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Will Linux Win the Next Presidential Election?
i_like_spam writes "Douglas Karr has posted an interesting breakdown, complete with bar charts, of the operating systems and server software used by the websites for 23 declared and undeclared presidential candidates. The breakdown shows that there is nearly an equal split between Linux and Windows servers among the whole candidate pool. More interesting, all of the Democratic candidates except for Hillary favor Linux or FreeBSD. 69% of the Republican candidates, in contrast, prefer Windows. Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? And, more importantly, will Linux win the next election?"
Makes you think, doesn't it?
And don't even get me started on Hillary, there's solid proof that her servers resolve to the IP address 66.66.66.66 and that good packets go in but only packets with the evil flag flipped to '1' come out.
I suppose that's politicians for you, though. 'Does not compute' with them, can't pretend we're living in a society where everyone feels equally represented without them.
My work here is dung.
Globaltics Global Political Discussion running on slashcode
- Uncle Willy
Lets me honest, it is VERY unlikely that these candidates even KNOW what operating system their web server is running. Furthermore, i would doubt that most of them know what an operating system, or a web server even are.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
What do they use? We have more than two parties you know.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Most, if not all, the candidates don't have a clue about what their website is running on, much less care about it. I really doubt that Hillary discussed Windows versus Linux versus BSD. Get real. It seems to me that most in Congress are technophobes, and have people do stuff for them.
Not as much the Party Ideals that choose the Operating System, But the more active supporters who choose the OS.
Democrats generally have a younger following then the republicans. More younger people know how to use Linux and know enough about it to use it properly. So Democrats will typically use Linux.
Republicans tend to have an older following and they will use what they know. If they don't know then they will use what most people seem to use. So that will be windows.
Also Open Source People tend to bereave in a more socialistic view that is more compatible with the democrats views so Linux and OSS People will be more likely to support Democrats.
Hillary Clinton is a more of a moderate candidate so bulk of the Linux supporters (who are typically more liberal) will not be as much encouraged to help her, while the general moderate population will be more willing to support her, so they will use what they know and the general population knows windows.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If Linux distro's were women... http://geeks-have-feelings-too.net/if-linux-distri butions-were-women/
21st-Century-Citizen
Sorry, I had to ask.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
This is one of the weaker examples of "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." that I've seen in a while...
Of all the things going on in the world and the country, if you actually care about this, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Seriously, people won't care about these crappy machines until either (1) some bat-shit-fucking insane neocon with a hard-on for starting WWIII is elected, or (2) Cowboy Neal is being sworn in.
Wait, one option already failed. Slashdotters, you know what you must do.
Does anyone actually believe the candidates care about what they're running? If you look, almost all of them are using a hosting company which, to me, indicates that they just don't care what OS they're running. Like every other client in the world, they're just worried about having a web page up and running and they don't care if it's a kitten in a box typing out the html every time a request comes in. They just care if it works. While interesting, I can't for the life of me understand why people would think it's a political issue what OS their sites are running on.
If Cthulhu were running what OS would he prefer?
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
These stories of a Finnish student designing Linux must be garbage. We all know that Linux is too complex to have evolved over time to its current state. It could only have been created by an Intelligent 'designer'
21st-Century-Citizen
John McCain (for example) took time out of his preparation for upcoming primaries to chair an internal commitee on whether or not to use Windows or Linux servers. Furthermore, he took into consideration the political, secretive, subliminal implications of this choice and made a strategic move that would appease constituents. Or maybe he just asked an old buddy to coordinate his web site.
Touting MyEclipse AJAX Tools
But it's the last thing I care about in this election. With the Iraqi war, the illusion of "terrorism", Big Government Republicans(let's get rid of state rights AND build new, extraneous federal agencies like TSA and DOHS). I could care less if they thought apple iie was the newest type of computer on the market and urging everyone to upgrade to that that is fine. OSS needs to win on a technically better standpoint not a political motivation. It also needs to win because of an Open Government standpoint too, not just because it is OSS.
Plan 9, Minuette, SkyOS
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Used rubber runs BSD.
Vote Giant douche.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I don't plan on doing a students t-test or anything, but these results seem pretty significant to me. You're right that the candidates probably don't know what operating system their web server is running, so instead it speaks more to the kind of people they hire to run their web servers. One can easily make generalizations about both groups, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Even the more moderate Republican candidates such as Ron Paul and Rudy Guliani are running Linux whereas most of the true right wingers are running windows and most of the true left wingers are running linux or BSD.
Perhaps this can be construed as a statement of American corporatism seeing as the fundamentals of a Republican viewpoint involve making sure there are plenty of jobs by making sure the corporations do well. This would mean that "buying American" is the way to go. The Democratic viewpoint however, encourages the little man to do well so saving money and being a savvy consumer on an individual level are preferred along with "giving the little guy a chance" so various flavors of linux and BSD come into play there.
Definitely an interesting find!
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
No and No.
If you honestly believe that a candidate's webserver reflects their political leanings, you're sadly delusional.
If you're planning your vote based on the candidates choice of webserver OS, then you're really missing the bigger issues.
There is not a single thing done on any of the candidate sites that are platform specific. And I doubt any of them developed their sites "in-house" (within the campaign staff). I would bet that every single one of them found a developer and/or hosting company to design and build their site. And they probably went with whatever that developer/hosting provider recommended for a hosting plan.
While looking at the differences makes for an interesting exercise in alleviating boredom, it says nothing about the overall race or candidate's positions and abilities.
And I say this as a web developer who works on both Windows and *NIX servers and usually recommends Apache on Linux or FreeBSD.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Linux is free, Windows costs money. Republicans are rich and Democrats are not (except Hilliary)
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
Interesting that in the short list you provided, you omitted the party that some people credit for causing Gore to lose the 2000 election. (I'm not making that claim, I'm just pointing out the claim.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Trendy, but not too trendy. Popular, but not too popular. Definitely superior, yet always a minority.
Macs!
