thelinuxlink.net

just went with some people from work out to a local establishment and a microsoft admin was there.

don't know where to start - but basically they are clueless - asked about some the industry trends and she had no clue - didn't even know what ISO or ODF was when I asked about it and open xml being approved in september. clueless - fricken clueless.

then we started talking about education and software - don't even know where to begin there -

I tell ya people - there are some real morons out there that have no business in the computer field that all they do is drink the microsoft coolaid and think they are doing right when they do what microsoft says.

I could care less what software people use just don't make me use your software and that is what microsoft does to everyone - period end of story and if the morons out there don't see that then the hxxx with them.

open source force open standards - I don't care what distribution people use but I do know if my cousin using ubuntu creates a document I can open it and edit it and know how it is going to look using fedora. you can't say that with windows not even different versions of windows and when I told the mcse windows admin that all I got was a dumbfounded look.

I have just about given up hope - I just hope the rest of the world can save us from the idiot mcse's of the united states.

I am done thanks for listening.

Yeah I hear you, luckily the place I work at has some smart people that actually know what they are doing. There are a few Linux guys but the rest of the technical people are open to using MS alternatives. The other people just pass my cube and wonder if I am using OS X or Vista then go back to work on their Word document, completely oblivious. Exchange is the only real annoyance with working in a mostly Windows environment I have.

then we started talking about education and software - don't even know where to begin there -

she said requiring the students of the schools is the same thing as requiring them to buy a specific book.

all I said to this was bull - it is nothing like that - it is more like requiring the students to buy a specific pen or pencil because they got a deal from a pencil maker for buying them in mass.

all I got is a dumbfounded look

the scary part was this women was older and said she was a former Unix administrator - scary very scary - microsoft really has the clueless snowed over big time. hope I at least made her think a little bit no matter how hard it hurt.

the only real place for windows IMHO is the dumpster. anybody that would code an OS that would require a big binary blob (the registry) to run is pretty stupid.

Dealing with winblows admins can be very frustrating. Dealing with higher ups who drink from the M$ Koolaid fountain is even worse. They have a bi-weekly luncheon at my job where they invite higher ups to have lunch with the general staff and talk about anything they want. I brought up whether or not the company is looking at F/OSS software for desktop deployments (at least for the technical staff). He laughed and said that "the cost of M$ is cheap because we already have so many licenses". My head nearly exploded. Our discussion dominated the rest of the luncheon. This was over a year ago. Luckily there are smarter people in the company. They've started using Linux on the server for several key applications. The time reporting system is all Linux based now. The corporate wiki is running on Linux boxes. The desktop migration will come. It's just a question of when. Our day will come.