You can't really give somebody new to unix or linux any idea of what it's all about without giving them a real hands-on experience. The best safe way to do that is with a Live CD. Knoppix is one which actually works. Demonstrate it on your show.
You might find some of the students like The C tutorial I wrote a few years ago. The youngest students I know about were a 12 yo Israeli, and a 14yo Canadian.
Other points:-
Knoppix to take home. Can't overwrite the parents' precious files!
Don't waste time installing. Just dd the file set to the students' disks beforehand.
Have the same distro on all student machines.
Be very familiar with the distro youself.
Introduce a scripting language.
Ruby for the older students. FOX or Tk windows available.
Sure you may save $27k but what happens when something break?
You squeak "help" here or on some other list / forum / whatever, and a devotee will come and fix it for you. Probably for free or for a case of beer or what have you.
It all depends on how complex you want to allow the exercise to become, and how many transactions you will be processing. You don't say, so I can't advise properly, but I'd probably go with Appgen Professional. I looked over some products from them a few years ago and was really impressed. Not cheap, but a fair price for a quality product. Runs on several platforms including Linux.
Look if crazy right-wing facists can get 30% of the vote then get a proportional amount of seats, something is wrong.
Crazy perhaps, but absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's democracy in action. Don't forget Democracy means rule by the people for the people. People living in democracies get the governments they want and deserve.
Remember that while the Lunatic Party with 30% of the vote might be the largest party they cannot govern because they do not have the majority of seats in the House. It is quite possible for there to be a situation where the largest party is in fact the Opposition, because the other 70% of the House has formed a Grand Coalition with a very substantial majority.
Before you throw stones in the glass-house don't forget that much of the world is firmly of the opinion that the current incumbent of the White House is in actual fact a "crazy right-wing facist" who got there without a proper mandate.
> The more we have third party, the closer we get to fairer, European-style representation.
Do we really want that and is it indeed fairer?
"European-style representation" is sometimes a bit like a wolf, a bear and a lamb having a debate about the lunch menu.
Most days here in NZ the lamb usually gets a chance to at least bleat before Grace is said. We have had European style elections twice now, and yes it does result in a fairer system for making legislation. The trouble is when the third party holds the balance of power and can effectively call the tune.
Pitcain ( 25:05S, 130:00W ) has a population of only 44 souls at the moment, and is in desperate need of a population infusion of fit men and women of reproductive age. Consider this as a possible destination. Fletcher Christian did, and founded a dynasty.
That may or may not be the case, but remember that there are several software authors who come to mind who give one the completely erroneous impression that they are "utter twits", yet they somehow they manage to churn out brilliant software packages. I have d/led the arch thingie and wondered if it was worth investing the time to get my head around it? It's far from simple you see.
One of the most exciting on-the-benchtop physics experiments I have seen was a Wilson Cloud Chamber detecting cosmic rays. So simple yet it makes radiation visible. I was spellbound by something this simple.
The e-toys are great fun for school age children.
Squeak for the cognoscenti, and
Squeakland for Mum, Dad, and the Kids. Heaps of fun.
Good books available from Amazon
too.
"In an unbelievable move the Greek government has banned all public play of computer games with enactment of law 3037/2002."
At last a government that has the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Devil Incarnate in the form of International Capitalism, and look after the good of the people.
The build system is so unusual, i.e. completely 'off the wall', that without investing an inordinate amount of time I could not get SAP-DB to even build. "./configure && make; su -c 'make install';" it isn't! For this dedicated OSS devotee, that was a big black cloud forming on the horizon.
I then installed off the provided CDs via the binary route, it's difficult to believe this, especially as I have been around these dumputer things for 30 years, but I could not find out in a reasonably simple or easy way how to start the daemon! By contrast, PostgreSQL tells you exactly what incantation to offer up at the end of the build process. Big black cloud overhead!
It needs a minimum of 128Mb. At the the time I did not have sufficient memory on the evaluation machine.
The web page with the technical information is ( was? ) completely cuckoo when viewed with Netscape 4.x or Mozilla. It's as slow as a wet week, and the information to read is stuck down in the corner in a truly miniscule font size. I'm being drenched in a black cloud rainstorm.
After all that I said to myself, "Umm...
I think I'll carry on with PostgreSQL for the time being". Unfortunately for SAP AG time is still being.
I have since got a more powerful machine with enough memory to at least try it out. When I've got a spare moment, I'll have another look at it. Spare moments are not exactly thick on the ground right now, so goodness only knows when that will happen.
"The Shuttleworth Foundation recognises the important contribution that Microsoft is making by providing their proprietary software free of cost to 32,000 schools in South Africa. This gesture will assist in the development of basic computer literacy skills, a challenge which has long since been overcome in first world countries."
See their page at for the full context.
