I have been driving under this construction (at Old Dominion University) every day for the past year or so, but never paid it much thought. Now it's on slashdot, and I feel compelled to go look at it......go figure.
...is a long time officer of the Navy and works closely with the rather large IT staff at his base. In our discussions over the past year he has been telling me how more and more of their systems have been migrated to Linux, and that the entirety of the IT staff has been recieving Redhat training. He also reports that the Navy has plucked quite a few crackers out of federal prison to assist them in securing these new systems. The same reports (concerning Linux migration) echo from my friend in the Army.
This development is nothing new to the rest of the government. I can only hope that those in charge of the migration decisions have read congressman Nueva's brilliant peice of literature on the topic.
That doesn't look like much fun really. A better use of such marvelous technology would involve fully animated imagery of that Mexican songstress Shakira, a forty ounce of the funk, and some "self time".
The wire had it that Microsoft had shipped about 1.5 million X-Box units to distributors by Janurary of this year, with Nintendo shipping about 1.3 million units by that time. If the figures are correct, and Microsoft loses money on each unit made and sold (we will take the lowest end of the spectrum and say $20 dollars), then Microsoft must have lost at least 300 million dollars in the US market by now. Nintendo on the other hand (as an example) should have earned roughly 260 million dollars on hardware sales alone by now (going by the figures that they were earning about 18-20 bucks off of each sale).
Now Microsoft, whoms software sales are the lowest of the three systems (so I have heard from my "Manager of a local EB" friend), is investing heavily in it's yet to be launched online gaming service. More units will likely have to be sold in order to insure a large enough customer base tro turn a large enough profit to cover past and continuing losses. The units that they must manufacturer to meet this goal are going to cost Microsoft even more.
Frankly, I don't see how much longer Microsoft can throw money at this system. I understand that they have a considerable amount of assets to fall back on, but at some point the stock holders have to start questioning the motives of Microsoft executives.
What does the amount of any given operating system on the network that you work with have to do with your ignorant statement above? Also, I did not come to the conclusion that only one operating system should be used, I see that you also have poor reading skills.
Only two courts have found Microsoft guilty of a monopoly, perhaps that does not constitute guilt to you. I get the feeling that it does to the rest of us.
And no, Microsoft's monopolistic practices do not "just boil down" to the fact that people were unable to remove Internet Explorer. The far reaching effects of their monopoly is old news.
You are a slashdot reader right? How can you be so ar behind in the times?
My stance on Microsoft is literally militaristic. That said, my wishes are that Microsoft fail with every single venture that they try, starting with the X-Box.
#1. "...the cost of operating system software is typically $100 per machine or less and the cost of hardware is typically $800 or more?"
This is incorrect. If you choose to purchase a copy of a Linux distribution from a distributor then you may pay anywhere from $20 to $120 for the operating system - true. This would be a one time purchase however, not for each seat as with Windows. And as a consultant that builds many systems and deploys many systems, Windows gets very expensive very fast, no matter what it's intended use. Linux does not. Furthermore, if the school or school district has a compitent IT staff (or just a tech or two that understand Linux) then a free download version of your favorate Linux distro (excluding SuSE) would be suitable. Myth #1 has been debunked.
#2. " There is an advantage to teaching kids on multiple operating systems. However Unix is not at all suitable for general introductory courses. If you have highly motivated and intelligent kids they could probably learn on anything, including JCL. But most kids are not in that category (just as well or else our skills would not be in the same demand)."
It is true that proficiency in multiple operating systems is beneficial. But this statement does not fit the context of this arguement. The purpose of Linux in schools is to save money (in this case). The use of Linux and open source tools foster and fuel creativity and give teachers more software options with a smaller budget (if they use *free* software, then almost no additional budget). Furthermore, whatever solution kick-starts the greatest amount of computing know-how in children is obviously the better choice.
#3. "Will they look at the csh command structure and conclude that computers are very hard to use, mysterious and probably deliberately so and resist using them? I suspect so."
I suppose that you have never seen or used KDE or Gnome?
I have been unsuccessfully attempting to persuade the local state college (where I have close tes as an ex-IT employee) to migrate their labs to Linux. The main problem with this venture is that it (the college) is a state controlled (duh) asset that must have certain proprietary applications available to students in order to satisfy certain contracts that it has made with organizations that bring in funding. I think that my next proposal will be a half-and-half Linux and Windows lab for testing. Anyone have any ideas?
It is refreshing to see small successes like this one.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been driving under this construction (at Old Dominion University) every day for the past year or so, but never paid it much thought. Now it's on slashdot, and I feel compelled to go look at it......go figure.
