1) Many teachers are computer illiterate. They don't like being shown up by their students who are mostly not computer jocks because they've grown up with them!
It is ironic that many teachers are very stubborn to learn new things. A teacher can teach algebra or state history for 25 years and retire. They probably think once the subject textbook is learned, why put forth any more effort?
It is probably inevitable that some form of core technology curriculum will form along side the other subjects in public schools. However, while it is understandable to be state certified for math or history, a state certification for technology would be laughable. How long until Microsoft heavy-hitters visit state education boards and the resulting certified teachers are really MCSEs?
The techology industry is so out of balance, right now, that any technology education our children recieve will be more like Bible study than anything else. The Gospel according to our Lord and Dominator Bill is the only education they'll need, anyway. Isn't that right?
High school students are going to be a LOT tougher on equipment than students at university, so in terms of hardware longevity a comparison between the two is invalid on its face.
I disagree. University computers take a lot of wear and tear, if only due to 24x7 high-volume use. It isn't uncommon in a lab of 100 computers to have three or four stations out of order for various reasons.
...a university is necessarily better funded than a high school...
True. My University's labs of Sun workstations was much nicer than my high school's lab of 486s.
...I suspect that they would eliminate the Mac lab...
It depends. I would expect that the science students would favor Macs, because they are easier, more elegant, and do have a good selection of scientific software. The business school, being mostly populated by Excel-addicts and Bill Gates groupies, would probably keep the PC lab.
If UNIX or Linux were in the mix, the science students might gravitate toward them. Writing scientific software under UNIX is dreamy.
Does this mean I've reached the top, that I can go no higher? Strange feeling, to now be a god attracting the reverence of cowards. (Sigh) what I really wanted was wealth, not fame.
I predict that in 3 years time, MS will be playing catch-up with Mozilla and OOo...
MS is already playing catch-up with Mozilla. And, yes, in a few years, it'll be OpenOffice.org, too.
The greastest thing about Open Source, it that it is always slowly and steadily moving forward. There is nothing Microsoft can do to make OpenOffice.org go away. It will just keep getting better, and better, and better....
Viewing it under word, you would find that the bullet points are plain wrong, sometimes it has embedded numbers in the bullet points.
This is very much a font issue, where the proprietary Word font used for bullets isn't available in OpenOffice.org. Each list is easily corrected in Word after the import (the bullet style just needs to be reset).
I'll start by saying that MS Office is just plain easier to use than anything anyone else has to offer, IMHO.
I remember spending a whole evening trying to get Word to do footnotes in a certain way, when Ami Pro intuitively took seconds to figure out the same thing.
Organizing large documents is easier in LaTeX.
Printing to PDF is easier in StarOffice.
Flexible page layout is easier in FrameMaker.
Word really is nothing special, except to those people who haven't spent a lot of time with the alternatives.
We shouldn't rush to overthrow the tried-and-true in today's corporate market.
There is nothing tried and true about MS Office. The only reason it is so popular is that it filled a percieved need, did it with tremendous marketing campaigns (some illegal), people bought into it, and are now stuck. They are stuck hard with the proprietary and unreliabile file formats of MS Office, and many people are looking for a way out.
The main problem (from a print shop's perspective) with Word is that it is printer dependent.
It's also dependent on things like installed fonts. I fear that whenever someone requests a Word format resume, that it'll look like crap on their system. I always prefer to use PostScript or PDF, but some people are either too stubborn, too afraid, or too locked-in to break out of their Microsoft tunnel-vision.
Download, install, and run. Read the tutorials on Sun's site.
If a kid can't do that, then programming isn't for them.
Be careful, though. A kid might look into Java, see the hundreds of APIs in the Java "platform", become depressed, and decide that those liberal arts classes aren't so bad after all.
Java/J2EE and.NET are enormous. Kids needs a simple, interactive, and fun environment for learning. Logo is fun for a few minutes, but the novelty wears off. Quite honestly, something along the lines of a Commodore 64 BASIC might be very appropriate, with fun examples in old issues of Compute's Gazette, animated sprites, and easy sound generation. I also remember seeing young people managing fun things in Pascal and Turbo C, but those might be best for a second language/platform.
