The internet is not private property. I can get free internet access at dozens of places around my city, including churches, public schools and libraries. It is more analogous to a public street than to a private store. If I find a song on the internet, copy it for personal use only, and leave the original song there, I have not harmed anything and have not violated any private property.
Unless you consider copyright an expression of private property. But case law concerning copying of copyrighted work for personal use is not well-settled yet. Certainly not settled enough to be a foundation for an ethical judgment one way or another.
Just a correction to your signature:
"Piracy is ethically no different than finding a few nice items on the street that you weren't planning to buy for yourself, making an exact replica of those items, and taking the replicas with you, leaving the original items unharmed."
That is a more accurate analogy, but quite a bit less clear-cut from an ethical point of view.
Having government agencies disseminate facts to the public through Wikipedia is certainly more cost effective than having them set up and maintain siloed sites like www.nutrition.com, www.consumer.gov, and www.usda.gov to do the same thing, the way the U.S. government does.
the retention ONLY has to do with correspondance concerning ongoing legal action, or issues where it can reasonable be assumed that legal action may arrise!
Since the law covers potential civil litigation, not just criminal litigation, it would pretty much cover all correspondence between a school and families. A family can bring a case to civil court for any school action that the family feels harmed by, so the school will have to retain all electronic communication with students and their families.
Why not iWork (Pages and Keynote)? It is far superior document software, especially for creative, multi-media documents which are ideal for education. Plus it is fully integrated with iLife which is a major reason why they would choose Macintosh in the first place. I'm sure Apple would cut them an education discount. Why not iWork?
Distribute and read e-books, for one thing. Most developing countries can't afford enough books for their students. For the first time ever, all participating students will have access to large libraries of books and other materials.
An OLPC clone is exactly what it is. Most analysts give OLPC little chance of long-term success. But if any aspect of the OLPC experiment reveals a previously unknown market for computers, the big players like Intel and Microsoft want to be prepared to move in. The potential upside is huge. Currently computers are only sold to a small fraction of the world's population; finding a way to turn the billions of non-computer users into new computer consumers would be a market far to big for any computer company to ignore.
Your point is well taken. There is loads of cheap kids software to be found in the bargain bins of many retailers. Personally, I use linux with OSS because I am running my software on free, recycled computers that will only run variants of Linux, or Windows 98. And Windows 98 is no longer supported by MS.
I could buy a newer computer and run XP or Vista, but then the $5 software you mention does not seem so cheap any more. I'm not in a position to lay out hundreds of dollars for a kids toy, no matter how educational it is. Especially since the computer industry is pretty well set up to make sure that any newer computer I buy will be obsolete in a few years.
So far I've been able to find more than enough OSS kids stuff to keep my kids busy. And I'm glad to know I can run it for as many years as I want -- or at least until the PCs capacitors blow out. At which point I can replace it with another free PC
This site has about a dozen free software titles for Linux that are good for kids. I've used a few of them with my kids. They've been great, and the price is right.
You are referring to the 5% of the company, mostly high-level execs, that Disney expects to be productive while out of the office. Those people can still get MS Office. But Google Office can take care of 95% of Disney employees who don't need productivity while away from a desk, at a fraction of the cost and maintenance that MS Office requires.
How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?
There would be no difference if Microsoft put the IE icon in a "premium position", say at the top of the desktop and the top of the toolbar, and then allowed any number of other web browsers to be fully pre-installed and place icons immediately beneath IE in those places. But Microsoft doesn't do that, so it is very different.
Well, then it is clear that your problem is not Linux or Windows, but your choice of application frameworks. Fortunately, no applications lasts forever. You can easily correct your error when your current application's life cycle expires.
Let me get this straight: He claims Linux is equal to Windows by using web-based email, web-based chat clients, web-based music stations, and web-based text processing.
Well, yes. A forward-thing system administrator has to be taking note of the fact that 90% of what we currently deliver to our users can be done, in some form, over the web.
Let's see what his 10 year old has to say about it when he wants to play the latest PC games, copy music to his iPod using iTMS, and/or run software his friends are running.
Probably the same thing he says when his friends games are on a different game system, or his friends music uses a different DRM system. There is a glut of information technology available for 10 years olds. They can't have everything -- they have to pick and choose. Choosing Linux instead of Windows on the desktop is no different than choosing PS3 instead of XBox. 10 year olds are used to making those kinds of choices all the time, and it doesn't bother them.
we use Windows for several non-linux bashing reasons: Exchange, AD, compatibility with other districts
You can get the same functionality with Linux and Web-based apps and standards.
and price/support to staying the course as opposed to rebuilding everything.
