On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 10:20:04 +0800, Orlando Andico <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bah, let's face it. The average teacher is better off > with MS products than magpapakahirap sa Linux. > Also, the average non-IT-techie end-user > is better off knowing how to use MS products. It's a > more marketable skill (see any want ads for "billing > clerk; must know OpenOffice.Org and SuSE 9.x" ?)
i agree. however, it's not the teacher who is paying for that software. it's the DOE. the DOE, and the philippine government, should be doing what is best for the DOE and the philippine government. if we can keep the dollars here, and if we can employ filipinos rather than paying for americans to screw us over (again), then the choice is pretty clear. > Besides, M$ ain't so bad. The Bill and Mel Foundation > has donated $20B na daw for AIDS research and > disease vaccination. that's fine. but i see no benefit for the philippines there. we would get some of that research benefit anyway, whether or not we bought microsoft. > If they throw some $$$ to our poor public school > teachers, and the price of that is using M$ products, > I'm all for it. I don't see any Linux-volunteerism-types > being able to cough up that scale of dough. we don't need to. free software trumps 10% of whatever the current price of XP is. and we could probably get cheaper hardware too, if we avoided KDE and GNOME or build a custom Gentoo distribution for lower powered hardware (e.g., transmeta, sub 1Ghz equivalents). and free software definitely beats hell out of non-discounted microsoft upgrades. one reason the government isn't going for an open source distro is probably just ignorance. the bayanihan linux people (and the people on this list) just don't have the marketing clout and budget that microsoft has. and then, of course, there's always kickbacks. which trumps everything. tiger -- Gerald Timothy Quimpo http://bopolissimus.sni.ph [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Public Key: "gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 672F4C78" Mene sakhet ur-seveh -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
