First, the project couldn't have even been done financially using any other OS/hardware combination. Second, the real reason technology doesn't improve education is we are treating it like magic and not as a productivity enhancement tool. The first computers used by government and business replaced rooms full of people by calculating stuff faster and with fewer errors. Even today, a smart phone replaces the need to have a map, newspaper and phone booth in a strange city when you want to see a movie (recent experience). In education, you don't have the incentive, or the viewpoint, to use technology to make the teacher more efficient at educating, and/or the student better at learning. For example, in the United States, teachers and other workers in education, but not educating, spend a significant amount of time on non-educational activities. Putting effort into automating and reducing the impact of those activities on the learning day, is a good use of technology. A bad use of technology, is replacing an existing working tool with a complex device that does the same thing, but adds overhead and requires more effort.
You have to have infrastructure to support tablets for a roll out to be successful. 1:1 Laptop deployments on existing network infrastructure have shredded wireless networks in schools. TCO of tablets will be 4X initial capital expenses, assuming you can get more than 1-2 years out of them. Plus teachers have to know how to use them inside their lessons, and to be viable from a cost perspective, nearly every learning activity will have to use the device in some form.
The real question is: Do we have the expertise, training, software and infrastructure to use a tablet to enhance education? Using the tablet for entertainment occasionally isn't bad, monitoring for inappropriate behavior and metrics is part of a solid network infrastructure, and teachers need to know how to use the devices or it is a waste of resources. I've seen too much technology thrown over the wall and minimally used.
In most cases education has used technology as a theater exercise. The only important part is taking a picture of a student using said technology with a attentive and concerned educator looking on. At best technology is used to replace existing tools on a one to one basis. Smart board for blackboard, tablet for textbook, laptop for notebook, etc.... The goal should be to do what every other company has done with technology and become more productive. Teachers should be able to use technology to teach 50-60 students at a time, all with individualized instruction.
Connectivity is the weak point of most computer for every student program. If the school district is already providing a computer to each student, then working with a local ISP to provide broadband connectivity is a viable subsidy. School computers can be set to automatically VPN into a school controlled network, limiting the potential for abuse. To be useful, the school district will need to spend a great deal of effort toward integrating an LMS and on professional development..
Most trading companies have huge numbers of Linux servers feeding data to high end trader desktops. I suspect that many of the quants have both Linux systems for work, and Windows for bureaucracy.(email, expenses, etc.). Regular institutional traders use tons of open source software, but likely don't realize it. Sure, the desktop OS is likely Windows, the office suite is likely MS Office, but the browser is Chrome/Firefox. There is also all the stuff on the back end. If the database isn't open source, it is still more likely to be running on Linux than Windows (Db2 and Oracle), with the exception of MSSQL. Web servers, internal and external are more likely to be Nginex or Apache than IIS or other proprietary offerings. Commercial application servers have a small market share compared to open source ones. I can go on, but open source software is already heavily adopted by most large corporations. You won't see it on the desktop extensively, but it is there.
RedHat, Suse and Canonical all sell support, not Linux and other Open Source software. You pay for RedHat (the most successful FOSS vendor) to have access to RHN for package updates, someone to call for support, training and certification, and a conduit back into the FOSS community. Suse is similar. Canonical still has a way to go in the enterprise space but has a solid financial backer, and is making money using FOSS to provide services. In fact you can include Amazon, Google and a host of others as successful companies that leverage FOSS to provide services.
I'm an advocate of 3D printing, but wouldn't it me more effective to build container sized housing components in a factory and ship them to the building site? It seems like a lot of work to ship in the concrete and its printer. A typical 2000 sqft house in the US could be put together from six standard 40' containers, all wired, plumed and finished at the factory.
I think you've seen too many movies where soldiers and sailors are non-thinking robots. Yes they are trained to follow orders, but they are also trained to think for themselves. It is highly unlikely they will shoot their fellow citizens without questioning the legality of the order. Plus the Constitution forbids the use of the Army and Navy for domestic law enforcement. That's the reason they aren't sent in immediately after national disasters... The state governors call up the national guard. And why Coast Guard detachments are assigned to Navy ships to make drug busts. The military doesn't even carry their guns around when on US bases, unless they are expressly training. Civilians provide most of the security and law enforcement on military bases. If anything, the political class would prefer the military deployed overseas if trying to suppress the population. Make it less likely they can join the rebellion.
