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Texas Senate Proposes a Budget With a No-Vista-Upgrades Rider
CWmike writes "The Texas state Senate yesterday gave preliminary approval to a state budget that includes a provision forbidding government agencies from upgrading to Windows Vista without written consent of the legislature. Sen. Juan Hinojosa, vice chairman of the Finance Committee, proposed the rider because 'of the many reports of problems with Vista ... We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Microsoft, but the problems with this particular [operating] system are known nationwide,' Hinojosa said during a Senate session debating the rider (starting at 4:42 of this RealMedia video stream). 'And the XP operating system is working very well.' A Microsoft spokeswoman said in response, 'We're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment. We hope as the budget continues to go through the process, this language will be removed.'"
I'm sure Microsoft can pay to have that done.
Dudes, Vista is a fossil already. By the time your law is passed, it'll be 'end of life'ed. Ban upgrading from XP, not upgrading to Vista. Then do the Macarena as Microsoft slips a thick stack of bills in your pocket to ensure the bill dies in committee. Like you ever had an intention of passing that law in Texas.
With Windows 7 just around the corner, it makes far more sense to wait for the first service pack of Windows 7, then to upgrade XP to a soon to be replaced OS.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
quote from Gomer Pyle, USMC.
As much as I'm unimpressed by Vista(and dread the eventual move of the PC side of the operation I work for) and amused by this bill, it is a stupid idea.
It is perfectly acceptable, indeed kind of the whole point, for legislatures to make laws, and handle budget matters, and this would give them the legal authority to do something like this; but that doesn't make micromanagement a good practice. If Texas' state IT minions are so incompetent that they need politicians to tell them what software to use, based on anecdotal evidence, then they should be fired at once. If not, then they should be treated like reasonably responsible adults, and allowed to do their jobs to the best of their expertise.
Broad requirements like "thou shalt use only open, interoperable systems" are perfectly appropriate; but "thou shalt not use item X" is just stupid, even if I happen to dislike item X.
Several/many Federal agencies already have done this as a agency-wide policy, i.e. "XP is fine, we're not officially approving or allowing Vista purchases". (Though I approve in general I'd prefer if it was left to IT in agencies to make the choice, not legislative mandate).
Is this not a bill of attainder?
It's interesting to see how widespread the anti-Vista sentiment is. Just name-recognition seems to scare most people away.
Sig is for Signature, so you don't have to manually sign every post.
Looks good so far, reasonable, tech savvy-- he just wants to ensure everyone uses stable, functioning software, and---
*facepalm*
UTF-8: There and Back Again
(Or, was that Goober?)
Well, GOOwahhLEEE, Sargeant Carter. I think mshaft is crying sour grapes.
Msoft should pray that OTHER countri... umm, states don't do this, and that there is no grassroots campaign to save the public a hunk of change. It would be interesting if the White House passes similar edicts and supports the Texas tone.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why bother upgrading to Vista at all. Just wait another two years or so until Windows 7 comes out and either upgrade machines at that time or purchase new machines which will come with Windows 7 installed.
If it would cost a lot to upgrade from XP to 7, then it's time to either switch to Linux or at least start talking about it so that Microsoft will help make the transition available for a more reasonable cost.
Considering that we're at a point where computational power is considered to be sufficient or in excess for normal, non-power users, in two years this should allow the government to purchase some low-end machines that have more than enough power to take care of the work that will probably be done on most of them.
singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment
If they consider that they single them out, they should have a discussion about their monopoly... changing the language would be simply "not to upgrade their uperating system with a newer one" and by not buying Vista they are saying the exact same thing...
If they are enterprise, they most likely have a MOLP, which if its current they paid for Vista anyway.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment.
I'm surprised that they would single out a specific corp/product by name. Not so much that they would "in effect". I thought that was the standard way they did things -- don't name a company or product, but specify the product requirements so specifically that there was precisely one product that met them all. Then when they wanted to change their mainstream products they had to keep an old line just to produce the government-required product, and this was part of why the government ends up paying out the nose for everything.
But I guess it's harder to disallow a specific product via the same method. "No Texas Government Agency shall install an operating system with an obnoxious security mechanisms that constantly ask your permission to do everything and gets in your way when you're browsing sketchy pr0n sites..."
The enemies of Democracy are
So, does this person actually know anything about operating systems? Or is this "my friend heard from a friend heard from that friendly Mac guy" type of silliness?
