There have been plenty of recommendations for Moodle, but just to throw it out there... it's not open source, but GradeConnect is a hosted course management system and is designed to do exactly what you're looking for (and a whole lot more) and has a free version. I used to do some development work for GradeConnect 6+ years ago, so I know the folks who run it and they're all educators. It really is a system designed by teachers, for teachers. Worth checking out at least!
They're biggest selling product was BES which was plagued with bugs and issues.
In my years in IT I've been least impressed with the usability of the BES. When it's installed properly and configured correctly it generally just works, and I really appreciate its integration with corporate mail systems, but actually getting in and using the product could not be less intuitive. It's just an ugly and horribly designed piece of software, and their new version 5, which went mostly web based is even worse than their older non-web based app.
FTA, "We plan to refocus on the enterprise business and capitalize on our leading position in this segment." If that truly is the case, they need to seriously attend to BES and its usability because that's really the biggest thing that differentiates BlackBerry from other smart phone experiences in the enterprise.
If you get any signal outside your house then a cell repeater is the way to go. It takes the strong signal outside, and... repeats... it inside. If you get 3+ bars outside then an omni directional antenna (outside) is the quickest and easiest. Otherwise a directional antenna (or two if the 800 and 1900 band towers are in different directions) is the way to go.
I've put up two of these solutions, one at work to extend the excellent signal outside into our warehouse, and another at a location that barely gets 1 bar outside, using two directional antennas to point at different towers.
Not trying to advertise for anyone, but I got my stuff from http://www.cellantenna.com/ using modified versions of their CAE700-70 system. Granted, that's an expensive and powerful package, you might not need that high end a system for your needs. Give them a call, or try hitting up http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/ as I got some great advice from the folks there.
They found that security is pretty much an afterthought in the current crop of robotic devices.
That pretty much defines how security is thought of most of the time, it's why software is so easily compromised, and why even physical security is often easily broken through. Why do they expect it to be any different with robots? Not that that justifies it, it just doesn't surprise me.
I read it again but I still don't agree with him. I'm also a BES admin, and it's not that big a deal to set up a BES server... anyone w/ basic Windows experience can do so, tying it to Exchange isn't as easy as it could be, but there are much harder things out there. Once you have it set up, in my experience it's not "vaguely okay" and "a pain in the ass" it actually provides very good sync and user experience between Outlook and the BB.
The company I'm working for now is starting to go crazy about KPI's, Key Performance Indicators... Total tickets closed is ridiculous, the only metric that shows (more tickets closed is better??) is how much stuff is screwed up and needs to be fixed. There are only two things I can think of that have any value to IT.
MTBF - Mean Time Between Failures
How long have we gone between thing X breaking?
MTTR - Mean Time To Recovery
How long does it take you to fix thing X when it breaks?
Both of these metrics have the benefit of expressing the value of proactive IT work.
Sony and Panasonic aren't complaining about used TV sales, Toyota isn't complaining about used car sales, and Dell isn't complaining about people reselling their computers.
The point being missed here is that a used product like a TV or a car actually has less value than a used game because they experience "wear and tear." A game (unless it has a scratch on the disc, or maybe a missing manual..) is still the identical game you could have bought new; your experience with the product doesn't change.
We just started using products from FortiNet and have been pretty impressed with them. Their FortiWifi-50B should do the trick for you. It'll do the QoS you need, but is also a great UTM device with built in AV, web filtering, firewall, VPN, etc. Good stuff!
...and you wont get the budget approved to upgrade.
Exactly. There's no money on upgrading yet. On the other hand, there's still money to be made off of IPv4, and far from making money, up front, lots of money will have to be spent on IPv6 adoption. So if you're a business, why wouldn't you wait as long as you could?
How would you make an effective case to your boss?
Why is Google doing this? While I don't know their specific reasons, this is going to save me a lot of time. Whenever I clean up a person's computer (from the latest virus/malware slam) or set up a new computer, I install almost all of the products from this suite with the exception of Norton AV.
Google Pack, downloads and installs all of these products without me sitting there clicking next, next, next and watching progress bars progress. It just does it. It'll also keep them all updated, which is something the average user almost never does, no matter how many times they're told.
My hope is that Google starts to offer more programs and allow me to swap programs out for others... like swapping out Norton for AVG and adding in Quicktime, OpenOffice, and MS Antispyware. Again, it's a time thing. The time I spend manually downloading and installing updated versions of these programs (and making sure the user keeps them updated) is reduced and I can even walk away and just let it do its thing.
Ok, so for 300 licenses you're looking at spending about $5,790 which works out to around $20/license. That's not that bad considering how much time it'll save you and exactly what you get, and you may be able to get it cheaper. I get Ghost licenses for $15ea through CDW-G because I work at a high school. You may want to check with a reseller to see if you can get a break on licensing.
