Our kids don't decide what to use, and I think my sentence makes perfect sense.
I provide support for a High School with 350 machines, and 4 local primary schools with another 100 machines total on top of that. Our licensing agreement covers the primaries machines as well, hence the discrepency with the numbers.
Actually, Linux is used on 4 backend servers (one more was put in recently) - 4 proxies, one for us at the High, and three for the primaries (one has an ISA server they wont let me replace). Once again, the confusion of numbers is cos I'm talking about the high school on it's own, rather than all the machines I support.
Teachers aren't interested in Linux or Open Source, they don't have the time, seriously. This ties in with your next point in that I said there is no scope in the CURRICULUM for alternative operating systems - the teachers teach the curriculum, not what they want to teach.
Your last point is null because I'm a sysadmin, not a teacher. I can't change that, they can. I just keep the things running.
So, your post should be Score: -5, Troll, Bullshitter, Blown out.
...And I fail to see how this hasn't already happened.
Props to Becta for doing such a study. They're a good thing and I like what they do for educational IT. However, we're already locked into Microsoft on the client side.
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows. Office is the "standard" that they all get taught (yes, I've put OpenOffice on - without teachers wanting to use it, Office is the only thing used). The educational applications that they use every day will only run on Windows (and some maybe on OSX, but we're not rich enough to afford Macs, I'm afraid.)
The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, which is just over £12k/year for licensing. While that is a nasty chunk of money, it means we're entitled to the latest and greatest on release - as such, I've got Office 2007 and Vista on my work laptop giving them a whirl.
Wine! I hear you say Wine! Sorry, no go. We cannot risk apps not working because Wine doesn't support them fully. The teachers would eat my testicles for dinner - it's bad enough dealing with the poorly written educational software as it is, nevermind dealing with Wine on top of that.
There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering). It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type).
As for the upgrade thing - don't we know it. Office 2007 rollout isn't going to happen before September, if not 2008 (getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!). Vista probably 2009 at the earliest - depending on what incompatibilites we'll come across during testing.
All in all, unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative], and until people start moving to Linux application developers won't develop applications for it! Chicken and egg problem.*
I've posted this comment on another story recently, but it's just as relevent to this one.
I work in a school, and as such we have an MS Schools License Agreement, which entitles us to all the latest Microsoft software for a reletively cheap price (I think £30ish a workstation).
We're expecting delivery of our Office 2007 and Vista discs in either the December or January licensing packs. While we may test them around the office, a network-wide deployment (about 350 machines total) of Vista won't even be considered till after SP1 is released. Not to mention all the poorly-written educational software that will need compatability testing on the new OS. Due to the training requirements of Office 2007 I probably can't see that being rolled out till 2008 at the earliest either - especially with the admin staff, since a lot of their applications tie directly into Office and they use it all day, ever day. The training requirements for that alone would cause so many headaches for us to support.
Many people I know who work at other schools in our area aren't even considering an upgrade yet or in the near future. XP works just fine for now and the forseeable future. My school is lucky in that we have a large IT budget and have mostly up-to-date PCs (enough for what they do on them anyway), other schools in my area are still running 333MHz/128MB RAM machines - not exactly the powerhouse needed to run Vista at a reasonable level.
The teaching side of things has nothing to do with me. I just keep things running. While I know that one of our teachers did show the learners a Knoppix bootable CD once, he's never done it again and none of the other teachers have requested anything like it. (Tho I may make that suggestion when I get time.) I could roll out VMWare player, but if no one is going to include it in the curriculum then there is nothing I can do about it.
The kids here, btw, are 11-16 (UK High School).
Computers are used in nearly every classroom for the interactive whiteboards that we have, so in that regard they are used for teaching. The IT lessons are pretty much Office-centric though, despite them having access to OpenOffice on all machines.
I run Linux at home on two desktop machines, I run it on my work laptop, it's also on three of our backend servers. While I don't consider myself a Linux guru, I know a/lot/ about Linux. But putting that on our desktops? Not a chance.
