Slashdot Mirror
When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education
jamie found this blog post up on the HeliOS Project, which brings Linux to school kids in Austin, TX. It makes very clear some of the obstacles that free software faces in the classroom. It seems a teacher came upon a student demonstrating Linux to other kids and handing out LiveCDs. The teacher confiscated the CDs and wrote an angry email to HeliOS's founder, Ken Starks: "Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. ... This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..." Starks pens an eloquent reply, which contains a factoid I have not seen mentioned before: "The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line. Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union. Of course you are going to 'recommend' Microsoft Windows."
I don't think it's worth attributing the teacher's support of Windows to some kind of fanatical support of union directives. From postal workers to teachers, truckers to plumbers, in my admittedly anecdotal experience I've found that the average professional has very little clue about his union's sources of funds and its goals.
What none sense; spending education dollars on MS products rather than say remedial spelling lessons for adults who are over reliant on spell check.
All I can say is wow... What a completly ignorant twat.
On another note ALL HAIL BILL
it is.
contribute at wikademia
I'm sorry, someone has to say it.
"I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..." Just like XP now.
How are these people allowed near kids? It's rhetorical question, don't bother replying.
[FUCK BETA]
Please provide the said teachers email address so that we can forward our comments - I think as a US taxpayer it is fair....
This is plenty of proof that tax money cannot buy education, and society will be better off once everyone figures that out. People either choose to become educated or not, and no amount of threatening or coaxing someone will change that.
The teacher has nothing to do with the NEA getting money from Microsoft. She's just a low-level drone who's only source of information was maybe an education tech conference she went to and the mainstream media.
A better letter would have pointed out that Linux is being used in industry, in the world's largest companies, the U.S government and so forth and that children should have the skills to compete in the workforce by learning Linux. The whole free software thing should also be explained in the letter throughly, perhaps with a page or two containing a complete idiots guide to the basics of the GPL, etc. Perhaps reprinted from C-Net or some other technology media source.
Anyone else reminded of:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_Needs_Windows_To_Run
Was this real? The letter snippet reads as if the supposed teacher was ranting about drug use or some other evil of society. So much righteous indignation, so little understanding of the real world.
I pity the school system that relies on these characters to educate and "guide and discipline" any child.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.
I can imagine a generation coming out of school believing that "free software" is somehow illegal or immoral. Nicely taught to pay the "computer tax" to Microsoft, which is the only solution.
...can take place on the desktop. M$ and Apple have a hegemony on school tech budgets. We use Linux Terminal Services for general productivity. I have a 2:1 ration to workstations in our school. Thankfully the school admin see the value in a free-as-in-speech approach. With the upcoming belt tightening, large districts will be forced to examine the Linux in schools option carefully. Are we ready to meet the challenge?
Here is a teacher, accusing a student and an Open Source software organization of breaking the law (and no doubt intimating as such to her class) and confiscating the student's property for no valid reason. I believe the teacher is guilty of criminal acts. I also believe she leaves herself and the school board open to civil action. I am not an admirer of the US legal system, but this might be a good time to use it to send a message to the world's ignoramuses that, yes, some software is both good and free.
Debian Edu / Skolelinux
...
Debian Edu
* is a Debian project to make the best distribution for educational purposes.
Skolelinux
is the name of a Debian Pure Blend which is produced by the Debian Edu project.
"Skole" ([skuËl]) is the Norwegian form of "school". Both "skole" and "school" comes from the Latin word "schola".
Goals
* Provide a complete software solution using free software and
* tailored for the needs and use-cases in educational scenarios.
* preconfigured for easy installation (standalone, as well as network-wide rollout).
* easy to use, maintain, and administer.
* supporting your language natively.
* Classify and package all free software related to education.
* Write documentation to describe how to use the various softwares (in an educational context).
* International availability, currently being translated into XX languages
The Long Now Foundation
1. No software is free
2. Computers are just like that - you have to reboot them once in a while.
3. Microsoft got to their dominant position because Windows is simply the best OS evar!
4. Teachers are intelligent people who are a reliable source of information about anything.
I along with many others tried Linux during college...
LSD, pot, Linux... ah, those crazy college days!
I'm yet to encounter an "IT" teacher at school level who knows anything about IT. Great way to prepare our youth for the information age!
I find this instance personally hilarious as education is one of the few areas that I would actively promote the use of linux - only teaching about one operating system is like only showing people how to turn left when teaching them to drive - sure they can get to most places but your REALLY giving them a massive disadvantage!
In the article, this hapless bint (how can we stop people like this getting near children?) says "I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods." I think she has got Linux confused with either (a) LSD or (b) [insert adventurous sexual practice here].
This is probably the finest example of how to not win over support from people outside of the Linux and Open-Source community.
I was kind of surprised to hear of the reaction that the teacher had to a student handing out Linux disks, as I don't know anyone who would take personal offense to trying out that software. Almost reads like a joke, but then again there is Rule 36...
However, I was even more surprised by the response that was given to her claims. Did he honestly think he could be persuasive by being condescending, insulting and, well, just downright mean?? His points are valid, though I think one of them is pure opinion. (I don't think Linux was designed to "free people from Microsoft." I think that it was designed as an alternative to closed-source operating systems in general, which being "freed" from Microsoft Windows is a side effect.) Yet, if that teacher was being a bit harsh, Starks did nothing to quench that fire.
With all of that said, I think that Linux is gaining positive momentum in education and public offices. Naturally, it will be a slow transition, considering most IT departments are not too comfortable with the idea of switching all of their computer network to a Linux-based one (and with good reason). It's getting there, though.
it is amazing how uninformed and ignorant school teachers really are, i think government owned & run schools are as bad as any in washington (run by a bunch of corrupted reprobates) shameful!
:D
on another off topic note i listen to ham radio & pirate radio on a shortwave radio as a hobby, more often i hear ham radio operators mention Linux
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
He sounds just as ignorant about unions as she does about operating systems. Microsoft doesn't "pump" money into the NEA. That's just stupid.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
"No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful."
Oh my goodness! Yes, keep that up, and students might realize they can write software themselves!!! What a horrible message that would send.
What kind of an upside-down world does this teacher live in? It's as if they were complaining that if students got free paper, they might start writing. Or if they got free wood and tools, they might start doing carpentry. Or ... learn to do anything.
"I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows"
BWHAHAHAHA! That was a good one. Not only would they be unlikely to do this, if Microsoft offered free copies of anything they'd probably offer free copies of Vista :-)
It's interesting that some of her statements are not strictly inaccurate. I might even say enlightened, without the enlightenment.
Amen to this. There is always an associated upkeep to software, alluded to by the reply about releasing improvements incrementally.
Kids aren't a commodity, you have to take the rotten apples with the good ones. School teachers are just people who have a lot of different kids to deal with. Imagine grading kids' papers, errors, and half-thoughts for years. I'll cut that person a little slack for what they get paid. Much like my 6th Grade teacher (with a Master's in Psychology) who was at a loss to figure out how to properly spell Chameleon (stuck in the Ca and Ka sections of the Dictionary), people are ignorant about different things. Welcome to the world. I'm surprised she wrote a letter. I saw it as a plea for help worded in a defensive manner. Now she gets educated. The circle is complete.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Does this mean that I have been *gasp!* pirating Kubuntu illegally for the past 6 years???
*frantically starts digging bunker in back yard*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
All hail Windows, and be damned anyone that uses another operating system!
Do school IT departments still think in this day and age that knowing how to use Windows and Microsoft Word makes children some sort of computer genius?
Mid 1980's in the UK, home computers were coming on to the market more, and the school had "IBM compatible" computers, Microsoft was nowhere to be seen. We used what we could run on the machines (or got licences for), not restricted to dogma about which OS to use.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This fuckwit of an arrogant opinionater troll-witch stole private property, libelled a legitimate company and slandered a child in her class.
And all because Linux must be illegal because free software cannot exist and anything trying to pass itself off as free must be illegal and stolen.
So how could ANY response short of a shagging from twelve hot pop stars would have made it possible to persuade her that she's wrong?
Ok, the teacher is misinformed and here email is a bit terse. Still, it was a chance to educate someone and make a friend; instead he chose to pen a rude reply and escalate the battle to the school's administration.
I simply do not understand this attitude - FOSS advocates are trying to gain wider adoption of their software and ideas and yet seem to go out of their way to antagonize anyone who doesn't share their viewpoint.
This could come down to a basic question - what right does a teacher or school have to control student activities in the classroom. My guess is that, if push comes to shove, a court would give them broad latitude in such matters. The teacher has no idea what is on the disks; and the school would naturally be concerned about any lawsuits that might arise over that, so they have a legitimate interest in restricting such activities. All it takes is one CD-Rom with something objectionable to a parent or illegal to paint FOSS and it's supporters as somehow evil and a danger to kids. Not that that is right, but winning and losing these kinds of battles rarely hinges on what is right.
FOSS advocates should ask themselves why MS and Apple are successful in getting their products into schools and adopt their approach - working with teachers, teaching them how to use their products to further classroom activities; in short becoming a partner with them. I know a lot of teachers, and most of them just want to help their students learn, avoid hassles from parents and administrators, struggle with the myriad of laws and other things that impact their ability to teach and really care about the kids they teach. Sure, there are some who are useless but most are just trying to do a good job in a challenging environment.
You do not have to agree with or like the teacher's stance, but to further FOSS goals you need to understand it and determine the best way to overcome it. making an enemy is not, IMHO, the best way to further those goals.
I've found teachers open to FOSS if approached the right way. For example, explaining how OpenOffice/NeoOffice can be used for schoolwork by students so parents don't have to shell out cash for MS Office. Give them a disk, with written instructions on how to set it up to save in an MS format and you've made it easy for them to use and helped build credibility for FOSS
The problem is zealots see everything as a threat or challenge; and believe compromise and cooperation is selling out; and that any differing viewpoint or argument against their approach is either flamebait or a troll (as evidenced by /. moderations).
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Really, you can't win people over by being snide and condescending.
She's wrong.
Your breath is free. You pay noone. Your play is free you can think without paying. You can help your friends without wanting payment in return (if they never pay back, you don't care: they are your friends and you could help. Or they aren't friends, just people who can be useful to you).
So, do you only keep friends as long as their balance in return favours no more than a little bit behind on credits?
You sad muppet.
As a fellow teacher, let me speak in this woman's defense:
As a teacher, and especially as a K-12 teacher, no one has ever asked her to be anything other than an ignorant, time-wasting simpleton bent on convincing the children in her charge that all adults are blathering morons and that education is for douchebags. In fact, I'm pretty sure "Time-Wasting" and "Self-Righteous Ignorance" are required courses in most teacher-training programs.
There is a reason why most people don't learn much until they get into college. College professors have never had to take any classes in the education department.
So cut the lady some slack, folks. She's just doing what she was trained to do.
I love Linux as much as the next geek, however, I can sort of understand her point of view, even if she doesn't represent herself very well. If a kid wants to play with Linux and learn about how the computer works then s/he should do it, but if it prevents the computer from working properly with coursework or software provided by the school, then that could be a problem. I can see how it would be highly annoying to a teacher, who really has better things to do than to support PCs, to have to explain why some document won't display properly, or something won't work exactly as it should on Linux. In a setting where spending any time at all on helping kids with how their laptops work is a huge distraction I can see how encouraging students to install Linux would be a very big disruption. Some will disagree, and it's better than it used to be, but I still wouldn't advise my mother to replace Windows with HeliOS or Ubuntu or any other Linux. The reason people choose Mac and Windows isn't entirely marketing and bundling, it's also because they tend to be easier to get support for - or even for novices to figure out.
I can imagine a generation coming out of school believing that "free software" is somehow illegal or immoral. Nicely taught to pay the "computer tax" to Microsoft, which is the only solution.
No, they just would pay for Linux... nothing is free, you know.
This is my sig.
I hope she told the other teachers to do the same thing.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Rather than being saracstic in his reply, this guy should've offered to educate the teachers into what other options are out there. Instead he's just turned them off and made them more hostile to alternatives.
Since succeeding in the education system requires children to give the answer the examiners expect - rather than the one that is correct, by closing this teacher's mind to other possibilities the Linux guy has made sure that the teacher will not admit coursework or answers that involve non-MS products. A good opportunity to expand some horizons has been wasted.
[1] yes, yes, I know: yours was inspirational and a credit to the profession. Congratulations, you're in the top 0.5%.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
A failing institution...
"Agitprop."
I'm surprised the Helios guy didn't carve a backwards 'L' into his face and claim he was ambushed by Steve Ballmer.
I'm disappointed that so many Slashdot readers are surprised by the actions of this teacher. Children are naturally curious and love to learn. If we allowed them to use libraries, Internet connections, and democratic structures, than the majority could achieve prodigy-like abilities; instead compulsory schools teach them censorship, arbitrary authority, and outright lies. The corporations need some way to forge an obedient workforce.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
It could be a troll, yes, but I don't think it's a given.
What if the "Linux" she had used was, say, Cygwin? If the letter isn't a troll, then it's quite clear that whatever it was she used, she didn't pay it a great deal of attention.
She sits down at a friend's computer, sees Cygwin running, asks what it is, and tunes out after about four seconds. Hears POSIX. Hears Unix. Hears Linux. Doesn't really care, minimizes Cygwin, sees the Windows desktop, and does what she came to. (For fun, I'll assume it's using Word to type a paper while her nerd-friend cleans Bonzi Buddy off her PC. Alternatively, she could be using Word while her friend replaces OS/2 with Windows on her PC, given her a permanent distaste for alternate OS's.)
Ten years later, she sees the kid passing out the disks, some old memories dust themselves off---and she draws her conclusions. "Linux" ran on top of Windows. This kid says his disks have everything you need, and you don't have to buy Windows. Alarm bells go off.
Her student's passing out software that to her mind must inherently include stolen Windows code, and it's not even software that's useful to schoolkids.
Lot of conjecture in this post, I admit, but I don't think it's impausible. People really do tend to think this way.
Teachers are supposed to embody the spirit of learning, this one is deliberately ignorant.
Did you even read the article? The disks in question are Live CDs that do not have any affect on anything installed on the computer.
I find what works best is to supply examples of fine open source software that runs on Windows and Linux. Once they grasp the concept of free open source software and the missing hurdles to it's use, the next step is to note the OS itself is free software. As an example, this page I wrote concerning an engineering challenge for launching t shirts at a NBA game. The engineering task was to find the optimum length for the launch tube. Note the use of open source software in the solution. When the teacher compared the open source solution to the Microsoft Sound Recorder or other packaged solution, then the seed for the concept is planted. Have the teacher read the license. um End User License Agreement. On a side note, the final and winner announcement will be this Friday. Our team has an excellent chance of winning. The teacher knows that I use The Gimp to size photos for the wiki, etc on a Linux machine. Windows is not needed.
https://inteltrailblazerschallenge.wikispaces.com/Barrel+length+trim+method
When Open Source is the best solution, it gets noticed. It is no longer just hobbiest software.
The truth shall set you free!
I have a brother-in-law named Dave. One day Dave's daughter comes home and says: "look dad, my teacher gave me this free student edition of ms-office 2003." Not knowing any better Dave installs it on the family PC, and just accepts all the defaults.
Three months later, the trial period ends, and Dave can not access his outlook email. I tried an outlook backup, and uninstalling the crapware, and re-installing Dave's ms-office 2000 - it wouldn't work. I had to completely re-build Dave's PC. But, nothing could read outlook trial 2003 email. I had to install the crapware on another PC, read the old .pst file in, save the email in another format, then move the email to Dave's rebuilt PC, then rebuild the other computer. When msft tells us "try before you buy" they don't mean it to be an option.
The teacher was deeply wrong with her viewpoint but the best way to respond is to politely correct her and guide her to somewhere where she can read up more on it. That's likely to result in a much more lasting result.
Instead he goes on about Evil Microsoft conspiricy theories a stupid "Linux is better than windows in every single way" type rant. It's fine thinking one OS is better than the other but you're deluding yourself if you don't think there are things one OS does better than than the other (cue 'lol windows crashes better' replies).
You won't change people by belittling them and going on what frankly, would seem like crazed ravings to someone unfamiliar with OSS zealots.
Ken Starks is a tedious and shameless self-promotion artist. He won't ever reveal the real names of the teacher or the student because they don't exist. He's a serial troll. The choice of Helios as a moniker is partially apt because he is at the very least *ego*centric, though certainly not effulgent. Free software would benefit greatly if "Helios" and Roy Schestowitz beat each other into dumb oblivion or if /. and lxer and similar just stopped taking any notice of these arseholes. They're embarrassing.
Hear, hear! Answering with a rant about how unions and MS are in bed together does nothing to releive this woman of her ignorance.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Let me speak against this woman.
Despite your attempt to excuse her behavior, she is ignorant, vindictive, and has no right to confiscate harmless personal property from a student.
I have had many teachers over the years, in public school, private school, and college, who were NOT ignorant, time-wasting simpletons. They were intelligent human beings who encouraged their students to investigate and experiment.
