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Operating Systems Software United States

What the Candidates are Running 748

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-base-your-vote-on-just-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes " Linux Journal has an article about what the presidential candidates are running their web sites on. It also has some reference to the Republican vs. Democrat uptimes. "
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What the Candidates are Running More

What the Candidates are Running

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  • Isn't it obvious... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ylikone ( 589264 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:22PM (#7408188) Homepage
    that the republicans are going to be running Windows? They wouldn't go near the socialist Linux OS!

    Vote Linux, vote democrat!

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @05:29PM (#7411320)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Netcraft confirms it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:23PM (#7408191) Homepage Journal
    George W. Bush is dying!

    Seriously though, if the leader of the free world runs IIS, I'm scared. . .

  • Biased Reporting... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tsali ( 594389 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:23PM (#7408192)
    What about the Green party? The Libertarians?

    Where's my fair and balanced coverage?
  • ...it's at least as good as some of the mindless reasons the candidates themselves give ...

    (yes, you were in the armed services; very nice. now put down those scissors and go play.)

  • Over a year up for Linux, not bad guys. Now lets see if it survices the /. effect It seems that LinuxJournal has succumbed :P

  • Yes.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pave Low ( 566880 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:24PM (#7408206) Journal
    let's discuss the most trivial things like 'boxer or briefs', 'macs or pcs' or 'what powers your website' , instead of some real substance that might really affect you or your vote.

  • Does anyone...? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:24PM (#7408207)
    Does anyone really think the candidates know, or even care? 'Course they don't. They say "go make a web site" to some design/hosting company and that's that.

    • Re:Does anyone...? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:38PM (#7408366) Homepage
      Although it could possibly say something about their supporters, the people who volunteer time, bandwidth and equipment to a candidate.

      For example, corporations donating services are probably more likely to provide a commercial OS/Server than a group of IT grunts who want to volunteer services but don't see a point in buying commercial licenses.
  • have average uptimes of less than a week.... ...or they're running msblast all over the place.
  • ...is running Apache/Unix:
    [tom@hal tom]$ telnet www.rpv.org 80
    Trying 205.147.245.156...
    Connected to www.rpv.org.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    get / http/1.0

    HTTP/1.1 501 Method Not Implemented
    Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 17:23:16 GMT
    Server: Apache/1.3.28 (Unix)
    Allow: GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, TRACE
    Connection: close
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
    <HTML><HEAD>
    <TITLE>501 Method Not Implemented</TITLE>
    </HEAD><BODY>
    <H1>Meth od Not Implemented</H1>
    get to /index.shtml not supported.<P>
    Invalid method in request get / http/1.0<P>
    <HR>
    <ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.28 Server at www.vagop.com Port 80</ADDRESS>
    </BODY></HTML>
    Connecti on closed by foreign host.
    [tom@hal tom]$

  • Typical (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:26PM (#7408228) Homepage Journal
    The fact that this is reported is proof that democracy is very flawed in some of the basic assumptions. Not to single out geeks (and I admit, I looked at the article with some interest I suppose) but people just don't know how to select who to vote for. The mainstream picks their candidate based on likability and how attractive they are and whether they wear the right colored suit or seem smug. You can have a great set of policies that are very sound but wear the wrong tie and you'll lose a few million people. Candidates need to start standing on policy, not the junk that gets reported (OS, favorite food, hair color, etc.)

    • Re:Typical (Score:2, Insightful)

      by WhoDey ( 629879 )
      Thank you for assuming that anyone reading that article is probably an idiot and would actually let it influence the way they vote. I'm sorry that I am not as smart as you and cannot just read the article because I find it interested and still vote on a candidate because of his policies.
    • The mainstream picks their candidate based on likability and how attractive they are

      Yup.

      Otherwise the dear peepull would need to get off the couch and actually THINK!

      It is much easier for the public to simply sit in front of the TV watching some talking head, who then tells them who to vote for.

      This is known as "democracy".

      There really should be a means test for voters. Not monetary, not intellectual, not age, but instead being able to discuss the important issues, or some such criteria.

      Then we can h

      • There really should be a means test for voters. Not monetary, not intellectual, not age, but instead being able to discuss the important issues, or some such criteria.

        Of course, who decides what the criteria are (also known as who watches the watchers)?

