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More Linux Activity in German Government 367

Posted by timothy from the first-a-trickle dept.
__past__ writes "The decision of the bavarian capital city Munich to switch their desktop systems to Linux has caused a lot of discussion, and has been widely regarded as an important step for Linux on the desktop. And even if Microsoft tried hard to make their offerings more attractive since, including a special license contract that could save the public sector 'a lot of money' according to interior minister Otto Schily, it looks as if Munich was only the beginning."

"9 more cities in Rheinland-Pfalz, including the capital Mainz, are seriously considering to replace most, if not all of their Microsoft software with Linux after their current contracts expire in early 2004, noting that there are many other cities in a similar situation, and with similar plans.

Meanwhile, the police in Niedersachsen (german) is busy rolling out RedHat Linux on 11,620 desktops and 120 servers, running both standard Linux software and a custom information system called "Nivadis" based on WebLogic and Oracle running on Itanium servers, citing savings of about EUR 20 Mio compared with a Windows-based solution.

In a less desktop-related project, the state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern started a project with SuSE, IBM and others porting a mission-critical system called ProFiskal from Reliant Unix to Linux on zSeries, again citing cost as the primary reason, but also noting the benefits of using open standards for both software developers and users."
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More Linux Activity in German Government More

More Linux Activity in German Government

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  • Start of a domino effect? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RayAlmostAnonymous ( 599340 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:42AM (#7016522)
    If these initial deployments are successful, and the organizations see real benefits from their switch to Linux then it could be the start of a wave of Linux deployments across Europe, at least in public organizations such as these.

    However, if there are problems with some of them it could hold up the acceptance of Linux (etc.) for some while .... So we can only hope it goes well!

    • Re:Start of a domino effect? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @07:28AM (#7016907)
      The more organizations deploy Linux, the lower the cost will become for further deployments.

      For example Munich will use VMWare while slowly porting their special Win-only software to Linux.

      The next generation will do without VMWare and will lower the cost to migrate to Linux.

      Oh, and I might add that 5 cities in Bavaria are also thinking in joining Munich directly.

      Also, in 3-4 years, if any hardware company will want to sell hardware to Europe or Asia, it will have to provide Linux drivers which will be beneficial for ALL Linux users.

      • The first city to change over and develop any specialist software for the German local government environment will have an opportunity to defray some of its costs by selling the application to other government bodies. After all their own apps don't have to be GPLed.

  • Metric and Imperial (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AnimeFreak ( 223792 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:44AM (#7016528) Homepage
    It would be funny if the rest of world used Linux while the United States uses Windows. It would be just like the current state of measurement in this world, where the United States uses imperial and the rest of the world uses metric.
    • That's not entirely true. Think for a moment what 'imperial' actually means. They are the system of measurements spread by the British Empire. Though the UK has moved over to using many metric units, we still use miles and pints, indeed with the level of drunk driving we use both at the same time. Also many here still use pounds (lbs) as a measurement and farenheit for temperature.

      It would be speculation on my part, but I woldn't be too surprised if many other former members of the British Empire also use
      • FWIW, the Netherlands still sells beer in pints as well.

        As for Britain, yes, we still use many imperial measurements; I still think in terms of someone being 6 feet tall, etc, I still buy half a pound of ham in the supermarket, despite it officially being sold in kilos.

        • > FWIW, the Netherlands still sells beer in pints as well.

          While you may find many packaging units that are derived from original imperial units and even some daily usage of terms like (metric) pounds and ounces, it is in fact illegal for manufactures and traders to use these units in their communication.
          So your beer bottle will have its contents specified in cl (centiliter), not pints.
          • If that's true, it's retarded. Who cares what someone measures their shit in? It's their shit, they should be able to do whatever they want to it. If they sell it, then the buyer can measure it in their own units beforehand.
            • When they want to communicate their measurements to others, e.g. when trading, they have to do that in a standardized unit.
              It is required by law to use s.i. units for this.
              That is not retarded, the US is retarded.
      • Yeah,

        but british miles are not american miles(or am I wrong?), definitly british pounds (lbs) are not american pounds, and british gallons are not american gallons and so on ....

        Finally: its unbeliveable that one wrecks a several hundred million space exploration probe because of a software error done by the programmres who could not compare a metric unit with a imperial unit correctly.

