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Australian State May Give Students Linux Laptops
Whiteox writes "The Australian Prime Minister's plan to equip high schools with 'one laptop per child' may go open source. Kevin Rudd's $56 million digital revolution will include 'laptops [that will] run on an open source operating system with a suite of open source applications like those packaged under Edubuntu. This would include Open Office for productivity software, Gimp for picture editing and the Firefox internet browser.' So far this has been considered for New South Wales and I think other states may follow."
That strategy worked great for Apple back in the late 1970s / early 1980s. Get Apples in front of schoolchildren and by the time the IBM PC came along it was too late. Kids were already in love with the Apples, and many "stuck with what they knew." It was the most effective long term marketing move Apple ever could have made, and I doubt they even realized it at the time.
Times have changed, though, and the ability to monopolize the hearts and minds of kids with the only computer they're exposed to is long gone. Many of the kids will already have PCs at home, many will have (or at least have played) X-Boxes, PS3s, Wiis and a host of other devices, including smart phones. I don't think this can have the same social effect that Apple had on us 30 years ago, because the environment is now so different. The novelty won't be there.
John
NSW secondary school students could be issued with $56 million worth of Linux-based laptops as part of Kevin Rudd's digital education revolution.
The real reason behind this is that the federal government would supply the *hardware*, but that the schools would have to pay for the *software licenses* and the *support*. At least the price for software licenses would be greatly reduced now.
(Despite being a FreeBSD user,) I consider this is a good step forward: Give the children wooden blocks to play with, and they will build bridges with them.
bash$
What's that for, punishment? Poor guys.
...This is going to make me even more employable :).
The biggest opposition to Rudd's "computers in schools" plan has been that he's funding the hardware/software but no the support or training. No doubt this will give more weight to their argument.
To bad they won't be able to surf websites such as Slashdot, Fark, or whatever else might be considered offensive to the government.
http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/08/10/13/No-opt-out-of-filtered-Internet.html?source=gs
Sorry for going off-topic.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Microsoft will be forthcoming with massive discounts 5 minutes before the deal with RedHat is signed and our government will renege on any promises they made.
It's the traditional "what do you mean we don't get a discount? Well, ya know, Open Source is getting more and more acceptable..."
Unfortunately, the moral imperative for schools to use exclusively Free Software is not even a consideration here.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The NSW State Govt can't organise a chook raffle let alone something such as equiping kids with open source laptops. It has bigger fish to fry.
Besides, the topic is slightly wrong. Rudd isn't part of an Australian State, his part of the Federal Government. Two different beasts. The State won't 'give', it will 'receive'.
Rudd wants to give lumps of cash to a number of States based on need, spending not just on technology, but more importantly on infrastructure, health and education.
That's a good thing. The reign of Scrooge McHoward left us economically poor and the treasury bulging with cash. We are not the British Empire.
How we know is more important than what we know.
better than 10 years of Mr Sheen, I mean Johnny Howard. (It was his wife pulling his puppet strings anyway).
It's easy to give something that isn't yours. Now wouldn't it be better if students buy their own laptops and choose which particular model or OS they like. I am not opposed to schools requiring students to have a laptop, in the same way they are required to have certain books, and perhaps offering assistance to those who can't afford it. But giving each child, even those who already have it, and those who are not interested in it and will simply sell it on ebay, a government approved computer seems like an idea that sounds good as a soundbite but terrible waste of taxpayer money in practice.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
During his campaign to be elected, he announced this plan, but never really elaborated on it. I took it with a barge-load of salt, as you should anything a politician said, but I still sent him (or rather his office) an email asking him if he was considering open source, and gave rough figures per student of the licensing associated with giving every student a copy of Windows, MS Office, Photoshop; for music students, something like Reason. My figures were retail price ones, as I said in the email, since I'm not aware of the bulk licensing prices companies offer for education, but even a 90% discount doesn't beat free. If he'd spent just $100 on software licensing on each student, it would quickly become a ridiculously large figure to throw around. The Labor government is a little wary of overspending, I would think, since the previous Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, plunged the country into recession. In his words "a recession we had to have".
Anyway, I doubt he read my email, or any of the other emails Australian open source fans could have sent. It's pretty much common sense, and if he has a brain, he's probably asked his IT department (not his IT minister :P).
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
The Aus economy would be in better hands if we threw the treasury at a 13yo girl in the mall
At least it would help Hot Topic through these rough times. At the very least the economy would look trendy.
Why? Because Microsoft will step in and provide a "really good deal" in exchange for the Government dropping Linux and using MS software instead.
My theory is that the Government probably would prefer Windows and relevant MS software on these laptops, however they first start by suggesting they MAY put Linux and OSS, in the hopes that Microsoft gives them a deal. Of course, if what MS offers isn't good enough, Linux is the fallback alternative, but I'm still sure that Linux is not the first choice, but rather a fail-safe and bargaining chip. I say this as an Aussie too.
