There are many reasons why proprietary software is sometimes the better choice. In some cases the TCO will be lower, or the software is easier to use for office workers (like it or not, Windows / Office is pretty much what employees will already be familiar with). It may be easier to find support staff for some proprietary software. And in some cases, the proprietary software will simply be of better quality, more reliable, or a better functional fit. Also, I fail to see why license fees are evil.

With that said, I think governments should use open standards for data, document storage and interfaces where available, and avoid products (proprietary or otherwise) that do not support such standards.

And my thesis committee - "Ballistic properties of early 21-century office furniture and of Executive personalities: an exoteric analysis"

Which bird gets killed? A few cats offing 100 pigeons (essentially flying rats) isn't as bad as this thing zapping one of the last bald eagles.

That's cryptobiotic soil, I think. Worth preserving, but I think we can stand to lose a few square miles of it in exchange for power for 100k+ homes. This isn't random people walking or driving over it for a moment and then leaving, this is permanently putting a piece of desert to useful work.

http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/nervous_norvus/transfusion.html

Then? The Banking vampire elite will need to generate new, ethnically-rationalized hate-conflict to keep us all at each other's throats - instead of removing their boot from our collective face.

Transfusion, transfusion
My red corpsuckles are in mass confusion
Never, never, never gonna speed again...
Pass the crimson to me, Jimson!

Now, to drop it off a bridge, into the East River!

Unsurprising, when you are ruled by lawyers. Poking around demographics on Congress, we find about 40% of members with a law degree (over 50% in the Senate). In contrast, only 2% of them are scientists or engineers...

Users will compare the office environment with what they know, which is usually Windows, and usually a version that isn't locked down thus giving a better experience. They will complain, it's inevitable. How they complain about the office setup and whom/what they blame for it depends on the situation:
- Windows at work: "Why can't our crap IT department make this simple stuff work properly, if I can do it at home?"
- Linux at work: "Why are we even using this cockamamie hippie software, instead of Windows which the rest of the world is using?"

There are good reasons for managers to go with MS, SAP, IBM. For the manager, they are safe choices; the decision to select any of these vendors is unlikely to be challenged. The Windows situation will only give him a stick to beat IT with, or at best some leverage to wring a discount or some free consultancy from MS. In case of Linux, it provides an opportunity to attack the decision to go with Linux itself. If the guy happens to be against Linux, or talked to MS about a sweet deal involving a move of their Euro HQ to Munich for example, those user complaints will come in very handy indeed.

Or the US Constitution.

Play fair.

Modded "flamebait", but you're sort of right. The hard part of blowing something up is getting the cash together, obtaining enough explosives, and finding the right target and opportunity, all that without having some security agency get wind of your plans. Finding some poor deluded soul willing to blow himself up for a crappy cause is actually the easy part, especially if you can draw from a pool of religious nuts. And islam has plenty of those, sad to say.

Yes. You have established the evidence and legal basis for summary execution. Excellent job, AmeriKKKan!

On the face of it, that makes a lot of sense, but in practice it is rarely that simple. If a team sees a 10% increase in productivity, it's often the manager who takes credit, but often enough it's due to that old boy engineer or that senior business analyst helping out the rest of the team and making things more efficient. Unsurprisingly, to make engineers work better you often need an engineer, not a generic manager. This is the difference between managers and leaders, and it's also why I think training (*real* training) and coaching are so important (and, like the engineer, they are undervalued by management). If you're a manager and you think that your staff comes fully equipped for the job, with up to date skills and knowledge of standards, best practices and procedures, think again.