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Windows in Brazil Costs 20% of Per Capita Business Income
mjasay writes "Ever wonder why open source is so popular in Brazil and other BRIC nations? As one study suggests, one big reason may well be Microsoft's punitive pricing, which exceeds 20 percent of Gross National Income for businesses in Brazil (and 7.8 percent of consumer GNI). This leads to a second, related reason: At those prices, there's little hope that Brazil can build a home-grown software economy on the foundation of proprietary software. This factor is exacerbated by Brazil's widespread disdain for the United States, which also tends to favor software that is not perceived as American. Of late the free and open-source Brazilian dream may be fading a little but its importance to the long-term growth prospects of the Brazilian economy shouldn't be understated."
Duties on imports may have something to do with the 20%. Right as Intel started putting manuals online, I was working on that project, and Brazil was high on the list of downloaders. We tracked them to a technical university, did some emailing, and found that the duty on a printed manual nearly tripled the cost of the manual (in USD).
Duarte's blog post is interesting and cites some statistics, but calling it a "study" is a bit rich.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The original article does NOT claim that Brazil pays 20.1% of its income to Microsoft, it only states that the âoeCost of Business Licenses as % of GNI per capitaâoe is 20.1%. Only a complete moron would read that as 20.1% of Brazilâ(TM)s income going to Microsoft.
Furthermore, the OP claims that the linked article is a study; it is NOT a study, it is a blog post. It has not been fact-checked or reviewed by editors or peers, and could be a complete load of BS.
Free software is a better deal regardless of Microsoft's perception and that perception is slipping everywhere. Microsoft's loss of face in the US is well documented and has more to do with Vista annoyances and "Works for Sure" DRM betrayal than it does with price. Free software, of course, comes with no such annoyances and consistently outperforms Windows on most hardware. People might be fooled into thinking Microsoft is less evil but will still know that free software is nothing but good.
You are right, but it's tough for many of us from the US to remember that. We've become so used to using American to refer to the USA that when we are in a place that uses the term properly it gives us trouble.
I was in Mexico recently and even though I consciously tried to avoid saying 'America' or 'American' in reference to the US, I still slipped up quite a bit. I think a lot of people here are not even aware of the distinction.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Nothing in the article states anything like what the headline of the post does. That was just plain irresponsible sensationalism.
I imagine Microsoft charges about the same and Brazilâ(TM)s brutal tax burden makes up the rest (the taxes are built into the price). So, the author acknowledges that the Brazilian government is probably the reason behind the pricing. But why let facts get in way? I mean, Microsoft is bad, so let's blame them!
It's not just Brazil. Look at any startup in the US. Flickr, Google etc etc, all used open source to get their businesses off the ground!
It has graphs and screenshots! It *is* a study!
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
It's nice how the post of the article fails to mention where most of the charge comes from, isn't it?
"one big reason may well be Microsoft's punitive pricing, which exceeds 20 percent of Gross National Income for businesses in Brazil "
That's not Microsoft's pricing. Microsoft's is about a third of that. It's a troll article.
Backwards place to live? You get that from experience? I'd live in any brazilian coastal city over any US coastal city. Warm climate, nice girls, drinking caipirinhas all the time, hapy music, happy people.
Like it or not, the English name for inhabitants of the U.S.A ane the adjective refering to them is "American". It is NOT "USAian". It is not "United Statesian". It is instead "American". That this adjective also refers to inhabitants of the North and South American continents is unfortunate, but does not change the fact. The inhabitants of Brazil have their own unique name, which in English is "Brazilian". Language is an emergent order and you do not have the power to change it just because you're pissed.
If you really want to see some pissed off people, talk to those Greeks living on the Island of Lesbos. Their proper name is "Lesbian".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Bad accounting. Not all of the 2500 USD leaves the country, there are taxes as another poster pointed out, as well as shipping and refining costs.
For a computer, factor in that the electronics will usually come in from Taiwan or China and that much of the coding is done in India and other places.
So really, if pushed, I couldn't make any sort of analysis except to say it is complicated.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The point which the author intended is valid, i.e., that commercial software licenses are much more expensive compared to local income levels in developing countries than in the USA. It's just unfortunately that the title is a bit misleading, deflecting the discussion. As a software publisher who has distributed my software in Brazil (in Portugese) in shareware and free-trial form, I can tell you that registration levels from Brazil are equal to those of the United States or Europe. I feel that's because my software is reasonably priced there for local income levels (about 40% less in local currency than it sells for in the USA). I would also like to add, as a frequent visitor to Brazil with many friends and family members there, I don't agree that there's any anti-U.S. attitude about software.
The Brazilian gov't puts heavy taxes on any technologies that are imported. Their whole idea is to be so punative that companies that manufacture in Brazil won't have to compete vs. the outside world. The Wii costs over $1000 in Brazil and the Playstation 3 costs $1800. (These are 2007 prices, I'm not sure what's current) The games cost $300-$400 reais, which is probably about $200 US Dollars. It's not just a Microsoft issue.
Think about it, would you pay 2500 to 5000 bucks for your OS?, or would you want something in the realm of what you can pay for it, Open source is becoming an avalanche in poor countries just because its free, and its current ( up to date), 3.1416racy is rampant in poor countries because people can pay 5 to 15 bucks for the latest M$xp, and they can pay 3 bucks for a 3.1416rated game,but they can not pay the salary of a whole year for brutally expensive software according to their economy, when somebody can get an OS that does what they need, for free ( Open source/Linux), they spread the word AND the CD to all their social group, creating a geometrical distribution into their circles of buddies, I have several friends in South America, and none of them have an original disk of anything, they used the underground market to get what they needed, for the price they were able to pay. The day that M$/proprietary software matches the price of their products to the economic environment in which they want to sell ( Marking it geographically) they will get a hold of the market, in the mean time, people will want the lowest cost for the maximum benefit.
