And instead of Cisco, they should all buy Huawei?

Only Democrats think Trump can run for election in 2028, but they never really can explain exactly how he could do that... Almost like its a completely baseless claim dreamed up by Democrat fundraisers to try and bank ANOTHER billion dollars to run against (the boogie man) Trump in the next election...

Seriously, you understand that if all goes according to plan, and Trump survives to the end of his term, he will be out of office in January, 2029 - when will this migration off MS Windows to Linux be completed? Their target is by the end of 2027, or just over one year before Trump is out of office (and yes, we know he'll leave office, he arleady left office once in 2021, remember?)

No, he didn't he wanted to buy Greenland. CNN BBC

And that assessment is based on your deep knowledge of modern military strategy? What about raw materials? 80 years ago we rolled a couple million soldiers into europe without a significant presence on Greenland, why couldn't we do that again without Greenland? Greenland is a useful location for defensive weapons, which explains why the US has historically had many small defensive and scientific military bases in Greenland in the past.

But yeah, somehow we would need Greenland to invade Europe. Right. Because cargo planes can't cross the Atlantic? Because supersonic stealth bombers aren't a thing?

Please, maybe sit this one out?

I largely agree, but the Juice wasn't worth the Squeeze - we were approached by an activist dad who waged an all-out frontal assault on the school district trying to convince us that "if we just ran Linux on our current desktops we could save millions of dollar/year and the kids would be using better tools".

We didn't spend "millions of dollars/year" on MS licenses so the savings promised (by him) were impossible, and his other claim, that we wouldn't have to replace out desktop computers every 5 years was based on his personal experience running Linux on 10 year-old computers in his basement for his children. WHat he didn't factor in was the fact that very few of the 3,000 users of community desktops and laptops in a public school district take as much care of their computers as his own children. After 5 years in public use, those computers were ready to be replace for physical damage BECAUSE we bought our "new desktops" as three year old off-lease desktops by the pallet at great discounts. When we replaced a computer in 2010, for example, it was likely a 2001 model - 2001 -> 2004 as a corporate desktop in a major corporation, then from 2005-2010 in a 7th grade classroom - it was ready to be replaced. If we held on to a desktop for ten years, it would have been 13 year-old technology and a 13 year-old device when it was replaced.

The pitch was Linux would save money, we showed it would not - but if there was an outside reason to migrate, that could have helped justify the move, but imagined savings alone, in 2010, weren't sufficient.

No, you can't just "redesign" a system serving the educational needs of 3,000 students and satisfying all state and federal reporting requirements.

Let's all, for the sake of argument, agree that converting an email server from Exchange to running "relaying SMTP" on two scrap desktops is whole lot easier that converting an entire 3,000 user-base to a completely new OS/ecosystem.

Replacing a single point in the network (email) with a FOSS solution is trivial, but that would have resulted in literally ZERO savings, since the Exchange server and outlook licenses were bundled with the desktop licenses.

We were successfully managing 1,500 Windows and Mac desktops with exactlyone Windows Admin and exactly one Mac Admin, along with a DBA/Report generator person to help admin staff get the reports/data they needed.

We had absolutely zero interest in SSHing into individual desktops to run scripts - managing the desktops with Group Policy was a simple, well-known mechanism. I don't mean this as a disparaging judgement, but your comments are really about today, 15 years after the fact - I'm talking about the state of the systems in 2010, not 2025, and your comments make me think you've never seen how a well-run windows shop is administered.

Thats your opinion, and that's fine, but that was what we were familar with.

Its hard for me to believe you could manage 1,500 linux desktops in 2010 with fewer than two admins like we had. And honestly, the Windows environment, when properly structured and maintained, is not nearly as problem-prone as most Linux enthusiasts claim.

Again, Hard to imagine saving significant money over the then TWO ADMINS for 1,500 desktops, nearly 3,000 users. If, as a practical matter the two existing admins were replaced with two Unix admins earning 50% more (effectively going from two headcount to three, in budget terms) then the complete, $10 savings versus the per-desk annual license cost of Windows is gone. If the two replacement Unix admins cost 10% more, that would make Linux just as expensive as Windows.

Schools are a funny business, yes they get three months off each year (sort of, summer school is a thing), but imagine, as a thought experiment, converting a school district with 1,500 desktops and 3,000 users (student and administrators) from Windows to Linux. Installing the OS on 1,500 computers, that's doable, no fun, but doable. But, there's a whole lot of automation and tooling bundled into Windows Server and Group Policy, much, but certainly not all, would need to be either purchased, implemented, and trained on between school years, And since school districts rely on boring things like attendance records (for federal funding), similar replacement software would need to be found, installed, trained on before the next school year. Oh, and the students AND faculty would, believe it or not, need some level of training on the new software tools AND operating systems without overly impacting their educational progress as they learn the new environment.

AGAIN, this is 2010, the world was not "browser-based", applications were distict local software packages installed on computers/servers.

