Oregon Government Supporting Open Source 124
amountlad writes "In a pair of articles released today on N4N.org, Oregon continues to lead the way in government open source adoption in the USA. The Oregon State University's Open Source Lab will host a Government Open Source Conference in October. The GOSCON has strong support from within the state government. The State's Department of Administrative Services released a white paper detailing their use of Asterisk for audio conferencing for more than 500 conferences a week. The set-up includes a web-based interface for judges to manage recording the hearings. In doing so the State joins Metro, a Portland area regional government which uses Asterisk along side its Beowulf Cluster."
Not ALL of Oregon Govt. (Score:5, Informative)
What's even worse is that there's a lot of alternatives in use between counties. For audio recordings in the court, most counties use either FTR or CourtSmart. My court uses Office products, even though the "official" standard is the Corel suite. It makes it difficult at times when working with other counties.
I think it'd be great if we went with Linux and Open Office, but that'll never happen.
Too bad this is so far down (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Open source + no hardware innovation: reusabili (Score:5, Informative)
No, it doesn't. Not even close. Please, for the love of God, don't pull "facts" out of your [thin air].
For those of you who aren't complete idiots, a computer uses about 300 Watts. 300 Watts in 24 hours is 7.2 kiloWatt-hours. That's a little less than 17 swimming pools worth of coal in energy.
*burying face in hands*
Coralized links trouble (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm a lawyer, and there is a hitch (Score:5, Informative)
"Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable."
Replace your lawyer--he can't read. The GPL does not require you to license things under the GPL simply because they were compiled with gcc.
If you don't believe me, read it [gnu.org] yourself.
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Open source + no hardware innovation: reusabili (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know where the hell that statistic is from either. My AMD64 3500+, Geforce 4 ti4200, and 2 sticks of PC3200 RAM uses about 200 watts of power. I recommend trying this thing called the kill-a-watt from thinkgeek, it really is nice for finding out how much power stuff uses. I am not going into anymore of a promo-mode besides that today though :)
Anyway, a hair dryer uses when it is on FYI 1359 watts, a toaster 800 watts, and even a gas dryer uses 500 watts! So don't bitch about desktop computers.
Re:Open source + no hardware innovation: reusabili (Score:5, Informative)
1 ton of coal produces 2,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity
1 pound of coal produces 1.25 kilowatt-hours
From:
http://www.teachcoal.org/lessonplans/how_much.htm
It looks like an hour of active computer use should use no more than 200 watt-hours in an hour.
From:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.h
200 X 24 = 4800 = 4.8kwh/day = Under 4 lbs. of coal.
I think the grandparent post got the words "day" and "year" mixed up. Easy mistake. Half the time I get carded, I tell the bartender I'm 22 days old.
Re:I'm a lawyer, and there is a hitch (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Open source + no hardware innovation: reusabili (Score:3, Informative)
24' x 12' x 4.6' pool = 1295 cubic feet
17 pools = 22015 cubic feet
Density of broken coal = 52 lbs/cubic foot
So that's 1144780 lbs of coal in 17 (small) swimming pools. At the aforementioned
Again, this is assuming smallish swimming pools. If we're talking Olympic sized swiming pools, figure 50 times that.
Not even close (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not even close (Score:2, Informative)
Just because Microsoft chooses to "smackdown" (to use your term) doesn't mean that many of us within state government won't be recommending the use of OSS when and where it's technically appropriate and cost-effective. Does this mean OSS will always be used? Of course not. But that also doesn't mean OSS *won't* be used, either.
Baby steps
Re:I'm a lawyer, and there is a hitch (Score:4, Informative)
http:www.lsb.org [lsb.org]Linux Standard Base
is an standard, supported by all major linux distros, which ensures that even proprietary software can be developed using it's components as a framework. When it comes down to compiling with GCC it is just bullshit and FUD that this imposes any license restrictions. As you can surely see onhttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGP LToolsForNF [gnu.org]
gnu.org
the copyright on the editors and tools does not cover the code you write. Therefore it is possible to compile even proprietary applications with GCC.Re:Not even close (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Informative)
As far as your suggestion that Free Software is liberal, this is misleading as well. Free Software enables various types of agendas. Liberals like Free Software because it helps the poor and extends the ability to make software to non-businesses. Conservatives like Free Software because it is good for businesses as well. Libertarians like Free Softare because it fights another form of government monopoly (namely "IP"). In short, Free Software is good for everybody, except proprietary software vendors.
Open Source In Oregon (Score:2, Informative)
http://cooper.stevenson.name/open_source_cd/ [stevenson.name]
Re:Open source + no hardware innovation: reusabili (Score:3, Informative)
Out of pure boredom and a little curiosity, it seems that with complete combustion or fission, you get approximately 8KWh of heat out of 1kg of coal [euronuclear.org].
There seem to be about four different kinds of coal (Anthracite Solid and Broken, Bituminous Solid and Broken), and the previous link doesn't specify a type of coal, I'll go with the average of the cleaner burning two Anthracite coals (+-1300kg/m3) [simetric.co.uk].
The GPP doesn't state what kind of swimming pools we're talking about, but a single olympic swimming pool is (50*25*3*1300) 4875000 kg of coal, which is (4875000*8) 39000000 KWh. Assuming the coal doesn't burn completely, but only say 90% to it's potential, that's (39000000/365) 106849 years worth of continuous computing pleasure.
Assuming the GPP was talking about a backyard swimming pool, it seems they are about 70m3 on average [activetoys.co.uk], or 249 years worth of computing pleasure.