        I mean: in some industries it really makes sense to stick to imperial units.

        angel'o'sphere
      • I've just moved to the UK, and I have found out that you are luckily being forced over to the metric system by the European Union.

        The pint will never leave, but in about 50 years people will think it is just a name for "beer".

        Most TV-channels now present Celcius first and Fahrenheit as an afterthought and all food are measured in grams first and foremost and imperial as an afterthought.

        It will take years for it to settle with the people, but formally England is firmly on it's way to a pure metric system.

  • Microsoft can't win by cutting prices (Score:5, Insightful)

    by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:51AM (#7016544) Journal
    The more they cut prices in order to stave off linux, the more evident it is how overpriced their list prices are. Instead of trying to compete on price, they should be trying to compete on features such as easy management, and security...

    Unfortunately for Microsoft, security isn't exactly their strength, and neither is easy management now that Linux has matured so much.

    • Re:Microsoft can't win by cutting prices (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tulare ( 244053 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:20AM (#7016629) Journal
      So true, so true. Where I work, it's possible to buy [oetc.org] M$ Office for $41.40 a seat. Now tell me they aren't overcharging everyone else.

      • Is it Office XP? If it is, I'll buy you 40 copies of it. The computers for students on my university department have been waiting for the funds for Microsoft XP for a while... At that price, I'll buy it myself!

        But, more seriously, that was something that intrigued me about Munich! If they lowered the price alot, wouldn't the rest of the world see what they were doing to the rest of us? Now we now that at Microsoft, burning cds isn't that expensive anymore...

        • Most people are far too stupid to realize that the 70% (*) profit microsoft makes on office and windows is straight out of their pocket and caused by the ms monopoly on office document standard. If they cut off 70%, sell it over the web (no boxes, shrink wrap & distribution costs) they'd still make a profit per unit. That's how sun does it.

          Your department should really look at staroffice or openoffice.org. It opens almost any ms office document, and has database support [openoffice.org] as well. It's a free download..

      • Likewise.. I work in Further Education and the 'Select' prices we are offered just prove how much they are ripping off the general public for copies of Office and Windows.

        And when it comes to server applications its even worse. I believe a license for Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise costs us something stupid like $200, and SQL Server 2000 is like $20.. i'm not 100% sure but I know they are silly prices.
        • Yeah, Exchange is $271, I'm too lazy at the moment to look up SQL, but it's insanely cheap as well - insane only compared to the monopoly-inflated retail prices. Honestly, $271 seems resonable to me for a full-featured mail and calendar package... any apparent bargain in that price is offset by the horribly high TCO, higher hardware requirements, and intangible "hassle factor" that goes with any windows app that you intend to make front-facing.
    • Agree, however what MS is really good at is making money. With Linux they can't simply do their "if you can't beat `em then buy `em" strategy. But if everyone's running Linux how will MS make money? They'll start writing Linux apps, port MS Office to Linux (I'd buy that one myself), even release an MS Linux distro. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but I don't see what other choice they'll have in the long run. Remember who the biggest software producer for Apple is: Microsoft.
    • The fact is that Microsoft is doomed.

      What does Windows really offer over Linux?

      • it is preinstalled
      • it runs more software esp games
      • there are more/cheaper admins for it
      • it runs more consumer peripherals

      To sum it all up, the only advantage Windows has over Linux is being better established.

      Munich will use VMWare while their apps are being ported/rewritten for Linux. In 4-5 years VMWare will no longer be needed by Munich or any other city that might think of switching.

      To sum that up, Munich is establ

    • Unfortunately for Microsoft, security isn't exactly their strength

      I dunno. .. the 8-bit XOR model used for the password encryption on Win95 was pretty impressive.

      I still remember the day I decrypted the passwords on my computer in a few minutes using a pencil and paper. I thought to myself, "Damn, THAT's the company I want to trust with keeping MY important and often confidential business information safe!"
  • While historically (as short as that may be), people
    ventured to America for myriad reasons; political,
    religious, economic, prosperity etc. Many of those
    things aren't really tangible except in the minds of
    the people. The first time in America's history,
    people migrate to Russia, Europe and China for
    technological freedom among other associative
    properties like jobs. I'm certainly keeping my
    options open, getting a CE degree what good is
    it in America when all the jobs are going overseas?