Those things are not mutually exclusive.
Certainly nobody in Brazil would find the statement that MS is an American company to be ambiguous, or find anything wrong with the statement that MS is perceived (by some) as less attractive than a domestic solution in part because it is American.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
One Pew Global Attitudes survey, indicating that 51% of Brazilians surveyed have an unfavorable view of the US, hardly points to "widespread disdain" for the United States in Brazil. In fact, most Brazilians find many aspects of the US very favorable, and worthy of admiration. Unfortunately, all of that tends to be lost next to the overwhelming disapproval of American foreign policy (an attitude shared by even greater percentages of Americans). Certainly, though, there is no widespread disdain for the US IT industry, which is admired and viewed correctly as world-class.
Here in Venezuela the government has made free software a priority, where almost all ministries and public internet cafes run Ubuntu, in the company I used to work with was forced to provide Linux solutions but they themselves were closed source, even worse they wanted me to take code from a GPL and slap it as their own. Suffice to say I am not working there anymore.
That said there is hope in social comptrollers, the LUGs are checking the ministries for fake open source solutions, and reporting them.
I live in Brazil. The anti-american wave has largely passed away: you don't find love for US here, but neither hate.
As for the pricing scheme, it is really outrageous for the average income here, but I don't think that it has much to do with the linux adoption here. It's very rare to see someone that does care about copyright here. Even if Microsoft sold at reasonable prices (yes, it is the government's fault), just the fact we need to register, call for license keys and all that bullshit makes us just pirate the damn thing. And if it's hard to pirate (wga and all), we go away. And there's linux. It's free and it doesn't hassle us. Oh, it's open source and all? Cute. But that's not the main point.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people that care a lot about FOSS philosophy (myself included) but for the masses, the "software that don't get in my way" is more important.
entropy happens
Was anyone in Mexico remotely confused when you referred to America or yourself as being American? This is one of those things that only certain European and American (US) linguistic pedants get upset about, as a way to feel intellectually superior.
I've spent years in Central and South America, as well as every other continent on Earth, and I've yet to meet anyone who didn't (at least occasionally) use the term "American" to refer to someone from the US, or thought that using "America" to the US in particular was in any way ambiguous.
When people refer to a particular continent, they say something more specific like "North America", and if they mean the entire entity, they say "the Americas". While "America" can certainly mean any part of those continents, there's no reason to use the word that way, as there are more specific but equally accurate and less ambiguous terms for anything but references to the US.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If their pricing were more in line with something like the Economist's Big Mac Index, they will go a long way to cutting software piracy rates in the third world.
Who knows, maybe I don't hang with the US haters, but I travel to Brazil very often and the Brazilians definitely do not have a widespread disdain for the US. They are probably one of the most friendly countries towards us in the region, outside of Colombia, of course, which is definitely our closest ally in the region.
The only difference between the Brazilian coast and the US coast is you can get killed over less money in Brazil. They have problems, just like every other country on earth.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The common view of this matter in Brazil and Portugal is: the denonym from one from the United States of America is indeed "americano" (denonyms are lowercase in the Portuguese language). However, "America" refers to the whole continent, not just a country.
Spanish-speakers, on the other hand, tend to be a bit touchy about that denonym, according to Wikipedia
Circumcision is child abuse.
Open source is going well in Brazil because the government is really involved in substituting proprietary software for open source. It's happening wildly in the public sector. I was astonished when my girlfriend (which is doing civil service exams) told me that in her last exam there were questions regarding OpenOffice, instead of Microsoft Office, which was the norm a few years ago.
Being a country with a past (or present) of government corruption, I really don't understand why Microsoft's bribes don't work here (but work elsewhere).
You got me! I'll be going down to McMurdo to work soon, it's my last continent. I've only been to the North Pole so far, I figure I have to finish the collection.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Don't forget to pack your fur-lined jockstrap. We wouldn't want you to turn into a Unix eunuch, now would we?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I remember hearing a factoid last year that said out of all US states, only Washington runs a trade *surplus* with China. It's probably true on the whole and not just with China, but this article was specifically talking about the President of China visiting the state. There's basically two big reasons for that trade surplus--both Microsoft and Boeing make most of their products here. People complain that we don't make anything in America anymore and don't export anything, but software is actually still one of the biggies.
The FSFLA, the South American sister organization of the FSF, is trying to get the license altered, but comments like those of Omar Kaminski, one of the drafters of the license, that the "GPL is incompatible with Brazilian legislation," and that "perhaps free software in Brazil is moving in a different direction than in the USA" do little to reduce the concerns of FOSS advocates.
That is an interesting issue - we assume the GPL is enforceable but much of that seems to be based on US copyright laws and various international agreements. It would be interesting to see if the GPL really would hold up in the face of conflicting national laws.
A country could pass legislation allowing companies to keep self-developed code proprietary even if it uses GPL code in a product. Protecting one's local companies and developing industries would be a higher priority than keeping the spirit of FOSS.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you are using the English language, American refers to people from the USA. If you want to refer to a continent, you don't say "America". There is no American continent. There is certainly a North America and a South America, but that is it. So, if a Brazilian wants to refer to themselves as a member of the South American content, in English, they say that they are South American. Canadians say North American. If you want to refer to both continents together, they are "the Americas".
