I couldn't tell you who won if my life depended on it, because I don't even know who was playing. I do know that it was played in Detroit, because I live in Michigan, and the local news media (even in other parts of the state) couldn't stop talking about that fact. I don't recall anyone mentioning the Lions, so I assume it was a couple other teams, but I don't follow basketball, so I couldn't name any off the top of my head.
You pick....Mac OR Dell....NOT BOTH. Powerbooks can run just about everything and so can Dells. Find out the things you simply can't deal without and pick the platform that runs on.
That's what we've already done. The answer is that we need both OS X and Windows. A PowerBook will not run AutoCAD. A Windows laptop (of any brand) will not run Final Cut. Fortunately such requirements usually break down by department, so the Interior Design students can all stick to Windows, the Multimedia majors can stick with Apple, etc. The college has been committed for years to being a dual-platform institution (with Linux, Netware, and whatever else we need behind the scenes). That's not going to change, because the educational programs that drove that decision are not going to change.
Ask Slashdot? Are you serious? There are much better resources out there that are much more appropriate and useful..... (but the real trick lies in finding the right person to contact - THAT can be difficult or even impossible).
That's precisely why I asked here. This is part of my research. My Director's talking to other Directors and no doubt they're sharing all sorts of swell ideas. But I wanted to cast the net a bit wider (and deeper), and reach out to fellow techs who've been in the trenches to make it work.
We have free printing now, and it's a minor disaster. Every week several reams of paper - coated with not-inexpensive color toner - get wasted by people printing things and not even picking them up! Not to mention the freelancers who use our equipment as a free print shop (e.g. 100 11x17" posters advertising a local bar's wet t-shirt night). We'll be instituting controls soon... or rather "when we have time". (Which will of course be further complicated when the students are all using laptops instead of staff-configured desktops.)
They are called acedemic versions, or acdemic licensing, talk to your college bookstore.
Please understand that I didn't just walk in off the street into this job yesterday. My department already buys software at volume academic discounts, but that can still add up to hundreds of dollars per machine, especially for niche products. My question about "handling" licensing included the question of how to manage licenses from semester to semester for apps that are too expensive to deploy everywhere.
Tell Microsoft, Adobe, Etc. you are going to specify Linux and FOSS apps because of the high costs involved....
:) I'm sorry, but that idea isn't just stillborn, it's the first-trimester miscarriage of a 60-year-old crack-addicted woman on the Pill and a pot-smoking steroid abuser who wore two spermicide-soaked condoms.:) You cannot run an art and design school on free/open-source software. With a few exceptions, the feature-equivalent applications simply aren't out there. For those apps that do exist, good full-time and adjunct faculty who know how to use them well enough to teach with them aren't out there. And even if you manage to teach art/design students using the GIMP and Blender and so on, the jobs for people with those application skills aren't out there. I love the stuff and I use it where appropriate, but even if Linux is finally "ready for the desktop", it still isn't ready for the artist's laptop. OpenOffice/NeoOffice might be worth considering, but OS X, Windows, Photoshop, AutoCAD, Final Cut, etc. are all non-negotiable.
The goals include providing tech support for painters, interior designers, sculptors, illustrators, photographers, etc. This is not MIT. We have some brilliant minds here, both faculty and students, but we're talking about very different kinds of intelligence than found in Nobel-winning scientists or their students.
I don't understand why someone would need this much computer equipment. It's like the guy with the Armani suit and Rolex watch driving a Lamborghini - he's compensating for something.
On the other hand, I drive a Geo Metro and ride a bike when weather permits. I'm definitely compensating for something. {grin} But the reason I have as much computer gear as I do is... it's fun.
Unfortunately my student aides are all art students, so there's a limit on how technical the tasks I delegate to them can be. Some of them aren't all that great at following verbal directions, either. Not that they're stupid... their brains just aren't wired that way. They help me with lab overhauls between semesters, and while that saves me some time and gives them something "real" to do, I still end up having to go back and check their work, to make sure they didn't miss any machines, etc.
My boss got spoiled in the past because she'd had a series of digital-media majors with geek tendencies who actually tried to do a good job, which rubbed off on the other student workers. So when I was hired to (among other things) supervise them, she didn't have many management tools in place... and the last of those semi-pro students had just graduated. The year and a half since then has been... discouraging.
I tried being very specific ("On Tuesday nights, John cleans off the monitors in room 527") which was ignored because it was too difficult to adhere to. I tried being very flexible ("Whenever you're not busy, check whatever labs you can") which had no individual accountability so no one ever did any of it.
