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Dear all I had an interesting day with my friend at FC. It has been years since I saw him, so it was personal refresher as well as a foray into the work of individuals in FC. He has a funded project at http://www.ecoloqo.net/ which he has hosted outside the College to maintain control himself, which he talked about in a seminar attended by MSc students with me as guest!! The IT Services run MS servers and regularly interrogate computers and invite staff to save in the black hole called My Documents. He and his colleagues want control themselves and keep out of the system as much as possible and want more freedom. There seems to be a culture we have explored before that skills are using the latest MS or Mac functional buttons. Apparently staff are being invited to training in Vista. Anyway, there is also a research group using LAMP, somehow within the MS system, apparently tolerated to some degree. I will go and see them soon. There are stations with CS3 installed for staff to use in the IT unit, though I have not seen them. We kept well away. Students use pirated software, which might provide a little leverage. I imagine that publicity for FLOSS on Windows might attract staff and students over to these programmes but the step to Linux would be somewhat harder unless the arguments about security prevailed. It might well appeal to some. Interesting, few staff seem to be seriously computer literate and at the other end of the scale, some students are immensely skilled. I wonder if Students' Unions might be the best route into Universities???? Ground floor entry (basement?). He will talk more to staff and think what the next step is. Meanwhile he has a list of relevant programmes and links. And a promise to buy Linux Format July with Ubuntu 7.04 Live DVD. I'll be in touch regarding future developments. If the door opens I hope someone here with appropriate expertise would take over. james kilty http://www.kilty.demon.co.uk -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html