"Todo: Get Linux to boot on a Black And Decker Appliance."
I could loan you a Black and Decker valve grinder from the 1960s or so for you to test with. It's probably more functional than the average e-Machine...
If the main project site is gone and all of the continuing development notes are no longer available, it's much harder for it to continue. Remember, the code itself is just the end product of a process that involves designing, coding, testing, revising, re-testing, etc, etc, etc. While someone who has the GPLed source could continue to work on it, such a person wouldn't have the experience or results from this process that the original developer had.
If the project is fairly mature, like the Linux Kernel, KDE, FVWM, or any other number of projects with lots of developers then it's easier to lose the top guy or gal and continue development. Linus' turning over the previous stable kernel trees to other big Linux guys like Alan Cox or any of the others is an example. One guy or even a very small number of people on a specific, niche utility or patch might not be able to achieve the same.
The space and organization required to keep the project internet-accessible is also a problem, as this case directly shows. He can't afford the space and bandwidth. I feel his pain, it's hard enough just keeping a personal domain with a mild amount of traffic up for almost no money. Trying to run something with backend CGI for forums and CVS isn't free.
I hope that people are able to reorganize this project, but if that doesn't work then it doesn't.
I too started out playing Crim, moved on to Dr. Scott, Riff Raff, and ended up playing Frank-N-Furter... I think that the people who took pictures destroyed them for the good of mankind.
It was a helluva good way to meet easy women. At least I think they were women...
First off, I don't want my neighbors (sp?) to be able to run Bluetooth sniffing tools and capture any of my passwords (particularly my banking ones!). I doubt any of them have the knowledge to do this, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
After all Bluetooth's security, isn't very.
Exactly my logic. Also, most of the IR keyboards run on their own custom protocols, so that it's much less likely for someone who manages to successfully trap the signals to be able to interpret them. Compare that to even early RF, and you have a lot more Logitech out there than anything else, so someone could fairly easily receive Logitech signal and interpret.
I wouldn't worry about the neighbours anyway. I'd worry about the wardrivers. I live far enough from the street at my apartment that I doubt much signal would make it from my place to where people would receive stray signal, but I don't want to take the chance.
My living room is twelve feet wide and eighteen feet across. Ir project my image on one of the twelve foot walls. The IR receiver is up front under the screen on top of the shelf that holds the Laserdiscs and center channel. It works very well. The keyboard has to be pointed somewhere in the direction of the front of the room, but none-too-specific, and it's not exactly a challenge to keep objects out of the line of view, even with the projector sitting on a small table in the center of the room. It works all of the way from the front-most seat to the back porch out behind the opposite twelve-foot wall.
Since RF and IR were the only two options when I built the setup, if IR hadn't worked straight out I would have bought one of those IR repeater setups and installed that. Mind you, I doubt that such would prove necessary given that remotes work pretty well and they use IR...
Bluetooth is not required for a home theatre keyboard. I used a Keytronic wireless IR keyboard with built in glidepoint trackpad for some time. I ended up replacing it with a smaller keyboard (no numeric keypad, integrated arrows at the bottom right) with a built on joystick-style mouse controller. They were both PS/2 and had IR receivers that went at the front of the room.
There are a few RF solutions, but none that have all of the features that *I* would like, and Infared works well enough if the receiver is placed well that there's no need for much more than that.
Reading throught many of the recent Groklaw stories and posts, I've found some of the legal insights intriguing. IBM's lawyers did a wonderful job of giving Darl and Company plenty of time and opportunity to paint themselves into a corner.
IBM has documented SCOX's failure on two different orders to produce their evidence in discovery. They have also brought forth conflicting statements made by various lawyers and corporate types, the lawyers saying, "We have no further evidence" with the officers saying, "We will find more evidence as things go along". Even more damaging, SCO's filing lawsuits against so many other entities has caused other lawsuits to depend on the conclusion of this one, so there suddenly is no way for them to not go ahead.
I just hope that the SEC seeks criminal cases against SCOX board members over this one. That would do everyone well for the long term.
