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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.
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
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.
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.....
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?
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)
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
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
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
The lack of a sufficient population precludes a Student test; any sample would be meaningless.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
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,
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!
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.
You should check the news stories, because you've got the donation patterns backwards. The GOP gets smaller, but more, donations, and the Democrats get larger and fewer donations from Hollywood and George Soros types.
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
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.
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!
Dude, (or dudette), read this and weep:y cle=2008
0 00286&cycle=2008
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/donordems.asp?c
For the under $200 donations, here's the breakdown:
Dems: 34,705
Reps: 27,710
From the graphs it looks like some other candidates get a larger portion of http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/geog.asp?id=N00
So please, don't trot out the usual suspects (Hollywood and George Soros) before doing some research.
Newsfollow.com
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
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?
The whole reason the Student test was developed was to work with small samples. You know... beer taste testing where you can't have the same tester drink a hundred beers at once.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Link to article discussing the "soft-money" donations, and how the GOP is wiping the floor with the Dems.
Your OpenSecrets link is misleading and inaccurate, because politicians are not required to report the number of sub $200 donations. When you look at the $5 and $10 donations, etc, and do the math correctly, the GOP comes out way ahead of the Democrats right now.
Campaign Finance Reform helped the GOP, too. From that article: The Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance gives the Republicans, who raise far more in small donations, a big advantage in next year's elections for the White House and Congress.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
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.
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").
YOur base assumption is wrong. as of last month about 65% of hosts were running a non-microsoft OS. The proper ration should be 65/35.
Also the decision is usually not random but based on how the candidate can get the best deal. In most cases the only reason you would be using microsoft as the host on your website is if your website was being provided to you by a large corporation that has its own servers and uses microsoft; because the management is only familiar with microsoft project and wants to keep everything consistant.
IOU one (1) signature
The sample size is, what, 8? Prove it's a correlation and not coincidence with that sample size.
Comment of the year
I used R's chisq.test() function.
...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.
Do the candidates know what software their web servers run or even care?
Clones are people two.