It should go reasonably far. Each of the 21,000 primary schools (of which I know more about than secondary) are within an administrative area. Generally, the people who head ICT training in these administrative areas are not developers. Furthermore, in the UK primary sector, there exist quite advanced mechanisms for transferring "best practice" from one school to the next. The UK gov't spends real money on this and gets real results in turn. If you train 100 teachers in the current pedagogical best practice for teaching software development, this will (at some level) feed into more than just their school. Ideally, you will see the head ICT trainers in an area being drawn from this initial pool of 100. Or, at the very least, advised by them.
I think this approach, even given the small numbers invovled, is better than previous approaches from the private sector. Previous approaches have involved throwing software and/or hardware over a wall and expecting teachers to know how to integrate it into the curriculum. I'm cautiously optomistic.
The author, essentially, details how if service providers were to choose the technologies we run then we wouldn't have had the uber successful WWW.
To me, this is a strong argument for net neutrality. If the ISPs are allowed to prioritise types of traffic then we may not benefit from the next generation of Internet service. Simply due to the short-sightedness of ISPs. Not through malice, but through market forces. A service would have to become popular for ISPs to encourage or throttle it, however it would be difficult for the service to become popular in the first place.
If you're doing your Thesis in LaTeX it makes a _lot_ of sense to use Subversion or Bazaar, instead of backing up like that. Then you can script a svn dump of the whole repository daily.
Just my 0.2p from someone going through the same thing.
I think the success of the 360 had a lot to do with Sonys failures. For Zune-NG to beat the iPod, Apple would seriously have to drop the ball. Though that isn't without precendent either.
I suspect if you form some sort of buying co-op or convince your state government to buy a large number the OLPC will deal with you. As has been stated, time and again, the reason for not dealing one-to-one with individuals as buyers is a cost thing. Distributing to you and me will cost money. Distributing in bulk to governments is cheap.
I do care about Free Software and how free my software is. Thankfully the RedHat guys have fixed up the Free Software Java stack to do all that is required to suopport the Java features in OO.o2. AFAIK only the media player is not supported, however it looks like the medial player will be replaced by something based on GStreamer soon.
I did this in a 12 machine school in Ireland. It wasn't hard but it wasn't easy either.
We had a similar scenario and asked Microsoft if we could downgrade the WinXP/WinNT 4 machines to Win98. They said no. Given that we didn't want to run illegal software our only choice was Linux.
There were three main problems * hardware configuration * user management * Windows applications * Course material
Hardware configuration
Each machine was a different hardware config (having been bought at different times over 6 years or so). And thus needed a separate XF86Config (as it was then) file. They also needed different network cards in the modules.autoload. It was not real biggy, but caused some teething problems.
User Management
What is the easiest way of allowing Teachers enter in the names and passwords for their students? I don't know. You might want to go with LDAP these days but I had a simple WEb script which took a list of student names (eg: Random Hacker)), created a user name (eg: rhacker) and set the password to something simple like their surname (eg: hacker). I felt it was quite important for each student to have a password even if it was simple as it got them used to logging in and gave them "ownership" of their own desktop space.
Windows Applications
With Abiword, The Gimp and some others I found most staff wanted to run the Linux apps on their windows laptops rather than wanted Windows applications on Linux. The major problem was the stupid little Macromedia flash based "educational" cames that came free on your breakfast cereal. I simply told the teachers that if I installed Linux these games would nvever work. Wine is hit and miss so I decided to manage expectations and not lie. Their analysis (as educators) was thet they'd rather have a consistant desktop and applications for students than have crappy "educational" games. They appreciated the honesty.
Course Material
I wrote a simple ECDL derived word processing course for Abiword. All students above 6 or 7 were capable of doing it and enjoyed it. Those younger than 6 tended to play gcompris which thought them the difference between single and double click and how to add money etc... But this was the major stumbling block for me. It takes time and a lot of effort. I'd love to see an OSS project take this on.
Just my 0.2c and I hope you get as much enjoyment for providing education as I did.
The GPL says I'll let you skip the R&D investment and use my code if you compete with me on a level playing field.
The BSD/MIT licence lets you skip the R&D investment and compete with me.
If someone is going to compete with me I'd rather they take my code and feed back any improvements than if they just used my work for their gain. However, there are many situations where I'd simply use BSD/MIT.
EU MEP's are answerable to EU citizens
on
Defining Globalism
·
· Score: 1
As a citizen of the Eu I can elect my representative to the European Parliment (EU:MEP == US:CongressPerson == IE:TD == UK:MP). This happens once every X years, where X is a number I can't remember.