What you have given us is an explanation, not an excuse. There is NO excuse for this.
"At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful"
The law isn't just there for assholes to misuse. She's calling him a thief and accusing him of corrupting children. She's also hindering his business and bringing his him into disrepute. I think it would make an interesting case and that it would have merit even if he didn't win.
To the best of my knowledge she's got every right to choose to keep Linux out of the classroom if the laws and regulations of her school, district, state etc. give her that power. However she has no right dictating what software the children use after hours or what their political views should be. So get a parent or two involved as well/
Of course you could use this as an opportunity to demonstrate that she's wrong, but you're not going to win her over, and if you did you'd have won one hell of a prize ally.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This kind of thing will only show how microsoft sucks.
See,
State of Free and Open Source Software 2008 - A summary of the misgivings of the industry:
http://2038bug.com/free-software.html
"She's just a low-level drone who is only source of information..."
now, children: please, allow me to correct you in case some grammar nazi (other than myself) comes along and rebukes everything you say, on the basis that poor spelling must indicate poor attention to detail and poor ability to reason. like.
the word you are looking for is "whose". "who's" is, as you know, a contraction of "who is".
as an anal attentative grammar nazi and long-time linux supporter and free software advocate, it would be much better that i get to you first before that teacher, or any of her "slazhdot-readin suhporturs" do.
This doesn't sound like a case study in union corruption, or a sign of some disturbing trend with Linux in education. It sounds like a random funny example of how public school can attract teachers who aren't all that bright, and how IT can attract people who lack social skills. While "Retard vs. Asshole" does have some Godzilla and Mothra entertainment value to it, I'm not sold on any "big picture" beyond that.
I was always laughter when R. M. Stallman start every interview with his 4 essential software freedoms. Now I don't. He's doomed to repeat them for eternity. For people like this "Teacher".
You don't (usually) see complaints departments in stores do you? Even if the person handling the complaint is correct, if you respond to a customer in the way he talked to you, he'll never come back. What's worse, he'll tell all his friends and they'll think twice about shopping there.
A polite, friendly, smartly written letter correcting her will educate this teacher more than 100 ranting letters ever will. If you change her viewpoint, she'll start talking to other teachers about "this linux thing" and you'll spread positivity.
But if you feel strongly about this, the only e-mail I could find on the web-site was
Ombudsman@austinisd.org
If you feel compelled to respond, please be polite. You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
Are unable to make the key distinction between free (as in beer) and free (as in freedom) that RMS is always harping about.
And hence the reason that all successful IT companies have marketing and PR departments that do the talking...
Very rarely is social change made on the basis of its inherent rightness or wrongness. Usually social change comes about because charismatic leaders inspire others to adopt it. For every Thomas Jefferson you have an Adolf Hitler. One was clearly in the right and one was clearly in the wrong, but both were followed by many. Linux advocates won't change the world simply by being right.
Maybe this teacher is a lost cause. However, the harsh response will likely tick off not only the teacher but her 10 colleagues who might otherwise have been on the fence. The superintendent is also less likely to intervene since he'll feel like he's stuck in a war between two zealots.
If the response stuck to the facts and how linux can be used to the advantage of education, he'd have done better. He could have pointed to the many careers that use linux, and the fact that it freely and legally gives student access to many professional-quality tools (compilers, servers, math packages, scientific simulation software, etc). Its ability to run on older hardware could enable parents to pick up a cheap computer at a thrift store and get decent word/spreadsheet/etc capabilities out of it. He could point to many educational initiatives both in the US and abroad that make use of linux. He could also point out how the free software community cares greatly about copyright - they developed alternatives to commercial software precisely so that they wouldn't need to violate the law, and they also use copyright law to enforce their own legal rights.
I agree with many of his points, but not the degree to which they were stated. I don't think that bringing the NEA into this was particularly helpful either - as much as I hate the NEA I doubt they'd have all that much interest in mounting an official anti-MS-competitor campaign for a few million dollars. the NEA might allow MS to present at teacher educational forums on the dangers of software piracy, but that is probably about it.
When you communicate you should communicate for a purpose. When you communicate with an adversary you should communicate even more deliberately. That purpose generally shouldn't be to "vent" - communicate with your spouse or your pillow or something other than your entire world or the person you are angry with if you want to vent. Or type up an email to yourself and then delete it (do NOT populate the TO line in such emails - I've seen them accidentally sent far too often).
"Teachers sacrifice" "Teachers give of themselves" "Teachers cultivate minds" "Teachers are heroes" Just some of the myths about teachers that the media bombard us with.
Call it a profession or vocation if you want. Teaching is an occupation. A way to pull down a paycheck. A job. And many do their job very badly. Just as there are bad programmers, bad mechanics, bad doctors and bad ditch-diggers. Where did we get the impression that teachers are somehow immune to ignorance, bias or incompetence? In fact, you could make argument that incompetence in other professions is *_because_* of bad teachers.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I see a teacher or school claiming this is their stance, I call bullshit. This has to be a lame attempt at trolling for support/blog hits.
i might not be the pin up boy for linux, but even i have to respect the right of others to give away their software. i have to say this kind of moronic prepackaged response is what i expect from teachers, both when i was at school and now when i deal with them outside of it. for people who are meant to teach our kids to think, they don't do much of it them selfs.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Not all teachers are members of NEA. My wife is a teacher in Georgia, and she is not a member. Considering that Karent is a teacher in Texas, I would bet she's not in a union. Unions have never been strong in southern states.
it took my some time to find it, I wonder how the students came across it. here is the link: http://www.fixedbylinux.com/
I'm not surprised this lady is a Texan. Let's not forget that this is the state from whence GW was spawned (and is still loved). They consider ignorance and arrogance to be signs of patriotism.
now on slashdot a blow by blow account of 2 idiots trying to communicate.
That was even more deluded than the teacher's apparent views.
Surely you Microsoft apologists can do better than that utter nonsense.
Try again.
So which Karen is it? Greathouse or Ciesla?
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
That there are two different kinds of free.
Surely an American can appreciate the concept of Freedom and the concept of Free Beer, and the distinction between them.
Eighteen years ago, I discovered emacs. I got hold of a printed copy of the whole manual for it, which was pretty thick, even back then. I took it to a copy shop so I could have one for myself. (Remember, this is back when a 4-foot wide line printer in the terminal room was about all I had access to.)
The girl working the counter flipped open the binder to the very first page, and saw a copyright notification, and promptly told me that she could not copy the manual because it would be illegal to do so. I told her to simply READ what she was looking at. In about thirty seconds, she was copying the manual.
I understand that people want to respect copyright law. I do too. But any sort of ignorance to the fact that it's actually copyright law that MAKES open source work ought to be able to be remedied quickly by just reading the copyright license to the software. Any questions about the situation could then be resolved within about 5 minutes of Googling.
And, just to threadjack my own post, I just-as-quickly forgot about emacs, and allowed myself to be beat about the head and shoulders by vi until now, to the point that I won't go anywhere near emacs. ;-)
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
That's not the HeliOS I remember working with many years ago (Perihelion RIP!) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeliOS
Funny how product / project names come around and go around...
Pretty sure you've got your definition of "factoid" messed up there champ. Like most people, you have assumed it means "little fact" or perhaps "little-known fact". Possibly due to abuse by CNN using the word in this sense.
From Wikipedia:
A factoid is a spurious - unverified, incorrect, or fabricated - statement formed and asserted as a fact, but with no veracity. The word appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as "something which becomes accepted as fact, although it may not be true.
It muddies the intention of the sentence when you use this word, because its meaning has been overloaded like this. I would have gone with:
"which contains an argument I have not seen mentioned before"
[dons flame-retardant suit]
What if every Slashdotter that does Linux were to send a variety pack of disks of various Linux distributions to that school?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Its your life dude.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
I doubt the teacher is spouting a union-sponsored line (although that is a fairly typical mindset). Instead, the teacher is most likely ignorant of Linux and FOSS in general. She's not, however, ignorant of piracy thanks to ads from folks like the BSA, MPAA, and the infamous RIAA. Thus, when she sees software being handed out on home-made discs, she assumes it's piracy. She's been conditioned to that response like the good union myrmidon she is.
There was a time when I'd be shocked at this level of idiocy in a government school, but no more. I'd have been more shocked had she understood and condoned what the student was doing.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Linux was created by Linus "Just for fun". Linus wrote a book describing why and how he created the Linux kernel. It's actually a good read and short enough to finish in a few days. ahref=http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620724rel=url2html-1756http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620724>. It's cheap.
GNU was created (this is where most of the useful apps come from) for educational purposes AND to be an alternative to closed-source, commercial software. "The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system." http://www.gnu.org/
GNU doesn't have a kernel, so they are using Linus' kernel.
Yes, we all know the mantra: Windows is Evil, Linux is Robin Hood.
Howeer, is Linux really FREE? If you are using it and have a problem who gives you support?
1: Ask on the web and get a responses from people who don't have time to answer your questions but have time to say you posted in the wrong forum/you are stupid/the question has been answered elsewhere. You then walk away feeling frustrated with no answers. (Been there done that)
2: Buy support which makes the product no longer FREE
If you need a change to the software what do you do?
1: Beg/pray/hope the community makes the change you want.
2: Pay a developer to do it which makes the product no longer FREE
The point being, is the software really free or is there a hidden charge associated with it?
I understand there are Linux Guru's out there who don't need support since they know everything, and if they'd like to come do work for me for free than I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
Oh, and one other point - how do you know if your Linux Kernel is authentic? For example, if an angry employee adds code to the kernel to cause everything to crash when they are gone how do you tell? Sure, with a lot of work and knowledge you could look into it, but is an average business manager going to be able to do that?
Using something for fun in your parents basement is one thing. Using it as the foundation for your business is something else. How does Red Hat make money again? When something is "FREE" you'll find out you can't really afford it.
against someone who believes that there can be no such thing as free software.
The fact that a teacher would confiscate Linux CDs from a student isn't half as shocking to me that the teacher would take the time to write a letter to the creator of the software bashing him for it. It sounds like the teacher has to much free time on her hands.
BSD users? ALL OF THEM.
The teacher's sentiments are common. Many, many people believe that any software that someone is willing to give away must be little more than a toy. Many of them will assume that Linux is pirated. (For that matter, I know more than a few people who insist my Mac is simply a toy, incapable of matching Windows in computing power.)
Remember, too, that for all the attention Linux gets in its little part of the world (people interested in tech), it remains almost unknown elsewhere. This teacher clearly has never heard of it.
That's not the teacher's fault. Those who want to evangelize Linux need to do much, much more work in the "real" world.
Teachers prepare students to exist and work in the world outside the school. In that world, Windows dominates. it is a simple fact that students will enter a workforce that expects them to know how to use Word and Excel.
The rant about the NEA was bush league and self-defeating. The teacher almost certainly has no knowledge of who contributes to the union, and Stark has no assurance that the teacher is an NEA member. Linux can't be sold by ideologues chanting anti-corporate mantras.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
http://www.austinisd.org/schools/staff.phtml?teacher=667 Maybe she could use some education herself.
In a world where many people speak two or three languages, it would be the ultimate crime to teach American children versatility. Frankly, it explains a damn lot about our culture.
I always keep in mind, back in the day, when the MAT was a grad admission test that the typical grad acceptance raw score for an education MA was literally _half_ that of a psych PhD grad acceptance. Don't expect high school teachers to be the brightest bulbs to have sat through four years of college.
Helios is more harmful to the FOSS movement than the teacher. Teachers have a hard enough time doing their job without bovine excrement from a totally clueless idiot like Helios. Helios I'd love to see you DOCUMENT the LIE that Microsoft has given to the teachers union to influence the purchase of Microsoft software. Yes Helios Microsoft has given money to schools to buy microsoft products, but it is completely another thing to say that Microsoft has given money to the teachers union to try to influence the purchase of Microsoft software. The teachers union and teachers have NO MEANS, METHOD OR AUTHORITY to influence the purchase of anything. The whole process is controlled by the school board.
Apple used to own the schools. Every major company targets the education market (or used to). If you can get people hooked on your system as students then they will want it as paying or decision making adults. I've seen discounts as much as 90% off for educational markets, sometimes hardware sold well below production cost. This may be less important these days as most people encounter their first computer at home instead of schools.
What I find shocking and offensive is the teachers belief that "no software is free". Attacking teachers on their ties to Microsoft (known or unknown) isn't nearly as effective as educating them on open source software and its benefits (there is a term for this, "teaching the teachers").
Think Deeply.
>> " How could she be uninformed..."
This is not her problem. It's a problem for the Linux community. That community talks to itself in assorted online media that have little appeal or relevance for the rest of the human race who are not enamored with tech for the sake of tech.
If this teacher, or anyone else, is unaware of the truth about Linux, that represents a failure by Linux.
Alos, if I was teacher, I'd need to be convinced that I had a valid educational reason to put Linux in my lesson plans. The world does indeed expect new graduates to know Windows. Telling a prospective employer that you know Linux but not Word is not the way to get a job.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Speaking as a UK school ICT Technician / ICT Manager for 7 years...
1) Some/Most teacher's are stupid, even in their specialist subject
It's a gross generalisation, but even most IT teachers cannot understand licensing, copyright, installation, administration of network machines, IT best practices, simple programming etc. I have seen heads of IT in secondary schools that have less knowledge of computers than my own mother, who can just about turn on a Wii unsupervised. If you think I am exaggerating, I'm really not. Couple this with the fact that *real* IT teachers (those who have taken computing degrees, and not some "business *with* computing" degree) are fewer than you think, that those who are still current on their IT are even less, and then those who can actually teach *AND* still understand anything vaguely technical are rare, if not non-existent.
This applies from kindergarten up to a lot of universities - their theory is sound but their IT is actually run by a real Network Manager (who will be denigrated and earn half their money because they don't have a PGCE or other 1-year-extra course that enables them to teach officially). If it isn't run by a real techie, disaster ensues - I know - I used to charge by the hour to clear it up. If you want to pass ICT GCSE, ask an ICT teacher. If you want to know about anything other than Word or Powerpoint or, indeed, anything that might ever require you to click the Help button, don't ask an ICT teacher. Guess who they'll ask.
2) 99.9% of people have never heard of Linux, even if they use it everyday (Google).
In my time working in IT support/network management for schools, I have met precisely six other people at work who have *heard* of Linux, and precisely *one* who actually used it more than "Yeah, installed it once, it didn't play games". That one was a fellow IT Technician. (Additionally, I have met three people who used any browser other than IE at home). Bear in mind that the average school has at least 30 staff (part/full-time), that I've worked in LOTS of schools (freelance support for five years), that this includes IT departments at large secondary schools / Academies, that it includes the Borough ICT support teams, sales people who called me etc. and I think you start to get the scale of the problem.
Now consider that most of those schools had Cachepilots or similar Linux-based hardware, ran on external shared services that were mostly hosted on Linux, Squid, Apache etc., used Asus EEEPC's, and even in one case the entire school network operated off the back of proxy caching servers and firewalls which ran Linux and even the IT people didn't know it until it was pointed out to them.
3) Free stuff has two connotations to the uninitiated:
a) Argh! It's rubbish. Because everything free is rubbish.
b) There's a catch. (i.e. it's illegal, it forces you to do things, it reads your emails, etc.)
A previous (and very IT knowledgeable) IT Manager of mine, who used to manage mainframes in the financial sector for about 20 years, actively resisted me using Linux inside a school for months before I was allowed to bring in a couple of experimental projects I had built previously using it. Purely because it was "free" and therefore, no good. The "Free stuff isn't Microsoft" isn't a new phenomenon and it scares even the most technical of people who haven't tried it themselves.
4) In schools, nobody cares.
Educational software for Linux sucks. Completely. I've just started a job at a school where the head and bursar actually do *get* Linux and OSS and we were in instant, unanimous agreement on this while still in the interview. So, as far as most schools are concerned, it's not even worth touching. Yes, office apps are there, you can print, save, email, and all the usual. It's great for remote terminals, for getting basics done and for re-using old, cheap machines. But you're still having to buy new machines to run the fancy Windows content that you want because there isn't any Linux
Getting opensource into schools is a hard process. it took me three years before my school moved in that direction. A good stepping stone is the openeducation disc. they can still hold onto their windows installs and software and you can slowly slip the programs into the curriculum, also a great way to dstribute the software to parents for a very small overhead.
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
I'm a High School teacher and would be very uneasy about putting bootable linux CDs into the hands of teenage boys on the school network.
Having Linux at home is fine, honestly - but - the things that a teenager could get up to with a copy of some other operating system range from the somewhat cheeky (using it to play a few video games while the teacher isn't looking), to the naughty (browsing websites outside the 'safety' filters), to the illegal (accessing private & sensitive student data) to the destructive (reformatting sections of the school network).
Like it or not - giving advanced access to school computers is a very very bad idea.
The vast majority of students will do no harm but it only takes one to spoil a few days, or even a whole year's education for the entire school.
Think - what if a student used advanced access to delete a whole year's coursework?
Teenagers don't have the maturity or self control to understand the wider effects of their actions, and schools don't have the money to bring in the level of security experts we need to protect against the kids.
