Slashdot Mirror

First, two references:

Scott Muller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs Its first chapter is 'Personal Computer Background' which i find quite interesting. I think it provides good background to non-technical people in your audience.

Byte Magazine : My favourite geek magazine when i was younger... They have this 20th aniversary edition that talks about "modern" history of PC era.

You could safely ignore what i am going to say...

A. You forgot to mention Alan Turing! How dare you... well i am sure you know about him, just forget to mention it on your post. But now you witness first hand some slashdot steam...

B. What's your audience? As one slashdotter already said, different audiences would require different kinds of materials and presention.

C. What would be different if computer literacy programs are being taught to average North American Highschoolers?

D. If i were one of your students, i would be interested in:

History of Computer Cultures (IBM, PDP, LISP, AI, MIT Vs Stanford Vs Oxford, Atari, Commodore, Mac vs MS,...)

History of impact on society (WWII, business -- COBOL, scientists, PC in offices, Internet...)

History of computation (Hilbert, Russell, Godel, Church, Turing...)

History of Computer Hareware (mainframe,minicomputer,PCs,networked computer)

History of Electronics (Vacuum,transitters,ICs,microprocessor...) (Is it highschool stuff?)

And, impact/restrains of Von Neumann machines -- sequential vs parallel, program ?= data...

All in 16 weeks!

Good luck...
Ricky

I work for IBM e-business, and I'm currently learning XML for a project. I ordered the requisite round of books, and I'm starting with SAMS' Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days. So far it's ok. I had been playing with Xeena from IBM Alphaworks over the last month or two, so I had some idea of what I was getting into.

The book is a bit too aggressive with the introduction for true beginners, but I hope that once I get through it, the rest of the books will make the introduction clearer. It's a big undertaking.
--

I work for IBM e-business, and I'm currently learning XML for a project. I ordered the requisite round of books, and I'm starting with SAMS' Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days. So far it's ok. I had been playing with Xeena from IBM Alphaworks over the last month or two, so I had some idea of what I was getting into.

The book is a bit too aggressive with the introduction for true beginners, but I hope that once I get through it, the rest of the books will make the introduction clearer. It's a big undertaking.
--

BIG MISTAKE DUDE!

Active Directory has to be in charge of your network. That means you put all of your UNIX at 2000's mercy. Do NOT do it!

I'm currently writing a book on how to keep NT off your network -- completely! Using NIS and (in a future edition) LDAP. People think they must have a native PDC -- NOT TRUE! There is a lot you can do with NIS and NT. [ Note: I was a contributing author of Sam's "Samba Unleashed" by Steve Litt, who is actually a good friend of mine. I was also an original NT 3.1 beta tester and after 8 years of NT, finally chucked it "cold turkey" in mid-1999 because UNIX is just so much better for networks. ]

Again, do NOT put your network at the mercy of 2000 server! Once you do, your network is forever Microsoft controlled. Microsoft did this purposely. And even the IEEE has identified Windows 2000 and Active Directory as a "Threat to Internet Standards and Diversity".

Worse yet is when you put Exchange and SQL 2000 on that same network. Nuts! This really ties you down to MS-only solutions! Exchange is a pig that self-corrupts (you like those 48-hour straight downtimes, eh?)! Try Bynari TradeServer instead (flat $599 -- unlimited users, GTK+ management GUI, standards-based, LDAP-based, 100% Outlook Calendar/Contact compatible), plus they have a UNIX client that can interact with Outlook. So you save money *AND* get Internet standards -- a win-win!

I fight the ignorant on this every day (largely our admin/accounting departments). John Dvorak has pointed it out best (paraphrased), "Microsoft knows standalone PCs, but knows nothing about networking" urging Microsoft to just get out of the network/server business because it doesn't know crap (and Sun seems to be the opposite, good network, bad PC knowledge ;-).

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

More commonly? I've met Perl programmers (yes, Perl programmers) who give me blank looks when I say "the Camel Book". Cute insider jargon and similar linguistic games are handy for making you sound ReeUlKeWl, but they're lousy for communicating technical concepts. That's the problem I have with a lot of O'Reilly books -- they put being cute ahead of being clear. And I'm afraid I seem some of that in what I've read of Lasser's book.

Sorry, Mac.

I like you guys. I actually do. Your Personal Bookshelf is an surprisingly useful site when I need a quick primer on some tech that I really should know off the top of my head by know, and you've kept that thing up for years.

But it's not fair for you to say you have a distribution. I think you know it.

Fellow Slashdot readers, I've been following the Mandrake guys ever since they merged with BeroLinux. BeroLinux, for those who don't know, was the first 2.2kernel distribution with everything recompiled to be pentium optimized. It was one heck of a slick package, unfortunately hobbled by some broken install routines.

Once Bero joined Mandrake(at the time, "Redhat+KDE"), I knew we'd be seeing a major powerhouse.

MacMillan may be doing great sales and marketing, but they're marketing the superlative work of the Mandrake people. I'm sorry if some Sales and Marketing folks at MacMillan don't feel they get much respect, but the bottom line is that the entire Linux community has been delivering rounds of applause to the Mandrake folks--those aw-shucks kinda guys who actually put together the package--to the degree that they got product of the year at the last Linuxworld Expo.

MacMillan should do the honorable thing and allow Mandrake to market the name of its distribution. There seems to be something quite faustian about his whole arrangement if you ask me; it's as if MacMillan went to Mandrake and said, "You could create the number one selling distribution, but it wouldn't be your name on it..."

That being said, I think they're doing a tremendous amount of good getting Linux out there, and we shouldn't take biased ravings(those geeks don't know what Linux is all about, thus he raved) too seriously--not even, mind you, from the person doing the raving. Five bucks says the guy was just quoting some out of line MCP guy off the record.

One lamer does not an organization doom...

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Laurie Petrycki is looking for more Open Source authors, to publish books in the same manner. If you have a book proposal, or just want to talk about one, send her email.

I read PERL BY EXAMPLE, by (I think) Sam Medinets. You can find it online at the Macmillan Personal Bookshelf, at http://www.mcp.com/personal.

Take a look at it, it's a great book.