German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools • Hacker News Board

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#91

Post by dijit » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:14 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #89

weinzierl wrote: post #57

At the beginning of the pandemic Microsoft Teams was practically forced on everyone with children in Bavaria. With practically forced I mean you could either sign a document to get Teams for free or your child could not participate in online classes. A whole age group of children whose first online experience is Microsoft. In my opinion we should start there: Instead of unrealistic bans that no one will ever enforce…

The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. Germany, somehow, is a decade behind most of the other Western industrial powerhouses in terms of digitizing. I think the constant flux and reluctance to just move on is holding them back.

> The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless.

That's a really bad argument when history shows the inverse.

Name a FOSS program that no longer exists and I will give you 5 proprietary programs that suffered the same.

Even in the same lineage as Teams there is: Communicator, Lync and Skype for Business.

Now, they simply do not exist.

However I can still run `vim` from the 80s and OpenOffice from the mid-00's without issue, even if there is limited support: it still works.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#92

Post by partiallypro » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #91

partiallypro wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. Germany, somehow, is a decade behind most of the other Western industrial powerhouses in terms of digitizing. I think the constant flux and reluctance to just move on is holding them back.

> The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. That's a really bad argument when history shows the inverse. Name a FOSS program that no longer exists and I will give you 5 proprietary programs that suffered the same. Even in the same lineage as Teams there is: Communicator, Lync and Skype for Busin…

We're talking about O365 as a whole, not just Teams. Chat in general is a bad example, because it's a product far more in flux and pretty easily replicated/replaced. Show me how not learning Excel is beneficial. Excel is one of the most important programs on Earth, and students should suffer by not learning it...and instead learn LibreOffice? Then they go to their jobs as adults and don't know how to use what most every other company on the planet uses?

When we discuss education, we must also look at what the world does, not just what we -wish- it did. It's cheaper for the schools to have O365 licenses than singular program license for various products that helps to power the global economy. Just like you wouldn't teach a kid command line on some new experimental OS, you'd teach them on UNIX or Windows, same thing. The whole point of schooling is to build real world skills. Much of the O365 suite is used widely, so are some GSuite products. It's just the reality, like it or not.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#93

Post by kspacewalk2 » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #62

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a lot. No one bats an eye when Firefox uses triple that amount sitting idle with 5 tabs open, because Firefox is Not Evil.

Firefox can do a lot more than Teams can.

That's akin to saying a car is more impressive than a nuclear power station because it can go to such interesting places. Or something something apples and oranges. Point is, my analogy may be bad, but it's not as bad as comparing Firefox and Teams in terms of what they do.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#94

Post by INeedMoreRam » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #26

lzooz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 6.5 % of available memory of a computer with 8 GB of RAM.

That's not a lot. No one bats an eye when Firefox uses triple that amount sitting idle with 5 tabs open, because Firefox is Not Evil.

So when you open 5 tabs in Firefox it uses over 1.5GB of memory?

I find that hard to believe.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#95

Post by dijit » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #92

dijit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. That's a really bad argument when history shows the inverse. Name a FOSS program that no longer exists and I will give you 5 proprietary programs that suffered the same. Even in the same lineage as Teams there is: Communicator, Lync and Skype for Busin…

We're talking about O365 as a whole, not just Teams. Chat in general is a bad example, because it's a product far more in flux and pretty easily replicated/replaced. Show me how not learning Excel is beneficial. Excel is one of the most important programs on Earth, and students should suffer by not learning it...and instead learn LibreOffice? Then they go to their jobs as adults and don't know how to use what most ev…

Even within the very well-worn "core" products of the MS office ecosystem: huge UI design changes de-skill millions of workers.

they're not optional.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-20...

I can easily imagine a world where other office apps are shutdown, you have the golden children like Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint. Which change UI and design language or change features over the years.

Then there's things like Office Whiteboard, VIVA, Bookings, Lists, Planner, Power Automate, Yammer, Sway. Who knows how long they'll last?- even mainstays such as Microsoft Access have been deprecated, and I bet you didn't know that you had half of those tools.

I mean, I learned graphics design on Macromedia Fireworks. Can I use that now? no. It was the industry standard for raster graphics that were not digital photos- but it's dead now.

Even staying with Excel: Excel on Windows and Excel on MacOS are similar, but not the same. Many features available on the Windows version are simply unavailable on MacOS.

Where-as something like Libreoffice Calc works consistently across platforms.

So, yeah, learning Excel only means that you're Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office for your entire professional career.

