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Microsoft and the U.S. School System
4/3PI*R^3 has the dubious honor of being the first of dozens of submissions: "Salon has a story on how Microsoft is bullying cash strapped school districts into purchasing "compliant" licenses for Microsoft software. Best quote from the story concerning financial problems of education and the added burden that Microsft is placing on them: "It's kind of like AIDS in Africa and the drug companies," Kowalski says. "Can anyone expect a dying person to be concerned about the drug companies' profits?"" It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
If Linux came pre-installed on PCs, booting right into KDE with the KOffice icons right there, then it would be as easy to "use/install" as windows, because most users never installed windows in their life. The PC came that way. I'd love to give these people a new PC with a blank hard drive and a windows CD and videotape the ensuing bafflement. Yeah, let's see how "easy" it is to install windows. Huh? Whaddya mean select IO and Interrupt for my NE2K clone card?
--
Here's a quarter. Go buy a clue.
How can Microsoft prosecute schools when they're all still running on Apple IIs?
I taught math in a public school for 6 years before quitting and going into the IT industry. My last two years there, I setup a computer lab from donated computers and other assorted junk people were willing to donate. When the school told me I could not install their copies of windows 95 and would have to buy my own, I turned to linux and installed that along with staroffice and some other software. Everyone at first balked and complained that the students didnt know anything about computers and linux would be to hard to learn, but as it turned out, if someone isnt already ingrained with the windows os and office mentality, then using linux, kde and staroffice is just as easy to learn (or hard). So I hope all schools switch to linux and other open source programs, because once the students learn how to use those tools, they wont feel intimidated by them and will opt to use them for their personal use at home and work. Afterall, why pay $400 for a software package when you can get one for $10 (staroffice on cd) that does the same thing just as well.
Yes,
Kids pick up really fast on what are the 'grown up' things and what are the kiddie versions. No self respecting 13 year old wants to get stuck in the Apple lab.
There is a risk of the same perception taking hold with regard to Linux and Windows. If Linux is running on the crummy school computers and is what people perceive as being the cheap 'third world' alternative, people will strive to get a machine with Windows on it, whatever the cost.
I don't think we want people to start viewing Windows as a Luxury. Considering that in it's most recent versions Windows is as stable a desktop platform as the Free Software alternatives, if the difference is 'free with less functionality' Linux and Free Software are doomed.
I wouldn't, but other parents might. It should be the parent's choice to send kids to Microsoft School, not the government's.
All they care about is the bottom line; they couldn't care less whether the kids are educated correctly or not
You forget that private schools get profit be educating students correctly: education is essential for the bottom line.
Private schools are great evil that not many see for what it is: an indoctrination into corporatism.
Since "corporatism" does not exist and is a left-wing myth, we are left with the reality of this: private schools allow parents to take control of the education of their children by choosing better schools.
wow.. that's interesting.. if you did something in a multi-platform thing like flash, or java. support redhat RPM's as the defacto. and just distribute some good info files on what is contained, I don't think it would be a problem. most of the time at the school's i've seen.. it's not the teachers that are installing programs, it's the network admins installing stuff on a computerlab basis.. so it's not real difficult to figure it out once, and just roll it out with the local admin's distribution method of choice.
exactly, I help a small charter school with their computers.. they have a small computer lab of 10 or so duron 500 systems, running redhat 7/KDE2/Soffice. after small ammounts of adjustment by the students, they work great. next thing I need to do is push out a few more updates, and get mozilla installed to improve browsing. (kids love to surf the's really awfuly done MS only websites.. don't ask me why)
I just lost 10 years of my life by reading your post. Of course this will not become obvious until I die, and it's impossible to prove that I died 10 years earlier than I would have otherwise. Compensate me anyway.
And no, my simple birth and living here to not imply agreement.
Sure it does. You can't claim ignorance, nor that you don't know how to avoid it. You want to keep standing on my land (me being the gov't)? Here's the rules, leave if you don't like 'em. Moreover, you don't generally pay taxes towards education unless you own land, and there was most certainly a contract, registry of deed, etc. Ignorance of the details is no excuse.
I used the term Libertarian since you espoused the majority of their philosophy, not because I do. And by Libertarian logic (or at the very least, Objectivist), taxes are most certainly permissible -- most Libertarians just can't admit it (although I've gotten several to do so, much to their discomfit.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
And what of it? If I sublet from a guy paying HOA dues, those HOA dues will likewise be included in my rent. It's all contractual, all quite acceptable under Libertarian philosophy.
You claim you are forced to pay, but you are not. If you wish not to pay taxes, simply leave the country. It's not immoral for someone to enforce a contract (in the end, at gunpoint) if you fail to live up to your end.
You are, of course, more than welcome to try and change the terms of the contract.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It has nothing to do with being cheap or an elitist, it has to do with responsibility. If you can be made to pay for other's kids' education, why not pay for their food, clothing, and entertainment while we're at it?
Because paying for education is part of the "HOA" (Home Owner's Association) for where you live. If you don't own property in my state, you don't need to pay "HOA" dues (property taxes.) All very Libertarian.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Word for Dos? Ick I remember that and I distincly remember it being a POS. They must have used a random number generator when they decided what functions would go under what menus or what the menus would be named. There was a reason why WP kicked it's ass all over the marketplace. It was a superior product.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
But if you used the onscreen menu bar, everything was logically arranged. IIRC, the WordPerfect function keys were designed such that the most used functions were assigned to the keys closest to the home row of the keyboard (pre PS/2 machines had the function keys in two vertical columns on the left side of the keyboard [and the control key in the correct location]..for those who are too young to have used them). However, once a person memorized the f-keys, you were very productive. I've seen many secretaries fly through documents never having to look at those little dots. Word slowed them down.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
XFree runs the prettiest desktops. Why would children be scared of that? Have you ever used a Linux machine? Not everyone needs the power of "find" and not everyone is forced to use it.
I am not clear on why you are having a problem with taxes paying for education. Taxes are only an issue if you earn something you know.
But how useful will knowledge of IIS be 8 years from now, when these kids finish college and entr job market? At least with open source tools you can dig into the meat of the system if you want to and learn the principles that don't change that much.
Just because people use office now and not Emacs at work, does not mean that they will be still using office 10 years from now.
BTW, I've been using Emacs as my main editor for about 15 years. Name a piece of MS software that is still in wide use after 15 years?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
But you have to be careful to try and educate the the children, not just train them in using MS Word.
The idea of using computers to write should be introduced, but this can be done just as easily with Emacs as with Word (and Emacs ha been in use much longer than Word has).
Imagine how much you'd learn about computers from setting up a network of Linux machine, setting up web servers and setting up some usefull cool apps (like a web site on which homework assigments are posted daily by the teachers).
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Basically I think that all the so called "educational software" is trash. AFAIK these are just simple games, that follow try to make boring drills of spelling or arithmetic little more exiting.
The real education in computers should in learning how they work and how they are programmed. See all the writings of S. Papert on LOGO.
What you need to give the kids is computer "Legos" and let them build their own stuff. Be it web sites, games, etc. You can learn a lot more stuff from building things, than from all the "educational" software.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Actually, it's useless to teach them anything specific about an operating system or application. A language is probably the exception.
Simply, if a kid is taught something about Windows 2k now, it will have been replaced by Windows 10k or XXIV or what have you by the time he or she gets out of school in a few years. Instead, it's my opinion that we should be teaching them concepts. How things work. Some specifics, but not a lot. There's no point in a lot of specifics, because they'll be moot by the time they'd actually need to use those skills.
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
No you stupid bum,
Ad hominem.
government is not a corporation. Government is the people.
You're both wrong, though it's more accurate to say that the government is a corporation than it is "the people." Give me a break! When was the last time you voted on a law? When was the last time you declared war on another country? When was the last time you decided how much money would be allocated to federal programs?
They get the government they pay for.
Government's natural tendency is to grab for even more power. Go back and read up on Clinton's (failed) EO 13083 entitled "Federalism."
When they don't bother to turn off the schlock coming from people like you who've read only Ayn Rand, and go and vote, they get the pond scum that is in office now.
More ad hominems. How do you know he's read "only Ayn Rand"? Furthermore, what "pond scum" are you referring to that has been put in office due to Libertarian vote? Every "pond scum" politician I've seen comes from the Republicrat or Green parties.
It still doesn't make government a corporation.
It makes it even less "the people."
No go off and get you daily dose of Limba on the government project known as the Internet.
More inaccuracies. DARPA was a government project. What we know as the Internet today is largely due to commercial successes. Is slashdot a private company or does the government run it?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
So we are to give them an insecure overly-complicated OS to learn on? Why? Because everyone runs Windows and Office? What about MacOS and WordPerfect or Notes? Is there nothing if it is not a Microsoft Product? It is not about the specific product (take a look at the different iterations of Office for example), it is about generic computing skills. Once you understand the concept of how something is supposed to work, it is just a matter of learning the details, and details are trivial. And you would be surprised at the amount of contact a person must have with *nix systems in the work place, especially anything professional.
UNIX doesn't have a monopoly on Good Ideas, it just owns most of them. --Alan Cox
The answer to this problem is simple. Schools need to dump the nasty old Microsoft software and head on over to: http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
While it may seem rather unfair to the schools, the law is the law, and these schools are violating it. Microsoft, for better or for worse, is in the business of making money, and this particular school system is impeding their ability to do so. The licensing terms are clear, and the school system obviously violated them. They should be held responsible, regardless of their financial situation.
This is, however, a perfect opportunity to introduce these poorer school systems to the benefits of Free Software. Unfortunately, there is very little if any OSS available that is suitable for widespread use in such an environment. Linux, Gnome, etc., are all fine and good for those of us that know what we're doing, but teaching a computer illiterate person how to use a Linux based system is far more difficult than teaching them, say, a Windows based one. Yes, the software would be free, but it isn't doing anyone any good if no one can figure out how to use it.
If MS were wise, and a little less profit hungry, they'd consider offering even ddeper discounts for public school systems. It might make for some effective positive PR, something they desperately need these days.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
"Jaywalking. Fork in toaster. Unlicensed Business Software.
Don't Risk Being Targeted By the BSA
Take advantage of a free software consultation"
M$ is the sponsor.
They also are running another one that says The BSA is targeting Portland. Yikes!
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
As opposed to WordPerfect which used a random number generator to decide which F-keys and modifers would be used. (Menus?) To this day, it's astounding that a program ever got popular even though it had to ship with little colored dots you could put on your keyboard to help figure out the commands.
(WordStar had a very logical command set and on-screen menus. Word for Mac 4.x and 5.x were very nice, slim GUI word processors that have all of the document formatting functionality of the current versions of Word.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
For programming-based classes (which should be limited to basic web programming (HTML, with intro to JavaScript, DHTML, and possibly XML), Perl and C to cover the basics).
Okay, granted, basic web programming should be taught. But I strongly disagree that C should be taught in high school. Intro Programming classes, for example, will be full of students who don't know how to program. Trying to get them to understand pointers, manual memory allocation, and other low-level computing concepts is just insane. Any programmer's first language should be high level. I'd recommend the following:
Pascal: it was designed as a teaching language, and it excels at that. It's so well designed that years after learning it I can still write Pascal fluently.
Python: this language is elegant and clean with beautiful syntax. I can't recommend it enough.
Eiffel: not as well known as the previous two, but still a well-designed language.
Teaching a high-school student C is, in my opinion, a terrible thing to do. If they have never seen a programming language before, they will most likely be turned off of programming. Perl's not so bad, but it gets ugly quickly. But still, C? Sure, if you're teaching an operating systems class, but that's not going to happen at the high school level.
Just for the record, I know and like C, but I sure wouldn't have wanted to encounter it in grade nine.
Problem is, most open source developer works on something they need themselves. There are few or any incentive (for the open source developer) to work on something that will only be useful for other people.
Je ne parle pas francais.
The reason why most people (businesses) won't make the switch from Windows to Linux is that Linux will take too long to retrain employees.
Retraining's impossible if the apps aren't there. Or are you talking about retraining the people who create databases in access using wizards to develope their own MySQL solutions? A huge amount of business logic has been written in things like Visual Basic. Until those can be migrated away, until apps come of age, forget about retraining.
It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
Until more business' make a switch from Wintel, its really just not that valuable a skill to be teaching kids linux in high school... They need to be using what they'll be using later on in life, which currently is Windows...
MS-DOS?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Non-degreed tech people making $100k is a historical fluke, I'd imagine that the economic downturn will put a lot of those people out of work and lower the overall salary those jobs get paid.
I don't doubt that there are high-quality non-degreed coders out there, and you're probably right that being self-taught indicates a much higher level of motivation. My degree is in Political Science, and I've done pretty well in Network Management largely because I'm not formally trained in the subject and I'm internally motivated to do well and learn.
The larger problem I have is that many of these people are pretty rough when it comes to larger skills that a degreed person might have, be they people social skills, writing ability or other kinds of skills that can make a person be more than just a coder.
The previous post was about non-degreed people making astronomical salaries, and that can't last forever. When managers have to start laying people off -- when you have to cut heads, why would you keep a non-degreed programmer when you have an equally skilled one with a degree? And the degree may also help tip the balance in new job openings.
When the job pool for programmers is so empty that you have to take whatever you can get, the degree matters a lot less, but those times are changing.
There are a couple of school districts in my area which are strapped for cash. My proposal to a local university is to take GPL'd source code, like GNUmeric or stuff from SEUL, and modify it to suit the particular district's teaching needs. They could make money by selling the software for about half the price of whatever software the district is currently using. Most importantly, they won't release the modified source, so that someone else can't take their source and undercut them on price. Sure, it violates the GPL, but the sales will help the cash-strapped university, and it seems like just about everybody here says it's all right for cash-strapped schools to break any software licenses they feel like anyway.
Cheers,
Here, Microsoft is pushing other school to behave the same way... I'm wondering what Microsoft is after these times... It seems pissing off it's users everywhere...
- Microsoft Passport to access MSDN
- The Microsoft activation system
- The change in it's Passport policy with it's implications to privacy
- ...
That looks like Microsoft is on the falling way... and try to catch something to stop the fall... That makes me remind a financial analysis from Bill-Parish telling that Microsoft is cheating on it's reports by using a pyramidal scheme and that the efective losses are greater and greater (instead of greater and greater earnings)...Maths may have changed a lot in the past 100 years, but school-level Maths hasn't changed nearly as much. How many theorems are taught at schools today?
University level Pure Maths is all proof, using these theorems you state, but school-level Maths is a completely different kettle of fish. In my UK A-Level Further Pure Maths (a more advanced maths qualification taken when 18, before going to university) we only briefly touched upon group theory (and I mean VERY briefly!). When I was 16 I was taught differentiation as a method for checking my answers - the syllabus only required the drawing of a tangent to a curve at a point to find a gradient.
Briefly, in school you do not have the mathematical background to do the more interesting and advanced stuff you mentioned. You have to go through basic training first - and basic training hasn't changed much at all.
this would foster a generation of people who are knowledgable in open/free appliactions.
Hmmm... And what good would it do these students? How many entry level jobs say "KOffice Experience Required"? Keep in mind that the computers are used by more than just the geeks at school anymore.
Promoting the Free Software agenda should not be done at the expense of others. Schools have a responsibility to give students some real world skills that they can use, not to enlighten or indoctrinate. I believe there is room for free software in schools, but certainly not that they should ignore the software that is in 90% of the desktops out there.
Take away Microsoft's demand at this level and this will most likely continue through the student's lives.
Doubtful. They'll have to learn to use MS software sometime. Few of us jump out of high school into our own companies or positions that have the authority to choose what software is run. By the time most of these folks get to the position where they can make these decisions, things will have changed so much since then, it will be a moot point. I don't see a lot of Apple ][e's around today to remind me of my HS education.
M$ hit my office for a Software audit several months ago, and after doing it, and finding we were compliant. . .they asked for ANOTHER audit.
This, plus the widely mentioned corporate licensing changes, and Product Activation, all signs that Microsoft is scrounging for money any way they can, is likely also the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Hopefully, it's the beginning of wide-scale acceptance of Open-Source, GPL'd, and similar software. . . but I'm not betting the farm on it, sadly...
This is the thing I've never understood: reading the copyright law, I remember that it specifically says that making copies of a copyrighted work is allowed for educational purposes.
Why would that part of the law not apply here? Schools should not have to pay for more than one copy of software, and should be able to copy it for educational use, at will.
Of course, they'd all be better off using free software anyway, although we could do them a favor and learn that an interface means more than pretty pictures. But that's not the point. :)
---
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
MS (and all of the other IP heavies) know that most people grow without ever having spent much time thinking about copyright. This leads to situations like the present, where IP is treated rather casually (when compared to the strict rights and limitations described in the copyright laws). Bill has to change that; he has to get people to take copyright law seriously. If he doesn't, there's no way he can keep innovating - the commoners will just keep stealing his precious IP.
Luckily, as everybody knows, it's easy to train kids to believe whatever you want; just repeat your message in a song or with a cartoon - it will sink in.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
I have personally had to assist several young, computer-savvy college graduates through this process. It is not usable for the average ten-to-fourteen-year-old, or whoever you hope will take advantage of this idea. They would need extensive command line indoctrination and practice first. Good luck with that, you'll need it with current end user attitudes toward CLIs.
It should also be said that your suggestion to distribute CDRs with Linux on them won't be too helpful to the typical kid or parent, either. The CD is not the problem. Most folks need extensive handholding, documentation and a kick in the ass (external motivation) to tackle a complex new computer system or application.
Long-term, I'm actually as enthusiastic as you are about using reliable, free software in the education system. But I'm afraid that for Linux, the home and educational markets are going to be even tougher than the business desktop from a usability perspective. At home you have to be your own sysadmin, which is the largest usability failure area on Linux.
- the acronym is deterministic finite automaton;
- a working definition is: a state machine which moves from a start state, through intermediate states, to an accept or error state, by accepting tokens;
- the standard application is to decide whether a candidate string is a member of a particular regular language;
- and this finds real world applications in string processing of all kinds, for example in grep, perl, awk, sed, vi, emacs.
I would love to know how the self-taught people do on this question. I would expect that few would have an idea of the relationship of finite automata to much of anything. I guess some would have read Mastering Regular Expressions and would have some clue. But anyone who remembers a theoretical CS class should have no trouble reeling off DFA stuff.Your suggestion to change the school into a boarding school is impractical and any form of it would wind up costing more than the lunch program. What's important is getting the child in an environment in which she can learn. Studies have proven that a well-fed child gets a better education than a hungry one. In this case a mock chicken leg, some mashed potatoes and a pint of milk do more than a Mac running MathBlaster.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
fwiw, school lunch is a damn good program. My wife has taught in places where school lunch was the only meal of the day for some kids. Pathetic but true.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Hmmm... And what good would it do these students? How many entry level jobs say "KOffice Experience Required"? Keep in mind that the computers are used by more than just the geeks at school anymore.
Discussion overheard in HR department or Megacorp Inc. in 2015:
Director: We need 500 new office drones to further our agenda of global domination. Find them.
HR Guy: Sorry boss, no one knows exactly how or why, but we can't find anyone who knows anything about the new
Director: (wringing hands) The board will crucify me... what can be done??
HR Guy: Well, I can get 500 people who know everything about free software that will achieve the same goals. They are well educated, creative thinkers that would be an asset to our corp.
Director: Get IT on the phone. I want our platforms changed over now. People our our greatest asset and if wee don't respond to their needs, our competition will.
Promoting the Free Software agenda should not be done at the expense of others. Schools have a responsibility to give students some real world skills that they can use, not to enlighten or indoctrinate. I believe there is room for free software in schools, but certainly not that they should ignore the software that is in 90% of the desktops out there.
Oh, I guess we should continue with our corporate indoctrination programs as well by allowing advertising (prevalent in our society), murder (prevalent in our society), guns (prevalent in our society), selfishness (prevalent in our society), gluttony (prevalent in our society) into the schools as well.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
We need to say what we support. To say "we support Linux" is too generic. Our customers can hold us to that, even if it's some tweaked version of Linux. In order to COA, we have to test each configuration that we claim to support. Additionally, our customers are not the most technically savvy customers so we typically need to do something a little friendlier than RPM. You might think this a little inane but that's been our experience.
Working Linux support into our products is not as trivial as you might imagine. Currently, we use tools that allow us to maintain a single code base. This means that if we want to support Linux, we need development tools that will allow us to develop a single code base for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux (installers not withstanding).
-Jennifer
StarOffice work on "linux". It isn't Redhat-specific, or Debian-specific. It works on Windows (95/98/NT/2000/ME) and various Unices, and the generic linux. It is able to do this by being static rather than dynamic, where the major problems could arise between distros. It isn't absolutely certain, but then, neither is windows software assured of running properly on windows without a good deal of user alteration/updating.
That's why we do intensive configuration testing. We check very carefully to make sure that our software is causing as little chaos as possible and that it's hardy enough to endure a lot of the quirks that are common under Windows. It's not that a Linux distribution that we put out wouldn't run on generic Linux; it's just that we only put the systems that we test on the side of the box.
The most you would likely need to "specify" or limit, depending on how static your code is is, perhaps the minimum glibc level. Again, it is possible to statically build your software to work regardless of glibc level. Perhaps the biggest item of any concern (again, it isn't insurmountable) is XFree86, depending on how fancy you want to get with graphics - and this could be handled to a large extent with static binaries.
We do a lot of multimedia type stuff (games, simulations, animations, etc). This is why we use Macromedia tools. They're cross-platform and have quick turn around. Recently it has become important to try to put a lot of this stuff in a web browser and it handles this need nicely. Not that I'd like to plug Macromedia since they don't always fit our needs.
So does anyone have any suggestions for a cross-platform lib for multimedia?
-Jennifer
Errr...if time is money, and effort is time...how does it not equate that effort=time=money? We're talking not about taking a kid to the park (which would probably get you arrested nowadays.) We're talking about funding an institution. You seem to forget that.
Read "The Big White Lie", by Michael Levine (former DEA agent), he has a chapter or so detailing the "cocaine coup" in Bolivia. The CIA helped some right wing drug kingpins take power. Klaus Barbie, nazi war criminal, was part of the government.
Read "Dark Alliance", by Gary Webb. Find out just how reponsible the CIA is for the explosion of crack in the US. Take a look at the Sandanista government in Nicaragua in the early to mid 1980s, and then look at the Contras who were fighting them. Look at the whole Iran-Contra scandal. The government, because it is comprised of people, is faliable. Very faliable.
itachi
ps - if you don't trust those two books, there was a congressional investigation in 1989 headed by John Kerry that found links between the CIA-controlled Contras and drug smuggling
Have you talked to any recent graduates of the Philadelphia public school system? Or visited any Philadelphia public schools lately? It might be tasteless, but it's not too far off. Public schools in Philadelphia are hurting very badly, for a variety of reasons. I can think of several approaches that MS and the BSA could take in dealing with schools and other non-profits that would make compliance verification much easier to do and much less of a burden.
itachi
By this argument students should not be allowed to use computers or even calculators...they should have only a writing tablet and do all the calculations by hand. [...] And hell, let's forget about students learning Java or Perl or C++, [...]
IMO, Students go to school so that they can learn how to get around in their world - and right or wrong, this is a world with jobs requiring Microsoft expertise.
The knowledge how to write or do arithmetic by hand helps you far than where to klick in Microsoft products or to program in Java. Those skills can easily be acquired later on.
In my case it is a small ( 40 students) private school and they have no problem with non-MS -- as long as I can make it work.
I am volunteering to teach "Introduction to Computers" as an adult ed class starting in August and will be using Linux boxes (ThinkNICs) with Star Office/Open Office run from NFS. There are about 10 people signed up right so far.
I've also got a deal with a local wholesaler where students can purchase a "real" PC (without monitor) for $349 -- including GNU/Linux preinstalled.
I want to see if I can get a setup (server PC and a bunch of ThinkNICs) solid then offer some to one of the local public schools that is screaming for donations.
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Nope, I'm in the clear. I gave them the entire machine and software -- I retained nothing.
...
From the EULA:
SOFTWARE TRANSFER. You may permanently transfer all of your rights under this WULA only as part of a sale or transfer of the COMPUTER, provided you retain no copies,
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
thanks dude. I appreciate that.
It's chickenshit like this that gives alternate vendors the best `ins' to challenge Microsoft. Although as much as I'd like to see Free software step in, I rather doubt many schools have the people (person, if small enough) to take advantage; but I wouldn't mind Apple getting back to its golden age, where IBM and its PCs were a distant nightmare on the horizon in K-12 education...
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
No, of course they don't. But this will
You can edit and save them back to the same
format if you want).
And of course it is free.
Star Office http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice/get.html
interesting solution, i'm impressed that your administrators are even computer literate enough to understand your request.
but then again, i guess somebody decided to shell out all that dough for legally licensed copies of adobe acrobat.
...disavow all knowledge...
Requires at least 4 years of public eduacation to even master the basics.
What is this crap software?
What is it supposed to do?
If windows is a cure from piracy, why we all take the medication being healthy?
I am also puzzled how Microsoft and the BSA can compel such inventory actions...
---END QUOTE---
Microsoft compels such actions by including a provision in their GROUP site licenses saying that the purchaser agrees to perform audits upon request of BSA/MS/whatever.
Otherwise I'm not sure they'd be able to get it done.
--alt
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
And people in charge of the school catering department should be allowed to just fill their trollies up in supermarkets and run off without paying, right?
I don't think schools should be allowed to break laws just because they're public and don't have much money.
If the US is anything like the UK, people's time would probably be much better spent working out what stupid PC schemes the local council has squandered money on.
If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny.
HTML and its relatives retain the structure of the document, they're editable and cut&paste-able, and even though MSWord generates ugly clueless HTML code, you can still reuse stuff.
The social engineering process you use is worthwhile, though.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's not simply a matter of doing things legally, but keeping the paper trail that says you've done it legally. It's astoundingly easy to lose a CD, or a piece of paper, especially when people move, computers move, when there's no real administration of the licences. If the school doesn't have a dedicated admin for this kind of thing it would be pretty easy to have done things correctly, but not have any record.
This is a 150,000% fine negotiated down to a 1,000% fine. (or 1,500x down to 10x) How does the BSA get to levy fines so out of proportion to actual damages? Put another way: if local traffic courts had $100,000 tickets for speeding, you'd feel grateful if the court "reduced" the fine to $666. But should the original ticket be so high?