Generally I'm a fan of opt-in and agree that should be the option, but the bankruptcy court's job is to recover the maximum amount of money for the people Borders owed money to. The database is worth more opt-out, so don't expect a change there.
Of the options available, none really good, B&N getting the database is not that bad. I have a buying history with Borders, Amazon and B&N, so integrating my buying history from Borders with B&N is a far preferable outcome to the database being sold to some marketing company that would resell my buying habits to spammers all over the world. We give these companies access to our information to get slightly better deals, if you are really concerned about your privacy, pay cash and refuse the discounts, or lobby congress to make your purchasing habits your property and not the property of the company you are buying from.
I've seen government institutions have unallocated money at the end of some budget cycle, that was so micro-managed that it could only be spent on a certain type of widget. I can see a university get a late grant, that had to be spent in 30 days, could only be spent on technology, that can only come out of a pre-approved catalog, and some administrative type that just saw a Top 500 super-computer list with competing university names on it, bring up in a meeting that we should build a super computer, and some grad assistant saying how easy it would be. They found a room with a window in it and ordered a bunch of parts, and will walk prospective students and their parents by it saying "This is the largest super-computer on the east coast".
Introduce them to Scratch. http://scratch.mit.edu/ It's an easy programming environment where they can actually create something. You can demo programs other kids have written and depending on the time you have, they could actually create programs themselves.
Six months ago Gaddafi and his government were legitimate. There are export restrictions to many nations (both from the US and Europe), but was there one to Libya? I'd suspect there wasn't.
So this becomes a moral issue. Companies should have a "don't sell to dictators" policy. We should isolate them from all trade. No more business with China until they have a freely elected government. No more oil from Saudi Arabia until the kingdom is overthrown.
The only viable solution is for "free" governments to allow and encourage anonymous, encrypted communication. Yes, that will make the job of law enforcement harder, people will use it to violate IP laws and traffic in child porn, but it is the only way to enable free exchange of ideas outside government control.
Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace fill some need, but people want something different. If Google+ is just the same again, maybe it'll fail. There may be something important with exclusivity: a social network that is more tribal and walled could be what people are looking for.
While the source of this data is obviously biased, I wonder where the stimulus money was actually spent. Think what a trillion dollars actually is. A new aircraft carrier costs ~10 billion dollars, planes double that cost, meaning that the country could have purchased 50 with the stimulus (we currently have 11). In todays dollars the Apollo program cost 150 billion meaning that we could duplicate it six times with a trillion dollars. A highway bridge near where I live is being replaced for a cost of 300 million, thus a trillion dollars could have replaced that bridge 3000 times. It could have paid the 14 million unemployed, $35000 a year for two years. Where did it go, and what did it do?
When patents were first introduced in the UK, their length was 14 years. That was based on apprenticeships lasting seven years, and two generations of apprentices learning how to build and operate a device. If it could be argued that it takes a software engineer six months to become proficient in a programing technique then software patents should only be one year. Look and feel patents, if it takes 12 weeks to master creating that look and feel, then the patent should only be six months. Something that takes a four year engineering degree to master, gets eight years. A doctorate, 16 years. This would reduce the load on the patent office, because it wouldn't be worth the effort to patent simple things.
At the security checkpoint between the F4F Wildcat/Sushi restaurant and the Chicago Children's museum playground, only the right hand lane has a back scanner. If you get in one of the other three you can avoid being scanned.
I agree that it is highly unlikely that these devices are actually dangerous, but they are ineffective. I highly doubt they discourage terrorists since they are so easy to get around (go at a busy time, start at a small airport, etc). Sure they catch people with contraband on occasion, but that's not the primary function. Scare tactics, getting the TSA agents to turn against their management, and accusations of corruption, probably will get the machines pulled faster than pointing out their expense and ineffectiveness.
Medium sized airports are the ones the are hardest to avoid the scanners. At a hub like ATL, DFW, DEN or ORD the lines are always too long to only use the scanners and pat downs. Plus it is easy, once you know the airport to not get in a line with a scanner. In CLT the C security checkpoint has no scanners, for example. The real problem is the effect is long term and ill defined. Busy business travelers want to get through security as quickly as possible, or arrive at the airport with minimal slack for making their flight. The pat down takes longer than the scanner, and the risk seems minimal. Heck subconsciously many realize that flying increases exposure to radiation from the sun. Just like living on a mountain is more dangerous than living at sea level for radiation exposure. The real victims of these devices will be the TSA agents, even if you argue complacency. Even being scanned twice a week with probably not increase cancer risks significantly (how many people would travel to Mars if the chance of getting cancer in 20 years rose from 10% to 20%?). Standing by a X-ray machine or a scanner may make cancer from radiation a near certainty.
