Tuesday, May 29, 2007

... the incompetents in office ...

-I keep reading on the news of a certain country I won't mention (as the vatican suggests never mix the sin with the sinner) of a generalized national waste emergency.
-Over ten years ago I suggested the people in charge of environment of a county there, to acquire shredders for tires, used to cut used tires into chips to be burned as combustible in ventilated bed power plants. Most of americans probably have never heard of MAC SATURN, Company producing the best tire shredders in the world, here, in america, you can even find them used on Ebay.
-The next reform in the school system and in politics should require a degree in "common sense".

... what do you want to do, I am the joker ...

Thursday, May 24, 2007

shortage of degreed people in california

Let's see:

-Workers not willing to work "off the clock" (read unpaid)
-Fair labor practice and unions rights non-existent
-A spaniard-victorian system of ethics and laws
-More illegal workers than legal
-Almost highest crime rate in the nation
-Racist and discriminative legislation, non-us citizens can not buy guns
-Cost of life crazy
-Highest public red tape in the country

... hey, make sure the last one turns off the lights ...

Monday, May 21, 2007

the hypocrites

Obviously, while cigarette smoke is not healty, is economically healty to cash 80% of taxes on cigarette packs, and smoke which comes from factories, power plants and car's exhaust must be healty , therefore the need of not signing the Kyoto agreement.

So, americans have the right to be free from second hand cigarette smoke, but they don't, AND NEVER WILL have the right to be free from second hands Hummers smoke.

something does not sound right, I tought I was the joker
:)

Monday, May 14, 2007

from my book, comments welcome


Appendix II - Open software and public administration


The public administration mission consists, in time of peace, on providing a military system capable of protecting the country, providing law and public order, and taking care of the welfare and well-being of the nation. In a time of war, public administration has to be able to furnish maximum support to the military machine, battlefield damage repairs in the home country and the basic needs of population.


Consequentially, being high paying war targets the industrial military economic complex, while generally other governments targets are not that high of a priority, the public administration has also the duty of providing supplemental services like communications, engineering, civil protection and support to reconstruction to the industry and the population, and to provide for its own survivability capacity, including all major services to the population.


In the above light, and from the standpoint of the highest public deficit in history, it appears obvious that the resources for this enormous challenge have to come from “self financing” instead than from the usual, and so loved by all economists, symbolic cow of public debt, that may end up not working as well for times of war, or times with an exceptional number of catastrophic events like the Katrina hurricane.


To help accomplish the above goals without adding burdens on budget, few logical solution appear obvious:


  • Deferring operational life of equipment can save precious funds to redirect to different contingent priorities, as an increasing number of national emergencies will arise off of a cycle of warming affecting the Atlantic regions.

  • Open software has today the capability of using 1998 and sometimes even older hardware, with comparable performances in terms of speed and products with today machines loaded with today's proprietary operating systems and applications, even if giving up a few 'modern' multimedia features, (which most public offices should not have anyway, unless they are the Press Information office or Public Relations office).

  • Telecommuting capacity of government agencies is also a very important step toward reduction of public spending (reducing cost of maintenance of real estate and operational fixed costs like energy and equipment).

  • Recent statistics in Canada show that 50% of public servants would choose to work from home if they could:


http://www.telcoa.org/id179.htm


  • However, no additional financial burden should be expected, like “double taxation” in interstate transactions, or specific software requirements. YOU CAN NOT IMPOSE YOUR EMPLOYEES TO USE A CERTAIN BRAND OF SOFTWARE AT THEIR HOME, IS UNFAIR AND IS UNCOSTITUTIONAL.


  • Telecommuting will also increase the survivability of government agencies (and private as a matter of fact, if they just would like to listen for once), if designed right. For example, the agencies in the WTC would have suffered much less of a loss if they had been dispersed on a company P2P network, with 50% telecommuters.