        In wake of Arnuld's landslide victory, I've been hearing a lot of this "people should have to pass a test in order to be allowed to vote" crap. I'm sorry but this is just completely at odds with the original intent of the founding fathers. You, yourself,

        • original intent of the founding fathers

          Who cares what the original intent of the founders were?

          They also thought women, blacks, and poor people shouldn't be allowed to vote. It was their *intent* to keep the vast majority of the country from being able to have a say in its governance.
        • No, its not. The original intent of the founding fathers was for landowners to be allowed to vote.

          The real and truest brilliance of the founding fathers was to create a limited, modifyable document to establish the nation. Thereby leading to the everyone has a vote situation we have today.

          But it has been stated, and shown in history, that when the populace figures out how to vote itself handouts from the public treasury, it is all downhill from there and we are a good ways along that path already.
        • Your post, and the parent got me thinking...

          What if we stoped voting for the President. Instead, we take advantage of the elector system that is already in place. The potential electors of each state could come up with a list of issues that they thing are important for choosing a presedent. The ballot would then alow you to state your position on those issues. the electors would then look at what the people wanted a and vote for the presedent who's platform mostly resembled those values.

          Just a thought
        • The founding fathers only intended for rich white landowners to vote. They also assumed all of the voters would understand the issue and how the process works.

          That isn't the case any more. Your average voter probably doesn't know the difference between a senator and a representative, doesn't know how the state legislature works, doesn't understand the electoral college, couldn't tell you what the majority whip does, or define the role of the speaker of the house. They couldn't name any of the cabinet
    • You can have a great set of policies that are very sound but wear the wrong tie and you'll lose a few million people.

      You know, a sound policy is only *one* factor that should guide your vote, because "policies" are often faked by a candidate just so they may be elected. Does anyone remember when Bush (as a candidate) said he didn't believe in "nation building" or military intervention? Ha.

    • Re:Typical (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Art_XIV ( 249990 )

      The mainstream picks their candidate based on likability and how attractive they are and whether they wear the right colored suit or seem smug.

      And which issues/policies should people favor? Or is just better to concerned with some kind of issue at all?

      Humans pick their CEO's, car salesman, dates, class presidents, etc. based upon the same criteria that your've described above. Personal impressions count, and they effect everyone's decisions to one degree or another. Too bad. Appearances, intuitions

  • uptimes (Score:2, Funny)

    by rabbits77 ( 453747 )
    It also has some reference to the Republican vs. Democrat uptimes.
    What about LinuxJournal uptimes? Shouldn't they be embarassed that after less than 20 commenst posted that their server is hoplessly /.ed?
    • Come my M$ comrades, let's take this wonderful opportunity to bash those damn *nix users! Look at the irony, a Linux site reporting on uptime and obviously slanted against M$ is down!

      We may not get this chance again...Glavin!

  • Any significance? Nope. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:27PM (#7408246)

    From the article:

    Is there any significance to what Web server/platform combinations 2004 presidential candidates are using?

    I'm glad this was posted to 'The Lighter Side'. However, that probably won't stop people from drawing ironclad conclusions from the data.

    Hint: political candidates' performance is not linked to the performance of their webservers.

    "Up next: inferring a person's religion based on his choice of toothpaste."

    :-)

  • Dean (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:27PM (#7408248) Homepage
    There was an interesting piece on NPR the other day about Howard Dean and how he's actually a technophone - doesn't like computers much. Ironic because his online fund raising is stellar. They said the most tech-savvy candidate is Lieberman, who can't do without his BlackBerry. Apparently Al Gore introduced Lieb to all the gadgets that let him keep in touch with people.

    • If we were listening to the same NPR report, it stated that Dean was a technophobe, but that he has learned to love technology in the last couple of years, hence he may be one of the best informed candidates in terms of technology.

      The Lieberman bit cracked me up: basically, he uses the hardware and software that he does because that's "what Gore made me use."

    • Re:Dean (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Elbow Macaroni ( 315256 )
      Yeah that's because he's smart enough to know who to hire!

      That's who we need in office, someone who will hire people smarter than him to do a good job. That's what Clinton did and it worked.

      Bush likes to hire people at his same intelligence level or just plain crazy.