Get off the PC high horse. Every nations chops down their nations name into something less than the full thing. In non-English languages they might have other conventions, but in English, the convention is pretty clear. If you call yourself an American in English, everyone who can speak English will assume that you come from the USA, not from Bolivia. No one is going to assume that you mean north or south America.
No one was confused, but some were put off. They weren't confused because they new I was an American and put it together. But I was corrected more than once. None of those who didn't like it or corrected me were European, from the US or people I would characterize as linguistic pedants. But that is just my singular experience.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This is simply not true. It is just a myth spread by open source advocates. Go check out who actually Linux, OpenOffice and Firefox in those countries by yourself.
In the eyes of non-geeks, the real benefits of open source is just the price and nothing else. When one can get a DVD with Windows and MS Office for $0 (download) to $1 (buy one at the street corner,) nobody will have the incentive to use Linux and Firefox. Period.
That seems like a moral thing to do, until you realize that it is exactly the kind of "market segmentation" goal that gave us region encoded DVDs.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Not being the center of attention for exploitation, and yet being a big countries, the use of online services for government/public and bank/public relations is the norm in Brazil. All banks in Brazil has offered complete and free online banking for at least 8 years, banks changed from having dozens of tellers, and enormous lines to having few tellers and dozens of ATM like machines that offer online banking. All banks offer business software for automatically paying bills, and software for printing bills receivable in any bank, and automatic payment for utilities for clients. Government agencies offer the usual run down on laws, and a variety of the most used services like filling tax return, check status of tax returns, CPF(SSN), CNPJ(number ID for busnisses), filling of inventory for controlled substances(pharmacies), and a variety of other niche services. Actually one would be very indifferent to the future by asking foreign companies to devise solutions for nation-wide needs, not to mention how vulnerable it makes the system to cast one's luck with everyone else. I think nothing that raises open source awareness and increases the number of open source technicians can be viewed in a bad lighting. Indeed open source could be doing better in Brazil, but with a population that doesn't have clue what a Microsoft Tax is, unless you buy a laptop, it can't be viewed as a surprise.
I live in a nice 3,000,000 people city; we have theaters, movies, moderately high-speed Net access (2Mbps from my home), cable/sat TV, universities, ...
Care to elaborate?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
You joke, but the full name for Norway is the Kingdom of Norway.
Interesting -- was this in a business context or personal? Cities or rural areas? I know there's a rather disturbing tendency for many Americans to consider Mexico as part of "Central" America as opposed to North America.
:P ).
:D. Mexico is one of the few places where being Texan can be hit or miss since people are more likely to have personally good/bad experiences, so I fall back on American there if I don't know.
When they corrected you, what did they suggest in place of "American"? Of course you can refer to the US different ways (I'll say "the States" in the UK or "the US" probably do more than half the time anyways), but there isn't any other generally accepted term for resident of the US (other than Yankee, but most southerners would take issue with that one
I'm from Texas, which is how I usually introduce myself to strangers (since everyone around the world, seems to love the idea of us riding to work on horses with our six-shooters, and it softens things up on a personal level even in areas that are virulently anti-US government), but my colleagues wind up just being poor generic "Americans"
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Hyperbole, thy name is Slashdot!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I was in Mexico City, hanging out with university students on a number of campuses. They were all pretty nice about it but made clear their preference. I had been warned ahead of time, but still slipped up.
You mention Mexico being mistaken as part of Central America. Since I've been back I've had a couple people ask me how I enjoyed my time in South America. I wish I was kidding.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
And the impoverished are not just "poor", as in "lacking money for basic elements of life". They're also extremely indolent and dishonest. They lack basic culture and effort to achieve any kind of progress.
They have access to an infrastructure that would be considered an impossible dream decades ago. The things is: a lot of jewish and italian people arrived at this very same land of crap, decades ago, without any money at all and none of the thousands of schools and no universal and free healthcare at all. Yet they managed to educate themselves and provide good education for their children (who are now 40-50 years old), without a single cent in their pocket. Their sons and daughters (who were impoverished children) are now members of the upper-middle class. You forgot to mention "random drug-motivated murders". And also forgot to mention that all those "happy people" are actually impoverished idiots who would rather spend their entire day partying around the city than working hard to improve their lives. Remember the Ant and the Grasshopper? If not, it's a classic that explains a lot about those bozos you call "happy people".
And if booze is something that motivates you to some kind of decision about where to live, you need treatment, not a better city.
Well, this sure ain't the market for Macs, and that is why I doubt that that Mac will be the dominant platform in 5-10 years. BRIC's GDP (Brazil, Russia, India and China in case you were wondering) is simply not high enough for there to be a market for Macs.
Microsoft on the other hand seems to have understood this and price their products accordingly. This strategy keeps people locked in, but it hardly creates any revenue. Not that Microsoft doesn't have enough money as it is, but I think it is unlikely that there will be a profitable market in the next five years to come. BillyG will continue to travel the world, spreading the glorious word of Micro$oft and the politicians fall for it.
Free and Open Source Software has a golden opportunity here, but it requires more than just being out there. What I believe is needed is a local movement with political backing. The software is there, but now we need to make sure that it is adopted.
Widespread use in Brazil, will surely affect the rest of South America and as the summary says: "which also tends to favor software that is not perceived as American." can't apply to only Brazil. The year of Linux has yet to come, but if it happens, then it wont happen because Americans decide that Microsoft is evil.