It really is too bad that a kid's first computer now-a-days will have the opaque behemoth that is Windows XP. My C-64 was a great first computer, and even my first DOS 5.0 PC was a lot of fun. Now, however, when I boot Win2K or XP, all I really am motivated to do is click around until I find something and the "magic" is gone. I would even argue that even UNIX/Linux is a bit too much, at first, but, perhaps, these are the best thing going, anymore.
With most of the standards less then three years old (most are one to two years old), XML still seems to too volatile to base a long-term project on it. It would be like the early days of J2EE, where it takes only six months before the code base becomes "legacy".
Also, XML introduces a lot of complexity into a project, where it is often better just to use HTTP properties instead of complex SOAP exchanges, for example.
So, is XML really more than just a bandwagon, even today?
How many patents could a patent millionaire patent if patenting patentable patents were patentable? The patently patentable answer to this patently stupid question is patented under patent 1,234,567 and any violations of this patent's patented licensing patent will be punished to the fullest extent of the law (patent pending).
When Microsoft overcharged $200 for WinXP, everyone was criticizing them. Now that they are releasing it for a more reasonable price, they are still getting criticized. We should decide on the price we want. Do you want WinXP at $200 or $50. I would rather have $50.
To be fair, they should also offer this "competitive upgrade" for all their competition, not just Lindows.
Where's the $50 XP for Solaris x86 and OS/2? What about people who bought commercial distributions of Linux, such as Red Hat?
A similar case has been brought before court. The software had reported to its publisher about (apparent) illegal copies being used, without the knowledge or consent of the client company. The court ruled that obtaining such information without permission constitutes a breach of privacy, and 'electronic trespassing', a criminal offense.
If only someone were brave enough to challenge the enforcability of EULAs. Then, those phone-home transmissions from Microsoft's software, such as Windows XP and Media Player, could be analyzed in court and, possibly, shown for the violation of consumer trust that they are. But, that would require courage...and money...lots of money...
I've had my share of license issues, where a license server would get confused and release (for example) the C compiler for use,...
When license servers work, they work well, but I've seen lots of productivity lost due to license servers that crash or lose track of check-outs. It would probably be enough lost productivity to form a case against the license-server company.
I've been told straight out from the RH sales folks that they really couldn't care less about the "comsumer"/free as in beer version of RH. They don't believe that market penetration at the desktop level for general use is where they need to devote resources, therefore, they're going for the server and high-performance workstation market.
A client-side monopoly coupled with incompatible and proprietary formats and protocols is the main reason Microsoft has any penetration in the server market.
There are always two sides to client-server, and ignoring the client means potential customers can be expected to say things like "but Samba doesn't support Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 file sharing" or "this Outlook 2006 thingy no longer supports IMAP in favor of undocumented protocol XYZ".
Companies like Red Hat, Apple, IBM, and Sun won't be able to stop bitching about Microsoft until they get MS' desktop market share under 50%. Without a "controlling stake", Microsoft just might be forced to play fairly, for once. Until then, Microsoft will remain the 200lb bully kicking sand into Red Hat's 98lb face.
Fortunately, even big guys like Sun are developing desktops based on Linux for corporate users, and companies like Lindows are targeting home users. Let's hope they are successful.
I think vaporware is critical on all levels in many different arenas. Not only for consumers but for developers as well. If companies aren't able to throw out plans and ideas then innovation is stifled.
Microsoft uses vaporware for the sole purpose of stifling innovation (I recall something about pen-base computers in the 90's). Why develop a competing product, when, for just the cost of a marketing campaign, the whole competing company goes bust?
Vaporware has been a very cost-effective weapon of corporate homocide.
Sort of a standardized platform if you will for doing solar system exploration.
Yeah, I can't wait for Microsoft to release MS Space Exploration Platform 2007. It will only be 78% compatible with existing systems, yet will have 98% market share eight months after release.
The EULA will allow all data and credit for success to be directed directly to Redmond, and there is no liability for small towns destroyed by the rain of fire after a GPF in the Main-Engine Servo Driver v1.2.
