Britain Advises Against Vista, Office 2007 for Schools 300
An anonymous reader writes "The British government's educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 'are significant and the benefits remain unclear.' Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."
Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, haggis is mostly oats.
Hardly.
Some people add spices, but this is peasant food so that's just wrong. In any case it's unnecessary; haggis is delicious.
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Thor [harringtonmuseum.org.uk], the very first US ballistic missile system, was deployed between 1959 and 1963 from bases in the UK. These were the days before intercontinental ballistic missiles. The missiles were controlled by the UK but the warheads were controlled by the US. A dual-key system was in place that required both UK and US authorisation to launch.
However, the situation has changed since the 1960s. The UK still leans heavily on the US for its nuclear capability, and today it uses Trident missiles which are shared with the USA in a common pool. However, the warheads on British subs are designed and built in the UK, and the UK has the ability to use its nuclear weapons completely independently of the US. The USA has not always been completely comfortable with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Trident_system [wikipedia.org] http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E2054A40-7833-48EF-991C-7F48E05B2C9D/0/nuclear190705.pdf [www.mod.uk]
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Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Trident Missile Program (5 nukes and a submarine).. 3.5 Billion Pounds (x2 for US Dollar)
Income support benefit for Immigrants... 3 Billion Pounds
Bitching about how much money we waste on Immigrants coming into our country? Priceless..
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What is your point? Britain wastes money?
Re:Ow. Bad for the US economy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but they're British nuclear weapons. Before you could launch them, therefore, someone would have to come out and knock on the silo door to say that the power cables were never actually connected during installation, so they need to dig up the street to connect them--but first they have to get permission from the city council, which takes three weeks, and then six weeks later after the work's finally done, your actual launch technician is a toothless yob named Nigel with an Exeter City FC tattoo, who promptly says "Well, it's a nuclear warhead, innit? More than my job's worth, pushing that button." He then re-disconnects your power cables and fucks off for another six weeks while you call the same number over and over again trying to get someone else to come out, but only reaching "Kenneth" in Mumbai....
WRONG!! (Score:2)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHPCr5m4ko [youtube.com]
Good for the US economy!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to point out that Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Novell, FSF, Linux Foundation are all based in the US. So good for US.
Well Done chaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well Done chaps, Wow, I got scuttled, again... (Score:2)
I guess / only wants journalistic firehose submissions. And, can't seem to want to rotate through as wide a number of readers' submissions... Oh well...
Re:Well Done chaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well Done chaps (Score:4, Informative)
Yep [bbc.co.uk]
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The angle is very different here though IMHO: from the report [becta.org.uk], I got the idea that it was more about the fact
Not that surprising (Score:5, Informative)
As it is they have windows server, Exchange, MSoffice, Dreamweaver (after a successful revolt against frontpage), and VB.
I've started teaching my kid myself....
Re:Not that surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
To cut a long story short, the school now has a custom-built server running Linux (CentOS 5) with RAID 1 mirrored drives in trayless caddies AND a spare 'cold swap' chassis that the school computer technician can use if the main server dies (which can then be repaired at leisure). Total cost was around £500
So there is hope.
Re:Not that surprising (Score:4, Informative)
All parts are branded and there is a spare chassis for the IT technician to use while parts are exchanged under warranty - something they are fully capable of doing. *You* may need a third party to replace a dead PSU, but this school doesn't - in fact, with their kit they can be up and running in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for an 8-hour call out service.
Sure, if you do not have the skills in house you may need third party support - this school has in house resources.
"A quote for £000's is money spent on peace of mind". Eh? Not if it's inappropriate - or do *you* say 'yes' to every quote you receive without weighing up the options.
You do not have all the fact so are in no position to make specific judgements. Maybe you work for a maintenance company?
Re:Not that surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Like the other AC poster, you are commenting from a position of ignorance.
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Perhaps you have never heard of the term innovation or maybe they way M$ keeps using perhaps they don't really understand what it means.