My representative(MEP) for my constituancy (constituancy ~= US:electoral college) using the idea of Proportional Representation (at least in Ireland). My MEP is a member of a European political party, which in my case is the ubergroup of her national political party. Other MEP's belong to National Political parties and join other (larger) Political parties (effectively voting blocks) in the European Parliment.
There are a number of other European institutions which all in one way or another answer to the EU citizens, either directly or by proxy (through National Governments port:2463:). A notable exception is the European Centeral Bank (ECB). The ECB is independant and probably has to be to compete with the other large financial institutions ie: the US Reserve. Anyway I know nothing of finance.:)
If humans converse via text, is a.doc file text? When you write a.doc file are you writing text or binary code. It (again) begs the question of interpretation. To me.doc is a binary format, LaTeX in a text format. DVI is a block of code which imparts text to the reader. If code isn't a freespeech format then is text expressed by code(.doc, ASCII encoding, DVI) freespeach?
Java is also Propritery. Sun Microsystems own it. The reason I take a dim view of this M$ move is that It limits the choice of users. It also limits the choice of Web Programers.
Java is "a tool for a job". Like any programming language it is better suited to some tasks, like the web. It's security isn't perfect, but it is better than anthing else.
Also as a WebProgrammer, I willl now be forced to use ActiveX. This makes business sense, as if 95% of your users (depennding on market segment) use a browser with no Java (by default) & with ActiveX, I'll have to use it. Programers write better code when working with tool they like.
There is also a huge cross-compatibility issue. I like the web, I like to see all the content on a site. Will M$ release an ActiveX plugin for Konquerer or Opera.
This was allways going to happen after the Sun -V- M$ case, pty tough
Is it just me or can anyone else not find pictures of this thing in flight
Microsoft to release for Linux!!!
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
[quote www.stupidfakenews.notrealsite.ie]
Microsoft announced yesterday that they would release Knome using the QTK toolkit. Industry sources say that the plan is to decrease Linux prodictivity by 75% by stating the mother-of-all flamewars.
[/quote]
Do you all sleep well at night after advocating the use of Linux in the military.
I for one would be seriously in favour of stating in the GPL open source soptware is not allowed for military use.
I know that the military could advance the technology but, come on people, military equipment is used to KILL, MAIM and DESTROY. How would you like if Iraq or Libya or some terrorist organisation killed your friends or relatives with a piece of software you possibly contributed to.
Please, please support Linux as a tool for peace. We are the Linux commUNITY, lets not kill our fellow brothers and sisters.
I feel really strongly about this. I know I may be hypocritical in some ways as I do use technology that once came from the military, but I will not be able to contribute to the development of Linux if it is used for guiding missiles. I have quit jobs over this kind of thing, so I will have no problem not useing Linux over it.
I think the term Operating System needs to be judged from the users perspective and not from a global market definition. My Mother(bless her simple heart) needs contextual menus, pointy clicky rolly-over stuff & a big help file. I will suffice on a command line and vi.
I see what I use as adaquate to my needs and my mother sees what she uses as adaquate. paraphraze(from article) An OS is a tool for controlling microprocessors /paraphraze
I control my microprocessor using a POSIX compliant CLUI. My mother controlls her processor (the same processor in our case) via a GUI.
Thus both my Linux kernel and her M$ gui are OS'es. That is unless tha author argues that an editor like vi or emacs is needed to define and OS.
--
I see things from my perspective & in my opinion UNIX is an OS.
Do you think that the judge got any basic things wrong like
More powerful, more expensive computer systems are known as servers
I know my freeBSD server is cheaper than my M$ box. If the Judge had gotten these basic premises correct, would things have turned out differently.
And why did the Judge feel the need to say Eric Corley's handle was from 1984 and was the leader of an underground movement.
I have only read some of the judgement but it seems that the judge was wholly against the idae of hacking and thus didn;t like the defendant. I don't think people in Europe (where I am) would stand for this.
I actually like or liked IE as a browser. I'm getting a bit pissed off with its non complience to standards though. Somthing that Netscape does very well (& is the way forward. web needs standards)
The real reason I like IE is that it is so fast on Windoze. IE *will* loose this speed if it ports to Linux as they can't tie it into the OS. Personally as a web designer I have high hopes for galleon. Just give me HTML4 CSS2 JavaScript and Java - nothing more, then I'm happy.
Hey,
nice to see someone into programmig so young. I'll take a java example.
I you create an Object (which is a container to hold data in a format you define) it is referenced by a memory address.
String MyString = new String("Hello World")
This string is held in a variable called MyString, the string is "Hello World". If I want to use it I have to (have to in Java) pass it into a function as a reference (memory address) thus copy-by-reference.