Umm.. no. See, you're a sucker and you believe that a national debt is a bad thing. It's not. A developing nation (and that's what we are) should be in debt. We should be growing and credit is how you do that at a viable pace. We're falling behind because the Liberals think we're just fine the way we are now. It's the same with the aussie dollar. The Liberals want it high so the surplus has buying power on the international market.. Labor wants it low because exports and foreign investment are the only way a developing nation can grow its economy.
The collective delusion of Australians that we're a first world country is the problem here.
How we know is more important than what we know.
the mentality that everyone should be in debt is exactly what has caused the current credit crunch and world economic crisis. and what happens when your debt is higher than your GDP? this is happening to Iceland and they are now f***ed because they will never pay it off.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Purely because:
A. It's cheaper
B. They think nothing runs on Linux thus they can easily stop kids from playing games, chatting etc.
It's nice they're using linux but if my assumptions are correct then that sort of mentality doesn't help in the long run.
There's responsible lending and there's irresponsible lending.. That is not the issue. The Liberal government doesn't see a need for lending. They don't see a need for development. As far as they're concerned, we're already developed.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You know, this is slightly OT, but I think it applies to the bigger picture. My Mom has been hyping prevention.com lately as a nice way to learn about health-related stuff. I just received an email from her today regarding what happened...
In short, prevention.com got hacked somehow, and she got a "nasty rogue-spyware". She spent quite a bit of time cleaning it up. She even warned me not to go there in her email. I wrote a nice reply, stating in effect, thanks for the warning, but we've switched to Linux.
Now I can just imagine how this would play out in a school running a bunch of Windows machines. One teacher hears from another than prevention.com is a good place for health information; teacher recommends it in class, and next thing you know the whole school is owned.
So who is going to clean up the mess? Will it be:
Windows: who is going to clean up the mess?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Err, I think you mean "borrowing".
All for computer education in schools (of course, I make my living programming)... BUT.
A laptop per child? For what really? It's just not needed. Have excellent rooms of computers where the kids can do work etc. in a supervised environment in and out of classes (heck, have one room that has no scheduled classes in it, just for kids to do extra curricular stuff).
But give all kids a laptop? A real waste I think, a real waste.
"Australian State Threatens To Give Students Linux Laptops to Force Microsoft to Lower Prices"
There, fixed that for you.
When everything is free to obtain and upgrade, students learn it all in school, and interfaces don't arbitrarily change every 4 or 5 years, the whole system collapses. There won't even be any big companies to bail out, either.
Thought it would be relevant to the thread: in Portugal (Western EU,population 10 million), the government is distributing 500 000 computers to primary school students.
The nice thing is that Venezuela and Brazil, it seems, across the Atlantic, are ordering 1 million of these, so it's becoming a really good deal.
The notebook has an Intel processor and runs both Windows XP and a Portuguese distribution of Linux. It will cost 50 euros, although I believe it will be free to students from lower income families.
Most of it will be assembled at JP Sa Couto.
More details, in English here and in Portuguese with video here.
Too bad the same government is also giving us a Chinese style censored Internet connection to 'protect the children'.
It has also been recently revealed that the connection can no longer be opted out from, you can only switch from one that blocks all 'child unfriendly' sites to one that only blocks 'illegal material'. No clear definition on what is considered 'illegal' (does the piratebay count?).
They also lied and claimed that Internet speeds would not be slowed dispute their reports claiming otherwise.
I just hope its a basic DNS block and I can switch to OpenDNS.
Anyway I voted green, mainly because both other governments sucked to much.
cat
Support doesn't come cheap, in Victoria schools share one government provided technician amongst a local cluster of schools and the hours assigned per week are assessed on how many students are in the school. This can be about 10 hours per peek per school amongst 3 to 4 schools per technician. Some area's especially country area's one tech might only have 3 hours per school shared amongst 6 or 7 schools.
Any extra hours they have to pay for another technician out of their own budget.
A few years ago I was hired as a junior tech in a school working under the government provided tech, I was looking after a network of 150 PC's 5 servers and 28 staff notebooks for a school of some 550 students.
Schools are simply worried about the added support costs to this system because there will be no extra resources provided to schools to support this extra hardware.
The cost of a basic tech to look after this stuff could prevent many schools from providing special education teachers and reduce the overall quality of the education provided by the school.
I have no problems with Linux being adopted onto notebooks for students, I do have a problem with the affordability of the support available for Linux.
At the moment Linux technicians don't come as cheap as a Windows tech and trying to find a tech who can manage an extra 100 or so Linux notebooks while supporting an existing Windows curriculum network with bare minimum pay and resources, doesn't sound like a very appealing job.
If this program isn't properly funded for support it will be an absolute disaster because after 3 years the system will be run completley into the ground, and this is what many schools are worried about, they consider it throwing money away.
OK, now that's an interesting position. Could you back it up, please? By most traditional measures (GDP per capita, GNI per capita, etc.), Australia is one of the most well-off in the world. By which measure do you assert that it's not a first world country?
" Give the children technology that they, and their teachers don't understand and the laptops will end up gathering dust. I'm all for using OSS, but somebody needs to take responsibility and ensure that teachers and students are properly educated in their use.
How difficult is it to use firefox, Openoffice, and Gimp? Seriously? It's not like we are asking them to use LaTeX.
