No doubt, total crap, especially when pondering this:
Did the people who want to go on killing sprees get into GTA because of the gore, or does the gore in GTA turn otherwise normal people into violent people who go on killing sprees?
You do bring up some very valid points, and I will give credit to you for that. Most linux distros are too complicated for the average user. Ubuntu is wonderfully simple to operate and configure, I think the only drawback there is that the installer goes way over the head of most users, though so too did Windows not too long ago. I have worked in shops where the SOP for a hosed Windows was Fdisk, Format, Reinstall. This process, too, is over the head of most people, which is why companies started to make system restore disk sets, to do this for you. With a similar setup, I think it would be very possible to put Ubuntu into the hands of someone who never used a computer, and they would find it very freindly (although they might get mad because game X says only runs on windows). Personally, I'm a nerd, I prefer SourceMage or Slack, but that's just me.
Yes, the Linux support community is a stretched a little too thin, and getting support for Linux from a real person can be tricky at times. That, in my opinion is the thing stopping most people from adopting Linux on the desktop. I always like to say "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft" just like no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Linux is getting there, but look at how long it took to get from Win 1 (1985) to XP. The linux kernel was started in 91, so in 15 years a people have volunteered (most as a side project) and created a great OS. In the same amount of time(85-2000), a HUGE corporation (the founder of which is now the world's richest man) we went from Win1 to WinXP (I know MS-DOS was probably around a little longer than Windows, if anything that only furthers my point that Microsoft has had more time to iron out the bugs than Linux). I'm not dogging XP, its a decent OS, give credit where due and all that, but the only real problem with Linux on the desktop is people. Either lack of support fot the hundreds of Linux distros or the unwillingness of people to change. Linux on the desktop is a real possibility. It is no harder to use than Windows, just harder to set up initially (though pre-imaging installs w(c)ould easily take care of that).
I'm not going to get into the whole copying a CD is not a crime, I don't do it, I don't want the legal ramifications if busted file sharing, but, I don't think that Metallica went bankrupt becuase some kids were downloading MP3's off napster. I am pretty sure, however, that if someone's identity is stolen, it could cause them to loose everything (mortgage forclosures, auto repossesions, having your bank account wiped out these things are very damaging). The data on a music CD is far from sensitive. Before you bash me about this, please understand, I agree that artists have a right to sell their art, just as I have a right to sell my services, and that it is not right to simply go out and rip a CD and put it up on the P2P networks, that does cost the artist, and I agree that it is not right. I'm just saying SS#, adresses, credit card numbers are far more sensative data. Different levels of security for different levels of sensitivity, that's all
I personally commend you for point number 2. That has been my thinking all along, and I have to wonder why SCO wasn't kicked out of court based on that alone.
I contend that it is never appropriate to violate the 4th ammendment. It is never appropriate to circumvent our civil rights. If they want to wiretap me on the grounds of the undelcared war on terror, they can go to the FISA court and get a warrent, even a retroactive one. That, at least has some judicial oversight. blanket monitoring of all people for terrorist activity == all people are to be suspected of terrorism -> all people are terrorists until cleared of wrongdoing -> the terrorists win, because now the liberties that they envied in us have been taken away.
Really there are better ways of gathering intel on terrorist plots than by blanket eavsedropping on converstations between everyone in the U.S. Even if all they are doing is monitoring call patterns, as some suggest, which would fall into the grey area of legality, as they are not invading privacy directly, it is a huge waste of effort, as there are many many reasons that someone would call overseas and then make several calls to domestic numbers. That in and of itself makes this whole excersise futile at best and a huge waste of time, effort, and money, as well as an invasion of privacy at worst.
I appreciate your honesty and integrety in this matter. Please feel free to call me on the carpet about trolling in the future. (I am being dead serious, not trying to start anything, and could only figure out how to get this message to you by responding. Kinda new to/. (like my user # didn't give it away). Anyway, thanks again, and see ya round.)
Fair enough and well played. My assumption is based upon the fact that they have not announced capturing anyone based upon this NSA wiretaps. Of, course they might have and not announced it, so I'll give you that point.
My other two points in that statement I will stand beside. Sorry for being a bit trollish.