Remembering that the purchasing power of a US dollar in Malaysia is very different from that in the US, why can't Malaysia work out the same sort of deal with Microsoft?
The domain names debacle needs sorting out - urgently. It is completely wrong
that the administration of such an important trans-national medium as the
Internet is in effect in the uncontrolled hands of just so few people.
The 'Net is something of such international importance that no national
interest, commercial or otherwise, should have any control whatsoever other
than the delegated administration of the names registries of the
individual countries.
This, in effect, means that the only organisation which should be able to change
either the underlying protocols or the top level domains is the United Nations
My own feeling about top level domains other than the country ones is that they
should be simply removed. Absolutely every legal entity has a home in some
country somewhere or other. No more.com,.edu,.mil,.net, or.org. The names
which belong to organisations based in the United States should be using the .us top level domain. There is, I suppose, the argument that there are a few,
very few, genuinely international organisations which should have domain names
not tied to any particular country. The International Red Cross is the kind of
organisation which comes to mind as the type which has the moral right to the
irc.org domain name. Similarly there is a genuine need for a single
supra-national domain for the use of the Internet infrastructure as a whole. I
thought that.net was intended for this, but it seems to have been polluted in
the interests of commercial gain.
The pollution of the.org space by hobby software projects is another case in
point. While these are certainly very useful and worthwhile projects, and the
groups of individuals are frequently located all around the globe, I really
don't think they have much in the way of absolute moral right to be in the.org
namespace. Perhaps they should have a fully international top level domain name
of their own. Is it.gnu or.oss?
The administration of domains which have been given away or sold by their
countries should revert to the UN until the countries in question can do it for
themselves. The very idea that the whole address space for an entire country
can be traded away for the personal profit of an idividual is, in this author's
opinion anyway, just plain wrong, and should be corrected as soon as possible.
Similarly, while the enhancement of Internet security is sorely needed at the
moment, no particular commercial interest should ever be able to hijack the
whole exercise by introducing secret protocols protected by draconian
intellectual property laws. The overall effect of this will be to give the
particular patent holder the right to tax every Internet user, or indeed every
single message.
Is this really what we want?
-- Christopher Sawtell
Re:Um... There is a good point here, guys....
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 2
I am currently developing a strategy on replacing 23,000 OS/2 platforms in my company. I have 2 basic choices for these desktops - Linux and Windows.
Don't forget you also have the do nothing option. OS/2 is a competent piece of software. Unless you actually need to change, don't.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't really give somebody new to unix or linux any idea of what it's all about without giving them a real hands-on experience. The best safe way to do that is with a Live CD. Knoppix is one which actually works. Demonstrate it on your show.
New definition for "Tilting at windmills". Best laugh I've had for months.
Other points:-
You squeak "help" here or on some other list / forum / whatever, and a devotee will come and fix it for you. Probably for free or for a case of beer or what have you.
It all depends on how complex you want to allow the exercise to become, and how many transactions you will be processing. You don't say, so I can't advise properly, but I'd probably go with Appgen Professional. I looked over some products from them a few years ago and was really impressed. Not cheap, but a fair price for a quality product. Runs on several platforms including Linux.
Has he seen the actually seen the writing on the wall, or is this normal behaviour? I don't know.
Look if crazy right-wing facists can get 30% of the vote then get a proportional amount of seats, something is wrong.
Crazy perhaps, but absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's democracy in action. Don't forget Democracy means rule by the people for the people. People living in democracies get the governments they want and deserve.
Remember that while the Lunatic Party with 30% of the vote might be the largest party they cannot govern because they do not have the majority of seats in the House. It is quite possible for there to be a situation where the largest party is in fact the Opposition, because the other 70% of the House has formed a Grand Coalition with a very substantial majority.
Before you throw stones in the glass-house don't forget that much of the world is firmly of the opinion that the current incumbent of the White House is in actual fact a "crazy right-wing facist" who got there without a proper mandate.
Do we really want that and is it indeed fairer?
"European-style representation" is sometimes a bit like a wolf, a bear and a lamb having a debate about the lunch menu.
Most days here in NZ the lamb usually gets a chance to at least bleat before Grace is said. We have had European style elections twice now, and yes it does result in a fairer system for making legislation. The trouble is when the third party holds the balance of power and can effectively call the tune.
Pitcain ( 25:05S, 130:00W ) has a population of only 44 souls at the moment, and is in desperate need of a population infusion of fit men and women of reproductive age. Consider this as a possible destination. Fletcher Christian did, and founded a dynasty.
That may or may not be the case, but remember that there are several software authors who come to mind who give one the completely erroneous impression that they are "utter twits", yet they somehow they manage to churn out brilliant software packages. I have d/led the arch thingie and wondered if it was worth investing the time to get my head around it? It's far from simple you see.