  • AtAT (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ster ( 556540 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:27PM (#7408249)
    From As the Apple Turns [appleturns.com]:
    In fact, the only candidate who stated for the record that he actually uses a Mac was Al Sharpton. And even though we usually pride ourselves on voting entirely by the candidates' computing platform preferences without letting our judgment be colored by anything relatively unimportant like "political issues," "competency," or "history of violent criminal acts," there's a deal-breaker that prevents us from ever possibly considering Sharpton for President. We speak, of course, of the hair. 'Nuff said.

    -Ster

  • So What??? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sergeant Beavis ( 558225 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:28PM (#7408257) Homepage
    Not one of these candidates knows WTF Apache is, let alone IIS.

    Sys Admins and Webmasters make those decisions and I'm betting the ones running the Democrat candidate websites have to worry about where they spend money. Thus they us OSS software.

    Of course they are also running the better webserver :) but that is beside the point.
    • Actually, from what I've read about Howard Dean and his "embrace" of new technologies, I'd guess he, at least, knows what Apache and IIS is. He might not configure/maintain/admin it, but he seems to be a brighter tack than others when it comes to technology issues.

      Of course, I could be wrong...

    • Sys Admins and Webmasters make those decisions and I'm betting the ones running the Democrat candidate websites have to worry about where they spend money. Thus they us OSS software.

      Oh please. I'd be willing to bet that both political parties have more money than they can figure out how to spend. It always irks me when I see DemocRATS ;) try to say that they are so much better than Republicans. I think a lot of people from both major parties in the political machine are corrupt and getting wealthy

  • ...used to brag about all his downtime, but I think he meant something else...

  • Who the fuck cares? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:30PM (#7408280)
    Third of the people on Slashdot are not Americans, another third are H1Bs and L1s located in America but cannot vote, and the last third of the readership are actual US citizens, but forgot to register to vote, since new Gnome came out that day.

  • Who cares?!? (Score:2, Informative)

    by vwjeff ( 709903 )
    Ask any of these guys this question:

    What operating system does your web server run?

    Do you think any of them could answer that question? I don't think this reflects the candidates, it reflects their IT staff.

    • Re:Who cares?!? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by evought ( 709897 )
      1) We're geeks, looking at this is fun.

      2) If/When they end up running the country, they will also be selecting staff. Something that reflects on their staff reflects on their ability to choose competent staff.

  • Meanwhile... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:31PM (#7408297) Journal
    Well, whatever they're running I hope it holds up better than whatever Linux Journal has...

    While waiting for the article to crawl out from under the Slashdotting, here's an aside I thought was interesting: a recent article talking about Howard Dean's succesful use of the Internet for fundraising noted that perhaps the first candidate to use that method successfully was -- that Judge Roy Whatever in Alabama with the 10 Commandments statue in his courtroom.

    Not someone I would have picked as a high-tech visionary, although he obviously is pretty shrewd about media manipulation.

  • Also This Month on the Newsstand... (Score:5, Funny)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) * on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:31PM (#7408299)
    "GQ" is running an article on which designer ties each candidate is wearing, "Veneer Quarterly" has a sidebar on what color, and how many coats, of paint the candidates used on their houses, "Breakfast Meats Bi-Monthly" is leading with the in-depth feature "Bacon, Steak, or Sausage: The Candidates Decide," and the cover story of this month's "Limousine Owner's Gazette" tells us wa-a-a-y more than we need to know about the contenders' choice of Regular, Premium, or Ultra.

    Gosh, with so much relevant information available to voters, it's easier than ever to make an informed decision!
  • A Fat Bald Man if he ran Linux? A few geeks would, nobody else would, not even if he were sent directly by God. Collectively, this country is an idiot.
  • If we were electing the nation's Sys-admin In Chief instead of Commander In Chief, I might care about this. As it stands, this isn't going to influence my vote one way of the other. I will still not be voting for Carol Moseley Braun, regardless of the fact that her website runs on FreeBSD.
  • "I want people with Tux stickers on their cases, and I want people with Best Viewed Under IE 6.0 on their web pages. The Democratic party needs a big tent!"
  • Political information that I can:
    1) understand
    2) use to vote

    [for the humor-impaired, this is called sarcasm]

