The same thing happened to us. We didn't contact HP about (good idea), but finally got the company to take them back. They still call about once a year with the same old line. After I explain to the person what we went through the last time, they seem to realize that we won't be falling for it again. The problem is what to do if they call someone outside our IS department? That's basically what happened the first time. It wasn't an IS person that agreed to the deal.
That's the problem, I work with them everyday and still don't know alot about how the educational stuff works. I'm sure these companies have educational specialists that actually work through how the software should interact with the students to help them learn the material. Our teachers rave about Plato and Accelerated Reader in particular. It's going to be tough for regular geeks to break into this market. It will take a company with the resources to have educational and curricula specialists on staff to help design the software plus be committed to open source/Linux. That's going to be tough to find.
Software like WinSchool/SASI handle student demographics, attendance, grading, discipline, etc. Sure, it's just a database. We use SASI by NCS Pearson which is based on DBF with an Oracle or MS-SQL option. The problem is that this software has replaced what was once called "Permanent Records". This is information on students that must be kept basically forever. Also, school division funding is based on very strange ways of counting attendance and entry/withdrawals. States require that schools send in monthly reports that HAVE to be accurate. No offense to all the great coders out there, but I want a large company like NCS that I can call and fuss with if the reports are wrong or if we lose data related to the permanent records. It isn't a seat-of-the-pants type deal like many open source products.
Instead of replacing products like these that work great, it would be nice to convince the companies to port them to alternative OS's. That won't happen until a critical mass is reached with Linux in the schools.. that won't happen until the software is there!
Someone mentioned WINE. I know it has gotten much better lately, but I don't think I would depend on it to run mission-critical apps like the ones described above. Some even require very specific Windows settings like # of colors, resolutions, hardware types, etc.
I'm with you that something should be done. Unfortunately, I can also see many barricades to cross before we get there. It will be a very tough uphill battle to really break into the education market (k-12 at least).. maybe even tougher than many businesses.
As the IS Manager for a K-12 school system that uses Linux for our main servers, I really see the advantage of it over NT. Also, I can see using KDE + Mozilla + Star/K/Abi Office for business classes and office PCs. The problem is what do you use to replace all the curriculumn and remediation software like Plato, Abacus, Destinations, Accelerated Reader/Math, STAR Reader/Math, etc.? There aren't any open-source or Linux-based alternatives that I'm aware of.
On the school office side, what do you use to replace SASI/Pentamation/WINSchool/etc.? for student management, grades, attendance, etc.? What do you use in the libraries to replace Follett?
These are all questions that need to be answered before many school systems would even consider switching. Until there is a good answer for all of them, it isn't feasible to switch away from Microsoft and/or Apple.
It would at least require companies to obey their own privacy policies. Right now, it doesn't seem to matter if I uncheck every box with words like "Subscribe me to electronic news", "Share my contact information with other companies", etc. when registering on a site. The majority of companies don't honor your preferences to not receive all their junk mail. With this proposed bill, it would be illegal not to do so.
That said, I still prefer the competing bill overall.
I-Gear has gone way downhill over the past couple of years and has driven off many school systems including mine. Their Linux version never ran properly on a multi-processor server. With no support for load-balancing and sharing of user accounts, that was a killer for a large system. If that wasn't bad enough, their support really went in the crapper when Symantec bought them out. I used to be able to talk to the programmers directly when we had a problem. Now, the support people don't have a clue about Linux or Solaris. Their DDR and auto-lock features are excellent, but the company has spoiled us on their product for good now.
As Manager of Technology for a K-12 school division, I can tell you how we do it. First of all, your system should have an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Students and parents should receive a copy of it each year during registration. Ours is included in the Parent/Student Handbook. All students who use the Internet must have a signed form from their parents granting privileges. Ours includes language that states that Internet access is for educational use only! Even though it isn't strictly enforced (we do allow entertainment sites for example), that language is there to back us up on content and P2P decisions.