Is software piracy that much worse than discharging toxic substances into waterways (max fine $125,000)? Misbranding a drug in interstate commerce (max fine $100,000)? Violating the Sherman Antitrust Act (the fine listed in Section 3571 (d) is "not more than the greater of twice the gross gain or twice the gross loss" caused by the conduct...)?
Yes, illegal copies are a crime (as is speeding), but the LAUSD wasn't running a mass piracy operation. Assuming that "hundreds" = 500 copies found, then the LAUSD had found roughly 1 copy per school, or 1 copy per 120 employees ( it has 60k employees total). The BSA got to treat the LAUSD as if it had found widespread felonious behavior rather than a few years worth of a few people deliberately or mistakenly making copies. That is too much power for one relatively small group.
Or perhaps we should give every association the same level of power. We should, for example, have a Software Consulting Association that can send audit letters out checking for late payments to consultants. If you've paid a consultant more than 30 days late, you get fined $300k...
In the software company store, I may still have the item, but I lost out on the possible services and the fab costs when you pirated my software. That is what my company runs on, not the physical product itself. You are obfuscating the two. If my company/software can do XYZ exponentially better than anyone else I should be rewarded, at least monetarily. You've been fed and swallowed the conformist rebel convential wisdom. Try thinking for yourself. I bet you're also one of those sheeple who defended napster.
You don't even have the balls on something as lame as
So he is a veteran computer teacher and he didn't know he was violating the EULA? He knew damn he was breaking the terms of the license but he installed it but it was for convenience's sake. By that kind of logic I'm not breaking the law when I run a red light when no one else is around. It's no different. I didn't think there was a cop around but suddenly my ass got busted.
"It was a minor violation," he says. "We use AppleWorks for word processing but I put Office on their computers because they couldn't read the Microsoft Word attachments they kept getting from the district's central office. It was easy to do, and it made sense since our schools are in dire financial straits."
This "veteran" computer teacher could have easily gone to Google and looked for a word processor. "Oh Wow, this OpenOffice looks good and its free!" If he doesn't like Microsoft's licensing games for Office then he isn't forced install it. He has choices.
Don't get me wrong now, I'm not defending Microsoft's products/practices but rather attacking this guys poor judgement call and general lack of A Clue. The real problem is that computer education (in high schools, DeVRY, ITT, community colleges) isn't computer education at all. It's a series of classes telling you how to use various Microsoft products - rather like booking a course in automobile mechanics and find yourself being taught how to drive a particular model of car.
...and until they start using free software, they can purchase legitimate licenses for the products they are using. Schools have no special rights about pirating software just because they're short on cash.
In the same way, schools are also not entitled to free VA Linux servers just because they're short on cash. But hey, maybe if VA gave away free servers to all the school districts, they'd start running free software.
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
I rather doubt that Microsoft's PR department were involved in this episode at all.
/.ers would probably currently be ridiculing an MS press release about how the company had worked out an educational discount with the schools board that ensured that there would be enough legal copies of the relevant software available to teachers at an affordable cost, so there would no longer be the temptation to engage in piracy, and how this demonstrated Microsoft's understanding of the responsibility it had as a major software supplier to be a good corporate member of society.
If they had been,
No, child, but if your understanding of your responsibilities is truly as limited as your posted comments suggest, they may very well be coming for you.
...One that isn't June frickin' Cleaver maybe?
Seriously, even just as a joke with no harm intended, that kind of comment is going to REPEL female students with startling efficiency (not to mention female teachers, administrators etc. whose support you might need) 'cause it sounds like you think women belong back in the kitchen. And if you're trying to promote your project to the schools (where they're trying to get more girls into computers) that's just going to be one more invisible tickmark against you.
I'd second the snappier-name thing too. You want something that rolls off the tongue of a technologically illiterate school board trustee who craves a reassuringly slick and professional facade. A slicker website might be an idea too.
No, this is great. If Micro$loth wanted to play fair or nice with the school system (open up the licensing, drastically cut prices, etc.) , we might need a decree from the government to get some open source technology in there. But since Microsoft wants to deal harshly, they will help to push the schools towards open source. My only wish is that Microsoft products were really expensive (say $4k or more a seat) and licenses were harsh (reregister your product every 10 minutes or you're going to *jail* buddy). Then nobody except those with money to burn would buy that stuff. Corporations that need to do some belt-tightening would look at open source. Same for schools, universities, families. In short, I think they (Microsoft) have tied a nice noose around their necks. Lets help pull it tight!
The Autonomous Cow. Moo.
Right - people do want Word and Excel...when I was thinking about the article, I was trying to put myself in the place of a parent. When my kid is working on a chemistry experiment and is recording data in a spreadsheet for use in creating graphs, etc, do I want him doing it in Gnumeric or Excel?
Well, let me think about that...if my child is very technically inclined, I can see him/her getting many hours of enjoyment and a rich educational experience working with Gnumeric. But what if they're not? What if I want my child to be thinking about chemistry, rather than wrestling with a package that, in some areas, pales in comparison to Excel. I can see a child being turned off to the whole learning process entirely if they're frustrated with their spreadsheet/graphing tool.
I don't think that open source tools have a place in mainstream highschools yet in classes that are NOT computer science-related. We are doing children a disservice if we support second-rate tools simply because of cuts in funding. I'm not saying that all open-source tools are second rate by any means. Simply that we need to provide the best tools to our children for the job they're doing. Instead of rallying around open source tools as the ultimate band-aid for the problem (which, one day, they may be...but not today), we need to be addressing the problem of inadequate state and federal support for our schools.
Umm, yeah, if they had one computer I don't think MS would have a problem with letting all the kiddies use it. Just like a book, if the library wants to borrow it to multiple people at once there better damn well be multiple copies. Just going in to Barnes and Noble and buying one book, then taking 20 more isn't going to work, is it now? And yes, photocopying the whole book is out of the question too.
If not now, when?
cynical crap like this is why the world is in such a sucky state.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
The article seems to be about much more than just some computer teacher down on his luck, but with the way in which MS and BSA are 'infiltrating' organisations and collecting information before demanding big $$$ in compensation.
In cases of non-profit piracy, especially with respect to non-profit organisations, shouldn't they just be charged for the licensing costs?...
Actually in an organisation shouldn't they do some homework and get something that won't get them in trouble - buy licenses to the software, or get cheaper (possibly free) software.
Well, yeah. If you break a law there is a penalty. If I steal your car and get caught do I I just give it back and go home? No.
If you could just remove offending software, why would anyone ever buy it when they could just "use it till we get caught". Of course you have to pay for licenses, you have used the software illegally for x days/months/years.
Even if microsoft products are over priced, schools aren't given free reign to pirate them. That'd be sort of like saying "I don't like the restrictions of the GPL, so I'm going to ignore them." The solution for poorer schools is two-fold: one, use cheaper software (aka free). Even if Linux was to mysteriously fall off the face of the earth, the general computer skills the students would gain would still be very helpful. Hey, I learned on AppleWorks for an AppleIIgs up through 1993ish, and that really hasn't hindered my ability to figure out other word processors.
The other solution doesn't have to do with software, but how we fund schools. It's too bad politicians give lip service to providing equal education to all, while not funding all schools equally. Schools with low funding not only can't afford Microsoft products, but not even books, classroom supplies, musical instruments, gym clothes, good teachers (as they usually lean toward the better paid schools, and who can blame them?). Heck, if I hadn't moved from the central Illinois school system (meaning: no money), to a suburban Chicago school system (meaing: tons of money), I wouldn't be going to a 30,000+ student University. The opportunities to simply travel around the country were infintely more available than at my old school.
If anyone tells you funding doesn't effect the ability of students to succeed at all, they've just never seen under funded schools.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
You need not go on, you have already proved that you are an idiot!
Judging by the article, these computers were probably Macs. I think Sun should really use this to push StarOffice into the Edco market, where Wintel boxes are gaining prevalence.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I thunk of it a few weeks ago. Why must a school system buy insanely expensive textbooks every few years? (Not to mention the incestous textbook business which vets content in Texas, but I digress).
English, math, science textbooks -- these things are perfectly suited for open source projects. Besides, math doesn't really change every few years, so a textbook can last a long time.
Schools are always underfunded, even the most well-financed. But schools in areas without wealthy homeowners have worst of it all. I grew up in one. We didn't even have construction paper. No glue. Books were shared sometimes. There just wasn't enough money. And this was CHICAGO!
I know this is a not technically on topic, but it is the same problem. Schools have to limp along on shoestring budgets. I know about the efforts to equip schools with free software, but how about creating some good textbooks for everyone to use without ever worrying about paying a company for dead trees? Print the books out on standard copy paper at Kinkos, or the school copy room.
Additionally, advantages I see are: unlimited supply of books, easy replacement if one gets lost (a sore point with me; i lost out on a semester of trig in HS 'cause my book was stolen and I couldn't pay for the replacement), and the ability to correct and extend the course content by the teachers themselves.
Thank you. Someone who truly understand my point about how using Unix or command line does not mean knowledge of the inner workings of the operating system, let alone the hardware.
I don't believe there will ever be a silver bullet in UI design. Although, Windows fills those above points more than a unix desktop does.
Not that I tremendously like the Windows interface. But I think it is better overall. Not perfect, but better.
Maybe that's why many schools start with MacOS, then goes to Windows in high school, and Unix in college. It also could be that more people are willing to pluge through windows than unix desktops.
Slow down cowboy! Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting reply on comments.pl and submitting a comment. It's been 16 seconds since you hit 'reply'!
Fantastic, all that time playing The Typing of the Dead has apparently done more than break my wrists, it has now alienated me from slashdot. *sob*
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
Regardless of what jailing Bill will do, nationalizing Microsoft would take even more power FROM the people: it would make it even less accountable.
If Microsoft were a government agency, a fellow could get the Windows source code with a simple FOIA request, as works of the United States government are in the public domain.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Man, either you live in a rotten country of the sorts, where the CIA helps out real bad ass dictators to launch a coup against the democratically elected government
Not the CIA but the Congress. During the Monica Lewinsky proceedings, the US legislative body passed two bills by anonymous, unaccountable voice vote: Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. A voice vote means that constituents back home are unable to review how their representative or senator voted. So how is DisneyCo CEO Michael Eisner not a de facto "bad ass dictator"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
For about $6,000 (less if you already have "old" computers), you can set-up a lab with e-mail, browsers, office suites, image programs...
But, as another poster mentioned, can K12LTSP run Reader Rabbit? It's not listed in the educational games section of the WINE compatibility database.
Will I retire or break 10K?
M$ has free viewers for most of their file formats
This is the page parent is talking about, with freely redistributable Office document viewers. Too bad they don't have viewers for any OS but Windows.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Exactly.
In my local district, four bond issues have been put down in what is a mostly age over 50 county. However, a Senior Center that was proposed in the county was approved the first time it came up for vote. All this while the school uses PS/2 486 machines and Apple IIgs machines for computer science courses.
Can you say "Brainwash" ?
One kid I meat was all pumped about doing Unix SysAdmin work for a living yet said to me "It pays better that windows work but it's not as good an Windows." I wanted to burn him, he then continued to argue the point that Windows, not just NT/2000 but 95/98/ME also, was better and MORE SECURE than any *nix OS, I then kindly changed the discusson to gaming, but then he hadn't heard of Counter Strike so I left.
So bombard local schools with info on NTs weakness, and Linux freeness and security, and hopefully we can stop shit like that kid from ever being spawned again.
Also that kid had been kicked out of school for breaking into the schools NT network from home, if he did that, how could he claim it was so secure right out of the box like he did? he couldn't answer me that one. But just continued to say "Trust me, it is." Isn't that what Bill always says "just trust ME" *grin*
goddam weazely fuck, i'd like to kick him in the beanbag...another nice start to a day ruined by MS *sigh*
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
Nope! Silicon Graphics Irixs. Molding and simulation, 1992. There just wasn't a Windows box that could come close.
And before you start spouting nonsense that I am unusual. Talk to any engineer that needed to do serious computing where rendering was an integral part of the analysis 7-8 years ago. Anything from heat transfer, fluid flow, 3d modeling ..
School indeed ....
I'm going to guess that most Unix advocates in business world today were exposed to Unix while they were in college.
My assertion:
Many Unix advocates were engineers using Unix in industry (not school) because Windoze couldn't cut it back then.
Show me numbers to back up your claim or shut up. I will refrain, as much as I want to to, to resort to personally attacking you.
We should absolutely consider organizing an effort to help install and support free software in the public schools. How hard would it be to set up a site where concerned technologists who want to give something back to the school systems can register. We can start a dialogue with administrators, teachers and school boards. We can show them how to save money while increasing the technical ability (and therefore the money-making ability) of themselves and their students.
Imagine with me for a moment:
It's Saturday morning and bleary eyed technical people are showing up on the doorstep of Joe Blow Junior High. Carrying their gear and unloading donated computer systems, they go about setting up an entire network using only free software. The teachers and administrators show up at noon and begin taking short courses on how to use all this new software. At the end of the day, the head administrator gets a technical contact (a local who volunteered) that he can call when things go wrong.
Not only does this help Linux/*BSD/etc...it helps the kids and the people struggling to make sure they don't end up working at McDonald's.
I, for one, would be happy to volunteer my weekends for something like this. Anyone else interested?
KitMarlowe
I gotta get a tight tension on...
Sure, there might have been alternatives, even from MS itself, and sure it would have been extremely preferable for that teacher to have installed StarOffice on those machines, but for MS to come down on them like a ton of bricks with an expensive software audit and threaten huge fines to a poor school district is disgusting.
"Both Microsoft and the BSA argue that they're interested in compliance, not enforcement."
Please.. won't you just comply?
I'll probably get modded down because this might seem anti-Linux and anti-open source, but here goes...
It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
No. It's not silly to bitch about this. Whether we like it or not, M$ is the standard. The vast majority of the public uses M$ products. Period. End of story. We might not like it and we can try to change it, but it's not silly to bitch about this. If they schools want their students to actually know how to use the computing products that businesses use in the real world, they need to teach and use Microsoft products in the schools.
I'm all for teaching kids to use open source products. In fact, I think it's a great idea. We need to get them while they're young and teach them all the things I wish I had learned at that age. But, but not also teaching them to use Microsoft products, we are only serving to handicap them. We should have the kids learn both. Linux, Unix and other *nix operating systems just don't have the kind of market share that warrants the kind of exclusive teaching that you're talking about.
Let me give you an example. I work for my state government here. In our office (just our office, not sure about the other offices here in the capitol) we have only one maching not running a M$ OS, and that's our Sun server. Everybody else just uses X-Windows clients to access the one piece of software run on the machine. We don't even have a Unix system admin. In fact, I know more about Unix than anybody else that works here, and I'm just a summer intern. Whenever our sys admin sets up the X-Win client software on a new computer, she has to use a "cheat sheet" that was written up by the people that installed the system. If something ever goes wrong, they have to call somebody in to come and fix it.
When the goverment, one of the largest (if not the largest) employer in the state runs Microsoft software, that's probably an indication that people wanting jobs should know how to use it.
I'm all for teaching kids to use Linux in schools. It's a great idea. But, we also cannot neglect the instruction of Microsoft software. Until Linux gains a larger software base, there's no reason to warrant its exclusive teaching in schools. If we do that, we are only serving to handicap the students. So yes. It is worth bitching about Microsoft's "extortion" tactics. They are wrong, and we should do something to stop them.
I'm sorry for sounding inflamatory or insulting, but sometimes some of you Linux zealots can be just as bad as Microsoft's corporate zombies. Before Linux can be exclusvely taught in schools, it needs to be able to succeed as a consumer OS. Some of you people just need to get your head out of you ass and realize that this will not happen over night. We need to first promote Operating System equality. Teach Linux, Windows, and whatever other OS we deem necessary together. Then we can let the consumers decide what OS is right for them.
--------------------------------------
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
--------------------------------------
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Oh, bullshit. The USA produces plenty of bright minds. It's just that a lot of us are lazy. :)
Personally, I wouldn't mind going on to get my Ph.D. I know it's within my potential. However, since I don't currently have the money for it, I doubt it will happen. If I have to start working to pay for my school, that will likely be the death of my school days. I'm simply too lazy to work and go to school at the same time. =P
--------------------------------------
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
I think you underestimate the flexibility of children. I see no reason why a well set up Linux box (running KDE 2 and a few solid, tested applications) should be frightening even to an adult. Certainly not to a kid.
I also think it's a crying shame to decide that these children are "going to be" office workers and shop clerks. They're children. They can be whatever they want to be. We shouldn't be training them to be keyboard monkeys, but educating them to understand what a computer is, and to learn the creative techniques of computer programming - even if they go on to be artists, peanut-butter salesmen or shop clerks.
For these skills, Linux is clearly a far better platform: it offers a multitude of simple programming languages, and once you get beyond the point-and-drool stage, it's much more intuitive to play with than Windows: no registry, a superior command line, etc.
David
Freedom of speech won't feed my children
We don't need no education
...
All in all it's just another sign on the wall
We just wanna be in control
Just dark sarcasm in the class room
>It's silly to think a computer or ten will
>substanitively improve one's education. At
>least, when more basic needs are not met. Most
>of the hurdles facing Education in the US are
>Socio-Economic. Not technological.
All the more reason why every school district in the country shouldn't be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Microsoft for their soon-to-be-annualized software subscriptions! That money could be used to - gasp - pay good teachers what they're worth.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
open/free software the way for schools to go
Everyone seems to agree on this, but does anyone ever take the first step? It's difficult for one person to get a school to change its ways, but what if your LUG, as a team, offered to help a local school set up a free software system? Maybe help work with the kids once a week/month?
Not only would this wean kids from Microsoft, it would give you potential new members and possibly some support from the community.
Your absolutely right of course, but what that means is that perhaps it's time to rethink how computers are taught to children in primary schooling.
Instead of relying on their main teacher to do it, hire one or more people who are trained specifically for teaching kids about computers and software other than Windows. Set aside some time each week in each grade for the person(s) to come in and do "computer time". A person who's only job is teaching computers to kids would have the time and expertise to teach kids about non-Windows computing is he so desired, and it was found to be beneficial.
I'm not advocating doing away with the teaching of Windows entirely, but put the burden of teaching computers on someone trained for it. Already-overworked classroom teachers may not have time to learn a lot of new software, or produce interesting hardware-related lesson plans. Hence, "computer time" more than not equals "play Oregan Trail and shut up".
Forget about even using Microsoft Office. If this guy's reasoning for installing MS Office was so that they could read documents from the main school building, then he SHOULD have installed Star Office. No licensing issues there, case closed.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
According to the latest stats on Etrade (Q3 2000), MS has $37,789,000,000 ($38B) in near-liquid (cash + stocks) assets. Yet, they are trying to drive educational institutions into the ground (along with everyone else, of course). Beating poor school districts senseless over licensing is a move that seems inherently wrong.
So...tell everyone you know about it. Teachers especially.
I've already emailed one teacher I know the article, and am pounding my brain for more.
If we all take the time to forward along the information we already know to the people in the right places, we can keep our school tax dollars where they should be: in the schools and not on MS's balance sheet. This goes for other software as well. IANAGP (graphics professional), but The GIMP is probably adequate for image processing all the way through high school (at least) save some very special circumstances.
Regards,
Stephen
Well put.
I'm a custom IC designer at a major international computer company. Yet I had very little exposure to computers in school. (We learned from these things called "books.") And I can write, spell, read, sing, play an instrument, draw, paint, sculpt, appreciate opera, talk about economics and history, find my state on a world map, and do a host of other things!
If only we had computers, I wouldn't have received such a poor education.
Postin' 'Me, Too' like some brain-dead AOLer...
Redmond, Wash. -
Microsoft lawyers left a small groups of babies crying today after taking away their candy earilier today. Witnesses state they saw "several vans full of FBI agents and Microsoft employess swarm the Redmond Community Playground, snatching lollypops, chocolate bars, and other sweets directly from the hands of small infants". Top level exectutives in Redmond would not comment specifically on the incident, though a unnamed source high up in the company has been quoted as saying "We are well within our rights to revoke the baby's license to the candy. Users agree to our candy licensing terms when they open the wrapper." Industry observers speculate that the babies own mothers may have invalidated the licensing by taking a small bite of the candy. The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Microsofts actions in the candy industry consitutes an monopoly. Microsoft does not expect the case to delay its upcoming launch of Sucker 1.0 this fall.
In other news today, the MPAA is back in court with a lawsuit against a hacker accused of posting a receipe for chocolate chip cookies to a newsgroup...
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
I'm not personally stating my opinion on this matter, but note the attitude change from page 1 to 3 (I assume most of us read page 1 or just the headline).
...districts can purchase subscriptions to Microsoft software suites, which offer a 50 to 90 percent discount, according to Microsoft figures.
...Philadelphia school district's chief information officer Ron Daniels, "Microsoft has acted more like a partner than police officer".
Not so expensive now is it?
Interesting change in attitude.
All and all, Microsoft has been very supportive and has provided us with tools such as an online database to verify our licenses and has even donated over $20,000 to assist our schools.
Although I agree that no company should bully an education institution for software licensing, I think these quotes alone point out that it is possible that M$ was not as violent (at least in this case) as the article would like us to believe at first glance.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Ummm... I'm sorry, but "Education" doesn't make schools and teachers any less responsible to follow the law. Even more so, in fact, since they are setting an example for students.
Free software is great and all. It's great that an author of software can release it under GNU for the "good of humanity", etc. However, in return for everybody respecting those wishes, people must respect the wishes of others.
If MSFT wants people to pay for their product, that should be respected. They are in it to make money, and responsible to their shareholders. For a group of people who are outraged with MSFT for trashing open source software, I'm amazing with how much hipocracy they will turn the insult the opposite direction.
If these schools are unwilling to pay for proper licences, simply DON'T USE THE SOFTWARE. Use StarOffice! Use Notepad! Write their own software! I really don't care... but, indicating that a company should be forced into involentary charity is unreasonable and irresponsible. Especially when it's the tax collected from Microsoft's products, and income tax from their employees that pays for things like the public school system to begin with.
--Legolas Greenleaf
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Man, either you live in a rotten country of the sorts, where the CIA helps out real bad ass dictators to launch a coup against the democratically elected government, or you should seriously consider stopping to read this right-wing nutter propaganda you're apparently into.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
DEC at it's prime had a very good relationship with universities. A lot of VAXen war installed and the punters puntered happily away.
In the eighties DEC became fat, lazy and arrogant, employing too much managers & sales droids, with too little clue and too much time on their hands.
As far I recall some genius implemented a new software licensing scheme and DEC software - albeit excellent (save for the application crap) was also very expensive and DEC suddenly started to charge universities redicoulous licensing fees, which they couldn't or didn't want to afford.
Of course universities jumed to cheaper alternatives, namely U/X and it was Suns finest hour, which jumped on the chance to infiltrate the decision makers of tomorrow.
So, in terms of ever repeating history this could actually be good news...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Or, alternatively, point out to M$ that if schools can't use their products because they can't afford them, they'll have to teach students to use F/free software instead. Given M$'s recent campaign against the GPL et al., that should give them pause... [/naivete]
--
MS-DOS? MS-DOS: never before have so many paid so much for so little.
This would fix both the complexity and the non-uniformity issues at once.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
It is very important to point out that civil disobedience is more than just disobeying an unjust law. It carries with it the willingness to be arrested for the belief that it is an unjust law, and giving one's self to the courts for them to decide on the justness of a law.
Just breaking the law isn't going to do a whit of good. Know what will? Breaking an unjust law and getting arrested. Getting the people and the courts to realize how unjust that law is. Convincing a jury of your peers that this law has no business being in the books. Even, if it comes to it, getting slapped with a conviction and a ridiculous punishment. (What are the legistlated penalties for breaking the DMCA?)
But to do all that, you have to be arrested.
You have to accept the high probability that, if you break the law, you will be arrested. That is civil disobedience, like it or not.
---
Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
If you where in the UK with me I'd happaly pay for your kids education. That way I'd know that when they become teeagers they woud have a balanced outlook on life and the possabilaty of a well paid job rather than sitting at the end of the street waitng with a baseball bat for your friends and relatives to walk past.
I'm not in Great Britian and I don't happily pay for others' kids to be educated - I'm forced to do it at the end of the government's gun against my will. Here in the U.S. if I have a problem with kids at the end of the street with baseball bats then I defend myself with something the British have decided to deny themselves.
Good education is the cheepist way of reducing crime that I know.
I could list cheaper alternatives, but you would find them distasteful, just as I find paying for others' children to be educated distasteful.
Having a well educated future is the responsiblity of the entire nation. If you don't like it, get the fuck out. (And I am the last person in the world that will use a "for the childeren" defense to promote my views)
Is that your answer to anyone who has a problem with the government or its heavyhandedness? If so I guess we needn't bother trying to change anything.
Attention all Slashdotters: Give up the idea of reforming copyright law or the silly notions of things like rights to privacy. The way things are now is best! As Jaysyn says "If you don't like it, get the fuck out."
I suggest you try earning less then poverty level, and raising kids some time.
I suggest doing your kids a favor and waiting till you're out of poverty to have them.
Ever heard of 'social responsibility'? If every citizen acted solely in their own best interests, I'm willing to bet you would be on the front lines of that group demanding the government step in and take control.
Yeah, I've heard of it, but I don't buy it any farther than I have a responsibility not to infringe on my neighbors' rights (and I define them strictly like the constitution).
I tend to subscribe to a personal responsibility creed. I take care of myself and my business and don't rely on others to do that for me. As for me standing in line demanding government help, I'll only go to the government when my rights are infringed since protecting my rights is their true function. I'll not be going to them when I've made foolish mistakes and can't deal with the results.
Sorry, I've paid taxes for those same roads as you have. And while I pay taxes that get allotted to others children for education even though I disagree with it, in your imaginary scenario where I've stopped paying taxes you resort to shooting me with a Bazooka. And you folks say my views are barbaric.
As for my 'right wing arse', maybe you should look at the left cheek of it; you know, the one that believes in decriminalizing drugs and prostitution and is pro-choice. That believes consenting adults should be able to do as they chose without the government getting involved. Yes, I'm against those government intrusions that YOU don't like as well.
I agree, it is wrong that children should be denied educational opportunities.
I would also say it is wrong to have children and then use government force to have others pay for them. But in the end I'm not denying anyone education because I'm forced by the government to do "my part" but the wrong being done against me is being brushed aside without a second thought, after all, I'm just one of those fortunate people.
