[backstage] Mapping the World of Piracy
Via NewTeeVee - http://newteevee.com/2009/02/05/mapping-the-world-of-piracy/ - Enjoy! The folks at the Pirate Bay released a Google Maps mash-up Wednesday that illustrates its worldwide user base, with exact percentages by country. It’s a pretty fascinating project in that it helps to dispel certain myths about BitTorrent, namely that while piracy may be a global phenomenon, swapping movies via the Pirate Bay definitely isn’t. For example, did you know there are roughly as many BitTorrent users in Portugal as there are in all of the African countries put together? And that downloaders in Spain are neck-in-neck with those of the U.S. for the No. 2 slot? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
[backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Press Association API?
Just dug this out to have a quick look at it, and it seems that api.welcomebackstage.com doesn't exist - any clues about where we could find the data? Thanks, Martin On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:05 PM, Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.ukwrote: Ok ok, It does exist, the delay has mainly been on our behalf due to wanting to launch most of this stuff all together. I can announce the documentation for the API - http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/node/2 But right now, the API is being tested on another server. At some point in the next few weeks, we'll move the end point to api.welcomebackstage.com. Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)2080083965 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Tom Scott Sent: 02 November 2008 13:18 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Press Association API? Hi all, I'm trying to track down the Press Association API, which was announced as imminent months ago (http://snurl.com/4xlfr) - does it exist yet? And if not, does anyone know when it'll happen? It'd come in very handy for a project idea I've got... Cheers, Tom - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Mm. Very interesting. If something as simple as a petition will make Windows free and open source, why has no-one thought of it before? Why do the idiots who start these petitions never have any kind of grasp of grammar? Or proof reading? Would you take anyone seriously who turned up on your doorstep dribbling from the mouth, telling you it's all bout the lu1z? No. Nothing to see here - move along now... Cheers, Rich. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Mr I Forrester mail...@cubicgarden.com wrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ I find this idea appealing but fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why this concept is a non-starter for all but a few schools. I went through this country's education system and am currently in my final year at University, so it wasn't such a long time ago ;) It so happens that my Dad was the deputy head at the school I went to and he was also the only person who managed the school's entire IT infrastructure for a very long time. Yes, the school did eventually become a Technology College (thanks in part due to his hard work over the time he was there), and with that Technology College status they got a lot more money - they eventually got one, then two, then several members of dedicated IT staff - but for the most part it was him steering the boat as such. He did the lion's share of the administrative IT work as well, installing and maintaining SIMS, all the staff machines, equipment, etc. The bloke working in the Reprographics department managed the offset litho printer (yes, they had one!) and the photocopiers I think, but that was about it. So, during the best part of 14 years he was there for, my Dad oversaw and managed installations of, in order, an Acorn network with matching Econet system (remember the DINs and T-bars? :D), a gradual move from Acorn to 95 machines, then to 98 with more and more intricate networking infrastructure. He had little money and worked with what he had available to him within budgetary constraints him local and national suppliers. This meant that, by the time the school got proper wedges of funding for IT, the school already had a firmly established userbase of Windows 9x machines, gradually making the move to 2000 then to XP as time went on. Site licenses for educational software are costly, and I would put money on the fact that just about all educational software is still written solely for the Windows OS. Chicken and the egg scenario here, but if you want definitive figures just go to BETT and do some empirical research to find out. (I bet I'm right). Also, historical investment in infrastructure cannot be ignored, and quite often you have scenarios where you build up relationships with suppliers and distributors and so can secure good deals for all sorts of things. When you have limited manpower and man hours to maintain a network used all day every day by hundreds of students and staff alike, you can't afford to have 'exotic particles' introduced into even a closed loop system. Plus, there are so many other outside influences and requirements (right down to the cacheing systems many schools used back when ISDN was the only reality for connectivity, before the Grids for Learning were properly established) that you could not expect to have a system being migrated over to some bizarre and funky FOSS alternative OS. Aside from the fact that the suite of *de facto* software the students would use day in and day would need to be the same, in some cases the bloody curriculum demanded that particular software be used, so your hands were tied. Other times, it was a cost/benefit analysis. Sure, FOSS alternatives to CAD/CAM were available, I'm sure, but did they work as well as CAD/CAM, play nice with all the hardware the graphics and control tech departments had, AND fully support all the old work and files students had created? You can't just rip and replace in an educational scenario. Given that many schools' IT infrastructure development was so organic and self-funded throughout the 90s, they are now in the situation where it is almost completely impractical to start from scratch with a FOSS OS and FOSS software, making sure that interdependencies aren't broken, networking works as well (or as expected) as prior to the switch, and students - and staff alike - aren't 'de-familiarised' with the setup. With any major transition such as an OS move, there's a lot of retraining needed for staff and students. When you run to such a tight timeline as most schools do, there just aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish this. The cost in terms of 1) setting it all up 2) testing it 3) supporting it 4) fixing stuff that doesn't work like it should 5) dealing with problems related to the transition can just become extortionate, and I would also wager that most school IT departments have their hands full enough just keeping existing infrastructure going. The only schools that could possibly get away with FOSS from the outset are the entirely new builds, because there's no legacy there in terms of hardware and software requirements. Having said all of this, I am fully supportive of FOSS - and so is my Dad. He's currently the IT advisor for education for the county council where he now lives, and has
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
He isn't advocating making Windows open source, the petition states that the primary OS used in schools should be a free and open source alternative to windows. Not idiotic at all. I've signed up. Phil On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Richard Lockwood richard.lockw...@gmail.com wrote: Mm. Very interesting. If something as simple as a petition will make Windows free and open source, why has no-one thought of it before? Why do the idiots who start these petitions never have any kind of grasp of grammar? Or proof reading? Would you take anyone seriously who turned up on your doorstep dribbling from the mouth, telling you it's all bout the lu1z? No. Nothing to see here - move along now... Cheers, Rich. On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Mr I Forrester mail...@cubicgarden.com wrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- http://philwhitehouse.blogspot.com