Next to RIS I don't think there's any solution that'll roll out a Windows install with programs, updates, automatically change the SID for you, give the computer a unique name, AND add the computer to the domain... all in about an hour (depending on your network/server/comps being ghosted.) Updating a 40 computer lab between classes is pretty sweet.
So long as you're using Ghost Corporate Ed. (new) you don't have to worry about boot disks, configuring pxe, whatever either. So long as the Ghost Client is installed on the PC just boot it up normally and start a session on the Ghost server.
On the flip side, if you go with Ghost, make sure you purchase all the licenses you'll need the first time. I bought 50 licenses and Ghost Corp v.8. A month later I went to buy 100 more licenses and I couldn't get them for v.8 any more as Symantec had updated Ghost to "Ghost Solution Suite 1.0" so I had to purchase upgrade licenses for the ones I had bought a month earlier.
I would argue that they care a lot about security and a few bugs. Those security holes and bugs are the main reason why the majority of average users (that I've come in contact with) have PC's that are completely bogged down with malware and viruses. I can't count the (large) number of computers I've cleaned for people. Let me say, I haven't met a single person who doesn't care that their new computer runs like it's 10 years old.
However, presented with the choice of a better product that works within the realm of what they know, people are usually quite receptive. Tell them that a lot of the pop-ups and malware they see are due to IE exploits and they're quite willing to try Firefox. Every person I've started on Firefox is still using it. Let them know that many viruses exploit Outlook, give them Thunderbird, and they'll use it.
The point I'm trying to make is just that people do care and if you give them a better option they'll usually use it. Most people simply aren't aware that there is something better or due to FUD won't try it unless they are forced to.
I'd highly recommend RuneScape. It's a great MMORPG that's free and will run on any machine. I work at high schools that are out during the summer & last summer I got so addicted that I had to cut myself off... however it's summer again... and I'm back on...
Actually, you can do UPC numbers just by searching for the UPC number, though it just comes up with a direct search link to upcdatabase.com. You can also do reverse phone lookup. Try the following format.
Not a party game, but an absolutely awesome, and free, mmorp. Runescape. I've been addicted since I started a few months ago. If you decide to check it out, i also highly recommend RuneHQ as it's an incredible resource for playing the game.
First off, your landlord can specify exactly what they're allowed and not allowed to do when they sign a waiver.
Second, if you approach your landlord in a way that makes it sound like they're getting a deal out of it, they may just say yes. Try pitching it to them like, "I want to upgrade your apartment, free of charge, to be satellite ready!"
the phonebooks of course, searched with rphonebook: for residential and bphonebook: for business, also does reverse lookup for the phone #'s themeselves.
specifying a site to search with site: is awesome
Everyone's already mentioned the calculator
If anyone wants a nice in depth look at some of Google's geekier features I highly recomend the book Google Hacks.
A friend of mine is finishing up his Economic Crime Investigation (ECI) degree at Utica College, which is an extension of Syracuse University, in western NY (though the weather is horrible out there, always grey). They also have an Economic Crime Management masters degree. I don't know if that's exactly what you're looking for but ECI (or ECM for that matter) is a good place to start if you're looking for a background in criminal investigation, law, computers, and white-collar crime. Granted, from what it looks like here the FBI at least don't seem to concerned with the exact degree you get, a masters helps. Just like anything else, you're going to need experience, start small. But what do I know..
but i guess the cheapest and easiest way to get the 1.48ghz
Cheapest?? The article said this thing is going to be $500. That aside though, I can't see why anyone would actually want this. It increases the frame rate for a couple of games but because MPEG-2 playback is dependent on the 733 MHz clock the article says that most in-game movies will pause every 3-5 seconds, and most DVD play back has similar problems. Granted, it has a switch on the front to knock it back down to 733 but the article also said that mostly didn't work for video playback.
I applaud the folks at Friendtech for this hack, and their mod chip for the system sounds like it has some pretty cool features for turning the xbox into a media center, but I can't imagine it'd be worth blowing $500 for a partially functional xbox.
Ironically my first mp3 was sent to me from my very non-geek g/f from college about 6 years ago, it was a band called Church of Rythm, the song was Not Perfect. I ran it in Sonique on a compaq P60 I got off ebay at the time for $50. My sister now uses the compaq (poor thing) and I still use Sonique.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been plenty of recommendations for Moodle, but just to throw it out there... it's not open source, but GradeConnect is a hosted course management system and is designed to do exactly what you're looking for (and a whole lot more) and has a free version. I used to do some development work for GradeConnect 6+ years ago, so I know the folks who run it and they're all educators. It really is a system designed by teachers, for teachers. Worth checking out at least!
http://www.gradeconnect.com/
They're biggest selling product was BES which was plagued with bugs and issues.
