It's amazing how well suited graybeards are to test and test automation. We've made the same mistakes (but with memory leaks), and while most companies are not devoted to testing, the larger ones are (especially if regulated) and they find graybeards a good fit.
In 1979 I acquired an Ohio Scientific Challenger 2 with a floppy drive (4P). It was a 6502 based single-board machine with 24k RAM (everything was soldered in), a monochrome NTSC composite signal video display port (24 x 80?), and even a UART that one could activate by cutting a trace, or by sending the machine back to OSI with several hundred dollars so *they* could cut the trace (seriously, guys? You were selling this to hobbyists with soldering irons).
The machine was not awful but the software and BIOS were. I don't remember the floppy DOS being particularly useful (something about the user having to manage sector allocation! for files). It did encourage me to learn 6502 machine code -- the only sure-fired way to program the damned thing.
I sold it to a music store in Denton, TX but to this day I wish I had retained it.
I'm developing a deep seated disgust with this whole Wii fiasco. Never have I been compelled to buy some crummy console #$##$ game unit, and not be able to get one at less than twice MSRP. I'd be fine *never* owning one, but my kids feel differently. This just makes me want to kick Nintendo to the curb and never look back. I still cannot understand the lack of production... honestly, it's not like there's a blue laser, magic faire or even just a small puppy's life at stake here... it's just a block of silicon and polycarbonate. What is this... the return of Commodore Business Machines? The "magic" is long gone here... and the hurt just keeps on building.
Maybe with luck this will do in Nintendo and teach the whole industry not to screw with the consumer so hard. Then again, maybe not.
I read this book by pop physicist and now pop New Age Guru (or something) while waiting to take the SAT, and I swear it boosted my score. At the time, the idea of quantum tunneling and Feyman-diagrams were pure magic to me (thanks to endless Star Trek series, at least the terms are familiar to the common man). It's still a mind bender and for amateurs, an interesting read.
I just took a job in Canada, after being laid off for the second time in less than six months in Dallas, Texas. Everyone here seems to think that things are worse here (Toronto, ON) than in the U.S. but it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. I told my friends that I'm "offshoring" myself before my employer (employer? What employer?) does.
I cannot wrap my head around the fact that we're not going to retrieve the greatest observatory of the 20th century when we have the means and the mandate (if the comments about international space treaties are correct). We don't have Columbus' ship; we don't have Leif Erickson's boat, but we do have the HST. It's as monumentous a vehicle of discovery as any and we can save it. If we cannot keep it flying, we must bring it back and place it in the Smithsonian. It's one of our (human race talking here) greatest accomplishments. It's not a weapon. It exists solely to measure THE SHAPE and SIZE of the UNIVERSE. If that doesn't get us some karma from ET, what will? We cannot throw this -- dare I say? -- sacred relic away. It showed us the Universe as if for the first time.
500M$US to bring it down? Chicken feed to an Administration that spends 1000 times that in deficit. Shame. Shame on them.
Your Minolta's SLR mirror is sticking to the light seals, which decay over the years and become adhesive. Likewise, the rubber shutter plane becomes sticky, and that can cause shutter delay on some models (the XG begin particularly sensitive to this). The XD series (XD-5, XD-7 and XD-11) used a titanium shutter, which needs light lubrication but which hasn't got the sticking issue mentioned. The XD series, as well as the later X series, are much lighter than the brick heavy SR-T series. Check out Garry's cameras for repairs and tuneups.
The SR-T series, sold from the late 60's until the late 70's, are Minolta's classic line of rugged, all manual SLRs. They introduced the CLC system, a contrast compensation metering that does pretty good job of metering high contrast scenes. Two models (101, 102) have flip-up mirrors, which eliminate camera shake for astrophotography. All models use the same MC (meter coupled) metering system so the user need not take their eye off the viewfinder to compose, focus, check depth-of-field (DOF) preview, and set exposure. And they're almost all mechanical and metal inside -- they usually survive hitting the ground with only the occasional dent.
On eBay, these cameras range from $50 to $100 with a 50mm f/1.7 lens.