In Java all simple types int,char etc.. are automatically copied by value.
static void foo(int i)
{
System.out.println(i);//java way of printing to screen
}
this means that if I call a the function foo
int MyInt = 10;
foo(MyInt);
MyInt dosn't get passed as a memory reference to the function. The actual number 10 is passed to foo. Thus its value is copied or copy-by-value.
Copy by value is much faster as when you copy-by-reference the function has to find the memory address and all the data.
These are difficult concepts when first starting programming. In my Computer Science degree class people had problems with them.
If you want to contact me my email is aidan.delaney@NOSPAM.eei.ericsson.se remove the NOSPAM. I'm always happy to help people get started in somthing cool
balor
Isn't the Canadian dollar and a lot of other things(like clothes) made out of hemp, which presumably has a very low THC content. Or if I'm in Amsterdam for a weekend how long do I have to wait b4 I can go to the airport again (assuming my boss dosn't have one of these)
There used to be two undocumented ASM calls. One of my lecturers gave me a book with them in it. AFAIK the calls killed windows and then rought it back to life. This may have only been with win 3.1 though. I tried it with Win 95, the code compiled (using MASM) but didn't run as expected Then again my ASM is not too good The commands are (surprisingly)
death - to kill win
ressurect - to restart win
If anyone can veirify this or get it running I'd love to hear about it.
However, I must realize that I'm posting this on slashdot, where many readers think stealing is better than paying, and IP means nothing A bit of a heavy handed statement! as a (relatively new)/. reader I havn't seen anyone express interest in stealing anyone elses product or IP. Point 1 -/. is run on Linux servers and its general readership are supporters of the GPL. 2 -/. (/.'s readership) has generally denounced napster for infringing copywrite. thus it shows an interest in protecting copywrite. As a statement this is unfair and IMHO incorrect. Most of us work in the whole IT sector and benifit from IP laws. This is how we make a living. Why would we support product stealing and IP ripoff when it feeds us?
I've (end-)used freeBSD 3.x and lately 4.0Stable, I also recently installed Slackware locally (I really wanted Debian) and I have experience with Solaris. I prefer BSD If OSX is BSD based, can we then get the UI to run on all *IX boxes(or is that what we're talking about)? I see we can port to OSX but could we replace the crappy CDE with a standard interface derived from the Apple UI? Could we have all save buttons on KDE and Gnome draw from a centeral graphic tablet that a user picks, possibly based on OSX? Why cant we just write save?
I don't mean to start a flame war, but KDE and Gnome just look very micro$oft UI to me. I would like to run somthing non windows(that works) like on Xserver.
Slashdot Mirror
It should go reasonably far. Each of the 21,000 primary schools (of which I know more about than secondary) are within an administrative area. Generally, the people who head ICT training in these administrative areas are not developers. Furthermore, in the UK primary sector, there exist quite advanced mechanisms for transferring "best practice" from one school to the next. The UK gov't spends real money on this and gets real results in turn. If you train 100 teachers in the current pedagogical best practice for teaching software development, this will (at some level) feed into more than just their school. Ideally, you will see the head ICT trainers in an area being drawn from this initial pool of 100. Or, at the very least, advised by them.
I think this approach, even given the small numbers invovled, is better than previous approaches from the private sector. Previous approaches have involved throwing software and/or hardware over a wall and expecting teachers to know how to integrate it into the curriculum. I'm cautiously optomistic.
Accidentally modded this informative. I'd rather not mod something up that is advertising violation of copyright.
The author, essentially, details how if service providers were to choose the technologies we run then we wouldn't have had the uber successful WWW.
To me, this is a strong argument for net neutrality. If the ISPs are allowed to prioritise types of traffic then we may not benefit from the next generation of Internet service. Simply due to the short-sightedness of ISPs. Not through malice, but through market forces. A service would have to become popular for ISPs to encourage or throttle it, however it would be difficult for the service to become popular in the first place.
If you're doing your Thesis in LaTeX it makes a _lot_ of sense to use Subversion or Bazaar, instead of backing up like that. Then you can script a svn dump of the whole repository daily.
Just my 0.2p from someone going through the same thing.
I think the success of the 360 had a lot to do with Sonys failures. For Zune-NG to beat the iPod, Apple would seriously have to drop the ball. Though that isn't without precendent either.
I suspect if you form some sort of buying co-op or convince your state government to buy a large number the OLPC will deal with you. As has been stated, time and again, the reason for not dealing one-to-one with individuals as buyers is a cost thing. Distributing to you and me will cost money. Distributing in bulk to governments is cheap.
