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User: xzvf

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  1. Replace memorization with wisdom and intelligence on How to Deal With an Aging Brain? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can't say more than that. I've seen many young hotshots that can run rings around me as day to day sysadmins. What I've became good at, as a sysadmin, is fixing something once and then automating the fix. I forget pretty quickly how I fixed the problem before, but I can always read the comments in the script I wrote to make sure it doesn't happen again.

  2. Re:Technology does help if open and integrated on How To Help Our Public Schools With Technology? · · Score: 1

    http://www.educationplanet.com/ Tons of other web sites. Stand alone applications are fairly rare in comparison.

  3. Resources and Information on How To Help Our Public Schools With Technology? · · Score: 2

    Most urban districts have significant resources to add technology in the classroom. With the e-rate program up to 90% of the cost for providing internet access can be recovered. Using devices like n-computing can multiply the amount of hardware available. K12LTSP and K12Linux are excellent starting points for putting large numbers of computers in the classroom. There are literally hundreds of free eduction websites that are proven to increase reading and mathematical abilities. Moodle and Sakai are great classroom management and collaboration software suites. Evergreen for library management is nice. Cups for school printing management. Training and integration with the lesson plans are critical. Add in Fedora Directory server for user management, LTSP is built into Edubuntu, add open source monitoring, package management and configuration management tools and a school can easily be managed by one person remotely. Despite what you are reading here, pervasive computing has a role in education just like it does in the workspace and our personal lives. What you can do here will make a difference for these kids. End note, make sure you design for easy maintenance and control, you want it to survive after you leave.

  4. Technology does help if open and integrated on How To Help Our Public Schools With Technology? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm currently working at a large urban school district deploying LTSP based thin clients. Access in the classroom to education web sites is extremely useful and shows measurable results. First pilot schools significantly improved their reading and math scores. It is also a nice reward. Many of these kids have no computer at home and 15-20 minutes of free time is a treat. Some even skip breakfast to get in line outside their classroom for computer time before school starts. It isn't a cure all, but as long as you integrate technology tools into the instructional mix correctly, it can be a wonderful supplement.

  5. Transparency on Obama's Mobile Phone Records Compromised, Shared · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually you are strangely correct. We should have transcripts of every conversation with lobbyist, campaign contributors, and business relationships. A lack of vision into our corporate and political deal making has lead to many of the abuses over the last decade. If every non-personal conversation by corporate executives and government employees was recorded and made available to the public corruption and graft will be driven further underground.

  6. Why there are draconian rules at work. on Obama's Mobile Phone Records Compromised, Shared · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A situation like this is why there are so many stupid rules at work that make people less productive. Why USB ports are disabled, or you can't have an iPod, websites like gmail are blocked. The biggest danger of electronic crime and compromising of personal information come from people that work at the company. Same as most shoplifting is done by employees of the store. The solution is, ironically stolen from the government. In order to see personal data (classified information) an employee of the company must, not only have rights to see the information, but must also demonstrate a "need to know". That two factor authentication will eliminate many of the abuses by corporate and government employees (Joe the Plumber's info breach by the state) and clearly put the action into criminal field as apposed to looky loo.

  7. Do you need the money? on Getting Paid To Abandon an Open Source Project? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do you need the money? Were you working on the project to build your resume and get a job? Will you hate yourself if you do this? If you quit/get fired/company closes, does the NDA allow you to come back to the project clean? I'm solid middle class with a good paying job. I wouldn't work for a company that steals code (legally or not) but bills piling up might change my mind.

  8. Marketing would fix that on Netbook Return Rates Much Higher For Linux Than Windows · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People don't want to be trained. They want to be sold. The problem with Linux on the consumer desktop is nobody is selling it to them. Apple marketing makes a different machine cool and worth investing the time to learn. Maybe treating the netbook like a web/mail appliance instead of a small computer would help manufacturers do a better job of satisfying the customer. What are some stats from other netbook makers?

  9. Re:Tipping Point on Maine To Skip Vista, Go Directly To Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    Red Hat Directory server functions as well in AD, has no per user license, and is LDAP standards based so you can migrate off of it will little effort. The free version is available in the Fedora tree if you want to try it out. It has been scaled into the millions of users. Zimbra is functionally as good as mail for collaboration and it scales better. Because it is based on open standards, any DBA can do many things with the data that requires extra software purchases with Exchange.

  10. Lack of effort and ambition and networking on The Stigma of a Tech Support Background · · Score: 1

    Help desk is a great place to network with other IT people. I started in a call center with a Poly Sci degree. I was second tier in six months and third in a year. Off hours I chased down the network, QA, application, server people that I asked to solve problems and followed them around. When I escalated tickets to them I added enough information about the problem to fix it, and even started guessing what I thought the solution might be. Saved them time and effort even when I had the wrong solution. When an application group had an opening, they asked me to apply. Long story not so long, I'm now a high paid consultant.

  11. political title - now make it work on Venezuela Purchases a Million Intel Classmates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Technology in education has a great deal of potential when you put a computer in each kids hands. The important part is ~$300 million is being spent on hardware. How much will the national government spend on infrastructure that will make it a success. Teacher training and lesson plans, maintenance and support, internet access.... It could be political, your kid now has a computer, but I doubt it will be a success as an educational tool without spending another chunk of money on making it work. By the way OLPC is the reason the classmate exists, and while some zealots will be angry that it isn't their piece of hardware, the real supporters of the OLPC project's mission will be happy to hear this.

