Forget about safety, stop debating how safe nuclear is/isn't. No mater how safe it is, I'll bet the companies that develop, build, sell, buy, operate these devices will be subject to extreme government regulation because of real or perceived dangers. Not only the federal government will want to know where these things are, who owns them, where the uranium comes from, where the wastes go to, etc., etc., but every local and state agency will also want to have their say. This will make compliance inaccessible to all but the largest corporations, thus maintaining the status quo. Substitute Exxon-nuclear for Exxon-Mobil. Although the price is still too high, the technology exists today that allows me to run my whole house on solar energy and be completely independent from the grid (granted, in central Colorado where we have 300 sunny days a year). When a large enough fraction of the country is using solar the prices will go down and make it even more accessible. Unless you tell me I'll be able to buy a nuclear battery (and dispose of it) without having to fill any government forms, I don't care how safe they are. Besides, even if we consider environmental issues, the chemical risks of solar panel manufacture can be isolated to a few manufacturing plants while the benefits can be spread as granular as we wish.
Also, while acknowledging that I'm even less knowledgeable than the parent, I'd say it's not just that the risk is small. It's what kind of risk we're talking about. Chemical pollution has already created many problems all over the world and is therefore mostly understood by everybody. Anyone knows what to do if they see changes in their water supply for instance: smell, taste, color, all serve as widely understood indicators. I can always stop drinking that water and have it analised if I suspect something. Compare that to radiation, which cannot be detected by any means short of specialized equipment and might have its effects felt years or decades in the future. I'd rather live in a town with a 1% chance of chemical contamination of the water supply than in one with.001% chance of a Chernobyl-type event!
Hey mattskent, welcome to the field. I'm 43 yo, been working this field all my life, and I have good news and bad news for you: the good, as others have pointed out, is that there's a big range of things you could be working on.
You don't have to develop all the time or to do support all the time. I've done a lot of those things myself, from crawling under people's desks to developing (not in the programming sense) products for my own company. The bad: you will always be doing some amount of support (and coding for that matter). Can't get away from it.
At entry levels, it's just expected. As you move upwards on the ladder -- and if you're any good -- there will be things only a very few people understand and you're one of them, in each case you will have no choice but to do some support, just because there are not a lot of people who can actually do it at that level.
This has led me to realize that ALL CS jobs are somehow related to support because the machines, programs and systems we create/develop/program are actually there to perform some work for somebody else, who usually knows a lot about that work but not necessarily about the machines they use.
AFAIK there's only one way out: get a PhD and become a researcher. That's the only way you will eventually get payed to play with computers, which is what most of us want when we pick CS as a major. But then you'll be required to teach also, which wouldn't work for me.
...I am not very comfortable to see Brazil rubbing elbows with crazy Chavez in Venezuela or Castro's Cuba. It reminds me there are political besides technical reasons why some countries support FOSS. For many years I was very close to the FOSS movement in Brazil and I can say "not sending more $$ to the USA" was as good a reason as any to support FOSS in certain circles.
All that aside though, not too long ago I was talking to someone who makes a lot of money selling knowledge (in the format of software tools) to various Brazilian agencies both in the federal and local levels. I knew there is a law in Brazil that compels government agencies to prefer Open Source solutions over proprietary unless they can prove they could not find a viable FOSS alternative.
What I didn't know was that when asked "do you want this for Windows or for Linux" the answer from some agencies would be "please don't ask that question. We want the Windows version but if you tell us there is a Linux version we'll be forced to buy that. Let's pretend you didn't say anything."
In that environment being able to require an ISO standard is a tremendous tool to help level the playing field. If ISO had not approved OOXML those agencies in Brazil would have _no legal basis_ to prefer MS Office. By becoming a standard, OOXML now tilts the field back in MS's favor. MS knows this. That's why they did and will do absolutely anything to be able to let their reps and techs say "yeah, ours is an ISO standard too..."
Hey, you get what you want. Most women are the way they are because that's attractive to most men. And vice-versa. But if getting stuck for life with a selfish, superficial 12-year old is not your dream, make that known and/or look for better.