  • Proprietary software, primarily that written by Microsoft, is the target of most malaware, viruses and spy ware on the Internet. Generally speaking people at home have kids downloading all day junk from the Internet, and will never have firewalls costing ten thousand dollars each or more (they pay out of pocket for their equipment, not via the cash cow of government agencies).

  • Consequentially, the reality of telecommuting in government requires employers to step away from proprietary software, toward a software anybody can afford, that performs regardless of hardware, and offers maximum un-compatibility with malicious software. The software that meets these requirements at this time is open source-based.

  • Profound changes on legislation will be needed to make telecommute a reality in the government sector:

    http://www.telcoa.org/id179.htm

  • Public administration should go toward open software anyway, because it has the constitutional duty to be inter-operable with all systems and to serve all citizens, not only those who choose to run a particular operating system. Government, being neither church nor a private company, should not be exempt from applying non-discrimination rules. Failure to provide cross-platform services equates to discrimination against those impacted.

  • A large number of experts agree to this day that open software is better than proprietary. Would it not seem logical after institutions like the Parliament of France have adopted Linux as their operating system of choice, giving more consideration to open operating systems ?

  • Open software can cost anywhere from nothing to 10-20% of the price of corresponding proprietary products.

  • Why the migration to open software is not happening fast enough in the US, should be object of a congressional investigation, and politicians in Washington should explain why government on-line services are discriminatory towards citizens not using Microsoft or Apple products.

  • The web is full of forms on plenty of Government sites, whereas the only way to get the information, is trough the use of proprietary code or programs. Citizens are discriminated on the access of public services, on the base of what operating system, browser and media player they use.

  • The private industry is following the above (bad) examples, due to proprietary software's ubiquity One ironically is even to fill up the on-line application for the Geek Squad using a “non-Microsoft” OS (seems to work on Linux with Netscape 7.2, however the unsupported OS notification on the page prevents users from certainty that their application may be actually filed).

  • Here some interesting considerations on browsers from 2001, the situation does not seem to be any better now:


http://www.strum.co.uk/webbery/browser.htm


  • The matter of a 'one and only choice' is serious, and is impacting both national productivity and security. The possibility of a net “infection” / “poisoning”, causing most or all systems of a certain kind to be down for an indefinite period, should be enough of a reason to start considering the maximum redundancy of products, instead of restricting the choice to one provider.


  • Because of the taxpayer's interest in efficient government spending and the need of interoperability of software and equipment, open software, as well as open hardware, should be a mandatory requirement for appropriation for any government agency.

  • Finally, open software opens the road for the government agencies to generate their own operating system and applications. “Government edition” versions of applications and operating systems can be royalty free, and can be distributed with no licensing charge in unlimited quantity, to employees, suppliers, contractors and citizens, maximizing standardization and compliance.


Here are few examples comparing cost of operating systems applications:


Operating systems, Office software and browsers:


x86

mac

Sparc/x86

Prop. OS

Vista $250

osx $199

free Solaris 10

Live OS

limited

limited

supported

Linux/bsd

Free

Free

free

Live OS

included

included

included

Prop. Office suite

Office $550

Office $ 199

25 star office

Open Office

FREE OO

FREE OO

FREE OO

Prop. browser

(different)

Free explorer

Free safari

Free java

Mozilla – firefox

netscape

Free – same

Free – same

Free - same


Other issues arise when talking about programming tools and environments, where also open software plays an interesting role. This is the higher portability of code across platforms, and consequent reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of development.


Open Source Development Tools:


x86

mac

Sparc/x86

Prop. Devel 3gl

Microsoft .net full $600

Free Xcode limited

Developer suite ($?)

Proprietary open software java

Free

Free

Free

Gnu – eclipse

Free

Free

Free

python – eclipse

Free

Free

Free

Prop. Database

SQL Server $500

none

Adabas (included with Star Office)

Proprietary database oracle express

Free

unavailable

Not Free ($?)