Have you priced out the hardware/software/training costs associated with rolling out Vista? Somehow staying the Windows course doesn't seem all the cheap to me.
One thing about teachers, you don't rock their boat. Let their classroom be about them and their students and all is well.
I agree. A careful linux/web roll out won't rock their boat any more that following the Windows upgrade path that is in front of us.
Let me get this straight: He claims Linux is equal to Windows by using web-based email, web-based chat clients, web-based music stations, and web-based text processing.
Well, yes. A forward-thing system administrator has to be taking note of the fact that 90% of what we currently deliver to our users can be done, in some form, over the web.
Let's see what his 10 year old has to say about it when he wants to play the latest PC games, copy music to his iPod using iTMS, and/or run software his friends are running.
Probably the same thing he says when his friends games are on a different game system, or his friends music uses a different DRM system. There is a glut of information technology available for 10 years olds. They can't have everything -- they have to pick and choose. Choosing Linux instead of Windows on the desktop is no different than choosing PS3 instead of XBox. 10 year olds are used to making those kinds of choices all the time, and it doesn't bother them.
we use Windows for several non-linux bashing reasons: Exchange, AD, compatibility with other districts
You can get the same functionality with Linux and Web-based apps and standards.
and price/support to staying the course as opposed to rebuilding everything.
Have you priced out the hardware/software/training costs associated with rolling out Vista? Somehow staying the Windows course doesn't seem all the cheap to me.
One thing about teachers, you don't rock their boat. Let their classroom be about them and their students and all is well.
I agree. A careful linux/web roll out won't rock their boat any more that following the Windows upgrade path that is in front of us.
And Firefox works the same on Linux as it does on windows. Want a simple Linux migration path?
Move as many of your applications as possible to the web
Replace IE with Firefox
Replace Windows with Linux
You can still keep a few Windows/Mac machines around for the odd application that won't work on the web. But 90% of your student computers could easily switch to Linux this way, with no more user training than you are currently have with Windows.
Apple only exists today because Microsoft kept Apple out of bankruptcy in 1997, presumably so Microsoft would not be subjected to the anti-competitiveness statues that apply to monopolies.
If bandwidth is the problem, that is best solved by bandwidth throttling rather than content filtering. Content filtering, no matter how you try to do it, is ultimately a form of censorship, which no respected institution of higher learning should be involved in.
Have your CIO read those two articles, then explain to you again with a straight face why they use web filtering to control bandwidth.
No email client will ever compete against Outlook at the enterprise level until they combine email and calendar into one application the way Outlook does. PDA syncing is a requirement too. Unless and until Thurderbird/Eudora does those two things, 95% of email client users will keep using Outlook.
You are a parent with limitted income who has a child who could benefit from this rich reading environment. You are a school administrator with the same student needs whose school is running a $4 million deficit. Which one would you choose?
Re:Doesn't work on white boards either
on
A GUI For Books
·
· Score: 1
Actually, while funny, your story is becoming a reality today. Many, many schools are starting to move beyond the whitboards of yesterday and are starting to implement SMART Boards, which actually do have an "undo button".
Key differences from LeapFrog
on
A GUI For Books
·
· Score: 1
The most important differences from LeapFrog include:
Price. While the cost of the TouchBook device is about the same as LeapFrog, $40.00, the LeapFrog is essentially a platform that requires you to buy software from the publisher, at about $15 per title. The TouchBook, on the other hand, comes with free authoring software that will allow teachers, or anyone else, to create their own TouchBooks at very low cost.
Connectivity. The LeapFrog is a closed system that only allows you to control the leapfrog device. The TouchBook, on the other hand, interfaces with a standard computer. A reader can use the TouchBook to not only have the computer read to them -- like a LeapFrog -- but also to surf the web, compose email, watch videos, and even control educational software, robots, or to control their environment (open doors, turn on lights, etc).
So the TouchBook has the potential to far exceed the LeapFrog both in terms of lower cost to use, but in terms of more interesting functionality for the reader.
I personally am greatly looking forward to using TouchBooks with my special needs students, who would benefit from the richer reading experience it can provide at a cost much lower than the specialized products for the disabled ($845) that are sold today.