Whatever the case in with this line about "no software is free" (sounds like a load of bunk to me) the idea that kids need Linux in highschool is ridiculous.
The HeliOS response is just as bad or perhaps worse. To the point that this whole thing sounds like two children bickering in a playground.
Tying the ignorance of one man the people who fight for worker's rights is just plain offensive.
The struggle of teacher's unions is in place to ensure a number of things like for example: the person standing in front of the room is highly qualified. The person standing in front of your teacher is not overworked (and therefore will have the patience to deal with your children calmly when they step out of line) and so on...
Teacher's unions are good for your children.
All things considered - they're both wrong.
My wife is a teacher and routinely refuses to use the Windows XP boxes in her classroom for anything other than what is required for the students use. In fact, she's pushing to get Linux in the classrooms since they are less susceptible to viruses and spyware and can be monitored and maintained with much less pain.
Pax Vobiscum
Am I the only one who finds it more than mildly amusing that this enlightened teacher calls Austin, Texas her home? Doesn't Austin perenially rank in the top five cities nationwide for information technology careers? Ha ha. Not A Jew
I'm posting AC because on /. saying that I have a Lab of 20 Ubuntu 8.10 workstations using Likewise-Open to authenticate to AD would be karma whoring - but I do.
Teachers ARE obstacles, but an even more nefarious opponent to the deployment of FOSS are poorly trained support staff in the district who object to anything that innovates in the classroom that doesn't come from approved sources.
The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line.
unsupported claims
Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union.
and makes dubious inferences and another personal attack
Of course you are going to 'recommend' Microsoft Windows.
falls a long way short of being eloquent.
Just because you agree with someone's crude rant doesn't mean it's elegant.
Personally I'm more inclined to think the teacher is quite sincere. Ignorant, certainly, but there's no reason to put their attitude down to malice or even corruption.
After all to most people, including teachers, the most important thing is that it works with Windows/Office which means it has to be Windows/Office.
The ideals of Free and Open software are pretty much irrelevant to the vast majority of people. Why should they care that they could, if they wanted to, get the source code any more than we, as software developers, would care if we could get the schematics for the latest Intel chip. Where's the "Freedom" when it comes to hardware, beyond having drivers?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
"When Teachers are 'Goon-ads'"
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
>>"The whole free software thing should also be explained..."
That will just cause eyes to glaze over. Most people don't even know, or care, that software is licensed. Ranting on about the GPL is the last thing you want to do.
Stop playing at being copyright lawyers. Stop yapping at the choir about the wonders of intellectual freedom. No one cares if programmers can share source code any more than they care if plumbers share wrenches.
No one is going to be convinced to abandon Windows simply because a lot of other programmers don't like Microsoft or closed code.
And when you try to tell a school or a teacher that they should teach Linux bcause "children should have the skills to compete in the workforce", you'd better name an employer or two in the local area, not just make unsubstantiated allusions to "government and so forth" using Linux. (And skip all the server use. It's irrelevant in an effort to convince normal folks to use linux.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...A "teacher" who doesn't know shit... Let's hope she's not the one instructing the computer class. I hope Slashdot can keep up with this and that Helios will post the results of that meeting with the Superintendant after the holiday break.
If there's anything that is an obstacle to real learning, it is them. Unions may have had a place at the beginning of the last century in an environment with immature labor laws, but the beginning of the last century is where they should remain. Every union poisons/screws the workers it claims to protect. Just look at what the UAW has done to the Big 3 auto manufacturers. They can't even compete any more with foreign companies whose employees aren't unionized. If you're reading this and you work in the steel belt making cars for the Big 3, come south and work at a Nissan/Honda/Toyota/Kia/Subaru/Hyundai plant. There's plenty of room for you, and the local economies would love to have your input! All that we ask is that you leave your cruft-filled, corrupt union in Detroit to die.
The same is true for the NEA. They have made public schools into terrible places where kids are merely warehoused until they turn 18. Their heads are filled with as much propaganda as possible, and they lack critical thinking skills. When they graduate, they're basically ejected into a world they're wholly unprepared to face. The average to above-average ones will attend college and/or start a business, or pursue something to give their lives meaning. But they majority of them will just stumble through life reminiscing about the good old days of living in the high school cocoon and bitching that their government doesn't do enough for them. Thanks, NEA.
Is there a better example of this old story. The reaction was one of an old economy not understanding the realities of the new economy. One based not on the scarcities of a product but on the service. Give the product away sell the service. She doesn't understand that that could be a more viable way to make money. Her student should be commended and HeliOS's Ken Starks should send that kid and school more free LiveCDs.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
I once had two managers asking me what is this Linux company and if it is as big as Microsoft...
In the end, the year of Linux on the desktop will come not when technology matures, but when it is advertised appropriately...it seems Linux has a marketing problem!
Don't forget to wear your daemon shirt to the school.
... teachers weren't supposed to take sides on religious issues.
Here we have a story of a teacher who has a valid concern (in theory) over what might be going on in her classroom and then reacts out of ignorance.
No effort was made by the teacher to actually research the subject before jumping to conclusions and sending off what must be one of the silliest, most ridiculous emails I have seen.
A thought that might have helped prevent the teacher avoid the ridicule that will follow:
"Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
In truth I am not entirely surprised by the teacher though.
Nor am I too surprised by the blogged response that perpetuates the negative stereotype of linux users as arrogant, obnoxious know-it-alls who might be a little bit crazy... (Conspiracy theory? Please.)
Linux improves all the time.
The amount of POSITIVE media attention and awareness linux gets continues to grow, as does marketshare.
The response posted in the blog reinforces my belief that what holds linux back the most is
some of the users.
Too bad, really, because linux users and the community is also one of the greatest strengths we have.
Linux computers, watercooled, photography
Stop pushing OSS / FOSS / Linux etc in the same way that religious people do. At least certain very large groups of religious people. Why do Linux have to be so fantastically morally superior all the time? Why do everyone who doesn't run Linux have to be unfaithful and evil and bad? I don't run Linux (actively) on any of my computers, am I a bad person somehow? Why push Linux as if you would go to hell unless all computers on earth runs it?
It's enough to burn a CD or DVD and offer to help with installation / usage. Make them dual boot. Show them an alternative and then let them make their own choice. That is freedom, that is choice. Which is far from the GNU/GPL is morally superior crap that just pisses me off. I personally prefer BSD that way.
If a kid wants to play with Linux and learn about how the computer works then s/he should do it, but if it prevents the computer from working properly with coursework or software provided by the school, then that could be a problem.
Where exactly does it say that the software was being installed on school computers?
Is that most teachers, indeed most people in general, don't really give a shit about computers. They are a means to an end, a tool to get a job done. Thus they are not at all interested in the intricacies of copyright law, free vs non free software and so on. They don't care about that any more than someone cares about how their hammer is made. They just want to use it. So this idea that they should go out of their way to know is silly.
Also you have to understand that in every case but information, the principle of TANSTAAFL, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," applies. With real products, someone always has to pay. If you come over to my house, and I give you a free sandwich, yes it didn't cost you anything but I paid for it. I had to buy the bread and meat to make it happen. Supposing Safeway gave me the bread and meat free, well then they paid for it, they had to pay the distributors to get it, and so on. NOTHING is free, at some point someone had to spend the money and/or effort to make it happen.
It is only when you enter the virtual world of information that isn't true, where you can make a copy of the information at zero cost (technically there's a small cost from running the computer I suppose, but you do that anyhow). All of a sudden there can be a free lunch. Someone can create something and everyone in the world can have a copy for no addition effort/money than just for him to have a copy.
Well, given this, it isn't surprising that many people don't understand that. It's a rather new concept, really.
You have to add to that that students are not always trustworthy about this shit. I work at a university and we have problems with copyright infringement all the time. Not only do students do it, but then they lie about it as though we don't know. For example the guy virused up a lab computer really bad. We looked at it and quickly determined it had a bunch of unlicensed software. He claimed to his professor and to us that he had downloaded it from his "home university" (he's a foreign student) and that it was all ok. Ummmm no, 2 minutes of investigation on my part revealed it had been downloaded from a Chinese pirate site and was indeed the source of the infection.
Now, I work for the tech group and we understand all about free software, in fact we run Linux on a number of systems. However you can see how someone who's not so informed might get the attitude of "There's nothing free," when dealing with liars like that. They claim "Oh no this is free, it's all ok," only to have it turn out they are just flat out lying. Thus if someone else comes along and starts handing out real free software, well their claims of "But it's free," sound like a lie too, even though they aren't.
As you pointed out, this is a time to try and educate, not to be a jackass. It's possible the teacher is a close minded asshole and it won't help. Ok but then nothing really will. It is however more likely that they just aren't informed. So, you work to inform them. You show them that indeed there IS free software out there. First just showing them that there is software that doesn't cost anything. Firefox might be a good starting place. Or perhaps Open Office or Java since they are backed by Sun, a major company. Then once you've got them understanding that, you give them an article on free software and the GPL, so they can understand the open source concept.
When you are an ass about it, well they are just going to assume they were right: That they caught you doing something you shouldn't and now you are trying to weasel out of it.
Operating under the assumption that Karen X is a real teacher in Austin, and the events described in TFA are true, I'd like to share my own thoughts on the matter.
...but then... it is Texas.
What I find incredible is that a teacher who "tried Linux in college" could be so terribly misinformed.
True, in an existential sense, no software is free... neither is love, compassion, or lunch... but.. come on.
This is little more than DMCA-induced anti-piracy terror topped with a generous portion of Post-9/11 paranoia. She's a FUD Zombie running amok.
I've found a good way to get educators to take the first step of FOSS is to give them a copy of "The Open Disc" for Windows. I had a form I needed to fill out but it was in Word Perfect and the school only had Word (or vice versa, I forget). When I tried it at home, OpenOffice.org opened it without hesitation. I mentioned this to our school's tech, who had never heard of it. I handed her a copy of the CD and said "anything on there is free to install on as many computers as you need". "Free" is a powerful motivating factor in an underfunded public school environment.
So why bother?
If a dog bites sheep, do you explain to the dog how bad it is, or do you shoot it?
Same here.
She's an ignorant bitch and the sooner she's out of the students' hair (by sacking rather than shooting) the better.
She was never going to be won over, so why try? It would be like explaining to an Amish that a blow-up doll with electric moving parts is a good idea.
Ain't. Gonna. Happen.
after the contracts (with kickbacks) are signed, the 'teachers' become just as much hostages, as most of the rest of US. so the 'obstacles' are....? don't forget the lack of wireless drivers for linus. that doesn't help.
You've obviously never seen the copious amounts of information out there showing that education majors--the majority of public school teachers--are one of the bottom five majors when ranked by intelligence and test scores...
Generally, education has gaps, particularly in technology. Not all is bad, it went in phases. In Junior high, they explicitly called me into the Library whenever the DOS computers acted weird to get me to fix it. However, in my first high school days, I was disciplined for 'harming' the school's computers. Some examples of what I did that got me banned from using their computers:
-Windows 3 displayed a blue screen, instructing to hit control-alt-delete. I did so. Evidently, their policy was to put an out-of-order sign and call the local computer company on a per-incident fee because that company told them those screens required such action.
-On their new Win95 computer, I opened a full-screen DOS window. They claimed I had deleted the OS and I barely had time to exit and show them it was still there before they called that company again to fix it.
-They had brand new deskjet printers that printed at minutes per page for simple text. I figured out their misconfiguration, and was called down for 'making the printers go too fast'. They said they were lucky they hadn't broken from going too fast and they called that company to 'fix' them back too slow (which they did all too readily, they knew how to exploit the ignorance).
For trying to develop and exercise my professional skillset of choice, I was actively precluded in instructing myself. My second high school refreshingly reverted to my junior high days of being explicitly called to assist the faculty.
As to Linux, I'm actually married to a teacher. Students were generally surprised to see Linux on the Desktop (didn't look like Mac or Windows) and the IT guy was happy to see a teacher using Linux. None of her peers would make this mistake.
All that said, the response was pretty dumb. don't be belligerent. You don't fix the problem by being an asshole. You provide education, links to the legal content of popular licenses and a layman's explanation. Provide reasonable motivations that lead to no-cost software development. Saying 'oh, MS bought you off' doesn't provide the requisite context to counter. Educational and other public institution contribution would be a good starting point, as it hits close to home. Corporate contribution in the name of marketing leverage, development costs (particularly for companies for whom the software is not their revenue source) and in order to obtain some government contracts would be another source perceived as both logical and quality. Finally, personal contributions for personal marketing (resume building) and hobbyist rounds out the major motivations. Mention companies like Dell, HP, and IBM doing open source to move hardware and services. Mention that even Microsoft invests in Novell and others due to their recognition of Linux as a legitimate market participant (assigning no value judgment to that, the statement is true regardless of whether you dislike or like the agreement). Mention that most supercomputers run the platform, many without paying explicitly for it.
You can craft a well-thought out, educational response that may actually spread in a positive way. Telling a teacher she is a bribed shill for MS is going to make her warn her peers in the teacher lounge more about this 'free' software rather than get her perhaps to discuss some interesting stuff she learned. You only have the get one teacher in a school interested enough to talk to get an entire school to at least basically understand Linux.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
> Surely an American can appreciate the concept of Freedom and the concept of Free Beer, and the distinction between them.
Oh, I see, the "insightful" thing is about giving karma to the poster, huh?
Nonetheless, a sarcastic emoticon -- if there is one -- would be helpful...
Perhaps one should remind said teacher that it was but a couple of decades ago when Apple ruled the classroom. Microsoft puts out another "quality" product like Vista, they soon will be again. Apple has already started taking over the college campus.
Never before have I wanted to grab my Apple IIc by the handle and slap this teacher clean upside the head. Unbelievable level of ignorance, not only to FOSS, but to any other vendor (Apple) out there.
Consider the commercials currently running on television. Are you a Mac or a PC? Of course it's a false dichotomy that there are only two choices, but nevertheless that's the message being presented to millions of people each day.
The answer to ignorance is education. I would love to turn on the television one day and see an "I'm an Ubuntu" commercial.
The pay really sucks. Frankly you'd probably be better off managing a fast food restaurant.
If you put up with the crappy pay and the stifling bureaucracy, then you're probably not doing it for your own selfish purposes, but rather because you feel that it's the right thing to do. Which means that you are genuinely interested in teaching people.
...or I'll fucking kill you! You have no right to steal my property. You are a thief and a liar. Give it back now, or I will hunt you down and kill you.
That is how it should be handled.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
A lot of people want to focus on high ideals as motivation for Free software, and that's just not easy for most people to believe. Most people who do contribute either would not be able (no time, contracts forbidding) to or wouldn't want to without other conditions being met.
Is listening to the radio free? Watching broadcast television? Reading an article excerpt on the front page of a newspaper in a vending machine? Free software represents to people and corporations a good advertising mechanism. There often are services or other products that cost money and augment them.
Was going to high-school free? Not in the strictest sense, as tax money funds it, but the same applies to many Free software. Institutions often contribute software open-source in order to best serve the public trust. Given the nebulous nature of the funding (all taxpayers), open source is most often a best-fit model to reciprocate that investment in that specific scope.
If a repairman had a hard time with a particular bolt, and lent you a wrench and asked you to hold the nut as he tried to turn the bolt, would he charge you excess for access to the wrench? Of course not, he isn't running a tool rental business, it just happens in the course of his actual job. This sort of incidental work is common in the technology world. A company needs an email server. They aren't going to hire an army of developers to write from scratch, and they might not buy a commercial solution. They'll have their administrator download an Open Source email server and that administrator has no motivation to keep required code changes private. On the other hand, getting local modifications accepted upstream absolves them of maintenance efforts on a local patchset.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In a state where this happens I am not suprised:
Q: What is the most common language is spoken in the United States?
6 students wrote "American" as an answer. My friend, a temp teacher there marked the answers wrong. The Dallas school district's answer is AMERICAN is a language. In that state, the level of stupid is beyond reasonable. I worked for a hearing aid company and we closed all of our corporate stores in Texas due to ... well... stupidity and an inability to find qualified staff. I remember looking through resumes with HR and 1/3rd of them we threw in the trash, the submitter didn't bother to include an email, phone, address, or any know method beyond astral projection to contact them. Now based on this teacher I can see why. It isn't stupid people, it's stupid teachers teaching stupid to others.
Perhaps we need to quarintine Texas until we can determine if stupid is contagious and what possible cures and treatments are available.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I had to read this a couple of times through, especially some of the responses. Not everyone is as enlightened to the use of Open Source as we are. Obviouly, some people have never even heard of the concept and equate it with "piracy". One simple way to point someone, especially those in the education field in the right direction, is, of course some simple, explanative web pages (RE: Wikis) on Open Source, Linux, etc. Another way, for those who might think certain web pages are not proof-positive enough, you can always tell them to go to their local MegaRetailChain Bookstore and check out the computer section and look at a few of the titles there. I also know that sometimes in education, a teacher is given a class to teach whether they have a background in it or not. You could ask them if they know anything aside Windows? What do they think about Macs or Unix? If their eyes start to glaze over, you have already gone above their level of expertise.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
as an anal attentative grammar nazi and long-time linux supporter and free software advocate, it would be much better that i get to you first before that teacher, or any of her "slazhdot-readin suhporturs" do.
