There was an editor it Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calestenics and Orthodontia that did something similar - lived and worked out of a trailer for most, if not all, of the year, but his work was with embedded systems.
Hi-speed/4G coverage will be spotty (at best) where you will likely want to AND be able to park a fifth wheel trailer, and Internet cafe's (AKA book stores, coffee shops, libraries) will be a drive from the campground.
At a superficial level, the issue would seem to be quite hard, but with a little planning it shouldn't be *that* hard.
My path would be to go out and build a new file server running either Windows Server or Linux, based on what OS your current file server uses, install the de-dupe tool of your choice from the many listed above, and migrate your entire file structure from your current box to the the new box - the de-dupe tools will work their magic as the files trip in over the network connection. Once de-duped, your old file server can be rebuilt with the same de-dupe tool, and the files migrated back to it for use going forward if desired, with the two large drives used as an online backup.
The temporary de-dupe box can be fairly simple with nothing more thana fairly robust CPU, two 2 or 3 TB drives and a gigabit NIC, you won't even need to buy an OS license if you are running Windows, as you can just use a trial copy of Windows Server,
If you have a need for internet access, get a MiFi/wireless hotspot. If you only want internet access if one of the houses/businesses has a free/unsecured hot spot you can "jump on to" what is the point? Either you need it or you don't.
Do you rummage through people's medicine cabinets for bandaids/medicine or do you bring them with you? Do you look for garden hose when you respond to a fire or do you have a tanker with a pump and hoses you bring with you?
If there is an open, unsecured, wifi hotspot the mesh network can find in the neighborhood, why can't the netbooks, laptops, and tablets you bring with you find them?
Wasn't there a post not two-four weeks ago about an effort to make mesh networks areas without service? Did the original poster even see that posting?
So wait - if the warmest temperature ever recorded was way, way, way back in 1922, that would argue against global warming (because it's never been hotter than it was 90 years ago), AND it would explode the connection between auto emissions and rising global temperatures, since there were almost no cars (comparitively) in 1922.
I was in Texas at the end of July, and the average temperature was about 105 degrees F. I left my cellphone in the car to charge while I was out and about, came back an hour later and found my phone displaying the Termperature warning (which apparently kicks in at 113 degrees F)...
I know several computer "enthusiasists" that bought Linux netbooks as a novelty, played with them a while, then found them too limiting and shoved them in the closet. Of course, this was back in the 1 Gig RAM, single-core CPU, integrated graphics days - like the Asus EEE 701. (Yes you could upgrade them, but then they were simply slightly faster machines that ran none of your familiar programs.)
The new netbooks/mini-notebooks are another story - with 11" screens, 4-8 Gigs of RAM and some with quad procesors, running Win7/Win8 or even Linux can be a joy (albeit at a price twice that of the original netbooks).
So if I'm reading this right, the way Apple "killed" Linux on the desktop is by offering a quality product, with backward compatability, on solid hardware with just enough *nix plumbing to make most casual shell hackers happy?
Those bastards!
Don't they know that, given enough time, the Linux folks could have offered a similar desktop experience if they wanted to but it was more important to create dozens of competing distributions with slight incompatibilities and sublte differences between them for no earthly reason other than the whims of the distribution packagers.
I think it's safe to save photos and other non-executable files to read-only media (DVD), then format drive, install a good anti-virus program, then carefully import images from the read-only media. The anti-virus software should detect any lurking issues in any files.
My first thought was to simply remove the HD and start over again - and at a later date use a different OS (Linux?) to off-load non-executable files and migrate them back to his PC.
Oh, and now would be a good time to finally implement a backup strategy.
The fantasy that this $35 'stone soup' computer was going to make inroads into the classroom is nuts.
I call this a stone soup computer because of the children's story - to be useful in an educational market the user will need a keyboard, mouse, power supply, case, and a display device that can be driven by the board.
Compare this $35 'wonder board' to the various $50-75 Intel Atom miniITX boards and the folly of the Raspberry Pi becomes apparent. For $100 I can take a RETAIL Atom board with dual core processora with 4 gigs of RAM and some USB flash storage and run any x86 OS on the market OR I can spend $35 and have a fraction of the functionality of an Atom board. Both systems can use the same keyboard, mouse, and display (the Atom may have an advantage because it can drive a VGA display without an HDMI to VGA adapter).