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Chris, your points are very interesting, and I wonder if you've been in touch with the team who are behind Open Labs: Learning? http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/openlearning/ a On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Christopher Woods chris...@infinitus.co.ukwrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ I find this idea appealing but fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why this concept is a non-starter for all but a few schools. I went through this country's education system and am currently in my final year at University, so it wasn't such a long time ago ;) It so happens that my Dad was the deputy head at the school I went to and he was also the only person who managed the school's entire IT infrastructure for a very long time. Yes, the school did eventually become a Technology College (thanks in part due to his hard work over the time he was there), and with that Technology College status they got a lot more money - they eventually got one, then two, then several members of dedicated IT staff - but for the most part it was him steering the boat as such. He did the lion's share of the administrative IT work as well, installing and maintaining SIMS, all the staff machines, equipment, etc. The bloke working in the Reprographics department managed the offset litho printer (yes, they had one!) and the photocopiers I think, but that was about it. So, during the best part of 14 years he was there for, my Dad oversaw and managed installations of, in order, an Acorn network with matching Econet system (remember the DINs and T-bars? :D), a gradual move from Acorn to 95 machines, then to 98 with more and more intricate networking infrastructure. He had little money and worked with what he had available to him within budgetary constraints him local and national suppliers. This meant that, by the time the school got proper wedges of funding for IT, the school already had a firmly established userbase of Windows 9x machines, gradually making the move to 2000 then to XP as time went on. Site licenses for educational software are costly, and I would put money on the fact that just about all educational software is still written solely for the Windows OS. Chicken and the egg scenario here, but if you want definitive figures just go to BETT and do some empirical research to find out. (I bet I'm right). Also, historical investment in infrastructure cannot be ignored, and quite often you have scenarios where you build up relationships with suppliers and distributors and so can secure good deals for all sorts of things. When you have limited manpower and man hours to maintain a network used all day every day by hundreds of students and staff alike, you can't afford to have 'exotic particles' introduced into even a closed loop system. Plus, there are so many other outside influences and requirements (right down to the cacheing systems many schools used back when ISDN was the only reality for connectivity, before the Grids for Learning were properly established) that you could not expect to have a system being migrated over to some bizarre and funky FOSS alternative OS. Aside from the fact that the suite of *de facto* software the students would use day in and day would need to be the same, in some cases the bloody curriculum demanded that particular software be used, so your hands were tied. Other times, it was a cost/benefit analysis. Sure, FOSS alternatives to CAD/CAM were available, I'm sure, but did they work as well as CAD/CAM, play nice with all the hardware the graphics and control tech departments had, AND fully support all the old work and files students had created? You can't just rip and replace in an educational scenario. Given that many schools' IT infrastructure development was so organic and self-funded throughout the 90s, they are now in the situation where it is almost completely impractical to start from scratch with a FOSS OS and FOSS software, making sure that interdependencies aren't broken, networking works as well (or as expected) as prior to the switch, and students - and staff alike - aren't 'de-familiarised' with the setup. With any major transition such as an OS move, there's a lot of retraining needed for staff and students. When you run to such a tight timeline as most schools do, there just aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish this. The cost in terms of 1) setting it all up 2) testing it 3) supporting it 4) fixing stuff that doesn't work like it should 5) dealing with problems related to the transition can just become extortionate, and I would also wager that most school IT departments have their hands full enough just keeping existing infrastructure going. The only schools that could
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
2009/2/9 Richard Lockwood richard.lockw...@gmail.com: If something as simple as a petition will make Windows free and open source, why has no-one thought of it before? That is not what the petition is about! :-) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Interesting that OLPC has just gone OS! Also,: www.opensourceschools.org.uk http://www.osor.eu/news/uk-open-source-is-core-to-education http://www.141.co.uk/?p=164 On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Dave Crossland d...@lab6.com wrote: 2009/2/9 Richard Lockwood richard.lockw...@gmail.com: If something as simple as a petition will make Windows free and open source, why has no-one thought of it before? That is not what the petition is about! :-) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Ant Miller tel: 07709 265961 email: ant.mil...@gmail.com
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Christopher Woods chris...@infinitus.co.uk Transforming a Windows school to an Ubuntu school is nigh on impossible to achieve unless you provide a year's warning, gradually phase out use of all Windows-only software over the course of the year, implement the massive overhaul and platform transition during the holidays and then spend the next six months to a year supporting users when stuff goes wrong. Most schools simply cannot afford to provision those kinds of resources, so they stay put with what they have, and that's why FOSS will never make significant inroads into those establishments. It would take something like Governmental intervention to impose FOSS and OSes on schools as a mandatory element of their funding in order for them to make the change, but it would be so disruptive that it would probably be ignored or sidelined by many schools. And yet they will end up on a newer Microsoft operating system at some point. ;-) I am not trying to scaremonger or FUD here, it is just my view as someone who has gone through the system and grown up alongside the maturation of a typical educational IT setup, and who also had the advantage of talking to the person who helped to implement a lot of it (and still talks to the person who now helps implement policy and infrastructure for an entire county's worth of education!) Although perhaps flawed or coloured, I feel it's a pragmatic, realistic view. It's very informative. Thanks. I've encountered similar stories from people working with charities for example. One thing I'd say is that nothing will stimulate companies that can support schools (and other institutions) using GNU/Linux like the prospect of there being a sudden increase in the number of schools using GNU/Linux to support. ;-) - Rob. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Transforming a Windows school to an Ubuntu school is nigh on impossible to achieve unless you provide a year's warning, gradually phase out use of all Windows-only software over the course of the year, implement the massive overhaul and platform transition during the holidays and then spend the next six months to a year supporting users when stuff goes wrong. Most schools simply cannot afford to provision those kinds of resources, so they stay put with what they have, and that's why FOSS will never make significant inroads into those establishments. It would take something like Governmental intervention to impose FOSS and OSes on schools as a mandatory element of their funding in order for them to make the change, but it would be so disruptive that it would probably be ignored or sidelined by many schools. I can still remember my secondary school getting 386s - one room had the ICL PCs, the other two still had BBC Masters! It was like that for a while, despite the school getting some pioneering grants. All school migrations on equipment and software is inevitably going to be a slow process as equipment comes online. It's not impossible, but you can't do it quickly. I think it's more doable at the primary school level. You start small and slowly. There's a lot of very good educational software out there, and distributions like Edubuntu. Old PCs which would need to be replaced otherwise, could be brought into service to try them out. Software needs at that level (I presume!) are a lot less constrained on what you need - and there's the added benefit that such software can be installed for free too ;) It just needs