The word you're looking for is 'retentive', not 'attentative'.
Please turn in your Grammar Fascist Certificate.
Shouldn't your sentences begin with capital letters and "i" be capitalized too? /ducks
Humanity has two basic options for government:
Cooperation and control.
In cooperation, we support each other and do not require institutions and Nanny State/Authoritarian governments to tell us what not to do. It's obvious murder is wrong, if you get something give something, etc. PROBLEM: cooperation requires the ability to kick out or kill non-cooperators, and it requires a strong innate culture, an "organic state."
In control, enough people are reckless with their desires that a strong institutional state emerges, mainly to tell them what not to do. Don't kill, don't steal, no nonconsensual sodomy, etc. They're ideal for unifying a whole bunch of people of unknown values. PROBLEM: control requires increasing amounts of control, because people learn to expect society to wipe their asses and so they stop thinking critically about their own actions, making them more not less reckless.
I know which one I'd prefer. (Portions of this message are paraphrases of the text of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, approximately page 112 in the new edition.)
Futurist Traditionalism
M'kay.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
So this one teacher dislikes Linux and banned it from his classroom. I dislike Brussels sprouts and ban them from my kitchen. It's a free country.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
ANY teacher who is ignorant of Linux, has ceased to LEARN, even a smidgen of an overview of what has been going on for over a decade in computing as reported constantly by the media.
And by media, I mean the tech sections of magazines and newspapers and then just overview sites on the web, ala Wired & Technology Review amongst hundreds and hundreds of sources.
This is what has happened to our schools, sadly.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Like I was saying :)
Ok, so she found a kid handing out software in class, she had no idea what it was, assumed the kid was lying (since a lot of them do), etc. Assuming there were computers in the room that belonged to the school, she also almost certainly had visions of having to deal with her district's IT staff of there was now a problem, which is often far from pleasant. She just didn't want to deal with some kid handing out crap in her classroom. Writing the letter was dumb, but the reply wasn't much better. And, by the way, with what a lot of school districts pay for IT people? You're not going to get linux in there any time soon. Oh, and also, they have a need for specific software that runs on Windows, and you're not going to get them to use virtualization, dual-booting or WINE. The first two would require maintaining additional configs or VMs, and the last just isn't going to fly.
Don't blame the teacher. Yes, we all know teachers are not getting a good rep, since they get paid next to nothing and have a union. Those two items alone would be enough for me to lower my expectations a little, but then they are often government employees, hired by other government employees. That also leaves me less than impressed in the process which hired them. I could be completely wrong.
On the other side teachers have to deal with unwilling students, the school staff, government "organization"(think forms, and loads of nonsense), and crazy less than bright, but vocal parents. One teacher was almost put away in prison for using the computer given to her by the school, which was infected with porn ads.
So, teachers don't get paid, don't get credit with things work, and have to deal with more crap than anyone else on the planet. Beyond that everyone is out to get them.
Then we should be willing to give them a little credit for not going postal every day they come into work. And when they act paranoid we should give them slack.
In my 11th year of school I had a teacher which took my handcuffs away after the last bell. They was paranoid about having such a thing on campus. It was a prop for a play. However the guideline about handcuffs(there was one) said that a teacher could take them only during school hours. I did some lawyering with that information and got them back, since the teacher took them after school hours. We used zip-ties for the play.
Teachers are in the worse place on earth, next to being in the path of an oncoming Chair Balmer(tm). This teacher just needs some reassurances, and so will others. The best place to start is with the PTA. I know first hand how hard it can be to get a teacher interested in education. After all they are working full time on survival.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
oh FFS, you've Godwined it now!
...for DECADES.
Let's cut the conspiracy crap and simple put it down to the case of the average human being being afraid of what they don't know.
You could quite objectively argue that the premise the teacher is trying to espouse is actually correct. It's also incomplete, and depends entirely upon the student(s) involved. If I was one of those kids being shown and starting to use Linux in the classroom, it would have benefitted me. If it was a particular friend of mine, it would have simply confused him.
Each instance of something like this comes down to information that nobody on Slashdot has access to, what *actually* happened. Perhaps the student in question claims that Stark's group told him "show the other kids in school" (kids are extraordinarily good at both playing dumb and confusing things - such as a forum post saying "it would be so beneficial for schools if...") Now, remembering teachers somewhat, creating a disturbance of ANY kind results in confiscations and scoldings, even just showing kids what's on your laptop if your laptop is supposed to be doing something else or not doing anything at all.
Anyhow, Stark, who is certainly expected to be educated about the greater context of the Linux versus other OS (primarily Windows) debate, actually comes off as a smug jerk. For example, the teacher didn't say the kids were doing anything illegal, but Stark responds as if the teacher implied conspiracy involving "his kids". Apparently this is a personal experience for Stark in the sense that it involves his family and/or friends.
The teacher is obviously not subjective, Stark is obviously not objective, so we should be admonishing them both - and Stark especially because he SHOULD know better.
Anyhow, mountain/molehill/whatever.
Ridiculous that Stark's blog gets prominent notice on Slashdot. Ridiculous, but not surprising. There are very few people who treat operating systems as they should be - tool boxes. The right tool for the right job for the right people at the right price in the right amount of time.
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I am the Program Director for the CS/IS and MSIS school at my College. Anyone can give out free linux at any time, and if someone wants to come along and do so, they are welcome to contact me. That is insane, and very deeply disturbingly wrong.
Apologies - that should read "the teacher is obviously not objective"
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If you want to show them how Linux is a legitimate OS don't tell them its free right of the bat. Tell them it runs on many of the servers they use to access their school's databases, websites, and security. Here is a fun fact: Many of the planes used by our government have a unix backbone. They might be surprised to learn that what keeps planes flying are systems built on versions of Red Hat/Fedora. Tell them that most computer science majors must have some background in Linux to graduate. It is an operating system most (probably all) computer science majors had to learn. Tell them that the NSA (National Security Agency) aka the authority on Network Security for the DoD (Departement of Defense) uses Linux on many of their systems. Tell them all about SE Linux and why the NSA supports it. Tell them that Linux and Windows are not so different and that you can use many Windows programs on both operating systems. Introduce them to Open Office (you won't believe how many people you will convert with Open Office). Again don't open with "It is free" the response will almost always be negative.
Wow. Just damn.
There's just no way to defend this sort of behavior by the teacher in question - decisions based on ignorance are almost surely bad...
That being said, I'm a high school science teacher, and I'd be *thrilled* to see a student passing out linux cdroms. Perhaps I'm an edge case though -- I'm on the development team of an "old" linux distribution and have started a linux user group at the high school where I teach :)
n/t
(Yet another analogy)
Ask him if he remembers the days when people would show up to build a neighbor's barn without getting paid. Why did they do it? Well, some did it because someday they'd need a barn raised. Others did it because it was "just being neighborly."
Well, FOSS is a "barn" that everyone gets to use. And the "catch" at least with GPL, is that you can't sell a community raised "barn" to other people, you have to give it away.
But there are still a couple ways for barn builders to make money. Some people don't like to clean their own barn so there are maintenance contracts. Some people want custom barns, so they hire people to modify the barn. Some people will make things that work with the barn, like silos, and they sell the silo while giving away the barn.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
This is Texas. After all, the kids have to learn to be good ignorami rednecks somewhere, no? Better it to be in school than in some disreputable hovel where you don't know what kind of bad redneckness they'll learn...
The whole reply letter is a good read. I hope all of it is true. (You can never be too sure).
It seems the teachers in my part of the country are still preaching the Gospel According to Steve Jobs. While the school districts are suffering, they gladly pay a premium for the latest and greatest Apple hardware and software.
I did a bit of consulting with the area schools this past summer. The admins would gladly switch to Linux (ideal) or Windows (less ideal but less of a headache administratively speaking compared to Apple). The only problem is the teachers. They have been bowing at the altar of Jobs for too long. And with the economy the way it is and the mass exodus from this part of the country, it would behoove them to switch to F/OSS.
The game.
Or straw man?
The email in the article reads like BS.
No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods.
That smells like trolling.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
I am currently a student.
All I can say is, there's not reason to be surprised.
I had to fight a suspension my sophomore year fore downloading open source software because the software was "proprietary." (It was, in fact, an open source project released under the GPL.) Fortunately for me, I'm stubborn and was a constant pain in their ass until they finally dropped the suspension. Others aren't so lucky.
But please, don't simply write off the school system as a helpless mess full of incompetencies. Some of us are still stuck here, and some direction from members of industry is the only way we're going to receive a meaningful education. Email the administration at a local school and offer to come up and help start/continue a programming/whatever club after school. It's an hour every couple weeks I can guarantee you won't regret, and we'll really appreciate it.
As a Texan, what surprises me most about this is where it took place. Austin's way more open-minded than the rest of Texas (the quasi-official slogan is "Keep Austin Weird") and a large segment of the population works in the electronics/computers industry. Even if the teacher disagrees, you'd think she's at least heard of the concept. Then again, I'm probably ascribing too much competence to the AISD teachers.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
"No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. ... This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all."
I see it as a simple problem with a simple solution that needs a little blood and sweat (hopefully no tears): Linux needs a network of evangelists (who do more than just read Slashdot) who can stop these "myths" in schools nationwide. I think the local town Linux User Group would be a good starting point and could perhaps start by demonstrating using a bootable LiveCD, gimp and openoffice. Followed by a workshop teaching how to install linux on dualboot systems. Once you teach a few students, they can be the cool kids who inspire and teach other kids (and their parents) how to do it.
Why do you think Microsoft visits colleges, gives away edu licenses for almost free and throws free pizza and Xbox parties? Sure MS pays its evangelists and student volunteers, but I think we should think of Linux evangelism as another way of giving back to the Linux community and to society. All you need is a few laptops, a projector and a few burnt CDs. If you succeed in one school, you can give the same presentation in other schools. Do not be surprised if you get requests! Its critical that you know your audience and do a good job the first time.
the old "If it is any good you know it does not come free." argument from a teacher.
Does the air we breathe come free? Some day someone will figure out a way to charge for that too. :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Yes. For instance, one imprisoned innocents and forced them to work all their lives as slave labour, while the other... er...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This sounds too 'good' (i.e. bad) to be true. I suspect it is more along the lines of an urban legend.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
From many years of repairing id10t errors,
I'd say the porn sites and scammers are slowly training our users for us.
I don't think they are getting the full view,
they are just becoming jaded.
users in the late 80's and 90's were more willing to try anything to save some money.
Now it must be a scam.
I used to sit next to this young man in one of my early com sci classes back in college. He was 16, had a huge chip on his shoulder, and argued at length with the professor in class that modern windows still runs on Dos. His proof was that he still saw text at boot up (yes, BIOS).
Eventually, even he was made to see truth, but its hard to break past those initial misconceptions we are allowed to live with for so long.
That reply constitutes eloquent? "The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way" isn't eloquent. It's an elitist, condescending statement from a person who is more interested in appearing superior than in persuading someone. The teacher, although misguided, obviously believed he/she was doing the right thing and cared enough to contact him. He could've used this as an opportunity to educate and win over someone, but instead opted to pen a snotty letter to smack down the teacher. Eloquent? I think not.
Anything cooperative is hurting society and clearly illegal. Individuals producing for free are breaking the law; only corporations are legitimate suppliers/producers, and only those who pay should have access to society's production.
I had the experience in high school way back in the late '80s and early '90s before "OSS" was a term.
I was suspended for writing software and sharing it with my friends. My own source code. The administration of my school told myself and my parents in no uncertain terms that I was breaking the law by writing software and giving it to others, and they were having none of it on school property.
They suggested that to be "constructive," my dad could help me to "start a company" and sell the software to my friends in the computer club, which would be legal, and, they suggested, if priced properly ($5-10 was what they suggested), still affordable to other students and not in violation of the "law," which forbids giving away goods for free. They mixed up anti-socialism/communitarianism in their heads with some kind of Sherman anti-trustiness and applied it to a 13-year-old kid.
My parents allowed me to leave school immediately and I finished my education as a home schooled student, went to a university CS department at 15 and eventually to the University of Chicago for grad school.
Those same administrators still run the local high school, which has 5,000 students and is an inner city campus.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
And it all makes sense.
Especially the I tried in in College line...
Christ. Way to Godwin the thread.
It's interesting to see how polarised people's comments are in this thread. Some think the reply should have been kind and constructive, trying to correct misinformation. Others think she's beyond hope and should have the book thrown at her. For what it's worth, I fall somewhere in the middle.
I agree with the parent post that there is no need for ranting and being rude. It is perfectly possible to explain that the teacher was mistaken about free software not existing, by giving popular real world examples, and to point out politely that in fact it is her disinformation that is the harmful thing to spread here. I suggest that it might be better to focus any such feedback on the concept of free-as-in-no-money software, since this is easy for non-technical people to understand. In any case, freeware has been around for as long as there have been computers, long before the GPL and such came along and tried to claim words like "free" for their own purposes, so there is no need to get into the political/ethical side of things.
On the other hand, she didn't just object to Linux. She accused the children in her care of breaking the law, threatened a completely innocent third party, and confiscated property without good cause. There is no excuse for that kind of behaviour from anyone, much less a teacher in a position of trust. Given the poor attitude she exhibited, formally reprimanding her (and requiring her to give back whatever she confiscated) is entirely appropriate.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I don't think anybody who lacks the experience of teaching can ever speak on what that experience is like. Teaching means waking up at 5 or 6 am, working the whole day until 5 with children who for the most part have no desire to be in school and trying to convince them that they actually want to learn, meetings with teachers, parents, students, bosses, grading assignments, preparing lesson plans, and editing lesson plans because they aren't good enough for the bureaucratic system. You're lucky to fall asleep by 11 so you can feel some iota of rest and rejuvenation for the next day.
Many teachers are not actually teachers. They indeed are looking for a paycheck, and in difficult times, that means turning to what has become a money-oriented institution. Many schools have weak criteria for their teachers because there is a lack of good teachers (Why might that be? Because teaching may very well be one of the most difficult professions that exists, next to medical professions).
But that does not imply that all teachers, or even a majority, are ignorant, money-hungry, leeches.
Check your assumptions at the door. K thank you.
She's just a low-level drone who's only source of information was maybe an education tech conference she went to and the mainstream media.
And this is probably the salaries of most teachers in the USofA are very low. If a teacher is simply a low-level drone, what possible knowledge can the teacher impart to the students? It was my high school mathematics teacher who introduced me and my fellow students to computers by bringing his own Commodore PET computer into class.
No we shouldn't teach Latin - because, let's be honest, the old Romans really haven't made much of an effort to promote it.
Come to think of it Science isn't great a promoting itself either. It's pretty much either you accept than gravity exists or you don't.
Religion - now that's a good one. They're big into promotion. That should be taught in schools.
Facetiousness aside: teachers have a responsibility to educate themselves first and the pass that knowledge on to other. There are lot of organizations in the world (past and present) that have big budgets, but that doesn't make them right and a good teacher has an obligation to know the difference.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
software for producing artwork from scratch?
Do you use the handle of your screwdriver to hammer in nails?
Do you use an 18-wheeler to go your daily shop?
No wonder you have problems with IT knowledge of others: you wouldn't recognise it if it existed.
Seriously, this has hoax written all over it. I can't for 2 seconds believe that people are taking this seriously.
The teacher started out by leveling legal threats. I'd left out the MS conspiracy stuff but I'd roasted her to a smoking crisp too....and I'm a K-12 admin.
I'm the director of IT for a small private school, and I've seen, first-hand, how some teachers respond when they are asked to learn, or teach, something new.
We were a Windows shop for many years, and still are in some respects. We use a bit of Linux here and there, but we are transitioning to Mac OS on the desktop - for reasons that I won't get into here.
The initial pushback was bad, lots of teachers did not want to learn anything new. Eventually, the doubters saw how attracted students were to the new platforms - the smart teachers used that to their advantage - holding out use of the computers as a reward for doing other non-computer related tasks.
We finally have most of the school moved over to Mac OS. I'm sure Linux would have received a similar welcome. It's not Windows VS Linux VS Mac OS - in the minds of many teachers it's "something I already know" VS "something new that I have to spend time on".
-ted
Lovely.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Texas teachers are not unionized.
-former Texas teacher
whats wrong with the NEA?
Wow. As a native Austinite, I'm completely ashamed of this teacher's actions. Nothing pisses me off more than stupid teachers spitting out condescending "teacher talk" in the guise of doing whats right for the children. This teacher has no clue what she's talking about, but sure as hell doesn't jump on the chance to swing around her proverbial dick. I just hope by the time I have kids, I make enough money to afford sending them to private school. Public schools in the US are nothing more than a glorified daycare.
