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Software Monoculture in Schools?
The World Is Not Microsoft asks: "I've been worried by changes my school has made over the past year or so to the general computer setup we have. The school is a City Technology College, and as a result of this there are an abundance of computers around the building which everyone is free to use. When I first started there (almost six years ago now) there were approximately even numbers of Windows and Mac machines. As happens over time these machines got out of date and had to be replaced, and the school has spent a lot of money buying replacements. What I'm bothered about is that when they did this they completely eliminated the Mac population, and by the time school starts again in September the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000. What's the situation like in other schools? Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?"
"There have been security problems with these systems in the past (mostly IE toolbars which requested content from sites which were blocked by the content filters, which caused problems for everyone), and with all the recent IE security problems I'm surprised that the people in charge aren't considering alternative systems (I know Linux would be too much to ask, but rolling out some OS X machines would be good). In addition to this, those who actually study ICT are required to use MS Office for spreadsheet and database tasks; no OpenOffice allowed."
Seriously.. Rebel! Grab yourself a Knoppix CD and outperform everyone else. Now, you have to be smart about this. It'll probably involve some after-school time practicing and making sure you can do absolutely everything your particular course requires without problems. Knoppix by itself is a very eye-appealing distro but you can do some things to spruce it up (i.e. School logo's where appropriate. Set proper homepages. Setup any printers and other networking quirks.) Having the one computer in the class that looks the nicest will quickly draw the attention of your fellow stu^H^H^Hrebels.
:). The fact that it is something you "shouldn't" be doing will only help you here.
:) Just don't ask them for support when your sound stops working.
Now, Your teachers depending on their level of expertise will probably either ask you to remove that theme or actually wonder what the heck is going on. This can be a good thing if your teachers are smart - getting them to join the rebellion will help you in your fight.
Now, this being a technical school of sorts, you probably have other enlightened persons hanging around. Polish your CD up a bit, make a funky logo to print on it and start handing it out to your fellow rebels. Having 3-4 people in a class running something different will immediately draw the attention of everyone else in the classroom (the innate nature of teenagers to all be different in roughly the same way
Now, you have a few possible endgame scenarios. First off, the administration can come down hard on you for violating their acceptable use policy. Not much you can do in this case without ending up as a martyr.
Secondly, you could get the teachers more or less on your side. As long as you get your work done, they shouldn't have much of a problem. The more converts you get, the more points you score
Finally you could achieve total victory against the software monopolist throughout the galaxy (or at least your classroom). This is when every student carries around his/her own Knoppix CD or you get a Linux-based installation on a few computers. This is a tough one, but you can always shoot for it.
So my advice is don't try and convince anyone. Show them that you can do the same job faster, cheaper, better, and somehow learn more out of it. Administrators like the first three benefits, and teachers especially like that last bit!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
My school has a couple APple 2e's lying around but other than those everything els is Win98/2000
When you can pick up a cheap windows desktop for $500, its hard to justify a Mac. Jojo
your school website even has an MS colour scheme
;)
you're doomed, drop out now
I'm sure your local school would be more than grateful for a big cheque so that they can fit out the labs with some OS X systems. You go, Girl!
When I first started there (almost six years ago now)...
Lane, I've been going to this high school for 7 and a half years. I'm no dummy.
I think you'll find the disproportionate number of Windows PCs is the direct result of MS' selfless donations to cash starved educational establishments. It's true altruism; the fact the children will grow up with no experience of anything other than MS products is a completely unintentional side effect, and must be a complete surprise to Bill and his merry men...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I work for an online training company. We see that about 98% of our students are using MS Windows. I like OSX, but have to spend all of my time programming for MS systems because the others are so rare.
At my office (elementary school), I'm stuck with a network made up of 98, 2K, and XP machines, and they're 95% Dell.
At UH-D, where I go to school, it's _all_ Dell and Windows XP or 2K unless you're in a high-level CS class and you've got Linux.
I blame Dell and their cheap, bulk PCs - sell them cheap, throw in Windows, ensure a monoculture and continued upgrades from their company.
On the plus side, they're now notoriously easy to reghost if something goes wrong.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
If you've been at a city technology college for six years, I'd say that the Macs being replaced is the least of your problems you should be worrying about.
The free computers aren't the ones you want? Such a shame you're prevented from choosing a different college to attend.
Nerd Rock In Progress
basically....on my campus, it's about 85% microsoft, one unix lab, 2 linux labs, 2 mac labs, and the rest windows. i'm pretty sure this is because most school's order from dell or another company like that, and they only sell it with windows....and the fact that most people can only use windows i guess. i don't know, there's no escaping it. microsoft will one day own the entire world.
Spiral out. Keep going...
back in the days when Apple was the darling of the education field. Now that it's Microsoft, however, it's bad.
Strange.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
At Columbia, we used to have a number of private SGIs, public Suns, Macs, and PCs. Over the last 2-3 years, the SGIs were removed and replaced w/ Windows 2000 PCs. The Suns are being removed now and being replaced with 1/2 Windows 2000 and 1/2 Linux. Public terminals are all Linux based; the public computer labs are split ~ 33/66% Mac/PC (Windows).
We have nearly a monoculture, but it's http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N19/history_of_athe.1 9f.htmlours [mit.edu], and open source to boot.
You need a hobby, or a girlfriend, or something. I cheer for non windows alternatives as loud as the next person, and I use linux at home. But what OS my school uses doesn't really matter to me.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
At my school (University of Regina) they are actually going in the opposite direction. When I started 3 years ago, all of the public computers were Windows 98 or Windows 2000 - Now they have a complete Linux lab, another restricted lab that is 50/50 between Mac and windows. I really thing that going towards open source is a good idea, just based on the cost of licensing both windows and macintosh OSes.
How are you supposed to enjoy teh intarweb without XP on a Pentium 4????
Windows machines are dominant on my campus, but thankfully a few labs are stocked with a handful of PowerMacs. Not to anyone's surprise, the art department is Mac country, with the students having access to a PowerMac lab, and the faculty equipped with eMacs.
...here at the Microsoft School for Better Busines Practices we use....
oh
wait
never mind
Hey when I started school we didn't have any Macs. My wife is currently a teacher and her school has zero Macs as well. I believe it is all up to what the current Admin feels most comfortalble with. If you have a big issue with it go and talk to the Admin and find out why the Macs are not being replaced.
Why do we correct our criminals but punish our children?
That is the scene I've found at my mom's school, my wife's school, my aunt's school and at the university where my wife teaches. It is unfortunate, but I can see the reason. In most cases the choice was made due to a perceived need to "get on the internet" and provide software. Since fewer people thesedays know Macs and even fewer know about *nix systems, they went with big contracts to have Windows PCs installed. The argument was that there would be better support for the Windows PCs. Sadly this has failed to pan out. At least here in California, there is little money to be spent on follow up so the PCs just languish. On top of that some stupid short-sighted politicians feel that standardized testing is a good thing and have shifted focus from real-world skills (writing, coding, graphics) to bubble-filling on test sheets. As such, the PCs do very little and recieve no support.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Windows is the more common system, and there are more applications, particularly educational applications. More hardware is supported, and people have more experience with Windows.
I fail to see why it's so surprising the school went to Windows. I have yet to come across a high school or college that wasn't this way.
is a fairly well-split mix -- some school sites have mostly PCs, some school sites have mostly Macs. It's around 50/50.
The server room is a heterogeneous environment including FreeBSD, Netware, NetBSD, Linux, Solaris, MacOSX Server, and Windows Server 2003. Hooray for the computer equivalent of biodiversity, it means we have to choose software based on cross-platform availability and standards. It also doesn't hurt that most of the administrators use Macs.
I go to depaul in chicago and for the most part we are a m$ school from vs c++ to office. but most of our labs have 5% or so macs.
Seriously, there was only one bad decision I can see here, and that was to go with windows, and I'm sure we can attribute this to laziness.
Financially, it makes more sense to ditch apple's stuff. It's considerably more expensive than pc hardware, and in your enviroment, I can't see a real use for it.
Once the decision was made to go with windows, the rest follow suit as common sense. Of course they are going to recommend against Open office, that's like adding moving parts to an already complicated machine.
Same with IE, to a limited extent. Through the use of group policies, I've managed to, at several sites, neuter it, to protect the users from themselves, and with a SUS server in place, their risk is effectively reduced. Not that I wouldn't love to hook them up on firefox and the like, but some customers won't even consider the possibility.
So..yay for entropy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Why is Linux too much to ask? You know it comes in a box now. Granted I'm a MacOS X user to the core- but if the school has all X86 hardware Linux is a more viable option than MacOS X.
Why they have all X86 is more on topic though. At my school it was a short sighted Principal who likes to pretend he's big into computers. I think that's the case most of the time. There was no evidence that price/upkeep was even evaluated for Macs, it was just assumed that they were more expensive.
"People in charge" usually don't know a fuck about IT world and situation at large.
Especially true when there are decision between machine that costs xxx bucks and barely gets the work done (but gets) and comes with flashy marketspeak advertising campaign or 2x xxx bucks (but gets it done properly).
It would be just about the time when manifacturer could be sued for serious money for lying in advertising campaigns.
Where I went to school, almost every machine outside of the CompSci dept was a PC/Windows machine. In the compsci dept there were a number of linux, unix and pc workstations. Of course I went to a science and engineering school, which explains the lack of Macs. I think the Metalurgy department had some Macs as there were a few met programs that we Mac based. Also, the mining & geology departments had some old unix workstations that they were replacing with linux and windows 2000.
In my professional life the only places I have ever encountered Macs were graphics designers and journalists. SO for my career, the college environment emulated the real world. That isn't meant to be flame bait, but there really are not a lot of Macs in use compared to Windows machines.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
... it's in the Student Newspaper office. Quite frankly, I can understand the decision ... it's a LOT cheaper to get PCs than Macs, and when you're on a budget, you err on the side of getting MORE computers, not less.
Quite frankly, it's a smart decision from a practicality standpoint as well. College isn't about your preference, it's about training you for the "real world" (theoretically, anyway), and that means that in a world where over 90% of computers are running Windows, that's what you should learn first.
The hardware is cheaper.
PC hardware can almost always be sold at prices less than the Mac equiv. Even with the Mac discount for education, the prices just don't look good compared to the the cash strapped budgets.
This isn't to say that in the long run they won't be more expensive, but that isn't how people think.
At least be honest -- Windows sucks and you'd rather use something else.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Well, it makes sense to me that if there was a school looking at windows vs. Mac -they chose win. School budgets don't really allow for labs of Mac computers. It seems they are simply unaware of what linux can do on older computers? I can't know what the school knows...
However, on a limited budget, Mac vs. win seems an easy decision.
At my school (Univ. of Arizona), there are definitely more MS-PCs more than Macs. I would assume this isn't some sort of takeover, but rather, simply because most people use Windows-running PCs. I wouldn't call this some sort of anti=(insert OS of your choice here) plan,but it just makes more sense. Simple economics also apply in this case. Most manufacturers do offer educational discounts, but I would assume under most circumstances, the PC is cheaper than the Mac....Consider
PC - $999 vs Mac - $1399
Now, don't mod me down or call my prices stupid/inaccurate/flamebaity, but just use those numbers as an example. For any college in these cash-strapped times (public or private), saving money where needed is mighty important, and if there is money to be saved somewhere, upgrading at lowest cost is probably one of the best ways to do so....Hell, if they had it their way, they'd probably not upgrade at all......
My MythTV HowTo
I went to a graphical school for three years. I have seen no Windows PC anywhere. The time I left it was all MacOS 8. Recently I heard they upgraded to MacOSX. For prepress design Windows isn't really an option. I understand a lot of chemical students/scientists work with unix based systems as well. They prefer sheer working power. In their case the choice of OS saves them hardware.
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
and are waaaaaaaaaaaaay less popular
When you can pick up a cheap windows desktop for $500, its hard to justify a Mac.
If you've ever used and tried to maintain a $500 cheap Windows desktop, it's hard to justify not using a Mac.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
at high school we had a majority of macs actually, and these were often upgraded and replaced. IIRC we actually had a lab of dual processor G4s when i left. oh, and all the staff were given laptops, many of which were powerbooks as opposed to the dell alternative.
now, at UNSW, all the computers in CSE are debian boxes, so im onw in heaven. i use a powerbook around uni, and i have to say the greatest thing about it is that i can do anything that i would otherwise do on a lab computer over wireless network and X forwarding. best ever.
---- Design. Invent. Cheese.
It's cheap, can be locked up neatly, and doesn't require hardware prone to theft.
All the single function machines on our campus (like the library catalogue) run KDE/Konqueror in Kiosk mode now, because the cost per unit is >>$200+screens.
Multi use machines are migrating to dual boot to allow the curious to get some experience and to get infrastructure sorted out, at the cost of about a week of two people's time. Compare and contrast to hardware migration cost. (Replaced machines just get the dual boot image, no fuss.)
Eventually when apps are deamed feature complete for 90% of use the default will be switched to Linux. It might take a while, but it can be done slowly, and if a urgent move is ever required (hello, licensing 7?) it'll all be in place and ready to go.
Beep beep.
"I'm surprised that the people in charge aren't considering alternative systems (I know Linux would be too much to ask, but rolling out some OS X machines would be good). "
Feigned innocence has always been one of my pet peeves. You're posting on Slashdot, you shouldn't be so shocked and surprised that windows machines are prevalent as general-use academic systems.
Fact: Windows holds a huge majority of the desktop market
Fact: The MAJORITY of PEOPLE are going to need to be comfortable with, and semi-knowledgeable of Windows and Office.
Conclusion: It makes no sense for a university to buy an ass load of Macs for general student use when those students are going to be going into the workforce using Windows.
At my University the campus is almost completely dominated by Windows systems except for two areas: Graphic Design / Art department (Macs), and the Computer Science department (Sun Blade 150's running Solaris.)
You use the right tool for the right job, you don't tear out your eyes and run around campus screaming "WINDOWS IS EEEEEEVIL OMG OMG OMG" as that just gets you pepper sprayed by the campus police. Nor do you confuse the majority of students by sticking a mac in front of them when they have a) likely been using windows their whole life, b) they probably HAVE a windows system, and c) are likely confused when faced with differing environments. And lastly just because they didn't choose mac, doesn't mean it wasn't considered.
So, the idea is going here is preparing you for a career, right?
What's the most common thing said about folks right out of school? They can't find their own butt with both hands in the dark!
This 'monoculture' may be a contributing factor, but I think the implied apathy of the student body has more to do with it. At the least, in this case.
Find out what's going on 'out there' in the real world, in your choosen career arena and insist that the training (I assume) you're paying for is pertinant!!
Can you imagine what a resume nugget that'd be?? "Spearheaded the conversion of (school name here) from outdated windows only training tools to current technology (open source even??)". It's an opportunity boy - gonna use it?
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
Part of the problem you face is that it's easier (not to mention cheaper) to support a single platform. Sure, there are folks who can support both, but from a purely budget standpoint, having a single platform is cheaper to support.
Yeah, it would be better if you had both. Yeah, it's a shame more money isn't spent on educational resources. But I suspect the reason for having a single platform has more to do with the cost of supporting a single platform vs multiple platforms when you factor in hardware, software, people who can adequately adminstrate, etc... than anything else.
At my school every computer runs windows 2000, we have about 940 total. So it's windows only. But beyond that, our school colors are blue and gray. It's horrible. And the entire campus is painted gray. People who are coming from the airport ask what those buildings are for, and whether or not they are a prison. Kinda sucks. I like the knoppix idea though. I can setup samba so that it authenticates the computer with domain controller so that I can gain access to my files, and connect to the internet. It would be awesome, I won't have to deal with the schools cumbersome security "features" and their spyware problems.
There are two reasons schools buy windows based machines and not apples.
A. Microsoft gives pretty good discounts to schools and the hardware they run on is an OPEN platform (for those who love being open source,etc.). While Apple does give discounts thier hardware is difficult and costly to replace. And while they've reciently become better in the network areana. For years they've sucked.
B. Keeping a mixed platform leads to higher costs of administration. While your school has gone all microsoft, there are others that have gone all apple.
So enough bashing Microsoft for being Microsoft and look at the reality of school culture.
I know in all the schools I've ever attended, they were pretty much 100% Windows. Fiscally, I can see where they are coming from, considering that Mac's are usually a little steep compared to their inferior MS rival. It's also for ease of use/administration. Most of the people attending school are familiar/somewhat familar with windows. Most of the school net admins are also trained in Windows admin... Tragic ways to have things, but change is slowly coming I guess...
...at Stanford the academic computing and residential computing clusters are dominated by OSX Macs that are rarely, if ever, used. The CS and technical computing clusters are better -- a mix of Linux, Unix, and Windows.
Hi, and welcome to the land known as "the real world". Please get used to it.
I don't see how any Computer Science course can possibly be fulfilling its remit by only teaching how to use one OS. Forget that it's Microsoft for a moment, it's just one of the operating systems that exist.
When I went to school, there was a truly varied environment, including Apple Macs, PCs and Acorn Archimedeseseseses. Oh, and the odd Electron or BBC Micro thrown in for comedy value (in fact, literally in the case of the electron).
Long gone are the days when you were taught how to use computers, now you just get taught how to use Microsoft. I just don't think that's right.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Here at the university, virtually all public computers run windows (NT, XP or 2000) it seems that the university has struck a nice deal with MS with cheap licensingfees. As a result, after 5 years of toiling, I don't really recall using other platforms on those public pc's. Most of the servers, on the other hand, run UNIX in some form (linux, solaris, freebsd,...)
I could make a rant against the MS haegemony, but what's the point of learning to work on plaform A when on a professional level, virtually everybody works on platform B? Then again, we all know the (many) cons of creating a single platform environment. From that point of view (lack of innovation, boxed thinking, etc.), I think education shouldn't really favour one or another platform even if the economic reality dictates otherwise.
Our local school system is actually switching away from Solaris to Microsoft because nobody knows how to use *nix. May I also add that the school routinely sends tech guys to classes on MS, but have never sent them to a *nix class to get a better OS on the servers, btw: the Domain and DHCP servers are nearly always down.
I talked to a person who was wanting to intern as a web developer and the school she went to only tought IIS, a little javascript, a little Visual basic and no real server side language or database skills.
I told her in an industry where Apache is dominant, they set her up to fail by only teaching her IIS. I told her to go back to her school and demand some server side scripting language in a cross platform compatible language, demand database administrator/developer courses and demand they start teaching apache.
She did and they actually listened but could do nothing about it because they were so invested in Microsoft.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Reading this story about the lack of diversity in OSes where you are reminded me of this video player troubleshooting page to which I was redirected automatically, simply because I was using Opera (the page was not messed up in any way I could discern and the video loaded in Media Player Classic without problems, of course).
--
2. What operating system do I need to use the Video Player?
The Video Player is supported on a *variety* of operating systems.
Windows 98 Second Edition
Windows Millennium Edition
Windows 2000
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Professional
--
Variety? Au contraire!
[Some emphasis added.]
I work for the technology department in my school district, and there have been a few changes over the last couple years.
At the three elementary schools they are still 100% mac except in some of the offices. In the middle school (6-8th grade) they have transitioned from 100% Mac to 100% PC except the art department which is still Mac. In the High School (9-12th grade) the are and have been for at least 7-8 years 100% PC exceptin the art department. Most of the servers have transitioned from Sun to Microsoft, except for a few routers and some new XServe's running DHCP in the elementarys.
On a side note they are moving the frame relay between schools and to our ISP from a T1 to gigabit this summer!
Yeah the CS department at my school is phasing out the pretty Sun Workstations and replacing them with crappy Red Hat machines. These crappy Red Hat machines can't do NFS worth squat and because of that everything is 5x faster on the Suns.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
At first we had mostly macs, a few PCS here and there.
Then, in the name of "security", we were told to standardize on Windows 95 (this was 2001, BTW).
Macs are still in use in media applications (such as printing the school paper)
UNIX was used for the school's web server, etc.
Alright, so this worked until mid-2002, when they decided that the presence of UNIX was a security risk. On the other hand, they also came to their sense about 95... and had us put Windows 2000 on.
Now, it's january 2004. Somebody hacks into the webserver, which is running an original relase copy of 2000 and has never had a single patch installed. They deface the website.
This was done remotely, from some external home or business.
The response is swift and severe:
All the remaining macs are eliminated. And not sold like they usually do with old equipment - we're told we have to incinerate them.
A reinstall is done on every computer that has had patches installed. A new policy is introduced that specifically forbids installing Microsoft's security patches.
Last but not least, the school is placed under "OS Security Quarantine." What does this mean?
* Documents printed out from computers not running Windows 2000 are forbidden from school grounds.
* Students are not to use non-2000 machines at home or school to do research for homework or projects.
* All disks must be Office Depot branded, and must be 1.44Mb.
* Students with laptops are not to run any OS other than Windows 2000. If the laptop is not PC-compatible or is too old to support 2000, it is not allowed on school grounds
* All PDAs must be Windows CE devices. Non-CE devices will be confiscated and returned at the end of the school year should they be brought onto school grounds.
Of course, this is awfully hard to enforce, but STILL...
At USC we have a very good Mac representation. I'd say overall, Windows boxes perhaps approach 50%, but the remaining 50%+ are split between Macs and Sun's.
He who controls the past, commands the future... He who controls the future conquers the past.
I'm 16, so I am still in high school.
My old school used the regular package: windows 2000 workstations and servers, packed with MS Office. Users weren't allowed to install software, and the system administrator found it too much of a burden to install openoffice on every system.
In my new school, they use a terminal-based system hosted on Solaris. However, this is only used to provide the "security", because all applications are run from Citrix MetaFrame Windows 2000 servers. Using an xterm and vi to do your homework is _NOT_ALLOWED_. I think that schools who should provide knowledge, don't realise they are limiting knowledge by limiting the choice of software.
Their monoculture of windows will someday hit them in the back.
All system administrators I have met in those schools were open to linux, but they found it wasn't ready for desktop use. Knoppix live-cd's couldn't convince them.
I'm looking forward to university (KULeuven). Open standards, freedom of choice, wide community of opensource-users...