In the same way we can't change the way language has evolved, we can make an analysis of what sort of society has given birth to such a "misnomer".
GDP of Brazil: $1.269 trillion
Microsoft global yearly revenue: $57.95 billion
actually, we should call ourselves "vespucians". if the continents were named after americo vespucio, by tradition we should've used his last name, not the first.
so brasils is in "south vespucia", and the US should be called "united states of vespucia".
What ? Me, worry ?
The current Da Silva's government is supposed to do its work as promised (back when he and its folks were the opposition to the then current gov't) and do concrete pro-FOSS actions.
Everyone who works at the gov't knows that there's absolutely no incentive to use FOSS (except by its own benefits). -- Really, zero. All until now has been rethoric.
Things the gov't could do:
- Tag (let's say) 80% of money the IT expenses (hw & sw) for exclusive use by FOSS-based solutions.
- The money spent in proprietary software-based solutions should be fully justified (why FOSS wasn't suitable instead etc). That, naturally, checked afterwards in an audit.
Those two, alone, would do wonders.
I've heard the complaint about the term "American" as well, but I've don't recall anyone providing a reasonable replacement. As has been pointed out elsewhere, USAian is lame, citizen of the USA is ridiculously long winded.
So the $64,000 question is what polite, English, word or term was suggested as the correct way to refer to a citizen of the United States of America?
I use to try to avoid the terms, but I never came up with a reasonable replacement. Frankly as I've gotten older I've decided that people are annoyed because they want more justification for already being annoyed with us 'Mericans.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
The one place a guy can say he is a lesbian in a mans body without making a crappy joke.
Dude. Relax.
The guy is well within his rights to have a negative opinion about a rather fucked up country. Yes, the USA isn't all that amazing in some aspects, but we're talking about gray areas.
Is it really necessary to go out on the 'net and tell people to shut the fuck up in all caps? I mean.. What does that accomplish in your life?
So what was their preference? I know the spanish word that is specifically for US residents, but there isn't a non-pejorative English one. Most languages have an explicit name for (US) Americans, but they usually translate to something like "United Statesian" or "North American" (which would be even more annoying to students in Mexico City -- and would cause most Canadians to spontaneously explode!).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I wish people would realize that FUD like this doesn't help the cause of Free software. It is much better in the long run to inform people of the truth and let them act based on that rather than using FUD to give yourself--and others--a false impression of superiority.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
For a concrete example of abuse by statistics, consider that in the US, MS-Windows licence costs exceed the total annual income of at least 50% of all computer users [kids!]
Please do not mistake me for an MS-toad. Personally, any MS licence cost above large negative numbers is overcharging. I have to be _paid_ to use MS products.
Sorry, but this repetition about the "Brazil FOSS utopia fading" that I hear everyone talking about is largely, I believe, due to the Linux.com article that is linked to above which highlights a bunch of negative comments by a few individuals and talks about some of the licensing controversies that have come up as Brazilian society as a whole widely adopts free software (I -wish- the government in the US cared enough about the GPL to have a licensing controversy).
In fact, the Brazil free software movement is an incredible phenomenon.
Consider:
1) Brazil's recent announcement at FISL of 52,000 computers labs (each with 15 terminals) serving over 50 million students -- with 29k of them coming online within the year -- all running Linux Educacional and KDE. Meanwhile, in -my- Ohio hometown, the public school system is fiscally doomed while still paying out enormous sums to Microsoft, IBM, Apple.
2) My wife, who is Brazilian, worked in the Brazilian equivalent of the US's White House, the Palacio do Planalto, migrating even the President's -Secretary- to an open source desktop running OpenOffice, not to mention the rest of the federal agencies in Brasilia. How is the open source migration of federal agencies going in Washington DC? Oh, right...
3) Brazil should be a model for much richer countries in this hemisphere, like the US and Canada, with their enormous and expansive Digital Inclusion program, which is entirely based on open source & free software. This program provides free training and computer lab access to bridge the digital divide in Brazil, with labs in urban favelas (ghettos that encircle the major metropolitan cities) and even remote indigenous communities living in the Amazon -- some of the Digital Inclusion projects are only accessible by BOAT. And in those areas, open source computer labs are, in many cases, the only computer access, the VOIP they provide are the only telephone, and so on.
4) A recent study confirmed that over 70% of Brazilian companies with more than 1,000 employees are using open source software.
5) Brazil has migrated the largest state-owned IT firm in Latin America (SERPRO) to open source software (including many more companies that are migrating).
6) FISL, hosted in Porto Alegre, has got to be one of the largest free software conferences in the world, if not the Americas. This year, Lula made news by saying that he would do everything he could to attend FISL. When was the last time George Bush or Bill Clinton said anything about free software, let alone went out of their way to support it in person?
It's really amazing to me how many open source advocates in the United States are indifferent to the open source phenomenon happening not only in Brazil, but throughout all of Latin America. One Linux.com article dismisses it as "hype" and that's enough for the most popular English-language open source news site? Meanwhile, an enormous free software movement goes literally un-noticed (when, in fact, there is plenty of room for voluntarism by wealthy North American developers in the region).