Does anyone else find it ironic that a F/LOSS advocate (as I am as well) uses a blogspot blog as his face to the world? Way to advocate there buddy! Spread that message on a closed platform!
Try wordpress.
My Babylon
How FOOLISH. I felt blood rushing to my head in anger when reading this. I never comment on anything, but this is SO maddening! AHHHH! This teacher is an obstacle to education. What irony! What about mac? Is there a problem with mac too? A price tag makes something worthy of use?
...having been in two different unions before, I have found that 100% of the membership is more than aware of corruption and malfeasance in their union hierarchy and with the various funds involved. And it has also been my experience that I have yet to meet a single solitary governmental worker, at any level, local, state, federal, civil, military, who isn't aware of malfeasance and corruption around them in their work sphere.
In other words, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility at all that this teacher has been both brainwashed (told lies in other words by alleged "experts"), possibly at some helpful seminar or along those lines, and paid off in one way or another by certain expensive closed source companies efforts to try and keep FOSS out of schools, governments and workplaces. The main company in question has not been shy at all, at their top corporate level on down to their traveling sales representatives, with comparing FOSS to "communism" or some disease, etc and claiming it "violates hundreds of patents", etc and has been known to go around the world to help officials "understand" such things as "open standards" and so on. You can use your imagination on what "helping to understand" could possibly mean with a company that has incredibly complex books and accounting (read: obfuscated beyond belief) and is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and has been in and out of court for very questionable business practices since they were founded.
I am amazed that anyone in education doesn't know the first thing about the Google. Let alone getting as far as the intricacies of the free software wars. JFGI: linux
Then, with some background, the online book Free as in Freedom on Stallman is a good, in-depth discussion.
exactly all you need to do is include things about how linux is a $25 billion dollar industry for a start http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/10/linux-ecosystem-worth-25-billi.html .
Point out how widely used it is in universities, how much it's used in the industry
Oh and your average unix admin earns about $80000 a year http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_IT10000152.html
If they teachers were half-way good, they'd have high-paying software jobs in industry. The saying is true: "Those who can't, teach".
... I can tell you they have a right to be paranoid.
1. The BSA have been real assholes and love to double dip on software installations on computers that are in storage and not even in use at various school districts. THey will try to charge us for software students are holding because its on school grounds.
THey even have training on this and piracy.
2. Teachers can get into hot water if students hack and load unauthorized sofware or hacking into school computers.
3. Students are there to learn and not to use alternative operating systems or anything that is not in the districts circulumn is not allowed to be taught. With No CHild Left Behind they have to move very very fast in order to raise test scores and the pressure is huge and its only about reading, writing, and math as this is how the school makes money now. COmputer education is not on the standardized tests so its not taught that much or at all anymore.
Schools are not the same as universities. Basically they are dictatorships because the students can not be trusted yet as they are not adults and its about control in order to create a learning environment.
CDs are great but I would want the principal to decide to pass them out and not put the burden on the teachers if a student loads the software and the school is found liable. The teacher does not know whats on those cds and should not be in a position to care.
http://saveie6.com/
It seems to me that what they're calling "confiscation" would also amount to theft if brought up in the courts.
... what can be explained by stupidity. I've been in and around universities for decades. Not schools, admittedly, but they're not that much smarter just because they have Ph.D.s. :/
a) Most people in education barely know linux exists. I was running XP in virtualization under Ubuntu one day when a guy from IT came over to put Active Directory on everyone's computers. (Long story.) This guy in *IT* had never seen anything like it before. "That's so cool," he said.
b) For the faculty, using some other OS is inconceivable. Literally. Trying to explain some of this stuff to them feels just like going all the way back to teaching kids the alphabet.
c) They're so far away from having a clue, they don't know they don't have a clue. The teacher in the post probably felt about like you would if somebody removed all the books and computers from class and substituted comics. I mean, look at the ga-ga reaction: "How dare you try to feed these children drivel instead of Solid Practical Experience?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People don't seem to care about their right to choose, I'm saying it's not about free or open source versus closed source software, it's just about having a range of choises, I work as a software developer in a company that uses Microsoft products, and actually i'm seduced by linux not by the fact that is free or open but just because it's something different, it gives me an alternative and thats the part that i find interesting. btw i find that closing the doors o preventing the right to choose it's criminal.
If you charge for sex, it's illegal; If you give sex away for free, it's not illegal. Why can't we apply the same reasoning for software?
I'm going to disagree here.
Working in customer service, I always found that matching the tone of a customer was a great way to build rapport, allowing you to help the customer help themselves.
Being polite and friendly will get your face knocked in.
It's been a long time.
I happen to teach computer science in a high school. We have a mac lab, a windows lab and 2 ubuntu labs. In the true cs courses, we only use free software, and are very often introducing the students to linux/open source for the first time. I am disappointed that the person in the article shares the same profession as me, but I also do not think it is any more indicative of teachers that it is of the entire population. I love open source software, and try to show people free options to the programs they need to use. In doing this it has become clear that many many people have no idea about linux or any free software. They live in a "macintosh or windows" world, where windows is what's used by most everyone so it must be the way to go. I think many people, certainly slashdot readers, forget that most of the population is unaware of the computer options available to them.
there is a free operating system... and it's not illegal!
Whiles Starks refers to the NEA, he could easily be making an assumption that the teacher is a member of the NEA or a union. Just because Starks knows Linux doesn't mean that he knows the ins and outs of any given school district.
In fact, given his phrasing, he seems to think that the National Education Association is a union or a union like organization. (ie 'spouting the union line')
Now unless being a member of the NEA keeps you from holding a teaching job in Texas, there is a possibility that the teacher in question IS a NEA member.
I have my doubts though. The response of the teacher tells me that she may be one of those drones who shouldn't be teaching because she is no longer learning.
Either that or it is all a hoax.
Teachers (and schools generally) have always been the biggest obstacle to learning and innovation, and the biggest source of propaganda. Exceptional teachers exist, but the centrally and stupidly run government institutions ("schools") prevent those teachers from doing much good. If you have any sense, pull your kids out of school and teach them at home (or rather: let them learn at home--they won't need nannying and spoon-feeding their whole lives, and in learning to learn independently they'll gain more than just an education) or at least put them in a school where the teachers are accountable to parents, and parents are actively involved in the school.
Nothing says "moral high ground" like cyberstalking eh?
I can understand wanting to take this arrogant woman down a peg. But this sort of thing isn't the way to do it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Open Source software (including Linux) is kind of like those free tomatoes. Your neighbor grows them for his own use, but ends up with more than he can use so he offers them to other people. With open source software, your neighbor (and many other people around the world) work on it for their own reasons, and rather than hoarding what they've done they offer it to other people.
The reasons for people to work on open source software are many:
fencepost
just a little off
Its very likely that an older, unsophisticated user could easily confuse Linux with Unix. And his actions would have, in his mind, been justified, based on his previous knowledge, that Unix wasn't free to give away.
what do teachers do for control?
they stand you in front of the class. they embarrass you. when they catch you doing something 'wrong' they make you do it 'over again' the right way.
give her a taste of her own medicine. stand her in front of the parents and ridicule her (in an adult way, of course). make her apologize publicly (the embarrassment feature). make the class re-enact the scene and have the principle watch over this 'act' to ensure she 'did it right' this time.
I'm completely serious.
I remember a story about a guy who was stopped by a cop. the cop had a 'teacher complex' about him and told the driver 'now go back and do that stop PROPERLY!'. see, the teacher-complex again - many authoritarians have it.
make that teacher feel her own medicine. make her 'do it over' but in public, this time.
maybe SHE will learn a lesson (!) from it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Although this is astonishing it is at least relatively straight forwardly explained away by a fruitcake teacher. In the UK as the Government's multi-billion pound "Building Schools for the Future" - or BSF - scheme rolls out - schools, and local authorities are being leaned on (by Partnership for Schools - PFS - a government agency) to sign up to fully managed services as part of the pre-conditions for drawing down the many millions required to build new schools. These on 5 years contracts and involving all schools within a local authority area. So typically every school will be tied into a network which will be admittedly very powerful - but which will be screwed down tighter than Fort Knox. Already we (I'm a headteacher - in US read 'Principal' ) we're being told that in future we'll only be able to use memory sticks that are encrypted and high strength password protected. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, it goes against many years of the same Government's commitment to giving schools more autonomy and the freedom not to buy into local authority services if they don't wish to. I can well imagine that some schools and teachers will buy into the managed service only to by-pass it completely by purchasing their own computers, and subverting the system - which is what ICT users are very good at. Remember where you heard it first
Sure, some people may get it. But unless there's a NASCAR team with "gratis" in one of their logos or slogans, or if ESPN uses the word, people won't get it.
I get all kinds of very puzzles looks when I wear my shirt that says:
Libre
Gratis
Linux
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
That's not the teacher's fault. Those who want to evangelize Linux need to do much, much more work in the "real" world.
I'd only say that if the teacher is in any way involved in teaching tech/IS then they are at fault for not knowing better. I'm going to take the lazy /.er way out by not RTFA so I have no clue what the teacher 'should' know.
If they teach history then they are off the hook. But even say a math teacher would be getting close to someone who should know better.
Because keep in mind the context of what the teacher did. If your going to flaunt your ignorance that explicitly and claim to be a teacher...well...
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Not necessarily. You can make whatever changes you want to GPL software without having to "give away" the modified version (i.e., distribute source code) as long as you don't distribute the binary based on the modified code. The GPL [wikipedia.org] only requires the modified source code to be distributed if the modified executable is distributed. An "in-house" application can use GPL code without having to distribute the alterations. And you can modify BSD-licensed [wikipedia.org] code and include it even in distributed binaries without having to distribute the modified code. All you have to do is be sure the distributed binary reproduces the copyright notice and disclaimer from the original code.
Yes, that's a great idea. When the guy who had trouble understanding "free" software asks you what the catch is, start right in with the differences between a GPL and BSD license.
Good luck with that.
typing too fast.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
After reading through the teacher's email, I don't really think the root of the problem has anything to do with Liunx at all. As a father of 3 school-age children, I have seen a lot of teachers. Most are good, some aren't, but occasionally you come across one that is just a petty tyrant by nature. I don't think there is anything that can be done in that case, other than to pray for their charges. That's pretty clearly the case here.
This line tells you all you need to know about Karen:
These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline.
This is a person who not only belives this, but apparently believes it is an important enough point that the reader needs to understand. Imagine going through a whole school year under the thumb of someone who has always has this thought running through their head while dealing with you.
Badmouthing the NEA wasn't a good idea.
Why not? The NEA is the biggest obstacle to improving education.
Rather than improving, the NEA and state teachers' unions keep asking for more money and smaller class sizes. But private schools with less money and larger classes get far better results.
I've tried, in the past, dealing with stupid people via the "polite and correct" method. Yes, in a couple occasions, when they're not COMPLETELY clueless, it'll work.
These rare occasions are the exception, rather than the rule.
Unfortunately, those firmly entrenched in their idiocies cannot have their views "corrected". At that point, the best you can hope for is the "smack across the nose" approach to set up a pain-aversion response in them. This way, when they go to open their mouths and remove all doubt, the mere memory of the last "smack" they got for "yapping where they know naught" will usually cause them a moment or two of hesitation (and in some cases, actual amelioration) of their unacceptable behavior.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Even someone who "barely uses the net" must be familiar with Google. So there are two very good arguments here:
First, Google provides their service for free. Ask them what they think about that. Where's the catch with Google? Obviously, it's possible to have a business model in which some products or services are given away.
Second, point out Google as one of many large corporations -- along with Amazon and IBM -- which not only use Linux, but use a lot of Linux. On the order of tens of thousands of machines. Obviously they are too big to get away with breaking a law, and too successful to be caught in some sort of catch.
A good way to cement the believability is to explain the "catch" -- what the disadvantages of Linux and open source are.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This guy in *IT* had never seen anything like it before. "That's so cool," he said.
Hilarious. I'm a school counselor. Yesterday the school's IT person handed me an ethernet switch and asked me how to use it.
For the faculty, using some other OS is inconceivable. Literally. Trying to explain some of this stuff to them feels just like going all the way back to teaching kids the alphabet.
Ok, so during that very same visit to the IT office, the IT person gets a phone call from head office, "somebody on your network is running ubun-2 (that's what she actually wrote). Who is it?"
I said, "I am. I brought in a laptop to use while you spend all morning trying to figure out why the one you gave me won't connect to the domain". In a situation like that you just bite your lip and be glad it's not you.
The free software culture hasn't adapted well to the role of desktop OS. People expect to use a desktop system that is managed by some entity not just as an OS, but as a platform:
There will be defaults that are amenable to the expectations of the user *and* the application developer. There will be a default IDE with a comprehensive set of APIs and best practices that are promoted to the developer base (whereas LSB is mostly ignored in the FOSS world). There will be a CLEAR concept of what hardware is supported (Linux only states what CPU is supported; compatibility for anything else requires try-and-see investigations). There will be hardware for which drivers can be easily installed (whereas drivers supplied for Linux may occasionally appear, will require CLI use, and will disappear as soon as the kernel receives an automatic update).
On 'Linux' there is confusion about 'Linux' user interfaces (not just the Desktop env. question, but the defaults used from distro to distro), which makes tech support for an independent application very difficult and expensive. There is the constant moving target of 6-month release cycles (not security and bug fixes that mostly keep backward compatibility, but 'new versions' with new features and changed defaults that interact in ways that app developers can't anticipate).
There is also the really rotten expectation that most users have to limit themselves to the apps that are offered in the distro's repository. Likewise, OS distro maintainers/packagers are expected to be the first point of contact for handling bugs and many fine-grained aspects of those apps which those package maintainers are unqualified to handle. As a result, apps features keep getting regressed and fat-fingered by maintainers while app developers become more isolated from their Linux user base.
If an app developer wants to mold their dream into a reality, the roiling sea of Linux-based distros is not likely to be their first or second choice of platform. OTOH, end-users aren't likely to even be able to recognize "Linux" any more than they could tell what brand of gasoline is in a car by looking at it; yet we keep idiotically marketing "Linux" to end users (thankfully, Google does not partake in that mania with their marketing of Linux-based Android).
Here is what must be done:
Define a personal computing platform, not 'distro', distros were for coders and techs and the concept couldn't be adapted to novices).
Make sure all levels of system development (even the kernel folks) are aware of the main use cases for desktop users. Don't have use cases with your requirements? Then draft some! This is why we've had terrible video and audio architecture for over a decade.
Choose a default IDE and market the platform to developers, whose target should be something like 'LSB Desktop 4.0'. Make it clear that the platform is a good common ground for them and their target audience to interface.
The platform must have a standard way to install packages from ISVs. An RPM file format is not good enough... package names and versions must be synchronize, and there must be a built-in command to start the install.
The platform must not shy away from full desktop functionality. It must specify what happens when my software rings while the MP3 player is running and I'm in the next room. That spec must show which components in the platform fulfill that behavior. (i.e. Linux + GNU + X11 = Not specific or meaningful enough to users and app devs).
Get a trademark (not the penguin, that's for the kernel) and market/license it (for a penny, if necessary) to hardware vendors: Give them a clear path to validating and then SHOWING compatibility with the platform. I want to be able to walk into a store and see that logo next to the Windows and OSX logos on a Wifi or 3G device.
Finally, yes I know that Windows is awful. I've got an HP printer driver installed on XP, but have to add another instance of the printer to get the settings right... lo and behold, Windows can't find the driver for the 'new' equipment even through the driver is already present. Terrible!
But - Windows is relatively predictable and accessible. Those are the two main requirements for a general-purpose desktop platform.
So you'd rather put him behind bars for something as stupid as this situation rather than publicly humiliate him with showing the world his ignorance and educating him at the same time?
Now if you'll just step over here where we will fit the implants so you will be an effective drone ... er, uh ... community member.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
You didn't read the article. The teacher said that she used Linux in college.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
While there's a whiff of tinfoiling in Helios's reply, I thought I'd point out:
Last I checked, MS has cut-rate licensing deals in place with many schools -- *on *condition that they adhere to an MS-only software policy.
It is not that farfetched to think that there's a deliberate "Windows only" mentality in these schools.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Can I suggest an alternative course of action?
1. Invite Japanese ambassador, heads of state to middle of nowhere.
2. Demonstrate nuclear bomb.
3. "Let's end the war before we have to burn silhouettes of your civilians into their local sidewalks."
4. ???
5. Profit!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Reagan...
Or for those who don't understand that, try:
Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia...
Or for those who don't understand that, try:
WTO, GATT,...
Or for those who don't understand that, try:
Limbaugh, Imus, Brittany, Ben Lo...
Okay, I give. Can Americans appreciate the concept of Freedom? Can they understand the concept of free beer? Can they understand the concept of distinction?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Some really good points were made in the reply. None of those will be taken seriously due to the sarcastic and mocking tone of the response. Why not save the oh so clever biting wit for the *end* of the conversation, not the beginning?
