I've been at my job for 20 years, I remember things we purchased back in 1987, I bet if they TRIED they could find people who remember the what happened with the purchase 15 years back (and being it was for $5 million dollars I would think most people would have no problem with something that big.)
Who cares if it is a new board, they signed on knowing they'd have to handle situations like this, I think as a constituent I would want a better answer from them besides, "um, we can't find the paperwork or what happened to those computers."
My last rant, (being as I work for a state/federal funded non-profit) where were the auditors on this in the last 14 years? NPs go though an annual audit by CPAs, even moreso with the funding sources they have. If they 'lost' the $5 million of equipment somewhere along those lines, would it not have shown up somewhere on the books? Fixed Assets? Somewhere?
I do actually own an RCA victrola and the EULA on it says that you can only play RCA records on it. Now at least our current licenses aren't that bad...
Yeah, it's not like some PC manufacturer is saying you can only run Windows on thier products in order to receive hardware warranty support... oh.. wait.
Besides either of those I am sure the hardware is might flashy like the PSP or the PS3, but the lame software does not justify the added cost of the hardware. As for compatibility, the Clie was a really nice PDA, except for the compatibility - being a Palm OS device it did not have first-party Mac drivers.
The iPhone may be expensive and cool looking but the thing I think that is selling it more is the software doesn't look like it will suck like the competition (though, until it actually comes out we won't know for sure).
We may not have the facilities anymore to develop scientists but we certainly have a corner on the market for the next generation of "Paris Hiltons" and "Ashley Simpsons!" And according to many TV shows it seems that is all that really counts to America's major industries.
This is a big word to the educational community, wikipedia definers it in education as:
"...In formal education or schooling (see education), a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of course and their content offers an institution such as a school or university..."
More or less it is the educational plan for educating. A big part of that is all the related 'materials', that are pre-designed to follow the curriculum. Many of the computer related materials (books, tests) focus on either Windows or Mac OS, and also, as usual, are a generation or two behind the "cutting edge" of OS or program technology.
Part of making FOSS useful to school is to have available curriculum materials that work with the FOSS applications and concept. Some teachers can get it and adapt as needed, but there are quite a few that take and use their curriculum materials completely in a rote fashion (try to teach them you instruct them in a concept (i.e. you say: "after you click Save, you enter a file name such as 'mydocument.doc'") they write it as a literal ("click Save, enter 'mydocument.doc'") I kid you not on this. Those are the ones that are more vocal of change as they do not have any clue on how to adapt other OSs or programs than what is spelled out in the course guides they have.
I think it's a great ida, but I know you will have to get more then just software resources together to get it to work more in more than schools with adaptable staff.
Maybe Windows and office are dirt cheap, but take a look at "educational software" (sometimes this is the same stuff at WalMart, but with an education certification sticker on it) That software can be (usually is) two to three times the cost of the retail equivalents.
And don't think there is any break on other school related programs such as for student tracking or library management.
Maybe the Apple version of Oregon Trail was a copy of the PET code or game play? (the PET used graphics, minimal, but beyond what a TTY could do) Not sure, just what information I got.
A couple years ago I got an email from a person trying to get the PET game Trail West to run for his dad (who wrote Trail West) on an emulator and in part of the reply was this message:
"P.S. Glad you like the game. A little trivia about it... When my dad
first made that game, just after the first PET came out, he had a
meeting with some people from MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing
Consortium) who were interested in buying game ideas. They thanked
him and left. Never a word from them after that... EXCEPT... they
magically came out with their famous nationwide best seller "Oregon
Trail" the very next year, which of course was pretty much exactly
"Trail West". Go figure!"
If you want to see what Trail West was like, the file is located in this disk image, and is playable on the VICE Emulator. After LOADing but before RUNing, you need to POKE 639,94 in order to circumvent the ancient copy protection. (my bad, should have fixed it)
Sure looks pretty with all those gee whiz features - if you are a home user.
(Start dry sarcasm)
But with:
- Mail's mail templates (you know those ones that add a whole bunch of HTML and images to perfectly good text messages) this will be great for that new e-discovery stuff.
- Fancy preview browsing (just think of the finder cache needed to store all that stuff!)
- Time machine - making sizable point-in-time backups for your protection (assuming your hard drive doesn't get totally borked, hard drives don't fail on Macs, really!)
