On Sun, 25 May 2003 09:49:59 -0400
*** Reply to message from "Fred A. Miller"
on Thu, 22 May 2003 23:42:01 -0400*** FTD cited a city council spokeswoman as saying that the council was now leaning to choose Microsoft over Linux. The council is to make a decision May 28."
um, so a 15% reduction on a product already priced beyond the reach of most is better than a free version of something?? ( Even should they choose our favorite distro it has to be less cost per unit than any MS setup. Tho, I'd not put it past Gates and co to try giving it,MS Wndows ,away too.)
My personal intuition is that there is something "secret" going on here. Something like the the western intelligence community has control over the "backdoors" in Windows, and I think Gates got off the anti-trust lawsuit by agreeing to help these people. Now in the "pursuit of gaining control over computing" , pressure is put on everyone to use Microsoft. This pressure can be negative, as in "we will make sure you don't get relected", or "you won't get that big american contract". Or the pressure can be positive, as in "kickbacks and bribes". The benefit in using kickbacks and bribes, is that if the politician decides to change his mind, he can be blackmailed over the bribe. Microsoft is probably heavily pushing how an administrator can easily spy on his users, somehow governments like that feature. Communications is inceasingly becoming this a "surveillance game". Microsoft leads directly to "Big Brother". Linux leads to choice and freedom. -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation