I am actually working on specing out a dc5800 Microtower model. I think its probably what we will go with. I have experienced their home user line a few times and its horrid but I have heard good things about the business/enterprise lines. Another school near us has used them for a number of years with good results.
We had the cap issue as well but there was just some general flakiness of the hardware and some ps issues as well. Also Dell was a pain in the arse for getting the CAP issue taken care of.
We had been standardizing on Gateway E-2610D systems (made by MPC) for the last two years. Their a good system except I have had the on-board NIC die on a few of them. Now I have to re-spec for some other brand. It irks me but it will probably be HP as I no longer trust Dell (since an issue we had with a bunch of Optiplex boxes). Anyone know of a brand that offers the same motherboards/chipsets for a few years at a time? I want to be able to use as few images as possible to manage our machines.
In education its very wise to at least be cautious about "free". I am not referring to FOSS but I have seen some very shady free offers. Like, we will give you this for "free" and all we ask in return is "insert very unpleasant request here". Only that unpleasant "request" is buried deep in some EULA or legal document of another type.
I try to use as much FOSS here as possible as I think it better serves the public as it reduces our costs and gives us quality software in return. I am still working on getting a few hundred $ in the budget to donating to our most used FOSS applications projects. I am hoping that they will see value in the money we saved (far more then a few hundred dollars).
I am an NEA member (though not a teacher) and I really don't give a crap about what they say. I am always getting propaganda from them about who I should vote for or how I should be outraged at some law that would make teachers have to be competitive or something. The first thing I do when I see it is throw it in the recycling bin. It really gets annoying thinking of all the dues I pay going towards propaganda materials.:/
I work for a public K-12, we already require high school students to do community service in order to graduate and have for some time. I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Its not that many hours (its 40 here already), it benefits the community, and they might just learn to respect the community a little more.
I use iTunes most of the time but sometimes I want to do things it can't do or doesn't do the best. I am really not crazy about having a music library. As others have said some of us have a pretty good folder layout for finding music. I still use XMMS (even though I have to run X11 and esd) quite a bit. Also I occasionally use MPlayer as well. What I like about XMMS is that you can sort currently playing music. In iTunes you can't just click on a song and play it and then decide that you want to listen to this other song next and have it move to that. At least not without making a playlist, and then you won't play that list seamlessly. You have to stop listening to the song you just clicked on in the library to start playing the playlist. Its just kind of annoying. I would be greatly happy to see XMMS made to run nativity on OS X, and have support added for protected / unprotected ACC files so I don't have to convert them first.
I work for a K-12 school District and that is dead on especially in the elementary. They watch TV, play games, play one the computer, and now they are installing even more "learning" software on the computers so they have to teach even less. Education is just getting sad. And at the Middle school and High School you can replace that with sports. Academics isn't just in the back seat, its in the trunk.:(
Ok, I have to ask. Why was your wife carrying flares? Was she worried you would crash in the ocean and get stuck on a tropical island or something? Just curious.:)
They may be able to drop the motor size down a little but don't forget that a family vehicle (5 seat) will be bigger and a bit heavier as well. Not to mention that you will be hauling more people in it. Also even if it is just $50k that is still about $25k more then people are currently spending on a decent family car and you can buy a lot of gas for $25k. Don't get me wrong I think electric is the way to go for many reasons, but at $50k for a family car many, and perhaps most, families won't be able to afford it. They need to get even cheaper and more convenient (no more then 10 min charges for road trips) before the average family can really consider them.
I am a US Citizen and I got searched every time I cam back in through Detroit. I switched to coming back through Minneapolis and haven't had any issues. I have heard from other people that they have had issues at Detroit as well. Still I question the legality of some of the searches. Why do they need to know how much money I am carrying? Why should they be able to go through my personal papers/documents? Why do they need to search my laptop again (besides making sure its not a bomb, which doesn't involve looking through the files on the HDD or my USB stick)?
For many things a higher current is more important then the low voltage as you could employ them in series to bring the voltage up. I just installed an electric drive system in my boat. Its a 48 volt system yet I am using 6 volt batteries so that I can get a better run time (more AH), you could do the same with ultra capacitors. Though I admit it will probably be a while before I will be able to run my boat on them. Still there would be many advantages as the charge rate could be much quicker, the life time much higher, and the weight much lighter. Though I would worry about one of them going bad or getting a bit too much current. I suspect there are ways you can litigate that danger as well though.
It depends on how your actually doing things. If you are "downloading" office to your computer/terminal and running it there and uploading things as you go you might have constant connections for office. If you are simply viewing a remote display and interacting with it then the only thing you are sending to the server is keyboard and mouse data (short of uploading other data like audio or files from a USB drive) and the only thing you are likely downloading is screen data (essentially live streaming video and perhaps audio). So you *could* be fine with more bandwidth down then up. It all depends on how the system is designed. Those Xterms playing xtank weren't really doing anything local other then sending keyboard data and receiving video data, all the processing and work was being done on the Sun server and it was staying there. That is not saying that you wont hit a road block as far as bandwidth is concerned, just saying that having lower upload speeds might not be an issue.
I moved from Quicken 2000 to Moneydance with no issues. It has full support for importing the Quicken files or Quicken backup files. I know this is off topic, but as you stated that it is so difficult I thought I might trow you a simple solution. Moneydance is well worth the $40, and it works on Lin/Win/OSX nativly.:)
I for one hope this will finally allow the OpenOffice.org dev team to enable Draw to open Publisher files and to save to them. That is, to my knowledge, the last bit of major compatibility missing from OpenOffice.org at this time. That would also allow for people who use Publisher a lot to finally be able to make the switch to Draw without re-creating all of their old documents and for them to share with people who still use Publisher.
That would be a major boon for OO.org if you ask me.:)
I want to run Windows safely inside a sandbox inside Linux. Why not just run it in VMware, Xen, or//s then? If you want to sandbox it anyway then you may as well. And now there is cool stuff like VMware's Unity for Linux (VMware Fusion for Mac has had this for a while and its nice, though I don't use it often) which lets you make the apps look like they are running without the virtual machine.
Off-topic, well kind of, but supposedly the next version of PalmOS is going to be based on Linux as well. On another note I have Alltel and I would love a Centro but I am a bit worried about signal and also being able to use the features (web based) I want as Alltel doesn't offer the Centro yet. Does anyone know how compatible the PRLs from a 755p would be for use with a Centro?
I have always had the same experience in Detroit as you did. I was always selected for a "random" search when I returned from Japan. So last time I came back I flew into Minneapolis, they let me right through. Even said "Welcome back" and sounded like they meant it. Though for some reason they were really paranoid about people using their cellphones before clearing customs. They were polite about it but still kind of odd. In Detroit the minute you hit the runway they said you could go ahead and use them. Weird.
You can reset the BIOS too. Then you can clear the password for boot up and BIOS config. Also once you boot a live cd you can mount the root partition, chroot into it and reset the root password.;) I've had to do that to reset a corrupted password before. If its a laptop its not always easy to find a box to hook it up to, or the IDE converter, maybe thats changed with SATA laptop drives though.
ZorbaTHut said...
* No exposure to the elements, thus reduced maintenance cost from wind/weeds/corrosion * No land cost * No clouds, no day/night cycle * There is no exposure to the elements but what about space debris? A solar array in space is likely to be quite large, all that surface area will increase its risk of being hit by something. * No land cost but it will take up a fair amount of room in an increasingly occupied orbital real estate. satellites need space between them, though perhaps this would be in a less occupied orbit, I don't know. * If it is geo-stationary, which I would think would be necessary, wouldn't it have some period in darkness at some point during its day? I am asking, I really am not sure though I guess I could google it.
Though, if it was in its own orbit then I guess the space debris would be less of an issue as well.
The newbreed software site has a number of programs there. There are actually quite a few educational titles around, I like gtypist for the older students as it is fast, modifiable, and has a lot of lessons. Its curses based though so it will turn some people off if they have a fear of the terminal, also it only runs on Linux, Unix, and OS X via darwin ports or fink (not counting cygwin). You can run it over an ssh session though and could automate that with a script.:)
Re:Anything that forces discipline is good.
on
The Return of Ada
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Whats wrong with searching Google?
Its a tool that can lead you to valuable information just as asking a colleague or consulting a book or other publication can. No one knows everything or has come across every issue, but there is usually a good chance someone has. Just because you have seen someone use it to find information who then did a half-assed job of fixing the issue doesn't mean the tool they used is no good or always lends itself to half-assed fixes.
Perhaps they have some way of limiting the number of pings from a specific address setup on their firewalls. Say they allow you to ping 5 times and then they just drop the icmp packets. Just a thought.
I have always found amber (dark amber) or orange on black to be easiest to read on my terminals. I have used green on black but it tends to hurt my eyes a bit more.