Well, according to Netcraft, the libertarians, communists and independent parties's sites are all running Linux. The American Green party is running FreeBSD.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Pure randomness? I'm sure someone here will be willing to calculate the odds against that for you, if you like...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? "
Um, no. Candidate says "Gimme a website". Contractor says "ok". He may say things about the color he wants or which font to use, but he certainly is not interested in which OS is being used. He won't even know the difference between PHP and ASP.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
They are running tubes on the internets Al Gore invented. Duh!
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
I really don't give a damn what servers are driving their websites. I give a damn about what their policies would be, and what hopes, ideals and dreams they intend to realise.
As a non-American, I don't get to vote for one of these people next year (heck, for that matter, neither do disenfranchised Americans) but that doesn't mean that this election doesn't effect me. In many ways (the "War on Terror", climate change, etc), those of us outside the US are just as effected by White House policy as Americans themselves.
So, I implore those of you that can vote to a) do so; b) encourage everybody you know to do so; and c) vote for the candidate that will do the most to repair the damage done in the last six years by the current incumbent.
Please, the last anybody needs is another head-in-the-sand US administration. We're not exactly at the last chance saloon just yet but four more years of politics ad absurdum isn't going to help make things better.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Every sentence you type in Democratic Linux invokes an automatic grammar checker which injects the opposite point of view.
This is my sig.
...but I really don't think any of these candidates know very much about what an operating system actually is (and are only repeating what they're told to say).
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
There aren't any "other candidates" yet...because they are smart enough to not get into the race a year early! Given the "election fatigue" this is sure to cause, waiting until a "normal" time to declare candidacy and kick off their campaigns seems to make a lot of sense. The "two-party system" is to blame for this insanity. 21-month-long campaigns??? C'mon!
Constitutionally Correct
You thought yourself being witty and knocking Intelligent Design in your comment, but you really just did what most Intelligent Design opponents do and only look at the surface and don't dig any deeper. If we dig deeper into your comment we discover that Linux is in fact a product of intelligent design, or is this Linus Torvolds character I keep hearing about just a myth geeks made up to explain the natural phenomenon of electrons, if left alone, will eventually form into bits, and given enough time, will over millions and millions of years result in a very robust computer operating system. Has Linux adapted and changed over time? Yes Is it the product of "Evolution"? No Is it the product of Intelligent Design? Yes
"Will Linux Win the Next Presidential Election?"
I didn't know that OSs could be presidential candidates...
*of the people, for the people, yada yada.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies?
Most of these guys (and gals) know nothing of what kind of software their web server or such is running. They're just like most others who pay to have these kinds of things put together: they hire out another party to have them take care of the details. Or do you mean to tell me that people here really think that Obama is busy working on his HTML skills between campaign stops?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Man... I really hope not... there are far too many other important issues to deal with than what stupid OS is running on some webserver that the candidate doesn't even know about, much less understand.
You're only commenting on the Republican side. I was referring to the discrepancy between the Democrats (1 out of X) and the Republicans (5 out of 9). As I implied elsewhere, I'm sure a Student's t-test would show this to be quite statistically significant. (Unfortunately, I can't RTFA to figure out what "X" is, but I'm guessing it's also about 9.) Also, your implied assumption is a priori 50/50 odds, which seems like a hell of an assumption. (Comparing the two groups requires no such assumption.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If Ron Paul wins, then Linux will too.
telnet www.ronpaul2008.com 80
Trying 74.205.85.10...
Connected to www.ronpaul2008.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:17:44 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Connection closed by foreign host.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
The fact that slashdot seems to think this is newsworthy is absolutely absurd. As many others said the candidates probably don't know anything about what servers their respective campaigns are running. Furthermore, this looks like an attempt at political influence based on this 'information'. If as a voter you choose based on a small thing like server OS, you really don't deserve to vote IMO. Maybe instead we could see more useful information on the candidate's respective views on OSS policy and DRM issues. Or even privacy records? Try again,
Some people believe Bush is the moderate (supporting Kennedy with no child left behind, his stance on immigration) and think Hillary is far left (socialized medicine). Personally, I think they are both politicians.
Remember that this has been going on in the past several election cycles, remember in the last two we had the exact kind of story on Slashdot?
Generally, larger web development corporations will tend to develop with Windows. Smaller ones with Linux or open source alternatives. This is also mirrored in funding. Dems (especially this cycle) will tend to get lots of smaller donations, while Republicans will get larger and fewer donations. Check the news stories.
It only stands to reason when, say, the McCain (or Hillary) camp wants a new website, they'll turn to the establishment crowd that they are a part of and get a largish business to do the job. This largish business would more than likely tend to do jobs for corps who run windows through and through.
Smaller funded campaigns (Ron Paul, and initially Obama, and Dean who notably used a variant of drupal) would use open source solutions because of the younger college age tilt of the immediate people surrounding them.
So yes, it does have something to do with the candidates themselves, and almost perfectly mirrors what kind of people they hang around with -- and thus what their positions as candidates will be in relation to business and choice, even if it was the candidates proxies that made that choice for them.
Newsfollow.com
Which will uncap H-1B visas. News for Nerds, fluff that don't mean stuff.
It's not too late to repent, non-believer!
Behold! From whatwouldjesusdownload, the operating system of GOD!
No, Fred Thompson will win the next Presidential Election.
Suck it, Libs.
Actually, there is. It looks to basically be Ubuntu with some free Bible and other related software included. The link that the grandparent posted was a mock site.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
1) Linux can not contribute money for the candidates
2) If too many candidates will use Linux (in order to save money, and not from ideological reasons), M$ just will donate Windows to all candidates, in the name of "showcasing how corporations can support democracy".
At least they got this one right.
Karma: It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
Another GAY slashdot article that has NO relevance.
Let me direct you to the real kind of plug that this story is.
That's the point. It's *not* random.
It's no surprise that the republicans are heavy Windows,
they know where their bread is buttered.
What is interesting is that even some of the republicans
are *not* using Windows. Watch for that to change over
the next year, either by the candidate dropping out of
the race, or converting the website over to Windows.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Maybe the one that uses an iPhone will win. I hear it is wonderful.
I call BS. You're just reciting tired old class-warfare clichés. Democrats like to be called the champions of the "poor little common guy" but their personal fortunes are just as large as anyone else in the elite political class. If you honestly believe what you wrote, you've been suckered.