While I agree that the administration is not attempting to hold on to its power like a despotic european facist, I don't recall congress ever declaring war (point out where I'm wrong). And, while the CinC does have sweeping lattitude concerning the activities of the military and the the executive branch, he does not have the authority under the Constitution of the United States, to declare war on anything. That is the job of Congress. The president has overstepped his bounds, cost us billions of dollars and not turned up one lead with the NSA domestic spying program. Let alone the moral issues that make this just plain wrong (4th ammendment, anyone?), and the arguement that by the government treating all its citizens as if they are terrorists, the terrorists have gotten what they wanted, the complete disruption of our lives.
So please, save your "He's the president, he is above the law" line for the RNC. No man or entity in this country is supposed to be above the law. And in answer to your "illegal activity" question. If I am a buck private in the military, and a 5 star general tells me to shoot an unarmed civilian, and I do so, guess what, it's an illegal order and I get tried along with said 5 star general. If the govenor of any state in this union orders one of his state police officers to shoot an unarmed citizen who is walking down the street, unarmed and not molesting anyone, it's illegal. More to your point, if a police officer plants a wiretap on anybody's order that isn't a duly appointed and sworn in judge, it is illegal, and you bet your ass he's going to get in a world of shit.
is a complete and total farce. It never really works and just makes criminals out of otherwise honest people. If I want to smoke a doobie in my bedroom, whose business is it? The only reason that someone gambling illegally (or smoking pot) needs to contact a criminal environment is because you need to contact a criminal environment to do something illegal. It is a huge waste of time, money and resources to keep these laws up, and the only reason anyone does is because they want to look "tough on crime". I wonder how many unsolved murders/other serious crime could be solved if the government would stop trying to be our mom.
So, no, criminalizing (insert favorite vice) does not help society more than it hurts.
Off topic (maybe) but I guess some people need the refresher. Just the other day, I heard a radio add for cable internet offering 5 megabyte/second speed. If I lived in their market, I'd hold them to it.
I know it exists (somewhere out there are several groups) who are attempting to build an 'ad-hoc' wireless network that anyone can join in on. Is there any reason that this is not a practical solution to the big telco problem (besides just getting enough people to get a transmitter/reciever unit). Is the technology itself just not ready to handle it? I really don't know enough about the subject, but I think it might be a good direction to start going toward. After all, a cb radio can go several miles, and is small enough. I can't imagine that something the size of say a small form factor pc couldn't go the same distances (or further) and blanket the country.
Note: I realize the troubles with then getting out to the rest of the world, but compared to actually deploying this kind of thing, that would be a small hurdle to overcome.
While working as a DSL helpdesk technician, I once recieved a call from a user who told me her internet wasn't working. After having them report the status of the lights on their dsl modem, I determined she had no sync. Since she had already had service up and running, I called the line maintenance department and was informed that the DSL service had been disconnected due to no payment. When I got back to the customer she admitted that her phone was indeed disconnected, but had no idea that the DSL would be shut off too.
If I read all the info on this correctly it is not just about the media player, but also the SMB protocol that microsoft calls "Microsoft Networking", and the perversions they performed on it to ensure a lack of interoperability. SMB was originally written by IBM, not MS, so the issue at hand is the way MS mutated it and said, well, if your OS can't communicate too bad. Microsoft is deliberatley using thier monopoly to impede others attempting to connect to thier "Windows Network" with anything else.
"Have you ever tried to get an average user to mount a CD in Linux?"
Put the CD in, automount does the rest if it is installed, and most distros will install it, unless you tell it not to. The fact is that if I gave your grandma Kubuntu, she would never notice the differnce, functionally. She might notice the buttons are a little different, and that the blue ie is now a blue globe, but they both say internet. (She might get a little concerned when her Thomas Kinkade screensaver won't install, and I'll give you that, but that isn't MS's problem to begin with, and I don't hold them accountable for a vendor not making a cross platform program). As far as the average user who just wants thier lites to blink and thier boobies to show up, tell me where Ubuntu would fail them. That is a very user-freindly distro, very stable, and very easy to use.
And I never said that unbundling Media Player and IE would be 'benificial', but the choice of not ever having to use IE would be welcome, ActiveX is a huge gaping hole to introduce all kinds of nasties onto your system.
For the most part I think we are on the same page, however your argument that an animated sexual filck depicting "underage" sex should be illegal is not held up by the your response. Kill Bill is legal because nobody was actually decapitated, so then should animated porn (because technically a cartoon doesn't have age) should not be illegal because nobody actually had sex, nor were there any people on screen. That was my only point. Fail quasi kiddie porn on it's own lack of merits, if you have a problem with it, argue that.
