most educational software sucks. period. it does absolutely nothing for students. it is designed to be sold to teachers too f***in lazy to be worried about whether their kids can read, write, or think. they just say, "golly, look at them on the computers, isn't it wonderful". adminstration grew up without computers so aren't tech savvy, and "we're using technology" sounds great and makes great PR in the school newsletter.
most ed. software teaches the kids to sit blanky and stare at the freakin screen, gaze at some gaudy shockwave/flash GUI, and then print out (maybe) the right answers from a multiple choice quiz. BFD!!!
i teach seventh grade history. what do i do? well, i have had the kids do lots of work, from creating editorial newspapers, researching curent events and doing analysis, creating web pages, and using powerpoint (i know, i know) but not the bells, whistles, and chrome crap, no the two text boxes, compare and contrast, pro and con stuff (so it would show up on tv in class to present). as well as internet research. i also had them get three different web sites on a single topic, evaluate them on content, clarity, and validity. try that with some ed. software.
i have been trying for years to get our district to adopt FOSS solutions. in fact last night, i demonstrated to school site council how to turn 30-40 old pentiums into X clients. in the school library, with parents, teachers, admin, and students, i had a p133/32mb running
GNOME2
OpenOffice writer, impress, calc
GIMP
Mozilla
Gvim (not emacs, he he!!)
Evolution
simultaneously, remotely from my classroom. that is the type of ed. softwares they can use. by the way, principal is very interested. she is clueless tech-wise, but loves the idea. she also loved how my 4 year old box i use in class class has a 55 day uptime. (mandrake 8.2/ximian) now on to the district technidiots!!!
</rant>
in case you think i'm fullof crap, my school's website is Arroyo Seco. don't netcraft it. it's iis. i had no say. and yes, the webmaster's email is mine.
I'd be more leary of putting a Linux box right on the net than I would an MS box.
are you serious? the slapper thing required gcc on the server. what the hell is gcc doing on a server, anyways? also, it affected a tiny percentage of the servers out there, compared to every windows server when a windows hole arises.
taken as a whole, *nix, and even just linux, security is far better.
i wouldn't put just any box right on the net. but the difference is this: when you use windows, you roll the dice and hope that microsoft has fixed all the holes, and when a new one arises, they jump to it.
when you use an open source OS, you can be assured that fixes will come faster and better. i think the SSL hole in IE and konqueror point this out. a fix was out in less than a day for konqueror. m$ wouldn't even acknowledge the hole, then took forever getting around to fixing it.
it's not so much the OS, but who ya gonna put your faith in...
1. work makes sense. in fact, my school's damn attendance program makes me have win4lin on my box. funny though, i ncpmount my servers, then map the drive under windows, then run the crap. the district IT is befuddled!!
though maybe businesses are going to be less thrilled to pay the tithe to pope bill in the future, and certainly can migrate lots of server side apps to linux. then when they have standards based apps, you'll be weaned from others.
2. games. fine. no argument. but my guess is that most corporate desktops are not being used for UT, or are they?
2. Mom. most people with an ounce of sense and computer skill can figure out konqueror/nautilus. but how bout this. with evolution you don't get trojans, viruses, etc. no scripting vulnerabilities in mozilla. plus, there's an abundance of software for everyone's needs.
besides, the real targets of RH are corporate desktops. like windows did, it got afoothold on the corporate desktop, supplanting os/2. it was "good enough". so is linux. now, imagine an employee needing to work on somehting at home, and asking the boss for a copy of office? yeah. but openoffice...
now, i have little experience with m$ servers, so i might be asking a really stupid question, but
are each of these servers a whole new way of doing things? i mean, did win2k totally change evrything from nt4, and with each server version, are they doing something totally different?
since i have been using/admin'ing linux from about 97/98 where i first set up a samba file/print server at my school (only to be removed later by district IT, who then screwed up everything with novell...) and built firewalls, inter/intra nets for people, done networking jobs for different small firms, etc., each time using linux(which i ended up getting to know well) and they just knew "it worked".
anyways, my first server was a RH5.2 setup, and since then, i have used and setup servers as recently as an 8.0 setup. and you know what? nothing has changed. performance has improved, features have been added, but the exaact same smb.conf file still works.
i guess i have an idea why m$ plans obsolesence, breaks backwards compatibility, and now forces upgrades. but,
one thing i have noticed is that perl is many times an "assumed you know" language. i don't believe there are tests or other industry certifications like java.
if you do web development, you better know some cgi, and any sysadmin better be able to parse log files, or automate tasks with perl.
i am working on computer programming classes in the district where i teach. it is so hard to sell them on perl because a) our district technicinas are idiots, (okay that's another story, but...) b) the curriculum people want to see how it can be measured against standards.
Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2
as far a Gates and other really hardline neocons are concerned. It's an ideological nightmare for them.
please. the group running m$ are all a bunch of lefties. look at paul allen. he gives money to a group that believes all alien should be allowed to stay here, and given all sorts of benefits. this is the group that bailed john lee malvo out of jail before his sniping spree.
MS more or less has a say in who gets appointed to the heads of the DOJ, the FCC, you name it.
are you kidding? whatever you're smoking, send me some.
just check your facts and stop the insulting, inuendos. oh yeah, get a clue.
because they have missed so many markets, and had to buy their way in (i.e. mosaic) then use their monpolistic position to gain control. this is their m.o. they wait until they see a nascent market and then jump in. this time they're taking a gamble. they are trying to be the first to market. if they win, then fine.
they see things like pda's cell phones, etc., and like many, see the ending of the pc as we know it. they also recognize the ending of OS dependency, thus the puch for.NET.
in fact wasn't this a/. posting a few days ago, something about m$ opening up windows? for them to drop a few hundred million, is nothing, and if it pays off, it is big. plus, by going in first, they scare off any potential competitors.
and if the tablet turns about to be another m$ Bob, they'll move on. see they have the ability to do so, where any startup would be gone.
company i used to work for before i became a teacher needed a specialized accounting program. ran only under dos. this is mind you, back in 1991. since we were in retail, we needed specialized inventory, and a way to track our sales merchandise and the clearance mercahndise versus our regular line stuff. something about amoritization and crap. hell, i dropped accounting in college. go fiugre. so, long about a year into the program, software company folds, but we need some modifications. oh shit. but wait, it gets better.
so, we need to ugrade our systems, and get a whole new line of IBM POS terminals. link to central database. pretty forward looking for this company. hell, we even had a sort of email in 1993. way cool. anyways, we need this data to link into new sales/ordering system. but guess what? can't be done, cause the older systems don't link up, and the data files are impossible to read.
so...about two years later, i'm gone getting teaching credential, and company isn't gotten system/data up to date. not until late 90's does it get resolved. i find out from a friend with company while we were out hunting. anyways, what was the cost...
i don't really know, but, it set back a whole series of migrations and implementations for a few years. no shit. data locked into legacy systems and binary data cost alot. just my story.
most people get windows for "free". whether preinstalled or "pirated", it has always been "free" for most. the activation scheme only came in when m$ knew there was no other option, for both xp and office. for the first time, many people had boxes that could do the upgrade. it was a calculated gamble. as for the OS, m$ sees the writing on the wall. the computer business has become commoditized, except for their chunk of it.
what they are doing is creating a revenue model, they are opening areas for greater penetration, i.e.,.NET. they realize the OS is becoming in some ways obsolete. if yo remember, win95 was fairly cutomizable, and every version of windows has become les so. why?
most people don't want to be bothered with the OS. they just want to use applications X, Y , and Z. m$ is betting the farm on web services, and the ability to rent software, not sell it. big risk. yes. but they are as business savvy as any US corp.
think, where is m$ biggest revenue source - client licensing, and where are they weakest - servers. if they can put the two together, holy f***!!! that is their gamble. the underlying desktop OS is becoming meaningless.
apparently i read that this version of windows only works with the new windows keyboard. it has built in cash and credit card slots for quick and easy payments.
i would love to use this at my school to show them the power of linux, yada yada, but might have problems hosing hard drives, etc.
is there a way to configure it so that i can get a remote x session from my desktop in my classroom. i know i can init 3, and get it from there, but i would like to drop it in, and have it automagically get X. it would be an awesome sell.
my education professors require that we turn in our work in a specific format (cough, cough). they want a zip disk with our work on it.
i know all about.doc compatibiltiy. i have been using openoffice in my classroom since last year. that wasn't the point.
the teachers put the assignments on.doc format, and it is assumed that we use Word.
in a class last year, we had to review some articles. i submitted y first review in.html created on mozilla composer. on my zip disk, he left a message, "Please submit the reviews in Microsoft Word please".
i am a grad student at cal state northridge, working on an MA in education. the ed dept. has a deal with m$ where by we can get office for $15-20 once per year. we must show our schedule to the bookstore manager, then we have to sign a sheet, they record the item number or something, then we get a cheap cd.
what is most disgusting about this is that not only do they sell it for the mac, the professors require that we submit docs in.ppt or.doc format.
trying to promote open source software is so hard when "office is 20 bucks". let me tell you, it sucks. it should be so obvious what m$ is doing.
while he took criticism at the Catholic Church's practices, he was not advocating a new religion nor church. It was only after he was forced to seek refuge in Saxony, and he had an army of followers did anything tantanount to a religion form. furthermore...
