This isn't totally wrong, of course, but the situation is so much further than presented. Retrain the users for a new OS? They never learned the first one. For so many of my users Windows 9x is one thing: a screen with icons on which to click to get to the application they barely know. KDE will do that quite similarly. And once they're in WP on Linux, I expect they'll feel quite at home. Typing is the same. The mouse works the same or close enough. Browsing the directory is something they either get (in which case its about the same in Linux) or don't (in which case they can't find their files in Windows either). Oh yeah, and to print they have to click the "print" button.
I hope I don't sound like a religionoid by saying this, but I think that there is good and bad in the world. Not, of course, the stupid prescriptions of the bible-bleating-sexually-repressed, but instead the difference between someone who desires to see his or her efforts used to better the world and those who seek otherwise.
This is all rather visionary: software by students for students. It is what schools should be doing, but frankly I don't think that they will. Too bad. I suspect that this all plays into exactly the stuff that's being discussed in the "voices from the hellmouth" stories. The schools just don't care about the nerds. Football jocks! Now those are worth dollars and attention. But for actual acedemics? Nope.
I wonder what it would take to actually change this situation?
This would actually be a great setup, if one could ever convince a braindead administration of that. Having one high-end Linux/BSD/Whatever box in the closet with some old 486's as X servers hitting it would be sweet. However, the school would have to hire a rather visionary technology coordinator to make this happen.
The problem is that school administrators are too much like any other administrators in the world: looking for prepackaged solutions that can be summed up in a pat "proposal". The idea of putting a unix host with some terminals and then setting the students free is, I expect, rarely even imagined.
This reminds me of a story. When I was in Junior high we had only 3 computers: an AppleII+ and two TRS-80's. The library decided to catalog their books on the Apple and had a student write the program for them. He did, but then he left the school and on the last day the program crashed. Did they hire a "consultant" to come in and fix it. Of course not; they grabbed me and a friend and had us pour through his 600 lines of Applesoft BASIC and fix the problem. What a neat experience for a kid that was. I don't think that this happens much anymore.
Well, I think it is obvious to the free sofware crowd that the money spent by schools on software is a lousy measure of of their dedication to computer education. I think a better measure is to check the class sizes of real computer courses and the number of machines available per student in such classes. Also, to note the fall of computer science type classes (read: programming) and the rise of application classes. I think, seriously, that your average computer class these days is an overglorified version of typing 101.
When I was a kid we learned BASIC in junior high and assembler and PASCAL in high school. I was in a high school recently that had no programming classes at all. However, they did have 90+ PC's in their Business Ed department, all running Word and Excel.
Well, if you can convince NT that you're a Domain Admin, you might run some lovely utilities like User Manager For Domains, turn off auditing and add a few backdoors. And then there is the HTML based admin utilities. How many paper MCSE's turn that off?
Is the FTP service off? Turn it on through server manager. Then all of your friends without SMB access can play with the files.
Exchange Admin can be run remotely. That might be rather fun. Give admin rights to read everyone's mailboxes. Then spend the evening with Outlook and their mail. Might be fun reading. Might be more fun posting.
Of course, to do all of this you'd have to reduce yourself to working on an MICROS~1 system. Hard to say if it'd be worth it.
I am an Eiffel developer and we are not rare. It is Eiffel jobs that are lacking. And while Java programmers might be a dime a dozen, beware dime-a-dozen quality. Eiffle is not the buzzword dejour. To my estimation, that recommends it.
And Eiffel attracts a rather quality driven user/developer base. The commercial products are mature and well supported.
Some links:
Visual Eiffel: {Tight Win32 native code, some RAD tools} http://www.object-tools.com/
ISE: {Large corporate projects, platform independence, various libraries} http://www.eiffel.com/
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't totally wrong, of course, but the situation is so much further than presented. Retrain the users for a new OS? They never learned the first one. For so many of my users Windows 9x is one thing: a screen with icons on which to click to get to the application they barely know. KDE will do that quite similarly. And once they're in WP on Linux, I expect they'll feel quite at home. Typing is the same. The mouse works the same or close enough. Browsing the directory is something they either get (in which case its about the same in Linux) or don't (in which case they can't find their files in Windows either). Oh yeah, and to print they have to click the "print" button.