We could ask for a new Slashdot or Fark feature that would let users submit URLs. When enough people submit a URL, it's placed in a, "please visit these pages just to eat bandwidth" section on the right side. Certain known-not-spam sites could be automatically ignored, and there could be a non-automatable process to submit URLs to remain unlisted (for peoples' homepages if someone is just being vindictive and such). If people visitting Slashdot would be willing to click on a couple of links (of course being mindful of "Not Safe For Work" links) each time they visit Slashdot, they could fairly easily and quickly use up all of the bandwidth of the virtual host's account level.
It could even be possible to load the pages in a zero-size, non-resizable frame that would draw bandwidth but not actually display anything. This of course would need to be done with care, so that people don't find spyware coming down to their computers, but it could be very effective as well.
"Wow. The New York Times has discovered IRC. What an amazing discovery. What are they going to discover next? Pennsylvania? I'd love to hear their hard-hitting expose about Pittsburgh."
Wait'll they discover that IRC is twelve years old! I think that the protocol is older than most of the people that use it, at least on a mental level.
"I have to agree. Hopefuly when the law suit is over they might be redeemed."
At least the few real developers that they had going into all of this can put Caldera International down on their resume instead of The SCO Group. The company renaming itself was probably the best thing that they did before going sue-happy on everyone.
The reality is that you do drive a car that requires oil change every 3000 miles or the dirt will kill it. Engine rebuild every 70,000 miles. AKA, VW Aircooled engine circa 1969.
Computers still have a LONG wan to go, horn or not.
To carry your analogy in a different direction, my systems running something released as stable get periodic security updates, which is a bit like checking to see if there are any recalls or mechanical failures in a car. I periodically go through the logs and filesystem to make sure that nothing 'funny' has shown up. I equate this about to the level of checking the tire pressure from time to time, and making sure that there is enough antifreeze, oil, and brake fluid in the car. Mind you, the occasional SSH update or whatnot has to be done, but that's like adding air to the tires.
My point with all of this is that a properly built OS doesn't require heavy maintenance and just works. That should be all that there is to it. Mozilla doesn't get hijacked by websites, email viruses don't infect my linux boxes through Pine or Mozilla Mail or any of the other clients, and when it finally is time for a major upgrade, the path exists and is viable. Most of my systems doing anything of importance are Pentiums, Pentium 2s, and a couple Pentium 3s. Nothing over 600MHz. I expect that after I upgrade their OSes next, they'll still work just fine for a few more years.
Writing good software for a given platform is the right thing to do. Writing more bloat on to existing broken software is just stupid.
"Janus looks in two directions, not many; thus the pejorative usage indicating that the abusee is "two-faced". And quite appropriate; the face MS Janus presents to the music"
I just thought that if a Java version came out, it would be "J Anus" for a naming scheme...
"Adding AWD to that car would be pointless and expensive."
Expensive, yes, but I wouldn't call it pointless. A friend of mine had a Mitsubishi 3000GT (might have been a Dodge Stealth actually, but the AWD versions are identical except for the headlights and spoiler placement) and it was all wheel drive. He would take turns at speeds that were just nuts, accelerating through them. Some of the freeway ramps marked with a serious 30MPH recommended speed he'd fly around at 80, and have grip to spare. It was an incredible ride.
The trouble is, it was mechanically a nightmare, and was in the shop enough that apparently mechanical failure is how Mitsubishi decided to let owners know that it was time for an oil change.
Having finally been able to read the site on the water car, it appears to be a custom body that is modelled after the Camaro, not a real one. It's rear engine, like any good boat, and fibreglass. 125 is okay, but nothing to write home about, considering the probable lack of weight.
125 really isn't all that fast, and I hope they didn't change out the engine just to achieve more power. If they made it an all wheel drive vehicle with proper balance between the wheels (and less excessive weight on the front from the removal of the GM 350ci V8), then that's good. The boat thing is just becoming passé. While it requires some engineering, a low center of gravity with proper sealing and flotation will allow anything to become a boat.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
So far, We've seen media-described breaches of all of these in the DoJ, FBI, and Military holdings in the military base in Cuba.
