Thread: cloud OS?
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Old December 31st 17, 06:30 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default cloud OS?

"Michael Logies" wrote

| As I wrote, 60% of US-schools are already sold to Chrome OS, proving
| that it makes a lot of sense for class rooms:
|
https://www.neowin.net/news/chrome-o...t-of-the-world
| Chrome OS tops in U.S. schools; Windows leads rest of the world

That's an interesting issue. Bill Gates and his
insidous foundation have been trying to push
their own agenda in the US, in terms of
education standards. According to your link,
Google is also making inroads. I don't consider
that progress. I consider it a combination of
corruption on the part of govt/companies and
naivety on the part of educators, in thinking
that tech by itself makes kids smarter.

The US is also making progress in selling
out schools to advertisers in order to raise funds.
Things like ball fields painted with "Hersheys"
or "Coca-Cola". I also don't consider that to
be progress.

My partner of many years is a retired
kindergarten teacher who now supervises
student teachers for a university. When she
taught she had to order Macs in order to get
the tables, chairs and shelving she needed.
The money came from Federal funding and
she wasn't allowed to order one without the
other. Gov't stupidity? Apple lobbying? I don't
know the details. I do know the Macs were
never used because none of the early childhood
teachers thought that 5-7 year olds should
spend their time with "edutainment" apps on
computers.

Channel One News with ads is also popular
in US schools. Is that good? I wouldn't say
so. When I was young we were assigned to
bring in current news stories to discuss. With
Channel One the stories are picked by a for-profit
company and interspersed with ads.

As for your link.... Do you know what "research
and consulting firms" like Futuresource do? Their
role is to talk up the industry with fluff press releases
and to give fluff seminars on the current fads at
industry conferences. They're glorified marketers.
How do you suppose you ended up with a link
about US edcation purchases from a British
consulting firm? Because they're the source of
their own planned hoopla:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...rket/78323158/

(Note who USA Today is quoting. It's a press
release masquerading as news.)

I have a favorite example of that kind of scam.
When XP came out, a company called Asset-Metrix
was everywhere with a "study" showing that Win98
was no longer safe to use and companies should
upgrade to XP. Why was 98 unsafe? Because MS
was ending support. That was the gist of their
study. Rather like the Monty Python brontosaurus
expert. (MS later extended support.)

Asset-Metrix, when they weren't doing brilliant,
in-depth research, was in the business of helping
companies upgrade their computers. They were
later quietly bought by Microsoft. Why did MS
need a Windows PC management company? Could
the company itself have been a "spin-in" racket?
Was there some kind of payoff going on? I don't
know and I'm not accusing anyone. But I do find
it hard to think of another reason for MS to buy
Asset-Metrix. Either way, their so-called study
was nothing more than an ad for their business.
They really didn't even try to hide that. Most people
are so trained to think anything claiming to be
a scientific study must be true that A-M didn't
need to hide what they were doing. They only
needed to present their ad as though it were an
official scientific study.


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