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911 Calls Linux
911 Calls Linux - For Reliable Service
In January 1998 I began testing linux for our 911 Center here in St. George Utah. We are the 911 Center for the South west corner of Utah. In November of 1998 Testing was complete with great success. I implemented Linux as the workstation for our 911 Center using RedHat 5.2 and AfterStep as the windows manager. These workstations get worked on 24 hrs a day seven days a week and run several apps on screen.
Some of the apps that we run our Eterm to connect to the main HP Server, X3270 for our State computer connection, WordPerfect for different reports the dispatchers create, and some custom apps I have written in C.
Our WordPerfect was given to us Mike Cowpland CEO of Corel. The WordPerfect 8 has worked perfectly. Thanks Mike.
Our uptime has been over 200 DAYS. This doesn't even come close to the reboot once a day with the Microsoft OS. I could give several horror stories of when the dispatcher is in the middle of a hot call, then had to reboot.
Linux has done so well, that I have unplugged the reset buttons and disabled the power switch. This was done to prevent finger glitch when they have to restart the NT box our radios work from (I just wish Motorola would switch over), that sits next to the linux box. Linux is the main console that the 911 Dispatcher works from, and has held up better than any I have ever seen. Linux has been doing great in the server end, but I have heard it's not very good at the client end. NOT TRUE. My installation time for the first pc was 45 minutes for full install with apps. By the time I got to the last set it was 30 minutes for full install. As a client it has worked great.
The only shutdowns have been from one power supply failure, and a kernel update for each. The workstations are still running great.
Officer Sherman Stebbins
St. George Police Department
e-mail policesa@infowest.com
Looking at the actual error message, exception 0E is a failure to retrieve swapped/paged memory from disk. The failure, it says, occurs in the VXD VMM (virtual memory windows driver) at the OS-level. I suppose it could have been a poorly written application that triggered the message, but in my experience when Windows has to bump out to text mode to give me an error message (indicating to me that the problem is above the application level, so much to the point that Windows doesn't trust the stability of the GDI to render a friendly error message graphically), a reboot/lockup is not too far behind.
I can't speak for WordPerfect (I use StarOffice), but AfterStep has never crashed on me.
Linux is more stable and reliable than Windows, plain and simple. If you've worked much with both platforms, you should know that.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Even if we accept your premise that a properly configured stock NT system, "without odd third party addons", is as stable as any other system, you still miss a key point. In the real world we have to deal with "3rd party software or odd hardware," and if they cause the system to crash then NT IS FLAWED.
To give you a somewhat silly analogy, let me introduce to NewT. NewT has has his driver's license revoked because he's in an accident on a weekly basis.
NewT claims that it isn't his fault, that he has never been in an accident when driving on closed roads where he's the only driver. He's never had an accident even when a handful of carefully selected drivers shared the roads with him.
"BUT IT'S NOT HIS FAULT THAT OTHER DRIVERS KEEP CAUSING HIM TO HAVE ACCIDENTS."
None of us would hesitate to yank NewT's license, because NewT's *must* be able to share the road with others.
Likewise claims that NT is as stable as other OSes "provided it is properly configured and is not running third-party software or contains additional hardware" leaves us underwhelmed. Even if we accept the implicit argument that Microsoft should be the only software vendor in the world, even MS applications have been known to cause NT to crash. And the idea that we should all be happy with a limited selection of video cards and network cards *only* is too silly to even bother responding to.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This is the sort of story which should get more publicity. The PHB's don't belive us geeks when we say Linux is good, they might listen to this sort of story from the trenches.
A lot of nuclear reactors use OLD computers and OLD software. Some, so old that the companies no longer exist. Why? Because it's reliable and robust. If it weren't, the computer would be a pool of melted plastic, metal and silicon by now. Few, if any, nuclear power plants gamble on upgrading to more modern computers. They don't need the extra power, and they certainly don't want the extra bugs. What works works, and they'll generally leave it alone.
The same is true of a lot of mission-critical organisations. I remember when I was on a tour of Fylingdales, Yorkshire, and being appaled at the archaic equiptment they were using. Right out of the stone-age! But it worked, and that mattered more to them than all the fancy gimics that were on the market.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In this case, I was wondering, is it just me? Or does this read like a hoax written by a 13 year old?