I heard exact the same sort of nonsense about DOS or Unix and even for, fuck sack, about low res green screen monitors, g
Education != Training (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was at school in the seventies, the bright kids got an education. The less bright girls learnt to type, because there would always be work for copy typists, and the less bright boys learnt to use a lathe, because here in Birmingham (England, not Alabama) there would always be work in the car industry.
I wonder how that's working out? I was taught transferrable skills, like how to learn, and thirty years later I'm still learning. Meanwhile, there's no car industry and copy typing, shorthand and the rest may as well be candle making for all the traction they have.
I don't know what software my children will use in the workplace in ten or twenty years' time, and if I did I'd be making a fortune producing it. I don't know what JOBS they'll be doing in ten or twenty years time, perhaps (indeed probably) in a very different landscape to where we are now. What I do know is that flexibility, adaptability, the ability to learn and reskill and change, are going to be vital in a world where the linear career is dead. And that's why the best thing you can learn is how to learn.
So as a matter of policy, whatever software the kids are using at school, we use something else at home. School right now is Office 2003 on XP, so home is iWork '08 on Mac. Spreadsheet problems I show them how to do by hand, and I'm about to start showing them how to knock up code to do it (and I'm choosing a language they're highly unlikely to use in school: I'm torn between Scheme and Processing). We did a poster project with Keynote, but also with a razor blade and cowgum.
You can teach your children ``the workplace'' if you like. I think you Americans call those sorts of lessons ``shop''. Someone who has a good degree in a pure science or a legitimate humanity can learn to use Word to a sufficient standard in a morning. Someone who knows Word, but can't use a library or do calculus, is welcome to try learning those in a morning. How many successful authors can touch type, and how many just did hunt and peck? Same principle.
How did Brunel build the Great Western without the help of Office? Which was more important: using Office, or being a great engineer?
And before anyone makes the point, I realise these aren't binary, black/white choices. But in terms of mentality, they are: do you regard education as about learning the direct skills of today, or the ability to learn the skills of tomorrow? There's a word for people with the first sort of education, or indeed training, and the word is `poor'.
ian
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Well, that's all well and good but the kids probably still need to learn to use Office 2007 because, like it or not, that's what the Real World (TM) uses. Because the Real World uses Office 2007 other companies are copying that UI design and implementing it across their own pieces of software.
Here is why this is utter bullshit: First, because the world is avoiding Office 2007 like the plague. It is an abomination. It is incompatible. It prevents people from doing what they should do with a word processor - writing.
Second, at the time these kids come out of school, the world will _not_ be using Office 2007. In ten years time, Microsoft will have lost the battle against open standards, and the world will be using either Open Office, or whatever Open Office compatible software Apple ships for fre
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Microsoft's response, "How do you know it'll hurt until you've tried it"?
Re:Ministry of the Obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
This so-called DDoS (Deeper Destruction of Sclera) attack can be prevented by installing Stick Service Pack 1, which adds an outer layer of additional protection to the stick thus preventing third parties from snapping the stick and re-assembling it to include their extension.
A tool is available to check your stick to see whether it has been affected by a malicious attack. The tool detects stick size changes - ask your stationery supplier for the '30cm ruler' tool.
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Is OpenOffice.org really any better? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would be better to teach these children how to use LaTeX. It offers the openness of OO.o, but allows for the preparation of much more professional documentation. It would also be very useful for those students who wish to pursue university studies, as most math, science and engineering papers are formatted using LaTeX.
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Text is for writing, TeX is for formatting, word processors? Well, they're for what's left.
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Microsoft Word, aside from being a hideous monstrosity of an application I wouldn't wish on my enemies is like using an F-15 to drive
Re:Is OpenOffice.org really any better? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the biggest disconnect with MS Word is what it's capable of compared to what it's good at. I constantly see people trying to make MS Word do things it doesn't do particularly well and getting frustrated in the process.
Credit where it's due: MS Word is a good word processing engine. You can type things, check your spelling (it's often right), check your grammar (it's often wrong), and print. These are good things that MS Word does well, as long as your document isn't too long.