Since you want to use sarcasm, meet the master:
Because we all know, if you are born poor you can just work hard and get rich.
We all know hard work is useless. Why bother when I can rob all those dumb saps who do work for a living.
I guess you'll just have to be poor forever. Should you have kids? Nope, that would just make more poor people
Well, I can't feed or take care of myself, but maybe if I have some kids that'll fix all of societies ills!
As a businessman how can you chose to limit your potential workforce by denying the majority of them education?
I'm not denying anyone anything. I don't think I should have to pay for it though. Assuming you're an American, you have the right to own a firearm - do you think I should be forced to buy you one of those as well? You have the right to free speach - should I be forced to set up a microphone and podium?
That is most certianly an elitist argument. What about the children who's families don't have enough money to pay their own way through the 6th grade? What kind of nation do you think we'd have if those without enough money were left behind to fend for thenselves without a grammar school education?
The notion that I shouldn't be responsible for your child's welfare is no more elitist than the "poor families" who believe they have a right to have children they can't afford because they know they can count on me to be the responsible one financially.
Yes, it would be a different world if my way of thinking were predominant. Yes, it would be much more harsh for those born into poor families. That doesn't justify taking what I have earned because others had children they couldn't afford.
I didn't mean to sound harsh, but can you see the pitfalls in such a self centered way of looking at the world?
Not harsh at all, I'm accustomed to such lines of thought. I see what you call 'pitfalls in my line of thinking' (i.e. poorly educated kids in what you see as my 'self centered' world) as being brought on by folks having kids they can't afford. I believe everyone should have the right to have kids, but they shouldn't have the right to force me to help them.
And your statement shows you know precisely nothing about a society with the right to bear arms. The assumption that I would shoot kids with baseball bats implied they were going to be attempting to physically threaten me. My response indicated that I would respond to their initiation of force with force rather than lie down and be beaten.
Frankly, I don't worry about violent crime in America and it is loaded with guns. You know what, I don't spend any amount of time each day worrying about getting shot. That you think America is the wild west shows that you need to try some 'educashun' other than your TV.
The point is - they can't AFFORD to pay M$'s exorbitant licensing fees....we're talking POOR district schools, where they struggle to get the computers in the first place.
And your solution is? Am I correct in assuming you think we should throw more money at the problem? I'm not sure about abroad, but here in the U.S. we've seen the costs of education skyrocket (i.e. we've infused a much larger portion of our salaries into it) while the results have been stagnant (i.e. kids aren't getting smarter).
It's one thing to bully businesses and city govts, but to start hammering schools? Not real smart.
So it's okay for schools, via the government, to hammer me for financial support at the point of a gun (government's ultimate answer should I refuse to pay for what they deem necessary) but it's not okay for Microsoft and other companies to expect to be paid for the use of their product?
If you don't own property in my state, you don't need to pay "HOA" dues (property taxes.) All very Libertarian.
I'm not sure which state you're in, but where I live unless you live in a box on the street or your car then you live in property that somebody owns. That somebody has to pay property taxes on it. Assuming you rent a house or apartment, are you assuming that your landlord is just sucking it up and paying for it himself? Nope, those taxes are figured into your rent. Just because you don't see the taxman's bill for it doesn't mean it's not there.
You claim you are forced to pay, but you are not. If you wish not to pay taxes, simply leave the country. It's not immoral for someone to enforce a contract (in the end, at gunpoint) if you fail to live up to your end.
A contract is an agreement between two or more parties. Taxes for the purpose of educating others' children is in no contract I agreed to. And no, my simple birth and living here to not imply agreement. As for the 'love it or leave it' arguement you put forward, that's the best answer you've got? I guess everyone here at slashdot should leave since just about everyone has a pet issue with government.
You've used the term Libertarian a lot. I don't know if you subscribe to that theory or you think you're winning me over by using it, but taxes as they are practiced in this country are not a Libertarian concept in any sense of the word.
Sure it does. You can't claim ignorance, nor that you don't know how to avoid it. You want to keep standing on my land (me being the gov't)? Here's the rules, leave if you don't like 'em.
So that's what it boils down with to you huh? You and the rest of the mob will force me to see your way or you'll run me off, although should I chose not to pay taxes for others' educations I am in no way violating any rights of yours.
You seem to assume there's a right to education and that the right you're assuming includes the right to have others pay for it. I guess you want a right to healthcare and food as well at my expense? It's certainly legal to enact such legislation and I'm sure I'll have to endure it here in my lifetime. In the minds of you and the mob who backs you rights are defined by the whim government and the mob that stands behind it and the individual is meaningless.
I find it funny that you want me to move so you can move this country more towards a socialist agenda when it was founded with the idea of freeing the individual from government (and mob via government) control. There's a whole tassle of countries I'm sure you'd be happier in - Canada, Britian, France to name a few while there are none that people with beliefs such as mine have to turn to because people like you have taken over government and made enacted legislation to make our voices and individual rights irrelevant.
As for libertarian/objectivist logic against taxes, I haven't argued against any tax here today except for that which is taken from me to provide education for others' children. However, I'm sure you could make a case that would stand in your mind for any tax that would benefit yourself, albeit at the detriment of the individuals forced to pay them. But the individual isn't really all that important, is it?
I have no problem paying for the education of any kids I might have. I don't expect you to pay for my kids' education and I don't think I should have to pay for your kids' education.
It has nothing to do with being cheap or an elitist, it has to do with responsibility. If you can be made to pay for other's kids' education, why not pay for their food, clothing, and entertainment while we're at it? I don't think other people's kids should be my responsibility.
After all those years, all that time wasted in school and all those power hungry teachers it's nice to see that some of us grew up to take their revenge :)
When we least expected it, a new hero came to town and his name is Billy Gator
will I get a reward, will I?
Let me get this straight...A part of the government is not paying a company for products it uses, and you are implying that this company is wrong to want to collect?
The government is hipocritical enough on its own...PLEASE don't condone it!
If the school system is low on money, which it is, then it is the school system's job to find ways to save...NOT companies who they purchase goods from. The school system wasn't forced into using Microsoft products -- they did so of thier own will.
I'm not even going to comment on that horrid attempt at an analogy.
Reason: It seems to me that after the trial was over turned that M$ has thought of themselves as infallable. Like any cocky teenager (we were all there at one time), they will go too far. When they do, the hammer will come down on them twice as hard.
This is really, really bad. People will see this, average joe home luser has childern, as being such they attend schools. They want thier children to learn "computers", however when the school has no choice but to
a: get rid of the computers
b: use a free OS
Well (a) is not really an option and (b) will inspire them to use that same OS at home. Well its free and my kid knows it and he can teach me. If you have ever done tech support you probably know that most parents don't have any quams about learning computing skills from thier kids.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
...usually require a warrant? Now granted, Microsoft themselves aren't breaking into your place of work or residence and rummaging around there, but it's the next best thing. Do they have the authority to order something like this? I mean granted, it's not really an official thing - it's Microsoft saying 'do this, or we unleash our formidable lawyers and robotic Richard Simmons', but even so... Issuing such ultimatums is pretty heavy handed and kind of scary when you think about the kind of power Microsoft thinks it is wielding.
How soon till we can expect hired goons in Microsoft uniforms breaking into our homes, scanning our hard drives and then requesting licenses for all our software at the risk of unspecified injury? </PARANOID>
I somewhat agree, but its makes a good point.
TK
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Macs have always been used in some schools, and were formerly used in many others. They were pushed out of the latter for reasons that included the (false) perception that Wintel Boxen were cheaper (sure the Packard Bell is cheap but will it work next week? And what exactly is your time worth?) and the idea that "everybody uses Windows." The problem with the last statement is twofold. Not only is it false, but a class of junior high school kids is 5-10 years out of the workforce. Think back, what OS and hardware were you using 5 years ago? Ten?
So in the end, educators have choices, if they have the guts to choose. They can Just Say No to the Wintel Duopoly.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
It seems that more and more companies are looking at software licensing in order to see which peice of software is costing them the most. Educational institutions will start doing the same thing pretty soon, I'm thinking. The Cost to Company of MS Office is the most obvious. The last company I was moved all of their workstations over to OpenOffice/Win98, and my current company did the same last month. The fact is that it's ridiculous to pay for licenses to a product that is actually quite generic in nature. OpenOffice has all of the spreadsheet and word processing features that most people use, and what's more has most of the total features of MS Office too. The thing that made MS Office big was its widespread use in the office/corporate enviroment. OpenOffice is the Open Source Software killer app, not Linux. OpenOffice will be the app that really brings OSS to the desktop (is already starting to bring OSS to the desktop, in fact).
"A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
Now how manny copies of MS Office have been sold? They don't rewrite it every time...in most cases it hardly even changes.
How come Micro$oft has all those billion $$$ aside for a rainy day.
and no I dont't think its more expensive to make software (Custom applications are another thing). Unlike music you can continue to resell the code, ie: MS Office.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Corporations putting financial pressure specifically on those who need their products (school: already MS infrastructured, can't afford to re-do) but can't afford to pay. This is what similes are for.
With a poor education, you may make life-altering decisions that shorten your lifespan considerably (smoke crack, get a job with no health insurrance, go to prison, join a gang, work in hazardous job, etc.) These are not easily measurable factors, but most people will agree that they _will_ likely shorten your life span. For each of these decision-based risk factors, a shortened life span is also calculable.
science is a religion
...was the only time we used Apples. In Senior High, we switched to Intel machines (for business software, methinks).
science is a religion
Having a well educated future is the responsiblity of the entire nation. If you don't like it, get the fuck out. (And I am the last person in the world that will use a "for the childeren" defense to promote my views)
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
The GNU project has been embraced by many pennywise university systems due to its cost - free. It seems that the primary and secondary educational systems would have picked up on this trend and noted its effectiveness in all areas of student development, but for some reason, they have not. The question arises - Why? ;)
The bulk of Free Software applications tend toward either recreation or programming, generally. This lack of adoption, apart from the ignorance of the general populace on alternatives to MS, likely stems from a lack of open-source software that covers topics that these children need to learn. If we want open source in our schools, we need to develop open source programs that they can use. Gnutella is great, but won't help Junior learn his math. MS platforms support a variety of software geared toward younger users, with all the bells and whistles that keep them both interested and occupied. I am all for what seems to be a viable alternative to both technical literacy and reduced educational budgets, but we need to supply something valuable to their needs. Sounds like a great open source project, to me. Any takers?
grep what I sed?
Root Down
Really? You may be right, I have no numbers, but the places in US I have been most of the Ph.D. students have been Asian or European. I sometimes think that the only reason USA hasn't become a third world country is the amazing number of bright minds they import from the rest of the world. They don't seem to produce many of their own.
Because all of the students that could be PhD candidates are out in the business world making money instead of incurring debt. There's no real benefit for a student to go for a master's or PhD yet. They make just as much money without the debt.
....for a business to make money these days.
I'm going to start throwing out some wild guesses at this point. I'm going to guess that most Unix advocates in business world today were exposed to Unix while they were in college. Before that (high school, grade school, etc.) their PCs ran DOS or early Windows. Those weren't very compelling systems, so there really wasn't a deep mental rut for the PC user to fall into. Today, kids get started with Windows as soon as they start grade school. After a decade of wallowing in Windows, not many of these college-freshmen-to-be will have an interest in breaking from Microsoft's benign circle. As many have pointed out in this forum, Microsoft cannot destroy free software by direct attack (outmarketing, underpricing, etc.) Over time however, Microsoft can do the one thing that will destroy free software: starve it of talent by strangling interest in it. By "charitably" donating software to schools, Microsoft fuels the benign circle that keeps kids from ever straying from the Windows fold.
I'm going to break here and ask for you to comment on the strategic implications of reflexive relationships and how those impact the Microsoft hegemony and the free software rebellion. I believe that unless the circles are systematically identified and reversed, there soon will not be enough talented individuals with sufficient interest in free software to warrant consideration of alternatives. Does anyone have a general theory for identifing and reversing the benign circles that Micrsoft is deliberately cultivating?
Engineer indeed.
I guess until the school system finds a way to pay up for all those copies of Office, Microsoft is going to break one child's legs a day.
-dr. layyze f. tooth PhD
StarOffice work on "linux". It isn't Redhat-specific, or Debian-specific. It works on Windows (95/98/NT/2000/ME) and various Unices, and the generic linux. It is able to do this by being static rather than dynamic, where the major problems could arise between distros. It isn't absolutely certain, but then, neither is windows software assured of running properly on windows without a good deal of user alteration/updating.
It is possible to stick to fully cross-compatible code (or code that requires only minor alteration to work on doze vs linux - or MacOS X which you are going to have to deal with now). Installers aren't that difficult either. StarOffice handles this too - allowing the user to specify where it should install if they don't like the default.
The most you would likely need to "specify" or limit, depending on how static your code is is, perhaps the minimum glibc level. Again, it is possible to statically build your software to work regardless of glibc level. Perhaps the biggest item of any concern (again, it isn't insurmountable) is XFree86, depending on how fancy you want to get with graphics - and this could be handled to a large extent with static binaries.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Hi. For a cross-platform multimedia lib, you might want to take a look at openSDL and perhaps openAL. Information for both can be found at:
http://www.lokigames.com/development/
OpenSDL is described as "...a cross-platform multimedia development API written and supported by Sam Lantinga, our lead developer."
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
First off, you don't need to make it for every distribution. They are not THAT different - if you have distro A and this software was tested/developed on distro B and C, then it is not that difficult to make A compatible to B and C (add some lib rpms or debs). On the other hand, you could simply develop statically-linked apps. They are bigger, sure (like most windoze software) but they would run on just about every distro. Then, all you'd need is to produce two statically linked packages: one for PC (perhaps based on Redhat or Mandrake, for instance, just to pick on to develop ON) and one for PPC (Yellowdog).
Your statically-linked app will install and run on other distros. The app size won't be a real problem for the sake of teachers and students. You wouldn't have to worry about updating your software as often, every time glibc changes, as you would if you wrote dynamic code.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
get your fat ass of the floor and help the schools.
... !
So why aren't any of you setting up a nonprofit organization that works
together with linux distro " manufacturers "/like Red Hat etc/
Go to a poor school, set the damn software up and running, get some money
for hardware upgrade from "linux factory" and so on.
I am planning to organize this in Estonia. So we can send to mister
LimpDick M$ a b-day card and thank him for helping us to become first
country in the world , where students and schools use only linux based
systems.
www.minut.ee
PS!me French kinda sucks, but I hope you understand
No, I don't think. this is melodramatic at all. Perhaps the word motherfucker makes you nervous, but it expresses my sentiments presisely. And, the piece was about MS in schools which is all about controlling the GUI in education which is what I'd hope the discussion would be about as well. Instead of this . . . when I was a boy, I had to get up three hours before I went to bed, have a bowl of cold gravel before my father stabbed us all to death! You try to tell this to kids these days and they just don't believe you.
You're off topic.
Another dumbass who didn't read my post.
Look, I despise the Mac business model more than you do. I have never owned a single piece of Mac hardware.
But, for THE tools for making computer based tests, the winner was decided long ago. It's called Macromedia Authorware.
I'm saying that until Authorware can run on K, then MS owns technology in education in conjunction with Macromedia and Lotus/IBM and ETS the inventors of the scantron. You know what a scantron is?
Uhm, well let's look a little closer at this.
First, I totally agree that Mac much more so than Windows was the software company that courted education.
But it wasn't just about the GUI. It was also the development tools. Macromedia is THE producer of Authorware which is THE tool for creating "media rich on-line learning interactions." But even closer to the bone, Authorware is the package used by ETS --the real education monopoly-- to make their multimedia tests.
Testing is what Authorware is all about. Sure, there are other icon.flow control packages that are fine for kiosks or whatever, but Authorware is the testers choice. The concept being that teachers all over the nation and globe were going to create their own unique tests by the gazillions full of bitchin multimedia and the future would be brighter by the minute as this vast array of awesome intellectual property reinvented the learning experience.
Well, we're still in the midst of things I suppose. But one of the problems is precisely that MS got involved. But it's not just MS. IBM bought out the backend of Authorware --the database that you want for administering a whole campus of test takers. It's called Pathware and its now owned by Lotus and you can have a copy for a mere $200K. You get the picture? These money grubbing motherfuckers are ransoming our future in very obvious and specific ways.
If you want to see a revolution in Linux adption in education then let's see a Linux run-time for Authrware. I'll be glad to lend a hand if there are people out there who want to get something started. I don't know jack about C, but I've used Authorware daily for about five years now. There's already a Mac and a Windows runtime, so what's to stop a K runtime?
This idea is particularly interesting in that Authorware charges the users for the use of the run-time rather than the authoring environment. There's no need to re-create the latter since it is readily available. Could Macromedia legally prevent people from Authoring and distributing an open source K run time?
I tell you what. I'll put my money where my mouth is. I have some commercial products written in Authorware and distributed with the Windows run time. If someone can come up with a K run-time, I'll re-package me media and distribute it for free as in beer.
"Most people who were made to use Macs at school realised they didn't like them" Wrong. Most people who test drive a Mac usualy by one
Maybe that's why the U.S. Department of
Defense just went to StarOffice instead
of using Microsoft Office products?
Tracy Johnson Justin Thyme Productions
Sponsors Classic Empire on the HPe3000 at:
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Oh, come on. This should be obvious. These are companies which are making money. They are making money while not giving Microsoft any, despite the Microsoft EULA. A school, on the other hand, is not trying to make a profit. They are not getting money while using stolen goods. This is not to say anything about whether or not Microsoft or the school was wrong. Your analogies are just a bit unfair.
-----
Same here, we also hire many high school students that cannot even trun on a computer! I was a techers aid for two year in a high school computer lab, pepole just don't want to learn how to use computers. They only want to say they had the classes and thats all most employers ask.
I am doing this for my sons' school.
;-)
A 'magnet' public highschool where I live is also attracting more and more linux support (all volunteer).
To me, a *nix-based system is a natural for young people.. it invites exploration. With a good admin-setup, it's easy to provide a powerful, yet safe environment for learning and exploring *nix. Remember what got YOU into this stuff
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Agreed!
It's a problem that presents a challenge.. but come on.. isn't it up to it?
Create a decent gnome or kde desktop standard for them, throw on a nice text editor e.g. nedit and settle on perl or python or C (use all three creating C modules for the other 2, even) and set some decent tasks.. let them create the ultimate mandlebrot set generator, funky screensaver, madplay front-end, whatever! Ensure basic programming concepts along with basic commands taught up front so the have the means to grow with it. But children are sharp.. they'll catch on fast to something they perceive as interesting.
It's stuff taught in colleges/universities but there's no reason to wait for that.. there's no prior knowledge needed.
Or if not up to that challenge, go with a non-X bash environment and a language of choice.. write a basic e-mail client or webserver.. something to provide a 'coolness' factor upon completion.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Sorry, just came off a couple dot.com's that twisted my view on what "for profit" companies really are - these guys burned through tons of cash without a biz to get (hardly) any back. Its closer to making personal copies - a bit grayer area for sure.
The third four sentence word doc still pushed me over the edge... and venting was at hand.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
dochawk@psu.edu wrote:
OK... then again, the distinction is not quite as "noncommittally geographic" as this wording suggests, is it? Not sure who first spoke in terms of this hierarchy, but I think it comes from the three states in France (first was noblesse, second clergy, then tiers-état -- the rest).
No doubt it was invoked by some well-meaning person, but like religion before, what it does is provide the ideological superstructure to colonize the world in the name of evangelizing it. Today, instead, we go around lecturing "developing" countries on democracy and human rights -- as if many of them had not been culturally and scientifically developed far before us. (Take India for one, or if you prefer, Irak = Babylon [*ducks*].)
Thus I remember, last February, a whole National Public Radio show on how the new administration intends to make Nigeria a privileged partner in Africa, because for some reason, that would be where we can expect expect "the best human-rights-and-democracy return" on our investment. All right... but as not one speaker saw fit to observe (this on NPR...), Nigeria happens to be also the largest oil producer on the continent...
The keyword here is indifference. People just no longer get their pants in a knot about anything beyond the weather, sports, the stock exchange, and whatever the current Simpson / Lewinsky / Columbine / Florida Recount psychodrama.
PSU, case in point. Tens of thousands of students there, quite a few in foreign languages or journalism I suppose, but nary a vendor of foreign newspapers around campus. You're in luck if you find the LA Times or the Washington Post at Ben & Jerry's -- that's about as exotic as it gets. Compare any European newsstand.
How does this tie in with this thread? Thus:
To the initial post, people are calmly and matter-of-factly responding that grad school just isn't a good investment for them. Very subdued response, I think, to an initial post which could be construed as inflammatory (1 flamebait moderation). But disquieting response, too, as it reveals the extent to which disinterested knowledge just isn't a value in our system.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Consider using WINE . Nowadays, WINE really works for many applications.
Try the CodeWeavers release. CodeWeavers release packages WINE in a GUI installer-config application. It's easy to set up right first time.
Please, give it a try with that software. You will be nicely surprised.
I was.
That sounds like a great idea to me - the linux community should come together to create a 'school standard' linux (PS-Linux for 'public-school') that is then distributed quickly and freely amongst public schools.
And on the point of computers in schools - they don't need to do anything complex really, I learned on a BBC (if anyone remembers those, I'll be surprised) and all we had was a text-editor like vim, a few text/minor graphics RPGs and i think one cute scrolling game. All less than 640x480 resolution.
The 'standard program set' ould be very easy to create - kids use computers to learn about maths (with very simple programs, we ain't talking triple-nested integrals here), typing tutors, cool graphics programs, simple 'theory of programming' programs (I remember a program called 'turtle' where you'd have to move it around the screen using a set of symple functions and syntax).....hmmm, what else - a few easy games for learning words or maybe even a foreign language (Spanish, French to start with...).
Amazingly easy to do and distribute. Someone with more knowhow ought to do this! And remember, when little Jimmy tells his dad about the 'new computers' they're using in school - you may even get daddy hooked on linux, and from there - who knows?
-Nano.
The point is - they can't AFFORD to pay M$'s exorbitant licensing fees....we're talking POOR district schools, where they struggle to get the computers in the first place.
-Nano.
Yeehar cowboy!
Perhaps the reason we don't have to worry so much about violent crime in Britain is PRECISELY because we have so few guns here. Or didn't your edukashun teach you that?
And BTW - 'If I have a problem with kids at the end of the street with baseball bats the I defend myself with a gun' doesn't sound much like self-defence to me - shooting kids just 'cause they have baseball bats is just the kind of mindless violence caused by gun advocacy.
-Nano.
"My thinking is that if you teach a kid how to use Gnome and/or KDE in grade school and then teach them how to use the command line in middle and high school, they'll come out of it with a pretty good knowledge of the workings of PCs."
I think this relationship you speak of between the command line and "knowledge of the workings of PCs" is just praise by association. Presumably you use some version of Unix with its command line interface and I also presume that you have interest in the internal details of a PC. The two are not directly related. Your "knowledge of the workings of PCs" is not something you learned because you use "ls" instead of a GUI file manager.
"Why would they not learn anything under Linux/BSD/etc? In fact, I think it would help them even more, by actually KNOWING what's happening instead of turning into pointy-clicky machines."
Unix/Linux, like Windows, is based on abstractions. The CPU doesn't know any more about command line prompts than it does about mouse clicks. The question is which abstraction is more useful for the majority of children.
Try to ask this again at AskSlashdot. The replies here will not be much, given that your msg is mixed with others.
¦ ©® ±
I dare them to come after me.
Didn't Bill Gates and Paul Allen "Steal" computer time on the Harvard computer lab to write the first version of BASIC for the Altair Computer? Since this event essentially started Microsoft off as a corporation, I figure Harvard must be owed about 60 Billion Dollars?
Why is it that Bill Gates thinks it's okay to steal from schools, but it's not okay for schools to steal from him?
And this is coming from Microsoft, which steals everyone else's innovations and ebraces and extends it into their own products.
I need a nuclear warhead and a ticket to Redmond...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Call me a troll if you like - I will probably get modded as such, but it is increasingly frustrating to read /. The tag line, "News for Nerds", used to accurately describe /., but it seems that lately every fourth article is one which lambasts Microsoft. Articles such as this, looking for another reason to say "Microsoft Sucks", are becoming tiresome.
/. (See article posted earlier this morning). How long will it be before this is nothing more than a warez site when all of the articles deal with how to steal stuff - whether music, movies or software?
With a name like '/.', it is obvious that this is a pro-*nix site, which is fine. And I think that most people here will agree that they don't like Microsoft's business practices. Again, this is fine. However, to constantly look for articles for justification to say that "Microsoft Sucks" is infantile.
The childish behaviour is not limited to Microsoft bashing. Posts extolling the virtues of Napster (before they went corporate) and Gnutella as ways to pirate music such that they can "screw the man" are also childish. There may be reasons to disagree with existing copyright laws and the the policies of the RIAA, and perhaps the use of tools to steal music is your form of protest. If you firmly believe in your position, be civily disobedient. Send the RIAA a letter that you are going to steal music and you feel that you are justified in doing so. But to engange in this practice anonymously is not civil disobedience - it is criminal.
Similarly, articles posted on how to defeat serial number protection schemes are equally childish, and rather frightening to see on
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
Do those free viewers work on a free OS?
in terminus illic est tantum opes
Why should my hard earned tax dollars go to pay for streets that I don't use? Cops that I don't need? I don't think we need a military and I shouldn't have to pay for it! I want my tax dollars to go for federally sponsort PR0N!!!!
Yeah, there are alternatives to using Microsoft in public schools, but try convincing school boards and technologically illiterate teachers of that. These are politicians and teachers, the majority of whom (in my own experience) buy into the idea, that Microsoft presents, that Open Source software is written by evil hackers bent on undermining the software industry, and who put evil virii into their so called "open source" software. Therefore, I think that when faced with the alternative of either using this "evil open source" or copying Microsoft software (which most people think is fine), they will go with the Microsoft software. Further, if the BSA and Microsoft continues to donate money to school districts, of course the school district is gonna take the donation. Which means more hopeless dependance on MS. NOTE: I had this discussion with my HS Government Teacher Senior Year, right after Bill Gates donated a huge amount of money to some poor group of people, he told me that I was jaded to think that Bill Gates was merely trying to gain public respect and had alterior motives, he said that it was a great humanitarian act. Ya right....now you see what we're working with in High Schools.
