Honestly who cares about ASP. No one today is really still writing in old ASP/VB (except may some intranents). However, if we are talking ASP.NET, in my repeated experience (since I work on a large team of web developers using multiple technologies), those migrating from PHP to ASP.NET constantly say "Wow, that would have taken me about 3 days to code that in PHP.". I mean simple things like caching are not built into PHP, you have to code it from scratch. Other things like OOP sessions don't exists. Everything is a freaking function for crying out loud. So you are left coding your own "framework" so to speak which is why there are a gazillion PHP frameworks out there all trying to immitate what ASP.NET provides you. Another example is the ever popular MVC model. ASP.NET does this out of the box. But with PHP you have to spend the time coding your own. I wrote PHP code for a long time dude, and switched to ASP.NET over a year ago and I haven't looked back. Open your mind. Do you want the green pill or the red pill?
I wonder if the virus can progate as a shared iTune? So if someone on a corporate lan added that to their shared iTunes and someone played I wonder what would happen?
It really depends on your marketing tactics. There are typically two different ways OSS can be marketed:
One: Trickle up. Whereby professors, students, etc would download your software, play with it, and may create a buzz
Two: Trickle down. The decision makers are notified, showed the system and make a decision to use the system.
Typically I think you should approach the trickle down method if you are looking for people to adopt the system quickly. Going witht the trickle up method is great if you have 2 - 3 years for the word to get out about it.
Several people have stated that their Universities or Colleges only purchase commercial software. I assume you from your wording that you are in fact representing a company. You probably obviously want to make money so there IS a commercial aspect to using the system. I think people would have more benefits of using your system than others since there is a commercial backing and it is still open source. Other companies that have done this that come to mind are MySQL and Zope. How profitable they are I don't know, but that is essentially your model with this.
HOWTO: Screw manufacturers and have them fight your battles in court
MS could help the manufacturers out by putting a clause in their agreemtn to state the refund cannot exceed the "OEM purchase price" or not to exceed $75.00. The entire license is written so that manufacturers get screwed on this deal. Will they learn from this, probably not. The CEO probably never knew this case ever happened and it may only get told at Christmas parties while everyone sits around and laughs at how this nut crazed Linux guy sued them.
What you would do if you were the manufacturer in this case? Could the manufacturer in this case proved the price they paid on MS Windows XP? I think they could have so I wouldn't go out trying to get $199.00 on each copy you own. I say this because I don't ever remember seeing anything when I ran a PC company that said I couldn't show my invoice from Tech Data, Ingram Micro or other distributors to a customer. Maybe they just didn't want to, who knows.
I do know this though, because of the MS license, manufacturers get screwed.
Please allow me to point out the obvious that this article is benchmarking a 3GHz CPU vs a 1.2GHz CPU. Is it just me or does this seem a little one sided? Now, of course you cannot buy a 3GHz G4, but what if you could? I think it really shows how superior the G4 processor is compared to the Intel/Athlon line of processors. If I was a Mac user, I would hold my head high.
I don't remember reading any car reviews where a 200HP engine was benchmarked against a 500HP engine. It just isn't done.
Nobody is probably going to read this since it is about the 2000th post on this thread but I have moved off of linux and windows to OS X. I have been using it now for about 3 weeks and I am happy that I moved on. OS X in my opinion is the best of both worlds. I've got unix underneath the hood, apps, stability and open source tools available like apache, mysql and php if I need them. For my needs and what I do it is the perfect combination.
I don't know if other people have noticed but I have started to notice more OS X postings on slashdot and other stories in the news around the net. I think OS X is catching on more and more (do I have proof no, that is why I said think). It would probably catch on more if apple would lower the prices on the hardware and open up OS X to the PC platform with those hidden AMD machines running OS X.