people who know what they're doing, but then, doesn't Windows?! There's been some interesting articles on education and Linux in Linux Format and there are some states and countries which are pressing quite heavily into removing Windows from their school. However the consensus appeared to be that the UK hasn't been geared up to providing the assistance that schools need to make the move. One of the articles I read said that some schools are using open source software - from servers to software like Gcompris - thanks to people with enthusiasm and a desire to try new things. They're small scale - obviously. And to get it extended you really need some big push to make it happen. It could happen. (Yeah. And monkeys might fly out of my butt :) ) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Maybe I'm a poor deluded misguided fool who needs showing the error of my ways? Lorks, far from it! I think we'd need a lot of people like you if the government does try and introduce open source into schools. These are really important problems that mustn't be overlooked. I'll assume for the purpose of brevity that the readers of this list understand the benefits of open source. We're training our kids to give money to vendors for their entire lives. Windows is an expensive, inherently closed system which, in 2009, offers very little benefit over and above open source alternatives. This gap is closing fast. So let's look at the negatives to see if they can be mitigated and overcome. I definitely recognise the problems you've outlined, but I believe they're not insurmountable. Introducing open source solutions to all schools in a 'big bang' fashion would be a total disaster, no doubt about it. But I can imagine a world where a gentle introduction (pilot projects in a limited number of capable schools) could help define what a subsequent, gradual rollout might look like. Several key issues would need to be addressed. The lack of available software is a big problem, but I believe this can be addressed at the government level by insisting that all commissioned software runs cross-domain. Having recently spent time walking around a primary school (my daughter started there in January) I didn't see any materials that couldn't have been designed to display in a browser. And there were plenty of PowerPoint slides that could run in OpenOffice. So if we start making this a condition of all new software NOW, then in a few years time we'd have a lot less propriertary software to worry about, and there's nothing to lose in the meantime. Support is another key issue, but one which I expect to fall away in 2009. Ubuntu isn't quite there yet, granted, but they're investing huge amounts of money in this area: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/162 I believe that support issues (especially re 3rd party devices) will be level with Windows in the next 2 years. Maybe sooner. Just looking back over your list: 1) setting it all up - keep it small to start with, then roll into normal upgrade cycle, there's no hurry! 2) testing it - this should be part of the procurement process, push the onus of (cross browser?) testing onto the vendor 3) supporting it - getting easier, and heaven knows Windows has its own problems here, especially re: virii, malware, etc. 4) fixing stuff that doesn't work like it should - same problems at present i.e. no obvious downside, again the browser is the key. If it works in Firefox it'll work everywhere. 5) dealing with problems related to the transition - again, by making it gradual and rolling it into the current upgrade cycle we mitigate the risk All this needs to be judged against the HUGE upside. More time, energy and money invested in open source makes it better for everyone. I'm not a microsoft hater by any means, but spending £millions of public money on vendor lock-in seems daft to me. Time to start planning a gradual and controlled move over to open source. Hey, it could take 5-10 years but the benefits seem worthwhile. And then we'd have an army of youngsters ready-equiped to operate in a world where open source will definitely be a big player. Just my $0.02! Phil On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Christopher Woods chris...@infinitus.co.ukwrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ I find this idea appealing but fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why this concept is a non-starter for all but a few schools. I went through this country's education system and am currently in my final year at University, so it wasn't such a long time ago ;) It so happens that my Dad was the deputy head at the school I went to and he was also the only person who managed the school's entire IT infrastructure for a very long time. Yes, the school did eventually become a Technology College (thanks in part due to his hard work over the time he was there), and with that Technology College status they got a lot more money - they eventually got one, then two, then several members of dedicated IT staff - but for the most part it was him steering the boat as such. He did the lion's share of the administrative IT work as well, installing and maintaining SIMS, all the staff machines, equipment, etc. The bloke working in the Reprographics department managed the offset litho printer (yes, they had one!) and the photocopiers I think, but that was about it. So, during the best part of 14 years he was there for, my Dad oversaw and managed installations of, in order, an Acorn network with matching Econet system (remember the DINs and T-bars? :D), a
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
2009/2/9 Phil Whitehouse phil.whiteho...@gmail.com: Maybe I'm a poor deluded misguided fool who needs showing the error of my ways? We're training our kids to give money to vendors for their entire lives. And, more importantly IMO, to not consider the value of freedom in relation to the parts of there lives that are computer-mediated, which is an accelerating part of all our lives. Sadly, since schools routinely spy on the use of computers and discipline students for using them for hobbies instead of only using them for school-approved learning, students learn lessons about freedom and privacy in relation to computers the hard way. Cheers, Dave (personal opinion only.) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
And yet they will end up on a newer Microsoft operating system at some point. ;-) Right - if they really stayed put with what they have, then they'd still be using Acorns. Which probably taught kids more about computer science than the XP machines in use today ;-) So, rather than spending on the Windows 7 upgrade, better to invest in the switch to software freedom. WINE will take care of legacy proprietary educational applications for the short period where they get re-implemented as free software. If only it were that assured... Wine's hardware 3D support is, from what friends who use it tell me, still quite potholed - and I don't even think it has fully fledged hardware TL support. Hell, VMWare doesn't have full hardware TL support yet, and that's far more widely used. For that reason alone, it won't be adopted to run graphics editing apps, graphics department software, cad software... The main sticking point for most schools is the can we help students if... question. Hypothetical scenario: a student who's never used Edubuntu before comes to the teacher in charge of the class and says, miss/sir, I know how to do zyx in microsoft Word because we have it at home, but I've not used OpenOffice before and I don't know how to figure it out. Can you help me? The teacher says, erm, yes kid no problem, let me just go Google for the answer because I don't know myself. Dingdingding we have a winner! The class loses respect for the teacher because they cannot lead and instantly assist the pupil, the teacher feels demoralised because they don't have all the knowledge they need to lead the class, and the whole scenario quickly descends into anarchy, as unguided classes often do. Most teachers, IT teachers aside because by their nature they are ahead of the curve, will have a working knowledge - not a technical knowledge, just a working knowledge - in the basic suite of DTP and productivity tools, plus Internet Explorer and maybe Firefox and whatever other hand-picked apps the school has on their systems. To retrain an entire school of teachers so that they are up to speed with the foibles and intricacies of a whole new suite of apps is unrealistic to say the least, at the most entirely impossible especially if you have supply teachers, part-time or percentage teachers, or people who just aren't technologically minded. My mum is one of the latter; she can just about use a system if