The only left wing radio I can think of is National Public Radio [npr.org] and it only stays in business because of the US Taxpayer[irs.gov].
At this point, NPR is primarily dependent on underwriting and listener donations. Since poor people don't write big checks, NPR's programming has become more and more yuppified. And the guy running NPR now is the former head of the government propaganda organ, the Voice of America, so he's hardly a lefty. People don't even know what left-wing is anymore.
> There is a much better, easier way to deploy a MOSIX cluster.
There may be better ways to put together a cluster, but the K12Linux/Mosix combo may become common, because the "terminals" schools buy will probably be cheap pcs which are overpowered for strict x-terminal duty. It seems like a shame to let those processor cycles and memory go waste. At least until there is a big enough market for someone to create real x-terminals for the k-12 market.
I was completing my Masters in Teaching English at Brown when I read about Linux for the first time on Salon. It was an epiphany. I had some exposure to Unix and much exposure to geek culture when I was an English major at Carnegie Mellon, so I realized the importance of a free unix for pc's. 1 year later I was spending my planning periods trying to install Debian on derelict 486's. A year after that I had 9 donated Linux boxes running in my classroom. You should have seen the end-of-year xpilot tournaments. This year I'm Technology Coordinator for a new high school, and I just turned down an opportunity to double my salary and move to Chicago and coordinate a university-funded project.
Relevant points:
It is easy to become a big fish in the small pond of educational computing.
Pushing free software in education can be a good career move.
You have to be willing to put up with the mind boggling inefficiency of bureacracy.
After the original Slashdot story on Sorcerer, I downloaded and tried Gentoo while waiting for Sorcerer's servers to become un-/.ed. I tend to be really impulsive about uninstalling and reinstalling different distros on my personal box. I don't want to think about how many times I've installed both of these on my fun box at home. I also put Sorcery a firewall and web server at the high school where I work.
Both are source-based distros. Gentoo uses a Python and bash-based package system, influenced by the bsd ports system. It handles required dependencies automatically, and chooses optional ones based on a config file--you indicate if you want kde functionality in your apps, for example. Sorcery just prompts you for each dependency.
That comparison is typical for the approaches to the two distros. Sorcery asks/tells everything in a very straightforward way. Gentoo is more automatic.
On the other hand, Gentoo doesn't really have an installer at this point, just a shell and a bunch of well-written instructions.
At this point I prefer Sorcery, because no other distro has made me feel like I really knew exactly what was going on with my box.
My Mom (age 60) sent me an email the day the new iMac was announced saying "this looks like my kind of computer." She actually does a lot of work in photoshop on her bondi blue iMac, retouching ancient family photos.
I, for one, got a job as a tech coordinator in a high school (I'm a certified English teacher and self taught Linux (sorta-)admin) by pointing out in interviews how many services and programs I could provide the school through my knowledge of free software.
When you actually explain this to teachers and principals in concrete terms, they are receptive. On the other hand, if you're being interviewed by the IT people, you're probably screwed (unless they already have seen the light).
I guess what my point is, is that teachers have a similar attitude to other highly paid professionals like lawyers or doctors.
First of all, teachers are poorly paid professionals.
They think they always know best. To them, if you're not an educator, you're an idiot. This makes it difficult to sell them on anything that doesn't have strong marketing hype, flashing colors and smooth talking sales reps. The unfortunate thing is, in most educational environments, these are the people who have the final say as to what products are used.
You're mixing two issues. Sure, teachers are likely to be swayed by glitz, like most humans. Good teachers do know what would be helpful to them, more than anyone who hasn't done serious classroom time as a teacher. Teachers should make the choices, or they just won't use them.
Our school was recently approached by some folks from the University of Chicago to work on a project developing some student information software that is more "teacher-centered" instead of "administration-centered." This ties in with some work I've started with Zope. I'm not positive that this will turn into an open source project, but considering I talked their ear off about free software when we met, and they decided to work with us, I think there is a good chance.
Seems clear to me that foundations and universities are going to have to get behind free software in schools if we are going to make a lot of progress.
This is an important point. I'm a new tech coordinator in a public high school and we're installing python, vpython, perl, and a bunch of other free as in beer and/or speech software on our Windows 2000 and Mac OS X images. I thought about installing Cygwin but that seemed a bit much. Once I catch my breath I'll work on setting up dual-boot configurations.
Regarding the doctor, I particularly liked his big forced smile at the end of his conversation with the Captain (I think). It made him seem like a character from another civilization that doesn't actually use the same facial expresssions to communicate emotion that we do, and he is making a conscious attempt to send the culturally appropriate signals.
Now, I'm sure there are plenty of other times he does smile naturally, but it was a nice touch.
My seventh graders are using Linux for word processing (AbiWord), a bit of typing-practice and also game-playing when they are done with their other work. I have been surprised that they don't mind using terminal apps like typist and pine. Give'em a flashy Eterm background and they don't know the difference. They might rather be playing flashier games, but they've steadily worked at sokoban for months.
They adapt.
Imagine you an adolescent living in a prehistoric (mythic) agrarian village. For untold generations, your ancestors planted one seed at a time, using a hoe. Your grandfather's generation invented the plow, increasing productivity and decreasing the strains on the farmer's body. Initally they were rare and expensive, but in your parents lives they are common. You know that for the rest of your life, unless you are a prisoner or an untouchable, you will make your living using a plow in some capacity. Plows become cheaper every year, and used ones are basically given away.
In your school, however, you're still spending 90% of your time on hoes.
It is pointed out that using the hoe doesn't teach you anything more about farming, aside from teaching you how to use the hoe. Which you have to agree is more or less true.