Neither students nor teachers are idiots, despite being treated by idiots for years by Windows software.
It depends how the debt was incurred.
If the debt is incurred to fuel capital spending, then yes, the debt helps the nation to grow by increasing our productive capacity.
If the debt is incurred to fuel consumer spending, then it's bad debt.
Debt comes with interest payments. Paying interest on the debt only makes sense if the benefit received by the debt is greater than the interest paid. So it really depends how the debt is used as to whether or not the debt is bad.
As for Australia being a "developing" nation: what crap. Australia is not a "developing nation", according to all international benchmarks. We have one of the highest standards of living, next to the US and Japan.
Australia:
Infant mortality: 4 / 1000
Adult literacy (men): ~99%
Adult literacy (females): ~99%.
Life expectancy (males): 78.9 years
Life expectancy (females): 83.4 years
Per-capita GDP: 37,300 $US.
For truly developing nations, these statistics are much much worse. Take India, for example.
Infant mortality: 33 / 1000
Adult literacy (men): 76%
Adult literacy (females): 65%.
Life expectancy (males): 63.1 years
Life expectancy (females): 66 years
Per-capita GDP: 2,600 $US.
(Yes, I know that Qatar has the highest per-capita GDP, that's largely due to its reserves of oil. An outlier doesn't disqualify the general trend.)
Developing nation? Please. You either don't understand the term or are unqualified to speak about it.
At the root of it all, a national debt means that government wants to expand its business faster than the people have agreed to fund it, and likewise faster than the people are even capable of supporting it. Especially a continously-expanding, never-ending national debt like in the US.
What else could it possibly mean? Surely you don't believe that the people actually wanted the national debt to increase and approved of it for every year since 1938, much less for it to become nearly exponential in growth over the past 20 or 30 years?
Let's call upon our good friend Common Sense to draw a conclusion here: the reason for the national debt is government greed, not rational economic decision, let alone the will of the people.
The way Microsoft could spin this, would be to offer Windows as an upgrade: "Sure, you can use the government's free offering, but for a truly enjoyable experience, shell-out some money to get genuine Windows on your laptop."
It would not even be much of a stretch, to be perfectly honest. After going through pains of KDE and Gnome on FreeBSD, I decided to try it on the slick KUbuntu (maybe, I thought, the stuff sucks on FreeBSD, because developers mostly test on Linux) — and it is even worse...
KMail, despite ton of really cool features, crashes often, and its IMAP implementation is nefarious. Thunderbird is more stable, but hangs often upon a message with a Return-Receipt (!). Firefox is awesome, but Firefox3, mysteriously looses older version's bookmarks and the back-button changes are quite atrocious. OpenOffice is still way behind Microsoft's on a number of features too.
Reduced hardware support, although not the fault of the OS, is another drawback...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Please explain the economic policies put into place by the Liberals to "solve the problem"?
Most economists would say that it was resulting from a boom in the mining sector and a general global economic boom during the years the Liberals were in office... in fact the recovery had already started during Keating's term..
Now we are in a global downturn our economy is not going to do as well as it used to..
Blaming/rewarding either party for the economic situations in the recent past/present is just partisan politics and bears no relation to reality.
"The Australians wanted to ban..."
Australia has a population of 20 million, we have a diverse background, we are not all the same.
Perhaps you could have been more specific and stated that a minority of Australian federal politicians wanted to ban such a thing.
Every state primary and secondary school is having there IT systems and infrastructure upgraded. As part of MOE project and smart state initiative, the upgrade purpose is to standardised IT environment for education with the same computers, OS and Applications
This means same desktop hardware for almost every school, OS and Application. Now EQ/DETA already have big contract with microsoft. As the choice of OS and Office Applications
DETA/EQ is signed to a long term agreement contract with microsoft.
Linux wouldn't fly well in QLD and Microsoft would kick up the shits
This would include Open Office for productivity software
So they want the kids to be "productive" in the business-office sense right from the early grades.
Doesn't Australia have any child labor laws?
(This seemed like an obvious and cheap shot when we were discussing putting MS Windows on the OLPC. But when free/open systems like ubuntu are being pushed and one of the reasons is the availability of "office productivity" software, it's high time we start asking some pointed questions about what they're trying to do to the children. We expect that sort of thing from Microsoft, but not from the linux crowd. Especially not ubuntu. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The collective delusion of Australians that we're a first world country is the problem here.
Care to elaborate on your definition of 'first world' vs. 'developing' country?
Spending all the previous surplus is a good idea at the moment, to increase consumer spending and stave off the worst effects of the economic downturn..
You seem to be irrationally opposed to Labor for some reason.. Taking a step back and thinking about why they are doing it might be a good idea.
> I still sent him (or rather his office) an email asking him if he was considering open source
You weren't alone.
http://www.fsdaily.com/Government/An_Open_Letter_to_the_New_Australian_Prime_Minister_Kevin_Rudd/related_links
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/79966,community-to-gillard-consider-open-source.aspx
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/73376,open-source-the-biggest-potential-game-changer-for-government-senator-lundy.aspx
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/76453,cebit-08-senator-lundy-lobbies-for-open-source-change.aspx
There were many calls from the Australian wider community for Rudd to consider open source.