I do care about Free Software and how free my software is. Thankfully the RedHat guys have fixed up the Free Software Java stack to do all that is required to suopport the Java features in OO.o2. AFAIK only the media player is not supported, however it looks like the medial player will be replaced by something based on GStreamer soon.
I did this in a 12 machine school in Ireland. It wasn't hard but it wasn't easy either.
We had a similar scenario and asked Microsoft if we could downgrade the WinXP/WinNT 4 machines to Win98. They said no. Given that we didn't want to run illegal software our only choice was Linux.
There were three main problems
* hardware configuration
* user management
* Windows applications
* Course material
Hardware configuration
Each machine was a different hardware config (having been bought at different times over 6 years or so). And thus needed a separate XF86Config (as it was then) file. They also needed different network cards in the modules.autoload. It was not real biggy, but caused some teething problems.
User Management
What is the easiest way of allowing Teachers enter in the names and passwords for their students? I don't know. You might want to go with LDAP these days but I had a simple WEb script which took a list of student names (eg: Random Hacker)), created a user name (eg: rhacker) and set the password to something simple like their surname (eg: hacker). I felt it was quite important for each student to have a password even if it was simple as it got them used to logging in and gave them "ownership" of their own desktop space.
Windows Applications
With Abiword, The Gimp and some others I found most staff wanted to run the Linux apps on their windows laptops rather than wanted Windows applications on Linux. The major problem was the stupid little Macromedia flash based "educational" cames that came free on your breakfast cereal. I simply told the teachers that if I installed Linux these games would nvever work. Wine is hit and miss so I decided to manage expectations and not lie. Their analysis (as educators) was thet they'd rather have a consistant desktop and applications for students than have crappy "educational" games. They appreciated the honesty.
Course Material
I wrote a simple ECDL derived word processing course for Abiword. All students above 6 or 7 were capable of doing it and enjoyed it. Those younger than 6 tended to play gcompris which thought them the difference between single and double click and how to add money etc... But this was the major stumbling block for me. It takes time and a lot of effort. I'd love to see an OSS project take this on.
Just my 0.2c and I hope you get as much enjoyment for providing education as I did.
I see it more as a level playing field.
The GPL says I'll let you skip the R&D investment and use my code if you compete with me on a level playing field.
The BSD/MIT licence lets you skip the R&D investment and compete with me.
If someone is going to compete with me I'd rather they take my code and feed back any improvements than if they just used my work for their gain. However, there are many situations where I'd simply use BSD/MIT.
As a citizen of the Eu I can elect my representative to the European Parliment (EU:MEP == US:CongressPerson == IE:TD == UK:MP). This happens once every X years, where X is a number I can't remember.
My representative(MEP) for my constituancy (constituancy ~= US:electoral college) using the idea of Proportional Representation (at least in Ireland). My MEP is a member of a European political party, which in my case is the ubergroup of her national political party. Other MEP's belong to National Political parties and join other (larger) Political parties (effectively voting blocks) in the European Parliment.
There are a number of other European institutions which all in one way or another answer to the EU citizens, either directly or by proxy (through National Governments port:2463 :). A notable exception is the European Centeral Bank (ECB). The ECB is independant and probably has to be to compete with the other large financial institutions ie: the US Reserve. Anyway I know nothing of finance. :)
If humans converse via text, is a .doc file text? When you write a .doc file are you writing text or binary code. It (again) begs the question of interpretation. To me .doc is a binary format, LaTeX in a text format. DVI is a block of code which imparts text to the reader. If code isn't a freespeech format then is text expressed by code(.doc, ASCII encoding, DVI) freespeach?
Java is also Propritery. Sun Microsystems own it. The reason I take a dim view of this M$ move is that It limits the choice of users. It also limits the choice of Web Programers.
Java is "a tool for a job". Like any programming language it is better suited to some tasks, like the web. It's security isn't perfect, but it is better than anthing else.
Also as a WebProgrammer, I willl now be forced to use ActiveX. This makes business sense, as if 95% of your users (depennding on market segment) use a browser with no Java (by default) & with ActiveX, I'll have to use it. Programers write better code when working with tool they like.
There is also a huge cross-compatibility issue. I like the web, I like to see all the content on a site. Will M$ release an ActiveX plugin for Konquerer or Opera.
This was allways going to happen after the Sun -V- M$ case, pty tough
try clicking on HISTORY it actually brings you to ABOUT THE GAMES
:o)
IT seams that the imagemap for the frontpage is off as someone forgot about history
Is it just me or can anyone else not find pictures of this thing in flight
[quote www.stupidfakenews.notrealsite.ie]
Microsoft announced yesterday that they would release Knome using the QTK toolkit. Industry sources say that the plan is to decrease Linux prodictivity by 75% by stating the mother-of-all flamewars.
