FAA May Ditch Vista For Linux 359
An anonymous reader writes "Another straw in the wind: following last week's news that the US Department of Transportation is putting a halt on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7, today comes word that the Federal Aviation Administration may ditch Vista and Office in favor of Google's new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware. (The FAA is part of the DOT.) The FAA's CIO David Bowen told InformationWeek he's taking a close look at the Premier Edition of Google Apps as he mulls replacements for the agency's Windows XP-based desktop computers. Bowen cited several reasons why he finds Google Apps attractive. 'From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages,' he said."
Ditching the monopolistic... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh wait, Google apps? never mind.
Pilot advisory - Seattle airspace (Score:2, Funny)
the Federal Aviation Administration may ditch Vista and Office in favor of Google's new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware.
The FAA issued a pilot advisory for the Seattle area: Pilots should be aware of the potential to encounter flying chairs any time they are east and slightly south of Seattle center controlled airspace.
moral? (Score:2, Funny)
I can see why the FAA dumped Vista...... (Score:4, Funny)
- A plane is about to land. Cancel or Allow?
- A plane is about to take off. Cancel or Allow?
- A transport truck is about to crash. Cancel or Allow?
You'd get sick of having to click Cancel or Allow all of the time too.
Oh wait.
When the Microsoft salesman calls... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:training (Score:2, Funny)
isnt the saying "those who do, do. those who cant do, teach. those whose cant teach work for the government?
Re:Google Apps Appliance (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well, Compare it to Vista (Score:3, Funny)
Usually middle management *are* the problem workers.
How many times have we seen this? (Score:3, Funny)
Let me tell you the end of the story for all of you, MS comes back and gives the software away on the initial upgrade pricing but nails them to the wall for years on support.
In 5 years, rinse and repeat.
WTF? Tallking to Dell about Thin Clients? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry, but do you really think Dell is going to enthusiastically push thin clients? AFAIK, Dell isn't even in the thin client business, they are in the PC business. Dell has an interest in dooming this from the start in order to protect their PC business. This CIO Bowen has no idea of where to go with this, so somebody needs to whisper in his ear. He needs to talk with Sun, since they have considerable experience with Sunray thin clients [sun.com]. Maybe even Neoware thin clients [ibm.com] from IBM/Lenovo.
This should scare you (Score:3, Funny)
1) The fact that Windows Vista (an unproven not yet released OS) is being considered for mission critical systems.
2) The fact that Government might tie a crucial part of national infrastructure to any single company (Microsoft or a high-flying dot com)
3) The fact that Linux was considered but not BSD, OpenSolaris, OSX and any number of other OSs suggests that the FAA still doesn't understand their problem, instead they focus on a sole-source vendor who can claims to be able to solve it, whatever it is.