it's common everywhere, but a lot of what she does by her own admission is learnt by rote and reinforced through use both at school and at home. She is perhaps at more of a disadvantage than the current generation of schoolkids - she cannot think laterally to solve computing problems, she either has to be shown or be instructed. Kids on the other hand pick stuff up far more easily (there's the old family story of how at 18 months old, I figured out how to turn on an Apple ][e, its printer and its external SCSI hard drive one morning just by watching my Dad the day before... Appparently I was sitting there using Paint 8) The point behind that (true!) story was that kids seem to be able to pick new stuff up far more quickly than the adults who are supposedly teaching them! And that's the massive problem facing any school that even wants to consider migrating the vast majority of its computers away from an established, well understood platform and OS, be they proprietary or not. ... I hope that some of these new build schools sieze the opportunity and set their systems up with a good chunk of FOSS though! - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Although this rant is impassioned and detailed it's almost comically misinformed. What's happening in education IT(C) is the imposition of a £45bn corporate cash cow called Building Schools for the Future (BSF) - through which the government is shamefully entering into yet more PFI relationships. The scorched earth Christopher suggests is impossible is already happening as more than 20 local authorities have struck deals with managed IT service suppliers such as RM under BSF. As a consequence local control, flexibility and in-school knowledge about IT services is evaporating. BSF schools will have what the supplier supports (essentially Microsoft) at prices determined by long-term monopoly contracts. The issue of Open Source remains important - Btw it is not true that OS is unknown in education - Moodle.org moodle.org/is a good example Christopher Woods wrote: Seen this in my mailbox a few times today, sure you will all find this interesting... We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nonMSschools/ I find this idea appealing but fundamentally flawed. Let me explain why this concept is a non-starter for all but a few schools. I went through this country's education system and am currently in my final year at University, so it wasn't such a long time ago ;) It so happens that my Dad was the deputy head at the school I went to and he was also the only person who managed the school's entire IT infrastructure for a very long time. Yes, the school did eventually become a Technology College (thanks in part due to his hard work over the time he was there), and with that Technology College status they got a lot more money - they eventually got one, then two, then several members of dedicated IT staff - but for the most part it was him steering the boat as such. He did the lion's share of the administrative IT work as well, installing and maintaining SIMS, all the staff machines, equipment, etc. The bloke working in the Reprographics department managed the offset litho printer (yes, they had one!) and the photocopiers I think, but that was about it. So, during the best part of 14 years he was there for, my Dad oversaw and managed installations of, in order, an Acorn network with matching Econet system (remember the DINs and T-bars? :D), a gradual move from Acorn to 95 machines, then to 98 with more and more intricate networking infrastructure. He had little money and worked with what he had available to him within budgetary constraints him local and national suppliers. This meant that, by the time the school got proper wedges of funding for IT, the school already had a firmly established userbase of Windows 9x machines, gradually making the move to 2000 then to XP as time went on. Site licenses for educational software are costly, and I would put money on the fact that just about all educational software is still written solely for the Windows OS. Chicken and the egg scenario here, but if you want definitive figures just go to BETT and do some empirical research to find out. (I bet I'm right). Also, historical investment in infrastructure cannot be ignored, and quite often you have scenarios where you build up relationships with suppliers and distributors and so can secure good deals for all sorts of things. When you have limited manpower and man hours to maintain a network used all day every day by hundreds of students and staff alike, you can't afford to have 'exotic particles' introduced into even a closed loop system. Plus, there are so many other outside influences and requirements (right down to the cacheing systems many schools used back when ISDN was the only reality for connectivity, before the Grids for Learning were properly established) that you could not expect to have a system being migrated over to some bizarre and funky FOSS alternative OS. Aside from the fact that the suite of *de facto* software the students would use day in and day would need to be the same, in some cases the bloody curriculum demanded that particular software be used, so your hands were tied. Other times, it was a cost/benefit analysis. Sure, FOSS alternatives to CAD/CAM were available, I'm sure, but did they work as well as CAD/CAM, play nice with all the hardware the graphics and control tech departments had, AND fully support all the old work and files students had created? You can't just rip and replace in an educational scenario. Given that many schools' IT infrastructure development was so organic and self-funded throughout the 90s, they are now in the situation where it is almost completely impractical to start from scratch with a FOSS OS and FOSS software, making sure that interdependencies aren't broken, networking works as well (or as expected) as prior to the switch, and students - and staff alike - aren't 'de-familiarised' with the setup. With any major
[backstage] Twittering on
Apparently, there are complaints about how much air time twitter is being given by the BBC: http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/09/bbc-radio-listeners-kick-fuss-twitter-time-bbc-create-microblogging-service/ -- Frank Wales [fr...@limov.com] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
On Monday 09 February 2009 17:32:58 Christopher Woods wrote: The main sticking point for most schools is the can we help students if... question. This is part of the issue that some people forget when they put their personal politics before the needs of children at school. If a tool undermines the teaching then it moves from a force for good into a force for bad. This goes as much for proprietary systems as it does for open systems. ie the reasons for change should be pedagogical rather than political. Michael. -- (personal views only) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 04:12:09PM -, Christopher Woods wrote: Aside from the fact that the suite of *de facto* software the students would use day in and day would need to be the same, in some cases the bloody curriculum demanded that particular software be used, so your hands were tied. At my school we had Acorns for general use (DTP etc), an ST for music composition, and a Beeb for handling the input from our radiotelescopes. I was happy with each of them (and did not have a computer at home to compare or learn on). There was no problem in using different computers for different purposes, each was the right tool for the job. So what's wrong with providing certain software where the curriculum prescribes it, perhaps on computers in the room or lab where that subject is taught, but the main suites could be running entirely open source solutions? And then if schools start to turn to open source, maybe the software prescribed by the curriculum will change as well. Schools should be preparing kids to go into the world. And open source is out there on desktops now. We should be looking forward to that, not back because that's how it's always been. -- Flash Bristow -Web Design Mastery -07939 579090 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Work: www.wdam.co.uk Personal: www.gorge.org - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Although this rant is impassioned and detailed it's almost comically misinformed. What's happening in education IT(C) is the imposition of a £45bn corporate cash cow called Building Schools for the Future (BSF) - through which the government is shamefully entering into yet more PFI relationships. The scorched earth Christopher suggests is impossible is already happening as more than 20 local authorities have struck deals with managed IT service suppliers such as RM under BSF. As a