I also cannot afford a *nix box; I only get access to learn by shelling and by using my boyfriend's box. Therefore, I would like to ask how would you make it possible for the kids to complete their work? Would free shells be provided? Also, I am in the UK. I am sure that it would be impossible for me to gain access to a teacher, unless over IRC or some other electronic media.
I don't think that a seven year old want's to use a linux disto because of the simple fact that they can't play much games on them....and that is one of the only things that kids do with a computer(except tomorrows geeks):)
Well my daughter (6yrs old) is no geek:( she doesn't run freeBSD for a start;o)
However she does run SuSE linux as her main OS (She also has BeOS, and Win95 for her Authur and Fireman Sam CDROMs). She hasn't expressed any interest in programming, but she does enjoy KDE's range of games - particularly Shisen-sho, SameGame, Sokoban and KPoker.
Honestly after the first paragraph of install instruction I am intimidated.
Add to this that the whole linux comunity doesn't seem to concerned about the desktop market anymore.
Hmm, I think that "Linux community" is getting harder to define as we pass 15 million (estimated) users.
As to your "newbie" problems, you should try the friendly faces of your local Linux Users Group. If you get someone to help you with an initial install of Debian GNU/Linux, you will find installing and updating software on it a breeze.
- Derwen
I think a cool idea would be to actually use the energy from the keystrokes themselves to charge a cell
Have a look at this story, on just such a design by Adrian Crisan of Compaq (Houston headquarters).
It carries patent 5 911 529 which was filed well before you posted the idea, sorry 8o/
Speaking of flame, there's a fascinating thread in news.admin.net-abuse.email on the nature of communication across the language barrier, and it started with a flame. Search for "worm poop" or "worm men" and watch as a native Italian speaker (and spammer) gets his flames and death threats translated through Babelfish to English (and back again), to the amusement and delight of all.
If you have half an hour and could do with some light relief, I recommend giving it a try. Some of the machine translated insults are choice, viz. Se avete le sfere da fingere siete un uomo. [="If you have the spheres to pretend you are a man."]
The thread does seem to back up the view of flaming as [relatively] harmless fun. Especially as the chief flamer concerned is probably far better occupied at his keyboard, than taking out his aggression elsewhere.
- Derwen
Oh, by the way, mushrooms aren't vegetables. In the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral, fungi dont fit into any of them (I'm sure someone can explain it better)
"fungussb......In Bot., a cryptogamous plant, characterized by the absence of chlorophyll and deriving its sustenance from dead or living organic matter."
It's all the result of some weird reasoning that we decide to categorise the various parts of plants into being fruit or vegetable
No, it's a culinary convention. 'Fruit' are sweet, or made into sweet dishes, and served for dessert. Hence the stalk of the rhubarb plant being called a fruit, whilst botanical fruit - tomatoes, chili peppers, aubergines/eggplants, mangetout peas and so on - are called 'vegetables.'
It's the same thing as when I see signs in supermarkets which point me to "beers and lagers". Lagers are beers dammit.
Hmm, it's not the same, you are just having a rant. This is fine in itself, but for the record yes lager is a subset of beer. 'Beer' is used on the store's shelves however to distinguish top-fermented (or even lambic) brews from lager (bottom fermented).
It's the same kind of thing where you get goods labelled "Organic". Well, of course it's organic. It has carbon in it doesn't it?
You really don't like words to have more than one meaning do you? In agricultural terms 'organic' means grown with due care and attention to the long-term needs of the soil [we have lost half the world's top soil since 1945, try feeding 6 billion people with no top soil in which to grow their food] and without persistent chemical pesticides. This is widely understood and most nations run certification schemes with which farmers must comply for their food to be labelled as organic.
Where does "the dumbig down of society" fit into this?
- Derwen
Why does it matter? Who cares if we genetically create better (or customized) people? We choose the sex of chickens by controlling egg temperature, and we have done it for years!
hmm, chickens!=human beings*
Of course many slashdotters hold strange views of the world around them, but equating moral choices about people with agribusiness techniques for
increasing commodities (chickens) is towards the more eccentric end of the scale.
This is just another step in our evolution.
I think that somewhere between me and you evolution has forked. Do not panic as the GPL allows for this, one day your offspring will be reabsorbed into the main codebase.
* I am not implying that chickens should not be accorded rights, just that they are not identical with human beings. So any chickens reading this please do not flame me (or throw any eggs).
- Derwen
"The modification gave Colossus an extra bit of brain, so to speak, to extend its repertoire," said Prof Michie. "There was a crash programme to build it, and more like it."
Anyway shouldn't trust a Sainsbury, the food is nice, as is the packaging, but damn who can afford it? (UK only?)
I'm afraid that they're more global than that. They own Star Markets and Shaws Supermarkets, very big in Massachusetts and number two in New England overall. See the FTC's concerns(?)