"[The web site] will list federal grants and contracts... except for those classified for national security reasons."
With 20% of the U.S. budget earmarked for "national security" and at least another 5-10% of spending that does not show up in the budget but rather is spent through "supplementals", I rather doubt this will clarify very much how the U.S. Government is spending money. This law leaves more than enough places for people to hide spending if they want to.
Slashdot Mirror
The internet is not private property. I can get free internet access at dozens of places around my city, including churches, public schools and libraries. It is more analogous to a public street than to a private store. If I find a song on the internet, copy it for personal use only, and leave the original song there, I have not harmed anything and have not violated any private property.
Unless you consider copyright an expression of private property. But case law concerning copying of copyrighted work for personal use is not well-settled yet. Certainly not settled enough to be a foundation for an ethical judgment one way or another.
Just a correction to your signature: "Piracy is ethically no different than finding a few nice items on the street that you weren't planning to buy for yourself, making an exact replica of those items, and taking the replicas with you, leaving the original items unharmed." That is a more accurate analogy, but quite a bit less clear-cut from an ethical point of view.
Having government agencies disseminate facts to the public through Wikipedia is certainly more cost effective than having them set up and maintain siloed sites like www.nutrition.com, www.consumer.gov, and www.usda.gov to do the same thing, the way the U.S. government does.
Since the law covers potential civil litigation, not just criminal litigation, it would pretty much cover all correspondence between a school and families. A family can bring a case to civil court for any school action that the family feels harmed by, so the school will have to retain all electronic communication with students and their families.
Why not iWork (Pages and Keynote)? It is far superior document software, especially for creative, multi-media documents which are ideal for education. Plus it is fully integrated with iLife which is a major reason why they would choose Macintosh in the first place. I'm sure Apple would cut them an education discount. Why not iWork?
Distribute and read e-books, for one thing. Most developing countries can't afford enough books for their students. For the first time ever, all participating students will have access to large libraries of books and other materials.
The election in question here is November 2006. The Democrats did win in November 2006.
DVD zoning puts all of the EU in one zone, so it doesn't violate EU rules.
An OLPC clone is exactly what it is. Most analysts give OLPC little chance of long-term success. But if any aspect of the OLPC experiment reveals a previously unknown market for computers, the big players like Intel and Microsoft want to be prepared to move in. The potential upside is huge. Currently computers are only sold to a small fraction of the world's population; finding a way to turn the billions of non-computer users into new computer consumers would be a market far to big for any computer company to ignore.
Your point is well taken. There is loads of cheap kids software to be found in the bargain bins of many retailers. Personally, I use linux with OSS because I am running my software on free, recycled computers that will only run variants of Linux, or Windows 98. And Windows 98 is no longer supported by MS.
I could buy a newer computer and run XP or Vista, but then the $5 software you mention does not seem so cheap any more. I'm not in a position to lay out hundreds of dollars for a kids toy, no matter how educational it is. Especially since the computer industry is pretty well set up to make sure that any newer computer I buy will be obsolete in a few years.
So far I've been able to find more than enough OSS kids stuff to keep my kids busy. And I'm glad to know I can run it for as many years as I want -- or at least until the PCs capacitors blow out. At which point I can replace it with another free PC
This site has about a dozen free software titles for Linux that are good for kids. I've used a few of them with my kids. They've been great, and the price is right.
You are referring to the 5% of the company, mostly high-level execs, that Disney expects to be productive while out of the office. Those people can still get MS Office. But Google Office can take care of 95% of Disney employees who don't need productivity while away from a desk, at a fraction of the cost and maintenance that MS Office requires.
How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?
There would be no difference if Microsoft put the IE icon in a "premium position", say at the top of the desktop and the top of the toolbar, and then allowed any number of other web browsers to be fully pre-installed and place icons immediately beneath IE in those places. But Microsoft doesn't do that, so it is very different.
Well, then it is clear that your problem is not Linux or Windows, but your choice of application frameworks. Fortunately, no applications lasts forever. You can easily correct your error when your current application's life cycle expires.
Google has a near-monopoly on web searches
44 percent is hardly a monopoly. Or a near-monopoly.
Let me get this straight: He claims Linux is equal to Windows by using web-based email, web-based chat clients, web-based music stations, and web-based text processing.
Well, yes. A forward-thing system administrator has to be taking note of the fact that 90% of what we currently deliver to our users can be done, in some form, over the web.
