The only real rule for his contest was to sink the battleship. Of course, after he did, the Navy came up with all sorts of reasons why it wasn't really a fair test. Howsomever, the ship was still sunk - and the LINUX server is still hacked. It's time for he who called the tune to pay the piper.
Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I got a degree in management. In the days of that adventure, I took a class in administrative management taught by one of the department's senior secretaries (only a 2 credit course). The course took a hard look at how to actually order and use office equipment such as 10-key machines, copiers, dictaphones, etc. In short, it was taught by someone in the working trenches who knew what it really took to be "productive".
In my last stint with a major corporation, beginning in 1990, I was a support administrator responsible for a small departmental LAN with 35 workstations under NOVELL 3.12. At the time, the fileserver was a 286/10, 200MB HD with a 200MB mirror, 16MB RAM. Most of the workstations were PS-2 Model 50's & 60's running WIN 3.0 (and WORDPERFECT 5.1 under DOS sessions) although some of the engineers were given 386/16SX systems. The few times I had to run VREPAIR on the server were occasions of much fear and trembling since I did what I did courtesy of OJT and long reading of the manuals.
The productivity problems I saw had little to do with the OS and much more to do with inadequate funding for equipment and training. The people who had to get the work done were invariably the ones least likely to get the training and equipment to be "productive" Although the systems seldom crashed, they almost always ran low, slow, and awkward. We were essentially on our own to help each other and, fortunately, we were able to generally arrange workflows based on what we knew as long as the work got done.
If you want to see a lack of "productivity", watch a senior VP fiddle with 6 different revisions of a memo because he/she can't A) figure out what it is that needs to be said and, B) can't decide on which font best communicates that lack of decisiveness. When more people at the top realize that the work genrally gets done from the bottom up rather than the top down and fund the process that way, we might just see an increase in "productivity".
The problem just might be, as one corollary to Murphy's Law states, "Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself".
I guess I wouldn't consider myself bright enough to qualify as a nerd, but I've certainly my own memories as an outsider in a public HS in the D.C. 'burbs. I was fortunate not to be the victim of too much abuse, but my sister, 4 years my junior at the same school, wasn't as lucky and came very close to self-destruction. All she wanted was to be left alone to try and chart her own course, but giving her that kind of privacy seemed beyond some of her peers. All of this has brought so many thoughts to the surface, but let me put out some possibly interesting reading to spur thinking about developing alternatives.
Virtually DeSchooling Society: Authentic Collaborative Learning Via The Internet; an abstract by 2 members of a university computer science department @ http://www.webcom.com/journal/eales.html
Camille Paglia's comments in the 04/28/99 issue of the e-zine "Salon" @ http://www.salon.com (do a past articles lookup from there; the URL's too long to trust to my typing)
Sadly out of print, but not too hard to find, Paul Goodman's, Compulsory Mis-Education and The Community of Scholars.
Beyond that, we have to raise the issue about what can be done, as a start, now.
* Don't give up; complain, request the issuance of a peace bond and/or file charges as necessary.
* Get others involved; parents need to support their children and children need to ask for that help. If your parents aren't open to the idea, look for an adult mentor (sorry, but so few take minors seriously) that is willing to try and help.
* Home (or small group of like-minded parents) schooling. Long disparaged by some professional bureaucrats as an example of the bunker mentality of the religious right, this educational option has a long history and strong base of available materials and support groups. Run a string search and go from there.
* Consider supporting the voucher system for funding public education; nothing makes some school staffers quite as nervous as empowering the scholastic consumer with the ability to vote for schooling choices with dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
With apologies to Jon Katz:
http://www.flamebait.com
smells like teen spirit
The only real rule for his contest was to sink the battleship. Of course, after he did, the Navy came up with all sorts of reasons why it wasn't really a fair test. Howsomever, the ship was still sunk - and the LINUX server is still hacked. It's time for he who called the tune to pay the piper.
Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I got a degree in management. In the days of that adventure, I took a class in administrative management taught by one of the department's senior secretaries (only a 2 credit course). The course took a hard look at how to actually order and use office equipment such as 10-key machines, copiers, dictaphones, etc. In short, it was taught by someone in the working trenches who knew what it really took to be "productive".
In my last stint with a major corporation, beginning in 1990, I was a support administrator responsible for a small departmental LAN with 35 workstations under NOVELL 3.12. At the time, the fileserver was a 286/10, 200MB HD with a 200MB mirror, 16MB RAM. Most of the workstations were PS-2 Model 50's & 60's running WIN 3.0 (and WORDPERFECT 5.1 under DOS sessions) although some of the engineers were given 386/16SX systems. The few times I had to run VREPAIR on the server were occasions of much fear and trembling since I did what I did courtesy of OJT and long reading of the manuals.
The productivity problems I saw had little to do with the OS and much more to do with inadequate funding for equipment and training. The people who had to get the work done were invariably the ones least likely to get the training and equipment to be "productive" Although the systems seldom crashed, they almost always ran low, slow, and awkward. We were essentially on our own to help each other and, fortunately, we were able to generally arrange workflows based on what we knew as long as the work got done.
If you want to see a lack of "productivity", watch a senior VP fiddle with 6 different revisions of a memo because he/she can't A) figure out what it is that needs to be said and, B) can't decide on which font best communicates that lack of decisiveness. When more people at the top realize that the work genrally gets done from the bottom up rather than the top down and fund the process that way, we might just see an increase in "productivity".
The problem just might be, as one corollary to Murphy's Law states, "Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself".
I guess I wouldn't consider myself bright enough to qualify as a nerd, but I've certainly my own memories as an outsider in a public HS in the D.C. 'burbs. I was fortunate not to be the victim of too much abuse, but my sister, 4 years my junior at the same school, wasn't as lucky and came very close to self-destruction. All she wanted was to be left alone to try and chart her own course, but giving her that kind of privacy seemed beyond some of her peers. All of this has brought so many thoughts to the surface, but let me put out some possibly interesting reading to spur thinking about developing alternatives.
Virtually DeSchooling Society: Authentic Collaborative Learning Via The Internet; an abstract by 2 members of a university computer science department @ http://www.webcom.com/journal/eales.html
Camille Paglia's comments in the 04/28/99 issue of the e-zine "Salon" @ http://www.salon.com (do a past articles lookup from there; the URL's too long to trust to my typing)
Sadly out of print, but not too hard to find, Paul Goodman's, Compulsory Mis-Education and The Community of Scholars.
Beyond that, we have to raise the issue about what can be done, as a start, now.
* Don't give up; complain, request the issuance of a peace bond and/or file charges as necessary.
* Get others involved; parents need to support their children and children need to ask for that help. If your parents aren't open to the idea, look for an adult mentor (sorry, but so few take minors seriously) that is willing to try and help.
* Home (or small group of like-minded parents) schooling. Long disparaged by some professional bureaucrats as an example of the bunker mentality of the religious right, this educational option has a long history and strong base of available materials and support groups. Run a string search and go from there.
* Consider supporting the voucher system for funding public education; nothing makes some school staffers quite as nervous as empowering the scholastic consumer with the ability to vote for schooling choices with dollars.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.