Summary: Another fine look into the workings of proprietary software giants and how they control what people are exposed to

Microsoft controls British education through BETCA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and earlier this week we showed that Microsoft uses this power not just to capture children in the perimeter of their schools but also in their homes [1, 2]. It's quite a cunning plan to monopolise the world's education and it is backed by Monopolist Supreme, Bill Gates. This is an issue that we wrote about in:

1. Bill Gates Puts in a Million to Ratify His Role as Education Minister
2. How the Gates Foundation is Used to Ensure Children Become Microsoft Clients
3. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
4. Microsoft Builds Coalitions of NGOs, Makes Political and Educational Changes
5. Microsoft's EDGI in India: Fighting GNU/Linux in Education
6. Microsoft's Gates Seeks More Monopolies
7. Gates Foundation Funds Blogs to Promote Its Party Line
8. Microsoft Bribes to Make Education Microsoft-based
9. Lobbyists Dodge the Law; Bill Gates Lobbies the US Education System with Another $10 Million
10. Gates Investments in Education Criticised; Monsanto (Gates-Backed) Corruption Revisited
11. Latest Vista 7 Failures and Microsoft Dumping

According to this triplet of reports from BETT, teachers may finally get some exposure to Free(dom) software -- the one which enables and empowers students rather than train them for some offending company from another country.

Frog and Fronter who are hoping to be standing when the VLE music stops are going for broke and everyone seems to have heard of Moodle.

Microsoft, which is inappropriately getting paid by British taxpayers, was there at BETT too. Watch what it's doing:

For instance, when I got in early before the crowds I counted (before getting bored) 45 black-t-shirted sales folk ready for action on the €£100,000 Microsoft stand. 45! Their salaries alone would be over a million pounds a year..thank you UK taxpayer I'm sure it's all worth the money you give MS.

Yes, that's Microsoft using BETT to sell proprietary software. The fake hype company, Apple, is meanwhile said to be cracking down on the press. The British publication The Inquirer writes about this in a funny way:

THE APPLE RELIGION has thrown down a fatwa on the scribes at Valleywag for daring to post a bounty on a picture of an Apple tablet.

The existence of the Apple tablet, sometimes called the Second Coming of the Newton, is an article of faith in the Mac fanboy community. No one has ever seen it, even Apple denies it exists, yet more has been written about the Apple tablet than about any other non-existent product including Duke Nukem Forever.

[...]

They sent out a cease and desist letter demanding that Valleywag withdraw the bounty.

At least with Apple there is far less of an attempt to force (or impose) proprietary software on students. For Microsoft to achieve what it has achieved it needed to get many people -- including officials -- into the fold; Microsoft did all that, it did it very effectively in fact. What it leaves the world with is an unethical 'education' system that trains young people on behalf of an outlaw company. Memorising menu items is a disposable skill. ⬆

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."

--Albert Einstein