As a frequent flyer it is fairly easy to avoid the scanners. Many smaller airports don't have them, and they are too slow for the majority of larger ones and are often turned off or majority of people waved around. Over time you learn where the scanners will not be used. The sad part is most TSA agents are normal people that need a job. They are forced to stand near devices that may be safe if operating properly, but over time normal wear and tear will increase the exposure. As is normal with a slow acting, long term effect problem, owned by the government, it won't be acknowledged until the majority of victims are dead. Like nuclear submarines, have the TSA agents where dosimeter badges every day for a year. Lets see if there is a problem.
I think B&N as the underdog has purposely left the reader fairly open. The Nook Color is extremely easy to root and has been for months. They use epub and load many other formats without charging any conversion fees. I speculate that if the publishers would let them get away with it, there wouldn't be any DRM either. While I'm sure B&N would prefer you purchase your ebooks from them, I'm purchased non-DRM versions direct from O'Rielly and Packt and they work fine on the Nook. Considering that Amazon wants to lock you into their proprietary format, severely limits the appeal of their devices for me.
I think this has the most value in K12. A lot will depend on support contracts and additional costs, but for a 1:1 program this is a reasonable structure. Many people will compare this to buying a laptop for under $400 that can be used anywhere versus a $240 dollar annual cost for a device that only works over the web. What most people will miss and what will be important for this to work, is reducing the management and maintenance costs of the devices. If you combine the $240 appliance with wireless access at school, administrative control of the device, replacement structures for broken and stolen devices, and the ability to integrate with an LMS, this could be a valuable reduction in costs.
Slashdot Mirror
First, the project couldn't have even been done financially using any other OS/hardware combination. Second, the real reason technology doesn't improve education is we are treating it like magic and not as a productivity enhancement tool. The first computers used by government and business replaced rooms full of people by calculating stuff faster and with fewer errors. Even today, a smart phone replaces the need to have a map, newspaper and phone booth in a strange city when you want to see a movie (recent experience). In education, you don't have the incentive, or the viewpoint, to use technology to make the teacher more efficient at educating, and/or the student better at learning. For example, in the United States, teachers and other workers in education, but not educating, spend a significant amount of time on non-educational activities. Putting effort into automating and reducing the impact of those activities on the learning day, is a good use of technology. A bad use of technology, is replacing an existing working tool with a complex device that does the same thing, but adds overhead and requires more effort.
You have to have infrastructure to support tablets for a roll out to be successful. 1:1 Laptop deployments on existing network infrastructure have shredded wireless networks in schools. TCO of tablets will be 4X initial capital expenses, assuming you can get more than 1-2 years out of them. Plus teachers have to know how to use them inside their lessons, and to be viable from a cost perspective, nearly every learning activity will have to use the device in some form.
The real question is: Do we have the expertise, training, software and infrastructure to use a tablet to enhance education? Using the tablet for entertainment occasionally isn't bad, monitoring for inappropriate behavior and metrics is part of a solid network infrastructure, and teachers need to know how to use the devices or it is a waste of resources. I've seen too much technology thrown over the wall and minimally used.
In most cases education has used technology as a theater exercise. The only important part is taking a picture of a student using said technology with a attentive and concerned educator looking on. At best technology is used to replace existing tools on a one to one basis. Smart board for blackboard, tablet for textbook, laptop for notebook, etc.... The goal should be to do what every other company has done with technology and become more productive. Teachers should be able to use technology to teach 50-60 students at a time, all with individualized instruction.
Connectivity is the weak point of most computer for every student program. If the school district is already providing a computer to each student, then working with a local ISP to provide broadband connectivity is a viable subsidy. School computers can be set to automatically VPN into a school controlled network, limiting the potential for abuse. To be useful, the school district will need to spend a great deal of effort toward integrating an LMS and on professional development..