Re:CMYK, and GIMP UI vs. drop-down menus
on
Film Gimp
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Evidently you didn't download and compile the "str-line" script-fu plugin. It only took me 4 hours to install and set it up after I got the straight line library (lib.1.2.strline.so) compiled and built which required that I install GCC 3.0 and update 27 other RPM packages. If I could have just "apt-get install str-line-fu" that would have been prefered.
To me this is pretty simple. If Dell doesn't sell you what you want then you CAN shop elsewhere. I say support the companies that are building workstations which come pre-loaded with Linux. There are plenty to choose from just go looking around.
I went to their main home page and got re-directed to the system control panel. Not the smartest re-direct I've ever seen. Has anyone else been able to get to anything?
The Ann Arbor party is going to be held "actually" in Ypsilanti at Tap Internet, Inc. Address info is:
Tap Internet, Inc. 125 N. Huron St. STE #400 Ypsilanti, MI 48197 734-482-1371 (if you get lost or need directions)
Coming I94 from Chicago get off at exit 183 and head north (left). Coming from Detroit get off at exit 183 and head north (right off of exit). When you cross downtown Ypsilanti get in the left lane and park at the Joseph Mercy Hospital parking lot on the left and walk to the end of the block to 125. Party starts at 7:00 and once all of the Pizza and food is eaten the party will be migrated to the bar around the corner.
"I don't know why this solution isn't being offered to companies."
Probably because it is stupid. I hate to say it that way but you need to get out from behind your computer every once in awhile and talk to real people in real businesses. Before I rant a little further about your post, let me go on record as saying that I do agree with your rationale that companies that are trying to embrace the Linux community by coming up with what I call "switch" programs are doing nothing but detracting from Linux. That however, isn't the biggest detractor, there are others such as ease of use, installs, setups, and business centric applications that are more than just a.41.34.12 release on sourceforge.
I speak to different companies everyday in my profession and telling someone they can use a bash script to convert word documents isn't going to make them go, "Yeah let's switch to Linux". Epecially given the fact they will need to take Windows off of ALL of their computers and install Linux, learn a new office suite, throw away key pieces of software which are vital to their business like PDF generation, contact management, accounting, and audio/media tools. This is not something a company is going to embrace! It is very easy to say what you gain but comanies are more interested in WHAT THEY LOOSE.
Here is how I see it. The open source community seems to be very good at producing what I call "protocol" driven applications. Why, well because there is a "plan" laid out for them to follow. If you deviate far from this analogy you will see there isn't much out there for a business or end-user to use in a production environment. Let me clariy "product environment". By that I mean, install it and get to work. I know somebody right now is thinking Openoffice. And you know what, the open source community didn't develop it, it was GIVEN to the open source community for us to improve on and make better. I challenge you to easily take a firewire supported camera and make your own DVD. I guarantee you cannot without pointing me to a 40 page howto.
Somebody mentioned the very simple task of playing DVDs on Linux above in a post. He had somewhat of a long rant (similiar to this one) about all of the ins and outs of how hard it actually is to get a DVD player to work in Linux. And of course some idiot posted "oh, use vidoelan.org, don't you feel stupid?". I wanted to smack the guy that posted that because evidently he didn't read between the fine lines. There ARE players out there, but it takes a degree in Physics and 3 weeks to get them to work. That is the "1 degree of separation" that separates Linux from being excepted in the mainstream, ease of installation and use.
After meeting with him for 4 hours I got to know him pretty well and he is a very informed consumer. He was mentioning windows and ASP because that is what they have used in the past for the web sites they build. It just turns out that NO ONE ELSE had ever approached him about using open source technologies. He knew about them, but none of the vendors they were using offered open source technologies.
I think this really drives home the point that Eric Raymond makes in his speaking about going to the "top" to get the company to use open source. If you get the decision makers on your side then things will start to move.
