I wish she would have talked more about the weather. From the article, I couldn't really tell if it was cold or not there.

This is right on the mark. As an employee, you're ethically obligated to help the company make the best decision for the company. It's not your place to decide to promote open source for the sake of open source.

This doesn't mean that open source is bad. You (and your manager) should objectively identify the advantages and disadvantages of each solution.

There was an article on slashdot a couple weeks ago about training that Microsoft released ( http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/09/05/195219/Microsoft-Attacks-Linux-With-Retail-Training-Talking-Points?from=rss ). If you look at the actual training, there's a slide that says "There's no guarantee that when security vulnerabilities are discovered, an update will be created. Users are on their own." Looks to me like Windows users are on their own.

I think part of the problem is that the term "computer" refers to the monitor as well as the box. People want to be able to be specific to the-thing-that-does-the-magic. What we need is a term for the box. Let's create a new term for it and keep using it until it catches on. I vote for rofflewaffle.

This is what I did with a leftover USB key:
http://blog.boogly.net/2008/10/diy-cow-usb-flash-drive/

When I was in high school, our school had 1 computer for every 2 students at the school. The problem was that the school installed the computers in every classroom and let the teachers "have free reign". The majority of the teachers didn't know how to do anything other than checking email and doing grades. So the computers were hardly ever used. We never got "open access time" because the teachers wanted to continue teaching their classes the way they always had been. So the geeky kids found all the opportunities to use the computers while the other kids didn't.

I saw an interesting TED video at http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/etherpad-shows-google-docs-how-its-done/ He did an experiment where he just installed computers in villages where there wasn't much modern technology and then watched what happened. He found that kids learned how to use the computer on their own (without help from any adults). He found that the kids even learned a few English phrases because the computer was running English Windows.

So I think that we just need to give students the opportunity to use it and learn themselves.