Still, having used both, I much prefer the Linux configuration. In Windows, you have the little tree on the left with expandable branches and the objects on the right. It only takes 4 or 5 clicks to get just about anywhere. In Linux it's a single text file with comments and examples interspersed. If you know how to use a text editor it's pretty simple. In fact, it's easier than clicking around a bunch of eye candy, just not as sexy looking. But it's a DHCP server so who cares if it looks sexy?
At the high school where I teach, we would have moved to DHCP much more quickly if our NT 4.0 server hadn't kept producing Dr. Watson reports whenever we tried to start the DHCP server (this was a couple years ago). For a while, we stuck with static IPs, which was a pain considering the hundreds of machines on our network.
After a while, we found a spare machine we had laying around (a P166, I think), installed Mandrake on it and had DHCP up and running that afternoon. None of us were really that experienced with Linux at the time, either, but it wasn't too hard for a high school teacher and a couple students to get it running with the help of some online HOWTOs. Now we run DHCP as a process on our school's web server because it doesn't cause a performance hit and that server is more likely to stay up than the previous machine.
These days it's even easier to set up DHCP in Linux because you can do it through Webmin or any number of other graphical tools. Any Linux admin that requires 10 hours to set up DHCP is either incompetent or ripping you off.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Although all I play on it is Karateka (sp?). That damn bird...
I got it in 1983.
My Atari 800 still works (from 1979, bought used in 1982), although the SIO connector on the computer for the floppy drive has been acting up. I still play Archon occasionally and have even gotten my fiancee into MULE.
I wish they would release an Electronic Arts "Museum" like they did for Namco. EA would make a killing on their old games.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
The server running our family domain is an old SE/30. It runs totaly headless because the onboard video went out, the ram is maxed way past what you are supposed to be able to put in it, it runs MK linux, and at last count was hosting 15 domains. The surpizing thing is just how fast it is! I never notice any lag when I connect and I'm about 1500 miles away!
Can you post a link? That way we can really test its speed. In fact, you might want to post a link as an Ask Slashdot article and see if we can't take out the ethernet card for you as well.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
My Apple ][+ doesn't have enough disk space to download this program. Can someone help me out?
I know you're just kidding, but something eerily similar happened when I volunteered for Apple Days when Mac OS 8.5 was released at the CompUSA in Cincinnati a couple of years ago when the iMac was still only one color. That morning, an odd-looking couple came in to look for some software. The people there really volunteered to talk about (sell) Mac OS 8.5, but we ended up spending most of our time helping people look for Mac peripherals and software (at least we got a free legit copy of 8.5!).
The couple had just purchased an "Apple" at a garage sale (a red flag) and were asking me questions about what sort of software they could buy for it. The guy picked up a copy of CorelDraw 8 and asked if it would work, so I played 20 questions to figure out what kind of system he had. It took a while, but it turned out he had purchased an Apple ][+ and wanted to use CorelDraw 8 on it. After I explained that CorelDraw wouldn't work, he started asking me where he could find software for his new computer. I tried to explain that the Apple ][ series was way outdated and he'd probably have to go to more garage sales to find software, but he wasn't getting it. Finally, I became frustrated and said, "There is absolutely nothing in this store that can help you." He gave me a strange look and the couple left.
About five minutes later, a CompUSA employee came back to the Mac section and said "Sure, this is our Apple stuff, everything here runs on Apple!" The guy then picked out CorelDraw 8 and walked to the register with it.
I still can't decide if the CompUSA guys were bastards or if the weirdo deserved it. I'll bet they charged him a 15% restocking fee when/if he returned it. I could just imagine him trying to force the CD-ROM into those big black 5.25" drives...
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Who cares anyway? I don't think BMW or Mercedes will ever "take 100% of the market"... what's so bad about being the minority, as long as it's a quality product?
I think this has been Apple's attitude since they conceded the business market to Microsoft and picked up Steve Jobs/Next. Obviously it's been a good decision to go that route, since they went from multiple quarters in the red and Michael Dell calling on them to sell off their assetts and return the money to the sharholders to multiple quarters of blank ink and becoming a brand associated with quality and style. There's no reason Apple can't be successsful as a niche player, they just have to protect and expand their niche as much as possible without losing their identity or their eye for quality.
If Microsoft lost Bill Gates to an airplane accident or whatever, it would chug along without so much as a hiccup. If Apple lost Steve Jobs, however, it would be quite a different story. That's not to say there aren't highly talented people working at Apple, but they're definitely driven by their own sort of cult leader.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
If the gov't is going to require certification, all you need is your A+ and Network Security certs. You know how "advanced" the A+ is with all of it's DOS and Windows 3.1 questions.