MS Word is capable of tracking changes in a document so you can know who made what edits and when. This does not make it a document versioning system, yet that is often how I see it used. It's a nice feature for a writer or a small workgroup but entirely ineffective for a larger group or over a longer time. And it will bite you hard if you send documents externally in native MS Office formats without killing all the evidence of previous edits.
MS Word is capable of generating tables and embedding graphics or spreadsheet objects. It's just not very good at it. Between different users on different systems (or the same user on the same system) it seems to have its own mind about how things should be displayed. Anything embedded can change on a whim, and will change provided you open the document often enough. Which feeds right into the next point.
MS Word is capable of doing document layout. But it's a complete nightmare. Lines disappear and reappear; text boxes change size and shape for no apparent reason; fonts randomly switch from 10-pt sans to 12-pt serif because they feel like it; auto-numbering decides it knows better than you what numbers go where; and objects resize and replace themselves entirely according to their own rules (which are confidential and proprietary).
MS Word knows better than you what you want to do with it, and if you want to something else, well, you're obviously mistaken. It really makes me miss the days of WordPerfect 5. I appreciated and made good use of the fact that I could see the codes embedded in the text, could tell from the codes when something would be bold or italic and not have to worry about text randomly changing format later
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on a side note, the number of kids bringing in odf documents has been slowly but surely increasin
I'd hardly call it innovative (Score:2)
It's better, that's for sure. But really, MS has done what they've always done: based their work on others', and called it their own.
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Ribbon (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, I should've mentioned Adobe's recent products, which are more of a direct rip-off than the iWorks stuff. I guess I'm just more sensitized to iWorks since I've been using it (and been very impressed by it).
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Maybe, maybe not. Microsoft do deserve kudos for dropping it into their flagship application. I've only read the reviews, not tried it. From here it looks like the kind of bet Apple have made repeatedly in every aspect of their products. It's a significant or even major change in the interface, ante'ing the status quo. I get the strong impression that wherever the bits and pieces come from, they hang together rather than separately, and that's not an easy effect to achieve.
"Borrowing" vs "Ripping off" (Score:3, Insightful)
In Microsoft's case, they rip off. They don't really even improve. They have built a (very successful) business around stealing other peoples' ideas, while contributing *nothing* back. It's not like they are building on the work of others. They copy the works of others, and pretend *they* invented it. They don't give credit (part of the obligation of "borrowing"). They don't admit
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Here here! I've recently started using LaTeX at university and although the learning curve is a little steep it is an excellent tool. There are plenty of existing templates to use for writing reports, the image and layout tools are ticky to get the hang of at first but again very powerful. I used these tutorials [andy-roberts.net] and they pretty much covered everything I needed
When it comes to references aswell BiBTeX is very handy for handling them all
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I really think it's now good enough for most people for most tasks. My wife's new laptop has OO rather than office, and it's fine.
That's what I do routinely for relatives ; want a word processor ? Sure, here is my OO.o CD, I'll install it no problem, my pleasure. Oh, you meant MS Office ? I can install it for sure, but you hand me the money first so I can go and buy the boxed version. Find a WHAT ? Nope, sorry, no way, I'm not breaking laws for you. OO.o will do ? Fine, let's go.
So far, all the persons I equiped with OO.o have stuck with it. None have reverted to MS-Office. Maybe they resent me, but that's a proof that they didn'
Re:Is OpenOffice.org really any better? (Score:4, Interesting)
Office isn't very good, and for OOo to do *worse* than it is a pretty miserable achievement. We need to get some fresh faces involved with the project to either clean things up (a la Firefox), or start from scratch to build an application that's got an overall "friendlier" appearance.
"Lack of features" isn't even the biggest issue here. Despite being much "simpler", I find AbiWord to be vastly superior to OOo, even though its featureset is comparatively limited.