An Atom board can go in a $20-30 case with power supply - what does a case for the Raspberry Pi cost? I know a Pi can use a $5-10 wall wart for power.
If you have an issue with the Atom CPU, AMD has a similar offering the E-350 chips that ship on similar MBs.
The Raspberry Pi is a fun, interesting hacker toy - it is little more than that.
The report is about access, not adoption rates. The point is they can't get service over 3 Mbs where they live, regardless of cost.
Poor people have cable TV, they likely have a big TV, and it makes economic sense, because that is a huge part of their entertainment. The profoundly poor will not have cable - in my mind poop is 1x to 2x the poverty level, profoundly poor is below the poverty line.
Are we seriously calling anything under three megabit unacceptable?
The 19 million people mentioned in the above write-up are not without any means of Internet access, they are without Internet access in excess of 3 megabits - they could have 2 or 2.5 megabit access and fall into the 19 million Americans the article discusses.
What would the number be if we ratcheted back the cutoff from the three megabits in the report to say one megabit? How about if we made it 768K?
There are honestly tens of millions of Americans that care very little about either Internet access generally or high-speed Internet access specifically.
The poor in America can get charity treatment at many hospitals if they truly have no money, but if they own a house nd get ick without healthcare coverage, they will be expected to pay the bill for their care.
When a poor Mexican citizen needs treatment he has coverage (in theory), but he has no access to healthcare.
'rich' people in countries with 'universal healthcare coverage' who buy private insurance don't necessarily buy it because they think they will be healthier, they buy it to see better doctors, vist less crowded offices than public clinics, and to avoid the inevitable waiting list for 'their turn' when a procedure or test is needed.
In England, for example, I suspect the average income for someone with private health insurance is not really that high - private insurance isn't THAT uncommon that only millionaires have it.
"Some 50 million Mexicans — nearly half the country's population — who previously were not covered by health insurance are now enrolled, leading the scheme's architects to claim that the country has near-universal health-care coverage."
So healthcare for one half of the population is considered 'near-universal'? Here in America we have over 275 million people covered, with by some estimates around 40 million left without healthcare coverage (about 80-85% of population covered) and we are told we have a crisis by our politicians.
Maybe we just need to adopt the Mexican definition, then we could easily consider ourselves to have 'near-universal coverage' with 85% of population covered, since they consider themselves to have 'near-universal coverage' at around 50%...
Seriously, on the "back" of a contract for 2,500 Kindles? What kind of "payoff" do you think they'd get for negotiating a 2-3,000 piece contract for an item the gov't would by at or below retail?
I think their real goal was to try and avoid the political stigma of a set of requirements that would lead them to buying a couple thousand iPads (while being good/great devices have so many additional uses that their purchase could easily be attacked politically)...
The $5 isn't the cost to 'not publish' the number, it is most likely a reflection of the value of that telephone number to various DB and telemarketers. By in listing the number, Verizon can't sell the data to third-parties. The dollar amount is likely as high as it is to try an discourage anyone from wanting the service, giving Verizon more numbers to sell and fewer exceptions to look out for in their database.
There is a hard reality facing this school district - this teacher is leaving and someone will have to take this on for no extra money, a little extra time (4 hours/week), and no budget.
How many union teachers in California will take on such a role "for the chidren"?
This school was very lucky they had this fellow on staff - his moving on leaves a much bigger hole than some might suspect.
When the threshold is 512 Meg of RAM and less than 10 years old, it isn't that hard at all.
With this teacher moving on to another school, who will take up his special assignment of overseeing the 70 computers around the school, given a four hour "reprieve" from teaching? I predict that within two years this school will switch to either a Mac or PCs, sinceudget item they will not find another teacher willing to simply take this on, and then when they hire a computer person to manage the infrastructure that person will be the justification for actually making computer costs a budget line-item, and then Linux is toast.
A license to run the latest Microsoft OS and Office tools, along with a long list ofother minor MS software applications costs between $30-40/year per desktop, Add in Active Directory and System Center Management Suite and you have a very powerful infrastructure (akin to most in private industry). Severe discounts in server licenses are also offered, but I don't have those numbers handy.
In my school district we have Mac & WIndows systems (about 1 Mac for every 5 Win PCs), and our MS license agreement for the entire district is less than one fully-loaded headcount (around $60K/year, including a fair number of Windows Servers).