Its a shame because software is one of the only things that could and should be theoretically perfect
And theoretically prohibitively expensive.
I have yet to meet someone who is geniunely willing to pay for software quality. They simply don't care or understand. Once the software reaches some minimum threshold of "working", the project gets cut off or put on some other tangent.
no, for instance the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft had "128 Mbyte mass memory" and used a R6000 computer.
The grandparent post's point still stands. 128MB is one huge mass of program and data to debug. I know I wouldn't stake my reputation on a "bug free" multi-megabyte program--only a fool would.
Remember, the true complexity of a program increases exponentially with the size of the program.
This is why I will never trust Windows for anything more than a gaming platform (millions of lines of hastily-written code == one hell of a buggy program). I would bet that any recent version of Windows has several hundred thousand bugs in it.
From a complexity standpoint, UNIX is an order-of-magnitude better than Windows but is still big enough to have lots of bugs. Linux is similar to UNIX in complexity.
No software in wide use today is bug free. I have never seen software that was bug free. Even the printf() call in a "Hello World" program probably has bugs in it, regardless wether the "Hello World" program exposes them.
Personally, I would never feel confident enough to write software that puts human life directly at risk, unless there are fail-safe non-software-controlled mechanisms in place. Sometimes, we just have to put software aside and let real Engineers do what they do best. And, yes, there is no such thing as a Software Engineer (it is still very much a made-up job title that anyone can have, even me:).
...that could also mean something like 1 in 10 Americans are prepared to install who knows what on their computer in return for some free music.
s/could/does/
If 10% weren't willing, then I wouldn't be seeing those compelling advertisements beckoning me to hit the monkey.
I recently saw an advertisement saying I can download software (from an unnamed company) to help me remember my passwords. If this isn't rock-bottom, I don't know what is.
much more goes into it than the fact it's one provider.
Bribes? Not knowing what the alternatives are? Simply deciding on what the think-tank of the week recommends?
I've seen some software and hardware aquisition in government projects, and it seems to be done in a highly unbalanced manner. Often, off-the-shelf things are way over-speced (and priced accordingly), yet the custom software goes to the lowest bidder or the group with the best "we can do it" song and dance. Granted, all I've seen is small pork contracts, and not the real big meaty stuff like, say, an F-22.
How is it a disservice to use a product that allows us to develop faster and integrate more seamlessly?
Because it makes an important part of the U.S. Government technologically dependent on one corporation (Microsoft). For most things, the risk behind single-source products is fully understood. Why so few people see that in software, I simply don't know.
The computer industry has finally matured to a point where single-source hardware and software is totally avoidable. Several companies make good hardware (HP, Sun, IBM, etc.) and there are many ubiquitous operating systems and application development tools that are very good. For example, commercial UNIX is available from at least five vendors, there are at least three BSD-derived systems, and many Linux distributions. Good and productive development environments range from PHP to Lisp to J2EE, which, conveniently, can be run on most of the previously mentioned UNIX, BSD, and Linux systems.
There is really no good reason to put up with lock-in, anymore, even if it makes things look good in the short-term.
The teacher will state that the work needs to be provided in MS-Word...
Why? Why is a text file written with Notepad not sufficient? What about a typewriter, or, God help us, a pencil?
It is not the school's place to require homework assignments to be done with a particular piece of software. If they want to teach Word in the "computer course" for the 50 minutes that the students are sitting in front of school-provided computers, that's fine, but the school has no place to expect computers in students' homes.
I do agree that they have their faults, but time and money (ha!) for researching software is not readily available to them.
They shouldn't have to research software, because choosing software isn't their job (unless they teach that "computer course", of course).
The reason we have public schools is that, beyond a pencil and a notebook, parents shouldn't be paying anything beyond state and local taxes for their child's education. If the parents want more, then they do that on their own time with their own money.
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1) Many teachers are computer illiterate. They don't like being shown up by their students who are mostly not computer jocks because they've grown up with them!
It is ironic that many teachers are very stubborn to learn new things. A teacher can teach algebra or state history for 25 years and retire. They probably think once the subject textbook is learned, why put forth any more effort?