The only practical solution would be to develop the new environment/ecosystem (OS, Servers, desktop images, application suites, and administration tools) in parallel, over a school year. That means you've got the Win Admin and Mac admin on staff, plus the two new Unix admins, plus a handful of experts in either Linux applications for schools or programmer analysts designing and implementing Unix-based solutions to all the issues run into during the migration.

That implies a huge (one-time) headcount increase - how many years of $10/desktop/year savings would it take to recoup those costs before we start "rolling in the savings"? And, where would the money come from - would the state give us sufficient money to hire several Unix experts for a year or two to migrate to Linux? Would the taxpayers approve a ten-year bond to increase their property/school taxes to pay for these future savings?

In the world of hand-wavy social media, migrating to Linux from windows is easy, heck everything (today, not 15 years ago) is browser-based, so whats the difference? But the reality is a bit tougher.

No, you're not forgiven.

You obviously missed the part of the story where he committed $400M of his own money to found a fully-funded institute to study the revolutionary treatment that may or may not help his 26 year-old daughter, but is widely believed to a revolutionary treatment for a braid range of medical issues...

You don't have to praise him, put him on a pedestal, but it would be nice if you'd at least acknowledge his massive financial contribution to a very promising treatment.

Someone investing $400M to treat others isn't the selfish dick move you seem to think it is.

Maybe re-read TFS?

Typo, it should read:

I remember looking at Linux for an American K-12 public school district about 15 years ago.

Yes, the base OS was/is free (as in beer), but, to manage all 1,500 desktops and laptops in the district required EITHER licensing (per desktop) a third-party tool to manage the systems similar to the way we managed Windows and Mac systems with Group Policy.

At the time we spent about $35/desktop for MS Windows and MS Office & Server CALs (MS Academic rate), the third-party tools were $25/desktop as I recall. So $10/desktop...

But the savings (a fraction of a headcount) wouldn't overcome the (at least initial) costs of training to support a third operating environment during the transition (at least one Linux Admin to compliment existing Win and Mac admins), let alone required training for staff and students, as well as the FACT we could never fully migrate off Win or Mac due to required software for student IEPs and in many courses no satisfactory replacements for many Win & Mac software in the curriculum.

The cost of the OS isn't the issue, it's the cost to support/maintain the environment.

If we paid more for Windows, who knows - maybe then the numbers would make sense.

Also, the IT director had ZERO APPETITE to defend migrating to this (basically) unheard-of OS to parents upset their children were learning/using something no employers used.

It's not just about dollars and cents.

Uh, what?

How old are the current Air Force One planes?

How far behind schedule (and over budget) are the replacement Air Force One planes?

Who holds title to the donated plane the federal gov't accepted as a gift from Quatar?

What was the money you claim was 'stolen' from the pentagon spent on? (Installing military equipment and defensive weapons systems... on a gov't plane)

Will the donated plane ever be actually given to Trump? (No, it is gov't property, it will go to the Trump Presidential library when it goes out of service - just like countless other gifts a sitting president receives, ceremonial swords, plaques, etc. and they are retained by the federal gov't (National Archives?))

Yes, it appears the SPLC was among the largest donors to countless hate groups, including the KKK. It has even been alleged that the SPLC directly funded certain aspects of the Charlottesville protest (the "good people on both sides" event).

When called before Congress, I found the SPLC officials that were questioned to be very concerned about self-incrimination, why is that?

The SPLC was caught violating many federal banking regulations, including, but not limited to, illegal wire transfers, creating non-existing corporations to hide payments, etc.

The SPLC may have once been a useful tool in the fight against hatred, but when it turned into a huge donation solicitation machine, I think they lost their way.

This is silly outrage - as best I can tell the "training/how-to" video was created AFTER the "No Kings" rally, NOT in preparation for it...

Imagine, a vendor producing training videos using previous actual events in their video! The Horror!

Oh, and how silly is the list of cities in the 404 media piece that "exposes" the cities that used their Flock cameras when there was a large scale protest ("No Kings")? Why wouldn't EVERY city that has installed Flock cameras use them during a large-scale event like the "No Kings" protests?

You can't really be mad that Flock made a training video based on a previous event after the event ended, that just nonsensical.

This is one of those "you have to tilt your head and look at it just this certain way to be upset" things.

The "No Kings" rallies simply provided source material for the training video - the training wasn't in preparation specifically for the "No Kings" protests, because, you know, the video appears to have been released AFTER the event.

Tesla sells FSD, cars, meaning the driver is required to supervise and intervene if needed.

These are fully automated, but are in such small numbers, in only a few geo-fenced locations. I strongly suspect that at least initially there's someone supervising/intervening in the 'driverless' cybercabs.

They couldn't count on passengers not just 'grabbing the wheel' and causing a problem.

Tell you what, why don't you put out your own "redundant taxi" to compete with "Roboraxis"? Instead of NO driver controls have a driver and give the passenger their own accelerator, brake, shifter, and steering wheel - just for those edge-case scenarios when the taxi driver is not capable of safely driving?

What could possibly go wrong?

Firemen don't move cars...

https://www.firerescue1.com/fi...