Netscape was better technically certainly back then - it had email and a newsreader built-in, and worked better. Maybe you don't remember IE 2.0, but I certainly do - the only thing we suggested our users do with it was use it to download Netscape.
IE 3.0 was somewhat better, but still not there. But from our (business) perspective, it definitely was something we could distribute to our users, whereas Netscape wasn't even an option, with those terms. We would have at least offered users a choice between the two - as it is, IE 3.0 was the end of Netscape for us, other than telling users they could feel free to download it. But why bother, when IE was provided for them on a CD?
Everyone knows that Netscape lost to IE on the Windows platform, because of Microsoft bundling IE with the OS for free.
Not completely. I ran an ISP at the time (1996 or so), and even when IE 3.0 came out (I still have two of the "I downloaded!" glow-in-the-dark T-shirts!), Netscape was better. We would have loved to continue including it on on our setup disks for our customers.
But here's the thing: even though Netscape was available for free download, they got greedy - they wanted to charge us, as the ISP, $20 per copy, purchasable only in lots of 1000, to provide it to our customers. And then, if our customers called Netscape support lines for help, they would gladly provide it - then charge us for doing so.
So at first, our install disks included a utility that would download Netscape. Then IE 3.0 came out, was totally free, and even had the IEAK which allowed us to pre-set bookmarks, brand it, etc. It also supported a sign-up server allowing us to just distribute the disks with "insert this disk to sign up!" on them, and it would connect up to our systems and walk the users through creating their accounts, after I wrote some custom C code. This was HUGE for us. No more stopping into the office to sign up, no more paperwork.
So we went to IE and told Netscape to go Cheney themselves. As a result, every one of our users started out their online life with IE. And even though I'm no Microsoft fan, I don't feel bad about that, based on Netscape's behavior.
Yep, my folks (pushing 70) have one and like it. You can get one with predefined buttons even, much like the Firefly-type kid's phones, and can talk to an operator if you need to call someone else.
Probably a good fit for her, unless she plans to call a lot - the Jitterbug plans seem somewhat pricey.
Vista is such a bloated pig it barely fits on a 32-bit system (it only performs acceptably with 2G of memory), and we know by now that every new OS release from Microsoft is even more of a bloated pig than the one before.
Consequently, anyone should be able to see that the next OS they release won't fit on a 32-bit system, much less have room for applications to run. This just makes good sense.
Thanks for the links! Both are very cool, unfortunately I'm looking for stuff that I can do from a Linux script - ideally a Perl module.
One thing I've started looking at is that there's a new ID3v2 frame type that does pretty much the same thing as the Apple enhanced podcast stuff - allows content and chapter marks to be put into MP3 files. It's still kind of in its infancy, but it's getting there. Pocket Player, which I use on my Windows Mobile phone with a Bluetooth stereo headset, has preliminary support for it.
I'd like to see the ID3v2 stuff get so widely supported that Apple has to support it on the Ipod and give up their proprietary stuff, but that'll take awhile, I'm sure.
as a file with a.smil extension, which gives me a nice file to parse with segment titles, audio src tags and such.
The showcode you can see as the first JavaScript parameter on the webpage link to the audio, and if you leave the segnum parameter blank, you get all of it for that day's show.
Then I just iterate over those (my script starts parallel processes to do more than one at once for speed, NPR hosts on Speedera edge caching servers) and run:
Then I do the same multiple-process thing with lame to convert the wav files to mp3.
This is script-based stuff for a Linux box, not for real-time browsing. But I would imagine that a GreaseMonkey script could easily piece together a URL like that from the JavaScript code linked to each story.
Who said redistributing? It's for my personal use and not redistributed in any way. And I pay my local affiliate to offset the use, despite the fact that they suck and only air NPR on a crappy AM station that I can't even get half the places I want to listen to it. I'm looking at you, Colorado Public Radio.
I didn't mean "podcast" in the sense of a publicly-posted one, I meant for me, hosted on my own Linux box and available in my house via Apache. My script grabs the playlist for the day's show, streams the Real Media files and converts them to MP3 on-the-fly, then puts them on my internal web server for download. My podcast client points there, and I can also access it remotely via an SSH tunnel when I want.
As for it being "a bitch of a process", the only bitch was writing the script, and it was a good learning exercise.
Unfortunately, I don't often do it as NPR doesn't post the files until after I leave for work. I'd gladly pay to get hold of a podcast of Morning Edition as it's being aired on the east coast, but they won't do it.