As someone mentioned earlier, the A+ Operating Systems test no longer has any Windows 3.1 questions, and its command line questions are either related to DOS in Win9x, or to the commands in Windows 2000.
Anyone who passes these tests is definately qualified to repair my computer running my favorite flavor of *BSD or Linux!
What in the world does the operating system have to do with repairing the physical computer? If the floppy drive is hosed, replace it. If you want a DVD-RW drive installed, not a problem. Of course, drivers and compatability are another story, but physical installation shouldn't be an issue.
While I wouldn't let the average A+ Certified technician loose on my Linux installation, they're probably quite capable of fixing most hardware problems you might have. And you can always require them to be Linux+ certified if you need help with that, but since that's aimed at techies with 6 months of experience, I'm not sure that would be your best option either.
At this point, since a number (but not all) of the IT certifications out there can be earned with a majority of studying and minimal hands-on experience, I don't think requiring certifications in the industry is going to do anything more than further boost the popularity of those certifications. We've all heard the horror stories about NT MCSE's who couldn't make a boot floppy.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Apple has found that using one menu at the very top increases productivity. "What? You're crazy!" you say. No seriously, the theory is (and it is not Apple's theory, they just adhere to it) is that in order to get to a menu item a user can simply throw their cursor to the top of the screen and 'overshoot' the menu because it is at the very top, in this sense the menu is located at a place of infinite height and is very easy to get to.
I've had the (dis)pleasure of training a lot of the staff members in our school district to use our collaboration software, for which there are Mac and Windows versions (and soon, a Linux version!). Whenever I tell them to use a certain menu (i.e., the "Connection" menu to change their password), people using Windows look all over the screen to find out which window they're in, where the menu bar is, etc. On the other hand, Mac users always instinctively look to the top of the screen and find the proper menu, where it always was and always has been.
The breaker in this deal, however, is how Mac OS X changes the standard Mac UI to get rid of the application menu in the upper-right corner of the screen in favor of an application-specific menu in the upper-left corner of the screen (next to the now-nearly-useless Apple Menu). This makes it only slightly less obvious which application you're currently running, although Aqua uses lots of subtle hints to try to make it stand out (putting the new application-specific menu in bold, making all of the other window title bars in the background slightly translucent, adding drop shadowing to windows). I wish they'd just make the active application icon pulsate or glow in the Dock - then there would be no question.
Anyway, if you ever wonder why User Iterface guidelines seem so silly and written for the lowest common denominator, you should spend some time teaching computer-illiterate people how to drag-and-drop an attachment onto an email message. The more consistent the UI, the better.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Does this have anything to do with OSDN's recent decision to close FreeCode? I guess I would be a little jittery if my parent company closed down one of its subsidiaries. Of course, that wouldn't qualify as "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" as much as the CappucinoPC press release, so that won't be posted today.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Personally, I would seriously question the validity of anything coming from the Drudge Report. I'm not sure if anyone remembers or not, but four and a half years ago Matt Drudge first gained notoriety by breaking the Monica Lewinsky story. Treated as the first Internet celebrity, he was then hired by Fox News to host his own talk show and was subsequently fired two years later after walking out when Fox wouldn't let him show a photo of a 21-week old fetus on the air. Since then, he's sort of slipped into obscurity after the whole dot-com bubble burst. (He was also sued by then-White House aide Sidney Blumenthal after posting a story that claimed Blumenthal beat his wife; Drudge later retracted the story and apologized.)
Next time, before everyone spends a lot of time and energy debating the morality of copyright laws and the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the MPAA, we should probably take a look at the source of the article to determine how seriously we should take it (even though that's not as much fun).
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
The best thing I loved about Apple's Customer Service, is that when I called, the lady asked me my name and then asked for my phone number so she could call me back just in case we got disconnected. Do you believe that? I can't remember the number of times that I've been disconnected on Customer Service lines, but for once someone got it right.
I was working on an IBM Netfinity Server once and the very first thing IBM's support asked me was for my name and phone number so they could call me back, so I think this is becoming standard among the industry leaders.
In fact, after resolving the problem (Windows 2000 crashing due to the NIC and some service pack nonsense), they called back a week later to make sure everything was still working so that they could close the support ticket. They were also very nice and knowledgable (once you got to level 3). Pretty impressive.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Joe Sixpack doesn't want to download Open Office. He wants to buy it off the shelf and have it work without thinking.
Maybe I'm being a smartass, but isn't this what most computer users want? I mean, I would personally rather pay a small fee for software that will "work without thinking" rather than having to twiddle with make and gcc and whatnot. I guess I'm just lazy (or else I have an intrinsic desire to financially support good software developers), but I don't think it's fair to mock regular people who just want a computer that works.