I love alternative operating systems as much as the next geek, but I can't even being to suggest that we move our desktops to Linux (and OSX/Apple hardware *is* beyond our budget, discount or not). 95% of Educational software will only run on Windows (and maybe OSX if you're lucky) - and poorly at best. Since most of it is written crappy, I doubt it would work through Wine, and quite frankly, I don't want to be supporting educational software that runs thru Wine. I have enough headaches to deal with as it is.
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job. And as far as I'm concerned, the right tool for the job in this case is Windows on a Windows Domain Controller. We run misc services on Linux servers (email, proxying/filtering, some file shares, etc). I *want* these kids to have Linux experience, I want them to know there are alternatives, I want them to see outside of the Windows box, but there is no way I can justify replacing Windows on our PCs. I'm looking into dual-booting, but it's a lot of extra work and right now I've got more pressing things to worry about.
I work in a school, and as such we have an MS Schools License Agreement, which entitles us to all the latest Microsoft software for a reletively cheap price (I think £30ish a workstation).
We're expecting delivery of our Office 2007 and Vista discs in either the December or January licensing packs. While we may test them around the office, a network-wide deployment (about 350 machines total) of Vista won't even be considered till after SP1 is released. Not to mention all the poorly-written educational software that will need compatability testing on the new OS. Due to the training requirements of Office 2007 I probably can't see that being rolled out till 2008 at the earliest either - especially with the admin staff, since a lot of their applications tie directly into Office and they use it all day, ever day. The training requirements for that alone would cause so many headaches for us to support.
Many people I know who work at other schools in our area aren't even considering an upgrade yet or in the near future. XP works just fine for now and the forseeable future. My school is lucky in that we have a large IT budget and have mostly up-to-date PCs (enough for what they do on them anyway), other schools in my area are still running 333MHz/128MB RAM machines - not exactly the powerhouse needed to run Vista at a reasonable level.
Between managing users, the rest of my team, the servers, the desktops and such, and being that I, nor anyone else I know, uses hibernate or sleep (you do this how often to servers exactly)? I think this small gap in my knowledge is perfectly acceptable.
I'd never heard of JotSpot before, and since it won't allow me on the site while they migrate to Google's servers I can't tell what exactly it does.
Reddit, on the other hand, has quickly become one of my favourite and most visited sites. I'd highly recommend checking out Reddit, especially if you like Digg (or if, like me, you're starting to find Digg a little... annoying).
Obviously, most of the swearing that I left out or that was edited out of the print version has been put back in to better express how these fucking cunt ass games pissed me off.
Hey, I genuinely believe that they should be murdered.
They're only out for greed and (stupid amounts of) profit, taking it all out on the little guy. They contribute very little to society (they're not the ones making the music).
Yes, it did occur to me. What I'm saying is, Browzar doesnt do anything to prevent data from being recovered from the physical disk, so it's still just as good as Clear Private Data in Firefox.
You want untraceable? Linux LiveCD. Pretty much as good as it gets.
Being a Gentoo user myself, I have found Ubuntu to be an extremely nice distro and I'd highly recommend it. My Mother's PC currently uses it and (using Automatix) she's had no problems with it. Updates are presented to the user in a very simple fashion so my Mother does all her own updates and such.
No, it wasn't a joke. By the "sorry state of the education system", which education system? I'm from the UK, stop assuming I'm not.
I have seen behaviour exhibited by fish - such as them coming to the surface when a human is nearby, hence associating humans with food, however, you can't make a claim that they don't have a 3 second memory and not back that up.
I wasn't asking for evidence because I believed they do have a 3 second memory, I was asking because he made a claim that they didn't without evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
Stick yer Halo up your arse. This was here first! :p
Right.
Our kids don't decide what to use, and I think my sentence makes perfect sense.
I provide support for a High School with 350 machines, and 4 local primary schools with another 100 machines total on top of that. Our licensing agreement covers the primaries machines as well, hence the discrepency with the numbers.
Actually, Linux is used on 4 backend servers (one more was put in recently) - 4 proxies, one for us at the High, and three for the primaries (one has an ISA server they wont let me replace). Once again, the confusion of numbers is cos I'm talking about the high school on it's own, rather than all the machines I support.