The meter battery is very, very hard to find, as it is a 1.35v mercury cell (which is now banned - too many ended up in landfills). Several options exist to work around this. Zinc-air (Wein) cells work at almost the same voltage (1.4v), but wear out after six months of use. The meter system can be recalibrated by a relatively lightly skilled electronics geek to work with 1.5v silver cells. And there is a product that encapsulates the v76 series silver cells and which drops the voltage of the 1.5v cell to the mercury's 1.35v.
This line of Minolta works with the MC or MD series lenses, the latter ("Metered Diaphram") required for full automatic operation with the XD and X series (e.g. XD-5, XD-11, XG, X-700, etc.) bodies. Look for Minolta Rokkor lenses -- they are very high quality lenses. A 28mm, 50mm and 135mm will provide a great range of lenses for an amateur photographer.
The only major problem with older Minolta cameras is the light seals decay and become sticky over the years. It costs around $40 to have them replaced by a competent camera repair store, but they are harder and harder to find. Check out Garry's repair site for help.
"Network black" is something of a myth. However, my former employer does inject a standard black 30 frame segment at the start and end of all commercials it broadcasts to TV stations (over 1000, at last count). This series of frames ought to be pretty consistent, except for variations in a station's analog conversion/transmission of MPEG-2. It's still possible for the stations to not transmit any of these black frames, so it's not 100% by any means.
Tim Patterson wrote a set of 8080 macros for the 8088 assembler, and reassembled the CP/M source that Kildall shared with him (they were friends at the time), because Kildall didn't have access to a working 8088 CPU and motherboard and was interested in seeing CP/M working on the new Intel chip. Patterson knew Paul Allen, and told him about the effort. Paul told Bill. Bill called Tim and offered him $50K for the codebase. Tim agreed to sell. Some of this story was part of the teleplay of The Pirates of Silicon Valley.
It doesn't make sense that Patterson would do this, but it does explain the CP/M calls in MS-DOS 1.0. Obviously, Microsoft rewrote sections of CP/M to work with the IBM-pc BIOS, and to provide a more Xenix like shell (later called COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS 2.X) as opposed to the CP/M one.
This was related to me by an individual who had a seat at the table when Kildall and his lawyer visited IBM in Boca Raton in early 1981, to share the good news that MS-DOS was based on their code. IBM ended up buying a source license for CP/M for Microsoft (cost: $250K) so that they could clean up the licensing mess that Bill and Tim had made. Little did they know that it was just a harbinger of the OS/2 vs. NT fiasco to come.
Oh, you mean like IBM buying an open license to MS-DOS in 1981, and then finding out that it was really CP/M, ported by Seattle Softworks? And then facing a huge lawsuit by Gary Kildall?
My guess is that this happens all the time, and only rarely gets into the courts.
The technology is actually called Turbo Direct Injection, named for the manner in which diesel oil is dispursed into the combustion chamber to maximize combustion, thus extracting more thermal energy and leaving less unoxidized fuel and other nasty things in the exhaust. Unfortunately, as many posters have noted, in the United States the quality of diesel fuel is poor (high sulfur) and thus even with the better fuel economy, there's probably more nitrous pollutants coming out of the TDI engine than even a light truck puts out (maybe, with CAFE set on "stun" for trucks and "kill" for passenger cars, it's hard to tell).
I test drove all three (Civic, Prius, TDI) but chose a Golf TDI because it was less expensive than either the Civic Hybrid or Prius, and VW's ergonomics are far better than the Civic and Prius (the new Prius is going to be a far better experience than the initial version). Plus, with VW cars you can get the Monsoon sound upgrade for a nominal fee (8-amp, 8-speaker CD/Tape/FM/AM) in all models. The Golf TDI comes in two flavors (GL, GLS) and the Jetta TDI comes in both sedan and station wagon, also in GL and GLS trim. That's right, a real, honest to God station wagon that isn't half bad and can really haul a decent load.
The TDI will gladly haul you at over 100 MPH if need be, and I typically get 43 MPG driving in D/FW traffic well above the posted limits and/or in horrendous sprawl-induced jams. Stick with the five-speed unless you simply cannot drive a standard... the extra mileage will make you smile. I usually drive 560 miles between fillups, and I often have a gallon or more left in the tank at that point (VW's ad claims 750 miles between fillups... that's possible if you drive 65 MPH and hit no traffic on Interstates).
