You can run Nedit also, with a shell and x-win32. There're a couple of steps to get there, but then Nedit is everything that Notepad wishes it were.
I also have GVIM which runs pretty well on XP--I launch it from a desktop icon. I used to have Emacs for the PC but never managed to get it to run really well. (Operator-error, I'm sure.)
I teach literature and writing at a smallish midwestern university with a strong engineering and technical emphasis. I've used computers/email/web pages/computerized classrooms for several years.
Currently I'm teaching technical writing in a networked classroom. The advantages are many; the disadvantages are pretty much web-surfing, game-playing and reading email.
My university uses Blackboard, a commercial product that works very well, does a lot of different things, and is easy to use. There are other products, commercial and other, that probably work as well as Blackboard.
My point is, see if you can't get a program that already exists to use; why reinvent the bulletin board or chatroom?
Some of the advantages I've found:
course materials available 24/7 without waste of trees (actually have had students rebuke me for printing and handing out hard copy)
interactivity among students (and instructor) that can extend beyond class time.
online exercises of various kinds that lead directly to reports.
Do people "write better" when they use computers? Probably not. However, I'm not going to use a typewriter or pencil and paper because of the convenience of editing, revisiong, conflating files that computers make possible.
I'd suggest you go slow in trying new things in your new teaching environment. Too many new things at once can be confusing and exhausting. And the concern some posters expressed about your students adapting to the computers is good. How much will you have to teach the students so that they can use the technology? When I began using email in classes, I had to teach them how to use Elm and WordPerfect. Now they come into class with much more knowledge.
Earliest memory I'm sure is a real memory (as opposed to memories constructed from family members' stories about my early life):
Riding on a train from Colorado to Kansas toward the end of WW II; I was around 2.5 years old. I'm on the observation platform at the end of the train and a man in uniform helps me stand on his suitcase so I can see over the railing. I have a vivid memory of his wool uniform.
Associated with this memory--perhaps not the same trip--a small, rural railroad station, clapboard one-story building, a hot night, june bugs swarming around the lights on the platform.
A slightly later memory of Union Station in Kansas City, catching a train with my mother to go to Minnesota. I have to go to the toilet; she sends me into the men's alone (was I four?) and warns me not to let my "pilots" touch the seat. I had not a clue in the world what she meant. Only in recent years have I realized that she said "privates" but I heard the nearest word that was meaningful (sort of!) to me. I don't recall her otherwise using "privates" to refer to genitalia. Perhaps it was the more or less public setting--there were a lot of people around--that lead her to that locution.
I'd like to claim earlier memories, but I'm suspicious that they are artifacts of hearing certain stories of my very early childhood told over and over, reinforced by photographs from the period. A year or so before the train memory, I ran away from home (rural Colorado) and was lost overnight. I had my dog with me and a neighbor's dog found us although adult searchers couldn't. But I can't say I genuinely remember that.
On a farm in Kansas--about 4 years old--I was dressed up in a suit to go to church and intended to sit on the rim of a slop pail. I sat instead in the pail. The slop pail was a five-gallon bucket into which kitchen scraps were put to be fed to the hogs, very wet and smelly. And this memory is genuine and tactile to boot.
I'm a grandfather who runs Linux. My wife--both a Mom and Grandma, naturally--uses it also. She's never used Winbloze except recently at her work. (She hates it.) Neither of us has any formal computer training. My son helped me set up a Linux system over three years ago. I use the Redmond crap at work, have for quite a while. Hate it. Wouldn't have it in my house.
To the point: I've learned enough to administer our LAN. My wife is using KDE on SuSE 7.3 and does quite well She has no problems except low-level "how do I do x?" stuff. She plays scrabble, boys and girls, online with one of our sons (who uses the dreaded M$ product.) She uses pysol also. She uses Star Office for docs, spreadsheets, posters, etc for her work.
If you guys' and gals' Moms can raise you-all, she can use Linux. Maybe not administer it, but, hey, you love her, right? Give Ma a hand with a 3-button mouse. She'll even forgive you the birth-pangs. (Maybe)
Browsing this discussion half-awake on saturday morning. I count as an "old" person. I begin using computers in the late 80s. I had one bad experience with a KayPro (sp?). Two faculty colleagues were going to "teach" me--they were patronizing, spoke intense jargon and ignored my questions. And they were teachers?!
A year or so later, one of my sons insisted I try his frankensystem, using WordStar. He was patient, eschewed jargon, and, yes, Sara, answered the same question from me ("how do I?") more than once. He wasn't impatient often. He also let me work until I had a question or problem.
I acquired a DOS machine in my office. I had help from two good folks in our computer support office. Patient, with simple explanations, like my son. I knew I was making progress when one of these folks had a problem and I knew the solution.
I was in my late 40s at this time. That doesn't seem old to me now, but I know it seems old to those in their 20s.
