Slashdot Mirror
Teachers Need an Open Source Education
palegray.net writes "Teachers are sorely in need of an education in what open source software is, what it isn't, and how it can benefit their students. A recent news story at the Reg discussed the case of a Texas teacher who accused those distributing Linux to students of committing criminal acts. A HeliOS blog entry exposes a 'higher education' culture of apathy, lies, and fear of open source software. Things have got to improve, and that improvement needs to start with misguided teachers getting their facts straight."
Here in Germany, I never experienced any hostility towards open source software in the educational system.
The universities are quite supportive of open source and lend their infrastructure to host mirrors for various distributions.
Apache is a different situation. Apache has been around since the Internet and as such has fought the battles.
The problem with Linux and Open Office is that they have not been in broad use in the context of a desktop. And as such the traps related to the desktop have not been exposed.
Many of the worst problems are because people click on things that they should not be clicking on. Linux does not have that type of idiocy proof technology built in. Windows and Vista have that built in. It is also a reason why I hate Vista.
Here is a very simple example. If I want to open a port below 1024 I need admin rights. Well what about above? Nope don't need it. This was done in the days when anything below 1024 was considered important. Though now it has become irrelevant and as such could be a security threat.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/node/2179
From the article...
> I wonder why. Isn't it time to declare the port 1024 limit as obsolete too and remove it?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
"Did you try the links in the summary?"
...
Not only that, when the story first 'broke', I tried emailing the AISD, they never heard of a 'Karen' involved in the alleged incident. The only source is on that blog
davecb5620@gmail.com
Any commercial use of the software, and any resale or further distribution of the software, other than as expressly authorized by this agreement, constitutes a material breach of this agreement and may violate applicable copyright laws.
Looks like you were advocating copyright infringement. Clamwin is the only Free Software virus scanner I know of.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
I thought that it was a problem exclusive for Third World but now I feel somewhat relieved. I've been teaching "Systems Engineers" how a blog works, why the the blue Internet icon is bad for the internets and that there are OTHER operative systems. The problem here is that MS do a lot of lobby in Colleges so theres really an abuse of dominant position. I hope someones do something about it, It's a lot more relevant that the discussion of IExplore WMP and antitrust.