remember the flap about microsoft auditing that oregon school district(sorry, no link). talk about shortsighted. now they got open source bills on the docket in the legislature and microsoft had to do a huge about face. this will hurt the riaa because it will show what a bunch of thugs they really are. this will turn the public against them. if they were hitting real pirates, i.e., those burning and selling bootleg cd's, i'd say more power to them, but hammering a twelve year old girl. any sympathy they would have gotten is shot out the window now.
maybe it's the defiition of schools, as institutions of education versus institutions of training. schools are in the education business. yes, we have plenty of school-to-career paths, but my point is that technology should be taught in technology class, period. schools need to educate. we have gotten away from that. it matters not at all if the students learn anything about computers, or any other skill, in school. they need to be educated in a classical manner. they need literature, history, science, etc. they need to read, write, and think. businesses have "dumped" training on the schools, yet they wonder how come the people they hire can't read or write effectively, can't learn a thing on the job. all the school reform initiatives ask "how do we prepare students for the future...". schools don't. shouldn't. we educate. period. big difference.
this is just another of those sounds good, feels good ideas. i taught seventh grade for seven years, and now teach high school. the whole "computers in the classroom" is nonsense. there has not been one definitive study to show that technology aids in learning. now if these were part of a technology program, fine. but are these going to motivate students? no. are these going to increase learning? no. are these going to make the students more critical thinkers? no. it isn't the computer, it's what you do with it. for years teachers in my junior high school were all shits and grins about powerpoint presentations. they'd have the students spend a week in the lab, make this really neato PPT presentation. impress the shit out of everyone with all the eye-candy, and what did the students learn? not much. there was so little room for any information, all the students' time was spent looking for pictures, making word art, etc. it was crap. now, i would do a current event assignment. the students had to find a current event, had to research the country at the cia website, had to research the history on the web, and had to evaluate the article for bias. even though it was done in word, i specified no pictures, graphics, etc. i wanted content. now, which is more impressive? the PPT. which is more educational? hmmm...
beware teachers and districts that say how much technology they are implementing. if it is a tech program, i.e. networking, web design, sys-admin, programming, etc., fine. wonderful. but nothing beats a good teacher, who knows their subject, who makes kids read, think, write, and learn. technology should be part of a technology program only. it doesn't take a computer to make kids read books, use their brain, learn arithmetic skills, write complete sentences, learn history, etc. sorry, but that is the truth.
i am finishing a masters in ed. technology. i am as big a computer geek as there is on a high school campus. but i also am a history teacher. and there is nothing a computer can do for me, the kids, or the class, that will make them learn history better.
it's also non-existent. macromedia bought it out, then shit-canned it. yeah, i used it a few years ago, before i drop windows completely. it was good, now its good-bye.
wouldn't ANY vba flaw be critical. if i recall correctly, through vba, you can manipulate the entire file system. while it doesn't give you low level access, it has access to every COM object on your system. in fact, weren't the code red and i love you virii (and many others) written in VBA. VBA seems to be such a big reason that businesses can't move away from windows/office. to me, it seems like a reason TO move away from office.
RH, any distro for that matter updates so many packages. with windows updates and fixes, it is for the OS itself. pertiod. when you consider that even rh comes with well over 1000 packages, most are third party apps, open source sure, but not rh apps. there is no double standard.
is the way micrisoft behaves, and yet people and especially businesses continue to basically sell themselves to the bishop of redmond. okay, i can see people, walking into best buy, comp usa, even go to dell.com and by a "pc". many just don't think about an OS. however, i cannot fathom how businesses will continue to so slovenly follow and buy into whatever microsoft puts out. if any other supplier or partner acted even remotely similarly, then nobody would do business with them. i don't get it. i understand schools from personal experience. they throw freebies and such to the schools. for instance, in my master's in ed program, we can get office pro for $20. for mac or windows. and most schoot IT people are not too bright or talented, else they'd have more lucrative employment. but businesses are another deal. why do they follow them still. it can't be because there are no other options. ( i personally think "piracy" had alot to do with it. but that's another thread.)