It is probably inevitable that some form of core technology curriculum will form along side the other subjects in public schools. However, while it is understandable to be state certified for math or history, a state certification for technology would be laughable. How long until Microsoft heavy-hitters visit state education boards and the resulting certified teachers are really MCSEs?
The techology industry is so out of balance, right now, that any technology education our children recieve will be more like Bible study than anything else. The Gospel according to our Lord and Dominator Bill is the only education they'll need, anyway. Isn't that right?
High school students are going to be a LOT tougher on equipment than students at university, so in terms of hardware longevity a comparison between the two is invalid on its face.
...a university is necessarily better funded than a high school...
...I suspect that they would eliminate the Mac lab...
I disagree. University computers take a lot of wear and tear, if only due to 24x7 high-volume use. It isn't uncommon in a lab of 100 computers to have three or four stations out of order for various reasons.
True. My University's labs of Sun workstations was much nicer than my high school's lab of 486s.
It depends. I would expect that the science students would favor Macs, because they are easier, more elegant, and do have a good selection of scientific software. The business school, being mostly populated by Excel-addicts and Bill Gates groupies, would probably keep the PC lab.
If UNIX or Linux were in the mix, the science students might gravitate toward them. Writing scientific software under UNIX is dreamy.
Red meat
Does this mean I've reached the top, that I can go no higher? Strange feeling, to now be a god attracting the reverence of cowards. (Sigh) what I really wanted was wealth, not fame.
I wonder if that school also has a "zero tolerance" policy where bright kids get expelled for having prescription cough syrup in their locker.
I predict that in 3 years time, MS will be playing catch-up with Mozilla and OOo...
MS is already playing catch-up with Mozilla. And, yes, in a few years, it'll be OpenOffice.org, too.
The greastest thing about Open Source, it that it is always slowly and steadily moving forward. There is nothing Microsoft can do to make OpenOffice.org go away. It will just keep getting better, and better, and better....
Viewing it under word, you would find that the bullet points are plain wrong, sometimes it has embedded numbers in the bullet points.
This is very much a font issue, where the proprietary Word font used for bullets isn't available in OpenOffice.org. Each list is easily corrected in Word after the import (the bullet style just needs to be reset).
I'll start by saying that MS Office is just plain easier to use than anything anyone else has to offer, IMHO.
I remember spending a whole evening trying to get Word to do footnotes in a certain way, when Ami Pro intuitively took seconds to figure out the same thing.
Organizing large documents is easier in LaTeX.
Printing to PDF is easier in StarOffice.
Flexible page layout is easier in FrameMaker.
Word really is nothing special, except to those people who haven't spent a lot of time with the alternatives.
We shouldn't rush to overthrow the tried-and-true in today's corporate market.
There is nothing tried and true about MS Office. The only reason it is so popular is that it filled a percieved need, did it with tremendous marketing campaigns (some illegal), people bought into it, and are now stuck. They are stuck hard with the proprietary and unreliabile file formats of MS Office, and many people are looking for a way out.
The main problem (from a print shop's perspective) with Word is that it is printer dependent.
It's also dependent on things like installed fonts. I fear that whenever someone requests a Word format resume, that it'll look like crap on their system. I always prefer to use PostScript or PDF, but some people are either too stubborn, too afraid, or too locked-in to break out of their Microsoft tunnel-vision.
Download, install, and run. Read the tutorials on Sun's site.
.NET are enormous. Kids needs a simple, interactive, and fun environment for learning. Logo is fun for a few minutes, but the novelty wears off. Quite honestly, something along the lines of a Commodore 64 BASIC might be very appropriate, with fun examples in old issues of Compute's Gazette, animated sprites, and easy sound generation. I also remember seeing young people managing fun things in Pascal and Turbo C, but those might be best for a second language/platform.
If a kid can't do that, then programming isn't for them.
Be careful, though. A kid might look into Java, see the hundreds of APIs in the Java "platform", become depressed, and decide that those liberal arts classes aren't so bad after all.
