Heh, I knew that jab was likely to come. I don't have access to a grammar book or I would've checked that, honestly. The closest thing I have is a style guide, and that won't do me any good. You probably know what I intend already, but my feeling is that a typical student is much more likely to just use Word to check the grammar for them, rather than learning it, if they are presented with the option.
I considered it as in "I do not know", "We do not know", "The kids do not know". Thinking of it the way that I should've, "The generation does not know", it is definitely better with "does" than with "do".
Yes, ironic is it for this one. At least it was grammar and not spelling that I spelled wrong. Although, maybe people would've thought that I did it on purpose then. Or maybe it exemplifies the problem?
Wow, make two, maybe three errors in a post that mentions bad spelling and grammar, and you really take it hard.:) At least I still managed over 99% accuracy, despite my own best efforts.
Is that correct? As far as the sound test, "a generation of kids that does not know grammar" and "a generation of kids that do not know grammar" both seem okay. Word also does not find a problem with either of these ways. Which one really is the correct way?
Aww, come on now, I didn't do *that* terrible.;-) Two spelling mistakes for 322 words, and both are spelling "grammer" instead of "grammar". Sliderule should also be slide rule, according to the dictionary in Word.
If we're lucky, perhaps this sort of problem will inspire someone to take a look at exactly how tech is used in the classroom. Giving kids calculators and computers and etc. seems like a good idea. However, while it is important that kids learn how to use technology, it's much more important that they can do these things without it.
When I was in school, I remember thinking how cool it was that I could use a calculator in 9th grade math. Then after trying to use one, not only did I find that I could do it faster without it, but that I learned the math better. I carried that attitude through calculus, and I'm very glad that I did.
Now we have a generation of kids that can't do basic math, can't spell, and don't know grammer. What a great help that tech has been for them in school! All the teaching aids in the world don't turn a bad teacher into someone that can educate your children. Don't let elementary school kids write papers on the computer, they don't get handwriting, spelling, or grammer practice. They just learn the computer will fix it for them. Don't let them use calculators for their math, because they just learn that calculators will do math for them, so they don't need to know it.
There is a proper way to use these things in the classroom. A word processor in English class is wrong, just as a calculator is in basic math class. Once you get to a Lit class or advanced math, the tools are useful in teaching more effectively.
Also, Someone mentioned log books in another post as being a shortcut tool. So are sliderules, but try doing logs sanely without one or the other. What you learned to use logs for was a shortcut to doing long-hand division and multiplications... after you learned how to do that math anyway.
You cannot expect all people to be able to do all things. If the formula is known, the chemical can be reproduced. The problem with the RAW formats is that the format is not known, is unnecessarily obfuscated, or interoperability is unattainable because of copy restriction or some sort of infernal Federal laws.
Today you don't know how the film works, or the digital camera, or the timing and fuel mix control systems of your car. This is perfectly fine, since how it works *is* known, and there are people that can make all of them. If not, you could learn how to take the information and use it to recreate these things.
The whole thing that is done in schools *is* wrong, and it *is* bad for learning and for the kids. People have differing abilities, and you need to form the education to deal with it.
Just as you shouldn't pass some kid and put them in the next grade just to be with his peers, you shouldn't lie to someone and tell them that they aren't good at something because they're not trying hard enough, and that's the only reason. Some people can't do creative composition, some can't play an instrument. Look at all the of the people in IT/CS that have no aptitude for it.
Now, many of the areas you mentioned are based on memorization. Geometry doesn't really take any skill, but you have to remember rules and corrolaries. Same idea in history, grammer, spelling.
I agree with you in that we should be teaching kids that *everyone* is different from *everyone* else. Teach them that there is uniqueness in themselves. Find ways to teach them what they need to know, and give them an environment where they can grow and start to find their aptitudes. Then provide a mechanism to learn more about those aptitutes so they can decide what they would like to try and do with their lives.
Exactly! Saying someone is African-American is someone with dual citizenship. Using it the way the it is now, it's just another label, another stereotyping term. Anecdotally, of all the people that I've met with dark skin, I only know of three that were actually African-American. We have all sorts of these asinine labels now: African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-American, etc. They all aid people to discriminate.
Worse still, now instead of discriminating negatively against recently immigrated ethnic groups, and similar, we give advantages. It's still disrimination, but now that group starts to form a sense of entitlement to these things. Equal rights means everyone is the same. Race, ethnicity, gender, whatever doesn't matter, so we should stop acting like it does.