.NET *cough*, and that if they copy even one software package, then the Microsoft Nazis will be coming and breaking down doors to punish them. Hell yeah I'd like to see open source in schools, but will it happen at this point in time, probably not.
Furthermore, there is the user friendliness of the systems. Teachers demand immediate access to certain documents and such. As soon as you tell them that they can't use their familiar Office Suite, they will be reluctant to work with anything else. Its the short attention span idea, if its not there when I want it to be, and in some familiar format, I'm not going to look for it. The first time they got a message attached in some unreadable format, it would be bye bye open source, hello pirating Microsoft software again.
While I don't necessarily agree with taking one copy of Office and installing it on 2000 machines in the district, I find more fault in donating just enough money to school districts to get them using your system, then telling them that they have to upgrade every so often *cough*
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
- Dan I.
Why I am reminded of Pricess Leia talking to Moff Tarkin? "The more you tighten your grip, the more schools will slip through your fingers..."
May the Open Source be with you...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Although it is most certainly distasteful, it is (under current law) their right to do so.
Ignoring the semantic right/privilege issue, it seems to me that a case could be made for the schools having a "right" to make copies in the manner they did.
IANAL and all, but it seems to me that one of the primary reasons for the fair use provisions of copyright law was to allow schools to make multiple copies of items they could not afford as long as it was for educational purposes and it did not strongly impact the potential sales of the items.
The only flaw with plan is that it doesn't make any profit for Microsoft, and must therefore be A Very Bad Thing and unAmerican.
Thank you, come again! What's the correct URL? Cut&pasted straight from your reply, but got a nice 404.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Somethingwicked wrote:
Not that I expect your average somethingwicked to have the URL to back his claims... or do you? Post the URL, silly, otherwise nobody will beleive you!
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
If I do it as a company I am doing it as a business case, it is not my responsibility to support your choice of OS.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
The techers COULD photocopy all the books too. But they don't because they are aware of copyright laws (generally, they do copy PARTS sometimes). The difference here is that the teacher acknowledges that he was aware that he shouldn't copy the software, but HE felt it was justified because they didn't have any money.
Next week I will be "borrowing" your SUV b/c I feel that I am justified, I don't have one, I need it and you have too much.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Desks, chairs, paper, cleaning supplies, books, food, buses, etc.
Georgia Pacific should just give the kids paper and pencils for free *smirk*
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Damn, I hope the kids were able to get out of the way first *grin*
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
BTW, for those that don't know, M$ has free viewers for most of their file formats available for download. Not that I expect your average teach to know this.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Books are also intelectual property. When a library buys a book, it doesn't have to pay for all the people that are going to read it. There are special rules for this that make it possible to run libraries, because it is in the public interest that people ecan read books.
The same goes for software licenses in my opinion. Schools should not and cannot be held to the same financial standard as companies. If the BSA wants to build a case with intelectual property law, take them to court, because they have no case. Libraries are a clear example of how intelectual property is protected to such a degree that it is to the benefit of the public. Once again it shows that something is very wrong. Copyright was invented to give artists and insentive to create. Microsoft earns enough money to justify continuing their work, so there is no reason trying to scrape money where there is none. If Microsoft thinks that piracy costs them so much money that they are losing the insentive to create more, then by al means: quit creating, 'cause you're not helping anyone.
-- Please put this in your sig if you think
Well, indeed Math has changed the last 100 years. For example, some of the most important theorems for primarity (testing if a number is prime-->encryption, RSA, ssl, etc etc etc) came from the XIX and XX century. Just an example.
Make It Secret . Free JavaScript implementation of AES for your browser
What is described in this story sounds to me like a private organization exercising what is essentially police power, which is always disturbing. Is anyone else envisioning all the great potential here for advertisements... Instead of all this peace, love and linux crap IBM and others should be making commercials about the potential of jack-booted thugs forcing an expensive and time-consuming audit down your throat for failing to comply (purely by accident, natch) with complicated and confusing licensing laws.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
It is difficult to recruit native English speaking PhD students. However, I think this has more to do with opportunity costs than laziness. $25,000 stipends and 150,000 starting salaries is a lot of money to most top students in China, for example. But to an articulate MBA from a top US school, it sounds like a waste of 4 or 5 years.
I don't know what it is like in your field, but in Accounting we offer stipends of between $25,000 and $30,000 if you speak English (you have to pass the Test of Spoken English before we can put you in the classroom). On top of that we pay tuition and health insurance. Don't put off getting your PhD because of money without first looking into the financial package that a good school will offer.
The analogies are a little hard here, because MS is also an OS company. But Adobe, for example, provides free viewers for several OS's just to promote their composition product. There is a PDF viewer for X-Window, but I'm not sure if it is provided by Adobe or is from the Open&FSF people. Still, the MS viewers MAY work under WINE, I haven't checked. But developing a new viewer for Linux or *BSD could be problematic. Under some interpretations of the new Millenium Digital Copyright Act (?) this could be considered reverse engineering and actionable, unless MS were to take a kindly view of actions which tend to encourage the use of non-MS OS's. Using Star-Office to read a memo from the School District may be a bit much, though. Ross
These schools have a hard enough time to get M$, a program they already know. You introduce Linux ( which is a great idea) then you have to find somebody to hook everything up, and do the administration on it. Sure some of the kids will know it well but do you want a kid running your schools network? Any how go ahead and give them Linux, but make sure they can use it too.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Helloooooo....Is anybody home?
Because there is NO MONEY. None. My wife established and maintained a 1200 user 200 node network 3 server LAN/WAN on a shoestring. Her annaul budget was well less than $100K including salary costs and licenses. (not hardware). Grant-making institutions will fund hardware, but not administration or licenses.
You can bitch about software piracy; you can bitch about crappy education. Just don't bitch about how much (little!) you pay in taxes at the same time.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Granted If MS cut the schools some slack there would be more money able to be spent in other areas, but with the use of Free Software the money is, aside from the hardware, a non-issue. Microsoft in schools is only aiding MS in becoming even more "the norm" (or monopoly depending on how your semantics guide you). Microsoft is getting free users by being in damn near every classroom in every school that houses computers the children are being added to their roster of soon-to-be-MCSE's.
This is a fight for The OpenSource Community, not for the schools. Schools need to spend their time and money in places that are in dire need for improvement; new and better books, rooms, and other miscellaneous supplies. If the community were to take a more "aggressive" approach to getting the software in the market (this may be more of a fight for ditsributors than individuals, although it is the individuals that make up the community) then more and more people would be more and more familiar with OSS and thus more and more people would probably be using it.
Without sounding like too much of a psuedo-capalist pig, if "alternative" OSes got into the CLASSROOMS the more adults in the coming years would be more comfortable using them. As earlier (read) posts stated, and I quote paraphrased, "It's easier for a child to learn things than it is for an adult stuck in their ways"
There has to be a better way.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
The decision to use Free Software whenever possible instead of proprietary or closed ones (especially from Micro$oft) should be a no-brainer. No matter what the opposition would like you to think, Free Software is a Good Thing, and one that is in the best interest of society.
However, I think it is time to do less whinning about Micro$oft, and instead place more time, talent, and focus on the support, development and advancement of Free alternatives.
Perhaps Open Source supporters can band togther and volunteer their time to help install and educate open-source software (Linux/BSD) for schools? This should go a long way in helping out the schools... Raja
Raja
So I take it when *anything* goes wrong with these Linux Boxes that you propose to have in schools, the /. community or some Open Source/Free Software guy is going to be right there to troubleshoot it?
/. is going to be Mr. Bigshot, drop 10 Linux workstations in an environment where no one will know how to use them, but they will be saved from Microsoft...Are you going to teach classes to the kids/teachers? No. Are you going to be the one to troubleshoot them when something happens? No. Unless you or anyone else can answer "YES" to any of the above, please can this idea of Forcing Linux into the schools, unless the Open Source/Free Software/ /. community is willing to pay out of their own pocket for these educators to come into the schools and do this.
I really believe that this kind of thing is completely assinine. Teachers, at least in my area, don't know how to use anything except Apple IIe's! Even the *remotely* computer literate teachers know OS 9, and even a just a scant bit of Windows. How are you going to teach the teachers to monitor this?
With school budgets dwindling faster than VA Linux's stock price, teachers are being paid less and less. The lucky few who do make a fair amount aren't likely to give back $$ so that a Linux professional can be brought in to teach/admin the computers.
So
Also, just out of curiosity, why are schools in fear of being audited? Schools are a business, should pirating be acceptable for them, and not other businesses? Also FYI there are only 50 WINDOWS total machines in all of my cities schools(40 of them are at the high school). The rest of the computers in town? Macs, Apples, Amigas, and a Huge AS/400 that is Broken.
Claric
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
I think his point is that no one is going to DIE if they don't get to use Microsoft Word.
World of difference.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
I totally agree, in education there are a lot of people developing their own software, choosing an expensive platform because it's *easy* means you have to pay for it as well, no excuses!
Considering the support for writing open source software vs. e.g. visual basic software, open source educational software should have been promoted more and earlier, which means *we* (developers of open source) should have reacted earlier and embrace the educational sector!
What about the flip side of this coin, on which
the above-mentioned students have no inkling that
anything other than Microsoft and Windows even
exists at all?
Or: are you saying that using a Unix machine will
not give the student any marketable skills? I
would be surprised to find a HS graduate with
real knowledge and some school credentials of
Unix not being able to get an entry-level NOC
monkey or Jr. Sys Admin type of job. In fact I
was working as a Jr Sysadmin when I was 15 and
still *IN* high school.
I believe the correct approach is to keep such
proprietary stuff as Microsoft in schools to a
minimum. Not out, but to a minimum. Certainly
there might need to be Windows workstations in
a school lab. But heck, even if *all* the
workstations are Windows, just one monstrous
FreeBSD server for everyone to log into and
run Exceed on their windows desktops -- that's
progress.
Of course, my school wouldn't listen to me when
I suggested the above and offered to implement it
for free. Oh well - their loss.
Which brings us to the real issue: nothing is
going to change until people in charge start
giving a fuck *and* having a clue.
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
Sorry, but I live here in NYC, and if Giuliani
was harassed by Microsoft to the point where the
school board was forced to announce a major
switch...those apologetic helicopters would be
swiftly met with a giant surface-to-air toilet
plunger.
Just because a few of us can read write and do a little math, doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe
OK, M$ is right, insofar as the the schools are violating the terms of the license. But M$ is wrong for such a heavy-handed response.
I think the analogy to the situation of big pharma vs. poor AIDS stricken nations is fairly appropriate.
In both cases, profits are more important than people. Sure, when he needs some good publicity Gates opens the vaults and donates (by his standards) a paltry sum for some cash-strapped group. But I have to wonder how many of the recipients install Linux with their grant?
It is rather self-serving. Bill makes a donation and gets a tax receipt, and the donation is used to purchase more M$ product...
I am having flashbacks to that episode of the Simpsons:
Bill Gates: "I didn't get rich by writing a bunch of cheques"
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
The big problem with this is too often schools "want to use what businesses use", as if the school is nothing but a trade school. Of course this is ridiculous. By the time some first grader gets into the workforce, everyone will be using something wildly different anyway. It's more important for kids to learn how computers work or how to learn about what a computer can do for them, rather than be trained to use a specific application.
Being a high school Advanced Placement Computer Science teacher for six years, I agree with you.
To Microsoft's credit, we did take advantage of a killer deal on Visual Studio 6 Professional Edition for five bucks a seat. That included Interdev, J++, Visual BASIC, Visual C++, and gobs of other apps. The district in Arizona I worked for only would allow us to adopt Microsoft apps.
Had I not gone into industry the next year, I would have installed Mandrake as a dual boot option for just my lab.
Piracy in high school districts is still pretty rampant. In three districts in Phoenix that I worked in, I saw teachers routinely making copies of Micrograde, usually assuming that all educational software comes with unlimited site licences. I would get asked all the time to make copies of Office 97, crossword puzzle software that I personally bought. When I said no, I got ostracized by the rest of the staff.
I remind teachers that Los Angeles district got busted for one licence of Office 95, AutoCAD 12, being copied about 2000 times all over the district. However, it seems to go in one ear and out the other.
However, there's so much damn free stuff out there on the net for teachers, it's more a matter of educationing administrators about what's out there.
Oh by the way, after six years teaching Cisco, and AP C++/Java and a Master's, I got paid a lousy $30,000. now I'm getting double that a year into industry programming in C++. Don't tell me that high school public teachers have tons of cash.
I am writing from a summer school right now where they let us roam the web for about 15 min each day. They use complete Microsoft systems, Win 98 Office 2k, and Microsoft pumped hundreds of dollars out of them for licences for each copy of Office (Yes Frost MS is legal!) Why schools can't go open source, I will never know!!
Does that also mean that owning the schools will give free/Free software only 5% of the market?
Keeping up with software purchases is a nightmare for our schools. It's not just what we buy, it's everything the teachers and kids install too. Using thin-clients with K12LTSP (K12LTSP.org) is a more viable solution. Microsoft does give schools a break when buying software but free is much better! ;-)
My school is getting a Linux box to act as a firewall for the network. It will be the first computer in the school district to have Linux on it. The rest of the servers run Win2k. But I'm going to try and talk the sysadmin into getting a Linux server for the website(I like Apache better than IIS).
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
There were two things I did in high school (which was '84-'88 if you care) that drastically influenced the course of my life. One was gymnastics, which isn't germane to this conversation.
The other was playing around with BSD 2.9 on an aging DEC 11/70. By my senior year the PDP had been replaced by a VAX 11/780 running Ultrix. Early experience with those operating systems (boy, I get nostalgic just seeing a vt100) is IMNSHO the major factor in my current employment (Unix BOF^H^H^Hsysadmin).
I was crushed when -- several years after I graduated -- I went back to LSRHS and saw that the entire computer room had been ripped out and replaced with a cutesy little networked Macintosh lab. Sure, Macs are nice for doing papers and assignments, but the kids using them weren't learning much about computers...
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
I can see what you mean, but I think it's even better to teach the basics of computing at an abstract enough level so students would quickly adapt to whatever system they are plunked in front of after graduation. Teach a kid about the basics of word processing and text manipulation, and they could use anything. Teach them about Word, and they'll just know how to use Word.
In any case, it's monumentally depressing to think of public schools as just junior league Microsoft certification mills.
~jeff
*** I've donated a couple of old PCs (and their respective Win95 licenses) to my kid's school. *** FYI: you can't donate MS OS licenses. If you're talking about OEM licenses, they die a) when a machine is imaged and b) when ownership transfers.
The main reason I won't be getting a doctorate any time soon is that I think a lot of employers will then offer no additional money or refuse to hire me. All for 5 years of my life spent (most liekly) out of industry. I may do it as part of a company sponsored thing (at a research lab) or when i hit the 45 year old 'unhirable' wall.
Reboot macht Frei.
If you dont have a good education how can you make a decent living? If you can't make a decent living how can you prosper physically, mentally and spiritually? You feel less you act like less. Give choice, and many will take it. Those who don't, well that's another story. The problems that poor countries face with stuff like health aid for their citizens are grater than those faced by public school systems,true,but killing the oportunity of kids to get exposure to technology because you want to make a buck no matter what seems a little counter productive; Who will then become MS developers? Give someone a tool to work with and he'll work to better himself, give someone the hope to live and they will take more resposible actions and will try to continue living until the day a cure may be found.
What? A beutiful butterfly you say? And how exactly are you going to turn into a beutiful butterfly then?
What's so unnecessary about paying for kids to have an education? Are you cheap or just an elitist?
That is most certianly an elitist argument. What about the children who's families don't have enough money to pay their own way through the 6th grade? What kind of nation do you think we'd have if those without enough money were left behind to fend for thenselves without a grammar school education? Not only that, but by giving a child an education you can possibly instill upon them a love for language, arts or even math :)
To use your line of reasoning why should you pay the government a proportional amount of your salary to buy weapons to protect the country? Why not just buy your weapons or pave your own patch of road in front of your house?
When I was in 7th grade the voters of my town decided not to raise taxes and to instead make budget cuts to the school system. I ended up (due to seniority) having my old art teacher as my new history teacher, and my home economics teacher became my new science teacher (she had a nervous breakdown within a year). I learned absolutly nothing that year and it still pisses me off that the people of my town couldnt see the value of a good education for all.
I didn't mean to sound harsh, but can you see the pitfalls in such a self centered way of looking at the world?
I reported Microsoft. Project for the day is writing a Perl script that will automatically submit Microsoft as a pirate every, oh...30 seconds?
I am proud of the fact that the only Microsoft software that I have ever paid for was MS-DOS 5.0. And I got that, used, at a discount software reseller.
Microsoft and the BSA can kiss my ass.
Stallman's strategy was to use to copyright law, even though the law was causing him problems.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
It may be a little late to mention it, now, but I do not believe Jack Webb's message could be interpreted as racist. Especially in the context of the Dragnet episode I was thinking of.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Top 6 reasons to have computers in schools:
6)If not for anything else, then to show the kids that there is a world beyond the east and west coasts, north of buffalo and south of texas. Not like what CNN and ABC would have you believe. But that's another rant.
5) Help them keep up to date with the latest happenings with BOTH sides of the story.
4) There's a lot of info and resources out there. Which is free at the moment. (Till AOL-TW take over all content creation)
3) Free music!!
2) Unreal Tournament!! (My cuz's high schools computers are powerful enough to run a quake server and its a public school.)
1) Plus we do need to expose them to slashdot.org
Well maybe my priorities are wrong. but the point is there
Democratic USA - Government of the corporations, by the Corporations, for the corporations.
Computers are not meant to replace teachers, but rather complement them. But we know how TVs have replaced parents in raising kids. So its possible that they will replace them. Computers are necessary just coz it can store information and resources or point to them ( say internet .. well the reliable sites anyways). No human can possibly store all the info in the noggin.
I know I would rather learn from a person than a screen but with teaching becoming an unionized profession, the reluctance of spending more on public education (aka Mike Harris and the Ontario Public Education System), I wouldnt be surprised if computers do replace teachers. However, those computers would have to be intelligent rather than a "Learn Addition in 6 steps wizard"
Democratic USA - Government of the corporations, by the Corporations, for the corporations.
Yes! A company with the cost efficiency of the Pentagon, the leading edge technology of the Rural Electrification Administration, the speed of the United States Postal Service, the customer service of HEW, and the openness of the CIA. Yes, government ownership of private companies sure would improve things!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Worth reading, especially if you're a headteacher or principal. /.-reader on these issues.
If only they knew, and only if they knew what linux actually stands for, how far linux has come, how it perfectly suits their needs, etc...
I reckon it all comes down to the teachers ignorance. If they were properly educated (no, I'm not saying they should at least have a CS degree), they would know why they shouldn't use windows in classrooms. I remember reading a german governmental white paper on this, and why they decided to have linux installed in 500 schools throughout the nation. I forgot the URL, but it basically comes down to the fact the german government shares the toughts of the avarage
another product of public education I see... didnt learn to read either huh?
what part of "grandparents living in southeast Kansas" do you not understand...
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I see reading wasnt one of your strong points :)
as for math... Kids are FAILING addition, subtraction, multiplication and division... THAT hasnt changed... if they cant get that right what makes them think putting a computer on their desk will help them out?
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
BS... Investing in children cost TIME and EFFORT... how much money does it cost to take your child (or your neighbor's) to the park to play some basketball? to talk with them? to share your wisdom? to show that you care?
why is it in the 1930's durring the great depression (when there was NO money around) people were being educated? 99% or the people growing up in that era (including your grandparents) had very little money... yet they arent stupid...
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
-- Just my $.02
Expect to get burned. Did the people in these schools and libraries really think that these grants and giveaways would last forever? The sold out to the Beast and have to pay the price. The following song seems appropriate now. It goes out to all the network admins & guys who create the IT budgets for these institutions, because it's probably how you feel.
Blue Devil
I used to have a nice life
I used to live by the right
But I've strayed from the good side of the Lord
And I flirted with the Devil and he dealt me a card
And he told me that you will never win
And he told me that I was his only friend
I had nothing to go home to
So I sold my soul to the Devil now I'm blue
I never thought it could be this bad
Hurtin' like this Oh, it's killin me bad
And now I've stuck in a life of pain
And I got the Devil takin me away
And he told me that you will never win
And he hold me that I was his only friend
I had nothing to go home to
So I sold my soul to the Devil now I'm blue.
- Shelton Hank Williams
1. Can you use Windows?
- No I can use Liniux BSD OpenBSD UNIX
2. Can you use Word?
- No I can use Star Office
3. Can you use Excel?
- No see above
4. What can you do?
- I can type make install really quickly
and then can go into the source code to fix the compatabilaty problem between this version and the version of the operating system the program was written from.
Oh and I can also program in PhP Perl C C++ Python Fortran
And I can Install and configure a web server, db server and email server.
I can design and maintain a database.
I can run a full security audit on all the installed software and hardware on the companies network
Need I go on
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
In the UK Parents and others can train to become Teaching Assistansts. These are unpaid volantiers who donate their time to help out at their local schools.
/.'s have with Open Source projects and the fact that they can leagally 'Upgrade' the entire schools network for free, we should be accepted with open arms.
;-)
I'm sure that with the vast expertease
Hell we my even be able to start socialising with real humans again
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
If you where in the UK with me I'd happaly pay for your kids education.
That way I'd know that when they become teeagers they woud have a balanced outlook on life and the possabilaty of a well paid job rather than sitting at the end of the street waitng with a baseball bat for your friends and relatives to walk past.
Good education is the cheepist way of reducing crime that I know.
And before any one goes on about well educated crimanels, note that I said reduce not elimanate.
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Sorry, miss read the parent post. You are right
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Sorry you have broken the law. Win95 Licenses are non transferable
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Ok so you don't want to pay taxes and I do.
This means that I have a part share in the road between your house and the shops, where you work, the movieplex etc and you don't.
So when you leave your house I'm going to exercis my right to stop you driving on MY road and BAZOOKA your right wing arse into the next world
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
where the CIA helps out real bad ass dictators to launch a coup against the democratically elected government
This has not happened in the real world. Perhaps you are reading stalinist propaganda?
Methinks you are not too good at reading what the CIA really has admitted to. They have openly admitted toppling the governments in Guatemala and Panama during the height of the cold war, and were very instrumental in Pinochet's coup against Salvador Allende. There are more cases, all of them openly (albiet reluctantly) admitted to by the CIA today. They have always been active to protect USA business interests.
But to come back on point, the whole "kick 'em when they're down" approach is despicable, whether a software agency is suing a cash-strapped school, or a pharmaceutical giant is putting the squeeze on a shaky economy. The method used is the same and is morally wrong.
Period.That is highly unlikely, as the USPS took over a State service from Great Britain. Not only that, but enfocing such a rule would be nigh impossible, and hurt oh so many other US firms.
What might otherwise be possible is the siezure of some or all MS software assets, and thrusting their code into the Public Domain. The company could be left in one piece, but the cash cows would be carcasses. Then US coders would be encouraged by politicians to improve "Public Domain Windows", instead of that foreign Linux stuff.
Or Microsoft could make good on its threat to leave the USA. It would burn a lot of bridges, but greed has always been more important than friendships...
As for Apple? They're concentrating on their hardware. Rather than opening of the system, they're sneaking their hardware into the *NIX camp, and driving hard at the home entertainment market...
And congress is wondering why American schools are behind the rest of the world: lack of goodstandardized tests, too much political correctness, and Microsoft.
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After all the typical school PC hardware costs like ten times the school licenses (licenses to school are _alot_ cheaper than business licenses) of the microsoft software that they install on them.
Excause me, but this is just bullshit all the way.
"People complain day in day out on /. that the cost of music CD's are over priced and that they should sell for less. Software is overpriced!!!! It should be sold at the same cost as a music CD as it is to OEM's"
I'll tell you why...
There are houndreds of developers developing Office. Houndreds more making documentation. It takes several years between each version.
It takes half a year or so for an artist to make a record.
You don't think it is just a little more expensive to pay the people that makes the software?
It isn't microsofts fault that the school doesn't have enough money and it sure isn't their reposibility to save money for the schools.
They are entitled to request money for their products just like anyone else in the world.
Are you going to bitch at Ford as well and request them to give away cars to schools for free?
Outrageous prices?
Microsofts licenses doesn't costs much for school. And how the hell did they afford to pay for the hardware that costs ten times more or so?
I have 2 children at home and I use Linux, they have no more trouble learning Linux than MS software. I use K office a free office that comes with KDE, which is also free with Red Hat Linux. It is all free. So if you are saying that I have to spend Money on MS office because the school wasted my tax money on it, so that my children can do their homework. Than I say that is a crime. It is bad enough that MS uses its monopoly to destroy choice, it is even wors when people think that the whole world needs to bow to them and use their software because all the other stuff is to hard and that's not what " I use at Home." So lets get the schools to use MS (Which they of course have to pay for) than of course everyone who has children in school will have to buy MS software in order to comply with what the government school system has chosen, Much to the delight of the guy who is scared that they might have chosen something scary and different that he may not understand regardless of the cost. If all the libraries and schools use free software than that is the standard that will need to be adopted in the home. Not vice versa. And it will be ok because everyone can afford free software at home.
The biggest name in word processing used to be Word Perfect. Why? Well because it was free for educational institutions, this meant that a whole generation of people came out of school knowing how to use Word Perfect. So when they hit the real world and the boss asked, " What Word Processor should we use. " everyone said Word Perfect, because that's the one I know I learned it in high school and used it in college. Now MS is not giving away its software to the education system. But Linux is free and was built for the purpose of educating students in the Unix OS. It is criminal for a school system to purchase MS products when Linux is out there and available for nothing. Red Hat or another Linux provider should step up to the plate and lobby the government, promise help in migrating the schools to Linux. If all the schools where using Linux this year than all the work places will have it in no time. With in 5 years Linux will be in every workplace in North America.
Red Hat ver 7.1 with KDE, is just as EZ to use as WIN 98. Don't let the MS gang scare us into believing that different means harder and less functional.
And when the MS police come knocking give them all your MS CDs and tell them no thaks I don't need any. :)
That's the penalty to MS for being so SS about it.
Poverty is a choice now.
Because we all know, if you are born poor you can just work hard and get rich.
Oh wait, how can you get a good paying job without an education?
I guess you'll just have to be poor forever.
Should you have kids? Nope, that would just make more poor people.
If no poor people had children then they'd all eventually die and there would be no poor.
Yeah right.
A lack of public education freezes classes (no pun intended) in their places.