Java/J2EE and
It really is too bad that a kid's first computer now-a-days will have the opaque behemoth that is Windows XP. My C-64 was a great first computer, and even my first DOS 5.0 PC was a lot of fun. Now, however, when I boot Win2K or XP, all I really am motivated to do is click around until I find something and the "magic" is gone. I would even argue that even UNIX/Linux is a bit too much, at first, but, perhaps, these are the best thing going, anymore.
I made simple GW-BASIC programs and have moved on from there.
Quick, someone upgrade the President!!! An 8-year-old....now, it all makes sense.
...hired me with a six-figure wage....I'm already 24 years old and I'm not going to live forever.
Geeez, six-figures...I feel for you, man. And at 24, too. What a pity.
XML is now becoming more than just hype.
With most of the standards less then three years old (most are one to two years old), XML still seems to too volatile to base a long-term project on it. It would be like the early days of J2EE, where it takes only six months before the code base becomes "legacy".
Also, XML introduces a lot of complexity into a project, where it is often better just to use HTTP properties instead of complex SOAP exchanges, for example.
So, is XML really more than just a bandwagon, even today?
How many patents could a patent millionaire patent if patenting patentable patents were patentable? The patently patentable answer to this patently stupid question is patented under patent 1,234,567 and any violations of this patent's patented licensing patent will be punished to the fullest extent of the law (patent pending).
According to Froogle it's $90.
According to Pricewatch, it under $80. Choose your vendors wisely... Some don't require hardware purchases, either...
When Microsoft overcharged $200 for WinXP, everyone was criticizing them. Now that they are releasing it for a more reasonable price, they are still getting criticized. We should decide on the price we want. Do you want WinXP at $200 or $50. I would rather have $50.
To be fair, they should also offer this "competitive upgrade" for all their competition, not just Lindows.
Where's the $50 XP for Solaris x86 and OS/2? What about people who bought commercial distributions of Linux, such as Red Hat?
A similar case has been brought before court. The software had reported to its publisher about (apparent) illegal copies being used, without the knowledge or consent of the client company. The court ruled that obtaining such information without permission constitutes a breach of privacy, and 'electronic trespassing', a criminal offense.
...
If only someone were brave enough to challenge the enforcability of EULAs. Then, those phone-home transmissions from Microsoft's software, such as Windows XP and Media Player, could be analyzed in court and, possibly, shown for the violation of consumer trust that they are. But, that would require courage...and money...lots of money...
I've had my share of license issues, where a license server would get confused and release (for example) the C compiler for use,
When license servers work, they work well, but I've seen lots of productivity lost due to license servers that crash or lose track of check-outs. It would probably be enough lost productivity to form a case against the license-server company.
I've been told straight out from the RH sales folks that they really couldn't care less about the "comsumer"/free as in beer version of RH. They don't believe that market penetration at the desktop level for general use is where they need to devote resources, therefore, they're going for the server and high-performance workstation market.
A client-side monopoly coupled with incompatible and proprietary formats and protocols is the main reason Microsoft has any penetration in the server market.
There are always two sides to client-server, and ignoring the client means potential customers can be expected to say things like "but Samba doesn't support Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 file sharing" or "this Outlook 2006 thingy no longer supports IMAP in favor of undocumented protocol XYZ".
Companies like Red Hat, Apple, IBM, and Sun won't be able to stop bitching about Microsoft until they get MS' desktop market share under 50%. Without a "controlling stake", Microsoft just might be forced to play fairly, for once. Until then, Microsoft will remain the 200lb bully kicking sand into Red Hat's 98lb face.
Fortunately, even big guys like Sun are developing desktops based on Linux for corporate users, and companies like Lindows are targeting home users. Let's hope they are successful.
I think vaporware is critical on all levels in many different arenas. Not only for consumers but for developers as well. If companies aren't able to throw out plans and ideas then innovation is stifled.
Microsoft uses vaporware for the sole purpose of stifling innovation (I recall something about pen-base computers in the 90's). Why develop a competing product, when, for just the cost of a marketing campaign, the whole competing company goes bust?
Vaporware has been a very cost-effective weapon of corporate homocide.
Sort of a standardized platform if you will for doing solar system exploration.
