Andy Chiles (The Argus) reports about Professor Tara Brabazon, from the University of Brighton, prohibiting students from citing Google and Wikipedia as sources.

She has dubbed the phenomenon ‘The University of Google’. Prof Brabazon said: “The education world has pursued new technology with an almost evangelical zeal and it is time to take a step back and give proper consideration of how we use it. “Too many students don’t use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis.”

I tend to agree with her premise. Some of the students we see as interns probably haven’t seen the inside of a library.

In addition to getting back to basics, we think something ought to be done about penmanship as well.

James Bannan shared his pain about Window’s Vista activation —or lack thereof. It seems by simply updating a device driver, the Microsoft’s pseudointelligent activation scheme labels you a violator and deactivates your legitimate copy of Vista. Add this to the list of reasons why we’re not upgrading to Vista.

After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I’ve finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.

Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into “reduced functionality” mode, where you can’t do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.

Linux on the desktop is quickly becoming a viable alternative. Why else would the “Redmond Giant” bully companies into license agreements for “235 patents” that they won’t specify? What keeps Ballmer awake at night?

We’re making the switch to Ubuntu. We’ll have at least one Windows XPSP2 system until we migrate our financials. We’ve been able to find open source equivalents to every package we use. You can view an extensive list on Wikipedia.

Finally, we’d like to encourage you to complete the 2007 Linux Desktop/Client Survey. Your opinion matters.