If you're born in the USA, then you're American; it's your citizenship. You might say that you're irish, but you're not Irish. Stupid subtle difference, but one is describing your ancestry, and the other is describing your citizenship.
We'd be better to drop all the artificial priveledge and all the labels and treat everyone as they deserve: as equals.
At the same time, it's a natural response. People stereotype instictively as it has aided in survival.
Some blue berries make you sick leads to not eating blue berries, even though some are okay. Snakes with pointed heads tend to be poisonous, so stay away from all pointed snakes. Some spiders can kill you, stay away from all spiders.
When it comes to people, as a whole, we do the same and key on some visible trait. This is unfortunate, since the way someone looks (not dresses, just physical makeup) rarely correlates to what they're like in the head. It happens for the same reason, though.
If you notice, when most people meet someone, they form opinions about them based partially on stereotype and partially on first encounter behavior (first impression). This tends to be a strong belief about the person, but can be changed over time.
We will never be rid of stereotype unless we evolve away the instinct. We can just try to reduce the effect through social pressure.
Hmm... point is missed. How about you are born with a liver that's only half the size, but that could process blood in a different/more efficient manner that compensated for this and also aided in immuno-response. This would be a defect, in that your liver is malformed from the norm, however a result of whatever caused the defect makes your liver still function like a normal one, and has an added benefit.
What about a person that has no coloration to their eyes, but could also see partial infra-red?
The point is just that you are born with some mutation, but there is a positive side-effect to the mutation. This effect must happen for evolution to take place.
You're completely correct. Doing B&W is much easier overall than color. I was just pointing out that while it's hard, it isn't by any means impossible to do these things. While their products used trade secrets, many of those have already been figured out. It's still outside the realm of what most people could, or would be willing, to do in their homes.
On the other hand, making your own digital camera isn't nearly as hard as making your own color film. There's a lot less reasearch and trial & error involved, and all the parts are easily available.
Actually... for the most part the formulas are publicly known for developers. You don't have to worry about acid fixes and rinse baths being proprietary. For most developers there are a number of companies that will make the chemical for you. Then you can just mix it yourself, or dilute it. I suppose you could make it yourself from scratch, but many of them use all sorts of evil to arrive at the final chemistry.
Also, it isn't particuarly impossible to make your own film. Sure, getting the emulsion nice-nice isn't easy, but it's possible to do yourself.
All that aside, you can develop most negatives from any vendor in the same chemistry. It's the C-41 process, and it makes industries like one-hour photofinishing possible. It also makes your life easier as an enthusiast.
IOW, you don't have to worry about film being shut down because Kodak or whoever doesn't feel like manufacturing any more. It might be more difficult to get your favorite chems is all.
You can set policies to change that kind of stuff, either with gpedit.msc and similar, editing the registry directly, or with ADS.
There will still be bad applications out there that ignore your policies. The reason that you use the API for this is so that you can direct the data files where they're supposed to go, according to the system. It's bad practice to not let the user override the defaults, but this lets you get what the default should be in the first place.
That API only works with IE4 and up... so not at all by default on WinNT4 or under, or Win95/98. This is the sort of thing that makes people's points; MS doesn't every do anything right the first two times.
MS also has a horrible habit of making API calls like this a complete pain in the ass. That call requires you to give it the CSIDL to the folder you want. Now you have to go find those defines. A bunch of stuff which only exist if you have the desktop integration stuff from IE4. Of course, the API was extended in IE5 to create the folder for you if it doesn't exist.
This means that if you don't want to depend on IE4 or above being installed, you have to find another way. The other way I know of was to get the currentuser and then the windowsdir and start shoving stuff into windowsdir\profile\username directories.
Everyone is different with how their minds work. The reason I object to the grading of homework just because there is a good chance that the student will not do it correctly. I have less of a problem with grading whether you attempted the work, and then correcting and tutoring the student as needed. I feel that homework is practice, and that practice shouldn't be held against a student.
In grade school/secondary school you're probably right about needing to supply the motivation for a student to do the homework. Then again, those schools are as much about instilling work ethic and problem solving ability as they are about math , history, etc.
However, in college/university the idea is distasteful to me. The student is voluntarily in class now, and the motivation should be to learn. The professor shouldn't be forcing the student to do homework, but evaluating the student's ability on the subject matter. If the student doesn't feel the need for the homework, either because they're comfortable with the material, or just foolish, they are the one paying to do poorly and not learn.