"Now we need a logo for open-source hardware, so people know what to buy. Preferably one designed by a competent icon designer, like Susan Kare."
No, we need the DMCA repealed, so developers within the USA won't be afraid to reverse-engineer some company's hardware. We need companies to release their own source, or to at least provide a high quality binary driver if the development is slow enough (XFree86 as an example) so that people can use Linux on their new cheap machines.
For the longest time there was no decent support for the sound chipset on my motherboard. Fortunately the OEM didn't skimp on the PCI slots, so adding a Sound Blaster with an EMU10K wasn't a big deal, but it would be nice for this stuff to just work. I had an i815 based machine at work that has problems with sound, video, and ethernet. The video stuff came in first, but I had added cards to handle sound and ethernet, and even if they have a solution at this point it's irrevelant to me since I came up with a stable workaround. Most users aren't going to want to do that though, they just want the damn thing to work.
I use Debian on my computers. I like it. It's easy to maintain, stable on the servers, and fairly easy to keep current enough for my tastes with Sid. I install it and I don't think about it anymore, excepting security updates. I have a computer that's been up for the better part of a year (non-public:) and doesn't give me any fits. I could probably automate the apt-get update && apt-get upgrade procedure and still not worry.
For some reason I thought that all of the discrete components were going to be surface mount instead of through the board when I read that the board was "Lead free"...
The laptop model already stated is a Toshiba Satellite 1755. It has the joystick pointer between the G and H keys, and the buttons are all thumb-press in a pattern below the spacebar. I don't even have to move my hands from the keyboard in order to use the pointer. The buttons are close enough together to be easily reached, but far enough apart to not get in each others' ways.
What about middle-click? What about the other two mouse buttons that X-windows can use?
My Toshiba has four buttons. Under Windows, they'd be left click, right click, scroll up, and scroll down. Since scroll up and scroll down are interpreted as "4" and "5" in the way Linux's PS/2 mouse module polls the device, I can assign them to anything that I want. You can do this on your scroll wheel if you're really bored on a PC. Why should I limit my self to having to stretch across the keyboard to find the modifier key? That just seems stupid.
"At the other end of the spectrum, graphing calculators are an awesome classroom tool. Being able to graph a function near instantly, rather than calculating five or more y values for graphs, finding some graph paper, and then plotting the points lets one actually teach. Using the old paper and pencil method you'll be lucky to get one done in ten minutes the first time you're teaching it, and then if you want them to actually learn to plot it by hand, it'll take a good 3 days or so of class time before most of your class has grasped it."
Here's a question for you then: Are the students that take the longest to understand any given exercise or operation generally the same students that take the longest to understand every exercise or operation?
If this is the case, would it then make sense to seperate students out further, so that the students who experience difficulty with operations that need to be reinforced don't hold back the students that excel?
The trouble that I always had when it came to "basic principles" (a nice P.C. term to mean no calculators) was that I had experienced some of the curriculum with calculators already, which made their lacking quite a chore. This seems to be a backward approach to me. It would make sense to me that if I could understand a concept with a pencil, paper, and a little bit of patience, and demonstrate that concept as proof that I'd learned it, then I would be justified in using electronic means to answer it, leaving the brain open to the details of the next operation to come.
I've had some kid-friendly teachers. They played their parts well, putting up a wall of immaturity that the kids related to. One teacher, Mr. Cosmano, would mess up his experiements on purpose to make them explode or bubble over or otherwise amuse the students enough to hold the class' attention. He'd go over with us what went wrong, and the more knowledgeable kids would pick his experiment apart. It gave the class the opportunity to criticize him, but gave him the the opportunity to dump huge amounts of information in our heads when we were most vulnerable to it.
I think this type of thing is why "Beakman's World" and "Bill Nye the Science Guy" are popular, because they give the audience something besides an otherwise sterile subject to focus on. It would be good for more teachers to learn such techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
"Todo: Get Linux to boot on a Black And Decker Appliance."