Personally, I make my living as owner of a business which works with open source/free software in Latin America and the United States. My wife was employed for several years by the Brazilian government working exclusively on the widespread deployment of open source technology in Brazil. And, I operate a news website which provides English-language updates about the free software movement in Latin America - http://news.northxsouth.com/
I urge everybody to take a look at our site and re-evaluate if Brazil or any Latin American country is a fading open source dream, or if, in fact, they are doing the hard work of converting their government to free software and, moreover, converting their society to open source software. We should take a look at what they're doing and ask ourselves: "why are -we- failing so miserably to influence -our- government?" instead of trying to find any gap in their impressive demonstration of the power of open source to transform massive social institutions.
What you are saying is half true. Why? Because here in spanish speaking countries we consider that America (there is no Americas in spanish) is the continent (one continent) and United States is the country. In spanish, the denonym for americans is 'estadounidense'. Informally we use the term 'norteamericano' (northamerican) or 'gringo'. But, we use the term 'America del Norte' (North America) to refer to the area from Canada to Panama (or Mexico).
The term America, which from its origins is used to refer to the new world, means United States to english speakers because it's the only part of the continent that you have cared about since the english arrived here.
I mean, most computer science departments love to use unix/linux because the OS lets you get down and really teach and use the core components, basically providing a much more solid development model for a lot of people.
Windows, however, has the benefit of being able to pay lots of money and not have to worry about donations or grants to fund its progress.
The only question is whether or not you think we're moving to stable free software as a workable model for most platforms.
+5, Truth
Nice one. But in that case we should be called colombians, because the continents were discovered by Columbus.
I hope that name hasn't been taken yet.
It already happened in the 1980s. Brazilian protectionism required imports to justify that a Brazilian alternative was not available. Because of this, there was a local production of MSX computers and a local reimplementation of Unix (SOX). By the 1990s, they had figured that protectionism was harming local consumers of equipment more than promoting local production and that there were too many routine authorizations for imports.
It seems that free trade was not accepted enough.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
In what way? It is a web site, accessible from all over the world. It serves technology news, US-originated or not. Its servers may reside in the USA, but that's pretty irrelevant, IMO.
Got that right, I hate idiots that think just any work generate wealth, just because it generates wealth for themselves. When only some 10% of population is engaged in agriculture or industry, and another 2% is engaged in intellectual production, well, almost all other work amounts to thieving and tricking.
The European Union Public License, which is similar to GPLv2 to my untrained eye, is available in lots of languages, including "Portuguese Portuguese" :-)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Maybe the USA should change their name to avoid confusion.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I completely agree with you and I would like to increase your comment mark but I have no idea how to do it :(
Sorry
Why don't you go live there if it's so perfect. According to some of the Italian immigrants I know living there, it's not a whole load of fun.
Plus if it's so perfect why would they leave Brazil to come to the damp dark UK to work shitty low paid jobs?
Fair enough if you don't like your country but saying stupid things doesn't get one over on "The Man".
Do you have a better name and adjective for the inhabitants of the U.S. of A.? Since "USAian" does not work, what is your suggestion?
Those of us who aren't silly politically correct pedants, will refer to people in North America as "North Americans", those in South America (and Brazil) as "South Americans". Saying "American" to mean the inhabitant of a continent is beyond stupid, because there is no continent named "America".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
There is the different between "living" and "pillaging". Are those Italian immigrants "living" or "pillaging"? Are those Brazilian in the UK "living" or "pillaging"? After the "pillaging", where are your Italians and your Brazilian going to do their "living"? What's this, "The Man" gave you a bone, now you chase after every rattle in a random bush?
But, don't worry: you'll grow up some day. I just hope that it happens before it's too late. Because I don't want to. I'm attached to this country for a lot of reasons, and one of them is true nationalism. Except that I don't practice it left-wing-style: a.k.a. bitching while doing nothing and hoping communism completely dominates the country so you people can execute anyone "subversive". After all, it's all our fault, right? We, the "neo-cons", are to blame for everything, poverty, wars and all of the rest!
The fact that I like this place wil never exempt the nation from its "backwards country" status. The thing is: I was simply bashing Brazil and then two or three bozos like you started to bash the US too, as if it was some kind of "worse place" competition.
People like you are never about making things better. You're only about destroying the society that left you out. I'm sorry that this kind of backwards hate, motivated by latino populist anti-american stupidity, completely dominates you. =] My biggest wealth is my education. In fact, I would be much better living (again) at the US, but I don't want to. For people who doesn't know portuguese, he just called me a "fucking nigger". What a nice guy.
Sure, Brazil is great. After all, futile moments containing booze, chicks and happy people is all it takes for a country to be just "awesome", isn't it? I hope your kidney fails from all that "caipirinha" you people love so much. =]
Hey did your girl/wife just left you or something? Because there's no need to insult anyone to get some attention. I know it's more expensive than in ranting in /. but you should hire a hooker. You'd be more relaxed by now.
And the impoverished are not just "poor", as in "lacking money for basic elements of life". They're also extremely indolent and dishonest. They lack basic culture and effort to achieve any kind of progress.
Oh, do they? And you pretend to prove your point by tagging everyone as indolent, dishonest and with lack of "basic culture" and "lack of effort to achieve any kind of progress"? Oh you are so illustrated to think in black and white only. You really represent those ideals of "culture" and "progress", right?
As unlighted as you are, you probably know this already, but I need to enforce my point: Culture is not just the "american" way to live.
You forgot to mention "random drug-motivated murders". And also forgot to mention that all those "happy people" are actually impoverished idiots who would rather spend their entire day partying around the city than working hard to improve their lives. Remember the Ant and the Grasshopper? If not, it's a classic that explains a lot about those bozos you call "happy people".