Yeah, I can't wait for Microsoft to release MS Space Exploration Platform 2007. It will only be 78% compatible with existing systems, yet will have 98% market share eight months after release.
The EULA will allow all data and credit for success to be directed directly to Redmond, and there is no liability for small towns destroyed by the rain of fire after a GPF in the Main-Engine Servo Driver v1.2.
Its a shame because software is one of the only things that could and should be theoretically perfect
And theoretically prohibitively expensive.
I have yet to meet someone who is geniunely willing to pay for software quality. They simply don't care or understand. Once the software reaches some minimum threshold of "working", the project gets cut off or put on some other tangent.
no, for instance the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft had "128 Mbyte mass memory" and used a R6000 computer.
The grandparent post's point still stands. 128MB is one huge mass of program and data to debug. I know I wouldn't stake my reputation on a "bug free" multi-megabyte program--only a fool would.
Remember, the true complexity of a program increases exponentially with the size of the program.
This is why I will never trust Windows for anything more than a gaming platform (millions of lines of hastily-written code == one hell of a buggy program). I would bet that any recent version of Windows has several hundred thousand bugs in it.
From a complexity standpoint, UNIX is an order-of-magnitude better than Windows but is still big enough to have lots of bugs. Linux is similar to UNIX in complexity.
No software in wide use today is bug free. I have never seen software that was bug free. Even the printf() call in a "Hello World" program probably has bugs in it, regardless wether the "Hello World" program exposes them.
Personally, I would never feel confident enough to write software that puts human life directly at risk, unless there are fail-safe non-software-controlled mechanisms in place. Sometimes, we just have to put software aside and let real Engineers do what they do best. And, yes, there is no such thing as a Software Engineer (it is still very much a made-up job title that anyone can have, even me:).
...that could also mean something like 1 in 10 Americans are prepared to install who knows what on their computer in return for some free music.
s/could/does/
If 10% weren't willing, then I wouldn't be seeing those compelling advertisements beckoning me to hit the monkey.
I recently saw an advertisement saying I can download software (from an unnamed company) to help me remember my passwords. If this isn't rock-bottom, I don't know what is.
much more goes into it than the fact it's one provider.
Bribes? Not knowing what the alternatives are? Simply deciding on what the think-tank of the week recommends?
I've seen some software and hardware aquisition in government projects, and it seems to be done in a highly unbalanced manner. Often, off-the-shelf things are way over-speced (and priced accordingly), yet the custom software goes to the lowest bidder or the group with the best "we can do it" song and dance. Granted, all I've seen is small pork contracts, and not the real big meaty stuff like, say, an F-22.
How is it a disservice to use a product that allows us to develop faster and integrate more seamlessly?
Because it makes an important part of the U.S. Government technologically dependent on one corporation (Microsoft). For most things, the risk behind single-source products is fully understood. Why so few people see that in software, I simply don't know.
The computer industry has finally matured to a point where single-source hardware and software is totally avoidable. Several companies make good hardware (HP, Sun, IBM, etc.) and there are many ubiquitous operating systems and application development tools that are very good. For example, commercial UNIX is available from at least five vendors, there are at least three BSD-derived systems, and many Linux distributions. Good and productive development environments range from PHP to Lisp to J2EE, which, conveniently, can be run on most of the previously mentioned UNIX, BSD, and Linux systems.
There is really no good reason to put up with lock-in, anymore, even if it makes things look good in the short-term.
The teacher will state that the work needs to be provided in MS-Word...
Why? Why is a text file written with Notepad not sufficient? What about a typewriter, or, God help us, a pencil?
It is not the school's place to require homework assignments to be done with a particular piece of software. If they want to teach Word in the "computer course" for the 50 minutes that the students are sitting in front of school-provided computers, that's fine, but the school has no place to expect computers in students' homes.
I do agree that they have their faults, but time and money (ha!) for researching software is not readily available to them.
They shouldn't have to research software, because choosing software isn't their job (unless they teach that "computer course", of course).
The reason we have public schools is that, beyond a pencil and a notebook, parents shouldn't be paying anything beyond state and local taxes for their child's education. If the parents want more, then they do that on their own time with their own money.