Now, with the new (and relatively inexpensive) "netbooks" coming on to the market, many of them with Linux pre-installed, this seems more and more like the sensible way for the government to go.
The government could even be very smart here, and source the "Linux netbooks for education" from an Australian supplier:
http://www.pioneercomputers.com.au/products/products.asp?c1=3&c2=12
All of the Pioneer DreamBook Light computers can be purchased with Ubuntu pre-installed as an option. No Windows tax with Australian taxpayers money being paid un-necessarily to an American company. Local product, from a local company.
Welcome to the way governments work, all the way back to Rome. Bread & Circuses...
Given that the traditional definition of a first world country is based on quality of life, per capita measurements really seem to be the appropriate measure. Raw measurements are more for measuring a country's economic power when compared to other countries, which is a quite different measurement. In this field, I'll freely agree that Australia is, at best, a middle power.
Can I mod the article summary (and everyone's pro-OSS hopes) down for a couple of reasons?
- The summary lets you read in an implication that it's being considered by the NSW Government. It's NOT, it's being suggested by the President of the NSW Secondary Schools Council, which REPORTS to the NSW government.
- Even if the NSW government WAS looking at it, that would still be irrelevant. State governments make noise about being standards compliant, but still stay fairly fierce about doing things their own way.
I say this as somebody who actually spoke to a representative of the Education Department (and other departments), in Government, in another Australian State. It was all part of one big "study" by this State Government. The single loudest speaker against adopting Open Source at this table was the Education representative.
At the same time, there was a domain name registered for www.opensource.nsw.gov.au. The site, during the time of this study, was never up. The NSW government doesn't necessarily take OSS seriously, let alone other states or Federal government.
OSS has already been examined somewhat, look in South Australia instead. Look for a 2004 paper by Hudson and Moyle, "What Place does Open Source Software have in Australian And New Zealand schools' and jurisdictions' ICT Portfolios? Open source software suitable for use in Australian and New Zealand School; A review of Technical documentation" published by the Department of Education and Children's Services South Australia. That spoke VERY glowingly re: OSS.
Note, however, that you don't hear screaming success stories of OSS all over Australian schools and governments. It's my opinion that Microsoft has the place mostly sewn up through the usual dodgy deals Slashdotters have come to expect; and that parts of the government are very firmly in bed with them.
As far as Australian PM Kevin Rudd's promise goes... well, let's just say we Australians still remember his predecessor's invention of the election term "non-core promise".
Posting anonymously, because although I'd like the karma, I'd rather not risk it. The "study" I did whilst with those government people in that particular state was shot in the face like an old man in front of Dick Cheney. There's a reason I subscribe to RMS-like principles of "anarchism" now.
Debt is bad. Debt is wealth taken from the future to the present. It reduces the standard of living of the future "you" because "he" has to support the debt payments so you can enjoy your 46" tv now.
Isn't it better for surplus cash to work for you rather than you to work off the debt?
Well, you would know. It always seems to be the Brain Damaged Bogans that decide our elections. Which specific one term Labor government were you talking about? Whitlam?
If you have a nice small laptop with Linux pre-installed (so that everything works ... "reduced hardware support" in Linux is a complete myth anyway), you need just one CD (and maybe a second one as a backup) to keep any number of laptops working. You install from that one CD to as many amchines as you want. No need to keep track of licenses. Huge cost savings, right there.
You can even make up your own master CD, with whatever application set you desire, and customisations such as a school backgrounnd wallpapaer, etc. (Google for Linux, LiveCD and "re-mastering").
No need to run anti-virus, or to make sure that anti-virus databases are up to date.
You can set up (a) Linux server(s) (no CALs fees either) and put software update repositories on your server, and point all of the laptops to accept updates from your server, so that all laptops were updated together. Easy maintenance.
You also have a huge software base to choose from, all available at zero cost, and all able to be installed on all machines overnight, at no cost, with no need to try to keep track of licenses.
Enormous savings.
Finally ... from an education perspective ... with open source you are actually allowed to study the source, and find out how it works. Make your own as well ... the tools are all provided.
Google for "squeak" and "sugar" in an education software context ... I'm sure there are lots of others as well.
Finally, read this:
http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html
It has some prfound things to say about software and eductaion.
Ok, other than ignoring your lack of reading comprehension.. let's discuss your disgusting consumer point of view of credit.
You don't use debt to buy toys.
If I'm a business man and I want to build an office building, it's not because I'd really like some neat place to hang out. It's because I expect to be able to rent the office space and recover my investment. Now, should I save up all my pennies for the next 60 years, buy the office building with cash and then wait 15 years to recover my investment and then die? Or should I go and get some money from people who already have it? The building gets built, the renters can move in and the economy keeps moving forward at a sane pace.
Things I didn't mention: every now and then someone will convince an investor to build a property that makes no sense and the renters will not show up, they'll go broke, the property will be auctioned and the investor will lose part or all of their investment. There's risk involved, yes. But what's the alternative? The people who want to rent the property get together and build it? What if they guessed wrong about their future needs for an office building? There's still risk, it's just someone else who is carrying it now.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Your slashdot nick is most appropriate.