The only candidates you'll likely find who aren't personally wealthy are typically those that most think "don't stand a chance" because they are ideologues. They stand on principles and aren't out to win for their own personal agenda. For example, I don't expect that Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo are particularly well-to-do—House members usually aren't. Above average income certainly (as you'd expect a successful person to be), but not extremely so. (Senators and governors, on the other hand, are almost always millionaires.) They are running for president because they believe America is on a wrong course. People like GWB and Hillary run for president because it's the next step in their political careers. Why a majority of Americans (who, by definition, are average) continually elect people so unlike them to represent them is truly paradoxical, IMHO.
Constitutionally Correct
True, that. (Thanks for the figures. I didn't have them handy.) We don't have a Democratic and a Republican party, we have a single Politician Party. One monster, two heads, that call each other names in order to distract us.
Constitutionally Correct
I forgot the one I'm thinking of, however. Here's the gist: for sake of argument, let's assume that there are 9 Democratic candidates. If we now naively assume that the odds are 50/50 then the probability of having less than 2 Democrats using Windows is 9/2^9, or approximately 1.8%. If instead, we assume that the odds are 1/3 (the average over both groups), then the probability of less than 2 Democrats using Windows is q^9 + 8pq^8 (p=1/3, q=2/3), or about 13%. So, it doesn't pass the 5% threshold, but it does seem quite unlikely.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No we don't. We have Republicans and Democrats. Anyone from any other so called "party" is really just an enemy of one of the existing parties which would make them a member of the opposing party. Where the hell have you been? If you don't hate gay marriage, then you are a godless liberal Democrat. If you support the death penalty you are christian conservative Republican. All the people who don't agree with the whole party are flip-floppers or traitors to the other party.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
That last equation should read q^9 + 9pq^8, or about 14%.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So what, if the winning candidate runs Linux it doesn't matter if they pass laws that take more of our freedom, give more handouts to large corporations, or generally muddle in the lives of general people and pandering to the rich and famous?
Good thing they run linux or they'd be truly evil.
The Anti-Blog
Maybe Republicans use a more professional corporation for web work that recognizes that Windows is better than Linux for web development.
I mean, come on, its 2007 and Linux keeps falling farther and farther behind in developmental tools. Sure KDevelop and the like aren't far behind where Visual C++ is, but that's only because MS has made a FoxPro out of it. These days, the action is in C# and right now Linux simply does not have an environment that can even compare to Visual C#. It just doesn't.
So, yes, I love Linux, but its largely because the platform is wide open and I can contribute to it, but, I'm not stupid enough to pretend that it's still 1995 and Unix is flat out better than Windows. It isn't any more. In many conceivable ways, ease of development, management, programmability, Windows is easier to use than Linux is. Windows Server is expensive, but it is a darned good operating system.
Sure, go for Linux, and the ideology and the history, but Republicans will have none of that in something as a critical as a campaign, and they will go with Windows. If you would have taken this poll 10 years ago, sure, Republicans would have all be hosting on Suns, I'm sure.
This is my sig.
Don't tell me about the importance of elections; we've seen the results of uninformed and apathetic voters over the last 6 years. Even some of the most die-hard dittoheads are abandoning ship (you'll hear a lot more people calling themselves "Libertarian" rather than "Conservative" nowadays). But, you're telling me that you don't find it interesting that there's such a disparity in Linux preference and that it doesn't belong on Slashdot?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I doubt the Dem's even realize that they are hosting on Linux. From my experience the Linux hosting is usually just a little cheaper than Windows Hosting. Therefor I doubt that Hillary even knows that she is hosting on Linux and I doubt that her campaign workers even know it as well.
Wow, that's one of the best sigs I've seen in a while.
'will linux win presidential election?'
Only if that's what the voting machines run upon...
It's not what you Warg, it's how you Snarf
FYI, here's the breakdown:
Joe Biden (Democrat) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
Hillary Clinton (Democrat) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Paul Holcomb
Christopher Dodd (Democrat) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
John Edwards (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
Mike Gravel (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
Dennis Kucinich (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
Barack Obama (Democrat) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
Bill Richardson (Democrat) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
Wesley Clark (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
Al Gore (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Sam Brownback (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting, Inc.
Jim Gilmore (Republican) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
Rudy Giuliani (Republican) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
Mike Huckabee (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
Duncun Hunter (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
John McCain (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Ron Paul (Republican) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Mitt Romney (Republican) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Tom Tancredo (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
Fred Thompson (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
Tommy Thompson (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
Chuck Hagel (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
Newt Gingrich (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
DIE IN A FIRE
I'd like to thank everyone here at Slashdot for educating me on what the real issues in the upcoming election are. I used to think I knew what was really important in a candidate. I looked for integrity, relentless honesty, a good attitude, and someone who puts some thought into what they say and believe in. However, thanks to this excellent article, we now know what to really look for. In 2008, don't concern yourself with silly matters such as Social Security, or matters of privacy. Ask your candidate: what OS do you host your webservers on? And what OS do you run? Make sure they know where they stand on the important matters of life.
This has been a public service announcement.
Referring to my other calculations, one could argue that the chances of this happening by chance are about 1 in 7. So, yes, as you say, not statistically significant. What is interesting is that Hillary (arguably the most conservative Democrat) is the one Democratic Windows user, and two of the four Republican Linux users are Ron Paul and John McCain. So, I do not believe it is "pure randomness", but that hypothesis cannot be ruled out. (I.e., you're absolutely correct in every sense.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It'd be nice if you had an electoral system where they weren't inevitably going to be insignificant, but you do. First Past the Post collapses to the biggest two parties, leaving you with one dimensional politics.
Deleted
Shouldn't someone pose that to these potential candidates? "Hey, what OS does your webserver run on? Why did you choose that one?" The thing is we're in a technical age; it's about time that they made at least a nod to nerd-dom in the form of figuring out a cogent response. We want our candidates to be technically saavy, right? The answer is far less important than their ability to answer it - but we more or less assume the question is not one you'd seriously pose to a politician. Why is that?
