US State Department rejects using Firefox over, "Expense Questions"

Source: Gizmodo

AHAHAHAHAHAAH!!

US State Department is saving money by not getting a free browser that is better than IE.

so uhh

why did they call clinton to ask about internet explorer

I'm tempted to move out of the country now. I don't want to live in a country whose Government is this stupid.

Where will you go?

Why didn't the dumbass back down when he was told Firefox was free, or at least take a moment to reconsider his position?

Wow... :|

A place who's government doesn't know about Firefox is not a place worth living!

Seppekuuuuu!

Yupp...Thankfully, I don't really care what the government uses. I don't have a government job. Hell, at high school I had Firefox on a jumpdrive, I'd use it over IE. I got in some trouble for it (something about poor security), but I kept doing it anyway; they didn't catch onto me til almost the end of the year regardless.

IE wins again.

Sheesh Oni its not that big of a deal. Its not like the US is gonna fall apart because the Gov't use IE.

Although I do think Firefox is better than IE in many ways, let people use what they want >:[

Anyways, this doesn't really matter to me.

I'm more upset that they said "Nothing is Free", implying that they think Firefox costs money. Also, it is stated by an employee that they are forced to use Internet Explorer right at the beginning. If you read the article, you will see this, even though it isn't explicitly stated in the video.

Ok,

They probably might have used that as a excuse anyways.

This post has been edited by Im4everkool on Jul 16 2009, 02:46 AM

They probably just used that as a excuse anyways.

They are forcing their Employees to use a specific Browser. That removes some freedom of choice from its Employees. A Country whose Government breaks its own freedom-enforcing Constitution is not a good Country, imo.

perhaps it's so people who are having trouble can get help from others
perhaps it's so they don't have to install a seperate browser on every computer there, forcing everyone to relearn things and wasting plenty of valuable time in the download process?
perhaps it's an internet browser and no-one cares?
perhaps it's government policy?

Theres a lot of places that force their Employees/Students to do and use certain thing.

It's a web browser, and whatever is being done on that computer will still get finished, firefox or not. It's not that big of a deal what they use and it really shouldn't be this big of a deal to you.

and what B.M. said.

I don't think the deal is the browser they used in the end, but rather the official's reaction. He was unable to admit he had made a mistake, and instead bull****ted his way out of the situation.

government should not be using proprietary software. this should be obvious.

a company being in control of the government's computing is very clearly not a good idea. we've already seen problems arising with voting machine software, breathalyser tests, etc. being run on proprietary software.



as for the guy bull****ting his way out of the question, I see you guys are new to politics? this happens all the time, it just so happens that this time you know about the issue they're bull****ting about.

This post has been edited by Lightning on Jul 16 2009, 04:13 AM

They oughta have one of those commercials with the Mac guy and the PC guy, but instead with Firefox and IE.

What about Chrome and Opera?

Anyway, I don't see how its expensive, sure, there is a cost associated with setting it all up, and a few days spent getting used to Firefox.

But a virus will cost a hellava lot more money.

What about Solaris and GNU/Linux?

Firefox and IE are the 2 most widely used web browsers, just as Windows and OSX (which is really all the PC and Mac ads are about) are the 2 most widely used operating systems.