You obviously did not notice the leader of your beloved liberal party opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, wholeheartedly agreeing with the governments spending package.
The surplus that Howard built was built on starving pensioners and unemployed, labour is finally giving some back.
What kind of "whole" did keating dig, the one where Costello changed virtually nothing, and took the credit for Keatings economic changes.
Are you uninformed or just stupid?
Nice to know I'm not alone here. Software gets a very tiny part of the media's attention in Australia. I've only seen two of those "I'm a Mac" ads, and one ad for Vista in the past few years. And I mean I saw them once, not regularly running. All three were in late night ad spots, so not exactly targeted at the painfully common user who still uses Outlook Express with no security patches.
We're the victim of a lot of monopolies and duopolies, here (Telstra owns most of the telecommunications infrastructure, satellite TV provider Austar and the only competitor Foxtel; Coles and Woolworths own most supermarkets, and they almost certainly price-fix), and Microsoft basically seem to have so much market share and mind share that you almost never hear of alternatives. Unless you happen to be from the internet, like me.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I believe the GP was referring to the Late 80's recession (AKA, the early 90's recession) which like our current economic woes was mainly driven by external economic powers, but much I suspect the GP doesn't have a clue, just a significant political bias.
He also tends to forget that Labour had been in power for 5 terms, not 1 (Hawke government (Labour) was elected in 1983 for the uninitiated). He also forgets that the 1982 recession which was worse than the current or 1992 recession was under the Fraser government (Liberal).
Recessions in Australia are mainly driven by by external stresses(to Australia), our economy is tied to other key economies the US, Japan, Europe to a lesser extent(mostly a leftover from our days in the British Empire) and more recently China, because of this when their economies are up so is ours and when they go down Australia follows suit. Whilst personally I'm against Howard (mostly due to his stance on I.R.) he did do a decent job of the economy (granted in the halcyon days of 2000-2005 it wasn't a difficult job). If Rudd keeps the economy afloat in the current global crisis and by all indications he will, he has done just as good of a job with the economy. Australia has the second most stable banking system in the western world, second only to Canada so we will weather the current crisis but we will probably have to pull the belt in a few notches.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yep, it could have been Keating's 'Recession we had to have,' but the only one term Labor government with a bad economic record I could think of was Jim Scullin. Two days after taking office, the '29 crash occurred. Not an easy time to govern.
Yes, Australia as a whole is most definitely a developed nation.
But don't forget the developing country that the Australian aboriginals live in. It's pretty embarrassing that one race lives in a developed environment, but another race does not.
"You seem to be irrationally opposed to Labor for some reason"
His nick *is* "brain dead bogan".
Funnily enough I always thought people who voted for Howard were brain dead bogans, and guess what? I was right!
(-:
I don't think you know what first world means.
It wasn't Howard that made Australia wealthy, it was the mining boom.
And the bribes-to-buy-votes line is a bit cynical given that we're *3 years* away from the next federal election.
Most Aborigines choose to live that way. If you want to live out in the middle of the desert "like your ancestors", why should you expect the same standard of living as people who live in cities?
If this was an elementary in East Timor or a government department in Iowa, you might have a point about support. But it's a high school in a reasonably developed nation. Providing support is educational. Broken computers are good course material. Some of the students are probably more proficient than the quality of for-pay support they could buy. I really can't see the support argument flying here.
sorry.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That's the one I was referring to, the recession "we had to have".
The Whitlam govt was in power during the 73 oil crisis which had a severe effect on us in 74.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
> The government could even be very smart here, and source the "Linux netbooks for education" from an Australian supplier:
> All of the Pioneer DreamBook Light computers can be purchased with Ubuntu pre-installed as an option. No Windows tax with Australian taxpayers money being paid un-necessarily to an American company. Local product, from a local company.
I was with you up to this point, but you're very mistaken about Pioneer.
Pioneer do no more than assemble and re-badge some fairly shoddy Taiwanese gear. They have no capacity to diagnose (let alone repair) the laptops they sell, any repairs go straight back to Taiwan. The cost of repair/replacement of a mobo exceeds 90% the cost of a replacement system.
This is in no sense a local product, and in no sense a quality product. I bought one high end laptop from them, it failed due to poor design, and they absolutely failed to deal properly with it - they have no stock of replacement mobos, they have no wholesale arrangements for replacement of failed mobos, they have no means of repairing them.
I wouldn't buy a toaster from those clowns.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
You speak as if school kids don't own school MS networks now. You clearly don't speak to kids about it.
To hear them brag, this FUD scenario occurs frequently right now under Windows. Not surprising really, I mean how hard could it be?
I'd rather the best and brightest were bragging about the new program they wrote, or the latest bug they fixed, than the new Windows 'sploit they used to 0wnz0rz the admin network (as they currently do.)
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
I just spoke with the bloke who's behind this, and he pointed to the following source material which forms a background to their proposal:
Reading it, seems like they really have a solid grasp of the issues, and have made a cogent and excellent proposal.