  • This doesn't matter (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wonky73 ( 720005 )
    What possible conclusions can you possibly draw from this? Most of the candidates probably don't even know they have a website. Somebody in their campaign hires a firm to stick up a website and they do. This has nothing to do with the polititcs of the candidates.
    • In the generic case, you're probably right. However, there are candidates who grok the importance of open standards, open source, and the evils of things like the DMCA, permanent copyrights, software patents (at least as they are currently being exploited/granted), and other issues such as these. Those candidates will have input into their web infrastructure, and if I see a candidate purporting to be interested in open source or standards but whose website runs IIS, then I know that I can't trust them to un
  • Well, yeah. But I would certainly give this some weight in my consideration if: 1) it came up as a topic of debate between now and the election and 2) the candidates back up their reasons for using the platform they chose with some solid reasoning.

    There has already been some buzz around Howard Dean making a potential guest appearance on Lessig's blog. He also seems seems to have some peripheral interest in and empathy for our positions (sorry for the very broad generalization here) on many issues that

  • Nader (Score:3, Funny)

    by bigkahunafish ( 708759 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:41PM (#7408399)
    I'm not so sure about Nader wanting to use modern computers at all. Those new hardrives could be "Unsafe at Any Speed" He's probably running that Commodore 64 that was recently updated with ethernet capability :o)

  • I shall be here all ze week (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > As of this writing, November 5, 2003, the RNC has an uptime of 4.26 days (maximum of 39.04) and a 90-day moving average of 16.91. The DNC has an uptime of 445.02 days (also the maximum) and a 90-day moving average of 395.38 days.
    >
    > Draw your own conclusions.

    uh, Republicans can't keep it up? but we've known that since Bob Dole started doing ED ads ...

  • FIRST OFF (Score:2, Informative)

    by h8macs ( 301553 )
    The candidates hosting company may be running such and such, NOT the candidate! If you can point me to a candidate that set his/her site up on their own and did NOT use frontpage or office for it....I might vote for them.

    If you can point me to a candidate that actually runs his/her website off of a homebrew box running linux or a bsd that he/she built themselves, I WILL vote for them.

    Most likely they chose whatever they chose because it was the cheaper option offered by their "web host".

    That being said w

  • Oh brother (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Geekenstein ( 199041 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:53PM (#7408526)
    Yes, these candidates made a conscious decision on what OS to run their web sites on. Yes, they know what they are running. Yes, they all know they even have websites.

    Quick, base your votes on this!

    As to the "reporter" who thought this was a worthwhile test of a candidate, go back to the New York Times. :)

  • Curses! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fizban ( 58094 ) <fizban@umich.edu> on Thursday November 06, 2003 @01:56PM (#7408565) Homepage
    The Linux Journal is slashdotted?!?! A LINUX site is SLASHDOTTED?!?!? Oh, the horror. The HORROR! We're doomed, I tell you. DOOMED!

  • Spanking of downtime (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Burgundy Advocate ( 313960 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @02:05PM (#7408652) Homepage
    Linux Journal: [linuxjournal.com] Apache on Linux
    Uptime: Down faster than a drunken cheerleader on prom night

    George W Bush: [georgewbush.com] IIS on Windows 2000
    Uptime: Still going!

    HTH HAND!

  • Edwards, OpenSource, & Macs (From Campaign HQ) (Score:5, Informative)

    by AaronMyers ( 703066 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @02:54PM (#7409315)
    I'm the Dir. of Internet Operations for John Edwards' presidential campaign. It's worth noting that we run our campaign blog [johnedwards2004.com] on Apache on FreeBSD -- and the blog is actually powered by Slashcode!

    (If you cruise over to Larry Lessig's blog [lessig.org]John Edwards is guest blogging on a variety of tech topics this week.)

    We use a handful of open-source tools here at Campaign HQ. Why? Cost and reliability. The same reason you guys choose this stuff.

    Oh... And our entire Web Team runs on Mac OS X. Contrary to one of the comments posted earlier, Senator Edwards made it clear during Tuesday's debate that he prefers his Mac.

    I hope you folks have a chance to learn more about John Edwards [johnedwards2004.com].

  • Security (Score:3, Funny)

    by generic ( 14144 ) on Thursday November 06, 2003 @04:25PM (#7410509)
    If your uptime is 445 days... you need to patch your kernel.

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