P.S. The typical diesel gas pump is a filthy mess unless you buy diesel at the pricier pay-at-the-pump stations that actually offer it (usually there are only one or two diesel pumps). Truck stops have the best prices... usually ten to twenty cents per gallon below the national brand stations, but they're really nasty to fill up at (and no one in an eighteen wheeler, let alone a "dually" pickup, can see your TDI).
I live in a modest 3 bedroom home that features a loft. When we bought the house, the loft seemed like the ideal place to put the home multimedia (this being well before "home theater" entered the lexicon). As it turns out, this isn't the best idea acoustically, so eventually it became my Geek Loft.
Alas, my young son was fascinated by the many computers (PCs, Macs and a NeXT Cube) in the loft and would try to push the buttons that glowed with pretty lights. Servers were being powered down by the little imp. I started to panic. Visiting a used office supply outlet, I discovered that I could buy expensive Hayworth cubicle walls for very little money. Presto! $600 later, I have an instant geek room in the middle of the loft that's also a cubicle with a door.
I built a seven foot tall cubicle along the main footprint of the loft, leaving a path to the bedrooms upstairs and not walling the edge of the loft that opens to the rest of the house. The door has a lock on it, which solved the access by kids problem. I lined the inside with bookshelves, hung up a few Mars posters and put dozens of slogan buttons on one cloth lined wall.
When you walk into my home and look up, you see a full cubicle looming overhead.
I've recently taken the nook along the longer loft wall and setup narrow table tops across the whole length. At one end, I built an Elfa(tm) rack for my network gear and the printers shared on the home net. On the tables themselves I put my finest Apple/NeXT boxen (NeXT Color Turbo Slab, Power 8100, Apple ][e) on display in what I call my "Shrine to Steve Jobs". They all run, and are networked (well, not the ][ -- get real).
While this Geek Room pales in comparison to others, I think it does stand out for a couple of reasons. First, it's in the fricking middle of a 'married with children' home. How many wives would put up with this visual: a huge cubicle in the middle of their home. I think I won them over by networking the house and making sure everyone has their own decent PC (AMD boxen with lots of RAM). Second, it's small but packed full of gear -- three or four systems KVM'd together, three full height bookshelves crammed with sci-fi novels, NeXT programming guides, and every Mac or PC programming book I've bought since 1985. I got all the usual elements: eclipse light, scanner, A/V setup including S-VHS deck, laser disc player and small monitor television, UPSes, cables, cables and cables tucked under the desk. Office Depot chair on a carpet mat. It's all here. Even the propeller beanie.
Four pioneering CGI firms contributed material to Tron. It was definitely a hybrid film, a point made over and over by others, and ironically, featured not only painstakingly handmade "CGI" like effects (the glow effect was brutally expensive and entirely hand done), but also handmade electronic music -- Wendy Carlos' technology at the time was the analog Moog synthesizer.
The one statement you cannot make is that Tron had little or no CGI. True, The Last Starfighter had more CGI (and it was obvious -- by today's standards -- where the CGI was) but the story of Tron was entirely oriented towards the coming cyberpunk genere.
If you want to see what RPI was like in the 80's, take a look at the "samizdat classic" Not the Rensselaer Handbook. While not the most flattering review of undergraduate life, it does attempt to portrait the "real RPI" of twenty years ago (at least, as I and co author Tom White saw it).
This device could potentially aid parents of autistic kids when going to large social outings. While I can clearly see the negative uses of this (essentially) private "house arrest" device, the benefit of being able to find one's autistic kid if he/she wanders off is rather immense.
I speak from experience. My son took off at Fiest a Texas in San Antonio, TX without anyone seeing him to ride a roller-coaster we thought he was afraid of. We spent a frantic twenty minutes looking for him while he waited in line and rode the coaster. The bracelet again, potentially would have told us where he was.
The public is on MS's side (82% favorable rating!)