How many times have you heard Mac users say, "I use a Mac because it lets me get my work done and I don't have to mess around with the system"? Why can't we expect this from Linux as well?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Ultimately, you're responsible for what happens with your internet account, be it the dial-up account you gave someone the password to or the cable modem you let someone else use. Just like someone who leaves their WAP open to the public is going to find their account terminated if someone spams through it (and quite rightly, I might add), you can be sued by the RIAA if your cable modem is used to swap.mp3s without permission (setting aside the moral argument of whether or not they should be suing you for it).
Are you going to try to pass the buck onto your girlfriend if you get sued?
I wasn't suggesting that, I was just thinking of larger firewalled networks where someone may be running a p2p client without the knowledge of the person paying the bill. For example, if there's a house full of college students sharing bills and a cable connection, who gets the lawsuit if Larry the geek leaves Morpheus running on his computer 24 hours a day? I just think that ambiguity might not stand up in court, unless it goes the direction mentioned by another poster who said one roommate's testimony will be used against another's.
But maybe I'm missing the point - are they going to sue people for misusing their internet accounts, or are they going to sue people for having lots of illegal mp3s shared on their computers? The misuse of the account accusation sounds like it would involve significant involvement by your ISP.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
One of the things people have been claiming to be a disadvantage to gnutella is now showing itself as an advantage. People cannot browse your file lists in gnutella and thus cannot see how many illegal files you are swapping. They only learn of what files you have when they do a specific search for them.
LimeWire, a gnutella client, has allowed users to browse a person's shared directory in the past, but it doesn't seem to work if you're behind a firewall.
Besides, it's possible that they (the RIAA) could write or modify their own gnutella client that searches for all of the songs to appear on the Billboard Top 40 in the past five years and keep track of the IP addresses returned. If one particular IP address is sharing more than some magic number of those songs (100? 1000? 10000?), the red flag goes up and the ISP is notified.
However, I'm wondering what they're going to do in cases where individuals are at a university or organization behind a firewall, or even those individuals behind their own firewalls at home (like a LinkSys Cable Router). If my girlfriend is sharing mp3s using LimeWire on her computer, am I going to get sued because the cable service is in my name? How are they going to know it was her and not me? I just don't see how they can hope to pull this off besides sending cease & desist orders to everyone on every high-speed internet service in the U.S. or by suing people with the expectation that they'll just want to settle out of court because they can't fight the music industry.
And one last question - why are they spending all this time and money on plans to sue individuals when they should have had working, legitimate online music services years ago? If consumers could download any song they like for $.50 each and know that they were getting a good-quality encoding, there wouldn't be as much of a need to go after individual mp3 swappers. Yes, there will always be individuals who will trade mp3s and software for free, but I can think of a number of people (especially in my parents' generation who are just getting into the internet and high-speed access) who would legitimately pay for music if those services were available.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
The major goal of this bill is probably not to give the RIAA and MPAA new tools against p2p pirates, but legitimize tactics that they're already using. I can't imagine that they haven't already started putting up bogus files - I mean, people are already doing this to each other (go find the Minority Report avi on gnutella and tell me if you like watching the Scorpion King trailer over and over and over again). What probably spurred on this proposal was that someone, somewhere within the RIAA and/or MPAA realized that they might be breaking some sort of laws relating to online misrepresentation or - god forbid - violating the Terms of Agreement of the p2p software, so they're just making loopholes in existing laws in order to wreak havoc legally.
What would happen if the RIAA violated the Morpheus terms of agreement? Would that mean we're allowed to redirect their network connections or flood them with bogus files, since they're using the software in ways other than it was originally intended? Does that misuse violate the DMCA, or are they going to write the bill so that they are allowed to get around the DMCA in order to protect their copyrights?
Finally, as someone else suggested, are they allowed to spew garbage traffic all over private networks on which these p2p apps are run? Of course, I'm sure Roadrunner (a la AOL Time Warner) won't mind, since they're aligned with the RIAA and the MPAA, but it should be interesting if someone sues because they can't legimately use their favorite p2p app because the record labels have been flooding its network.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
before I secheduled even a phone interview, I'd always search dejanews for the person in question. Sometimes I'd come up with a definate hit (first and last name as well as email and mentioning the local area or some work that was on their resume) and I'd be able to see what kind of person I was really dealing with. That's when I started looking at what I'd posted.
This kind of freaked me out when I started teaching in 1998 - I'd been running a large fan web site devoted to one of my favorite bands, and being heavily into the band, I posted a lot in their newsgroup and participated in more than one flame war. Of course, I was in college and in my very early 20's and late teens, but it's all archived on DejaNews now, with no way to remove it. I really doubt any public school districts are going to wise up to this (or even care, considering the national teacher shortage), but I wouldn't be surprised if it came back to haunt me in some way some day. As a previous poster mentioned, such is the burden of free speech.