- Boot Camp - a nifty application that allows you to explore the wonders of Windows while completely turning off access to the OS and Apps you really want to use along with it. And also taking another significant part of your HD - that time machine doesn't backup.
- Not to mention the 'lets make yet another full sized copy of that image, just in case' iPhoto application.
Yes, business administrators can now rejoice on Leopard, as it will make our life easier as well as our co-workers.:-P
Even worse, your server never have downtime...at least human babies take nap here and there.
I can see the Microsoft tow picture ad now, top picture harried sysadmin with the linux box, screen showing * WORK * WORK * WORK * in ugly green pixelated courier on black. In the next picture, the same (now) MS based admin is leaning back on his chair with a big smile with his feet propped up, on the screen - white on pretty blue - is "Server down, please reboot" in nice friendly Arial TTF letters.
And the quote, "Even sysadmins deserve a break from sever management, Microsoft will give it you."
Microsoft and Apple, among others, are willing to give stuff to schools. With Linux, the software may be free, but you probably have to buy your own hardware.
They may give stuff (even hardware) or discount it - but there are usually strings attached such as only certain products, or limited licensing quantity/discounts. Even if they gave stuff there is still the license tracking nightmare as well as the hodge-podge of the different granted unit configurations (i.e. the new Dell systems may have different hardware/software makeup than the HP ones they got a via another grant a year back.)
Gifts are wonderful things but sometimes it is a nightmare to deal with what you get. At least by using free software you can get some sort of uniform standard going without all the paperwork and red tape.
When that is the case you get and "tone and probe" set. Which is a two-device tool, one clips onto one end of the wire run (the tone generator) and the other is a pencil like (much bigger) proximity sensor to locate the wire source of the signal. So you would go to say the living room and clop the tone to a jack there, then to the wiring closet to locate the other end with the probe.
Frys Electronics has them for as low as $39ish.
If sorting out electrical wiring you can find one for AC outlets at many big-box hardware places.
The major way of infecting PCs is through tricking naive users into running malicious programs. Intercepting this sort of thing, to protect the users from themselves, is what AV software mostly does.
All that does is get the user to run a program, in Windows that IS enough to infect the whole computer. In Mac OS or Linux, it is enough only to mess withe the users file space (assuming the mail program is set to readily allow allow user to click and run executable attachments) but not the computer as a whole.
The problem is Windows still NEEDS to have something that stops viruses. In XP it is a required 3rd party addition; without it the OS is toast in operating as it was intended (to go into a network or on the Internet.)
Microsoft should not have to "include an AV program" or "provide one by default" they should eliminate the need for any such thing entirely.
Of course, I am well aware (as is surely those at MS) that it would break too much compatibility of all those many, many legacy apps that keep the customers dependent on the Windows platform. Break too many and the customer will realize they are starting from scratch anyway and really start some serious comparison shopping.
By taking/using the product without contributing anything at all, he and all the schools are guilty of leeching on an otherwise honest and productive community.
Back in the BBS heydey "Leeching" was a popular term for BBSs, many sysops who said they ran thier boards for purely altruistic purposes always got neurotic about particiaption of the 'leeching' of users, those who viisited and downloaded or played games without adding files or contributing to discussions. For the most part I kept away from that as I figured if my BBS was good enough for me as well as attracted callers that was what I really wanted, was a for of communication (a dial-up blog of sorts I guess).
I would think your use of leeching would be similar to the RIAA or MPAAs use of the word pirate for those artists who choose to freely distribute thier works instead of trying to go therough the record companies.
As an open source developer and enthusiast, I would also not get too upset if someome deploys all those programs and saves a bunch of cash - part of the reason we wrote such programs is that the commercial altertives largely overcharge for ther stuff. Other reasons- is that it spreads the word about Open Source to more potential contibutors (may not be that guy but may be the teacher who wants to add clip art) as well as a venue where Open Source really needs to be (namely education). Having kids experience OSS is also a good thing as they may decide they want to be programmers when they grow up and they could get a good start by looking at how OOo and other FOSS actually work.
NeoOffice (now 2.1) is better than it has been, but there are some issues still, though most are with other features than operational stability (print formatting is one I can think of readily).
OpenOffice for Mac is either X11 or the 'real soon now, honest!' Aqua version. The X11 version beign that it has to go through X11 is slow and feels klunky (and feels less stable then NeoOffice).