Sometimes I also use a script that records WNYC's real-time stream and makes that into a podcast, but that's annoying because I often want to skip stories, like the constantly-annoying "human interest" stories they air at about ten minutes before the hour.
Just do what I do - decode the Javascript to find the actual location of the Real streams (I like the quality better than the WMV streams), then use command-line mplayer to stream it out and reencode it to MP3.
Now if Apple would just release tools or docs for creating enhanced podcast files for something other than a crappy command-line tool for OSX, I could make a rocking NPR podcast with skippable segments, but noooo...
The improved version is a nice rewrite of the routine in question that drops some letters (obvious candidates for a number to letter mixup like "ell" and "ess") and moves some assignments outside the loop - now it's generating 100K+ keys in 16 minutes on an X2 4200+ processor! And saving them to a file as well.
Things like this are definitely proof that Microsoft simply DOES NOT UNDERSTAND security in any way shape or form. Firstly, having something this important even be available as a VBScript function is positively hilarious, and secondly, not inserting delays in the product key validation routine to foil brute-force attempts is a seriously n00b error.
I haven't used a modem in my house since 2001 - and that was only because I was silly enough to move from Omaha to Denver and think that, since I had a cable modem in Omaha, surely I could get one in Denver. Silly me. I spent the next nearly two years back in dialup hell.
Other than laptops, who the heck uses modems anymore? My 250+ employee IT consulting company just noticed a few months ago that our last two dialup lines weren't working, because noone had used them!
Personally, when I used to travel to Asia and the Middle East, I always wore earthtones and Birkenstocks a lot and pretended I was German - worked great for me. Of course, being somewhat heavyset with close-cropped hair, a mustache and goatee and small German-stereotype glasses helped a lot too.
Now I'm considering scrambling to get my passport renewed before they start issuing this crap - my company was recently bought out by EMC and EMC has big plans for Europe and Asia in the coming couple of years.
And also according to FCC standards, 802.11 wireless is a Part 15 service, and must accept interference, so you can expect approximately no action from the FCC on this issue.
Part 15 devices are not protected from interference.
I used to have a WinRadio, I think it was the 2000 version, in an old Pentium II/233 machine, and it performed quite well and didn't pick up much of anything for hash from the computer, amazingly. The actual radio electronics are very well-shielded on the board, and then it's just a matter of getting the antenna away a little. Actually, though, I got good results with just the long-wire that came with it.
They did recommend at the time that if your BIOS had a setting to ramdomly vary the clock frequency, it was a good idea to turn that on, because then any noise it may pick up will be spread widely and won't interfere with a given signal.
Or, if you want a REALLY low-tech way to not swamp your incoming, do what I do when I need to download something from Easynews when I'm at work and don't want to swamp the whole connection - use wget with the --limit-rate option. Works amazingly well.
I ran a bulk-sending system (legitimate!) to email Frontier Airline's frequent flyer members, and Verizon was the biggest single problem getting mail through. I don't think I ever did get them to accept our runs at all.
The big thing they already had in place was that they want to connect back on port 25 to the sending system AND make sure it responds initially with the same name it's using to send mail out. Not a bad thing overall, I suppose, but I can see how it would block quite a few messages from providers that use separate sending servers from their receiving servers. I finally had to set up SMTPFWDD on both outgoing servers to accept connections and silently drop any emails they get, that helped, but I think they still rate-limited heavily.
I'd say if you depend on getting your email, Verizon's not a good ISP to use.
I'll second that. I have several X10 modules in the house and it works great.
I put one on the lamps in the kids' rooms, so they can read or whatever without me having to worry or sneak in if they crash without turning them off - I just hit "all off" on the remote at night before I go to bed. A USB interface to my Linux box allows me to make the house look occupied while we're away. It's also great for lights down in the basement, in closets, etc that always seem to get left on - every night the Linux box shuts them all down at 11pm. Saves quite a bit of electricity right there.
Luckily, though, the X10 stuff was so insanely cheap that I'll most likely get some Insteon stuff to try out and nuke all the X10 stuff if it's better.
If it's 755, users can execute it, but if they don't have root, trying to send signals to processes they don't own is going to be rather futile. I would imagine it would send signals to their own processes, though, so it would act like a personal killall.
