If you took a hybrid which already has excellent mileage and added intelligent features to it, would it not outperform its intelligent-only counterparts? This article seems a little like another spin on "we don't need to stop using oil, look at what we can do with gasoline NOW!" The bottom line is that we need to stop dependence on oil. Period. Hybrids are a step in the right direction and their popularity has spurred on development of even better non-oil solutions.
So you "ran across" this organization and happened to end up with an alias of "openeducation"? At least you could say that you work for them, are a member of their team, or just wanted to help people know about you. Additionally, I'm surprised at the proposition. Who is going to support the mission-critical student information system when it is open sourced? What happens when the state requires new forms to be utilized? What programmers are guaranteed to create them on schedule? This is like telling k12 institutions that free always = better. There are already enough bad decisions in education because of FOSS being perceived as the magical silver bullet to every woe we (I work for k12 as a technology director), collectively have. I agree with the other posts that education needs to be scrapped and started over now that we are out of the industrial revolution. Books are also a total drain on resources as they keep making the books larger with more and more white space in the margins so they can charge more.
I guess I would argue that the only reason the iPod has taken of is not because it is allowed to run on "other" operating systems but specifically because it will run on THE operating system: Windows. If you look at the MacOS market share vs iPod market share you will see that there just aren't enough Macs out there to match the 85% iPod market share. Microsoft does not have to make their music player run on other operating systems any more than Apple does; They just have to run on the dominant OS. I don't see Apple supporting the iPod on Linux...
I strongly dislike the Zune but that is not what my posting was about. Microsoft is finally catching on that the OS of the future is going to be a web platform, and if they don't position themselves now they will very quickly be left behind as Google launches app after app that runs on any modern web browser.
As far as the new blood not knowing how to make money, that is an unfair analysis of upcoming MBA students and youth in the workforce in general. I think there is a lot of hidden talent at Microsoft right now (business and technical), but the flowers are hidden behind an ugly rock (Ballmer), for the time being. Just wait for Ballmer to finally exit and the momentum will really take off. Just look at IBM of the 70's and 80's vs the IBM of today; corporations are made of people and people change. I believe Microsoft is in the process of transitioning from a "we do things our way or else," (see old IBM), to "we have no choice but to play fair," (see new IBM).
I believe that Microsoft is still being run by its original founders (Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in particular), who still put forth the old Microsoft mentality. As new blood enters the company and the old (can I say "cancer?"), is finally evicted, they may actually turn into an ethical corporation. If you look at many of the MSDN blogs you can see that the developers coming into the company now are much more familiar with the FOSS and understand what it means. I see a sort of "grass roots" change going on within the company that will really take off once that loud mouth Ballmer finally lets go of his Empire mentality.
From the post: "Using hypnosis, scientists claim to be able to incorrectly trigger the portion of the brain responsible for recognition of something familiar."
I'm pretty sure I've seen this kind of grammatical faux pas on/. before...
I think that Munich is doing more than just what is best for their network. They have been in a bright, global spotlight since the news that they rejected Microsoft's offer broke, and they are now in a very favorable position to set an example for other city and state governments, (national?), to migrate and stand up to the Giant's licnesing trap.
I work for a K-12 school district in Oregon as the network technician, and I have been slowly moving us into open source. While our budget is terrible lately, (and most school districts never have enough money), it would seen that free as in beer would sound good. But it is difficult to migrate hoards of users who have grown dependant on their Microsoft nipple to a new interface. So my strategy is a multi-year one and is as follows:
Issue: Too many older systems and older Power Macs. Can we still use them for something?
Solution: Terminal services will allow all of these older machines to be used. I'm starting off with MS Terminal Services to maintain our common desktop. We currently are a Microsoft shop.
Issue: Licensing is costly, what can we do to save money?
Solution: Install StarOffice 7 or OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 alongside MS Office 2003 to begin exposing users to the new office suite. Simultaneously, deploy Firefox 0.92 on the terminal server and push it out to Windows desktops to expose people to the new browser and the beauty of tabbed browsing. After adequate testing, phase out the MS products and standardize on OO.org and Mozilla-based web browser.
Issue: MS Terminal Services costs a lot to license!
Solution: Migrate to the Linux K12 Terminal Services Project, (www.k12ltsp.org), and move the terminal server from Windows TS to K12LTSP running OO.org and a Mozilla-based web browser.
The acquisition costs for MS TS or K12LTSP will be justifiable because of the money saved by NOT purchasing new hardware and being able to put older Macs back in service while taking in older donations. The end result is a fully open source desktop. A MS TS can still be running to allow users to run apps that currently cannot run in a Linux environment.