The GIMP has been stumbling along for years upon years, and has never really managed to reach a state of usefulness to designers. However, in a very short period of time, two guys wrote an f---ing amazing shareware "Photoshop substitute [pixelmator.com]" for Mac OS. Granted, it's not photoshop, but unlike The GIMP, or OOo, it's fast, has a good UI, and even though it lacks some of Photoshop's more advanced features, it's more than adequate for my needs.
It's not open-source or cross-platform, but seriously..... two guys wrote it in their spare time!
I'll also ignore that comment about teaching primary schoolers LaTeX. I'm a reasonably savvy university student, and I find LaTeX absolutely unusable. It's got to be one of the most difficult and convoluted pieces of software in widespread use. It's great in concept, but make one tiny syntax error, and the compiler blows up with a 2-page long indecipherable error message. Most C compliers have better error handling.
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I know it's apocryphal to even make this point, but is it possible that there is a point beyond which the basic Office-style apps simply cannot be improved? This is a serious question, not troll. Given the constraints of near-horizon technology (no AI, imperfect voice recognition, no brain-computer interfaces), how much better can word-processor, spreadsheet and slideshow programs get? Leave aside databases, design and payout apps, and other things bundled in MS Office for the sake of simplicity. Is there a point at which the three basic apps couldn't get any better? I'd be very interested to hear people's thoughts on this because I'm guessing it will bring out all sorts of interesting suggestions for improvements that have never occurred me.
Ahh... the voice of sanity.. Office is not a DTP app. Excel is not a database. There are circumstances where Office is used for everything, but it's like trying to build a boat with a swiss army knife. Better than nothing, but not the same thing as having the right tool for the job.
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Totally agree, but not necessarily children. Part of a science/engineering/mathematics major should be learning how to write using LaTeX. I've learned by myself and I use it for pap
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My boss at a former job pointed this out to me. LaTeX follows a programmer's paradigm. First you write the source, then you have to compile and link it to produce what you really want. This is fine for programmers and people who don't mind learning the ins and outs of how computers work. But it's needlessly complicated for someone wh
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Have written many software manuals as well as assembly guides using it, it's great stuff and you don't have to entwine yourself with the LaTeX side of things.
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Where it fits in (Score:5, Interesting)
The interesting thing is the timing.
Every single technology-aware teacher in Britain is at the BETT show at the moment - the trade fair for the educational IT industry. And the Eee PC is the star of the show. Rebadged it may be under various resellers' names, but it's the same old Linux-based Eee PC, complete with OpenOffice and - more significantly - 802.11g and Firefox, ready to access any number of educational webapps. Of course, it doesn't hurt that in a time of reduced Government spending, the Eee is also ridiculously cheap.
So along comes Becta and says "actually, you should look at free alternatives to Windows/Office". When they said that three years ago, everyone went "uh-huh" and carried on buying what they'd always bought. This time, there's an alternative. This is the first serious challenge to Microsoft in UK schools since the demise of the Acorn Archimedes.
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The EEEPC labelled as the 'RM Minibook'. I think it is about time. As Nicolas Negroponte found in his landmark studies of how technology can aid education (and his subsequent laptop project), there is only one ratio that matters, children need their own individual computers to really get to know them and use them effectively.
In Britain, the government gives poorer kids meals and uniforms, laptops may well be next.
Full Report (Score:5, Informative)
http://learningandskills.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=35275 [becta.org.uk]
I can't read that (Score:4, Funny)
The surprising part (Score:4, Insightful)
A Government department suggesting schools investigate the use of Linux? That's rather encouraging and should be seen as significant.
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Schools may not be the only problem - a UK view (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-7210652,00.html/ [guardian.co.uk]
The supported use of FOSS software could make a radical difference. Recycled hardware running free operating systems and applications could reduce the cost of student PCs to almost zero, and truly put computing within the reach of every child.
I have several computers at home that my children use for school-related activities. TOTAL cost of each (hardware, OS, office suite, image manipulation) is that of the monitor. These boxes are absolutely fit for purpose, and would otherwise be landfill.
