McCain's campaign was poorly run and much more negative than Obama's. Between his pick of Palin for VP, his suspended campaign stunt, and all of the negative campaigning (Ayers, ACORN, Socialist, etc.), I'm not surprised he got so much bad press.
And are you really surprised Obama got such good press? He's charismatic with many, many loyal followers who got out the vote for him. Simply covering that story would get him more good press than McCain.
I've used several in my line of work (Linux Sysadmin), and have been very impressed with how easy they are to work with and how reliable they've been. Very Linux friendly; newer kernels support AoE natively. Might be out of your price range, but they'll do RAID 5 or 10. You buy the enclosure, and the drives separately.
Here's how Gentoo teaches you Linux: (Full disclosure: Yes, I'm a hardcore Gentooista) I have friends who have used Linux for a while and are fairly proficient with it. However, when something breaks, I find they have no idea where the config files or logs on there machines are located so they can start troubleshooting. There are no easy GUI wizards to help you configure the software on the machine. This forces you to learn to use a text editor and a shell. You also have to learn where things are located on the file system (config files, logs, etc.) and what all those directories off of root are for. Then when something does break (oh, jeez, maybe some big update nukes X), you're not stuck scratching your head because you don't have a desktop and a mouse cursor.
No stage 1 install --> Not true! Gentoo still provides stage 1 tarballs, however using a stage 1 install is not recommended and therefore documented. Not really a big deal though, you can always do a stage 3 install and then do a "emerge -e world" to rebuild all your packages with all your custom use flags and compiler settings.
My $.02 --> Gentoo is the Linux user's Linux. It is not intended to be installed by a novice in 10 minutes (see Ubuntu). You will struggle and make mistakes on your first install (or two), but you'll learn, and be all the better for it.
First off, VB isn't a good programming language, period, let alone a good one for beginners.
As there isn't one good language for every programming task, there isn't one good language for teaching everything in CS. My thoughts:
You want to teach the UTTER basics (basic syntax, simple input/output, logic, flow control, iteration), use python, perl, or ruby. It'll get students' feet wet real quick, and show them that programming, above all, is fun, without intimidating them too much.
You want to teach memory management, pointers, basic data structures, and hardware? Use C.
You want to teach OOP? Use Java.
You want to really, really learn how all that hardware works (along with compilers, linkers, etc.)? Use assembly.
You want to teach recursion and some of the real art and beauty in programming? Use Lisp.
Granted, the FOSS would do well to court more hardware manufacturers and vendors, but the "We won't support linux because there are too many distros" line is old, tired FUD.
First step, (as many have said here) is to not use hardware that doesn't have open source drivers.
Second step, pick a distro, then support it. If you expect the FOSS community to come to you and address some of your concerns, you'll have to meet them halfway. You like Ubuntu? Good! Pour some money and people into the project so you can have an easily supportable distro.
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can someone explain to me why this was even *considered* as a post?
McCain's campaign was poorly run and much more negative than Obama's. Between his pick of Palin for VP, his suspended campaign stunt, and all of the negative campaigning (Ayers, ACORN, Socialist, etc.), I'm not surprised he got so much bad press. And are you really surprised Obama got such good press? He's charismatic with many, many loyal followers who got out the vote for him. Simply covering that story would get him more good press than McCain.
http://www.coraid.com/
I've used several in my line of work (Linux Sysadmin), and have been very impressed with how easy they are to work with and how reliable they've been. Very Linux friendly; newer kernels support AoE natively. Might be out of your price range, but they'll do RAID 5 or 10. You buy the enclosure, and the drives separately.
Here's how Gentoo teaches you Linux: (Full disclosure: Yes, I'm a hardcore Gentooista) I have friends who have used Linux for a while and are fairly proficient with it. However, when something breaks, I find they have no idea where the config files or logs on there machines are located so they can start troubleshooting. There are no easy GUI wizards to help you configure the software on the machine. This forces you to learn to use a text editor and a shell. You also have to learn where things are located on the file system (config files, logs, etc.) and what all those directories off of root are for. Then when something does break (oh, jeez, maybe some big update nukes X), you're not stuck scratching your head because you don't have a desktop and a mouse cursor.
My $.02 --> Gentoo is the Linux user's Linux. It is not intended to be installed by a novice in 10 minutes (see Ubuntu). You will struggle and make mistakes on your first install (or two), but you'll learn, and be all the better for it.
As there isn't one good language for every programming task, there isn't one good language for teaching everything in CS. My thoughts:
Granted, the FOSS would do well to court more hardware manufacturers and vendors, but the "We won't support linux because there are too many distros" line is old, tired FUD. First step, (as many have said here) is to not use hardware that doesn't have open source drivers. Second step, pick a distro, then support it. If you expect the FOSS community to come to you and address some of your concerns, you'll have to meet them halfway. You like Ubuntu? Good! Pour some money and people into the project so you can have an easily supportable distro.