However, I think linux is coming up as a serious alternative. Openoffice is now more mature than it was 2 years ago, and the Gnome desktop is more user-friendly than the windows alternative. Teachers e.g. are now referring to dia slideshows as "presentations" instead of "powerpoints". Give it a year or 3. First the government (I live in europe) and then the schools!
I just graduated from UVic.
In the main computer labs, you could choose from over 200 Macs. These were generally used for surfing, email, and word processing.
In the Engineering building, we had Solaris boxes. These were really old and clunky, but they had AutoCAD and MATLAB installed.
In a few of the labs(including the final project labs), you could find Windows boxes. There weren't that many, and the priviledges were too low to be useful. (Have fun doing any development if you're not an administrator!)
Several other labs let you telnet into a unix server and run the epxensive programs. (I still telnet into the unix server to check my email with PINE.)
If you couldn't use all of them you wouldn't get your degree because you couldn't run some of the programs required for assignments.
So, in answer to your question, no, not every school is locked into MS.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Issue: Too many older systems and older Power Macs. Can we still use them for something?
Solution: Terminal services will allow all of these older machines to be used. I'm starting off with MS Terminal Services to maintain our common desktop. We currently are a Microsoft shop.
Issue: Licensing is costly, what can we do to save money?
Solution: Install StarOffice 7 or OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 alongside MS Office 2003 to begin exposing users to the new office suite. Simultaneously, deploy Firefox 0.92 on the terminal server and push it out to Windows desktops to expose people to the new browser and the beauty of tabbed browsing. After adequate testing, phase out the MS products and standardize on OO.org and Mozilla-based web browser.
Issue: MS Terminal Services costs a lot to license!
Solution: Migrate to the Linux K12 Terminal Services Project, (www.k12ltsp.org), and move the terminal server from Windows TS to K12LTSP running OO.org and a Mozilla-based web browser.
The acquisition costs for MS TS or K12LTSP will be justifiable because of the money saved by NOT purchasing new hardware and being able to put older Macs back in service while taking in older donations. The end result is a fully open source desktop. A MS TS can still be running to allow users to run apps that currently cannot run in a Linux environment.
Anyway, that's my plan, hope it helps you out!
Cheers
At my LARGE public university, we have a few mac labs... maybe 3-4 out of around 50. We do have an active mac user group... but it seems to me.. that macs are losing out. Especially as ppl dont understand how to use macs or they dont want to. Surprisingly scary!!! I work in our campus labs... and I see that ppl would rather not use a comp than use macs.
:(.
On top of that... MS sells us win XP for like 5$ whereas apple sells us panther for 50$ (Through the school). As a result... most ppl buy win XP pro and use that as it is much cheaper. These guys now get used to windows... and viola... they're not gonna buy macs. Apple got it right with its 1984 ad. Big Brother IS out there trying to control your mind.
I also believe that mac OS 9 put off a lot of ppl. A lot of my classmates hated mac os 9. So, they'd rather not try out mac OS 10.3 (SO AWESOOOME) because they do not trust the mac OS anymore.
There is hope, however. I feel macs are a more personal computer type of computer. You get pretty possessive abt them:). so.. putting them in labs.. and asking ppl to share them... seems so wrong:-D
When I was in school they only had Apples and Apple gave the districts a special deal. When the IBM came out it was the same price as the Apples, but then something happened: the "clones." Now that clones cost $600-$800 for a full fledged machine, and Apple still thinks it needs those margins. Well, oh, dear! That's the main reason Apple's market share is in the single digits.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
One of the winners of a recent CPSR essay contest was Viruses, Worms and Biodiversity in Computer Systems.
I work in the Computer Services department at a private school from which I graduated this June. As we speak, we are looking at ways to phase out our remaining Macs. When I started nearly four years ago, we were buying new Macs like crazy -- for multimedia and art in the upper school and for all purposes in the lower school. Now we're phasing them out. We took delivery of Dells to replace the Macs in our multimedia lab this spring, and we're getting a delivery of twelve new Dells with 17" flat panels tomorrow afternoon to replace the Macs in upper school art. In two year's time, the only Macs on campus will be ones in the lower school classrooms that we will have rigged up to run Citrix and connect to a Windows server.
Why are we doing this? There are several reasons.
1. Administration. Macs don't play well with PC networks, even with OS X on them. As we are implelmenting things like Active Directory, hard-drive-based backup of network storage, web caching and filtering, and the like, we're having to jump through hoops to get our Macs to work with these new systems. Instead of hiring three Mac specialists to maintain the machines, it's cheaper to move to an all-PC environment.
2. Administration again. We've implemented RIS of all PC machines that can PXE boot, which is most of the ones on campus. If a machine is acting funky, we just PXE boot and walk away, and two hours later, all of the OS components and applications are restored to their original state -- the hard drive has been wiped clean and redone. Macs just can't do this. Every time a Mac is acting funky, we need to spend several hours of our valuable IT time redoing it and reinstalling apps. We can't afford that.
3. Cost. Macs cost a lot. The machines that are getting delivered tomorrow are Dell Dimension 4600s with 2.8 GHz processors, 512 MB of dual-channel RAM, 80 GB hard drives, and 17" Dell UltraSharp flat panels. We got them for $800 a pop. You just can't compare a $900 eMac to that kind of value.
4. Upgrade cycle. This ties in with cost. We buy most of our PCs from Dell Refurb. We generally get them for about $400, upgrade them for another $100, and we have cheap, capbable machines. That means we can upgrade twice as often as if we buy $1000 Macs, and that translates to better experiences for students.
5. Compatibility. It's true -- there are more applications for PC and those that are cross-platform often run better on a PC. Even my die-hard Mac friends admit this. That means that if we buy PCs, we get an assurance that they will meet our needs. Also, our student-coded ColdFusion-based website barely runs on Macs -- so it's a no-brainer. PCs for all.
Who the fuck cares?
I recently finished high-school and there we had to use Windows. The idea of the school was quite nice: every student has his/her own laptop to do school work on. Sadly, it mostly attracted people who used the computer for gaming... The computers had Windows installed and we were not allowed to use anything else. But that didn't hinder us from removing it and installing something nicer. The problem was that Windows XP didn't run good enough. During a period the computer crashed once an hour, forcing a reboot. Slackware is so much nicer! :-)
Something that disturbs me more is that the local University is only using Windows for their clients. Their servers are mainly based on Unix and some Windows, but the clients are all using Windows. I'm hoping to start at that university in the beginning of next year, hopefully taking courses in programming. I wouldn't like having to use Windows to much... Visual Studio just isn't as good as Vim... :-)
When I was in all profs were pushing IBM 360/OS and PL/I, wile the students wanted to work on the sexy little PDP machines.
(Opps, showing my age.:-)
We have a lot of Windows machines in ee labs that use Windows software for things like programming boards as well as in labs that are free for general use such as in the main library. In the cs/software area on the other hand, there are almost entirely Solaris machines as well as a few Linux machines. This does not seem to be changing very much at all. I know that Microsoft tries as hard as they can to offer cs students free software, but at least the school has not caught on with it because well, lets face it, we are hippies and we like open source software.
...by people in charge of budget.
They use Excel, Access, Word, Powerpoint and Internet Explorer all day, curse "the hackers" responsible for their computer's failings and pay MS like they pay their utility bills, for another essential facility.
They regard Windows as a standard.
At MyCorp, the training rooms are full of Windows boxes. But the hardcore technical people use Mac laptops that give them applications "that just work", full UNIX, and compatibility with the beancounters that send them MS file formats. Lately, various directors and VP's have been getting Mac laptops, too.
It'll be interesting to see how far down the corporate hierarchy Macs migrate: the managers acquire some cachet by mimicking the choice of IT professionals, but if their secretaries and training rooms start to fill up with Macs the exclusivity will have worn off. OTOH, aspiring middle-level managers will want to keep up with the big cheeses...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
yes, I agree with the sentiment of this post.
On my campus (www.dtu.dk) we use a UNIX based computer system from SUN. A couple of gigantic computers in the basement and a load of slick, noise-free thin clients everywhere on campus. I think we're running Solaris 9. In addition to this there are also some PC's of which many dual boot in either Win2k or Linux.
Now the next Unv I worked for was about 40% Mac on campus in general. I determined this by MAC address. Since I only identified Apple OUIs it's possible that there were more and were using anoter brand of nic (Farallon, Adaptec, Asante, etc...). My department (IT) had numerous Macs in part because the director was a Mac fan. They had a lot of Macs when we parted ways too. Again there were a number of colleges with mostly or exclusively Macs. Education of course is one of them. The PC labs usually worked. They were maintained by the individual colleges though so the user experience varied from lab to lab. The SGIs were usually broken or taken off the network due to being horribly insecure. They only had a few Sparcs. Macs were liberally scattered across the campus too. All but one of my numerous machines were Macs. I saw many of the Macs disappearing though. It was far less than the other Unv though. I think this can be contributed to the decentralized management of the labs and tech support. Those techs and the people making the recommendations to the people that make the purchasing decisions are closer to the end users. I think they make more decisions not based on initial cost but on what the user wants/needs and what they want to maintain.
WTG NCSU! We've got Windows labs, yes, but they're hard to come by anywhere other than the chemistry building and maybe a bit in the math building. The main CSC department lab (the only one open 24/7) is split about 70/30 with Redhat and Sun boxes. No windows machines in sight. The EE/CPE department has a completely Sun lab, and a few Linux boxes scattered around. We do have one Windows lab, but its the smallest in the building...I think its mostly used for orientation/freshman classes, since I haven't had a lab there in the past 3 years. The humanities building has a few OSX labs; I'm rarely around there, but I've never seen a Windows lab. The best signs though: all over the walls in the main ECE building is "Check out the Penguin labs in room X"!
My kids went to a private school. The school mostly had Macs so old you could see Eve's teeth marks on the apple. A company donated their old PCs running W98, that were at least newer than the (abysmally slow) Apples, and "Voila!" - an all Windows school. (I think the guy who corrdinated the donation helped convert all the data, too.)
I live in Mexico and I am currently in one of Mexico's biggest universities.
The main problem I see is that sysadmins and even people studying comp. sci. don't really care for anyting other than Windows. Add to that the fact that the Government and most all government agencies use MS (windows, office, formats, etc.) for everything I don't see things changing soon.
Many people have tried changing things but it's hard competing against Microsoft's cash-happy marketing and PR units.
were the IT geniouses decided to replace 3 perfectly functional iMacs which were used by students in the student Union building to check their email real quick in between classes(there aren't even any chairs) with dual 2Ghz G5s with a gig of ram and apple 17" LCD.
Meanwhile, the few macs available in the general purpose labs are slow and still are using OS X 10.2
Brilliant I say.
When I went there, the undergrad computing labs had mostly PCs. The funny thing about that was that our email accounts were (and still are) run on *nix machines. The school's various clusters and supercomputers used *nix.
.cshrc file in fun ways anymore. Like changing someone's config file, when they would step away without logging out, to have a bunch of aliases pointing to "netscape pr0nsite". It was also hard for them to change their config file back if you aliased all the editors; the person would have to telnet/ssh in to edit the file. =)
In my department (aero & astro), we had one Mac hooked up to a scanner. We had several PCs, but the PCs were all hooked up to DEC Alpha servers running unix. When I started there in my junior year of college, the department had 3 PCs and a TON of xterminals connected to the DEC Alphas. By the time I left, after getting my masters, we had mostly PCs, one mac (the same one), and a few xterminals, oh and the servers.
The servers are still around because they are used part time for simulations and join other machines for parallel computations (clusters and supercomputers).
The secretaries and advisors all ran Macs.
Oh and the user accounts were all on the servers, which meant when you logged on one of the PCs, your userid and password were compared to what was on the server. I don't know the exact methods used to admin the whole system, but I would think that it was very adhoc.
It was too bad that they got a bunch of PCs. You couldn't modify someone's
I just graduated from University of Missouri - Columbia in December. We have about a 5-1 PC to Mac ratio in the general computer labs. However, we also have some mac-only and Linux-only (redhat, I believe) labs. I'm pretty impressed with how diverse everything is. Of course, no one really uses the Linux or Mac computers when they aren't required to for classes, and this is probably the reason that schools don't buy them.
Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?
Where I am, the situation is different: we have a site-wide contract with Microsoft. We must pay some amount, I think it's $5 per computer per year, for the OS. But, if we decide to break out of this contract, we must pay full retail price for the latest version of Windows, regardless of the version that is installed on the computer.
Naturally, every machine dual-boots Linux and the administration would love to get away from MS as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we can not possibly afford the lump sum necessary to buy all of those licenses.
I'd link to my University at this point, but the contract says that the terms of the contract must remain private, and I'd rather not risk inconveniencing our administration like that.
Does anyone else know of a deal with the devil similar to this one?
Where the heck is BSD???
MS is doing exactly what apple did in the 80s to entrench itself in the education market. They are giving very, very amazing discounts to the education and non-profit sector. I am talking about $10-$20 or less per license for windows and office. When they build up enough of a stronghold the discounts will subside however. I still don't understand why the cash strapped school system isn't embracing linux or freebsd completely though. You surely can't beat free in terms of licensing cost!!!
For a long time, outside of academia, Mac's were a rarity. Business' use PC's. MACs were used in multimedia and little else.
... if you don't teach them real world skills, you lose federal funding for student loans."
What has happened is that Technical colleges have been turning out students that prefered to use the easier mac to get work done -- once they tried entering into the workplace, they were essentially worthless unless re-trained how to use pc's.
By law, in order to get federal funding for student loans, a certain percentage of graduates must get a job in the career that they studied for, otherwise the college would become unavailable for federally backed student loans. With students graduating and being unable to find work, the feds and the business communities came out and said "If you don't teach these students PC's, we won't hire them
When money talks, people listen. Keep in mind, this is not a debate on which is better. I firmly believe that the Mac is a better machine, especially since OS X came out.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
At Alma College most of the computers (75%) are Macs running OSX. Most of the windows users are the administrative staff.
The professors would fight like hell if the labs went to windows. They love how easy it is for student to create multimedia and seamlessly create that content on the students' web sites.
The monoculture arguments seem to be specifically one more piece of leverage against Microsoft. What if it was linux? OSX? Would the same arguments still hold? Or are we just looking for a new stick to beat MS with?
To "City Microsoft Technology College"
The next pasture is always greener
We have staroffice and we have some games,
but as a technology coordinator for an elementary
school the lack of educational programs for linux has been a serious impediment to adoption. The secret to getting linux adopted in schools is educational courseware with SITE licenses and technical support.
The reason why macs are dying in education is because is because a brand new Dell is $800 while a brand new mac is $1200. Mac is a niche product like the people who own bose stereos. Whether that Dell/Gateway/Ibm computer has win XP or (favorite) flavor of Linux is a separate issue.
While you're at it, why not also suggest that they have their typing classes teach Dvorak? And stop using English, instead have half of the classes taught in Mandarin Chinese! Their maps are North-centric too, why not a little diversity there, as well? The metric system is fine too, but there are some important places that customarily use Imperial units, so there's another place to diversify! Good Luck!
I'm not surprised that as the Macs go, they are not replacing them, because as a "technology school" they will of course want to teach what is being used in business (helps get the grads jobs...). Regardless if it is right or wrong, Microsoft is the primary technology is business these days. It would make more sense to replace the Mac machines with MS, or barring that, some widely used flavor of Linux such as Red Hat, or SuSE. Or even some *BSD of one kind or another. The only places I see Macs these days is in creative departments, where they certainly excel.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My old junior high/middle school, when I went there a few years ago, was exclusively mac-based, except for like 5 computers in the library. (which nobody used, really). Judging from their website, they've continued that trend, even investing in the flat-panel imacs. Clicky here: http://www.winnetka.k12.il.us/cw/washburne_technol ogy.htm.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
this is a little testimony that my high-school (or rather ex-high-school) also replaced it's computer park, but instead of buying entirely new machines all running windows which they didn't have the money for, they offered a total switch to linux (http://network.gouldacademy.org), and for that they received machines from IBM, and were able to recycle their old ones using the Linux Terminal Server Project (http://www.ltsp.org). So, the school's infrastructure is totally running linux, from the admission's office to the student terminals. Of course, the fact that the technology department head is an MIT graduate might help explain why the unix influence is so strong there. I heard students bitching about how Linux sucked, but when they heard the stories of how it was to manage a park with mixed machines of windows 3.11, win95, 98 and 2000, they stopped bitching and admired how stable it was. In the dorms, every student is allowed to bring whichever machine he feels like. The problem is, for people who don't own computers (they still exist) or have never used one (they also still exist) they only see Linux. Now this may be a good thing, or a bad thing. Teach people how to use one thing, they'll have trouble learning something else. I just think that having a park full of windows machines is just a gateway to killing computers. Even in a corporate environment using only win2k we get so much crap that goes through firewalls and anti-viruses... But that's just me.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
Caution: burning karma ahead
They have windows because you're in a technology school! If you had Macs, you wouldn't learn as much because they would work! You wouldn't have to spend time learning how to troubleshoot Windows, which is what you're there for anyway, right? If all the computers worked, how would they teach you how to fix it? I'm guessing they don't have a 'If-it-ain't-broke...' class.
Now before you reply, it's called 'humor' and 'sarcasm'. Not to be confused with zealotry.
Speaking of Macs, I managed to crash mine the other day. If you count the time I tried and succeeded to get a blue(black on Mac)screen on the OS X Public Beta, that makes twice.
I don't know what they have now, but 10 years ago, the University of Michigan was a mix of DOS/Windows3.1 machines and Macs running MacOS 7.5 or 8.1, along with a zillion flavors of Sun, HP, and DEC Unix boxes for the engineering students.
There was also a smattering of Apollo workstations, IBM AIX boxes, and OS/2 2.0 boxes.
There was even a Mac 512K machine in one of the grad student lounges so people could quickly check their email or monitor their print jobs. Next to the Apollos, I think it got the grandfather award.
It makes sense for "average liberal arts students" to use Windoze boxes for 95% of their work, since that's what they will likely encounter in the world. However, they should have the OPTION of using something else if it can get the job done, and should be required to use Macs and Linux to do key tasks like word processing, printing, web browsing, and email at least once. CS, Science, and Engineering students need heavy Unix/Linux exposure, and graphic-artists of any major need heavy Mac and Linux exposure.
Programmers, of course, should write a "hello world" or similar toy program on just about every environment around, including 8-bit machines or at least simulators of them as well as supercomputers of various flavors and architectures. They should also write "hello world" in every major language, including *gasp* COBOL.
Our school district is all Macs. Mostly iMacs running OS9 and quite a few old PowerPCs.
University Of Washington -
main lab/Mary Gates Hall
has 80% dells xp wiht 20inch flat panels (which are pretty damn nice) and 20% OSX apple
the other labs are mostly Win2k/XP, I'm not sure about what the CS department has, they used to have a win2k lab back in the the day, at least main student server for mail/etc is unix based, and you are free to complie code on.
Most of the stuff was microsoft though, they did have neoto intergration, where in CS classes you turned in code on a web server, and it complied it for you and sent a copy to your professors directory.
Western Washington University
100% of the labs were win2k when i was there 3 years ago.
there was a art department lab with OSX/Apple
there was one room of like 40 sun machines with Solaris on it, they used for programing Scheme for CS.
and there was a few FreeBSD machines, which some (shell remain un-named teacher) forced us to use for a Unix Programing class, apperently linux wasn't unix enough for him.
At the community college I used to work for the CIS department had removable hard-drives that were checked out to students. The ubiquitous installation of Microsoft products is just a byproduct of their legally proven monopolistic tendencies.
/. loves to portray. The backend has moved to the free *nix in EDU anyways, the battle is on the desktop. Use knoppix if you need a local linux console, push VNC sessions from remote workstations if you can deal with it... and ssh my friend. Linux is everywhere, people just don't see it yet.
Schools have very little to gain by switching to Linux. Those familiar with the way a computer operates and who are open to experimentation can utilize linux in a variety of different ways.
During the Operating Systems courses students were encouraged to demonstrate different operating systems, in fact hard drives configured to run anything from BSD to Linux were available to slot into the removable bays.
The thing that always gets me, is if you really want to spread the word, then you've got to practice what you preach. A Knoppix CD in your pocket isn't sufficient? The majority of users have been force fed MS-Windows all their lives, and those who haven't most likely are familiar with Mac OS.
Moving to a partially linux environment is not even considered in most administrative positions for serveral reasons. The biggest of all is the educational discounts and giveaways that Microsoft has perpetuated. The TCO argument nearly goes out the window when it costs 15 dollars to move to the newest iteration of the operating system.
Of course we as administrators and users know that Linux has other benefits, but to the decision makers in education they'd rather pay the $15*1000 systems than take one footstep into a leap of faith.
So I say: So? Deal with it. The world is using M$ products, advocate linux, but don't use the false innocence that
I'd've thought that switching to Linux or OS X would be the perfect solution for public terminals with "DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY PROGRAMS ONTO THESE COMPUTERS" notices on them. There's no point downloading things that wouldn't run. It might cost less, too.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
When I went to elementary school all computers were Apples and the high school was just starting to get 1 or 2 PC's. I think this is more of a who gives the school free/cheap hardware/software than anything else. Apple used to give huge educational discounts but I think they stopped doing that.
Don't act holier-than-thou, towards the administrators or the technicians (regardless of whether they'd deserve such an attitude or not).
It's always amusing to read things like that on slashdot...nobody, no matter how ignorant or the topic at hand deserves a holier-than-thou attitude. In all situations it will make the situation more difficult; they won't get your message and they will dislike you.
Here you're advising not to have an attitude because the people have a power over you, but if they don't it's okay to treat them like trash.
If only there were some why to harness energy from arrogant pricks, slashdot could put OPEC out of business.
I'm not suprised by this at all, based on the mentality I've witnessed when trying to show people how to do things in various applications.
People don't want to learn the underlying concepts, they just want to get the immediate need satisfied. While that may solve the problem quicker, the failure to learn the concepts and expand one's toolset leads to more and more problems later on that the person cannot solve on his or her own. So, they come back to me.
For example, the concepts of tabs, page breaks, em-dashes and the like are the same in any word processor. Instead of grasping the concepts and being able to lookup the solution in help (just once), people will do stupid things like insert a header at the top of the second page of a document in line with the body of the text. Or use blank lines to force paragraphs together or apart. Then they'll come to me when it blows up in their face.