I am a non-union Administration/Support person (IT Manager) for a public school system in Michigan. I am also a member of a group whose goal is to educate K-12 CIOs on the benefits of Open Technologies (you can find more information out about us at www.k12opentech.org). I find the "factoid" that the author of the note includes stating that the NEA receives funding from Microsoft and is thus influenced by Microsoft laughable. Here is a link to the NEA's positions on Technology in schools: http://www.nea.org/technology/index.html I am sure Microsoft gives money to the NEA (I have no idea if they do or don't), but in my experience the classroom teacher has never been the problem with adopting Open Technologies in K-12 education. In fact, Open Technologies are almost always adopted from the classroom up in sort of a grassroots fashion. Classroom teachers (and the NEA) want one thing - access to more technology in a classroom. Ask any teacher if they would rather have 3 Windows or Mac machines or 6 OSS machines and they will always ask for the latter. In my opinion the roadblock is always the federal, state, and county leaderships. My state, Michigan, seems to have some freakish, unbreakable alliance with EDS and Microsoft. Every solution that they push on us always seems to require some sort of Windows box. Another example, look at Maine. Their 1:1 legislation was basically authored by an employee of Apple at the time, Mark Whesten (now works for Dell). Of course, you could say the same thing about Indiana's INACCESS program, but this is more about the economics and not the application. I do not know what is going on in Texas (of course Dell is in their backyard), but this story contradicts everything I have witnessed nationally in the classroom.
I thought they were supposed to be the kinds of people who research something a little before spouting random facts. They are in a position where doing such things can probably make them liable to slander.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I'm sure she is ignorant on the subject of free software and just needs to be educated. Throwing in comments about her motives is distracting from this education. My mother and many other members of my family are teachers and they still do not grasp the concept of open source.
Free software would benefit greatly if "Helios" and Roy Schestowitz beat each other into dumb oblivion
Hear hear.
However, COLA is still one of the groups that entertains me most. Where would I go to get my 15 minutes of side-splitting laughter without Roy and his hillarious flamefest of a usenet group?
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
considering the oppositional attitude we see in kids (some of them anyway) this action by the teacher may be the best thing that has happened to Linux for kids! They will check out the OS in sheer defiance of authority. ;-) bb
Most "teachers" I had in high school were first class morons (with one honorable exception). I have seen nothing in the intervening years to suggest that things have gotten better.
http://www.austin.isd.tenet.edu/schools/staff.phtml?teacher=667
I used to be a tech coordinator for a school district. We ran apple, windows, and linux computers. From what I have read of the comments, I see a naive view of the situation. If the student was actively using the disc on a computer without authorization, I would take it as computer risk/violation and a violation of the student computer-use policy which all students sign. Had the student ASKED, we could have set up a lab, and they would be free to experiment all they want. But as such I would treat it as trying to circumvent the operating system already installed. It may seem like a hard-line approach, but I had to repair too many computers used by students and TEACHERS who think it's OK to install/use whatever software they want that has nothing to do with the mission statement of the school district. Always installed without regard to the effects to others in the school. Too many times an entire lab will be unusable until they can be re-imaged. What do you say to that teacher and class? You can't use that lab today because the previous teacher allowed Johnny to fuck them up. Yes Virginia you can fuck up the OS that is installed on the computer with a Live-boot CD. Every one of them asks "would you like to install this to the hard drive?" Ask and you shall receive, hide it from the IT department, and it will be treated as hacking, EVEN if that was not the student's intent. It's not their personal computer to play with. It has a purpose. It was put their to be used as part of a curriculum as set by the teacher. In this case the teacher was correct in taking the CDs until an appropriate environment can be set up for the students to use them.
Under our current rule of law^H^H^H government by random action, when people commit illegal actions and get burned, then the government uses a new law to make their loss good on the backs of the rest.
In this case, you get the guy to try to "be clever". Then when he gets sued, he goes running to uncle Sam? "Sam! Sam! It's not fair! I was cheating, and I cheated in stupid ways, but EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOIN' IT, and I lost everything, and you've got to make that system proprietary so I can steal it like everyone else..."
And in case you don't believe that Congress would feel they have to do sumpin, and pass a law to do exactly that,
look at
Bailout #1 (forced sale of Lehman bros to preferred company #1)
Bailout #2 (Official bailout)
Bailout #3...45 (Paulson acting in extension of what the official bailout allowed)
Bailout #46 (forcing banks to take cash loans at 5%, 'it was a take it or take it offer, quote')
Bailout #47 (focing banks to pay out money from cash loans to directors as dividends and bonuses)... Bush says that that is good for the economy.
Bailout #48 (Automakers loans).
Each and every one of these bailouts was enacted by the Executive or Legislative branches "because we have to do something", nominally in good faith that they would be used appropriately, in good faith that they would magically save the economy despite every evidence that they wouldn't; many of them were illegal; resulted in complete and utter shock when nothing happened as promised, and put the burden of the bailout of the illegal, greedy, and stupid, on those who had not been illegal, greedy, and stupid.
In other words, those who seek power at all costs are now undone by the threat of realizing that they are not in control, and they are desperately wiggling every joystick they can find, in order to try to "get back in control."
In line with that, your advice is quite possibly going to hand all OSS over to Micro$oft in bailout #4797, the Computer Software Bailout.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Indeed. Maybe get a superbowl commercial talking about how linux/open source/open office/etc break you free from microsoft yet are still backwards compatible with them.
And then someone make Ubuntu idiot-proof edition, where, over time, Ubuntu slowly weans you day-by-day into how to do common linux operations. Over like 90 days, changing from an XP Desktop clone into a normal install of ubuntu.
Or we could go get chips and dip :)
I'm surprised Stark's reply didn't include the phrase "see figure one". My reply certainly would have!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Here's another example of what little intelligence our public school teachers have, but sometimes a particular teacher's idiocy is indeed shocking.
Wonderful. He takes on the bigotry and stupidity of an ignoramus of a teacher, and then shows himself to be a stupid, bigoted, anti-union ignoramus. Since his reference to the NEA came basically out of nowhere other than his own fevered imagination, it shows just as much about him as it does his opponent.
I'm sorry to hear what your sister in law makes. I have a relative who teaches in a private school (college prep too) in California, who makes less than your sister in law. If he moved to the public schools, he'd get a 50% raise even if they paid her as an entry level teacher. I'm sure there are private schools that pay more than the public schools, but they aren't all like that.
"The problem is zealots see everything as a threat or challenge; and believe compromise and cooperation is selling out"
This is a perfect description of the teacher in question.
If the reply wasn't confrontational in the same way, then it may have been more receptive.
It's like meeting a drunk woman in a bar that calls you an a$$hole because you're a man and that they're all no good. Sure, you could tell her to go f'erself, but if you sympathize and buy her drinks, you can find out that she just got dumped and can work your way into her pants in no time.
"I'm a High School teacher and would be very uneasy about putting bootable linux CDs into the hands of teenage boys on the school network
...
..
What school would that be?
Not using Linux didn't save Julie Amero from losing her teaching license or a conviction for disorderly conduct, where was the union in this case ?
"Think - what if a student used advanced access to delete a whole year's coursework?"
If you're relying on Windows to protect your coursework then you are deluding yourself.
"schools don't have the money to bring in the level of security experts we need to protect against the kids"
Like how is it less expensive to protect Windows against attacks?
"the idea that kids need Linux in highschool is ridiculous"
Using Linux, kids learn about computing, using Windows and they learn that the right-mouse-click is dangerous. And it would show them that there is more to computing than Windows.
"Teacher's unions are good for your children"
imho, Unions are good for the executive officers of said union, and no-one else
davecb5620@gmail.com
"I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."
I was LMAO at this. If I wanted to get the get the goat of Ken Starks, I'm pretty sure this is about what I would say.
Then he goes on to counter that she's pro Microsoft because her Union told her so LOL.
I'm not sure which is more comical, the prank letter or his response.
Maybe the teacher is correct in his beliefs.
I mean, outside of /., there isn't a lot of uptake of linux. Period. Some home users play with it, others have VM's of it running to "explore" linux, etc. but, it has no market penetration like Windows has.
Yes, exposing kids to Linux might help it take off in the future, to the levels we would like to see, but that will happen when it actually works, out of the box. I, myself, will work with 2 or 3 reboots and getting a functional system out of the box (Wintel), rather than having the 2 reboots the Ubuntu took, with non-working WiFi requiring me to actually go out and get FWCutter (real easy, when your computer HAS NO FUCKING NETWORK CONNECTION). Oh yeah, that's proprietary, so it has to be that way.
Really? Why is it the same card works Carte Blanch in Windows? How come it's SO horrible to run some companies proprietary driver in linux, but that same driver is fine for the WinTel community?
Yes, I ended up going to proprietary drivers on my Linux computer. It actually works better than when I let Ubuntu decide which drivers to use. Yes, I'm using NVidia's proprietary code, and I like it, like it MUCH better than the crap that came with Ubuntu that offered me max 800X600.
Thinking that it is the teacher's unions keeping linux out of the world is just absolute fanaticism. I mean, REALLY now. I can't promote an operating system that doesn't "just work" out of the box to people that aren't computer literate. I can promote WinTel to the same people, and 9 of ten times, it works, out of the box.
So, someone care to tell me why my wifi card doesn't work out of the box in Linux, and does with Windows, and care to expand on why that's OK, since the driver is "closed source".... WHY THE FUCK is it OK to have a broken OS, if you maintain Open Source with it.
--Toll_Free
It's the typical struggle between our inner virtual and self-interest. If we in a society would be governed by our inner virtue, we would voluntarily take care of one another -- your cooperation model. However, if we allow self-interest to rule, we need laws to keep all the self-interest in check and we lose freedom. Only a virtuous society can be truly free.
"No free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles" -- George Mason
"Statesmen...may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand." -- John Adams
A Profession is a teaching. Things like engineer, teacher, doctor... can all be professions.
A Career is a course of jobs, from one to another.
A Vocation is a calling, with specific reference to being a calling by God. Arguably, Mother Theresa had a calling, Pope John Paul II had a calling, Maximillian Kolbe had a calling.
It is a bad mistake to use the words Vocation and Career interchangeably. Vocations are things that, if missed by the recipient, badly damage their chance at salvation and holiness. Vocations are also things that are sometimes claimed by wolves in sheeps' clothing, to help them get more clothes, cheap -- whether the vocation is real, or just claimed, comes out eventually. Vocations shape your whole life, not just 8 hrs, 5 days a week.
My vocation, for example, is to work far below my education, in a concrete yard, and live in a trailer home, and help coworkers and fellow trailer-park residents, while quietly (not silently) evangelizing Christianity. My claim (you can believe it or not) is that I got here through direct directives from God in prayer, followed by events happening as He said they would. That includes Him telling me in the middle of prayer "get your stuff together, because I am moving you", followed by -- 3 minutes later -- a supervisor walking into sight, discussing with another supervisor, and then coming up, and asking me to come up to the office, where they moved me to another location.
Now, you can believe me or not -- but if I am lying, making claims like that is really going to backfire badly. If I am telling the truth, making claims like that won't. That's part and parcel with the nature of the word "vocation".
My career, though, would have been to be an aerospace engineer. Of course, that never got past the B.S. AE/OE. Careers are like that -- kindof random.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
In cooperation, we support each other and do not require institutions ... PROBLEM: cooperation requires the ability to kick out or kill non-cooperators, and it requires a strong innate culture, an "organic state."
Actually, in the primary example of social cooperation, raising children, this isn't true. There are hundreds of social species on this planet, and none of them expect their infants to contribute, or even "cooperate", for most of their childhood (however that's defined). Of course, part of the upbringing of species like ours is to teach the kids that cooperation and sharing are expected. Others (e.d., bees and ants) have builtin instincts that "force" them to cooperate when they become adults.
Of course, non-cooperating adults do tend to be evicted from social groups in most species. But "freeloaders" have been documented in many species. This may be a social inefficiency, but not necessarily. One could argue that, in software, it's advantageous to have freeloaders. They are regularly viewed by developers as testers. Software with lots of non-programmer users can be among the best, because such users can contribute bug reports ("complaints"), and this information can be used to improve the software. So the FOSS crowd doesn't kick out (or kill ;-) non-cooperators, they just relegate you to the status of guinea pig for software ideas.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
neither is this .. :)
...
"I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back"
Snort!!!!, I do believe this requires further investigation
davecb5620@gmail.com
The quickest way to change that teacher's mind may be to send her a link to this forum so she can see just how many people responded to this story, and how strongly they feel!
I'm not going to look up facts, I don't need to, but most of the computerized world runs on Windows or a pirated version of Windows. When I worked at Unisys, Sun and Cisco, they used windows profoundly, do not let anyone fool you. Almost all areas of customer service, contact/call centers and banking that are not on legacy machines or dumb terminals run on windows.
All computers have security issues, and the main issue is the user, not so much the code. When infrastructure teams decide on the OS of choice, it's windows. Cause when you need to sue or blame someone, it's nice to know your vender/supplier has money and resources you can get at.
Free is never free when used in a corporate enviroment.
You have said yourself that almost every person in almost every school has little or no IT experience.
Consider what would happen, therefore if you plopped them into a Linux environment - where support means reading the source code. They'd be absolutely helpless. In fact, by saving them money and changing them to "free" software, you'd in fact make all their IT unusable, as they would not have the skills to use it, nor the experience (to say nothing of the time) to find out how. It would be a completely inappropriate level of technology: not better or worse, just wrong.
For people in this situation, who just want to get things done, Microsoft and a support team - from a 3rd party or easily recruited staff are more important than the cost of the kit.
Maybe the secret is to step back from the bits and bytes of the technical aspects and consider that what they really need is ubiquitous, seamless computing that allows that to teach their children, without messin' around with installs, upgrades and reconfigurations.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I doubt teachers have free reign to confiscate whatever they wish from students. If the teacher thinks it is stolen ask him to prove it. During the process he will hopefully learn something about FLOSS. In the end the student should get the CDs back and the teacher should learn something. If the teacher refuses and the student is a minor ask they should ask their parents to address the issue. The teacher is within their authority to tell the student not to demonstrate it in class but outside their authority to confiscate perfectly legal CDs. I highly doubt the issue is one of conspiracy. A much more likely cause is a closed-minded, authoritarian teacher. Taking the action described above should hopefully remedy both issues.
Ugh, sad attitude. How does one reason with a fool without becoming a fool themselves? She obvious likes to judge things on a snap. Maybe that was just a day/week for her ;)
I am pretty sure that by non-cooperators the OP was referring to somewhat different behavior than you are. In FOSS terms, my understanding of what he meant would be the people who modify and distribute the software without releasing the source code.
The mechanism the FOSS crowd has for dealing with this group (essentially ostracism) is not very effective. Fortunately, there exists a mechanism outside of the FOSS community to deal with them (the courts).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
AISD - Austin Independant School District - Austin Tx
High tech land
Dell, Siemens, and a million smaller companies, mostly running on Linux.
They should call Mike Dell and ask him what OS their servers boot from, or what the Mini runs
Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave. -Guy Kawasaki
Your emails are not property. Period.
No law anywhere will sustain such nonsensical view.
Even if you would put them in media, the data is still not subject of any property law, but of copyright and perhaps trademark or patent law (which have nothing to do with property law).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The pay really sucks. Frankly you'd probably be better off managing a fast food restaurant.
If you put up with the crappy pay and the stifling bureaucracy, then you're probably not doing it for your own selfish purposes, but rather because you feel that it's the right thing to do. Which means that you are genuinely interested in teaching people.
How much can you earn managing a fast food restaurant? Is it more then 40k a year? A teachers pay puts them in the top 50% of wage earners. Not great money but the pay DOES NOT SUCK. And the bureaucracy tends to drive out people with options, talents, youth, and abilities. People interested in teaching will eventually be driven out like everyone else unless they have no better options.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-25-teacher-salary-raise_x.htm http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
I used to be the sysadmin for a high school. The district standard was Windows 2000 or XP on all workstations, with Altiris Deployment Solution to manage it all. My F/OSS experiences:
- We somehow wound up with a massive number of Ubuntu install CDs. I left them in a help-yourself tray in the library, until it was pointed out to me that SOME student is going to install it on a home computer, format the HD, and the parents will be calling the school for MY head on a stick. This wasn't too far-fetched, considering that I was frequently blamed for problems with teachers' home computers.
- I pushed out Firefox to lab computers, until teachers started to complain. Turns out there were several websites teachers sent students to that required MSIE--including educational software running on my own servers.
- All my lab computers ran Office XP. Because of my experiences with teachers who tended to be idiots, I did not also install OpenOffice.Org, lest I be blamed for installing something that doesn't work. One time, one student came in with a OOO document on a USB flash drive. I used this student as my catalyst to install OOO on lab computers. Surprisingly, no complaints from teachers.
Now, Altiris did support Linux imaging, and if a teacher wanted Linux across their lab, I'd jump on the opportunity. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, as the teachers with computer labs under their control had the combined IQ of a tree stump. Example: the web design teacher told me her computer was "out of memory" because she had the entire desktop filled with icons.
One could argue that, in software, it's advantageous to have freeloaders. They are regularly viewed by developers as testers. Software with lots of non-programmer users can be among the best, because such users can contribute bug reports ("complaints"), and this information can be used to improve the software.
