Je m'appelle Bond. James Bond. Saw this last night here in France. No 30 minutes of adverts, just on with the film. And just for the/. crowd, there was a laconic, throw away reference to 'security through obscurity'. That's all I'm saying.
Well, this simply isn't true any more. (Yes, I too work in schools, and have for the past ten years.) At County level, there may be subtle pressure to adopt a certain policy, or set of standards, but there is nothing to stop individual schools doing what ever they please with their IT budgets. Indeed, the last three schools I have worked at disposed of the remnants of their RM Networks in the dim and distant past, and have no intention of ever going back. True, the schools are still predominantly MS oriented, but that is for fairly clear reasons covered by other posters in this discussion.
My gut instinct is to deplore the state of surveillance in the UK - I am by nature a very private person - but I would be keen to hear from anyone whose interests have actually been damaged by being (innocently) caught up in the CCTV web that exists here. Not in some future nightmare scenario, but here and now. Given that it is reckoned that we are each on average caught some 200 times a day on such cameras, there should be some stories by now?
An awful lot of schools in the UK haven't had RM networks for many, many years. I have been working as IT Support for schools in Norfolk (UK) for the past decade, and have seen only one RM network, and then only in passing as it was thrown out into the skip. The norm is a pure MS based network, with something like Winsuite on top if it is considered that local expertise is insufficient to set up and maintain proper security profiles, etc.
There are reasons for this. Pragmatically, teachers do not want to move out of their comfort zone, which means Windows. It is still not uncommon for IT to be taught at Secondary level by teachers who do not have IT as their first subject. This is changing, but very slowly. As it is also the norm for a particular teacher to be 'in charge of' IT (i.e. holding the budget, shaping the policy as best he or she sees fit), it is not going to happen very often that a school will deviate from the safe option. Up until recently, NGFL funding enabled schools to equip themselves in a half-decent fashion, and if spent prudently, money was no more of a problem for IT procurement than it is for any other area of school budgeting. As a consequence, most schools have modern, fast networks with decent desktop machines to work on.
Should those desktops be running Windows? Well, from a techy quasi-political point of view, maybe not. But IT in schools is not a purely techy thing. In many of the schools I have worked in, IT is seen as an empowering skill. Before you get all indignant, think on this. At the last mainstream Secondary school I worked at, there was a considerable basic skills deficit. Literacy and numeracy, to you and me. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. OSS ain't gonna make the difference. Being comfortable with the machines those children will meet in their day to day lives MAY make a difference. Their parents are not going to be installing UbuLinuxHat, and they won't be seeing anything other than Windows machines in the real world (in THEIR real world) any time soon... And yes, for many of these children, the difference between Windows and *nix is enough to cause confusion, and to dissuade.
Until recently, I would have argued vigorously against what I've just written. But now, working at a special school has rather driven the point home. Yes, it's a different client group, but that only serves to emphasise the point that children with difficulties, whether in mainstream education or not, need the comfort of the familiar in order to stand any chance at all. And at the moment, the 'familiar' is Windows. That may be an uncomfortable conclusion for the evangelists, but until Linux (or MacOS, for that matter) is a commonplace in the real world, a significant proportion of children are better served by not being pawns in an intellectual slanging match.
As an aside, it may be that the children in the developing world will be among the first to see Linux in their 'real world' for economic reasons - and yes, their education should reflect that.
Well said, and all that, but the alternative is what/who? We effectively have a one party state, with a few minor variations to the authoritarian seasoning, and a daily dose of public pantomime to give a semblance of discussion. In reality, it's all sewn up tighter than a vasectomised scrotum.
Which begs the question - (and I'm really, *really* not trolling) - where in the world are an individual's freedoms and privacy given some value, beyond cynical and superficial lip service? Certainly not in the US, and certainly not here in Britain. Has there been a comparative study in relation to this? I'm aware of studies looking at a rather nebulous 'quality of life' - but I think there's a subtle difference, or at least, one concept is perhaps a subset of the other.
I may be too old to be irate, but I'm not too old to be quietly concerned about the roles that governments of (all?) the major nation states seem to arbitrarily adopt. And I'm very happy to move out of the UK, if anyone has any ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
Je m'appelle Bond. James Bond. /. crowd, there was a laconic, throw away reference to 'security through obscurity'.
Saw this last night here in France. No 30 minutes of adverts, just on with the film.
And just for the
That's all I'm saying.
Well, this simply isn't true any more. (Yes, I too work in schools, and have for the past ten years.) At County level, there may be subtle pressure to adopt a certain policy, or set of standards, but there is nothing to stop individual schools doing what ever they please with their IT budgets. Indeed, the last three schools I have worked at disposed of the remnants of their RM Networks in the dim and distant past, and have no intention of ever going back. True, the schools are still predominantly MS oriented, but that is for fairly clear reasons covered by other posters in this discussion.