I could loan you a Black and Decker valve grinder from the 1960s or so for you to test with. It's probably more functional than the average e-Machine...
If the main project site is gone and all of the continuing development notes are no longer available, it's much harder for it to continue. Remember, the code itself is just the end product of a process that involves designing, coding, testing, revising, re-testing, etc, etc, etc. While someone who has the GPLed source could continue to work on it, such a person wouldn't have the experience or results from this process that the original developer had.
If the project is fairly mature, like the Linux Kernel, KDE, FVWM, or any other number of projects with lots of developers then it's easier to lose the top guy or gal and continue development. Linus' turning over the previous stable kernel trees to other big Linux guys like Alan Cox or any of the others is an example. One guy or even a very small number of people on a specific, niche utility or patch might not be able to achieve the same.
The space and organization required to keep the project internet-accessible is also a problem, as this case directly shows. He can't afford the space and bandwidth. I feel his pain, it's hard enough just keeping a personal domain with a mild amount of traffic up for almost no money. Trying to run something with backend CGI for forums and CVS isn't free.
I hope that people are able to reorganize this project, but if that doesn't work then it doesn't.
I too started out playing Crim, moved on to Dr. Scott, Riff Raff, and ended up playing Frank-N-Furter... I think that the people who took pictures destroyed them for the good of mankind.
It was a helluva good way to meet easy women. At least I think they were women...
I wouldn't worry about the neighbours anyway. I'd worry about the wardrivers. I live far enough from the street at my apartment that I doubt much signal would make it from my place to where people would receive stray signal, but I don't want to take the chance.
My living room is twelve feet wide and eighteen feet across. Ir project my image on one of the twelve foot walls. The IR receiver is up front under the screen on top of the shelf that holds the Laserdiscs and center channel. It works very well. The keyboard has to be pointed somewhere in the direction of the front of the room, but none-too-specific, and it's not exactly a challenge to keep objects out of the line of view, even with the projector sitting on a small table in the center of the room. It works all of the way from the front-most seat to the back porch out behind the opposite twelve-foot wall.
Since RF and IR were the only two options when I built the setup, if IR hadn't worked straight out I would have bought one of those IR repeater setups and installed that. Mind you, I doubt that such would prove necessary given that remotes work pretty well and they use IR...
Bluetooth is not required for a home theatre keyboard. I used a Keytronic wireless IR keyboard with built in glidepoint trackpad for some time. I ended up replacing it with a smaller keyboard (no numeric keypad, integrated arrows at the bottom right) with a built on joystick-style mouse controller. They were both PS/2 and had IR receivers that went at the front of the room.
There are a few RF solutions, but none that have all of the features that *I* would like, and Infared works well enough if the receiver is placed well that there's no need for much more than that.
Reading throught many of the recent Groklaw stories and posts, I've found some of the legal insights intriguing. IBM's lawyers did a wonderful job of giving Darl and Company plenty of time and opportunity to paint themselves into a corner.
IBM has documented SCOX's failure on two different orders to produce their evidence in discovery. They have also brought forth conflicting statements made by various lawyers and corporate types, the lawyers saying, "We have no further evidence" with the officers saying, "We will find more evidence as things go along". Even more damaging, SCO's filing lawsuits against so many other entities has caused other lawsuits to depend on the conclusion of this one, so there suddenly is no way for them to not go ahead.
I just hope that the SEC seeks criminal cases against SCOX board members over this one. That would do everyone well for the long term.
"Heck, I just slashdot them."
That gives me an idea!
We could ask for a new Slashdot or Fark feature that would let users submit URLs. When enough people submit a URL, it's placed in a, "please visit these pages just to eat bandwidth" section on the right side. Certain known-not-spam sites could be automatically ignored, and there could be a non-automatable process to submit URLs to remain unlisted (for peoples' homepages if someone is just being vindictive and such). If people visitting Slashdot would be willing to click on a couple of links (of course being mindful of "Not Safe For Work" links) each time they visit Slashdot, they could fairly easily and quickly use up all of the bandwidth of the virtual host's account level.