Here's hoping it doesn't get subverted or ignored.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
How should it be done, per km? Per Kangaroo? Yes, I guess then we would not be doing so well.
Except they don't actually have it. Banking deregulation has led to ever decreasing requirements on how much money banks are required to keep in reserve.
Credit is necessary for a functional system, but our current system of credit is out of control. The current crisis is a reflection of this. Credit is a house of cards, and the problems we've seen recently is only the tower teetering. It still has the potential to completely collapse.
This isn't trolling - per capita measurements tell you nothing about the actual distribution of wealth.
So while a nation may have tons of money, 99% of that money could belong to 1% of the people. The nation will appear to be thriving based on per capita measurements, but would in reality be hellish to live in.
Statistics are like bikinis - it's not what they show that matters, it's what they hide.
>Pioneer do no more than assemble and re-badge some fairly shoddy Taiwanese gear.
>This is in no sense a local product, and in no sense a quality product. I bought one high end laptop from them, it failed due to poor design, and they absolutely failed to deal properly with it - they have no stock of replacement mobos, they have no wholesale arrangements for replacement of failed mobos, they have no means of repairing them.
Gee. Harsh. Considering that the alternative is to buy some fairly shoddy Taiwanese gear from the Taiwanese, and hence to send ALL of the taxpayers money to Taiwan instead of just some of it.
>I wouldn't buy a toaster from those clowns.
http://www.pioneercomputers.com.au/government/
Apparently the Australian Government, however, does buy their stuff.
You wouldn't be a competing supplier or importer by any chance, would you? Or worse yet, a Windows-only supplier? Just asking.
> Gee. Harsh.
Not as harsh as being told by pioneer's "Business Development Manager" (of which they have a plethora) that their upstream supplier's business model relied upon heavily discounted new units and extreme profit on replacement parts *after* your expensive laptop died a week after warranty expired.
>>I wouldn't buy a toaster from those clowns.
> Apparently the Australian Government, however, does buy their stuff.
Who knows. They claim to be accredited, they probably are (since that'd be hard to fake and get away with.) Based on my personal experience, I would take any of their less verifiable claims with a grain of salt.
> You wouldn't be a competing supplier or importer by any chance, would you?
Absolutely not. No affiliation or commercial relationship with any vendors (except as a customer.)
> Or worse yet, a Windows-only supplier?
Shyeah, right, that's why I'm called 'Minix.'
> Just asking.
Just reporting my misfortune in ever dealing with Pioneer, that's the extent of my interest. I wouldn't ever buy from them again, and am dismayed that someone would recommend them as 'local suppliers.' In my experience, they just don't bring the goods.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
You're comparing apples and oranges here.. this reeks of opportunistic advocacy.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The federal government didn't budget for much more than just the computers with its Digital Education Revolution . So open source software might help the state government stretch the budget a bit further. Coincidently, next week Pia Waugh from the One Laptop per Child Australia Foundation will speak in Canberra at CASE AGM on Monday about Linux and education .
Tom Worthington FACS, Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd
On reliability:
>Just reporting my misfortune in ever dealing with Pioneer, that's the extent of my interest. I wouldn't ever buy from them again, and am dismayed that someone would recommend them as 'local suppliers.' In my experience, they just don't bring the goods.
Sigh! A certain percentage of machines break, no matter who makes them or sells them.
On overall cost:
> The federal government didn't budget for much more than just the computers with its Digital Education Revolution
> The funding programme grants $1000 per computer needed to get a schools computer:student ratio for year 9-12 students to 1:2.
>My understanding of the NSW beef with this programme, was that they wanted the Fed Govt to pay for the electricity to power these machines as well, among all other things like tech support and software purchases.
Pioneer sells one variant of its "netbook" class machines, the IL3 model, for $549 with a 60GB hard drive, and Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.
To deploy a big number of such machines in an education context, all one would need to do in addition would be to prepare a USB stick with a suitable customisation script, and also put some extra eductaional .deb packages on that usb stick, and go from machine to machine and run the script.
Your machines are now all customised for use in the school, with all applications installed, set up and ready to go, for zero extra captial cost apart from the labour to run the customisation script. All up cost is no more than $600 per machine.
The government is offering $1000 per two students. So you have $400 per two student surplus ... easily enough to pay for any additional support, servers and printers for the whole school, consumables (including electricity, as this class of machine is low-power) for some years, and still have a sufficient percentage left over to pay for replacement machines if any break.
There is no way IMO that any alternative approach to this is going to work better than that and stay within the $1000 budget.
I am wondering under what terms we can use the laptops if we ever get them.
Will they be locked on to edubuntu or will they be average cheap laptops?
Also, I hope that they are more secure then the school networks. Never a day goes by when a student doesn't crack the system and fill the hard drives with movies and games...
What I have not seen mentioned is the following, planned by the same government:
A great firewall will be erected around Australia. Australians will not have the option to opt out of 'illegal' content.
