Same thing happens here in Illinois. Road projects are lined up one after the other in Chicagoland...but anything south of Joliet is on the snicker-list. The county I'm in has been on a state waiting list for almost 40 years...to get a single 4-lane highway! Simultaneously, the state funding formula for schools favors suburban Chicago districts, where the majority of state legislators are from. So I feel your pain, in a non-Clintonesque sort of way...
I am in the process of ridding the school of Microsoft-ism...but of course lots of our software runs on Windows, so there will be Windows machines around for a long time...but lots of machines are running various flavors of Linux and Openoffice/Staroffice and such. I'm really in the feeling-out stage now. All of my servers went Linux-only coming up on two years ago...and our functionality has increased over the Novell that we had before, and light-years beyond the Windows stuff that my old district still uses. They operate five servers where I run one...they had a separate server for the web, another for proxy, another for printing, another for Macintoshes, and another that ran grade software...I run all of that and lots more on one single 750MHz machine...and I don't foresee having to upgrade it every few years like they've been doing.
Yes, the users AND the administrators are that dumb. They swallow every numb-skulled marketing presentation and readily open their checkbooks. It disgusts me...but then again, I do what I can in my own sphere of influence, and our costs have plummeted.
Well considering they (my old district) had around 1000 machines, you have the following Microsoft Per-Seat licenses, at least as sold by the salesmen (which means they don't really need all of this...)
Windows Server 2003
Microsoft Exchange Server
Terminal Server
Microsoft Office
I think that's about it. Each of those is sold through a Microsoft Value Added Reseller, and of course installed by those same smiling, smug MCSE's at astronomical rates. Multiply this by 1000 machines, and you get an awful lot of teachers...especially when they get forced to upgrade every few years.
I know you're just an Anonymous Troll, but why shouldn't someone be fired for wasting public funds on costly computer software and hardware, while teachers are laid off? In the former district that I rant about so much, we just bought over $200,000 of computer hardware and software, including upgrading every server to Windows Server 2003. That took a huge amount of "consultant" time and money...while at the same time, we laid off 13 teachers and instituted huge fees for all sorts of activities. Who is the TOOL here?
This is at my "former" district...where I am now a bystander, and not in control of things like at my current district. However, I am still the object of continual tax increases to support their massive outlays for nothing more than Microsoft licenses for Terminal Server (that they never use, but the salesmen sell them anyway.) I have tried to talk sense into them, but then the salesmen come back and say "we're legitimizing the paradigm shift of our end-to-end solution and increasing your throughput!" and the administrators and such stare at them with glassy eyes. Not wanting to look dumb, they nod their heads in agreeement. At my current school, we went from over $10,000 per year in licensing costs to $0 per year...and things are working much better, I might add. The "easy" thing to do is to keep saying that "we want the best for our kids, regardless of cost!" and keep on paying the ever-increasing Microsoft tax.
I tried to tell a group of people-in-charge of local educational institutions how they could get away from Microsoft in this way...to a person, they were all very uninterested. It's not just a chicken-and-egg problem, it's the sad fact that nobody gets fired for lining up for the "Office Suite." I've used OpenOffice to great effect in my district, but I'm the only one I know of. What needs to change is that people need to start getting fired for NOT using OpenOffice...after all, with all of the budget problems all of the schools are having, switching to a "Free" product is the sensible thing to do. None of the schools I know of are sensible though.
I can't imagine any scenario where DRM would make things more open and transferrable between devices. Instead of sharing music between your iPod and your MD player, it will instead prevent you from playing music from your iPod V4.3 on your iPod V4.4. When corporate types are given a tool of any sort, they always seem to use it as a hammer. (When all you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail!)
That's what I was thinking of when I did the post, since I am burning some CD's with Nero right now. But I was doing it to make a point about the issue, not karma points.
I am starting to think that this sue-crazy atmosphere that just gets thicker and thicker with lawyers will be the downfall of Western Civilization. Sure, we have to protect intellectual property and all, but sheesh...this is just downright predatory. It's dangling bait out in front of an industry until they all adopt it, then biting down on them with litigative teeth. At this rate, someone will come up with a patent on breathing...and we'll all have to pay up or desist.
I can remember WORM drives from over 15 years ago...they were the hot (if expensive) item back then...But maybe they didn't use their "proprietary" method.
Other than size, I think one of those $199 Walmart Microtel machines would be a better deal...they now have 1300MHz Durons in them. They are a bit skimpy on memory (come with 128MB), but you can buy 512MB of the SDR stuff they use for $50 these days. I have a bunch of them, and they've been flawless!