I found computers "intuitive" after a slow start. I do a lot of HTML, administer a Linux LAN in my home, and am asked repeated "stupid" questions by colleagues.
Bottom line? There are stupid users, adept users, good programmers, arrogant & sloppy programmers--and age doesn't have that much to do with it. I have observed among other "older" adults a general preconception that, because a person is young, that person understands computers. Baloney. Some do, some don't.
Time 2 take my geritol. --That's an old old-age patent medicine, you newbies;-)
In the case of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, people didn't elect him. He was appointed by his cronies in black robes, aided and abetted by his bro', the sunshine governor, and the comanager of his Florida campaign, the lovely K. Harris. Anyway, the campaign-financing system, the primary system, the nominating conventions--they're run by the wealthy and powerful, not the mythical "people." Retards? Naw; I think they pretty slick. They get their goodies and the people get the shaft. What a deal. Oh, Patrick Henry, where are you when we need you?
I've been using ergonomic keyboards for several years. Hate to use the linear boards.
My wrists benefit a lot from the keyboard. But the mouse is another story--it will get me. And height-adjustment is necessary to keep shoulder and neck problems at a minimum and I get them anyway.
Bottom line for me: the natural ("broken") keyboards is a must, but proper height and other factors are equally important.
this e-scam is just the electronic version of switching price tags in a store--take the tag off the $2.00 item and stick it on the $40.00 item. That particular trick is illegal and is prosecuted. If not now, surely soon, e-switching of price tags will be e-llegal.
this reality has been changed from its original form: it has been modified to fit your mind
I'd say "left-anarchy" rather than socialism: Open Source = individualism, tolerance, groupings by interest and need, no over-arching authority. Maybe it's closer to syndicalism, cf. International Workers of World, aka "The Wobblies."
Not "right-anarchy" because, while there's plenty of cyber-fart-lighting (aka flaming), there's not the in-built nastiness found in, say, Heinlein's science fiction.
Once again, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is very pertinent on this topic.
"Coders of the world, unit! You have nothing to lose but your cubicles."
think of the biblical possibilities: David is trolling the internet, comes across Bathsheba taking a shower on her bathsheba webcam, gets hot 4 her, summons up her avatar, puts his into action, they virtually do the deed and spawn a little 'bot called Solomon.
I have two words for you: Paul Kurtz.
(Books & articles showing the vacuity of claims of UFOs, ETs, etc etc.)
I wouldn't demean you for the paper, but I think your teacher needs to be told what a "thesis paper" is.
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! 40 years ago, as a college freshman, I had a friend who worked at a credit reporting agency, low tech by today's standards--but they went into people's private lives as well as their financial dealings. Their reports were (mis)used by a number of clients. My friend quit.
I'd really like to hear some politicians arguing that we need to get the corporations off our backs. The "gu'mint" is a kinda helpless giant, but the corporations do pretty much as they please and get mean when they're criticized. Databases are being built and shared (Sony is one participant) about opponents of the WTO, NAFTA, etc. This time around the "red scare" will be run by Corporate America, not some pathetic drunk senator from Wisconsin (Joe McCarthy).
Re:This experiment ignores the big problems.
on
Green Mars
·
· Score: 1
well another big problem is getting to Mars in the first place. months of radiation and weightlessness (loss of bone mass from that). Mars' atmosphere may shield colonists, but there's no atmosphere on the long trek. we can hypothesize all kinds of things, but right now it looks bleak for going beyond the moon.
but I want to go; to believe at least that someone sometime will get "out there."
I started using Linux (RH 6.0) a year & a half ago. Previously, I had several years of DOS and Windows, which became increasingly frustrating. My son, an Amiga user, sold me on Linux, helped me identify the right hardware and install it. So I've had personal help. Perhaps Linux-geeks could make an effort to communicate with lesser mortals?
I've also learned a lot from Welsh & Kaufman, Running Linux (O'Reilly) and Red Hat 6 Unleashed. Plus other stuff.
But I'm motivated.
For some strange reason I feel compelled to spend my idol hours arm-wrestling RH 7.0, downloading and (trying to) install tar.gz files that don't always do what they're proclaimed to do. So what can motivate the Windows-serf to migrate?
I'll just add that the only OS my wife has used has been Linux; she hadn't used a computer until I got a linux box at home. And she has a better experience than she would have with windows, you betcha. Gnome & KDE ain't that hard, folks. It's getting the system going that's hard.
All advertising is based on the fallacy that if you're flooded with ads you'll remember the brand when you want to buy. If it doesn't work, there's a lot of money wasted . . .
I suspect that Slashdot readers already have hight sales resistance -- except to products designed for us....
