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Free Geek Robbed
Ellen Wilson writes, "Portland, Oregon, non-profit Free Geek, which turns old PCs into Linux boxen, has been robbed of about $4500 worth of hardware. Portlanders are asked to keep an eye out for suspicious sales of Ubuntu laptops." This blog post has some details of labeling that could help to spot the stolen laptops. BoingBoing picked up the story and added that another local outfit, the Independent Publishing Resource Center, which supports Portland's zine scene, had been hit on the previous night.
I was playing in a band and we went on tour. We stopped in Birmingham, Alabama. After we played we were waiting for the follow up bands to finish and someone broke into our van and stole my laptop and someone else's laptop. They stole 2 of our cell phones too. I figured wtf, I'll call one of them. The robbers actually answered the phone and after about 30 minutes we convinced them to bring us the laptops back. We met in a dark alley and walked slowly with our hands in the air while on the phones to each other. I held up a couple 20's with some 1's and we did the swap. When I booted my laptop, it went into recovery mode as though someone turned it on, saw the linux boot up screen and thought, "wtf is this crap?! Jeez... I can't sell this... Hmm... the phone is ringing." and decided to try to get money for the crazy system from the owner.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
"suspicious sales of Ubuntu laptops"
So, ANY sales of Ubuntu laptops?
In other news tonight, Microsoft kingpin Steve Ballmer was arrested in connection with the theft of several thousand dollars worth of laptop PCs configured to run the competing Linux operating system. As he was led away by police, witnesses reported Ballmer saying, "It has to stop somewhere! Won't someone *please* think of the children!" Ballmer then reportedly munbled over and over, "Damned pinguins, damned pinguins," until police took him away.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Hi there,
I do volunteer work at FreeGeek. I teach the command line class once a week.
Freegeek does more than just hand out boxes. They teach people how to make the boxes. They teach people how to use the boxes. They empower people to fix their own stuff.
They're not always successful mind you. It's still a wonderful endeavor.
Right here I'd insert a "Teach a man to fish" line... but you get the idea.
-Tony
Allowing new words to the language embiggens us all. Besides that, it's a perfectly cromulent word.
Your post reminds me of teachers I had in high school who had the mentality that we were "just kids" who couldn't be expected to learn without being forcefed. Poor does not equal stupid; give people the opportunity to learn and they will surprise you.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Nine out of ten thieves agree, Linux is not ready for prime time.
Loose lips lose spit.
It is too bad you got graded a troll, but this is an honest question:
First off, we use Linux because it is the only possibility. Free Geek distributes over 100 computers a month. All of these have Ubuntu and Open Office (and many other programs) on them. How much would Windows XP and Microsoft Office cost to license for each computer? 500 dollars each? That would add up to 50,000 dollars a month. Free Geek doesn't have 50,000 dollars a month, period, and if we did, we probably wouldn't choose to spend it on software license fees. It could also be possible, I suppose, to beg for some sort of non-profit site license, but that would require a very strict accounting procedure. At Free Geek, the operating system is installed over the network. To install Windows, we would have to move to installing from master CDs, which we would then have to keep under lock and key, and keep a strict tallying of where systems were going. In addition, while the situation with hardware at Free Geek isn't what it used to be (the original system specs were for medium range Pentium-Is, which could only support Debian), it is also true that Ubuntu runs on our available hardware the way any Windows Operating System couldn't. Next year, we will probably be sending out systems around a Gigahertz with 256 Megs of RAM...something that Windows Vista will almost certainly not run well on.
Second, even if somehow Microsoft said we could put out as many computers as we wanted for free, I have never seen evidence that Windows is intrinsically simpler than Linux. Yes, people are used to it. But it is not like there is some awesomely hard concepts that Ubuntu Linux throws on the average user that Windows does not. Yes, working in command line is hard (but not something that I haven't taught dozens of people to do in a half hour or so), but on a modern distribution, you are only working on the command line for certain special uses. The things that you are going to fix on the command line are not things you are going to easily fix in Windows, either. Anyway, I have seen many people, many of them quite marginal in terms of education and past experience, pick up the simpler side of Linux in a few hours. I have also taught dozens or hundreds of people,from the age of 12 to the age of 82, many with no computer experience, how to take apart and rebuild computers, and how to install and use Linux on it. Yes, some people still prefer Windows afterwards, but I have yet to see a gigantic reaction of shocked incomprehensibility to Linux. It does take some effort to learn, but it isn't impossible.
Basically, the only real reason people change over to Windows from a Free Geek computer is to play games.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I just wonder how many people are willing to do 20 hours for something that would only require half that number of hours to buy outright in an average-wage job. Do you get a lot of takers?
You're making the mistake of assuming that earned income = disposable income. Many of our volunteers are there because that $50 they *could* spend to get one of our computer systems has to go towards putting food on the table, paying rent, and so on instead; saving up such an amount of money could take weeks, and it still means parting with hard-earned cash.
The volunteer labor isn't of the unpleasant "scrub the toilets, sawdust pools of vomit" variety at all. We teach our volunteers the basics of how computers work, starting with identifying each component and explaining how it all works together. Then we put them in tear down, where they remove most components from to-spec machines (or strip under-spec machines to bare metal), sort components into bins for subsequent testing, and put scrap plastic and metal aside for recycling. This process is supervised by a staff member, and everybody seems to enjoy it: taking imposing devices apart seems pretty cathartic to most of the folks who partake in the workflow, and they seem to like asking questions about why various components look different and function differently. After this, they get moved into testing, where they plug components into known working hardware and use our pre-determined testing procedures and separate the good from the bad (which, of course, also get recycled). Phase three is where they plug known working components together in a case and then proceed to install the operating system, with our help. We also teach them how to use the machine and offer free walk-in support if they encounter any problems. Nobody is stuck in a given process for any particular number of hours: rather, we let people do what they like doing most, but of course encourage them to do everything and learn as much as possible.
If you think all that's not worth 20 hours, that's your business. There are plenty of people who believe otherwise, and we welcome their presence, questions, and curiosity.