May I add:
Windows NT 4.0 Workstation
Windows NT 4.0 Server
Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Server
Windows 95 SP1
Windows 95 OSR2
Windows 95 OSR2.1
Windows 95 OSR 2.5
Windows 98
Windows 98 SE
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Windows XP Media Center
Windows XP Embedded 5.1
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 64-Bit Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter
Not to mention Windows CE, CE.nET, CE Pocket PC, CE Handheld PC, and CE Auto PC! But of course I'm dumb, so I guess this post doesn't mean anything to you.
This sounds like the typical excuses I hear from the Microsoft-brainwashed people that give presentations to the public-school Tech Coordinators in my area...
"It's open-source...anyone can look and see your code!"
"It's got a higher TCO!"
"It's open-source! It might fork!"
My response is the same as a previous poster...Windows forks every couple of years, so what's the problem?
No...like most people whose views have little or no basis in reality, he was long on rhetoric and short on facts.
He was complaining about having to get a separate Microsoft license for everyone to be able to upload to an FTP site...which raised the question about why didn't they just run the WWW and FTP site in question on Linux and Apache...that produced the response about Linux being "open to the world" so "everyone can see your code." I could tell he was not dealing in reality at that point...so I decided not to cast my pearls before swine and kept my mouth shut. As I said, everybody else there, whose systems ran 95% Microsoft and 5% Novell (I was the only Linuxer) all shook their heads in agreement. Yep. Gotta stay away from that evil OPEN software...after all, everyone could see our code!
I was at a conference yesterday where I heard several misconceptions about Linux...first off, the main presenter told everyone that Linux was "open for the world" and "anybody could get in and see your code." I thought that was just wonderful. He didn't want to hear it, but my contention would be that's like looking at a house, but the realtor/builder says "you can't inspect the foundation though...just trust us!" Wheras Linux is more like a house that you can inspect, take apart, rebuild whatever way you like. Of course, though, Microsoft products are "more mature" and "suited to a professional environment." Sheesh. All of the other attendees nodded their bobble heads in agreement.
That's what I meant...we were paying $7000 per year in licensing costs for Novell previously, and another $3000 or so for Surfpatrol. The other district I spoke of is paying in excess of $70,000 per year for a full-tilt Microsoft Server 2003 license, plus anti-virus, Surfcontrol, Outlook, and lots of other things. That is in addition to the OS X server licenses they have for four machines, by the way, and client licenses for almost 1000 Windows 2000 machines. It all adds up to an annual budget nearing $400,000...wheras, this year, my annual budget is $5000. The sad part is that they are about to get a big tax increase to keep on doing the same thing.
The old ones get disseminated to the junior high and grade schools...where they are adding eMac's and iMac's at an astounding rate too. Each grade school has three labs of 30 machines, and at least two machines in each classroom...remember, these are buildings with 200 students in them.
I have firsthand experience with this in my old district...we are $1 million in deficit spending for the year...and just laid off 13 teachers. But at the same time, we are replacing a lab of 25 G4 GHz Macintoshes with new G4 Macintoshes. These are machines that are barely 2 years old, but we are replacing them anyway. By the way, they all have big flat-panel displays. Total cost (with "custom" installation) was near $100,000. But of course we have to maintain our lead in technology! In my district, I have gone the opposite direction, cutting back on expenditures for new machines, and converting everything to license-free Linux. But I am an isolated island of such thinking; everywhere else, it is SPEND SPEND SPEND on computers...even if we have no teachers to run them!
If Google's algorithm-mucking gets rid of the dozens of pages that say something like "NUMBER ONE TOPSITE FOR...(your search term here)" then it's fine with me. Back in the days of Altavista and such, people rapidly figured out how to get their page of mindless drivel to appear on pretty much any search...and they're slowly figuring it out with Google too. I'm glad to see they're being proactive and not letting their search engine turn into a Netster.com.
I agree with you that it is an uphill battle; when I first got on the internet in 1995, there was nothing like the commercialization of today...most sites were there "just because", and not to make a profit. If zero popups are a necessity, hand-pick all domains the kids are allowed to go to, and put these in something like Dansguardian's siteallowed list. Everything else, popups, penis enlargment, etc, will be blocked. Give the grade school kids discoverykids.com, give the high school kids access to something...and do something like having teachers search out acceptable sites. Squidguard and Dansguardian are both free software (although DG charges for a very good blacklist.) My district has a super that makes $80,000 per year; my former district had a super that made $120,000 per year, and a mindless "tech director" that made $90,000 per year...so I understand where you're coming from when you say budget troubles overshadow everything. DG/Squidguard have something like a 99 percent success rate in my experience...but if it's abolutely necessary that nothing bad ever happens, then switch to whitelist-only.
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Same thing happens here in Illinois. Road projects are lined up one after the other in Chicagoland...but anything south of Joliet is on the snicker-list. The county I'm in has been on a state waiting list for almost 40 years...to get a single 4-lane highway! Simultaneously, the state funding formula for schools favors suburban Chicago districts, where the majority of state legislators are from. So I feel your pain, in a non-Clintonesque sort of way...