consequence local control, flexibility and in-school knowledge about IT services is evaporating. BSF schools will have what the supplier supports (essentially Microsoft) at prices determined by long-term monopoly contracts. The issue of Open Source remains important - Btw it is not true that OS is unknown in education - Moodle.org is a good example Moodle is an unusual exception to the rule, and I think it's been as popular as it has become mostly due to the fact that it's web-based. People are already familiar with Intranets, and no two school intranets will be the same. FOSS is the king of web-based solutions for sure at the moment, especially when you have LEAs hacking it apart, hosting entire collections of resources on it and making it work very well for their own (vil! ;) ends. And moodling is a nice verb to slip into common parlance :) I wish there were more varieties of platforms in schools - my Uni currently has way more Macs than PCs, but that's another angry discussion I'm raring to have with the first person who foolishly puts their head above the parapet - but the sheer volume of computers that most schools have today almost requires that the common denominator is OS and platform. If you have 400-500 PCs, just keeping them all running smoothly is a sheer nightmare. This number can rise significantly if a school has more than 1,000 students and is well funded for ICT (most Technology College accredited schools will likely have at least 1 computer to every 3 people, my old school has almost 1 for every 2). When I was at primary school, our IT room had BBC Master systems, Acorns of all shapes and sizes (my own A3000 is still tucked away in the loft) and some IBM PCs. Every kid wanted to use the PCs because they had the best games on them (The Incredible Machine!) Of course, they weren't networked, secured or anything like school computers have to be these days, because those pesky kids will always sniff about trying to find holes in the system to get through. Given the added demands of policing the network at all times and a disparate set of platforms becomes a nightmare. Sure, you can get VNC for all major and minor platforms, and no doubt there are FOSS monitoring solutions out there - but most proprietary monitoring systems (that sit on the desktops and monitor keystrokes, take screengrabs etc) are for Windows, and the best-supported ones will be proprietary. My sixth form (at a different school) had that kind of monitoring software which also looked for keywords entered and disabled your username if you exceeded a threshold! That was a pain (the sysadmin knew me by how I knocked on the IT Support door after a few months). Oh, and I almost forgot... Once you've sorted everything else out, you then have to add in UK.gov policies, including its most recent creation, RIPA, dictating strict rules and policies for educational establishments to adhere to - and woe betide if you cross them and Mr. investigating officer doesn't like the cut of your jib or how you've handled the enquiry. So, compliant monitoring, data retention and archival becomes almost as key as providing a stable base for students and teachers. Although I don't have intimate knowledge of each and every solution I certainly get the feeling from what I've read and seen that most solutions either have to be completely bespoke or an off-the-shelf, proprietary solution... Which quite often will work on a proprietary OS. Reiterating the point I made earlier, and Michael picked up on, until all teachers are as au fait with every kind of platform and software as the kids are (or may be), there's no point forcing a move to FOSS, because the kids will be doing stuff the teachers can't even understand and it'll just waste everybody's time and money plus lower the quality of teaching. Who cares if MS is de facto in the school setting if it serves its purpose? Even if on the face of it FOSS could replace it, all that existing knowledge is gone because people have to relearn how to work the computers to a standard they were at before. A phased migration is the only workable solution, and even that becomes harder and harder when you have outsourced service and support from third parties as Neil mentioned. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 16:12 +, Christopher Woods wrote: Given that many schools' IT infrastructure development was so organic and self-funded throughout the 90s, they are now in the situation where it is almost completely impractical to start from scratch with a FOSS OS and FOSS software, making sure that interdependencies aren't broken, networking works as well (or as expected) as prior to the switch, and students - and staff alike - aren't 'de-familiarised' with the setup. With any major transition such as an OS move, there's a lot of retraining needed for staff and students. When you run to such a tight timeline as most schools do, there just aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish this. You seem to be saying that although the status quo is not good (indeed, it is delivering a second-cless education), there's no easy way out, so let's leave things as they are. If I have mis-characterised your argument, I apologise, but let's sidestep that. After all, you're barking up the wrong tree. The model of maintaining individually-installed apps over several discrete PCs was all very well in the 80s, and possibly the 90s, but how long before schools catch up with the rest of the world. PCs in schools are mandated to teach curriculum areas - this can easily be delivered through 500 - 600 web apps. The whole curriculum. A small investment from government (less than 1% of the UK's annual school IT spend) would get all of these apps written. Released under the GNU GPL, they would be tweaked and improved by thousands of teachers and students. Given web apps, designed to work with standards-compliant browsers, it becomes irrelevant which platform is used to view them, save on grounds of cost and maintainability. The obvious choice then is LTSP. I believe the sad fact is that much FOSS isn't as well or reliably supported where it matters because there just isn't as much money in it. Again, chicken and the egg. Schools are a difficult market for a support company. Maintaining two or three is easy enough for anyone. Beyond that it won't scale well until you're covering all of an LEA :-( How as a FOSS company are you going to maintain a well-staffed callout team and helpdesk if the software you are providing is essentially free? Why is that a problem? My companies have never had a problem charging for support for Free Software. All software needs support. You can't justify far higher support contract charges for that reason alone, and schools will either bring the required talent in-house Schools don't pay enough to attract good suport staff :-( or source it locally - and bingo, just like that, your company is out of business. So think local. How many schols are there within 40 miles of you? - Richard -- Richard Smedley, r...@m6-it.org Technical Director, www.M6-IT.org M6-IT CIC+44 (0)779 456 07 14 Sustainable Third Sector IT solutions. PRINCE2[TM] Project Management Web services * Back-ups * Support * Training Certification * E-Mail M6-IT is a Community Interest Company, limited by guarantee. Registered in England Wales, Registration No: 6040154 11 St Marks Road, Stourbridge, West Midlands, DY9 7DT Northern Office: 4, Hollins Green, Bradwall, Cheshire, CW10 0LA. Welsh office/Swyddfa Gogledd Cymru: e-mail / e-bost - cy...@m6-it.org Southern Office: Oxford contact matt...@m6-it.org - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Sorry for those who can't quite figure out what I'm quoting and what I'm saying myself in my previous email, when I converted to plaintext I forgot to add in the appropriate quote marks. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Twittering on
The really cool kids are on both right? Surely it's the same as when Radio presenters couldn't help but chat about there Myspace pages all the time? Every bar I go into now a days, there's talk about Youtube, Facebook and sometimes Twitter anyway. Cheers, Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)2080083965 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Rob Myers Sent: 09 February 2009 18:04 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Twittering on Frank Wales wrote: Apparently, there are complaints about how much air time twitter is being given by the BBC: http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/09/bbc-radio-listeners-kick-fuss-twitter -time-bbc-create-microblogging-service/ Yeah, all the cool kids are on identi.ca now. ;-) - Rob. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Press Association API?
