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Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

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Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#71

Post by sofixa »

notimetorelax wrote: post #29
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #19

This is basically European protectionism under the guise of privacy. My guess is that within a few years (or even sooner), you will be reading about a massive breach of student data from whatever alternative they choose to go with.

Agree, I don’t understand how a non-judicial branch can attest that Google is not compliant. If they think so, they should sue. Otherwise it sounds as if a minister invested in a local alternative…

ICOs, which are executive and non-judiciary, are responsible for compliance and enforcement. In the same way that if you're polluting, the respective executive agency will fine you and order you to stop. With, of course, you having the option to appeal to the judiciary branch.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#72

Post by tirpen »

rattray wrote: post #31

How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns? I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads). Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?

> is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?

Yes, the Snowden leaks.

It doesn't matter whether Google themselves takes privacy seriously, they are a US company and therefor when handling personal information we must always assume that everything that is uploaded to their servers is sent straight to the NSA as well. Because that's what US law allows for.

I'm not even exaggerating, according to the latest rulings by EDPB, storing personal information on US servers is pretty much always forbidden unless you store it in encrypted form and control the encryption key.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#73

Post by dmos62 »

dx034 wrote: post #42
lrvick wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we teach kids to use TikTok and Facebook so they will be better prepared to help with future office marketing tasks too? This line of thinking is poison and will only amplify the monopolisic power of whatever select companies make the taught-in-schools list. Proprietary technology has no place in educational institutions.

No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.

Teach them LibreOffice. Or better yet, teach them how to learn themselves.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#74

Post by ryanmercer »

lrvick wrote: post #56
dx034 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.

I have had a long career with many office jobs all across the US and never once has anyone taken issue with me using LibreOffice or similar as long as I got my job done and documents were exported in compatible formats. Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.

Excel is a far different beast than what Libre Calc offers, and then what Google Sheets offers. It has some formulas that are exclusive (mind you Liber likely has some that Excel no longer has), outside of startups it is effectively the industry standard as well and is used in all kinds of industries and roles.

Libre also has different features than Excel which has different features than Sheets, etc, but Excel is the "standard". You're going to see Excel far more than Sheets in the workplace and I've never seen a job listing mention Libre Calc.

I know Excel, I started at a startup 4 months ago using Sheets, the first few weeks I had to 'unlearn' half of what I knew and try and figure out how to do similar in Sheets. If I only knew sheets, I'd probably have been even more lost going to Excel because Microsoft doesn't hold your hand like Sheets does with every formula you start to type. I'm guessing something like Libre Calc is worse than Excel and Sheets in that regard.

>Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible

Sure, but teaching someone to drive a 4-cylinder automatic driver's ed car doesn't prepare them to say operate a manual tri-axle or a an excavator. Sure they understand steering, acceleration and stopping, but all of the unique mechanics of say Excel are different than random free software.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#75

Post by philliphaydon »

Aerroon wrote: post #41
dx034 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have to disagree here. Teaching kids how to use Word and Excel will help them for the majority of office jobs out there.

Just use LibreOffice Calc or some equivalent. The main things you want them to learn is to use formulas, charts and filters anyway. LibreOffice Calc does all of that in a pretty similar way to what Excel does. I'm actually not even sure what I would gain by switching to actual Excel.

I used to know excel pretty well but spent the last 8? Years using Google spread sheets.

Excel is really difficult to use now.

I don’t imagine moving from libreoffice calc to excel would be easy.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#76

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #19

This is basically European protectionism under the guise of privacy. My guess is that within a few years (or even sooner), you will be reading about a massive breach of student data from whatever alternative they choose to go with.

protectionism is allowable for EU countries don't you know. I hope the next batch of US legislators isn't afraid to 'regulate' EU products

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#77

Post by bigDinosaur »

Aerroon wrote: post #49
bigDinosaur wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing really compares to Excel. (Nothing really compares to Excel in some of its most terrible bugs either).

What does Excel do that something like LibreOffice Calc does not? I'm genuinely curious because I've not run into any issues with the latter that the former would've solved so far.

I realise my comment sounded like I was saying the features of Excel are not comparable. What I really meant was simply that, like MS Word (which I hate with a passion), it's so ubiquitous that guaranteeing compatibility between businesses is often worth a significant amount of dollars in time saved.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#78

Post by Conan_Kudo »

lrvick wrote: post #56
dx034 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.

I have had a long career with many office jobs all across the US and never once has anyone taken issue with me using LibreOffice or similar as long as I got my job done and documents were exported in compatible formats. Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.

Not to mention, Microsoft Office has supported the LibreOffice native formats nearly perfectly for almost a decade now, because some governments mandate OpenDocument formats over Microsoft ones. In fact, since at least Office 2013, you can configure Office to use those formats by default.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#79

Post by bluGill »

lrvick wrote: post #20
wiz21c wrote: post #2

Now let's ban MSFT Office365 too. It's of zero use to teach whatever to the kids.

Schools have no place supporting or teaching proprietary software in the first place. They should teach concepts using publicly available software and sponsor students who wish to patch bugs that impact school operations.

Should need to teach how to think. Part of that means the ability to adopt to whatever tool. Thus schools should require students to use each of 4 different office system. O365 is only one of them, and LibreOffice is an obvious section choice (I'm have no idea what the others might be). tools come and go, but the concepts you are using the tools for stick around. I wasted a lot of time learning WordPerfect F-keys back as a kid a useless skill. Microsoft introduced the Ribbon and changed the way you use their office 20 years ago. I haven't even used a word processor in the last few years, but by focusing on good writing (well as good as I can do) I can figure out how to make tools submit, and that is what is important.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#80

Post by hardwaresofton »

Cxckers wrote: post #61
hardwaresofton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use and am very happy with Protonmail (Switzerland, so not quite the EU) And for documents, LibreOffice is quite good these days.

I was a big fan of Protonmail but there recent outages have been far from ideal. Might be worth considering other alternatives if 24/7 access to emails is a must

You mean the outages from like... last week/this week? That was the first outage in like years of service, and it was resolved pretty quickly, with good communication throughout and an apology. The discussion on Reddit is worth looking at[0].

What alternatives are out there without service degradation/outages?

Also not to undermine my own point (Protonmail is wonderfully stable for me) who is getting life or death emails these days? I could take whole days of downtime (hasn't ever happened) and probably be OK.

Why do we all pretend that we are all so important that we need services with bulletproof reliability and as many 9s as we can get?

Bit of a rant, but not directed at you so much Cxckers!

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/w0vcge/email_fr...

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