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A Babe in Tuxland
Joe Barr writes "This is the kind of story that WagEd and MS would love to see in one of their astroturf campaigns. But this story is real grassroots, with a real Sysadmin writing it and a real granddaughter as the babe using Linux. A sweet tale, with tips on Linux for kids." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
Or an suid exploit? After all, script kiddies are getting younger and younger these days.
The Debian Jr. project has been around for quite a long time. Its aims are to package and maintain a collection of relevant applications for the younger generation within the Debian framework.
This is very much an active project which is working with some of the other organisations. I myself have experimented with some of the stuff it includes with my niece. As mentioned in the article tuxpaint seems to be very popular for the pre-school age group.
The growth of these "Custom Debian Distributions" (the contents of which can usually be used on a traditional Debian install) should help bring free software into lots more situations.
Rob 'robster' Bradford
Debian Planet Guy
We are the apt. You will be packaged. Resistance is futile.
Out of context quoting on your second snip... the full phrase was
K.D. had watched her mom, my wife, and me using the various Linux-based computers in our home...
Her mom is the writer's daughter. The writer's wife is a different person being listed along with the writer, since all three use the Linux-based computers in the home.
The title is a play on words from "Babes in Toyland" - a Victor Herbert operetta from 1903. ...of course, the best version was the film with Laurel and Hardy.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
A kid's application should be like clay, changing it on a whim to try new things quickly.
This Perl module provides scripted access to the SDL (Simple Direct-media Layer) libraries. Hopefully, this whole thing will be mostly portable to Windows.
When the graphics are simple, and hardware assisted, a scripting language like Perl starts making more sense. The actual application logic doesn't need a lot of horsepower.
I pipe many text messages off to Festival, since young kids aren't going to be able to read a prompt like "How many apples do you see?" I wish the TTS community had better packaging for alternative voices like MBROLA's extensions... I've yet to get anything but three pure Festival voices working.
I want to develop Perl bindings to the Open Dynamics Engine, letting the on-screen toys "fall" and "bounce" and interact realistically. It looks very promising, but I'll save that work for later.
My library consists of about 3000 lines so far, not counting the docs and auxilliary helper routines. I'm working to make extensions as simple and flexible as possible, so the curriculum can grow quickly and spontaneously.
Toy::World will be able to handle basic lessons and drills at first, such as counting and adding, letter and shape identification. I want to start building on those ideas into the usual early-childhood skills of understanding money, subtraction, words, matching, memory skills, and animal identification.
I've yet to work out the basic reward system, but I'm thinking of a sort of token-winning, token-spending theme, where you can play certain lessons to win on-screen coin tokens Mario-style, and some lessons may require spending those same tokens (or Mom can check out the totals for a few real-world benefits).
With a lot more work, I want to get into more hands-on experimentation. Simulated water-pouring, block-stacking, multiplication drills, cause/effect lessons, and even networked "shared toys" simulations involving small groups of children.
By that time I hope to have opened the project to community help. Contact me if you're interested.
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(For those of us who don't know these things by heart)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Open Mozilla's Options menu
Go to General->Connection Settings
Select Manual Proxy Configuration
HTTP Proxy: Localhost Port:80
No Proxy For:sesamestreet.com, nick.com, etc.
She's just a model. Ceran is the only true BSD chick!
Uh...anyone see a double-standard?
/. is not attempting to hide the source of the article.
Microsoft posting this kind of story and passing it off as real news = "astroturfing."
What I see is someone who doesn't know what "astroturfing" means.
Life is too short to proofread.
I use Debian with udev and hotplug (which are quickly becoming defaults). When I boot my computer, it automatically finds and configures everything I have attached to it. When I plug in my USB palm, it loads the appropriate module so that Kpilot can sync with it. When I plug in a keychain drive, it loads the appropriate module and mounts it. All of my printers worked with the drivers shipped with CUPS. I plugged a PCMCIA NIC into my laptop, and it beeped after it loaded the driver and configured the network. My sound card Just Works. My USB mouse Just Works.
Why do people still think that Linux is in 1997? I know that there are some annoying driver problems, just as there are in Windows, but the vast majority of hardware I've come across does the right thing without intervention.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think this is the one that ended up being the most help (I had problems getting the steps in the general printing howto to payoff for me)...
debian windows shared printing
Make sure to force the CUPS sharing into RAW mode...
Pax -- Ob