My children regard computing at home as a commodity, which funnily enough, it is, if you step outside the wierd monopolistic force-bubble that is our educational computing practice.
The only excuse for the situation in our schools, the only reasoning that could possibly hold water, is 'They should use what they'll use at work'. This is short, snappy, and is accepted easily by those only peripherally involved in the question. I don't think it bears examination though. Some thoughts:
A trite one:
I don't believe any otherwise suitable candidate has ever been passed over because they were trained on the wrong spreadsheet, but if they were they should count themselves lucky to have escaped. They are more likely to be passed over if they didn't do well on the coursework because their parents couldn't afford to give them access to a PC.
A less trite one:
Office 2007's new UI, if it achieves the any sort of foothold on corporate desktops, will render all experience of word processing at schools until now totally obsolete. Or will it? No of course not - conversion courses will help the latest intake drive the latest software.
If this change can be handled between versions of the same product, then exactly the same case can be made for conversion between products. So (for example):
Train on OpenOffice (or other product if it's free at least for educational and domestic use, and runs on a free operating system.) With the money you save on buying no Microsoft Office or Windows licences build and deploy short conversion courses for people about to leave school, getting them up to speed on the current commercial favourites. This would spit out kids with more up-to-date experience of the commercial softwarescape than the current policy.
The benefits of this approach come from breaking the lock-in: commoditisation spreading children's access to computing in a way that otherwise only massive subsidy could (fail to) achieve; our children, their teachers and parents able to take advantage of the freely-given, high-quality work of a global community, while ending their education better trained on the latest commercial tools than they are today.
They should use what they'll use at work (Score:2)
They should be learning about IT! They should learn a little about different Operating Systems, maybe a bit of html, how to read a manual (very important for anything tech related), etc.
What do we currently have you might be asking? 1 year of learning that a monitor is an output and a keyboard is an input. The IT education in England is a joke.
IT education should start from primary school, it's far more impor
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Re:They obvious know nothing of the organizations. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they do, but they tend to have to commit serious crime for it to happen. Kiddy-fiddling, murder, that sort of thing (little things like defrauding the taxpayer of tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds tend not to cause much of a fuss).
It also doesn't matter two shits what the IT staff want, because they don't make the decisions. That's why we have organisations like BECTA, who (thankfully) have a relatively level head about such things and can tel
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OpenEducationDisc (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a good start of the year for MS (Score:3, Interesting)
However will this year continue, for MS? I hear that a lot of disillusioned users of Vista just decided to get macs. A little number, perhaps, but still an erosion of Microsoft marketshare. And then there's Firefox that's increasing its marketshare every month a little bit.
Not just Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apart from learning the basic WP and spreadsheet skills, schools ICT teaching is not a series of 'how to use Word' sessions.
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kdegames has much better games than ms does out of the box, plus kdeedu is great too...
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You think people sit around writing macros for themselves? Maybe some, but every company i've worked for in the last 10 years has had (literally) hundreds, even thousands of documents on file servers with embedded macros for use by the entire company.
The Accounting departments are particularly notorious for this, as are Human resources. They have create macro embedded documents for vacation request forms, health care an
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Poor Computer education already (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Poor Computer education already (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, I think the computing diversity we had in the 80s is sorely missed.
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If that is the case. The schools are teaching the wrong things. They should teach concepts not particular applications. Word Processing is understanding the following things: opening files, closing files, printing files. How paragraphs work, wor
Somehow, I doubt MS is Quaking in Their Boots (Score:2, Informative)
The site's in French, but FF numbers are the lower in the UK than anywhere else in Europe -- and according to this report, it actually shrunk this fall. (Search for "Royaume-Uni" for the UK's numbers).
Last time I checked, IE's still number one in the UK, and its share seems to be growing. Anyone know why?
And yeah, I know FF isn't Linux or OO -- but its IS free, and it IS open source. And IMHO, its
Reality is a bitch (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to spoil the party but what BECTA say counts for bugger all as they have no power beyond recommendation.