So if the "public" finds a criminal to be popular, he should be let free? Well, hot damn! Let's hold popularity contests at all the Federal Prisons and get some of those incarcerated popular people back on the street.
Mob rule sux. And Microsoft is just the ring leader. This isn't the Rule of Law. It's a damned shame. (And while I'm on the topic, who here really thinks John Q. Public has any idea how to evaluate Microsoft's business and technical practices?)
I didn't think I could get more cynical about the political system in this nation, but then 9-11 comes along and the top companies of this nation go to the Congress demanding their pound (kilogram?) of flesh from the Public Till. The same Congress that they paid for delivered, and the same "President" they bought goes along for the ride. US$99B in hand outs to Corporations but next to nothing for the fellow just out of work sez it all...
The author states that duplication of a product that a dominate player controls is a losing venture (he quotes Peter Drucker). That may hold in business, but Linux and its desktop are not primarily being developed for a business. In many cases they are being developed to provide replacement versions of existing products; before Linux there were many commercial UNIX OS products -- didn't Linux violate that rule when it "took on" those? And has it now "succeeded" in dominating the UNIX business space despite not being a commercial product?
The fact is, Linux doesn't exist in the same space as Windows. It's not created solely to make a profit for a corporation. It's also not being improved for the general benefit of "customers". It's being modified by very clever yet self-serving individuals and small groups to suit their particular needs. Some want to clone Windows and Office, and others just want generic office tools. This flies in the face of almost all for-profit software companies, but again, Linux isn't playing that game so it doesn't matter to Linux's long term success.
We had cable modem outtages in North Texas (well, McKinney) tonite, and I noticed in the poster's list of IPs infected that mckiny1.tx.home.com was a common subnet. I just ran my own script:
and I get 120 systems infected in the last 18 hours. I wonder if @Home was trying to put in some kind of block? How can that be done, given that port 80 requests are so common?
PS: Just checked the script before finishing the post... I'm at 122 infected systems.
The oddest thing about collectible computers is how many are emulated on existing platforms. This, in effect, makes ancient computers more readily accessable by the average person than any other kind of antique (other than the words/images from ancient books). The box shouldn't matter; Apple II emulators are a darnsight easier to use than the physical machine.
But, there is something special about booting an Apple II+ when it was the one of few personal computers you could actually handle in 1980. I had an OSI C2-4P, and access to HP 67 and Apple II/II+. I'd love to reaquaint myself with these old slugs. It'd be fun to have a glass extension on my home where I keep them on display but away from my scrappy teenage son and his clever, trickster friend Ferris. I'd hate for anyone to actually turn them on and burn them out...
Good luck getting any non-Microsoft software into school districts. At one time, Apple was the defacto king of educational computers, but in the last couple of years Microsoft has very successfully marketed their way into most middle and upper-middle class schools. My local elementary has "Microsoft nights" where parents are shown Microsoft products -- all pitched under the auspices of the local school district (McKinney ISD, with which I have recently had a few disagreements and which has been noted in Slashdot here).
It's unlikely that Linux or branded Linux systems would ever be permitted in this environment. I'll be that Microsoft has sold the MISD licenses that forbid alternative operating systems on any desktop or server in the district, all in exchange for a cheaper Windows license. Well, Linux costs nothing, and as a tax payer, that really fries my bacon when tax dollars are spent on more expensive products that don't really offer any services that the school district's rather restrictive IT policies allow in the classroom.
I wonder if another monopoly court case could be construed from this?
I'd just like to say that, from personal experience, school districts want technical volunteers like you want cancer. Please visit this site to see a chronicle of my experiences volunteering at an upscale Texas school district.
I don't believe my site was "slashdotted" today, not at all. There was a healthy surge in readers, of which I approve.
My site describes the treatment I received, as a parent, by the same people who have denied Sean any due process. Since I was (what, censured?) I have not volunteered for a single event at my daughter's school (it's been over two years) and I fully expect to NEVER be allowed to participate in her class activities again. It broke my heart to stop volunteering at my daughter's school; now the only voluteer work I do in McKinney is building computers for the local Baptist Church instead (the same church attended by the Superintendent).