On a broader note, how does "new journalism" validate the things it reports on? I've been bothered by this for quite some time. I mean, what's to prevent me from writing some story, taking out a hotmail account called "Busch@hotmail.com" and writing in about how I'm the plant manager for Busch Beer and we've just switched all our floor-control boxes over to Linux?
Just wondering....and I think it's something that will have to be addressed as the Slashdot-esqe news source fights for credibility.
Werd.
Ah reckon this makes you the Linux-usin'est Slashdot-readin'est deputy in the, uh... damn my knowledge of us geography... mid west?
Note the date on that link - July 09, 1999. After that date it was decided not to use Linux at all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm working in a fire/medical dispatch NT environment. It's very easy to say "port everything," but it's not practical. Too many systems are working together on the same OS for it to be stable with a completely different box in the mix. In this case, it's ProQA (medical aid), the radio systems, the phone systems, TriTech VisiCAD, the old CAD system as a backup, along with normal workstation duties like logging, 4th dimension, etc. The system runs stable, and data transfer between apps and systems runs smoothly.
What people seem to be forgetting, also, is that the people operating the systems are not trained rats. They are completely capable of handling every incident without the aid of any computers at all. therefore, if a computer crashes, dispatch doesn't come to a screeching halt. Until a compltely stable, robust SUITE of applications is delveloped natively for linux, it will not be a practical solution for many aapplications. I'd love to see Linux be a player in this arena, but it needs to earn its reputation from experience, not solely from the enthusiastic cheerleading of the linux community.
Or Slashdot could hire a few more people and actually spend 2 minutes validating each story. The story summaries are often grossly wrong, giving me the impression that the submitter and/or poster didn't bother spending a few minutes to actually read the story being linked to. Not minor details being wrong either - major things.
There's also a bit too much bias, whether on purpose or not. For example, when Amiga announced its new OS would be a Linux/BeOS hybrid, slashdot reported it'd run Linux, while not mentioning BeOS at all. It turns out BeOS is the only OS that was correct in that statement (Linux is not being used), so the slashdot story was 100% wrong, compared to the 50% wrong of the story it linked to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No, it's utah. I lived there for 18 years, I know. Meesa think your brain has been fried by living in the prozac capital of the world.
Roblimo,
:-)
To prevent this kind of sowing of doubt, may I suggest each story have a small link next to it entitled "verification" or something similar, that would take the curious or doubtful to a web page summarizing the verification process in much the same way you just did? For links to other news sites this probably isn't necessary, though it might still be a nice touch to have the same kind of link, pointing to that new site's journalistic "standards" page (if they have one).
Clearly this kind of stunning success for Linux is rubbing some folks the wrong way -- wonder why.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
> when was the last time you had a kernel panic in Linux
:-)
Well, not a kernel panic, but daily (or more) spontaneous reboots for no obvious reason.
At least, not obvious until I looked at little closer at the machine (under my desk) and noticed the power cord not fully inserted, so that it would power glitch when I'd bump my leg against it. (Yes, it would re-boot when I booted it
-- Alastair
Okay, for those of you who've read this already, this is my semi-regular rant on Windows, installing apps, and shared libraries. If you've read it already, skip it.
>Yes, you need to reboot much more when
>installing or changing software than Linux, but
>you can always say no and stop and restart the
>service. (Same basic prinicple on Linux)
No. These are very different issues. When it comes to shared libraries, Windows has dropped the ball. Shared libraries mean that some other application (perhaps even the OS) may use them and have them locked. When you are asked to reboot, it is because some shared libraries couldnot be copied because they were locked. These shared libraries will not get copied until you reboot. More concerning, however, is the uninstall. If the uninstall can't delete something (say X.DLL), it marks it for deletion at next reboot, and asks if you want to reboot. If you say no, and go install something else in the meantime, which happens to try to install X.DLL, things will be happy until you reboot, when X.DLL is deleted (as the uninstaller told it to do).
Linux deals with updating shared libraries, partially as a result of naming conventions, and partially as a result of filesystem capabilities.
