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US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux
twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant."
"Not only that, I just checked and according to fedex it costs $7.39 to mail that same letter from coast to coast for their cheapest option. That's only what, nearly 17 times more expensive?"
factor in how much of your tax dollars when into that and then get back to us with a valid point....
Umm, the USPS is self-funded. None of your tax dollars go towards supporting their operation source
When you request the location of your package, it just sneers at you and says "Google is your friend."
That's actually true.
Type/paste a tracking number from any of the major shippers into google and it will automagically figure out that is a tracking number and will show you the current status.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Umm, the USPS is self-funded. None of your tax dollars go towards supporting their operation source
That's a little misleading - it hasn't always been that way, so a lot of the USPS infrastructure is tax-payer funded.
In addition, they come around every once and a while and ask for money from Congress - they are doing it this year and while I am hazy on the details, I believe they did something similar about a decade ago in order to fix funding problems with their pension system. Plus, they have a monopoly on letter delivery - that's why fedex costs so much more, they have to classify and price it as something other than a letter - so that's an indirect tax by government intervention to prevent a free market.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.