Myself, I rarely did homework or studied. This worked fine in high school, getting me top grades on tests and excellent scores in class. I don't know why teachers didn't drop my grade for not doing homework, but they didn't. Everyone else was certainly penalized. This included Calculus, physics, history, etc. The classes were just too slow paced for me to have any problems with the material. In college, my classes were much shorter, being seven weeks long with three or four class meetings a week. I had a horrid time adjusting to this and did rather poorly the first two terms. Once I started studying and doing excercises at home, I did much better.
I've always believed that the right way is to teach the theory with examples of application. Once the theory is soundly in place with the student, then you move on to teaching how to take the theory and use it.
Using a formula without knowing how it works and why just leads to voodoo science. The same is true in any field.
Oh so true, which is why I hate the concept of graded homework. Or mindlessly repetative homework. In fact, most of the common characteristics of homework in the US are just the wrong way to do it. Graded practices that take up massive amounts of out of class time and count against you if you didn't "get it". Or you could divide it up and copy off each other. Or, easier still, you could just not do it at all and learn to ignore the teacher yelling at you for it.
I wouldn't have minded homework nearly as much if it was selected problems that gave me an opportunity to check myself on the material. That was how I used it, and mostly got away unscathed. Many teachers didn't appreciate that I wouldn't do homework half the time, but I valued my time doing absolutely anything else over time spent doing their homework.
Amazing that the field that I taught myself is the field I excel at over any other (so far). Sure, I tried going to college for it, but ended up transferring majors because the professors in my preferred major upset me so much with their terrible methods. Now, I've been doing it as a profession for ten years, make a difference with it, and still enjoy it.
I think that had I finished in my preferred major, it would've burned me out. I also think that I would've done much better in college if I hadn't developed the idea that "homework = pointless waste of time" while in high school.
Teaching the theory, then the application is the right way to do it. It's also very uncommon in college now. Take a look at the typical CS major: all the time is spent learning Java or, decreasingly, C/C++. You'll get a handful of theory classes, but if you took 20 classes, 16 will be application. I used to think it was just my school that had a bad major program, but that strategy is in the majority of schools now.
Truth is, many EE's will end up doing crap design busywork as some crap company, and they'll hate their job. Some EE's will get really great jobs and love it. Most of both will use a fraction of what they learned in college, and will do best with the parts they enjoyed.
Well, I suppose you can speak for yourself, but I think I'm worse off for it. Then again, I went to a college where so many professors think you should spend at least three hours a day on their class. Unfortunately 24hrs - (3 classes * 4hrs) - (3 Meals * 0.5) - (8hrs sleep) = 2.5hrs for anything else. Hopefully you don't want side projects, a job, or social time.
Luckily, as a part of the working world, I get paid to have 8hrs to myself, rather than 2.5hrs and paying tens of thousands of dollars.
Sounds a lot more like a school or set of schools who just decided to take the opposite extreme. You need a balance. Homework is about giving students a check that they know the material. It shouldn't be mind numbing repetition and fourty of the same exercise.
When I was in high school, I hated homework; it was the same drivel over and over. So I just stopped doing it. If I thought I didn't know the topic, then I would try a few and see. Lucky, my teachers weren't idiots and didn't try to cause me trouble for some stupid thing like homework. I knew the topics, I tested excellent, so I suppose I "got away" with it. I got to college and was screwed, because I adopted a policy of not needing to study or do homework.
My idea of using homework is to assign it, provide answers, review it in class. However, you never let it have anything to do with your grade. Build that with projects, papers, tests, etc. This lets kids that don't like needless repetition do something more productive with their time.
Run different ERP software, antispam doesn't cost any money outside of time. AD replacement with Novell is tested quite well. Domino is about the same cost as Exchange.
Can't easily give you remote install w/o some work, but I can get you something for free, save for time again. I've done that one before. This is the only one to worry about.
Cost: same or less than Windows. Flexibility and TCO saving are much better. Licenses cost you a lot less.
Sure, if you ignore Informix and DB2, and probably a few others that I can't think of. SQL Server isn't the end all be all. It took MS many, many revisions to get the damn thing to work right. *Now* it's a decent product, but it wouldn't have mattered if the clueless idiots of the world picked the right products before instead of the Microsoft-won't-get-me-fired product years ago.