Unless you're not going to be very demanding on the system (i.e. actually use the best features), I wouldn't recommend using a Mini-ITX board for the main system.
One of the big advantages of Myth is its support for transcoding the recordings after they're done, removing commercials automatically, and archiving them to, say, DivX or XviD format. You're not going to be doing that with a 1 GHZ processor on a Mini ITX board.
Much better to get a real box for the backend, which does the recording, and network it to the Mini ITX box to use as the frontend, which runs the user interface.
Personally, I got sick of seeing my 2.8 GHZ P4 Hyperthreaded Sony desktop being used as the family web browser/email machine (such a waste!) so I replaced it with a nice little 2.4 GHZ Compaq EVO from Ebay and am building Myth 0.19 on Ubuntu on the Sony. It's big, it has space for two hard drives, it has a DVD burner and a CDROM drive built in, and it's SILENT, even when running 3+ hour video reencoding jobs at 100% CPU. Got a 300 GB Samsung drive for it, with room for another before I need to go external.
Today my PVR-350 comes, so that'll get me really going on the build. I'll try and use its video output, but I'm starting to see a lot of limitations with that, as the author mentions. I may get a cheap NVidea card with TV out instead. But the PVR-350's are the same price, if not cheaper, as the 250's right now, so why not get one?
Next thing to check out is getting a cable box with Firewire output from Comcast to record some HDTV on, even though I only have a standard TV. Supposedly they're required by the FCC to give me a box with Firewire that outputs at least all "must carry" (read: local broadcast) stations unencrypted, we'll see.
I currently have a Panasonic Showstopper (also known as a ReplayTV first generation) which has worked well for going on five years, but the Myth user interface simply blows it out of the water - killer searching and recording options, a remote REAL-TIME web interface (Replay has one, but the box only dials up once a night - wanna record something now when you're at work, you're out of luck). Plus weather, RSS, and a general video storage area that will also mean I can move my XBox running XBox Media Center to another room.
Once this is all happy, I may look into getting some Mini-ITX boxes with monitors for the kids' rooms and load Ubuntu on them - voila, web surfing and email that I can control and monitor, and Myth frontend machines for them to watch shows on, which I can also monitor.
Geek family nirvana!
Re:Sudo is only useful when there are lots of admi
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I would disagree, in some cases. I like that Ubuntu does things this way, because it's designed for less-experienced users. I often see posts in the forums that list several commands in a row to execute, all preceded by sudo.
Being a more experienced admin, that looks wierd and counterproductive. But here's the nice thing: it keeps users from opening up a root shell and then forgetting they're in that shell, where they could easily wreak havoc. I think that's a good thing.
Me, I pretty much just always type "sudo -i" to do my stuff. But I wouldn't want less experienced users doing that.
idiot educators who refuse to recognize the realities of modern communication, and insist on teaching skills that have no use other than to give the educators something "special" to teach.
Here's a great example: my sons, 6 and 5, are being taught a different writing style. It's called D'Nealian Handwriting, and here is a sample of it. It's basically italics, with curly-q's at the end of each letter, and slanted letters.
Now you may ask, why the heck do we need a new writing style to teach our youngsters? Well, one of the big reasons given is that it makes the transition to cursive writing easier. Excuse me? Cursive? Other than to formulate a signature, perhaps, what real purpose does cursive writing have any more? Cursive should be like caligraphy: you want to learn it, you take a special class, maybe as an elective in high school.
But of course, in true modern education style, the teachers don't actually care whether my kids learn to formulate their letters WELL or anything. So the end result is, my kids have crappy writing and are developing bad habits in a writing style that's, in my opinion, harder to read in the first place. I've had to download practice sheets to print out to work to get their letter formation to something even marginally readable.
And they're already smart enough to see how stupid all this is - the end result is they've already got an unhealthy disrespect for the whole teaching process, which can only hinder things.
So don't just blame everything on technology. Our educators have a big piece of this pie too.
It seems a little case called Amado vs. Microsoft got decided not all that long ago, David beat Goliath, and now, any new installation of Office 2003 that doesn't include SP2 will be considered "out of compliance with Microsoft's licensing requirements".
Sure hope there's not anything else in Office SP2 that's a problem... Sucks to be using closed-source software.
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Netscape was better technically certainly back then - it had email and a newsreader built-in, and worked better. Maybe you don't remember IE 2.0, but I certainly do - the only thing we suggested our users do with it was use it to download Netscape.