[Ego]out
When I first clicked on your link, a big tan-ish square loaded toward the top with absolutely no content. At first, I thought they had detected that I was a heathen and were withholding content from the damned.
Then I turned off NoScript and saw that they were merely serving Christian Google ads... whew!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What's the name of the proper test for 2-group category data? I tried sifting through Wikipedia to find it, but it's been more than 15 years since I had a (proper) statistics class.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No, having diebold in your pocket will.
WTF is this trash... To normal people, the OS has jack-sht to do with anything. Get a reality check, people...
Vote Torvalds.
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
A troll he may be, but he does bring up a good point.
Scary.
"Well, according to Netcraft, the libertarians, communists and independent parties's sites are all running Linux. The American Green party is running FreeBSD."
So... Netcraft confirms American democracy* is dead?
*of the people, for the people, yada yada.
Well it doesn't take a Kreskin...
I doubt the candidates know what OS their campaing sites are hosted on. If they know, I wouldn't think it was a decision of choice, unless the person in charge of maintaining the site was concerned about that sort of thing. I think the guy who wrote this article is reading too much into it. It's most likely a coincidence and they're running the sites on whatever the hosting company uses by default.
Haven't Democratic campaigns been broken into enough? Republicans choose Windows because it is their turn to get pwned.
On geological time scales, it's always almost Friday.
I'm not sure that the suggestion that what server operating system you prefer is somehow indicative of one's political views is worthy of serious consideration. Both Windows and Linux/BSD are products of the free-market. They only differ in method of development and price.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Joe Biden (Democrat) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
Hillary Clinton (Democrat) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Paul Holcomb
Christopher Dodd (Democrat) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
John Edwards (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
Mike Gravel (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
Dennis Kucinich (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
Barack Obama (Democrat) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
Bill Richardson (Democrat) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
Wesley Clark (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
Al Gore (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Sam Brownback (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting, Inc.
Jim Gilmore (Republican) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
Rudy Giuliani (Republican) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
Mike Huckabee (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
Duncun Hunter (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
John McCain (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Ron Paul (Republican) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Mitt Romney (Republican) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Tom Tancredo (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
Fred Thompson (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
Tommy Thompson (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
Chuck Hagel (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
Newt Gingrich (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
... and I positively never agree to discuss the remote chance that I voted in the extreme negative for George W Bush in the last election.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Maybe. It just won't win the desktop...
Cause I want some, I'm running for president on the lottery platform.
If elected I will select a VP by lottery of those who are eligible (over 35 native born, non-felons) non-lawyers that have net paid taxes over the previous year (they're 'paying the cost to be the boss'. That lets out government teat suckers of all kinds and those who got earned income tax credits beyond the taxes they've paid), I will then resign and collect my presidential pension for life.
Give me my money. I want TV time on all the major networks tomorrow!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is not all that surprising. I mean Republicans typically like what appears to be tried and tested while the Democrats are normally more progressive. What is more to the point is that no one can argue that the Republicans are more entrenched with the incumbent "big business" in the software space. GNU+Linux is for the people by the people even to the point of civil disobedience and that not by chance is the Democratic party appeal. Equally unsurprising is that those Republicans that do use GNU+Linux are careful to use Ubuntu-Christian even though that maybe just a ploy to paint them selves in a certain light while not really believing in the Judao+Christian values. Yes it is interesting but only confirms my own views as Christian lover of Israel and user of a number of GNU+Linux distros.
Those that do not know, pay for it.
they would be a little too open to be elected. I mean how could an operating system with all of its code and data naked to the world tell every group what they want to hear. On, the other hand you could count on Linux to work well under fire and to require very infrequent vacations at Camp David. There's also the problem of fragmentation, which flavor of Linux would get nominated and who's to say they won't fork midterm? Forking is a tough one but it would be nice to be able to get updates on the fly...though sometimes the president might have to recompile ndiswrapper so that wireless card would work with the updated kernel. And copying, that could be a real challenge. I mean how is the US supposed to be superior when the president could be copied bit for bit to go and run other governments willy nilly? Then again, it might be nice if there weren't so much nation lock-in. Then we could all move to Russia like our grandfathers have undoubtedly suggested. I have to say, it's undecided if Linux would win though it is interesting to think about.
The choice of software only reflects what the politician wants to project, not what they will actually do. Previous actions are better guides than words.
When it comes to the tools that matters, GNU/Linux has already won. Check out the growing RNC email scandal - when it came to work that counted, GWB used GNU/Linux. What the White House uses for it's glad handle front page is meaningless when things are viewed from this perspective.
Don't think, however, that GWB has been good for software freedom. He's not only let M$ run rampant instead of enforcing the anti-trust trial, he's come to their defense in EU anti-trust cases. It's pathetic.
I'm not really sure if the Democrats will do any better. They are the party that crafted and passed the DMCA. Their use of free tools is as meaningless as the RNC's.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Good thing you aren't a Phd... er, wait...
1 in 7 is not statistically significant? Says who? Against which distribution? A rear-loaded F-distribution could easily have 1/7 be so far out there that it meets any given level of expected confidence...
And what if I think that 20% or 50% is significant? Not everyone runs their experiments at the book-generated, easily available 10%, 5%, 1%, etc. levels of statistical signficance. Maybe 15% or 20% will be ok for me.
You may want to look into Nonparametric statistics. Not everyone can take 30 samples and look at the chart on the inner cover of the STAT101 book for the results... (example : how much stress can a 10' gear costing $10,000 take before breaking? I doubt that they will give you 30 of them to break...)
Real men roll their distributions. The binomial theorem rulez.
But if that were true, why is there such a strong correlation between the parties and use of opensource servers?
Thanks for the laugh mate.
Just out of curiosity, what Independents, Libertarians, and Socialists have declared that they are candidates? I believe there are 18 total Republicans and Democrats that are officially declared as candidates right now, and the other few in the survey are probably people like Al Gore and Fred Thompson that are considered "strong possibilities" for declaring their candidacy sometime in the near future. I did cringe a bit when I came across "undeclared candidates" in the summary. Some people are saying that Michael Bloomberg left the Republican Party and became an Independent as a prelude to becoming a candidate, but he's denying it so far. There are one or two other Republicans that might run as Independents (Hagel, I think?), but otherwise the only actual candidates that I know of right now are either Republicans or Democrats.