I started a lab checklist this semester, and assigned each of the student aides to check a handful of them for basic funcationally, at any poing during each week. I gave myself a few labs as well, to show them that it was an important enough task for me to do it as well. Not surprisingly, I'm the only one who routinely keeps up with it. Part of the problem is that they're work-study employees, so they see it more as a form of financial aid than as a job, and the truth is that firing any of them for anything less than gross misconduct would be difficult. Fortunately the most "experienced" one is graduating in a couple months, and most of the current batch are complete newbies, so maybe I'll be able to get a fresh start over the summer.
We do hire student assistants whose job includes looking for equipment problems; I'm already working 150% of my scheduled hours and can't do this myself. The problem is that without adequate supervision (again, no time for it), most of them quickly become worthless.
None of which challenges (even a little) the fact that public schools are an example of socialism. Too bad they failed to teach you basic reading comprehension.
There is nothing unconstitutional about a public school system...
Um, no one said it was. But it is a form of socialism, albeit on a local level. If someone thinks public schools should be abolished because of that, I can respect that (while disagreeing entirely). But for someone to say he doesn't believe in socialism while supporting one example of it is either playing Orwellian word-redefinition games, or (more likely) simply doesn't understand what he's talking about.
Actually, my job, working as a tech for the school district, was not do to what the teachers asked. It was to keep the computers running, maintain the security of the network, and to follow approved procedures for adding new software.
That's something the students at the college where I work don't seem to understand. I get a little bit of that from faculty, but most of them are pretty reasonable about what they ask and expect. But some of the students seem to think that not only is it my job to comply with their every request, but to anticipate it or detect it remotely, and the best way to motivate me is to insult me: "stop playing half life* and fix teh printer** its ben broken for a weak*** and upgrade windows media player****"
* I'm not even a gamer.
** Which one?
*** Well that's your own damn fault for not telling me until now.
**** Um... why?
The district IT department, itself, is a bunch of incompetant controll-freaks.
That's certainly possible, but it's just as likely that they're overwhelmed cat-herders trying desperately to keep things from falling into utter chaos.
more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem
When making big decisions, I sometimes make exhaustive analytical charts in which I list factors making a choice, numerically weight factors in relationship to each other, and assign values for how each option satisfies that factor.... and then sit back and watch myself tweak and adjust the weights and values. Almost inevitably, I catch myself fudging the data to favor one option over the others; that's the option I choose. So I do genuinely evaluate objective criteria as I consider the question, but I give my subjective intuition the final say. And I've always been reasonably satisfied with the choices I've made this way.
My C64 was the first computer I did real work with (in college, doing word processing and terminal emulation), but the first computer I owned was an Atari 400 with 16KB RAM, cassette drive, and flat keyboard (years before ST:TNG made flat computer consoles cool). I goofed around with BASIC on it, but mostly played Star Raiders and Missile Command. Before that, I'd used an Apple ][ and a couple TRS-80s, and a few terminals (via acoustic-coupler modem) connected to a DEC PDP.
Still not sure that parasites can manipulate the behavior of host organisms? Consider these other cases:
Female humans, when infected by a single-celled organisms known as spermatazoa, have been known to gorge themselves on ice cream and pickles, and engage in all sorts of other bizarre behavior, all to allow the parasite to develop into an organism capable of surviving outside the host (half of which carry spermatazoa themselves).
Individuals infected by an as-yet-unidentified parasite exhibit a syndrome known as Boogie Fever, which causes them to "boogie down", a rhythmic but erratic flailing of the arms and legs. Doing so somehow enables the parasite to spread to other hosts, as people in proximity to the first host will often proceed to "boogie down" as well.
I say give the guy his job back... but only if he assures us that his toddler isn't named "Edward". Giving a child a hand-me-down name as heavily used as that should be grounds for termination. Break the cycle!
I'm admittedly not a particularly social person, and I would have thought that having an office to myself would be ideal. And I'd freak out and run screaming from the room if forced to share space with other people. But that hasn't been the case.
At the place I worked for a dozen years ago, my boss and his boss decreed that it was time to "tear down the wall" between Programming and Tech Support, which meant not only taking down the almost-to-the-ceiling partion between the two groups, but turning the entire room into an open office area, with no vertical barrier taller than a seated person. And it worked great. So much so that, at my next job, when they started talking about reconfiguring the cubicles for the IT dept, without even being asked I went home and made up a similar design to serve as a first draft. That also worked out well. (Of course, it helped that in both instances, I managed to get myself a desk with a view outside... even if it was just a parking lot.)
The job I had after that paid better, and I got my own office with four walls, a ceiling, and a real wooden door. Heaven, right? Nope. Granted, there were factors other than the seating arrangements, but I hated it.