In Windows, if a program is using a particular shared library, you cannot remove that library file from the filesystem. It is locked. Under Linux, what is locked are the inodes. It is irrelevant whether or not the file has a filename linked to it. When I use the unlink() system call (there's a reason there's no delete_file() sys call), we unlink the file name from the inodes storing the file, preventing more apps from opening it. Only when the file's usage count drops to 0 is it removed from the fs. This means that I can create a new file, with the same name as the one I just unlinked, without affecting the performance of any applications using the original file. I can replace shared libraries without having to stop the application using the shared library.
Further, most Linux applications don't install new shared libraries when they install themselves. It would be seen as very poor practice for some little app to install a new version of glibc as part of its own installation. Yet, we accept this as normal in the NT world.
Even better, Linux allows multiple versions of a library to coexist on a system, using version numbers. Under Windows, you can't even get Microsoft's own ODBC 3.51 to coexist with ODBC 4.0.
Since you are obviously an NT advocate, and this is slashdot, I'm not going to spare the rod since I assume you know what you are in for here.
/.'s stability related to the linux kernel?
/. is unstable, don't blame Linux, blame Rob ;P
.dll.. hint hint).
How is
90% of the time, when I have problems connecting to slashdot, it's either the ad banner garbage, or the network itself is bad, or there is an actual problem with Slashdot's software.
Which brings me to your second point. Doing anything even remotely similar to slashdot on an NT system is basically impossible. It simply doesn't have the flexibility.
If
Finally that bit about 2.2 tells me what I already know: you are full of it, and are clearly striving to give us the appearance that you know what you are talking about. 2.0.30+ was (and arguablly still is) probably more stable than most 2.2.x releases so far. The fact that 2.2.x itself is far more stable than any MS OS (any version, throughout all of MS's history) by orders of magnitude should tell you something.
You clearly have the whole thing backwards anyway. Bleeding edge kernels always have two things in common: extra features, at cost of stability. The OSS model NEVER suggests you regularly update mission critical installations. However, things like slashdot, and my home machine, are hardly critical; I re-install kernels as they come out, anyway. I imagine Rob is constantly twiddling with slashdot itself, and not just a "development" mirror machine.
Which brings me to the question of what long uptimes mean. A long uptime means to ME that a) the system is stable and doesn't crash and b) I dont have to reboot it everytime i change something unrelated to having to reboot (like installing a
Your comment about security makes absolutely no sense, assuming the admin knows what he's doing.
How, exactly, is uptime related to the system's security? I must have missed something. Are you telling me that because NT crashes 3 times a week its secure? Does a long uptime indicate that the admin is too lazy to apply patches, or that the OS vendor hasn't supplied patches? Is the latter because the OS doesn't need patches, or because the vendor doesn't even bother to develop and then release timely patches?
I can only conclude that you are hinting that the admins of boxes with long uptimes are idiots who refuse to update. I agree. They are idiots, but don't forget that to them, having a box that stays up for more than 3 days is a miracle, thanks to MS training everybody that rebooting fixes everything.
Assuming the problem is big enough to warrant it, they can outsource and fix whatever bugs are ailing them if need be.
What do they do with Microsoft?
Sign over their souls to Bill Gates? I'm sure Bill Gates doesn't care about the little fish in the sea. With Linux, if you don't like one vendor, you go to another.
Windows NT has no recovery mechanism from such situations, and given that a 911 service is bound to be extremely busy 100% of the time, the workload is inevitably going to bring up more bugs than any domestic, or even routine office, use.
Don't slag off people who put machines through unusual stresses as guilty of FUD. Think, first, about the fact that these ARE unusual stresses! If it takes an extreme environment to cause a particular bug to surface, why aren't you praising the coder for writing that well??!! Why spend all your time critisising the finder?
You don't know everything, no matter how much you might believe you do. Obscure and unusual bugs happen all the time in computing, especially under highly extreme situations and workloads. Can you tell me that you've checked the configuration they are using, under the stresses they are putting that box, to see if it will crash? No? Oh, there's a surprise. You'd rather hide behind the AC stamp than face the fact that bugs exist, whether it's in Linux or NT.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just imagine a World w/out Linux...
." ......" .. crap."
Possilbe scenario on a NT or 95/98 network for 911.. (god forbid they should use TAPI..)
officer-"Hello 991."
person-"help me please... i can hear someone in my house..."
officer-"hold on... ok i have your location
person-"PLEASE hurry i can heAr them coming!!!"
