[Smaug] Doctor Fun and another MSFT foolishness

[Peter Belew]

First, I want to remind everyone of the archive of hilarious Doctor Fun cartoons on ibiblio:

  http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/archive.html

These cartoons were created over a dozen or so years by a sysadmin, David Farley, working at the University of Chicago library. A bit like the Far Side cartoons, with their own flavor. I just corrected a link I had to this site, so I thought I'd share it. Enjoy!

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Fun

And I just read this article about a new system from Microsoft, which shares a PC with a number of thin-client terminals. The package apparently includes special licensing of applications for the shared environment. It's intended especially for schools:

  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/01/BUJ21C7G5L.DTL

So, is the need for specific Microsoft applications sufficient reason to pay Microsoft's premium, over the same hardware running Linux with thin-client X servers running on the terminals? It would seem that this approach could be more cost-effective for schools. Quite possibly such systems are being used in Europe or elsewhere.

- Peter

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