I didn't forgot "random drug-motivated murders". I never wanted to include any negative points so no, I didn't forgot to mention that or anything you said I forgot. They happen everywhere anyway, including every US city. The "happy people" I refer to are not those you are talking about. I'm referring to exactly the opposite of people like you, that rants and bitchs about everything, being grumpy and cheer-less all the time, and using that ant-grasshopper tale to justify their sad and boring existence.
And if booze motivated my decision about where to live wouldn't be your business. But no, it doesn't. Never said it did anyway. It's that the world is so crowded with below-average ignorant people like you that I usually get sick of it.
Your post only shows your lack of culture and education. I wonder if the education story to you told up there is really your family story there.
Ok, you can lie with statistics, but still the microsoft prices are too big for the average consumer, let me show with hard numbers:
Price of Windows Vista Home Basic: R$499,00
Minimum wage: R$415,00
And believe me, a lot of families earn the minimum here. That's 83% the cost of the OS. Do you see any chance of them paying that?
Of course, you could argue that these people don't own computers. Not true, since there are programs of distribution of low-cost PCs (how they would be able to run Vista is a mistery), and some do have them.
But that's not the main market. Let's say them a good middle-class salary, of about R$1200,00
Now the OS is 43% of the wage. Would you pay it?
Darn, myself used a pirated edition during my whole childhood, until I learned enough so I could install Linux.
entropy happens
In English, it's "American". Go ask a random selection of people from every English speaking country in the world a non-leading question about the meaning of the word "American" and the vast majority will be in agreement.
The situation is different in different languages --- but "America" and "American" are best treated as "false friends" in those languages.
Look out!
I called you a "fucking nigger"? You're the one gulping down those caipirinhas. If you have an education at all, I very much doubt it extends to anything outside technical knowledge, otherwise no man in their sane mind would so blatantly defend neurotic New England work ethics, and would know such thing doesn't exist, nor can it be created outside the United States. You would also understand that cheap labor has stalled Brazilian agricultural development for countless decades, and would see it a stupid decision, and not wish for even more competition, and even cheaper labor force, and the same principle applies to nearly the entirety of the Brazilian economic sphere. I wish it were possible to compare whether my vices prompt my thinking, or your vices that prompt your staying.
> I-wish- the government in the US cared enough about the GPL to have a licensing
> controversy
I don't. I prefer that the government take no interest in the GPL at all.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What? nonsense! The continent referred to is Europe. That's clear, given that British call people non-British/Irish Europeans "Continentals".
Anyway, the real problem is Europeans who reckon Australia is in Oceania. France has a better claim to being in Oceania than we do. Australia's a continent and in the larger grouping of the Asia-Pacific. And anyone who thinks the ocean directly south of Australia is the Indian Ocean.
Look out!
Thanks for the very informative post, as I live in the "Western world", my news has little or nothing about 90% of the worlds people. (And a shocking amount about the tiny fraction of clueless fools known as celebreties)
I had no idea of the positive moves made by your government. Most of our governments are also hopelessly corrupt, but we have the label "lobbying" for this corruption.
This is the best OSS news I have heard in months. the worlds fifth largest population, using free software, I don't know the percentage of computer users in Brazil, but even at 2 %, that means more than 3 million people freed from the FUD, and with possibly 1% of them contributing to the OSS ecology, that gives us another 30,000 bugfixers, tweakers and forkers.
I also think this is exactly what any country that respects it independence needs to do, as being chained to Microsoft, as the U.S.further regresses into a fascist theocracy, strikes me a very,very poor foreign policy.
Again, thanks for the news from outside, makes me think that OSS just climbed another 0.1 on the Ghandi scale
This is NOT a signature.
What is really missing? My experience is that commercial software lags the free softare world with the most restrictive being at the bottom of the pack. There are very few applications where a free alternative is not available and none of them are general purpose desktop things most businesses and home users are intersted in.
If I was talking about my nationality I would say, "We're from the US". When I goofed up usually it was more a case of saying something like, "Well back in America...." and the preferred was "Well back in the US..."
It wasn't the end of the world with anybody. It was my first visit to Mexico City and I was amazed at how friendly and nice everyone was for such a big city. My experience in large US cities has been that size and kindness have an inverse relationship.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Ever heard of a place called Canada? It was a part of the UK long after the U.S. became independent. Most of the people in Canada speak English and refer to the citizens of the U.S. as Americans.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Calling an entire nations poor people "extremely indolent and dishonest" is absolutely disgusting and racist. One thing I noticed in my life is when you meet people from different countries the stereo types are actually quite often far from the truth. I read the Fodors guide to the UK. I am British and what it said was hilarious and full of crap. Bet your an American! Ha ha ha... I am such a hypocrite, but I just bet you are.
I doubt you can work drinking caipirinhas all the time. ;-)
And why is GP saying it's a backwards place to live? I quite like it here.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Must... resist... snarky... pedantic... comment... Screw it, no use.
<pedant>Hehe, I wonder how they "new" you were from America :P</pedant>
Why do you care so much about we are using linux or windows?
I live and work (a lot) in Brazil. I'm on the IT field, and most of the people I know uses linux, my company uses Linux/Intel in most of its datacenter.
Comme on! Don't blame about stuff you don't know!
Our voting machines (which are xxx times better than the diebolds) mostly run a port of linux.
There is a huge movement to migrate all government software to open source.
And people don't hate the US, we maybe disagree with a lot of the things the US Government does. But after all, hate is not a common word in Brazil. Of course you have those narrow minded that think the US are the devil, but these are a very small portion of the population.