Luther was first a German nationalist. (And rabid anti-semite). he had long been upset at what he saw as foriegn potentates (i.e. popes) usurping from German princes the control over their lands. That was one of his biggest beefs.
His was an argument that dated back to a guy named Henry IV, who challenged the pope on appointing of bishops, which by default menat control of church lands. He wrote against things like the Concordat of Worms, and the Treaty of Constance. Luther was a supported of royal appointed clergy. So he sided with the kings, or in German lands, the princes. Many of his writings were not so much anti-clerical as anti church practices. Many of these the church has since abandoned.
wouldn't the whole microsoft experience be a programming error. basically they have forgone security for convenience.
we should learn from them. by allowing things like scriptable macros in office, embedded executables in IE, and no user permissions they open the door to trouble. the prevalence of all the viruses, trojans, etc., that are so pervasive should be example of how not to do things.
let m$ be the how not to inCS the how to in MBA school.
Slashdot Mirror
most educational software sucks. period. it does absolutely nothing for students. it is designed to be sold to teachers too f***in lazy to be worried about whether their kids can read, write, or think. they just say, "golly, look at them on the computers, isn't it wonderful". adminstration grew up without computers so aren't tech savvy, and "we're using technology" sounds great and makes great PR in the school newsletter.
most ed. software teaches the kids to sit blanky and stare at the freakin screen, gaze at some gaudy shockwave/flash GUI, and then print out (maybe) the right answers from a multiple choice quiz. BFD!!!
i teach seventh grade history. what do i do? well, i have had the kids do lots of work, from creating editorial newspapers, researching curent events and doing analysis, creating web pages, and using powerpoint (i know, i know) but not the bells, whistles, and chrome crap, no the two text boxes, compare and contrast, pro and con stuff (so it would show up on tv in class to present). as well as internet research. i also had them get three different web sites on a single topic, evaluate them on content, clarity, and validity. try that with some ed. software.
i have been trying for years to get our district to adopt FOSS solutions. in fact last night, i demonstrated to school site council how to turn 30-40 old pentiums into X clients. in the school library, with parents, teachers, admin, and students, i had a p133/32mb running
GNOME2
OpenOffice writer, impress, calc
GIMP
Mozilla
Gvim (not emacs, he he!!)
Evolution
simultaneously, remotely from my classroom. that is the type of ed. softwares they can use. by the way, principal is very interested. she is clueless tech-wise, but loves the idea. she also loved how my 4 year old box i use in class class has a 55 day uptime. (mandrake 8.2/ximian) now on to the district technidiots!!!
</rant>
in case you think i'm fullof crap, my school's website is Arroyo Seco. don't netcraft it. it's iis. i had no say. and yes, the webmaster's email is mine.
who's the ODM. their laptops are all made in taiwan by a few ODM's (as are most notebooks, really).
so, dell is again just repackaging/rebranding someone else's hardware and selling/servicing it. on-line.
by the way, who owns the patent on that!!!
I'd be more leary of putting a Linux box right on the net than I would an MS box.
are you serious? the slapper thing required gcc on the server. what the hell is gcc doing on a server, anyways? also, it affected a tiny percentage of the servers out there, compared to every windows server when a windows hole arises.
taken as a whole, *nix, and even just linux, security is far better.
i wouldn't put just any box right on the net. but the difference is this: when you use windows, you roll the dice and hope that microsoft has fixed all the holes, and when a new one arises, they jump to it.
when you use an open source OS, you can be assured that fixes will come faster and better. i think the SSL hole in IE and konqueror point this out. a fix was out in less than a day for konqueror. m$ wouldn't even acknowledge the hole, then took forever getting around to fixing it.
it's not so much the OS, but who ya gonna put your faith in...
