Dubai GNU/Linux cluelessness I spoke to someone from Dubai's E-government initiative and asked them what their systems would run on. They said "Microsoft is the Internet so we run on that." *Sigh*. Folks I've spoken to who use this e-government system moan that mandatory subscription fees make it more expensive than doing things the old way. At least we now know how to make money online.

Dubai was like Hong Kong piracy-wise until after the Gulf War, where Microsoft put pressure on the local government to stamp it out. Looks like they did a fine job, when I called a white-box assembler yesterday, they refused to pre-install GNU/Linux because they "didn't offer any pirated software." *Double sigh*.