MS software is quite reasonably priced, and it makes most parents happy that their children are using the tools some 98%+ of computer users use.
If you like, go ahead and try and convince some 4,000 families that Linux/OpenOffice is technically comparable to Windows/Office, but there is this fantasy in most parent's minds that they want their school age children to use the tools found in industry NOW, no matter their age. Why a fifth grader needs to use PowerPoint 2010 now, and PowerPoint 2013 next year as a sixth grader (lest they fall behind!) is beyond me personally (very few fifth or sixth graders drop out of school and embark on a career in corporate), but that is where most parent's heads are right now.
No, how about the included system management tools that come along when a school deploys Windows on their student desktops?
To deploy a system management tool that is similar to Active Directory in a large Linux environment is anon-trivial exercise.
Also, don't forget parental predjudice - if you deploy Linux in the inner-city, you run the risk of being branded "racist" by fobbing off inferior tools the kids in the suburbs wouldn't adopt, and they are not the tools used in the corporate world. Try and roll out Linux in a large suburban school district and the wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding perceived inferior tools being used instead of industry standard MS tools.
I absolutely understand this to be a perception/marketing issue, but is it a real issue that school districts have to deal with.
And of course, there is also the issue of teacher training. While a technical user can quickly adapt to a new OS, many, many teachers are very slow to pick up new things.
Laptop carts full of netbooks are slowly being replaced with smaller carts filled with iPads, and it makes a certain amount of sense when you realize that when a teacher wants to roll in a computer for each student they typically want them to go to some highly-interactive, media-heavy website and tablets typically provide a better experience than, say, a Mini 9 or Inspiron 2110.
There is also the issue of managing a deployment of Linux netbooks - that is a non-trivial thing once the deployment exceeds a few dozen computers - most districts opt to install Windows 7 and Office 2010 on them for about $30-40/year license fee to also have the complete suite of MS Active Directory tools available for management of the netbooks.
People imagine a large deployment of Linux computers (laptop or desktop) essentially manages itself, but that isn't really the case in practice.
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There was an editor it Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calestenics and Orthodontia that did something similar - lived and worked out of a trailer for most, if not all, of the year, but his work was with embedded systems.
Hi-speed/4G coverage will be spotty (at best) where you will likely want to AND be able to park a fifth wheel trailer, and Internet cafe's (AKA book stores, coffee shops, libraries) will be a drive from the campground.
At a superficial level, the issue would seem to be quite hard, but with a little planning it shouldn't be *that* hard.
My path would be to go out and build a new file server running either Windows Server or Linux, based on what OS your current file server uses, install the de-dupe tool of your choice from the many listed above, and migrate your entire file structure from your current box to the the new box - the de-dupe tools will work their magic as the files trip in over the network connection. Once de-duped, your old file server can be rebuilt with the same de-dupe tool, and the files migrated back to it for use going forward if desired, with the two large drives used as an online backup.
The temporary de-dupe box can be fairly simple with nothing more thana fairly robust CPU, two 2 or 3 TB drives and a gigabit NIC, you won't even need to buy an OS license if you are running Windows, as you can just use a trial copy of Windows Server,
Worry? Multiple different resolutions serve a purpose - different resolution playback devices.
If you have a need for internet access, get a MiFi/wireless hotspot. If you only want internet access if one of the houses/businesses has a free/unsecured hot spot you can "jump on to" what is the point? Either you need it or you don't.
Do you rummage through people's medicine cabinets for bandaids/medicine or do you bring them with you? Do you look for garden hose when you respond to a fire or do you have a tanker with a pump and hoses you bring with you?
If there is an open, unsecured, wifi hotspot the mesh network can find in the neighborhood, why can't the netbooks, laptops, and tablets you bring with you find them?
Wasn't there a post not two-four weeks ago about an effort to make mesh networks areas without service? Did the original poster even see that posting?
So wait - if the warmest temperature ever recorded was way, way, way back in 1922, that would argue against global warming (because it's never been hotter than it was 90 years ago), AND it would explode the connection between auto emissions and rising global temperatures, since there were almost no cars (comparitively) in 1922.
Thank you for that very informative factoid! ;^)
I was in Texas at the end of July, and the average temperature was about 105 degrees F. I left my cellphone in the car to charge while I was out and about, came back an hour later and found my phone displaying the Termperature warning (which apparently kicks in at 113 degrees F)...