I mean, where I work we're not upgrading to Vista either. But that was a decision made by IT, after actually looking into it. I highly doubt the politicians have any idea of what they're talking about.
Remember, next month they could just as easily say "no upgrading to Linux, everyone knows that's socialism!" It'd have just as much research behind it as this legislation does.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The problem is that there's really no reason to "upgrade" to Vista, and at twice the price for slower speeds and performance, not to mention the mandatory RAM and video card costs, this is a wise budgetary precaution.
Just don't mandate netbooks - they have a tendancy to walk away.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Texas doesn't have to put this in writing.
It's obvious to everyone that you shouldn't use Vista if you have choice...
Yeah, plus how hard/expensive will it be to get a new PC with XP instead of Vista?
It is like a friend of mine that compared prison to hotels because they both have color TVs.
Yeah, just the same.
Plus, I don't what my state officials having to go out to find B&W TVs.
You know how hard those would be to find now-a-days?
That is a lot of flea markets the prison system employees would have to attend.
If any agency already has a contract their law means diddly squat. The historical meaning of bill of attainder is to try and convict a person or group in the legislature. It may apply to a product if it can be seen as inflicting punishment on Microsoft.
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, retroactive law, or any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be made.
Texas's constitution still has the post WWII eugenics provisions, how quaint.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
It's not a micromanagement choice when he's responsible for a government that has perhaps 50,000 workstations, each needing a $200-300 license. Conservatively. I have no idea how many workstations the entire state educational system has, but I'd bet 50,000 is a lowball estimate. But still, that's $10 million, minimum, for an upgrade. For an educational agency's budget, that's not small potatoes. That could pay for the salaries of 57 primary school teachers for the next 5 years. The fact that the upgrade has questionable value for the educational agencies in the state is a supporting point! Why spend that much money for something with no real return on investment? Or, we could just ignore the huge economic question here and cry "evil microsoft!" or "how dare they single out a single company!" Yes... Those arguments make so much more sense than it's uneconomical.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Silly.. why are they legislating technical decisions that should be left to technical decision makers, not politicians?
As an IT manager for a small govt org in Texas, it would not surprise me one bit if this was not actually requested by some of my more politically influential colleagues.
I and my group are avoiding Vista like the plague, mostly because of the unnecessary expense of the hardware upgrades it'll require, but also additionally because of the additional end-user training it'll require.
We're having a hell of a time just getting our users to recover their productivity after the Office 2007 mess that was rammed down our throats, and most of them still hate Office 2007 with a bloody passion. We do not wish to repeat this ordeal with a changeout of the whole desktop operating system anytime soon.
...but sometimes I am PROUD to be a Texan!! Yee-frikken-haw!!!!!
That is an awesome rider and I'll bet the one proposing it has much personal experience with Vista, because only personal experience with Vista could result in such angry legislation. Would it have been better to offer up less angry reasons? Absolutely. Might it even have been better to suggest "hey, because we can't afford waste money fixin' something that ain't broken!" Yup!
(Here's my take on technology. Technology that suits the need and purpose is great! And if something suits the need and purpose better, then get it! But "upgrading" just because it's newer? That shit stopped around the year 2004 or before for most of us.)
I hope this thing sticks, but as some are probably already guessing, Microsoft will ride in on a white horse, carrying a white flag and offering all of Texas government a price a $0.00 for both Vista and Office 2007... you know they will because Microsoft can afford it... and in a way, that's can't afford not to.
What they tell their constituents is different from real life. Neo-cons, like Tom Delay was, LOVE to be paid to change their opinion. In fact, I would not be surprised if large amounts of funds show up in Texan pols re-elect funds, with the disappearance of that language.
If this passes, stop using your internet immediately, because I'm afraid that Texas wins the internet. All of it.
You mentioned it, and apparently with that 0 mod, it appears that the fan-bois are attracted to you.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This should have been done years ago when Windows first came out, not now when the Vista name will soon be replaced by Windows 7. Of course there are many (including myself) who believe that Windows 7 is just Vista with a new skin and a new name. Microsoft showed us that they would do this if we didn't buy Vista with the "Mohave" commercials, and I'm certain they are laughing their heads off that people who bought Vista are about to buy it again in the hope of fixing their problems just because they have renamed it. What the law should say is that XP can't be upgraded to any newer Microsoft OS without legislature permission. Even if you do believe that it is a different OS, based on the Vista disaster, I would hope that you can see that the law (if such a law is to be written) should stop migration to any new unproven Microsoft OS, not just one with the Vista name.