Thus, schools should teach the underlying concepts of using computers (spreadsheets, word processors, programming, whatever) without latching onto one particular method and teaching the specific way of doing it in a particular app. Students must be tought the *skills* of using computers, and the *knowledge* will flow naturally, and more robustly as things change from time to time and app to app.
While homogeniality is diappointing, the reality though (in my opinion) is that it is the parents' responsibility to educate their children. The school system is just a tool for the parents to use, and is hardly a comprehensive solution. It will always be up to the parents to plug any gaps and teach things outside the realm of school. This is just one more gap for parents to fill.
When I went to school it was pretty clear breakup:
Faculty of Education - Apple & VAX/VMS
Faculty of Math/Comp Sci - Unix (SunOS) & VAX/VMS
Faculty of Management - Microsoft
Other Faculties - various or timeshare.
Now the CPSC labs I worked in were all dumb terminals, every last one. Multi-screen terminals (the secret of actually using them came 2nd year...) were on every desk. The only exception were the 4th year students, who were allowed to use X-terminals (HP, I think.)
In Education, where I worked as a lab monitor, the machines were all IIe's and g's typically running Claris Works and LOGO. (Quite an experience, nothing like trying to expain programming to a technophobe when every sentence is virtually guaranteed to include the phrase, "Well you got to tell the turtle...") The VAX was pretty much off-limits for students, and I think it was pretty much maintained by the computer science people, I know it was there, but was never allowed access.
I recently went back for a visit, and things are not so good anymore. The CPSC guys use Linux now, but everywhere else M$ reigns supreme. The Mac zealots still swing by the neck on the lawn of the Education Tower...
What bothers me, is that the University has raised tuition every year since a year or two after I left. Surely at least one of those increases could have been avoided if the University had chosen to eschew M$ costs. No matter how good the price break, it is hard to beat free.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
That's cool and all, but maybe you could just use an OS that doesn't require constant ghosting? Sounds like you've automated the task, so that means it must happen fairly often.
If that's the case, are you really getting bang for your buck? I dunno, but in our linux shop we don't reghost the machines, or reinstal the OS. They just don't break. I've never had to ghost/reinstall the few OS X boxes either.
A car that breaks often and is easy to replace or a car that doesn't break. I know which one saves me more money in the long run. Rememeber that as an IS guy, your time is money. If every computer in your shop could, at any moment, have to be reghosted, then you're probably wasting a lot of money as opposed to setting the machine up once and letting it run for longer periods without human intervention.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Seriously. They're the creation of a government which believes that the only purpose of an education is to fit people for the job market that existed at the point they entered school. Find a school that still uses blackboards. You may still have a career when you're 25.
The Linux community needs to donate about 50 high end machines to the The Lakeside School . I have a feeling they are short on Linux boxes.
Why do you need to work on a MAC anyways? Not like you can learn anything from them... (just a joke) ...MACs definitely look good...
what do you expect? the school system is there to prepare you for life, and the reality of life is that diversity and choice exist as a token part of our beliefs. It gives use a warm fuzzy feeling to know that choice and diversity exist while the vast majority choose the same drinks, eat the same food, dress the same way, listen to the same (boring) music and use the same operating system. Um, you must also learn to deride and ignore anyone who actually chooses to move away from the 'norm' and tread a different path.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
You've been in City College for 6 years now.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
Please folks, lets skip the /. Anti-M$ rhetoric and be objective. The semi-rural elementary and middle school I attended were entirely Mac systems with nary a Windows box to be encountered, and I'm not sure my school systems student population ever recovered. Despite whatever technical superiority mac might have over Windows, 99% of the average suburbia public school population won't encounter more than one or two macs outside of the school enviroment. Why not try and give the non-college bound students a nice foundation in what they will encounter in the workforce? Once they leave HS, their education is finished. Instead of some largely useless mac skills, if they have been exposed to Windows for 13 years, K-12, hopefully they will have picked up at least the basic skills needed to be functional in the workforce. Once you get to college, your free to choose mac, and hopefully if your college bound you'll be able to make the jump from Windows to Mac relativly quickly. I might sound a bit bitter, but it really sucked having HS classmates who couldn't perfom simple tasks in Windows and having to do it for them.
Hell,
SFSU's Comp Sci dept. was the only one in the school that did not have a computer lab. None! Even the art department had one! M$ has already killed computer science. Most grads don't have a clue who Allen Turing or Kurt Godel are and why they are important.
Try going for Math if your smart. At least you wont have to deal with stupid professors complaing about how they got a virus and your homework is lost. Or monking around with power point slides that dont work or cant even trun on the stupid projection screen..
(Don't blame me for my grammer or spelling. I went to public schools).
I can't speak for your situation, but at my university the school has gone all PC/MS for financial reasons. Even an IT purchasing department with the best of intentions can't turn down the free software and equipment deals they get from MS and the like. Those companies want students hooked on their products before they enter the real world, so they're willing to give away all kinds of stuff. Opensource might be free, but somebody's still got to pay for the hardware - better a gigantic corporation than the university, eh?
my uni's got a significant number more wintel boxes, but in every lab there are [decently modern] macs that are used in about the same percentage as the pc's. as you move into the graphics/comm/journalism departments, the ratio of macs increases, as does the ratio of people using them to empty machines. i have, at times, observed people waiting to use a pc when there were empty macs. when i told them they could edit their word doc or browse the web just as well on a mac, they seemed surprised and walked up to a mac. just about the only thing our lab macs don't offer that the pc's do (aside from easy exploitability) is the hardcore engineering viz software (Pro E, Matlab, etc.)... and Mathematica, Maple, and others are just an X session away...
I'm a dumbass.
forgot the URL
The Lakeside School.
Check it out.
Better yet... email 'em and offer to donate a free linux based PC!
...has multiple labs with tons of Solaris stations, imac classrooms, and many Linux robots :)
I have 2 computers in my office, one dual boot XP/RH9, and one debian embedded platform.
But you don't really get much more geeky than CMU...
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
The official reasons: *nix is too hard for students to use and the world uses Microsoft exclusively, so why should they be different? This coming from a school with a slogan of "Why not change the world?" At least the CS dept sees the light and runs BSD and Solaris primarily, with a small sampling of Windows.
All of the computers in the magnet program at my school run either Windows 2000 or Windows XP and almost all are Dells(old gx100s are the oldests and the newest are optiplex sx260s in the computer science labs). In the rest of the school which is not as technology focused, made a switch over to a major of Windows 2000 installations from 98 and NT4. There are a few Macs left which are only in operation because of stuborn teachers of course specific applications which have teachers which have yet to find a Windows alternative. There is a SUSE box which I use for "security evaluation"...I think that's what we're calling it. As for the servers, again, all Windows of course (half server 2000 and half server 2003).
Let's face it, Windows is the most dominant OS out there. Do we want to teach our kids something they can use at home, at work, at the library down the street or do we want them to get used to an OS that's only helpful if all they want to do is listen to their iPODs? I say ban Macs from schools and teach the kids something they can use!
What do Macs do for Science and Engineering that would justify spending the money on them? They're great for desktop users but they're simply not designed to be "special" for science and engineering. Right now top 40 CS school is split between x86's running redhat and sun machine's. Starting next fall they are probably going to be phasing out the sun's for either more redhat machines OR FreeBSD (yep...really looks like *BSD is dying for all you haters).
And perhaps you should rethink your entire logic about those educational discounts, dell offers them too, that completely negates your point. I worked for a university tech support program, and we could get a half dozen dells for the price of a single mac -- even with the discount.
Finally, on top of working for my university tech support (a school of near 40,000 students) who did have a few macs solely for the sake of troubleshooting for students with macs, I've worked for one of the top 3 financial software makers in the world (give you a hint, either SAP, Oracle or Peoplesoft), and one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the country in their IT dept. I've not once, note even ONCE, seen a mac. So get off your high horse about real companies use macs. It's entirely preference.
and students at public schools aren't going to become comp sci majors. To readers of /., the idea of 'learning how to use windows' might seem as silly as learning how to use a fridge, but for most people, the slope of the learning curve is a lot more daunting. Public schools seek to prepare its students for life. Given Microsoft's market penetration, teaching students how to use windows is as necessary as teaching them how to use the decimal system.
Schools are compelled go to the MS/x86 route because:
a) Microsoft practially gives away OS/Office licenses to schools. Apple may discount their but it isn't much of a comparison.
b) PC hardware is cheap, and with Windows 98/200 you can still run on relatively old/inexpensive hardware. Later Macs and OSX are increasing in prices and system requirements.
c) Schools find it difficult to find suitible support staff to maintain tens to hundreds of non-windows boxes (in the classroom and in administration). Even less at the salaries they offer to those non-classified positions.
d) a lot of vendors know where the big bux are at and that is selling to the majority of Windows systems instead a minority of other OSs. Even though there are proportionally more Mac apps for education they are also usually slightly higer in price than the PC versions (less sales, more cost).
e) schools are nowadays reactive (looking for a quick fix) and less proactive (looking to the long-term solution) in just about everything. Even though better systems/OSs may be out there the short term cost (mostly in training/support) is considered too much.
f) even with all the above that spurns their purchase I know many aren't at all happy about thew situation either. For many administrators it's just the only possible route (in their mind). There's not much they see that can be done about the security and or viruses, etc., so then they react to defective systems/security they probably will lock down the kids access instead of the solving the computer problem with the machines.
My suggestion, make Linux/OS X easier to learn, accessible, affordable and and have the necessary software available for schools to transition and then the administrators will be able to look at the merits of open source and security benefits.
I have been an Mac fan for over a decade and with the new stock of Apple products I think Apple's new digital lifestyle (ala DRM) direction is losing ground in Education. Linux has more educational potential (due to it's openness and accessibility) in my opinion now.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Welcome...... to the real... world.
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
Almost without exception, IT 'professionals' I encounter who know only one operating system, like windows or macos, are noticeably poorer at basic technical comprehension and troubleshooting. Ask them to figure out a technical problem they haven't seen before, and they are more confused than people who, early in their technical education, learned multiple operating systems. Anyone else notice this?
Frankly, I've seen it so often that it becomes apparent that any educational institution that proports to teach information technology and tries to squelch all but one operating system (windows, mac, *nix, whatever), doesn't encourage its students to learn to adapt to new environments and think for themselves. And the 'real world' is all about adapting to new settings as well as new technologies.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
the reason for a mono-culture when it comes to on-campus computing is that it's much more easier (and therefore cheaper) to support and maintain. dells preloaded with win2k is probably gonna be hard to beat, esp. considering that the students are gonna be working on computers similar to ~95% of the rest of the world.
even the big schools aren't immune to such mono-culturism. the mit computing environment has always been unix based (well, since multics =). for a long time i believe they used dec's, then sun's running solaris, and now linux on commoditized hardware (with few exceptions, i believe there is a small mac lab and a small windows lab). the fact of the matter is, the singular environment makes the life of I/S so much easier - and the students work in the environment that they'll most likely see after they graduate (as they are engineers we're talking *nix - so that they can run magic, matlab, hspice, all that good stuff).
at sloan (the b-school) i believe just about everyone uses windows-based laptops and that's what the I/S dept. supports there.
it's just a matter of balancing functionality and price.
of course, i would hope that students aren't barred from using whatever environment they wish at home - tho this probably isn't the case. at mit, alot of effort was made to make sure course-specific software was made available on a range of platforms. but that's a different matter altogether.
----
i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
Well, at MIT we have a lot of Sun Blade 150 boxes, a lot of Dells running Linux. We also have a few custers of windows PCs running Windows 2000 or XP. We used to have SGIs, but they got replaced with IBM workstations running Linux.
We've actually been working pretty hard to avoid developing a software monoculture in the CS department at Maryland. We particularly want to avoid forcing students to use a particular OS, and by spreading around which OS we use in courses, we make it hard to force certain OS's on students.
There are a bunch of campus operated computer labs, running Windows, Solaris, Linux or Mac OS (the campus web page says 9.2, but that has got to be out of date, I hope). The department runs a Linux lab for undergraduate education, and we just purchased 32 iBooks for in-class computer labs for the intro programming courses.
For research and desktop use, we have a pretty broad mix (Solaris, Windows, Linux, OSX).
Of course, the fact the we have so many different operating systems running makes maintance a little more complicated, and that we have to use cross-platform solutions for things like meeting scheduling, IDEs, etc. A little harder, but the consensus is that it is worthwhile.
I work at a state university where the largest campus lab (over 120 seats) are 20" iMacs. The lab is on a 2 year upgrade schedule, and the other mac labs on campus (another 140 or so seats total) are on a 3 year upgrade schedule. We have G5's, new iMac's or G4 towers (with cinema displays) in all the public labs. OS X is standard (Panther after this summer).
The PC's (I'm talking labs, not faculty or department setups) on campus probably double the Mac's as there is not one mac in the Business school (maybe 200 PC's), and PC's usually are next to major mac labs.
We have a few people very high up on the IT pecking order who push hard for Apple, and we keep the technology cutting edge to stay relevant. Also high-tech media labs that do video, music and graphics really need a top of the line mac setup (industry standard), which gives mac os a foothold on campus.
"the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000"
Lemme know what your ARIN range is. I'm running low on remailer zombies.
There are so many possible factors involved. These are the three most important, IMHO:
1) up-front cost. Donations are always going to be of the computer used by the donor (and with the market size of PC vs Mac we know how that will go). Otherwise, the school will look at which system will cost them less upfront. Schools don't need top-of-the-line systems, so compare an average Mac with an average PC. Keep the hardware approximately equivalent. Which costs less?
2) ongoing maintenance. How do you get a Mac serviced? How long does it take? How much does it cost? How do you get a PC serviced? How long does it take? How much does it cost? How much of the service can be done in-house or locally?
3) applicability. If you are training in CAD (drafting), legal admin, document preparation, computer programming, or accounting, the largest volume of software and that used in many businesses is on the PC. If you are training in CGI, marketing, and other graphic fields, it may be more Mac-friendly. What are the computers in the school used for? What file formats need to be transfered to and from them?
Based on these and other issues, your school may have made what it considered the best possible choice. What alternative(s) do you have? Find out who is actually in charge of requesting new computers. If they are opposed to Macs, you have your answer and may as well give up until they are replaced. If not, find out their concerns and see if you can find workable solutions. For example, if you can demonstrate that software exists for the Mac that does the task better and (very important) is compatible with the existing PCs, you may see Macs start showing up again. You could seek out other Mac users who are alumni and encourage donations of older machines. Schools don't generally turn their noses up at donations.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
That doesn't reflect the PC vs Mac population out in the "Real World"? It isn't all that suprising and there was an article on slashdot not to long ago about a superintendent in Cali that did the same thing. He said something like "why teach the kids on tech that is not whats widely used when they get out of school?" Aside from specialty areas where Macs do have a footing, why push them on the masses? And maybe if they weren't so expensive to upgrade the schools would be more willing to keep them in use. Mac upgrade = buy new machine.
There are a few reasons for this that I can see:
1) The teachers know how to teach the apps on a Windows pc - if I move an icon on the start menu one down I get complaints.
2) We own a lot of windows only software. A lot.
3) I know how to admin Windows networks.
4) Cost - windows boxes are cheap to buy.
5) Licensing issues, slightly odd one this, but it explains why we don't use linux - whatever pc's we own we MUST have a windows license regardless of if it runs windows. For this we get all windows software for a big discount.
Despite all that - I would love to have a suite of apples, and possibly will invest in some at a later date if I can convince the management.
Like it or not, MS has a monopoly on schools in this country (the UK).
A few people in other threads have brought up the "but we all use X in industry and you aren't serving people properly not teaching them X" - this is a conversation I've had with my teaching colleagues in the past, and they quite rightly brought up the issue of teaching vs. training.
I think that if you are reasonably capable of using a windows machine, you could be reasonably expected to be able pick up anything in fairly common use. (I'm talking about using, not admining!)
Whooh, I've rambled a bit there, but I hope you get my drift.
-- You ain't seen me, right?
It's called tech tools. All of the comps in the school are now running windows 2000 or windows xp.
I write this trying not to sound pretentious, but read it as you will. The Creative Writing department at my University has four separate computer labs, all with one-year-old (or less) computers. One lab has your standard Windows XP Professional machines. Another lab has about ten G5s, three of which have dual 20-inch Cinema displays and one which has dual 23-inch Cinema displays. No one in the department bothers to use this lab, but occasionally graduate students from computer science work there. The third lab has 25 Dell Precision 560s running Debian GNU/Linux (unstable). The final lab, and the only one that shows any wear (from its constant use) is the FreeBSD 5.2.1 lab. Each machine is powered by a dual Itanium 2. One of these machines is dedicated to running dictd and therefore runs headless, but the others run a heavily modified GNOME 2.6 desktop.
The four labs are kept separate to reduce inter-operating system fornication.
-Letter
Hi. I'm here today representing the real world. Here, 90+% of our PCs have Windows on them. If you are at a college, please learn how to use the computers you'll be using 90+% of the time once you get out here.
What's that? You like Macs better? Good for you! Buy one for your home use. With the same money, we'll buy two or three of ours. We here in the real world have strapped budgets and are a bit technophobic, so when given a choice of something that's widely available, relatively cheep, and everybody already knows the most about it, we'll stick with that one, thanks!
As poor as schools are always claiming to be, I would be pissed as hell if my school wasted money on Macs unless they were for video production.
Sure, I'd love schools to run more linux, but then they'd have to spend more time and resources supporting the dumb users because they cant find the damn start button.
Without getting too zeolty, I am simply appalled by the lack of choice students have in school programming classes in the Seattle area. I seem to have no choice but to start with VB of one form or another if I want to take a CS/programming slant to my edumacation. Where is Python? Anything that doesn't make me have to dual boot just to get a piece of paper that says I can program. I realize that I live close to Redmond, but this is ridiculous.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
Don't forget to pay SCO your $699, you tea-smoking cockbaggers!
I've been pissed for years about the moronic school IT bureaucrats blowing my tax money on Macs. Even if they get them free, they still have to spend money to admin them. You teach kids all this Mac stuff, then they get in the real world and it's 98% Windows and their Mac skills were a waste of time.
Sure, it'd be great to see the schools devote their old Mac admin money to Linux admin money, which I think will happen soon. But it's good to see the wasteful Mac shit go away. I know I'll piss off the Mac crowd here, Macs ARE good machines, but they are way overpriced and shouldn't be in an educational environment any more than they should teach how to make buggywhips in shop class.
As I mentioned in a previous reply, we are 75% Macs at Alma College. Yes, Macs cost more initially, so why do we use them? Return on investment (ROI). I maintain 400 Macs and rarely have any work to do and my customers are happy. My windows counterpart (whose customers are mostly administrative staff running windows apps) maintains 150 PCs, is swamped with work, and the customers are disgruntled.
That $500 difference between a PC and a Mac is quickly reduced when you take into account reduced productivity, OS crashes, spyware, viruses, and the other multiplitude of crap when dealing with windows.
Yes, I must confess. I was a windows fanatic before I started this job supporting the Macs. Some windows people may see me as "a wierdo", but I consider myself to have become "enlightened."
My customers have almost no problems and they're happy campers. There are some things money just can't buy when you try to skimp by buying a cheap PC.
On our department almost all of the computers have only our custom Linux-distribution installed. Do you think this is as bad as having only windows?
Where I went to school, we had a great variety, and it was one of my favorite things about the school. In the CS department, there were 3 windows XP labs, 2 solaris labs, and 1 linux lab (running redhat 8, I believe). All of these ran on brand new Dell 3GHz machines with flat-panel monitors. The CS department servers were running on Solaris, and every XP machine had a link to Exceed right there on the desktop when anyone logged in. Each student had their own network storage, accessible as a network drive on XP, the home folder on unix/linux, and the home folder via FTP access. It was great--turning in assignments was as simple as an FTP and an SSH, poof, done. In the library, there is a lab stocked with half windows XP, and half Mac OS X machines. There are also approximately 20 more labs scattered around campus, some open to all students, some restricted to students of certain departments. My point is, I was never forced into anything. Being a die-hard Mac user since I was 12 years old, it was really cool that I wasn't locked into Windows. For all you high schoolers out there: find a school that gives you a choice! The UC system is particularly good about this =)
I hope this doesn't come off as flame bait or trolling . . .
When I hear educational software, I draw a blank. We didn't have educational software when I went to school, we had a typing tutor with a long stick, and, basic and logo for the programming inclined students.
I think it would be a rather simple project to put together an educational package for linux if I had some idea of what was supposed to be included in the package. I'm just getting old, and without kids of my own,I am out of touch with what is being taught in school now.
What are some of the more popular educational software packages that people are running on windows and mac ?
We have 3 labs available to all students. Only one lab has about 1/3 of the machines running the mac os while the rest are windows. For CS students there are two additional labs one all mac (very cool latest hardware) the other running all redhat. All other locations like classrooms, library etc. run windows. One thing I noticed lately is the windows machines in the general labs now let you use mozilla for web browsing.
It's Dr. Nelson!!! Not FreeBSD but NetBSD, which he hosts the website for in his office. Actually there was a large WWU Linux group when I was there. Much of the faculty was bigoted toward some technology or OS in some way (some Anti-MS, some pro MS, some anti/pro this-and-that). Too bad for them, else they really could have done great things.
entropy
inertia
Appears your school is simply preparing you for life-after-school.
Life after school will put you in a position to get many things done, probably things that used to be done by 2, 3 maybe 4 other people, so you will be swamped.
Then your glorious employer will saddle you with a windows box, and likely Lookout! (outlook to some). your work day will then be a struggle to get your work done while you deal with your ability to use the computer hampered by the virus/worm of the day, email that hurts, and the ever-present crap virus scanner that monopolizes the CPU rendering your machine useless for 1-4 minute stretches throughout the day, usually at the time you really need it to be responsive. to put the prvoerbial "icing on the cake", you will be forced to use IE and the loading of alternate software like Mozilla will be banned.
The above reality will provide you with an opportunity to develop advanced skills in profanity.
