russia during the winter).
Held off the german forces in WW I
When invaded by germany in WW II, held out just long enough for the British Expiditionary force to sail from Dunkirk.
After WW II the French failed to re-occupy Indochina due to resistance from the formerly US-backed Viet Minh. They pulled out of Indochina in 1954. The US also failed to gain power in Indochina.
Seriously... It's only from 1940 to 1954 that France's military record is any worse than any other, and when you consider what they were up against (USSR was still operating under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when France was invaded, and on continental europe only France stood against the Axis), they really were no worse.
You can't just add them that way! The 70K that use Firefox likely account for almost all of the 45k that use Tbird, it's very unlikely that anywhere near 100k personnel are involved if there are only 70k Firefox users.
Good numbers still for one organization, but an awful flawed statement to have found it's way into a Slashdot front page. How did this get past our meticulous editors?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It's amazing that the people who whine that we saved France in WWII so conveniently forget that Soviet Russia saved our asses in that same war... If it wasn't for the 20 million Russians who died fighting Hitler, who knows how much more bloody that war would have been for Americans.
That's why, after 40 years of Cold War, we never changed the name of Russian salad dressing. The French have yet to earn that respect.
I think the term you are not aware of is 'disk imaging' and/or 'netinstall'
We do this for Macs with netboot for User labs, actually. Any networked machine can get hard disk formatted, and loaded with new OS/apps/settings in minutes. For new G5 gigabit models we can 'install' a new system in 93 seconds (6.3 GB of uncompressed data on the drive, 2.7GB compressed image). An older mac with 100 base-T, gets done in roughly 15-20 minutes. So you CAN roll any upgrade overnight or even over coffee break. Have to be physically present there to press 'N' (and record MAC addy + key-in password) the first time, but after that, the machine can be blanked/reloaded/upgraded remotely, or by a script.
One problem (advantage, in User Lab case) is that all the user data will be wiped off the disk, but I am sure you could write a script to look for new local documents/bookmarks/etc, and just copy those. Or keep user directories on the server?
Pretty sure you can do that with non-Macs, but probably more of a pain in the neck. Could cost more than $1000 for OS X server (or 2 weeks of messing around with FreeBSD), too.
I think there are tools for PCs (Ghost??) that can something similar though.