In this case, they really aren't freeloaders, are they? Real freeloaders are people like Google, who take, and then never contribute ANYTHING back, not even mailing list comments, but instead have their own internal world where everything occurs.
So I suppose they are breaking the law too:
The site of the Austin Independent School District:
http://www.austin.isd.tenet.edu/
What they are running:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.austin.isd.tenet.edu
OS: Linux
Server: Apache/2.2.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.6 PHP/5.2.5
Last changed: 10-Dec-2008
IP address: 206.77.0.250
Netblock Owner: Austin Independent School District
The parent was presenting an old argument, i.e., that people need to learn computers, not software.
I've never agreed.
People don't use computers. They use software. It's the software that needs a computer.
Knowing the intricacies of computer design and structure won't help you learn to use a single new piece of software.
However, for example, knowing Word Perfect will make it easier to learn Word, because both share many functions.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Humanity has two basic options for government:
cooperation sometimes works if you have 2-4 people, but sooner or later an arbiter is needed. The question is how much power is given to that arbiter. The larger the society, the faster the rule of law becomes absolute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8yrOAjfKM
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
Or you could be doing it because it's something you can do and you can't find a better job. There's an old saying:
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
My point is that for 15 years the Linux community has been trying to get normal people to use Linux by talking about freedom, free as in software and free as in price.
That hasn't worked very well. Maybe it's time to reexamine assumptions and plot a new course.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
>>In the end, the year of Linux on the desktop will come not when technology matures, but when it is advertised appropriately...it seems Linux has a marketing problem!
Well, now we know that Windows and Linux have at least one thing in common...
Mark Williams, District 5, President, Austin Independent School District.
Dear Mr. Williams:
As you may or may not be aware, it appears that a teacher in your district recently disciplined her student for demonstrating open source software to his/her classmates.
IMPORTANT: The article http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/08/12/10/001236.shtml about this is going viral on the web.
I can assure you that educators need to understand that Open Source Software is, by it's very nature, free. Free to use, free to distribute and free to copy. Further to that, Open Source Software can save your school board 10's of thousands of dollars in licencing and royalty fees. Replacing Windows and/or Microsoft Office is now easy. Furthermore, going forward, upgrades are free too.
More and more schools and school boards are adopting Linux and Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/. Open Office is a mature, fully-featured, standards compliant Open Source office suite which adheres to fully open document standards and can open and create virtually any MS Office document, spreadsheet or presentation. Linux is virtually virus-free, stable and secure. Special versions of it are designed for schools. Here's one: http://k12ltsp.org/
The most important thing about Open Source Software is that it helps to level the playing field. Less advantaged students can take home legal copies of software and use and install them legally at home.
All I would ask is this:
- Please educate your teaching staff about the advantages of Open Source Software.
- Please have your IT department review its costs and look at the savings to be had.
- Please do what you can to help give all kids the same opportunities.
Thank you in advance for your time in looking into this matter.
*** Don't be dull.***
Can one still kill an adult trespasser after dark there? One could when I lived there.
If so, and this dangerous woman trespasses on your property after dark, and you believe her a threat to children, I suggest considering killing her for trespassing. Perfectly legal, unless the laws regarding trespassing have changed recently.
After all, "Think of the children."
What this woman is doing is worse than child rape -- the physical trauma heals -- she is poisioning their minds with outright lies.
Perhaps I'm being a pedant here, but "factoid" originally meant something that's asserted fact, but may actually be false or misleading. The idea was that "factoids" might stand in for "facts" in an invalid but persuasive argument. The tidbit about Microsoft pumping money into the NEA is a fact, not a factoid, unless of course he's just making that up.
(Unfortunately, the alternate meaning of "small fact" is common. *sigh*)
My school (in Germany) had a cobbled-together pick-of-the-litter CIP-Pool running under Suse.
When I went through physics the CIP Pool ran on Suse and DEC Alphas.
I did my diploma thesis in an MPI and we were/are running Suse on P4s and the number-crunching is done under Suse on some old Alphas and Opterons.
Now I am on Xubuntu on an EEE - well, that's what you get when you head out for a year abroad.
So there was definitely no shortage of Linux in my education.
However, e.g. most of the Architecture department has never heard of Linux - the CAD vendors make sure of that. The same with the Business department. And I know that the CS-department gets free licenses from Microsoft to avoid them "going Linux" [many still do].
Marx ist die Theorie, Murx ist die Praxis
Fair enough. I'd submit that at this point it's really more of a, shudder, marketing issue than anything else. Yeah FOSS on the desktop still has some technical issues but nothing stopping it really from large scale adoption.
I can sit someone down in front of an Unbuntu install and they often will say something to the effect of, "Oh is this a Mac?" They know it's different but the learning curve is so low it's no real barrier to use.
And so in so much if we follow with the idea that it's a marketing problem now FOSS does not really have the mechanics to employ the marketing it really needs to push past where it is now. The model of FOSS just does not lend itself to that. Instead we just have to rely on some of the 'parts' of FOSS like Red Hat, Unbuntu, and such to do that job. I would say that for what they are capable of doing they are doing it well. However I think, if I'm reading you right, what you really want is beyond what FOSS as a whole is capable of doing.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Except that the accusation in this case doesn't hinge on convincing the target of changing her perspective on free software. The arguments for free software were much more side notes to his real point; "What you did was illegal and I am going to ensure that you are reprimanded". He further demonized her for either being a member of an evil, corrupt union actively assisting them in their efforts whether or not she even realizes it.
And I don't think he is jumping to conclusions. I have the same 'opinion' (to be fair) of these kinds of unions. IMO, unions like these that have 'no competition' clauses are very corrupt (must be member or you can't work here).
A person like one that would right the first letter is not going to be persuaded by a kind and polite letter. This letter's target audience was not the teacher, but her supervisors and administration. It is a polite and well worded letter describing how the teacher is a complete idiot that needs to be removed from her position if she is not willing to change her perspective. He gave the administration the information necessary to open their minds, not hers. I think she is a lost cause, sending her the letter to is a formality, and it encourages openness.
actually, I think this is a pretty good idea. Kids like nothing better than to think they are using something illegal. The only thing that would have topped this would be if the principle of the school made a public announcement banning Linux software as being illegal hacker material.
Someone should contact the principle of that school and ask him to do precisely that.
She tried Linux in college. Unless she is confusing Linux with some sort of punch card OS then I can't imagine that she is a member of the generation you are referring to.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think instead of all this. We should get together and donate 100 computers all running Linux to the school. It would be hard for them to turn away from free computers, plus that makes the teacher look like a complete tool. I know, please dont bring up support problems or god know whatever else any of you can think of a draw back to this. So please keep all that to yourselves. What would come out of this is the media would jump on board and Linux would get some good PR while making the ignorance of this teacher and the school board that hired her look like they were all holding back the children, and wont some PLEASE think of the children.
Don't shudder. If you don't market, no one knows you exist.
I don't believe FOSS is inherently limited in how it markets its products or how successful that marketing might be. I think the teacher's letter is just one piece of evidence that FOSS has failed to counter the notion that Linux is tainted software, or that it can't be any good because it's free.
Some issues that hold Linux back are out of its control, like proprietary drivers. Others are not, like the sophomoric notion that Linux users are smarter and better because they use Linux.
Finally, we need to remember that choice of software isn't that big a deal to many, many people. They bought a machine and Windows is on it. End of story for them. They don't want to talk about software any more than they want to talk about plumbing fixtures A lot of people will put up with a lot of crap before they even think about abandoning Windows.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Does this so called teacher even read? We hear on the NEWS, Radio, everywhere that Open Source Software is FREE!!!!! Heck even my grandmother was using Fedora until she died 4 years ago.
Except where it doesn't. General word processor and spreadsheet skills are what they should be teaching, if anything. Actually, scratch that. The kids already know how to do all that. What they should do is take a semester and drill typing.
Two points here:
#1 - an "edumacator" from the public dumbing down system
#2 - Austin, TX
Nothing can be a surprise after those facts are established.
Maybe this one instance was a good thing, "If the teacher doesn't like it I want to know more" or at least, when I was a kid and authority figures denounced something it made me want to know more about said thing.
Hopefully kids still question authority.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
i had friends who didnt know what linux was. i say had being i educated them and some even use it now. as for my school days i got a rep of knowing more then the it or repair man so when i brought a pice of software in none bothered me abought what it was.
Tons of Christian organizations will just give out Bibles, absolutely free of charge. Producing them costs money for the printer, the binding, the shipping, and so forth. Yet they ask for no money in return. They do it for two reasons:
1. They hope you'll like it and come around to their way of thinking.
2. They hope they might get a few secondary benefits in the form of, say, church donations or volunteer work.
The exact same thing applies to FOSS. Where the Christian might say "Here, have a Bible, I think you'll like it and ditch your current religion," the FOSS advocate might say "Here, have a Linux CD. I think you'll like it and ditch your current OS."
The FOSS organizations also hope for some secondary benefits. Instead of church donations they hope for support contracts. Instead of volunteering at the church bake sale or soup kitchen, they hope you'll volunteer to contribute patches or bug reports.
But, with both the Bible and the Linux CD, you're more than free to just take it, use it, and not donate anything back.
This cannot be difficult to understand for anyone of any age. Everyone's familiar with churches. Let them see that it's essentially the same thing.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
One of my cousin's teachers instructs her students to vandalize Wikipedia and claims everything in it is false, so while at first this shocked me, after I thought about it a bit, didn't strike me as odd at all.
It is unrealistic to expect that everyone that could be significantly important will do the appropriate legwork before making incorrect assertions. In this case, the response was the first opportunity for a non-student to provide active feedback and educational data. Teachers sadly are inherently distrustful of their students justifications, so this may have been the most opportune moment to prove that mature, intelligent people are behind the movement. Instead, she got a response that in her mind essentially proved her expectation of selfishness/immaturity. Even if her mind is unreachable, there is nothing to be gained from that response.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As a teacher, I think the argument about the NEA was very appropriate, and I don't think any teacher as ignorant as this one would have done what they did without the work of the NEA, just from a little experience... you know, if anyone actually paid any attention to the drivel they spew. Personally, I think this teacher is just one of those types. I thought it was quite perceptive... or luck, but likely true.
You should hear the kind of stuff they say about Wikipedia. It is mind boggling.
IANAL, but if I say "I'll sell you my email for $1" and you say "OK, here's $1" and I hit the "forward" button, then "property" has been exchanged.
If a burglar breaks into my house and starts erasing my emails and I shoot him claiming he was destroying my "valuables", no DA will press charges, at least not around here.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I noticed in the comments section of TFA, there were some other anecdotes of similar experiences... so it seems to me this phenomenon was being under-reported before this (and is probably still going to be under-reported for some time to come). Here's the one that struck me:
Unfortunately, lots more folks are claiming this has to be a fake letter, that "Karen" either doesn't exist or that she couldn't possibly have written this screed verbatim. Not that skepticism is a bad thing -- I wish more people were skeptical! -- but folks seem very willing to give this teacher a pass, or to claim that Helios is making stuff up. We worship teachers as heroes in our society, even if we don't pay them well (or even enough).
From my own scholastic experiences, I can say that even in a private (Catholic) school, I still ran into my fair share of small-minded bureaucrats. They are everywhere. (I still remember the time that Mister Deburro corrected me when I was asking permission to do something -- he insisted I should say "Can I...?" instead of "May I...?" and wouldn't even let me finish my request until I phrased it how he wanted it. On the other hand, he did introduce my class to the word "umbrage." But he was still being a douchebag pedant, and he was wrong! Even though this guy probably did way more right than wrong in his career, I'll forever remember him as the asshole who corrected me when I didn't need correcting.)
Usually social change comes about because charismatic leaders inspire others to adopt it.
Well, the free software movement has RMS!
If the masses don't like our charismatic leader figure they probably just need more education!
I don't believe FOSS is inherently limited in how it markets its products or how successful that marketing might be. I think the teacher's letter is just one piece of evidence that FOSS has failed to counter the notion that Linux is tainted software, or that it can't be any good because it's free.
I fully agree that FOSS is not limited in how it can market itself. Rather that by, for lack of a better word, design FOSS just does not lend itself to being marketed. And that most likely came out poorly so let me say it again in a different way. Marketing on a large scale works best with a relatively simple message. FOSS as a whole is not exactly simple. For that matter IS is not simple so when it gets marketed it's very on point. Market X product at Y target. And to that end like I said when Unbuntu markets it's product it can, and imo does, do well. But the idea of marketing the whole concept of FOSS is just way too much.
So ok, you say lets just market the idea of a FOSS desktop OS. Well...which one? Do we market all of them? Do we include BSD derivatives? Do we explain how it's really a combination of a kernel that then has a X windows system sitting on top of the CLI OS? I mean we have already gotten wayyyyy too complicated for even some 'power users', never mind the general population.
So I go back to the idea that if we market FOSS it has to be done at a very target able level. Unbuntu markets it's OS at users who want an alliterative OS. OO targets users who want an alternative office package. Those are manageable X to Y targets. But I just can't see how doing it for all of FOSS is viable.
Don't shudder. If you don't market, no one knows you exist.
I agree, but it's just the general direction that marketing wonks want to take things that brings the shudder. Were I to explain that I wanted to market FOSS and listed the complexity of it's nature they might respond with something along the lines of, "Well why doesn't Red Hat buy up Debian since they own Unbuntu and then we can market both those products." Which just would make me /facepalm.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Real freeloaders are people like Google, who take, and then never contribute ANYTHING back, not even mailing list comments, but instead have their own internal world where everything occurs.
Did I miss something?
http://code.google.com/soc/2008/
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.
They should just sue the teacher. If something was illegal in this case it was the teacher confiscating the cd's. Clearly not only immoral but definitely illegal.
/me tried to find a "FAIL" tag like from fark.com. Dang... I can't seem to find it around here.
I think the problem lies that with manby other fields of study, there are people of a certain camp of thought that no matter what will not be wrong.
He could not be convinced that FOSS was legal and genuinely free. There had to be a catch.
There is a catch (with most of the licenses): If you improve the code and distribute your improvements you have to distribute the source of your improvements, too, and can't keep others from distributing it further. (The ones without the catch often started out with institutional funding - where somebody's taxes or endowments came with a "distribute it to benefit society" string, like many other research projects.)
The people who built it are being paid in kind by those who chose to do more coding, and all the coders get far more code from others than they write themselves. Meanwhile everybody else who drops by gets to "use the mall's elevator and drink at the drinking fountain" for free, as the coders try to bait other coders into doing neat stuff for them. B-)
Explain it this way and maybe he'll get it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is exactly how you reply to people. There is no persuasion, no reasoning available. You are dealing with someone incapable of independent thought, who takes orders from authority figures, particularly religious ones. The satisfaction of counterattack is all you have.
While I realize that this may be lost in thousands of reply's to such a disturbing topic I still feel the need to say something. Only portions of an email the teacher sent are shown and little of the situation surrounding this is know. This whole thing reminds me of the AVI book Nothing But the Truth. /. and other audiences accuse her, and gladly will I condemn her if she is but it would be worse to tarnish the good reputation of a hard working individual because we make unwarranted assumptions based on less than all of the facts. Wait before you flame I beg, she may not deserve the harsh abuse evident here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_But_the_Truth_(novel)
Assuming that this person is a horrible teacher or that she did something wrong is unbecoming of an educated audience and does nothing but breed ignorance. It may be that she is guilty of all the things that the
While I am not sure that this is a conspiracy, I do believe this could be contributed to an uninformed educator.
As a relative of mine is an educator, they do not always have the time and effort to keep up with the latest technology for the education of our children. After speaking with this relative, I have also realized that it is not always the educator, it is also within the parents' responsibility as well.
Educator's responsibilities are to provide an environment and tools to allow the student to learn
Materials to provide the information:
Classroom
After School studies
Environment to allow for discussion, exploration and environment to provide for Problem determination:
Access to information
Where to find information
Validity of information
Viability of information
If it were me, I would question the reason for the confiscation and if no viable reason was provided, then I would demand the CD's back and inform the educator to not react without proper knowledge of the situation (i.e. LINUX is free)
It reads as incoherent ranting and gibberish to me.
What's this "soft strokes to your hair" stuff all about? That's weird, and that paragraph should be dropped.
Then there's "To think that I would involve my kids in my "illegal" activities is an insult far beyond outrage". For one thing, the kid is obviously involved to some extent in his activity, handing out Linux disks. And what's this "far beyond outrage"? What exactly is far beyond outrage anyway?
Then there's a couple of irrelevant paragraphs ranting about a teachers' union. Not helpful.
Followed by "A teacher who cared about her students would do that". Translation: a teacher who cared about their students would follow my agenda. That's just insulting. As is "Don't shackle your students in your prison Karen."
The final paragraph is full of threats instead of a polite request for the disks to be returned.