It could even be possible to load the pages in a zero-size, non-resizable frame that would draw bandwidth but not actually display anything. This of course would need to be done with care, so that people don't find spyware coming down to their computers, but it could be very effective as well.
"My God...it's full of stars"
Not if all they're recording is Infomercials and the Paramount Network...
"Wow. The New York Times has discovered IRC. What an amazing discovery. What are they going to discover next? Pennsylvania? I'd love to hear their hard-hitting expose about Pittsburgh."
Wait'll they discover that IRC is twelve years old! I think that the protocol is older than most of the people that use it, at least on a mental level.
"I have to agree. Hopefuly when the law suit is over they might be redeemed."
At least the few real developers that they had going into all of this can put Caldera International down on their resume instead of The SCO Group. The company renaming itself was probably the best thing that they did before going sue-happy on everyone.
The reality is that you do drive a car that requires oil change every 3000 miles or the dirt will kill it. Engine rebuild every 70,000 miles. AKA, VW Aircooled engine circa 1969.
Computers still have a LONG wan to go, horn or not.
To carry your analogy in a different direction, my systems running something released as stable get periodic security updates, which is a bit like checking to see if there are any recalls or mechanical failures in a car. I periodically go through the logs and filesystem to make sure that nothing 'funny' has shown up. I equate this about to the level of checking the tire pressure from time to time, and making sure that there is enough antifreeze, oil, and brake fluid in the car. Mind you, the occasional SSH update or whatnot has to be done, but that's like adding air to the tires.
My point with all of this is that a properly built OS doesn't require heavy maintenance and just works. That should be all that there is to it. Mozilla doesn't get hijacked by websites, email viruses don't infect my linux boxes through Pine or Mozilla Mail or any of the other clients, and when it finally is time for a major upgrade, the path exists and is viable. Most of my systems doing anything of importance are Pentiums, Pentium 2s, and a couple Pentium 3s. Nothing over 600MHz. I expect that after I upgrade their OSes next, they'll still work just fine for a few more years.
Writing good software for a given platform is the right thing to do. Writing more bloat on to existing broken software is just stupid.
"Janus looks in two directions, not many; thus the pejorative usage indicating that the abusee is "two-faced". And quite appropriate; the face MS Janus presents to the music"
I just thought that if a Java version came out, it would be "J Anus" for a naming scheme...
Boy wouldn't that be true to form...
"Adding AWD to that car would be pointless and expensive."
Expensive, yes, but I wouldn't call it pointless. A friend of mine had a Mitsubishi 3000GT (might have been a Dodge Stealth actually, but the AWD versions are identical except for the headlights and spoiler placement) and it was all wheel drive. He would take turns at speeds that were just nuts, accelerating through them. Some of the freeway ramps marked with a serious 30MPH recommended speed he'd fly around at 80, and have grip to spare. It was an incredible ride.
The trouble is, it was mechanically a nightmare, and was in the shop enough that apparently mechanical failure is how Mitsubishi decided to let owners know that it was time for an oil change.
Having finally been able to read the site on the water car, it appears to be a custom body that is modelled after the Camaro, not a real one. It's rear engine, like any good boat, and fibreglass. 125 is okay, but nothing to write home about, considering the probable lack of weight.
125 really isn't all that fast, and I hope they didn't change out the engine just to achieve more power. If they made it an all wheel drive vehicle with proper balance between the wheels (and less excessive weight on the front from the removal of the GM 350ci V8), then that's good. The boat thing is just becoming passé. While it requires some engineering, a low center of gravity with proper sealing and flotation will allow anything to become a boat.
My '78 Chrysler Cordoba could do 125...
"Yes, it's a false dilemma but it provides a different perspective on the whole thing."
How? You already admitted that it's fallacy, so it doesn't provide anything really.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
So far, We've seen media-described breaches of all of these in the DoJ, FBI, and Military holdings in the military base in Cuba.
Why do we still have this president again?
"Now we need a logo for open-source hardware, so people know what to buy. Preferably one designed by a competent icon designer, like Susan Kare."