My wedding was at a restaurant with immediate family and some dear friends and cost $3K including wedding dress. The money that would have bought white horses, chariots and that castle in Hungary for 1/2 hour got us a fantastic honeymoon and the down payment on our 5-bedroom house.
And by the way, if any part of your marriage is only about one of you you shouldn't be getting married anyway.
It's probably too late to make a difference in this old thread, but that's what I've been saying ever since people started clamoring for pre-installed Linux. Dell, HP, Lenovo: yes, do by all means include a pre-installed Linux if you want; but please make an option to sell ALL models in your line-up with no OS at all. If you want to appeal to the Linux crowd, make sure your hardware is supported, maybe release a couple of drivers under the GPL?
Show me a program than will know what I mean when I say (or type) "allow my friends to see my stuff" and does what a human would do. Then I'll start believing in automated debugging.
Most local libraries will do a used book sales twice a year, at least in my area. If you're a bit patient and don't mind waiting a couple of years for the latest titles, you can enjoy reading for pennies to the book. The trick is to come in early on the first day to get your choice selections at US$ 3 to 4; then show up again at the very end for the "bag sale", in which you can buy a few bags for usually $5 each and then leave with as many books as you can fit in your bag. Once I discovered library sales I very rarely shop anywhere else.
I am a layman in medicine, but when I have a health problem I make it my business to understand it the best I can. I am a layman in law but when I must deal with the legal system I will take the time to learn how it works. I am a layman in accounting (and I think it's extremely boring and it makes me sleepy) but during tax time I put in the effort to understand what and why I am paying for. As a computer layman if you want to (or need to or are forced to, just like taxes) use the Internet, you better MAKE yourself interested - or suffer the consequences. If you want the easy path, "series of tubes" is good enough for you. Now go IM on AOL and stop wasting my time.
...someone gets to be an IT worker outside the IT department. In my experience, usually this happens because some dept. head is unhappy with IT. They think if they have someone they can control directly, they'll get things done 'their way' instead of the 'IT people's way'. So they go and hire someone.
This poor soul then comes into the company without any knowledge of the wars that ended up by spawning his or her job and gets all surprised because IT is less than helpful to him or her. If you think their job's simple existence means IT lost that war it becomes clear why IT reacts the way it does.
But feelings and corporate politics aside, usually and especially in complex environments, there's reason for what outsiders perceive as bureaucracy in the IT dept. This is not to say that sometimes structures ossify and start abusing their powers, by no means. That does happen, but I believe most of the time that 'bureaucracy' is just IT trying to cope with absurd workloads.
Remember that IT depts have been hit hard by cost-cutting measures. There's never enough warm bodies to tackle all the projects and the backlog is usually huge. Remember that, even if the 'IT person outside the IT dept.' is absolutely flawless in their skills, mistakes and security vulnerabilities, especially done to central resources, will ultimately be blamed on IT and IT will be the dept. expected to correct the problem. Combine these two issues and you begin to understand why IT depts. everywhere are pushing for centralized controls. There's no other way to make sure of a lot of vital things such as: changes are logged somewhere so people know who did them, why and more important, how to undo them if they have to; proper testing has been done before changes are implemented; backups are being done and spot checks are happening so those tapes are actually useful if they are ever needed; all (sometimes thousands) Windows workstations are having security patches applied regularly and anti-virus definition files updated at least daily; etc, etc etc.
We have what I think is a good plan where I work (state university) - and yes, I work in the IT dept.: you administer, you support; you want our support, we administer. In other words, if you have the root/ administrator password, you are self-supported. Why is that? Because our team of 8 people wouldn't have time to fix everybody's computer if all our 8000 users had the freedom to download and install whatever they want.
