Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
"Journalist after journalist, industry analyst after analyst has seen
fit to warn consumers and business off Vista. In but one example, the
influential Dutch Consumers’ Counsel has warned its constituents to
avoid Vista, after receiving over 5000 complaints about Vista in only a
single month. Vista is a quagmire for most users, but Education
Victoria are happy to be Microsoft's patsy and waste Victorian taxpayer
money in the process," said Zymaris.
"Rather than look to Vista, school districts across North America,
Europe, East Asia, India, South America and Africa, are moving away
from Windows to Linux. The Russian government is moving all schools
across to Linux in 2009. There are hundreds of thousands of educational
Linux systems in Spain.
"Linux and open source delivers a broader range of technologies to
schools and pupils, because one of the great advantages of Linux and
open source software is that schools can now afford all forms of
technical, graphical, educational and business apps - it's all free
software after all. This in turn leads to better educational outcomes.
"Open source software also leads to positives for those local ICT
industries, as billions of dollars aren't sucked out of the coffers of
school districts, to pay for Microsoft licence fees," Zymaris said."
In addition, Zymaris claims that the Victorian Education Department
does not even need to pay Microsoft for the software it receives from
the company. Instead, it could even be demanding money from Microsoft.
"The funny thing is, Microsoft would probably pay handsomely to ensure
that school children learn Microsoft products and not alternatives like
Linux and open source. Instead of using this fact to demand that
Microsoft covers the costs involved in deploying Microsoft's wares, the
Victorian Department of Education is actually paying $23 million in
Microsoft licence fees alone," claimed Zymaris.
"By subverting the power of competitive markets, the Department of
Education is hurting local platform vendors. By keeping innovative
technology off school desks and by adopting Vista, they're wasting
taxpayer money. And by stubbornly refusing to seriously consider
alternative technologies such as Linux and open source, they are
shackling themselves to the Microsoft upgrade treadmill in perpetuity,"
concluded Zymaris.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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