Re:Good, but he's no Tolkein...
on
The Truth
·
· Score: 3
No, Pratchett isn't Tolkien: Tolkien didn't have nearly as good a sense of humor. And as far as geeks go, the high energy magic department of the Unseen University is a lot geekier than hobbits in holes in the ground. And then there's the "computer" at the Unseen University--somehow programmed with ants.
I really like Tolkien (note that this is the correct spelling) and I really like Pratchett too. Ranking one over the other is like trying to decide whether Linux is better than a Corvette. They ain't in the same category.
The Truth isn't the best of Pratchett's novels. Try Small Gods for a nasty take on authoritarian religion, classic Greece, and turtle soup.
I think it's safe to say that Tolkien would've hated computers along with all other embodiments of the "modern." He didn't like automobiles, for instance. "ash nazg" & all that.
For a real geek novel, read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. (I'm not saying I spelt his name right.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but unless you've won a Nobel or at least a Pulitzer, you bibliography should include some sources by other people.
You can run Nedit also, with a shell and x-win32. There're a couple of steps to get there, but then Nedit is everything that Notepad wishes it were.
I also have GVIM which runs pretty well on XP--I launch it from a desktop icon. I used to have Emacs for the PC but never managed to get it to run really well. (Operator-error, I'm sure.)
I teach literature and writing at a smallish midwestern university with a strong engineering and technical emphasis. I've used computers/email/web pages/computerized classrooms for several years.
Currently I'm teaching technical writing in a networked classroom. The advantages are many; the disadvantages are pretty much web-surfing, game-playing and reading email.
My university uses Blackboard, a commercial product that works very well, does a lot of different things, and is easy to use. There are other products, commercial and other, that probably work as well as Blackboard.
My point is, see if you can't get a program that already exists to use; why reinvent the bulletin board or chatroom?
Some of the advantages I've found:
course materials available 24/7 without waste of trees (actually have had students rebuke me for printing and handing out hard copy)
interactivity among students (and instructor) that can extend beyond class time.
online exercises of various kinds that lead directly to reports.
Do people "write better" when they use computers? Probably not. However, I'm not going to use a typewriter or pencil and paper because of the convenience of editing, revisiong, conflating files that computers make possible.
I'd suggest you go slow in trying new things in your new teaching environment. Too many new things at once can be confusing and exhausting. And the concern some posters expressed about your students adapting to the computers is good. How much will you have to teach the students so that they can use the technology? When I began using email in classes, I had to teach them how to use Elm and WordPerfect. Now they come into class with much more knowledge.
Anyway, good luck.
Earliest memory I'm sure is a real memory (as opposed to memories constructed from family members' stories about my early life):
Riding on a train from Colorado to Kansas toward the end of WW II; I was around 2.5 years old. I'm on the observation platform at the end of the train and a man in uniform helps me stand on his suitcase so I can see over the railing. I have a vivid memory of his wool uniform.
Associated with this memory--perhaps not the same trip--a small, rural railroad station, clapboard one-story building, a hot night, june bugs swarming around the lights on the platform.
A slightly later memory of Union Station in Kansas City, catching a train with my mother to go to Minnesota. I have to go to the toilet; she sends me into the men's alone (was I four?) and warns me not to let my "pilots" touch the seat. I had not a clue in the world what she meant. Only in recent years have I realized that she said "privates" but I heard the nearest word that was meaningful (sort of!) to me. I don't recall her otherwise using "privates" to refer to genitalia. Perhaps it was the more or less public setting--there were a lot of people around--that lead her to that locution.
I'd like to claim earlier memories, but I'm suspicious that they are artifacts of hearing certain stories of my very early childhood told over and over, reinforced by photographs from the period. A year or so before the train memory, I ran away from home (rural Colorado) and was lost overnight. I had my dog with me and a neighbor's dog found us although adult searchers couldn't. But I can't say I genuinely remember that.
On a farm in Kansas--about 4 years old--I was dressed up in a suit to go to church and intended to sit on the rim of a slop pail. I sat instead in the pail. The slop pail was a five-gallon bucket into which kitchen scraps were put to be fed to the hogs, very wet and smelly. And this memory is genuine and tactile to boot.
I'm a grandfather who runs Linux. My wife--both a Mom and Grandma, naturally--uses it also. She's never used Winbloze except recently at her work. (She hates it.) Neither of us has any formal computer training. My son helped me set up a Linux system over three years ago. I use the Redmond crap at work, have for quite a while. Hate it. Wouldn't have it in my house.
To the point: I've learned enough to administer our LAN. My wife is using KDE on SuSE 7.3 and does quite well She has no problems except low-level "how do I do x?" stuff. She plays scrabble, boys and girls, online with one of our sons (who uses the dreaded M$ product.) She uses pysol also. She uses Star Office for docs, spreadsheets, posters, etc for her work.