Officer-"oh *hit.. blue screen crash.. Just hold on a sec ok?"
person-"AHHHHW!HH!Hhaawaw!H!HH!
officer-"hello? hello?
hehe
"Y'all come back Y'a Hear!?!?"
"Y'all come back Y'a Hear!?!?"
Xian
I think this is an interesting extension to the
Free Software philosophy that has driven our cause. That free software not only enriches our lives but also saves them is indeed something to be proud of -- and has shown me, for one, that
Free Software can mean much more than I had previously imagined.
Who takes responsibility when it doesn't work? Or, actually, who recieves the blame? Like he said, Motorolla and MS take the blame for the NT box that they have to connect too, but they don't take responsibility. The sad truth is, that most supervisors and managers out there, especially in life-and-death related feilds, are much more concerned more with _liability_ than _reliability_. Can't really blame them, because this is a world where everyone grew up with Microsoft applications and the inevitablity of bugs and errors and system reboots. It's hard for them to accept software that works correctly. It's really hard not to have anyone to blame when things might go wrong. ;)
This is a world where Murphy's Law and Linux are the only things not effected by Murphy's Law.
NOTE: this is NOT flamebait. It's an honest-to-goodness question
First let me say that I think it's great that Linux is getting this good exposure. My question is this: Why does everyone say it's a great article when somebody writes about NT's downtime, and how Linux is better than NT. However, if someone writes something positive about NT (or BSD, or anything that's NOT Linux), it's instantly labelled as "FUD" or "flamebait".
I think Linux is great and all, but it's not perfect (yet), we need to be fair in advocating it.
Juiced? Or Not?
Also, we don't require things like
cops and metal detectors in our schools.
One thing about Utahns, they continue to beleive that they are immune from the problems that afflict the rest of society, while the truth is, for the most part, their violent crime rate is quite similar to metropolitan areas of similar size.
On the other hand, the permissive business environment among "members" means the state has been home to some major fraud outbreaks, not that this level of trust is necessarily a bad thing.
On the other hand, there have been some notable child welfare problems in utah which result, in part, because of gaping failures of the social system.
I know for my part that when I was in school in the early 80's all the Salt Lake City high schools had cops on the staff, along with some private goons. We had people bringing guns & knives to school. A fair number of suicides, frequent outbreaks of violence and intimidation. Date rapes by nice mormon boys, lots of drunken driving by those same nice mormon boys. Teenaged pregnancies (a state seanator's daughter). And this was in one of the good schools.
It wasn't just SLC though. The number of teenaged pregnancies among underaged Mormon girls in smaller, rural, predominantly Mormon communities suggests that Utah is not immune.
In otherwords, I call bullshit on your representation of Utah schools.
Presumably, most of the people here have had to deal with NT (I certainly have), and they know what's good, stable and flexible, and what's not. That is not bias; it's experience.
Certainly, Astroturfers will want to paint it as bias, but it's no more biased than reporting the baseball scores. What is, is.
I know from personal experience that I can set up a Linux box, and apart from occasional updates, leave it be. I have never been able to do that with an NT box for more than a couple months at a time, and NT machines have this nasty habit of suddenly becoming flaky for no apparent reason, depending on load and the particular software/services you're running. And service packs are a crapshoot (remember NT4 SP2?).
So, it's a great article because it is confirming the experience of most of the people here who have actually used both Linux and NT to any significant extent.
--
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I'm a web administrator in St. George, UT and run a number of Linux web servers so I am somewhat familiar with the reliabilty of Linux. I would like to think that I know what's going on in the local computer industry here since it's so small, but this story blew me away! To see this kind of support for Linux in my community is just wonderful. Go SGPD! You guys rock.
He says he set up Linux and it just runs. NT doesn't.
So maybe he's a moron (I reserve judgement). But if he is, that says that it's easier (for a moron) to set up a stable Linux system than it is for a moron to set up a stable NT system.
'Nuff said. Go back to spending your Wagged money and leave us alone.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Okay, I'll admit it. When I was beta-testing a driver for the Computone Intelliport II I had a kernel panic.
But I've never had a kernel panic with the stock Linux kernel on supported hardware, and I've had some sites out in the field since 1996. (Not running continuously, they were upgraded from Red Hat 3.0.3 to Red Hat 4.2 in that time frame, but there were no kernel panics).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
*beep*
Are you sure you want to speak with an operator?