If you are Australian, take ACTION NOW!!! I've already contacted the current local (Liberal) member and Senator Conroy. This firewall, if it is to work at all, will slow speeds by up to 75% and will cripple the communications of an entire nation. The solutions needed to make sure that corporate VPNs and other tools keep working is non-existent. This is not a hoax. Please let the tech community be able to tell them what we think.
http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/76ya5/australians_will_be_unable_to_optout_of_the/
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1399635276&eid=-255
http://nocleanfeed.com/takeaction.html This is being discussed on Whirlpool but NEEDS TO HIT THE MEDIA TODAY!
however this is being implemented in NSW where we have compulsory Computing for yrs7 and 9 and that means their is a least two computer teachers at most high school as well as a part time technician that comes in for two or three days a week
null
Aboriginals, like anyone else, are entitled to welfare, free education, etc. They choose not to take it.
It's a bit like the other country that Native Americans live in...
Or the other country that New Orleans is located in.
I hesitate to post this, but as a tertiary educator working at a leading Australian university, I would rather see this money being put towards reducing secondary school class sizes. Free laptops make a great headline, but our education system has larger issues. The proportion of Australian-educated students who have passed year 12 English but cannot write a simple one page report and make their point understood is far higher than their overseas-educated (and often ESL) counterparts. Similarly, overseas students have far higher levels of mathematical training, while locally educated students are often unable to grasp simple year nine trigonometry. Perhaps someone can explain to me exactly how free laptops can improve basic English and maths skills more effectively than reducing class sizes (or other more traditional methods)?
They already do. I've done support for W.A. schools that were having problems with their internal Exchange server. They were shocked when we discussed the 'real' price for Exchange. They paid less than $1000 for it including CALs and hardware. MS has some serious sweetheart deals for schools and I bet if it came down to providing even cheaper Windows and Office for schools they will do it.
That's not the real price, though. The real price also includes all the down time, extra re-builds, malware tools, etc. Add to that also the cost of missing incoming messages, missing outgoing messages and delayed messages -- these last add up to more work for the users, which can number in the 100's, rather than just the maintenance staff which can usually be counted on one hand.
Before MS Exchange was hammered through the back door, e-mail was both so fast and reliable that many used it in ways resembling instant messaging.
Worth a look:
Roundcube: http://roundcube.net/
Kolab: http://www.kolab.org/
Citadel: http://www.citadel.org/
Zimbra: http://www.zimbra.com/
If you need a plain vanilla mail transfer agent instead of all the non-essentials, then postfix, exim, qmail, the new sendmail, and simta each have their niche. They're used pretty much everywhere, even if you don't always see the evidence of them outside the message headers.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Thanks for that. I get a little tingle down my spine when I see the Ubuntu logo and "Digital Education Revolution" on the same foil.
.
Um, the traditional definition of a first world country is based on solid allegiance to the United States and opposition to the Soviet Union.
On s similar note. A new version of the openeduationdisc was released last week. www.theopendisc.com
Umm.. no. See, you're a sucker and you believe that a national debt is a bad thing. It's not. A developing nation (and that's what we are) should be in debt. We should be growing and credit is how you do that at a viable pace.
Creation of money supply through fractional reserve lending is done by the authority of the government. Therefore, the government, rather than borrowing money created as debt by its own authority could instead create that money without incurring debt to the Reserve Bank, the value of the money backed by the capital works paid for rather than the governments commitment to repay the debt. Since the increase in the money supply would be matched by increased production (the capital works paid for) there would be no resulting devaluation of the currency.
Money as Debt: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279 (45 mins)
or if you prefer to read:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_99/hannigan092099.html
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
The assumption your making here is that the only way to be creative and successful at it is to use a mac that is simply not true. Why should the eeepc have to run OSX why cant it run Linux or Windows? both have available programs that do the same things as a Macbook but are going to be allot cheaper.
I really like FOSS, but I doubt a 7 year old nor the folks who work at the school would be of much help finding or using those tools.
Teacher gives out Mac specific instructions. All the other kids follow those. The kid with the eeePC spends a couple hours tracking down a similar program and figuring out how to use it. Then proceeds to attempt to translate the instructions into the new program.
I don't really know if it is the right environment to introduce the kid to linux. Enough of the staff would probably be familiar with Windows to help the kid out a bit. They do know how to use OSX. I really just don't see the support being there for linux, and I doubt most 7 year olds have the wherewithal to deal with the extra headaches without getting frustrated and discouraged before he even get to what they want to do.
I suppose it would depend on how you see it being used, but if it is going to be mainly at school and being directed by a teacher, I just don't know how well Linux would work. It would be less of an issue if much of the work and set up would be done at home, with help from a parent familiar with linux.
It really might be a better idea to wait a bit for the money or to looking around for a good price on some refurbished hardware(though honestly a quick look in Google doesn't seem hugely encouraging, and it seems a used macbook that's a couple years old is still going to set you back far more than an eeePC).
As in change the comment to "this code forking needs to be changed".
I love the idea of spending $54M on Linux PCs for schoolchildren. Maybe some kids coming out of that experience will want to see Linux grow into a respectable gaming platform. Who knows? The next great game of 2025 might just come from Australia...
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Support doesn't come cheap [...] Any extra hours [...] At the moment Linux technicians don't come as cheap.