    Maybe there is some us

  • Software Patents (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elektroschock ( 659467 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:56AM (#7016560)
    And thanks to Munich FFII Germany has the strongest anti-swpat movement...

    In Munich they demontrated [baddogs.de] together with a social democrat politician Lochner-Fischer (Member of Bavarian House of representatives) that capaigned for Linux! See this picture [baddogs.de] with her election campaign banners.

    Also European MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dorfler hold a speech at FFII demo munich.

    German Wiki page about Munich demo [ffii.org]

    Note: As a Northern German I don't like Bavarian culture, but Munich is special, less ultra-conservative than the rest of Bavaria. As an European I am proud of the leading role of Europe in the current silent Open Source revolution.
    • Note: As a Northern German I don't like Bavarian culture, but Munich is special, less ultra-conservative than the rest of Bavaria. As an European I am proud of the leading role of Europe in the current silent Open Source revolution.

      I was born in Munich and lived in Bavaria for the first couple years of my life. Strictly out of curiosity - what are the cultural differences between Northern/Southern germans?

      • Read CSU-Bayernkurier Feuilleton! Read IT policy proposals by CSU. I remind you that 2/3 elect this party; this and a 91% vote is regarded as a sign of strength, part of the so called "Geschlossenheit" ideology. I think Northern Germans are more liberal. Lever dod as slaav. And of course: Bavarians are sooo proud of themselves and their currupt system. Take their "Zentralabitur" as an example. In Bavaria it would have been far more easier for me. Every year similar simple questions while I had to learn
        • What our friend Elektroschock fails to mention is, that Bavaria is the most successful state in Germany, with low unemployment, low state debt and good education - especially compared to northern states.

          So please spare us the rhetorics about bavarian conservatism and catholicism.

          Bavaria feature also a high percentage of IT industry: Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Suse, Ingram Micro etc. have all their german HQs in Bavaria.

          And Bavarians are as corrupt as anyone else.

          If you have a problem with people loving th
          • Well,

            an our friend orangeguru fails to understand that the economical situation in the southern countries is a result of the situation following world war two. And there is no relation to the fittness of any particular governement after the war. Bavaria had the luck to sit in a place where everything went to the good side by its own.

            Regading corruption .... I think in germany we have not much true corruption, but something we call "filz". People sitting in governemnt position are to lazy to care about cer
      • If you mix Swedes Danes & Dutch, you pretty much have north(western) germans (Hamburg). If you take Italians, French & Chechs, mix them and add some beer, you have Bayern (Munchen). It's certainly not that crude but the differences between traditional cultures in Germany are pronounced and this diversity makes Germany a very fun and surprising country to visit.
    • Obligatory Illuminatus! quote:

      This is the dawning of the Age of Bavaria --
      Age of Bavaria --
      Bavaria -- Bavaria!

  • ... since here (Germany) exists (at least from my point of view) the tradition to invest large amounts of money in 'government software projects' that turn out to be scrap in the end. If it works fine, this for sure will boost the acceptance of LINUX since the public sector (still) is an important customer to deal with. CC.

  • Savings? (Score:2, Funny)

    by nacturation ( 646836 )
    ...citing savings of about EUR 20 Mio compared with a Windows-based solution.

    Is that 20 M Euros or 20 Mibi-Euros? Either 20.000.000 EUR or 20.971.520 EUR. It's important to know these things [slashdot.org].
  • This is indeed only the beginning. People all over the globe are becoming sick of paying big bucks for buggy OSes. (Particularly the kind of OS that forces reboots for program crashes.)

    Microsoft better get their act together if they intend on staying competitive. Linux is slowly eroding their market share.

  • MS: Our software dies. Linux: Have it your way! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:16AM (#7016618) Homepage

    Microsoft has adopted an extremely powerful public relations method, but it is a self-destructive one: Microsoft has declared that its software dies, regardless of how many users it has.

    Linux, in contrast, offers software that lives forever, if an organization wants to support it. This makes a big difference to large organizations. There are many, many situations where a 350 MHz Pentium I computer running some data entry system is just fine, especially when it has been completely debugged and is giving no trouble.

    When Microsoft enforces software death, those organizations must disturb something that is working well. As you can imagine, they are extremely reluctant to do so. The issue is often not money. The issue is often management capability. There is plenty of work to do without disturbing something that is working well.