I got the T shirt from Linux Journal - has a donkey, rebpulican, and penguin, with the penguin checked. On the back, it says "Vote Penguin Party. Linux Journal"
Cool shirt!
I have no idea how this was modded up and didn't bother to read the last half.
/etc files from the tape backup. Issues like this makes administrators prefer unix.
For those who read my comments and I am not a gnu zealot nor am I 100% pro linux but it has its uses as a server and IT professionals swear by unix. I like MS environments where its right for the job and nice as a clients.
But to say Linux is immature and years behind windows is flamebait to say the least. Still and I mean still Windows/IIS has not overtaken Unix! Now switching the tables how many years has the www been out? Apache or Jakarta is hear to stay for the vast majority of websites out of rackspace.
Sure linux does not have this wonderful ASP.net that can be learned in a "learn vb.net in 24 hours" book, though Mono is making progress. But Linux/Unix has:
1.)Stability
2.) Configurability
3.) Security
4.) Clusterability
5.) Lower TCO
Java Servlets can scale many times over asp.net if you ask any expert who has tried both. Also IIS before the latest version was very bad and was filled with security holes and was unstable.
Serves need to run with low maintance. Explain to me how to restore part of a Windows server installation without restoring the whole thing? You can't due to the windows registry. With unix you can just get some of your
So if you have money to burn and all your programmers are ms fanboys then go with iis/.net but its going to cost more in extra redundancy.
http://saveie6.com/
My boss is head of the IT department and pretty computer savy; Not uber-geek but he knows what Linux is and has tried Ubuntu for a desktop. His boss knows what machines cost since she approves budgets for various departments but I seriously doubt she has ever sat at a Linux console, she probably sees it as a server OS. Her boss, and the last in our chain, has probably heard of Linux and knows it has to do with computers, maybe even servers. The fact is that only my boss needs to basically understand why we need Linux in some places, Unix in others and Windows in the others. If he understands more, it isn't because he needs to in order to do his job well and the officers he answers to don't need to either. They need to understand people and listen to good advice. Our IT is run pretty well, not because people at the top understand the technology, but because they listen to good advice and hire good staff. I think the same is the most we can ask from our politicians. They're not going to be tech savy and the last thing I want is someone in office who thinks they are geek enough to decide the course. I want someone who knows how to hire and listen to good people, in particular people who understand detailed IT issues.
I suspect these results don't reflect politics of OS nearly as much as they reflect the type of people that the sides tend to employ. If you were to look at who is running most Republican sites, I suspect you'll find older people who have many years of experience in managing IT. They won't be experimenters, won't think of software as politically associated, and still think of Linux as a new thing that might get interesting some day. If you look in the Democratic camps, you'll probably find more students and people with strong ties between their software preferences and their belief systems. More than likely you can tell who is most influential with which age groups by what their IT people choose, but I doubt you'll find out anything about their personal views on software. Politicans are nearly always extroverts with a strong focus on relationships, the computer systems just tell you what kind of relationships they tend to achieve.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
... and it was good.
Site Operating System and Server by Candidate
* Joe Biden (Democrat) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
* Hillary Clinton (Democrat) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Paul Holcomb
* Christopher Dodd (Democrat) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
* John Edwards (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
* Mike Gravel (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
* Dennis Kucinich (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
* Barack Obama (Democrat) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
* Bill Richardson (Democrat) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
* Wesley Clark (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
* Al Gore (Democrat) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
* Sam Brownback (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting, Inc.
* Jim Gilmore (Republican) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
* Rudy Giuliani (Republican) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
* Mike Huckabee (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
* Duncun Hunter (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
* John McCain (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
* Ron Paul (Republican) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
* Mitt Romney (Republican) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
* Tom Tancredo (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
* Fred Thompson (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
* Tommy Thompson (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
* Chuck Hagel (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
* Newt Gingrich (Republican) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
I remember a story here a few months ago where in the UK the labor party supporters(liberal) ran macosx in public forums. The tories and their supporters(conservative) ran ubuntu and suse linux more often while windows ran equally for the rest of the users on both sides.
Conservatives in the US like corporate things that cost more money and do not care about about gnu/free software. Republicans love corporations as they are the answer to big government and are a driving force to eliminating unemployment by creating jobs.
As a note the moderate republicans and independent minded ron paul run linux. THe far right run windows.
Liberals on the other hand feel corporate entities are only after the $$$ and government needs to step in to make things fair. I suppose they would be less attracted to run Windows and would look more into cost rather than shiny brochures.
For the background I am a democrat but have been shifting to the right alot recently since Ford's death and admiring Reagan who I once hated. I have also become more pro MS over the years as well as I just care for the right tool of the job and do not care about ideological battles like I once did. I wonder if its related to my views shifting to a more conservative background?
But more than likely campaign donors give away platforms to both supporters as a thank you. They use what they get but I am sure there are geeks for every candidate who go over the fine details.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm no expert in these matters, but I would have thought that any relationship between political views and webserver infrastructure would be a spurious correlation.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Would Al Gore know if he ran it? Actually, did he know when he ran for president?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Without the all the numbers, I can't run the test, but from what I've seen, I wouldn't be surprised either way if there is or isn't a "significant" relation. I think it's going to be one the edge.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a relation due to where the campaigns get their staffers from. The Republicans are likely to have business people as staffers, while the Democrats are more likely to have people who've been community organizers. But I don't think that any such effect will be strong enough to show up decisively in this sample.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
I was surprised that Obama and Clinton had actually started putting videos on youtube [...]
I'm not. This is because 90+% of all staffers in most political campaigns are either current students or recent college graduates. When I volunteered in the 2006 election for a gubernatorial candidate that had been in office in the legislature for 20 years, we had a pretty solid YouTube presence. This is because every single staffer was internet savvy. I was the only volunteer for the campaign that didn't have a Facebook or Myspace account as far as I'm aware.