1. work makes sense. in fact, my school's damn attendance program makes me have win4lin on my box. funny though, i ncpmount my servers, then map the drive under windows, then run the crap. the district IT is befuddled!! though maybe businesses are going to be less thrilled to pay the tithe to pope bill in the future, and certainly can migrate lots of server side apps to linux. then when they have standards based apps, you'll be weaned from others. 2. games. fine. no argument. but my guess is that most corporate desktops are not being used for UT, or are they? 2. Mom. most people with an ounce of sense and computer skill can figure out konqueror/nautilus. but how bout this. with evolution you don't get trojans, viruses, etc. no scripting vulnerabilities in mozilla. plus, there's an abundance of software for everyone's needs. besides, the real targets of RH are corporate desktops. like windows did, it got afoothold on the corporate desktop, supplanting os/2. it was "good enough". so is linux. now, imagine an employee needing to work on somehting at home, and asking the boss for a copy of office? yeah. but openoffice...
many of us, as you said are forced to use windows at work.
now, i have little experience with m$ servers, so i might be asking a really stupid question, but
are each of these servers a whole new way of doing things? i mean, did win2k totally change evrything from nt4, and with each server version, are they doing something totally different?
since i have been using/admin'ing linux from about 97/98 where i first set up a samba file/print server at my school (only to be removed later by district IT, who then screwed up everything with novell...) and built firewalls, inter/intra nets for people, done networking jobs for different small firms, etc., each time using linux(which i ended up getting to know well) and they just knew "it worked".
anyways, my first server was a RH5.2 setup, and since then, i have used and setup servers as recently as an 8.0 setup. and you know what? nothing has changed. performance has improved, features have been added, but the exaact same smb.conf file still works.
i guess i have an idea why m$ plans obsolesence, breaks backwards compatibility, and now forces upgrades. but,
why haven't people just said f*** it?
one thing i have noticed is that perl is many times an "assumed you know" language. i don't believe there are tests or other industry certifications like java.
if you do web development, you better know some cgi, and any sysadmin better be able to parse log files, or automate tasks with perl.
i am working on computer programming classes in the district where i teach. it is so hard to sell them on perl because a) our district technicinas are idiots, (okay that's another story, but...) b) the curriculum people want to see how it can be measured against standards.
just buy Sam's teach yourself Visual Basic in 21 days...
1) what is the menaing of is?
2) is oral sex, well, sex?
answer correctly and you too can be POTUS.
Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2
since when did win2000 become a flavor of unix?
as far a Gates and other really hardline neocons are concerned. It's an ideological nightmare for them.
please. the group running m$ are all a bunch of lefties. look at paul allen. he gives money to a group that believes all alien should be allowed to stay here, and given all sorts of benefits. this is the group that bailed john lee malvo out of jail before his sniping spree.
MS more or less has a say in who gets appointed to the heads of the DOJ, the FCC, you name it.
are you kidding? whatever you're smoking, send me some.
just check your facts and stop the insulting, inuendos. oh yeah, get a clue.
because they have missed so many markets, and had to buy their way in (i.e. mosaic) then use their monpolistic position to gain control. this is their m.o. they wait until they see a nascent market and then jump in. this time they're taking a gamble. they are trying to be the first to market. if they win, then fine.
.NET.
/. posting a few days ago, something about m$ opening up windows? for them to drop a few hundred million, is nothing, and if it pays off, it is big. plus, by going in first, they scare off any potential competitors.
they see things like pda's cell phones, etc., and like many, see the ending of the pc as we know it. they also recognize the ending of OS dependency, thus the puch for
in fact wasn't this a
and if the tablet turns about to be another m$ Bob, they'll move on. see they have the ability to do so, where any startup would be gone.
funny story (sort of):
company i used to work for before i became a teacher needed a specialized accounting program. ran only under dos. this is mind you, back in 1991. since we were in retail, we needed specialized inventory, and a way to track our sales merchandise and the clearance mercahndise versus our regular line stuff. something about amoritization and crap. hell, i dropped accounting in college. go fiugre. so, long about a year into the program, software company folds, but we need some modifications. oh shit. but wait, it gets better.
so, we need to ugrade our systems, and get a whole new line of IBM POS terminals. link to central database. pretty forward looking for this company. hell, we even had a sort of email in 1993. way cool. anyways, we need this data to link into new sales/ordering system. but guess what? can't be done, cause the older systems don't link up, and the data files are impossible to read.
so...about two years later, i'm gone getting teaching credential, and company isn't gotten system/data up to date. not until late 90's does it get resolved. i find out from a friend with company while we were out hunting. anyways, what was the cost...
i don't really know, but, it set back a whole series of migrations and implementations for a few years. no shit. data locked into legacy systems and binary data cost alot. just my story.
but now I can get Windows for free too.