    From the IT World article [itworld.com]:

    "The cost of licensing Microsoft products and the lack of support for some of them, such as the NT operating system, which is still used widely in many city administrations, are among the chief reasons for the nine German cities to mull a switch from the U.S. software giant to providers of open-source products, he said." [My emphasis, of course.]

    Not only do Microsoft's products regularly die, but Microsoft has a schedule of assisted suicide: Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Businesses [microsoft.com]. Bill Gates has become the Dr. Jack Kevorkian [go.com] of software. Mr. Gates has, for example, decreed the death of Windows 98, which is used by at least 50,000,000 people throughout the world.

    • Microsoft has declared that its software dies, regardless of how many users it has. Linux, in contrast, offers software that lives forever,

      Yes, it's really as simple as that, I'm realizing. As far as software/OSes go, linux is eternal, once you've got the drivers or have written your own. It's probably also important to point out that linux vendors also declare death of version support (ie., RedHat). However, since linux is freely available, in direct contrast to the closed-source Windows software, u

    • They're a commercial company, it's in their interests to kill off old products as people aren't going to buy your new ones.

      Every company has to draw the line somewhere, otherwise their support departments will have to keep on growing, eating away at profits.

      • MS: Wants everything. May get nothing. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @07:13AM (#7016873) Homepage

        The point of both the Slashdot story and my grand-parent comment is that Microsoft is killing future profits completely by being aggressive. Supposedly the aggressive behavior is an attempt to get more profit, but in reality it is a strong bid to get zero profits, and fast.

        Once the German government switches entirely to Linux, Microsoft will not make another penny from that source. The draconian, one-sided licensing changes would not in themselves be enough to push customers away from Microsoft. It is software death that is perhaps the aggression that is most disliked by customers. The Microsoft license cost is small compared to buying 20,000 new computers because Windows XP won't run on hardware that works well with Windows 98. That's the sort of problem huge organizations face.

        Of course, fundamentally, licensing and software death are not as important as the fact that Microsoft's international government customers are under the control of a foreign company controlled in part by a foreign government that runs the biggest spy organizations that have ever existed. Who was using the Microsoft security vulnerabilities before they became publicly known?
      • Of course Microsoft's motives are understandable, but Microsoft's motives being understandable doesn't help the affected people in any way, they are still screwed.
    • I'd like to add that because Windows Product Activation, people might end up with machines that won't even boot, even if they would agree to run an unsupported system.

      Microsoft has never made a statement of what will happen to WPA after the "lifecycle" and they certainly won't send those codes forever...

  • District names (Score:5, Informative)

    by alext ( 29323 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:16AM (#7016619)
    Alternatively, in English:

    Rheinland-Pfalz => Rhineland Palatinate
    Niedersachsen => Lower Saxony
    Mecklenburg-Vorpommern => Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania

    Next you'll be spelling Hanover with two ns ;-)
    • I regard it as very impolite to spell federal states like this. I also don't call New York, Neu York as they did in 189X.
      • Which? Impolite to translate or not to translate?
        • It is an artificial translation.
          • Er, no. These names have been in use for hundreds of years and are the correct English terms as used by the authorities in the regions concerned.

            It sounds to me rather as though you (and the /. editors) are displaying your lack of historical knowledge. I would hope that educated English speakers would know that Prince Albert was Duke of Saxony, that Gutenberg's printing press was in the Rhineland etc.

            For reference, here's a Rhineland tourism [germany-tourism.de] page, and a note on Pomerania [polishroots.org] (wow, it's real place! ;-) )
      • I regard it as very impolite to spell federal states like this. I also don't call New York, Neu York as they did in 189X.

        Actually it's a compliment. The name is used so often that the language has got an own one for it.

        'Kalifornien' anyone? That's a real compliment.

        'South Carolina' ? We don't have a german versino for that one. Or did I miss 'Sued Karolinien' in geography back then? LOL.
        • Exactly so.