If more companies like ours embraced open source to build its products with and support the product on open source platforms it covers two of the biggest objections, cost and support. Our cost is lowered since we are using open source products to build it with, therefore there are no license fees to pay. And two, we support it very well on linux. If the product works and works well, will save your business money after you buy it and is supported there isn't much of an argument against using it. If the partner your company is working with doesn't use open source then you are going to wind up using windows and paying a lot for it.
I will say this, the open source community needs a few things to kick this thing in the rear:
1. Business tools - like ACT, goldmine, contact management, accounting packages, inventory management tools etc. The problem is that "geeks" don't won't to write stuff like this so we leave the job to closed source software companies to develop these apps and make millions. Sure we almost have evolution but how long did it take the open source community to say, you know this Outlook thing is pretty cool and companies are using it.
2. Kill off the stupid forking of open source projects. What I mean by this is if you go to sourceforge.net there are over 29,000 projects. Most of which are things that people are duplicating over and over and over and over. The programmers that are cauusing this say how bad a project is and then go off and start some lame project that never goes anywhere. These programmers aren't doing the open source community any good. They should FIRST AND FORMOST join an existing project and make it better. This would make the SuSE distribution a lot smaller (hahaha).
3. Geeks need to become salesmen and start speaking in terms a business or another person can understand. Telling your boss that you are "31337" and he should use linux because your uptime is 126 days is not convincing enough. I have found that business owners respond positively if given the proper pitch.
>What happens when we have a problem that my sysadmin can't solve?
I live in Michigan (outside of Detriot) where there are tons of consulting companies who specialize in providing these types of services for companies. One that comes to mind is located in Ann Arbor, MI called "The Linux Box" which is a firm that specializes in nothing but helping companies use and maintain Linux in their corporate environments.
I am from Mississippi originally, and you are right in that finding a Unix geek there would be extremely difficult unless you are in a bigger city (which there aren't that many).
Something I like to ask IT managers is, "The last time you had a problem with an NT server did you solve it by calling Microsoft?" I have probably spoken to hundreds of people in this type of position and I haven't gotten a YES yet. Why? The main reason is that Microsoft doesn't provide support directly for its OS. I sold hardware for about 5 years and everytime we sold a PC, we (being the manufacturer) were required to support the operating system and whatever we sold them. Sometimes the on-site firm we used as support had to go out and try to fix it. If we called Microsoft for support we never got an aswer or a bug fix. We ALWAYS had to resort to forums and online news posting to solve the problems, or contact the manufacturer of the products we used.
I guess my point is that Microsoft has done a great job at convincing the IT managers they have support, but the truth is they don't. It is another illusion Microsoft has everyone buying into.
I do mention the numbers about apache and others though. As someone else pointed out "businesses use what everyone else is using" and this is a key point to selling it to non-technical people who really don't know any better. Their mentality is "If it is good enough for the goose, it is good enough for the gander".
I met with the executive vice president of a very large advertising agency this past week about using our companies product which has been built using open source technologies. During our introductions he kept mentioning Windows and ASP pages. I didn't really know where he stood as far as using a product built to run o pen source technologies. So I asked him, "I am going to mention two words to you and you tell me what comes to mind........Open Source".
He thought a minute and said, "Well, stability, scalability, more functional, and ease of use". I don't know where he got the ease of use but everything else he said I couldn't believe.
I don't really count this as a viable argument as this can swing to both sides of the fence. Usually when something like this happens it is a case of YOUR COMPANY didn't hire the right people who knew what they were doing. It doesn't really matter if we are talking about Linux or Windows in this case as both operating systems have fallen prey to this type of "blame" (which they are going to loose anyway cause stuff isn't working).
I can see it now, someone at your firm "wanted" to be a Linux savior but didn't really have any idea what he was doing, but he knew that Linux would save the company money and would meet the needs of the company. So this guy/gal recommends Linux, people buy into it and when it comes time to tweak it and do a corporate setup the guy/gal doesn't have a clue as to what they are doing. Of course, the person isn't going to say "I have no idea what I am doing, we should call in a Linux consulting company for some help" in fear that he may loose his job.