The rich will always be rich because they can afford to learn, and the poor will always be poor because they can't.
As a businessman how can you chose to limit your potential workforce by denying the majority of them education?
Thanks for ignoring the actual meat of the message.
A lack of education is bad for the economy.
The American government makes you give them money so that they can protect the rights of everyone, as well as ensure the stability of the nation.
One of the factors in the stability of the nation is education.
A government is useless if it can not maintain itself.
We pay taxes to ensure our rights are kept and to help the nation thrive.
Well, that's the reason for taxation anyway.
You don't buy other people firearms and podiums because it doesn't help maintain the country (unless you're talking about military or politicians, which is iffy anyway).
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
We have copyright law, and contractual agreements. I don't think a private corporation (ie, Microsoft) should have the power to bully anyone else into complying with the law. We have government institutions for that kind of stuff. It makes it worse that they're bullying a PUBLIC sector.
We have government for a reason. Mainly, to protect us. To protect us from our neighbors, private individuals, criminals, and corporations. The government should be handling this, not some vigilante style corporation.
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If the objection is that teachers just don't understand how to use Free Software OS's, then why don't more of us 'enlightened' technical people just become school teachers? For all the complaining that goes on around here about people being ignorant about computers, you'd think there would be more of an investment in trying to overcome the deficiency in our technical education.
It would also be a great covert way for free software to infiltrate the world's youth... just think if more and more places told MS sales reps, "Sorry, it's just not worth it to retrain our empolyees in MS software, because they are already familiar with Linux and X."
Of course, that might mean a cut in your $80,000+/year paycheck... but hey, where are all those homeless ex-dotcommers?
Granted, I'm sure a lot of us geeks (I can't decide whether I am one or not anymore, actually) didn't have such a great time in school and aren't too eager to go back there, but personally I plan to give it a shot.
I dont know of any educational softwares, but if you post the purpose they solve, the opensource community may help to write some if they dont exist.
Count me in.
People, I use Linux, too, and I love it. There's really no need to preach to the choir here about that. But seriously, why do people use MS? Particularly people whom it would seem shouldn't have the money? Well, it was said earlier "application support." This is part of it, for sure. But it's not the whole picture. People use MS because windows is a toy. It's there for your amusement. Just like building blocks or legos...not too hard to use, easy to make work right, and everything you build is kinda ghetto, but hey, at least you get off the ground. Try giving a kid a load of scrap metal and a machine set. Even if it's the most user-friendly machine set in the world, the very fact that the extra functionality is there will confuse and anger them. Sure, you can make X as pretty as you want, and it's user friendly in a way, but every instance of X is different (to a learning mind) and there's not enough conformity to make their experience meaningful. All windows are virtually the same and you don't have to dig down to the kernel to find non-user servicable (and thus customizable) parts. Even if every computer in the school were the same, what about the one at home? At a friend's house? Well, even if they were Linux (which they're probably not) then you wouldn't know anything about them. To a kid, learning a linux box is totally unapplicable at the level they'd be learning. Also, it's cheaper. Yes, believe it or not, people would rather shell out a lot of $$$ one time and have something they're pretty sure will work, rather than have something so complex (and it IS complex to the average Joe, don't kid yourself) that they can be virtually guaranteed that any given person won't be able to use it without help. You'll have to hire one (probably several) highly paid experts just to get the things running, and then again every time you want to change the load on them. Maybe the product is better, maybe the costs are lower long-term, maybe the benefits are there, but who knows and who is willing to risk it? See the discussion on micropayments for a great analysis of why flat-rate is appealing. :)
--adam b.
Apple offers schools discounts. That makes up for their computers being overpriced.
When I went to high school, they decided to put a computer in every classroom. They also put a bunch of computers in the library, one in the grammer classroom, and replaced a lab that was in the technology department. Every student got space on the network's server for his work, which could be accessed from any computer.
Were the computers use? Nah. Occasionally, some students would use the computers to type up a report at the last minute. The computers in the classrooms were never used, and the ones in the library were used for a little research, but mostly the students checked email, chatted on AIM (which they weren't allowed to download), and played games at candystand.com. In the grammar room, the class used the computer once a week to use a program that would help them practice grammar. The students could learn a lot more if they used a textbook for that practice. The only computers that were worth the money were the ones in the technology dept.
My point? Schools don't need many computers. Students abuse them, pulling out CD drives while the computer is off, scribbling pen on the computers, sticking pencils into the floppy drives, and degaussing the screen.
There is also the further stupidity of teaching students how to use MS Works in middle school, and then installing MS Word at the high school.
Did Microsoft get their head public relations person from the KGB or something? It's one thing to bully businesses and city govts, but to start hammering schools? Not real smart.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
In Germany the ct magazin started some years ago an initiave called "Schools to the net" whihc delivers a Linux server set with a really elementary school teacher level frontend to get a net going on Linux. By now they have a pretty good environment together tested in hundreds of schools... Check http://www.heise.de/ct/schan/schan-user.shtml for details. BTW: This is in German but the mentioned mailinglist on that site should find someone speaking English :-).
http://office.microsoft.com/Assistance/9798/viewer scvt.aspx
It wouldn't cost much of anything to train anyone but the tech staff. How many teachers install the OS on their machine now? Working for a school district while I go to school I can say safely that none of them do. All they would need would be for the tech dept. to set up the PC up where one icon is for the net, email, and other applications and they would be fine for the most part.
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Pla
Having a teacher for a parent, i have to put in my two cents on this one. Some schools spend their money in stupid ways, but these institutions in no way represent the average school system in this country. Most schools are grossly underfunded, using outdated texts, and paying their teachers little more than they could be making by working at Burger King. Perhaps if there were some slightly higher benefits to choosing teaching as a career, more caring and dedicated individuals than those you speak of would take up the profession. Its one thing to say that they should do it because they care about the children, but its another choice for prospective teachers alltogether when it seems that they are throwing their ability to adequately provide for their own family away for their devotion to other peoples kids. In short, i dont know much about Minneapolis, but come to Pittsburgh, walk into a city school, take 5 minutes to look at their resources, and then try to say schools have too much money.
My school was similar, yet we all still managed to learn UNIX. If you are going to be a CS major you really should be able to learn technical things on your own - how about a little initiative. Maybe the issue is not with your university or SUN. Please post your name so that I know not to hire you :)
Now a comment that relates to the topic...
Microsoft claims to be involved in the development of this country's future, yet they are hounding schools to become legal on licensing. If they really wanted to help they would sponsor programs in schools where they donated computers or provided academic licensing for school districts.
Or at the very least, some apostrophes, and perhaps a Shift key.
Apparently the moderator was one of the students you talk about. Your troll got modded insightful!
Math has changed tremendously in the past 100 years (although very basic math remains mostly unchanged). English is a constantly evolving language (read something from the turn of the century if you don't think so), HOW many "major events" did we have in the last 100 years? Are you sure you really want kids using 100 year old textbooks?
I do love the use of random quotes, the unattributed sources (a poll even!), and the call back to the "good old days." What a masterful troll, I salute you.
Pbthhhhhhhht!
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Who the hell would report a teacher for putting Office on 5 computers? Does the BSA have a reward system in place for tips or what?
My opinion would be different if there were evidence of some of the bully tactics I've seen MS pull at other places, such that the teachers didn't have a choice but to use Office. But the article never mentioned any of these tactics being used in this case.
If the schoolteachers want to cut the costs, stop using overpriced software like Office.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Microsoft has been found guilty of breaking the law in federal court. These schools are a slam-dunk nolo contendere for breaking copyright law.
Even steven, eh? Take from the public, give back to the public? Sounds great to me...
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Having worked in technology in a Public School District, and now in a Private School. It's not that easy to shift your OS even if it's free in a School District.
Why?
Training at the Administrative level. Most district's admin staff and school administration don't get any time off like teachers do. It would be *very* hard to train them. It's hard enough to get them used to Windows 9x or NT. The shift to KDE or Gnome would be very difficult to pull off and not lose alot of productivity.
Then at the State level, there are files that have both platform and program requirements. The people at the State Education department arn't going to accept files not done on Windows.
Microsoft pushed administration into a corner by cutting deals with the State, and now they know they have the power to dictate terms.
Yep.
Until Linux runs Reader Rabbit and all those other annoying K-3 applications with the annoying beeps and tones...Linux will not have a place in the classroom.
Now I know there are schools using it, but we need to dumb it down some for the K-12s where the technology staff is overworked and underpaid. In my public school job, there were 3 of us to support 1600 computers across 8 locations.
I've noticed with all of these license stories that Microsoft doesn't ask people to remove their software, only pony up the money to become compliant. I wonder if they will accept someone removing their software as compliance, or if there's something more nefarious at work here (i.e. If you've used our software illegally, you have no choice but to pay the licensing fees to correct this situation). I wonder if people realize they have that option at all.
thanks. But sorry, I haven't a clue where to find such a breakdown (other than, "check google")
hawk
>have been most of the Ph.D. students have been Asian or European.
Yep, and they come *here* to get the degrees, while relatively few americans leave to get one . . . hmm, there might be a reason for that . . .
The better graduate programs are primarily (but not entirely) here. On average, the foreign students *are* better than the american students--but this is comparing the graduate student base from the entire US population to the cream of the crop from abroad.
Also, look at the ratios. The U.S. has what, 5% of the world's population? Yet we have far more than 1 in 20 of the graduate students in top programs. At 10%, we're *over*-represented, not under represented
>I
>sometimes think that the only reason USA hasn't become a third world
>country is the amazing number of bright minds they import from the
>rest of the world.
a) It would be impossible for the U.S. to become third world--it's not a wealth/development issue. U.S./Europe/US-sphere is 1st world. Soviet Union and it's sphere is second world. Then there's the third world, not drawn in by either.
b) we're running a hell of a racket, here
>They don't seem to produce many of their own.
>Of course, this is in science and technology only. Maybe USA produce
>the worlds finest doctors and lawyers.
Yes, and the finest physcians, too (who tend to style themselve "Doctor" for having an M.D., a degree which lacks the most fundamental element of a doctoral degree, the contribution to knowledge . .
hawk, a real doctor, not an M.D.
> for it, I doubt it will happen.
I took a 90% pay cut from what I would have made the next year as a lawyer, and it was woth evgery penny . . .
hawk, who's still down 50% as a professor
>for Windows, but I believe the Mac versions of Word and Excel were at 3.
way, way, off.
Word 3 is somewhere around '86; I had it on an office machine in '87. Word 5.1 is late '92 or '93, and excel 4 along with it. These were also the last good products to come out of MS; I bought both of them.
Word for Windows 2.0 was a half- baked port of 5.1.
Then along came Word 6.0, so bad that they had to put 5.1 back on the product list. I kept using old macs to continue using 5.1 until I found lyx . . .
hawk, who owned several macs
> a piece of MS software that is still in wide use after 15 years?
uhh, word, maybe? Perhaps excel? Flight simulator? BASIC? (OK, that's stretching it
Other than Bob, can you name a microsoft product that's gone *out* of use?
Besides, real men use vi.
hawk
>can be done just as easily with Emacs as with Word (and Emacs ha been
>in use much longer than Word has).
Wait a minute, aren't those two names for the same executable? You know, that bloated editor that tries to do absolutely everything and requires 115% of the resources of any shipping computer?
More seriously, the major advantage that Word has over Word Star is footnotes. The tables are usefull, too, in some applications, and the spell checker is better at suggesting alternatives (now; it used to be worse). The rest is pretty myuch eye-candy.
hawk
It irritates me to no end to have Microsoft use their company name and "philanthropy" in the same sentence. Going after an anonymous tip (can we say disgruntled employee?) the BSA and MS are all over a school district that is running $200 million in the hole. So MICROSOFT, being the PHILANTHROPISTS they are, have donated $20,000 to help Philly become compliant. Ok, here's $20,000 so we don't sue you for $1.5-$3 million? Not only are they running $200 million over budget, Philly School District might _not be able to pay_ its 27,000 workforce? If free software isn't implemented soon, or Apple (or SOMEONE) doesn't step up to the plate, Philly is just plain doomed. While copying copyrighted software is admittedly wrong and illegal, it is perfectly clear that Microsoft and philanthropy do NOT belong together. This is nothing new. There are plenty of bigger fish in the sea, but to further cripple a SCHOOL DISTRICT is down right despicable. -mj
You wouldn't care to support a family on $50,000? Do you spend money like water? I have a family, a house, and two cars, with my only debts being on the house, and I managed on $30,000. That also included a major medical disaster for the year. I have friends who get by (with more kids) on much less.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually, as a nation, we are all imports. I think it's amazing how far we've come, considering America started out as just being a mix of people that no other country wanted.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I think the problem is that teachers, by nature, want to share. They understand that information is freely sharable. Therefore, things like "licenses" to use instructions (which is what a program is) is absurd. I don't think they give it a second thought, because giving and sharing is part of who they are.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Not really. It runs some things well, but not a generic out-of-the-box program. It runs best if (a) you installed the program under Windows, and (b) you have the Windows DLLs installed somewhere. It's getting better, but still not there.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually, it's perfectly legal for students to photocopy large sections of books and entire articles for use at home. In this way, multiple copies _are_ being used at once.
Engineering and the Ultimate
1) Consistancy
2) Predictability
3) Simplicity
4) Standardization "
Funny, those are the problems I have with MS stuff.
Maybe it's just computers in general that aren't ready for prime-time.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Either that or the other suggested remedy (M$ opens up and publishes ALL file formats and changes BEFORE the software that runs those changes is put on retail) will be pushed as part of the consent decree. Its the same sort of thing that the DoJ got for IBM back in the 60s...
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You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Easy fix - instead of making them depend on the training leeches (Like the people that teach IIS Administration for $500/day/person), give them an free resource - volunteer your time to come in and teach a group of teachers about something that you know about.
They can probably even find kids in their highschools that can teach the classes, but make the effort volunteer your time - think of the long term effect you'll have - Linux in the schools. No more MS/BSA audits.
Call your local schoolboard and ask how to go about volunteering your time. Do it now, you know you want to!!
If insufficient people complain about Microsoft's insensitive behaviour, it will raise more ABM (Anything But Microsoft) feeling and consequently result in more people using ABM, which in the long term is IMHO a good outcome. Of course, a similar effect resulted if they tried to complain through MSN Messenger recently... (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I've told this story here before, but I'll tell it again.
Simply put, educators don't want Linux any more than the leader of, say, MSNBC does.
Once, a while ago, I volunteered my time and about a half-dozen old 386's. Rather, I should say, I tried to, because no one wanted them. "They need to be Pentium II's", they would say (not even the standard at the time! Most people still had plain-jane P5's!). "They need to run Word. We're teaching job skills here". I tried to say, learning to use a computer is much more than selecting text and printing. No dice. I eventually junked the machines because no one would take them, and spent my now free time doing nothing.
The point is - and I do have one - is that encouraging Free Software is important, sure, but its going to fall on dead ears. People want Word. People know what Word is. People at large are not interested in the ethics of software. Most of them don't want to see MS broken up.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Just wondering.
Not that MS pays taxes anyway, as I understand it, but would having inflated losses due to piracy be a deductable expense?
Also, doesn't microsoft's "philanthropy" foundations give copies of Microsoft to schools (thus extending their monopoly and training a whole new generation of Microsoft-dependent users) and make annoucnements to the media that they have given away "millions" to education (which they can also write off)?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Without simplicity, products are destined for failure. Great concepts are often complex concepts packaged in simple packaging. Why would a teacher unfamiliar with your product choose "K-12LTSP v.1.0" over "Microsoft Windows"? If you don't choose a name that you can build recognition with your products will be simply unrecognizeable (and thus unsold).
Okay, how about Debian Jr. for a name then?
Jay (=
I have a Linux system, so I use pdf2ps and ghostview. They could use the Acrobat Reader or something else if they don't want to install Linux. I could of course use StarOffice, but this seems to work just as well.
You could also use acroread 4.0, or xpdf, or konqueror, or ghostscript. All work great for reading PDF files under GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. There is definitely no shortage of readers for reading PDFs, nor of word processors capable of writing PDFS (staroffice, applix to name just two).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Linux/Open Software in schools is a grand and awesome idea. On paper it looks great, and in a presentation it will make anything else look downright expensive. Except: What IS/IT people they have will fight it tooth an nail as they are usually MS drones, the CS teacher (Who is a MS preacher), some other teacher that knows a little bit about networking, students (and the faculty dont trust them), or volunteers from the professional community which are MS zombies with the letters MCSE tattooed on their brain.
Over the course of one summer, an entire schools IT can be converted to linux, the administrators trained, the teachers trained, and in full swing as if nothing has changed.... But it wont happen.
The volunteer Computer professional will rant and pout like a 3 year old, demanding it be NT/2000 (or worse XP).. The teacher that knows sometinhg will be scared because he has never touched anything but Windows 95/98, and the CS teacher will kick and scream that he cant teach kids on anything but microsoft... Complaining that you cant program or teach without a GUI based lanuage.
until we get someone to mandate the changes to schools it wont happen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Computers are needed in schools, but they aren't the reason that public education is often poor and why the public education system is frequently tottering on bankruptcy.
The big reason that public schools have such problems is that school has ceased to be about education. It's become more and more of a welfare delivery system. Each new welfare program installed in schools under the guise of helping Johnny read needs staff people, administrators, office space and tons of other overhead that should rightfully go towards books, teachers, and facilities. And don't get me started on the massive subsidies provided to school sports, which were once a good use of gym equipment after school that have become almost entities unto themselves.
The reason most school systems started being about welfare delivery is that they realized that if Dick and Jane haven't been eating, they don't learn. What they fail to realize is that bringing everyone up to the same socioecnomic level as the high-achieving middle class white students means solving a LOT of social problems, which takes a lot of resources, and the pool of resources the public is willing to assign to education is limited.
Schools need to stop trying to solve all the socioeconmic problems. It's not to say the socioeconomic problems aren't worth solving, but the education field is the wrong place to solve them. Educating the people first may actually solve more problems in the long run because you're producing people who are capable of integrating more fully into the economy and society.
Math has changed tremendously in the past 100 years (although very basic math remains mostly unchanged).
OK, math has changed. I'm sure the field of mathematics as an academic pursuit has changed, and it probably has had a major impact on science, engineering and fields for whom statistics plays a major role.
But how much of the math that even well-educated people actually know and use in everyday life has changed in the past 100 years? Most educated professionals who aren't in a math-intensive field seldom use much beyond very basic algebra. Have significant new digits in Pi changed much? Are there bold new techniques for solving for X?
Even in the calculus classes I took in college school, much of the "soft" education about the subject involved guys like Newton, Leibniz and other people who were long-dead. We never learned about significant advances in calculus in the past 100 years (although I don't doubt there were at least a few), let alone the past 10 or 20 years.
I'm sure math has changed, but I'm willing to bet that most of the math taught in high school hasn't changed meaningfully in the past 25 years and only trivially in the past 50. Academic math in colleges has probably changed dramatically, but that's largely meaningless for most high school students.
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
...quoted in the article who said, Oh, yeah, we violated Microsoft's copyright, but we're a poor school district, blah blah blah. I'm no libertarian, but there's a difference between setting aside private-property rights for the public good (e.g., Brazil's cheap AIDS drugs) and putting an altruistic spin on one's individual violations of the law (this case).
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
As they start reaching their limits they'll get more deperate. They'll do things like this which, despite bad PR, keeps up the cash inflows. Their new licensing scheme for XP is further evidence that they are desperate to milk every last drop of revenue they can. Also make note of the fact that the release cycles for their products have been getting shorter and providing less significant enhancements. It went from Office 97 to Office 2000 to XP being released in 2001. It went from NT which was released how long ago to Windows 2000 to now, within a year, Windows XP.
Also notice how Microsoft is trying to leverage their control of the desktop to expand into other areas rapidly, trying to keep revenues increasing. X-box to get into the consumer entertainment market. Smart Tags to extend their power back to their media properties.
I just get the sense that Microsoft is a high performance engine that's been redlined for just a little too long. Sure the government will probably settle the anti-trust case but a resultant barrage of private lawsuits is going to at least distract them if not outright hurt them. Add to this slowly growing interest by corporations in using open source software. The odds are stacking against them fast.
Microsoft is desperately flailing around to find ways to keep itself growing. They'll hide their desperation in well developed PR campaigns and certainly the more paranoid amongst open source supporters will make their apparent position seem that much more powerful. But in the end, unless they learn how to survive as a more methodical and slow growing corporation they are going to be in trouble very soon.
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I'd venture that you don't need application software. /Samba/Gimp/Abiword/ MySQL boxes for specific tasks or general hacking. Get the school to donate the use of a couple of analog phone lines for use after hours for dial-in access to email and the kids user space. Get every parent/student/teacher set up as a user. Get the High School computer club to be administrators. Form a Linux club and donate some time to it.
I think what would really get kids jazzed is to see their *own* work, not Carmen Sandiego or Rug Rats or whatever passes for educational software.
Buy a cheap scanner for the school. Get it to work on a Linux box. Set up Apache.
I'm sure kids and parents alike would much rather see scans of crayon drawings and digital photos of the Christmas Pageant than anything from any of the 'educational software' companies.
Give each kid directions on how to log in or FTP in and how to chmod the files in ~/public_html so that they can show off *their* work. Work with them and make it easier
What kind of box would you need? (My webserver is a PII that I *Found in the Trash*.)
Get a couple of boxes donated and set them up as Linux/ Apache
Someone mentioned that their school district holds "Windows Night" once a month. Um, so just hold "Linux Night" once a month. Take a CD Burner and a stack of blank discs and burn copies of Redhat or Debian or Mozilla. Show people how to install them. Encourage them to bring an old PC to set them up on. Provide donuts and coffee
Find out what your school district spends on software licenses - I'm sure the school's budget is public record - Let people know how much of that could be saved. Did they spend $2,000 on licenses for MS Access? Did they know that MySQL is *free* and also runs on Windows and the apps they develop could probably be written as a CGI app using perl or PHP?
Promote your Linux night as a way for parents and teachers and students to learn the basics, whatever you consider that to be, (be it KDE or Gnome and StarOffice or Bash and pine and Pico.)
The way to get Linux into homes and offices is to promote it as a "Second Box" solution. If they have a PC, they probably have a copy of Windows and a license. Don't compete with that - Get Linux on the second PC, the kid's PC, the print server, whatever. That's the benefit of MSBloat - The copy of Office that comes with the box they bought recently will run like a slug on the box from 2 years ago. Linux will make better use of the resources that they probably have. Your office getting rid of some Pentium 133's Grab a couple, set them up with a workable linux configuration and give 'em away to people who are interested.
Most of all, let your kids' teachers know that you want your kids learning Python, not PowerPoint, Ansi C, not Excel macros.
I think that this recent wave of MS/BSA crackdowns is the best thing that could happen. Remind people that a MS Office CD is a lot like a credit card. Use it and it's going to cost you $500 a pop. If you manage to avoid getting caught, you are a thief.
I think licenses should be strictly enforced at schools and businesses. Once you buy the software and install it, the install CD should be locked up in the school's safe - (The liability is just too high.) Does the school leave its credit cards lying around for the convenience of the teachers? No way, that would be madness.
How is this any different?
OK, I should stop ranting...
Cheers,
Jim
MMDC Mobile Media
-- My Weblog.
It is a privelege bestowed by law, for which the constitution explicitly allows but does not grant outright.
I understand where you are coming from, but you worded your post quite badly. If the EULA has been agreed to by the school districts, then Microsoft certainly has the right to enforce those contracts. This is a much different thing than the privilege of copyright.
(whether the EULA counts as a valid contract is another matter)
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I think the whole situation is funny. One monopoly is charging high prices to another :-)
Microsoft has about a 90-95% market share. Public schools have about a 95-98% market share.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
> Top 6 reasons to have computers in schools:
I suspect the real reason we have them is that they make more socially acceptable babysitters than televisions do.
It is not at all obvious (to me) that a computer teaches (say) how to multiply integers any better or more cost effectively than (say) flashcards do.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The reason you see a lot of non US people doing Ph.D's in America is because the division of the subject between different levels is different. You get a broader, less detail undergraduate degree and make up for it with a 5 year Ph.D that includes sitting courses. In the UK (where i'm from) the undergrad degrees take the subject further but are narrower, and then you do a 3 year Ph.D comprising of just (more or less) research.
The upshot of this is that for the best education you can get, a good degree in the UK or somewhere similar, followed by a US style Ph.D seems to be very popular.
-- "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
The anti-trust case has certainly proved otherwise. Both the original court case, and the appeal concluded that MS has a monopoly, and that they abused it.
Thus, my statement is not exactly without merit.
I have often thought U.S. schools don't focus enough on computers. I remember there was one computer lab in the school I taught at briefly in Opelika, Alabama. Students were allowed time there to work on class projects and what not. These were old IBM PS/2 boxen that were so out of date it was pathetic. Not to mention the fact that programs like "Carmen San Diego" and "Oregon Trail" were long considered excellent ways of incorporating computers in the classroom. How wrong could taht be? All that does is use new technology to teach the same thing a book or movie can. Pretty much in the same fashon too!
If school systems are honest about teaching computer use in schoool, teach students how to use tools such as search engines and newsgroups to find information for reports. Use programs like powerpoint (or Star Office/KOffice/whatever Gonme's calling it's office app today) to add multimedia to their reports. Better yet, partner with someone like Macromedia and/or Adobe to use flash annimations on web pages designed through GoLive or Dreamweaver (after learning HTML programming by hand of course). Get copies of "Learning Perl" or some of Laura Lemay's "21 Days" series. Teach kids how computers are used in the world. Teach them why they're useful and how they work. Teaching the standard Microsoft line will not allow students to see how applications work in anything beyond a superficial standpoint (a diagram in a book). It will also more than likely produce more people who expect an AOL-ized or M$-ized version of computing -- simplicity to the point of absurdity. Don't get me wrong, computing for Joe User should be pain free, but wouldn't things be great if Joe User could remember something from high school computer class like, "if your password's not working, check the CAPS Lock key!"?
Microsoft is not necessarily needed for all of this. For programming-based classes (which should be limited to basic web programming (HTML, with intro to JavaScript, DHTML, and possibly XML), Perl and C to cover the basics). Anything from Linux to one fo the BSDs would work fine. Schools could arrange a deal with local vendors to sponsor computer purchases through fund matching programs and what not. Imagine how far universities could go with CS programs if most incoming freshmen already knew all this information.