Lets also remember that Microsoft announced when Vista first came out that it would be the last 32 bit Microsoft OS and that the next version after Vista would be 64 bit only. "Windows 7" is 32 bit. Therefore Windows 7 isn't the successor to Vista. Therefor it is Vista with a different look and a different name.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Insert any other operating system in there instead of Winbloze and the thought is just chilling. A state legislature banning Linux? OS X?
Maybe it's a testament to how crappy Mojave is, er I mean Vista, that you have to looks at the shoe being on the other foot to see why it is ridiculous.
Actually it isn't. Moving From XP to Vista is a big issue, especially if you have a lot of legacy apps.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My wife is a Federal employee and just received new laptop with a fresh install of.... XP!
Of course it's probably been sitting in a warehouse for three years but no one is in any rush to upgrade to Vista. It's probably sensible to block Vista adoption until everyone is at least running XP, and by that tine Windows 7 service pack 2 or 3 will be out.
If we cannot find you a program that meets all of your needs, Addiction Link has provided a full list of treatment centers including contact information. ========== jonathan ========== alcoholism treatment-alcoholism treatment
Or simply older hardware. Moving from XP to 7 would be easier than XP to Vista.
We aren't upgrading to Vista either, but we aren't preventing it. More or less if a new system comes with Vista, that's fine. We have two reasons for this:
1) XP works well. We see nothing for most uses that Vista offers an improvement on. That isn't to say it's worse, just that it isn't better by enough to warrant an upgrade.
2) Vista wants more RAM. If you are buying a new system, it should have plenty of RAM for Vista and then some, RAM is cheap. Old systems may not, and may not be so easy to update. Thus a new system will likely run it well, and old system may not.
It is a technical decision on our part.
To me, this reeks of "Something I heard on the 'net," or "Something my friend told me a guy told him." Seems to me that most people who have real hate for Vista fall in to one of three categories (yes I like ordered lists):
1) People who tried it on inadequate, unsupported systems. It was slow and problematic because they lacked the power to run it, and lacked the drivers for their devices.
2) People who got second hand information on it. They never actually used Vista, they just heard from a friend or online that it was bad. They are just repeating what they heard, not relating any real experience.
3) Linux/Mac zealots that hate MS and want to sandbag Vista. They too usually haven't tried it, and are often more or less making shit up. They are just spreading FUD because they want MS to fail.
So ya, this sounds really stupid. The IT people should do a proper evaluation of Vista. Figure out what it costs to do the upgrade, including hardware (which could be nothing if the hardware is current and they have a yearly MS license as some places do), figure out the benefits, the drawbacks, and see if it is worth the time and effort. We decided it wasn't, other may decide different. Trying to legislate this is dumb. It really is an administrative task.
Ok... Microsoft has a point here, but what other corporation is there to single out _but_ Microsoft?
I thought Texas was supposed to be conservative? I guess they don't mind picking winners and losers in markets.
Take the entire transcript and replace the following words:
Microsoft -> Chevorlet
XP -> Malabu
Vista -> Volt
So if the sentence "We are not going to upgrade to Microsoft Vista, because XP is running fine and we've heard that there are problems with Vista." read as "We are not going to update to Chevy Volts, because our Malibus are running fine and we've heard there are problems with the Volt." ... Would it be fair for Chevy to complain?
I don't think so.
And, no, I did not RTFA.
--Pathway
If it passes as written (and that's a big if)
Microsoft will just rename Vista to Microsoft Texta. Problem solved.
"If any agency already has a contract their law means [nothing]."
You are saying that if there is a contract with a company, and the company delivers a poor product, the government can do nothing? Don't forget that Microsoft top managers deliberately and knowingly delivered an unfinished product, as court records have shown. The costs of dealing with the hassles of Vista are far greater than the price of Vista. (And Microsoft has done that before: Windows ME and DOS 4.0 are just two examples.)
The following quote may need translation for those who are unfamiliar with habitual abuse:
"A Microsoft spokeswoman said in response, 'We're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment.' "
Translation:
"We're a corporation. Corporations should be allowed to be as abusive as they want, without comment from you political peons who are far below us in power and hierarchy."
It would have, if 7 supported upgrading from directly XP. Unfortunately, so far, it does not, though we'll have to see if that is still the case for the release.
Who's to say that Windows 7 is going to be much better than Vista?