This situation sounds familiar to me, too. When I was in high school, we had a iMac lab and a PC lab, with additional PCs in the library. By the time I graduated last June, they were removing the last of the iMacs, having replaced them all with PCs. College, on the other hand, is different. As far as individual computer labs go, we have an equal number of Macs and PCs. Also, in the hallways we have public access computers for use, generally more of them iMacs than PCs. Math labs use PCs, Science labs use Macs. All in all, at College (a small 4-year college within the SUNY system)the number of Macs to PCs is about equal. And then we have our CS labs... G4s, PCs and (of course) Sun workstations.
Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?
.NET. Thankfully in a few of my CSET classes I'm not restricted to windows for my programming, but in others (some for no good reason) I've needed to break out the windows partition. While I'll agree that VS isn't such a horrible piece of software, I think that promoting it's use so exclusively is probably damaging our career options.
Yeah, it's pretty much windows everywhere, at least on the desktop. At OIT (Oregon), everyone's using windows workstations and there is an unfortunate number of windows servers as well. The server part is especially bad since certain Microsoft SQL servers go down on a regular basis.
What I think is real bad though is our CSET department teaches almost exclusively in Visual Studio
Interestingly enough I think if awareness of alternatives increases we'll see a jump in the number of users of openoffice and Firefox and eventually Linux. Just today I got asked to create a PDF file from an excel spreadsheet. I just fired up Openoffice and exported it as PDF (after hassling with some options to get it looking right). When I gave it to them and told them I used openoffice they seemed genuinely interested in openoffice. So slowly but surely people are becoming aware of the alternatives.
I carry around a Knoppix CD, and convert every
PC I use into a Debian system. Oh, I'm nice, and
I leave it running Word via CrossoverOffice when I'm
done, but I always make sure they boot straight
into KDE before I leave.
Look at the chicks!
Y 11 prom2004.html :)
http://www.bwctc.northants.sch.uk/pages/slides/
If none of these bother you, ask yourself why it bothers you who supplies the PCs and software to your school? If you answer the question truthfully, you'll discover that you have a zelous hidden agenda.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Linux is on the way up and Mac is on the way back in.
I'm a consultant for many corporations and more and more execs these days are using OSX, they cite the ease of use, compatability and SECURITY as the main reasons for switching over to OSX. That and the fact that it's aesthectically pleasing and has a sexy factor a Dell could never have.
Switching an exec over to a new Platform/OS is one thing, switching a company or entire depts even is another.
But since OSX came out I've been seeing more and more engineering depts using OSX and would expect this trend to continue as the costs of downtime and consulting due to viruses, crashes and just plain old dogfood hardware adds up.
Once OSX and Linux are more common in the Corporate Sector, you'll start seeing the educational sector make that move. Remember, it's the Corps that provide a lot of the bank roll to the schools, and they do speak up when there's something they want/need out of those schools.
...my school still has the world's best computers running: the glorious Speccy and its hoard of clones, that they or, generally, quite happy with. And it is not about them not having an ability to upgrade, but, rather, not wanting to. IMHO, it should be first considered to make a change in the human minds and only later in anything surrounding, or else the change will not be accepted. If they want to learn, they will, otherwise they do not really necessitate to.
At my University (Oregon State University) it seems like the opposite is happening. There is a growing number of non-Windows machines around campus. We have Mac labs (dual G5 systems with sexy screens), Unix lab, a brand new Linux lab, and several Windows labs. While Windows is definatly the majority as far as computers students have access to, there are still a lot of options, usually within the same lab.
Space for rent, inquire within
I'm personally disgusted by the lack of diversity of operating systems here at the School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. All the new workstations are Dells with Windows XP stickers on them running NetBSD. The old machines are either other x86 boxes running NetBSD, or rapidly ageing iMacs. Undergraduates are forced to use NetBSD; graduates are limited to using Windows via terminal services, and can only get a windows box on their desk if they beg for it.
The servers used to be a diverse collection of Alphas and Sparcs running Digital's and Sun's unices, but now they're being replaces with - you guessed it - more Dells running NetBSD. A monoculture like this can only mean trouble.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I guess my school was lucky. While we have many more pc's then macs, last year we got 25 G5's for the art lab. 4 which were dual processor. All with flat screen monitors...*whipes drool from face*. It was fun learning maya on those babies.
I go to the University of Canterbury. According to the IT department website they run 6 seperate computer labs of with 366 PCs and 62 Macs. This does not include the Computer Science dept which run their own labs with 130 'Intel Pentium-4 workstations' running Red Hat. They also have another 35 PCs (WinXP) and 5 Macs. The Maths dept also have some of their own computers which run Linux, Unix and Windows. I'm sure how hard the University by recent virii but as I have my own computer which I tend to keep up to date with patches, I've never had any problems connected to the network. Only annoying thing is that they charge me 7.5c per MB for international traffic.
Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily - Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
Granted it's been a few years now, but when I was in high school it was mostly PCs with Windows. There were some old Macs, but they were slow and generally hated by all. There was one media class with a few high-end Macs and a dozen SGI O2s. The network was managed by Novell and Solaris. And there may have been a Linux machine or two around ;)
It's the schools job to give students skills they can use in the real world ... Microsoft is in 97% of the businesses and homes, Apple 2% and all the other hangerson are in that last 1%.
.. "Whoopee!" say the interviewers, "Come back later when you have skills we can use."
Otherwise kids go out into the world and go to job interviews saying "I can use MacOS!"
People tell themselves "Microsoft is what everyone uses" or "Microsoft has so much money how can they make bad products" or whatever, and they believe it just like all those people believed before drinking that kool-aid...
If you went to a smart school, you would see the types of computers various people need for their work. Depending on where you were in my university, you'd see Sun workstations, Macs, SGI workstations, PCs, etc., where engineers mostly got Suns and Macs, business majors mostly got PCs, liberal arts got PCs and Macs, and science majors just got a bit of everything. All the students ran either Windows or Linux, and pretty much everyone was happy.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
back in the days when everyone ate apples. Now that it's Twinkies, however, it's bad.
Strange.
--
Think... or thwim
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Back in the day I cheered the PC and its big distributers Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq. The were bring computers to the masses and on the cheap compared to Apple. I also cheered the PC because it was the comparatively open platform that people could really put their hands on and learn something. Now Dell/MicyShaft have closed the PC as much as the MAC for most people. Few even consider opening the thing themselves and Windows has been made so arbitrailly complex and deliberatly obfusticated you can't really even play with the software anymore. Naturally you can't get anything buy Winders from the major vendors at least not on a cheap box, because they are in bed with M$, worse yet if you do install any other OS you totally forefit any right to tech support, sure its a non-issue for us slashdoters but its scary for many people.
10 years ago I cheered that the old gaurd Apple was being crushed by that little upstart Microsoft with their supper flexible dos platform. I would have been happy to see them beaten compleetly to death by M$ now not so much. Microsoft has such a dominance with a product they took in a horrid direction which I now feel only contempt for. They have more abusive business practices then Apple or even IBM ever did. Their monoculture has devistated the industry in countless ways. Its really sad to see any of the other players hurt now.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I go to Univ of IL at Chicago. We have 7 Windows labs. In each lab there would be an average of 30 Computers with about 5 of them Macs. There are two Linux labs. One is about 30 computers. The other has 30 or so Red Hats, and another 60 Sun computers. The only people that can use the Linux labs are the CS majors. Everybody else has to use the Windows labs. They use XP, and their configuration sucks. I remember when they had 98 and let you do pretty much what you wanted, but now everything is locked. Ironically some of the CS profs teach us how to get past the protection. Last semester we were taught how to get around their protection to open a dos prompt(I know, pretty basic).
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?"
Well yes... unless you belong to one of those school districts where they've bundled an iBook with each student (and while in the minority, there are still a considerable number of them). In those places, students probably come away with a much better Microsoft experience, because they're not running Office under Windows.
But realistically, given the distribution of people who know ANYTHING about computing or technology in the ranks of the decision makers, it's to be expected that they will purchase the absolute-rock-bottom lowest cost crap possible, and force the staff to suffer with it until it crumbles into dust.
Which begs the question, why hasn't Linux made a bigger (or any) impact in the public schools? They could extend the life of mouldering old boxes and do so for virtually no cost! I think there's a case to be made for public-spirited geeks to put together a polished presentation to a school board (after winning the hearts and minds of the local school PC admins so they can provide support to the budgetary folks in the decision-making process) or school district showing how easily this can be done and how much they will save.
It will be a tough sell, because for a lot of these "civil servants" the easiest way to increase their own standing (and salaries) is to crank up the budgets. This is the role of the talented salespeople at IBM, Dell, HPQ and Apple. They have a synergistic relationship with the school district management -- a you-scratch-my-back-I'll line-your-pockets kind of a deal.
That's definitely not the case everywhere. ...
At Ohio State, in the general public computing labs, there's maybe a 4:1 ratio of Windows to Mac.
But
CS runs on Network Computers and Solaris servers
-Computation servers on z/OS
Mechanical Engineering works on IRIX/Windows
EE runs on HPUX/Windows
Math dept runs on MacOS/AIX
Physics, MacOS/some flavor of UNIX.
Talk about diversity!
(unfortunately, the network computers will soon be phased out for PCs running Windows and X-Win32. Goodbye big iron!)
Most schools around here are locked into Apple. The vast majority of computers are PowerMac 5260's, iMac (fruit coloured) and PowerMac G4's, with PowerMac G3's acting as servers for clusters of 30 or 40 iMacs. All except the G4's run "Classic" Mac OS, and some of the G4's run Classic as well.
My Systems
When I started there the machines were half BBC Micros and half DOS/Win3.11 machines. By the time I left, the BBCs were on their way out and the PCs were taking over.
:)
Why is this worse? Well, Macs and PCs are much the same in a lot of respects; the UI is very similar, the apps are similar, especially if you have MS Office on the Macs.
On the other hand the BBC Micros were great in so many respects for kids. There was a simple programming language on the command line (BBC BASIC). For those who wanted to get more into programming, the machine code was simple enough for a 12 year old to understand. And the best thing of all: the 'user port'. A socket in the back of the machine that could be used both for control and sensors. This was great for electronics projects.
Now, I know you can do all these things with a PC. But they're not immediately available, they require a lot more setup, and I'm guessing that it would take a lot to make PC electronics as robust as the user port.
Anyway, enough of the nostalgia. Here's the advice. What I learnt about CTCs was that they tend to follow the lead of business. This is a two-edged sword for you. On the one hand, you could be stumped by the automatic 'Microsoft is the industry standard' approach[1]. On the other, one of the favourite words in CTC circles is 'innovation'. If you can pitch it like a business plan, and be prepared to do some of the hard work yourself, you might just get somewhere.
Good Luck Commander (as I undoubtedly would have said when I was at school).
[1] I remember being invited to a lunch with some vaguely important people, and embarassing my teachers by wondering aloud why we didn't choose the obviously superior Arcimedes over IBM compatibles
"What's that? You like Macs better? Good for you! Buy one for your home use. With the same money, we'll buy two or three of ours."
So because you like Windows, and you cliam that Windows systems are 3 times cheaper than Macs, then anyone who likes Macs should have to conform to using a Windows system. You are quantitatively wrong about the cost of Macs and qualitativley wrong about forcing everyone to use the same tools. Schools should offer the tools neccesary for people to learn effectivly. Not make bull headed pronouncements based on some status quo.
"Sure, I'd love schools to run more linux, but then they'd have to spend more time and resources supporting the dumb users because they cant find the damn start button."
I doubt it. We have a school locally where I live that has gone completely Linux using LTSP, saved a bundle and have provided more computers than they could have any other way. All this while making things "single click" easy for the novice user.
The argument about Windows being easy for the computer novice is quite simply a lie. I don't know what usability studies are claiming other wise but here in the Real World people barely know how to launch applications in Windows, let alone "use" Windows. Windows is a miserable usability wreck for the novice and a contraint for the advanced user. A Windows mono culture has proven to be dangerous time and again.
Have some Windows machiens around if you need them, but don't advocate one tool fits all. It's just arrogant.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
2. students will likely be getting a job after school.
3. People always bitch about learning things which are not applicable after leaving school.
4. Companies always bitch that people are leaving school without skills necessary to enter the workforce.
Thus, it is smarter from an educator's standpoint to teach Windows/Office.
As for the whole "monoculture" bullshit arguement (which has very little unbiased information on its side), it is always easier for support staff (as well as the people doing the purchasing) if an organization can...
STANDARDIZE
I know if I graduated from Lunix U. but couldnt do anything for my first three months because I needed to learn how to use Office, I would be rightfully pissed.
I heard earlier this year that a very important university in Mexico, the UDLA (Universidad de Las Americas) is dumping all their macs and linux stuff and going fully windoze. .NET, also. Really sad. There are rumors that MS bought off the head of the CS career (I don't know the title for that in English).
The reason? well, the dean said something along the lines of "everybody uses windows out there, so what's the poing of teaching something else here?" or something equally stupid. I can't believe that's the mentality that the people responsible for education have these days. To me, it's like saying "everybody misspells a lot, why not just stop correcting them and mistype everything also?"
Some CS students protested against this, to no avail. Most students didn't really care. They're dumping Java in favor of
Go hug some trees.
From the places I've worked in, most schools, colleges and universities respond to the skills required from the local employers and milkround companies that visit them. If you want to persuade your school to change, you'll have to persuade the employers to change.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Here at UC Berkeley most of the public computers are windows boxes, but so heavily locked down that all you can do with them is browse the web and the library catalogues. However in the dorm computing centers it's about 3/4 windows and 1/4 mac (cubes, G4s, or better). What i've seen though it's mostly the windows boxes that get used. On the other hand, in the CS buildings almost all the computers are linux, with only a few rooms dedicated to windows 2000. Even the intro cs class uses SPARC workstations.
What are you expecting to find here?
M$ licensing states that you have to buy a license for EVERY computer on campus, including ones with Linux on them. Their reasoning, they have the capability to have windoze loaded on them.. So that is how they keep their monoploy going ahead.
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
My school runs primarily Windoze boxxen (almost all Dells, with a few converted knoppix discs ;-) , but in the mac tradition, there is one room full of macs for graphical design. It is pretty much self-contained; they have a few PowerMac G4s running 10.3 server edition, about 20 emacs, and a networked printer dedicated to that room.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
A brief description of the project: It's a contract you sign with Microsoft, after you've signed it you have to pay each year. Teachers get the software for "free" (you must prevent them from using anything else!, it would be a disaster for MS if teachers get in touch with OS software). And to make it an attrive offer for the schools, the government pays a part of the price.
This is one lame signature, please read the message above instead.
Back in elementary/middle school (my elementary and middle school were the same school. Two story building, elementary on the bottom floor, middle school on the top floor) when I was in the 2nd grade we had these old computers. I don't even remember what OS they had. They were removed during the 3rd grade, but we got a new Mac Lab. Somewhere around the 5th/6th grade the MacLab was replaced by Windows NT.
Ah, you found me!
In my entire time in school, I have encountered less than a few dozen PCs (a small amount of Dells, to run the 2 Windows only programs, not even on the network or internet), and hudreds of Apples. However, I think that it might be better for Apple if Microsoft is introduced to teens at school. My School's IT staff is pretty pathetic, so the network uptime and computer performance sucks, plus let's face it school's aren't big spenders hardware wise. So, this crappy performance has caused most people to blame Apple, not realizing that all public computers would do that. Obviously, the reason schools have a tendency to be entirely one or the other is that they picked what was cheapest, and then upgrade gradually. And PCs and Apples on the same network make things more complicated, especially with group liscenses for software. Finally, being familiar with my school's IT staff, I don't think they could manage Linux, and the less tech-savvy teachers complain enough as it is.
RIAA and the MPAA, putting the "F U" in "fair use".
The first two years I was at my high school all we had were Macs. A 20 Macintosh network in the lab and 5 more in the library.
:)
Then some Windows boxes popped up in an accounting class and 2 in my drafting class for CAD.
In years since, the AV class has acquired PCs for their digital photography and broadcasting, the auditorium systems are run by a Windows PC and most of the Macs were replaced with PCs as well.
I think in most institutions where this scenario plays out, it is due mostly to cost of ownership (things like repair and replacement of parts) and not to which is the better OS or has better tools.
If your school's PC's have CD-ROM drives, bring in a copy of Knoppix if you want to run Linux
R(k)
I saw the same Macs disappearing/PCs breeding syndrome when I was in school. But my wife is going to school now, and what seems to be the main computer lab (this is just a community college, mind you) has about 2/3 W2K machines and the other third have "Linux" labels on them. So maybe Linux is growing where Macs are shrinking.
However, instead of saying they have "Linux" labels on them, I'd simply say they're Linux machines, except that I've been unable to get any to boot to the point where I could use one. The Windows machines may be awakened from sleep mode by hitting a key and/or moving the mouse, then one logs on with a standard user/password combo written on the whiteboards (or, more usually, you come back to the desktop showing someone's homework in a Word session). The LinuxBoxen, however, are actually powered down, and when you start them up, you get a BIOS error. They have one funky-looking drive bay each that may be a removable drive slot. Maybe they boot from that, and someone or other has removable drives that they use for that. Dunno. Also dunno why they would do something dumb like that. Oh well.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Obviously you don't understand... schools aren't a place for you to experiment with Linux, they are a place to learn the computer (and other) skills you need so you can get along in the world when you graduate. Any school that would let kids bring bootable CDs in to use is just asking for trouble. School techs are not idiots, most of us use Linux at home or even in our offices for certain things. We are probably more tech savvy than a lot of business techs because our knowledge base has to be more diverse because of our environments.
I am a technology director in a K-12 school and I can promise you there won't be ANY users on our systems booting up with a Knoppix disk thanks to BIOS passwords and lock-down hardware and software. There are no good educational reasons to do so on the classroom or lab workstations. However, we have a handful of machines that are not protected that only computer team kids can use to do individual projects on. These are the only machines the kids can experiment with (with my permission) and they have to have a classroom assignment or be in an independant study program to do so. The rest are off limits for experimentation. And suggesting that you would do what you mentioned on a lab machine just to prove a point is dumb. We already know Windows is not the best system out there. There's nothing wrong with having an old system laying around for things like that, but that machine should not be connected to the network. Maybe you have lots of time on your hands, but I know I don't have time to sit and babysit someone that's playing around with something that could potentially bring our network down. Sorry, not happening. Play at home.
School computers are not yours to do whatever you want. They are property of the institution, paid for by taxpayer money to be used by EVERY student and staff member, not just for those who want to do whatever they want. The script kiddies and jerks are the reason they are locked down and firewalled. We don't allow program or zipped downloads either. This may sound harsh, but since we started with these policies our downtime on workstations is down to almost none and productivity is high.
Go to work for a school system some time and maybe you'll see what I mean. Coming from business and retail into a school system really opened my eyes. Altough I'm a certified (or is that certifiable?) tech and network administrator and have been building and maintaining PCs and designing, building and maintaining networks for almost 15 years, I need to keep up with things to help me stay one or two steps ahead of the kids that want to damage our systems. As much as people think we might be too strict, the vast majority of our kids and staff appreciate what we do.
Having said all of that, we standardized on PCs with Windows about 7 years ago and phased out the Macs because the quality of the PPC was crap, and the cost was not justifiable. Couple that with the fact that at the time hardly anyone in business used Macs, it made no sense to continue buying them. I almost regret supporting that decision because when Apple came out with OS/X I wished they had done so 7 years ago. I would never have supported the decision to go to Windows. I would actually love to switch our entire district to Linux but the software is not there yet. It's not arguable, it's the truth. The Linux world still can not compete with the Mac/Windows world for educational software. I've checked out lots of them. As much as I'd love to get rid of Windows in our schools I can't justify it financially yet. The handful of new Macs we have now were purchased for video purposes and they are great. Nothing on the PC side comes close.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
I go to a law school in New England which has been overrun by PCs because "almost all law firms use Windows." Over the past two years the IT department has gone from being (relatively) inclusive of all platforms to exclusive of everything except Win 2000 Professional and Win XP.
At least 50% of the student body uses Macs, so I'm not some random geek demanding that my lone mac work on the network. The lack of Mac services is a serious inconvenience to half the school.
To quote their website, the "IT Department does not officially support Macintosh and Linux platform desktops and laptops. Although Internet connectivity (pop/imap/smtp e-mail, web browser) should work fine on these, we can not guarantee access to other network resources such as printing and personal network space."
The trouble we have in the district I work in, is (especially now - that Apple is pushing OS X and the s/w vendors are not up to speed) there just isn't software available for the Mac, thats wanted. Many a times is a new course created, and they go through entensive expense to make Mac's run PC software using virtual PC's, only to have failure in the end.
There's nothing pro-microsoft about not buying a mac. They didnt buy everyone leather chairs either, did they? Macs are one company, PCs are many companies, every last PC sale in the world is Apple's own fault for its control over hardware. Or am I wrong? I could be, I'm not exactly in the mac loop, but that's how it was last week.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'm the net/sys/pc admin for a large urban school district in Mass. I would love to move to Linux, but I can't.
Like most states, we have testing requirements (MCAS here). The evaluation/learning software we use is StarMath (not star office math) and SRI reading (among others). There is no linux version,and attempts at WINE have failed. They don't work in Linux. There are no current alternatives, and we are mandated to do this sort of testing/preparation.
So, we do cheap dells, and use Fortres and ghosting to do lock-downs, imaging.
Given that the "department" I manage has only myself and one technician (and one MIS director) to administer/repair a 28-site WAN with 3500+ computers, I don't think they will invest in unknown software.
Also, if you are in a corporate environment, you may not need to reghost linux boxes... but most adults aren't as destructive as high school and middle school students who think that a penis as the desktop background is funny, and even funnier is breaking the OS. Believe me, you would have to reimage linux machines in this environment. In this way, schools have very different requirements - hence the lockdown software and regular reimaging.
What kinds of educational software are teachers using in school these days? Better yet, what kinds would they like to use?
One of the barriers is that most people don't consider it "educational" unless it's clearly designed for kids. There are plenty of Free/Open Source dictionaries, calculators, and typing programs, but I don't think we'll ever have a multimedia "Margaret and Jose visit the zoo."
-- . . ramblin' . . .