We're changing the urls of a lot of things and expect to have it launched this month. Sorry for the delay Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)2080083965 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Martin Deutsch Sent: 09 February 2009 16:03 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Press Association API? Just dug this out to have a quick look at it, and it seems that api.welcomebackstage.com doesn't exist - any clues about where we could find the data? Thanks, Martin On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:05 PM, Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk wrote: Ok ok, It does exist, the delay has mainly been on our behalf due to wanting to launch most of this stuff all together. I can announce the documentation for the API - http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/node/2 But right now, the API is being tested on another server. At some point in the next few weeks, we'll move the end point to api.welcomebackstage.com. Ian Forrester This e-mail is: [x] private; [] ask first; [] bloggable Senior Producer, BBC Backstage Room 1044, BBC Manchester BH, Oxford Road, M60 1SJ email: ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk work: +44 (0)2080083965 mob: +44 (0)7711913293 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Tom Scott Sent: 02 November 2008 13:18 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] Press Association API? Hi all, I'm trying to track down the Press Association API, which was announced as imminent months ago (http://snurl.com/4xlfr) - does it exist yet? And if not, does anyone know when it'll happen? It'd come in very handy for a project idea I've got... Cheers, Tom - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
2009/2/9 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: The really cool kids are on both right? Given that identi.ca can now supply Twitter and Facebook with messages automatically itself - just pop in your login details - this isn't as cool as it sounds. ;p - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
Ian Forrester wrote: The really cool kids are on both right? I refer the honourable gentleman to the smiley I appended at the conclusion of my previous statement. ;-) I think Twitter has the more famous people on it. Surely it's the same as when Radio presenters couldn't help but chat about there Myspace pages all the time? Every bar I go into now a days, there's talk about Youtube, Facebook and sometimes Twitter anyway. Twitter is breaking through to the mainstream. It's a big enough phenomenon that ignoring it would be the extraordinary thing. - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [backstage] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
2009/2/9 Richard Smedley r...@m6-it.org: curriculum areas - this can easily be delivered through 500 - 600 web apps. The whole curriculum. A small investment from government (less than 1% of the UK's annual school IT spend) would get all of these apps written. Released under the GNU GPL, Affero GPL ought to be used for new web-apps :-) http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html Cheers, Dave (Personal views only) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 19:15 +, Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/2/9 Richard Smedley r...@m6-it.org: curriculum areas - this can easily be delivered through 500 - 600 web apps. The whole curriculum. A small investment from government (less than 1% of the UK's annual school IT spend) would get all of these apps written. Released under the GNU GPL, Affero GPL ought to be used for new web-apps :-) Good point. Although I had in mind putting the apps on the school's intranet server, in which case GPL would be adequate. However there would doubtless be a market for remote delivery. - Richard -- Richard Smedley,www.m6-it.org PRINCE2[TM] Project Management. Interactive Websites. GTD seminars. OpenOffice training and certification. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Who cares if MS is de facto in the school setting if it serves its purpose?=20 Its purpose (as someone else pointed out quite eloquently) is to teach kids. I don't know how well MS software teaches anything other than how to use the previous version of MS software, a skill that at best devalued by the time you get into the workplace. Even if on the face of it FOSS could replace it, all that existing knowledge is go= ne because people have to relearn how to work the computers to a standard = they were at before.=20 For the average computer user this is their experience of upgrades to new versions of MS software. There is a bogus upgrade bait and switch cycle that keeps people upgrading their intel hardware, MS OS, and MS software to prevent them losing their investment in each when the next one is declared outmoded by the company that sells it. GNU/Linux can break the OS part of this cycle, and Dave has mentioned WINE. A phased migration is the only workable solution, and even that becomes harder and harder when you have outsourced service and sup= port from third parties as Neil mentioned. These third parties must remain competitive if they wish to continue to receive tax money. I allege that the advantages of switching to Free Software *can* outweigh the costs (sic) of support, teaching, and third party staff upgrading their skills to more open, flexible and studiable systems. ;-) - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
Actually a lot of tweeters complain about the likes of Chris Moyles et al moving into twitter! Soulla :) 2009/2/9 Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org Ian Forrester wrote: The really cool kids are on both right? I refer the honourable gentleman to the smiley I appended at the conclusion of my previous statement. ;-) I think Twitter has the more famous people on it. Surely it's the same as when Radio presenters couldn't help but chat about there Myspace pages all the time? Every bar I go into now a days, there's talk about Youtube, Facebook and sometimes Twitter anyway. Twitter is breaking through to the mainstream. It's a big enough phenomenon that ignoring it would be the extraordinary thing. - Rob. -- Soulla Stylianou RL Client Director DADEN LIMITED e: soulla.stylia...@daden.co.uk t: 0121 698 8520 m: 07814145167 w: www.daden.co.uk http://twitter.com/SoullaStylianou sl: http://www.slurl.com/secondlife/daden%20prime/160/184/26 sl IM: ImmortalitySou Ballinger Daden Limited is an Information 2.0 Consultancy and full service Virtual Worlds/Second Life development agency. Creators of Daden Navigator - the first Web Browser for Second Life ( http://www.daden.co.uk/navigator)
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
I have to admit that I generally don't see the point of twitter. Having said that though, this recent spell of cold weather has actually made me like it, mostly because the university I go to have been updating us on whether the uni is closed via twitter (http://twitter.com/UniofBath), and also the local bus company have been doing the same ( http://twitter.com/bathcsc). Much easier and nicer than constantly going back to a web page with the service status on (or going out and waiting for an hour for a bus that never turns up). Personally I think it is things like that which will bring twitter to the mainstream, especially when combined with it's ease of use on mobile devices. Duncan 2009/2/9 Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org Ian Forrester wrote: The really cool kids are on both right? I refer the honourable gentleman to the smiley I appended at the conclusion of my previous statement. ;-) I think Twitter has the more famous people on it. Surely it's the same as when Radio presenters couldn't help but chat about there Myspace pages all the time? Every bar I go into now a days, there's talk about Youtube, Facebook and sometimes Twitter anyway. Twitter is breaking through to the mainstream. It's a big enough phenomenon that ignoring it would be the extraordinary thing. - Rob.
