2008/11/3 David Lowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > The amazing thing about this thread is the way schools are paranoid about > security and yet willing to embrace proprietary (insecure...) software.
One must remember that Schools have very little with true Education or Scholarship these days. It's almost all Vocational Training nowadays. The words "de facto Industry Standard" go a long way with those who control the purse strings, even if European Governments are installing F/LOSS applications and O/Ss by the 100,000+ desktops. > There is a campaign that needs to be run to promote the use of free software > in schools. Is change happening? Up to a point. Novell's OpenSUSE is accredited for use in schools, and the bulk purchase of Microsoft product licences for all schools by the Education Department is now only of historical interest. What the next government will do is currently unknown. > What is the experience at other schools? My > only experience is with CPIT - my daughter is studying there and the way > they do all their lecture notes using .doc and .ppt files makes me spit. > When she wanted to connect to their wireless, she was told 'we don't support > Linux' (and yet they do support Apple!). My son's school did a careful study of the cost of running a laptop in a school setting and discovered that the support cost of a Windows PC is three times that of an Apple Mac. and have since banned Windows machines from their networks. There are some standalone P.C.s for specialist applications. > (A phone call to her Linux support rep (moi) solved things promptly). How did you manage to persuade the said network admin to change his/her mind? > So its great to see that a free solution like Gmail can not only provide a > good solution, but also can break through all the paranoia and misplaced > security. Unfortunately Gmail doesn't "break through" anything. It merely uses Port 80 which has to be open in order to use the WWW. It doesn't stop the paranoia. > - D > > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:38 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Hi all >> >> Sorry for being way OT, I've got to move some files off my student >> workstation at school to my pc at home. Now the pc's here are very locked >> down, I can't use ftp or ssh or plug in external usb devices. So I'm >> looking for some (free) online storage space for around 50megs of work. >> I've had a quick google and either they are a real pain (or just look >> dodgy) to sign up for or no longer available >> >> Any suggestions would be appreciated >> >> Regards, >> Kerry >> > > -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
