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UK Schools Warned Off Microsoft Deal
rs232 sends in a BBC piece on the UK computer agency Becta advising schools against signing up for a Microsoft educational license because of alleged anti-competitive practices. "The problem was that Microsoft required schools to have licenses for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else." We have discussed Becta's role in British education here several times as they have acted as a watchdog warning of perceived Microsoft excesses.
I am a network manager in a UK school. So I do have a little knowledge on this subject. If anyone wishes to read up on exactly what a 'Schools Agreement' license entails they can do so here and/or here. If you want to get a feel for how much this scheme costs a school have a look at this thread or this one on EduGeek.
One student at the high school I was administering discovered that even with our more prohibitive settings (many/most of those alternatives were disabled) he could simply create a shortcut to C: on a floppy disk and he was home free.
Sure, I was pissed at him, but at the same time I was impressed with the elegant simplicity of it all.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
I wonder if Ubuntu will replace Microsoft on school computers.
I just saw that Tesco UK is selling Ubuntu PCs as well! This is a first in England.
For those that don't live here Microsoft is the computer. For about 10 years I have never heard of anyone else using Linux in the UK (I mean walking around or in real life. Not over the internet), then this year suddenly walking around the university everyone's laptops have Ubuntu or Fedora or SUSE. Even my university has SUSE in one of their labs. Now that is a first!
There was a piece from 2005 in which it talks about the government seriously thinking of switching all its software to open source.
At work I totally blew up the security one of our tech guys work, using Internet Explorer's Help Menu. Click Help > About > System Info > Open > Right Click > Explore. If that's disabled, then it's off to View > Privacy Policy > Tell me about cookies > Tools > Internet Options > (Temporary Internet Files) Settings > View Files. Even if all the icons are gone, get Task Manager open, click Help > About > End User License Agreement (would you believe it opens NOTEPAD?!?) And to top it all off, MS Word is officially the biggest vulnerability in that type of security (can you get to the VB Editor in that? "Shell cmd.exe" is the one line that demolishes all security).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Myself and another student actually ran the Windows network at my high school. We administered the network and created the majority of the security settings on it. We were able to do it much more efficiently than the the staff, as the other students had no idea we were in charge. Other students would share their little tips and tricks with us, and we would promptly make adjustments to stop them from happening. Surprisingly, the student body never caught on (but rather thought our faculty to be particularly adept) over the 3 years my friends and I held the position. Last I heard, our basic setup was still in place, 6 years after leaving. Apparently a "spy" produced system is superior to the best they could concoct.
Just another ignorant American.