From personal experience in a different field I question the religion of "Peer Review". I worked for a small company that published a thoroughly researched, valid career interest assessment. Unfortunately, we could not get our research published in the "peer reviewed" journal that represented the field. Why? because the editor of the journal (a very well respected professor from a large university) hated, yes hated with a passion, the founder and developer of our assessment. It all stemmed from a disagreement they had in graduate school 30 years in the past. The editor accepted all research from another large company that he worked very closely with, but would not even accept for review our research, much less publish any of it. He once went so far as to verbally harass me at a trade show in front of other academics and potential customers because our product was not published in any "peer reviewed" journals. The point is when those with a certain opinion become the gate keepers to the journals you can pretty much guess what gets published and what doesn't.
Yep, Everything that flashed through your consciousness has happened many, many times in my K-12 District w/ the exception of the server cracked part.
My world:
10 Buildings scattered across town 800+ PCs (mixed Windows OS) 500+ MACs (mixed MAC OS and OS X) 10 Servers (Novell, Linux and 1 W2K) Fiber INET between Buildings 6000 Students 650 Staff
3 IT Staff for the whole thing (well... we have staff help at the building level, but it is very part time, and in half the buildings the help is no help at all.
I came from the private sector and had to give up almost all of my ideas of how IT should be done.
300 Teachers definitely. I think that I have heard every item on your list more than once.
In the K-12 District I work for we have no more than 75 "Staff only" laptops, and they have more trouble and a much shorter life than the nearly 1000 PCs we let the kids use.
Example 1. Administrator brings in her expensive IBM ThinkPad (that she just had to have at 2x the cost of the Dells we normally spec)a couple of months after new. She says "The screen doesn't work" I open the cover and in addition to the cat paw prints on the screen there is way too much play in the hinges (or what passes for hinges) and it looks like the screen had been hyper-extended. I asked what happened and she responds "My Kids were playing w/ it over the weekend and I don't know what happened, can you fix it?"
Example 2. Different Adminstrator dumps entire cup of coffee on her 1 week old Dell. She was used to having just the keyboard to wreck (we have replaced her keyboard at least once for the very same problem).
Example 3... on and on and on w/ the same stories as above. You get the idea!
On the other hand we have 150+ Apple iBooks that the kids as young as 2nd grade use all day w/out many problems at all. The Apples have been way more reliable than I thought they would be when we first got them; most of the issues have been deliberate destruction though.
Disclosure: I am a white, conservative, Republican, male. In other words, I am one of the most despised people in the U.S. and apparently the rest of the world.
In addition to the above, I am the Technology Coordinator, and senior network engineer for a smallish school district.
With my position comes complete administrative control for the entire network. I can open and peruse any directory or file w/ merely the click of the mouse. I don't! period! the ability to do so demands the responsibility not to do so. I once explained the situation to the new Superintendent as follows: "There is nothing in any folder on the network that could be so interesting to me that I would jeopardize my job to read, and further, soil my own honor for something so trivial."
If the Republican staffers even so much as only clicked a mouse button and opened someone's unprotected folder they should face whatever legal ramifications this action entails. I do not think it rises to the level of a Patriot Act offense, but if it does: HANG THEM! If it doesn't: Fire them on the spot! If there are Republican Senators involved, Censure them. Even if their only involvement in the affair was not firing the staffers who opened the files.
I wanted the Clinton Administration and the Clinton's to pay for their ethical lapses, and I will not let the Republicans off the hook for similar antics. So I hope that the matter is fully investigated and all guilty parties get their due.
As an interesting side note: The leaked material shows the Democrats to be guilty of just this side of Treason.
OK,
As I read the IBM site RE: the OS/2 strategy for 2003. I think that what they are saying is that they are going to upgrade OS/2 for EXISTING INSTALLATIONS. They have no interest in reviving OS/2 as a desktop platform (this is truly unfortunate IMO).
They are going to bring certain web services functions to OS/2 in order to help the many current installations migrate to the WebSphere Platform with as few headaches as possible. Why? so that they can stop providing support for OS/2.
I think that IBMs focus on Linux is the most effective use of their funds. As much as I had hoped for the success of OS/2 those many years ago, it ain't gonna happen so it is time to move on.
Wow, talk about exposing one of my healed raw nerves.
I too bought Warp4 with great expectations. I convinced my boss to spring for a new Dell w/ 16Meg RAM and I believe a 1Gig HDD. I installed the new OS with very little difficulty and was ready to rock. Then I opened a spreadsheet and the cursor was off by a mile!
I called the video card manufacture (Number 9, where are they now?) to ask if they had drivers for Warp rather than 2.11 (one of the major changes to OS/2 from 2.11 to Warp 4 was the video subsystem). After the guy finished laughing at me he sneered " when they sell more than 3 copies of that crap we might think about it" and hung up on me.
I also got a nearly identical response from the developer of SPSS. While they were heavily advertising their new version for NT3.5!
