A bad time to be selling IT to the Commonwealth?

I’d say it’s a pretty crap time to be selling anything to the Government.

Agreed, the stripped down ‘nix they’re putting on netbooks these days is a much simpler beast for the user than Windows in all its hideous complexity and nested check boxes.

harvyk1 said :

an OS which is harder to use that windows

That may have been the case as recently as five years ago; I refute that it is the case now.

I installed Ubuntu on the Significant Other’s lappy when she was finding Windows XP too unreliable, and asked her to try it for a month. She found there was nothing she wanted to do that she could do with Windows but not Ubuntu, and was impressed by the speed, reliability and versatility.

The only part that didn’t work at the time was the inbuilt wifi, however, her chipset is supported in the latest release. She now recommends Ubuntu to her friends.

As for sysadmin – you only need one build for the whole State, then it’s just users. Pretty much the same as Windows.

harvyk1 said :

As for linux on student laptops, don’t make me laugh. Unless teachers have really improved their IT skills in the last 10 years I doubt any teacher would be able to work out how to turn a linux laptop on, let alone show kids how to use it. They couldn’t really do it with windows, so using an OS which is harder to use that windows probably ain’t going to happen. Plus MS would probably step in and offer very competitive pricing, as they saw the IBM \ Apple tactics of the early 80’s, and we all know who won that battle.

Sad, but true. The Linux desktop has come a long way in the past few years, to the point that most average punters could use it to go online, read email, browse the web etc. But when it comes to sysadmin – there’s a long way to go yet.

L

I know they did, just that was roughly the amount of time it took for their share price to go from roughly $2.40 in late May 2007 to 8c, including a period of suspension from the ASX.

> “How to ruin a successful company in 400 days”

I also used to work there…I’d say that places demise was on its way well before Commander came along. Volante themselves did a fine, fine job of managing the place incredibly badly

Loquaciousness, don’t get me started on the sensationalism of the average news source in Australia (RiotACT excluded). I’ve come to a conclusion, ignore the headlines as they are almost always blatantly wrong, read the article and reduce the number of victims by 50%, reduce the “pain and suffering” factor by three quarters, and use the story to link to actual police media releases etc…

Recently I read two articles about the same incident, one on news.com.au, the other on CNN. If you read the news.com.au version you’d have thought that the world was about to explode, and everything was coming to get you. The CNN version simply relayed the facts. Here is what happened, here is the result, people are a little shaken up, but they will be fine.

As for linux on student laptops, don’t make me laugh. Unless teachers have really improved their IT skills in the last 10 years I doubt any teacher would be able to work out how to turn a linux laptop on, let alone show kids how to use it. They couldn’t really do it with windows, so using an OS which is harder to use that windows probably ain’t going to happen. Plus MS would probably step in and offer very competitive pricing, as they saw the IBM \ Apple tactics of the early 80’s, and we all know who won that battle.

Oh, and for the record, Jim Whitehurst was not in town because of the NSW school laptops. He got asked the question in one of the many interviews he has done while here, and claimed no knowledge. I believe he was meeting with the Finance minister and the Opposition spokesperson for Innovation yesterday. I don’t know specifically what the meetings were about. I dare say the topic of NSW school laptops might have come up, but it most certainly was not the purpose of his trip.

L

AG Canberra, I’ve been following the Commander story quite closely (I used to work there, but got out just as the trouble started). Commander was “business as usual” right up until the fateful day. The funny thing was that the rate the company’s share price was falling, they’d win million dollar contracts in a day, and the company would lose 10 million in value in the same period. The other amusing thing was they fired 600 odd employees, which boasted it’s share price by 10% during that day, and yet by COB the price had dropped by 10%.

The better part was that a good proportion of the 600 where back working for commander within a week as a contractor. (Therefore they where at contractor rates, plus a redundancy in the bank).

I do hope the employees still working there (as some of them are friends of mine) get all they are entitled to. I also hope the various managers end up unemployed for a long long time, that or write a book called “How to ruin a successful company in 400 days”

fnaah said :

The CEO of Redhat was in town yesterday to speak to several MPs up on the Hill.

Wasn’t that more to do with NSW school laptops?

Linky: http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24490953-15306,00.html

… although I guess it would have been silly of him to be up on the hill and not try and convert as many people as possible. Good luck to him, would be nice to see less taxpayer money spent on unnecessary Microsoft licensing.

Hmmm … this story is interesting. It says a lot without actually saying anything (which is about normal, I know). Since when were the government planning on doing anything with open source?

NSW secondary school students could be issued with $56 million worth of Linux-based laptops as part of Kevin Rudd’s digital education revolution.

…sellers could look at offering non-proprietary software for the laptops

(highlighting is mine)

Yes, of course they could be. They could also be issued with $120 million worth of MS-based laptops, or they could buy $40 billion worth of Apple-based laptops. All the quotes were just so much “no comment”. Much as it’s a lovely idea that we’re going to equip all our school children with Linux laptops, there’s been no definitive statement from the government that says they’re going with Linux. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

All I see is a great headline that will get people talking – people tend to feel strongly about Linux one way or the other, so people will read the article based on the fact it uses the word in the headline.

And as for this bit:

“Students would also have access to thousands of other open source educational programs,”

Of course they would. Everyone with a computer connected to the internet has access to thousands of open-source programmes (educational or otherwise). It’s a non-statement.

It reminds of the story of the Qantas plane recently that had a sudden drop in altitude. I saw two articles headlined “Laptop causes Qantas plane drop” and “mobile phone use causes Qantas plane drop” (or words to that effect). The verdict was finally published today – it was a problem in the fly-by-wire system in the Airbus. Phones and laptops do not cause planes to drop out of the sky.

Sensationalism, wot?

L