Although I believe 9 monthes is way too long for adding memory to a server, if someone is trying to do it right it's also not a 10 minute job. In our environment we do have to cope with state purchasing laws and regulations, for instance. Yes, getting a memory stick from buy.com and sticking it into the server is appealing, but it's illegal and that's not the IT dept's. rules. Beyond that, we want to make sure we're buying a trusted brand, the vendor has proper warranty, the server actually supports the part, the server downtime will not create other problems down the line. Not to mention, in times of tight budgets, checking if the additional memory is even needed. Maybe trying to be a bit more efficient in your code or database design would save the company a lot of trouble.
Over the last 20 years, my experience has been that Microsoft wishes to make computers so easy to use that people without any clue on how to use a computer can do so. As Microsoft continues to put ease of use and automation ahead of security concerns, without any attempt to actually educate users on how to operate a very complex and powerful machine, does any other attempt at security make any sense? I mean, it took you guys several years to realize that having Outlook automatically run scripts upon receiving a message will NEVER work safely. This is just one example of the same attitude. Do you intend to do something about that or are you waiting until you finally defeat Unix so that you can replicate its model?
OK, maybe this is a stupid question, maybe it's been asked before and discussed ad nauseam. I don't know if it has. But why don't we simply stop buying CDs from these guys? Even better - why don't we buy only from recording companies/distributors/artists who put it in writing that they will respect our basic rights as we see them? We could use the web or even peer-to-peer to spread the word around about who's "music lover friendly" and who isn't. Thoughts?
Well I'm a Brazilian living in Colorado. There are many good things going for both places - and some bad too. I'm not getting into all that but you can be assured the capivara is not to be feared! First, it's only found in the wild or in zoos. Second, it's just a very big rodent. Think of it as a 50 pound chipmunk. It's big, yes, but it's a herbivore and very very shy. I've only been able to ever see them in the zoos.
Let's be honest here. How many projects actually have "3 or 4 hundred guys" looking at bugs? Maybe the big ones like the Kernel, Apache, KDE, etc. but do you really believe that every application gets that kind of scrutiny?
Precisely, only the big ones get that kind of scrutiny, but if MS Word can't be compared to one of the "big ones", I don't know what can.
And there are plenty of bugs in open source products that take longer then a few days to have resolved. Take a flip through Mozilla's bugzilla sometime
Once again, agreed. But i'm talking about average time...
I do understand all the complexities involved in trying to fix a bug the way the article describes. That's exactly why Open Source is superior. Instead of wasting a decade while 3 or 4 guys look at the problem from different angles, we'd have 3 or 4 hundred guys working on it not because it's their job but because they need it fixed. That's why fixes usually take days or hours on Open Source products.
OTOH, lots of people know enough programming to solve that kind of problem to their satisfaction. We don't have to submit that fix, so we don't have to worry too much about the side effects of the fix. That enables us to keep working with the product until some official (and usually better) solution comes along.
The way I see it, Open Source methods work because the whole infrastructure is free (libre). So Linus doesn't (usually) have to ask the community "hey guys, we'd really like this thing fixed in the SMP code" and the Apache guys don't have to ask their community to work specifically on SSI or whatever.
Right now, if I see a problem anywhere in GNU/Linux during my own work I can decide to fix it no matter where the problem is; it might be Apache, or PHP, or PostgreSQL, or the TCP stack or netfilter or a NIC driver. I may then decide that my fix will be useful to others and submit it to the appropriate porject for inclusion.
I might even decide that there's nothing that does exactly what I want so I'll start a new project.
I believe this attracts many developers to FOSS project. What good will it do if I'm working on a small part of an XML parser for Word if I cannot fix an eventual problem in the "Open document" dialog? I would lose interest very quickly.
Being Brazilian, I can say thay Rui's explanations are mostly correct - although I cannot validate the Durex story, even if it does make sense. But for the record, 'rapariga' means prostitute basically in Rio de Janeiro. In most other parts of the country, it means girl or young lady and it immediately tells you that whoever is saying it is from Portugal, because by now it's a seldom used word in Brazil - outside of Rio.
To me it sounds obvious: So far, the only thing that keeps MS dominant on the desktop is Office. Therefore, they'll move Office to the server and thus try to extend their dominance there. It's just another anti-Linux move.