An interesting thing did happen to me at the beginning of this school year. I teach high school computer classes, and I was talking about managing that fan web site when one of my students (a junior) opened his eyes really big and pointed at me with his jaw dropped, sort of aghast. I paused and asked him what was wrong, and he exclaimed that he downloaded and used the guitar tabs I'd written years earlier when he was in junior high. I found that kind of amusing!
I think the archiving of the internet is particularly scary when I can still find a lousy guitar tab I did of Pearl Jam's "Footsteps" that I did back in 1992, when I was a senior in high school piggybacking off an account at the nearby university, on my parents' Apple//e, while I was still learning how to play guitar. Obviously, the internet can have a much longer shelf life than a ProDOS 5.25" floppy (excluding news sites that "expire" their articles after limited availability).
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely
on
General IT Books?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
While Cringely is a geek favorite here at Slashdot, I really got a lot out of his take on the whole computer industry, "Accidental Empires", on which the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" is based and from which the made-for-tv-movie Pirates of Silicon Valley is loosely derived. It attemps to answer a lot of "why the hell did they do that?" questions that pop up whenever you deal with some strange aspect related to computers, and it really gives a good overview for how the industry developed to where it is today. I've made it an option for my IT students to read during the semester, and they usually get a lot out of it (and they're in high school). The only major weakness the book has is that stops right before the Internet revolution of the late 90's, so you'll have to find something else to pick up the slack. But when it comes to covering the industry from its earliest days through the early 90's, it's a great book.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Re:"Learning Python" better than "Programming Pyth
on
General IT Books?
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· Score: 2
I would recommend "Learning Python" over "Programming Python" for anyone with little or no experience of the language. I have both, and while Programming Python is an excellent book it is not at all suitable for beginners. Unlike "Programming Perl" (which is a classic text book no matter what level you are) "Programming Python" is more of a cook book - it discusses several more complex areas of Python in depth such as GUI coding and network / web server stuff but does not have much of use to language newbies. "Learning Python" on the other hand covers the whole basic language and does it in a very complete way - it's probably the best learn-a-language book in my collection.
I have to agree with this in relation to "Learning Perl" over "Programming Perl". Yes, Programming Perl is a great book, but I find myself referring more and more to the examples in Learning Perl simply because the layout of the book is more logical.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
...We had people working on levels for Doom that looked like the school....
The only reason you would ever do that is as a training exercise for when you plan to 'pull a Columbine' on your own school.
You should immediately report to your local law enforcement facility for processing.
You joke about this, but I can completely see a kid getting expelled even at our school for designing school-like levels. I've had to steer several students over the years away from making levels with skins that look like teachers....
Again, I'm sure you're being sarcastic, but you might be surprised at the number of people out there (especially adults in authority) who would react exactly that way.
We even cancelled plans to make a Quake walkthrough tour of our high school (with no monsters, guns, ammo, items, etc) because we were concerned about promoting the idea of a person walking through the school with a double-barrel shotgun.
Of course, until someone brings a gun to school (and they will, regardless of the school, its students or its location), it seems ridiculous. Then again, a ninth grader brought a loaded handgun to school my second day of student-teaching because he was having problems with a bully.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
we did this at my high school my first two years
on
Games in High School?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
My first two years of teaching, we had a group of kids who loved Quake, Quake II (especially Action Quake), and Half-Life (especially with the Opposing Forces add-on and, to a lesser degree, Counter-Strike). My first year (1998-1999), we let them play in our Writing & Research Center, which is a general-purpose computer lab with MS Office and internet access on about 20 P/166's and 5 P/233's at the time. Needless to say, Quake II only ran well on the 233's, so the kids would try to get there quickly after school to snag a good computer. I used to play them from time to time, and even though I can hold my own at fps's, they loved it when they "0wn3d" the teacher. They even pooled money together to buy a legit copy of Quake II to run as a server (because I wouldn't let them run pirated software on our computers - they brought in their own legit licenses). It was a great way for kids who were otherwise social rejects to get together and have a good time.
After Columbine in April 1999 (I think), we quietly put a stop to the games for the rest of the school year, and the kids were surprisingly understanding. They really didn't protest much, and a couple of them really agreed with us putting a hold on it, because a number of these guys fit the Trenchcoat Mafia profile, if you know what I mean.
That May, we passed a $40M bond issue and immediately upgraded that computer lab to 40 Dell P3/450's running NT with 128 megs of ram. Of course, we didn't get the machines until June, but it was a pretty high priority to the district to get that lab up and running so they could show it off to the taxpayers (smart idea). Instead of hiring some consultants to come in and set up the lab, and instead of doing everything with my dad (who's the building tech coordinator), we contacted these kids over the summer and told them the machines were in. About five of them showed up at nine in the morning (which is a serious accomplishment for any male high school geek in the summer) and spent the next two days setting up machines, throwing away packaging, illegally dumping cardboard in nearby recycling containers... willing to work their asses off because they knew, when the lab was set up, they were going to have an unbelieveable LAN party on machines that were (at the time) much better than anything they had seen before. And we did, and it was great.