<rhetorical question>is managment really that stupid or shortsighted?</rhetorical question>
1- you don't need new hardware. linux runs on damn near any platform, at least those that count. x86-yes, sparc-yes, ppc-yes, big iron - yes (thanks IBM)
2- the options taht linux gives you are unlimited. with windows, what they give you is what you get. for instance: let's say you have 20-30 older boxen. turn them into thin clients. suddenly adding 30 new cubicles and need a bridge or router. fine. where's that old pentium 120 we had laying around.
3- with windows you either upgrade when they say, or face EOL'd products. even if yo have an old RH5.2 mail server (and you know who you are!!), you never have to upgrade. and you have the source.
those are examples that the article missed. i'm sure there are many more. this is where TCO analyses falter. how do you calculate the cost of things like these?
No personal computers will be allowed unless they are running Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, or another variety of *nix. If you are bringing a PC, please see the installtion CD in the back of the Freshman orientation handbook. For installation instructions, find the guy in your dorm with long hair, glasses, birkenstocks, and a penguin on his shirt. For payment, beer will usually do. Or, if you are under 21, and can't find someone to buy for you, perhaps a bag of Starbucks will suffice. However, if you are a female, just acknowleging him at least once during the semester, when you are with your friends will be plenty.
Where I teach,I hear fellow teachers, and even students, look befuddled and apprehensive (ah the big words) when using windows. Most of these are for want of a better term, newbies. They are computer illiterate. So they haven't become dependent on the windows GUI. Plus, since they know so little about comptuers, anything is going to be difficult, UNTIL, they learn how. Linux will have a harder time in users who are used to, but not savvy with, windows. They know where their apps are, where their files are, and not much else. They will be unwilling to "change". However, most of this "is linux desktop ready" is crap, because, if you put somehting in front of a worker, er um, employee, and say, use it, they most likely will. As long as microsoft can have mindshare, that PC=windows, then it will be tough. But, newer users are not going to have the problem. "Oh, you click on the big K. Thanks"
9.1 was awesome. i ran it in my classroom last year. had several xterms connected, even my laptop. did everything with it. pounded the hell out of it, and it was up for 155 days.(end of school you know) but can they recover? did they lose market and mind share?
is mandrake still viable
on
Mandrake 9.2 RC1
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
i have used drake since 7.0. i have bought 7.0, 7.2, 8.0, and 9.0 so feel that leeching an iso or two is not horrible. however, are they still viable? i love it. i can just use it like a mind numbed idiot, or use it like a geek, and not have to worry. and urpmi is awesome. but with RH snarfing up most of the server biz, and suse seeming to get most of the rest of the press, is drake commercially viable. deb, gentoo, slack will always be around. but their not "commercial" distros. drake does such great jobs with their wizards and hardware, but is investing time and effort into drake pissing into the wind. i hope not, since i've used drke for years. but...
i am a public school teacher and am finishing up a masters' in technology. you have no idea how microsoft makes it presence felt. they throw freebies to our district IT people. in college, our professors require work in either.doc or.ppt, and we get office for like $20.
Windows XP Home Edition, however, ships with five ports open, behind which run "services" that serve no purpose except on a computer network.
but XP home is not designed to be on a network. according to the the horse's mouth, "Windows XP Professional is best for people who connect to large networks, such as a school or office network. also from the horse's mouth, "Windows XP Professional is required to access a domain-based network.. so they are turning on services that won't even work. great job boys.
the interface that matters is the applications' interfaces. people are familiar with office. hell, ask most of the windows users if they can do mroe than minimize and close a window and they'll say no. most people are accustomed to a particular application. especially office. sun would be better off just to map/home to/My Documents and make the OO.org UI as identical to office as legally possible. this is even more true for more specific apps,like accounting apps, what have you. that is what holds linux adoption back. most people don't even "use" the operating system, nor do they even care to. they use a tool. they could really care less what the OS is. in fact, they only know what it is when it does nasty things.
i use apple's mail.app with bayesian filtering. i have received maybe 4 or 5 true spam emails in over a year. i haven't yet missed any real emails either. i would have to say that's pretty good. otoh, our groupwise system at work is fscking horrible. i get tons of fscking spam. i have had to set dozens of rules, and it still doesn't matter.