No, we need the DMCA repealed, so developers within the USA won't be afraid to reverse-engineer some company's hardware. We need companies to release their own source, or to at least provide a high quality binary driver if the development is slow enough (XFree86 as an example) so that people can use Linux on their new cheap machines.
For the longest time there was no decent support for the sound chipset on my motherboard. Fortunately the OEM didn't skimp on the PCI slots, so adding a Sound Blaster with an EMU10K wasn't a big deal, but it would be nice for this stuff to just work. I had an i815 based machine at work that has problems with sound, video, and ethernet. The video stuff came in first, but I had added cards to handle sound and ethernet, and even if they have a solution at this point it's irrevelant to me since I came up with a stable workaround. Most users aren't going to want to do that though, they just want the damn thing to work.
I use Debian on my computers. I like it. It's easy to maintain, stable on the servers, and fairly easy to keep current enough for my tastes with Sid. I install it and I don't think about it anymore, excepting security updates. I have a computer that's been up for the better part of a year (non-public:) and doesn't give me any fits. I could probably automate the apt-get update && apt-get upgrade procedure and still not worry.
Debian is for Slackware admins that got lazy.
For some reason I thought that all of the discrete components were going to be surface mount instead of through the board when I read that the board was "Lead free"...
I remember using Webcrawler back when I got my first 14.4 Slirp connection back in 1994. It was the only way to search!
and then came the marvels of altavista.digital.com.
I'm so glad that google came along...
So the courts finally come out and say that sex should be on the internet!
Millions of smelly UNIX administrators breathe a sigh of relief.
The laptop model already stated is a Toshiba Satellite 1755. It has the joystick pointer between the G and H keys, and the buttons are all thumb-press in a pattern below the spacebar. I don't even have to move my hands from the keyboard in order to use the pointer. The buttons are close enough together to be easily reached, but far enough apart to not get in each others' ways.
What about middle-click? What about the other two mouse buttons that X-windows can use?
My Toshiba has four buttons. Under Windows, they'd be left click, right click, scroll up, and scroll down. Since scroll up and scroll down are interpreted as "4" and "5" in the way Linux's PS/2 mouse module polls the device, I can assign them to anything that I want. You can do this on your scroll wheel if you're really bored on a PC. Why should I limit my self to having to stretch across the keyboard to find the modifier key? That just seems stupid.
"At the other end of the spectrum, graphing calculators are an awesome classroom tool. Being able to graph a function near instantly, rather than calculating five or more y values for graphs, finding some graph paper, and then plotting the points lets one actually teach. Using the old paper and pencil method you'll be lucky to get one done in ten minutes the first time you're teaching it, and then if you want them to actually learn to plot it by hand, it'll take a good 3 days or so of class time before most of your class has grasped it."
Here's a question for you then: Are the students that take the longest to understand any given exercise or operation generally the same students that take the longest to understand every exercise or operation?
If this is the case, would it then make sense to seperate students out further, so that the students who experience difficulty with operations that need to be reinforced don't hold back the students that excel?
The trouble that I always had when it came to "basic principles" (a nice P.C. term to mean no calculators) was that I had experienced some of the curriculum with calculators already, which made their lacking quite a chore. This seems to be a backward approach to me. It would make sense to me that if I could understand a concept with a pencil, paper, and a little bit of patience, and demonstrate that concept as proof that I'd learned it, then I would be justified in using electronic means to answer it, leaving the brain open to the details of the next operation to come.
I've had some kid-friendly teachers. They played their parts well, putting up a wall of immaturity that the kids related to. One teacher, Mr. Cosmano, would mess up his experiements on purpose to make them explode or bubble over or otherwise amuse the students enough to hold the class' attention. He'd go over with us what went wrong, and the more knowledgeable kids would pick his experiment apart. It gave the class the opportunity to criticize him, but gave him the the opportunity to dump huge amounts of information in our heads when we were most vulnerable to it.
I think this type of thing is why "Beakman's World" and "Bill Nye the Science Guy" are popular, because they give the audience something besides an otherwise sterile subject to focus on. It would be good for more teachers to learn such techniques.