Some people live happy with one solution or the other and stories like this could have been solved if the right person was doing the right job. I would sue your human resources department for not knowing enough about technology and how to interview people. Company's only survive if the people they put in place KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING.
If someone over at IBM or another big player wanted to bail Loki out of their financial problems they could and help fill a gap greatly need by the Linux community. According to another article on linuxtoday.com, Loki is 1.5 million dollars in debt. That is a drop in the hat for someone like IBM or a VC.
Use this as an example
on
Dorm Storm?
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· Score: 2, Informative
A lot of people have already written in with some good advice as far as FAQ's and the such. At the Univ. of Mich I think they do a very good job of handling this sorta thing with about 40,000 students. They have a whole entire division called ITD which may offer some material you may wish to cover.
When Covad suddenly shut off DSL services, I cannot tell you how much this affected corporate america (our company included). Maybe this will be the next NBC movie or next hacker movie? Anybody in Hollywood reading this I am sure is having those kinds of thoughts go through there heads.
I am not sure how they are structured and how many employees they are using but it is a simply matter of a simple budget. If they sell 100,000.00 of Mandrake a month, and their expenses are 110,000.00, they need to cut back, restructure and not be so wasteful. Sometimes companies try to do to much to fast and forget to look at the bottom line about how to pay the bills.
Ok, it is real cool that transmeta and toshiba are getting in bed with one another. I want to play Tribes 2 or Quake III on my laptop. Give me that Toshiba/Trasmeta, and you have a paying customer.
I like the Yahoo model myself. Very little graphics (requiring low band width) and using open source servers to run it (bsd). If you are getting enough traffic to have to spend more money on bandwidth then I hope you are at least selling something that is making money or charging for people to view the site.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to publically submit my resume to apply as one of your developers:
The following software code is release under the GPL:
$hello = 'hello';
$world = 'world';
echo $hello world;
Nice huh? What do you think?
For $79.00, it has to be great! I mean we are in America where you get what you pay for right? Comcast is $45.95 where I am at so it has to be better!
Honestly who cares about ASP. No one today is really still writing in old ASP/VB (except may some intranents). However, if we are talking ASP.NET, in my repeated experience (since I work on a large team of web developers using multiple technologies), those migrating from PHP to ASP.NET constantly say "Wow, that would have taken me about 3 days to code that in PHP.". I mean simple things like caching are not built into PHP, you have to code it from scratch. Other things like OOP sessions don't exists. Everything is a freaking function for crying out loud. So you are left coding your own "framework" so to speak which is why there are a gazillion PHP frameworks out there all trying to immitate what ASP.NET provides you. Another example is the ever popular MVC model. ASP.NET does this out of the box. But with PHP you have to spend the time coding your own. I wrote PHP code for a long time dude, and switched to ASP.NET over a year ago and I haven't looked back. Open your mind. Do you want the green pill or the red pill?
They could have at least installed the open source version of .Net, aka Mono. What were they thinking!
I posted this story to my blog yesterday and copied the pdf and the images there. The last time I checked the site was down.
http://blog.zorka.com for the pdf and images.
I wonder if the virus can progate as a shared iTune? So if someone on a corporate lan added that to their shared iTunes and someone played I wonder what would happen?
It really depends on your marketing tactics. There are typically two different ways OSS can be marketed:
One: Trickle up. Whereby professors, students, etc would download your software, play with it, and may create a buzz
Two: Trickle down. The decision makers are notified, showed the system and make a decision to use the system.
Typically I think you should approach the trickle down method if you are looking for people to adopt the system quickly. Going witht the trickle up method is great if you have 2 - 3 years for the word to get out about it.
Several people have stated that their Universities or Colleges only purchase commercial software. I assume you from your wording that you are in fact representing a company. You probably obviously want to make money so there IS a commercial aspect to using the system. I think people would have more benefits of using your system than others since there is a commercial backing and it is still open source. Other companies that have done this that come to mind are MySQL and Zope. How profitable they are I don't know, but that is essentially your model with this.