In my years in IT I've been least impressed with the usability of the BES. When it's installed properly and configured correctly it generally just works, and I really appreciate its integration with corporate mail systems, but actually getting in and using the product could not be less intuitive. It's just an ugly and horribly designed piece of software, and their new version 5, which went mostly web based is even worse than their older non-web based app.
FTA, "We plan to refocus on the enterprise business and capitalize on our leading position in this segment." If that truly is the case, they need to seriously attend to BES and its usability because that's really the biggest thing that differentiates BlackBerry from other smart phone experiences in the enterprise.
IMHO... A hacker is anyone who derives joy from discovering ways to circumvent limitations.
If you get any signal outside your house then a cell repeater is the way to go. It takes the strong signal outside, and... repeats... it inside. If you get 3+ bars outside then an omni directional antenna (outside) is the quickest and easiest. Otherwise a directional antenna (or two if the 800 and 1900 band towers are in different directions) is the way to go.
I've put up two of these solutions, one at work to extend the excellent signal outside into our warehouse, and another at a location that barely gets 1 bar outside, using two directional antennas to point at different towers.
Not trying to advertise for anyone, but I got my stuff from http://www.cellantenna.com/ using modified versions of their CAE700-70 system. Granted, that's an expensive and powerful package, you might not need that high end a system for your needs. Give them a call, or try hitting up http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/ as I got some great advice from the folks there.
Good luck!
They found that security is pretty much an afterthought in the current crop of robotic devices.
That pretty much defines how security is thought of most of the time, it's why software is so easily compromised, and why even physical security is often easily broken through. Why do they expect it to be any different with robots? Not that that justifies it, it just doesn't surprise me.
I read it again but I still don't agree with him. I'm also a BES admin, and it's not that big a deal to set up a BES server... anyone w/ basic Windows experience can do so, tying it to Exchange isn't as easy as it could be, but there are much harder things out there. Once you have it set up, in my experience it's not "vaguely okay" and "a pain in the ass" it actually provides very good sync and user experience between Outlook and the BB.
The company I'm working for now is starting to go crazy about KPI's, Key Performance Indicators... Total tickets closed is ridiculous, the only metric that shows (more tickets closed is better??) is how much stuff is screwed up and needs to be fixed. There are only two things I can think of that have any value to IT.
MTBF - Mean Time Between Failures
How long have we gone between thing X breaking?
MTTR - Mean Time To Recovery
How long does it take you to fix thing X when it breaks?
Both of these metrics have the benefit of expressing the value of proactive IT work.
Sony and Panasonic aren't complaining about used TV sales, Toyota isn't complaining about used car sales, and Dell isn't complaining about people reselling their computers.
The point being missed here is that a used product like a TV or a car actually has less value than a used game because they experience "wear and tear." A game (unless it has a scratch on the disc, or maybe a missing manual..) is still the identical game you could have bought new; your experience with the product doesn't change.
Sure you read TFA?
"After receiving the highest security rating by a National Security Agency (NSA)-run certification program..."
We just started using products from FortiNet and have been pretty impressed with them. Their FortiWifi-50B should do the trick for you. It'll do the QoS you need, but is also a great UTM device with built in AV, web filtering, firewall, VPN, etc. Good stuff!
http://www.fortinet.com/products/telesoho.html
Exactly. There's no money on upgrading yet. On the other hand, there's still money to be made off of IPv4, and far from making money, up front, lots of money will have to be spent on IPv6 adoption. So if you're a business, why wouldn't you wait as long as you could?
How would you make an effective case to your boss?
Actually...
"Guitar Hero 2 is scheduled to hit the shelves in time for Black Friday..."From http://ulo.tricho.us/?p=63
So maybe you can get her a pre-order certificate for her birthday... :P
Why is Google doing this? While I don't know their specific reasons, this is going to save me a lot of time. Whenever I clean up a person's computer (from the latest virus/malware slam) or set up a new computer, I install almost all of the products from this suite with the exception of Norton AV.
Google Pack, downloads and installs all of these products without me sitting there clicking next, next, next and watching progress bars progress. It just does it. It'll also keep them all updated, which is something the average user almost never does, no matter how many times they're told.
My hope is that Google starts to offer more programs and allow me to swap programs out for others... like swapping out Norton for AVG and adding in Quicktime, OpenOffice, and MS Antispyware. Again, it's a time thing. The time I spend manually downloading and installing updated versions of these programs (and making sure the user keeps them updated) is reduced and I can even walk away and just let it do its thing.
Ok, so for 300 licenses you're looking at spending about $5,790 which works out to around $20/license. That's not that bad considering how much time it'll save you and exactly what you get, and you may be able to get it cheaper. I get Ghost licenses for $15ea through CDW-G because I work at a high school. You may want to check with a reseller to see if you can get a break on licensing.