  12. Funny, but... the point on Unemployment Hits New High In Silicon Valley · · Score: 1

    I think unemployment is the point of the spear. In reality, if the time and money is spent upfront to build an application or data center to be redundant and stable, you gain great returns on long term maintenance. You should be able to spend most of your time reading (researching on) /.. Or on projects that add value to the company. IT companies are starting to learn they only need staff for emergencies and projects. If that resource is part time and shared with other companies (cloud computing, consultants) or full time (1 day a week on maintenance, 4 days on special projects) is up to the talents of the individual and company's risk management strategy.

  13. Applications are the key. on HP May Be Developing Its Own Version of Linux · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For both Dell and HP the allure of Linux is no need to be dependent on another company to innovate the OS to drive Laptop and Desktop sales. If they are willing to take a short term loss supporting two operating systems (Don't fool yourselves, OEM's support Windows for end users, not Microsoft) then they get to keep another $30-$100 bucks to add to their profits. Until the promise of cloud computing materializes, it will be difficult to sell consumer Linux without setting expectations that you will be using free versions of software or provide the software and support like Apple does. Plus be willing to stick out the growing process until you get 2-3% of the market. By the way, the model has worked for the big three of servers (IBM, HP and Dell) and now Linux is decent, higher margin revenue driver for all three companies.

  14. Discounts make the Windows=Linux in cost on Dell Begins Selling Inspiron Mini 9 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The discounts on the two windows based versions equal out the cost of configuring the Linux version exactly the same. The resolution of the screen is 1024x600 making it slightly better than some competitors.

  15. Shows what competion can do. on IE8 Beta Released To Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While IE8 doesn't work on my chosen platform, it shows again how open source sparks development in stagnant environments. This product would never have happened without Firefox.

  16. Agenda based FUD on California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a Carcinogen · · Score: 1

    When will we get past stuff like this? LED's cause cancer. Cell phones cause cancer. Nuclear power plants are dangerous. Is there a strange group out there that wants to go back to a tribal hunter/gatherer type existence? Take our population down to a couple of million?

  17. MS ISV astroturf on Dell's Subnotebook To Ship With Ubuntu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm involved with a fairly large Linux desktop deployment and I've noticed that whenever a blog post or article is posted for desktop Linux, a lot of MS apologist come in stating that Windows is a better deeper experience and you are shortchanging your students/workers by giving them Linux. While I'm a Linux zealot, I am willing to deploy Windows and MAC when I need to and it makes since from a performance/cost perspective. I don't believe this is a paid guerrilla advertising campaign from MS, but suspect that a lot of small ISV's that tied their livelihood to supporting Windows installations are nervous about the growing market share of Linux. It might be less than 1% of the market, but start paying attention when you walk into a call center, retail store, hospital or school. Actually paying attention may not be enough because they are well camouflaged.

  18. Ubuntu runs fine on EEE and Classmate on Dell's Subnotebook To Ship With Ubuntu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Might be obvious, but a little googling is all it takes to put Ubuntu on an EEE. Edubuntu 7.10 installed on mine with no real problems. But for normal people, yes it would be nice if it came preinstalled. The Intel Classmate comes with a version of Edubuntu 8.04 from Go2PC that is getting more stable every day. This may be Ubuntu's market if they can sign up more OEM's.

  19. I'd do it if they paid me. on Smart Self-Service Scales · · Score: 1

    We should get a discount for doing all the work and saving them a salary or two. Of course we pump our own gas now and it is just a matter of time until they turn it around and start charging a premium to scan and bag.

  20. Re:with smaller news rooms....troll on 30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging · · Score: 1

    Because sites like digg have been ruined because of every huffington story being driven to the top. I've actually seen the titles of some of their posts. The ones you mentioned I've never seen.

  21. Already was the law from 1949-1984ish on 30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I remember right the fairness doctrine was the law from 1949 until sometime into Reagan's second term. Its repeal lead to the rise of talk radio and helped cable news. Probably indirectly led to the lack of regulation by the FCC of the internet.

  22. with smaller news rooms....troll on 30% of Americans Want "Balanced" Blogging · · Score: 1

    The internet today is an off balance representation of the population as a whole. I believe it will balance out and insane sites like huffington will lose popularity. With smaller news rooms, dominated by boomers at the TV networks and likely similar environments at papers. The internet, TV, radio (mostly opinion and no news research) and papers all have one thing in mind. Eyeball hits for selling advertising. Best way to get hits? Troll. But it is better than having the government edit "balance" the news. Maybe Google can have a project to aggregate all the news stories on a subject and strip out everything but the facts. Kind of like the online translators.

  23. Evolve - eat pre-processed food on Cooking Stimulated Big Leap In Human Cognition · · Score: 3, Funny

    If we could get all our food preprocessed (already chewed with the waste removed) we could send more resources to the brain and less to the digestive system. We have the technology.

  24. Bogus Review and Sales Pitch on Linux Authentication Against Active Directory · · Score: 1

    It has been mentioned that it can be done with a little configuration of pam, ldap clients and kerberos. But for a company without some Linux expertise, I've found Centrify to be an excellent solution at a reasonable cost. But I'm not going to submit a bogus review and sales pitch.

  25. Re:Stop paying MS for bad software... on Windows XP Still Outselling Windows Vista · · Score: 1

    Duh, you are paying for Vista... Despite what they say, the OS that comes with your new PC isn't free.