Re: [school-discuss] M$ Windows 7 (meaning of the "great satan of software")

[Marilyn Hagle <marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim,

Sounds like your school district is lucky to have you.  You know how to use
your tools.  You make it all work for your teachers and the students.  That it
is a very wonderful thing - speaking as a teacher in a district struggling
with
technology.

Fortunately I am allowed to manage my own computer lab at school.  For the past
two years my student stations have duel booted to Windows (which I seldom use)
and Ubuntu-Studio.  We supplement activities with the Musix live DVD.  I teach
animation and multimedia.  The most powerful thing I can offer my often
economically disadvantaged students by using Open Source applications such as
the Gimp, Blender, and Cinelerra is that they can have these great tools at
home for free.  They do not have to steal Photoshop, Premiere, or Maya off the
Internet.  When I started this job, that's what they were doing.

My main issue with Microsoft is their need for total dominance.  Why can't we
live in a Mac/Linux/Microsoft world?  Wouldn't life be richer?

I was particularly struck by this just yesterday.  I have spoken some on this
list about modifying netbooks to serve dyslexic children in school.  Both of my
children, ages 8 & 10, are dyslexic.

Recently we were able to find a technology solution for Hannah's book
reading situation.  She is required to read a 200 page book per week. 
Intellectually, she can understand literature even above that level, but reads
much too slowly to accomplish this task.

We discovered that we can go to http://booksshouldbefree.com and
http://gutenberg.org and easily download the html versions and mp3 files for
many wonderful books.

We added OMusic, an online music player, and FoxVox, a text-to-speech reader to
Firefox.  The html book files and mp3 audio book files are in a "books"
directory on the hard drive of Hannah's EeePC (linux version).  We bookmarked
the html book files.  When Hannah opens a book, she clicks on the music note
(OMusic) are the bottom of the Firefox window, and chooses the audio file for
the chapter she is reading.  She arrows down the text with the reader, always
keeping the current text at the top of the window so she does not get lost.

Hannah is currently reading/listening to Alice in Wonderland.  Already resident
on her EeePc are these books:
  *  Secret Garden
  *  Anne of Green Gables
  *  Heidi
  *  Grimms Fairy Tales
  *  Moby Dick
  *  Aesop's Fables
  *  Beatrix Potter Complete
  *  The Day Boy and The Night Girl
  *  The Enchanted Castle
  *  Dracula
  *  Gulliver's Travels
  *  Peter Pan

This is a solution that is working really well for her.  We are pleased and
relieved.

So, I wrote to the Mozilla people to say "thank you" and was going to write to
the EeePC people as well . . . they used to have an educational sales staff you
could contact.

I was horrified to discover that they have completely dropped their Linux EeePC
OS.  In fact, there was even a link to "upgrade" to XP.  *shudder*

Why?  The EeePC/Linux computer is perfect for a fifth grade kid - and really
great for a dyslexic student.  It is full of educational software not loaded on
the XP version (my husband has one of those).  The desktop of tabs and large
buttons which easily launch software are perfect.  This computer cost $279 and
includes the solid state hard drive, bluetooth, SD card reader, and a webcam. 


In 2005, I was demonstrating a Linux package at the main Texas technology
convention and while chatting with a major hardware vendor asked him, "you know
Linux is wonderful . . . why don't you put it on your desktops?"

He answered, "We can't.  If we put a different OS on our desktops, Microsoft
will increase their prices with us so we could no longer compete."

In 2008, I was demonstrating the Musix DVD at NECC in San Antonio.  One of the
people who spoke with me was the the tech director for a large school district
in a state capital.

She said, "everything you are showing me is wonderful.  However we can never use
it in our district.  We get Microsoft money."

While of course it is a fine thing that the Gates Foundation is doing charitable
work, it is unfortunate that it has created feelings of obligation to
Microsoft.

Microsoft is not the great satan because of their products.  You are using their
products to help school children.  That is fabulous.  They are the great satan
because of their efforts to drown out other voices.  Our schools need those
other voices.  Diversity is a good thing.

My 2 cents.  :)

Marilyn

Quoting Tim Dressel <tjdressel@xxxxxxxxx>:

> First a quick disclosure, my entire desktop environment is Microsoft,
> I run an AD infrastructure end to end with the exception of messaging
> (we use FirstClass) and perimeter security. My open source environment
> is limited to key task specific devices (spam filter, bsd based
> firewalls and packet filters, web server and mysql server). District
> wide I have less than 20 open source servers, and less than a handful
> of desktop clients. MS desktops are around 1000, servers are all
> virtual in VMware and total about 20 - 2003/2008 on a two node cluster
> (the linux servers share in the cluster)
> 
> Normally I read this low traffic list and I take away some neat stuff.
> Every once in a while though I whince at the jabs that come in defense
> of open source platforms. It's too bad that Mr. Wildstrom is published
> and read by many when he is so clearly ignorant of the fantastic free
> tools that Microsoft gives away along with its licensing packages. We
> test migrated XP to Windows 7 Machines, completely automated, in under
> 1 hour (this was a lab of 30). Using the existing hardware. I won't
> bother to go into the details, but for any reasonably sized school
> (more than 60 computers) this stuff is pretty straight forward. We
> used USMT to a network store, then did clean installs of Win 7 via the
> new 2008 R2 tools (license for EDU was $140), then on first complete
> boot we brought back in USMT. The only issue we had was boot order on
> the NIC's being set inconsistently in the bios,,, a quick F12 to
> select the boot device and off to the races we went. The machines are
> running just as quick as with XP, and some applications appear to run
> faster. The machines were named the same before and after (as per
> their serial numbers), so all their assigned software just pushed out
> via GPO's. We found the biggest bottleneck to be the server hosting
> the GPO shares when getting hit almost simultaneously by 30 requests
> to install Office 2007, and then our WSUS machine got hit hard. But
> what do you expect!!! :)
> 
> To put things in perspective, we pay $14,000 per year in MS licensing.
> For this we get a site license of Office, Windows, Forefront, and
> every CAL under the sun. For us it works out to about $14/year per
> workstation. For this I have two full time techs that can completely
> hands off manage the entire network in 12 physical locations. Doing
> something similar in Linux land would take more bodies, but yes would
> be less expensive. I can extend WAHR to my teachers for Office 2007
> Enterprise for $16.25 delivered. OpenOffice just can't compete, and
> there is no combination of FLOSS tools that give me the same amount of
> control over my desktops with not much more than a few clicks of the
> mouse. I didn't have to write complex batch files, or perl myself
> silly.
> 
> Open source in the school has so many good arguements,,, why loose the
> arguement on a technicality for ignorance of the great satan of
> software (Directed at BW, not Joel)? Take the high road and win
> cleanly. Put MS to task on poor web standards, or paying their Indian
> programmers a pittance of what the guys in Redmond make. Putting them
> down for a migration strategy you are not aware of just makes us look
> the fool.
> 
> Respectfully,
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Here's a recent article on the latest
> > fun & games from you-know-who:
> >
> > http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_37/b4146000989683.htm
> >
> > Looks like the Redmond rascals are
> > once again shooting themselves in the
> > foot and supplying more ammo for the
> > FLOSS evangelists. The article doesn't
> > even mention Linux (we're used to
> > that, of course), but one of the
> > reader comments does.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 


:)