Teachers aren't interested in Linux or Open Source, they don't have the time, seriously. This ties in with your next point in that I said there is no scope in the CURRICULUM for alternative operating systems - the teachers teach the curriculum, not what they want to teach.
Your last point is null because I'm a sysadmin, not a teacher. I can't change that, they can. I just keep the things running.
So, your post should be Score: -5, Troll, Bullshitter, Blown out.
...And I fail to see how this hasn't already happened.
:p)
Props to Becta for doing such a study. They're a good thing and I like what they do for educational IT. However, we're already locked into Microsoft on the client side.
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows. Office is the "standard" that they all get taught (yes, I've put OpenOffice on - without teachers wanting to use it, Office is the only thing used). The educational applications that they use every day will only run on Windows (and some maybe on OSX, but we're not rich enough to afford Macs, I'm afraid.)
The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, which is just over £12k/year for licensing. While that is a nasty chunk of money, it means we're entitled to the latest and greatest on release - as such, I've got Office 2007 and Vista on my work laptop giving them a whirl.
Wine! I hear you say Wine! Sorry, no go. We cannot risk apps not working because Wine doesn't support them fully. The teachers would eat my testicles for dinner - it's bad enough dealing with the poorly written educational software as it is, nevermind dealing with Wine on top of that.
There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering). It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type).
As for the upgrade thing - don't we know it. Office 2007 rollout isn't going to happen before September, if not 2008 (getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!). Vista probably 2009 at the earliest - depending on what incompatibilites we'll come across during testing.
All in all, unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative], and until people start moving to Linux application developers won't develop applications for it! Chicken and egg problem.*
(* - I know this was solved!
I've posted this comment on another story recently, but it's just as relevent to this one.
0 53950
I work in a school, and as such we have an MS Schools License Agreement, which entitles us to all the latest Microsoft software for a reletively cheap price (I think £30ish a workstation).
We're expecting delivery of our Office 2007 and Vista discs in either the December or January licensing packs. While we may test them around the office, a network-wide deployment (about 350 machines total) of Vista won't even be considered till after SP1 is released. Not to mention all the poorly-written educational software that will need compatability testing on the new OS. Due to the training requirements of Office 2007 I probably can't see that being rolled out till 2008 at the earliest either - especially with the admin staff, since a lot of their applications tie directly into Office and they use it all day, ever day. The training requirements for that alone would cause so many headaches for us to support.
Many people I know who work at other schools in our area aren't even considering an upgrade yet or in the near future. XP works just fine for now and the forseeable future. My school is lucky in that we have a large IT budget and have mostly up-to-date PCs (enough for what they do on them anyway), other schools in my area are still running 333MHz/128MB RAM machines - not exactly the powerhouse needed to run Vista at a reasonable level.
I posted the original comment here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=209148&cid=17
Those adverts piss me off too.
The teaching side of things has nothing to do with me. I just keep things running. While I know that one of our teachers did show the learners a Knoppix bootable CD once, he's never done it again and none of the other teachers have requested anything like it. (Tho I may make that suggestion when I get time.) I could roll out VMWare player, but if no one is going to include it in the curriculum then there is nothing I can do about it.
The kids here, btw, are 11-16 (UK High School).
Computers are used in nearly every classroom for the interactive whiteboards that we have, so in that regard they are used for teaching. The IT lessons are pretty much Office-centric though, despite them having access to OpenOffice on all machines.
Dude, look.
/lot/ about Linux. But putting that on our desktops? Not a chance.
I run Linux at home on two desktop machines, I run it on my work laptop, it's also on three of our backend servers. While I don't consider myself a Linux guru, I know a
I love alternative operating systems as much as the next geek, but I can't even being to suggest that we move our desktops to Linux (and OSX/Apple hardware *is* beyond our budget, discount or not). 95% of Educational software will only run on Windows (and maybe OSX if you're lucky) - and poorly at best. Since most of it is written crappy, I doubt it would work through Wine, and quite frankly, I don't want to be supporting educational software that runs thru Wine. I have enough headaches to deal with as it is.