Now I'm in a job where I share an office (four walls and a door... that's always open) with a co-worker.* And it's actually kinda nice. One of us can intercept interruptions when the other is trying to get something done, getting help with something is as simple as stating a question aloud, and I don't need to worry about keeping abreast of what my coworker is doing because I'm right there when he does it. As long as I continue to get "alone time" - at home and on breaks - I'm fine. I gave up several thousand dollars a year and some benefits to take this job instead of the office-with-a-door job. It was worth it. Even without an outside window.
*Actually, the co-worker position is empty, and we're interviewing to fill it. Anyone with Mac experience interested in working for an art-and-design college in Grand Rapids MI is invited to contact me at "verbeet AT ferris DOT edu"
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't tell you who won if my life depended on it, because I don't even know who was playing. I do know that it was played in Detroit, because I live in Michigan, and the local news media (even in other parts of the state) couldn't stop talking about that fact. I don't recall anyone mentioning the Lions, so I assume it was a couple other teams, but I don't follow basketball, so I couldn't name any off the top of my head.
I believe the Rhino phase was next on the agenda?
That's what we've already done. The answer is that we need both OS X and Windows. A PowerBook will not run AutoCAD. A Windows laptop (of any brand) will not run Final Cut. Fortunately such requirements usually break down by department, so the Interior Design students can all stick to Windows, the Multimedia majors can stick with Apple, etc. The college has been committed for years to being a dual-platform institution (with Linux, Netware, and whatever else we need behind the scenes). That's not going to change, because the educational programs that drove that decision are not going to change.
That's precisely why I asked here. This is part of my research. My Director's talking to other Directors and no doubt they're sharing all sorts of swell ideas. But I wanted to cast the net a bit wider (and deeper), and reach out to fellow techs who've been in the trenches to make it work.
That's already the same person.
We have free printing now, and it's a minor disaster. Every week several reams of paper - coated with not-inexpensive color toner - get wasted by people printing things and not even picking them up! Not to mention the freelancers who use our equipment as a free print shop (e.g. 100 11x17" posters advertising a local bar's wet t-shirt night). We'll be instituting controls soon... or rather "when we have time". (Which will of course be further complicated when the students are all using laptops instead of staff-configured desktops.)
I'm pretty sure Compaq's first 386 came out in 1987. IBM followed not too long after, with the PS/2 model 70.
Please understand that I didn't just walk in off the street into this job yesterday. My department already buys software at volume academic discounts, but that can still add up to hundreds of dollars per machine, especially for niche products. My question about "handling" licensing included the question of how to manage licenses from semester to semester for apps that are too expensive to deploy everywhere.
Tell Microsoft, Adobe, Etc. you are going to specify Linux and FOSS apps because of the high costs involved....
The goals include providing tech support for painters, interior designers, sculptors, illustrators, photographers, etc. This is not MIT. We have some brilliant minds here, both faculty and students, but we're talking about very different kinds of intelligence than found in Nobel-winning scientists or their students.
On the other hand, I drive a Geo Metro and ride a bike when weather permits. I'm definitely compensating for something. {grin} But the reason I have as much computer gear as I do is... it's fun.
- a couple Mandriva Linux servers (dns, mta, imap, http, nfs, smb) mutually redundant
- generic Mandriva Linux workstation for daily e-mail/web client activities
- Mac G3 All-In-One next to the Mandriva workstation, for internet stuff that doesn't work easily on Linux.
- PowerMac G5 in the studio for graphics/illustration work, iTunes, DVD-watching
- iBook G3 with Airport for casual web surfing or writing around the house/yard
- WRT54G for the above G3
- TiVo series 1, slightly hacked
- Toshiba laptop running WinXP, most of my legacy/Win-only apps, and my Mustek USB A3 scanner
- Celeron box running Win98SE with an old-fashioned serial port for backing up my beloved Psion Revo PDA (and emulating it when/if it dies)
- Psion Revo, the best (for me) PDA ever made
- compact Dell 486/33 running Coyote Linux as router/firewall
- compact Dell 486/33 running LRP-based print server software, with li'l HP LaserJet and DeskJet attached
- SpeedStream SDSL adapter connecting me to Speakeasy
- assorted cheapo 10/100 hubs and switches holding it all together
- assorted rebated UPSes, and a petrol-powered 1KW generator in case of extended power outage
Depending on my mood and willingness to waste electricity, other stuff that might be online includes:My boss got spoiled in the past because she'd had a series of digital-media majors with geek tendencies who actually tried to do a good job, which rubbed off on the other student workers. So when I was hired to (among other things) supervise them, she didn't have many management tools in place... and the last of those semi-pro students had just graduated. The year and a half since then has been... discouraging.
