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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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.....
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
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Give me a break, why are you reading into this so much. If you believe that garbage you need a reality check.
The campaign manager found a website project manager to construct and maintain the site. The campaign manager wanted x, y, and z to work like so. The web manager took those specs and choose an operating system, probably the only their company uses most, if not exclusively, and went that way.
If even one of these 23 sites had its OS designated by someone other than the project manager, based on needs, I would be very surprised.
You do realize, this sort of detail is meaningless to pretty much everyone right?
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
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?
and John Kerry ($750m), Herb Kohl($243m), Jay Rockefeller($200m), Jane Harman($172m), Dianne Feinstein($42m), Edward Kennedy($19m), Jeff Bingaman, Tom Harkin, Mark Dayton, Jon Corzine. Most years the few top richest democrats in congress dwarf the holdings of most republicans. It's nice and all to vote for people who are for just us regular folks, but it's kind of hard to believe someone can relate to you when they are have 1000x more money. I think the idea that republicans are rich fat cats is a myth, or at least the fat cats are pretty evenly distributed on both sides.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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
Republicans are rich and Democrats are not (except Hilliary)
...
Except Obama... and Edwards... and Gore...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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
maybe on some other planet .... on this planet, at least in Western democracies, outside the US, the US Democrats tend to the right of the spectrum, the Republicans look like religious crazies starting wars all over to push their end-times goals
But Dude, like, don't you totally realize that, like, intelligent design can also, you know, mean, like, that an intelligent and benevolent being directed the course of evolution? Using that model, you could totally say that Linus is like that benevolent dude who guides the evolution...intelligently.
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.
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!
Politicians.... well yes, but not in the better sense of the word. 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. Ah, but I do miss the concept of noblesse oblige!
So, some people believe that everything Bush does is for an ulterior motive, and that by supporting "moderate" positions on the surface he is able to gain subtle advantages for the hard-line right-wing fascist agenda of his handlers. For example, the "no child left behind" program, which on the surface seems all well and good, has been hobbled and twisted up in its actual implementation. And as for Bush's stance on immigration, well that seems like an obvious way to drive down wages across the board and continue to prop up a privatized state.
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? That would put her a bit to the right in my book, but it's not clear from her page on the subject.
-- thinkyhead software and media
DIE IN A FIRE
Yes, it does. Evolution just means change over time. Linux changes over time. Intelligent design runs counter to Natural Selection as a mechanism for evolution, not evolution itself.
Jeremy
The sample size is, what, 8? Prove it's a correlation and not coincidence with that sample size.
Comment of the year
...fucking stupid premise. If you base your vote on this, stop voting from now on, please.
Do the candidates know what software their web servers run or even care?
Clones are people two.
Exactly which parts couldn't have arisen, of course, are subject to change as soon as the old examples get explained.
It's the 'There's a unicorn hiding behind that tree' method of science, forcing real sciences to drag everyone over and explain that, no, yet again, there's no unicorn there, whereas the IDers then spy another likely tree and start exclaiming how there's a unicorn behind that one.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"