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Heh, I knew that jab was likely to come. I don't have access to a grammar book or I would've checked that, honestly. The closest thing I have is a style guide, and that won't do me any good. You probably know what I intend already, but my feeling is that a typical student is much more likely to just use Word to check the grammar for them, rather than learning it, if they are presented with the option.
I considered it as in "I do not know", "We do not know", "The kids do not know". Thinking of it the way that I should've, "The generation does not know", it is definitely better with "does" than with "do".
Yes, ironic is it for this one. At least it was grammar and not spelling that I spelled wrong. Although, maybe people would've thought that I did it on purpose then. Or maybe it exemplifies the problem?
Wow, make two, maybe three errors in a post that mentions bad spelling and grammar, and you really take it hard. :) At least I still managed over 99% accuracy, despite my own best efforts.
Is that correct? As far as the sound test, "a generation of kids that does not know grammar" and "a generation of kids that do not know grammar" both seem okay. Word also does not find a problem with either of these ways. Which one really is the correct way?
Aww, come on now, I didn't do *that* terrible. ;-) Two spelling mistakes for 322 words, and both are spelling "grammer" instead of "grammar". Sliderule should also be slide rule, according to the dictionary in Word.
Maybe that's a missile silo?
If we're lucky, perhaps this sort of problem will inspire someone to take a look at exactly how tech is used in the classroom. Giving kids calculators and computers and etc. seems like a good idea. However, while it is important that kids learn how to use technology, it's much more important that they can do these things without it.
When I was in school, I remember thinking how cool it was that I could use a calculator in 9th grade math. Then after trying to use one, not only did I find that I could do it faster without it, but that I learned the math better. I carried that attitude through calculus, and I'm very glad that I did.
Now we have a generation of kids that can't do basic math, can't spell, and don't know grammer. What a great help that tech has been for them in school! All the teaching aids in the world don't turn a bad teacher into someone that can educate your children. Don't let elementary school kids write papers on the computer, they don't get handwriting, spelling, or grammer practice. They just learn the computer will fix it for them. Don't let them use calculators for their math, because they just learn that calculators will do math for them, so they don't need to know it.
There is a proper way to use these things in the classroom. A word processor in English class is wrong, just as a calculator is in basic math class. Once you get to a Lit class or advanced math, the tools are useful in teaching more effectively.
Also, Someone mentioned log books in another post as being a shortcut tool. So are sliderules, but try doing logs sanely without one or the other. What you learned to use logs for was a shortcut to doing long-hand division and multiplications... after you learned how to do that math anyway.
You cannot expect all people to be able to do all things. If the formula is known, the chemical can be reproduced. The problem with the RAW formats is that the format is not known, is unnecessarily obfuscated, or interoperability is unattainable because of copy restriction or some sort of infernal Federal laws.
Today you don't know how the film works, or the digital camera, or the timing and fuel mix control systems of your car. This is perfectly fine, since how it works *is* known, and there are people that can make all of them. If not, you could learn how to take the information and use it to recreate these things.
The whole thing that is done in schools *is* wrong, and it *is* bad for learning and for the kids. People have differing abilities, and you need to form the education to deal with it.
Just as you shouldn't pass some kid and put them in the next grade just to be with his peers, you shouldn't lie to someone and tell them that they aren't good at something because they're not trying hard enough, and that's the only reason. Some people can't do creative composition, some can't play an instrument. Look at all the of the people in IT/CS that have no aptitude for it.
Now, many of the areas you mentioned are based on memorization. Geometry doesn't really take any skill, but you have to remember rules and corrolaries. Same idea in history, grammer, spelling.
I agree with you in that we should be teaching kids that *everyone* is different from *everyone* else. Teach them that there is uniqueness in themselves. Find ways to teach them what they need to know, and give them an environment where they can grow and start to find their aptitudes. Then provide a mechanism to learn more about those aptitutes so they can decide what they would like to try and do with their lives.
Exactly! Saying someone is African-American is someone with dual citizenship. Using it the way the it is now, it's just another label, another stereotyping term. Anecdotally, of all the people that I've met with dark skin, I only know of three that were actually African-American. We have all sorts of these asinine labels now: African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-American, etc. They all aid people to discriminate.
Worse still, now instead of discriminating negatively against recently immigrated ethnic groups, and similar, we give advantages. It's still disrimination, but now that group starts to form a sense of entitlement to these things. Equal rights means everyone is the same. Race, ethnicity, gender, whatever doesn't matter, so we should stop acting like it does.