IE 3.0 was somewhat better, but still not there. But from our (business) perspective, it definitely was something we could distribute to our users, whereas Netscape wasn't even an option, with those terms. We would have at least offered users a choice between the two - as it is, IE 3.0 was the end of Netscape for us, other than telling users they could feel free to download it. But why bother, when IE was provided for them on a CD?
Not completely. I ran an ISP at the time (1996 or so), and even when IE 3.0 came out (I still have two of the "I downloaded!" glow-in-the-dark T-shirts!), Netscape was better. We would have loved to continue including it on on our setup disks for our customers.
But here's the thing: even though Netscape was available for free download, they got greedy - they wanted to charge us, as the ISP, $20 per copy, purchasable only in lots of 1000, to provide it to our customers. And then, if our customers called Netscape support lines for help, they would gladly provide it - then charge us for doing so.
So at first, our install disks included a utility that would download Netscape. Then IE 3.0 came out, was totally free, and even had the IEAK which allowed us to pre-set bookmarks, brand it, etc. It also supported a sign-up server allowing us to just distribute the disks with "insert this disk to sign up!" on them, and it would connect up to our systems and walk the users through creating their accounts, after I wrote some custom C code. This was HUGE for us. No more stopping into the office to sign up, no more paperwork.
So we went to IE and told Netscape to go Cheney themselves. As a result, every one of our users started out their online life with IE. And even though I'm no Microsoft fan, I don't feel bad about that, based on Netscape's behavior.
Yep, my folks (pushing 70) have one and like it. You can get one with predefined buttons even, much like the Firefly-type kid's phones, and can talk to an operator if you need to call someone else. Probably a good fit for her, unless she plans to call a lot - the Jitterbug plans seem somewhat pricey.
Who is this guy and why hasn't Bush fired him yet?
Vista is such a bloated pig it barely fits on a 32-bit system (it only performs acceptably with 2G of memory), and we know by now that every new OS release from Microsoft is even more of a bloated pig than the one before.
Consequently, anyone should be able to see that the next OS they release won't fit on a 32-bit system, much less have room for applications to run. This just makes good sense.
Thanks for the links! Both are very cool, unfortunately I'm looking for stuff that I can do from a Linux script - ideally a Perl module.
One thing I've started looking at is that there's a new ID3v2 frame type that does pretty much the same thing as the Apple enhanced podcast stuff - allows content and chapter marks to be put into MP3 files. It's still kind of in its infancy, but it's getting there. Pocket Player, which I use on my Windows Mobile phone with a Bluetooth stereo headset, has preliminary support for it.
I'd like to see the ID3v2 stuff get so widely supported that Apple has to support it on the Ipod and give up their proprietary stuff, but that'll take awhile, I'm sure.
Well, not to give too much up, and I won't post my script as that would be uncool to NPR, but...
M E&showDate=17-Apr-2007&segNum=&mediaPref=RM&getUnd erwriting=0
.smil extension, which gives me a nice file to parse with segment titles, audio src tags and such.
I save off:
http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=
as a file with a
The showcode you can see as the first JavaScript parameter on the webpage link to the audio, and if you leave the segnum parameter blank, you get all of it for that day's show.
Then I just iterate over those (my script starts parallel processes to do more than one at once for speed, NPR hosts on Speedera edge caching servers) and run:
mplayer -nocache -vc dummy -vo null -ao pcm:waveheader:file=out.wav (audio src url)
Then I do the same multiple-process thing with lame to convert the wav files to mp3.
This is script-based stuff for a Linux box, not for real-time browsing. But I would imagine that a GreaseMonkey script could easily piece together a URL like that from the JavaScript code linked to each story.
Who said redistributing? It's for my personal use and not redistributed in any way. And I pay my local affiliate to offset the use, despite the fact that they suck and only air NPR on a crappy AM station that I can't even get half the places I want to listen to it. I'm looking at you, Colorado Public Radio.
I didn't mean "podcast" in the sense of a publicly-posted one, I meant for me, hosted on my own Linux box and available in my house via Apache. My script grabs the playlist for the day's show, streams the Real Media files and converts them to MP3 on-the-fly, then puts them on my internal web server for download. My podcast client points there, and I can also access it remotely via an SSH tunnel when I want.
As for it being "a bitch of a process", the only bitch was writing the script, and it was a good learning exercise.