Most trading companies have huge numbers of Linux servers feeding data to high end trader desktops. I suspect that many of the quants have both Linux systems for work, and Windows for bureaucracy.(email, expenses, etc.). Regular institutional traders use tons of open source software, but likely don't realize it. Sure, the desktop OS is likely Windows, the office suite is likely MS Office, but the browser is Chrome/Firefox. There is also all the stuff on the back end. If the database isn't open source, it is still more likely to be running on Linux than Windows (Db2 and Oracle), with the exception of MSSQL. Web servers, internal and external are more likely to be Nginex or Apache than IIS or other proprietary offerings. Commercial application servers have a small market share compared to open source ones. I can go on, but open source software is already heavily adopted by most large corporations. You won't see it on the desktop extensively, but it is there.
RedHat, Suse and Canonical all sell support, not Linux and other Open Source software. You pay for RedHat (the most successful FOSS vendor) to have access to RHN for package updates, someone to call for support, training and certification, and a conduit back into the FOSS community. Suse is similar. Canonical still has a way to go in the enterprise space but has a solid financial backer, and is making money using FOSS to provide services. In fact you can include Amazon, Google and a host of others as successful companies that leverage FOSS to provide services.
I'm an advocate of 3D printing, but wouldn't it me more effective to build container sized housing components in a factory and ship them to the building site? It seems like a lot of work to ship in the concrete and its printer. A typical 2000 sqft house in the US could be put together from six standard 40' containers, all wired, plumed and finished at the factory.
I think you've seen too many movies where soldiers and sailors are non-thinking robots. Yes they are trained to follow orders, but they are also trained to think for themselves. It is highly unlikely they will shoot their fellow citizens without questioning the legality of the order. Plus the Constitution forbids the use of the Army and Navy for domestic law enforcement. That's the reason they aren't sent in immediately after national disasters... The state governors call up the national guard. And why Coast Guard detachments are assigned to Navy ships to make drug busts. The military doesn't even carry their guns around when on US bases, unless they are expressly training. Civilians provide most of the security and law enforcement on military bases. If anything, the political class would prefer the military deployed overseas if trying to suppress the population. Make it less likely they can join the rebellion.
Generally I'm a fan of opt-in and agree that should be the option, but the bankruptcy court's job is to recover the maximum amount of money for the people Borders owed money to. The database is worth more opt-out, so don't expect a change there. Of the options available, none really good, B&N getting the database is not that bad. I have a buying history with Borders, Amazon and B&N, so integrating my buying history from Borders with B&N is a far preferable outcome to the database being sold to some marketing company that would resell my buying habits to spammers all over the world. We give these companies access to our information to get slightly better deals, if you are really concerned about your privacy, pay cash and refuse the discounts, or lobby congress to make your purchasing habits your property and not the property of the company you are buying from.
The only "good fit" about it is Amazon has stable and competent management.
The movie Ice Station Zebra was nice, but at least reference the book it was based on. http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Station-Zebra-Alistair-MacLean/dp/1402790333/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1316100563&sr=8-4 Especially sense it was just re-released.
I've seen government institutions have unallocated money at the end of some budget cycle, that was so micro-managed that it could only be spent on a certain type of widget. I can see a university get a late grant, that had to be spent in 30 days, could only be spent on technology, that can only come out of a pre-approved catalog, and some administrative type that just saw a Top 500 super-computer list with competing university names on it, bring up in a meeting that we should build a super computer, and some grad assistant saying how easy it would be. They found a room with a window in it and ordered a bunch of parts, and will walk prospective students and their parents by it saying "This is the largest super-computer on the east coast".
Introduce them to Scratch. http://scratch.mit.edu/ It's an easy programming environment where they can actually create something. You can demo programs other kids have written and depending on the time you have, they could actually create programs themselves.
Six months ago Gaddafi and his government were legitimate. There are export restrictions to many nations (both from the US and Europe), but was there one to Libya? I'd suspect there wasn't. So this becomes a moral issue. Companies should have a "don't sell to dictators" policy. We should isolate them from all trade. No more business with China until they have a freely elected government. No more oil from Saudi Arabia until the kingdom is overthrown. The only viable solution is for "free" governments to allow and encourage anonymous, encrypted communication. Yes, that will make the job of law enforcement harder, people will use it to violate IP laws and traffic in child porn, but it is the only way to enable free exchange of ideas outside government control.
Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace fill some need, but people want something different. If Google+ is just the same again, maybe it'll fail. There may be something important with exclusivity: a social network that is more tribal and walled could be what people are looking for.
