Quoting Gary Stainburn :

We're just in the process of upgrading 120 Win95 boxes to WinXP (hate it) just so that we can access a web based application.

We have no choice, we have to do it to be able to access the service, and nothing below XP wil work (read nothing below XP will be supported cos they've got a very small and narrow-minded support desk and even more narrow minded development team).

Something tells me they missed the whole point of developing web based applications. Might as well have just written it in vb and access :) Matt -------------------------------------------------

On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 03:42:15PM +0100, Gary Stainburn wrote:

On Wednesday 02 Jul 2003 2:58 pm, Derek Harding wrote: [snip]

...

inexpertise in. ^^^^^^^^^^^

Love this, gonna remember that one.

Just for the record, it's not just schools that have this problem.

We're just in the process of upgrading 120 Win95 boxes to WinXP (hate it) just so that we can access a web based application.

Sounds like they have lost the plot badly here.

We have no choice, we have to do it to be able to access the service, and nothing below XP wil work (read nothing below XP will be supported cos they've got a very small and narrow-minded support desk and even more narrow minded development team).

This much be a very important application to be worth the 5 or 6 figure pricetag. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

Terry Taylor wrote:

In both cases we are simply seeing a reflection of the reality of the current market and if alternatives are not present then it is a result of less effective promotion of the products. [...]

Or is it because of more effective anti-competition tactics from the current dominant suppliers? I think that is what the OFT are being asked to consider.

in the first case the request for Microsoft to become involved in the course mapping came from schools, colleges, universities and employers [...]

IT education is often accused of this sort of "tail wagging the dog". The ultimate aim of schools and colleges is to produce a skilled workforce. For example, instead of teaching people how to use specific electrical testing gear, you teach them about electricity and then apply it to specific test gear, which is then supplemented by their work experience. The test gear they use at work may or may not be what the college has, but it doesn't really matter, as long as they are skilled enough to learn it reasonably quickly. If they didn't understand the ideas behind it, they might find themselves getting a nasty shock(!). Contrast that with current computing and IT education. Some of it is actually independent of particular software, and necessarily so for markets where MS Office et al are not available in the language of instruction, but not yet in England. The results of not teaching the ideas behind computing and IT are not as quickly obvious as for electrical testing. If student or employer demand dictates -- rather than informs -- course provision, I think that is a disaster that will set us back years. Sorry if that's a downer. If you know of examples that don't fall into the above trap, please share them, but there are lots that do. NB sig etc, as ever. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ Thought: "Changeset algebra is really difficult."

Are you telling us, therefore, that the exam boards are collaborating with Microsoft to shut out the competition? Furthermore, are you telling us that they are all doing this together? That would be a first! I go back to my original point - schools/colleges are not forced to offer those courses. You are saying that it is the effect of the action which is important and obviously one cannot disagree with that, but you add that 'fault doesn't come into it'. If this is the case then there is nobody to target for action. On the other hand, if we take the usual stance that the effect has to be caused by something, then that something is a result of Boards offering the syllabi, the government agencies passing them, and schools and colleges using them, so they are the groups 'at fault' (meaning they are producing an effect which you say is wrong). Where does Microsoft come into this equation? -----Original Message----- From: ian [mailto:ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com] Sent: 03 July 2003 20:22 To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Cc: 'Richard Rothwell' On Thu, 2003-07-03 at 01:30, Terry Taylor wrote:

It is not really clear what is being looked at here. My initial reaction was that this was about vendor specific training and tests being used as modules for qualifications. If this is the case then Cisco were the first, I believe, followed (in a sense) by CompTIA, with Microsoft still working on it - so if you are targeting an organization it should be Cisco rather than Microsoft in the first instance.

No we are talking exam boards such as AQA, Edexcel etc. The law is specific on Chapter 1 of fair trading. Companies are not allowed to act together to shutout competition. If an exam board sets a generic exam eg GNVQ IT that unnecessarily forces a school to buy the products of one company (Microsoft) its quite possibly against the law, particularly if you show that you could assess the practical skills by say course work and then let the centre decide which software to use.

If, on the other hand, it appears to be about desktop software (as the newsgroup has implied today) surely the fault is not with Microsoft but with the Boards.

Fault doesn't come into it, its EFFECT. If the effect of the action is anti-competitive the parties involved are liable irrespective of the intention. Its up to them to make sure they are not acting anti-competitively.

In both cases we are simply seeing a reflection of the reality of the current market and if alternatives are not present then it is a result of less effective promotion of the products.

Gain that is a red herring. Monopolies are monopolies are monopolies read Chapter 2 of the 1998 Act.

I really do not see where the OFT fits into all this as in the first case the request for Microsoft to become involved in the course mapping came from schools, colleges, universities and employers, and in the second it surely has to be for the supporters of the alternatives to persuade their Boards to accommodate them or take their custom elsewhere.

This illustrates why Microsoft have not been held up over many of these issues. Its simply that few people who know the law understand software licensing and technology in general and few people who know the technology understand the law.

There are companies that do compete with Microsoft and succeed by producing products which they show to be better - not complaining to OFT or the equivalents.

A monopoly is defined as > 25% of the market. There is no doubt that Windows and Office are monopolies in any definition you care to look up. Why etc is irrelevant, they are so they are subject to fair trading law. Its just to this point no-one seems to have bothered to much about taking this line of action.

If there are so many enthusiasts out there who develop and use the alternative products, then there should be the potential to organize a global marketing and support machine that nobody (including Microsoft) could ignore.

But of course certain environmental factors can make that a lot easy eg not having licensing systems that pay M$ for machines that run none of their software (obvious one so I started that action first). Not having an exam system that virtually prevents schools from using alternatives (The subject of this thread). However I come back to the main point. Richard needs evidence from people running courses in schools such as GNVQ where the course requirements dictate the schools use M$ products. National courses not proprietary certification because the latter can be avoided the former can't.

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This year I sat AQA AS Computing. Module 2 (which incidentally was one of the worst written exam papers ive seen - it even had a question where they gave you an algorithm that didn't actually work!) had a question about file systems and it basically said the following is typed into a personal computer then asked questions about what each bit of the file path etc meant and what type of file each one was (i.e. ASCII and binary). It explained what the type command did but that was all: C:\> type c:\myproject\source\source.pas some pascal program C:\> type c:\myproject\build\build.bld some random symbols Now isn't this technically disadvantaging non M$ users as they may not have heard of C:\ and not have a clue what it means (I know it's unlikely but isn't this still linking to M$ too much? Alex Brett alex.brett@brettcomputers.co.uk On 4 Jul 2003 at 8:40, Richard Rothwell wrote:

--- Terry Taylor wrote:

...

Are you telling us, therefore, that the exam boards are collaborating with Microsoft to shut out the competition? Furthermore, are you telling us that they are all doing this together? That would be a first!

There doesn't have to be collaboration - if the exam boards have written their exams, mark schemes or their syllabuses in such a way that either:

* schools have to or feel they have to purchase MS software --------or--------- * pupils of schools using non-MS products are penalised

then this is clearly anti-competitive behaviour. Whether it is illegal or not depends on the view of the lawyers!

Example....

if a mark scheme in a GCSE paper only credits an MS function syntax is this anti-competitive?

===== rgds, Richard Rothwell -------------------------------------------------------------------- GNU and Wine are rirds. Rird is recursively defined.

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