.NET. they realize the OS is becoming in some ways obsolete. if yo remember, win95 was fairly cutomizable, and every version of windows has become les so. why?
most people get windows for "free". whether preinstalled or "pirated", it has always been "free" for most. the activation scheme only came in when m$ knew there was no other option, for both xp and office. for the first time, many people had boxes that could do the upgrade. it was a calculated gamble. as for the OS, m$ sees the writing on the wall. the computer business has become commoditized, except for their chunk of it.
what they are doing is creating a revenue model, they are opening areas for greater penetration, i.e.,
most people don't want to be bothered with the OS. they just want to use applications X, Y , and Z. m$ is betting the farm on web services, and the ability to rent software, not sell it. big risk. yes. but they are as business savvy as any US corp.
think, where is m$ biggest revenue source - client licensing, and where are they weakest - servers. if they can put the two together, holy f***!!! that is their gamble. the underlying desktop OS is becoming meaningless.
apparently i read that this version of windows only works with the new windows keyboard. it has built in cash and credit card slots for quick and easy payments.
i would love to use this at my school to show them the power of linux, yada yada, but might have problems hosing hard drives, etc.
is there a way to configure it so that i can get a remote x session from my desktop in my classroom. i know i can init 3, and get it from there, but i would like to drop it in, and have it automagically get X. it would be an awesome sell.
or is this just a case of RTFM?
my education professors require that we turn in our work in a specific format (cough, cough). they want a zip disk with our work on it.
.doc compatibiltiy. i have been using openoffice in my classroom since last year. that wasn't the point.
.html created on mozilla composer. on my zip disk, he left a message, "Please submit the reviews in Microsoft Word please".
i know all about
the teachers put the assignments on.doc format, and it is assumed that we use Word.
in a class last year, we had to review some articles. i submitted y first review in
nuff said.
they create a fictitious business to show you how to save money and you can download the specs in get this: an excel spreadsheet. WTF?!?!
see here:
did i miss something, or does office now run on unix? (no os x trolling here please)
i am a grad student at cal state northridge, working on an MA in education. the ed dept. has a deal with m$ where by we can get office for $15-20 once per year. we must show our schedule to the bookstore manager, then we have to sign a sheet, they record the item number or something, then we get a cheap cd.
.ppt or .doc format.
what is most disgusting about this is that not only do they sell it for the mac, the professors require that we submit docs in
trying to promote open source software is so hard when "office is 20 bucks". let me tell you, it sucks. it should be so obvious what m$ is doing.
while he took criticism at the Catholic Church's practices, he was not advocating a new religion nor church. It was only after he was forced to seek refuge in Saxony, and he had an army of followers did anything tantanount to a religion form. furthermore...
Luther was first a German nationalist. (And rabid anti-semite). he had long been upset at what he saw as foriegn potentates (i.e. popes) usurping from German princes the control over their lands. That was one of his biggest beefs.
His was an argument that dated back to a guy named Henry IV, who challenged the pope on appointing of bishops, which by default menat control of church lands. He wrote against things like the Concordat of Worms, and the Treaty of Constance. Luther was a supported of royal appointed clergy. So he sided with the kings, or in German lands, the princes. Many of his writings were not so much anti-clerical as anti church practices. Many of these the church has since abandoned.
that allows a Server to go down
hell, i'll allow a server to go down on me, he he he...
and you've written a linux kernel extension for single image clustering?
if you agree or disagree with him fine. but you're an idiot for saying moshe bar has no credibility.
wouldn't the whole microsoft experience be a programming error. basically they have forgone security for convenience.
we should learn from them. by allowing things like scriptable macros in office, embedded executables in IE, and no user permissions they open the door to trouble. the prevalence of all the viruses, trojans, etc., that are so pervasive should be example of how not to do things.
let m$ be the how not to inCS the how to in MBA school.
check the document for hidden tags, maybe it's written by valerie malinson
i beleive the newton from mac did this like 10 years ago, but the procesors weren't fast enough to keep up with handwriting recognition.
so much for m$ innovation.