This is the official site of Amyr Klink, the brazilian guy who rowed across the south atlantic from Africa to the Brazilian coast back in 1984 in a boat he himself designed (and which looks a lot like the french woman's boat, minus the fish). Then he went on to spend a winter alone in the Antarctic. His most recent adventure was a global circumnavigation around Antarctica non-stop in a sailing boat.
No need to tell us you use Windows... Why else would you want to reformat once a month? Unless you are like so many of the kids who plague the venerable field of Eletronic Data Processing (as it should still be called instead of IT or the buzzword of the moment) for whom the computer is a toy. You know, you need to have the latest biggest fastest hard drive, the latest fastest memory, the latest processor; you will happily fork out a few hundreds of dollars for that extra decimal point on you processor clock. You don't care what you're going to do with it, it's new and you want it. Kids, gotta lov'em!
Being a Brazilian geek, I do know about Conectiva
on
Conectiva Linux 9 Review
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've know about them since their first version, which was RedHat translated to Portuguese. The main reason for its popularity in Brazil was and still is the Portuguese language. This makes it popular with people who don't speak English and don't want to learn - which is simply a stupid move for someone working in IT.
Conectiva has undoubtedly matured in many ways but they're not as easy as Mandrake or as popular as RedHat (even in Brazil) or as power-user oriented as Debian or as Unix-like as Slackware.
It is a fairly popular distro in Brazil, but mostly among domestic users. Not many corporate users. AFAIK their biggest client is the state government of the state where they're based and it usually makes sense for a state government to favor local companies.
About the translation, it's extremely heterogeneous. Since it was done by contributors and not very well edited or verified, you find everything from great translations to simply incomprehensible ones. As a consultant in Brazil, I have come across a few companies using Conectiva over the years and more than once I've had to open the original RedHat man page alongside the translated Conectiva just to make heads and tails of it.
My genral impression has always been that Conectiva is a good way to start using Linux if your only language is Portuguese and if you know nothing about Linux and Unix. I don't know of any mission critical or big private companies using Conectiva.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget about safety, stop debating how safe nuclear is/isn't. No mater how safe it is, I'll bet the companies that develop, build, sell, buy, operate these devices will be subject to extreme government regulation because of real or perceived dangers. Not only the federal government will want to know where these things are, who owns them, where the uranium comes from, where the wastes go to, etc., etc., but every local and state agency will also want to have their say. This will make compliance inaccessible to all but the largest corporations, thus maintaining the status quo. Substitute Exxon-nuclear for Exxon-Mobil. Although the price is still too high, the technology exists today that allows me to run my whole house on solar energy and be completely independent from the grid (granted, in central Colorado where we have 300 sunny days a year). When a large enough fraction of the country is using solar the prices will go down and make it even more accessible. Unless you tell me I'll be able to buy a nuclear battery (and dispose of it) without having to fill any government forms, I don't care how safe they are. Besides, even if we consider environmental issues, the chemical risks of solar panel manufacture can be isolated to a few manufacturing plants while the benefits can be spread as granular as we wish.
Also, while acknowledging that I'm even less knowledgeable than the parent, I'd say it's not just that the risk is small. It's what kind of risk we're talking about. Chemical pollution has already created many problems all over the world and is therefore mostly understood by everybody. Anyone knows what to do if they see changes in their water supply for instance: smell, taste, color, all serve as widely understood indicators. I can always stop drinking that water and have it analised if I suspect something. Compare that to radiation, which cannot be detected by any means short of specialized equipment and might have its effects felt years or decades in the future. I'd rather live in a town with a 1% chance of chemical contamination of the water supply than in one with .001% chance of a Chernobyl-type event!
Hey mattskent, welcome to the field. I'm 43 yo, been working this field all my life, and I have good news and bad news for you: the good, as others have pointed out, is that there's a big range of things you could be working on.
You don't have to develop all the time or to do support all the time. I've done a lot of those things myself, from crawling under people's desks to developing (not in the programming sense) products for my own company. The bad: you will always be doing some amount of support (and coding for that matter). Can't get away from it.