I just got modded troll by somebody -- whoever it is ought to be ashamed. Mine is a serious post stating facts and my opinion. Instead of misusing your modpoints why don't you reply so that you can actually learn something.
I'm one half of the two person IT staff at a technical school for junior and senior level high school students. From the IT staff perspective, I completely understand why those Macs were removed from your campus. It all boils down to three simple facts: Macs are expensive (yet very pretty!) paper weights, time, and money.
I am the sole person in charge of 250 windows xp workstations in the building, as well as the 10 Apple G4's in use in our Advertising Art course. 260 computers isn't that tremendous a burdon. I'd say its safe to say, however, that I put an equal amount of time into those 10 macs as I do the other 250 computers in the building. There are a few reasons for this:
1. I don't know Macs, and it's not worth the investment to get trained. The school sure isn't going to pay for it, and I'm not going to invest a cent in learning a skill that won't benefit me anywhere else.
2. The instructor isn't a tech person. Sure, back in the day Apple had a repulation for making computers for those that wanted to get work done instead of fiddle with drivers and INI files and network settings and such. But shipping an operating system build on BSD seems to have changed all that. While school is in, I get more tech support calls from that classroom than the rest combined. And when I go fix it, the instructor goes crosseyed and cries while watching. If gurus like Jeff Zeldman (http://www.zeldman.com/daily/lifeisbeautiful/osxb lues/) have problems with OS X, believe me, our instructor is going to have problems too.
3. They don't integrate well. Maybe this has changed somewhat with Panther, but we don't have Panther yet, nor do I forsee my boss taking money out of his budget to buy an entire operating system that should probably just be a service pack (I've been wrong when I said the same thing about MS products too though). I've got plenty of examples to prove this point:
If the school wanted to put the investment into training me or someone else on the finer points of administering this handful of machines, we'd be in good shape. But, if the difference in platform is serving no pupose, its not worth the extra investment in training nor the much steeper price tag on the equipment. Replacing them with more manageable, cheaper hardware and software is the only logical solution in my opinion.
"Beer is the reason I get up every afternoon."
... by the time school starts again in September the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000.
Well, take heart. This problem will fix itself shortly. Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. You already mentioned the first:
"There have been security problems with these systems in the past (mostly IE toolbars which requested content from sites which were blocked by the content filters, which caused problems for everyone), and with all the recent IE security problems I'm surprised that the people in charge aren't considering alternative systems..."
This isn't going to get any better no matter how many patches Microsoft releases. The spyware/adware writers are discovering bugs faster than Microsoft can patch them. The people in charge will soon have an overwhelming desire to use anything, anything except IE! While they are looking for alternatives to Microsoft's browser, they are certain to run into alterantives for Microsoft in general.
The second reason has to do with that mix of win98 and win2k machines. It is getting harder and harder to get even win2k on new systems. As the school phases in XP systems, they are going to find what I did; WinXP does not work and play nice on the network with older Windows! They are going to be faced with the alternative of paying lotsa money to upgrade every system to XP or, maybe, just maybe, running something besides Windows.
Don't believe me? Try a search for Windows XP master browser problems on the web.
My students loved Linux. They could do more faster and more reliably. A gui is a gui. A gui that does not crash is better. Favourite apps were OpenOffice, the GIMP, and Mozilla. Students learned to set up simple servers in 5 minutes or less on some of the doorstops laying around. The grade 12 students set up dynamic webpages using LAMP. Not one student had a bad thing to say about Linux because they had seen what the other OS would do. They definitely had marketable skills and many of them are prepared to use computers more effectively at home and work because of Linux. Of course, they did express their opinions about their decrepit, old, ugly, over-the-hill teacher.
When I was studying for my bachelor degree, in a highly regarded engineering school in my country, I had my first OS insight with Unix, and I learned all that client-server, IPC, socket, etc. stuff in some Linux servers we had there, programming in C and C++. Linux with Samba were our file servers, etc. This was some years ago.
When I got into the professional world I found that Linux was highly disregarded. Lots of managers used to grin and disregard it as "kid's stuff". And they thought about Unix machines as "legacy". To them, NT was hot stuff!!!
Now, I'm back to school to graduate, and they utterly sold their souls to Bill! Everything is M$ now, OS classes focus on Windows, development classes focus on Microsoft stuff. The Linux servers are slowly being replaced by Windoze boxes. The teachers that try to resist this invasion are cast aside.
I shiver looking at the young kids there and imagining my country's IT industry invaded by brainwashed Microsoft drones.
It makes me sad that the school which introduced me to Linux is now formatting the minds of the future generations on behalf of Darth Gates and his Evil Empire. I even heard a teacher saying "standards get in the way of progress".
How come Bill has his fist up their ass like this?
And let me tell you, what a monoculture!
Everything* is Windows. There are a few legacy Novell servers on the backend, but I don't know what they do.
The head of the technology dept. is a former DEC engineer. He also teaches AP CompSci, so I got to learn some of his opinions. Many of those opinions are the same that Microsoft holds. For instance, he believes that "quick and dirty" takes prescedence over "correct." He believes that the simplicity of the UNIX plaintext configuration is inferior to a Windows Registry-type database. He's definitely not part of the "hacker" culture, and I'm not sure if he really understands the GPL.
* Every computer also has Novell Zenworks, running on a stripped down version of Red Hat, for the purpose of reimaging the machines. This is stupid in several ways:
1. This is the boot process of each computer: POST -> lilo -> Zenworks -> DHCP fails -> change the active partition to the FAT one and reload the bootloader -> reboot -> POST -> lilo -> FAT -> Windows boots. Takes forever.
2. If you can't effectively lock down a computer so that people can't screw it up, either you or the OS is not doing its job.
3. If you're going to go so far as to reimage machines, why do you need to spend money for a tool that performs the equivalent of dd if=image of=/dev/hda?
Ten years ago at the California public university I went to and worked at the computer center of (as a Mac lab assistant), they initially also had about 50%/50% Macs/PCs. Then they built a new building to house a bunch of new labs, and the designated PC labs were populated quickly, but the new Mac labs remained empty for a couple of years. The holdup: California had/has some rule that 10% of its purchases must come from minority-owned businesses, and 3% from woman-owned businesses, or something like that. Basically, they could fairly easily find PC's built by businesses in the necessary proportions, but only Apple built Macs. So, being a public institution in California, they had to wait for a waiver to purchase the Macs. Sucked, really, cuz I only knew and did Macs at the time, and every labbie wanted to work in the Mac labs, cuz that's where the art and journalism and graphic design students were (i.e. cute girls).
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
I'm the network admin for a private school. We are predominantly a windows shop, with a handful of macs thrown in. (And some linux machines running in my office.)
Why we use windows:
1. Everything runs on windows. Our Executive staff never worries about software or hardware compatibility when making software purchases. Try to find educational software, donor management, and student records software that doesn't run on windows. This makes purchasing very easy.
2. Group policies. Being able to lock down every little setting and creating a uniform "expierience" at every workstation from a central management console is crucial.
3. Cost. Windows on X86 is a cheap platform. We pay $40.00 per copy of windows and $60.00 per copy of MS office. I like OS X, but at Academic pricing it is still $99.00.
These are just some reasons for choosing windows. When OS X or Linux beats windows in all three of these areas - we WILL switch.
-ted
But the fact is, how common are Macs in todays world? They have a loyal following sure, but in the workplace I do not believe they are near as common as Windows or Unix/Linux boxes. A university or college is an educational institution designed to teach their students skills that can be applied to the real world. Thus it would be more beneficial for them to use machines that will be used in the workspace. Not to sound like flamebait, but the real problem thus isn't that they are ignoring the Mac minority, but that they are ignoring the fact that Unix/Linux machines are in wide use in the real world.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Let us not forget when Apple did the same thing 10-15 years ago. They flooded the elementary and high schools with machines, hoping students would be indoctrinated as they graduated and go with the flow. Why is everyone so hell-bent now that Microsoft is doing the same thing?
...put in a lab of 20 Mandrake Linux boxes for a special class centred around indigenous students. They loved it. They get extra street cred from their peers for using something different, and dragged other kids in to have a go.
The room's teacher hated it, because he only knew one system and this wasn't it. That caused immense problems when it came time for the school to pay for setup but doesn't appear to have hobbled the students at all.
In a related situation, I've just set up a Linux-and-thin-clients Internet not-cafe (can't call it a cafe 'coz it has no cafe licence) in a budget accommodation place in Perth. Some users whine about no IE (or no MIRC), most of them are delighted by the games and such. Many guests edit up things like CVs on OpenOffice Writer or KWord and never even notice that they're not using MS-Word. The only FAQ which causes them to blink is using Kopete for their Instant Messenger stuff, but the ones with accounts on several different IM providers are again delighted that they only need to run one program to deal with all of them. They also find having config tied to the user rather than the machine to be odd, but again are very happy with the implications (mostly privacy, permanency of storage (think Sheriff card), and not having to set up, tear down or otherwise muck around with settings every time on the way in and out).
Another local high school, not very far from where I live but which otherwise shall remain nameless, went from all-MS-clients all-Linux-servers to 100% MS sitewide on the advice of a Favoured Son. It cost them many hundreds of thousands of dollars and has yet to work properly. For the same amount of money as they've so far spent on that white elephant, they could have completely re-equipped the school at least twice over with brand new whitebox PCs running Linux.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Technical school: Were's the CNC and PLC programs? Were's the mixed signal design programs? Were's the 3D CAD programs? Regular school: Were's the CBT programs?
What problems have you had getting the Mac working with Active Directory?
Did you even *try* to resolve the issue? Maybe not, because the second "point" illustrates a total lack of understanding.
You most certainly *CAN* boot a Mac from the network and re-image it. In fact, that's been a feature in OS X Server for a while now..both Netbooting and remote installations. Just read the documentation - it's actually pretty darn simple.
If it's taking "several hours of valuable IT time" then perhaps you should take those hours and pay attention to what the software can do. Sounds like an under-educated (or worse, Windows-centric) IT staff to me.
Stop the FUD, please.
At the college of Education at ASU they have a Mac classroom in the computer lab that students are free to use whenever there isn't a class going on. There used to be a number of macs in the main lab as well. But practically nobody used them unless the rest of the PCs were already taken.
So now, when they bought brand new systems, they replaced the Macs in the main lab.
Anyone thinking it's some kind of MS conspiracy isn't in touch with what's really going on.
That's nice that somebody phoned Slashdot and asked where the Macs went but they would have gotten the answer just as easily by asking the people who made the decision to buy more PCs and not Macs.
The answer: 99.9% of the student body doesn't use Macs. And those that use Macs can just as easily use PCs.
99.9% of the student body doesn't absolutely need Linux either. A school isn't going to dedicate a $1000+ system to just a few students who might show up once in awhile to make use of the system.
A Windows machine is useful to 100% of the student body. A Linux or Mac machine isn't useful to anywhere near that number of students. That's just the way it is.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
You came that close. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You mean you're in a jail cell, and the only computer that you're allowed to use run Windows? That no other OS software is available, and that stores force you to buy a Windows product? That without Windows, you'd die on the spot? Get a life. No one is locked into any product. You don't like Windows? Use Unix, Linux, Mac, OS/2, or any of the numerous alternative operating systems out there. Don't like the products available, get off your ass and attempt to create something better. Your school decided to migrate to a total Windows setup; the government did not put a gun to their head and demand they must use Windows or be shut down (or shot). Complain to the school administration and IT department, and if you feel that strongly about the Windows issue, move to another school where the OS makeup is more to your liking. Until you put any effort into changing things, stop whining!
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
... it can run any Linux on 2.6 kernel as well. So I can't see any real problem in your naive question "Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?" You are limited only with your own imagination.
There you are, staring at me again.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
First, almost all of the stuff you listed is dated usefulness. Then you kind of made my point by saying that most mainframe work is done by linux clusters now -- and that mac's are simply used for desktop. Then to quote you:
And let's not even go to the "special" science programs and projects that were developed 1st on the Mac and then ported to the PC once they were working correctly:
Mathmatica
LabView
PGP (yep Zimmerman did it on a Mac laptop at CU Boulder)
The Human Genome project was solved by banks of Macs.
Key idea, THEY WERE PORTED. My entire argument is based on COST VS VALUE, not solely value. Apparently my thesis comment didn't make that clear enough. Mac's cost a ton to make the desktop standard, where as x86's are dirt cheap. If all the processing is going to be done on linux clusters, and all the programs have been ported to PC, why spend the money to use a mac? And I still stand by my original statement that they aren't heavily used in the broad sense that you propose. You found a very very thin slice of the market that YEARS ago the mac's had a math calculation advantage on, but today, does it still exist? Not from my experience, and unlike you who worked in a university a many years ago, I worked in one last year. All of our chemistry lab-interface equipment was (to my disgust) running windows 2k. Not sure what we did our number crunching on, but I think we both know it was either a Cray or a cluster (and we don't have a mac cluster, though I'm aware they exist). And before you slam my school for chemistry, we're a top 15 school for chemistry whose chair was named "most brilliant chemist in the world" by popular science last year.
I work for a K-12 district, and before we even think about considering linux, we need more educational software ported over. We would need Renaissance Learning products such as Accelerated Reader and Star Reading ported over, or something comparable to come out (Which would be really hard, teachers are really attached to AR). We would also have to be able to run those stupid little kids programs that a teacher will pick in the bargain bin (I haven't actually tried to run any of those in Wine, but try walking a teacher through that). All in all, I think schools will probably be one of the last institutions to adopt Linux on a wide scale.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
Yes, as a matter of fact I am <grinning/ducking/running> (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Let's be clear about what we mean when we say "monoculture." We mean "not my platform" or "not the platform my friend wants (possibly for X purpose)."
Not all of us would insist forcing our choices on others, but very few of us want a plethora of platforms for the benefit of having a cornucopia of platforms. We've come to say "you're creating a deadly monoculture" when we really mean "I don't think your hammer is going to do that great with all these screws."
What I have a problem with is IT departments that force a choice upon the users for a theoretical cost savings...which never emerges. Of course, I also don't like people telling me what platform to use when it doesn't affect my ability to work.
Macs (like Sun boxes) have OpenFirmware as teh "BIOS". You don't need special software to re-install from the network. Type in "net boot" at the PROM prompt and the entire system can re-install itself from bare metal without third party software.
Suns have been doing this for over a decade. It's nice to see the PC world finally caught up.
Knoppix boots without touching the HDD, unless you type arcana to tell it to.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Problem 1: The general thought process in many colleges is that they should teach students how to use Microsoft products because that's what most businesses use, hence their students have 'marketable skills'. Microsoft loves this because students that "grow up Microsoft" are less of a threat to their market share. Microsoft provides deep licensing discounts to colleges and universities for this very reason.
Solution:
Problem 2: While Macs running OSX are far more robust than any XP box could hope to be, the added hardware cost makes deploying them on a large scale hard on the pocketbook, especially considering the lean IT budgets that many schools are operating under these days.
For trying to comprehend an OS that is above him and for spreading more FUD then a microsoft pep rally
My highschool taught Information Systems on Macs, and the business computing class was taught on PC's. We started off with the old monochrome macs, until we eventually had a few iMacs. My university at the moment also has both. Although the Computer Science Department in which I study is full of IBM machines, the School of Communications and Multimedia is full of iMac's, and I think they might have got some g5's in this semester.
Start with the applications, then. Teach them OpenOffice and FireFox and GIMP because they're very much like the MS apps on the surface, you can legitimately send a CD home with them for free, and Microsoft's own Slate magazine recommends it. Then shimming a real OS in underneath is pretty much painless.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Admittedly, KDE is a fairly heavy WM, but the users like it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
After all, using the more widely-supported system that has the applications they need is wrong--an educational system should take a chance on something less-supported with fewer apps, 'lest the college dorm room Slashdotters accuse them of teaching groupthink! Education is more about following ideals rather than getting the job done.
I think someone's anti-"M$" blinders are on...
There are two very big reasons why Schools use Windows on their client PC's.
1. Real-World Experience - we try and prepare students for working in the real world, which unfortunately is primarily Microsoft.
2. Applications - Education these days isn't what it used to be, Technical Drawing is TurboCAD, Maths is XL, English is watching a DVD and writing about it using a spell checker, and Multimedia/Business is Flash, Publisher, Powerpoint, and MYOB.
I agree, locking an entire organization into one OS, like Windows, is a bad idea. So is locking into either of the other two popular options: Linux and OS X. But from a bigger picture point of view, there's really not a whole lot of variety out there. Linux and OS X are variants of UNIX. Ditto for BSD. They may differ internally in a lot of ways, but from the user's point of view (and often from the programmer's point of view), there's more in common than not. And taking UNIX out of the picture, we're still talking about interfaces that are all directly derived from the same source.
If avoiding monoculture is the utmost issue, then it would be better to get something *different* into the mix. Now what that something would be, and still be useful, I don't know. Very few people even in computer science don't have exposure to more than Windows + UNIX these days.
...or anything else even slightly familiar to the users.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This is Slashdot, so Microsoft is bad and Linux is good.
I'm a student at http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/, which is, in part, an Information Science school. Our infrastructure is almost entirely Microsoft. If I tried to reconfigure the bios on lab computers to boot from cd I'd be looking for a new computer lab. I luckily have an office across the street with my own machine running SUSE. I logon to the Windows lab machine, connect to a remote window on my Linux machine, and work in a browser window. With an ssh connection I can upload working documents to my ftp space and grab them from there to print in the lab.
Granted, this isn't the best solution and it won't suit those who can't run their own machine on a fast network, but if you have a Linux machine in a dorm room, it may work depending on the campus firewall configuration.
It's alway fun to see people react to Linux for the first time. I think they expect to see a Unix prompt or some arcane GUI.
TANSTAAFL, y'know.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Schools are generally cutting back on their computer budgets in general, which makes cheap pc boxes more attractive. THe mian thing is, Microsoft has made huge strides in the last couple of years in making Windows more manageable. Windows 2000/XP added good user based permissions, good easy to use mass deployment tools, good central administration, etc. Macs used to be much easier to support in school enviroments, just becasue they were harder to break softwarewise. Apple also used to offer massive educational discounts, now its pc makers (especially Dell). I actually arranged a lab upgrade for my old high school (at the technicians request). Dell gave them 30 dual Xeon machines with lcd monitors, and 3 top of the line servers, already configured and supported by Dell, including the rack mount, for the price Apple wanted for 20 iMacs. The choice was obvious, and unlike the mac labs, whenever there was a problem the machine could just be imaged remotely in a few minutes, with no student work lost. Add to this the mess the transistion to Mac OS X caused (which shook up the status quo in school systems in general), and the choice is obvious. In the 4 years I was there the school went from all Mac and one PC lab to all PC and 2 Mac graphic design labs. They were much better off in the end. Hate MS all you want, but Windows has taken huge steps in the past few years, and Apple hasnt done anything to stop them.
At the technical college I teach at, I am the only Unix (Linux) instructor on staff. I get to teach very low level intro to UNIX and elementary UNIX systems admin classes, but nothing higher than that. There are about 8 Microsoft Operating Systems instructors who teach every aspect of systems admin, and several other instructors who are well versed in (and teach) most major Microsoft applications.
Microsoft is well aware that that people who learn on Microsoft products in school (especially college) will continue to use those products once they graduate to the real world, as paying customers. A *BIG* reason why many colleges use Microsoft products is because the colleges get these products at a highly discounted rate; and Microsoft is always glad to subsidize computer hardware purchases (of boxes that will run their product) so they can propogate their own dominance of the market.
At times I feel I am the only voice of reason in the crazed Microsoft controlled world at my school. I feel redeemed, though, when students (and those Microsoft instructors) see how cool Unix/Linux really is. Another thing I like is that just my presence as a Unix/Linux instructor gives our college bargaining power with Microsoft to get even more discounts on Microsoft products, as we threaten to move entirely to Linux. (Yeah, I can only dream...).
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As for MAC hardware and software-- unless Apple gets a program going like Microsoft has (and I think they did at one time) they won't ever compete with Microsoft.
In the past, MacOS8 was a great desktop/consumer interface, but it would not stand up to the rigors of an Enterprise level system. Microsoft is moving in that direction, as they are trying to displace the heavy UNIX (Solaris/AIX/HPux) top ends. Now that Apple has moved to a BSD (UNIX) based OS (i.e. OSX) they are now in a position to move to the Enterprise level also. But again, Apple must free up some hardware and software to schools to keep in the game.
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Why is this hard on Apple? Because the hardware is sole-source (their own hardware) while Microsoft is a software company mostly. As every hacker knows, making another copy of software is a LOT cheaper than acquiring another machine. Still, I would LOVE to see a lab of MAC gear in my college. (Are you listening, APPLE???)
Just my humble opinion.
Knoppix is doomed to get you in trouble I've found, and accepting defeat is never an option. Use a laptop with a linux install, and all will be good. Oh, as to why they're doing this: they are technophobic idiots. This applies to a lot of the world, and the situation isn't getting better.
The University of South Carolina Columbia has Solaris and Linux labs, and has Linux based research objectives. The Georgia Institute of Technology has MANY Linux labs, and indeed embrace Linux and open source and push for its enhancement. They even mirror many major distributions... including Mandrake Linux. Big name schools in the US, in general, have a place for Linux and push for advances in Linux. The University of Georgia doesn't count... because there's no education going on there :P
The Peanut Gallery, Ubergeek, Biblically Sober
NCAAbbs.com: Thousands of fans, Hundreds of teams, Just one place
Solution: Make formal requests for classes in OSX and/or Mac programming. Get other students who share your opinions to do the same. Find out if any existing faculty members can teach the classes. If enough students request such classes, the administration may choose to offer them. This works for Linux and FreeBSD, also.
Problem 2: While Macs running OSX are far more robust than any XP box could hope to be, the added hardware cost makes deploying them on a large scale hard on the pocketbook, especially considering the lean IT budgets that many schools are operating under these days.
Solution: (also works for Linux and FreeBSD)
While the Instructional Computing Lab tends to have more Windows machines than UNIX or Macs (and the Windows machines are networked using Novell, interesting enough), they do have a fair number of Macs (mostly for the multimedia courses) and at least two dozen Linux machines.