Next to RIS I don't think there's any solution that'll roll out a Windows install with programs, updates, automatically change the SID for you, give the computer a unique name, AND add the computer to the domain... all in about an hour (depending on your network/server/comps being ghosted.) Updating a 40 computer lab between classes is pretty sweet.
So long as you're using Ghost Corporate Ed. (new) you don't have to worry about boot disks, configuring pxe, whatever either. So long as the Ghost Client is installed on the PC just boot it up normally and start a session on the Ghost server.
On the flip side, if you go with Ghost, make sure you purchase all the licenses you'll need the first time. I bought 50 licenses and Ghost Corp v.8. A month later I went to buy 100 more licenses and I couldn't get them for v.8 any more as Symantec had updated Ghost to "Ghost Solution Suite 1.0" so I had to purchase upgrade licenses for the ones I had bought a month earlier.
they don't care about OS security or a few bugs.
I would argue that they care a lot about security and a few bugs. Those security holes and bugs are the main reason why the majority of average users (that I've come in contact with) have PC's that are completely bogged down with malware and viruses. I can't count the (large) number of computers I've cleaned for people. Let me say, I haven't met a single person who doesn't care that their new computer runs like it's 10 years old.
However, presented with the choice of a better product that works within the realm of what they know, people are usually quite receptive. Tell them that a lot of the pop-ups and malware they see are due to IE exploits and they're quite willing to try Firefox. Every person I've started on Firefox is still using it. Let them know that many viruses exploit Outlook, give them Thunderbird, and they'll use it.
The point I'm trying to make is just that people do care and if you give them a better option they'll usually use it. Most people simply aren't aware that there is something better or due to FUD won't try it unless they are forced to.
There are quite a few small companies that provide online course management solutions. However, I don't know of any as big as Blackboard or WebCT.
A lot of high schools in my area are starting to use a site called GradeConnect which seems to be mostly free to use.
I'd highly recommend RuneScape. It's a great MMORPG that's free and will run on any machine. I work at high schools that are out during the summer & last summer I got so addicted that I had to cut myself off... however it's summer again... and I'm back on...
Actually, you can do UPC numbers just by searching for the UPC number, though it just comes up with a direct search link to upcdatabase.com. You can also do reverse phone lookup. Try the following format.
rphonebook: 555-555-5555Not a party game, but an absolutely awesome, and free, mmorp. Runescape. I've been addicted since I started a few months ago. If you decide to check it out, i also highly recommend RuneHQ as it's an incredible resource for playing the game.
Or you could just go here and make your own with stuff in your house for under $1.
Note, I don't live in an apartment but...
First off, your landlord can specify exactly what they're allowed and not allowed to do when they sign a waiver.
Second, if you approach your landlord in a way that makes it sound like they're getting a deal out of it, they may just say yes. Try pitching it to them like, "I want to upgrade your apartment, free of charge, to be satellite ready!"
the phonebooks of course, searched with rphonebook: for residential and bphonebook: for business, also does reverse lookup for the phone #'s themeselves.
specifying a site to search with site: is awesome
Everyone's already mentioned the calculator
If anyone wants a nice in depth look at some of Google's geekier features I highly recomend the book Google Hacks.
A friend of mine is finishing up his Economic Crime Investigation (ECI) degree at Utica College, which is an extension of Syracuse University, in western NY (though the weather is horrible out there, always grey). They also have an Economic Crime Management masters degree. I don't know if that's exactly what you're looking for but ECI (or ECM for that matter) is a good place to start if you're looking for a background in criminal investigation, law, computers, and white-collar crime. Granted, from what it looks like here the FBI at least don't seem to concerned with the exact degree you get, a masters helps. Just like anything else, you're going to need experience, start small. But what do I know..
Cheapest?? The article said this thing is going to be $500. That aside though, I can't see why anyone would actually want this. It increases the frame rate for a couple of games but because MPEG-2 playback is dependent on the 733 MHz clock the article says that most in-game movies will pause every 3-5 seconds, and most DVD play back has similar problems. Granted, it has a switch on the front to knock it back down to 733 but the article also said that mostly didn't work for video playback.
I applaud the folks at Friendtech for this hack, and their mod chip for the system sounds like it has some pretty cool features for turning the xbox into a media center, but I can't imagine it'd be worth blowing $500 for a partially functional xbox.
Ironically my first mp3 was sent to me from my very non-geek g/f from college about 6 years ago, it was a band called Church of Rythm, the song was Not Perfect. I ran it in Sonique on a compaq P60 I got off ebay at the time for $50. My sister now uses the compaq (poor thing) and I still use Sonique.