To Guantanamo Bay with the lot of them, I say...we have a cargo container with your name on it!
I am in the process of ridding the school of Microsoft-ism...but of course lots of our software runs on Windows, so there will be Windows machines around for a long time...but lots of machines are running various flavors of Linux and Openoffice/Staroffice and such. I'm really in the feeling-out stage now. All of my servers went Linux-only coming up on two years ago...and our functionality has increased over the Novell that we had before, and light-years beyond the Windows stuff that my old district still uses. They operate five servers where I run one...they had a separate server for the web, another for proxy, another for printing, another for Macintoshes, and another that ran grade software...I run all of that and lots more on one single 750MHz machine...and I don't foresee having to upgrade it every few years like they've been doing.
Yes, the users AND the administrators are that dumb. They swallow every numb-skulled marketing presentation and readily open their checkbooks. It disgusts me...but then again, I do what I can in my own sphere of influence, and our costs have plummeted.
Well considering they (my old district) had around 1000 machines, you have the following Microsoft Per-Seat licenses, at least as sold by the salesmen (which means they don't really need all of this...) Windows Server 2003 Microsoft Exchange Server Terminal Server Microsoft Office I think that's about it. Each of those is sold through a Microsoft Value Added Reseller, and of course installed by those same smiling, smug MCSE's at astronomical rates. Multiply this by 1000 machines, and you get an awful lot of teachers...especially when they get forced to upgrade every few years.
I know you're just an Anonymous Troll, but why shouldn't someone be fired for wasting public funds on costly computer software and hardware, while teachers are laid off? In the former district that I rant about so much, we just bought over $200,000 of computer hardware and software, including upgrading every server to Windows Server 2003. That took a huge amount of "consultant" time and money...while at the same time, we laid off 13 teachers and instituted huge fees for all sorts of activities. Who is the TOOL here?
This is at my "former" district...where I am now a bystander, and not in control of things like at my current district. However, I am still the object of continual tax increases to support their massive outlays for nothing more than Microsoft licenses for Terminal Server (that they never use, but the salesmen sell them anyway.) I have tried to talk sense into them, but then the salesmen come back and say "we're legitimizing the paradigm shift of our end-to-end solution and increasing your throughput!" and the administrators and such stare at them with glassy eyes. Not wanting to look dumb, they nod their heads in agreeement. At my current school, we went from over $10,000 per year in licensing costs to $0 per year...and things are working much better, I might add. The "easy" thing to do is to keep saying that "we want the best for our kids, regardless of cost!" and keep on paying the ever-increasing Microsoft tax.
Their response would be...will it run Microsoft Outlook? I would say no, but there are lots of Open Source alterna....."NOT INTERESTED"
I tried to tell a group of people-in-charge of local educational institutions how they could get away from Microsoft in this way...to a person, they were all very uninterested. It's not just a chicken-and-egg problem, it's the sad fact that nobody gets fired for lining up for the "Office Suite." I've used OpenOffice to great effect in my district, but I'm the only one I know of. What needs to change is that people need to start getting fired for NOT using OpenOffice...after all, with all of the budget problems all of the schools are having, switching to a "Free" product is the sensible thing to do. None of the schools I know of are sensible though.
I can't imagine any scenario where DRM would make things more open and transferrable between devices. Instead of sharing music between your iPod and your MD player, it will instead prevent you from playing music from your iPod V4.3 on your iPod V4.4. When corporate types are given a tool of any sort, they always seem to use it as a hammer. (When all you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail!)
That's what I was thinking of when I did the post, since I am burning some CD's with Nero right now. But I was doing it to make a point about the issue, not karma points.
I am starting to think that this sue-crazy atmosphere that just gets thicker and thicker with lawyers will be the downfall of Western Civilization. Sure, we have to protect intellectual property and all, but sheesh...this is just downright predatory. It's dangling bait out in front of an industry until they all adopt it, then biting down on them with litigative teeth. At this rate, someone will come up with a patent on breathing...and we'll all have to pay up or desist.
I can remember WORM drives from over 15 years ago...they were the hot (if expensive) item back then...But maybe they didn't use their "proprietary" method.
Other than size, I think one of those $199 Walmart Microtel machines would be a better deal...they now have 1300MHz Durons in them. They are a bit skimpy on memory (come with 128MB), but you can buy 512MB of the SDR stuff they use for $50 these days. I have a bunch of them, and they've been flawless!
All this really makes me wonder when the death penalty will be approved for spammers. Or at least some harsh beatings...