I know more and more students are learning this stuff on their own these days, but why can't schools look to expand their computer learning beyond learning Office apps and playing outdated and useless geography and history games with little to no interactivity. I realize most people qualified to teach this stuff can make lots more money than a school system can offer, but when you think about it, lots of teachers could make more money doing something else too! It's not about money so much as it's about how passionate someone is about his cause. In this case, I'm asking how passionate people are about teaching school kids about computers and programming rather than how to use one OS and a handful of marginally useful applications.
/Sig/
I work for a very large educational publishers in the US in the education software division (they call it New Media). I can't recommend any software because I honestly don't know of any that runs under any Linux distribution. But I can tell why you will be hard pressed to find any. It's the same in the schools as it is in business. Educational software publishers put out their software for Windows and usually the Mac. The schools buy Windows or Mac because that's what the software requires. The publisher looks at what their customers have and say, "We need to make sure our future software works on Windows and Mac" and the cycle begins again.
Linux is apparently making some in roads, though. A few months ago, my manager came to me asking about supporting Linux. I asked which one. Apparently he didn't understand that there are flavors of Linux. Since then, we've determined that Flash 5 would be advantageous to develop in since we're pretty experienced in Macromedia tools and Flash 5 seems to have wide support, including open source plugins. But I still can't see us doing a CD-ROM distribution for Red Hat, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, etc. It would take forever to QA and the software is typically done as incentive to buy the textbooks, not as way to make money. Even so, we think it might be worth focusing on Red Hat, since it seems to be the most user friendly distribution and K12LTSP is supporting it.
-Jennifer
English, Math, Social Studies change all the time. New ideas, formualas, and ways to teach math are available all the time. English is constantantly evolving. And we're learning more about the past than we every thought we would, this has lead to a re-interpretation of everything. It happens all the time. Part of this change involves actually getting kids exposed to computers and showing the right and wrong ways to use them. Computers are part of the "basics". Things have changed even in Kansas. Failure to realize that in the modern society is a failure of education.
Investing in children costs money, and the money just isn't there.There is a teacher shortage, but that is directly due to teacher salary. There simply is no money for anything. The government would rather give ill concevied tax uts to everyone instead of paying for education. When the government is ready to really, really invest in education, and pay teachers a reasonable wage then, things will begin to change. Till then , we're stuck on the same cycle of not enough money.
I doubt though that American Kids are the DUMBEST in the world. That seems a little drastic. We do score lower on test, but that is because we test everyone and not just those who'd pass the test. We end up with the same or more numbers of phds and master students per capita.
For once, Microsoft is completely right, and the the schools are on the wrong side. Before you tag this message as troll or flamebait, let me explain.
Microsoft sells their product under certain conditions, one of them being, that you may not install them more than once. These conditions are silly, used to harass the user etc., nevertheless they are what one must accept to use the programs.
If a school or teacher wants to use MS-Office, they need to get a legal copy. The facts that schools have no money to buy the licenses, are in a poor neighborhood, don't want to spend the money or perform very important service for the community gives them no right to override those conditions.
Basically, the school has only three ways of resolving the problem:
- Asking Microsoft to donate some licenses or give at least huge rebates and hope they'll get it. This may work where Microsoft sees a benefit, but it also may not work.
- Getting the money to buy full licenses. This shouldn't be a problem in any civilised country that value the education of its youth. Something is really wrong in a country, where schools don't get enough money to do their job.
- Using cheaper or free products. There are great freely usable programs out there for most tasks a teacher will ever need. I really loved the line about there being no replacement for outlook available. As if Microsoft inventend email.
All three ways are reasonable courses to take for the schools and the involved teachers. There is no reason for breaking silly licenses. If they choose to do it anyway and have the bad luck of being caught at it, they get what they deserve and I don't have any sympathy for them.
My mistake. I have nothing against the BSD licenses at all (I use OpenBSD for my mail server).
What I should have said was "free of per-user/per-use/per-seat" fees. I want to be able to install the software on any number of educational systems without additional cost.
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
What really torques me off about the situation is that as soon as the pharmacutical lobby complained, our "liberal" vice-president Gore was threatening to impose sanctions on South Africa if they allowed the manufacture of generic AIDS drugs.
Of course, back when South Africa had apartheid, imposing sacntions would have been "premature" and "counterproductive". Immoral bastards, the lot of them.
- bridgette
You're thinking of college. We need to acknowledge that there are two distinct tracks in HS. Those who will be continuing their education and those who won't. Concepts can be useful to those who are continuing on, but some students NEED to learn skills. And you may know that if someone knows one word processor, they can likely figure out another, but does the hiring authority for an entry level job know this? Maybe not. A lot of folks might shrug off someone who has no MS experience for someone who does.
Everyone needs to learn the concepts. Reading, writing and arithmatic (and critical thinking and problem solving) are important for functioning as an adult in society, regardless of your job/profession.
And among the students who won't go on to college, it is not clear cut that they will be using an expensive office suite at their crappy, low paying jobs. Off the top of my head I've seen telemarketers, data entry folks, random hospital clerical staff, clerical staff at the DMV and other municipal offices, bank tellers and customer service reps all using various proprietary systems. And of course, the construction workers, waitresses, sweater folders, plumbers, assembly line workers and orderlies don't seem to be using any computers at all.
In fact, the only jobs I've seen specifically requiring MS office experience are secritarial positions, but now that the bubble burst, I imagine the HS grads will once again get stiff competition from the people who can't get a better job with their English BA (hey, remeber the 80's).
On the other hand, the HS grad may benefit from knowing how to use free software to set up the $499 computer they got on sale at Best Buy, since they can't afford to buy and upgrade software that cost half as much as thier computer.
- bridgette
This is partially because students/teachers will want the school computers to be behave in a very similar way (if not identically) to their home machines.
How many people have even 10 machines networked together in their homes? How many people have networks with thousands of users in their homes? On a home machine the person sitting in front of a machine being able to install any software they like is a feature. On a machine on any network it's a disaster waiting to happen. Let children use it and you won't have to wait too long for the disater.
This leads to the greater problem that virtually none of the people in k-12 schools, public or private, are capable of handling a unix variant (and even windows in many cases).
The point is they don't have to. On a unix type system the users can just use. The person who administers the system need not be anywhere near they could be anywhere on the Earth's surface (above it.)
Promoting the Free Software agenda should not be done at the expense of others. Schools have a responsibility to give students some real world skills that they can use, not to enlighten or indoctrinate.
If avoiding this is important then best not use proprietary software....
I believe there is room for free software in schools, but certainly not that they should ignore the software that is in 90% of the desktops out there.
But what will be the current software in 5-10 years? In order to even attempt this you need a time machine.
Putting open source software on school PCs isn't going to help them. Bear in mind the kinds of people using these computers aren't going to be Perl gurus, or even web developers.
Not are they going to be Windows Wizards, but that dosn't stop Windows being pushed.
They're going to be office workers, shop clerks etc. They're not exactly going to need to know about daemons and stacks,
But they do need to know about scandisk, registry, etc. Let alone that if a program crashes it is likely to dump registers and stack frame as "more info".
Windows is a system which expects end user administration
but they will need to know Microsoft products, as these will look better on a resume/CV than StarOffice or some other home-cooked tiny suite.
Or it might be as useful as putting "Mafia" down...
children LOVE to learn, tinker, explore... Why would they not learn anything under Linux/BSD/etc?
Rather you they can tinker without simply ending up with a heap of "broken glass".
With school children and Windows its a matter of when rather than if they will break it. Though some of the staff are just as bad.
Instead, it's depriving them of getting to grips with Windows and Office which they will need later on when they apply for jobs.
Of course we know that Microsoft will continue to exist... Also that knowing todays versions of Windows and Office will help much with those in 5-10 years time... What's to say that Microsoft won't go the same way as Digital Research or even Pan Am.
Beyond that, the specifics of what they are taught about how to use MS-Office XP in 9th grade will be obsolete by the time they finish High School or college and the company they work for is using Office XP+2 or XP+4.
Assuming even that Microsoft still exists. The timescale we are talking is a very long time in computers.
The only thing that is going to make them the least bit proficient is going to be an understanding of the basic concepts of a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. And they can get that from free software just as easily, and much more cheaply.
Also it's quite possible to have a real educational version of a free software workdprocessor/spreadsheet/etc. Which has all the bells and whistles taken out. So as not to confuse the student (or more likely the teacher.)
but most of the teachers in elementary schools don't have the first idea how to use Linux, or other non-windows os's.
And they know how to use MS Windows? They'd probably be better off with a unix type system, because then someone else can do the system administration tasks which are beyond them. The fundermental problem with Windows is it's end user administration paradigm. Which whilst useful for home machines is an utter diaster everywhere else.
The applications and operating systems have yet to come to the point where "joe Elementary School Teacher" would be able to use it effectivly, much les instruct others on how to use it.
In which case what they really want is an Acorn A3000 (diskless machine, starts up in seconds, lightweight and simple to use applications), but LTSP might be a suitable subsitute.
Imagine a large school district -- Philadephia, New York, LA -- announced that, due to the cost of licenses of MS products, they were standardizing on Debian (or pick your favorite distribution) with StarOffice, Gimp, and Mozilla for the 15,000 computers in all of their schools and administrative offices. Approximatly, 16 hours later a fleet of helecopters from Redmond would swoop down and drop crates of MS products compliments of the Gates foundation
Not sure if that would really help them. Problem with Windows stuff is that it tends to expect to be installed on every machine individually (with XP making this even worst). Drive imaging software helps, so long as you have lots of similar hardware, but it's difficult to get Windows to work in an "install once, run everywhere". LTSP does this automatically and it's trivial even with "Sun style" workstation setups.
Whilst some business environments may have a situation of issuing a computer to one person school networks simply don't work that way at all. Schools would also much prefer proper site licencing than per machine setups, if they must use "payware" software.
Older teachers may be "computer illiterate", but they would at least be familiar with AOL and probably Word. We changed browsers from IE to Netscape a while ago and you should have heard the uproar.
;).
The uproar from the teachers or the students?
That is just a simple app level change. Linux in the classroom == a very hard fight indeed
Why should it be any harder than changing to Microsoft XP?
That IMHO is the heart of the issue, changing to Linux would be "difficult", but the Microsoft annual model change (which means an awful lot of work for the sysadmin) is ok...
Most of it that I've seen is not quite ready for prime time; in particular, undergraduates who grew up in a Microsoft-saturated market seem to have difficulty with that abstruse notion called "portability".
The other problem is they need to make the software lightweight. i.e written for a 50MHz 16M machine, rather than a 1GHZ 256M machine. Schools cannot afford to be always buying the latest and greatest hardware.
I have boxen that won't run Win95 with Novell Client 32 without thrashing. There is no way Wine would be able to run the software, even though much of it is probably Win3.1 software recompiled.
They will probably work fine with LTSP, even if you have to buy new hardware for the server that is still less than a roomfull of even the most basic new machines.
One of the 'harder' questions (we have people with degrees fail to explain what linked-lists are) is to describe what a DFA is and for what it is used.
A nice tricky question, considering "DFA" is ambiguious in this context. The answer could be "analysis of data flow" or "dosn't work (but sounds better)".
Jonathan Moran
Oink, Oink!!
You would be sorry not to hire me. I have the initiative to learn such things, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten through the CS cirriculum; I would have failed out my first semester. I hold an advantage over CS students that had things clearly explained to them and who had little hassle in making it through the program... people learn from mistakes and struggle, not through breezing by four years of college.
Regardless, posting on Slashdot is a wonderful way for me to see that computer professionals assume that only people who are technically curious about EVERYTHING with computers belong in the industry. I've learned many technical things in college on my own, it's just that I never got around to exploring Solaris as a tool for anything else other than programming my class assignments. And I do know UNIX to an extent, except that I don't know everything relating to UNIX. Solaris isn't a very user-friendly OR publicly available operating system, and the environment in which I had access to it was restrictive. I never said I didn't WANT to learn it or that I never tried. I just never tried as hard to learn it as I tried to learn, for example, Macromedia Flash - that doesn't mean I lack initiative.
The smiley is a nice touch too. It shows that you grin arrogantly at those who aren't the kind of programming GOD you think you are. That's okay, though; please post your name so I know not to apply to any jobs where I might have to deal with your rudeness and egotism.
I'm not saying to mislead them, in fact I agree that it is necessary to try to educate as to what the term "Free Software" means. I just don't think anyone will get past the term free.
In fact I've found that most people lock up if their original assumptions are challenged. These aren't just moral or philosophical assumptions, but even technical ones. I once tried to explain the concept of using the gears on a mountain bike to someone. She had it in her head that you pushed the lever on one side to go faster, and the lever on the other to go slower. No amount of explanation or demonstration could convince her otherwise. It was almost as if I were watching a buggy Operating System encounter a problem and reboot itself.
One of the major problems with using the term "Free Software" in the business worldn is that people don't get past the term free. Here is close to the exact conversation I had once with a business major:
Me: (talking about linux) Free Software means free as in speech, not as in beer. This means that you can use it, copy it, and sell it if you want.
Business Major: Free! You mean nobody makes any money on it?
Me: No, it't talking about freedom, not price. You can make all the money you want on it. You just can't stop others from doing the same.
Business Major: How do they make any money if they have to give it away for free?
An educator will have the same tendency. You can talk, explain, scream, demonstrate, and whatever else you can think of to impart clue, and most will still insist on not understanding. When this happens, I see nothing morally wrong with utilizing that to our ends.
With business, we changed the name to get rid of the problems associated with the term free, why not do the reverse with education?
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
There are far more jobs for high school students and college students that require people who know Word and Excel than there are jobs that require people to know StartOffice or Gnumeric.
If you know StarOffice I bet you can do the job in Word/Excel as well. If you are only able to look into a book with picturea and then click on a similar picture on a toolbar in order to accomplish a task, then you should not use a computer in the first place.
Most teachers in elementary schools haven't a clue how to use windows effectively.
As long as you give them a desktop and a start-menu like object (or even something better), and easy access to word processors, spreadsheets, and maybe a few other programs, and make printing painless, there will be no problems, regardless of OS.
Linux + Gnome/KDE + StarOffice + MSO Converters + Wine could EASILY replace Windows, the trick is getting our foot in the door.
The attempt at helping the teachers to read their documents was misguided. For a start a teacher should know better than installing one copy of office on multiple computers. There's a simple solution by using staroffice, but that's not the point.
My main point is: by installing office on the computers of one school the problem is only solved for that school. For other schools, still lacking versions of office, the problem has become worse: they now get even more frustrating worddocuments. Instead the teachers should turn their frustration on the originators of that damn Worddocuments and tell them to send the documents in different formats. Especially if the documents originate from some public organisation they should get the point over, that not everyone has access to word, to view, let alone edit, their documents.
The way to handle proprietary and restrictive standards is to make the originator of the content aware of the problem and make it his problem, not to go along with it as far as installing unlicensed software. But that only works if more than a hanful of people act that way. By letting themselves be forced to do Microsofts bidding (by installing the software and thus making it their own problem) the teachers only provide a bad example.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
What kind of fucking moron would actually believe that schools pirating windows software is like an epidemic that is wiping out an entire population of people? This is probably the stupidest comparison I've ever heard! From what I hear Microsoft donates thousands of copies of its software to schools anyway, maybe if the schools in question didn't start out by using illegal copies, they could have avoided all this problem. Or, perhaps they could have used one of those free operating systems AND software that are talked about so much. But, comparing AIDS to software piracy is just fucking idiotic!!
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
The bottom line is, no matter how much MS OS's suck, not matter how much they charge or overchage for the software and applications, no matter how much we hate it - until "Ready to Read with Pooh" and about a zillion other education software titles can run on Linux - Windows will own the school systems, and Windows will own the parents. People buy computers for the applications they run, and 99.9% of the useful educational software runs on Windows or Mac, almost none of it runs on *nix.
I can't really see BSD / Linux, etc being used by the general non-CS public in an educational setting. Sure it might be good for educational / managerial utilities (databases, calanders, to-do, etc). Even using it as a simple web-browser in the class-room / library (on slower machines). The problem is that it still doesn't cut the mustard for office apps. I'd venture to say that 99% of students don't have a Linux-running-Office supporting OS environment at home, and administering this would be a nightmare. Most people are going to use MS Word these days, and that's what you'll need sitting somewhere on school-grounds.
It might be possible to reduce the number of Windows machines through the infiltration of Linux, but then you'd have to have UNIX administrators. Sure the acting IS staff (typically a single guy) could learn it, but can a given school justify sending these poor-overworked people to UNIX training when they're only going to provide marginal utility for the school? I discourage schools from out-sourcing such administration to student groups for several reasons.
-Michael
-Michael
Yeah, it sounds like a great marketing strategy, but you don't need to market when you've already got the market cornered. Microsoft doesn't have to worry about informed college graduates influencing their PHB's to buy Microsoft products. It looks like Microsoft is just trying to scrape up every last penny possible.
This whole situation makes me sick! There are many school districts out there that can hardly pull together enough money to buy books, let alone have to worry about software licenses. You would think that Microsoft would be donating the software then writing it off their taxes, which would be a much less draconian way to get their money. Is it all about greed now? I wonder if any schools in Redmond are being targeted?
Linux is certainly easier to use than the Apple II-e and II-gs that our school system used *exclusively* in the 80's and early 90's. Don't give me this shit about how linux is hard to use. You go to school to learn. You might as well learn how to be self-sufficient, and not reliant on $199 software from The Man.
Methinks you didn't use computers as a kid. My school used Icons (from Unisys, remember them?). A less standard interface is hard to imagine, but I seem to have come out fine.
Yeah, I might not want to subject kids to the terror that is emacs, but I would have no problems plunking one in front of a UNIX machine running KDE (I can't speak to Gnome - I don't use it). If schools are willing to use Windows 3.1, they should be willing to use either major desktop environment. Quite frankly, I'd consider KDE far less "hostile".
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
The above-60 crowd is a major negative force for school moneys. They vote down anything that smells like a tax increase, and what do they care, they're not going to benefit from better schools. Their kids HAVE kids, so let the mommies and daddies pay for it, and leave granny's checkbook out of it.
The property owners (that is, real estate like houses and ranches) vote down anything that would raise property taxes, too. Down with urban growth! Down with sprawl! Blah blah.
Are property owners and sextagenarians likely to care about these issues of schools and "free" software? No. Can the rest of us overcome that? Yeah, but don't count on it.
[
I can understand students pirating software individually (I did it plenty of times in college), but having someone at the school district do it is stupid. The guy said he was running AppleWorks, but they were having a problem translating Office docs. Well, I've had no problems opening Office documents in AppleWorks using the included DataViz translators. For more complicated work, it may choke, but in my experience, very few people do complicated Office documents -- how many times do you see someone doing a multiple column, multisectional document with embedding tables and whatnot? And I don't see them doing something like this at a school. So I think he must be rationalizing the fact that he didn't know very much about importing/exporting documents in AppleWorks, and that cost the school district $300,000 in fines.
The big problem with this is too often schools "want to use what businesses use", as if the school is nothing but a trade school. Of course this is ridiculous. By the time some first grader gets into the workforce, everyone will be using something wildly different anyway. It's more important for kids to learn how computers work or how to learn about what a computer can do for them, rather than be trained to use a specific application.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Just look at OS's five years ago compared to today's OS'. Five years ago, we had Windows 95 and Mac OS 7 on school computers. Today we have Windows XP and Mac OS X -- radically different, though most of the basic concepts remained.
Where was MS Office at 5 years ago? I don't recall the version number for Windows, but I believe the Mac versions of Word and Excel were at 3. Completely different from Office XP and Mac Office 2001, though again the basic concepts are there.
No, it's far, far more important that children learn concepts of computing that they will be able to adapt to whatever OS they use. And if they plan on going into an IT field, then it would benefit them to start playing around with a more challenging OS (like Linux) at an earlier age. But for most people, just about any modern platform will do.
You're absolutely right. I was thinking the same thing. IBM did the same thing with mainframes. They provided them to universities at a huge discount and software was free, if I recall correctly. In return, students got free time on IBM mainframes and when they went off to look for jobs, they (and I) were getting jobs writing software for IBM mainframes.
Of course, I've been away from the mainframe world for years now, but it definitely helped IBM. If Microsoft is smart, they'll provide software at greatly reduced prices or even free to educational institutions. It encourages young people to use their software. They should do this for the same reason that they always released the Windows SDK for free. I began programming for the Windows SDK and the fact that it was free, certainly encouraged me to write Windows software.
I'd even be willing to convert or implement a small application as a demo (though not necessarily for free:-)).
Get involved, get your LUG involved.
illegitimii non ingravare
Write it. Its weader wabbit, not wocket science.
illegitimii non ingravare
The point of the article is that schools are doing just that, moving to open source.
Does anyone else see this as an enormous opportunity for advocacy? Get off your tookus and get involved in moving schools onto OSS. You have skills they need. And where is the argument about the difficulty of our chosen tools when Dad comes home from a hard day managing his department's MS determined upgrade schedule and finds out his grade-schooler is using GNU/Linux/BSD et. al.
Who's bitching!?
illegitimii non ingravare
Guys, when was the last time you were in a public school system? Money is tight for all of them. I have never seen a public school with an unlimited budget. Just because the guy is complaining about finances being tight doesn't make any difference for what he did. He could have installed star office because that opens MS Office documents last time I checked and it's free. He didn't "have" to go installing office on a few dozen computers in a school system. Both businesses and the government know better than to install a single copy on multiple computers. It's in the damn license agreement for God's sake. If they want to buy microsoft products, they should follow the contract or use something else. Sure it would be cheaper to use open source, but face it. How many high school teachers have you heard of that use linux on a regular basis? Not too many from what I remember. They should have the teachers learn right along with the students how to use a free OS that way they can re use those older pentium computers instead of throwing them away for p3's or p4's like they are now. It's rediculous that they can't just take an hour out of their lives to learn something new that would save the school a lot of money. I mean come on, Linux isn't that hard to learn especially since they would be learning X instead of the command prompt. Ditch these netware using, public school IT biatches, and get a few students to help out to set up a linux network, that way the software is free and there would be less problems. But as far as exploitation goes, that's a whole other rant
Especially with the latest round of Microsoft software debacles of licensing and bundling.
We need to prevent Microsoft from having its cake and eating it too; charging schools licensing fees and having our school system raising generations of kids (read: future consumers) on Microsoft software, just like Disney and McDonalds are doing.
Free software needs to have the advocacy in education. There needs to be people (something perhaps, like FSF for Education) whose focus is to provide free software and awareness and training for schools and it needs to be at such a scale as to convince educational systems around the country (U.S.) that it is worth investigating into and investing in. They need to know that this "free software thing" isn't going to go away soon and that teaching kids about it will not mean that they cannot function in the workforces of tomorrow.
I think perhaps some of the large Linux houses should (if they didn't already) invest more into programs for educators.
Also, I was under the impression that Windows does come with a programme to produce pdfs. You have to pay for Acrobat Exchange to do that (or use any number of free, but shit, programmes that are available).
I believe that this kind of advocacy will just put people off Linux (Manager type - "No no no, we can't have that in our company, it doesn't even do Word documents or excel documents.)
Being forced to use MS Word makes me pray for death.
Not everyone deserves a 320i
I have boxen that won't run Win95 with Novell Client 32 without thrashing. There is no way Wine would be able to run the software, even though much of it is probably Win3.1 software recompiled.
When confronted with the options of:
- Re-train all new personnel AND pay for the software
- Use Free Software
what will be easier for a company to choose?Given the choice between Dragnet and Henry Thoreau, I know who I trust.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
--The situation is clear: Any OS will teach computer skills; typing, word processing, web based research, email, programming.
--But your average teacher may be deficient in computer skills or "married" to Windows b/c that is all they've ever used (this happens with Macphiles as well.) Subsequently you can not drop *nix boxen in the classroom and expect them to be used.
--"Login?" "Why doesn't escape work?" "This isn't like the on we have at home." "Where's Start?" "I use Internet Explorer." "chown?" "su root?" "Where's the Recycle Bin?" "Network Neighbohood?" "mount - t smbfs -o...?"
--Teachers NEED to feel comfortable. Chances are they are at a disadvantage anyway. A seventh Grade student may already be a l337 h4x0r or at least know enough networking to set up a UT server behind their backs. Teachers probably won't be comfortable using some free *nix box they've never touched before. And let's face it you average Education Major is not going to be real comfortble at University hanging around all the l337 CS students trying to take Linux 101.
--SO the problm starts in the board meeting where the school decides what OS to get... "Well the Dell's COME WITH Windows ME." Sold.
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This
Just because school districts are needy does not justify their violation of licenses. That they have other alternatives to piracy (such as installing GNU/Linux or talking to Microsoft themselves) makes me feel even less pity for them. Hungry people are not justified in robbing the shelves of Safeway, and neither are the teachers of this cash-starved district justified in "sharing" their Microsoft software.
Reader Rabbit for Linux, or whatever is required, sounds like great senior-level projects for college CS students. I'm sure some university would just love the public PR it could generate from it's students "giving back to the community" by creating educational programs of various types. Just an idea.
All the more reason why every school district in the country shouldn't be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Microsoft for their soon-to-be-annualized software subscriptions! That money could be used to - gasp - pay good teachers what they're worth.
Exactly! The article made me want to fucking scream. Phili paid nearly five-million dollars in fines, anti-piracy employees, buying compliant software. If I was a Philadephia taxpayer I'd be pissed.
I'm willing to be that for $5 million, RedHat would be willing to put together a standardized installation CD set that had linux plus KDE (or GNOME), an email program, a browser, StarOffice, the GNU compilers, GIMP, etc. etc. etc.) that would be intuitive to install and would run on a Pentium 133, 32 mb, 20 gb hd. The school district would never have to pay licensing fees again!
Instead some moronic, non-technical, middle-management administrators lack the foresight to escape their current cycle of doom. My sypathy is definitly not with the administration of that school distict (though I do feel sorry for the students and the teachers).