There is also a UNIX/Open Systems Certificate to be had here which involves introductory courses to UNIX, UNIX System Administration, UNIX Network Administration, UNIX Systems Programming, and Oracle Database Administration. (That last is actually not part of the certificate.)
We have a "UNIX guru" here - Abbas Moghtanei - who has been teaching here for many years (as well as running his own consulting firm with clients such as Oracle and Wells Fargo, for whom he has worked in the past), and he's not about to let the college go "Windows only".
When the college set up a Computer Security Certificate program, most of the teachers were Windows oriented. So this fall we have "Advanced Computer Security for Network Administrators" - which he will teach and will be undoubtedly oriented to UNIX. It's a class on preventing hacking and no doubt will involve teams of class members trying to hack into some reserved ICL machines and others trying to prevent them. He likes class projects like that.
When I took Network Security this past spring, I demo'd the Knoppix STD (Security Tools Distribution) to the class. Somebody asked if the tools on the CD were all command line oriented, and I pointed out that while some (such as Ethereal) were GUI oriented, most network security involves servers and many servers are UNIX-based and servers tend not to have GUI interfaces, so a lot of security tools tend to be CLI based.
The college does participate in the Microsoft program where free copies of Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Professional, Project Planner, and Visio are downloadable free by computer class students. MS has obviously discovered that many college students use Linux because it's cheap, and want to increase student exposure to MS products.
You'll notice the cash cow, Microsoft Office, is NOT on the list.
I'd like to see CCSF have an "Introduction to Linux" course which would take parts of the Introduction to UNIX course but instead concentrate on the Linux desktop, Linux applications, and enough about the CLI to allow students to be comfortable in both the CLI and GUI environments. Students could be taken from installation through tweaking and package management and given some introduction to home and small business uses such as Samba and Apache in one semester, including perhaps a couple sessions on integrating Linux with Windows in a small business (such as email servers to shield Windows machines from viruses). I think such a course would be well attended and valuable.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Very few of my Outlook-using clients stay wistful for long after being introduced to Thunderbird. If you use FireFox and Thunderbird in place of Mozilla, you can be a little more selective about who gets what.
Also, I recommend throwing OOo into the mix, set to default to MS file formats. That way when the Revolution comes, changing will be less painful. All of this, you can put on a CD (including Mac versions) and send home with students, admonishing them "Go forth, and install as many of these as you like!"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
At the IT/Media institute at Aarhus University/Denmark Macs are starting to move in. A lot of eMacs were bought recently and they are the ones that always work when you need a machine - even though that's probably because the administrators haven't started locking them up yet and just set up a guest account for people to use. It's safe enough that the machines keep running just fine.
;)
It makes sense to use them, since people can get used to using MacOS X which is of course used when editing movies (Final Cut Pro/Media100) and they have become quite popular with the java crowd as well.
In the offices there are lovely 15" flat panel iMacs and when I asked (carefully) what they thought of them at the administration, they said they loved them.
I don't care much myself, as I just drag my 12" powerbook with me everywhere I go. I don't have connectivity problems regarding Windows and luckily our system administrators are using 12" powerbooks themselves, so one knows that things will work with those - like the airports near them
In fact they seem to administer the otherwise Windows-centric network entirely from their Macs. But they could have a machine hidden away somewhere of course, it just isn't in their office.
...because once they get the next biyearly invoice for licensing fees from Microsoft, it won't take long for the administration to switch...
my school had ONLY macs and that's it. But funny thing is, the server ran windows server 2003. I never used my account except to download mp3s anyways. Next year (new school) there'll be a better situation though: my school has windows computers in the library and calssrooms, and redhat linux comps in the PC lab, and I've met the teacher who is a real linux geek, even though he admits to being a mac user. Heck I'm a linux geek who admits to being a PC user! ... i do have a linux boot floppy though.
Amen.
"I don't have time to sit and babysit someone that's playing around with something that could potentially bring our network down." Sasser? Netsky? Blaster? Frankly, you've got more to worry about simply running windows, than what you'd have to worry about if you had a few linux boxen on the network.
BTW, I very rarely mod down. There are usually more than enough whiners around to do that job for me. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Our school has a Unix lab but they are OLD OLD Sun workstations. There has been talk about upgrading them to faster hardware and putting Linux on there but that's a no go right now.
There's a huge computer lab that is all upgraded super fast windows machines. It has over 100 computers. The Unix lab has 8 machines.
Although the Unix boxes are never full.
J
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
Flat out, What sells better? That's pretty much the end of that arguement.
eMacs are $650 for schools. And you save certain costs such as antivirus software and ghosting software.
What, me worry?
"hardly anyone in business used Macs"
Meaning none of your students is competent to work at a multimedia firm where Mac is the platform of choice?
I'll grant you the number of multimedia firms is not high compared to every other industry, but a lot of companies in all industries do have departments (such as advertising and marketing) which are essentially multimedia where Macs do slip in.
Abandoning the Mac platform (or Linux) entirely is a disservice to students.
And not having Linux machines around because there is no "educational software" for them is incorrect as well. City College of San Francisco teaches UNIX courses and has two dozen Linux machines for those students. Any school could afford to have at least a couple Linux machines around so that students could at least be apprised of the existence of alternative OS's and should be taught so in introductory computer courses.
It's not education's job to be shills for Bill Gates regardless of the money he hands out. And that's the ONLY reason he hands that money out.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Given that Macs all have the super-easy access cases, they start looking a lot cheaper to maintain - lift latch, open case, no need to reach around for the RAM, it's right in front of you, close case, 5 minutes you're done.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
my school has a few shiney new macs, a few new winblows pcs and a lot of old windowz pcs and about 1-2 each linux and solaris boxes. knoppix is a favorite of my class and our teacher, but nobody else realy gets it.
Nathan Friedly
And windows computers are cheaper than Mac's.
I call BS!
Check out www.dell.com and www.apple.com and compare prices before repeating the usual PC cheapness nonsense.
An eMac (basic outfit) costs $799 (without any education discount).
The cheapest Dell I could find with roughly the same stuff under the education section was a Dimension 2400 (with 17 inch monitor) costs $757 (again with no special discount, but with only a 1yr warranty - probably a very bad idea with Dell stuff).
So you save a couple of bucks and end up with decidedly inferior hardware!
Enough said on the issue. People who don't buy mac for cost reasons are too lazy to look at more than one web site.
Was pointed out months ago. Any technology monoculture is doomed to be a pain in the a$$.
Our labs (which are a pretty hostile environment for machines anywhere) are constantly under attack by some fool kid trying to hack something, download porn, etc. Usually the only thing they accomplish is that we have to re-image the drives, and if somebody foolishly left info on that machine, it's gone.
True about the placement issues. But I think there's a place for Macs, Linux boxes in tech schools (I happen to teach in one).
Either Linux or Mac machines could be used in gen ed courses, or in the libraries for research and paper-writing. Also, if it's Word, etc. you're pining for, why not have some Wine?
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
I work at Arizona State University and I can tell you first hand that Macs are little more than a curiosity around here.
We do have some newer iMacs in the open computing labs, but few people use them. As for our classrom labs, I don't think there are macs in any of them. Actually I take that back, Architecture has a couple of labs like that, but they are the exception that proves the rule. As for the open labs, you will have a line of people waiting to use the PC's (running Windows XP) and over half of the Macs will still be sitting there idle.
The only people who use the macs are the people who have always used the macs, even back when the macs we had were old Motorola clones from the mid-90's.
There are usually a small handful of people in any given college (of which ASU has many) who go out of their way to use Macs, sometimes spending several thousand dollars of the state's money to purchase them. I think this is a waste unless you have a specific need for a Mac, and the fact that you like it better because you're too stupid or lazy to learn anything else is not a good reason...Well not a good reason to buy a Mac anyway, it is a good reason to fire your dumb ass and hire someone competent.
Other than your handful of die-hards, everyone else uses standard PC's. I work for the school of engineering and around here most of these systems are running Windows of some kind, but we do have a significant number that run Linux. Then of course there are the Sun systems and the occassional SGI or Dec system. I'd be willing to bet you that there are more Sun boxes in the school of engineering than there are Mac systems of any kind in all of ASU, not to mention PC's running Linux.
This is just the way things are. Apple didn't want to play by the rules as set down by the marketplace, and so they lost. They try to blame their fate on Microsoft, but that is a cop-out and a lie. Apple is the walking dead of the computer industry because of a long sordid history of stupidity and intentional self-sabotage, and I for one have zero sympathy for them.
Then of course there are the "holier-than-thou" mac zealots who never miss an opportunity to act like a bunch of culties when it comes to Macs. I wouldn't be suprised if one of these days I'll hear a knock on my door and disover that instead of a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness, I'll find a Mac fanatic there intent on converting me to his religion. Needless to say I have no use for such people. Religion is for retards, and it takes a special breed of retard to get religious about computers of all things.
Again the comparison is not really fair, as the schools aren't buying $500 whiteboxes with XP home without Ghost and antivirus software. They are buying more reliable (and expensive) optiplexes with XP Pro (more $$) and buying Ghost corporate and anti-virus licenses for all the computers. The eMac is cheeper, even upfront.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
There's almost no chance that you can get away with not having any PCs at your school. Since that's true, and administration wants to keep costs down, you buy all PCs. Having one operating system makes it easier to support (or hire support).
Yes, Slashdot has always been a wretched hive of scum and ignorance, but judging from the number of ass-backward posts in this thread marked +5 Insightful, I think we've seen a whole new level of suck.
I am one of two art teachers that run the only Mac lab left in our K-12 school district of around 2300 students. The tech support department only shows up to deliver items like replacement hardware when it is delivered. They still sit for hours at a time at the pcs on the network because it is still quicker than many of the automated systems that they have at their disposal (and that are incapable of doing anything to a Mac) but need to do literally nothing in our lab of 30 Macs. (Ranging from 5400s running 9.X to G3 all-in-ones on 9.X, G3 B&Ws on Jaguar, and G4 towers and G4 eMacs on Panther.) Back when 5400s were the norm on teacher's desks (c. 1998), we had faculty recording and editing video among other cool projects. Now with PCs everywhere besides our digital studio, a teacher is on the cutting edge when they have a student use PowerPoint in their class.
The ironic part is that any time a teacher or student has trouble with their files or needs any kind of media developed, they show up on our door. The two most common things we hear from these folk are "I don't have time to wait for tech support to show up and help me so so-and-so said I should come to the Mac guys." and "Tech support said this couldn't be done. Can you guys help me?" Oh, and the kicker is that we are spending over 50 times the dollar on tech support and IT infrastructure as when we had Macs throughout the district except for one PC lab for CAD (and then honestly 90% of that support budget went to support the CAD lab machines!). So, from our perspective, the school district is spending more money on hardware, more money on support, and with a couple of exceptions, accomplishing only WP, email, and browsing. Perhaps it is different where you are, but that's our reality.
I thought the post was funny as hell not insightful.
//es and a vax. VMS is kinda relevent today. 6504 assembler is not.
When I went to school we had apple
In computers things change all the time. The pace has slowed but the times they are a changing..
Maybe I'm just jaded because I'm an engineer and we're taught general ways to solve problems. The modeling classes taught us how to model any kind of system (electrical/mechanical/civil).
You know your school requires certain measures to prevent YOU to play games or music with your laptop in clases.
Schools wants to introduce computers in the classrooms the problems is with some LASY students that want to used them on other tasks.
SO the administration software your schools employs works just with WINDOWS 2000 or WIN98 guess what!!!
You are not going to be allowed to used macs or linux
Sadly most of the school administration software works just with microsoft.
Schools must inforce some rules because of "smart" students
Or help your school to find a linux utility that restricts use for lazy students in the classroom
and it was mostly because of:
... Less training if EVERYONE uses the same software, no switching of different apps to confuse our lUSERS. Seriously, I had secretaries that got pissed off and demanded I convert their computers BACK to Windows 98 and Office 97 because they had never used Office XP and was NOT going to learn a new product! *(HELLO!!!-- The sad part is I actually lost this argument with the boss and had to conver the system back till she dies or retires,tick,tick,tick...)*
:)
1) Too difficult to stay abreast of BOTH OS's in a district wide environment (9 ele's, 2 jr's, 1 high & 1 tech building + admin, bussing, and maintanience buildings... You try and keep different os's and programs on them all... Oh, and spread out about 35 miles from one end to the other...) And patching and updates...etc..
2) Price discounts in Bulk update purchases of computers & Parts from vendors. (ie, If I buy 500 computers to replace the old, they are discounted better then 250 macs & 250 PC's vs. 500 PC's)
3) Network inferstructure... We run Novell Netware 6, and to get a desent MAC Client, you have to purchase that SEPERATELY, as apposed to Windows that has the client from Novell
4) Training
5) Sanity... If I have ONE SCRIPT that works based on ONCE client at login, I don't have to beat my head against the wall trying to figure out why a drive only maps on the windows side, and not MAC because I didn't have Namespace set to MAC also!, etc.. etc.. etc...
6) Software Availablity... Believe it or not, (and I don't like it either, so I fight back in the back end with the servers, etc..) MOST SPECIALIZED SOFTWARE IS WINDOWS ONLY... Case in point, our Tech department has a machine shop classroom and a computer lab with it... Lots of cool toys like robotics, CNC lathes, 3d Prototype modler, etc... ALL tied in nicely with the curriculum that the teacher was already teaching... Guess what, Yep... WINDOWS ONLY!
So you can see, it really is a big conspiracy to keep you tied to windows, but I did like the idea of the Knoppix CD... Cool idea, just don't bug me (or the counterpart IT dude at the school) to help you figure out how to log it into the novell network to get your network space, or how to print to a network printer with it, or drivers, etc.. We got enough junk to keep running, that we won't offer any help outright... But of course, we me point you to a machine that is running Windows, IE, and has the homepage set to Google and tell you that your answer is there in front of you...
Cheers!
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
As you can tell from my .sig, I'm a public school teacher. In the past seven years that I've been at my current school, I've also seen the environment grow more homogeneous. You want to know why?
We have over 300 computers. We have over 2300 users, and 2000+ of those are hostile. We have one full-time tech guy. One.
He has to keep those machines running, not to mention install new versions of proprietary educational software. He makes around $35K/yr. Show me another discipline where they expect a single person to support that many machines/users.
We must use Windows machines across the board, because 1) we've already paid for the Windows licenses, and 2) 90% of educational software, which is usually single-vendor, is Windows only. And horridly-written, by and large, I might add.
Ideally, for his sanity we'd have 300 of the exact same machine, with the exact same Ghost image, but due to limited licenses for things like Photoshop and 3DS MAX and Borland C++ or whatever, that's not possible.
But you can bet we're running Windows 2000 across the board, with as many remote administration tools as humanly possible.
It has everything to do with software compatibility requirements and support personnel needing homogeneity to keep their heads above water. It's not a conspiracy, and really doesn't have that much to do with hardware or software costs, to be honest.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
YES? Microsoft gives some massive deals to schools, in order to lock them in. Asking your school to turn to some other OS is like asking them to tear up a cheque. Besides, believe you me, your school does not give a flying fig about security... not many do.
Schools have finite dollars for training and maintenance. Macs are expensive to buy, and not everyone knows how to administer them.
For better or worse, people who know Windows and Windows networking are quite common and relatively inexpensive. Windows runs on commodity hardware.
Every new OS is another set of headaches and another pile of things to learn. Of course there's going to be a tendency towards monoculture--the overworked and underpaid admins don't want to have to manage two, or three, or four, or five (Win98, Win2K, WinXP, OSX, various Linuxen...) separate operating systems, and get them all to talk to each other where required.
They've settled on MS because they have admins that know it, they received a steep educational discount from MS, and face it--the most software runs under Windows...including the most popular stuff. For most of the staff and students, it's what they have on their home machine. Familiarity means fewer calls to the helpdesk, too.
Maybe if there's a computer science club or some such you could try to get them to roll out a prototype Linux network for demonstration purposes, but don't expect a school's administration to jump on the opportunity to increase the complexity of their network.
~Idarubicin
A certain ivy-league that starts with a "Y" that I happen to attend generally has both Windows PCs and Macs (and even a limited amount of RedHat boxes). PCs outnumber Macs in most labs, but there are Mac-only labs as well (mostly for A/V stuff though). These include anything from G3s to G5s, all running OSX. There are also many students who use Macs as their personal machines.
Now, this is obviously not the most typical institution, but given that many who attend there are statistically likelier to attain fairly high positions in society, not all is lost by far for platform diversity.
You've gotta fight... for your right... to Linux!
So our optimum solution is this: Each location will have one or more Windows 2K3 Terminal Servers (for Windows-specific apps) and one or more Linux Terminal Services Servers (LTSP and TAO-tc). The building file/print server is an Apple Xserve which can serve AFP/SMB/NFS home directories to all our clients. Those classes which need "special" computers (G5's for Graphics and Video, PCs for AutoCAD, etc.) get high-end standalone computers - everyone else gets a "thin-client".
The thin-clients net-boot off one of the Linux or Xserve boxes and start either an X-session with the LTSP server for a Gnome/KDE desktop (home directories NFS-mounted from the Xserve) or they start a full-screen rdesktop/rdp session to one of the Windows TS serves for Win2K3 desktops. You literally can't tell that it didn't just boot off the hard drive (except it only takes about 20 seconds).
So at each location (barring the few high-end standalones) we have maybe 2 windows servers to manage, secure and patch and maybe 1 or 2 Linux boxes to manage. All the clients have no moving parts and never need to be upgraded or touched - they are literally disposable. They get their configuration from our centralized dhcp server and all accounts are single-signon with kerberos through Active Directory (PeeCees won't play well with OpenLDAP :-\ ).
The only downside is that these workstations can't run the myriad mac software titles the schools have invested in. Our solution to that is to use the new CD-ROM-less eMacs. For $599 we have a bullet-proof all-in-one workstation that we net-boot off an Xserve to OS X. Home directories are auto-mounted on the desktop using Apple's Active Directory Plugin. For those users who want/need to access Linux software they can click an icon in the dock to open an X session to the Linux server and run Gnome full-screen. If they need to use windows apps they can click an icon and instantly have their desktop replaced with a windows RDP session. Same credentials, same home directories, same printers, cross-platform.
When it comes right down to it, the eMac as a terminal is the BEST choice. It can function as both a Linux and Windows desktop and run Mac apps as well and costs $599. An Intel-based thin-client costs about $200 plus a monitor ($150) = $350. It is about half the price and can "do" both Linux and Windows (and never needs to be replaced) it just can't run Mac Apps. Whereas a low-end Dell workstation with monitor runs about $600 + virus subscription + patchlink license = $630 and can ONLY run windows (I haven't found a good FREE X11 "client" app for windows yet). On top of that, assuming we don't turn it into an expensive thin-client in 4 years, it will have to be upgraded or replaced. Not to mention the headache and overhead administering stand-alone Windows boxes with their ad/spy/virus/warez problems. There's no contest.
My philosophy is you should use the best tool for the job. My primary workstation at work is a low-end Fedora Core 1 box. I don't need much because I always have multiple sessions going to the LTSP/WinTS servers (which are really fast). I also have a G4 TiBook with OS X for my mobile solution, because, again, I can literally open a fullscreen session to Linux or Windows as well as run ARD to admin Xserves.
Our students will graduate knowing how to use Macs, Linux and Windows, and be ready for ANY market. Meanwhile we are able to better manage and can afford to upgrade only a few servers. This will give our students and faculty a much better experience and, who knows, maybe even give them the courage to go home, blow away their windows box and install Linux.
Hey, it COULD happen :-)
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I've always hated working on MAC's. This is mainly due to the fact that my high school was MAC only when I was going there. At that time a MAC could not read a PC disk. So if I wanted to bring my homework to school or my school work to home, I was S. O. L.
We don't have outbreaks like that because we educate our users and I have a darned good firewall, anti-virus protection and Outlook is forbidden in our district. Students use ISD web-mail only, all others are blocked. On top of that, our ISD is our email provider and they also scan and eliminate most infected emails. We patch our desktops frequently and don't use MS server software.
It's really not that hard to keep viri out of your system if you want to.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
yeah but..
he's not a teacher, he's an IT guy for a school. it isn't his (her?) job to teach students new os's; it's his job to keep the systems stable and working. ergo decisions about whether to allow or encourage students to use/learn alternative os's are not only NOT his to make, they shouldn't be.
I am a tech at our local school district. Our district has 15 schools with about 3500+ computers. When new computers are ordered we must shop for the best prices since we are publicly funded. Decisions are made based on cost which is always in favor of the Windows PC.
It's kind of funny though, because the video lab and the art rooms have macs and the IT dept. won't touch them because they "don't do other platforms." Then they go calling all the video directors idiots because they use macs. However the video dept. has somehow been able to get along without their help for the past 5 years.
I actually had some respect for the IT people. I mean, it makes sense that they just wanted everyone to be on the same page. But then one day they were mac-bashing and the director asked me if I had any idea how hard it was to get outlook running with DHCP in virtual pc. (What idiot would do that? they don't even use exchange...) He also tried to convince me that the ONLY way to image macs was to string them via firewire, and that the major reason apple sucked was because they only started using IDE 2 years ago (that's 2002, people...) It was then I realized that they just had no clue.
So, our school is stuck with win2k servers (which crash inevitably once every three weeks) and win98 on every workstation except one computer lab that has XP. Of course the smart ones (the science, video and art dept.), have been using macs from the begining, integrating with the rest of the network services on their own without any help.
IT wise our school system could be much more cost efficient if they used macs. We need a new batch of machines almost every other month because they crap out so often (I can't even count the number of premio motherboards we've redone) However, the video and art labs have been using the same machines they originally got when the building was redone 5 years ago. They've purchased new machines, only one batch though and they're always add-ons to the other ones, which are still functional. They're able to keep the OS up to date (panther) and do whatever they want without help. OS X just makes so much more sense than windows, and windows has so much bloat (especially when random people use the machines 24/7 for games).
School is there to educate kids. Mac's not there? No problem. Explain to me why having kids train an O/S that runs on about 3 percent of computers is really that relevent.
Budgets for school boards are tight, so I would have a hard time rationalizing the extra expenditure for more expensive technology that most kids will never use or even see.