Somewhere I think you missed the point of the EU's decision. The decision is not based on the fact that third party software can't run on Windows, it can, and does every day (firefox, open office, and any game made by anybody but MS press). The issue is with interoperabilty with other systems, and their forcing Windows Media Player down the throats of the EU, but mainly the interoperabilty with other systems. The EU says, your not disclosing the slang that your servers and clients speak while speaking in SMB (that would be the protocol that MS likes to call Windows Networking), is unfair because nobody else can learn to use your slang. That's the interoperability issue here, not running third party apps.
How many different vendors of Windows is there, oh, just one? Can I check out the source code myself, no? oh, well, how about choosing my web browser at install time, no? my desktop? which calculator I want to use? clock, no, office suite, no, media player, no? How about my security app, can I choose which one I want to have at install time, no? So with Windows, I have to choose your desktop environment, your browser, your clock, your calculator, and can only install others after I use your browser to download it? Keep windows, I'll stick with Linux.
So what of a picture of someone who looks over 18 but is actually 17 yrs 364 days old? By your statement, it would be legal, because it is appearance, right? Under the law, nope, not yet 18 still child porn. The problem is that is isn't appearance, but action that determines illegality. If I use an 18 year old model that looks (thanks to make-up) to be 16, I didn't violate the law, nor the viewer of the material. The person involved was a consenting adult. And don't get me started on "simply viewing the material" is a crime. What if I got blasted by a pop-up? I didn't go out looking for it, but I saw it, am I guilty of child pornography?
Child porn, definately sick, quasi child porn also sick, not why I'm responding. What is the difference, in your mind between Kill Bill (quasi-murder) and a snuff flick? I don't know that a snuff flick is legal, but the illegality of a snuff flick should have no bearing whatsoever on whether Kill Bill is legal or not. If quasi child porn is illegal, it should be based on it's own failings, not because it is based on real child porn. Not trying to flame you, or even to disagree, but where is the line to be drawn? And how do you know that the anime cartoon isn't meant to depict an 18 year old teenage girl anyway?
Some people want to make it sound as if it's like going to the grocery store (5 different companies), it isn't. If food product a costs too much at store z, you check out v, w, x, and y. If v and w still charge too much, there are 2 more stores.
If the telcos get to play thier game, all the ISP's will because they can, and they know they can, in which case the internet in the U.S. is hosed, at least until people start using powerful wireless transmission mediums and form a kind of ad-hoc internet.
You didn't say that You couldn't leave linux alone, and you didn't say that you had to learn CLI?
"The cost to train everyone to use command line interface instead of the gui they were used to would take too much time out of the computer literacy course. In reality, with linux you can't simply set it up and leave it."
Yes, I did read your post, twice, before responding, seemed like a flame to everyone but M$ to me.
Your argument is so far off base, I thought it had to be a joke. Lets see here: 1) You think that there are no GUI configuration tools for Linux? While I prefer working from within the CLI, it is not neccisary, not even with Sourcemage (which I use). A co-worker uses Ubuntu, because he likes that GNOME GUI for everything. Last resort on a GUI for configuring (if you can't figure out how to work the KDE Control Center or the GNOME configuration applets) LinuxConf. Nice GUI, tabbed for every configuration option ever.
2) You can't leave a Linux box running? right, I forgot they get viruses and spyware all the time and have to be re-loaded. Oh, nope that's M$
Honestly, have you even touched Linux in the last 5 years? Not to mention, you can run Linux on a 450 Mhz with 256 MB of RAM pretty well. (My server runs KDE 3.5 just fine, and even it has a GUI for most configuration). Try running XP on that setup (I did, it choked all the time). So, if I have to upgrade my hardware every 2 years to run a windows box over 10 years that's $2500, vs say $500 one time ($400 for the hardware and $100 to get a script kiddie to set up Ubuntu).
Then take into account those aforementioned re-loads of windows. Even if you have an in-house guy do it and you use images, and you only have to re-load each omputer once per year. With 500 computers, and 30 minutes to image, re-name, configure, etc.. that's 250 man hours. Let's say you're payed 7.50 per hour, that's an extra $1875 per year to maintain, that's just with problems because of malware, not counting kids who are smarter than you, but dumb enough to wipe out critical system files.
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No doubt, total crap, especially when pondering this:
Did the people who want to go on killing sprees get into GTA because of the gore, or does the gore in GTA turn otherwise normal people into violent people who go on killing sprees?