Some of the students are naturally curious regarding technology. Let them learn what interesting things can be done with the machines, and have them teach the others. Hire a one or a few of them cheaply to do any formal support if the extra hours are needed.
Also, make it easy for the students to reimage the laptops on their own [i.e. provide a step-by-step guide and a netbootable mini-OS that does just that], so there are fewer requests for the sysadmin to do that. That should also allow curious students to experiment more.
It's nice to see political "discussion" at the American level from somewhere else in the world for a change...
The only true criteria by which a country becomes "first world" is if it has invaded or destroyed economically (pwnd) other countries at some point in history. Sorry Aussies..
Hmmmm.
When it comes to being a developing nation, both Australia and the the US fall into this category when it is measured, not by finance, mortality rates, or even technology, but by the compassion the government has for the people who voted them in.
All politicians are riding high on the the excuse of the "global financial problems" while failing to meet the needs of those who placed them in office. It's these fundamental issues that will bring all false governments to their knees in the long run. Maybe even in the short run in these troubled times.
So you don't all wear "outback" hats and cook "shrimp on the barbie"? Well, color me uninformed! We have a restaurant chain here in the U.S. that serves authentic Australian cuisine called Outback Steakhouse. I don't know if you have them in Australia, but if you're ever in the U.S. and get homesick you might want to check it out. The have Foster's (Australian for beer).
Unfortunately, the moral imperative for schools to use exclusively Free Software is not even a consideration here.
Moral issues are only a side line here for schools.
What is important here is an Open Source platform line Linux gives the students a place to learn the simple things about computers far better then the mind less numb of the so called main stream brand. Students have all the tools to take the system apart and simple tools to learn how to program. Without the tools to program all you get is toast.
Times have changed, though, and the ability to monopolize the hearts and minds of kids with the only computer they're exposed to is long gone. Many of the kids will already have PCs at home, many will have (or at least have played) X-Boxes, PS3s, Wiis and a host of other devices,
Your talking about game platforms. What is important in schools is learning. Open Source gives that in ways the game platforms can not.
But if they are giving the laptops to the students to use & take home, isn't it the students themselves that are expected to fix their own problems, not the schools that must provide the support?
Yes, but there's no Soviet Union any more, and the list of countries with solid allegiance to the United States nowadays runs to... well, four by my count, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and the UK, and that last one's there only on official policy not public opinion.
So there isn't much of a 'First World' left, which indicates to me that we might want to update the definition.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Slashdot mods on crack again, I see?
> By which measure do you assert that it's not a first world country?
Fosters lager.
No first world country would produce such stuff... Not even to export to their pommie "enemies".
Even if you do update the definition, you don't get to call the new definition the "traditional definition", at least not for a few decades.
You mean they are wary of gifts from the people who stole their land, language and children. Many adult indigenous Australians cannot go into schools because these were the places they experienced profound abuse of many kinds, and it brings back shocking memories.
Has anyone actually seen something like this implemented - that is, a full-school Linux laptop program? Much as I like the idea (and I work as a school admin), there are a number of problem areas that I don't know the answers to:
1) Students need to be educated in "Industry Standards" (Yes, much FUD). While the OS (and to some degree Office) portion of this is irrelevant, there are application sets that do cause problems - CAD, Music, and Video editing, primarily. For the art crowd, GIMP might be close enough, but Vector? DTP? Robolab? Many of these aren't a problem on OS X, but within Linux, I'm not sufficiently up to date with user app projects to know how viable the alternatives are these days.
2) Teachers are hidebound animals. They tend to cling to resources like barnacles, and only get cleaned off every decade or so - the number of Win 95 unsupported programs we get asked for is crazy. The students are easy to educate, by comparison.
3) Laptop programs in general have some issues. Wireless infrastructure gets much more demanding (needing something like Aruba), power access usually needs to be redone, and, alluding to 2), Teachers need to be able to cope with kids working on their laptops all the time. Also...
4) Netbooks, and even laptops, are a bit cruel to inflict on anyone for certain apps. This means desktops, which means *greater* than 1:1 computer resources needed. This applies if you're cheating by using VDI/Blades, too.
In essence, this means you'll still have a heterogenous environment - you'll need desktops for certain tasks like music or graphics/art labs, some of which will need Windows or OS X; Staff desktops or laptops are sometimes also bound in to a Windows environment by the need to use particular School Management software (some of this seems to be migrating to the back end), but Education Queensland won't be going anywhere else soon....
It's not the students that are the hidebound animals. *Burea*COUGH*Tea*COUGH*Paren*COUGH*. Pardon Me.
Wyrd, dude.
It is good to hear linux getting wider. But the at some news i found linux is costlier than windows at points. Smith, http://www.samudhai.com/
When I was at high school the school got it's first computers.. We, the kids, were the ones that figured them out...
Now what's changed???? absolutly nothing just computers are far easier to use and do far more...
Why not let the kids figure them out.. it's good for them Teachers don't have to do the teaching any more but some times be the ones to ask the questions... Why do you think... Etc
Kids will be far better off for it.. They will grow with enquiring minds they will take input, processes it , and come up with meaningful output
Go for it Linux is perfect for kids to learn on.