I hope I don't sound like a religionoid by saying this, but I think that there is good and bad in the world. Not, of course, the stupid prescriptions of the bible-bleating-sexually-repressed, but instead the difference between someone who desires to see his or her efforts used to better the world and those who seek otherwise.
This is all rather visionary: software by students for students. It is what schools should be doing, but frankly I don't think that they will. Too bad. I suspect that this all plays into exactly the stuff that's being discussed in the "voices from the hellmouth" stories. The schools just don't care about the nerds. Football jocks! Now those are worth dollars and attention. But for actual acedemics? Nope.
I wonder what it would take to actually change this situation?
This would actually be a great setup, if one could ever convince a braindead administration of that. Having one high-end Linux/BSD/Whatever box in the closet with some old 486's as X servers hitting it would be sweet. However, the school would have to hire a rather visionary technology coordinator to make this happen.
The problem is that school administrators are too much like any other administrators in the world: looking for prepackaged solutions that can be summed up in a pat "proposal". The idea of putting a unix host with some terminals and then setting the students free is, I expect, rarely even imagined.
This reminds me of a story. When I was in Junior high we had only 3 computers: an AppleII+ and two TRS-80's. The library decided to catalog their books on the Apple and had a student write the program for them. He did, but then he left the school and on the last day the program crashed. Did they hire a "consultant" to come in and fix it. Of course not; they grabbed me and a friend and had us pour through his 600 lines of Applesoft BASIC and fix the problem. What a neat experience for a kid that was. I don't think that this happens much anymore.
Well, I think it is obvious to the free sofware crowd that the money spent by schools on software is a lousy measure of of their dedication to computer education. I think a better measure is to check the class sizes of real computer courses and the number of machines available per student in such classes. Also, to note the fall of computer science type classes (read: programming) and the rise of application classes. I think, seriously, that your average computer class these days is an overglorified version of typing 101.
When I was a kid we learned BASIC in junior high and assembler and PASCAL in high school. I was in a high school recently that had no programming classes at all. However, they did have 90+ PC's in their Business Ed department, all running Word and Excel.
Obviously something is wrong here.
Well, if you can convince NT that you're
a Domain Admin, you might run some lovely
utilities like User Manager For Domains,
turn off auditing and add a few backdoors.
And then there is the HTML based admin utilities.
How many paper MCSE's turn that off?
Is the FTP service off? Turn it on through
server manager. Then all of your friends
without SMB access can play with the files.
Exchange Admin can be run remotely. That might
be rather fun. Give admin rights to read
everyone's mailboxes. Then spend the evening
with Outlook and their mail. Might be fun
reading. Might be more fun posting.
Of course, to do all of this you'd have to
reduce yourself to working on an MICROS~1
system. Hard to say if it'd be worth it.
Oh pooh !! :)
I am an Eiffel developer and we are not rare.
It is Eiffel jobs that are lacking. And while
Java programmers might be a dime a dozen, beware
dime-a-dozen quality. Eiffle is not the buzzword
dejour. To my estimation, that recommends it.
And Eiffel attracts a rather quality driven
user/developer base. The commercial products
are mature and well supported.
Some links:
Visual Eiffel:
{Tight Win32 native code, some RAD tools}
http://www.object-tools.com/
ISE:
{Large corporate projects, platform
independence, various libraries}
http://www.eiffel.com/
SmallEiffle (GNU):
{GPL release, helpful community,
fast--very fast}
http://smalleiffel.loria.fr
ELJ:
{Eiffel Libery Journal, online magazine,
all the other links you might want}
http://www.elj.com/
-- Jeffrey Straszheim