If you're born in the USA, then you're American; it's your citizenship. You might say that you're irish, but you're not Irish. Stupid subtle difference, but one is describing your ancestry, and the other is describing your citizenship.
We'd be better to drop all the artificial priveledge and all the labels and treat everyone as they deserve: as equals.
At the same time, it's a natural response. People stereotype instictively as it has aided in survival.
Some blue berries make you sick leads to not eating blue berries, even though some are okay. Snakes with pointed heads tend to be poisonous, so stay away from all pointed snakes. Some spiders can kill you, stay away from all spiders.
When it comes to people, as a whole, we do the same and key on some visible trait. This is unfortunate, since the way someone looks (not dresses, just physical makeup) rarely correlates to what they're like in the head. It happens for the same reason, though.
If you notice, when most people meet someone, they form opinions about them based partially on stereotype and partially on first encounter behavior (first impression). This tends to be a strong belief about the person, but can be changed over time.
We will never be rid of stereotype unless we evolve away the instinct. We can just try to reduce the effect through social pressure.
Hmm... point is missed. How about you are born with a liver that's only half the size, but that could process blood in a different/more efficient manner that compensated for this and also aided in immuno-response. This would be a defect, in that your liver is malformed from the norm, however a result of whatever caused the defect makes your liver still function like a normal one, and has an added benefit.
What about a person that has no coloration to their eyes, but could also see partial infra-red?
The point is just that you are born with some mutation, but there is a positive side-effect to the mutation. This effect must happen for evolution to take place.
You're completely correct. Doing B&W is much easier overall than color. I was just pointing out that while it's hard, it isn't by any means impossible to do these things. While their products used trade secrets, many of those have already been figured out. It's still outside the realm of what most people could, or would be willing, to do in their homes.
On the other hand, making your own digital camera isn't nearly as hard as making your own color film. There's a lot less reasearch and trial & error involved, and all the parts are easily available.
Actually... for the most part the formulas are publicly known for developers. You don't have to worry about acid fixes and rinse baths being proprietary. For most developers there are a number of companies that will make the chemical for you. Then you can just mix it yourself, or dilute it. I suppose you could make it yourself from scratch, but many of them use all sorts of evil to arrive at the final chemistry.
Also, it isn't particuarly impossible to make your own film. Sure, getting the emulsion nice-nice isn't easy, but it's possible to do yourself.
All that aside, you can develop most negatives from any vendor in the same chemistry. It's the C-41 process, and it makes industries like one-hour photofinishing possible. It also makes your life easier as an enthusiast.
IOW, you don't have to worry about film being shut down because Kodak or whoever doesn't feel like manufacturing any more. It might be more difficult to get your favorite chems is all.
You can set policies to change that kind of stuff, either with gpedit.msc and similar, editing the registry directly, or with ADS.
There will still be bad applications out there that ignore your policies. The reason that you use the API for this is so that you can direct the data files where they're supposed to go, according to the system. It's bad practice to not let the user override the defaults, but this lets you get what the default should be in the first place.
That API only works with IE4 and up... so not at all by default on WinNT4 or under, or Win95/98. This is the sort of thing that makes people's points; MS doesn't every do anything right the first two times.
MS also has a horrible habit of making API calls like this a complete pain in the ass. That call requires you to give it the CSIDL to the folder you want. Now you have to go find those defines. A bunch of stuff which only exist if you have the desktop integration stuff from IE4. Of course, the API was extended in IE5 to create the folder for you if it doesn't exist.
This means that if you don't want to depend on IE4 or above being installed, you have to find another way. The other way I know of was to get the currentuser and then the windowsdir and start shoving stuff into windowsdir\profile\username directories.
Everyone is different with how their minds work. The reason I object to the grading of homework just because there is a good chance that the student will not do it correctly. I have less of a problem with grading whether you attempted the work, and then correcting and tutoring the student as needed. I feel that homework is practice, and that practice shouldn't be held against a student.
In grade school/secondary school you're probably right about needing to supply the motivation for a student to do the homework. Then again, those schools are as much about instilling work ethic and problem solving ability as they are about math , history, etc.
However, in college/university the idea is distasteful to me. The student is voluntarily in class now, and the motivation should be to learn. The professor shouldn't be forcing the student to do homework, but evaluating the student's ability on the subject matter. If the student doesn't feel the need for the homework, either because they're comfortable with the material, or just foolish, they are the one paying to do poorly and not learn.
