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

[Tim Dressel <tjdressel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Diversity is a good thing, and your post of a laundry list of great
reasons to use open source is exactly the kind of colleague sharing we
desperately need. :)

I wish Microsoft was giving me money,,, it could not be further from
the truth. And unfortunately the FUD spread about MS increasing prices
if we migrate to Linux could not be further from the truth. MS has a
long document history of anticompetitiveness, and their reaction to
threats is the exact opposite of raising prices. They go the opposite
way!

Remember when Apple used to heavily subsidize their computers and
software for schools? How come that has gone away? (Rhetorical
question)

I also really appreciate your comments about disadvantaged students. I
often find it hard to pull back from tech everyone once in a while and
look at the classroom as a whole to discover that upwards of 50% of
their families can't even afford a computer at home without
sacrificing sports, or dinner. I've been pushing GIMP in the high
schools for a while now and its hard to make fly when the students are
so adept at using torrents and usenet to grab full copies of Adobe
software. I think we are failing at teaching moral computing which is
something I'm putting into my long term technology plan. ;)

Cheers,

Tim

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Marilyn Hagle
<marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
> :)
>