Unfortunately, I don't often do it as NPR doesn't post the files until after I leave for work. I'd gladly pay to get hold of a podcast of Morning Edition as it's being aired on the east coast, but they won't do it.
Sometimes I also use a script that records WNYC's real-time stream and makes that into a podcast, but that's annoying because I often want to skip stories, like the constantly-annoying "human interest" stories they air at about ten minutes before the hour.
Just do what I do - decode the Javascript to find the actual location of the Real streams (I like the quality better than the WMV streams), then use command-line mplayer to stream it out and reencode it to MP3.
Now if Apple would just release tools or docs for creating enhanced podcast files for something other than a crappy command-line tool for OSX, I could make a rocking NPR podcast with skippable segments, but noooo...
It gets better...
The improved version is a nice rewrite of the routine in question that drops some letters (obvious candidates for a number to letter mixup like "ell" and "ess") and moves some assignments outside the loop - now it's generating 100K+ keys in 16 minutes on an X2 4200+ processor! And saving them to a file as well.
Things like this are definitely proof that Microsoft simply DOES NOT UNDERSTAND security in any way shape or form. Firstly, having something this important even be available as a VBScript function is positively hilarious, and secondly, not inserting delays in the product key validation routine to foil brute-force attempts is a seriously n00b error.
When does Wookie Christmas 2 come out? In time for this holiday season? Can't wait!
I haven't used a modem in my house since 2001 - and that was only because I was silly enough to move from Omaha to Denver and think that, since I had a cable modem in Omaha, surely I could get one in Denver. Silly me. I spent the next nearly two years back in dialup hell.
Other than laptops, who the heck uses modems anymore? My 250+ employee IT consulting company just noticed a few months ago that our last two dialup lines weren't working, because noone had used them!
Personally, when I used to travel to Asia and the Middle East, I always wore earthtones and Birkenstocks a lot and pretended I was German - worked great for me. Of course, being somewhat heavyset with close-cropped hair, a mustache and goatee and small German-stereotype glasses helped a lot too.
Now I'm considering scrambling to get my passport renewed before they start issuing this crap - my company was recently bought out by EMC and EMC has big plans for Europe and Asia in the coming couple of years.
Because Microsoft is a convicted monopolist? Does the phase "maintenance of monopoly" mean anything to you?
And no, that doesn't mean taping up the corners of the box for your Parker Brothers game.
And also according to FCC standards, 802.11 wireless is a Part 15 service, and must accept interference, so you can expect approximately no action from the FCC on this issue.
Part 15 devices are not protected from interference.
I used to have a WinRadio, I think it was the 2000 version, in an old Pentium II/233 machine, and it performed quite well and didn't pick up much of anything for hash from the computer, amazingly. The actual radio electronics are very well-shielded on the board, and then it's just a matter of getting the antenna away a little. Actually, though, I got good results with just the long-wire that came with it.
They did recommend at the time that if your BIOS had a setting to ramdomly vary the clock frequency, it was a good idea to turn that on, because then any noise it may pick up will be spread widely and won't interfere with a given signal.
Or, if you want a REALLY low-tech way to not swamp your incoming, do what I do when I need to download something from Easynews when I'm at work and don't want to swamp the whole connection - use wget with the --limit-rate option. Works amazingly well.
The Bush administration? Keeping secrets? Say it ain't so, Joe!
I ran a bulk-sending system (legitimate!) to email Frontier Airline's frequent flyer members, and Verizon was the biggest single problem getting mail through. I don't think I ever did get them to accept our runs at all.
The big thing they already had in place was that they want to connect back on port 25 to the sending system AND make sure it responds initially with the same name it's using to send mail out. Not a bad thing overall, I suppose, but I can see how it would block quite a few messages from providers that use separate sending servers from their receiving servers. I finally had to set up SMTPFWDD on both outgoing servers to accept connections and silently drop any emails they get, that helped, but I think they still rate-limited heavily.
I'd say if you depend on getting your email, Verizon's not a good ISP to use.
I'll second that. I have several X10 modules in the house and it works great.
I put one on the lamps in the kids' rooms, so they can read or whatever without me having to worry or sneak in if they crash without turning them off - I just hit "all off" on the remote at night before I go to bed. A USB interface to my Linux box allows me to make the house look occupied while we're away. It's also great for lights down in the basement, in closets, etc that always seem to get left on - every night the Linux box shuts them all down at 11pm. Saves quite a bit of electricity right there.
