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State Department Employee Asks Hillary Clinton for Firefox
Despite new leadership from a relatively tech-savvy president, some government offices still seem a little slow to adopt popular technology. While the State Department might have promoted and encouraged Iranian Twitter activity, the Department is nevertheless lagging behind in other Web areas.
In a town hall meeting yesterday, a new member of the State Department, which uses Internet Explorer as its Web browser, pleaded with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "please let the staff use" rival Mozilla Firefox. (Jump to 26:34 on the above video.) Pointing out that Firefox had been "approved for the entire intelligence community," and that it's a "much safer program," the rookie's question was met with a rowdy chorus of cheers and laughter.
Clinton, for her part, maintained her composure and turned to Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy for help. Kennedy replied that the switch would be an expense issue, to which several people in the crowd responded appropriately with "It's free!" The rest of the interview basically degrades into governmental ramblings about "resources to manage multiple systems," "patches," and the "capital investment fund."
While the exchange may seem like just another instance of politicians being oblivious to a changing world, at least no one muttered anything about tubes, the Internets, or Web site numbers. [From: U.S. State Department, via DownloadSquad]
In a town hall meeting yesterday, a new member of the State Department, which uses Internet Explorer as its Web browser, pleaded with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "please let the staff use" rival Mozilla Firefox. (Jump to 26:34 on the above video.) Pointing out that Firefox had been "approved for the entire intelligence community," and that it's a "much safer program," the rookie's question was met with a rowdy chorus of cheers and laughter.
Clinton, for her part, maintained her composure and turned to Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy for help. Kennedy replied that the switch would be an expense issue, to which several people in the crowd responded appropriately with "It's free!" The rest of the interview basically degrades into governmental ramblings about "resources to manage multiple systems," "patches," and the "capital investment fund."
While the exchange may seem like just another instance of politicians being oblivious to a changing world, at least no one muttered anything about tubes, the Internets, or Web site numbers. [From: U.S. State Department, via DownloadSquad]
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Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsDr. Evil GeniusJul 15th 2009 3:30PM
I hope she doesn't pull an Al Gore and claim that she created Firefox after giving the go-ahead to use it.
MikeeJul 15th 2009 4:14PM
Translation: Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy doesn't want give up all the handjobs that Bill Gates gives him.
JHRJul 15th 2009 11:18PM
MICROSOFT IS ONE OF HILLARY'S BIGGEST DONORS. There's the important part of the story that this article missed.
THEY ALSO COMPETE WITH GOOGLE'S NEW BROWSER, and google is one of Obama's biggest donors.
UNLIKE MOST GOOGLE PROGRAMS, Firefox doesn't collect your personal data.
DeepenJul 15th 2009 11:23PM
that guy is clearly oblivious to the Internet. He said "its and expense issue?" what is he on crack?? FIREFOX IS FREE FREE FREE!!!
UnpatientJul 16th 2009 5:30PM
Yes Firefox but the government makes it harder to switch browsers because of the Support that they may be getting like when Microsoft payed universities to use Live (now called BING) search engine instead of Google.
Anyways I also agree not trusting Google for their a primary advertising company which is where most of the profits are from and now with their new Ads automatically collecting data about u and targeting specific ads towards the user. Google gives users a search engine, mail service, a Browser, Andriod, and now Chrome OS? With 'Chrome OS' Google will have all the information about you collecting data to the point if the Government wanted any information about you they will just go get the information from Google.
Too much control and power is corruption.
charles stackerJul 22nd 2009 10:13AM
This was so funny I sprayed coffee.