From: Ad 

http://gyaku.jp/en/index.php?cmd=contentview&pid=000112

"Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported late last week that the
Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to introduce the
open-source operating system Linux for use within classrooms across the
country in the near future. According to an investigation conducted in the
spring of last year, there are currently over 400,000 computers at schools
in Japan running on either Windows 98 or Windows Me, systems no longer
supported by the software manufacturer Microsoft. The prohibitive cost of
replacing these machines with newer models, as well as the rising price of
proprietary software, prompted school teachers and administrators to
propose the possibility of switching to open-source software as an
affordable alternative. A conference held in Tokyo on March 2-3, attended
by around 2000 government officials, teachers and education board members
from across the country, considered the idea of reclaiming these older
computers by switching from unsupported and out-of-date versions of Windows
to the operating-system Linux, which can be freely downloaded from the
Internet. A teacher from a high-school in Fukuoka Prefecture explained:
"Having to always install the latest software is costly, and it makes
things very difficult for us. From now on, I want to actively move toward
the use of free open-source software""


The hole in the dyke is getting larger.

Adam

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