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job. And as far as I'm concerned, the right tool for the job in this case is Windows on a Windows Domain Controller. We run misc services on Linux servers (email, proxying/filtering, some file shares, etc). I *want* these kids to have Linux experience, I want them to know there are alternatives, I want them to see outside of the Windows box, but there is no way I can justify replacing Windows on our PCs. I'm looking into dual-booting, but it's a lot of extra work and right now I've got more pressing things to worry about.
Shame no one will read this comment now. Pfft.
I work in a school, and as such we have an MS Schools License Agreement, which entitles us to all the latest Microsoft software for a reletively cheap price (I think £30ish a workstation).
We're expecting delivery of our Office 2007 and Vista discs in either the December or January licensing packs. While we may test them around the office, a network-wide deployment (about 350 machines total) of Vista won't even be considered till after SP1 is released. Not to mention all the poorly-written educational software that will need compatability testing on the new OS. Due to the training requirements of Office 2007 I probably can't see that being rolled out till 2008 at the earliest either - especially with the admin staff, since a lot of their applications tie directly into Office and they use it all day, ever day. The training requirements for that alone would cause so many headaches for us to support.
Many people I know who work at other schools in our area aren't even considering an upgrade yet or in the near future. XP works just fine for now and the forseeable future. My school is lucky in that we have a large IT budget and have mostly up-to-date PCs (enough for what they do on them anyway), other schools in my area are still running 333MHz/128MB RAM machines - not exactly the powerhouse needed to run Vista at a reasonable level.
Between managing users, the rest of my team, the servers, the desktops and such, and being that I, nor anyone else I know, uses hibernate or sleep (you do this how often to servers exactly)? I think this small gap in my knowledge is perfectly acceptable.
I've been in a sysadmin job now for about 4 years.
I work with computers daily, both Windows and Linux (and a dabble with OSX).
Can I tell you the difference between sleep and hibernate? No.
What are the differences, and why do they matter to the average Joe? Why not just have the 'best' one and forget the other one?
For that matter, why are they duplicating the Lock option, seems pretty dumb to me.
People on Slashdot have been saying this since it was first announced.
They should talk to geeks more.
I'd never heard of JotSpot before, and since it won't allow me on the site while they migrate to Google's servers I can't tell what exactly it does.
Reddit, on the other hand, has quickly become one of my favourite and most visited sites. I'd highly recommend checking out Reddit, especially if you like Digg (or if, like me, you're starting to find Digg a little... annoying).
Hey, I genuinely believe that they should be murdered.
They're only out for greed and (stupid amounts of) profit, taking it all out on the little guy. They contribute very little to society (they're not the ones making the music).
So yeah, he was joking, I'm not. Kill 'em all.
Nah, the Democrats have just figured out how to exploit the electronic voting machines this time round. ;)
Great comment. If I had mod points available (somehow) you'd get all 5.
I can't believe I got half way down the comment page before someone came up with that...
I award you my "Comment of the Month" award. You don't get anything except a vague sense of self-satisfaction that you made someone laugh, very hard.
Yes, it did occur to me. What I'm saying is, Browzar doesnt do anything to prevent data from being recovered from the physical disk, so it's still just as good as Clear Private Data in Firefox.
You want untraceable? Linux LiveCD. Pretty much as good as it gets.
Firefox -> Tools -> Clear Private Data
Dude, come on. You told me you were using Lindows, how did you want me to look... Pleased?
:)
I was a Gentoo man then, and I'm a Gentoo man now!
Being a Gentoo user myself, I have found Ubuntu to be an extremely nice distro and I'd highly recommend it. My Mother's PC currently uses it and (using Automatix) she's had no problems with it. Updates are presented to the user in a very simple fashion so my Mother does all her own updates and such.
I don't get the reference but I sense it's familiar... Why those particular numbers?
"How do you punch a 16-year old spammer."
No, it wasn't a joke. By the "sorry state of the education system", which education system? I'm from the UK, stop assuming I'm not.
I have seen behaviour exhibited by fish - such as them coming to the surface when a human is nearby, hence associating humans with food, however, you can't make a claim that they don't have a 3 second memory and not back that up.
I wasn't asking for evidence because I believed they do have a 3 second memory, I was asking because he made a claim that they didn't without evidence.
And where is your evidence to the contrary?