Since students and teachers use the same network and computers, all are subject to the same policies and filters. We transparent proxy all requests to port 80 and 554 through iPrisms which filter and then pass the request on to a Squid proxy that generally runs at about a 40% hit ratio. All other Internet traffic passes through our Cisco firewall which performs NAT based on an access list. That access list denies NAT for all the popular instant messaging and P2P applications. Since all computer addresses are private, no NAT means no access. Instant messaging is blocked after an incident where a bomb threat came in that was untraceable according to AOL. P2P filtering is obvious due to copyright violations and bandwidth usage. It is interesting to watch the hits on our access lists from P2P apps that are denied. Kazaa seems to be the most popular, we block several million Kazaa packets each week.
That's how we do it, if you have any questions, let me know.
As a constituent of Boucher's, I sent an e-mail to him after his CNet interview a couple of months ago thanking him for his support of fair use for digital media. He sent a very nice response detailing how fair use rights for digital media is one of his highest priorities. His fair-use rights included custom compilation CDs and circumventing technological protection measures in order to archive or excerpt material. The last part really covers almost anything we've been worried about.
He also stated that the potential to penalize and prosecute individuals who excercise such rights is an affront to First Amendment protections, a harm to consumers, and inhibits the creation and public use of intellectual property!
To say I'm glad to be represented by him is an understatement.
Have you ever looked at Compaq's business systems (Deskpros)? Really awesome design with completely tool-less chassis, mini-tower/desktop swappable case (slide out the drives, slide them back in sideways, flip the case over 90 degrees.. all with no tools). They also use standard components and memory. If we have a hardware problem, the replacement is there by 10:00 am the next day. We support several hundred of these at work.
There's a reason companies don't build their own PCs or buy from Joe-Bob's Computer Warehouse.
I noticed that after running the newest ref file from Ad-Aware that Kazaa Lite stopped working. It gives the message: "You have uninstalled a part of Kazaa that is required to run". I thought my system was clean until the latest update where it found more BDE stuff. I assume that's what made Kazaa Lite stop working. So, it appears that the Lite version isn't as ad/spy-ware free as I thought.
As a PHP developer, I don't agree with many of your points. The only one that really got me though was variable names. That's a function of coding style, not the language. All my PHP apps have full descriptive variable names.
What does the average Slashdotter (AMD-lover, MS-hater) do in this situation? I'm expecting some to have big headaches today just thinking about it. What next? Dogs and cats living together?
I think he what he means though is that in this case, the traffic doesn't balance out. How many times do you visit sites in Africa? I don't think I ever have. How many users in Africa visit sites in the US? I would bet that is a fairly large number. That's why the costs are different.
To look at it another way. I start a small ISP with several thousand users. Will MCI pay to peer with me? No, because it is worth more for me to peer with them since they have access to all the cool sites my users want to visit. This is the same situation, just on a larger scale.
The problem though is that if I want everyone to access my OpenNIC site, their ISPs must also add the OpenNIC root servers. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
What's illegal is for "Bristol Herald Courier" (my local newspaper) to tell the stores that they can't carry USA Today, New York Times, etc. They aren't wanting to do it for free, they're wanting to sell the national feeds to anyone who wants them. Local channels aren't available on DSS where I live, so I have to use an antenna to receive the network feeds. If this were to pass, I could receive the NYC NBC feed for example.
Slashdot Mirror
The same thing happened to us. We didn't contact HP about (good idea), but finally got the company to take them back. They still call about once a year with the same old line. After I explain to the person what we went through the last time, they seem to realize that we won't be falling for it again. The problem is what to do if they call someone outside our IS department? That's basically what happened the first time. It wasn't an IS person that agreed to the deal.
Jason
That's the problem, I work with them everyday and still don't know alot about how the educational stuff works. I'm sure these companies have educational specialists that actually work through how the software should interact with the students to help them learn the material. Our teachers rave about Plato and Accelerated Reader in particular. It's going to be tough for regular geeks to break into this market. It will take a company with the resources to have educational and curricula specialists on staff to help design the software plus be committed to open source/Linux. That's going to be tough to find.
.. that won't happen until the software is there!
.. maybe even tougher than many businesses.