We have a lot of taxes here, we suffer to buy a decent computer, paying absurd customs fees.
But in case of software? I think it should be much higher!!! If we have a option on open source, why pay at all?
It might well be that MS pricing is too high. It's rather high in the US, where MS-Windows may cost 33% of the machine purchase price (for low-end machines). Whence people calling it the MS tax.
Furthermore, US law seems to accept grey market good and rules anti-grey measures as anti-competitive (illegal) behaviour. So MS cannot segment markets as much as they might like.
But I simply remember Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is in the middle of making a mistake."
Had to read the summary twice. 20% of per capita business income. That would be not all income. Just the business income. To explain why that matters, let's take a hypothetical situation. All business income (assuming that income means profits) could be $1. They didn't say revenue... they said income. So if all businesses spend all the money they make on reinvestment in developing new business, salaries, etc, then they have very little profit left at the end. Now take that figure and divide by the population. You get per capita business income. 20% of that is still a very, very small part of the economy. But the headline makes it sound like 20% of all the money spend in Brazil goes to MS. At the very least the title is ambiguous. It should have specified whether it was business revenue or business profits (rather than "income") that it was talking about.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here is an example on the other side of the Atlantic http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2365
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I've never been to Brazil, but it seems like you suffer from some sort of cultural centrism. People around the world are different from you because of historical and geographical conditions over which they or you have no control. You need to accept that and not be so hostile.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Feeling a bit scared? Afraid? That's just death lurking around.
I have spent some time living in Brazil.
1) there is no disdain for American things there (unfortunately). American franchises and products are widespread there, if not quite with the same stranglehold one sees in Mexico City, Australia, etc. American "culture" - TV and Hollywood - is swallowed up there quite readily, to great destructive effect as always.
2) Windows is absolutely endemic in Brazil (and Russia and India, btw). The appalling statistics in the headline tell the story, I am not sure why the summary takes such a contradictory tack. Open source is destined to grow in the BRIC bloc, anybody could have predicted that for many common sense reasons, but MS has a lock on mindshare which is both tragic and incredibly costly.
And to the (presumably American) posters who claim Brazil is "backward" - they need to look a bit closer at their own neighbourhood. Brazil's infrastructure is excellent, they are (like all BRIC) highly educated, and have a culture of hard work and accountability - not to mention friendliness and generosity - which makes Bushistan look quite backward and socially diseased. Travel and take an interest in other cultures - get over your superiority complex.
you had me at #!
Brazil is a shit tip, get over it.
Microsoft's product prices in Brazil are approximatively twice as much as those in the U.S. It is probable that the difference is due to taxes and that Microsoft pricing be actually half of the 20% of GNI, which still amount to 10% of GNI. Related to U.S. GNI, that amounts to approx. US$4,500.00. Does it make sense to pay this amount to use Windows? I think not. Which is why most home users have pirate copies of Windows. Most are not even aware of this: they pay, say the equivalent of 50US$, a techie that comes and installs Windows, Office, Photoshop, etc.
The impoverished population of Brazil IS extremely indolent and dishonest and that is the first thing people from the US comment after returning from their trips. And most Brazillian people are pretty proud of their "jeitinho brasileiro".
And, BTW, I'm from Brazil too. Except that I'm proudly out of the group that includes most of the population. =] What a bunch of crap, batman. Most pretty brazillian chicks own their looks mostly to their European, Middle Eastern or Japanese origins. All other chicks look like crap. And most poor brazillians are becoming extremely fat. Sure there isn't. Almost every single Brazillian is a freaking loser, anyway. All those spoiled, drug addicted rich kids ARE losers, riding their fast cars right into DEATH. And all middle-class idiots with no values of hard work and sacrifice, pretending they're rich while they're not, are also losers. More than 99% of the brazillian population is composed of inferior human beings. And the worse part of the brazillian population are the white, party-all-day, spoiled, middle-class (yet not rich) idiots who were born with a lot of infrastructure and opportunities yet will only manage to achieve a life standard that is lower than the one their own parents can afford today.
The US is also composed by a large percentage of inferior people too. The thing is: the good ones are surrounded by opportunities and civilization. That doesn't happen here in Brazil. All we (the civilizated ones) have left is paying taxes and more taxes, so the rest of the population can keep sucking every single benefit they can suck out of the state.
Most impoverished people from Brazil ARE indolent and dishonest, a chacteristic that was unfortunately generated by decades of populism.
From Michaelis:
safado
sa.fa.do
sm 1 trickster. 2 (também iron) rogue. adj 1 worn out, threadbare. 2 pop shameless. 3 bras immoral, pornographic. 4 bras, iron roguish. 5 bras upset, irritated, cross. 6 bras restless, agitated, naughty.
preto
pre.to
sm (pl pretos, fem preta) 1 Negro, black-a-moor. 2 black (colour). 3 a black suit. adj 1 Negro. 2 black, dark, jet, scooty. 3 sombre, sad, mournful. 4 bras, fig dangerous. 5 bras, fig difficult. as coisas estão pretas / things are getting bad. ficar preto to blacken. frades pretos monks of the order of St Benedict. pôr o preto no branco to set down in black and white, get something down in writing. preto como carvão coal-black, as black as ink. preto no branco pop in cold print. tornar preto to black. vestir preto to wear black.
This was never about praising the US. You're just acting like the typical low-self-esteem latino idiot. I'm not praising anything else, actually, just bashing this shithole we call Brazil.