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From personal experience in a different field I question the religion of "Peer Review". I worked for a small company that published a thoroughly researched, valid career interest assessment. Unfortunately, we could not get our research published in the "peer reviewed" journal that represented the field. Why? because the editor of the journal (a very well respected professor from a large university) hated, yes hated with a passion, the founder and developer of our assessment. It all stemmed from a disagreement they had in graduate school 30 years in the past. The editor accepted all research from another large company that he worked very closely with, but would not even accept for review our research, much less publish any of it. He once went so far as to verbally harass me at a trade show in front of other academics and potential customers because our product was not published in any "peer reviewed" journals. The point is when those with a certain opinion become the gate keepers to the journals you can pretty much guess what gets published and what doesn't.
Yep, Everything that flashed through your consciousness has happened many, many times in my K-12 District w/ the exception of the server cracked part.
My world:
10 Buildings scattered across town
800+ PCs (mixed Windows OS)
500+ MACs (mixed MAC OS and OS X)
10 Servers (Novell, Linux and 1 W2K)
Fiber INET between Buildings
6000 Students
650 Staff
3 IT Staff for the whole thing (well... we have staff help at the building level, but it is very part time, and in half the buildings the help is no help at all.
I came from the private sector and had to give up almost all of my ideas of how IT should be done.
400 kids maybe.
300 Teachers definitely. I think that I have heard every item on your list more than once.
In the K-12 District I work for we have no more than 75 "Staff only" laptops, and they have more trouble and a much shorter life than the nearly 1000 PCs we let the kids use.
Example 1. Administrator brings in her expensive IBM ThinkPad (that she just had to have at 2x the cost of the Dells we normally spec)a couple of months after new. She says "The screen doesn't work" I open the cover and in addition to the cat paw prints on the screen there is way too much play in the hinges (or what passes for hinges) and it looks like the screen had been hyper-extended. I asked what happened and she responds "My
Kids were playing w/ it over the weekend and I don't know what happened, can you fix it?"
Example 2. Different Adminstrator dumps entire cup of coffee on her 1 week old Dell. She was used to having just the keyboard to wreck (we have replaced her keyboard at least once for the very same problem).
Example 3... on and on and on w/ the same stories as above. You get the idea!
On the other hand we have 150+ Apple iBooks that the kids as young as 2nd grade use all day w/out many problems at all. The Apples have been way more reliable than I thought they would be when we first got them; most of the issues have been deliberate destruction though.
Disclosure: I am a white, conservative, Republican, male. In other words, I am one of the most despised people in the U.S. and apparently the rest of the world.
In addition to the above, I am the Technology Coordinator, and senior network engineer for a smallish school district.
With my position comes complete administrative control for the entire network. I can open and peruse any directory or file w/ merely the click of the mouse. I don't! period! the ability to do so demands the responsibility not to do so. I once explained the situation to the new Superintendent as follows: "There is nothing in any folder on the network that could be so interesting to me that I would jeopardize my job to read, and further, soil my own honor for something so trivial."
If the Republican staffers even so much as only clicked a mouse button and opened someone's unprotected folder they should face whatever legal ramifications this action entails. I do not think it rises to the level of a Patriot Act offense, but if it does: HANG THEM! If it doesn't: Fire them on the spot! If there are Republican Senators involved, Censure them. Even if their only involvement in the affair was not firing the staffers who opened the files.
I wanted the Clinton Administration and the Clinton's to pay for their ethical lapses, and I will not let the Republicans off the hook for similar antics. So I hope that the matter is fully investigated and all guilty parties get their due.
As an interesting side note: The leaked material shows the Democrats to be guilty of just this side of Treason.
Hang all of them!
OK, As I read the IBM site RE: the OS/2 strategy for 2003. I think that what they are saying is that they are going to upgrade OS/2 for EXISTING INSTALLATIONS. They have no interest in reviving OS/2 as a desktop platform (this is truly unfortunate IMO). They are going to bring certain web services functions to OS/2 in order to help the many current installations migrate to the WebSphere Platform with as few headaches as possible. Why? so that they can stop providing support for OS/2. I think that IBMs focus on Linux is the most effective use of their funds. As much as I had hoped for the success of OS/2 those many years ago, it ain't gonna happen so it is time to move on.
Wow, talk about exposing one of my healed raw nerves.
I too bought Warp4 with great expectations. I convinced my boss to spring for a new Dell w/ 16Meg RAM and I believe a 1Gig HDD. I installed the new OS with very little difficulty and was ready to rock. Then I opened a spreadsheet and the cursor was off by a mile!
I called the video card manufacture (Number 9, where are they now?) to ask if they had drivers for Warp rather than 2.11 (one of the major changes to OS/2 from 2.11 to Warp 4 was the video subsystem). After the guy finished laughing at me he sneered " when they sell more than 3 copies of that crap we might think about it" and hung up on me.
I also got a nearly identical response from the developer of SPSS. While they were heavily advertising their new version for NT3.5!