But somehow, as you stand out in the field with your grandfather's hoe, you can't help but feeling like your wasting your time and falling behind all those kids who ride around on their parent's plows all afternoon.
That, I think, is a metaphor for the current situation, particularly in poorer school districts. I don't believe that computers have a magical role to play in the learning process, but to have schools be basically the only place in society to NOT use computers in the flow of everyday life drains them of relevance, particularly to students for whom the value of education is not a given.
We need to get linux boxen and xterminals into schools so that kids can have access for the least possible amount of money. I'm an inner-city English teacher, and I need more damn books, but I also put together a word processing cluster with donated hardware and Linux this year, and it is working out quite well.
Slashdot Mirror
At this point, NPR is primarily dependent on underwriting and listener donations. Since poor people don't write big checks, NPR's programming has become more and more yuppified. And the guy running NPR now is the former head of the government propaganda organ, the Voice of America, so he's hardly a lefty. People don't even know what left-wing is anymore.
There may be better ways to put together a cluster, but the K12Linux/Mosix combo may become common, because the "terminals" schools buy will probably be cheap pcs which are overpowered for strict x-terminal duty. It seems like a shame to let those processor cycles and memory go waste. At least until there is a big enough market for someone to create real x-terminals for the k-12 market.
Relevant points:
The MacOS 9 driver is free for download, but the OS X driver is $10 by mail.
Both are source-based distros. Gentoo uses a Python and bash-based package system, influenced by the bsd ports system. It handles required dependencies automatically, and chooses optional ones based on a config file--you indicate if you want kde functionality in your apps, for example. Sorcery just prompts you for each dependency.
That comparison is typical for the approaches to the two distros. Sorcery asks/tells everything in a very straightforward way. Gentoo is more automatic.
On the other hand, Gentoo doesn't really have an installer at this point, just a shell and a bunch of well-written instructions.
At this point I prefer Sorcery, because no other distro has made me feel like I really knew exactly what was going on with my box.
My Mom (age 60) sent me an email the day the new iMac was announced saying "this looks like my kind of computer." She actually does a lot of work in photoshop on her bondi blue iMac, retouching ancient family photos.
When you actually explain this to teachers and principals in concrete terms, they are receptive. On the other hand, if you're being interviewed by the IT people, you're probably screwed (unless they already have seen the light).
First of all, teachers are poorly paid professionals.
They think they always know best. To them, if you're not an educator, you're an idiot. This makes it difficult to sell them on anything that doesn't have strong marketing hype, flashing colors and smooth talking sales reps. The unfortunate thing is, in most educational environments, these are the people who have the final say as to what products are used.
You're mixing two issues. Sure, teachers are likely to be swayed by glitz, like most humans. Good teachers do know what would be helpful to them, more than anyone who hasn't done serious classroom time as a teacher. Teachers should make the choices, or they just won't use them.
Our school was recently approached by some folks from the University of Chicago to work on a project developing some student information software that is more "teacher-centered" instead of "administration-centered." This ties in with some work I've started with Zope. I'm not positive that this will turn into an open source project, but considering I talked their ear off about free software when we met, and they decided to work with us, I think there is a good chance.
Seems clear to me that foundations and universities are going to have to get behind free software in schools if we are going to make a lot of progress.
This is an important point. I'm a new tech coordinator in a public high school and we're installing python, vpython, perl, and a bunch of other free as in beer and/or speech software on our Windows 2000 and Mac OS X images. I thought about installing Cygwin but that seemed a bit much. Once I catch my breath I'll work on setting up dual-boot configurations.
--Tom
Regarding the doctor, I particularly liked his big forced smile at the end of his conversation with the Captain (I think). It made him seem like a character from another civilization that doesn't actually use the same facial expresssions to communicate emotion that we do, and he is making a conscious attempt to send the culturally appropriate signals.
Now, I'm sure there are plenty of other times he does smile naturally, but it was a nice touch.
My seventh graders are using Linux for word processing (AbiWord), a bit of typing-practice and also game-playing when they are done with their other work. I have been surprised that they don't mind using terminal apps like typist and pine. Give'em a flashy Eterm background and they don't know the difference. They might rather be playing flashier games, but they've steadily worked at sokoban for months. They adapt.
Imagine you an adolescent living in a prehistoric (mythic) agrarian village. For untold generations, your ancestors planted one seed at a time, using a hoe. Your grandfather's generation invented the plow, increasing productivity and decreasing the strains on the farmer's body. Initally they were rare and expensive, but in your parents lives they are common. You know that for the rest of your life, unless you are a prisoner or an untouchable, you will make your living using a plow in some capacity. Plows become cheaper every year, and used ones are basically given away.
In your school, however, you're still spending 90% of your time on hoes.
It is pointed out that using the hoe doesn't teach you anything more about farming, aside from teaching you how to use the hoe. Which you have to agree is more or less true.
But somehow, as you stand out in the field with your grandfather's hoe, you can't help but feeling like your wasting your time and falling behind all those kids who ride around on their parent's plows all afternoon.
That, I think, is a metaphor for the current situation, particularly in poorer school districts. I don't believe that computers have a magical role to play in the learning process, but to have schools be basically the only place in society to NOT use computers in the flow of everyday life drains them of relevance, particularly to students for whom the value of education is not a given.
We need to get linux boxen and xterminals into schools so that kids can have access for the least possible amount of money. I'm an inner-city English teacher, and I need more damn books, but I also put together a word processing cluster with donated hardware and Linux this year, and it is working out quite well.