As an exercise for my grade 11 students, I have them install a number of operating systems. Many flavors of Windows and Linux. Their assessment as to ease of installation and configuration? Linux is easier. Fewer reboots, you get everything in logical order, you can set up your network configuration while installing and all the hardware is automatically identified and configured (yes, I'm sure there are a few exceptions to this, but we've yet to come across them in our testing).
I had a look at the parent post's link and noted that it was from 2002 and even still there were a number of positive comments regarding Linux.
They key point from my perspective is this: nobody is telling you that you have to run Linux. All that is being said is that it's there if you want to try it and use it, and in a great number of cases, it's available for free. Nope, the gaming and some commercial apps aren't all there, but for the vast majority of computer use it's just fine.
I run dual boots on pretty all my computers at home except my firewall/gateway, which runs linux exclusively. I game more on my windows boots, and I work more on my Linux boots. Windows lacks the combined capabilities of bash, perl and gnu tools (unless you want to run cygwin). I don't mind spending the time to learn how to use the gimp. Like many *nix tools, it's great once you've spent the time to learn how to use it. Remember, however, that nobodies telling you that you HAVE to use linux. It's just an option being provided by your friendly OSS community.
Almost guaranteed you have the default DRI drivers from your distribution running. These are fine for 2D but use software rendering for 3D. In order to unleash the 3D hardware power, you need to download and install the proprietary linux drivers from ATI's web site. I have had mixed results with these drivers in the past. Some times they install and work fine and other times they do... strange things and I have to start over again. Read the directions carefully and follow them. Then draw pentagrams and burn tallow candles and mutter latin incantations and hope for the best.
I have them running fine on this box. The only problem I have now is that they refuse to work with the Doom3 Linux native binary (sigh).
I have used wine to play Everquest (which is a DirectX 9 game) fairly succesfully on Mandrake 10.1 with the proprietary ATI drivers. The only errors I've had so far are some missing textures (armor missing on most mobs).
On the other hand, Doom3 Linux native binary won't work (locks up during the initial cut scene). Who knows why something I'd think wouldn't work is working fine, whereas something actually designed for Linux won't. I know ATI has had some issues with their OpenGL performance for some time, so perhaps that's part of it.
What is truly misleading is that they don't add in the extra time for the OS to load because IE preloads large parts of itself at boot time, nor do they mention the overhead that is used on your computer by implementing such a strategy.
It's called layered security. While code audits and all evidence at present may indicate that a service is safe for the world to see exploits may be discovered at some time in the future. A firewall is both a failsafe for that and a way to stealth your computer so folks randomly portscanning can't find something to work with.
Having a firewall on by default is a good idea for the vast majority of users that end up administering their systems by default and are unlikely to know or care which services are installed or whether or not they need to update them.
Having perfectly secure designs in your network services would be nice, but it has never existed in the real world.
I would have to agree whole heartedly. Sega has by far the better product for Hockey at the least. It doesn't really matter which talking head is doing hte announcing in game as long as the game play and 'extras' are all of the same quality. EA's hockey games haven't really been worth it for some time.
Anyone entering the teaching profession without a true enjoyment of the work and working conditions is doomed for early burn-out. If it was such a "cushy" job we probably would not have as big of a problem as we have with teacher retention.
Starting with the OT stuff, and getting to some on topic comments towards the end of the rant.....
Amen to that. Yes, teachers do get almost 3 months a year of vacation time (technically unpayed, although in some jurisdictions you get that pay spread out over the whole year). While the work day goes officially from 8:30 to 3:30, that only counts contact time. It does not count prep time (creating all those handouts, lessons, planning field trips, etc), marking, coaching (where I work, this is done on a strictly volunteer basis, but 80% of the teachers 'volunteer' as they see it as part of their obligation), preparing graduation commencement, and any of hundreds of other activities.
Basically a teacher's work load comes down to a minimum of 50+ hours a week if you are doing it properly. I don't know about Ontario, but I know in BC superivsion of teaching is provided by principals at the school level and disctrict admin at the district level. Teacher evaluations are mandatory every 5 years with a growth plan required. Disciplinary actions are not terribly consistent, however, with some teachers being harshly treated for minor infractions and others often ignored for bad practice - but sadly this is the nature of humanity, there will never be a perfect system.
As far as pay is concerned, things aren't bad. A teacher can support their family for the most part, but not terribly well. There is little room for advancement. The work load can be tremendous, especially in times of education funding cuts. I don't know about Ontario, but in BC you can't bank your sick days to use for holidays, you can only use em if you are sick, and you can't use them to retire early. The pension plan is decent, however, you do pay a significant chunk of your pay into that plan. Frankly, most teachers should not plan to teach much longer than 25-30 years, as they'd burn out very quickly. When I graduated from University, the statistic was that teachers lived on average 5 years past their retirement date.
Now back to our real topic - Star Office in schools. While this is a good thing, I think OO is a better choice. It's cheaper, there is ready assistance available for tech support on the net, IRC, Usenet, etc. I have my students compare office suites side by side - MS Office, OO, KOffice (the last two using an LTSP boot) and they can't see any significant difference.