Sorry Ken, you missed an opportunity to provide a polite response that could have pointed out how and why software can be free, and instead publicly insulted one of the people educating your children.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
My wife is a teacher and we were going to try to get a hold of some old surplused computers for her classroom for the 1st graders to do things on. The trouble we found when we considered Linux, was the inavailability of standards-aligned educational software (e.g. companion software from textbook vendors), or early-mid primary school tailored software (aside from maybe some of the features of the XO laptops). Kids at that age given the start requirements benefit more from more structured software to keep them on task and has minimal UI interaction (e.g. the program works and acts like a book). Unfortunately, that software is usually custom to the written material. The second problem was the lack of support from local IT (all Windows/Dell shop, securing desktops with GPO).
Unfortunately, K12 education is not very platform agnostic, though it is better than it used to be with the online-resources, but even most of them require Non-OSS or poorly implemented Linux software (e.g. Flash Player, IE Only Sites, ActiveX) to work properly.
Thirdly, trying to get wireless connectivity configured was a pain given that they change their protocols like most people change their underwear.
All in all, it was a discouraging prospect because I *know* I could get more computers for the kids if I could get them under-spec (therefore less expensive) and run Damn Small Linux or OpenBSD with a trimmed down package list of a simple paint program and internet browser. However, with all the problems we ran into meeting the specific need for early primary kids, we found it just wasn't worth it when Windows isn't that expensive for academia.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
You see no problem with preaching to us in the very same way that you condemn in others.
-but that doesn't turn the information itself into a physical good.
A good example of this is the Traveling Knot.
Take a piece of twine, and attach it to a rope. Attach the other end of the rope to a piece of thin chain.
Now tie a simple overhand knot into the twine. Work the knot across the length of the combined assembly. The same knot is expressed in twine, then rope, then chain. It's the same knot, but it's proven to be independent of the medium.
The knot itself is only a curve. It requires some medium to manifest, but is not directly tied to that medium. You can draw a number of conclusions from this simple relationship, such as (a) the knot requires a medium to express itself in a tangible way, that (b) it isn't tied (sorry) to any particular medium, (c) that it's primarily information, and (d) that it can traverse (be copied) across a medium while leaving it effectively unchanged.
This means the knot is definitely not a physical good, although a knotted string can be. I guess I should add (d) that in general, the properties underlying an apparently simple, tangible thing are often highly complex and non-intuitive.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
"The problem with the "no such thing as a free lunch" theory is that the assertion is much to strong. " Right. There is a "food bank" here in town where a lot of poor people get free lunches all the time. Nothing about the food is substandard. It is commercially produced stuff you would find at any super market. And I have personally received many free lunches from friends, family, neighbors, etc, etc. Indeed, free lunches do exist!
Students are there to learn and not to use alternative operating systems or anything that is not in the districts circulumn is not allowed to be taught.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. God forbid the kids are allowed, you know, to learn stuff on their own.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Dude... As an Anal-Retentive Grammar Nazi you should really grammar check your posts. You don't have a single capitalized letter in a post with no fewer than four sentences (I'm not sure if "like" qualifies), and several proper nouns. You've also comma spliced in at least two places. Get a new job.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
>> ... any teacher as ignorant as this one...
That's an example of how the Linux community turns off prospective users.
Explain to this teacher why she is misinformed about Linux and you might win a convert. Tell her she is stupid and you win an enemy.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Oh, OK, yeah the teacher is suppose to stop the class to sit down and talk with the student about what he's doing, right? Maybe a nice 10 minute conversation about Linux? And the other kids are, what? Tearing up the classroom then? And so now the teacher knows about Linux. So what? You expect him to start installing it on all the computers the next day and get started? Please. There's no barrier here.
You want Linux in the classroom? Go down to your local school, set up a meeting with interested teachers, take and hour or so of your time to demonstrate it, and then hand out free CDs.
You market FOSS products by forgetting about the FOSS bit. Forget about all the kernel and X business. Market software, not FOSS. No one outside the community cares. They care what software does, not how it does it.
OS X has all that -- a kernel, a windowing system, etc. It's just as complicated as any Linux distribution and Apple never makes any of that part of its marketing and they seem to be doing just fine.
You can't succeed at marketing Linux if you believe you need to run prospective users through a course in OS design first.
Then, someone decides to market a particular flavor of Linux. All the different distributions are confusing, and dilute the brand, just as would happen if there were scores of different versions of Windows or OS X on the market.
That kind of decision is not a "we" decision, it is not a community decision. It is a decision for the company selling or giving away that distribution.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
9.41. PROTECTION OF ONE'S OWN PROPERTY. (a) A person in
lawful possession of land or tangible, movable property is
justified in using force against another when and to the degree the
actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to
prevent or terminate the other's trespass on the land or unlawful
interference with the property.
(b) A person unlawfully dispossessed of land or tangible,
movable property by another is justified in using force against the
other when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force
is immediately necessary to reenter the land or recover the
property if the actor uses the force immediately or in fresh pursuit
after the dispossession and:
(1) the actor reasonably believes the other had no
claim of right when he dispossessed the actor; or
(2) the other accomplished the dispossession by using
force, threat, or fraud against the actor.
9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is
justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or
tangible, movable property:
(1) if he would be justified in using force against the
other under Section 9.41; and
(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the
deadly force is immediately necessary:
(A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of
arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the
nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or
(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing
immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated
robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the
property; and
(3) he reasonably believes that:
(A) the land or property cannot be protected or
recovered by any other means; or
(B) the use of force other than deadly force to
protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or
another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974.
Amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, 1.01, eff. Sept. 1,
1994.
Since the teacher can bring arbitrary force to bear against the student via a summons for help, demanding the return of his property at gunpoint seems approrpiate as does killing her if she tries to flee.
In Liberty, Rene
We're supposed to believe that this teacher went out of her way to track Kenny down and threaten legal action over a student handing CDs out? Why, it's almost as if she knew exactly what to say to get all them Linux users fired up!
Those of you who believed this: You've been trolled.
I don't think Thomas Jefferson was wrong to free the slaves
No proof this actually happened.
People do get upset easy and fast.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
She works for the Austin Independent School District. It's an all union shop. She can't work there unless she's a dues-paying member of the Teacher's Union. As a close friend of several high school teachers (one of whom is the computer science teacher) and as father-in-law to a student teacher, I can confirm that there is no conspiracy theory here. It is fact, not theory. The union has a great deal of influence in what schools do with their curriculum, even down to software choices. Our high school, however, is a 100% Macintosh shop, since Apple offered irresistable incentives to cash-strapped school districts to get them to purchase Macintosh educational computers and software at a steep discount over Microsoft's program. It was a very smart move. Both of my sons are now in college, and they both have Macs. They turn up their nose at my Vista machine, but my youngest son now seems enchanted with my Ubuntu 8.04 media center desktop.
I mean, reading it, it is very accusatory, aggressive and rude. As a project founder, you don't have the luxury of doing something like this. That is, unless the tone of your project/general community, is such that this is acceptable. But, is that a tone that is really wanted?
What I mainly associate with Lindt is the awful (yet terribly expensive) truffles.
They are greasy in a very bad way. I think Lindt uses petroleum jelly to help separate the truffles from the equipment. Eeeeeew.
I guess Lindt also sells some crazy-expensive bitter chocolate squares. The label says "XX% Cacao", with XX being something from 65 to 95. This is only edible if used to bake cookies or brownies.
There are several entities involved with the proliferation and development of Linux and its components. One of the more notable examples is Red Hat.
Here are some contributors to debian
One could think of it being like: many people put together computers. Some people build them at home, while large companies such as Dell sell by volume. They have a large array of companies supplying parts and components, and you can't really say that one is more valuable than the other.
Personally I think that by far the most likely explanation for this whole thing is a hoax. Somebody wrote a fake email to Ken Starks (of HeliOS) that criticised Linux-based OS's in an absurd way. Mr Starks fell for the bait, and published the email on his blog with a mocking refutation. Now Slashdot's linked to it, too, which has made for an amusing discussion but I'm skeptical of its origins without further verification.
That, or the blog owner just dreamed up the hoax himself to bring attention to his project. For a blog that appears to average about 15-20 comments per posting, this new one which features 332 comments (right now) certainly seems popular.
Maybe this teacher doesn't exist. I'd like to see some verification of the email, because at this point it seems most likely to me that somebody's either sent a hoax email to Ken Starks of HeliOS Solutions (and he's fallen for it), or possibly he's even dreamed up the entire hoax to draw attention to his project.
As it stands, the source of this whole issue is an absurd-sounding email with no headers or trace information with which to verify its source, and with the full name and school removed such that it's impossible for anyone to check with the alleged source (because it hasn't been stated).
Perhaps stupid teachers like this is why the US lags so far behind the rest of the world, in education, and implementation of technology. At the current US adoption rate of internet speeds in the us...it would take 110 years to chatch up where Japan is today.
I have been promoting Linux boxes at the special ed facility I work at for about three years. It just isn't happening. At the beginning of last year, I submitted a proposal that would install computers in each class, fully wired, for about $200 a computer material cost. Of course I would be doing the install and support, which would bring that cost up a little as I don't work for free, but not by much, as I told the principal I would be more than fare with what I would need to be paid. It's like many of these posters have said, the older generation simply can't understand that Linux and FOSS are legitimate options. They know Windows, and they have seen how it crashes, gets viruses, loses stuff, etc and they subscribe to the thought of "you get what you pay for". If Windows is expensive, and it crashes, then Linux must not work at all, because it's free. I'm doing my best to convince the staff around me, but it's just not easy to do. I still have a job to do, and can't relinquish my duties in order to spend my day showing people how cool it actually is. What Linux needs is a spokesperson.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
..Leave those kids alone!
You had me at nonconsensual sodomy.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
...when there isn't at least one cross-distro package standard? How could the teachers release, say, a particular program for the students to use? Good luck teaching them how to compile.... The students would all have to switch to the same locked-in distro. Yes yes, it's true that most of them wouldn't have Linux to begin with and would take whatever distro the school decided upon, but Linux shouldn't have that barrier. All Linux users should be able to choose any "distro" as long as it has a package manager which uses an open standard package format for software accessibility. While this may not be as huge of a problem now for students, it will be more and more as Linux gets bigger. Best to solve the problem now though...
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Am I the only one who is more than slightly irritated by that?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the majority of servers running *NIX? Or has Windows actually over taken the server market?
A. Thank her for her concern but explain the reality of said software. B. Send her a copy of the EULA highlighting applicable sentances. C. Open a dialog to learn how many students are at that school. D. Send the school X number of copies of said software.
Give her a copy of Revolution OS and a Linux Livecd. Perhaps a copy of the GPL, along with the OSS definition. Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. My 9 yr old took his OLPC Xo to school afterwards we had a couple of the parents call and ask where they could get one. Linux and Open-Source are the future it is time for microsoft to crawl back under its rock where it belongs.
Debian Sid LXDE Firefox 3.6.4
GNU/Linux and Firefox, surfing the internet safely.
Indeed. Maybe get a superbowl commercial talking about how linux/open source/open office/etc break you free from microsoft yet are still backwards compatible with them.
Hmm. Who might be able to afford such a commercial? How about a certain entrepreneur and occasional space traveler who lives in Africa?
...I really need to punch somebody right now.
Are teachers like this really the people we should let educate our children? First, Windows does not run on almost every computer. There are gazillions of embedded devices which simply can't run Windows due to it's bloat. Not to mention Internet servers. You'd have to be a lot more naive than common sense permits to be able to think that all machines run Windows.
Second, this is the way to go if you want to prevent a to-be computer scientist from actually becoming one. Way to go,(insert disturbing word of your choice here)!
Disclaimer: while this post may lead you to think I'm a violent person, that is not the case.
Probably the same people who think Sarah Palin is the most awesome and intelligent woman in the world. You cock-smoking teabagger.
I guess this teacher himself doesn't have passion, potential and patience to learn Linux.
He might be finding it uneasy to answer the student's doubts on Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias
Slashdot = Sarcasm
If they teachers were half-way good
Apparently your teachers weren't very good. Or maybe you're just a moron. My money's on the latter.
...has my vote for the next net.bozo catchphrase.
I would like to say that, as a teacher, I have not seen this. Unfortunately this is not so. I don't think it is a union thing, but it is still disturbing. Even at a college that TEACHES Linux (well, they teach Unix, but we use Linux, as they don't DARE say they teach Linux), I faced opposition. The powers that be treated the class as a joke. They all belittled it, saying that while it was nice that we teach Linux, it is pretty much worthless. They are a Windows shop through and through. Even as my students and I continued to teach the power of the Linux OS, we were continually fought against. I, and my students, were told that what we were doing can't possibly be free, and that it can not possibly have real world implications. We would counter by telling them that the majority of web servers run Linux, and that Linux runs embedded on many of the devices they use every day, like TiVo, and routers. Still they claim we can not possibly be correct. Even when the president of the school made me project lead on the computer scholarship project, getting out free PC's to students in need (running Ubuntu), we found much resistance. Teacher's were afraid that they would not be able to read reports written on the computers, or that the students would get in trouble for running free software. The level of ignorance among the educators in this country in regards to Linux is amazing. I imagine that is just the way MacroSoft likes it. Meanwhile some of the best students are quietly running Linux, and are doing some amazing things. I think Linux should be taught to ALL IT majors. Every semester I would get students sent to my class because their business has a Linux box quietly running in the back room. The man who set it up no longer working there, and the company doesn't know what to do with it, and are scared to shut it down because they don't know if it is vital or not! Eventually that school shut me out of my Linux classes (they had gotten very popular) and has them now being taught by someone who is not familiar with it, just they way they like it, non-threatening.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
This is by far the biggest obstacle to using Free Software: people think you have to buy EVERYTHING. That's a sad commentary. Yes, I know stupidity is the real culprit but that's a little broad. Conspicuous consumption (people wanting the newest version of some software, or the newest shiny MacBook) is another huge problem. Obviously people who use Unix-like software have always had other priorities.
On the college note, even though I was a faithful UNIX user during college, I got all the way through college with a degree in _math_ (!) and nobody EVER told me that Linux was available for free. My biggest shock when I really read about GNU and Linux was not that it was free --- that made sense --- but that I was too stupid to have found out about it.
I like the suggestion about showing the teacher Revolution OS; my parents understood much better what I was talking about after they watched it. My dad called me saying that he had just watched it and was trying to boot a LiveCD right after the credits ended!
The most persuasive sentence in the movie is rms saying "...that was a promise to be a bad person." Most people think the opposite, but hearing him say that really hits home with people.
On the other hand, 100 scathing letters might encourage her to think before speaking and acting.
You should probably cry for not understanding what "school" is about. Learn on your own on your own time.
More like, "threatening." As in, threatening legal action. Wow. Teachers are supposed to have good general knowledge of the world and of course most do not. Being aware that there is such a thing as FOSS should not be considered some kind of esoteric knowledge.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
The answer is simple because the superintendent and the school board bought Microsoft products without the input from the teachers. The teacher has been told by the superintendent and school board that in order to stay legal everything but what is installed for the teacher is illegal. Now Helios is dragging him/her before the principal for following the rules set forth by the district that if not followed will result in his/her dismissal. Will the poor teacher EVER consider Linux or anything else but Microsoft? You can be sure that not only will the teacher never want Linux in his/her classroom, but the district after having to deal with Helios will run as far away from Linux/Unix/Apple as fast as it can. Helios can be described as a clueless idiot who is standing up for his non-existent rights. At worst he can has done a lot of damage to the school district, the rest of the children and the free software movement. What a south end of a north bound horse!
Teacher! Teacher!...leave those kids alone!
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Yes, but probably because I did not mention it explicitly. I am talking about how they have taken things like Apache, forking and internalized them. They do not contribute their changes back or otherwise help the Apache community.
So Google sponsoring and contributing to open source projects doesn't count because they haven't released *all* their changes?
I think they've given a lot to the open source community - not as much as they could have, but if they're not redistributing the software, then that's not exactly one of the requirements of the license either. You might fault them for not giving back more than they have, but I'd hardly call them freeloaders.
*shrug* I guess it's just personal opinion.
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.
"The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line. Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union. Of course you are going to 'recommend' Microsoft Windows."
As soon as your verbal opponent read that, he stopped listening, and now you have no chance of convincing him you were right.
Mr. Starks missed an opportunity.
Really, I cannot understand why anyone would want to provide a reply to such an email. Some emails should be left unanswered, and this was one of them.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28039226?pg=7#Tech_JerkGadgets
He's posted a response to this and many others.
Very well done and interesting. Pity /. won't post that.
import system.cool.Sig;
Why, whenever I read a story about texas it's about its educational system. Where do they find these people??
I think you're sadly mistaken if you don't think that humans have just as many builtin instincts driving us to cooperate as ants or bees - that's what our emotions are. Sure we're sapient and aren't totally ruled by instinct, but we certainly follow it 99% of the time whether we're aware of it or not...
They introduced me to Linux!
Though that was the uber-geek IT technician setting up and running a Linux server with some student telnet accounts, and no teachers had a clue :)
Could you please notice that? It's not Linux. It's GNU/Linux. (See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html. [gnu.org])