-Z
This should have been the title of this story:
HOWTO: Screw manufacturers and have them fight your battles in court
MS could help the manufacturers out by putting a clause in their agreemtn to state the refund cannot exceed the "OEM purchase price" or not to exceed $75.00. The entire license is written so that manufacturers get screwed on this deal. Will they learn from this, probably not. The CEO probably never knew this case ever happened and it may only get told at Christmas parties while everyone sits around and laughs at how this nut crazed Linux guy sued them.
What you would do if you were the manufacturer in this case? Could the manufacturer in this case proved the price they paid on MS Windows XP? I think they could have so I wouldn't go out trying to get $199.00 on each copy you own. I say this because I don't ever remember seeing anything when I ran a PC company that said I couldn't show my invoice from Tech Data, Ingram Micro or other distributors to a customer. Maybe they just didn't want to, who knows.
I do know this though, because of the MS license, manufacturers get screwed.
It will only get worse before it gets better.
Please allow me to point out the obvious that this article is benchmarking a 3GHz CPU vs a 1.2GHz CPU. Is it just me or does this seem a little one sided? Now, of course you cannot buy a 3GHz G4, but what if you could? I think it really shows how superior the G4 processor is compared to the Intel/Athlon line of processors. If I was a Mac user, I would hold my head high.
I don't remember reading any car reviews where a 200HP engine was benchmarked against a 500HP engine. It just isn't done.
Nobody is probably going to read this since it is about the 2000th post on this thread but I have moved off of linux and windows to OS X. I have been using it now for about 3 weeks and I am happy that I moved on. OS X in my opinion is the best of both worlds. I've got unix underneath the hood, apps, stability and open source tools available like apache, mysql and php if I need them. For my needs and what I do it is the perfect combination.
I don't know if other people have noticed but I have started to notice more OS X postings on slashdot and other stories in the news around the net. I think OS X is catching on more and more (do I have proof no, that is why I said think). It would probably catch on more if apple would lower the prices on the hardware and open up OS X to the PC platform with those hidden AMD machines running OS X.
Evidently you didn't download and compile the "str-line" script-fu plugin. It only took me 4 hours to install and set it up after I got the straight line library (lib.1.2.strline.so) compiled and built which required that I install GCC 3.0 and update 27 other RPM packages. If I could have just "apt-get install str-line-fu" that would have been prefered.
is that we are just one step closer to getting one of those cool laser guns that never runs out of fire power :)
To me this is pretty simple. If Dell doesn't sell you what you want then you CAN shop elsewhere. I say support the companies that are building workstations which come pre-loaded with Linux. There are plenty to choose from just go looking around.
-Zorka
I went to their main home page and got re-directed to the system control panel. Not the smartest re-direct I've ever seen. Has anyone else been able to get to anything?
-Z
The Ann Arbor party is going to be held "actually" in Ypsilanti at Tap Internet, Inc. Address info is:
Tap Internet, Inc.
125 N. Huron St. STE #400
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
734-482-1371 (if you get lost or need directions)
Coming I94 from Chicago get off at exit 183 and head north (left). Coming from Detroit get off at exit 183 and head north (right off of exit). When you cross downtown Ypsilanti get in the left lane and park at the Joseph Mercy Hospital parking lot on the left and walk to the end of the block to 125. Party starts at 7:00 and once all of the Pizza and food is eaten the party will be migrated to the bar around the corner.
-Z
Whoah! Whoah! Whoah!
.41.34.12 release on sourceforge.
"I don't know why this solution isn't being offered to companies."