All of the beta testers for Windows 7 I've heard says it is better than Vista.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I went on slashdot and I saw an article about texas doing something right for once. I then woke up in a fit of panic because I knew it wasn't real.
Okay, let's remove the bit where they say your best selling operating system is "working very well".
Follow me
the law is on Microsoft's side. Now, what they can do is have a state IT policy that says the standard is XP and be done with it.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
...that the legislators themselves, their aides, and their family (some large enough percentage) have a huge beef with vista, having gotten it on new personal machines and found that it truly sucketh. It might be an easier explanation than anything else - "Hey,you try that new vista stuff?" "Yep, sucks donkey ballz" "What I thought, we shouldn't PAY for this crap now, plus we can tout we are saving the tax payers money!" "Yep, slam dunk good move, we look good, costs nothing"
in Texas?
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
For that matter, I bet /.'s response would be completely different if the quote were about Diebold (Premier Election Systems) and voting machines. Consider the following:
Sen. Juan Hinojosa, vice chairman of the Finance Committee, proposed the rider because 'of the many reports of problems with AccuVote TS... We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Diebold, but the problems with this particular voting machine are known nationwide. And the optical scanning machines are working very well.'
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I hope there's some money in there for chairs.
No, No,
The anti-virus and security upgrade treadmill is a farce, as long as Active-X and extension based execution are pervasive Win X has no security, if the Security Policy is modernised then there is massive application level incompatibility, the only way to run Win-x securely is to virtualize it under Linux.
I have not tried the Win7 beta myself. But most reviews indicate it is what should have been Vista Service Pack 3. A version of Vista that finally runs fast, stable and has the worst quirks removed from the user interface.
So I think it is probably not bad to use and will actually be an UPgrade from XP. Only the people who already have Vista and will have to pay more money for Win7 have reason to be annoyed.
Personally I won't run a system that requires periodic product activation, but that's a political rather than technical reason.
C - the footgun of programming languages
s/optical scanning machines/lever machines that have worked and will work for decades/g
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment"
Say, why single out microsoft when they could just option a competing product that will run all of their applications (equally) from another vendor in this free-market economy?
Good thing we have all those anti-trust rico laws that make this possible!
Windows versions upgrades aren't exactly known for being a reliable option. I strongly suspect that most organisations who deploy a new version of windows will do so by building a new image from scratch and then reimaging the machines.
Unavailibility of a direct path for upgrading without reinstalling may be an issue in some edge cases but it's not a huge deal.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
If pigs had wings, they'd be pigeons.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Personally I won't run a system that requires periodic product activation, but that's a political rather than technical reason.
I have parents who are still not on the Internet and don't want it. They do use a computer for writing and a few other things though. Sometimes it would make life handy for me, but given their approach to computers it may overall be better that they stay off the Internet than expose themselves to the dangers. So from my point of view periodic product activation is a political, technical, emotional, and personal issue.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Government offices do not upgrade the operating systems on their desktops by running some upgrade installer from the vendor. That's not even remotely how they do that.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If there are compatibility issues, then that would be a technical reason not to go to Vista. Any law that uses "bad publicity" as a reason to do ANYTHING or not do anything without other facts(not subjective opinions) should never be allowed. It would be too easy for Microsoft to put out anti-Apple advertisements, and then push to make sure that based on the "negative press", no Apple products should be allowed.
Why would you leave the choice up to the people you contract to run these technologies. Of course they're going to say "YES!" it means they get to bill the government for their time to upgrade it which may end up being years worth of labor if they have complications.
Bloody typical. The legislature is composed of IT experts, or thinks it is. Don't they have something better to do that to micromanage the state's IT departments?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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guess everyone is a bunch of dumb-asses, no wait correct that more like lemmings (this is from the perspective of the mentality that Vista is horrible, which it is not)... Not that Vista is the best thing in the world, but I have had 0 problems with it. Even when migrating a bunch of old crap to it. Of course I did a clean install.. Then Again we are talking about TexASS.
It's more like saying you must stay with OSX-Tiger and not upgrade to OSX-Leopard.
It's simply saying "Must Try Harder".
The software cost of upgrading is often effectively nil, because most large enterprise environments are on multi-year Enterprise Agreement contracts that allow for no-additional-cost software upgrades...
Like they haven't been already burned before by that company, at least once, by similar claims.
Deciding that a specific product is inappropriate is out of their purview...