You do bring up some very valid points, and I will give credit to you for that. Most linux distros are too complicated for the average user. Ubuntu is wonderfully simple to operate and configure, I think the only drawback there is that the installer goes way over the head of most users, though so too did Windows not too long ago. I have worked in shops where the SOP for a hosed Windows was Fdisk, Format, Reinstall. This process, too, is over the head of most people, which is why companies started to make system restore disk sets, to do this for you. With a similar setup, I think it would be very possible to put Ubuntu into the hands of someone who never used a computer, and they would find it very freindly (although they might get mad because game X says only runs on windows). Personally, I'm a nerd, I prefer SourceMage or Slack, but that's just me.
Yes, the Linux support community is a stretched a little too thin, and getting support for Linux from a real person can be tricky at times. That, in my opinion is the thing stopping most people from adopting Linux on the desktop. I always like to say "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft" just like no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Linux is getting there, but look at how long it took to get from Win 1 (1985) to XP. The linux kernel was started in 91, so in 15 years a people have volunteered (most as a side project) and created a great OS. In the same amount of time(85-2000), a HUGE corporation (the founder of which is now the world's richest man) we went from Win1 to WinXP (I know MS-DOS was probably around a little longer than Windows, if anything that only furthers my point that Microsoft has had more time to iron out the bugs than Linux). I'm not dogging XP, its a decent OS, give credit where due and all that, but the only real problem with Linux on the desktop is people. Either lack of support fot the hundreds of Linux distros or the unwillingness of people to change. Linux on the desktop is a real possibility. It is no harder to use than Windows, just harder to set up initially (though pre-imaging installs w(c)ould easily take care of that).
I'm not going to get into the whole copying a CD is not a crime, I don't do it, I don't want the legal ramifications if busted file sharing, but, I don't think that Metallica went bankrupt becuase some kids were downloading MP3's off napster. I am pretty sure, however, that if someone's identity is stolen, it could cause them to loose everything (mortgage forclosures, auto repossesions, having your bank account wiped out these things are very damaging). The data on a music CD is far from sensitive. Before you bash me about this, please understand, I agree that artists have a right to sell their art, just as I have a right to sell my services, and that it is not right to simply go out and rip a CD and put it up on the P2P networks, that does cost the artist, and I agree that it is not right. I'm just saying SS#, adresses, credit card numbers are far more sensative data. Different levels of security for different levels of sensitivity, that's all
I personally commend you for point number 2. That has been my thinking all along, and I have to wonder why SCO wasn't kicked out of court based on that alone.
I contend that it is never appropriate to violate the 4th ammendment. It is never appropriate to circumvent our civil rights. If they want to wiretap me on the grounds of the undelcared war on terror, they can go to the FISA court and get a warrent, even a retroactive one. That, at least has some judicial oversight. blanket monitoring of all people for terrorist activity == all people are to be suspected of terrorism -> all people are terrorists until cleared of wrongdoing -> the terrorists win, because now the liberties that they envied in us have been taken away.
Really there are better ways of gathering intel on terrorist plots than by blanket eavsedropping on converstations between everyone in the U.S. Even if all they are doing is monitoring call patterns, as some suggest, which would fall into the grey area of legality, as they are not invading privacy directly, it is a huge waste of effort, as there are many many reasons that someone would call overseas and then make several calls to domestic numbers. That in and of itself makes this whole excersise futile at best and a huge waste of time, effort, and money, as well as an invasion of privacy at worst.
I appreciate your honesty and integrety in this matter. Please feel free to call me on the carpet about trolling in the future. (I am being dead serious, not trying to start anything, and could only figure out how to get this message to you by responding. Kinda new to /. (like my user # didn't give it away). Anyway, thanks again, and see ya round.)
Fair enough and well played. My assumption is based upon the fact that they have not announced capturing anyone based upon this NSA wiretaps. Of, course they might have and not announced it, so I'll give you that point.
My other two points in that statement I will stand beside. Sorry for being a bit trollish.
I was referring to this "war on terror", and I appreciate you confirming for me that congress has not actually declare war since WWII.