Social networking was primarily tapped by Democrats in 2004 thanks to the Dean campaign, but 2006 and on has shown that both sides are about equally savvy in this respect.
As long as politicians are mired in old thinking and do not understand current technology we will continue to have problems with the way technology is regulated and how it is being incentivised (or not).
Side note: This will ALWAYS be a problem because politicians don't really start getting into senior positions to affect things until they're in their 40's or later. Most of the cutting edge of technology is driven by people in their 20's. This generation gap does not look like it's going to change any time in the future.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If I had mod points, you would have earned them. I enjoy Linux as much as the next /.er, but people are making a dangerous assumption that using Windows means you are automatically ignorant of an alternative. Perhaps a candidate who happens to be using Windows is perfectly aware of open source alternatives, but they make a conscious decision to buy Microsoft? Probably not, but the fact remains that you don't know and therefore cannot assume. I'm glad there is a viable, solid alternative and people are using it. That's what I love about Linux. It means competition, and competition can only benefit the consumer in the end.
Next we're gonna hear, "Republican presidential candidates prefer Hanes briefs, while democratic candidates prefer Fruit Of The Loom boxers, except Hilary who reportedly wears a black PVC bondage body stocking."
-- QED
A few weeks ago, I started to see how well candidates' sites held up under the W3C Validator, but I got bored quickly. I'm hoping someone else has already checked this out.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
You have to remember that most people really don't care what OS they use. I made a "Vista Phone Home" joke to one of my friends and a relative angrily denied that Microsoft products do any such thing. I frankly do believe this results in some underreporting of Solaris and the BSDs because (and this is being written on a Gentoo machine) the flavor of the month is Linux. While I do know some genuine Lefties who use Linux, I also know a lot of people with whose politics I couldn't agree less. I've never thought of too many people in the middle who use it, so these statistics are news ("If liberals are using it I'm not a progressive?"). Most likely your "mainstream liberals" are using LAMP because it was suggested to their providers, not because they are prepared to support us. As Massachusetts State Senator Mark Pacheco will attest M$ can be very generous.
Politics used to be about advocacy and effective expression. Now it means - and I guess you mean - packaging up your corporate supporters' agendas into something people can swallow without choking.
Not really. Patronage and looking after the needs of the elites has been a part of our nation since before its founding. I recommend reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." It's a bit cynical and has some openly admitted bias to it, but the events it chooses to highlight are fascinating for understanding many of the social and cultural dynamics of US history that most history books either gloss over or entirely omit such as slave rebellions, populist riots against the rich, deliberate attempts to foster a racial divide between slaves and indentured servants, and the financial interests of colonial leaders in independence after the French and Indian War.
The golden age when politicians were pure and acted only voted based on philosophical principle is a myth.
And I don't know much about Hillary, but is it "socialized medicine" she wants, or is she like most politicos completely ignoring the "single-payer" option (which when most common people understand it, seems to be what they'd most want) in favor of other models that favor private insurance companies?
Geez. If you want to know that, just go back to when she was driving the effort to make a government healthcare system when her husband was president. The bill was exactly the sort of mixed-model monstrosity that you're talking about. It would've been huge, complex, and would've likely saved taxpayers very little in administrative overhead costs.
The newly elected Republican congress eviscerated it. The Clinton's made the mistake of proposing a compromise bill (between single-provider social medicine and fully private systems) in a climate when compromise was to be wrung out through hard battle. In other words, she set the goal posts too far to the right, and the Republicans had a field day portraying it as a hard left measure, setting back healthcare reform for over a decade.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's what I was thinking of, although I think it was just called a "Fisher's test" back when I (sort of) learned it. Interestingly enough, when I assume there are 9 Democrats (as I did in my other calculation), I get p=1/104, or about 1%. (For the first "box" I get 9/1768, and for the second "box" (there are only two), I get 1/221, and 9/1768+1/221=1/104. So, either my original assumptions (which also requires an a priori assumption that this does not) were way off, or my calculations here are messed up.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You are using a known copy-protection-bypasser (NoScript). Thus, you are a heathen and a pirate, and likely damned!
All I was saying was that it seemed unlikely that it was random. Once you've ruled out random, you're free to explore other hypotheses. You'll note there are several already floating out there, but I'll choose to remain agnostic as to what the "real" reason(s) are.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Where's the +5, good troll button?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Yes, the next election will be won by the machines, just like the previous one. But those machines don't run Linux.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
But not because the candidates themselves had anything to do with choice of OS. Rather, most campaign operations themselves run on the cheap, cheap, cheap. The large numbers campaigns spend that we hear about on the news go to TV and paying the campaign managers and Beltway consultants (often that's a two-fer: the campaign managers draw a salary and then they have a political consultancy they 'hire' to produce the TV commercials. They win both ways.).
So for everything else, including the OS for the campaign, it's the cheapest option. For Democrats, who mostly run at a fundraising disadvantage, OSS is a perfect answer to an increasingly critical campaign component. For Republicans, however, and Republican Lites like Hillary, they're much likelier to have campaign managers with corporate buddies who offer to sell them a Windows license. It's like Steve Forbes spending thousands of dollars to install french doors on his campaign tent in Iowa--completely unnecessary but a corporate buddy thought it would be cool and they had money to burn.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Be cheap
They know money should goto advertising for themselves, everything else is low priority--that's what wins elections! NOT OSes.
Now what's interesting here is that Linux offers lower TCO over the short term (i.e. most of the stuff is free and a political candidate's requirements are pretty straight forward: Ads!). So those candidates that are 1. hiring smart people to keep costs down (i.e. use linux) and 2. are aware of their infrastructure (open source community, in touch with the 'future' vs. just listening to the best marketing speech and a good dinner) says a lot about how a candidate will run this country.
Therefore, my vote goes to the linux candidate.
...fucking stupid premise. If you base your vote on this, stop voting from now on, please.
I don't think it's a political thing. It's more likely that they hire their PR/marketing firm and they choose where to host the site.