At entry levels, it's just expected. As you move upwards on the ladder -- and if you're any good -- there will be things only a very few people understand and you're one of them, in each case you will have no choice but to do some support, just because there are not a lot of people who can actually do it at that level.
This has led me to realize that ALL CS jobs are somehow related to support because the machines, programs and systems we create/develop/program are actually there to perform some work for somebody else, who usually knows a lot about that work but not necessarily about the machines they use.
AFAIK there's only one way out: get a PhD and become a researcher. That's the only way you will eventually get payed to play with computers, which is what most of us want when we pick CS as a major. But then you'll be required to teach also, which wouldn't work for me.
As I said earlier, welcome to the field...
...I am not very comfortable to see Brazil rubbing elbows with crazy Chavez in Venezuela or Castro's Cuba. It reminds me there are political besides technical reasons why some countries support FOSS. For many years I was very close to the FOSS movement in Brazil and I can say "not sending more $$ to the USA" was as good a reason as any to support FOSS in certain circles.
All that aside though, not too long ago I was talking to someone who makes a lot of money selling knowledge (in the format of software tools) to various Brazilian agencies both in the federal and local levels. I knew there is a law in Brazil that compels government agencies to prefer Open Source solutions over proprietary unless they can prove they could not find a viable FOSS alternative.
What I didn't know was that when asked "do you want this for Windows or for Linux" the answer from some agencies would be "please don't ask that question. We want the Windows version but if you tell us there is a Linux version we'll be forced to buy that. Let's pretend you didn't say anything."
In that environment being able to require an ISO standard is a tremendous tool to help level the playing field. If ISO had not approved OOXML those agencies in Brazil would have _no legal basis_ to prefer MS Office. By becoming a standard, OOXML now tilts the field back in MS's favor. MS knows this. That's why they did and will do absolutely anything to be able to let their reps and techs say "yeah, ours is an ISO standard too..."
Hey, you get what you want. Most women are the way they are because that's attractive to most men. And vice-versa. But if getting stuck for life with a selfish, superficial 12-year old is not your dream, make that known and/or look for better.
My wedding was at a restaurant with immediate family and some dear friends and cost $3K including wedding dress. The money that would have bought white horses, chariots and that castle in Hungary for 1/2 hour got us a fantastic honeymoon and the down payment on our 5-bedroom house.
And by the way, if any part of your marriage is only about one of you you shouldn't be getting married anyway.
It's probably too late to make a difference in this old thread, but that's what I've been saying ever since people started clamoring for pre-installed Linux. Dell, HP, Lenovo: yes, do by all means include a pre-installed Linux if you want; but please make an option to sell ALL models in your line-up with no OS at all. If you want to appeal to the Linux crowd, make sure your hardware is supported, maybe release a couple of drivers under the GPL?
http://www.gergely.risko.hu/debian-dsa1571.en.html
Q.E.D.
Yes, with the "advantage" that you don't really learn anything in the process...
Show me a program than will know what I mean when I say (or type) "allow my friends to see my stuff" and does what a human would do. Then I'll start believing in automated debugging.
Most local libraries will do a used book sales twice a year, at least in my area. If you're a bit patient and don't mind waiting a couple of years for the latest titles, you can enjoy reading for pennies to the book. The trick is to come in early on the first day to get your choice selections at US$ 3 to 4; then show up again at the very end for the "bag sale", in which you can buy a few bags for usually $5 each and then leave with as many books as you can fit in your bag. Once I discovered library sales I very rarely shop anywhere else.
I am a layman in medicine, but when I have a health problem I make it my business to understand it the best I can. I am a layman in law but when I must deal with the legal system I will take the time to learn how it works. I am a layman in accounting (and I think it's extremely boring and it makes me sleepy) but during tax time I put in the effort to understand what and why I am paying for. As a computer layman if you want to (or need to or are forced to, just like taxes) use the Internet, you better MAKE yourself interested - or suffer the consequences. If you want the easy path, "series of tubes" is good enough for you. Now go IM on AOL and stop wasting my time.