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If you took a hybrid which already has excellent mileage and added intelligent features to it, would it not outperform its intelligent-only counterparts? This article seems a little like another spin on "we don't need to stop using oil, look at what we can do with gasoline NOW!" The bottom line is that we need to stop dependence on oil. Period. Hybrids are a step in the right direction and their popularity has spurred on development of even better non-oil solutions.
So you "ran across" this organization and happened to end up with an alias of "openeducation"? At least you could say that you work for them, are a member of their team, or just wanted to help people know about you. Additionally, I'm surprised at the proposition. Who is going to support the mission-critical student information system when it is open sourced? What happens when the state requires new forms to be utilized? What programmers are guaranteed to create them on schedule? This is like telling k12 institutions that free always = better. There are already enough bad decisions in education because of FOSS being perceived as the magical silver bullet to every woe we (I work for k12 as a technology director), collectively have. I agree with the other posts that education needs to be scrapped and started over now that we are out of the industrial revolution. Books are also a total drain on resources as they keep making the books larger with more and more white space in the margins so they can charge more.
I guess I would argue that the only reason the iPod has taken of is not because it is allowed to run on "other" operating systems but specifically because it will run on THE operating system: Windows. If you look at the MacOS market share vs iPod market share you will see that there just aren't enough Macs out there to match the 85% iPod market share. Microsoft does not have to make their music player run on other operating systems any more than Apple does; They just have to run on the dominant OS. I don't see Apple supporting the iPod on Linux...
I strongly dislike the Zune but that is not what my posting was about. Microsoft is finally catching on that the OS of the future is going to be a web platform, and if they don't position themselves now they will very quickly be left behind as Google launches app after app that runs on any modern web browser. As far as the new blood not knowing how to make money, that is an unfair analysis of upcoming MBA students and youth in the workforce in general. I think there is a lot of hidden talent at Microsoft right now (business and technical), but the flowers are hidden behind an ugly rock (Ballmer), for the time being. Just wait for Ballmer to finally exit and the momentum will really take off. Just look at IBM of the 70's and 80's vs the IBM of today; corporations are made of people and people change. I believe Microsoft is in the process of transitioning from a "we do things our way or else," (see old IBM), to "we have no choice but to play fair," (see new IBM).
I believe that Microsoft is still being run by its original founders (Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in particular), who still put forth the old Microsoft mentality. As new blood enters the company and the old (can I say "cancer?"), is finally evicted, they may actually turn into an ethical corporation. If you look at many of the MSDN blogs you can see that the developers coming into the company now are much more familiar with the FOSS and understand what it means. I see a sort of "grass roots" change going on within the company that will really take off once that loud mouth Ballmer finally lets go of his Empire mentality.
From the post: "Using hypnosis, scientists claim to be able to incorrectly trigger the portion of the brain responsible for recognition of something familiar." I'm pretty sure I've seen this kind of grammatical faux pas on /. before...
I think that Munich is doing more than just what is best for their network. They have been in a bright, global spotlight since the news that they rejected Microsoft's offer broke, and they are now in a very favorable position to set an example for other city and state governments, (national?), to migrate and stand up to the Giant's licnesing trap.
I for one, welcome our new open source leaders...
Issue: Too many older systems and older Power Macs. Can we still use them for something?
Solution: Terminal services will allow all of these older machines to be used. I'm starting off with MS Terminal Services to maintain our common desktop. We currently are a Microsoft shop.
Issue: Licensing is costly, what can we do to save money?
Solution: Install StarOffice 7 or OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 alongside MS Office 2003 to begin exposing users to the new office suite. Simultaneously, deploy Firefox 0.92 on the terminal server and push it out to Windows desktops to expose people to the new browser and the beauty of tabbed browsing. After adequate testing, phase out the MS products and standardize on OO.org and Mozilla-based web browser.
Issue: MS Terminal Services costs a lot to license!
Solution: Migrate to the Linux K12 Terminal Services Project, (www.k12ltsp.org), and move the terminal server from Windows TS to K12LTSP running OO.org and a Mozilla-based web browser.
The acquisition costs for MS TS or K12LTSP will be justifiable because of the money saved by NOT purchasing new hardware and being able to put older Macs back in service while taking in older donations. The end result is a fully open source desktop. A MS TS can still be running to allow users to run apps that currently cannot run in a Linux environment.
Anyway, that's my plan, hope it helps you out!
Cheers