Proprietary open source Ingres

Free

Free

Free

Postgres

Free

Free

Free


Finally, costs can be reduced using many open source free or low-cost specialized applications rather than proprietary from software houses. For example:


Specialized applications:


x86

mac

Sparc/x86

Proprietary photo

Photoshop $839

Photoshop $719

Photoshop ($?)

Open software gimp

Free

Free

Free

Proprietary CAD

Autocad $399

Autocad $399

Autocad ($?)

Open Software US Army BRL CAD

Free

Free

free

Proprietary ERP/CRM

MS CRM $405

MS ERP $2,200

Daylite $145

Open MFG free

($?)

Open Software ERP/CRM

ERP5 - Compiere

Free

Free

free


Several open software projects are not yet at maturity but are expected to be in the years to come.



Open software is being looked upon by many government agencies as a way to reduce operating costs. As a backlash against proprietary software deepens, open-source software is gaining acceptance in the world community.


Open software is a big player in the United Nations project related to the Millennium Development Goals. The US Department of Defense is already highly involved in open software, and so are agencies like the NASA and its European equivalent, the European Space Agency (ESA).


http://directory.fsf.org/

http://www.ony.unu.edu/seminars/2006/opensource/

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=89668DCF-D287-48E3-93F0-A0AB7DED24F7

http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMDV1T4LZE_index_0.html


Kansas City, Paris France, Schoten in Belgium, Gwangju in Korea are running their administration on open software:


http://www.bensoft.com/kansas_city_open_source_systems.html

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1941298570;fp;16;fpid;0

http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/5178/470

http://www.zdnet.co.kr/etc/eyeon/enterprise/0,39


Several libraries are now running on on open software:


http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-bin/library?e=p-en-home-utfZz-&a=p&p=factsheet

http://www.oss4lib.org/

http://www.koha.org/


The state of Georgia is running 256 libraries on open software, with a long list of others:


http://www.open-ils.org/


Also, the first indications that at a certain point the use of Open Software may become mandatory in specific Countries, is indicating that compatibility to open software is something governments can not afford to ignore any longer, as indicated in the article below:


http://news.com.com/2100-1001-272299.html


All the above leads to believe that closed proprietary software is on the way of estinction, like the dinosaurus, and further public spending in it, with very few exceptions of highly specialized software, is a symptom of poor managerial decision capability at the best, or conflict of interest at the worse.


Note: All prices are approximated, and obtained with “best price” query on google, choosing the lowest offer for full edition products (non academic, OEM, demo's or 'not for resale')

Thursday, May 10, 2007

a joke called government social security

-I am starting thinking just as in Justice, in Amerika "almost" equal for all, so is everything else government organized.
-They take your contributions out of your paychecks, and you can do nothing for it.
-They waste your money on useless public expenses.
-Look at the employees that take your applications, they make 7-8k bucks a month, working in pharaonic buildings YOU PAID FOR
-Then when you are sick and you can't work, they won't even give you an answer on your medical conditions, nor they may even give you a visit that lasts more than 15 minutes, nor they may explain you why they are denying you any service after all the contributions you paid for 30 years.
-They will also stay away from creating a public medical system, that touches the pocket of the big money makers health corporations, who would otherwise replace the profits they make in one of the most liberalized markets for human organs in the world ? So, Amerika is for profits, whats wrong with the picture of parting almost-dead semi-alive corps to make a buck ?
-Obviously there is something wrong in this picture of "civilized" Amerika teaching the world.
-What can we, poor "uncivilized" species, learn more from Amerika ?, what is next, after the genocide of the natives, centuries of slavery, the biggest financial fraud in human history (read gold standard, and silver standard), medical nuclear "experiments" on unaware citizens, a number of executions second only to africans "banana republics" and the most liberalized human organ market in the world...
-Oh I forgot, Amerikans are all rigorously "christians", so keep on paying as you pray, and praying as you pay, DoG will take care of you, "eine nazion unten gott"->l ol