Probably because it is stupid. I hate to say it that way but you need to get out from behind your computer every once in awhile and talk to real people in real businesses. Before I rant a little further about your post, let me go on record as saying that I do agree with your rationale that companies that are trying to embrace the Linux community by coming up with what I call "switch" programs are doing nothing but detracting from Linux. That however, isn't the biggest detractor, there are others such as ease of use, installs, setups, and business centric applications that are more than just a
I speak to different companies everyday in my profession and telling someone they can use a bash script to convert word documents isn't going to make them go, "Yeah let's switch to Linux". Epecially given the fact they will need to take Windows off of ALL of their computers and install Linux, learn a new office suite, throw away key pieces of software which are vital to their business like PDF generation, contact management, accounting, and audio/media tools. This is not something a company is going to embrace! It is very easy to say what you gain but comanies are more interested in WHAT THEY LOOSE.
Here is how I see it. The open source community seems to be very good at producing what I call "protocol" driven applications. Why, well because there is a "plan" laid out for them to follow. If you deviate far from this analogy you will see there isn't much out there for a business or end-user to use in a production environment. Let me clariy "product environment". By that I mean, install it and get to work. I know somebody right now is thinking Openoffice. And you know what, the open source community didn't develop it, it was GIVEN to the open source community for us to improve on and make better. I challenge you to easily take a firewire supported camera and make your own DVD. I guarantee you cannot without pointing me to a 40 page howto.
Somebody mentioned the very simple task of playing DVDs on Linux above in a post. He had somewhat of a long rant (similiar to this one) about all of the ins and outs of how hard it actually is to get a DVD player to work in Linux. And of course some idiot posted "oh, use vidoelan.org, don't you feel stupid?". I wanted to smack the guy that posted that because evidently he didn't read between the fine lines. There ARE players out there, but it takes a degree in Physics and 3 weeks to get them to work. That is the "1 degree of separation" that separates Linux from being excepted in the mainstream, ease of installation and use.
-ZorKa
After meeting with him for 4 hours I got to know him pretty well and he is a very informed consumer. He was mentioning windows and ASP because that is what they have used in the past for the web sites they build. It just turns out that NO ONE ELSE had ever approached him about using open source technologies. He knew about them, but none of the vendors they were using offered open source technologies.
I think this really drives home the point that Eric Raymond makes in his speaking about going to the "top" to get the company to use open source. If you get the decision makers on your side then things will start to move.
If more companies like ours embraced open source to build its products with and support the product on open source platforms it covers two of the biggest objections, cost and support. Our cost is lowered since we are using open source products to build it with, therefore there are no license fees to pay. And two, we support it very well on linux. If the product works and works well, will save your business money after you buy it and is supported there isn't much of an argument against using it. If the partner your company is working with doesn't use open source then you are going to wind up using windows and paying a lot for it.
I will say this, the open source community needs a few things to kick this thing in the rear:
1. Business tools - like ACT, goldmine, contact management, accounting packages, inventory management tools etc. The problem is that "geeks" don't won't to write stuff like this so we leave the job to closed source software companies to develop these apps and make millions. Sure we almost have evolution but how long did it take the open source community to say, you know this Outlook thing is pretty cool and companies are using it.
2. Kill off the stupid forking of open source projects. What I mean by this is if you go to sourceforge.net there are over 29,000 projects. Most of which are things that people are duplicating over and over and over and over. The programmers that are cauusing this say how bad a project is and then go off and start some lame project that never goes anywhere. These programmers aren't doing the open source community any good. They should FIRST AND FORMOST join an existing project and make it better. This would make the SuSE distribution a lot smaller (hahaha).
3. Geeks need to become salesmen and start speaking in terms a business or another person can understand. Telling your boss that you are "31337" and he should use linux because your uptime is 126 days is not convincing enough. I have found that business owners respond positively if given the proper pitch.
>What happens when we have a problem that my sysadmin can't solve?
I live in Michigan (outside of Detriot) where there are tons of consulting companies who specialize in providing these types of services for companies. One that comes to mind is located in Ann Arbor, MI called "The Linux Box" which is a firm that specializes in nothing but helping companies use and maintain Linux in their corporate environments.