The good points about OpenOffice/NeoOffice is it has a lot more graphics abilities (the draw layer) and as a Mac user who really likes AppleWorks Draw integration, I think Neo/OppenOffice is a much needed alternative (as Apple dumped AppleWorks first on Windows then just about to on the Mac.
I hope this article gets some excitement going in the Mac porting community to work on those projects more.
From reading the comments and the snippets in the comments it sounds like it's another damned unintelligible EULA. One of the main reasons I prefer GNU/Linux is their EULA (it may have the GPL and others but in those I can find sites that fully explain it in a common language as well as gives me some tangible rights as well as restrictions.)
Those are the three I can see When I talk to people about the greatness of Linux those are the things that make it hard to explain or hard to support.
Setup - Yes it's easier but as some have stated not all necessary drivers are readily available either that or there is no easy definitive shopping list of 'good hardware' to get before you install (most notably wi-fi and video cards). The second problem is if you make a mistake some things are more pain to fix then to re-install, such as borking your video drivers, there is no video safe mode where you can test and reconfigure your video card.
Applications while the list of applications are growing there are some gaps that remain.
And while there are some GREAT applications there is a lack of good documentation (many times when I select help on KDE I usually get credits or nothing, either they aren't installing on the base system (or with the related apps). I have been looking for some good books and once in a while I get lucky (got one on GIMP this last weekend) but I hope publishers see the light and put out some more books on GNU/Linux Apps (hear that Peachpit press we need more Visual Quickstart Guides for OOo, Scribus or Inkscape.)
A good example is address book, which is now totally separate from mail which is not actually HI but it is very annoying yo launch a second app to edit email addresses. Also in Address book to add an address or group you press the [+] button on the bottom of the list (no nice easy to understand "add" button - but to delete and address or group there is no [-] button (like other similarly interfaced Apple apps), in Address book you have to highlight the item and press Backspace or Delete - very non-intuitive.
Don't get me started about printer management in OSX.
Apple lost a lot of it's over-all intuitiveness when they dropped OS9 and it is pretty much a mishmash of different interface styles as they seem to be more concerned about having cool widgets than a cool user experience.
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I've been at my job for 20 years, I remember things we purchased back in 1987, I bet if they TRIED they could find people who remember the what happened with the purchase 15 years back (and being it was for $5 million dollars I would think most people would have no problem with something that big.)
Who cares if it is a new board, they signed on knowing they'd have to handle situations like this, I think as a constituent I would want a better answer from them besides, "um, we can't find the paperwork or what happened to those computers."
My last rant, (being as I work for a state/federal funded non-profit) where were the auditors on this in the last 14 years? NPs go though an annual audit by CPAs, even moreso with the funding sources they have. If they 'lost' the $5 million of equipment somewhere along those lines, would it not have shown up somewhere on the books? Fixed Assets? Somewhere?
I do actually own an RCA victrola and the EULA on it says that you can only play RCA records on it. Now at least our current licenses aren't that bad...
Yeah, it's not like some PC manufacturer is saying you can only run Windows on thier products in order to receive hardware warranty support... oh.. wait.
Those that know what goes on with Macs look at Linux as a platform to switch to.
The questions to really ask are:
Is the hardware compatible with anything else?
And does the software not suck?
Besides either of those I am sure the hardware is might flashy like the PSP or the PS3, but the lame software does not justify the added cost of the hardware. As for compatibility, the Clie was a really nice PDA, except for the compatibility - being a Palm OS device it did not have first-party Mac drivers.
The iPhone may be expensive and cool looking but the thing I think that is selling it more is the software doesn't look like it will suck like the competition (though, until it actually comes out we won't know for sure).
We may not have the facilities anymore to develop scientists but we certainly have a corner on the market for the next generation of "Paris Hiltons" and "Ashley Simpsons!" And according to many TV shows it seems that is all that really counts to America's major industries.
Adam and the Apple
This is a big word to the educational community, wikipedia definers it in education as:
"...In formal education or schooling (see education), a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of course and their content offers an institution such as a school or university..."
More or less it is the educational plan for educating. A big part of that is all the related 'materials', that are pre-designed to follow the curriculum. Many of the computer related materials (books, tests) focus on either Windows or Mac OS, and also, as usual, are a generation or two behind the "cutting edge" of OS or program technology.
