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Britain Advises Against Vista, Office 2007 for Schools
An anonymous reader writes "The British government's educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 'are significant and the benefits remain unclear.' Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."
The head of IT at my sons school (here in the UK) recently told me of their irritation at being told they had to use Microsoft only software for their network and teaching. The result was a network that was a nightmare to keep secure (you try and keeping hundreds of enthusiastic kids from finding ways round microsoft security), and poor quality teaching tools. Had he had his way there would be a linux sever running the network and email, XP classroom machines (not linux just yet), openoffice, and python in the programming classes.
As it is they have windows server, Exchange, MSoffice, Dreamweaver (after a successful revolt against frontpage), and VB.
I've started teaching my kid myself....
Thor, the very first US ballistic missile system, was deployed between 1959 and 1963 from bases in the UK. These were the days before intercontinental ballistic missiles. The missiles were controlled by the UK but the warheads were controlled by the US. A dual-key system was in place that required both UK and US authorisation to launch.
However, the situation has changed since the 1960s. The UK still leans heavily on the US for its nuclear capability, and today it uses Trident missiles which are shared with the USA in a common pool. However, the warheads on British subs are designed and built in the UK, and the UK has the ability to use its nuclear weapons completely independently of the US. The USA has not always been completely comfortable with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Trident_system http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E2054A40-7833-48EF-991C-7F48E05B2C9D/0/nuclear190705.pdf