May I add: Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Windows NT 4.0 Server Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Server Windows 95 SP1 Windows 95 OSR2 Windows 95 OSR2.1 Windows 95 OSR 2.5 Windows 98 Windows 98 SE Windows 2000 Server Windows 2000 Advanced Server Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Windows XP Professional Windows XP Home Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Windows XP Media Center Windows XP Embedded 5.1 Windows Server 2003 Web Edition Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition Windows Server 2003 64-Bit Enterprise Edition Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Not to mention Windows CE, CE .nET, CE Pocket PC, CE Handheld PC, and CE Auto PC! But of course I'm dumb, so I guess this post doesn't mean anything to you.
This sounds like the typical excuses I hear from the Microsoft-brainwashed people that give presentations to the public-school Tech Coordinators in my area... "It's open-source...anyone can look and see your code!" "It's got a higher TCO!" "It's open-source! It might fork!" My response is the same as a previous poster...Windows forks every couple of years, so what's the problem?
If this "evidence" is produced...will it become immediately public, or be only for the use of the lawyers and/or court?
No...like most people whose views have little or no basis in reality, he was long on rhetoric and short on facts. He was complaining about having to get a separate Microsoft license for everyone to be able to upload to an FTP site...which raised the question about why didn't they just run the WWW and FTP site in question on Linux and Apache...that produced the response about Linux being "open to the world" so "everyone can see your code." I could tell he was not dealing in reality at that point...so I decided not to cast my pearls before swine and kept my mouth shut. As I said, everybody else there, whose systems ran 95% Microsoft and 5% Novell (I was the only Linuxer) all shook their heads in agreement. Yep. Gotta stay away from that evil OPEN software...after all, everyone could see our code!
I was at a conference yesterday where I heard several misconceptions about Linux...first off, the main presenter told everyone that Linux was "open for the world" and "anybody could get in and see your code." I thought that was just wonderful. He didn't want to hear it, but my contention would be that's like looking at a house, but the realtor/builder says "you can't inspect the foundation though...just trust us!" Wheras Linux is more like a house that you can inspect, take apart, rebuild whatever way you like. Of course, though, Microsoft products are "more mature" and "suited to a professional environment." Sheesh. All of the other attendees nodded their bobble heads in agreement.
That's what I meant...we were paying $7000 per year in licensing costs for Novell previously, and another $3000 or so for Surfpatrol. The other district I spoke of is paying in excess of $70,000 per year for a full-tilt Microsoft Server 2003 license, plus anti-virus, Surfcontrol, Outlook, and lots of other things. That is in addition to the OS X server licenses they have for four machines, by the way, and client licenses for almost 1000 Windows 2000 machines. It all adds up to an annual budget nearing $400,000...wheras, this year, my annual budget is $5000. The sad part is that they are about to get a big tax increase to keep on doing the same thing.
The old ones get disseminated to the junior high and grade schools...where they are adding eMac's and iMac's at an astounding rate too. Each grade school has three labs of 30 machines, and at least two machines in each classroom...remember, these are buildings with 200 students in them.
I have firsthand experience with this in my old district...we are $1 million in deficit spending for the year...and just laid off 13 teachers. But at the same time, we are replacing a lab of 25 G4 GHz Macintoshes with new G4 Macintoshes. These are machines that are barely 2 years old, but we are replacing them anyway. By the way, they all have big flat-panel displays. Total cost (with "custom" installation) was near $100,000. But of course we have to maintain our lead in technology! In my district, I have gone the opposite direction, cutting back on expenditures for new machines, and converting everything to license-free Linux. But I am an isolated island of such thinking; everywhere else, it is SPEND SPEND SPEND on computers...even if we have no teachers to run them!
If Google's algorithm-mucking gets rid of the dozens of pages that say something like "NUMBER ONE TOPSITE FOR...(your search term here)" then it's fine with me. Back in the days of Altavista and such, people rapidly figured out how to get their page of mindless drivel to appear on pretty much any search...and they're slowly figuring it out with Google too. I'm glad to see they're being proactive and not letting their search engine turn into a Netster.com.
I agree with you that it is an uphill battle; when I first got on the internet in 1995, there was nothing like the commercialization of today...most sites were there "just because", and not to make a profit. If zero popups are a necessity, hand-pick all domains the kids are allowed to go to, and put these in something like Dansguardian's siteallowed list. Everything else, popups, penis enlargment, etc, will be blocked. Give the grade school kids discoverykids.com, give the high school kids access to something...and do something like having teachers search out acceptable sites. Squidguard and Dansguardian are both free software (although DG charges for a very good blacklist.) My district has a super that makes $80,000 per year; my former district had a super that made $120,000 per year, and a mindless "tech director" that made $90,000 per year...so I understand where you're coming from when you say budget troubles overshadow everything. DG/Squidguard have something like a 99 percent success rate in my experience...but if it's abolutely necessary that nothing bad ever happens, then switch to whitelist-only.