Part of making FOSS useful to school is to have available curriculum materials that work with the FOSS applications and concept. Some teachers can get it and adapt as needed, but there are quite a few that take and use their curriculum materials completely in a rote fashion (try to teach them you instruct them in a concept (i.e. you say: "after you click Save, you enter a file name such as 'mydocument.doc'") they write it as a literal ("click Save, enter 'mydocument.doc'") I kid you not on this. Those are the ones that are more vocal of change as they do not have any clue on how to adapt other OSs or programs than what is spelled out in the course guides they have.
I think it's a great ida, but I know you will have to get more then just software resources together to get it to work more in more than schools with adaptable staff.
Maybe Windows and office are dirt cheap, but take a look at "educational software" (sometimes this is the same stuff at WalMart, but with an education certification sticker on it) That software can be (usually is) two to three times the cost of the retail equivalents.
And don't think there is any break on other school related programs such as for student tracking or library management.
Maybe the Apple version of Oregon Trail was a copy of the PET code or game play? (the PET used graphics, minimal, but beyond what a TTY could do) Not sure, just what information I got.
A couple years ago I got an email from a person trying to get the PET game Trail West to run for his dad (who wrote Trail West) on an emulator and in part of the reply was this message:
If you want to see what Trail West was like, the file is located in this disk image, and is playable on the VICE Emulator. After LOADing but before RUNing, you need to POKE 639,94 in order to circumvent the ancient copy protection. (my bad, should have fixed it)
Sure looks pretty with all those gee whiz features - if you are a home user.
:-P
(Start dry sarcasm)
But with:
- Mail's mail templates (you know those ones that add a whole bunch of HTML and images to perfectly good text messages) this will be great for that new e-discovery stuff.
- Fancy preview browsing (just think of the finder cache needed to store all that stuff!)
- Time machine - making sizable point-in-time backups for your protection (assuming your hard drive doesn't get totally borked, hard drives don't fail on Macs, really!)
- Boot Camp - a nifty application that allows you to explore the wonders of Windows while completely turning off access to the OS and Apps you really want to use along with it. And also taking another significant part of your HD - that time machine doesn't backup.
- Not to mention the 'lets make yet another full sized copy of that image, just in case' iPhoto application.
Yes, business administrators can now rejoice on Leopard, as it will make our life easier as well as our co-workers.
(/sarcasm)
Better buy your Tiger usable Macs while you can.
Even worse, your server never have downtime...at least human babies take nap here and there.
I can see the Microsoft tow picture ad now, top picture harried sysadmin with the linux box, screen showing * WORK * WORK * WORK * in ugly green pixelated courier on black. In the next picture, the same (now) MS based admin is leaning back on his chair with a big smile with his feet propped up, on the screen - white on pretty blue - is "Server down, please reboot" in nice friendly Arial TTF letters.
And the quote, "Even sysadmins deserve a break from sever management, Microsoft will give it you."
Microsoft and Apple, among others, are willing to give stuff to schools. With Linux, the software may be free, but you probably have to buy your own hardware.
They may give stuff (even hardware) or discount it - but there are usually strings attached such as only certain products, or limited licensing quantity/discounts. Even if they gave stuff there is still the license tracking nightmare as well as the hodge-podge of the different granted unit configurations (i.e. the new Dell systems may have different hardware/software makeup than the HP ones they got a via another grant a year back.)
Gifts are wonderful things but sometimes it is a nightmare to deal with what you get. At least by using free software you can get some sort of uniform standard going without all the paperwork and red tape.
When that is the case you get and "tone and probe" set. Which is a two-device tool, one clips onto one end of the wire run (the tone generator) and the other is a pencil like (much bigger) proximity sensor to locate the wire source of the signal. So you would go to say the living room and clop the tone to a jack there, then to the wiring closet to locate the other end with the probe.
Frys Electronics has them for as low as $39ish.
If sorting out electrical wiring you can find one for AC outlets at many big-box hardware places.
About 14 mm longer for one hand and 17 mm on the other. Am am better at programming than math.
The major way of infecting PCs is through tricking naive users into running malicious programs. Intercepting this sort of thing, to protect the users from themselves, is what AV software mostly does.
All that does is get the user to run a program, in Windows that IS enough to infect the whole computer. In Mac OS or Linux, it is enough only to mess withe the users file space (assuming the mail program is set to readily allow allow user to click and run executable attachments) but not the computer as a whole.