If you guys' and gals' Moms can raise you-all, she can use Linux. Maybe not administer it, but, hey, you love her, right? Give Ma a hand with a 3-button mouse. She'll even forgive you the birth-pangs. (Maybe)
A year or so later, one of my sons insisted I try his frankensystem, using WordStar. He was patient, eschewed jargon, and, yes, Sara, answered the same question from me ("how do I?") more than once. He wasn't impatient often. He also let me work until I had a question or problem.
I acquired a DOS machine in my office. I had help from two good folks in our computer support office. Patient, with simple explanations, like my son. I knew I was making progress when one of these folks had a problem and I knew the solution.
I was in my late 40s at this time. That doesn't seem old to me now, but I know it seems old to those in their 20s.
I found computers "intuitive" after a slow start. I do a lot of HTML, administer a Linux LAN in my home, and am asked repeated "stupid" questions by colleagues.
Bottom line? There are stupid users, adept users, good programmers, arrogant & sloppy programmers--and age doesn't have that much to do with it. I have observed among other "older" adults a general preconception that, because a person is young, that person understands computers. Baloney. Some do, some don't.
Time 2 take my geritol. --That's an old old-age patent medicine, you newbies ;-)
In the case of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, people didn't elect him. He was appointed by his cronies in black robes, aided and abetted by his bro', the sunshine governor, and the comanager of his Florida campaign, the lovely K. Harris. Anyway, the campaign-financing system, the primary system, the nominating conventions--they're run by the wealthy and powerful, not the mythical "people." Retards? Naw; I think they pretty slick. They get their goodies and the people get the shaft. What a deal. Oh, Patrick Henry, where are you when we need you?
I've been using ergonomic keyboards for several years. Hate to use the linear boards.
My wrists benefit a lot from the keyboard. But the mouse is another story--it will get me. And height-adjustment is necessary to keep shoulder and neck problems at a minimum and I get them anyway.
Bottom line for me: the natural ("broken") keyboards is a must, but proper height and other factors are equally important.
this e-scam is just the electronic version of switching price tags in a store--take the tag off the $2.00 item and stick it on the $40.00 item. That particular trick is illegal and is prosecuted. If not now, surely soon, e-switching of price tags will be e-llegal. this reality has been changed from its original form: it has been modified to fit your mind
Not "right-anarchy" because, while there's plenty of cyber-fart-lighting (aka flaming), there's not the in-built nastiness found in, say, Heinlein's science fiction.
Once again, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is very pertinent on this topic.
"Coders of the world, unit! You have nothing to lose but your cubicles."
Or, for you Maoists, "Let a thousand OS's bloom."
think of the biblical possibilities: David is trolling the internet, comes across Bathsheba taking a shower on her bathsheba webcam, gets hot 4 her, summons up her avatar, puts his into action, they virtually do the deed and spawn a little 'bot called Solomon.
I have two words for you: Paul Kurtz. (Books & articles showing the vacuity of claims of UFOs, ETs, etc etc.) I wouldn't demean you for the paper, but I think your teacher needs to be told what a "thesis paper" is.
I'd really like to hear some politicians arguing that we need to get the corporations off our backs. The "gu'mint" is a kinda helpless giant, but the corporations do pretty much as they please and get mean when they're criticized. Databases are being built and shared (Sony is one participant) about opponents of the WTO, NAFTA, etc. This time around the "red scare" will be run by Corporate America, not some pathetic drunk senator from Wisconsin (Joe McCarthy).
but I want to go; to believe at least that someone sometime will get "out there."
I've also learned a lot from Welsh & Kaufman, Running Linux (O'Reilly) and Red Hat 6 Unleashed. Plus other stuff.
But I'm motivated.
For some strange reason I feel compelled to spend my idol hours arm-wrestling RH 7.0, downloading and (trying to) install tar.gz files that don't always do what they're proclaimed to do. So what can motivate the Windows-serf to migrate?
I'll just add that the only OS my wife has used has been Linux; she hadn't used a computer until I got a linux box at home. And she has a better experience than she would have with windows, you betcha. Gnome & KDE ain't that hard, folks. It's getting the system going that's hard.
All advertising is based on the fallacy that if you're flooded with ads you'll remember the brand when you want to buy. If it doesn't work, there's a lot of money wasted . . . I suspect that Slashdot readers already have hight sales resistance -- except to products designed for us ....
I really like Tolkien (note that this is the correct spelling) and I really like Pratchett too. Ranking one over the other is like trying to decide whether Linux is better than a Corvette. They ain't in the same category.
The Truth isn't the best of Pratchett's novels. Try Small Gods for a nasty take on authoritarian religion, classic Greece, and turtle soup.
I think it's safe to say that Tolkien would've hated computers along with all other embodiments of the "modern." He didn't like automobiles, for instance. "ash nazg" & all that.
For a real geek novel, read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. (I'm not saying I spelt his name right.