          I'll wager that Slashdot editors have never heard of the Rhineland, and never tasted a Reisling [schloss-johannisberg.de], or Queen Victoria's favourite "Hock" (Hochheim), so a news item from "Rheinland-Pfalz" is probably as foreign-sounding as one from Turkmenistan. In fact, I doubt if they could pronounce Rheinland-Pfalz without spitting on you.
    • No, in English Hannover is spelled "Windsor".
      • Wasn't it Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? I believe that, due to a bug in the Hanoverian law of succession, Queen Vic failed to inherit the Duchy of Hanover, a traditionally British part of Europe, which was then obliged to become German.

        Hopefully the Queen runs SuSE Linux in honour of her roots, man.

  • Geopolitics? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by segment ( 695309 ) <sil AT politrix DOT org> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:24AM (#7016635) Homepage Journal

    even if Microsoft tried hard to make their offerings more attractive since, including a special license contract that could save the public sector 'a lot of money' according to interior minister Otto Schily, it looks as if Munich was only the beginning."

    IMHO I think this is somewhat of a political move coming out of Germany, combined with the fact that MS has had MAJOR problems within the past few months with worms and all...

    Now when I say political I mean maybe Germany doesn't want to spend their money on US products based on the tension between the US and Germany that started with the war somehow. It would also be benificial to Germany if say they were to choose SuSE for a distro of choice, maybe that would become a Euro standard distro of sorts. Something similar to what US companies think of when Linux comes to mind... Redhat. Sure geeks think of other distros, but have you ever mentioned Slackware, or Stampede to a CEO? Chances are he's heard of Redhat but not Slack, Debian, etc.

    Let's not forget that nice little letter [politrix.org] that went out earlier this month to the Dept. of Homeland Sec., which vendors asked the US gov to reconsider their use of MS products. Hell if US companies are turning their backs on MS, then why would foreigners want to use it.

    • Re:Geopolitics? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Elektroschock ( 659467 )
      "Now when I say political I mean maybe Germany doesn't want to spend their money on US products based on the tension between the US and Germany that started with the war somehow. " tension? I was more like accounting: the figures were wrong. Nobody has a problem with the USA (as long as they respect international law and institutions) or was anti-US. The only problem is the reaction of the USA that didn't respect our souveranity, our "national" Free Speech and tried to bully their allies. I don't think th

  • In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ChrisK077 ( 667911 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @06:07AM (#7016749)
    ... Microsoft has recently added BMW boss Helmut Panke to its board of directors [1] - a move to get more insight into the German political system?

    And a German Member of Parliament, Ekin Deligoz, recently said (on TV) that she thought it was frightening "if you think about how much money Microsoft invests into their parliament work". [2]

    Both links in German language only, unfortunately:
    [1] Heise [heise.de]
    [2] 3sat [3sat.de]

  • Energize the Local IT Industry (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrueJim ( 107565 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @06:15AM (#7016766) Homepage
    I think one oft-unspoken reason overseas governments contemplate wholesale adoption of open source solutions is that doing so creates a lot of high-end local IT jobs (e.g., software development and support). This offers the prospect of creating more in-country "silicon valleys" and the possibility of local "dot.boom" economies.

    Open source may have the advantage of better access to legacy civil documents and lower TCO, but the real motivation of politicians is getting re-elected, and job creation is always a good way to do that.

  • Canadian adoption of linux (Score:4, Informative)

    by d3am0n ( 664505 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @06:52AM (#7016833)
    Canada, having one of the most active e-governments in the world, is also being actively woo-ed by linux. At the chateau laurier in ottawa I attended the linux conference by IBM and while they did seem to ramble abit, they were being taken very seriously by the people in attendance. I guess the high amount of online government computers for vital functions probably plays a big part in most peoples minds about what sort of security and stability they want when it comes to their servers.

    • Re:Canadian adoption of linux (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I wouldn't get too excited just yet. The major issues confronting senior decision-makers revolve around IT staff skill sets. Concerns abound about whether MS-trained people can effectively support Linux. The issue goes deeper than that. MS has made serious inroads into the educational curriculum in our institutions of higher learning in Canada. They are highjacking student mindshare and creating an army of drones who are incapable of thinking outside the MS box. The worry is that it's hard to get Linu

  • German schools (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bazik ( 672335 ) <bazik@NOsPam.gentoo.org> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @07:19AM (#7016884) Homepage Journal
    I really hope this movement will change the opinions of most teachers here.

    In our schools here in Germany, they teach you the
    'work' with Windows as it is the industry standard and got no alternatives.