Here is a picture of the MISD Superintendent at the ACT Academy taken late last year.
This is exactly the boilerplate crap that Diana is so well known for in McKinney. She's the PR person for the district, but I challenge you to actually get any informaton from her.
BTW, local resident Linda Royer is running for the MISD school board and could use some more funds to wage a campaign against Anthony's #1 Choice (Robb). Mail me if you'd like to help.
Slashdot Mirror
It's amazing how well suited graybeards are to test and test automation. We've made the same mistakes (but with memory leaks), and while most companies are not devoted to testing, the larger ones are (especially if regulated) and they find graybeards a good fit.
In 1979 I acquired an Ohio Scientific Challenger 2 with a floppy drive (4P). It was a 6502 based single-board machine with 24k RAM (everything was soldered in), a monochrome NTSC composite signal video display port (24 x 80?), and even a UART that one could activate by cutting a trace, or by sending the machine back to OSI with several hundred dollars so *they* could cut the trace (seriously, guys? You were selling this to hobbyists with soldering irons).
The machine was not awful but the software and BIOS were. I don't remember the floppy DOS being particularly useful (something about the user having to manage sector allocation! for files). It did encourage me to learn 6502 machine code -- the only sure-fired way to program the damned thing.
I sold it to a music store in Denton, TX but to this day I wish I had retained it.
I'm developing a deep seated disgust with this whole Wii fiasco. Never have I been compelled to buy some crummy console #$##$ game unit, and not be able to get one at less than twice MSRP. I'd be fine *never* owning one, but my kids feel differently. This just makes me want to kick Nintendo to the curb and never look back. I still cannot understand the lack of production ... honestly, it's not like there's a blue laser, magic faire or even just a small puppy's life at stake here ... it's just a block of silicon and polycarbonate. What is this ... the return of Commodore Business Machines? The "magic" is long gone here ... and the hurt just keeps on building.
Maybe with luck this will do in Nintendo and teach the whole industry not to screw with the consumer so hard. Then again, maybe not.
I read this book by pop physicist and now pop New Age Guru (or something) while waiting to take the SAT, and I swear it boosted my score. At the time, the idea of quantum tunneling and Feyman-diagrams were pure magic to me (thanks to endless Star Trek series, at least the terms are familiar to the common man). It's still a mind bender and for amateurs, an interesting read.
I just took a job in Canada, after being laid off for the second time in less than six months in Dallas, Texas. Everyone here seems to think that things are worse here (Toronto, ON) than in the U.S. but it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. I told my friends that I'm "offshoring" myself before my employer (employer? What employer?) does.
500M$US to bring it down? Chicken feed to an Administration that spends 1000 times that in deficit. Shame. Shame on them.
Your Minolta's SLR mirror is sticking to the light seals, which decay over the years and become adhesive. Likewise, the rubber shutter plane becomes sticky, and that can cause shutter delay on some models (the XG begin particularly sensitive to this). The XD series (XD-5, XD-7 and XD-11) used a titanium shutter, which needs light lubrication but which hasn't got the sticking issue mentioned. The XD series, as well as the later X series, are much lighter than the brick heavy SR-T series. Check out Garry's cameras for repairs and tuneups.
On eBay, these cameras range from $50 to $100 with a 50mm f/1.7 lens.
The meter battery is very, very hard to find, as it is a 1.35v mercury cell (which is now banned - too many ended up in landfills). Several options exist to work around this. Zinc-air (Wein) cells work at almost the same voltage (1.4v), but wear out after six months of use. The meter system can be recalibrated by a relatively lightly skilled electronics geek to work with 1.5v silver cells. And there is a product that encapsulates the v76 series silver cells and which drops the voltage of the 1.5v cell to the mercury's 1.35v.
This line of Minolta works with the MC or MD series lenses, the latter ("Metered Diaphram") required for full automatic operation with the XD and X series (e.g. XD-5, XD-11, XG, X-700, etc.) bodies. Look for Minolta Rokkor lenses -- they are very high quality lenses. A 28mm, 50mm and 135mm will provide a great range of lenses for an amateur photographer.