What we (my dad and I) realized is that not only can high school students have incredible technical abilities (which we already knew), but many of them are willing to bust ass for the benefit of the school if they have some sort of ownership in the situation. Our school's tech support is largely done by students from my tech classes during periods when they'd normally have study hall, and not only do we save unbelievable amounts of money (we have over 600 PC's running the whole variety of Windows - our tech support issues are constant and almost overwhelming), but the kids who are doing the work are learning skills they can actually use at home and quite possibly in a job some day.
So, to get back to the original question - I would recommend making sure that if you let these kids play games, get some work out of them in return! The best way to justify letting them play games is to tell your critics, "Hey, I'm letting these kids play Unreal Tournament because they spent the last week fixing machines and installing software for us, and that saved the district time and money." If you play it off as a reward, you can do a lot for those kids (our principal at the time bought a new motherboard for the kid who programmed our attendance system) and few people will complain. Also, always get the blessing of your principal before you do anything, and you might want to consider having another teacher or even a parent chaperone around so you don't get accused of being a pedophile trying to keep young boys at the high school until the wee hours of the evening.
Incidentally, we tried to put together a Quake II tournament in our high school two years ago where the kids would have to pay a couple bucks, and half the money would go to the winner while the other half would be used to purchase new equipment, but we couldn't get enough kids that were willing to put up the money (like $5), and a couple higher-ups balked at the idea of students participating in a "deathmatch" tournament. So, it didn't happen, but I bet I could have pulled off a StarCraft tournament this year if I'd had time.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I only had one game that used it. That was a space combat type simulater. You used the pad to bring up a hyper-space map. Fun game as I remember.
Star Raiders, which was adapted from the (much better) Atari 800 version of the same game. I currently have the cart, but haven't run across a controller in the thrift store yet. The Atari 800 version was actually pretty in-depth for a machine that only had 48k of memory. Just like this X-Box game that's coming up, there were all sorts of keys that you had to learn and be able to use at a moment's notice. It kind of reminds me of the first X-Wing game, in a way.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Slashdot Mirror
Except that they don't suck.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
What program is this?
At the high school where I teach, we would have moved to DHCP much more quickly if our NT 4.0 server hadn't kept producing Dr. Watson reports whenever we tried to start the DHCP server (this was a couple years ago). For a while, we stuck with static IPs, which was a pain considering the hundreds of machines on our network.
After a while, we found a spare machine we had laying around (a P166, I think), installed Mandrake on it and had DHCP up and running that afternoon. None of us were really that experienced with Linux at the time, either, but it wasn't too hard for a high school teacher and a couple students to get it running with the help of some online HOWTOs. Now we run DHCP as a process on our school's web server because it doesn't cause a performance hit and that server is more likely to stay up than the previous machine.
These days it's even easier to set up DHCP in Linux because you can do it through Webmin or any number of other graphical tools. Any Linux admin that requires 10 hours to set up DHCP is either incompetent or ripping you off.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
This is Slashdot. I think you're assuming too much (especially considering non-Canadians' geographical knowledge of Canada).
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
My Atari 800 still works (from 1979, bought used in 1982), although the SIO connector on the computer for the floppy drive has been acting up. I still play Archon occasionally and have even gotten my fiancee into MULE.
I wish they would release an Electronic Arts "Museum" like they did for Namco. EA would make a killing on their old games.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
You have to stand up and run into her arms... if you approach her like you're going to fight, she'll kick your ass.
I nearly woke my parents up when I yelled in surprise the first time she did that.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Can you post a link? That way we can really test its speed. In fact, you might want to post a link as an Ask Slashdot article and see if we can't take out the ethernet card for you as well.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I know you're just kidding, but something eerily similar happened when I volunteered for Apple Days when Mac OS 8.5 was released at the CompUSA in Cincinnati a couple of years ago when the iMac was still only one color. That morning, an odd-looking couple came in to look for some software. The people there really volunteered to talk about (sell) Mac OS 8.5, but we ended up spending most of our time helping people look for Mac peripherals and software (at least we got a free legit copy of 8.5!).
The couple had just purchased an "Apple" at a garage sale (a red flag) and were asking me questions about what sort of software they could buy for it. The guy picked up a copy of CorelDraw 8 and asked if it would work, so I played 20 questions to figure out what kind of system he had. It took a while, but it turned out he had purchased an Apple ][+ and wanted to use CorelDraw 8 on it. After I explained that CorelDraw wouldn't work, he started asking me where he could find software for his new computer. I tried to explain that the Apple ][ series was way outdated and he'd probably have to go to more garage sales to find software, but he wasn't getting it. Finally, I became frustrated and said, "There is absolutely nothing in this store that can help you." He gave me a strange look and the couple left.