BTW Sainsbury's are an odd company environmentally. Very bad relatively-speaking (they're a supermarket: centralised distribution, food miles, lots of packaging,....) but standing out amidst supermarkets (pressurising growers to reduce fertilizer use, codes on wild-harvested ingredients, sustainable timber policy,...).
A paradox? Or do they just know their customers well?
A quick google search for information on the asteroid which detonated over Tunguska in Siberia in June 1908 will pull up several sites, including this one (picked at random).
The problem with statistically possible events is that they do occur, and in unpredictable ways, too. The 1908 impact happened in the most emote and sparsely-populated region on the planet. As we probably won't be so lucky next time (whether it is in 1 or 10,000 years time) it is fortunate that some people recognize the problem.
- Derwen
It is well known that the consumption of refined sugar is linked with the development of degenerative illnesses. As long as you're covering your health insurance, eating crap or smoking anything you like is fine by me, but don't doubt the long- (& short)- term effects of the substance.
Sugar is the end of a complex refining process that takes away every trace of minerals, vitamins and fibre from the beets/cane/other original vegetable, except for the calories. Eating sugar raises the level of your blood fats, putting stress on your pancreas as it tries to maintain blood sugar level. It can also contribute to atherosclerosis.
Most of us in Europe/ North America/ et al. eat about 2 pounds (~1 kilo) of the stuff each week, providing about 20-25% of our calories. You can find it in almost every packaged food in some form, from baked beans to diet sodas. We have a natural liking for sweet (as well as fatty) foods. This comes from times when food was hunted and gathered, not loaded into a trolley, and we were (still are) hardwired to find substances to help us through lean times. Try switching to products with raw, unrefined sugar. Here the sucrose crystal is surrounded by a thin film of molasses containing 200 odd organic nutrients, many of them involved in breaking down sucrose in the body.
Unsulphured molasses are very nice by the spoonful =)
... it isn't likely to come out until the glass dissolves.
Actually, if you read the Salon article, you will find the following:
'"The fine particles of glass laced with lead eventually degrade. With rainfall getting into the dump site, the water will become contaminated with lead, and that lead-filled water will leach out of the landfill and into the groundwater." It's a process that may take several decades, but it will happen: It's as ineluctable as the flaking of paint.'
Radio-active waste is not just dissolved into glass, it is also buried where (in theory) it cannot be leached into the environment.
I wish people would worry about real pollution problems, such as the poisons in circuit componets and motherboards
On another topic, chromium causes cancer yet most vitamin manufactures insist on putting it into their formulas. Why I do not know.
Chromium is essential to your body's management of fat and blood sugar, IIRC, but only needed in doses of 20-40 microgrammes. Almost everything we need is toxic in quantity. Refined sugar is extremely toxic, that is why it is used to preserve food (eg fruit as jam/marmalade/jelly).
- Derwen
There is nothing in your rant with which I would disagree, Paul. However I obviously phrased my original post badly as all replies missed the point (or perhaps I shouldn't have jumped into a thread on the Amish, I know little of their supernatural beliefs - my concern is with good husbandry of the soil).
My point related to technology being neither a good or bad thing in itself, merely a tool. To when technology and progress have been regarded as an end in themselves, particularly (my area of concern) when applied to the soil.
Your (good) examples all point to the results of a short-sighted greed. That is why I suggest a more far-sighted approach to land management, if we (the population of earth) are to continue to eat, shelter and clothe ourselves, nevermind the important things we all want. Here is some more locally-applicable info for you.
By the way, I followed the url above your post. I will read the essay when I have enough mental space to consider these issues again.
- Derwen
If the earth could support 12 billion people in 1900 why did it only support 1 billion? You may say it was 'social and political' reasons, but I ask for you to outline how we can change our society or politics.
Population has been on a slow rise for many centuries (since the 'discovery' of agriculture). The (relatively) recent rise in the rate of increase is due to better water/ sanitation/ medicine and some other products of the industrial revolution - particularly transportation of goods to cities and mechanization of agricultural labour. As for how to change our society or politics....
I hope you guys don't think I'm moralizing. I haven't quite decided whether North America is 'better' or worse with 300 million people or 10. Or the earth, with 6 billion now and 10 billion people in 50 (or is it 100) years.
... as you say, we will soon have 10 or 12 billion people on this planet, with far less clean water or soil available than we have now. There will be no choice but to change so we should do it the best way we can whilst we have free choice in the matter.
You can find a lot of how we might do this in this link (which i've already posted). But you might also like to consider this.
- Derwen
Another great way to help out the Linux community is to help out with the local LUGs.
