Does Ron Paul want to live in country where we're citizens of corporations because of an irrational fear of "big bad government?"
Some of us are already citizens of corporations. The city seal for my town says "The Corporation of the City of..." Of course that's what I get for living in a comonwealth state. That just means my money belongs to them, and thier money belongs to them too.
"If there's a better way, I'll be the first in line - it better work this time!" - Metalica (back in the good-old days...)
Why aren't all these enlightened geeks in charge by now, anyway?
Because as any politico will tell you, a popular incumbent is hard to beat. I am very impressed with the inroads OSS has made already into the corporate/government world, I believe mostly because of the education of those management types that IT people provide. Of course other factors are involved, but I feel that sitting down with the boss and explaining and giving a demonstration has a lot to do with it. Don't talk down to them with a lot of tech terms; they hate that and will probably boot your project on that principal alone. 'TCO' is still a buzzword they like to hear. Provide the proper presentation, in thier language, and things click. Don't get me wrong, people still want closed source on the desktop because that is what they are familiar with. And sometimes a closed source app is foisted upon the IT dept. to support one way or another, but if it's what makes the company tick you don't have much of a choice. Just lock it down and stabilize it best you can.
There aren't any IP issues with the government. The government doesn't have IP to speak of. You can plagerize anything from the government's files freely, and the best they can do is stick a "National Security" or "Sensetive" label on it and lock it up (and maybe you too, since that NS label goes a long way to remove your rights too...).
I just hope this memo is enough to make some heads at least turn to take a look in the OSS direction. It takes an act of God around here to convince management that W2K server is NOT the best option for what they want to do.
To add to the "scratch-my-back" stories from above, I too have been victimized by the local-yokel syndrome that seems to permiate the base/post level IT oversight. An Air Force Master Sargent over our IT dept. (we were a govmt. contractor) asked for bids to replace aging equipment for the y2k bruhaha. We went and got three good bids from Gateway, Dell, and Micron (others were too high) that fit just above the $800.00 per-computer limit he had set (at the time that was damn cheap, with monitor, office 97, and win 98... don't ask). It turns out that some local outfit won the bid, basically a guy working out of his garage (literally) came in with cheap hardware and set his price at $799.00/machine. How convenient. We learned later that this guy was a 'good friend' of the Sarge. We paid for it a year later -- as the warranty ran out, almost every one of the 180 machines went tits-up -- and guess what; our supplier dissapeared from the face of the Earth. And since it was cheap hardware (read not-quite-standard Chinese/Korean knock-offs) to begin with, there wasn't a prayer finding spares on the open market. What a nightmare. Many more were to follow with the sarge at the helm.
Anyhow, here's hopin' you have a better time of it than I've had in government (contractor) service.
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Does Ron Paul want to live in country where we're citizens of corporations because of an irrational fear of "big bad government?"
..." Of course that's what I get for living in a comonwealth state. That just means my money belongs to them, and thier money belongs to them too.
Some of us are already citizens of corporations. The city seal for my town says "The Corporation of the City of
"If there's a better way, I'll be the first in line - it better work this time!" - Metalica (back in the good-old days...)
Here's some good advice: Find the guy who made the mess in he first place and get *him* to do it!
Why aren't all these enlightened geeks in charge by now, anyway?
Because as any politico will tell you, a popular incumbent is hard to beat. I am very impressed with the inroads OSS has made already into the corporate/government world, I believe mostly because of the education of those management types that IT people provide. Of course other factors are involved, but I feel that sitting down with the boss and explaining and giving a demonstration has a lot to do with it. Don't talk down to them with a lot of tech terms; they hate that and will probably boot your project on that principal alone. 'TCO' is still a buzzword they like to hear. Provide the proper presentation, in thier language, and things click. Don't get me wrong, people still want closed source on the desktop because that is what they are familiar with. And sometimes a closed source app is foisted upon the IT dept. to support one way or another, but if it's what makes the company tick you don't have much of a choice. Just lock it down and stabilize it best you can.
There aren't any IP issues with the government. The government doesn't have IP to speak of. You can plagerize anything from the government's files freely, and the best they can do is stick a "National Security" or "Sensetive" label on it and lock it up (and maybe you too, since that NS label goes a long way to remove your rights too...).
I just hope this memo is enough to make some heads at least turn to take a look in the OSS direction. It takes an act of God around here to convince management that W2K server is NOT the best option for what they want to do.
To add to the "scratch-my-back" stories from above, I too have been victimized by the local-yokel syndrome that seems to permiate the base/post level IT oversight. An Air Force Master Sargent over our IT dept. (we were a govmt. contractor) asked for bids to replace aging equipment for the y2k bruhaha. We went and got three good bids from Gateway, Dell, and Micron (others were too high) that fit just above the $800.00 per-computer limit he had set (at the time that was damn cheap, with monitor, office 97, and win 98... don't ask). It turns out that some local outfit won the bid, basically a guy working out of his garage (literally) came in with cheap hardware and set his price at $799.00/machine. How convenient. We learned later that this guy was a 'good friend' of the Sarge. We paid for it a year later -- as the warranty ran out, almost every one of the 180 machines went tits-up -- and guess what; our supplier dissapeared from the face of the Earth. And since it was cheap hardware (read not-quite-standard Chinese/Korean knock-offs) to begin with, there wasn't a prayer finding spares on the open market. What a nightmare. Many more were to follow with the sarge at the helm.
Anyhow, here's hopin' you have a better time of it than I've had in government (contractor) service.