...is a long time officer of the Navy and works closely with the rather large IT staff at his base. In our discussions over the past year he has been telling me how more and more of their systems have been migrated to Linux, and that the entirety of the IT staff has been recieving Redhat training. He also reports that the Navy has plucked quite a few crackers out of federal prison to assist them in securing these new systems. The same reports (concerning Linux migration) echo from my friend in the Army.
This development is nothing new to the rest of the government. I can only hope that those in charge of the migration decisions have read congressman Nueva's brilliant peice of literature on the topic.
That doesn't look like much fun really. A better use of such marvelous technology would involve fully animated imagery of that Mexican songstress Shakira, a forty ounce of the funk, and some "self time".
The wire had it that Microsoft had shipped about 1.5 million X-Box units to distributors by Janurary of this year, with Nintendo shipping about 1.3 million units by that time. If the figures are correct, and Microsoft loses money on each unit made and sold (we will take the lowest end of the spectrum and say $20 dollars), then Microsoft must have lost at least 300 million dollars in the US market by now. Nintendo on the other hand (as an example) should have earned roughly 260 million dollars on hardware sales alone by now (going by the figures that they were earning about 18-20 bucks off of each sale).
Now Microsoft, whoms software sales are the lowest of the three systems (so I have heard from my "Manager of a local EB" friend), is investing heavily in it's yet to be launched online gaming service. More units will likely have to be sold in order to insure a large enough customer base tro turn a large enough profit to cover past and continuing losses. The units that they must manufacturer to meet this goal are going to cost Microsoft even more.
Frankly, I don't see how much longer Microsoft can throw money at this system. I understand that they have a considerable amount of assets to fall back on, but at some point the stock holders have to start questioning the motives of Microsoft executives.
What does the amount of any given operating system on the network that you work with have to do with your ignorant statement above? Also, I did not come to the conclusion that only one operating system should be used, I see that you also have poor reading skills.
Only two courts have found Microsoft guilty of a monopoly, perhaps that does not constitute guilt to you. I get the feeling that it does to the rest of us.
And no, Microsoft's monopolistic practices do not "just boil down" to the fact that people were unable to remove Internet Explorer. The far reaching effects of their monopoly is old news.
You are a slashdot reader right? How can you be so ar behind in the times?
You have never worked in the IT industry have you? "If you don't want Microsoft to control you(sic) then don't buy their stuff".
Yea, that works really well. Isn't there some federal trial concerning a monopoly and it's effects going on somewhere?
My stance on Microsoft is literally militaristic. That said, my wishes are that Microsoft fail with every single venture that they try, starting with the X-Box.
#1. "...the cost of operating system software is typically $100 per machine or less and the cost of hardware is typically $800 or more?"
This is incorrect. If you choose to purchase a copy of a Linux distribution from a distributor then you may pay anywhere from $20 to $120 for the operating system - true. This would be a one time purchase however, not for each seat as with Windows. And as a consultant that builds many systems and deploys many systems, Windows gets very expensive very fast, no matter what it's intended use. Linux does not. Furthermore, if the school or school district has a compitent IT staff (or just a tech or two that understand Linux) then a free download version of your favorate Linux distro (excluding SuSE) would be suitable. Myth #1 has been debunked.
#2. " There is an advantage to teaching kids on multiple operating systems. However Unix is not at all suitable for general introductory courses. If you have highly motivated and intelligent kids they could probably learn on anything, including JCL. But most kids are not in that category (just as well or else our skills would not be in the same demand)."
It is true that proficiency in multiple operating systems is beneficial. But this statement does not fit the context of this arguement. The purpose of Linux in schools is to save money (in this case). The use of Linux and open source tools foster and fuel creativity and give teachers more software options with a smaller budget (if they use *free* software, then almost no additional budget). Furthermore, whatever solution kick-starts the greatest amount of computing know-how in children is obviously the better choice.
#3. "Will they look at the csh command structure and conclude that computers are very hard to use, mysterious and probably deliberately so and resist using them? I suspect so."
I suppose that you have never seen or used KDE or Gnome?
I have been unsuccessfully attempting to persuade the local state college (where I have close tes as an ex-IT employee) to migrate their labs to Linux. The main problem with this venture is that it (the college) is a state controlled (duh) asset that must have certain proprietary applications available to students in order to satisfy certain contracts that it has made with organizations that bring in funding. I think that my next proposal will be a half-and-half Linux and Windows lab for testing. Anyone have any ideas? It is refreshing to see small successes like this one.