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I am actually working on specing out a dc5800 Microtower model. I think its probably what we will go with. I have experienced their home user line a few times and its horrid but I have heard good things about the business/enterprise lines. Another school near us has used them for a number of years with good results.
We had the cap issue as well but there was just some general flakiness of the hardware and some ps issues as well. Also Dell was a pain in the arse for getting the CAP issue taken care of.
We had been standardizing on Gateway E-2610D systems (made by MPC) for the last two years. Their a good system except I have had the on-board NIC die on a few of them. Now I have to re-spec for some other brand. It irks me but it will probably be HP as I no longer trust Dell (since an issue we had with a bunch of Optiplex boxes). Anyone know of a brand that offers the same motherboards/chipsets for a few years at a time? I want to be able to use as few images as possible to manage our machines.
In education its very wise to at least be cautious about "free". I am not referring to FOSS but I have seen some very shady free offers. Like, we will give you this for "free" and all we ask in return is "insert very unpleasant request here". Only that unpleasant "request" is buried deep in some EULA or legal document of another type.
I try to use as much FOSS here as possible as I think it better serves the public as it reduces our costs and gives us quality software in return. I am still working on getting a few hundred $ in the budget to donating to our most used FOSS applications projects. I am hoping that they will see value in the money we saved (far more then a few hundred dollars).
I am an NEA member (though not a teacher) and I really don't give a crap about what they say. I am always getting propaganda from them about who I should vote for or how I should be outraged at some law that would make teachers have to be competitive or something. The first thing I do when I see it is throw it in the recycling bin. It really gets annoying thinking of all the dues I pay going towards propaganda materials. :/
I work for a public K-12, we already require high school students to do community service in order to graduate and have for some time. I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Its not that many hours (its 40 here already), it benefits the community, and they might just learn to respect the community a little more.
I use iTunes most of the time but sometimes I want to do things it can't do or doesn't do the best. I am really not crazy about having a music library. As others have said some of us have a pretty good folder layout for finding music. I still use XMMS (even though I have to run X11 and esd) quite a bit. Also I occasionally use MPlayer as well. What I like about XMMS is that you can sort currently playing music. In iTunes you can't just click on a song and play it and then decide that you want to listen to this other song next and have it move to that. At least not without making a playlist, and then you won't play that list seamlessly. You have to stop listening to the song you just clicked on in the library to start playing the playlist. Its just kind of annoying. I would be greatly happy to see XMMS made to run nativity on OS X, and have support added for protected / unprotected ACC files so I don't have to convert them first.
Just my 2 cents, take it how you will.
I work for a K-12 school District and that is dead on especially in the elementary. They watch TV, play games, play one the computer, and now they are installing even more "learning" software on the computers so they have to teach even less. Education is just getting sad. And at the Middle school and High School you can replace that with sports. Academics isn't just in the back seat, its in the trunk. :(
Ok, I have to ask. Why was your wife carrying flares? Was she worried you would crash in the ocean and get stuck on a tropical island or something? Just curious. :)
They may be able to drop the motor size down a little but don't forget that a family vehicle (5 seat) will be bigger and a bit heavier as well. Not to mention that you will be hauling more people in it. Also even if it is just $50k that is still about $25k more then people are currently spending on a decent family car and you can buy a lot of gas for $25k. Don't get me wrong I think electric is the way to go for many reasons, but at $50k for a family car many, and perhaps most, families won't be able to afford it. They need to get even cheaper and more convenient (no more then 10 min charges for road trips) before the average family can really consider them.
Just my two cents of course and YMMV. ;)
I agree.
I am a US Citizen and I got searched every time I cam back in through Detroit. I switched to coming back through Minneapolis and haven't had any issues. I have heard from other people that they have had issues at Detroit as well. Still I question the legality of some of the searches. Why do they need to know how much money I am carrying? Why should they be able to go through my personal papers/documents? Why do they need to search my laptop again (besides making sure its not a bomb, which doesn't involve looking through the files on the HDD or my USB stick)?
Whoops. I did mean mitigate, sorry it was early here.
For many things a higher current is more important then the low voltage as you could employ them in series to bring the voltage up. I just installed an electric drive system in my boat. Its a 48 volt system yet I am using 6 volt batteries so that I can get a better run time (more AH), you could do the same with ultra capacitors. Though I admit it will probably be a while before I will be able to run my boat on them. Still there would be many advantages as the charge rate could be much quicker, the life time much higher, and the weight much lighter. Though I would worry about one of them going bad or getting a bit too much current. I suspect there are ways you can litigate that danger as well though.