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
Duncan Barclay wrote: I have to admit that I generally don't see the point of twitter. You could have fitted that into a twitter message and reached a much wider audience. ;-) - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
I allege that the advantages of switching to Free Software *can* outweigh the costs (sic) of support, teaching, and third party staff upgrading their skills to more open, flexible and studiable systems. ;-) I like the use of the word allege. Can you demonstrate it? Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
2009/2/9 Richard Smedley r...@m6-it.org: Good point. Although I had in mind putting the apps on the school's intranet server, in which case GPL would be adequate. However there would doubtless be a market for remote delivery. Affero is still important for intranets; The plain GPL does not protect the rights of users of a program, only those of the systems administrators who install it on the server. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Richard Lockwood wrote: I allege that the advantages of switching to Free Software *can* outweigh the costs (sic) of support, teaching, and third party staff upgrading their skills to more open, flexible and studiable systems. ;-) I like the use of the word allege. Can you demonstrate it? Sure. Give me control of the state budget for school IT... ;-) - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
RE: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in stateschools free and open source
It goes deeper than this; currently there is no place in the national curriculum to teach kids to touch type. So even though they will most likely spend a large part of their time on a keyboard no one thinks it appropriate to teach them an effective way to do that. Rupert Watson +44 7787554801 www.root6.com -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of backst...@gorge.org Sent: 09 February 2009 17:47 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in stateschools free and open source On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 04:12:09PM -, Christopher Woods wrote: Aside from the fact that the suite of *de facto* software the students would use day in and day would need to be the same, in some cases the bloody curriculum demanded that particular software be used, so your hands were tied. At my school we had Acorns for general use (DTP etc), an ST for music composition, and a Beeb for handling the input from our radiotelescopes. I was happy with each of them (and did not have a computer at home to compare or learn on). There was no problem in using different computers for different purposes, each was the right tool for the job. So what's wrong with providing certain software where the curriculum prescribes it, perhaps on computers in the room or lab where that subject is taught, but the main suites could be running entirely open source solutions? And then if schools start to turn to open source, maybe the software prescribed by the curriculum will change as well. Schools should be preparing kids to go into the world. And open source is out there on desktops now. We should be looking forward to that, not back because that's how it's always been. -- Flash Bristow -Web Design Mastery -07939 579090 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Work: www.wdam.co.uk Personal: www.gorge.org - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ __ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email __ ROOT 6 LIMITED Registered in the UK at 4 WARDOUR MEWS, LONDON W1F 8AJ Company No. 03433253 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
for me I have made some excellent connections via twitter both for work purposes and for personal. I now have a modest number of followers and I follower an equal number of people. I have connected on a social level with Greeks/Cypriots around the globe who are interested in Web 2.0, twitterers in my region and people who are interested in our Second Life work. In fact on a better scale than linked in. I also, I have to admit, follow the likes of Stephen Fry and @wossy. I even followed Russell Brand just to see how quickly his number of followers would rise over the hour, two hours and 24hrs etc. I'm now connected to a wider audience of people which reflect my interests and my local community and have in turn met some of them either in Second Life and in Real Life. As a result of a twitter we found out that we'd been mentioned in dispatches by a presenter at an Ideas Performance event, I twittered back who then asked me to write a blog post. As fortune would have it I was meeting the client for a coffee and between the two of us we responded http://ideaperformance.com/2009/01/27/birmingham-and-second-life/ all within an hour of the first tweet. Now thats what I call magic! Soulla :) 2009/2/9 Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org Duncan Barclay wrote: I have to admit that I generally don't see the point of twitter. You could have fitted that into a twitter message and reached a much wider audience. ;-) - Rob. -- Soulla Stylianou RL Client Director DADEN LIMITED e: soulla.stylia...@daden.co.uk t: 0121 698 8520 m: 07814145167 w: www.daden.co.uk http://twitter.com/SoullaStylianou sl: http://www.slurl.com/secondlife/daden%20prime/160/184/26 sl IM: ImmortalitySou Ballinger Daden Limited is an Information 2.0 Consultancy and full service Virtual Worlds/Second Life development agency. Creators of Daden Navigator - the first Web Browser for Second Life ( http://www.daden.co.uk/navigator)
RE: [backstage] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
How as a FOSS company are you going to maintain a well-staffed callout team and helpdesk if the software you are providing is essentially free? Why is that a problem? My companies have never had a problem charging for support for Free Software. All software needs support. You can't justify far higher support contract charges for that reason alone, and schools will either bring the required talent in-house Schools don't pay enough to attract good suport staff :-( or source it locally - and bingo, just like that, your company is out of business. So think local. How many schols are there within 40 miles of you?= (by the way Richard, I believe we may have conversed before this evening, offline :) Thistle, last year?) Oh, there are many schools in my area. There's one about a third of a mile away from my doorstep! You seem to be saying that although the status quo is not good (indeed, it is delivering a second-cless education), there's no easy way out, so let's leave things as they are. If I have mis-characterised your argument, I apologise, but let's sidestep that. After all, you're barking up the wrong tree. You're somewhat on target; my final comment on this for the time being is that I think the current situation is far from ideal, but I freely admit that I have no fantastical solution which will make everything better. (the educational goldmine?) I know that M6-IT is somewhat unique in how it operates, including recycling legacy gear and giving it a new lease of life with quality FOSS to provide custom solutions that fit in where other proprietary solutions may not have worked as efficiently (it's a great thing!) - but M6 is also slightly different in its model, aiming itself as it does as a social enterprise for the voluntary and educational sectors. How many schools do you serve in your locality? (just curious...) Your model obviously works exceptionally well for what you do, but I wonder how big your client base is versus how big it could potentially be if you supported every school in the area - you could get very big, very fast, or the ground could open up for competition and aside from lower costs to the end users, there might be an even greater disparity in levels of support or the kinds of solutions delivered. I suppose the one sad fact about the current MS incumbency is that there can be some predictable level of consistency throughout the LEA. I'm fed up to the back teeth as much as anyone at some counties (including where my parents live) where the council has a massive arrangement with Dell - for the kind of service they get, they must literally parachute bags of money into Dell's UK HQ, and I think it's good money mostly wasted. The model of maintaining individually-installed apps over several discrete PCs was all very well in the 80s, and possibly the 90s, but how long before schools catch up with the rest of the world. PCs in schools are mandated to teach curriculum areas - this can easily be delivered through 500 - 600 web apps. The whole curriculum. A small investment from government (less than 1% of the UK's annual school IT spend) would get all of these apps written. Released under the GNU GPL, they would be tweaked and improved by thousands of teachers and students. Given web apps, designed to work with standards-compliant browsers, it becomes irrelevant which platform is used to view them, save on grounds of cost and maintainability. The obvious choice then is LTSP. Personal opinion: 95% of web apps just don't cut it. If you're talking about SaaS, the problems highlighted by Salesforce.com's recent downtime are testament to that - and as I'm sure you're well aware, school timetables and the National Curriculum have even less margin for troubleshooting IT than even the business sector. If I was a teacher I would hate it hate it hate it if I couldn't teach a class because the main host server was bogged down with too many intensive tasks, or it fell over or lagged out or needed to be failed over for some reason. There's a new build school in Bucks which is currently under construction; unfortunately it looks like not enough forethought was paid to the IT infrastructure so it becomes horrendously unfeasible, perhaps even impossible, to implement the kind of high quality, high bandwidth and low latency network a totally thin-client based network would require. (right down to simple things such as impossible corners for bundles of fibre to go round, poorly chosen rooms for network nodes in context of rooms where computers will be installed, and architectural features that can't have ducting run along them as it would spoil the visual presentation! So the fibre has to take a massively long route all the way around instead, hugely increasing the cost.) Of course, not every school is (hopefully) going to be designed like this, but it's not great... I think a lot of educational ICT systems have these kinds