The only major problem with older Minolta cameras is the light seals decay and become sticky over the years. It costs around $40 to have them replaced by a competent camera repair store, but they are harder and harder to find. Check out Garry's repair site for help.
"Network black" is something of a myth. However, my former employer does inject a standard black 30 frame segment at the start and end of all commercials it broadcasts to TV stations (over 1000, at last count). This series of frames ought to be pretty consistent, except for variations in a station's analog conversion/transmission of MPEG-2. It's still possible for the stations to not transmit any of these black frames, so it's not 100% by any means.
It doesn't make sense that Patterson would do this, but it does explain the CP/M calls in MS-DOS 1.0. Obviously, Microsoft rewrote sections of CP/M to work with the IBM-pc BIOS, and to provide a more Xenix like shell (later called COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS 2.X) as opposed to the CP/M one.
This was related to me by an individual who had a seat at the table when Kildall and his lawyer visited IBM in Boca Raton in early 1981, to share the good news that MS-DOS was based on their code. IBM ended up buying a source license for CP/M for Microsoft (cost: $250K) so that they could clean up the licensing mess that Bill and Tim had made. Little did they know that it was just a harbinger of the OS/2 vs. NT fiasco to come.
My guess is that this happens all the time, and only rarely gets into the courts.
I test drove all three (Civic, Prius, TDI) but chose a Golf TDI because it was less expensive than either the Civic Hybrid or Prius, and VW's ergonomics are far better than the Civic and Prius (the new Prius is going to be a far better experience than the initial version). Plus, with VW cars you can get the Monsoon sound upgrade for a nominal fee (8-amp, 8-speaker CD/Tape/FM/AM) in all models. The Golf TDI comes in two flavors (GL, GLS) and the Jetta TDI comes in both sedan and station wagon, also in GL and GLS trim. That's right, a real, honest to God station wagon that isn't half bad and can really haul a decent load.
The TDI will gladly haul you at over 100 MPH if need be, and I typically get 43 MPG driving in D/FW traffic well above the posted limits and/or in horrendous sprawl-induced jams. Stick with the five-speed unless you simply cannot drive a standard ... the extra mileage will make you smile. I usually drive 560 miles between fillups, and I often have a gallon or more left in the tank at that point (VW's ad claims 750 miles between fillups ... that's possible if you drive 65 MPH and hit no traffic on Interstates).
P.S. The typical diesel gas pump is a filthy mess unless you buy diesel at the pricier pay-at-the-pump stations that actually offer it (usually there are only one or two diesel pumps). Truck stops have the best prices ... usually ten to twenty cents per gallon below the national brand stations, but they're really nasty to fill up at (and no one in an eighteen wheeler, let alone a "dually" pickup, can see your TDI).
Alas, my young son was fascinated by the many computers (PCs, Macs and a NeXT Cube) in the loft and would try to push the buttons that glowed with pretty lights. Servers were being powered down by the little imp. I started to panic. Visiting a used office supply outlet, I discovered that I could buy expensive Hayworth cubicle walls for very little money. Presto! $600 later, I have an instant geek room in the middle of the loft that's also a cubicle with a door.
I built a seven foot tall cubicle along the main footprint of the loft, leaving a path to the bedrooms upstairs and not walling the edge of the loft that opens to the rest of the house. The door has a lock on it, which solved the access by kids problem. I lined the inside with bookshelves, hung up a few Mars posters and put dozens of slogan buttons on one cloth lined wall. When you walk into my home and look up, you see a full cubicle looming overhead.
I've recently taken the nook along the longer loft wall and setup narrow table tops across the whole length. At one end, I built an Elfa(tm) rack for my network gear and the printers shared on the home net. On the tables themselves I put my finest Apple/NeXT boxen (NeXT Color Turbo Slab, Power 8100, Apple ][e) on display in what I call my "Shrine to Steve Jobs". They all run, and are networked (well, not the ][ -- get real).