A good idea. How about looking for other local projects (which could be LUG-related), such as getting free software into local schools (they may appreciate hardware as well!). I'm investigating a project along these lines myself, so many schools know only M$, but see little reason for things to be otherwise.
-Derwen
Uh well. For one, most of the Amish live on some of the most fertile soil in the United States.
Fertile soil is created, by nature and by good husbandry, and destroyed by bad farming practices. The world has lost half of its topsoil in the last 50 years. This is a result of technology being applied intensively to the land for the purposes of making money.
Technology is a tool, like a hammer or an explosive, what counts is how it's used. This planet could support a population of 12,000,000,000, using essentially 19th century technology. The changes would have to be social and political.
Though I sincerely doubt the indians were able to support high population densities given their primitive agricultural skills.
I know little of Kansas (sorry, Toto), but in the Australian outback one family often struggles to make a living (grow enough to feed themselves and earn enough to pay for other necessities), on land that once supported more than 200 Aboriganal Australians. As for the American Indians "primitive agricultural skills", we are talking about a people who lived in harmony with their land for thousands of years. When you can support yourself in a truly sustainable way, perhaps then you can indulge in looking down on other people. It still won't be a nice thing to do though.
- Derwen
Slashdot Mirror
Hope this helps
- Derwen
Well my daughter (6yrs old) is no geek :( she doesn't run freeBSD for a start ;o)
However she does run SuSE linux as her main OS (She also has BeOS, and Win95 for her Authur and Fireman Sam CDROMs). She hasn't expressed any interest in programming, but she does enjoy KDE's range of games - particularly Shisen-sho, SameGame, Sokoban and KPoker.
Back on topic: As well as debian-jr and SuSE's educational emphasis, there are projects such as www.seul.org.
Residents of the UK should watch their local Linux news sites for a schools Linux project which will be launching soon....
- Derwen
Hmm, I think that "Linux community" is getting harder to define as we pass 15 million (estimated) users.
As to your "newbie" problems, you should try the friendly faces of your local Linux Users Group. If you get someone to help you with an initial install of Debian GNU/Linux, you will find installing and updating software on it a breeze.
- Derwen
Or what browser?
Have a look at this story, on just such a design by Adrian Crisan of Compaq (Houston headquarters).
It carries patent 5 911 529 which was filed well before you posted the idea, sorry 8o/
If you have half an hour and could do with some light relief, I recommend giving it a try. Some of the machine translated insults are choice, viz.
Se avete le sfere da fingere siete un uomo.
[="If you have the spheres to pretend you are a man."]
The thread does seem to back up the view of flaming as [relatively] harmless fun. Especially as the chief flamer concerned is probably far better occupied at his keyboard, than taking out his aggression elsewhere.
- Derwen
"fungus sb. .....In Bot., a cryptogamous plant, characterized by the absence of chlorophyll and deriving its sustenance from dead or living organic matter."
No, it's a culinary convention. 'Fruit' are sweet, or made into sweet dishes, and served for dessert. Hence the stalk of the rhubarb plant being called a fruit, whilst botanical fruit - tomatoes, chili peppers, aubergines/eggplants, mangetout peas and so on - are called 'vegetables.'
Hmm, it's not the same, you are just having a rant. This is fine in itself, but for the record yes lager is a subset of beer. 'Beer' is used on the store's shelves however to distinguish top-fermented (or even lambic) brews from lager (bottom fermented).
You really don't like words to have more than one meaning do you? In agricultural terms 'organic' means grown with due care and attention to the long-term needs of the soil [we have lost half the world's top soil since 1945, try feeding 6 billion people with no top soil in which to grow their food] and without persistent chemical pesticides. This is widely understood and most nations run certification schemes with which farmers must comply for their food to be labelled as organic.
Where does "the dumbig down of society" fit into this?
- Derwen
hmm, chickens!=human beings*
Of course many slashdotters hold strange views of the world around them, but equating moral choices about people with agribusiness techniques for increasing commodities (chickens) is towards the more eccentric end of the scale.
I think that somewhere between me and you evolution has forked. Do not panic as the GPL allows for this, one day your offspring will be reabsorbed into the main codebase.
* I am not implying that chickens should not be accorded rights, just that they are not identical with human beings. So any chickens reading this please do not flame me (or throw any eggs).
- Derwen
So, Windows 9x goes back further than we thought?
# Here is your lifetime supply of democracy (use it wisely):
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X
Hmm, I think if we had too many collage students, the computers might look pretty - but would they run OK?
- Derwen
When he does come, can you ask Him to bring along SMP motherboards for the Athlon. we've been waiting a long time, after all.
I'm afraid that they're more global than that. They own Star Markets and Shaws Supermarkets, very big in Massachusetts and number two in New England overall. See the FTC's concerns(?)