I am from Mississippi originally, and you are right in that finding a Unix geek there would be extremely difficult unless you are in a bigger city (which there aren't that many).
Something I like to ask IT managers is, "The last time you had a problem with an NT server did you solve it by calling Microsoft?" I have probably spoken to hundreds of people in this type of position and I haven't gotten a YES yet. Why? The main reason is that Microsoft doesn't provide support directly for its OS. I sold hardware for about 5 years and everytime we sold a PC, we (being the manufacturer) were required to support the operating system and whatever we sold them. Sometimes the on-site firm we used as support had to go out and try to fix it. If we called Microsoft for support we never got an aswer or a bug fix. We ALWAYS had to resort to forums and online news posting to solve the problems, or contact the manufacturer of the products we used.
I guess my point is that Microsoft has done a great job at convincing the IT managers they have support, but the truth is they don't. It is another illusion Microsoft has everyone buying into.
I do mention the numbers about apache and others though. As someone else pointed out "businesses use what everyone else is using" and this is a key point to selling it to non-technical people who really don't know any better. Their mentality is "If it is good enough for the goose, it is good enough for the gander".
I met with the executive vice president of a very large advertising agency this past week about using our companies product which has been built using open source technologies. During our introductions he kept mentioning Windows and ASP pages. I didn't really know where he stood as far as using a product built to run o pen source technologies. So I asked him, "I am going to mention two words to you and you tell me what comes to mind........Open Source".
He thought a minute and said, "Well, stability, scalability, more functional, and ease of use". I don't know where he got the ease of use but everything else he said I couldn't believe.
I don't really count this as a viable argument as this can swing to both sides of the fence. Usually when something like this happens it is a case of YOUR COMPANY didn't hire the right people who knew what they were doing. It doesn't really matter if we are talking about Linux or Windows in this case as both operating systems have fallen prey to this type of "blame" (which they are going to loose anyway cause stuff isn't working).
I can see it now, someone at your firm "wanted" to be a Linux savior but didn't really have any idea what he was doing, but he knew that Linux would save the company money and would meet the needs of the company. So this guy/gal recommends Linux, people buy into it and when it comes time to tweak it and do a corporate setup the guy/gal doesn't have a clue as to what they are doing. Of course, the person isn't going to say "I have no idea what I am doing, we should call in a Linux consulting company for some help" in fear that he may loose his job.
Some people live happy with one solution or the other and stories like this could have been solved if the right person was doing the right job. I would sue your human resources department for not knowing enough about technology and how to interview people. Company's only survive if the people they put in place KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING.
If someone over at IBM or another big player wanted to bail Loki out of their financial problems they could and help fill a gap greatly need by the Linux community. According to another article on linuxtoday.com, Loki is 1.5 million dollars in debt. That is a drop in the hat for someone like IBM or a VC.
A lot of people have already written in with some good advice as far as FAQ's and the such. At the Univ. of Mich I think they do a very good job of handling this sorta thing with about 40,000 students. They have a whole entire division called ITD which may offer some material you may wish to cover.
When Covad suddenly shut off DSL services, I cannot tell you how much this affected corporate america (our company included). Maybe this will be the next NBC movie or next hacker movie? Anybody in Hollywood reading this I am sure is having those kinds of thoughts go through there heads.
I am not sure how they are structured and how many employees they are using but it is a simply matter of a simple budget. If they sell 100,000.00 of Mandrake a month, and their expenses are 110,000.00, they need to cut back, restructure and not be so wasteful. Sometimes companies try to do to much to fast and forget to look at the bottom line about how to pay the bills.
I like the Yahoo model myself. Very little graphics (requiring low band width) and using open source servers to run it (bsd). If you are getting enough traffic to have to spend more money on bandwidth then I hope you are at least selling something that is making money or charging for people to view the site.