begin quoting Andrew Lentvorski as of Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 02:00:29PM -0800: > Randall Shimizu wrote: > >But if we can get schools to adopt OSS that will be a big step > >forward. This probably where there is the greatest opportunity to > >expand the use of OSS. One problem is that so many teachers and > >people are only exposed to Windows that blindly accept it as a > >defacto standard. > > Look, teachers really don't care. The big problem with computers in > academia is: "There ain't nobody to admin." Someone with time to properly configure and administer a machine is someone can can be tasked with "additional duties as assigned".
> Plain and simple. Teachers cannot admin a computer. Therefore, if they > even get a choice, they will choose the OS that lets them not admin. > That's Windows. Admin of a Windows computer is an SEP (Somebody Else's > Problem). That explains why Mac OS pre-X was so popular among teachers. > Furthermore, even if they *can* admin that computer, they are not > *going* to. No teacher in their right mind is going to do something > that means they have to accept the responsibility for what happens on > that computer. You can thank the "OHMYGAWD! My child saw <gasp> > *PORN*. And he/she would *never* search for that. It's the *teacher's* > fault.". It will be the teacher's fault despite the fact that their > children have drunken, naked pictures on their > MySpace/Facebook/NarcissisticWeb2.0SiteOfTheMoment pages. Why do children need Internet access again? > This extends all up and down the educational system from Kindergarten to > Senior in college. And there are howls of outrage if anyone tries to administer a network (with penalties like kicking known trouble-makers off the local network) at the other end of the scale. -- Universities need real firewalls and non-routable IP addresses in the dorms. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