No, hardly any means a low percentage. When you look at the total number of jobs, the number of those requiring Mac is very low.
And not having Linux machines around because there is no "educational software" for them is incorrect as well."
No it's not, you're talking about higher ed software, not K-12. And more specifically, K-5 where Apple still rules in most districts. Apple had hundreds of lower elementary titles under it's belt before the PC side ever thought about it seriously. Most vendors wised up and made them available for both, as is evidenced by the multitude of dual platform CDs I have. But the number of titles for Linux is so low I can't convince anyone to look at them. I have several CDs with elementary software on them but there are only a handful that are good enough to use.
I am trying to put a Linux machine out for general use, but the software just isn't there for the schools yet aside from the office packages. I have tested Open Office and Star Office, and they are just not compatible enough with the MS documents and powerpoints that we tried them with to justify using them. There is no high end DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, AutoCad, iMovie, etc. equivalent program for linux and linux doesn't connect to Novell 6 right now. This was a year long test, not a one day thing. I want to move MS out of our district, but I still don't have enough ammunition to do it.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
There are two colleges in my city, LC (which started out in the penal colony days as a women's prison - bad omen?) and NC which just opened last year.
I started my college life as a student of LC, and it was terrible as far as OS variety goes. I think we had one Linux machine running as the print server, and every other machine in the school was either Win2000 or WinXP. NC was completed towards the end of the year, and they held the usual open day thing to get students to choose that college.
I jumped ship to NC and never looked back. We have a nice mix of Linux (Mandrake flavor), Macs with OSX, and WinXP machines in all the general-use areas (Library, common room etc). The Multi-media labs have about 50 G5's and 6 WinXP machines, and the CS classes have an even mix of Linux and WinXP machines.
Basically, NC is now the college all the techies and art-types go to, and even has IT scholorship programmes tied in with the university, and art scholorships with the Art Sciences university.
It's all a matter of choice. NC chose to fork out a HEAP of money from the start, and ended up having 80% of all college age students in the state attending, while LC has become the school no-one wants to go to.
The high school I just graduated from, Southeast Raleigh High School, is purely MS. Well, not entirely accurate; the network is Novell, and our webserver is a nice Gentoo Linux box.
Ack... I just said "our" but I don't go there anymore, disregard that...
Anyway, the Windows thing is becuase the county has mandated everyone uses Windows. However, SRHS is the technology school in the county, and usually the trends we started ended up becoming policy. Except for the Microsoft thing, they've been demanding that since the school opened 8 years ago.
For my graduation project, I was exploring different ways of teaching people, and I hijacked a computer lab to teach a class on Linux. Everyone got a Knoppix CD and a floppy to save their settings on (they could take it home... just some random geek and non-geek volunteer friends of mine, and a teacher.)
A few weeks ago, one of the net admins asked if I'd be interested in helping him teach a class on Linux to more teachers with hopes of getting them to instal Linux on their laptops. It's a start, and I of course agreed.
Fact is, Longhorn isn't going to be successful, and all these Microsoft dependent people aren't going to know what to do when Microsoft isn't there for them anymore...
"Software is like sex; it's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
I agree, the Optiplex line is a compact, manageable PC that has a long product life cycle. That's a major issue for institutional budgets, where machines tend to be used for longer periods of time. Plus, Dell's production facilities are ISO 9002 certified. Meaning your not getting a white box that was put together in someone's garage.
Need Gmail?
From experience (my mom is a computer teacher) I know it is increasingly hard to keep Macs in schools. My school was 99% Mac as recently as 1999. But two big things happened:
-A program gives discarded PCs from businesses to schools. So one lab goes from Macs to a polyglot set of mainly Gateway/PIIs with varying specs. You can't argue with free.
-Complaints that the Macs are slow and stupid (even after upgrading to eMacs). No parents use them at work, and the kids increasingly don't use them at home because parents have (Windows) computers so they can bring their (Windows) work home, so it boils down to:
Why are you teaching kids on Macs when no one in The Real World uses them?
All of the compatibility, virus and "It still runs everything" issues pale in the face of those strikes, much to the Mac's detriment.
I work in a middle school where we are purchasing brand new computers for the fall. We got quotes from Apple, Dell, and IBM for desktop computers. The quotes from apple for an eMac were $540 everyone else was at least 20% higher than that. Same with an iBook mobile lab. Up front the Apples were just cheaper.
Surely if you know how to use Linux apps, you can most certainly find your way around the MS stuff. In a sense, you are more valuable to the employer because you have a more general understanding of the apps, the system, and how it all works. Don't employers want people that have "learned how to learn" so that they aren't stuck in such a narrowly-defined role?
We used to have Macs, Windows, and Linux in the Computing Commons a few years ago... now there are no Linux machines at any computing site... although they *have* replaced the old CRT iMacs with new hinged-flat-screen iMacs running OS X.
//'s) almost exclusively until high school...
I remember in grade school in MN we had Macs (and before that... Apple
people who are familiar with mroe than one OS are proficient out of interest usually instead of force (since there is one dominant OS)
people who are interested in their job fields are always better at their jobs, this holds for every industry you can name.
a troll. I'll give you a hint -- it's not having an opinion that you disagree with.
I stated facts, mac's are NOT the biggest choice for either CS or corporations. PC's are in NO way the desktop for fools, like the post I replied to supposed. I gave my personal experience to back this up. Please tell me how ANYTHING I said can be considered troll? Or let me guess, you're posting from a mac.
That's the point.
It's not some great mystery why schools don't supply Macs or *nix boxes in nearly as great a quantity as Windows boxes.
If I need to use a Mac, I can find one somewhere on campus. If I need a *nux box, I can find one somewhere on campus. Most likely in the Engineering college. I've never needed either.
This isn't an "Ask Slashdot" mystery. It's common sense.
If there was actually a demand for Linux and Mac there would be more of them on campus. If you want to see more of them on campus, get the students requesting them. Don't go around pretending there's some big conspiracy.
It's like wondering why Best Buy doesn't sell web-server hardware and pretending that the big name mid-tower case manufacturers have some kind of grip over Best Buy.
Even Fry's Electronics didn't start carrying that stuff until recently.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I am sorry for you plight. Up here in Canada my experience has been far different. When I went to university there were more Linux computers available than Windows PCs. And the college that I taught at up here was mainly Mac and SGI. I guess it really comes down to choosing to move based on attending the school that really offers what you're looking for. Spend some time researching the facilities available before you choose the school you attend. If the school you would like to attend does not meet your needs, then by all means discover the email address for their IT support team and related administrative counterparts and lobby hard for improved facilities while you re still in high school. In your present situation, I can only recommend working in Windows when you must and using Knoppix when you need a real workstation.
In a two-year technical college?? How many years do you have left?!?
John Kerry is a Joke!
Because, sorry to bore everyone with the standard response, Microsoft is already a monopoly in most markets. When a monopolist takes actions, (eg subsidising sales to make alternatives uncompetitive) to increase market share, that would be fine for a minor player, like Apple, it's quite different, and in some cases illegal.
This is a SUN shop, boy. We work on real operating systems on real hardware. Oh, wait. You're asking about what the "differently abled" liberal arts students use? Well, we don't really think of them being part of the University. But, yeah, it's a bunch of brand new Windows boxes along with some ancient Macs.
At the beginning of the last school year, my university had just finished upgrading their systems from NT-something to all WindowsXP. Every lab was populated entirely with WinXP boxen, save the one Mac in the Education lab, and the few standalone Macs reserved for special tasks like publishing, and graphic/video editing.
Guess what happened at the beginning of that semester? All it took was one student (there were probably more) bringing his Dell Paperweight 6800, plugging it into the school's network, and WHOOPS! The entire University has the Blaster virus! Mail, networking, and Internet services were locked down for WEEKS. Some students had to find expensive communication workarounds in order to stay in touch with home. The rest were just supremely annoyed.
All because some jackass thought Windows was the all-important platform.
If a university admin isn't smart enough to realize that it's useful to know how to use something besides Windows, I think he DESERVES the shit that hits when a virus breaks out. It would have been simple to avoid. Before I graduate this place I'm going to make a formal proposal that half the lab machines be upgraded to RHEL. Maybe it'll bring the local MS spook^H^H^H^H^Hrepresentative out of hiding.
I know first hand that a software monoculture is certainly a problem when it comes to resilience against viruses, and security altogether. The network could surely have been better protected against the invasion of a virus to begin with, but a heterogenous network is a very safe fallback position if something sneaks through.
I also think writing and knowingly distributing malware should be punishable by 10 years, or caning--or 10 years of caning. Bastards.
While playing in the orchestra of a nearby university, I noticed that, while there were quite a few computers around, every single computer in the music building which I saw, and it doesn't matter whether the computers were in an office, or belonged to students or faculty, every single computer was a Mac. Both laptops and desktops were from Apple. I'm not kidding. It was both surprising and gratifying. The library is another matter but in the music building, Mac's reign.
"they are a place to learn the computer (and other) skills you need so you can get along in the world when you graduate"
And learning computers means having expose to OSs other than Windows (and Mac), as well as the alternatives to the MS software. Most people don't know what Linux, Dos, OS/2 are. Half the world (even people that are supposed tech support) go 'huh' at the mention of Linux, OS/2, etc.
"someone that's playing around with something that could potentially bring our network down"
I'd be more worried about what's outside the network. My entire school was crippled for weeks from Sasser, Blaster.
"As much as I'd love to get rid of Windows in our schools I can't justify it financially yet."
Linux is free. Although software is lacking a bit.
I go to ohio state, and there seems to be a pretty good balance between windows and mac machines. There are a few computer labs with only macs. there are also some machines running linux there. All the computers Ive come across are running Windows XP or OSX. Thats just in the labs though, I couldnt tell you about any of the servers or anything along those lines...
As an admin for a small all-girls school here I can say that most business types have NO CLUE how much we have to put up with in this environment.
In corporate there is the fear of a pink slip (or even criminal damages), but at a school, the worst that might happen here is that a student loses her computer privs.
This is especially bad in a lab environment though, especially when students may sit at different terminals on any given day.
True... True.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
What no petty bitching about the profliferation of windows into our lives/computers/cat, reasons why everyone should use linux because it offers no added functionality for the average user, just a finger to the capitalist ediface that keeps their overpaid asses in academia or jobs that don't require enough of them so that they can spend sleepless nights producing code for use by companies too cheap to pay their own programmers. I'm shocked.
At NCSU, where I went to school, it was quite the opposite. Just about every computer lab had your choice between Windows (XP usually, sometimes 2k), Mac OS X, or Solaris (running *box). We even had a linux computer lab with our own linux distro (Red Brick Linux).
:-(
I wish I hadn't flunked out
Jay | http://oldos.org
hey, im from a 900 person school down in austrlia and the only computers we have are Mac's.
We hate them, they crash, are locked down too tight and are very slow, even though they are fully updated and well maintained as the latest models
I dont see what you are complaining about Having all our computers relplaced by windows would be a dream come true. Not only are the better to use but they are better to learn on simply because 97% of all computers in the workplace are windows.
I can't see a reason in the world why you would want macs oer PC's. Virus and hacking are the schools tech peoples problem. So what have you to complain about?
Ya, damn them for training people on the computers that nearly every one of them will be using in the real world.
Mark me down if you want, but grow up.
You can actually get eMacs for $625 each if you buy them in 8-packs (which a school is obviously in a position to do), or $600 if you buy one without a CD-ROM drive. I believe bulk orders of low-end eMacs go for about $550 a pop.
I will be a senior at LD. Ever since our resident computer expert (and Computer Science teacher) retired (the only computer literate teacher on staff as well as open-source and linux advocate)the school has fallen into the dictatorship of the little-hitler we refer to as the "network-nazi". since the begining of his regime we have fallen victim to shotty LAM computers, windows 2000 / XP and over-the-top web censorship. Not just the type of standard antiporn and illegal stuff type of censorship, but even google, linux.com, /., and sourceforge are blocked out as "potential security risks" This guy is phasing out all the macs and replacing them with mindless win 2k network booting machines. All of us who did any work in the computer classes are dreading the new sadistic changes that are made for this year. If only we had back the carefree days of C++ and redhat. but that was yesterday, and big brother is taking over.
=/\= Captjc =/\=
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
I go to the University of Utah and it is not as bleak a computer situation. I have access to Windows 98/2000/XP, Unix (Solaris), Linux (RedHat)and Mac with OS X. In the CS department, it is about half Linux half Windows XP. In the ECE, we have mainly Unix and Windows and in the open access labs, it is about half Mac and Half Windows. I don't know why everyone is so down on windows though. I have been running fedora for about 6 months on my laptop, and for the most part, I prefer XP for compatibility and availability of software. I don't think Office is terrible at all. I prefer it to openOffice so far. I personally think that macs are great for content creation, but not worth the price. I could set up a nice 4 computer network for the price of a G5. I also don't like not being able to toy with the mac as easily as an intel/amd rig. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux a lot especially for the price, but I don't really hold a grudge against MS either. If you don't like it don't use it. If you can't stand the fact that your school only provides Windows stuff, Transfer.
Leaving is not a bad option. Take what you have learned and go to some place that has sense. You are better off some place where people don't force stupid things like Word Docs and choice of OS on you. M$ force is a sign of much larger issues of clueless belligerence and a sheep like following of bullies.
Since September 11th all the assholes have come out to play. They have used the panic to push all manner of stupid agendas. M$ monopoly in the name of "security" is one of those really dumb agendas.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
At the CS department of the University of Helsinki where I study they have mostly Linux/Windows dual-boots and some Linux-only machines. So I guess we are quite fortunate, compared to some of you.
:)
Linux-orientation is not a surprise though, because Linus Torvalds graduated from here.
Yes, that seems to be the case at my school, as well. We moved from strictly Macs (running MacOS 8 then MacOS 9), to only PCs (running Windows 2000, but switching to XP Pro)- except for four G5s in our journalism office. Odd, and unfortunate- however, I prefer PCs to Apples, so I don't mind THAT much...
- Code Dark
Well, here at KTH all our machines dualboots Windows 2000 and Fedora Core 2 and most courses dealing with computers are held in a Linux environment. This school has come a long way in the Linux transition. Of course, there is a need for Windows, but it's quite limited as we use Linux on a daily basis and it has progams for almost all tasks needed.
When I joined my school in 1999, they had an award-winning Mac network. By the time I left this year, the only Mac in the place was the video editing Powerbook locked away in a little room. They bought 30 brand-new green iMacs (this was then) and a year later, chucked them, and bought Viglens running Windows. Phh.
Politics is derived from two words - poly, meaning many, and tics, meaning small blood-sucking insects.
Believe it or not most schools do think about the real real tco on most purchases. My school recently replaced all the monitors on campus in all the labs. They went from crt's to lcd's ... the power bill will pay for it with in the life of the lcd.
That doesn't explain the mac's though really cause for some things the school doesn't care about tco. It really cares about what the school needs. What most schools need is what the teachers want. If your school doesn't have macs at all it is because your teachers don't request them . Most schools purchase on the department level. If the department wants it, it can order it.
You do realize no school is going to roll a Linux distro school wide right? I don't mean to be an ass here but lets face reality? Could you see your administration doing that?
Didn't think so.
Seriously, you have to choose a better school. If your computer experience / training is limited to Microsoft products only - you'll quickly find yourself in the lower end of jobs, as described here:h tml
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/35271.
My company (60000 employees worldwide) will not employ any it person with MS only skills. You can forget employment with Novell, Oracle and IBM since they're switching to Linux.
Unfortunately, it would seem that your school is preparing you for unemployment.
At Umass Amherst there seems to be a mix of Windows/Mac/PC. Of course, the majority of systems on campus are PCs running windows, but there are quite a few mac labs.
In fact, OIT provides quite a bit of support for Mac users. (in the off chance it's actually needed).
There are also a couple Linux labs in the CSci dept.
...it's the culture. When I was teaching computer science to middle school students I offered an advanced course for the really talented kids - about a dozen in any school year. In this course one of the things I taught them to do was to install and configure Linux, as well as to do some light programming in C and Perl on the machines. This was just one part of the class, but I thought it was an important one.
The school district, in it's infinite wisdom, not only decided that I couldn't install Linux on any regular working machines, but that it wouldn't even fork over the money to buy a single Linux package. Some members of the administration fought tooth and nail to ban this part of the course altogether, claiming that Linux was "the tool of hackers" and that I was training my kids "to break the law". One even went so far as to claim I was "brainwashing" my kids by teaching them things "they shouldn't be learning". Morons.
Apparently the MS message that Linux was evil had gotten through to the more gullible staff. Combined with the fact that by the end of the year these kids could run circles around most of the IT folks - and certainly around any teacher or administrator - and the program wasn't the least bit popular, except with the kids.
In order to do this part of the course at all I had to take broken machines, find the good parts among them, and construct new working machines from those parts. Okay, no problem, I just made it a section of the course. Good experience for the kids to build their own computers.
After that I had to buy my own copies of Linux (for decent manuals - beats trying to explain man pages to 11-year-olds), as well as extra copies of Unix texts (to show them where Linux had it's roots), C texts, and Perl texts. Quite a chunk of change.
But I was insistent and at least a couple dozen kids walked away with an education in something other than how to use Word or Excel on Windows. Unfortunately when I left my entire built-from-scratch Linux lab was scrapped and replaced with Windows installs, despite the fact that the Linux machines were far more reliable than the Windows ones and that the kids had come to prefer them.
It isn't just that Windows is the most common operating system. It's also because most IT personnel in school systems wouldn't know Linux if it up and bit them in the ass, and because the teachers and administrators don't trust students who can do something they can't using an operating system they don't understand and have been told is the training ground for evil hacker-types.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Disclaimer: I realize that this is likely to get flamed, as happens in any Mac vs. Windows PC debate. If you think it's really worth your time to flame... well, it's your time. =)
I found this /. article interesting because earlier today I was looking though a site I recently discovered on this very subject -- schools switching from Macs to PCs and not being able to give a rational justification for it.
I personally have worked in two different school districts who haved phased out Macs for the same silly reasons... "businesses use Windows so kids should too" and "we're on a budget so we need to purchase computers that are inexpensive [i.e. not taking TCO of Windows machines into consideration]." John Droz, the guy responsible for macvspc.info, has referenced over 500 articles debating Macs vs. PCs, mainly focusing on arguments of which platform should be used by school districts. While he obviously has a Mac bias, he brings up a lot of very good points (parts summarized below since most of us don't have time to read).
For the TCO argument, Droz suggests that district IT managers make a table and list all aspects relevant to operation in a school district, and then fill in estimated costs for Windows or Mac, including (at least) the following criteria:
Droz also recommends that IT managers write a list of "discernible benefits" of Windows PCs over Macs:
This will really give a school district a much better idea of whether it's worth it to "standardize" on Windows (i.e. eliminate all else). See his article on this subject.
On the "students should use Windows because businesses do" argument, Droz agrees that students should become familiar with Windows in school, but suggests that Macs with Virtual PC would be a more cost-effective solution because it's two computers in one, for a very small per-computer investment in VPC. However, Droz goes on to disprove the claim that students should use Windows PCs exclusively because businesses do. One argument is that businesses and schools are significantly different environments and have much different purposes:
He also argues that while Windows may be dominant now, there's no telling what OS a student will end up using in business. I would be remiss to not personally mention the gradual rise of the popularity of Linux as it becomes more mainstream and familiar to the masses. Let's say Linux reaches a 10 percent OS marketshare by the time a student graduates from college, and the student gets hired by a company that uses a Linux distro. Does it really matter that he/she learned a different OS in school? To some extent, yes, but the GUI is so familiar that it's not at all hard to get used to it. So why force kids to use Windows?
If you're interested in the subject of school conversion to Windows, I highly recommend
the JoshMeister on Security
..., my school, is mostly Linux and UNIX (Solaris, to be exact). Sure.. we've got some Windows machines for some of the civil engineers (Who CAN'T build a bridge?), but I would say the ratio is almost 4 to 1. We've even got a few supercomputers in the building which certainly aren't running Windows!
What is your penile percentile?
Let's face it: these "technical" schools aren't the best place to find people who want more than to learn how to use computers enough to find themselves a comfortable job; that's what these schools are for. He may be able to find a few of these people at his school, but I wouldn't count on it.
City Technology Colleges are a long running thorn in the British Education system, set up by the previous (conservative) government in the late 80's the current (labour) government tried to abolish them but came up against a lot of resistance so decided to create their own version known as 'City Academies'.
To cut a long story short I attended a CTC (Dixons CTC to be precise) and the schools are not in any way designed to just get people a "comfortable job", roughly 90% of pupils go on study at university (not work in supermarkets as most UK school leavers seem to do). They actively promote wider thinking and encourage pupils to look behind whats visible and learn more than would be expected in mainstream schools. In my experience a shortage of students (and, to some extent, staff) willing, and wanting, to delve into IT aspects there is not.
I'm of the opinion that computers pc and macs need to co exist. Also different operating systems needs to be accessible to all students. using this wide choice students can choose for themselves.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
The number of working hours scales with the number of operative systems. Its better to spend the time making one OS work well than to divide the time between two.
I'm a tech for Cal Poly University, and I'll tell you some of the issues we're facing right now. We support 20,000 users and are currently moving everyone over to the Oracle Collaboration Suite from the now unsupported formerly-HP-but-now-Oracle OpenMail/OpenTime system. Now, what can OCS do with Outlook that nothing else can do? OCS doesn't use MAPI but uses a propietary connector that lets your (collaborative) calendar, email, PDA, and phone--yes, analog phone--be synced to each other always. You can call a number and have your email or calendar read to you, make the changes to your schedule, and your coworkers can see your updated schedule on their Palm. Is this a big deal when you work for the State of California and need accessability (not to mention functionality) for ALL 20,000 users?
Can you tell me of a Linux/Mac solution that can do that? If there is one, I'm all for it. But in this world, the vendors choose the playing field, the powers that be choose to play the game, and we just have to go with it. Changes can only be made from the top down, not the bottom up.
It's not about the hardware or the O/S, its about what software runs on said hardware and O/S.
Most educational software in the UK is Windows based. It used to be BBC micro based, as that was what most schools had.