Let's see what his 10 year old has to say about it when he wants to play the latest PC games, copy music to his iPod using iTMS, and/or run software his friends are running.
Probably the same thing he says when his friends games are on a different game system, or his friends music uses a different DRM system. There is a glut of information technology available for 10 years olds. They can't have everything -- they have to pick and choose. Choosing Linux instead of Windows on the desktop is no different than choosing PS3 instead of XBox. 10 year olds are used to making those kinds of choices all the time, and it doesn't bother them.
we use Windows for several non-linux bashing reasons: Exchange, AD, compatibility with other districts
You can get the same functionality with Linux and Web-based apps and standards.
and price/support to staying the course as opposed to rebuilding everything.
Have you priced out the hardware/software/training costs associated with rolling out Vista? Somehow staying the Windows course doesn't seem all the cheap to me.
One thing about teachers, you don't rock their boat. Let their classroom be about them and their students and all is well.
I agree. A careful linux/web roll out won't rock their boat any more that following the Windows upgrade path that is in front of us.
Let me get this straight: He claims Linux is equal to Windows by using web-based email, web-based chat clients, web-based music stations, and web-based text processing. Well, yes. A forward-thing system administrator has to be taking note of the fact that 90% of what we currently deliver to our users can be done, in some form, over the web. Let's see what his 10 year old has to say about it when he wants to play the latest PC games, copy music to his iPod using iTMS, and/or run software his friends are running. Probably the same thing he says when his friends games are on a different game system, or his friends music uses a different DRM system. There is a glut of information technology available for 10 years olds. They can't have everything -- they have to pick and choose. Choosing Linux instead of Windows on the desktop is no different than choosing PS3 instead of XBox. 10 year olds are used to making those kinds of choices all the time, and it doesn't bother them. we use Windows for several non-linux bashing reasons: Exchange, AD, compatibility with other districts You can get the same functionality with Linux and Web-based apps and standards. and price/support to staying the course as opposed to rebuilding everything. Have you priced out the hardware/software/training costs associated with rolling out Vista? Somehow staying the Windows course doesn't seem all the cheap to me. One thing about teachers, you don't rock their boat. Let their classroom be about them and their students and all is well. I agree. A careful linux/web roll out won't rock their boat any more that following the Windows upgrade path that is in front of us.
- Move as many of your applications as possible to the web
- Replace IE with Firefox
- Replace Windows with Linux
You can still keep a few Windows/Mac machines around for the odd application that won't work on the web. But 90% of your student computers could easily switch to Linux this way, with no more user training than you are currently have with Windows.Apple only exists today because Microsoft kept Apple out of bankruptcy in 1997, presumably so Microsoft would not be subjected to the anti-competitiveness statues that apply to monopolies.
If bandwidth is the problem, that is best solved by bandwidth throttling rather than content filtering. Content filtering, no matter how you try to do it, is ultimately a form of censorship, which no respected institution of higher learning should be involved in.
Have your CIO read those two articles, then explain to you again with a straight face why they use web filtering to control bandwidth.
No email client will ever compete against Outlook at the enterprise level until they combine email and calendar into one application the way Outlook does. PDA syncing is a requirement too. Unless and until Thurderbird/Eudora does those two things, 95% of email client users will keep using Outlook.
What it the purpose of the book here?
Touch screen: $300
TouchBook: $40
You are a parent with limitted income who has a child who could benefit from this rich reading environment. You are a school administrator with the same student needs whose school is running a $4 million deficit. Which one would you choose?
Actually, while funny, your story is becoming a reality today. Many, many schools are starting to move beyond the whitboards of yesterday and are starting to implement SMART Boards, which actually do have an "undo button".
The most important differences from LeapFrog include:
So the TouchBook has the potential to far exceed the LeapFrog both in terms of lower cost to use, but in terms of more interesting functionality for the reader.
I personally am greatly looking forward to using TouchBooks with my special needs students, who would benefit from the richer reading experience it can provide at a cost much lower than the specialized products for the disabled ($845) that are sold today.
"[The web site] will list federal grants and contracts... except for those classified for national security reasons."
With 20% of the U.S. budget earmarked for "national security" and at least another 5-10% of spending that does not show up in the budget but rather is spent through "supplementals", I rather doubt this will clarify very much how the U.S. Government is spending money. This law leaves more than enough places for people to hide spending if they want to.