While the source of this data is obviously biased, I wonder where the stimulus money was actually spent. Think what a trillion dollars actually is. A new aircraft carrier costs ~10 billion dollars, planes double that cost, meaning that the country could have purchased 50 with the stimulus (we currently have 11). In todays dollars the Apollo program cost 150 billion meaning that we could duplicate it six times with a trillion dollars. A highway bridge near where I live is being replaced for a cost of 300 million, thus a trillion dollars could have replaced that bridge 3000 times. It could have paid the 14 million unemployed, $35000 a year for two years. Where did it go, and what did it do?
When patents were first introduced in the UK, their length was 14 years. That was based on apprenticeships lasting seven years, and two generations of apprentices learning how to build and operate a device. If it could be argued that it takes a software engineer six months to become proficient in a programing technique then software patents should only be one year. Look and feel patents, if it takes 12 weeks to master creating that look and feel, then the patent should only be six months. Something that takes a four year engineering degree to master, gets eight years. A doctorate, 16 years. This would reduce the load on the patent office, because it wouldn't be worth the effort to patent simple things.
Set a bunch of these loose in the Sahara printing out solar panels.
At the security checkpoint between the F4F Wildcat/Sushi restaurant and the Chicago Children's museum playground, only the right hand lane has a back scanner. If you get in one of the other three you can avoid being scanned. I agree that it is highly unlikely that these devices are actually dangerous, but they are ineffective. I highly doubt they discourage terrorists since they are so easy to get around (go at a busy time, start at a small airport, etc). Sure they catch people with contraband on occasion, but that's not the primary function. Scare tactics, getting the TSA agents to turn against their management, and accusations of corruption, probably will get the machines pulled faster than pointing out their expense and ineffectiveness.
Medium sized airports are the ones the are hardest to avoid the scanners. At a hub like ATL, DFW, DEN or ORD the lines are always too long to only use the scanners and pat downs. Plus it is easy, once you know the airport to not get in a line with a scanner. In CLT the C security checkpoint has no scanners, for example. The real problem is the effect is long term and ill defined. Busy business travelers want to get through security as quickly as possible, or arrive at the airport with minimal slack for making their flight. The pat down takes longer than the scanner, and the risk seems minimal. Heck subconsciously many realize that flying increases exposure to radiation from the sun. Just like living on a mountain is more dangerous than living at sea level for radiation exposure. The real victims of these devices will be the TSA agents, even if you argue complacency. Even being scanned twice a week with probably not increase cancer risks significantly (how many people would travel to Mars if the chance of getting cancer in 20 years rose from 10% to 20%?). Standing by a X-ray machine or a scanner may make cancer from radiation a near certainty.
As a frequent flyer it is fairly easy to avoid the scanners. Many smaller airports don't have them, and they are too slow for the majority of larger ones and are often turned off or majority of people waved around. Over time you learn where the scanners will not be used. The sad part is most TSA agents are normal people that need a job. They are forced to stand near devices that may be safe if operating properly, but over time normal wear and tear will increase the exposure. As is normal with a slow acting, long term effect problem, owned by the government, it won't be acknowledged until the majority of victims are dead. Like nuclear submarines, have the TSA agents where dosimeter badges every day for a year. Lets see if there is a problem.
I think B&N as the underdog has purposely left the reader fairly open. The Nook Color is extremely easy to root and has been for months. They use epub and load many other formats without charging any conversion fees. I speculate that if the publishers would let them get away with it, there wouldn't be any DRM either. While I'm sure B&N would prefer you purchase your ebooks from them, I'm purchased non-DRM versions direct from O'Rielly and Packt and they work fine on the Nook. Considering that Amazon wants to lock you into their proprietary format, severely limits the appeal of their devices for me.
Maybe we should have an ask slashdot where authors explain why they think, what he says is valuable or interesting and worth quoting.
I think this has the most value in K12. A lot will depend on support contracts and additional costs, but for a 1:1 program this is a reasonable structure. Many people will compare this to buying a laptop for under $400 that can be used anywhere versus a $240 dollar annual cost for a device that only works over the web. What most people will miss and what will be important for this to work, is reducing the management and maintenance costs of the devices. If you combine the $240 appliance with wireless access at school, administrative control of the device, replacement structures for broken and stolen devices, and the ability to integrate with an LMS, this could be a valuable reduction in costs.