If you follow the economic news, you'll see the administration and a host of big corporations are really trying to push something like a major "IP" economy, where companies just create a boatload of dubious "IP", then license it around the planet, and the rest of the planet will somehow magically continue to do the heavy liftng forever and ever and a day and keep trading us valuable tangibles for pieces of paper.. They have sold off and/or are conceding manufacturing, we don't really have any major raw resources to export, so that leaves entertainments/software/some ag although that is dropping/ and for tangibles, military weapons. "IP" is their economic answer, that and a lot of pretty strange paper financial "products" that don't do much other than rearrange the wall street casino poker chips.
So it just follows that the R party heavyweights support the alleged "more valuable" closed source type software "intellectual property". It fits their current business meme better. The D party heavyweights will keep giving hollywood and the music industry what they want as well, but aren't as concerned with expensive closed source software, so you'll see them using the cheaper and better and freer in cost open source solutions, but still keep supporting draconian DRM anti replicator technology for the most part.
It sort of makes more sense that way I think, why this discrepancy with the server software. I certainly don't think it is random coincidence.
I used to run a small state campaign website for Wesley Clark back in '03. Didn't go anywhere, but it was a good experience, and it introduced me into the world of political software.
The Republicans have held a technology advantage over the Democrats for several election cycles. Mostly in the way of mapping software and databases. If you saw the Gerrymandered redistricting in Texas, it was obvious that map came from a GIS system loaded up with demographics data. No human would have come up with something so bizarrely complicated. This is in part due to monetary advantage. The GOP had a supreme fundraising advantage, and as such funnelled a lot of it back into their friends by way of hiring contractors to build things. Thus, more of their software is composed of enterprise development tools such as Java or ASP.NET.
On the Democratic side, it was mostly volunteer work that introduced technology to the campaigns. Initially the old organizers were leary of technology, preferring their old lists and such that had worked well for them in the 1960s and 1970s. Brute force and constant nagging pushed them into the present time.
Things are changing slightly, but there is still a different dynamic. I think the Republicans are better with data-mining. The Democrats on the other hand are better with social networking. That's in part representative of the way the parties differ... Democrats are more about the conversation, Republicans are more about bottom line. But it may also be due to when the technology arrived in Internet time.
Republicans have fantastic email lists, and early blogs where opinions are published(instapundit, powerline, etc). But they don't have a feedback loop. Most Republican blogs don't allow for comments, if they do they are roundly ignored(redstate). This comes from their very top-down approach from the 1980s and 1990s. Radio, magazines, newspapers just turned into websites and email lists where they could tell their supporters what to do to help.
The Democratic organization is the other way. It's much more about blogs, community comments, etc.(mydd, dailykos, talkingpointsmemo) The supporters tell the politicians to do this or fuck off, etc. But these types of internet things weren't available until relatively recently. So maybe there is a different question. Did the Democrats technology come because it was developed after 2000? Or are the Democrats dominant today because finally the internet had enabled the style of conversation their supporters liked? I think it's a bit of both. It was the internet blogs and communities who really railed against the Iraq policy from the start. It wasn't a question of Iraq going bad and being in the right place, this policy was profoundly flawed from the start. But if not for that internet conversation about how bad this policy was, the newspapers and mainstream media would have continued their lovefest and we wouldn't be having this current debate about where should America really stand on this issue of foolish intervention.
But as to whether linux or microsoft makes a difference. Nope. The wingnuttiest wingnuts I know are solid diehard Linux fans. Hell I know one guy who is a firm member of the 26% club who loves Apple Macintosh and Linux.
And most of my coworkers in the Microsoft space, support Obama or Clinton, etc.
Do the candidates know what software their web servers run or even care?
Clones are people two.
You heard it here first!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I truly despise it when Microsoft FUD articles (or the uniformed public, or Microsoft zombies) describe Windows as the 'established, tested, reliable server OS'. Windows was clearly a joke of a server up until Windows 2000, and debatably a joke still today.
choosing a candidate on OS usage is as good if not better that listening to what they say !
The .9% value you arrived at agrees very closely with the 1/104 value that I arrived at by applying Fisher's Exact Test. Since I also derived a totally different value (14%) using a self-invented naive method, I'm inclined to believe that my math in doing the Fisher's Exact Test was not wrong, but that my self-invented naive method was either too naive or suffered from a mathematical mistake itself.
Ben Hocking
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Actually, I think that this clearly shows that Republicans are idiots.
I'm sure american Linux geeks are already practicing scream these slogans while coding... "Vote for Tux!" "Tux for president!"
You really think the candidates even know the difference between Linux or (ok, maybe) Microsoft is? Besides how much money they get from them?
I doubt even their political wranglers even know. They hire somebody, say "give a website", and there ends any political involvement.
Yeah, Hilary is all down into the Linux tree debugging code. That's less likely then her debugging Bill.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
A reason to not like Hillary Clinton
I think the internet, far from opening minds up, has driven everyone into their own little mental camps of religious orthodoxy, where people throw out claims without actually looking at things. I used to do this myself, when I was younger now. Now I am old and don't give a shit about some side or another winning. I just want to make some money and pay off all my massive credit card bills. Apple vs Atari, DOS vs CPM, Amiga vs PC, OS/2 vs Windows, BeOS vs Everybody... I've been a zealot for all of them...
As it is, Windows Server has quite a few strengths.
a) Good uptime. I use Windows Server at work and get year long uptimes.
b) Easy to add, remove, users and manage groups.
c) Good support for wireless networking.
d) Good API for graphics and file access.
e) Consistent APIs for sound and printing.
I'm not convinced that Linux wins all the time in security or in stability, in this day and age. Sure, in the days of Windows NT, absolutely, but since Windows 2000 the gap has narrowed significantly and I would not be at all surprised if, depending on the application, Windows Server can be more stable than Linux. I think to continue to say Linux is not as stable ignores that Windows has moved rather rapidly on its own, even though the gaps between major releases are long. Similarly, I would dispute the lower TCO as well. Both systems are complicated, and the biggest factor in TCO right now is going to be the level of training on both.