While I agree that the administration is not attempting to hold on to its power like a despotic european facist, I don't recall congress ever declaring war (point out where I'm wrong). And, while the CinC does have sweeping lattitude concerning the activities of the military and the the executive branch, he does not have the authority under the Constitution of the United States, to declare war on anything. That is the job of Congress. The president has overstepped his bounds, cost us billions of dollars and not turned up one lead with the NSA domestic spying program. Let alone the moral issues that make this just plain wrong (4th ammendment, anyone?), and the arguement that by the government treating all its citizens as if they are terrorists, the terrorists have gotten what they wanted, the complete disruption of our lives.
So please, save your "He's the president, he is above the law" line for the RNC. No man or entity in this country is supposed to be above the law. And in answer to your "illegal activity" question. If I am a buck private in the military, and a 5 star general tells me to shoot an unarmed civilian, and I do so, guess what, it's an illegal order and I get tried along with said 5 star general. If the govenor of any state in this union orders one of his state police officers to shoot an unarmed citizen who is walking down the street, unarmed and not molesting anyone, it's illegal. More to your point, if a police officer plants a wiretap on anybody's order that isn't a duly appointed and sworn in judge, it is illegal, and you bet your ass he's going to get in a world of shit.
is a complete and total farce. It never really works and just makes criminals out of otherwise honest people. If I want to smoke a doobie in my bedroom, whose business is it? The only reason that someone gambling illegally (or smoking pot) needs to contact a criminal environment is because you need to contact a criminal environment to do something illegal. It is a huge waste of time, money and resources to keep these laws up, and the only reason anyone does is because they want to look "tough on crime". I wonder how many unsolved murders/other serious crime could be solved if the government would stop trying to be our mom.
So, no, criminalizing (insert favorite vice) does not help society more than it hurts.
Off topic (maybe) but I guess some people need the refresher. Just the other day, I heard a radio add for cable internet offering 5 megabyte/second speed. If I lived in their market, I'd hold them to it.
I know it exists (somewhere out there are several groups) who are attempting to build an 'ad-hoc' wireless network that anyone can join in on. Is there any reason that this is not a practical solution to the big telco problem (besides just getting enough people to get a transmitter/reciever unit). Is the technology itself just not ready to handle it? I really don't know enough about the subject, but I think it might be a good direction to start going toward. After all, a cb radio can go several miles, and is small enough. I can't imagine that something the size of say a small form factor pc couldn't go the same distances (or further) and blanket the country.
Note: I realize the troubles with then getting out to the rest of the world, but compared to actually deploying this kind of thing, that would be a small hurdle to overcome.
While working as a DSL helpdesk technician, I once recieved a call from a user who told me her internet wasn't working. After having them report the status of the lights on their dsl modem, I determined she had no sync. Since she had already had service up and running, I called the line maintenance department and was informed that the DSL service had been disconnected due to no payment. When I got back to the customer she admitted that her phone was indeed disconnected, but had no idea that the DSL would be shut off too.
I like the cut of your jib, wanna start a business?
If I read all the info on this correctly it is not just about the media player, but also the SMB protocol that microsoft calls "Microsoft Networking", and the perversions they performed on it to ensure a lack of interoperability. SMB was originally written by IBM, not MS, so the issue at hand is the way MS mutated it and said, well, if your OS can't communicate too bad. Microsoft is deliberatley using thier monopoly to impede others attempting to connect to thier "Windows Network" with anything else. "Have you ever tried to get an average user to mount a CD in Linux?" Put the CD in, automount does the rest if it is installed, and most distros will install it, unless you tell it not to. The fact is that if I gave your grandma Kubuntu, she would never notice the differnce, functionally. She might notice the buttons are a little different, and that the blue ie is now a blue globe, but they both say internet. (She might get a little concerned when her Thomas Kinkade screensaver won't install, and I'll give you that, but that isn't MS's problem to begin with, and I don't hold them accountable for a vendor not making a cross platform program). As far as the average user who just wants thier lites to blink and thier boobies to show up, tell me where Ubuntu would fail them. That is a very user-freindly distro, very stable, and very easy to use. And I never said that unbundling Media Player and IE would be 'benificial', but the choice of not ever having to use IE would be welcome, ActiveX is a huge gaping hole to introduce all kinds of nasties onto your system.
For the most part I think we are on the same page, however your argument that an animated sexual filck depicting "underage" sex should be illegal is not held up by the your response. Kill Bill is legal because nobody was actually decapitated, so then should animated porn (because technically a cartoon doesn't have age) should not be illegal because nobody actually had sex, nor were there any people on screen. That was my only point. Fail quasi kiddie porn on it's own lack of merits, if you have a problem with it, argue that.
