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Interview with California Air Resources Board CIO
SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin has published an exclusive interview with the CIO of California's ARB (Air Resources Board), Bill Welty." From the article: " Massachusetts might have been the FOSS shot heard 'round the world, but California may be quietly building pressure for an open source earthquake of its own. On the face of it, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) is not setting the world on fire with its well-documented adoption of free open source software. It is using FOSS primarily in the back office, just like so many other governmental agencies and businesses. But if you dig just a little deeper, as shown in this Mad Penguin(TM) interview of the ARB staffers responsible for moving ARB toward a more FOSSy future, you can see that the seeds of more profound change gradually developing. "
It would probably be more convincing if it wasn't on a site called "madpenguin", which has all of the credibility of my little sister's blog.
Also, they went a bit overboard on the FUD, too: "In the eleven years we've been doing open source, we have not, in my view, had one failure in applying open source solutions." Wow. These guys must be the best IT staff on the planet, if they haven't (in his view), "had a single failure in (applying) open source solutions".
Also, you're not going to find any intelligent IT person slamming Microsoft, specifically. The OS isn't important, anymore. Nobody who has two brain cells gives a shit about the OS. That's piddly stuff for large companies. It'd be more believable if he was talking about his database or CRM applications.
And, the piece-de-resistance: "It's been difficult to move off of Windows and Oracle and move onto Linux, but most applications have been migrated over to Linux-Apache-MySQL and PHP (LAMP)." This actually made me laugh out loud... replacing Oracle with MySQL.
C'mon guys, if you're going to go through all of the trouble to manufacture FUD, at least work on the story a bit more. You guys hit all of the major FUD sensors!
I don't respond to AC's.
Actually it's those representatives you're suggesting everyone write to who are the ones making non-CARB approved mods illegal. They're the ones writing the legislation.
If ARB operates more efficiently, surely they'll be able to put mods through the approval process faster?
-- Alastair
Aren't these the idiots that allowed MTBE (methyl t- butyl ether) to be used as an oxygenate. It was implemented at a huge cost that was .... drum roll please.... passed on the the consumers. This heralded in gas prices higher than anywhere in the country.
..... drum roll please ...... polluting water supplies and now it is no longer being used.
Oh and now we find that the low molecular weight ether is water soluble (known all along) and is
Why didn't these fools mandate that ethanol be used? Oh because it is biomass produced and a renewable resource. Well, we can't have people thinking they can grow gas for their cars when the asshats in charge are in the pocket of the petroleum industry.
I say tar & feather these fools and ride them outta town on a rail.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/mtbe/
Who will guard the guards?
This is such a frustrating topic for a person who works on old cars it's hard for me to even address it without going into seizures and throwing the keyboard against the wall.
There is a huge problem with your "I heart CARB" sentiment if you really do want cleaner air. Yeah, sure you can buy overpriced aftermarket stuff that is CARB approved. But what you can't do is adapt used modern cleaner technology onto an older car by upgrading to more efficient used technology. See, that "used" part is extremely important in the reality of car parts.
The problem isn't with people who are buying overpriced aftermarket stuff that gets the CARB approval. After all, people who can afford that crap probably have newer cars and then have a hobby car they hardly ever drive. They're not the polluters. The polluters are the folks driving old beaters on a day-today basis that can't afford that stuff. Those are the people that are shit out of luck. It is simply not the case that these people get rid of their cars becaue of these regulations. Au contraire, they are forced by the regulations to stick with the original outdated equipment if they want to have their cars running at a price they can afford. That economic reality that CARB glosses over is the real source of pollution.
If you were to allow that segment of the market to "upgrade" using used parts you would see genuine improvements in air quality. Far more efficient parts for older cars are available in spades at prices that make them extremely attractive to owners of older cars.
Take the example of an older car that uses a carburetor instead of EFI. In many cases there is no technical reason a mechanic could not upgrade that older car to EFI at a price even cheaper than rebuilding the carb by grabbing an EFI from a newer model out of a junkyard. The reason it can't be done is not technical, it is regulatory. Hence, carburetors are still being rebuilt by the tens of thousands. How does that help clean the air?