BTW Sainsbury's are an odd company environmentally. Very bad relatively-speaking (they're a supermarket: centralised distribution, food miles, lots of packaging, ....) but standing out amidst supermarkets (pressurising growers to reduce fertilizer use, codes on wild-harvested ingredients, sustainable timber policy,...).
A paradox? Or do they just know their customers well?
It was a stone meteorite, a conclusion reached in 1993 by three well-respected researchers and consistantly reaffirmed. OK?
The problem with statistically possible events is that they do occur, and in unpredictable ways, too. The 1908 impact happened in the most emote and sparsely-populated region on the planet. As we probably won't be so lucky next time (whether it is in 1 or 10,000 years time) it is fortunate that some people recognize the problem.
- Derwen
.....it'll save all that depressing 2020 bother.
- Derwen
Sugar is the end of a complex refining process that takes away every trace of minerals, vitamins and fibre from the beets/cane/other original vegetable, except for the calories. Eating sugar raises the level of your blood fats, putting stress on your pancreas as it tries to maintain blood sugar level. It can also contribute to atherosclerosis.
Most of us in Europe/ North America/ et al. eat about 2 pounds (~1 kilo) of the stuff each week, providing about 20-25% of our calories. You can find it in almost every packaged food in some form, from baked beans to diet sodas. We have a natural liking for sweet (as well as fatty) foods. This comes from times when food was hunted and gathered, not loaded into a trolley, and we were (still are) hardwired to find substances to help us through lean times. Try switching to products with raw, unrefined sugar. Here the sucrose crystal is surrounded by a thin film of molasses containing 200 odd organic nutrients, many of them involved in breaking down sucrose in the body.
Unsulphured molasses are very nice by the spoonful =)
Actually, if you read the Salon article, you will find the following:
'"The fine particles of glass laced with lead eventually degrade. With rainfall getting into the dump site, the water will become contaminated with lead, and that lead-filled water will leach out of the landfill and into the groundwater." It's a process that may take several decades, but it will happen: It's as ineluctable as the flaking of paint.'
Radio-active waste is not just dissolved into glass, it is also buried where (in theory) it cannot be leached into the environment.
I agree.
Chromium is essential to your body's management of fat and blood sugar, IIRC, but only needed in doses of 20-40 microgrammes. Almost everything we need is toxic in quantity. Refined sugar is extremely toxic, that is why it is used to preserve food (eg fruit as jam/marmalade/jelly).
- Derwen
There is nothing in your rant with which I would disagree, Paul. However I obviously phrased my original post badly as all replies missed the point (or perhaps I shouldn't have jumped into a thread on the Amish, I know little of their supernatural beliefs - my concern is with good husbandry of the soil).
My point related to technology being neither a good or bad thing in itself, merely a tool. To when technology and progress have been regarded as an end in themselves, particularly (my area of concern) when applied to the soil.
Your (good) examples all point to the results of a short-sighted greed . That is why I suggest a more far-sighted approach to land management, if we (the population of earth) are to continue to eat, shelter and clothe ourselves, nevermind the important things we all want. Here is some more locally-applicable info for you.
By the way, I followed the url above your post. I will read the essay when I have enough mental space to consider these issues again.
- Derwen
Population has been on a slow rise for many centuries (since the 'discovery' of agriculture). The (relatively) recent rise in the rate of increase is due to better water/ sanitation/ medicine and some other products of the industrial revolution - particularly transportation of goods to cities and mechanization of agricultural labour. As for how to change our society or politics ....
You can find a lot of how we might do this in this link (which i've already posted). But you might also like to consider this.
- Derwen
The root of the problem is that farming is a system of producing commodities for the international markets, not of producing food for communities.
Fortunately, at least some Americans have a very good idea of what needs to be done, and we're not talking "idealistic Amish community" here.
- Derwen
A good idea. How about looking for other local projects (which could be LUG-related), such as getting free software into local schools (they may appreciate hardware as well!). I'm investigating a project along these lines myself, so many schools know only M$, but see little reason for things to be otherwise.
-Derwen
Fertile soil is created, by nature and by good husbandry, and destroyed by bad farming practices. The world has lost half of its topsoil in the last 50 years. This is a result of technology being applied intensively to the land for the purposes of making money.
Technology is a tool, like a hammer or an explosive, what counts is how it's used. This planet could support a population of 12,000,000,000, using essentially 19th century technology. The changes would have to be social and political.
I know little of Kansas (sorry, Toto), but in the Australian outback one family often struggles to make a living (grow enough to feed themselves and earn enough to pay for other necessities), on land that once supported more than 200 Aboriganal Australians. As for the American Indians "primitive agricultural skills", we are talking about a people who lived in harmony with their land for thousands of years. When you can support yourself in a truly sustainable way, perhaps then you can indulge in looking down on other people. It still won't be a nice thing to do though.
- Derwen