About five minutes later, a CompUSA employee came back to the Mac section and said "Sure, this is our Apple stuff, everything here runs on Apple!" The guy then picked out CorelDraw 8 and walked to the register with it.
I still can't decide if the CompUSA guys were bastards or if the weirdo deserved it. I'll bet they charged him a 15% restocking fee when/if he returned it. I could just imagine him trying to force the CD-ROM into those big black 5.25" drives...
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I think this has been Apple's attitude since they conceded the business market to Microsoft and picked up Steve Jobs/Next. Obviously it's been a good decision to go that route, since they went from multiple quarters in the red and Michael Dell calling on them to sell off their assetts and return the money to the sharholders to multiple quarters of blank ink and becoming a brand associated with quality and style. There's no reason Apple can't be successsful as a niche player, they just have to protect and expand their niche as much as possible without losing their identity or their eye for quality.
If Microsoft lost Bill Gates to an airplane accident or whatever, it would chug along without so much as a hiccup. If Apple lost Steve Jobs, however, it would be quite a different story. That's not to say there aren't highly talented people working at Apple, but they're definitely driven by their own sort of cult leader.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
As someone mentioned earlier, the A+ Operating Systems test no longer has any Windows 3.1 questions, and its command line questions are either related to DOS in Win9x, or to the commands in Windows 2000.
Anyone who passes these tests is definately qualified to repair my computer running my favorite flavor of *BSD or Linux!
What in the world does the operating system have to do with repairing the physical computer? If the floppy drive is hosed, replace it. If you want a DVD-RW drive installed, not a problem. Of course, drivers and compatability are another story, but physical installation shouldn't be an issue.
While I wouldn't let the average A+ Certified technician loose on my Linux installation, they're probably quite capable of fixing most hardware problems you might have. And you can always require them to be Linux+ certified if you need help with that, but since that's aimed at techies with 6 months of experience, I'm not sure that would be your best option either.
At this point, since a number (but not all) of the IT certifications out there can be earned with a majority of studying and minimal hands-on experience, I don't think requiring certifications in the industry is going to do anything more than further boost the popularity of those certifications. We've all heard the horror stories about NT MCSE's who couldn't make a boot floppy.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I've had the (dis)pleasure of training a lot of the staff members in our school district to use our collaboration software, for which there are Mac and Windows versions (and soon, a Linux version!). Whenever I tell them to use a certain menu (i.e., the "Connection" menu to change their password), people using Windows look all over the screen to find out which window they're in, where the menu bar is, etc. On the other hand, Mac users always instinctively look to the top of the screen and find the proper menu, where it always was and always has been.
The breaker in this deal, however, is how Mac OS X changes the standard Mac UI to get rid of the application menu in the upper-right corner of the screen in favor of an application-specific menu in the upper-left corner of the screen (next to the now-nearly-useless Apple Menu). This makes it only slightly less obvious which application you're currently running, although Aqua uses lots of subtle hints to try to make it stand out (putting the new application-specific menu in bold, making all of the other window title bars in the background slightly translucent, adding drop shadowing to windows). I wish they'd just make the active application icon pulsate or glow in the Dock - then there would be no question.
Anyway, if you ever wonder why User Iterface guidelines seem so silly and written for the lowest common denominator, you should spend some time teaching computer-illiterate people how to drag-and-drop an attachment onto an email message. The more consistent the UI, the better.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Then, Taco reposts a story about a 'universal remote control' that timothy posted on Saturday (it's still listed on the front page of slashdot over on the right).
Then, Taco posts this very obvious press release/advertisement about a small form-factor PC and slashdots the poor manufacturer's web site. I guess that's what you get for advertising on slashdot when you run IIS.
Does this have anything to do with OSDN's recent decision to close FreeCode? I guess I would be a little jittery if my parent company closed down one of its subsidiaries. Of course, that wouldn't qualify as "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" as much as the CappucinoPC press release, so that won't be posted today.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Next time, before everyone spends a lot of time and energy debating the morality of copyright laws and the hypocrisy of Hollywood and the MPAA, we should probably take a look at the source of the article to determine how seriously we should take it (even though that's not as much fun).
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I was working on an IBM Netfinity Server once and the very first thing IBM's support asked me was for my name and phone number so they could call me back, so I think this is becoming standard among the industry leaders.