PC Satisfaction extends the native functionality of Windows XP with services such as an enhanced firewall and virus scanner that give customers a better Windows experience out of the box.
translation: how many third party ISV's can we assimilate
Slashdot Mirror
remember the flap about microsoft auditing that oregon school district(sorry, no link). talk about shortsighted. now they got open source bills on the docket in the legislature and microsoft had to do a huge about face. this will hurt the riaa because it will show what a bunch of thugs they really are. this will turn the public against them. if they were hitting real pirates, i.e., those burning and selling bootleg cd's, i'd say more power to them, but hammering a twelve year old girl. any sympathy they would have gotten is shot out the window now.
microsoft can just shred their source tree and start anew. maybe...
maybe it's the defiition of schools, as institutions of education versus institutions of training. schools are in the education business. yes, we have plenty of school-to-career paths, but my point is that technology should be taught in technology class, period. schools need to educate. we have gotten away from that. it matters not at all if the students learn anything about computers, or any other skill, in school. they need to be educated in a classical manner. they need literature, history, science, etc. they need to read, write, and think. businesses have "dumped" training on the schools, yet they wonder how come the people they hire can't read or write effectively, can't learn a thing on the job. all the school reform initiatives ask "how do we prepare students for the future...". schools don't. shouldn't. we educate. period. big difference.
this is just another of those sounds good, feels good ideas. i taught seventh grade for seven years, and now teach high school. the whole "computers in the classroom" is nonsense. there has not been one definitive study to show that technology aids in learning. now if these were part of a technology program, fine. but are these going to motivate students? no. are these going to increase learning? no. are these going to make the students more critical thinkers? no. it isn't the computer, it's what you do with it. for years teachers in my junior high school were all shits and grins about powerpoint presentations. they'd have the students spend a week in the lab, make this really neato PPT presentation. impress the shit out of everyone with all the eye-candy, and what did the students learn? not much. there was so little room for any information, all the students' time was spent looking for pictures, making word art, etc. it was crap. now, i would do a current event assignment. the students had to find a current event, had to research the country at the cia website, had to research the history on the web, and had to evaluate the article for bias. even though it was done in word, i specified no pictures, graphics, etc. i wanted content. now, which is more impressive? the PPT. which is more educational? hmmm...
beware teachers and districts that say how much technology they are implementing. if it is a tech program, i.e. networking, web design, sys-admin, programming, etc., fine. wonderful. but nothing beats a good teacher, who knows their subject, who makes kids read, think, write, and learn. technology should be part of a technology program only. it doesn't take a computer to make kids read books, use their brain, learn arithmetic skills, write complete sentences, learn history, etc. sorry, but that is the truth.
i am finishing a masters in ed. technology. i am as big a computer geek as there is on a high school campus. but i also am a history teacher. and there is nothing a computer can do for me, the kids, or the class, that will make them learn history better.
it's also non-existent. macromedia bought it out, then shit-canned it. yeah, i used it a few years ago, before i drop windows completely. it was good, now its good-bye.
The bluster worm
was that written by ballmer perchance.
i was thinking of direct memory access, hardware access, low level crap that c can do. but yes, through COM, you can do almost anything.
wouldn't ANY vba flaw be critical. if i recall correctly, through vba, you can manipulate the entire file system. while it doesn't give you low level access, it has access to every COM object on your system. in fact, weren't the code red and i love you virii (and many others) written in VBA. VBA seems to be such a big reason that businesses can't move away from windows/office. to me, it seems like a reason TO move away from office.
better book that flight for down under, mate.
RH, any distro for that matter updates so many packages. with windows updates and fixes, it is for the OS itself. pertiod. when you consider that even rh comes with well over 1000 packages, most are third party apps, open source sure, but not rh apps. there is no double standard.
damn echange servers.
is the way micrisoft behaves, and yet people and especially businesses continue to basically sell themselves to the bishop of redmond. okay, i can see people, walking into best buy, comp usa, even go to dell.com and by a "pc". many just don't think about an OS. however, i cannot fathom how businesses will continue to so slovenly follow and buy into whatever microsoft puts out. if any other supplier or partner acted even remotely similarly, then nobody would do business with them. i don't get it. i understand schools from personal experience. they throw freebies and such to the schools. for instance, in my master's in ed program, we can get office pro for $20. for mac or windows. and most schoot IT people are not too bright or talented, else they'd have more lucrative employment. but businesses are another deal. why do they follow them still. it can't be because there are no other options. ( i personally think "piracy" had alot to do with it. but that's another thread.)