...someone gets to be an IT worker outside the IT department. In my experience, usually this happens because some dept. head is unhappy with IT. They think if they have someone they can control directly, they'll get things done 'their way' instead of the 'IT people's way'. So they go and hire someone.
This poor soul then comes into the company without any knowledge of the wars that ended up by spawning his or her job and gets all surprised because IT is less than helpful to him or her. If you think their job's simple existence means IT lost that war it becomes clear why IT reacts the way it does.
But feelings and corporate politics aside, usually and especially in complex environments, there's reason for what outsiders perceive as bureaucracy in the IT dept. This is not to say that sometimes structures ossify and start abusing their powers, by no means. That does happen, but I believe most of the time that 'bureaucracy' is just IT trying to cope with absurd workloads.
Remember that IT depts have been hit hard by cost-cutting measures. There's never enough warm bodies to tackle all the projects and the backlog is usually huge. Remember that, even if the 'IT person outside the IT dept.' is absolutely flawless in their skills, mistakes and security vulnerabilities, especially done to central resources, will ultimately be blamed on IT and IT will be the dept. expected to correct the problem. Combine these two issues and you begin to understand why IT depts. everywhere are pushing for centralized controls. There's no other way to make sure of a lot of vital things such as: changes are logged somewhere so people know who did them, why and more important, how to undo them if they have to; proper testing has been done before changes are implemented; backups are being done and spot checks are happening so those tapes are actually useful if they are ever needed; all (sometimes thousands) Windows workstations are having security patches applied regularly and anti-virus definition files updated at least daily; etc, etc etc.
We have what I think is a good plan where I work (state university) - and yes, I work in the IT dept.: you administer, you support; you want our support, we administer. In other words, if you have the root/ administrator password, you are self-supported. Why is that? Because our team of 8 people wouldn't have time to fix everybody's computer if all our 8000 users had the freedom to download and install whatever they want.
Although I believe 9 monthes is way too long for adding memory to a server, if someone is trying to do it right it's also not a 10 minute job. In our environment we do have to cope with state purchasing laws and regulations, for instance. Yes, getting a memory stick from buy.com and sticking it into the server is appealing, but it's illegal and that's not the IT dept's. rules. Beyond that, we want to make sure we're buying a trusted brand, the vendor has proper warranty, the server actually supports the part, the server downtime will not create other problems down the line. Not to mention, in times of tight budgets, checking if the additional memory is even needed. Maybe trying to be a bit more efficient in your code or database design would save the company a lot of trouble.
Over the last 20 years, my experience has been that Microsoft wishes to make computers so easy to use that people without any clue on how to use a computer can do so. As Microsoft continues to put ease of use and automation ahead of security concerns, without any attempt to actually educate users on how to operate a very complex and powerful machine, does any other attempt at security make any sense? I mean, it took you guys several years to realize that having Outlook automatically run scripts upon receiving a message will NEVER work safely. This is just one example of the same attitude. Do you intend to do something about that or are you waiting until you finally defeat Unix so that you can replicate its model?
OK, maybe this is a stupid question, maybe it's been asked before and discussed ad nauseam. I don't know if it has. But why don't we simply stop buying CDs from these guys? Even better - why don't we buy only from recording companies/distributors/artists who put it in writing that they will respect our basic rights as we see them? We could use the web or even peer-to-peer to spread the word around about who's "music lover friendly" and who isn't. Thoughts?
I can vouch for that. It's true. I'm him! (really big grin)
Well I'm a Brazilian living in Colorado. There are many good things going for both places - and some bad too. I'm not getting into all that but you can be assured the capivara is not to be feared! First, it's only found in the wild or in zoos. Second, it's just a very big rodent. Think of it as a 50 pound chipmunk. It's big, yes, but it's a herbivore and very very shy. I've only been able to ever see them in the zoos.