    At least at our school we got one teacher who really is pro-linux. He uses Debian, doesnt like Microsoft, is happy about the current movement and teaches the histroy of Linux, installation of Debian and configuration/installation of various services.

    And beleive me, thats thousand times more interesting than clicking through a Windows application installer...

  • OSS critical mass eminent in germany (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @07:27AM (#7016906)
    The Market is taking off anytime soon over here. I just had a 2 hour talk on the phone with one of the large players on the german internet bookmarket. One thing that everyone with knowlege of the material predicted shows clearly:
    The people are fed up with proprietary software inable to takle proprietary problems and won't take MS & co. any much longer. The market is clearly shifting to a much more service oriented one with OSS taking a lead in that area and Germany, as many thought would happend, is one of the first to adapt to that. I'm kinda glad I saw that coming 2 years ago.
    It's just like John 'Maddog' Hall said at the Keynote at Linuxtag this year: Software needs to be free, the solutions built with it need be proprietary.

  • simple economics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @08:02AM (#7016982) Journal
    Frankly, I'm very surprised it has taken so friggin long for European countries to realize what a waste it is for them to continue dumping so much money into the American giant that is Microsoft. Germany has SuSe, so why has it taken them so long to switch to a cheaper local solution?

    It's simple economics. Why send money out of the country when you don't have to? That is truly a testament to the power of Microsoft's monopoly.

  • Germ's goin' Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jskline ( 301574 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @08:17AM (#7017035) Homepage
    This is probably only the tip of the iceburg. Apparently if you haven't yet seen Micro$oft's EULA's that they now include in all their updates, you have missed the boat off this island.

    They now are installing software to "check your license validity" with all the updates, and you have to agree to this in order to install and use the updates.

    I happened to paruse the EULA's with Directx 9 and Media Player 9, and both of them contain these requirements that you click through and allow them to spy on you, and what you have in your computer. On one machine, I allowed it and had Sygate installed to catch stuff, and sure enough, some stuff was trying to get out to the internet as soon as stuff was finished loading. I didn't have time or a way of looking at the packets, and what DLL's were doing it but suffice to say my suspicions were raised when the machine starts up and takes an unusual amount of time to boot, and my HD light was on for a really long time.

    Talk about the "New World Order" or what???!!!!!!!! Bastards.

    I'm very closely scrutinizing my Laptop since it has Windows XP Pro on it, and already discovered NOT to trust the Microsoft firewall that comes with XP!!! Apparently they might be caught with the pants down if you have Sygate, or ZD's firewalls, and if people are actually willing to try them also.

    I have to try the new browsers soon as I'm going back to experimenting with Linux and BeOS (rogue versions and my legit Pro 5 ed).

    Cheers;
    Jeff

  • Domino Effect Proven! Munich Redeemed! (Score:3, Funny)

    by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @09:27AM (#7017325) Journal

    A simple economic motion and the entire domino theory is proven, only the trouble starts in Western Europe this time instead of repeating itself in Eastern Europe.

    One wise little action and the entire connotation of the word 'Munich' changed. I'm sure Chamberlain's descendants are breathing a collective sigh of relief.

    If we continue marching backward through time what else do we see happening in Munich?

    Germany was hundreds of principalities with no sense of nationalism until the fire of the French revolution followed by Napolean drove them to it. Perhaps we should all be seeing Darl McBride in a triangular hat feather and his hand tucked into his pants?

    One has to look at Micrsoft's behavior in the same sort of manner as the German barons of the East Elbe during the beginning of the 19th century. Tax farmers, they are, treating the peasants as chattel. And the end of this whole mess is started by one rebel in the Baltic. Isn't the German/English meaning just delicious - those East Elbe tax farmers were known as "Junkers".

    The parallels are there - history DOES repeat itself, although in this case instead of a GNU like recursion we're seeing a strange sort of historical palindrome metaphor.

  • In Germany (Score:3, Insightful)

    by carolchi ( 129848 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:59PM (#7019060)
    Supermarkets have to take back any unwanted packaging, and many consmuners unpack their goods when they pay for them.
    Shops have to close early on Saturday afternoons and cannot open on Sundays.
    I cannot think of appropriate words to describe the difference in driving techniques on freeways.
    America may yet be surprised by "old" Europe.

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