Re: [backstage] Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source
Richard Lockwood wrote: I allege that the advantages of switching to Free Software *can* outweigh the costs (sic) of support, teaching, and third party staff upgrading their skills to more open, flexible and studiable systems. ;-) I like the use of the word allege. Can you demonstrate it? There is number of problems that prevent the wide use of Linux, Open Office and other open source applications. These are: * Microsoft offers the OS and Office at extremely competitive prices to schools. I have heard it quoted as being around £5 per license for Office. * Parents have an expectation that MS Office will be taught in the classroom as it is what they know and use in their work place. * The majority of schools have limited IT resources and might have limited experience of using and securing Linux and other open source software. They could be substantial costs in retraining staff. I totally agree that opensource has a great to offer schools with applications like Moodle, Audacity and many others, but currently I don't think many schools are ready for Linux/Ubuntu and OpenOffice. Its a shame BBC Jam was killed. That could have really improved the educational software market. Adam
RE: [backstage] Make the primary OS used in state schools FOSS
bits and bobs snipped Note I'm not affiliated with these groups, nor am I a teacher, just showing that working, LEA-or-bigger SaaS *is* being delivered because of that better resourcing. It warms the cockles of my very being to hear that some organisations can get it right :) I wonder how much of it is mainly down to clueful people at the reins? BathNES seems to have come a long way... But then we in Wiltshire were always the poor relation to upper middle class BaNES ;) (lived in Wiltshire for 14 years when I were but a nipper :) BucksCC with the SEGfL is currently in the process of implementing a few gigs of storage (think it's 10?) + hosted email + docs + VLE + workspace for every single primary and secondary pupil in the county, with several years' retention and remote access, all the other gubbins... A truly titanic investment and development of infrastructure, which central Government /is/ paying for, handily. Every so often I ask about how it's progressing and I just get a weary look in my direction! I think in the end a proprietary solution /was/ chosen over the alternatives because it was just faster, easier and more beneficial to implement, having on balance the best interoperability with the other existing infrastructure and all the other essentials. I must ask the old man for some more information because I know things have changed since we last talked about it too. What is BathNES using for its base infrastructure? School network reliability aside, many Universities across the UK are deploying thin clients as we speak, my current employer (the University of Bath) has rolled out something like 400 in the past 12 months, without any significant problems. A number of other universities have had similar experiences. Bath are rolling out Sun Ray machines, as are, again, some of the other universities. All the components you mention above are probably equally as important - if the AD server goes down for a day and no-one can log in? Wuh oh. If the proxy is down and a teacher can't show the class the youtube video of a science experiment or get them to do some research for a project? Wuh oh. Yes, very true, my analogy works both ways. However, there's always the fact that unless something catastrophic happens to the authentication server (of which hopefully there's more than one if it's a large network) there's that much more of an incentive to get it fixed! In the meantime, if people are already logged on, hopefully the system will let them stay logged on because they already have validated credentials for that session. Thin client server goes down... Caput. I've witnessed my fair share of cockups and poor adminning at a network level as a luser in some of the schools I've been in (including some hair-tearingly frustrating ones... Classfuls of roaming profiles loading over a 100mbps network at the start of each lesson anyone?) but a catastrophic failure of some element of the network in a regular 'standalone' machine infrastructure won't be *quite* as catastrophic to the people who are currently using the system as if they were on thin clients... ... That said, do the Sun machines have some kind of stateful 'stasis' mode where the full state of each person's session is restored after a reboot of the host server? Of course if uptime is the #1 essential then you're going to have multiple host servers, but then you still need all the other bits and pieces AND you need multiple huge, sweaty beasts of machines to power the entire school's computing needs. And then you end up with compartmentalised networks, multiple host servers to look after in physically different locations... I can quickly see it becoming as much of an administrative nightmare as a sprawling standalone network. Pros and cons I suppose... I look forward to the time when thin clients become usable enough to fully replace desktops in some scenarios, because then we'll all get more desk space :D As a side note, I can guarantee Dave that educational software from five years ago that is essential in the classroom today does not run under Wine even now :) Can I put a fiver on that? I have a feeling that most schools would carry on using their existing setups regardless because it's too much hassle to change. Oops, forgot you did actually say that :) I forget I say stuff too, happens all the time. :/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
Feel strongly that the BBC should use something else instead of Twitter, how about voting or offering your support here. http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/ideatorrent/idea/16/ Cheers, Ian - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/2/9 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: The really cool kids are on both right? Given that identi.ca can now supply Twitter and Facebook with messages automatically itself - just pop in your login details - this isn't as cool as it sounds. ;p Yeah. Because giving your login details to another completely unrelated site is completely cool. It astonishes me how many supposedly clued-up IT people are happy to break this basic security rule. Dave... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Twittering on
I must admit I took one look at identi.ca and came straight out again. It just looks messy compared to twitter. Perhaps I should take a second glance. Saying that my twitter feeds my facebook page and I generally don't go into facebook anymore although when I do I get a number of messages from people who have responded to a comment I've made on twitter not on facebook! :) PS Morning all. Snowing up here - again! :( 2009/2/10 Dave Cross d...@dave.org.uk Dave Crossland wrote: 2009/2/9 Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk: The really cool kids are on both right? Given that identi.ca can now supply Twitter and Facebook with messages automatically itself - just pop in your login details - this isn't as cool as it sounds. ;p Yeah. Because giving your login details to another completely unrelated site is completely cool. It astonishes me how many supposedly clued-up IT people are happy to break this basic security rule. Dave... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Soulla Stylianou RL Client Director DADEN LIMITED e: soulla.stylia...@daden.co.uk t: 0121 698 8520 m: 07814145167 w: www.daden.co.uk http://twitter.com/SoullaStylianou sl: http://www.slurl.com/secondlife/daden%20prime/160/184/26 sl IM: ImmortalitySou Ballinger Daden Limited is an Information 2.0 Consultancy and full service Virtual Worlds/Second Life development agency. Creators of Daden Navigator - the first Web Browser for Second Life ( http://www.daden.co.uk/navigator)