What you have to understand about the biogerontology is that it is for the most part in it's late infancy. The process of aging is still not completely understood and still has competing theories. The question of how much aging is pre-programmed and how much is random damage, especially to mitochondria, is not something that scientists have come to agreement on.
While currently an appropriate diet is the biggest influence we can come up with to affect the life span of mice, that doesn't mean we won't develop better ways in the future. Our understanding of telomeres as well as oxidative damage of mitochondrial DNA, the production of garbage vesicles in the cell, the effects of hormones on development of aging etc, are all potentially going to provide mechanisms to modify life span potentials.
Staying healthy and active is a good thing. Research on aging is not grasping at straws. It's the next logical step.
If life extension were to be successful, remembering one's past would certainly become a more interesting endeavor. I suspect personal weblogs and other computerized storage would become very useful.
As a last thought, I suggest folks read Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light" for a completely different look at life extension.
Actually, there was a first edition of AD&D.
Here's how it went:
Original Boxed set (mid-late 70's - I remember getting a photocopy of the rules before they were released in Canada and then buying the first set when they came to Canada). Three booklets. Later, you could get addons such as Greyhawk.
Basic Edition
Advanced D&D - DM's guide, Monster Manual, Players Handbook. Was followed by a number of add-ons such as Dieties and Demigods, Fiend Folio, etc.
2nd Edition
3rd Edition, whatever.
I found the best campaigns were always those where the DM had dumped many of the core rules, or misinterpreted them badly, then redesigned them to a completely different, but balanced system. Ah, the days of a swing a level!
You are absolutely correct - nobody should paint your entire population with generalisations. That said, I will most definitely not be going to the US if things like this are in place.
Another nice tool is ipkungfu - decent tool for home networking and small businesses. For those that say you need a behemoth product to run larger businesses - hire a decent admin who understands bash scripting and whatever ip filtering script supported on his OS of choice - a *bsd is a good choice if only for security by obscurity.
I charge big bucks to go fix Access applications. There are so many Access developers that sort of know what they are doing and can usually whip up an app that does most of what it's supposed to do. However, when they get stuck, I charge the big $ to get it working the way it's supposed to. Nothing like having Holiday pay being calculated incorrectly and everyone freaking out to convince someone to pay up.
That said, you can get a kid out of high school to set up mysql with OO and get the simple features you'd generally use in a small office from Access without hiring a developer. You get the added bonus of much better multiuser capabilities. If you've ever seen an Access multiuser system in action with 8 or more simultaneous users, you know what I mean.
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As an exercise for my grade 11 students, I have them install a number of operating systems. Many flavors of Windows and Linux. Their assessment as to ease of installation and configuration? Linux is easier. Fewer reboots, you get everything in logical order, you can set up your network configuration while installing and all the hardware is automatically identified and configured (yes, I'm sure there are a few exceptions to this, but we've yet to come across them in our testing).
I had a look at the parent post's link and noted that it was from 2002 and even still there were a number of positive comments regarding Linux.
They key point from my perspective is this: nobody is telling you that you have to run Linux. All that is being said is that it's there if you want to try it and use it, and in a great number of cases, it's available for free. Nope, the gaming and some commercial apps aren't all there, but for the vast majority of computer use it's just fine.
I run dual boots on pretty all my computers at home except my firewall/gateway, which runs linux exclusively. I game more on my windows boots, and I work more on my Linux boots. Windows lacks the combined capabilities of bash, perl and gnu tools (unless you want to run cygwin). I don't mind spending the time to learn how to use the gimp. Like many *nix tools, it's great once you've spent the time to learn how to use it. Remember, however, that nobodies telling you that you HAVE to use linux. It's just an option being provided by your friendly OSS community.
Almost guaranteed you have the default DRI drivers from your distribution running. These are fine for 2D but use software rendering for 3D. In order to unleash the 3D hardware power, you need to download and install the proprietary linux drivers from ATI's web site. I have had mixed results with these drivers in the past. Some times they install and work fine and other times they do... strange things and I have to start over again. Read the directions carefully and follow them. Then draw pentagrams and burn tallow candles and mutter latin incantations and hope for the best.
I have them running fine on this box. The only problem I have now is that they refuse to work with the Doom3 Linux native binary (sigh).
I have used wine to play Everquest (which is a DirectX 9 game) fairly succesfully on Mandrake 10.1 with the proprietary ATI drivers. The only errors I've had so far are some missing textures (armor missing on most mobs).
On the other hand, Doom3 Linux native binary won't work (locks up during the initial cut scene). Who knows why something I'd think wouldn't work is working fine, whereas something actually designed for Linux won't. I know ATI has had some issues with their OpenGL performance for some time, so perhaps that's part of it.
If the patent can't be upheld in court it is effectively invalid. I suspect that'd be the case with sudo as prior art is emminently provable.
What is truly misleading is that they don't add in the extra time for the OS to load because IE preloads large parts of itself at boot time, nor do they mention the overhead that is used on your computer by implementing such a strategy.