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Does anyone know of a school that actually uses Free Software? I know that back when I was in high school all we used was NT and Mac OS. Why? Because that's what the teachers knew. Even the teachers that tought computer classes only knew Windows. No school district is going to use a system that only the students are capable of using with any skill. Also, no district is going to pay for teachers to go learn computer skills. The vast majority of teachers are not there to know computers. They are there to teach and don't have the time to learn something new. The education about Free Software has to occur while the teachers are still learning...in college. Get the colleges and universities to promote this in their classrooms. Then the districts must attract these new teachers. But because teachers are so underpaid (at least in the US) anyone with any computer skills is probably going to go for a higher paying job. So these school districts need to raise teacher salaries. But they can't because they can't afford it (and buying MS licenses isn't helping). It's a horribly vicious cycle. The solution? RAISE TAXES!!! (got your attention, didn't I?) Then the schools will have more money to attract technology-savvy teachers and you, the Slashdot reader, will have your Free Software in public schools.
---
I think that comparing copying software to robbery committed at sea (piracy) is very tasteless as well. However, the BSA and the huge software companies have made it common usage. When I think of a pirate, I envision a guy with an eyepatch and a parrot on his shoulder, not a teacher who installs MS Office on more than 1 computer. The language has been twisted by these companies to give a bad image to people who copy software. In my mind, calling these people pirates is analogous to calling people who run red lights rapists. If I was a large entity and used this terminology all the time, it would twist the meaning of the word and may fall into common usage, just as piracy has now. I don't think using unlicensed software is the right thing to do, but I am angry at the way the language has been manipulated to make it seem like a worse crime than it is.
Enigma
Enigma
Schools teach two types of computer courses.
One, teaches application use.
"This is the keyboard, this is the mouse. This is how you start Word. This is how you save your document. This is how you print."
the Second, teaches programming.
"This is how you tell the turtle to move forward 20, right 90."
Free software is an acceptable solution to the second problem. It is not an acceptable solution to the first problem.
(Neither is Windows, but many students are made to suffer with it.)
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Heck, it is even a business opportunity, selling things and services to the city.
someone should get cracking.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
most of the teachers in elementary schools don't have the first idea how to use Linux, or other non-windows os's
but it would probably be cheaper to hire a full-time person to maintain the systems and train the teachers than pay the licencing fees - especially after the .NET scam begins...
--------
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
225HP-WB-180/25-14. No one would buy such a hideously named monstrosity
Do you ever think that it is *BECAUSE* we look for pretty-names that we also confuse the real issues that are relevant when chosing products? Maybe if we started paying attention to these issues - and ignoring the payed liars (advertisers/marketers) we may end up better off? The right place to remove this kind of back-ass-wards thinking is in the schools.
Branding is bullshit - the world has enough mindless consumers - why not encourage people to make educated decisions instead of mis-informed ones (bad ones)?
Note that we should call it Free Software when advocating to schools. The idea confusion between free beer and free lunch will help us here where it hurt us in the business world.
Ah ah ah. GNU/Linux is Free (libre and gratis) software. We should make if very clear what Free Software means in the Free Software Foundation sense. It is never 'right' to mislead. You will win more favour by informing and aiding them than by taking advantage of their ignorance and simply advocating it as 'cheap'. Use convincing arguments and less subterfuge - dont trying using marketing/advertising/branding tricks(aka lying) - this kind of decision making is what is responsible for the problem originally.
Students go to school so that they can learn how to get around in their world - and right or wrong, this is a world with jobs requiring Microsoft expertise.
It is wrong - and we should fight tooth and nail to oppose it. Public education is not a training program to gain a skillset in a meaningless job. Public education teaches ideas, ideals, concepts and reasoning. Broad based learning to enlighten people. Life is not about the worthless-corporate-work-world. DO NOT ACCEPT OTHERWISE. And dammit dont try and teach children that.
You are dead right. This happens more often than you think, english words are often propaganda loaded for specific purposes. Communism, Socialism, Terrorism, Pirate, hacker, and many, many, more.. the words themselves are used completely out of context - and in place of their true meaning.
If youve not read some of Noam Chomnsky's works on the media and language - i suggest you do...
That is the most cluefull and lucid comment Ive read at /. in weeks - someone please mod FreeUser up.
First of all, comparing the lack of legal Windows licenses to AIDS in Africa is stupid at best and unbelievably offensive at worst. It's not like people in South Africa are whining because they want GlaxoWellcome anti-AIDS cocktails rather than some Indian version that also works. They have no alternative. Then there is the minor point that nobody is likely to die for lack of Freecell. There are perfectly legal, free alternatives to Windows that work very well. You don't like the alternatives? That is unfortunate, but I cannot think of any other area where you can choose not to play by the rules just because you do not like the readily-available alternative that you can afford.
The fact that this complaint is taken seriously shows that Microsoft has managed to convince an awful lot of people that Windows is a necessity.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I'm not sure where you went to school, but where I did, the teachers didn't know anything about Windows OS's, either. Face it, apart from the sysadmins the school hires (or doesn't, to save money), nobody really knows what's going on with the fancy schmancy computer lab the school bought. With Free/free software, the school can save money on installation and spend it instead on a knowledgeable admin who can double teaching kids how to administrate/program. And *never* have to worry about a Microsoft inquisition.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
I can't understand why certain products have to be discounted for the poor and others not.
What I do beleive is that software is over priced. An MS Office CD should go for the same price of a music CD. The cost of production is the same in regards to the number of copies made. People complain day in day out on /. that the cost of music CD's are over priced and that they should sell for less. Software is overpriced!!!! It should be sold at the same cost as a music CD as it is to OEM's
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
science is a religion
Let's say someone came into your office today...18, fresh out of high school. They list the Word processing program they learned when they took word processing, I'm guessing back around 8th grade for them.
This means the software they learned is 5 years old: a person going for a job would be listing Word 95 and Excel 95.
It's possible they've kept up with the different versions over the years, but the specific brand of software, and even operating system, that a student learns in anything below 10th grade should have minimal to low impact by the time he or she reaches the workforce.
Beware typoes.
Not sure why the reply has been moderated down to -1, but just to comment: I'm thinking more in terms of the poster I replied to, commenting on your average office worker and less about your Sysadmin.
Beware typoes.
I find that mildly disturbing. I'll bet the bastard gets a huge tax write-off for it too.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
"software giant launched an investigation of Philadelphia's entire public school system" As if the MS Office police are on the trail. "My name is Gates ma'am, just doing my job."
By this argument students should not be allowed to use computers or even calculators...they should have only a writing tablet and do all the calculations by hand. In fact if they really want to learn how to be self-sufficient (and I am not sure where it says that's what kids go to school for anyways), we should get rid of all the teachers and just send the students the year's required reading and let them figure it out themselves. And hell, let's forget about students learning Java or Perl or C++, and make students learn assembly language. Hell - make 'em learn machine language. If they really want to be self-sufficient, they should know all the hex opcodes, rights ? IMO, Students go to school so that they can learn how to get around in their world - and right or wrong, this is a world with jobs requiring Microsoft expertise. If the open-source zealots don't like it, they should focus on making the world one where jobs require open-source skills, instead of pushing a (partly, not entirely) irrelevant education on students. Who gives a damn whether a student knows what the root account is, or how to use Emacs, if they likely will never need to use that information once they get out of school ?
Sure, maybe pushing Linux on students now will make the open-source world better years from now, but that is a payoff that will take a while to be harvested. In the meantime, students will be without the requisite MS skills (unless they pay to get it elsewhere), making it harder for them to find work now, and it is unfair to charge the students with those costs.
That's your interpreation of what public education is or should be. It is not everyone's. I think the education system would do its students a huge disservice if the students couldn't even get a crappy entry-level position because they don't know their way around Windows. Your stance would dismiss all sorts of things that get taught in schools now, like Home Economics, Phys Ed, shop, typing, accounting, and more.
Sure. Now imagine just how much they would learn if they tried to do the same thing using, say IIS. They would learn nearly as much. And while some students may well learn a lot about hacking around with Unix (perhaps largely because they would have to do so !), I find it hard to argue that this (by itself) is a good reason to install Linux. Let's face it, most people are NOT going to be sysadmins when they grow up, most people are NOT going to use Emacs at work, most people do NOT care whether or not you learn Perl.
Right or wrong, it is HUGELY important these days that people learn to use MS applications. There are far more jobs for high school students and college students that require people who know Word and Excel than there are jobs that require people to know StartOffice or Gnumeric.
One of the real reasons we are in the pickle we have today with Office having 90+% of the office apps is people made copies... copies for home, copies around the office, etc. MS owns us now, because people really did not look at software and say "how much did I pay? Was it a good value?" All software has a price, though not all of it is cash. Look at the options that fit your budget. In this case, it might have required someone to look at FreeDOS or something like that...
MS made it real easy. Now they want to end it since the only person to hurt is themselves. I just shake my head every time I hear, "but we have to be able to run Office"! No you don't... I _should_ be able to turn in assignments in .rtf format rather than .doc when at school. At the workplace, COME ON PEOPLE - there is nothing wrong with ASCI text in an e-mail, rather than attaching a one page WORD DOC.
Ok, I'm ranting. Stepping away from the keyboard....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Actualy, it is like a Cancer. Or even more, MS Office is a Pac-Man like application. So useless, so dumb...
And, oh! yes!, it's unamerican and endangeres business around the world, by threatening their intellectual property by forcing yo to accept silly virus-like licenses.
What? that all this is not about MS Office? Mmm
For home users they made it very easy to buy one copy of a new version of Windows and then install it on every PC in the house. I remember having to reinstall a version of Windows (95 I think) after a complete reformat of my drive. Even though I only had an "upgrade" copy of the OS (completely legal BTW) it let me install the OS even though it couldn't find any verification that I was entitled to an upgrade.
The result is that Windows and Office spread and became required for doing business.
Now that the monopoly is firmly established Microsoft is doing what monopolies do best, raising the prices above the level that would normally be supported by the market. They are doing it two ways First, by simply raising prices, have you LOOKED at the price of Office 2000? Secondly, by going after all the people who were actually encouraged or forced by Microsoft's monopoly power to steal copies.
The law is very clear on this subject, Microsoft and the BSA appear to have every right to do what they are doing. But, theft is not always morally wrong. If my family were starving I would not hesitate to steal to feed them. On the other hand, I have argued with cashier to get them to take back the extra dollar of change they gave me. It is a gray area of morality. Being poor does not give you the right to steal from the rich. But, being rich does create (in my mind) and obligation to help the poor.
No matter the law or the morality of the situation if Microsoft did not have a monopoly and did not abuse its monopoly power, this situation could not have happened.
StoneWolf
Alternatively, he could have done something intelligent and used the Word 97/200 Viewer.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
a friend of mine recently staffed a middle/high school teacher computer training seminar (using ms-windows, of course), and he said the teachers got VERY excited about emoticons. i submit that most of the teachers in elementary schools don't have the first idea how to use COMPUTERS.
I think it is a disturbing trend of Microsoft and BSA "enforcement", which sounds more and more like a racketeering organization (Mob) than a Neighbourhood Watch group. Pay up the "compliance license" fee or Vinnie will do an "inventory" on you.
I am also puzzled how Microsoft and the BSA can compel such inventory actions. Up until the DMCA copyright violations were resolved in civil court, not a criminal offence. So I don't see how the MS goon-squad can force access to these schools.
Just another day of, "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)" at the Evil Empire?
Hopefully school boards can look at using Free Software/Open Source where they can, easily. For example for servers. Why buy Win2K Server with heaps of CALs which costs big dollars over a Linux or BSD server with Samba, Apache, and Postfix/Exim/Qmail?
They might use JDK/Kaffe, Cygwin GCC, DJGPP for their programming needs rather than VB or the rest of the Microsoft expensive "learning" suite. This might have the side-effort of even more young people getting started in Open Source development.
Serious consideration of StarOffice might be more common within school districts I suspect.
Maybe, at a grade school level, math hasn't changed in 100 years, but mathematics have. New developements happen in cutting-edge mathmatics every year. Sure, you may say, it doesn't matter if the high-end stuff changes, since the school system will teach the same low-end stuff each year. *Wrong* I remember, when I was in High School about 5 years ago, taking IB Calc, the teacher mentioning that they had never even had the option of Calc in high school, and Calculus is as old as Mr. Isaac Newton himself.
Science is changing every year, man discovered the existance of DNA only half a century ago, has been in space for only a little over 3 decades, and is still working on understanding the fundamental nature of the universe.
Economics, and Psycology is still undergoing rapid changes, as people try to understand those fields.
And you are just naive if you believe that the English language hasn't changed in 100 years. Sure, the language hasn't changed *that* much, but the style of writing, the format of books, and the use of applied skills in life (such as writing good emails) has changed.
In history, well, in my lifetime, I've seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe/Soviet Union, the handover of HK to the Chinese, the creation of several countries, war in the former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda, and this nation try twice to impliment star wars. I'm guessing at least one of these events will have some effect on the years to come.
As for having the dumbest kids in the world, what poll is this? I thought the US was ranked somewhere 5-10, and the spread, amoung the higher-ranking countries, wasn't that much. Heck, out of the many countries in the world, that isn't bad. (Oh, yes, they started teaching statistics in schools awhile back, see how useful it is?) So, taking a semi-useful, yet probably at least slightly flawed measure of intelligence, and having our kids score in the top ten, makes me feel pretty good.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for your grandparents. But do you think that one room schoolhouse will work well for your kids? Farmers need a good grasp of mathmatics and a decent grasp of science to survive (a farm is a business, and with animals, plants, disease, fertilizers, pesticides, animal husbandry, and different plant strains, a good farmer needs to know science). It might have been possible 100 years ago to learn some of that from their parents, and the rest of it from school. But this is the modern world, and our kids will need to know how to use computers. The world grew more complicated. 100 years ago Russia still was a backwards monarchy. Nobody cared what they did. China was almost entirely shut off from the world. Now both of them are nuclear powers. What didn't matter a century ago matters today.
I wasn't able to find decent stats, but it appears about %60-%70 of PHD's are US Citizens. That's just a guess based on limited numbers. If anyone has stats that include more than just one state or University, please post.
- Dan I.
- Dan I.
There's something the article didn't mention, may be they don't want to eat lawsuit. I've told this story many times.
BSA, after an audit, threatened to sue our University using illegal copies of MS products(well, it's difficult for an U to keep track of license of them). M$ one day called over, and offered to 'help' them settling the lawsuit if they agreed to sign a deal to purchase certain amount of M$ products for 5 years.
Of course we didn't know the deal at that time. During my study they replaced many of the SUN workstations with NT workstations. Of course, our research was adversely affected. We even have to squeeze money from our tiny research budget to buy Reflection X so as to run X programs on NT.
After we graduated we found out the truth. I wondered, how could they sign such a deal at the expense of our benefit. I did consult a lawyer but he said it's nothing I can do: I've no tangible lost(sort of), I don't know who to sue(definitely no chance to sue M$), and it's strictly business deal because BSA didn't actually sue them for copyright infringement.
Very obvious, BSA is working closely with M$....well it isn't surprising.
The younger the kids, the more annoying these inconsistancies become. And then you turn kids off to computers.
I dunno about that. I'm pretty annoyed by the ridiculous number of inconsistent things that you have to do in Super Mario 69,000 and Legend of Zelda 42 in order to get the Vorpal Sword of Punishing Wrath and Bubbles, yet my 9 year old nephew can do it with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. Kids have far more capacity to learn than those of us who are older and stuck in our ways. Kids are constantly learning about life and the world anyway, so it isn't much of an extra effort for them.
My thinking is that if you teach a kid how to use Gnome and/or KDE in grade school and then teach them how to use the command line in middle and high school, they'll come out of it with a pretty good knowledge of the workings of PCs. And after learning Linux figuring out Windows and MS apps ought to be a snap.
Or stick with the Mac and OSX platform for grade school (pretty point and click) and then when they get older teach them about the BSD system that's sitting under all of it.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
You're making a false connection. I wasn't implying that by teaching the kids how to use the command-line that they would magically have knowledge of the workings of PCs. I was implying that if you started with the simplistic pictures of a GUI, and once that is mastered then move on to the more abstract/less intuitive command-line interfaces, you will have covered the whole of the system pretty well in a graduated manner.
One of the benefits of the command-line interface is that you can easily chain together series of commands or scripts to create bigger scripts and mini-programs to get the system to do exactly what you want. You learn the kinds of commands that the OS uses behind it's pretty GUI. You learn the principle of a directory tree (which most people completely miss if they've only been trained on the GUI interface). If you teach someone how to use a command-lines interface, they will come out of it with a much more complete understanding of the OS than they would if you told them to just point and click because you actually have to learn something about the computer rather than relying on an intuitive user interface.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
What a masterful troll, I salute you.
You forgot to point out that he claims to be living in Kansas, home of the "Let's not teach evolution anymore because it's wrong" State Board of Education. That's how I finally knew it was a troll.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
), and he said the teachers got VERY excited about emoticons. i submit that most of the teachers in elementary schools don't have the first idea how to use COMPUTERS.
You can extend that to include most teachers at most schools regardless of the level of students that they are teaching. There are obvious exceptions in more affluent school districts, but for the majority of them the above is true. Most public schools simply don't have the money to train their staff. Period. I live in Ohio, and here we have a state requirement that in order for a teacher to retain their state teaching certificate/license that they must complete a certain amount of continuing education on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this is generally considered the teacher's responsibility, NOT the school district's (though again some more affluent districts do cover the costs).
There is actually quite a debate going on now in the Ohio Supreme Court that has me somewhat excited about the future of Ohio's education systems. The state legislature is being forced to completely revamp the way that school districts receive funding because the current system (based on property taxes within the district) was ruled unconstitutional. Under the property tax system the discrepancy was mid-boggling. The poorest school district in the state (in the hills of southeastern Ohio) only had an average of $300 to spend per student. The richest school district in the state (an affluent suburb of Cleveland) had $13,000 per student. I don't know how it's going to finally be sorted out as it's still in debate but I think that it is important to note the size of the discrepancy. Most schools just don't have the money to properly train their students, let alone train the teachers.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Right or wrong, it is HUGELY important these days that people learn to use MS applications. There are far more jobs for high school students and college students that require people who know Word and Excel than there are jobs that require people to know StartOffice or Gnumeric.
No it's not. It's not important at all. As many have pointed out, if you understand the concepts behind StarOffice, PerfectOffice, etc, then you can figure out MS-Office with little difficulty whatsoever. Beyond that, the specifics of what they are taught about how to use MS-Office XP in 9th grade will be obsolete by the time they finish High School or college and the company they work for is using Office XP+2 or XP+4. The only thing that is going to make them the least bit proficient is going to be an understanding of the basic concepts of a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. And they can get that from free software just as easily, and much more cheaply.
But here's my other point: most of the people that I've had to work with in the past 8 years or so since I've been out of school have been essentially clueless about how to use even the basic MS-Office or Windows functions. "What do you mean by right-click? I clicked on the right thing!" "You mean you can open Excel without double-clicking on a spreadsheet?" "Drag and drop? What's that?" "I don't go into the Start button because I might mess something up. I only run programs that are already on the screen [she meant desktop]." I used to get stuff like that all the time. Companies in the tech biz tend to be an exception to the above, but in every non-tech company I've worked at the level of computer literacy is as close to zero as could be possible.
Some people may claim that this is because the people I've worked with never had the advantage of working with PCs in school. While this may be true, they are also the same people who have been working with PCs during the course of their jobs for the last 10 years, and they've managed to learn almost nothing.
So with the lack of computer literacy in business in mind, I think that it's more important to a) teach basic concepts and how to learn new ones in schools, and b) let the businesses train new employees on the specifics of doing a mail-merge in Word.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Today, if you don't have at least a degree from a two-year college, you can't get a job that will pay enough to support a family.
Not quite true. I know plenty of people in the tech industry who do not have degrees who make anything from $50,000/year up to $100,000/year. Granted, I wouldn't care to support a family at the lower end of the spectrum (at all actually, but for arguments sake let's say that I'm a family man) but it would certainly be possible if the family weren't too big and one were careful with their money. Their are a lot of lower-middle-class families in the US who manage to get by on less.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
And when it comes to providing a school with a Linux or BSD type box, why not? Not all the teachers have to have it. For the informed student who would rather use the Linux box in the library to type up another English paper on it because everyone else is hogging the Windows machines, why not? Free Software is a labor of love, AppleII was not viable in the classroom cause you still had to purchase it. Linux and StarOffice and all the other free programs are just that FREE! If not that many kids can use it, so what, it didn't cost the school one red cent to get it. And if one extra kid per graduating class in the school has a handle on how to use Linux, then great! That's got to amount to more well versed employees in the future. Especially ones that realize that there are free alternatives to the pricey juggernaut of M$ software.
Why doesn't the Open Source community help those schools out? I'm guessing that if people from the open source community started writing code that made things easy for the educators, that this wouldn't be an issue. How about someone out there introducing them to WINE? How about showing educators how you can setup a network of terminals running UNIX? For all the squaking that the UNIX community does about how MS is the evil empire, you'd think they'd have a convincing alternative by now. Something that is there when you are in grade school would help. Something that you have to learn when you are little would be great. Does Mandrake or Red Hat really advertise in the public school system? Does any UNIX distributor realize the potential of teaching the kids what makes UNIX work? Get them hooked while they are young. It just doesn't seem like the UNIX community really believes in promoting it's cause... There is a whole community out there that would welcome Free software, and they would probably pay to have /. nerds teach them a little bit to get there systems running...
Just out of interest, apart from any other considerations (I agree it's more practical for schools to use free software from a purely economical point of view), but why aren't these schools already in posession of compliant licenses?
Is it suddenly alright for educational establishments to pirate software?
'Flamebait' is right.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
There's a bit in one of Guy Kawasaki's books in which he gave the Redmond school system free copies of AppleWorks, just to get under Microsoft's skin. I wonder if they're still using AppleWorks there?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
I used to work for the government (state). When you buy products you have to have at least three bids, and you have to take the lowest. Because Microsoft is a monopoly even their discounted 'educational' licenses are extravagant and excessive and people believe that MS is their only option (an idea that they try to cultivate) thus circumventing the whole bid thing. Just another way for them to get taxpayers money. And in this case totally bypassing the normal checks and balances that were put in place to avoid these kind of problems.
I remember a time when companies gave away computers to the school system. A good business strategy, as it creates a dependency and a familiarity with their products, thus ensuring a foothold in the future market. Ahh well, I suppose that bill gates has a better grasp on marketing than me. After all, he is worth a tad more than I.
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
While I agree that it would be ideal for k-12 schools to use Free software, I think it's highly unrealistic. First of all, the linux variants would get stiff resistance from the vast majority of students and teachers. This is partially because students/teachers will want the school computers to be behave in a very similar way (if not identically) to their home machines. No one wants to worry about whether or not the latest version of Star Office can decode microsoft's latest word file format. Only the truly enlightened will see it any other way.
This leads to the greater problem that virtually none of the people in k-12 schools, public or private, are capable of handling a unix variant (and even windows in many cases). If you have a computer teacher who can, you're greatly blessed. But I bet they're rare, and in high schools only.
Universities are a different story, obviously. And I bet Microsoft is far more willing to cut them a deal, since those students would be be trained in microsoft tools when they join the workforce, and since most universities have large enough budgets to purchase complete ibm, sun or hp hardware and service contracts.
Until Linux has a user interface as clean as the mac osx interface, it will never be mainstream. Not in the home, and therefore, not in schools.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
It's good to hold schools responsible for copyright violations. Maybe if they begin to see the true cost of what they condemn their students to using, they'll think about using other, more affordable software. I'm not (just) talking about free software, but even some competition in the commercial software market would be nice. Atari, Amiga, Apple, etc., all used to be used in schools because they were a lot cheaper than PCs. But with the hardware being cheap and the software being pirated, Windows just ended up dominating.
What GNU/Linux needs is a way to push their product on schools. If you were to go to your local school (elem, jn high, or high), and ask to talk to their technology expert, you'd be surprised how receptive they are. They're just looking for excitement about technology. If you present linux as a godsend (and it is), they will buy it. If they only hear about linux through newspaper articles, they'll always think it's too complicated for kids. What a shame.
I wonder why a company hasn't sprung up to do just that. By preparing an "education" package, and selling the computers to go with it, you have a very strong business model. It would be easy to make a few graphs showing how free software can be a cost savings. And then you say, "I'm just the person to help you take advantage of it."
I know a few "technology chairs" of local schools. My dad is a teacher. I've seen how a school can be sold on a bunch of high-priced lemons (they paid to get a IBM thinkpad for every teacher. The reason they went with the deal? Because IBM was the only company to contact them!) If hardware vendors can do it, you know that software vendors are too.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
"The message we need to get to them is that intellectual property deserves to be respected."
Well, Jenny, how about we worry about getting some other messages through first. Start with:
"2+2=4"
"C-A-T spells cat".
"Protons have a positive charge, electrons have a negative one".
Maybe after those lessons are learned, and these kids are doing something with their lives other than flipping burgers, maybe then they'll be mentally equipped to start worrying about problems like intellectual property.
*This page intentionally left pointless*
The message we need to get to them is that intellectual property deserves to be respected.
When the educational establishment promotes a message that a significant minority disagrees with, that is indoctrination, not education. Not everyone feels that intellectual property deserves to be respected, like the BSA. The school system ought to teach good citizenship, but it doesn't have to assert that every law and philosophy is just.
I'd rather they send the same message Jack Webb did in Dragnet years ago: "We live in a democracy, a nation of laws. And when you don't like the laws, you don't break the laws. You work within the system to change the laws.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
and, of course, gates can't be the bigger man and take it upon himself to vastly improve the schools by offering the software, and even convince other companies to throw in the hardware for free, even though that will even make him more money in the future. think about it, if he gets all the schools wired into the ms universe for free, he would automatically be the world's greatest philanthropist and he would effectively create whole generations of junkies that will then buy and buy and buy once they can no longer get it for free. he's done this somewhat already, but at the price of his company's image: most people detest ms but have to use it anyway.
sheesh. some people just don't know when they have enough money.
"Why is all this crap here?" -- 4-year-old Brandon
I recall a story on /. about a year ago that mentioned how M$/Bill Gate$ was going to give a whole lot of PC's to schools as a part of BG's grand vision to help all US students... you know... part of his whole "everyone will have a PC by the year xxxx" hype.
Seems the schools that might have been on the receiving end of Gate's benevolent side didn't get to read the bit in the license that says "pay us money... oh, and give over a quart of blood, your house, your car, a packet of skittles, and your first born child to rent our product for the next 20 minutes.
God help us when the .NET scam really starts to take off. What will they ask for then? Souls??? :)
Really? You may be right, I have no numbers, but the places in US I have been most of the Ph.D. students have been Asian or European. I sometimes think that the only reason USA hasn't become a third world country is the amazing number of bright minds they import from the rest of the world. They don't seem to produce many of their own.