*BEEEP!*
This operation could not be completed because an error of type -4019 occurred. Please standby, transferring you to the next available operator. Your expected wait time is: 493 minutes. Please have your MS-PIN and Certificate of..
*BEEP!* *BEEEEEEEEP!* *BEEEEEEEP!!*
... and thank you for using MS911!
*click*
NO CARRIER
--
Yes, the EULA absolves MS of all liability, says you can't sue them even if it crashes ten times a day and erases all your mission critical data regularly, etc.
But: you can say "man, that's Microsoft's problem, I've reported it to them and they say they'll fix it but I can't do anything about it until they do." Then you can go along with sitting on your bun drawing your paycheck for clicking a mouse.
Whereas with Linux, you have the source, so even if you say "Man, that's Red Hat's problem, I've reported it to them" etc., sooner or later someone is bound to say "Hold it! You have the source! Why don't YOU fix the problem?" Thus requiring you to actually do work.
I run EST Inc.'s network on Linux because I like solving problems, but if I were a lazy guy more intent on my paycheck than on solving problems, I'd certainly rather run NT. With NT I can just shrug my shoulders and say "That's Microsoft's problem." With Linux, people expect me to fix the problem.
But, alas, I appear to be unusual in my desire to fix problems. Most people seem to prefer to "leave it to Mickeysoft".
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Microsoft developers (i.e., actual programmers within Microsoft) are quick to tell me "if NT is unstable, it's because you didn't configure it right." They claim that their own heavily-used development machines have been up and running for months.
What, it takes being an actual Microsoft engineer to configure NT?
meanwhile, I can throw Linux on any old junk PC in the office and it just works. Same PC that NT blue-screens on regularly.
Pfui.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
So 911 service isn't well funded out there.
I'm sure this guy would love to have redundant power supplies, hot swap RAID, etc. in his workstations, but a $12,000 workstation is the same price as a 911 dispatcher in Utah (well, actually, 911 dispatchers in Utah probably make less than that, but $12K was what they made in my rural community in Louisiana). If it's a choice between talking to a dispatcher, and getting a busy signal because they don't have enough dispatchers because they had to fire one to buy a redundant computer, well, I'll choose a dispatcher all the time.
That's the kind of hard decisions that governments must make all the time, and why it's a mystery that Linux hasn't taken hold in a big way in the government market.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I've been giving this a lot of thought lately - when critical systems fail, and these systems are running software developed under open-source-type systems, who is responsible?
one could make an argument that the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the individual or group of individuals who chose to use the software package. after all, noone is forcing this 911 center to use linux, and more importantly, if they think that there is a potential for disaster, well, they have all the source, and they are not only welcomed, but encouraged to improve the software so that it is less likely to fail.
I don't see any reason why we should hold software developers responsible for faulty software. that's not to say that they shouldnt feel a need to create robust software; it's just that it is the choice of the user what systems to use.
Has anybody ever succesfully sued Microsoft?
As far as I can tell, the answer is "No."
But you can certainly BLAME Microsoft if their software quits working. Saves having to actually do some work and FIX what's broken, which is what you'd have to do if it was Linux (either by fixing the source code yourself, or hiring a consultant to fix it for you).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Man, I've counted at least two people from the Microsoft anti-Linux hit squad here today (just looking at their posting styles).
Anyhow: At Enhanced Software Technologies Inc. (the BRU guys), we run our infrastructure on Linux. Period. (Except for a legacy SCO box used for some old stuff, sigh, but that's going away soon). Sales, marketing, financials, every desktop is a Linux box.
WordPerfect 7 doesn't crash. KDE doesn't crash. (We used to use Afterstep, but KDE is easier for the clueless marketing types to use). The only thing that DOES crash is Netscape (a giant bug masquerading as a browser), but that's a nuisance, rather than a loss of mission critical data.
In short, anybody who says Linux is not stable in a workstation environment is smoking some mighty fine Redmond herb. We have too many examples to the contrary, ranging from Garden Grove CA onwards.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Now here's a police officer that uses his training to choose the better path: Linux. As he proved, it served it's purpose when it was most needed, when someone needed desperate help.
:)
Now if I was the one on the phone getting directions on how to revive or possibly save the family member/friends life I would not want directions on the dispatchers screen to suddenly be replaced by a blue screen. I don't think a GPF would do me any good then.