Yep. Presumably includes exacerbating awful spelling, too...
My gut instinct is to deplore the state of surveillance in the UK - I am by nature a very private person - but I would be keen to hear from anyone whose interests have actually been damaged by being (innocently) caught up in the CCTV web that exists here. Not in some future nightmare scenario, but here and now. Given that it is reckoned that we are each on average caught some 200 times a day on such cameras, there should be some stories by now?
Well, sort of, perhaps, maybe...
An awful lot of schools in the UK haven't had RM networks for many, many years. I have been working as IT Support for schools in Norfolk (UK) for the past decade, and have seen only one RM network, and then only in passing as it was thrown out into the skip. The norm is a pure MS based network, with something like Winsuite on top if it is considered that local expertise is insufficient to set up and maintain proper security profiles, etc.
There are reasons for this. Pragmatically, teachers do not want to move out of their comfort zone, which means Windows. It is still not uncommon for IT to be taught at Secondary level by teachers who do not have IT as their first subject. This is changing, but very slowly. As it is also the norm for a particular teacher to be 'in charge of' IT (i.e. holding the budget, shaping the policy as best he or she sees fit), it is not going to happen very often that a school will deviate from the safe option. Up until recently, NGFL funding enabled schools to equip themselves in a half-decent fashion, and if spent prudently, money was no more of a problem for IT procurement than it is for any other area of school budgeting. As a consequence, most schools have modern, fast networks with decent desktop machines to work on.
Should those desktops be running Windows? Well, from a techy quasi-political point of view, maybe not. But IT in schools is not a purely techy thing. In many of the schools I have worked in, IT is seen as an empowering skill. Before you get all indignant, think on this. At the last mainstream Secondary school I worked at, there was a considerable basic skills deficit. Literacy and numeracy, to you and me. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. OSS ain't gonna make the difference. Being comfortable with the machines those children will meet in their day to day lives MAY make a difference. Their parents are not going to be installing UbuLinuxHat, and they won't be seeing anything other than Windows machines in the real world (in THEIR real world) any time soon... And yes, for many of these children, the difference between Windows and *nix is enough to cause confusion, and to dissuade.
Until recently, I would have argued vigorously against what I've just written. But now, working at a special school has rather driven the point home. Yes, it's a different client group, but that only serves to emphasise the point that children with difficulties, whether in mainstream education or not, need the comfort of the familiar in order to stand any chance at all. And at the moment, the 'familiar' is Windows. That may be an uncomfortable conclusion for the evangelists, but until Linux (or MacOS, for that matter) is a commonplace in the real world, a significant proportion of children are better served by not being pawns in an intellectual slanging match.
As an aside, it may be that the children in the developing world will be among the first to see Linux in their 'real world' for economic reasons - and yes, their education should reflect that.
Tuppence worth.
Well said, and all that, but the alternative is what/who? We effectively have a one party state, with a few minor variations to the authoritarian seasoning, and a daily dose of public pantomime to give a semblance of discussion. In reality, it's all sewn up tighter than a vasectomised scrotum.
/. nick.
I may yet live to regret my
Nah. Dixon of Dock Green http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixon_of_Dock_Green met his maker years ago. British Law Enforcement nowadays consists of shooting first, and covering up afterwards.
Wait, wait, wait... reasoned responses, calm thinking, no oh-so-sharp wit - you must be new here...
Which begs the question - (and I'm really, *really* not trolling) - where in the world are an individual's freedoms and privacy given some value, beyond cynical and superficial lip service? Certainly not in the US, and certainly not here in Britain. Has there been a comparative study in relation to this? I'm aware of studies looking at a rather nebulous 'quality of life' - but I think there's a subtle difference, or at least, one concept is perhaps a subset of the other.
I may be too old to be irate, but I'm not too old to be quietly concerned about the roles that governments of (all?) the major nation states seem to arbitrarily adopt. And I'm very happy to move out of the UK, if anyone has any ideas.
Peace, and all that.
Good grief. Just tried http://www.lastgoogle.com/ with the first word that came into my head - random, with just a hint of personal topicality - 'hunger'. And lo... http://ebony-hunger.shepherd.net/
Truly, Alpha to Omega, and all in between...
Yep. It's an even bigger 'Fore!'
Tsk. Youngsters today.
Ha, you see! Security by obscurity does work! You don't even know what a flagpole *really* does!
...Tibet doesn't exist at all. Thanks for being open, GoogleEarth...