Anyway, enough discussing with a shameless racist idiot.
I don't know if your metal deficiencies are due to poor English, or poor Portuguese, or general poor general grasp of semantics. What I did say was something in the lines of "certainly you understand there's no way around the "preto safado"" which means you can't get rid or avoid the lazy/slippery black man, which from your previous post on the complexions(read generalization) that define poor Brazilians, I felt would paint an image more suitable to your neo-con rationale. Furthermore, what could I possible hope to attain by calling you a "fucking nigger"?
Oh, I could praise the US with the best of democrats, but I could never praise it for its faults, which is hardly the point since the only mention I made of the US was suggesting that you emigrate to your beloved empire, the cite an opinion on Puritan work ethics, which not even you could disagree, except for describing it as neurotic.
And who said that? Again, another formatted latino with low-self-esteem. Everything to you people is about the US and never about your own things. The thing is, it's "hip" and "cult" to bash the evil empire, people like you feel smart by acting like that. But it's pretty fricking hard and boring to think about your own issues, about the things that make latin countries a nightmare to live. That's not "hip", it's too much of a "serious neo-con stuff" for your formatted, old-style, fake-intelligent latino stereotype.
Let's say that the US is NOW a big shithole. That doesn't exempt Brazil from being a backwards country with a long list of extremely serious issues. Except that my existence is not boring and sad, as (because of a lot of hard work) I'm part of the middle-upper class. I travel to the beach extremely often and quality entertainment is a constant in my daily routine. I live in a fine neighborhood, eating at the best places in the city, always surrounded by friends and worrying about nothing except my personal life and professional desires. The urban places I use, from my home to the place where I work, including where I get my entertainment, are above the level of the average US city and can be compared to top US destinations.
Which is sad, if you consider that almost everyone else in the city is excluded from those kinds of "benefits". That actually bugs me a lot, which is why I always try to be involved with projects destined to making things better.
Life IS an ant-grasshopper tale. I worked hard years ago, and now I'm very comfortable. Some people do suffer from plain, old-style injustice, but a lot of people are suffering from their own past actions. Yeah, a formatted latino talking about being below-average. You're just too self-important to notice that latin america is full of issues, and spending your entire life bashing the US and ignoring the place where you live is not helping things at all. I'm not sorry for considering things like real-world issues. You just a self-apointed fake-intelligent feel-gooder. Now that's one thing where the US also sucks a lot: their modern society is getting flooded with stupid people like you. People with an excess of "cutsy" feelings and with a dangerous lack of real world considerations. Modern yuppies love to spread positive, custy comments about everything.
As I said: you people are just the latin, decades-old, version of the emo kid.
Almost every single response to my post is "omg! get laid!
Doesn't that ring a bell?
No, seriously, I'm not Brazilian nor "american" so if you want to insult me, use something else. Yet, you keep insulting Brazilian people and that's what it makes you wrong. There's no need to generalize or insult to prove a point. That's why you got many angry replies.
Life IS an ant-grasshopper tale. I worked hard years ago, and now I'm very comfortable. Some people do suffer from plain, old-style injustice, but a lot of people are suffering from their own past actions.
Good for you but I really can't care less how well you are doing so if you want to save some time, drop all the "I have a good life" speech. Again, good for you.
It's true that most people suffer from their past actions. I couldn't agree more with you on this point. But then there's my point again, the people I refer to as happy, even if poor, chose that life. You can be happy and poor...Well, not you but many people. Happiness is not related to economic status at all.
Life is whatever you want it to be. For you, a grasshopper tale, but not for everybody.
And who said that?...
You said "They lack basic culture" in your first post. Perhaps I misundertood you. Would you mind elaborating what do you exactly consider basic culture?
I'm not sorry for considering things like real-world issues....
And you wouldn't be, but you don't need to insult anybody while doing so.
It is quite sad how capitalism is always most ardently propounded by such vicious dim wits, who don't even seem to read what others write, it is just as well, since they certainly can't get the upper hand on argumentation. This isn't society, you can't hide your deficiencies by shouting the loudest, and ascribing all possible derogatory adjectives that might stick when one lacks a backlog. But here there is a backlog, all that naming people as racist, authoritarian, rebellious youth, and typical US hater does is revel your desperation. Seriously, get a clue as befitting a man.
The only way a software license has any meaning at all is through the government and courts system.
Go drink your "happy poverty" kool-aid. I'm tired of know-nothing foreigners prasing something they don't actually know.
I like his music. But he is still a dead drug addict that was mostly funny but not at all a good reference on most topics related to real life.
He was a person with a lot of qualities, but wisdom on what relates to "hard" aspects of reality wasn't one of them.
Relax and enjoy life. Good talking to you.
There are so many wrong things with what you just said. The Brazilian government offers many services to the middle-class. For instance, the federal universities are the best ones. And besides, one of the reasons people pay taxes is to transfer the wealth from the richer sections of society to poorer sections. It's like that in almost every country in the world, even USA.
Even worse: not everybody can attend those universities. It's not available to everyone.
I would rewrite that as "people pay taxes to allow a strong government that can unite efforts (money) to alow the society to move forward". Except that it is not the ONLY reason why people pay taxes. They also pay taxes because some services need some kind of central institution to apply rules and make purchases that represent large amounts of people. In fact, I consider "moving free cash to the poor" to be one at the bottom of the priority list for a perfect government.
Transfer of wealth is nonsense. Sane societies need merit, not a system of benefits that makes people work even less.