That's not to say that Linux doesn't have its strengths. Out of the box, C++ on 64 bit Linux is infinately better than C++ on 64 bit Windows. Visual Studio 2005 for C++ on 64 bits feels like crap, whereas KDevelop feels solid if a bit feature short - the intellisense is not particularly good, and the debugger does a horrible job with showing registers if you decide to switch to assembly view or step into assembly. However, Linux does tell time accurately, taking into good account the historical nature of time zones, whereas Windows makes no effort to do this at all. So, mktime(), or even its API underpinning LocalTimeToSystemTimeTZ (or whatever it is) on Windows will be wrong for a historical time, and on Linux it won't.
Do I want Linux to "win"? A part of me does, yes, as I'm investing more and more into learning it, and I've got three titles to be released over the next few months and a pretty cool idea for a forth. However, I'm not so silly as to buy into a religion that Linux is automatically better than Windows, as, despite all the hype to the contrary, at key times Microsoft did face some stiff competition and actually churned out a better product than its competitor. Access was light years ahead of dBase, Visual Studio 4 killed Borland C++, Windows 95 was, truthfully, a better OS in a lot of ways than OS/2 (and that REALLY pissed me off, because I really did like Warp, but 95 had a better use of threads in its desktop process than OS/2 did, and OS/2 had its share of 16 bit code in its guts too). And yes, Netscape 3 and 4 were nowhere near as good as IE 4.0 was. People didn't bail on IE because it was bundled - they bundled because it had a fully programmable DOM and Netscape was only partially so... InnerHtml = trump card for MS back in the day.
It's easy to think that MS is terrible because, well, so many people that use MS products aren't that well trained in formal computer science. If I had a nickel for every time I heard a VB fan boy say "geez, MS is doing all of this hard stuff for me", after having had the "hard stuff" back in college in the 1980s, I would be pretty darned rich myself. But the fact of the matter is, you need to separate Windows from the vast majority of the people that use it, and if you do that, you'll find that there are some parts of it that are surprisingly elegant, well thought out, and reliable. More often than not, its the people using Windows that make it unreliable and retarded, and not the people that wrote it.
This is my sig.
My favorite bit on the site was the free tool bar that reads "What would Jesus download?"
Sorry, no matter what they run on their servers, Linux does not win or benefit in any way, shape or form.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
More interesting, all of the Democratic candidates except for Hillary favor Linux or FreeBSD. 69% of the Republican candidates, in contrast, prefer Windows
I think more likely somebody who works for somebody else who works for somebody else who works for an adviser of the candidate prefers the O/S.
Metaphorically speaking, Clinton, being the unabashed socialist, should be using Linux/Apache. While Romney, being the successful entrepreneur, should be using M$. In both cases, we see the opposite. Entertaining, but sorely lacking some serious objectivity.
Can Linux run the US?
Politics wouldn't tell the difference between a computer and a watermelon, but if they make them win votes, they'll attempt to support them.
So you have the republicans. They are partly funded by Microsoft, and massive, often evil American corporations are their thing (in fact, republicans are pretty much an association of people from these corporations). They want to favour their ugly corporations, so they choose Microsoft, save for a few ones who try to sway democratic votes by pretending to support Linux (yet they will still favour Microsoft and everything huge, ugly and American if they win). That's, of course, because they haven't heard anything about Richard Stallman and most important Linux people's religious beliefs.
Then you have the democrats. Again they don't know what is this "Lunix" thing but they believe it's about penguins and buttons. Since it's what the "cool" people "do" (somehow), and it's the opposite to what republicans support, they support Linux. That's until they enter the government and discover they need to support big, fat, ugly American corporations to stay in power.
I suppose there must be one or two democrats who truly support Linux and know a thing or two (at least as users), but I think they'll be a minority.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
Same goddamn post every fucking election cycle. Let's skip to the chase: THE POLITICIANS DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WHAT OS THEIR CAMPAIGN RUNS. They're too busy stealing your money to buy votes with. They contract out or hire people who take care of all this shit for them. If you think you can read something into a politician by the OS their website is running on you FAIL and need to get back to your mom's basement and play WOW.
You're doing it wrong--http://youredoingitwrong.mee.nu
I think we should avoid the Linux competition angle for a little while. Its showing at the Indy 500 was not exactly awe-inspiring...
Don't get started mixing politicians with technology. The many users of the dump-truck tubes beg of you.
Here's an idea: Ask the candidates what a microkernel is and how it's different from a monolithic kernel, or a hybrid kernel for that matter.
All the people who don't agree with the whole party are flip-floppers or traitors to the other party.
Or John McCain.
Btw, now that one can RTFA (no fault of yours if you didn't read it before), it turns out that there are 4 Republican campaigns running on Linux and 9 running on Windows. As for the Democrats, there are 7* runing on Linux, 1 running on Windows, and 2 running on BSD. That makes this even less likely to be due soley to random chance. (As you'll see elsewhere, under the old assumptions it was already slightly less than 1% due to pure chance.)
This is not to imply some big Windows/Linux controversy. All I am arguing is that it is not purely random. There are lots of possibily non-sinister, non-controversial explanations for how this could come to be, many of which have been discussed elsewhere.
*This includes Al Gore, for some odd reason. In fact, looking at the entire list, there are probably other dubious inclusion. If you want to argue that this is non-meaningful, your best recourse is to argue for cherry-picking the data. As I have no way of knowing how the data were picked, I can't argue effectively against that. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
A: Well it is really neither. Ubuntu Christian Edition is based directly from the standard Ubuntu distribution and contains extra Christian software as well as a few additional tools to make the transition to Ubuntu easier for a Linux newcomer. The graphical changes are minor and are only intended to tailor the project to Christians. Does that mean they get rid of the nekkid people wallpapers?
Both Windows and Linux/BSD are products of the free-market.
Not true.
Government granted monopolies are inconsistent with a free market.
So, BSD is, Linux is kind of sort of but not really and Windows isn't at all.
Wikipedia is your friend. I think many of those listed here are those in the "have declared intent, but not officially 'declared' as in having filed the paperwork" stage. Personally I think it's foolish to "officially" start a campaign two years in advance. Lay some groundwork, feel things out, make connections - sure, but that's different.
Constitutionally Correct
I wish I could find the text of what Pinocchio said in Shrek 3. You could spend hours trying to build a truth table out of it to determine if he was lying or not.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling