January 03, 2004

Oy, These Prices! Are You Meshugganah? Also here and here.
posted by forksclovetofu 20 years ago
  • Good on them, really. Using Microsoft just seems to be throwing public money down the drain. Also, it seems to be catching.
  • Here in Oz, the ACT parliament managed to pass a bill requiring that open-source software be at least considered for government projects. Microsoft went completely apoplectic
  • Like, the open source fanboys never ever wax hyperbolic.... All Catskills schticks about "never buy retail!" aside, the Israelis are certainly a very frugal nation. Anecdote follows. One afternoon, standing in the checkout queue at the REI flagship store in Seattle, I found myself behind an Israeli tourist and her local host. The Israeli, marveling at the raw quantity of the goods being bought (it was a long queue), wanted to know whether in English we had a benediction to use to a person receiving a new piece of gear. I tried, "Congratulations on your new car," but that wasn't it: she wanted something that you'd say upon seeing that somebody has new shoes, etc. After some discussion back and forth, I learned that in Israel, the act of acquisition is fairly uncommon, and so worthy of a minor "Gesundheit!" style social celebration. If I can generalize from my single encounter, there is little notion in Israel of upgrading a possession to have the latest model or the most recent set of features. They'd rather save some money in exchange for investing a good amount of their own labor, repairing that torn tent, etc. Open source would seem to be a good match.
  • So, how's that whole open source thing working out?