Which is great for microsoft, because you will always take the pain of learning whatever they do over migrating to something else, due to the cost of retraining to more conventional standards.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#96

Post by partiallypro » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #95

partiallypro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about O365 as a whole, not just Teams. Chat in general is a bad example, because it's a product far more in flux and pretty easily replicated/replaced. Show me how not learning Excel is beneficial. Excel is one of the most important programs on Earth, and students should suffer by not learning it...and instead learn LibreOffice? Then they go to their jobs as adults and don't know how to use what most ev…

Even within the very well-worn "core" products of the MS office ecosystem: huge UI design changes de-skill millions of workers. they're not optional. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-20... I can easily imagine a world where other office apps are shutdown, you have the golden children like Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint. Which change UI and design language or change features over the year…

You can believe whatever you want and come up with every excuse to support your world view but putting "proficient in LibreOffice" on your resume is not going to help you get a job or help the company. "Proficient in Excel" will. The UI of Excel isn't overly important, formulation is and as I said it's cheaper to pay the O365 fee than to pay individual licensing fees, so throwing out random product names that aren't widely used isn't helping your case.

Germany has struggled with digitization, sometimes it feels like you're walking back into the 70s when you're dealing with it. That is in part because of their traditional views (which can be good and bad) which aren't always in tune with how the rest of the global economy has already played out. I feel like every year I read about some Germany state or city upending their previous system to go to Open Source, then 2-3 years later see it walked back.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#97

Post by dijit » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #93

dijit wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox can do a lot more than Teams can.

That's akin to saying a car is more impressive than a nuclear power station because it can go to such interesting places. Or something something apples and oranges. Point is, my analogy may be bad, but it's not as bad as comparing Firefox and Teams in terms of what they do .

I don't understand your point then.

Yes, the thing that consumes more resources uses more resources. Because it can do more things. People are also mad about that btw.

Saying "well, x uses more than y" where `y` in this case is using about 5x more resources than its contemporaries is just an insultingly weak argument.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#98

Post by taneliv » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #65

BartjeD wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit clickbaity. But on the whole i'd say its warranted. Because these judgements are precedents which bind other DPA's. The scope of the factual findings is broad enough to say that it affects any business using 365 handling personal data. That leaves only the question of legality in the specific case. Which depends on the presence and kind of personal data present in 365.

What I'm wondering is, how is office 365 really any worse than Windows 10/11 itself?

From the article:

  Germany’s Federal Office for Information (BSI, in German) has already expressed concern that Windows 10 and 11 operating systems collect telemetry data, including typing data and even speech-to-text.

  In response, German and French public schools switched to Linux operating systems and other Office 365 alternatives for their educational needs.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#99

Post by dijit » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #96

dijit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within the very well-worn "core" products of the MS office ecosystem: huge UI design changes de-skill millions of workers. they're not optional. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-20... I can easily imagine a world where other office apps are shutdown, you have the golden children like Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint. Which change UI and design language or change features over the year…

You can believe whatever you want and come up with every excuse to support your world view but putting "proficient in LibreOffice" on your resume is not going to help you get a job or help the company. "Proficient in Excel" will. The UI of Excel isn't overly important, formulation is and as I said it's cheaper to pay the O365 fee than to pay individual licensing fees, so throwing out random product names that aren't…

Your argument is "the status quo is the status quo and therefore it should remain as such because it's the status quo".

Appeals to continuance (perhaps because you have a personal sunk cost fallacy?) are unconvincing.

Your original assertion (that FOSS programs might go away) is a weak one for the reasons stated.

"Getting a job" is subjective, that depends on what skills are in-demand. I don't see many people putting "Skilled at Microsoft Viva" on their CV, and that's not because it's proprietary. It's because desired skills are borne from need, and there are network effects in those.

If nobody had adopted Excel and instead learned R and SQL, then you would be getting jobs based on listing them as skills. Not surprisingly.

EDIT: I should point out that businesses usually follow what schools do: the reason Java is so popular in Germany is because it's what University used to teach so it is (or was) a common denominator, Microsoft knew this and poured billions into getting Microsoft into Education in the 90s when I was coming up. That doesn't mean they get a perpetual license to continue in the event they abuse that position, which they do.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#100

Post by hdjjhhvvhga » Fri, Nov 25, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

I need to vent off some steam here. It really bothers that whenever I use a piece of Microsoft software like Teams or if I accidentally login to edge to use some MS service like Minecraft, Xbox etc., it logs me in to a MS account locally. It's infuriating. I can still undo it by going to settings and logging me out of all apps, but I bet there is someone in MS thinking well right now how to silently remove that option as a part of the next batch of updates (and all reasonable people always update their software to stay secure, right?).