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+ - FOSS company sues Govt. for giving 722k$ to MS 2

Submitted by wackysalut
wackysalut writes "Savoir-faire Linux, a Montreal-based company,sues the Quebec govt. for attributing a ~722,000$ contract to Microsoft, without a call for bids. The RRQ wanted to switch 800 desktops from Windows XP to Windows Vista without ever considering open source, without even enumerating their needs. Here in Canada, the govt. is supposed to do serious verifications and analysis about different available solutions for anything beyond 25k$. Interestingly enough, the trial which is held at the moment in superior court, is followed live on Twitter. That's in Canada, but is the same thing happening in your country ? M. Beraud has an interesting quote up on his blog: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Gandhi."
Microsoft

+ - Microsoft, Quebec Pension Plan sued->

Submitted by Aliencow
Aliencow writes "Savoir-Faire-Linux, a service company specialized in Open source solutions, is suing the Quebec Pension Plan and Microsoft, among others, for not proceeding to a real needs analysis and awarding the contract for the purchase of 800 operating system and productivity suite licenses, even though according to law, this can not be done for contracts over $25 000."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Of course you should be paid (Score 5, Informative) 735

by Aliencow (#30273244) Attached to: Should You Be Paid For Being On Call?

You're basically hooked to a pager, which means you need to be near a phone, and usually near a computer with internet connectivity.

I don't work in operations, but everyone in decent places I've worked at did get paid around 3hours of salary per 24hours of wearing the pager. Then it was a minimum of 1 hour per "call" (more like issue, as it could involve multiple calls) except for the first one of the day which was included in the 3hours.

That meant that in a typical week you'd get paid for (24*7)-40 hours of "pager duty", which amounted to 16 hours of salary, so 2 days extra. That's pretty good, assuming you're on a decent rotation and don't have to be THE guy doing it every single week.

Comment: Re:I lock my computer when I walk away (Score 1) 336

by Aliencow (#29574877) Attached to: Schneier on Un-authentication

I saw that it exists in USB format, called the Mouse wiggler or something similar.

Apparently, police use it to prevent machines from getting locked when they seize them. I don't remember who makes them but they also make some kind of power 'bridge' to allow you to plug a running machine to a UPS without shutting it down.

Comment: Re:You are asking the wrong question. (Score 1) 564

by Aliencow (#28588895) Attached to: RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller?

Well, I guess it depends on the amount of servers. Drive failures are very very common to me, I mean, techs go in and change at least a drive or two every week. Those would be one or two servers down, with one or two restores, with one or two pissed clients.

RAID is very very, very useful, as long as you don't think it replaces backups obviously.

PC Games (Games)

Is Crowdsourcing the Next Big Thing In Game Design? 47

Posted by Soulskill
from the everyone-make-a-zombie dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard about user-generated content for games that have fixed toolsets — but this interesting piece on Develop has got me thinking about the idea of games production being opened to a community before development finishes. A new iPhone game (Aztec Odyssey) did that with its soundtrack; could someone do it with the game's art assets? Or level design? A great comment under the story says that LittleBigPlanet would have been more interesting if it was just shipped as a toolset with no pre-built levels. I'm inclined to agree!"

I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.

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