Devoid of Anything Useful

I have many things that I can say OMT for. This however, deserves the true OMT (at least here).

And this came through via slashdot, which was then from my feed reader, and after finding the source I come to this which gives me another yay feed to add.

One wonders if the OS wars were ever fought...

Snippets:

...observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. ... The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student ... I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back.

This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them...

(Ok, maybe not snippets I got lazy after the first 2 cuts).

This brings to light how propaganda is so effective. It is not a question of how the teacher is stupid. She did try Linux before (though when it was highly primitive). However, being brainwashed by higher-ups led her to become one of the many drones that are running classes in US now. I think she would be the exception, actually finding a source to the "problem" and voicing out what her bleached brain was trained to output.

Then of course, "kind" rebuttals (I think of them as hidden niao). By the Helios guy himself:

The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way.

And from slashdot, some guy mentioned that he was chatting to his old friend. The friend was complaining about expensive antivirus software (ha Windows duh), and he suggested Linux and introduced to him the Free and Open Source Software movement (FOSS). That old friend rejected the idea completely, along the lines of "no such thing as free lunch", "if anything is to good to be true, it is" and "scam, illegal, etc".

I do not think we have that problem here, as the people who fit into the category of old stubborns do not actually like or care about the particular stuff they use, and they just want to manage to teach a decent lesson (the literal meaning intended here) with Microsoft PowerPoint (refering it by its proper name). Think Shiehls and Chiak.

Then the ones who actually care about piracy and stuff do have some knowledge about this matter. The rules added about "copyrighted games" are (I suspect, and most likely anyway) due to the number of people caught playing GTA (wtf I hate GTA. No meaning unless you do the allcarsgoboom thing), NFS (I (or at least my brohter) buy them noob shits) and *gulp* DotA (actually not that I play it often now, seeing my previous screenshot (which was the reason that I gulped actually)).

All this however, could be slowly ruined. Microsoft has extended its grisly arms to education, providing us with the FutureSchools Programme, congratulating us with huge banners on our entry to the gates of Updates and Service Packs (if they even come).

Let us all hold ours heads down in prayer in the name of Haruhi.

EDIT: Then again, doing my usual clicksurfing, I came upon the huge joke of Jerry Lee Cooper. One wonders if he was just joking all along.