Office in schools

British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has released a report http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=35275 that recommends schools in Great Britain not to consider upgrading to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 unless they can upgrade all computers at once and has a direct benefit of such upgrade.

The report from Becta has been referred to in the Danish media over the last few days. (http://www.version2.dk/artikel/5884 and http://www.computerworld.dk/art/43644)

A journalist from the Danish computer magazine Computerworld.dk has asked about such report in Denmark. Vice President Per Thorbøll of UNI-C http://www.uni-c.dk/generelt/english/index.html explains that they don't have money nor authority to do a similar report in Denmark, but as he says:

The conclusion is of cause from Becta, but the computers are the same and the Windows versions are the same. So I think that the situation in Denmark is quite close to the British.

This is as close as he can get to a confirmation without confirming.

UNI-C is the Danish IT Centre for Education and Research and hosts and supports IT for almost all the Danish schools and universities.

Another financial report from Ramböll Management

The Norwegian newspaper TU (http://www.tu.no) claims that the Norwegian adoption of open standards and open source software will be very expensive. The article (Norwegian): http://www.tu.no/it/article129909.ece. The conclusion comes from a report done by Ramböll Management based on calculations of the amount of documents that has to be converted.

Ramboll Management - Don't we recognize that company name ?

Yes we do. This is the exact same company that made two similar reports in Denmark last year. Here they also claimed, that the costs will be huge and the benefits will be small. Also then (last year in Denmark), Ramböll Management could only come to a negative conclusion because they think that the authorities will continue to use (and buy) Microsoft software. Basically Ramböll takes only the costs and claims that the benefits will never come.

How about asking someone else next time. To me, this sounds like a fotocopy of the Danish report of last year.

Rob Weir writes about the upcomming BRM

Rob Weir writes...

You are Here

Within the next 24-hours, Microsoft will submit to JTC1 a set of proposals for addressing the 3,522 comments that accompanied OOXML's failed ballot last September. We'll no doubt hear a lot of yip-yip-yahooing on their end. Expect a major media campaign. I don't want to take away the surprise, but I'm hearing that journalists are being flown into Redmond next week from around the world for briefings on OOXML. So, for their benefit, and yours, let's review where we are in the JTC1 process.Read his complete post here: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/01/you-are-here.html

Don't let this boy near the airport

Sometimes you find funny news on the internet. Funny, but at the same time serious and dramatic. Now take this one about a 14 years old school boy from Poland ( http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2675715.html ).
He hacked into the local tram system and played with the trains like it was his private toys. I specially like the part about the remote control. Can you imagine this biy standing in the corner of the central square with this little device - laughing.

Shame in you.

But how should the adults punish him ?

Of cause he must be punished. He have hurt several passengers and four trams were derailed. I suggest that he is ordered to work at the hospital or the local care center for elderly citizens for 10 days or so. Then he will see the consequences of his work. Furthermore he should be punished with at least four years in university. This guy clearly has perspective. I have a son aged twelve and of cause he couldn't do this. But what I think is, that a boy at this age can never be responsible for a thing like this. The responsible is the people responsible for the tram system. They should be punished hard.

Now comes the funny part. Imagine the above incident with this article ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=562 ) about Boeing 787 at risk of in-flight hacking.

Imagine the boy with his remote control in the airport.

Shame

I'm ashamed that the Danish democracy (The Parliament; Folketinget) can appear so little creditable, that the country is at laugh to our neighbors (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/12/danes-set-open-standards-trial). A decision in the Parliament has within a year and a half been reduced to nothing. It's not worth the ink.

It started so well in 1996, the parliament agreed (with no votes against it) to support a definition of open standards: It must be real open!

The next year it appeared that one or two local IT-managers couldn't live up to the "Readiness for changes" mentioned in his resume. The MP's got cold feet because they were afraid of criticism. All the good and innovative thoughts was completely killed by low practical questions and fear of the unknown.

Originally it was agreed that the final solution (end 2009) should be based on evaluations regarding influence on the competition and innovation and not (only) from practical decisions regarding interoperability (even that is important).

Before the election for Parliament last year, there was no limits to the promises from the political parties. Almost all political parties was agreeing on one and only one standard. ODF. But of cause I am naive.

The political parties behind the original proposal B 103 is bragging about how Denmark is ahead of other countries regarding the use of open standards.This is absolutely not the truth. We Danes (the parliament) made a decision in 2006; and if that decision is implemented as it was decided; yes we would be ahead. But unfortunately the implementation does not live up to the original word nor spirit. Please have a look at this report from the ODF Alliance, listing several countries and their opinion on open standards and how it's being implemented. http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/AnnualReport2007.pdf