Precisely, only the big ones get that kind of scrutiny, but if MS Word can't be compared to one of the "big ones", I don't know what can.
And there are plenty of bugs in open source products that take longer then a few days to have resolved. Take a flip through Mozilla's bugzilla sometime
Once again, agreed. But i'm talking about average time...
I do understand all the complexities involved in trying to fix a bug the way the article describes. That's exactly why Open Source is superior. Instead of wasting a decade while 3 or 4 guys look at the problem from different angles, we'd have 3 or 4 hundred guys working on it not because it's their job but because they need it fixed. That's why fixes usually take days or hours on Open Source products.
OTOH, lots of people know enough programming to solve that kind of problem to their satisfaction. We don't have to submit that fix, so we don't have to worry too much about the side effects of the fix. That enables us to keep working with the product until some official (and usually better) solution comes along.
Right now, if I see a problem anywhere in GNU/Linux during my own work I can decide to fix it no matter where the problem is; it might be Apache, or PHP, or PostgreSQL, or the TCP stack or netfilter or a NIC driver. I may then decide that my fix will be useful to others and submit it to the appropriate porject for inclusion.
I might even decide that there's nothing that does exactly what I want so I'll start a new project.
I believe this attracts many developers to FOSS project. What good will it do if I'm working on a small part of an XML parser for Word if I cannot fix an eventual problem in the "Open document" dialog? I would lose interest very quickly.
Being Brazilian, I can say thay Rui's explanations are mostly correct - although I cannot validate the Durex story, even if it does make sense. But for the record, 'rapariga' means prostitute basically in Rio de Janeiro. In most other parts of the country, it means girl or young lady and it immediately tells you that whoever is saying it is from Portugal, because by now it's a seldom used word in Brazil - outside of Rio.
I don't know if the Pinto/Corcel story is true or not, but I can attest that Ford did sell a car named Corcel in Brazil. My dad had two of those.
To me it sounds obvious: So far, the only thing that keeps MS dominant on the desktop is Office. Therefore, they'll move Office to the server and thus try to extend their dominance there. It's just another anti-Linux move.
(in portuguese).
This is the official site of Amyr Klink, the brazilian guy who rowed across the south atlantic from Africa to the Brazilian coast back in 1984 in a boat he himself designed (and which looks a lot like the french woman's boat, minus the fish). Then he went on to spend a winter alone in the Antarctic. His most recent adventure was a global circumnavigation around Antarctica non-stop in a sailing boat.
No need to tell us you use Windows... Why else would you want to reformat once a month? Unless you are like so many of the kids who plague the venerable field of Eletronic Data Processing (as it should still be called instead of IT or the buzzword of the moment) for whom the computer is a toy. You know, you need to have the latest biggest fastest hard drive, the latest fastest memory, the latest processor; you will happily fork out a few hundreds of dollars for that extra decimal point on you processor clock. You don't care what you're going to do with it, it's new and you want it. Kids, gotta lov'em!
I've know about them since their first version, which was RedHat translated to Portuguese. The main reason for its popularity in Brazil was and still is the Portuguese language. This makes it popular with people who don't speak English and don't want to learn - which is simply a stupid move for someone working in IT.
Conectiva has undoubtedly matured in many ways but they're not as easy as Mandrake or as popular as RedHat (even in Brazil) or as power-user oriented as Debian or as Unix-like as Slackware.
It is a fairly popular distro in Brazil, but mostly among domestic users. Not many corporate users. AFAIK their biggest client is the state government of the state where they're based and it usually makes sense for a state government to favor local companies.
About the translation, it's extremely heterogeneous. Since it was done by contributors and not very well edited or verified, you find everything from great translations to simply incomprehensible ones. As a consultant in Brazil, I have come across a few companies using Conectiva over the years and more than once I've had to open the original RedHat man page alongside the translated Conectiva just to make heads and tails of it.
My genral impression has always been that Conectiva is a good way to start using Linux if your only language is Portuguese and if you know nothing about Linux and Unix. I don't know of any mission critical or big private companies using Conectiva.