In fact, after resolving the problem (Windows 2000 crashing due to the NIC and some service pack nonsense), they called back a week later to make sure everything was still working so that they could close the support ticket. They were also very nice and knowledgable (once you got to level 3). Pretty impressive.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Maybe I'm being a smartass, but isn't this what most computer users want? I mean, I would personally rather pay a small fee for software that will "work without thinking" rather than having to twiddle with make and gcc and whatnot. I guess I'm just lazy (or else I have an intrinsic desire to financially support good software developers), but I don't think it's fair to mock regular people who just want a computer that works.
How many times have you heard Mac users say, "I use a Mac because it lets me get my work done and I don't have to mess around with the system"? Why can't we expect this from Linux as well?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Are you going to try to pass the buck onto your girlfriend if you get sued?
I wasn't suggesting that, I was just thinking of larger firewalled networks where someone may be running a p2p client without the knowledge of the person paying the bill. For example, if there's a house full of college students sharing bills and a cable connection, who gets the lawsuit if Larry the geek leaves Morpheus running on his computer 24 hours a day? I just think that ambiguity might not stand up in court, unless it goes the direction mentioned by another poster who said one roommate's testimony will be used against another's.
But maybe I'm missing the point - are they going to sue people for misusing their internet accounts, or are they going to sue people for having lots of illegal mp3s shared on their computers? The misuse of the account accusation sounds like it would involve significant involvement by your ISP.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
LimeWire, a gnutella client, has allowed users to browse a person's shared directory in the past, but it doesn't seem to work if you're behind a firewall.
Besides, it's possible that they (the RIAA) could write or modify their own gnutella client that searches for all of the songs to appear on the Billboard Top 40 in the past five years and keep track of the IP addresses returned. If one particular IP address is sharing more than some magic number of those songs (100? 1000? 10000?), the red flag goes up and the ISP is notified.
However, I'm wondering what they're going to do in cases where individuals are at a university or organization behind a firewall, or even those individuals behind their own firewalls at home (like a LinkSys Cable Router). If my girlfriend is sharing mp3s using LimeWire on her computer, am I going to get sued because the cable service is in my name? How are they going to know it was her and not me? I just don't see how they can hope to pull this off besides sending cease & desist orders to everyone on every high-speed internet service in the U.S. or by suing people with the expectation that they'll just want to settle out of court because they can't fight the music industry.
And one last question - why are they spending all this time and money on plans to sue individuals when they should have had working, legitimate online music services years ago? If consumers could download any song they like for $.50 each and know that they were getting a good-quality encoding, there wouldn't be as much of a need to go after individual mp3 swappers. Yes, there will always be individuals who will trade mp3s and software for free, but I can think of a number of people (especially in my parents' generation who are just getting into the internet and high-speed access) who would legitimately pay for music if those services were available.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
The major goal of this bill is probably not to give the RIAA and MPAA new tools against p2p pirates, but legitimize tactics that they're already using. I can't imagine that they haven't already started putting up bogus files - I mean, people are already doing this to each other (go find the Minority Report avi on gnutella and tell me if you like watching the Scorpion King trailer over and over and over again). What probably spurred on this proposal was that someone, somewhere within the RIAA and/or MPAA realized that they might be breaking some sort of laws relating to online misrepresentation or - god forbid - violating the Terms of Agreement of the p2p software, so they're just making loopholes in existing laws in order to wreak havoc legally.
What would happen if the RIAA violated the Morpheus terms of agreement? Would that mean we're allowed to redirect their network connections or flood them with bogus files, since they're using the software in ways other than it was originally intended? Does that misuse violate the DMCA, or are they going to write the bill so that they are allowed to get around the DMCA in order to protect their copyrights?
Finally, as someone else suggested, are they allowed to spew garbage traffic all over private networks on which these p2p apps are run? Of course, I'm sure Roadrunner (a la AOL Time Warner) won't mind, since they're aligned with the RIAA and the MPAA, but it should be interesting if someone sues because they can't legimately use their favorite p2p app because the record labels have been flooding its network.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
before I secheduled even a phone interview, I'd always search dejanews for the person in question. Sometimes I'd come up with a definate hit (first and last name as well as email and mentioning the local area or some work that was on their resume) and I'd be able to see what kind of person I was really dealing with. That's when I started looking at what I'd posted.
This kind of freaked me out when I started teaching in 1998 - I'd been running a large fan web site devoted to one of my favorite bands, and being heavily into the band, I posted a lot in their newsgroup and participated in more than one flame war. Of course, I was in college and in my very early 20's and late teens, but it's all archived on DejaNews now, with no way to remove it. I really doubt any public school districts are going to wise up to this (or even care, considering the national teacher shortage), but I wouldn't be surprised if it came back to haunt me in some way some day. As a previous poster mentioned, such is the burden of free speech.