I know several computer "enthusiasists" that bought Linux netbooks as a novelty, played with them a while, then found them too limiting and shoved them in the closet. Of course, this was back in the 1 Gig RAM, single-core CPU, integrated graphics days - like the Asus EEE 701. (Yes you could upgrade them, but then they were simply slightly faster machines that ran none of your familiar programs.)
The new netbooks/mini-notebooks are another story - with 11" screens, 4-8 Gigs of RAM and some with quad procesors, running Win7/Win8 or even Linux can be a joy (albeit at a price twice that of the original netbooks).
So if I'm reading this right, the way Apple "killed" Linux on the desktop is by offering a quality product, with backward compatability, on solid hardware with just enough *nix plumbing to make most casual shell hackers happy?
Those bastards!
Don't they know that, given enough time, the Linux folks could have offered a similar desktop experience if they wanted to but it was more important to create dozens of competing distributions with slight incompatibilities and sublte differences between them for no earthly reason other than the whims of the distribution packagers.
I think it's safe to save photos and other non-executable files to read-only media (DVD), then format drive, install a good anti-virus program, then carefully import images from the read-only media. The anti-virus software should detect any lurking issues in any files.
My first thought was to simply remove the HD and start over again - and at a later date use a different OS (Linux?) to off-load non-executable files and migrate them back to his PC.
Oh, and now would be a good time to finally implement a backup strategy.
The fantasy that this $35 'stone soup' computer was going to make inroads into the classroom is nuts.
I call this a stone soup computer because of the children's story - to be useful in an educational market the user will need a keyboard, mouse, power supply, case, and a display device that can be driven by the board.
Compare this $35 'wonder board' to the various $50-75 Intel Atom miniITX boards and the folly of the Raspberry Pi becomes apparent. For $100 I can take a RETAIL Atom board with dual core processora with 4 gigs of RAM and some USB flash storage and run any x86 OS on the market OR I can spend $35 and have a fraction of the functionality of an Atom board. Both systems can use the same keyboard, mouse, and display (the Atom may have an advantage because it can drive a VGA display without an HDMI to VGA adapter).
An Atom board can go in a $20-30 case with power supply - what does a case for the Raspberry Pi cost? I know a Pi can use a $5-10 wall wart for power.
If you have an issue with the Atom CPU, AMD has a similar offering the E-350 chips that ship on similar MBs.
The Raspberry Pi is a fun, interesting hacker toy - it is little more than that.
The report is about access, not adoption rates. The point is they can't get service over 3 Mbs where they live, regardless of cost.
Poor people have cable TV, they likely have a big TV, and it makes economic sense, because that is a huge part of their entertainment. The profoundly poor will not have cable - in my mind poop is 1x to 2x the poverty level, profoundly poor is below the poverty line.
Are we seriously calling anything under three megabit unacceptable?
The 19 million people mentioned in the above write-up are not without any means of Internet access, they are without Internet access in excess of 3 megabits - they could have 2 or 2.5 megabit access and fall into the 19 million Americans the article discusses.
What would the number be if we ratcheted back the cutoff from the three megabits in the report to say one megabit? How about if we made it 768K?
There are honestly tens of millions of Americans that care very little about either Internet access generally or high-speed Internet access specifically.
The poor in America can get charity treatment at many hospitals if they truly have no money, but if they own a house nd get ick without healthcare coverage, they will be expected to pay the bill for their care.
When a poor Mexican citizen needs treatment he has coverage (in theory), but he has no access to healthcare.
Quick, which system serves the poor better?
'rich' people in countries with 'universal healthcare coverage' who buy private insurance don't necessarily buy it because they think they will be healthier, they buy it to see better doctors, vist less crowded offices than public clinics, and to avoid the inevitable waiting list for 'their turn' when a procedure or test is needed.
In England, for example, I suspect the average income for someone with private health insurance is not really that high - private insurance isn't THAT uncommon that only millionaires have it.
So healthcare for one half of the population is considered 'near-universal'? Here in America we have over 275 million people covered, with by some estimates around 40 million left without healthcare coverage (about 80-85% of population covered) and we are told we have a crisis by our politicians.
Maybe we just need to adopt the Mexican definition, then we could easily consider ourselves to have 'near-universal coverage' with 85% of population covered, since they consider themselves to have 'near-universal coverage' at around 50%...
