M$ adds on Linux Today

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2005, Collins Richey wrote:
>I got a real chuckle, or rather a gagging sensation, when I opened
>Linux TOday to read the news a few moments ago. They're running a big
>M$ Crap/Infomercial that's almost the same width as the regular news.
>The ads tout that tired old lie that it takes more personnel to run
>Linux than Windows. Sickening.
>
>I'd like to see an M$ shop run 120+ desktops and 30 servers like we do
>with only 2 engineers. And to top it all off, they should try it with
>Win98 since most of our systems are running ancient RH9. Of course we
>don't do Email, and the corporate staff that handles the Exchange crap
>is certainly not 2 engineers! We average about one OS-related problem
>every 3 months for all of these systems.

The crux of the problem is that it only requires 2 engineers to
run the non-Microsoft shop, and there are bazillions of MCSEs out
of jobs if it were't for the shoddy M$ systems!

This isn't a new issue.  I was data processing manager for a
beltway bandit (aka Navy Contractor) in the D.C. area for twelve
years, and for most of that time we were using Burroughs Medium
Systems, B2500->B3800, systems.  The MCP Operating System on
these machines was far superior to the IBM OS/360, requiring only
me and one other programmer to handle everything for a company
with about 250 engineers.  An IBM shop would have required a far
greater number of support people, if only to help the engineers
figure out the JCL for their computer jobs.  I fought people who
wanted to replace the Burroughs system with IBM because I thought
my job was to provide the most bang for the buck.

It took me almost 10 years to figure out that minimizing costs
wasn't desirable in a company that work on CPFF (Cost Plus Fixed
Fee) contracts since the company's profit was a fixed percentage
of their costs!  So long as the company could ``justify'' the
costs in their proposals, the greater the cost, the more their
profit (and the Navy's contracting officers had little reason to
keep costs down because their position and power depended on the
dollar value of the contracts they administered).

It's easy to see why employees in the public sector have no great
desire to replace inefficient Microsoft systems that provide them
with employment security, and their managers with larger departments.

In the private sector, their should be more incentive to reduce
costs (unless they're CPFF contractors :-), but how many of the
management people understand that there are alternatives to the
Microsoft virus, Windows?  Surely there are many people in IT who
have no incentive to educate their management as their jobs
depend on Windows.

Bill
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