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Australian State May Give Students Linux Laptops

Posted by kdawson on from the keep-it-cheap dept.

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."

5 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. In the middle of an economic crisis by Brain+Damaged+Bogan · · Score: -1, Troll

    KRudd is wasting money on laptops that students don't NEED. The Aus economy would be in better hands if we threw the treasury at a 13yo girl in the mall. It's going to take a 3 term liberal govt to fix the mistakes of a 1 term labor govt, it did last time, but by the end of it everyone had forgotten why labor only lasted one term. They've already spent half of the nations surplus on a moronic homebuyers grant (which will just artificially inflate property prices in the short term) and in giving a $1000 christmas bonus to families on welfare (I actually don't have much of a problem with this, but it just goes to show that our govt is currently more socialist than capitalist).

    --
    -- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
    1. Re:In the middle of an economic crisis by QuantumG · · Score: 1, Troll

      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.

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      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:In the middle of an economic crisis by QuantumG · · Score: -1, Troll

      By most traditional measures (GDP per capita, GNI per capita, etc.)

      Look for the bias.

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      How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. Even the Linux kernel by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: -1, Troll
    The Australians wanted to ban access to obscenety over the internet. That would have included the Linux kernel which has "fuck" in it in many places. That would have made GPL compliance hard: "Sorry we can send you the binary, but the source is banned."

    Luckily someone saw sense...

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    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  3. Re:The security of it all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    So keeping the students stupid and uneducated, and limiting their choices of software and tools is a far more "secure" option for the education system than... education?