[Nottingham] Fwd: The UK's cruelest cut

[ForkBombFluf]

On Thu, 24 May 2012, Jason Irwin wrote:

> On 24/05/12 13:41, ForkBombFluf wrote:
>> Sure, if you're willing to be patient about it. You'll likely need to
>> implement the bottom-up rather the top-down approach to have much
>> success, though.  Get FLOSS into the schools first, and get the kids
>> used to it and hooked on it instead of Microsoft.  Even Apple knows
>> this, and it gave them a nice in-road to the share of the market they
>> have in the US today.

> To get into schools you need the money to ensure that the correct people
> are properly informed at various lunches, dinners, sporting events and
> exotic locations.  Only after digesting all this could they possibly
> reach a decision.  Unbiased, of course.  Cough.

Well, that's an intersting point of view of how the system works!

Yes, a bit defeatist I'd have to agree, and really, this particular 
equation for "getting things done" could be applied to any of man's 
organisations and endeavors if you put your mind to it, I'm sure.  There 
also seems to be an unstated assumption here that it's the *only* way to 
get things done too, which I happen to disagree with.

It does leave one wondering how Jobs & Wozniak could have ever started it 
all from a garage with virtually no money behind them, yet somehow years 
later managed to end up in the position to offer all of these supposed 
bribes to so many of the correct people in the school systems.

Or, perhaps, could it be that the systems they produced were so much fun 
and easy to use that people actually *wanted* them in preference to the 
stark c:\ at the top of a barren DOS screen on the "IBM compatible" at the 
time?  Nah, surely not when, after all, bribery trumps all.  :-P

> OK, so that is a slightly defeatist attitude.  But with major
> institutions such as universities* (who have hordes of hopefully
> intelligent CompSci students to draw on) not supporting GNU/Linux, what
> hope is there for a school to do so?

Chicken-egg-chicken-egg-chickeng-egg--repeat.

Schools are smaller (generally speaking), they have more independence 
(generally speaking), and, perhaps more importantly, they contain large 
numbers of young minds with a lot of plasticity left in them.  (Ones 
which, incidentally, will grow up and go on to Universities and become 
Council workers.)

> Any change usually seems to come from left-field rather than any
> vertical direction with one player simply saying "Nuts to this" and
> doing their own thing.  OpenMolar, RasPi, Ernie Ball etc.

When the only tool you're familiar with is a hammer, everything starts to 
look rather like a nail.

> The situation is even worse in the USA where advertising for various
> products is actually embedded into the text books.  "Billy has $2, he
> buys SuperCola(tm) for $1 and MegaNuts(tm) for $0.50.  How much money
> does Billy have left?"

The manufacturing of textbooks is a big $$$ industry in the US.  I'm not 
half as bothered by Coke advertising in them as I am by the insipid 
political and religious movements who want to change what is taught in 
science and history classes to suit their "beliefs" rather than leaving 
the facts to speak for themselves.

However, it seems to me that if this sort of thing can work for them, then 
there must be some way to utilise the lever for "good" as well-- such as 
threading FLOSS into what will become the society of tomorrow.

(Or you could just invest in "Stuffed Penguins on Sticks Inc." and hope 
for the best)

Cheers,

-Stef