Luckily, though, the X10 stuff was so insanely cheap that I'll most likely get some Insteon stuff to try out and nuke all the X10 stuff if it's better.
If it's 755, users can execute it, but if they don't have root, trying to send signals to processes they don't own is going to be rather futile. I would imagine it would send signals to their own processes, though, so it would act like a personal killall.
Unless you're not going to be very demanding on the system (i.e. actually use the best features), I wouldn't recommend using a Mini-ITX board for the main system.
One of the big advantages of Myth is its support for transcoding the recordings after they're done, removing commercials automatically, and archiving them to, say, DivX or XviD format. You're not going to be doing that with a 1 GHZ processor on a Mini ITX board.
Much better to get a real box for the backend, which does the recording, and network it to the Mini ITX box to use as the frontend, which runs the user interface.
Personally, I got sick of seeing my 2.8 GHZ P4 Hyperthreaded Sony desktop being used as the family web browser/email machine (such a waste!) so I replaced it with a nice little 2.4 GHZ Compaq EVO from Ebay and am building Myth 0.19 on Ubuntu on the Sony. It's big, it has space for two hard drives, it has a DVD burner and a CDROM drive built in, and it's SILENT, even when running 3+ hour video reencoding jobs at 100% CPU. Got a 300 GB Samsung drive for it, with room for another before I need to go external.
Today my PVR-350 comes, so that'll get me really going on the build. I'll try and use its video output, but I'm starting to see a lot of limitations with that, as the author mentions. I may get a cheap NVidea card with TV out instead. But the PVR-350's are the same price, if not cheaper, as the 250's right now, so why not get one?
Next thing to check out is getting a cable box with Firewire output from Comcast to record some HDTV on, even though I only have a standard TV. Supposedly they're required by the FCC to give me a box with Firewire that outputs at least all "must carry" (read: local broadcast) stations unencrypted, we'll see.
I currently have a Panasonic Showstopper (also known as a ReplayTV first generation) which has worked well for going on five years, but the Myth user interface simply blows it out of the water - killer searching and recording options, a remote REAL-TIME web interface (Replay has one, but the box only dials up once a night - wanna record something now when you're at work, you're out of luck). Plus weather, RSS, and a general video storage area that will also mean I can move my XBox running XBox Media Center to another room.
Once this is all happy, I may look into getting some Mini-ITX boxes with monitors for the kids' rooms and load Ubuntu on them - voila, web surfing and email that I can control and monitor, and Myth frontend machines for them to watch shows on, which I can also monitor.
Geek family nirvana!
I would disagree, in some cases. I like that Ubuntu does things this way, because it's designed for less-experienced users. I often see posts in the forums that list several commands in a row to execute, all preceded by sudo.
Being a more experienced admin, that looks wierd and counterproductive. But here's the nice thing: it keeps users from opening up a root shell and then forgetting they're in that shell, where they could easily wreak havoc. I think that's a good thing.
Me, I pretty much just always type "sudo -i" to do my stuff. But I wouldn't want less experienced users doing that.
Here's a great example: my sons, 6 and 5, are being taught a different writing style. It's called D'Nealian Handwriting, and here is a sample of it. It's basically italics, with curly-q's at the end of each letter, and slanted letters.
Now you may ask, why the heck do we need a new writing style to teach our youngsters? Well, one of the big reasons given is that it makes the transition to cursive writing easier. Excuse me? Cursive? Other than to formulate a signature, perhaps, what real purpose does cursive writing have any more? Cursive should be like caligraphy: you want to learn it, you take a special class, maybe as an elective in high school.
But of course, in true modern education style, the teachers don't actually care whether my kids learn to formulate their letters WELL or anything. So the end result is, my kids have crappy writing and are developing bad habits in a writing style that's, in my opinion, harder to read in the first place. I've had to download practice sheets to print out to work to get their letter formation to something even marginally readable.
And they're already smart enough to see how stupid all this is - the end result is they've already got an unhealthy disrespect for the whole teaching process, which can only hinder things.
So don't just blame everything on technology. Our educators have a big piece of this pie too.
It seems a little case called Amado vs. Microsoft got decided not all that long ago, David beat Goliath, and now, any new installation of Office 2003 that doesn't include SP2 will be considered "out of compliance with Microsoft's licensing requirements".
Sure hope there's not anything else in Office SP2 that's a problem... Sucks to be using closed-source software.