Except if that product is known bad. They have an obligation to prevent further damage and / or to prevent good money from being thrown after bad. The recession is a depression in many areas, as evidenced by among other things, deflation. Regardless of recession or depression the times are harder, and not through getting harder, than has been experience for a few generations. And with that in mind, any wasted money means lost jobs. That wasted money can come through unnecessary licensing as well as lost efficiency.
If the French Gendarmerie can reduce IT costs by 70% through use of FOSS, why isn't Texas allowed to do so as well? Or, as the original post states, why not at least be able to avoid shelling out for MS Vista upgrades and upgrade headaches?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Isn't one of the things ALWAYS brought up (and especially so in the "Linux needs more critics" troll story is that when someone says "My hardware doesn't work" and the linux supporters say "well buy one that works with linux then" it was PROOF that linux cannot and will not accept criticism.
Yet here you are, saying that if hardware doesn't work with Vista, buy new hardware.
Well well well.
'We're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment. We hope as the budget continues to go through the process, this language will be removed.'
Umm... you singled yourself out when you cornered the market. Thank God Linux is finally starting to make major advances toward replacing Windows.
Maybe you should spend your time upgrading your legacy apps before you focus on Vista. Why people think a 15 year old windows 3.1 app should run flawlessly on Vista is beyond me.
Real reason is that MS chose to promote VISTA as Evolutionary. Well, they'd have trouble passing it off as Intelligent Design.
Kudos to Texas legislators for attempting to prevent an expensive "upgrade" to an OS with a clearly limited service life and a reputation for high hidden costs. It needs to be noted that this situation would be very different if Microsoft committed to fully supporting Vista for the next five years. But instead MS has been mumbling about offering some kind of low cost "upgrade" from Vista to Win7, which is a strong indicator that future Vista support is going to be marginal at best. There is no business logic that can justify Texas spending money on Vista in this situation.
The rider should have a sunset provision: "no upgrading to Vista during this budget year", or "no upgrading to Vista until Service Pack 1 is released". Or something like that. That would make the bill more palatable and probably make its intent more clear (which could be useful when this is challenged in court).
I don't really see any better way to write this kind of legislation.
First, banning all software upgrades is clearly inappropriate: in the last year I've upgraded Ubuntu twice at no expense and benefited with lower TCO afterward; I am looking forward to another upgrade within 30 to 90 days, and Texas institutions that are using Ubuntu have likely done the same. Ubuntu is not unusual in this way: most OSs and distros are now using 6 to 12 month upgrade cycles where the total costs of upgrading are generally offset by immediate cost reductions from improved functionality.
Second, interfering with any current migrations from proprietary software to FOSS is also inappropriate. Or migrations from one proprietary OS to another, when there is sound business logic for doing that. That would constitute meddling in technical matters, and should not be done by any legislature. But specifically delaying upgrades to Vista is a matter of business logic, not technical logic, and setting business logic policy for a government is definitely within the scope of its legislature.
So in this situation, I think it is fully appropriate to identify Vista by name. That is merely a recognition that Microsoft has created a very unique business situation where the product it is now selling offers no compelling reason to upgrade from the earlier version, while MS is also saying that there is a new product that will do it all even better coming Real Soon Now.
I love when non-technical people attempt to regulate technology policies, especially when it's based on hearsay. Don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of issues with Windows Vista, but shouldn't the Texas IT department be handling these decisions? I realize that they may initiate the process, but what's the point of creating another hoop for them to jump through? I doubt the senate has any clue as to what goes on behind the scenes in their IT department's dealings with Windows.
Why would Microsoft want to remove stuff about upgrading to Vista, when they're about to start pushing Windows 7?
As a lifelong Texas resident, my first thought is: what else is on the Texas Senate's plate? -- They do stupid things like this when they're blowing up some camouflaging smoke to hide doing something really evil.
2K/XP (which are really in the grand scheme of things pretty similar) gave us hugely more stability and scalability than 9x (at least if you had hardware it got along with, I used to have some hardware that just didn't get along with 2K). This was something most of us power users (who are the ones that drive the computing media) could really appreciate. Yes there WAS performance and compatibilty issues but at least we could see significant upsides as well as downsides.
On 9x you could exhaust GDI resources simply by filling a single row taskbar with browser windows (and this was pre tabbed browsing). Having to close some stuff so other stuff would get the GDI resources it needed to render properly was often a major PITA.
What does vista give you? some eye candy, some security improvements (most of which are half baked) and slightly better support for heavilly locked down drm media.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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