The problem is Windows still NEEDS to have something that stops viruses. In XP it is a required 3rd party addition; without it the OS is toast in operating as it was intended (to go into a network or on the Internet.)
Microsoft should not have to "include an AV program" or "provide one by default" they should eliminate the need for any such thing entirely.
Of course, I am well aware (as is surely those at MS) that it would break too much compatibility of all those many, many legacy apps that keep the customers dependent on the Windows platform. Break too many and the customer will realize they are starting from scratch anyway and really start some serious comparison shopping.
By taking/using the product without contributing anything at all, he and all the schools are guilty of leeching on an otherwise honest and productive community.
Back in the BBS heydey "Leeching" was a popular term for BBSs, many sysops who said they ran thier boards for purely altruistic purposes always got neurotic about particiaption of the 'leeching' of users, those who viisited and downloaded or played games without adding files or contributing to discussions. For the most part I kept away from that as I figured if my BBS was good enough for me as well as attracted callers that was what I really wanted, was a for of communication (a dial-up blog of sorts I guess).
I would think your use of leeching would be similar to the RIAA or MPAAs use of the word pirate for those artists who choose to freely distribute thier works instead of trying to go therough the record companies.
As an open source developer and enthusiast, I would also not get too upset if someome deploys all those programs and saves a bunch of cash - part of the reason we wrote such programs is that the commercial altertives largely overcharge for ther stuff. Other reasons- is that it spreads the word about Open Source to more potential contibutors (may not be that guy but may be the teacher who wants to add clip art) as well as a venue where Open Source really needs to be (namely education). Having kids experience OSS is also a good thing as they may decide they want to be programmers when they grow up and they could get a good start by looking at how OOo and other FOSS actually work.
NeoOffice (now 2.1) is better than it has been, but there are some issues still, though most are with other features than operational stability (print formatting is one I can think of readily).
OpenOffice for Mac is either X11 or the 'real soon now, honest!' Aqua version. The X11 version beign that it has to go through X11 is slow and feels klunky (and feels less stable then NeoOffice).
The good points about OpenOffice/NeoOffice is it has a lot more graphics abilities (the draw layer) and as a Mac user who really likes AppleWorks Draw integration, I think Neo/OppenOffice is a much needed alternative (as Apple dumped AppleWorks first on Windows then just about to on the Mac.
I hope this article gets some excitement going in the Mac porting community to work on those projects more.
From reading the comments and the snippets in the comments it sounds like it's another damned unintelligible EULA. One of the main reasons I prefer GNU/Linux is their EULA (it may have the GPL and others but in those I can find sites that fully explain it in a common language as well as gives me some tangible rights as well as restrictions.)
Um you mean like this Tron Guy?
But does it run on Linux? :-)
Those are the three I can see When I talk to people about the greatness of Linux those are the things that make it hard to explain or hard to support.
Setup - Yes it's easier but as some have stated not all necessary drivers are readily available either that or there is no easy definitive shopping list of 'good hardware' to get before you install (most notably wi-fi and video cards). The second problem is if you make a mistake some things are more pain to fix then to re-install, such as borking your video drivers, there is no video safe mode where you can test and reconfigure your video card.
Applications while the list of applications are growing there are some gaps that remain.
And while there are some GREAT applications there is a lack of good documentation (many times when I select help on KDE I usually get credits or nothing, either they aren't installing on the base system (or with the related apps). I have been looking for some good books and once in a while I get lucky (got one on GIMP this last weekend) but I hope publishers see the light and put out some more books on GNU/Linux Apps (hear that Peachpit press we need more Visual Quickstart Guides for OOo, Scribus or Inkscape.)
Mod parent up, I really getting tired of that "multicolored pinwheel of wait".
A good example is address book, which is now totally separate from mail which is not actually HI but it is very annoying yo launch a second app to edit email addresses. Also in Address book to add an address or group you press the [+] button on the bottom of the list (no nice easy to understand "add" button - but to delete and address or group there is no [-] button (like other similarly interfaced Apple apps), in Address book you have to highlight the item and press Backspace or Delete - very non-intuitive.
Don't get me started about printer management in OSX.
Apple lost a lot of it's over-all intuitiveness when they dropped OS9 and it is pretty much a mishmash of different interface styles as they seem to be more concerned about having cool widgets than a cool user experience.