I tried being very specific ("On Tuesday nights, John cleans off the monitors in room 527") which was ignored because it was too difficult to adhere to. I tried being very flexible ("Whenever you're not busy, check whatever labs you can") which had no individual accountability so no one ever did any of it.
I started a lab checklist this semester, and assigned each of the student aides to check a handful of them for basic funcationally, at any poing during each week. I gave myself a few labs as well, to show them that it was an important enough task for me to do it as well. Not surprisingly, I'm the only one who routinely keeps up with it. Part of the problem is that they're work-study employees, so they see it more as a form of financial aid than as a job, and the truth is that firing any of them for anything less than gross misconduct would be difficult. Fortunately the most "experienced" one is graduating in a couple months, and most of the current batch are complete newbies, so maybe I'll be able to get a fresh start over the summer.
We do hire student assistants whose job includes looking for equipment problems; I'm already working 150% of my scheduled hours and can't do this myself. The problem is that without adequate supervision (again, no time for it), most of them quickly become worthless.
None of which challenges (even a little) the fact that public schools are an example of socialism. Too bad they failed to teach you basic reading comprehension.
You say that as if it were necessarily a good thing.
Um, no one said it was. But it is a form of socialism, albeit on a local level. If someone thinks public schools should be abolished because of that, I can respect that (while disagreeing entirely). But for someone to say he doesn't believe in socialism while supporting one example of it is either playing Orwellian word-redefinition games, or (more likely) simply doesn't understand what he's talking about.
That's something the students at the college where I work don't seem to understand. I get a little bit of that from faculty, but most of them are pretty reasonable about what they ask and expect. But some of the students seem to think that not only is it my job to comply with their every request, but to anticipate it or detect it remotely, and the best way to motivate me is to insult me: "stop playing half life* and fix teh printer** its ben broken for a weak*** and upgrade windows media player****"
* I'm not even a gamer.
** Which one?
*** Well that's your own damn fault for not telling me until now.
**** Um... why?
That's certainly possible, but it's just as likely that they're overwhelmed cat-herders trying desperately to keep things from falling into utter chaos.
When making big decisions, I sometimes make exhaustive analytical charts in which I list factors making a choice, numerically weight factors in relationship to each other, and assign values for how each option satisfies that factor.... and then sit back and watch myself tweak and adjust the weights and values. Almost inevitably, I catch myself fudging the data to favor one option over the others; that's the option I choose. So I do genuinely evaluate objective criteria as I consider the question, but I give my subjective intuition the final say. And I've always been reasonably satisfied with the choices I've made this way.
Or get a video camera and two teenagers. Sell the movies on the internet, and you can afford one of those professional ripping services.
The concept that seems to be eluding you is interoperability.
My C64 was the first computer I did real work with (in college, doing word processing and terminal emulation), but the first computer I owned was an Atari 400 with 16KB RAM, cassette drive, and flat keyboard (years before ST:TNG made flat computer consoles cool). I goofed around with BASIC on it, but mostly played Star Raiders and Missile Command. Before that, I'd used an Apple ][ and a couple TRS-80s, and a few terminals (via acoustic-coupler modem) connected to a DEC PDP.
I say give the guy his job back... but only if he assures us that his toddler isn't named "Edward". Giving a child a hand-me-down name as heavily used as that should be grounds for termination. Break the cycle!
At the place I worked for a dozen years ago, my boss and his boss decreed that it was time to "tear down the wall" between Programming and Tech Support, which meant not only taking down the almost-to-the-ceiling partion between the two groups, but turning the entire room into an open office area, with no vertical barrier taller than a seated person. And it worked great. So much so that, at my next job, when they started talking about reconfiguring the cubicles for the IT dept, without even being asked I went home and made up a similar design to serve as a first draft. That also worked out well. (Of course, it helped that in both instances, I managed to get myself a desk with a view outside... even if it was just a parking lot.)
The job I had after that paid better, and I got my own office with four walls, a ceiling, and a real wooden door. Heaven, right? Nope. Granted, there were factors other than the seating arrangements, but I hated it.
Now I'm in a job where I share an office (four walls and a door... that's always open) with a co-worker.* And it's actually kinda nice. One of us can intercept interruptions when the other is trying to get something done, getting help with something is as simple as stating a question aloud, and I don't need to worry about keeping abreast of what my coworker is doing because I'm right there when he does it. As long as I continue to get "alone time" - at home and on breaks - I'm fine. I gave up several thousand dollars a year and some benefits to take this job instead of the office-with-a-door job. It was worth it. Even without an outside window.
*Actually, the co-worker position is empty, and we're interviewing to fill it. Anyone with Mac experience interested in working for an art-and-design college in Grand Rapids MI is invited to contact me at "verbeet AT ferris DOT edu"