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I remember asking my high school's one-man IT department this exact question, and he said that the school needs someone to sue in the event something goes wrong

by dsrguru 13y ago

I remember asking my high school's one-man IT department this exact question, and he said that the school needs someone to sue in the event something goes wrong.

brokenparser 13y ago
Lie. No one ever sues MSFT for delivering a bad product, let alone (cash-strapped) schools.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  there's lots of businesses that provide lab computers. Schools and universities often outsource to such sue-able people.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I think in reality the reason is a sort of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality. I know that if I found myself suddenly a school technology administrator person, I would be very inclined to take the easy way out and just install windows on all the lab computers. I would do this if only so that I did not have to fight the stupid mentality of "You have to teach these 5th graders how to use obscure features of a version of MS Word that will be a decade and a half out of date by the time they graduate" Seriously, every "vocational" computer skills class I ever had was absolutely worthless. They should shitcan all of those classes and teach something that is actually worldview expanding... but that will never happen. The people in charge of making those decisions will all inevitably think that those courses are important because they are teaching the tools that they are currently using.
GhotiFish 13y ago
sue redhat? Or someone else who will put their butts on the line. Maybe what needs to happen is some open source businesses need to enter the fray, offering configured and working lab systems, integration, and support guarantees.
- csense 13y ago
  > what needs to happen is some open source businesses need to enter the fray, offering configured and working lab systems, integration, and support guarantees Sounds like a startup opportunity to me! > redhat They'd probably be decent at it...if they made a conscious high-level decision to devote resources to focus on the education market, and followed through.

by dsrguru 13y ago

I remember asking my high school's one-man IT department this exact question, and he said that the school needs someone to sue in the event something goes wrong.

brokenparser 13y ago

Lie. No one ever sues MSFT for delivering a bad product, let alone (cash-strapped) schools.

GhotiFish 13y ago
there's lots of businesses that provide lab computers. Schools and universities often outsource to such sue-able people.
jlgreco 13y ago
I think in reality the reason is a sort of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality. I know that if I found myself suddenly a school technology administrator person, I would be very inclined to take the easy way out and just install windows on all the lab computers. I would do this if only so that I did not have to fight the stupid mentality of "You have to teach these 5th graders how to use obscure features of a version of MS Word that will be a decade and a half out of date by the time they graduate" Seriously, every "vocational" computer skills class I ever had was absolutely worthless. They should shitcan all of those classes and teach something that is actually worldview expanding... but that will never happen. The people in charge of making those decisions will all inevitably think that those courses are important because they are teaching the tools that they are currently using.

GhotiFish 13y ago

sue redhat? Or someone else who will put their butts on the line. Maybe what needs to happen is some open source businesses need to enter the fray, offering configured and working lab systems, integration, and support guarantees.

csense 13y ago
> what needs to happen is some open source businesses need to enter the fray, offering configured and working lab systems, integration, and support guarantees Sounds like a startup opportunity to me! > redhat They'd probably be decent at it...if they made a conscious high-level decision to devote resources to focus on the education market, and followed through.