While this Geek Room pales in comparison to others, I think it does stand out for a couple of reasons. First, it's in the fricking middle of a 'married with children' home. How many wives would put up with this visual: a huge cubicle in the middle of their home. I think I won them over by networking the house and making sure everyone has their own decent PC (AMD boxen with lots of RAM). Second, it's small but packed full of gear -- three or four systems KVM'd together, three full height bookshelves crammed with sci-fi novels, NeXT programming guides, and every Mac or PC programming book I've bought since 1985. I got all the usual elements: eclipse light, scanner, A/V setup including S-VHS deck, laser disc player and small monitor television, UPSes, cables, cables and cables tucked under the desk. Office Depot chair on a carpet mat. It's all here. Even the propeller beanie.
The one statement you cannot make is that Tron had little or no CGI. True, The Last Starfighter had more CGI (and it was obvious -- by today's standards -- where the CGI was) but the story of Tron was entirely oriented towards the coming cyberpunk genere.
If you want to see what RPI was like in the 80's, take a look at the "samizdat classic" Not the Rensselaer Handbook . While not the most flattering review of undergraduate life, it does attempt to portrait the "real RPI" of twenty years ago (at least, as I and co author Tom White saw it).
I speak from experience. My son took off at Fiest a Texas in San Antonio, TX without anyone seeing him to ride a roller-coaster we thought he was afraid of. We spent a frantic twenty minutes looking for him while he waited in line and rode the coaster. The bracelet again, potentially would have told us where he was.
So if the "public" finds a criminal to be popular, he should be let free? Well, hot damn! Let's hold popularity contests at all the Federal Prisons and get some of those incarcerated popular people back on the street.
Mob rule sux. And Microsoft is just the ring leader. This isn't the Rule of Law. It's a damned shame. (And while I'm on the topic, who here really thinks John Q. Public has any idea how to evaluate Microsoft's business and technical practices?)
I didn't think I could get more cynical about the political system in this nation, but then 9-11 comes along and the top companies of this nation go to the Congress demanding their pound (kilogram?) of flesh from the Public Till. The same Congress that they paid for delivered, and the same "President" they bought goes along for the ride. US$99B in hand outs to Corporations but next to nothing for the fellow just out of work sez it all ...
The fact is, Linux doesn't exist in the same space as Windows. It's not created solely to make a profit for a corporation. It's also not being improved for the general benefit of "customers". It's being modified by very clever yet self-serving individuals and small groups to suit their particular needs. Some want to clone Windows and Office, and others just want generic office tools. This flies in the face of almost all for-profit software companies, but again, Linux isn't playing that game so it doesn't matter to Linux's long term success.
But, there is something special about booting an Apple II+ when it was the one of few personal computers you could actually handle in 1980. I had an OSI C2-4P, and access to HP 67 and Apple II/II+. I'd love to reaquaint myself with these old slugs. It'd be fun to have a glass extension on my home where I keep them on display but away from my scrappy teenage son and his clever, trickster friend Ferris. I'd hate for anyone to actually turn them on and burn them out ...
It's unlikely that Linux or branded Linux systems would ever be permitted in this environment. I'll be that Microsoft has sold the MISD licenses that forbid alternative operating systems on any desktop or server in the district, all in exchange for a cheaper Windows license. Well, Linux costs nothing, and as a tax payer, that really fries my bacon when tax dollars are spent on more expensive products that don't really offer any services that the school district's rather restrictive IT policies allow in the classroom.
I wonder if another monopoly court case could be construed from this?
I'd just like to say that, from personal experience, school districts want technical volunteers like you want cancer. Please visit this site to see a chronicle of my experiences volunteering at an upscale Texas school district.
My site describes the treatment I received, as a parent, by the same people who have denied Sean any due process. Since I was (what, censured?) I have not volunteered for a single event at my daughter's school (it's been over two years) and I fully expect to NEVER be allowed to participate in her class activities again. It broke my heart to stop volunteering at my daughter's school; now the only voluteer work I do in McKinney is building computers for the local Baptist Church instead (the same church attended by the Superintendent).
Here is a picture of the MISD Superintendent at the ACT Academy taken late last year.
Keep those e-mails coming!
BTW, local resident Linda Royer is running for the MISD school board and could use some more funds to wage a campaign against Anthony's #1 Choice (Robb). Mail me if you'd like to help.