Just think of the many people relying on Windows to aid many citizens in everyday tasks. For example, I found this picture quite amusing until I actually thought about it. How would I feel if I had to scramble around the airport at the last minute figuring out if my flight was delayed or not because of an error in the messaging system. Not that funny anymore.
Overall I think that Officer should be awarded something.. I don't know what, but maybe a gold penguin or something at the 1st Annual Linux Awards when they eventually are sponsored
Congrats to Officer Linux and the Sgt.,
Matthew
______________________________________
sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
Bad idea. If you try to explain to a group of Utahns how free software is different from free beer, they will run you out of town for mentioning the devil's brew.
--Shoeboy
*Microsoft* was unable to solve the problem. Their ultimate answer (after having a ticket open for six months) was that FoxPro is not designed for this kind of use!
No FUD. No bullshit. Just the facts. Microsoft software sucks.
I have *never* seen a UNIX or Linux box behave similarly.
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I called the St. George Police Department through its published non-emergency phone number, verified Officer Stebbins' identity, and chatted with him personally (by phone) before posting the story. Note the emphasis on using a *published* phone number for initial contact. It is as easy to spoof a phone number as an e-mail address; all you have to do is claim you're giving out a "private line."
Without proper verification, this story would not have run. Period.
Robin "roblimo" Miller
roblimo@slashdot.org
Hey, we could raise your taxes, and add a redundant system with the money from that? I'm assuming that in the States (I'm in Canada), the Emergency response department is funded by the govenment, no? Where do you get the money for a hot swap failover cluster?
"Old man yells at systemd"
No no, see, the PHB wants to be able to tell his boss that its "Someone elses problem". Actual liability is somewhat of a farse in a life or death situation unless you have software specifically written for that purpose. Which, in this case, they didn't before, and they don't now.
Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
I went to the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) exposition in Minniapolis, MN a few weeks ago. This is the show for the folks who make the radios, dispatch equipement, mobile computers, etc. for the police and fire departments nationwide.
I was dismayed at the number of dispatch systems, mobile computers, and radio setups that used Windows NT (or worse yet, 95/98) as the core. I saw about 3 vendors selling Unix (Solaris) solutions, and if there was a Linux box there (other than my laptop) I didn't see it.
The reason is a matter of demand: Most shops want stuff that works under Windows, and anything else does not compute. This is due to ignorance.
The solution is the same for this as anywhere else: ask for Linux/Unix versions of the code. If the radio programming software only runs under Windows, ask the radio manufacturer to port the code to Linux. If the test equipment only speaks to Windows, ask the manufacturer to port to Linux. If the dispatch software runs under Windows, ask for a port. If the mobile data unit runs Windows, ask if it will run Linux.
If enough shops ask for Linux support, it will be granted.
#include
The views expressed in this post are my own, not my employers. I am employed by a company that makes test equipment for police radios. Personally, I'd love to have customers asking for Linux support! It'd show the marketing people I know what I'm talking about!
(B.T.W. the APCO homepage is http://www.apcointl.org)
www.eFax.com are spammers
growing up as a non-mormon in southern Utah, I can say that most of this is not true. While there is a very high involvement of the church in Utah, it is mostly friendly, I was invited to all the youth events and never really pressured in to going to church, which is more than I can say for the Baptists when I lived in southern Missouri. As for the school system, most of Utah (with the possibly exception of SLC, which is 70% non-mormon) has a very excellent school system, I graduated in '93, and I was using CAI stations in the electronics classes as well as having the oportunity to take college level chemistry, english, physics, CAD, history classes. (by actually going to the local college)
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
I'm just adding a link to verification comment which was posted seconds after the previous comment. The /. editor did verify the information before creating the article.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/08/27/16412 23&threshold=0&commentsort=0 &mode=thread&pid=8#72
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Unfortunately, I've seen something else happen up here..
The Fire Department in a nearby city (St. Albert) uses software called "Crysis" for their 911 dispatching, which until recently, ran on QNX.. well, it seems in their infinite wisdom(?), Crysis has decided to switch over to Windows 98!
Hmm, now does this give anyone else here chills? I mean, think about if this happened in YOUR town... would you trust your emergency services?
I'm just glad that I don't live there.