An interesting thing did happen to me at the beginning of this school year. I teach high school computer classes, and I was talking about managing that fan web site when one of my students (a junior) opened his eyes really big and pointed at me with his jaw dropped, sort of aghast. I paused and asked him what was wrong, and he exclaimed that he downloaded and used the guitar tabs I'd written years earlier when he was in junior high. I found that kind of amusing!
I think the archiving of the internet is particularly scary when I can still find a lousy guitar tab I did of Pearl Jam's "Footsteps" that I did back in 1992, when I was a senior in high school piggybacking off an account at the nearby university, on my parents' Apple //e, while I was still learning how to play guitar. Obviously, the internet can have a much longer shelf life than a ProDOS 5.25" floppy (excluding news sites that "expire" their articles after limited availability).
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I have to agree with this in relation to "Learning Perl" over "Programming Perl". Yes, Programming Perl is a great book, but I find myself referring more and more to the examples in Learning Perl simply because the layout of the book is more logical.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
The only reason you would ever do that is as a training exercise for when you plan to 'pull a Columbine' on your own school.
You should immediately report to your local law enforcement facility for processing.
You joke about this, but I can completely see a kid getting expelled even at our school for designing school-like levels. I've had to steer several students over the years away from making levels with skins that look like teachers....
Again, I'm sure you're being sarcastic, but you might be surprised at the number of people out there (especially adults in authority) who would react exactly that way.
We even cancelled plans to make a Quake walkthrough tour of our high school (with no monsters, guns, ammo, items, etc) because we were concerned about promoting the idea of a person walking through the school with a double-barrel shotgun.
Of course, until someone brings a gun to school (and they will, regardless of the school, its students or its location), it seems ridiculous. Then again, a ninth grader brought a loaded handgun to school my second day of student-teaching because he was having problems with a bully.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
After Columbine in April 1999 (I think), we quietly put a stop to the games for the rest of the school year, and the kids were surprisingly understanding. They really didn't protest much, and a couple of them really agreed with us putting a hold on it, because a number of these guys fit the Trenchcoat Mafia profile, if you know what I mean.
That May, we passed a $40M bond issue and immediately upgraded that computer lab to 40 Dell P3/450's running NT with 128 megs of ram. Of course, we didn't get the machines until June, but it was a pretty high priority to the district to get that lab up and running so they could show it off to the taxpayers (smart idea). Instead of hiring some consultants to come in and set up the lab, and instead of doing everything with my dad (who's the building tech coordinator), we contacted these kids over the summer and told them the machines were in. About five of them showed up at nine in the morning (which is a serious accomplishment for any male high school geek in the summer) and spent the next two days setting up machines, throwing away packaging, illegally dumping cardboard in nearby recycling containers... willing to work their asses off because they knew, when the lab was set up, they were going to have an unbelieveable LAN party on machines that were (at the time) much better than anything they had seen before. And we did, and it was great.
What we (my dad and I) realized is that not only can high school students have incredible technical abilities (which we already knew), but many of them are willing to bust ass for the benefit of the school if they have some sort of ownership in the situation. Our school's tech support is largely done by students from my tech classes during periods when they'd normally have study hall, and not only do we save unbelievable amounts of money (we have over 600 PC's running the whole variety of Windows - our tech support issues are constant and almost overwhelming), but the kids who are doing the work are learning skills they can actually use at home and quite possibly in a job some day.
So, to get back to the original question - I would recommend making sure that if you let these kids play games, get some work out of them in return! The best way to justify letting them play games is to tell your critics, "Hey, I'm letting these kids play Unreal Tournament because they spent the last week fixing machines and installing software for us, and that saved the district time and money." If you play it off as a reward, you can do a lot for those kids (our principal at the time bought a new motherboard for the kid who programmed our attendance system) and few people will complain. Also, always get the blessing of your principal before you do anything, and you might want to consider having another teacher or even a parent chaperone around so you don't get accused of being a pedophile trying to keep young boys at the high school until the wee hours of the evening.
Incidentally, we tried to put together a Quake II tournament in our high school two years ago where the kids would have to pay a couple bucks, and half the money would go to the winner while the other half would be used to purchase new equipment, but we couldn't get enough kids that were willing to put up the money (like $5), and a couple higher-ups balked at the idea of students participating in a "deathmatch" tournament. So, it didn't happen, but I bet I could have pulled off a StarCraft tournament this year if I'd had time.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Star Raiders, which was adapted from the (much better) Atari 800 version of the same game. I currently have the cart, but haven't run across a controller in the thrift store yet. The Atari 800 version was actually pretty in-depth for a machine that only had 48k of memory. Just like this X-Box game that's coming up, there were all sorts of keys that you had to learn and be able to use at a moment's notice. It kind of reminds me of the first X-Wing game, in a way.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi