news.yahoo.com— French authorities will give out 175,000 USB memory sticks loaded with open-source software to Parisian high-school students at the start of the next school year.
Feb 3, 2007View in Crawl 4
@joelitoSo true. Maybe that explains why American right-wingers (despite their best efforts) never are any good at it. I mean, come on, "freedom fries"? How lame is that? Leave it to the British and the Germans to really let into them... ;-)
Why not just invest $3.4 million in broadband and recommend everyone install their favorite distro and just download all this software and keep it updated? Oh, I forgot, we're still in a Windows World. Install Linux for school, what am I thinking?If I taught comp sci I would require Linux and teach C, Java, Perl, shell, TCP/IP, x86 system architecture and administration, etc. But I guess in a couple years all that will be obsolete when Windows 7 is released, huh?
"""I could see it if it were in lieu of spending money for student licenses for MSFT office or the like"""No, you don't understand. Free at the point of access for the user DOES NOT MEAN "worthless".Firefox, for instance, is probably worth quite a lot more as a web browser than buying a Microsoft product to legally use Internet Explorer - especially if you take security, features and stability into account. OpenOffice is not perfect, but it's something that can save kids wasting more than a hundred bucks for no reason that's good enough.Producing these products takes investment of lots of development time, money and energy. There's nothing that makes distributing Open Source software worthless compared to wasting lots of extra money on Microsoft software.Young people should not be encouraged by their government to have dependence on monopolies that have been maintained illegally. All those MS licenses in schools? Now they're a real waste of tax money.Your tendency to see things as worthless if they're given freely comes across as a bit spoilt and/or simplistic, no offense, I expect you're not.
Closed AccountFeb 3, 2007
And I thought the French were bad.Counterpoint: Alizée.'nuff said.
princoFeb 3, 2007
There surely won't be VLC on there!!!!
joelitoFeb 4, 2007
@ aviaznAnd the Irony is that the US wouldn't even exist without the French help during the revolution.
aviaznFeb 4, 2007
@joelitoSo true. Maybe that explains why American right-wingers (despite their best efforts) never are any good at it. I mean, come on, "freedom fries"? How lame is that? Leave it to the British and the Germans to really let into them... ;-)
caleb4mjFeb 4, 2007
Why not just invest $3.4 million in broadband and recommend everyone install their favorite distro and just download all this software and keep it updated? Oh, I forgot, we're still in a Windows World. Install Linux for school, what am I thinking?If I taught comp sci I would require Linux and teach C, Java, Perl, shell, TCP/IP, x86 system architecture and administration, etc. But I guess in a couple years all that will be obsolete when Windows 7 is released, huh?
blackadderiiiFeb 4, 2007
"""I could see it if it were in lieu of spending money for student licenses for MSFT office or the like"""No, you don't understand. Free at the point of access for the user DOES NOT MEAN "worthless".Firefox, for instance, is probably worth quite a lot more as a web browser than buying a Microsoft product to legally use Internet Explorer - especially if you take security, features and stability into account. OpenOffice is not perfect, but it's something that can save kids wasting more than a hundred bucks for no reason that's good enough.Producing these products takes investment of lots of development time, money and energy. There's nothing that makes distributing Open Source software worthless compared to wasting lots of extra money on Microsoft software.Young people should not be encouraged by their government to have dependence on monopolies that have been maintained illegally. All those MS licenses in schools? Now they're a real waste of tax money.Your tendency to see things as worthless if they're given freely comes across as a bit spoilt and/or simplistic, no offense, I expect you're not.