You're right about most of the PhD students being foreign and it's been that way since the early 70s. This has happened for a number of reasons. First, PhDs are overproduced. There simply isn't very much demand for them. Many take post-doctoral work because they can't find suitable positions. Most US PhDs seem to be underemployed. Second, a PhD is not necessary to do most technical work. Third, grad students typically don't make much money. So there isn't much incentive to get a PhD other than strong personal desire. An experienced plumber can make more money. Many of the foreign students get PhDs to gain a foothold in America.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
hey, some of us do
The J.D. and M.D. are professional degrees and not "real" doctoral degrees.
The J.D. is the same degree as the L.L.B. (Bachelor of Law), but in the U.S., requires a regular bachelor's degree for entry. There is also an L.L.M., most typically in a tax area, that can come after the J.D./L.L.B.. Finally there is the "real" doctor of laws, the L.L.D. (or J.S.D. [doctor of jursiprudence]), which *very* few people have.
The modern M.D. (As opposed to the classical M.D. of the doctors of the university, which matched the Ph.D., L.L.D., and Doctor of Divinity) was largely concoted in the nineteenth century for the specific purpose of borrowing the respect of the doctors of the university. At the time, getting medical treatment was *much* more likely to harm than help the patient. The A.M.A. deserves a *lot* of credit for this fundamental change in the quality of medical care, but for an M.D. to attepmpt to disparage the Ph.D. with the "I'm a *real* doctor" bit is the height of chutzpah--not only is the Ph.D. the eductation to which the M.D. pretends, but the typical M.D. has never done a scrap of researh to contribute to the knowledge base.
hawk, j.d., ph.d., a real doctor
is to get a 'company' together, owned jointly by players in the open source arena (Red Hat, FSF, so on), with sales and marketing experience to go and run demonstrations at schools.
This is exactly how many places got exposed to MS in the first place. A suit turning up, running a slick presentation, demonstrating how EASY it is to run, and giving a professional image.
After all, it's the exposure and image that gets the beancounters to spend the money.. Or not, in the case of open source.
Once the presentation is made, a small brochure can be given on where to get support for open source, what it's about, how easy it is to use, where to get the free apps that can drive the institution, and so on.
Also, have a team on standby to do a few installs, in case institutions want to 'try before they buy into it'.
This same team to provide basic training on installation to members from institutions (possibly for a small fee to cover the costs of placing someone at a site, possibly hosted by the institution itself). After all, it doesn't take much to teach someone how to install a Mandrake (or Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat etc) distribution from a CD image.This will be a loss maker financially, but, given that you can call around and have talks with many schools in an area in a day, and take one day to get maximum exposure for a demo, the costs can be minimised.
As has been mentioned on posts here, the school system is a good place to raise awareness. And once that awareness is present, and people are used to using particular software, it can then slowly move out into the business arena.
After all, even the more clueless PHBs out there had to have used software at Uni, or somewhere previously (assuming they use it at all). If they KNOW that the Open Source apps work as efficiently for a user (at least) as stuff they pay for.. No prizes for guessing what option they're going to take.
But, the push needs to come in a slick, businesslike package, presented by the kind of people that are well versed in selling a concept
Hopefully, this is something already out there, or soon to come about...
Malk
Although it is most certainly distasteful, it is (under current law) their right to do so.
... another example of how the English language has been manipulated by the use of such terms as "copyright" rather than "copy restriction," which is a more accurate and descriptive term for what the law is designed to accomplish. Very similar to other forms of linguistic manipulation and propaganda, such as calling those who violate the copy restrictions placed on software by law "pirates" or "thieves," in direct opposition to the reality of their actions (nothing is being stolen, merely replicated, and no acts of violence are being committed at sea).
Stictly speaking, it isn't a "right," such as the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to not testify against yourself, etc. It is a privelege bestowed by law, for which the constitution explicitly allows but does not grant outright.
The mistake of calling such priveleges "rights" is a common one and an understandable one
It behooves us to, where possible, refrain from adopting their choice of language, as language does by in large define the parameters of our thoughts and to some degree the limits of what we can think. Certainly in this context it biases the conversation to the self-serving point of view the Copyright Cartels wish to promote and to some degree undermines our ability to discuss the topic with anything even remotely resembling an unbiased or criticial perspective.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And yet, when you got out of HS, somehow you survived having been trained on Apples when the business world wasn't using them. Do you really think it's that much harder for kids today, who are more technically savvy than you or I in HS?
School is supposed to teach concepts, not what menu in Word to use to get the right fancy font. Students can write essays, do math homework, and research papers on any platform. If you can prepare a presentation in StarOffice, you can do it in PowerPoint, and vice versa. Office suite compatibility in schools is the worst reason to stick with Microsoft. And heck, Microsoft software is so easy to use, those kids shouldn't have any problems making the slight adjustment when they reach the world of business, should they? :)
Sure, there's some educational software that only runs on Windows, and in those cases the applications provide a good reason to keep some Windows machines around. But general-purpose productivity applications, which are probably what the kids will use most of the time, are not sufficient reason to remain tied to Microsoft.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
You're thinking of college. We need to acknowledge that there are two distinct tracks in HS. Those who will be continuing their education and those who won't. Concepts can be useful to those who are continuing on, but some students NEED to learn skills. And you may know that if someone knows one word processor, they can likely figure out another, but does the hiring authority for an entry level job know this? Maybe not. A lot of folks might shrug off someone who has no MS experience for someone who does.
What has to be realized is not all students are going into our professions, most won't. Also, not all students have the ability or desire to take concepts and apply them. The latter may be a failing of the educational system, or it may just be a fact of life, but that's certainly another debate. I am just of the mind that we need to provide students who are going to look for jobs right out of school with some skills they can use immediately.
And yet, when you got out of HS, somehow you survived having been trained on Apples when the business world wasn't using them. Do you really think it's that much harder for kids today, who are more technically savvy than you or I in HS?
I had apple ]['s in school. At home I had an 8088 , and later a 286 to play with. (I even had access to a server that allowed me to telnet) Which were machines that the buisiness world was using. I was a rather privlidged person. Most people that I went to school with didn't have these. Schools should allow less privlidged students access to what is being used in the "Real World"tm, because they are more likely to be in the group of people who will not continue their education.
In many countries in Africa around 50% of the population has AIDS and its a horrible epidimic. These governments want to help their people (probably only so those people can stay there, if you don't have any people you don't have a government, but thats another discusion) by providing AIDS medications for them. But the medications are VERY expensive when bought from the people who created these medications so the countried have found suppliers who will supply generic versions of the medication even though its under patent. So these American drugs companies are litterly trying to drag these countries throught the mud with the UN's court system, declariing that they have violated International Patent laws. Anyways the point is there countries are too poor to afford the medicine and are finding it other way. And the US drug companies have no sympathy. This draws many parralles to the situation with MS and schools, though the MS situation is not nearly as serious.
is how Sun pretty much paid to be the exclusive computer vendor to my university - well, not exclusive, but my university was still in bed with them.
The end result is that very little of our computer science work was done outside of Solaris. Perhaps none, even.
I mean, Solaris is a solid OS, but not only do I have no Windows knowledge from college whatsoever, I also don't really know Linux or MacOS or any other operating system... or any other flavors of Unix, pretty much. The CS department was also very inflexible about introducing anything into the cirriculum that would promote variety and not propriety. There was a LUG on campus, but it was strictly extra-cirricular and outside the scope of the CS program. But it was at least something.
It would have been NICE to have some variety thrown in there. It also would have been nice if they actually had a user group or any kind of initiative to TEACH us Solaris. Upon entering the CS program, it was assumed that you knew basic Unix commands. While this may not be too much to ask, they had little in the way of reference guides and decent user assistance. If a professor wanted you to do something, he told you what commands to type. Yes, there were MAN pages, but man pages are sometimes cryptic and not a very useful resource to someone who doesn't know they're even there. I fault the university AND Sun for this - their OS is not user-friendly, but it's not learner-friendly either.
I suppose the worst part was when a professor gave an assignment and left you hanging as a result - through incorrect permissions on class files, typos on command-lines for step-by-step instructions, misplaced binaries, etc. - and the solution was to ask a fellow classmate or computer site operator for assistance and receive many sneers, dirty looks, and belittlement in the process. "OH, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE CHMOD? *GRUNT* " Reading the FAQ was more like going on a search engine and reading endless pages of technical documents to find simple command references, help files, and troubleshooters. On certain projects, this took hours.
There was no use trying to learn to use Solaris as a user OS, either. Every student in the university had an e-mail account on the central servers (4 MB limit to files, limited user time) that served as our work environment for CS. Yes, we got extended user time (but you had to switch groups for it for EVERY CLASS, and professors had a funny habit of not mentioning the group number on the syllabus or in class), but as you can imagine our capabilities on the systems were somewhat limited - except for the glaring security holes, but that's another story. The "where" command was disabled, and few applications were installed or accessible to students. In essence, if you wanted to use Solaris as a user OS, you pretty much had to have your own computer to use for it.
In conclusion, I have little to no programming experience outside of Solaris (I kinda stopped going to the LUG after a while, mostly because I didn't have access to a Linux box), but I don't really know how to use Solaris either. Furthermore, I no longer have access to Solaris either. I'm poor, I can't afford another computer, I don't have enough HD space to dual boot, I've got a lot of cheezy hardware that I don't want to go to waste (webcam, digital speakers, obscure network card, TV tuner), and I'm not involved or interested in any projects at the moment. And unlike the days of MS-DOS, Solaris has little relevance as a desktop OS at the moment - and even if it did, I wouldn't know about it.
This is why I don't like Sun. They don't just want to beat MS, they want to BE MS. They try to force their own brand of uniformity into institutions as well. They suck just like MS does, but in different ways. I'm glad I didn't get the Bachelors of MFC in CS, but what I have is somewhat useless to me at the moment. After four years of college, I still can't write usable programs on my home computer. At least with some diversity in OSes, I could have had more choices to find something that interested me and that I would want to work with even after college. I think that's what we need to focus on for kids today - let them learn different things so they don't get stuck on one thing in the future. Then maybe people won't have to dual-boot in the future just to use proprietary software/hardware when needed.
What the school systems have problems with is the personnel to enforce licensing, the resistance to lock down teacher machines to prevent software installs since they claim they need to install educational software, stuff that comes with texts, etc, etc... Ensuring license compliance is tough in a school, even if the school administration is doing all they can to be legal.
What I find highly disgusting is Microsoft trying to profit from this situation by nailing them to the cross instead of trying to work with them to make them legal at the cost of the licenses.
For example, one program Microsoft has is to sell unlimited per-seat site licensing for their software based on the number of FTE (full-time equivalent) staff. This agreement includes installations on student lab PCs of an unlimited number of copies. It's called the "Campus Agreement" and would be ideal in many of these cases. They should approach the schools and offer that to them with no penalties and not force them to do a costly audit and in real hard-luck cases, offer them grants to help pay for it (and since it's only a paper license, the marginal cost to Microsoft is almost zero...)
This frees up the school from a costly logistical nightmare. Now why the hell can't Microsoft work with the schools instead of trying to make examples out of them?
The other hand is making profit from other schools.
He must have read Machiavelli. Look like an angel in the public eye, act like a devil in reality.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Modern linux distributions are as easy to use as Windows. You can point and click your way to pretty much anything.
I don't think any windows user would have much trouble using one of these distributions.
As a case in point, my 14 year old brother came to visit the other day (we live thousands of miles apart), he had never seen any computer running anything other than Windows. He had no problem whatsoever using my Mandrake 8 machine.
Expert Java EE Consulting
Unfortunately, Microsoft Office is like a virus. If one of the offices you connect to uses it, it means that you have to use itserlf. In that way, Office usage is spreading like a infectious disease.
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Bizar technology?
No, installing linux, recompiling a kernal, and using a command prompt does not in and by itself show how a computer or operating system works.
:) I just live with it. But if I was new to the system, I wouldn't want to use unix. It is way to hostile of an environment. The younger the kids, the more annoying these inconsistancies become. And then you turn kids off to computers.
Typing "/usr/bin/emacs" and clicking "Start -> Programs -> emacs" merely launch emacs. Likewise, clicking an icon in a GUI that represents the file location does the same thing. Just because you got unix does not mean you know how program execution works.
The problem with linux and especially X is:
1) Consistancy
2) Predictability
3) Simplicity
4) Standardization
These can be very fustrating to new users. Heck, it annoys me, and I consider myself experienced enough.
How can Microsoft prosecute schools when they're all still running on Apple IIs?
The version of Basic built into the ROM of all Apple II computers from II Plus to IIGS is copyright Microsoft. "Pay up on Office, or we'll terminate your Applesoft Basic license, and you won't be able to use your IIGS lab."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now's your change to "get back" at them and cause them some pain. Quoting from the article:
So there you have it: the number to call. It might help to actually know there's some unlicensed software on a particular machine or two... but my guess is they'd be glad to have any tip, even a lie, as an excuse to conduct an audit (there will almost certainly be machines with unlicensed software, which means profit for the BSA)
Of course, it's Summer, so to maximize the pain for your school district, you'll probably want to wait until shortly before or right about the time school starts back up. In the end, doing this will only make the environment worse for everyone (except the BSA and maybe Microsoft), but it will put a lot of additional stress on teachers and administrators in the short term.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
When I first read that name I thought you were joking. No wonder why so many Linux companies are failing: lack of connection between the products and their potential customers. Here you go through the entire schpiel of a car salesman, and when it comes to the point of naming the car you blurt out some cryptic code that no one who isn't a car technician would understand. Detroit doesn't name their cars the GMC 225HP-WB-180/25-14. No one would buy such a hideously named monstrosity. And if they did, the owners would decide on a pronouncable name and call it that.
Without simplicity, products are destined for failure. Great concepts are often complex concepts packaged in simple packaging. Why would a teacher unfamiliar with your product choose "K-12LTSP v.1.0" over "Microsoft Windows"? If you don't choose a name that you can build recognition with your products will be simply unrecognizeable (and thus unsold).
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
The file attachment sent to the %user_name has been found to be of a proprietary and closed standard. The computing lab at %school_district maintains an open and commercial-vendor neutral computing infrastructure."The file you have sent is unable to be opened save specific proprietary software(s). Please retransmit your files in some of the following suggested formats:
*.doc - *.rtf
*.xls - *.csv
*.ppt - *.html
Your intended recipient, %user_name, has been notified of this transmission."
Schools have a responsibility to give students some real world skills that they can use not to enlighten or indoctrinate
Schools are meant ot teach conecpts - not as job training. Enlightenment is *EXACTLY* the goal. Indoctrination is another matter altogether, which is a bit to far offtopic - suffice it to say - "Indoctrination" occurs all around you - it is trying to instruct or teach a group of ideas... and when you run the school system, you are indoctrinating.
Teach a person what it means to 'copy a file' on a 'fixed media' is what is necessary - the implementation is trivial. cp or copy or 'cut-paste' is simply 'copying a file' afterall.
Teaching people how to use 'M$ Office XP' is a wrong - teaching them about word processors, spreadsheets and SQL/RDBMS is the *right* thing to teach.
Vocational schools (trade schools) teach job-skills. "General Public" schools should be preperation for University... and the foundations of general knowledge... otherwise the person should be sent to a vocational school.
That's funny, at my school we were always taught to share. If you had something that someone else could use, and you didn't need it, you should give it to someone else. This was never portrayed as stealing at any point during my education..
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Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
And with the growth of the industry stagnant, the Baron has ordered Raban to sqeeze all he can from Arakis, SQUEEZE!
[New slogan = "Through Windows I set my mind in motion."]
I'm less worried about what the move does for school budgets as much as what it will do to kids. "Dad, when I grow up I want to be a robber barron."
The education squeeze is nothing compared to the hurt they're putting on the suits. The new Software Assurance program may increase software operations costs for some businesses as much as 40%.
The deadline delay is supposed to make them look magnanimous: Kinder, Genter Microsoft Delays Buggery of Corporate America
Besides, M$ should be giving the product away.
Digital used to give away just about all their software to colleges via the "Campuswide Software License Grant" program. For a while, it really worked. DEC expanded their market share in higher ed., and students graduated with DEC experience. It wasn't enough to stop the PC trend, and DEC watered down the program in a desperate search for cash. However, it was a great idea, especially as a tax writeoff. The cool part was that they could write off the full value of what the colleges used (not what they bought or would have bought). If they used 3X as much software as before, the whole program became revenue-neutral compared to the old practice of trying to get blood from a stone.
The alternative is the current M$ strategy, which creates a huge opportunity for open source. Considering the escalating per seat cost of M$, the schools would be better off hiring open source consultants to install & train. The only problem is the availability of educational software (unless WINE becomes a reliable concept).
Apple tried the donation method and failed, but you have to consider that the stuff was pricey (for traditional paying customers), and not all that well suited for business (at the time).
M$ could easily follow the DEC/Apple example, and probably get better results than DEC or Apple did. Not only could they do this, it would not be an anti-trust issue because it's already been done by companies that once had commanding market share in the market where they were giving the product away. Besides, since when was there a limit on charitable corporate donations?
Instead, we can watch the latest example of M$ foolishness. It tells us who we are dealing with and what their priorities are.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or tax advisor. This is not legal or financial advice.
My question for the BSA was, "When is the last time your member companies have been audited?"
First they told me that member companies are not audited. Then I asked how they could expect other companies to perform costly audits if the member companies that are trying to enforce thier copyrights are not audited themselves.
Then they told me that there had been audits, but they are not publicized. I asked how the public found out about BSA audits and fines in the past if they weren't public. They claimed that the companies that infringed the copyrights and were fined were the ones making public the results of the audits. So, copyright infringers are tattling on themselves when they get caught?
I guess the best way not to get audited by the BSA would be to become PART of the BSA. Then you can go after companies and schools that don't comply to standards that you don't comply to yourself. How do you spell "hypocrisy"?
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I read an interesting article on this topic at adequacy.org, the controversial discussion site, regarding the education of children.
The article considered the sort of education that children get from unlikely sources, such as games, and the dangerous relations of this to commercial companies and some of the adverse effects.
Seems to me that we should not be overzealous and deny education and educational equipment, nomatter the provider.
That would be taking zealoutry too far.
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I've donated a couple of old PCs (and their respective Win95 licenses) to my kid's school. I've considered installing some Linux boxes (ThinkNICs) to assist but...
When I walked in the class there was a shelf full of (properly purchased -- for the most part) Windows educational software. None of that would run on Linux. Not much point installing a PC that couldn't run any of their existing programs.
I am in the process of gathering as much educational (elementary, middle & high school) software for Linux as possible so I can present them with an alternative.
Ideally GPL, since it will be installed on 8-10 workstations. (That's the "for the most part" part of the Windows software -- they own 1-2 copies of each, not 8-10.)
Does anyone have FIRST HAND experience with educational software for Linux that they could recommend? Not just a site that promotes the stuff, but specific programs that are worthwhile.
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I think comparing a very horrible, deadly disease to software problems is very tasteless.
S.t.e.v.e.
Entirely true. I got into Solaris because Sun dumped about $250K worth of IPC workstations and 21" black-and-white monitors into our CS lab when I was in college.
Strangely, everyone I graduated with also thought Sun gear and their OS was pretty cool, soundly beating the crap out of those MS-DOS boxen we had in our dorm rooms. We laughed when we saw Windows 3.1, which was the "really cool thing because you could run more than one program at once".
Opportunity to any Linux consultant-type geek: Find a school district. Point out the costs of MSFT licencing. Offer, for $20 per box, to install Linux and KOffice.
If you're in high school and are a consultant-type geek, offer to do it for free for your school, then $20 per box to other schools.
"Bring a child up in the way in which he should go, and when he is older, he will not depart from it".
- Proverbs.
I believe he was refering to the practice of large companies applying the same arm-bending tactics to financially-stricken individuals and groups as they do to organizations and individuals that clearly have the capability to pay without severely impacting the other parts of their existence.
If schools have to pay outrageous prices for software that costs next to nothing to reproduce, at the expense of paying for teachers, facilities, books, computers, etc., the kids attending those schools are disadvantaged because it will be difficult to get a good education. AIDS is bad because of the quality of life it bestows on the stricken. A poor education often results in poverty. Either way, a person is reduced to scraping to get by in life, when it doesn't have to happen.
If the means exist to treat both (drugs for aids, better teaching aids in schools), and large, profit-centric companies exacerbate the problem instead of helping, how is this a bad analogy?
science is a religion
but most of the teachers in elementary schools don't have the first idea how to use Linux, or other non-windows os's. The applications and operating systems have yet to come to the point where "joe Elementary School Teacher" would be able to use it effectivly, much les instruct others on how to use it. Please do not flame me, all you computer literate elmeantery school people, you KNOW that most of your collueges are apart of the AOL crowd...
How about another even more outrageous reflexive relationship? If the BSA is successful at international enforcement of U.S.-based licenses, they will be able to extract rather large amounts of capital from rather poor countries. The trade balance will swing in favor of the U.S. and result in a stronger US$ (currency strength always follows the balance of trade). A stronger US$ in turn requires these countries to pay out even more for software licenses and swing the trade balance even further in favor of US commercial software publishers.
Soros's reflexivity theory explains boom and bust market cycles. It also explains why booms build slowly, reach a frenzied climax, and then bust violently (like the dot-comedy). Usually, some new factor (a disruptive technology) enters the picture and reverses the direction of the circle, changing beneficiaries into victims and vice-versa. It's no wonder Microsoft abhors free software alternatives. There are many such vicious circles in the software industry that are fueled by the current commercial software model. Microsoft's entire business model depends on these circles remaining intact. And as you know, free software is the only realistic way that these circles can be reversed.
Celebrating the release of version 1.0 this last July, 4th. let me impersonate a car-dealer:
Do you want a computer-lab in your school?
Do you need 100% uptime?
Do you want to have a maintenance-free environment?
Do you want to teach, not re-install Windows?
... but you do not want to spend $20,000 and need crash-less computers?
Well, we have a solution. The K-12LTSP v.1.0 project
For about $6,000 (less if you already have "old" computers), you can set-up a lab with e-mail, browsers, office suites, image programs...
On Linux, of course.
Newsforge article
K12LTSP home page
Work with Legacy equipment
... and a " girl magnet " as stated on their site:
Salut and education,
This is their official reason for violating the license. I've had the same problem (management droids send MS attachments), but my solution is legal and working: When I get an e-mail MS attachment, I reply near-instantly:
Sorry, I could not open the file you sent me. Got an error message 'unknown file format' or something like that instead. Could you re-send it, and please use the pdf format this time, it seems to work better on my system.
Thanks.
Most managers are not computer literate, and sometimes this would even be a plausible reason (corrupted file etc.) So, MS Word gets the blame.
Most of the managers send then a pdf. Sometimes I've had to show them how to make this. (Repeat after me: Save-as-pdf) After a few mailings like this, some guys have actually started sending pdf attachments instead of 'corrupted' MS-Word docs.
I have a Linux system, so I use pdf2ps and ghostview. They could use the Acrobat Reader or something else if they don't want to install Linux. I could of course use StarOffice, but this seems to work just as well.
A good reference for schools to use in this area is SEUL.
> We end up with the same or more numbers of phds
> and master students per capita.
Really? You may be right, I have no numbers, but the places in US I have been most of the Ph.D. students have been Asian or European. I sometimes think that the only reason USA hasn't become a third world country is the amazing number of bright minds they import from the rest of the world. They don't seem to produce many of their own.
Of course, this is in science and technology only. Maybe USA produce the worlds finest doctors and lawyers.
Although it is most certainly distasteful, it is (under current law) their right to do so.
I'm not sure it is in their best interest though. It may seem so right now, because of their monopoly-situation, that trying to maximise short-term profit using this kind of strategy is wise.
I believe it is just this sort of thinking that may eventually lead to their downfall.
If schools get sick enough of forced-upgrading, high prices, anti-piracy-schemes etc.. they will switch because of their low budget..
And since they may very well help influence thousands of kids each, I think Microsoft should continue to be gentle to them (which my understanding is that they've mostly been so far).
Come on people. Why bitch about this? Instead encourage schools to use Open Source. I can't believe the lack of thought I've seen on these message boards.
Remember that one of the major attributes of all educators in the public education system is a heavy concern for money. You'd have it too if you were making 1/3 of most other people with a similar level of education, and had to hear about how the budget didn't allow for this or that necessary item.
Just what do you think the most effective way to advocate Free Software to educatiors is? Note that we should call it Free Software when advocating to schools. The idea confusion between free beer and free lunch will help us here where it hurt us in the business world.
All we have to do is point out to horribly cash strapped schools that not only can they get this great software for little or no money, but they can copy it to their heart's content and put it on as many computers as they want.
There will be some problems since educators often tend to be technophobic as well, but simply pointing out such incidents in the mainstream press will go a long way to make them consider a Free alternative.
Why bitch about this? Why not just encourage Free Software? Because bitching about this IS going to be the most effective way we can encourage the use of Free Software in the education system. Sure it's scare tactics, and smacks a little of FUD, but WE aren't making this up. As far as I'm concerned Microsoft dug their own grave here, it's just up to us to take advantage of it.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
to bitch.. open/free software the way for schools to go... this would foster a generation of people who are knowledgable in open/free appliactions.
Take away Microsoft's demand at this level and this will most likely continue through the student's lives.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Now, Microsoft is irritating the people that educate young minds. They are very clearly handing the very places where people are first exposed to computers a darn good reason for jumping on the Open Source / Free Software bandwagon. Honestly, somebody with some financial resources should contact these schools and offer to help them transition to Free Software that will prevent them from ever being hassled over licenses again.
After reading all of these latest releases about Microsoft bullying people, I can't help but think that they are either incredibly stupid (not likely), or they have an ace up their sleeve that nobody knows about yet. All of this sheds light on an experience a company I used to work at had. A few years ago, Microsoft did a license audit at the site (a hospital, BTW), and mysteriously discovered that they weren't in compliance. Now, I wondered how that could possibly be true, as we had more licenses than were being used. Anyway, under the disguise of benevolence, Microsoft agreed to forget the penalities from being "underlicensed," as long as the institution agreed to purchase an "Enterprise License." So, many many budget dollars were redirected to purchase the Enterprise License so that the institution wouldn't get sued. Quite a few high profile projects had to be scaled back or dropped altogether. I wonder what effect that might have had on patient outcomes....
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?