Now everyone is using Windows they write the software for it.
What we need is for the major providors of the software (Research Machines in the UK), need to provide software for something other than WIndows. BUT the problem is they have no commercial incentive to retrain all their programmers in A.N.Other language as all their customers are running Windows so....we have a chicken and egg problem.
Personally I think they should be using some a little more vendor neutral like Java, but I don't work for RM so....
I note that RM's internal systems for running the schools firewalls etc etc all run *nix as the sysadmins have a clue (tm).
If only it were so easy. Decisions about IT in schools are usually out of the hands of the teachers and the teachers have very little say. My mother is head of a business studies department in a Scottish school. It's amazing the kind of rubbish they have to use and put up with. You will find it very difficult to effect change from the grass roots. Someone higher up the educational food chain, usually at school governor level or above, needs to know someone who works for someone who knows about these things in an official capacity. For example, if you were the head teacher of the school or a governor or someone high up in the local education authority who knew someone who was high up in an IT company you might get listened to. Believe me, we've been chipping away from the low end for years...
Stick Men
In England, secondary school lasts either 5 years or 7 depending on whether you take A-Levels. In Scotland, secondary school lasts either 4, 5 or 6 years depending on which exams you take, and how old you are (you can not leave until you are 16 or there abouts). Things are changing in the Scottsh system these days. It's all different to when I left 12 years ago.
Stick Men
Public terminals are used for what? Surfing the web? Word processing? Writing papers and doing spreadsheets?
If I were a school administrator, and I had to buy 1000 public computers for use by the students, and I had to choose between a $500 dell and a $1500 MAC, which do you think I am going to choose?
Task-specific labs are another case where purchasing MACs might be the right thing to do - epecially if it's a graphic design lab or something, but for everyday use, there's no justification for spending more than is necessary to accomplish the intended, basic tasks.
Macs are definitely better than PCs at some things, but both can run $OFFICE_SUITE faster than you can type, click, or drag.
I feel so sorry for the kids at your school. There is so much wrong there. A computer team to each elitism. The computer as a magic box that's locked down. What do they have to do to get your permission? Tell you how great you are? You do sound like an arogant dickhead who would use that to set the criteria.
How does your lock down policy work wrt vanishing mouseballs or simply cut mouse cords?
Hitler would be so proud of you.
Want a second guess? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'll give you a big reason for the change from Mac. Value. Like it or not, Mac comes at a higher price with a much stricter warranty conditions. It also is more expensive and difficult to find techs to support Mac. Let's face it, The entry level price for a Mac is $800 to $900, for PC it is $300 to $400. I'm not bashing the platform, but too few Mac people have any interest in becoming technical. Because of the ability for a consumer to build their own PC, more PC techs occur naturally.
In The Jerusalem College of Engineering, where I go, all computers are PCs that dual-boot to Windows 2000 and RedHat Linux. Both systems include all development tools needed.
Really, if you can pass me some relevant hyperlinks to this, I'd like some very stern words with my MP. How about we only allow Fords and Rovers on the roads?
Really, the government should be pushing people if anywhere towards Open Office, not away from it. Ideally, they'd opt for HTML, but hey ho.
As for your school, how about starting something like an after school activity involving Linux there? It seems to me that students would get much more from it than Windows in terms of teaching the fundamentals (from one who attended clubs involving BBC micros where you had to write everything).
Our school is dominated by Microsoft. Like you we are a "Technology Collage", and let me just explain the setup. We have computer rooms filled with Duron 800s running Windows XP, with about 30,000 virii on each. If your lucky enough for it not to restart from blaster in the middle of your work, you generaly run out of space on your home directory as some twat decided to install The Sims about 50 times, or AOL. As for the main machines, we have 2 or 3 win2k servers ... which rarely work.
/.) one of my Linux distros. SuSE 9 professional 5 cd, cost me an arm and a leg that did, an offical copy mind you. Got it back a month later, I dont think he actully used it, scratched to fsck and all the jewel cases broken. It wont install now.
.exe, .zip and .rar files being downloaded, .iso is fine, so I can download all my Linux distrobutions :D
And the teachers, I know I shouldn't be saying this but http://www.kirkbalk.org/ - Head of IT's handy work. Ahh, the joy of Frontpage, the joy I feal when it doesn't display propperly, if at all, on any of my slackware boxes at home. The head of IT computer knowlage stops at about Office 97. I know I am just really getting into computers and I may not know a lot, but Jesus Christ how did he got his job?
I once offered the school techs (who wont be reading this, they read go on
Actully, the only thing I do like about this school is its internet connection. Although they have blocked
----- irc://irc.slashnet.org/#vendetta
all the machines at our local Uni have WinNT or 2K on them, but each is equiped with a copy of Hummingbird Exceed, and everyone gets an account on one of the Solaris boxes.
Essentially, I just used WinNT as the container for a dumb terminal, and it works great. The only thing I had trouble doing was watching MPEGs; remote X sessions just don't update at 25fps.
When i was in college, all the machines techies like me had access to were linux machines.
There were some windows machines, but they weren't used at all by guys in computer science, only by chemestry guys.
All our CS projects were done under linux because seriously, can u study CS on windows ??
Obviously if you wanna teach C or C++ in college you'll use gcc, not visual studio; and if u wanna teach basic networking you'll use tcpdump or ethereal not a commercial sniffer.
I would definetly suck to be in a so called technical school were the don't seem to know about unix.
I've been selling computers to large corps and the govt for about 10 years now. In the corporate world the objective is to improve productivity, reduce risk and control costs. So we use strategies like:
* platform standardization - it lowers costs, enhances security and reduces downtime at the cost of having the right computer for the job (just ask they guy in marketing how well illustrator runs on his celeron dell).
* standardization of software - the reduces support costs and makes standardized training possible. This is at the cost of using the right tool for the job at hand.
* Lock down security - once we know a job description, we restrict access massively.
It makes me want to scream when I see schools implement these strategies because they are in essence dumbing down the system. Yes, the school can save a little money, but having platform diversity is important: people need to know how to work with computers -- and you don't learn that by using a single platform. You also don't need total lockdown security - students need to learn how the systems really work... and if everything is totally locked down... you can't do that. That's one thing I love about unix like platforms - you can have a lot of security and still leave a lot of room to learn with the student.
Standardized software is my biggest gripe in schools. Software is a tool. Why restrict students to exploring just one tool? What's wrong with letting students use open office for a term paper - just submit in PDF... How about letting students do that slide set for their speech class with flash instead of powerpoint? Or why not let budding graphic designers try freehand vs. illustrator vs. corel.
-- $G
All we have is Macs :-(
;-)
We have 1100 XServes...and around 600 G4's...and numerous other G3s.
I think we like Apple
I attend Kent State University and at first glance it would look like there are windows machines everywhere. But this is not the case. The entire journalism department uses Mac's along with the art department. The CS Department looks like it had win boxes, but all the machines have cgywin on them and connect to remote linux servers (about 10 of them). Viri don't do too much damage to the systems either, as the computers cannot connect to the server without having a special distibution of McAfee running on the machine. The student are only given user rights too, so even if they do get a virus, it won't be able to do as much damage as it might have been capable of. Now if only the CS department would let me use my memory stick......
It's not so much that PCs are cheaper than Macs; it's that the price of PCs drops so much faster. Grant money, applied for months in advance, ends up buying hardware for hundreds of dollars less than originally written for... of course, the money isn't refunded to the teacher or school but, instead, is retained by central administration or, as is my case, the city mayor. I've had grants delayed 6 and 9 months just to take advantage of the hundreds of dollars per unit that can turn into a nice slush fund.
Sadly, the tech folks, themselves trained on PCs, attack anyone who uses the word "iBook" in a sentance as if they are a frothing fanatic and, hence, a "Michael Moorean" enemy of the state - funny part: I can't tell you how many times my PowerBook has done things on our network that the PCs can't.
Number munchers!
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
This is the cycle I have seen. Mac school needs PCs in business office. Eventually hires PC type person to serve them and a few other administrators. PC person is far more knowledgable about network stuff and appears to be doing more work. Less technically literate Mac person is pushed out when they tell everyone they have to buy all new software and hardware for OS X. Windows network lives happily for a year...... Virus, patch managment, and other strains dramatically elevate cost and make everyone frustrated. Four new tech staff are brought in to manage the situation. Linux leaning tech staff member aquires Powerbook to run some OSS. Avocates and gets macs back in the school. Macs slowly claw their way back in.
We are a progressive charter high school in Northern Minnesota. We have Windows, Mac and Linux availble for our community. 90% of our new purchases will be towards linux. Given the correct context - cost savings, virus free(relativly) and open source - the students have embraced linux whole heartedly
When the decision about what to replace existing systems with came up, this guy was totally, unequivocally behind Windows boxes. He knows them, he's hacked around with them because he's had to. The banks of Macs in the library, which had never been any real problem, got replaced with new PCs. Computer guy spends all his time maintaining those. It's a very good think he's so familiar with them.
Oh, and the whole new library system is Windows-based, and it took the librarians more than half of last year to learn to cope with it. Lots of bitching about that when I'd volunteer there.
The professional educators with the library degrees wouldn't have made those choices. We made them indirectly, by selecting for a person who had the most experience dealing with annoying little computer problems. He chose computers whose problems he knew very thoroughly.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Uses everything. We have dumb terminals (Which desperatly need to be upgraded), Mac in the graphics lab, and pc all over. I'm still pushing to have specialized labs so we can have linux systems for desktops. They are wanting to move to a PC environment here, but I can tell you that PC environments are hell on support. If a major virus hits I can loose a week of constructive work just taking care of then. But what can you do. Academia isn't a money pot and you have to make do with what you have or the special deals you are handed.
With the faculty, the preference goes by department, and most of the departments that have used Macs are still using Macs (with the notable exception of Education). The best I feel I can do here is to push hard to maintain an open infrastructure, where Windows, Mac OS, and open-source operating systems can equally access all services... and argue against the decision some institutions are making to just mandate Windows-only in the name of simplifying support and infrastructure costs.
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
I'm in K12 ed, and if I had my way, I would have Macs in all the elem schools, Windows/MS in the middle schools, and Linux at the high schools. Sadly, such a proposition is far too expensive for school systems to acheive. It is bottom line rule-of-thumb, that it is exponentionally more expensive to run more than one OS infrastructure. From needing gateways to connect to dissimilar systems, extra training each time a staff switches from one school to another, extra admin, extra licenses, have to by software in every flavor, etc.(like buying a Math Blaster Cd for Windows, then having to buy it again for the Mac) It all adds up to a lot. Administration, in any and all buildings, must absolutely run on the same system, end of story on that one.
I've always been of the notion that if a school has a lot of macs, then gather them up and at least put all in one or two labs in one building. Makes maintaining and admin much easier if they are all in one spot.
Alas, standard K12 could never afford my vision. But I do think higher ed should be more responsible in making sure that students learn that there is more than one type of computer out there.
In a nutshell, the use of computers in K-12 education varies considerably. Not surprisingly, the technology equipment as well as networking connectivity and all the other facilities are in direct proportion to local taxable income. Where people are employed, the local school system is better equipped than where unemployment and underemployment prevail. So local governing bodies, "Its the jobs Stupid" - legislate, regulate, and invest to improve safe employment for your local residents and the resulting revenues will raise ALL the ships.
With regard to being assimilated into the Borg, er Micrsoft collective, it is a windows world. Despite Apple's initial educational enticements, their equipment is just too expensive to deploy except in special applications like art classes. I saw many many Apple IIs stacked to be discarded, but very few Macs being brought in.
Linux usage at the time (2000) was nonexistant. As then, it continues to be largely a computerists intellectual persuit, though Linux usability/maintainability continue to improve. It doesn't seem deployable on a large scale in it's present state in the K-12 environment where undisciplined and sometimes hostile users are present.
Ok, let me start by saying don't give me that $799 eMac crap. (We've seen many of them break just after their 1 year warranty and cost more to repair than replace.) Macintosh hardware that is comparable to a $1100 AMD PC simply costs too much for schools to keep wasting their money on. $2800 for a G5 Macintosh is rediculous. Oh, here comes the flames - "But its 64-bit and its the fastest processor on the planet." Yeah, right, I've run both if its the fastest processor what is Apple doing in OS X to make it run so slow?
Working in support I'll tell you that supporting 2 desktop hardware platforms is a pain. If Apple would get smart and port OS X to AMD64 then we can talk. Until then the mantra of use Macs just because we'll keep a different OS around than the bloated buggy MS crap doesn't hold water.
My school has been watching for desktop linux to gain more of a foothold and would love to run it instead of Microsoft Windows. The SuSE/Novell solution looks phenominal. However, until the educational software that we rely on runs on Linux we're stuck using Windoze.
So Apple fanatics/cultists/elitists how about it, instead of filling the Internet whining that Macintosh are being replaced, how about contacting Apple letting them know that you'd buy OS X and use it if it was on the AMD64 processor. Let them hear loud and clear that your companies/schools/etc. would all consider using Apple OS X. If they didn't need to pay for overpriced non-competitive hardware made by one manufacturer with no competition.
The time for cross platform MacOS - OS X is now.
Title: Software Monoculture in Schools?
> What I'm bothered about is that when they did this they completely eliminated the Mac population
Do you consider Mac software? Or are you lost?
> Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?
Again, you are mixing your apples and oranges.. PCs can [easily] run Linux as well as many other OSes. Microsoft is not a maker of PCs. Perhaps a better title would have been "Platform monoculture?" Or "I want my Mac?"
Must-not-watch TV!
It's no more stable, properly configured, than a properly configured Win 2K box.
I have two properly configured, well maintained boxes, each about a year old that I use for work. One is Win2K, one is OSX. I reboot the OSX machine whenever there is an update that requires it. I reboot the Win2K machine every day. Why is this? Because when you actually run real world programs on them, like photoshop, indesign, firebird, ssh client, cvs client, acrobat, mail program, calendar program, scripting environment, etc. the Win2K box gets slower and slower as the day progresses as memory leaks catch up with the available RAM. Windows XP, is a downgrade in that it does not seem to clean up any better, and it uses more of the RAM to start with.
Macs are certainly more expensive for certain tasks, but given the choice between OSX and any version of Windows (my choice due to available applications) Windows loses spectacularly. For linux machines that sit in your basement as servers or windows machines that sit in your basement as, err, whatever, they may be fine, but they are unsuitable for a production workstation.
before 2001 information systems engineering students studied at both the computer science and electronic engineering departments. this was great because we had access to the comp. science lab's with around 200-300 machines running both linux and windows 2000, which they still do.
when we moved to the EEE department however all we had access to were win2k machines and a handful of solaris boxes. after a while the department set aside only 6 machines to run linux. unfortunately they dont take it that seriously and all but 1 machine was unusable. now in 2004 they've decided to remove all the solaris machines, upgrade all the windows boxes to xp (which they sometimes struggle with) and the last time i checked there were 3 linux machines sitting in a corner of the smallest computer lab in the building.
when i asked why we cant have more linux machines (part of our degree focuses a lot on unix) i was told 'we dont have the support for it', i was then basically told 'why dont you just use a windows machine'.the problem is so bad i have to resort to bringing in my own box for software assignments as any code i write seems to refuse every attempt to compile on the (outdated) linux boxes and forget about the windows machines. its a pretty sorry state of affairs...
jaymz
I had the same experience, as I have gone from Windoze to a Linux+Mac environment. When my windows pc came up for replacement, I requested the standard campus issue Mac in my office, but they have decided that Macs can be replaced with PCs but not the other way around as the TOC (purchase price + maintenance) is lower. I argued intensely that this totally misses the point because it does not factor in software savings (I use only open source), virus management, networking issues, workflow changes, and personal work style. Finally, the Dean's office sanctioned me a Mac while the tech dept keeps screaming bloody murder. One stand at a time, thats what its going to take to get better tech environments - so dont give up!
If those things aren't showing up then your e-mail messages aren't being properly formatted. It reads header information until it hits a crlf which is what is supposed to divide the header from the message body.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
As your school to install Software Update Services(SUS). Free to run on windows servers running IIS (also free).
Unfortunately, you need the server (not free) and CAL's (also not free) to use this product. In my classroom, we went with Samba for filesharing and authentication just for this reason.
Truly, tho, once you've installed a cron-job to execute yum -y update nightly you wish to God you could convert all the classroom boxes to Linux. Unfortunatly that's an administration directive ("they must know MS Word if they're going to be employable!" -).
*sigh*. It's the concepts of wp we are teaching (center, bold, select range, etc), not the specific button sequence of a specific program in which to do those commands. That's aping, not learning.
Here in the Lake Washington School District there is a "technology comittee". It's make up is primarily Windows users and we have "incentives" from MS or ex-MS people. The decision was made to blow away the Macs and switch to PCs. So the NT systems came in. Unfortunately someone did'nt do their homework and most of the educational programs did not run on NT so we had a whole year where there was no computer use basically. This finally sort of got resolved. What blows me away is that we don't have the books, extra teaching tools, and personnel but we have spanky new PCs. Priorites seem very whacked. In a world where mostly everything is done through a browser, with a climate of PC, MAC, and Linux...the school moved to the mono PC culture - the absolute lowest common denominator. What realy burns me is that Apple is such an innovator and I think that showing this to kids would be a good thing. In my humble opinion I don't think that Microsoft's monopolistic behaviour, legal judgements, stifling of innovation, quality of software, and use of massive quantities of "slave labour"/outsourcing are good models to hold up in front of kids...I'd much rather have the "Apple Story" of history, innovation, and high design held up to them.
I agree with that windows isn't the only possibility, but don't macs cost a lot more?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
When I was going to school we had a general computer 'lab' that was 100% MicroShaft - DOS and Windoze - and a large bay of printers connected to this network. This 'lab' was generally used by the Liberal Arts students, as well as the Computer Information Systems students (there were SQL clients available on the DOS machines to connect to the 'scratch' database servers used for these classes).
Since I was in the computer science cirriculum, I also had access to the computer science lab that consisted of various Sun Sparc pizza boxes and servers - as well as a bank of dialin modems (this was before the advent of DSL/highspeed internet access), with which I could work on and submit my projects remotely. The Sun workstations came equipped with Mozaic - and the first web browsing I did was in that lab.
At the time, there were no publicly accessible MACs on campus, although several professors did have MACs for their own use.
I am not sure about today, but I would imagine the Suns have probably been replaced by Linux machines in most cases - but the Windows boxes probably dominate for general purpose use. Most students probably have their own machines, so network access is probably more of a factor than having labs for this purpose - but I could be wrong (what is standard practice at most institutions today?)
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The computer team wasn't my idea, it's a very common thing in high schools that want their interested kids to learn more what than the standard curriculum teaches. In Michigan, a computer component is mandated by the state for every student as part of their graduation requirements. The kids are learning lots of things, not just how to type letters. The kids that want to experiment with things like this have to have my ok that it won't affect our network or they can't do it. That's all. I don't refuse based on ignorance or insecurity, in fact I have never refused a request like this because we take appropriate precautions. And our network has *never* been down due to a virus.
Arrogance is not a word people that know me use to describe me unless they're complaining about the rules. Unlike you, I don't need someone to tell me how good I am. I know what my capabilities are and are not. I have a lot of respect for people more knowledgable than me, and there are a lot of them. My abilities do not affect the curriculum or school policies. Those are set by a group of educators, administrators and I have a very small amount of input on the technical policies aspect. We don't rule by dictatorship, we rule by committee. Sometimes that's frustrating to me but that's how schools are. I tend to err on the cautious side, sometimes people don't like that. But I get heat from hundreds of people if the network goes down for any reason. Deal with pressure like that on a daily basis and then come whining to me.
If someone steals a mouse ball or damages a system for any reason we don't fix it for 6 weeks. We also replace broken or damaged (missing mouse balls) mice with optical mice. Administrative decision, not mine. This policy has almost stopped all computer vandalism. When an administrator shuts down a whole lab for a week and kids have to come in during lunch or before or after school to type and research, it makes them really angry at the kid(s) who did it. And we have the backing of our parents for these policies. Peer pressure works far better than all the rules in the world when kids mess things up.
Say what you want, you have the right to your opinion. But please base it on facts, not anti-establishment, rebellious fluff.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
I read in the report that you have used 40-wire IDE cables for the ATA100 devices. ATA100 devices definitly need 80-wire cables to give optimal performance with a 40-wire cable you get ATA33. Ofcourse it mainly affects the burst rate as the sustained transfer lies much lower.
...a win2k box that needs daily rebooting? for chrissakes, this is JUST NOT RIGHT.
even for the mac/linux zealots, you must see this is COMPLETE BOLLOCKS.
"unsuitable for a production workstation"? um, riiiiiight.
don't even DARE mod this guy insightful, he's trolling.
unfortunately my particular department has gotten rid of the sun ultra's and doestnt seem to care too much about the very few linux machines. they do however have a crap load of windows xp boxes that struggle to run the bloody thing, it's all just a show for the new undergrads coming in, they can say 'ooh, look windows xp, how up to date...'. anyway, to answer your question imperial have a very strict policy regarding jacking your own box/laptop into their network, its basically a no-no. you can go through a vetting process whereby you'll be given an IP and allowed to plug into certain access points. apart from that, a zip disc comes in very handy :)
in the computer science department the situation regarding actually physically plugging into the network is much the same, however, they do have a wireless access point so it is possible to surf on your own machine without much trouble. network access points are most important in the hall's of residence, but then thats only for the first year undergrads.
jaymz
In fact, you are not alone, and your school is already a special one. Why? Because you had had the chance to tastes Mac!:P As you told us, you school is the kinda technologically oriented school but many, many others are not. Somehow having the adequate no. of computers in other schools would have been the dreams of many. And you ask if there is a OS monoculture outthere. The answer is of course yes. Most commercially available software can only function in windows and, you know, many local admins, like my school's, are not professionally trained enough to get along with Mac, Linux, let alone BSD. In fact many students out there are also not prepared to work with OS other than win 9x/2k. More precisly, while you asking for OS multiculture, they would just ask "what good would it be to have more OSs?" The public just dun apppreciate this motive. What can we do???
One would expect something like Linux....I suggest sending a copy of The Flickering Mind for all of the Administration (Normal and tech).