One of the most exciting on-the-benchtop physics experiments I have seen was a Wilson Cloud Chamber detecting cosmic rays. So simple yet it makes radiation visible. I was spellbound by something this simple.
Anybody used it for a big project?
The e-toys are great fun for school age children. Squeak for the cognoscenti, and Squeakland for Mum, Dad, and the Kids. Heaps of fun. Good books available from Amazon too.
The Russians tried this out on Mir and wrecked it. Is that what you want?
... or somthing similar might be better.
At last a government that has the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Devil Incarnate in the form of International Capitalism, and look after the good of the people.
The mgetty unix daemon will do that.
Knoppix is what you need.
- The build system is so unusual, i.e. completely 'off the wall', that without investing an inordinate amount of time I could not get SAP-DB to even build. "./configure && make; su -c 'make install';" it isn't! For this dedicated OSS devotee, that was a big black cloud forming on the horizon.
- I then installed off the provided CDs via the binary route, it's difficult to believe this, especially as I have been around these dumputer things for 30 years, but I could not find out in a reasonably simple or easy way how to start the daemon! By contrast, PostgreSQL tells you exactly what incantation to offer up at the end of the build process. Big black cloud overhead!
- It needs a minimum of 128Mb. At the the time I did not have sufficient memory on the evaluation machine.
- The web page with the technical information is ( was? ) completely cuckoo when viewed with Netscape 4.x or Mozilla. It's as slow as a wet week, and the information to read is stuck down in the corner in a truly miniscule font size. I'm being drenched in a black cloud rainstorm.
After all that I said to myself, "Umm... I think I'll carry on with PostgreSQL for the time being". Unfortunately for SAP AG time is still being.I have since got a more powerful machine with enough memory to at least try it out. When I've got a spare moment, I'll have another look at it. Spare moments are not exactly thick on the ground right now, so goodness only knows when that will happen.
"The Shuttleworth Foundation recognises the important contribution that Microsoft is making by providing their proprietary software free of cost to 32,000 schools in South Africa. This gesture will assist in the development of basic computer literacy skills, a challenge which has long since been overcome in first world countries."
See their page at for the full context. Remembering that the purchasing power of a US dollar in Malaysia is very different from that in the US, why can't Malaysia work out the same sort of deal with Microsoft?
Union of American Soviet States.
I think I'll go around the world the other way next time I travel.
BitTorrent works absolutely perfectly.
Somebody has more money than sense. Just reward the BitTorrent author, if you want to splash money around.
To learn to read. It's got text to speech.
The domain names debacle needs sorting out - urgently. It is completely wrong
.com, .edu, .mil, .net, or .org. The names
.us top level domain. There is, I suppose, the argument that there are a few, .net was intended for this, but it seems to have been polluted in
.org space by hobby software projects is another case in .org .gnu or .oss?
that the administration of such an important trans-national medium as the
Internet is in effect in the uncontrolled hands of just so few people.
The 'Net is something of such international importance that no national
interest, commercial or otherwise, should have any control whatsoever other
than the delegated administration of the names registries of the
individual countries.
This, in effect, means that the only organisation which should be able to change
either the underlying protocols or the top level domains is the United Nations
My own feeling about top level domains other than the country ones is that they
should be simply removed. Absolutely every legal entity has a home in some
country somewhere or other. No more
which belong to organisations based in the United States should be using the
very few, genuinely international organisations which should have domain names
not tied to any particular country. The International Red Cross is the kind of
organisation which comes to mind as the type which has the moral right to the
irc.org domain name. Similarly there is a genuine need for a single
supra-national domain for the use of the Internet infrastructure as a whole. I
thought that
the interests of commercial gain.
The pollution of the
point. While these are certainly very useful and worthwhile projects, and the
groups of individuals are frequently located all around the globe, I really
don't think they have much in the way of absolute moral right to be in the
namespace. Perhaps they should have a fully international top level domain name
of their own. Is it
The administration of domains which have been given away or sold by their
countries should revert to the UN until the countries in question can do it for
themselves. The very idea that the whole address space for an entire country
can be traded away for the personal profit of an idividual is, in this author's
opinion anyway, just plain wrong, and should be corrected as soon as possible.
Similarly, while the enhancement of Internet security is sorely needed at the
moment, no particular commercial interest should ever be able to hijack the
whole exercise by introducing secret protocols protected by draconian
intellectual property laws. The overall effect of this will be to give the
particular patent holder the right to tax every Internet user, or indeed every
single message.
Is this really what we want?
--
Christopher Sawtell
I have 2 basic choices for these desktops - Linux and Windows.
Don't forget you also have the do nothing option.
OS/2 is a competent piece of software. Unless you actually need to change, don't.