Pretty sure the weapon in your hand is also considered a valid threat - in your hypothetical, you started it.
Seriously, on the "back" of a contract for 2,500 Kindles? What kind of "payoff" do you think they'd get for negotiating a 2-3,000 piece contract for an item the gov't would by at or below retail?
I think their real goal was to try and avoid the political stigma of a set of requirements that would lead them to buying a couple thousand iPads (while being good/great devices have so many additional uses that their purchase could easily be attacked politically)...
A federal procurement contract with a set of requirements that can only be satisfied by one vendor?
Unheard of!
Why not simply flip your WiFi port from 'infrastructure' to 'ad-hoc'?
The $5 isn't the cost to 'not publish' the number, it is most likely a reflection of the value of that telephone number to various DB and telemarketers. By in listing the number, Verizon can't sell the data to third-parties. The dollar amount is likely as high as it is to try an discourage anyone from wanting the service, giving Verizon more numbers to sell and fewer exceptions to look out for in their database.
There is a hard reality facing this school district - this teacher is leaving and someone will have to take this on for no extra money, a little extra time (4 hours/week), and no budget.
How many union teachers in California will take on such a role "for the chidren"?
This school was very lucky they had this fellow on staff - his moving on leaves a much bigger hole than some might suspect.
When the threshold is 512 Meg of RAM and less than 10 years old, it isn't that hard at all.
With this teacher moving on to another school, who will take up his special assignment of overseeing the 70 computers around the school, given a four hour "reprieve" from teaching? I predict that within two years this school will switch to either a Mac or PCs, sinceudget item they will not find another teacher willing to simply take this on, and then when they hire a computer person to manage the infrastructure that person will be the justification for actually making computer costs a budget line-item, and then Linux is toast.
A license to run the latest Microsoft OS and Office tools, along with a long list ofother minor MS software applications costs between $30-40/year per desktop, Add in Active Directory and System Center Management Suite and you have a very powerful infrastructure (akin to most in private industry). Severe discounts in server licenses are also offered, but I don't have those numbers handy.
In my school district we have Mac & WIndows systems (about 1 Mac for every 5 Win PCs), and our MS license agreement for the entire district is less than one fully-loaded headcount (around $60K/year, including a fair number of Windows Servers).
MS software is quite reasonably priced, and it makes most parents happy that their children are using the tools some 98%+ of computer users use.
If you like, go ahead and try and convince some 4,000 families that Linux/OpenOffice is technically comparable to Windows/Office, but there is this fantasy in most parent's minds that they want their school age children to use the tools found in industry NOW, no matter their age. Why a fifth grader needs to use PowerPoint 2010 now, and PowerPoint 2013 next year as a sixth grader (lest they fall behind!) is beyond me personally (very few fifth or sixth graders drop out of school and embark on a career in corporate), but that is where most parent's heads are right now.
No, how about the included system management tools that come along when a school deploys Windows on their student desktops?
To deploy a system management tool that is similar to Active Directory in a large Linux environment is anon-trivial exercise.
Also, don't forget parental predjudice - if you deploy Linux in the inner-city, you run the risk of being branded "racist" by fobbing off inferior tools the kids in the suburbs wouldn't adopt, and they are not the tools used in the corporate world. Try and roll out Linux in a large suburban school district and the wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding perceived inferior tools being used instead of industry standard MS tools.
I absolutely understand this to be a perception/marketing issue, but is it a real issue that school districts have to deal with.
And of course, there is also the issue of teacher training. While a technical user can quickly adapt to a new OS, many, many teachers are very slow to pick up new things.
Laptop carts full of netbooks are slowly being replaced with smaller carts filled with iPads, and it makes a certain amount of sense when you realize that when a teacher wants to roll in a computer for each student they typically want them to go to some highly-interactive, media-heavy website and tablets typically provide a better experience than, say, a Mini 9 or Inspiron 2110.
There is also the issue of managing a deployment of Linux netbooks - that is a non-trivial thing once the deployment exceeds a few dozen computers - most districts opt to install Windows 7 and Office 2010 on them for about $30-40/year license fee to also have the complete suite of MS Active Directory tools available for management of the netbooks.
People imagine a large deployment of Linux computers (laptop or desktop) essentially manages itself, but that isn't really the case in practice.