Somewhere I think you missed the point of the EU's decision. The decision is not based on the fact that third party software can't run on Windows, it can, and does every day (firefox, open office, and any game made by anybody but MS press). The issue is with interoperabilty with other systems, and their forcing Windows Media Player down the throats of the EU, but mainly the interoperabilty with other systems. The EU says, your not disclosing the slang that your servers and clients speak while speaking in SMB (that would be the protocol that MS likes to call Windows Networking), is unfair because nobody else can learn to use your slang. That's the interoperability issue here, not running third party apps.
How many different vendors of Windows is there, oh, just one? Can I check out the source code myself, no? oh, well, how about choosing my web browser at install time, no? my desktop? which calculator I want to use? clock, no, office suite, no, media player, no? How about my security app, can I choose which one I want to have at install time, no? So with Windows, I have to choose your desktop environment, your browser, your clock, your calculator, and can only install others after I use your browser to download it? Keep windows, I'll stick with Linux.
So what of a picture of someone who looks over 18 but is actually 17 yrs 364 days old? By your statement, it would be legal, because it is appearance, right? Under the law, nope, not yet 18 still child porn. The problem is that is isn't appearance, but action that determines illegality. If I use an 18 year old model that looks (thanks to make-up) to be 16, I didn't violate the law, nor the viewer of the material. The person involved was a consenting adult. And don't get me started on "simply viewing the material" is a crime. What if I got blasted by a pop-up? I didn't go out looking for it, but I saw it, am I guilty of child pornography?
Child porn, definately sick, quasi child porn also sick, not why I'm responding. What is the difference, in your mind between Kill Bill (quasi-murder) and a snuff flick? I don't know that a snuff flick is legal, but the illegality of a snuff flick should have no bearing whatsoever on whether Kill Bill is legal or not. If quasi child porn is illegal, it should be based on it's own failings, not because it is based on real child porn. Not trying to flame you, or even to disagree, but where is the line to be drawn? And how do you know that the anime cartoon isn't meant to depict an 18 year old teenage girl anyway?
Some people want to make it sound as if it's like going to the grocery store (5 different companies), it isn't. If food product a costs too much at store z, you check out v, w, x, and y. If v and w still charge too much, there are 2 more stores.
If the telcos get to play thier game, all the ISP's will because they can, and they know they can, in which case the internet in the U.S. is hosed, at least until people start using powerful wireless transmission mediums and form a kind of ad-hoc internet.
---- At least until the ice caps melt :)
Not blaming you for the decision, only for so adamantly defending it.
You didn't say that You couldn't leave linux alone, and you didn't say that you had to learn CLI? "The cost to train everyone to use command line interface instead of the gui they were used to would take too much time out of the computer literacy course. In reality, with linux you can't simply set it up and leave it." Yes, I did read your post, twice, before responding, seemed like a flame to everyone but M$ to me.
Your argument is so far off base, I thought it had to be a joke. Lets see here:
1) You think that there are no GUI configuration tools for Linux? While I prefer working from within the CLI, it is not neccisary, not even with Sourcemage (which I use). A co-worker uses Ubuntu, because he likes that GNOME GUI for everything. Last resort on a GUI for configuring (if you can't figure out how to work the KDE Control Center or the GNOME configuration applets) LinuxConf. Nice GUI, tabbed for every configuration option ever.
2) You can't leave a Linux box running? right, I forgot they get viruses and spyware all the time and have to be re-loaded. Oh, nope that's M$
Honestly, have you even touched Linux in the last 5 years? Not to mention, you can run Linux on a 450 Mhz with 256 MB of RAM pretty well. (My server runs KDE 3.5 just fine, and even it has a GUI for most configuration). Try running XP on that setup (I did, it choked all the time). So, if I have to upgrade my hardware every 2 years to run a windows box over 10 years that's $2500, vs say $500 one time ($400 for the hardware and $100 to get a script kiddie to set up Ubuntu).
Then take into account those aforementioned re-loads of windows. Even if you have an in-house guy do it and you use images, and you only have to re-load each omputer once per year. With 500 computers, and 30 minutes to image, re-name, configure, etc.. that's 250 man hours. Let's say you're payed 7.50 per hour, that's an extra $1875 per year to maintain, that's just with problems because of malware, not counting kids who are smarter than you, but dumb enough to wipe out critical system files.
Again, how much money are you saving by using M$?