[ubuntu-uk] (Marketing) Royal Society asks you - why IT is boring?

[Grant Sewell]

On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:31:35 +0100
Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote:

>   On 26/08/2010 22:27, Kris Douglas wrote:
> > On 26 August 2010 22:24, Gordon Burgess-Parker<gbplinux at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>   On 26/08/2010 19:25, Kris Douglas wrote:
> >>> but said because of the computer contract with Research Machines,
> >> My wife works for the largest Educational Publisher in the world
> >> and RM is a TOTAL NIGHTMARE. They dictate to schools what software
> >> they can or can't use - any software has to be "validated" by RM
> >> in INDIA????? They are not out to provide a service to schools -
> >> just to empire build and make a profit.
> >  From what I have seen, I can do nothing else but agree with you
> > there, it's not just the software, they enforce rules on it all,
> > and if those rules aren't followed they just don't support you.
> > (i.e goodbye Linux partition on our CPT machines, one was formatted
> > with ubuntu, and the RM engineer removed it because he thought that
> > was causing the poor windows performance. -failing to notice it was
> > set to download the users documents off of the server for each user
> > that logged in.)
> >
> 
> It's about time that schools took a stand - unfortunately what RM do
> is to contract with the LEA not individual schools, so schools get RM 
> foisted on them by the LEA and there's nothing they can do about it
> - no doubt with substantial backhanders to the LEA members.

We have fun down our way - and the same may be true right across the
country.  It's not just the support and "what's on the deskop/server"
that RM are into:

~$ whois swgfl.org.uk

    Domain name:
        swgfl.org.uk

    Registrant:
        South West Grid for Learning

    Registrar:
        RM Education PLC [Tag = RMPLC]
        URL: http://www.rm.com

(South West Grid for Learning = ISP for pretty much all primary and
secondary schools in the South West!)

Grant.