<rhetorical question>is managment really that stupid or shortsighted?</rhetorical question>
1- you don't need new hardware. linux runs on damn near any platform, at least those that count. x86-yes, sparc-yes, ppc-yes, big iron - yes (thanks IBM)
2- the options taht linux gives you are unlimited. with windows, what they give you is what you get. for instance: let's say you have 20-30 older boxen. turn them into thin clients. suddenly adding 30 new cubicles and need a bridge or router. fine. where's that old pentium 120 we had laying around.
3- with windows you either upgrade when they say, or face EOL'd products. even if yo have an old RH5.2 mail server (and you know who you are!!), you never have to upgrade. and you have the source.
those are examples that the article missed. i'm sure there are many more. this is where TCO analyses falter. how do you calculate the cost of things like these?
Where I teach,I hear fellow teachers, and even students, look befuddled and apprehensive (ah the big words) when using windows. Most of these are for want of a better term, newbies. They are computer illiterate. So they haven't become dependent on the windows GUI. Plus, since they know so little about comptuers, anything is going to be difficult, UNTIL, they learn how. Linux will have a harder time in users who are used to, but not savvy with, windows. They know where their apps are, where their files are, and not much else. They will be unwilling to "change". However, most of this "is linux desktop ready" is crap, because, if you put somehting in front of a worker, er um, employee, and say, use it, they most likely will. As long as microsoft can have mindshare, that PC=windows, then it will be tough. But, newer users are not going to have the problem. "Oh, you click on the big K. Thanks"
9.1 was awesome. i ran it in my classroom last year. had several xterms connected, even my laptop. did everything with it. pounded the hell out of it, and it was up for 155 days.(end of school you know) but can they recover? did they lose market and mind share?
i have used drake since 7.0. i have bought 7.0, 7.2, 8.0, and 9.0 so feel that leeching an iso or two is not horrible. however, are they still viable? i love it. i can just use it like a mind numbed idiot, or use it like a geek, and not have to worry. and urpmi is awesome. but with RH snarfing up most of the server biz, and suse seeming to get most of the rest of the press, is drake commercially viable. deb, gentoo, slack will always be around. but their not "commercial" distros. drake does such great jobs with their wizards and hardware, but is investing time and effort into drake pissing into the wind. i hope not, since i've used drke for years. but...
i am a public school teacher and am finishing up a masters' in technology. you have no idea how microsoft makes it presence felt. they throw freebies to our district IT people. in college, our professors require work in either .doc or .ppt, and we get office for like $20.
Windows XP Home Edition, however, ships with five ports open, behind which run "services" that serve no purpose except on a computer network.
but XP home is not designed to be on a network. according to the the horse's mouth, "Windows XP Professional is best for people who connect to large networks, such as a school or office network. also from the horse's mouth, "Windows XP Professional is required to access a domain-based network.. so they are turning on services that won't even work. great job boys.
the interface that matters is the applications' interfaces. people are familiar with office. hell, ask most of the windows users if they can do mroe than minimize and close a window and they'll say no. most people are accustomed to a particular application. especially office. sun would be better off just to map /home to /My Documents and make the OO.org UI as identical to office as legally possible. this is even more true for more specific apps,like accounting apps, what have you. that is what holds linux adoption back. most people don't even "use" the operating system, nor do they even care to. they use a tool. they could really care less what the OS is. in fact, they only know what it is when it does nasty things.
i use apple's mail.app with bayesian filtering. i have received maybe 4 or 5 true spam emails in over a year. i haven't yet missed any real emails either. i would have to say that's pretty good. otoh, our groupwise system at work is fscking horrible. i get tons of fscking spam. i have had to set dozens of rules, and it still doesn't matter.
'because developers complained about how "ugly" it was'
PC Satisfaction extends the native functionality of Windows XP with services such as an enhanced firewall and virus scanner that give customers a better Windows experience out of the box.
translation: how many third party ISV's can we assimilate
Xfree86 has a development model that places a greater emphasis on stability than new features.
just great. now xwindows will be more like windows. yippee.