I, am the admin of a UK school that has been running Linux on all of our servers for the last three years. It's brilliant! Uptimes are long, hacking is minimal and we save a bloody fortune in licences. Centos backend running LDAP,DHCP,DNS, Mandriva boxes for Samba and Zimbra (Open Source version) running on our mail server. The desktops (much to my despair) are still running XP but the curriculum software our teachers use won't run via WINE. The IT club however is going to be running Ubuntu or Fedora 8 so at least some will get the point but I digress from the point that I wish to make which is "Building Schools for the Future" or "Fucking-up Schools for the Future" as it's often to referred to by those of us that the council claim have been fully consulted when in fact we haven't heard a word.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is the governments plan to scratch build new school buildings for every school in the UK. Sounds great doesn't it but what they don't mention is that the building of these schools is a PFI (Private Finance Initiative) project that will lead to these schools; a) costing more long term than keeping them public and b) being run by private companies with the tax payer footing the bill (and the CEO's bonus).
On an ICT front, computing services will be tendered out to private companies along the lines of Capita and RM. Let's play spot the Linux oriented company in this lot shall we? Oh right, they're aren't any and that probably explains why leading edge BSF schools aren't running Linux. Whole counties are run on SIMS (School Information Management System) and it doesn't run MySQL or Postgres as the backend (Take a guess). The collection of data from schools will also be centralised to the governments education department which will require compatible software and all this is happening now.
And here folks is the problem. BECTA have been spouting on about Linux for years now and you will be hard pressed to find anything except Windows in schools because once you get to a certain level of decision maker no-one cares as it's just a few extra zeros on the end of number that's already very large. Part of this is probably down to the fact that no-one actually seems to know how much BSF is going to cost even though they are trying to sign service companies up to it. You can probably throw whatever figure you want at it and it will get paid because, like the Olympics, it's a Government prestige project that the tax-payer will underwrite. Obviously, if Linux did look too promising, educational XP licences would be extended and discounted to ensure that whatever converting cost, it would be more than the status quo.
I'll believe Linux in schools when, and only when I see it. Until then it's a fairy tale.
Re:Let me just be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Negotiation ploy (Score:5, Interesting)
From the report, only 20% of computers in the schools are even capable of running Vista and Office.
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Because the assumption is that what, exactly - Microsoft and entities hurting for funding are *always* engaging in backdoor negotiations? What happens when body X that's published a report giving a fair number of substantiated reasons not to go Microsoft suddenly turns around and is all of sudden using the latest Microsoft products? Body X loses credibility for taking that which they've disparaged the second they get a good deal, and Microsoft gets pegged as not only acting completely paranoid and frightene
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Yes, can we have 'obvious reaction' mod points.
This is as insightful as banging on about a Beowulf cluster.
It's a sensible report about real stuff.
Why should my kid get taught that computer == Microsoft? She uses openoffice, firefox etc at home and gets on fine for her work. Why should her school haemorrhage money at Vista when it is not necessary?
They've got better things to spend money on. Like teaching the teachers how to
2005 called (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really. I'm tired of answering your fucking phone.
Perhaps you might have been "insightful" two years ago, but Linux (and FOSS in general) is much more accepted and deployed in real-life situations these days. Nowadays, especially with Vista, people are serious when they talk about switching to Linux. It's no longer a negotiation tactic. It's *fact*. It's honest.
I've helped with Linux migrations for businesses that didn't even know Linux existed two years ago. Believe me, people are *tired* of taking it up the ass from Microsoft.
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Although, according to the warrant database, Charles only has a photocopier, no computer. The Queen apparently has an IBM machine, although that could be a server for all we know, if it is a server then it could be Linux or AIX.
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Re:Really. M$ Blew it. (Score:5, Funny)
This is BECTA's final report [becta.org.uk], the result of a two year study. Last year, they practically begged M$ for case studies and pilot projects to prove Vista's worth. There are only two reasons M$ failed to answer BECTA's concerns:
No, three reasons:
Our four...no... Amongst our reasons.... I'll come in again.