Just some thoughts,
It depends on how your actually doing things. If you are "downloading" office to your computer/terminal and running it there and uploading things as you go you might have constant connections for office. If you are simply viewing a remote display and interacting with it then the only thing you are sending to the server is keyboard and mouse data (short of uploading other data like audio or files from a USB drive) and the only thing you are likely downloading is screen data (essentially live streaming video and perhaps audio). So you *could* be fine with more bandwidth down then up. It all depends on how the system is designed. Those Xterms playing xtank weren't really doing anything local other then sending keyboard data and receiving video data, all the processing and work was being done on the Sun server and it was staying there. That is not saying that you wont hit a road block as far as bandwidth is concerned, just saying that having lower upload speeds might not be an issue.
I moved from Quicken 2000 to Moneydance with no issues. It has full support for importing the Quicken files or Quicken backup files. I know this is off topic, but as you stated that it is so difficult I thought I might trow you a simple solution. Moneydance is well worth the $40, and it works on Lin/Win/OSX nativly. :)
http://moneydance.com/
I for one hope this will finally allow the OpenOffice.org dev team to enable Draw to open Publisher files and to save to them. That is, to my knowledge, the last bit of major compatibility missing from OpenOffice.org at this time. That would also allow for people who use Publisher a lot to finally be able to make the switch to Draw without re-creating all of their old documents and for them to share with people who still use Publisher.
That would be a major boon for OO.org if you ask me. :)
Just a thought,
Off-topic, well kind of, but supposedly the next version of PalmOS is going to be based on Linux as well. On another note I have Alltel and I would love a Centro but I am a bit worried about signal and also being able to use the features (web based) I want as Alltel doesn't offer the Centro yet. Does anyone know how compatible the PRLs from a 755p would be for use with a Centro?
I have always had the same experience in Detroit as you did. I was always selected for a "random" search when I returned from Japan. So last time I came back I flew into Minneapolis, they let me right through. Even said "Welcome back" and sounded like they meant it. Though for some reason they were really paranoid about people using their cellphones before clearing customs. They were polite about it but still kind of odd. In Detroit the minute you hit the runway they said you could go ahead and use them. Weird.
You can reset the BIOS too. Then you can clear the password for boot up and BIOS config. Also once you boot a live cd you can mount the root partition, chroot into it and reset the root password. ;) I've had to do that to reset a corrupted password before. If its a laptop its not always easy to find a box to hook it up to, or the IDE converter, maybe thats changed with SATA laptop drives though.
* No land cost
* No clouds, no day/night cycle * There is no exposure to the elements but what about space debris? A solar array in space is likely to be quite large, all that surface area will increase its risk of being hit by something.
* No land cost but it will take up a fair amount of room in an increasingly occupied orbital real estate. satellites need space between them, though perhaps this would be in a less occupied orbit, I don't know.
* If it is geo-stationary, which I would think would be necessary, wouldn't it have some period in darkness at some point during its day? I am asking, I really am not sure though I guess I could google it.
Though, if it was in its own orbit then I guess the space debris would be less of an issue as well.
Just some thoughts.
In our school we run these and some othere that are less game like (and for older students).
:)
Tux Math: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxmath/
Tux Typeing: http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/
Tux Paint: http://www.tuxpaint.org/
The newbreed software site has a number of programs there. There are actually quite a few educational titles around, I like gtypist for the older students as it is fast, modifiable, and has a lot of lessons. Its curses based though so it will turn some people off if they have a fear of the terminal, also it only runs on Linux, Unix, and OS X via darwin ports or fink (not counting cygwin). You can run it over an ssh session though and could automate that with a script.
Whats wrong with searching Google?
Its a tool that can lead you to valuable information just as asking a colleague or consulting a book or other publication can. No one knows everything or has come across every issue, but there is usually a good chance someone has. Just because you have seen someone use it to find information who then did a half-assed job of fixing the issue doesn't mean the tool they used is no good or always lends itself to half-assed fixes.
Perhaps they have some way of limiting the number of pings from a specific address setup on their firewalls. Say they allow you to ping 5 times and then they just drop the icmp packets. Just a thought.
I have always found amber (dark amber) or orange on black to be easiest to read on my terminals. I have used green on black but it tends to hurt my eyes a bit more.