Myself, I rarely did homework or studied. This worked fine in high school, getting me top grades on tests and excellent scores in class. I don't know why teachers didn't drop my grade for not doing homework, but they didn't. Everyone else was certainly penalized. This included Calculus, physics, history, etc. The classes were just too slow paced for me to have any problems with the material. In college, my classes were much shorter, being seven weeks long with three or four class meetings a week. I had a horrid time adjusting to this and did rather poorly the first two terms. Once I started studying and doing excercises at home, I did much better.
I agree with you.
I've always believed that the right way is to teach the theory with examples of application. Once the theory is soundly in place with the student, then you move on to teaching how to take the theory and use it.
Using a formula without knowing how it works and why just leads to voodoo science. The same is true in any field.
Oh so true, which is why I hate the concept of graded homework. Or mindlessly repetative homework. In fact, most of the common characteristics of homework in the US are just the wrong way to do it. Graded practices that take up massive amounts of out of class time and count against you if you didn't "get it". Or you could divide it up and copy off each other. Or, easier still, you could just not do it at all and learn to ignore the teacher yelling at you for it.
I wouldn't have minded homework nearly as much if it was selected problems that gave me an opportunity to check myself on the material. That was how I used it, and mostly got away unscathed. Many teachers didn't appreciate that I wouldn't do homework half the time, but I valued my time doing absolutely anything else over time spent doing their homework.
Amazing that the field that I taught myself is the field I excel at over any other (so far). Sure, I tried going to college for it, but ended up transferring majors because the professors in my preferred major upset me so much with their terrible methods. Now, I've been doing it as a profession for ten years, make a difference with it, and still enjoy it.
I think that had I finished in my preferred major, it would've burned me out. I also think that I would've done much better in college if I hadn't developed the idea that "homework = pointless waste of time" while in high school.
Teaching the theory, then the application is the right way to do it. It's also very uncommon in college now. Take a look at the typical CS major: all the time is spent learning Java or, decreasingly, C/C++. You'll get a handful of theory classes, but if you took 20 classes, 16 will be application. I used to think it was just my school that had a bad major program, but that strategy is in the majority of schools now.
Truth is, many EE's will end up doing crap design busywork as some crap company, and they'll hate their job. Some EE's will get really great jobs and love it. Most of both will use a fraction of what they learned in college, and will do best with the parts they enjoyed.
Well, I suppose you can speak for yourself, but I think I'm worse off for it. Then again, I went to a college where so many professors think you should spend at least three hours a day on their class. Unfortunately 24hrs - (3 classes * 4hrs) - (3 Meals * 0.5) - (8hrs sleep) = 2.5hrs for anything else. Hopefully you don't want side projects, a job, or social time.
Luckily, as a part of the working world, I get paid to have 8hrs to myself, rather than 2.5hrs and paying tens of thousands of dollars.
Sounds a lot more like a school or set of schools who just decided to take the opposite extreme. You need a balance. Homework is about giving students a check that they know the material. It shouldn't be mind numbing repetition and fourty of the same exercise.
When I was in high school, I hated homework; it was the same drivel over and over. So I just stopped doing it. If I thought I didn't know the topic, then I would try a few and see. Lucky, my teachers weren't idiots and didn't try to cause me trouble for some stupid thing like homework. I knew the topics, I tested excellent, so I suppose I "got away" with it. I got to college and was screwed, because I adopted a policy of not needing to study or do homework.
My idea of using homework is to assign it, provide answers, review it in class. However, you never let it have anything to do with your grade. Build that with projects, papers, tests, etc. This lets kids that don't like needless repetition do something more productive with their time.
Run different ERP software, antispam doesn't cost any money outside of time. AD replacement with Novell is tested quite well. Domino is about the same cost as Exchange.
Can't easily give you remote install w/o some work, but I can get you something for free, save for time again. I've done that one before. This is the only one to worry about.
Cost: same or less than Windows. Flexibility and TCO saving are much better. Licenses cost you a lot less.
Sure, if you ignore Informix and DB2, and probably a few others that I can't think of. SQL Server isn't the end all be all. It took MS many, many revisions to get the damn thing to work right. *Now* it's a decent product, but it wouldn't have mattered if the clueless idiots of the world picked the right products before instead of the Microsoft-won't-get-me-fired product years ago.