It's called layered security. While code audits and all evidence at present may indicate that a service is safe for the world to see exploits may be discovered at some time in the future. A firewall is both a failsafe for that and a way to stealth your computer so folks randomly portscanning can't find something to work with. Having a firewall on by default is a good idea for the vast majority of users that end up administering their systems by default and are unlikely to know or care which services are installed or whether or not they need to update them. Having perfectly secure designs in your network services would be nice, but it has never existed in the real world.
I would have to agree whole heartedly. Sega has by far the better product for Hockey at the least. It doesn't really matter which talking head is doing hte announcing in game as long as the game play and 'extras' are all of the same quality. EA's hockey games haven't really been worth it for some time.
Starting with the OT stuff, and getting to some on topic comments towards the end of the rant.....
Amen to that. Yes, teachers do get almost 3 months a year of vacation time (technically unpayed, although in some jurisdictions you get that pay spread out over the whole year). While the work day goes officially from 8:30 to 3:30, that only counts contact time. It does not count prep time (creating all those handouts, lessons, planning field trips, etc), marking, coaching (where I work, this is done on a strictly volunteer basis, but 80% of the teachers 'volunteer' as they see it as part of their obligation), preparing graduation commencement, and any of hundreds of other activities.
Basically a teacher's work load comes down to a minimum of 50+ hours a week if you are doing it properly. I don't know about Ontario, but I know in BC superivsion of teaching is provided by principals at the school level and disctrict admin at the district level. Teacher evaluations are mandatory every 5 years with a growth plan required. Disciplinary actions are not terribly consistent, however, with some teachers being harshly treated for minor infractions and others often ignored for bad practice - but sadly this is the nature of humanity, there will never be a perfect system.
As far as pay is concerned, things aren't bad. A teacher can support their family for the most part, but not terribly well. There is little room for advancement. The work load can be tremendous, especially in times of education funding cuts. I don't know about Ontario, but in BC you can't bank your sick days to use for holidays, you can only use em if you are sick, and you can't use them to retire early. The pension plan is decent, however, you do pay a significant chunk of your pay into that plan. Frankly, most teachers should not plan to teach much longer than 25-30 years, as they'd burn out very quickly. When I graduated from University, the statistic was that teachers lived on average 5 years past their retirement date.
Now back to our real topic - Star Office in schools. While this is a good thing, I think OO is a better choice. It's cheaper, there is ready assistance available for tech support on the net, IRC, Usenet, etc. I have my students compare office suites side by side - MS Office, OO, KOffice (the last two using an LTSP boot) and they can't see any significant difference.
What you have to understand about the biogerontology is that it is for the most part in it's late infancy. The process of aging is still not completely understood and still has competing theories. The question of how much aging is pre-programmed and how much is random damage, especially to mitochondria, is not something that scientists have come to agreement on. While currently an appropriate diet is the biggest influence we can come up with to affect the life span of mice, that doesn't mean we won't develop better ways in the future. Our understanding of telomeres as well as oxidative damage of mitochondrial DNA, the production of garbage vesicles in the cell, the effects of hormones on development of aging etc, are all potentially going to provide mechanisms to modify life span potentials. Staying healthy and active is a good thing. Research on aging is not grasping at straws. It's the next logical step. If life extension were to be successful, remembering one's past would certainly become a more interesting endeavor. I suspect personal weblogs and other computerized storage would become very useful. As a last thought, I suggest folks read Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light" for a completely different look at life extension.
Once you have a good PL'ing toon to 65 with good gear and aa, it's not so hard to PL other toons up.
These days you can PL up a L65 in a week of dedicated effort np.
Actually, there was a first edition of AD&D. Here's how it went: Original Boxed set (mid-late 70's - I remember getting a photocopy of the rules before they were released in Canada and then buying the first set when they came to Canada). Three booklets. Later, you could get addons such as Greyhawk. Basic Edition Advanced D&D - DM's guide, Monster Manual, Players Handbook. Was followed by a number of add-ons such as Dieties and Demigods, Fiend Folio, etc. 2nd Edition 3rd Edition, whatever. I found the best campaigns were always those where the DM had dumped many of the core rules, or misinterpreted them badly, then redesigned them to a completely different, but balanced system. Ah, the days of a swing a level!
You are absolutely correct - nobody should paint your entire population with generalisations. That said, I will most definitely not be going to the US if things like this are in place.
Another nice tool is ipkungfu - decent tool for home networking and small businesses. For those that say you need a behemoth product to run larger businesses - hire a decent admin who understands bash scripting and whatever ip filtering script supported on his OS of choice - a *bsd is a good choice if only for security by obscurity.
I charge big bucks to go fix Access applications. There are so many Access developers that sort of know what they are doing and can usually whip up an app that does most of what it's supposed to do. However, when they get stuck, I charge the big $ to get it working the way it's supposed to. Nothing like having Holiday pay being calculated incorrectly and everyone freaking out to convince someone to pay up. That said, you can get a kid out of high school to set up mysql with OO and get the simple features you'd generally use in a small office from Access without hiring a developer. You get the added bonus of much better multiuser capabilities. If you've ever seen an Access multiuser system in action with 8 or more simultaneous users, you know what I mean.