[/quote]
I for one would be seriously in favour of stating in the GPL open source soptware is not allowed for military use.
I know that the military could advance the technology but, come on people, military equipment is used to KILL, MAIM and DESTROY. How would you like if Iraq or Libya or some terrorist organisation killed your friends or relatives with a piece of software you possibly contributed to.
Please, please support Linux as a tool for peace. We are the Linux commUNITY, lets not kill our fellow brothers and sisters.
I feel really strongly about this. I know I may be hypocritical in some ways as I do use technology that once came from the military, but I will not be able to contribute to the development of Linux if it is used for guiding missiles. I have quit jobs over this kind of thing, so I will have no problem not useing Linux over it.
My Mother(bless her simple heart) needs contextual menus, pointy clicky rolly-over stuff & a big help file.
I will suffice on a command line and vi.
I see what I use as adaquate to my needs and my mother sees what she uses as adaquate.
/paraphraze
paraphraze(from article)
An OS is a tool for controlling microprocessors
I control my microprocessor using a POSIX compliant CLUI. My mother controlls her processor (the same processor in our case) via a GUI.
Thus both my Linux kernel and her M$ gui are OS'es. That is unless tha author argues that an editor like vi or emacs is needed to define and OS.
--
I see things from my perspective & in my opinion UNIX is an OS.
More powerful, more expensive computer systems are known as servers
I know my freeBSD server is cheaper than my M$ box.
If the Judge had gotten these basic premises correct, would things have turned out differently.
And why did the Judge feel the need to say Eric Corley's handle was from 1984 and was the leader of an underground movement.
I have only read some of the judgement but it seems that the judge was wholly against the idae of hacking and thus didn;t like the defendant. I don't think people in Europe (where I am) would stand for this.
The real reason I like IE is that it is so fast on Windoze. IE *will* loose this speed if it ports to Linux as they can't tie it into the OS. Personally as a web designer I have high hopes for galleon. Just give me HTML4 CSS2 JavaScript and Java - nothing more, then I'm happy.
Hey, nice to see someone into programmig so young. I'll take a java example. I you create an Object (which is a container to hold data in a format you define) it is referenced by a memory address. //java way of printing to screen
String MyString = new String("Hello World")
This string is held in a variable called MyString, the string is "Hello World". If I want to use it I have to (have to in Java) pass it into a function as a reference (memory address) thus copy-by-reference.
In Java all simple types int,char etc.. are automatically copied by value.
static void foo(int i)
{
System.out.println(i);
}
this means that if I call a the function foo
int MyInt = 10;
foo(MyInt);
MyInt dosn't get passed as a memory reference to the function. The actual number 10 is passed to foo. Thus its value is copied or copy-by-value.
Copy by value is much faster as when you copy-by-reference the function has to find the memory address and all the data.
These are difficult concepts when first starting programming. In my Computer Science degree class people had problems with them.
If you want to contact me my email is aidan.delaney@NOSPAM.eei.ericsson.se remove the NOSPAM. I'm always happy to help people get started in somthing cool
balor
Isn't the Canadian dollar and a lot of other things(like clothes) made out of hemp, which presumably has a very low THC content. Or if I'm in Amsterdam for a weekend how long do I have to wait b4 I can go to the airport again (assuming my boss dosn't have one of these)
Then again my ASM is not too good
The commands are (surprisingly)
If anyone can veirify this or get it running I'd love to hear about it.
However, I must realize that I'm posting this on slashdot, where many readers think stealing is better than paying, and IP means nothing /. reader I havn't seen anyone express interest in stealing anyone elses product or IP. /. is run on Linux servers and its general readership are supporters of the GPL. /. ( /.'s readership) has generally denounced napster for infringing copywrite. thus it shows an interest in protecting copywrite.
A bit of a heavy handed statement!
as a (relatively new)
Point 1 -
2 -
As a statement this is unfair and IMHO incorrect. Most of us work in the whole IT sector and benifit from IP laws. This is how we make a living.
Why would we support product stealing and IP ripoff when it feeds us?
If OSX is BSD based, can we then get the UI to run on all *IX boxes(or is that what we're talking about)?
I see we can port to OSX but could we replace the crappy CDE with a standard interface derived from the Apple UI?
Could we have all save buttons on KDE and Gnome draw from a centeral graphic tablet that a user picks, possibly based on OSX? Why cant we just write save?
I don't mean to start a flame war, but KDE and Gnome just look very micro$oft UI to me. I would like to run somthing non windows(that works) like on Xserver.