Software like WinSchool/SASI handle student demographics, attendance, grading, discipline, etc. Sure, it's just a database. We use SASI by NCS Pearson which is based on DBF with an Oracle or MS-SQL option. The problem is that this software has replaced what was once called "Permanent Records". This is information on students that must be kept basically forever. Also, school division funding is based on very strange ways of counting attendance and entry/withdrawals. States require that schools send in monthly reports that HAVE to be accurate. No offense to all the great coders out there, but I want a large company like NCS that I can call and fuss with if the reports are wrong or if we lose data related to the permanent records. It isn't a seat-of-the-pants type deal like many open source products.
Instead of replacing products like these that work great, it would be nice to convince the companies to port them to alternative OS's. That won't happen until a critical mass is reached with Linux in the schools
Someone mentioned WINE. I know it has gotten much better lately, but I don't think I would depend on it to run mission-critical apps like the ones described above. Some even require very specific Windows settings like # of colors, resolutions, hardware types, etc.
I'm with you that something should be done. Unfortunately, I can also see many barricades to cross before we get there. It will be a very tough uphill battle to really break into the education market (k-12 at least)
Jason
As the IS Manager for a K-12 school system that uses Linux for our main servers, I really see the advantage of it over NT. Also, I can see using KDE + Mozilla + Star/K/Abi Office for business classes and office PCs. The problem is what do you use to replace all the curriculumn and remediation software like Plato, Abacus, Destinations, Accelerated Reader/Math, STAR Reader/Math, etc.? There aren't any open-source or Linux-based alternatives that I'm aware of.
On the school office side, what do you use to replace SASI/Pentamation/WINSchool/etc.? for student management, grades, attendance, etc.? What do you use in the libraries to replace Follett?
These are all questions that need to be answered before many school systems would even consider switching. Until there is a good answer for all of them, it isn't feasible to switch away from Microsoft and/or Apple.
Jason
DeoxyriboNucleic Acid of course :)
Jason
We have a couple of these, they work really well .. almost scary fast!
Jason
It would at least require companies to obey their own privacy policies. Right now, it doesn't seem to matter if I uncheck every box with words like "Subscribe me to electronic news", "Share my contact information with other companies", etc. when registering on a site. The majority of companies don't honor your preferences to not receive all their junk mail. With this proposed bill, it would be illegal not to do so.
That said, I still prefer the competing bill overall.
Jason
Oops, should have typed 443 instead of 554!
Jason
I-Gear has gone way downhill over the past couple of years and has driven off many school systems including mine. Their Linux version never ran properly on a multi-processor server. With no support for load-balancing and sharing of user accounts, that was a killer for a large system. If that wasn't bad enough, their support really went in the crapper when Symantec bought them out. I used to be able to talk to the programmers directly when we had a problem. Now, the support people don't have a clue about Linux or Solaris. Their DDR and auto-lock features are excellent, but the company has spoiled us on their product for good now.
Jason
As Manager of Technology for a K-12 school division, I can tell you how we do it. First of all, your system should have an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Students and parents should receive a copy of it each year during registration. Ours is included in the Parent/Student Handbook. All students who use the Internet must have a signed form from their parents granting privileges. Ours includes language that states that Internet access is for educational use only! Even though it isn't strictly enforced (we do allow entertainment sites for example), that language is there to back us up on content and P2P decisions.
Since students and teachers use the same network and computers, all are subject to the same policies and filters. We transparent proxy all requests to port 80 and 554 through iPrisms which filter and then pass the request on to a Squid proxy that generally runs at about a 40% hit ratio. All other Internet traffic passes through our Cisco firewall which performs NAT based on an access list. That access list denies NAT for all the popular instant messaging and P2P applications. Since all computer addresses are private, no NAT means no access. Instant messaging is blocked after an incident where a bomb threat came in that was untraceable according to AOL. P2P filtering is obvious due to copyright violations and bandwidth usage. It is interesting to watch the hits on our access lists from P2P apps that are denied. Kazaa seems to be the most popular, we block several million Kazaa packets each week.
That's how we do it, if you have any questions, let me know.
Jason
As a constituent of Boucher's, I sent an e-mail to him after his CNet interview a couple of months ago thanking him for his support of fair use for digital media. He sent a very nice response detailing how fair use rights for digital media is one of his highest priorities. His fair-use rights included custom compilation CDs and circumventing technological protection measures in order to archive or excerpt material. The last part really covers almost anything we've been worried about.
He also stated that the potential to penalize and prosecute individuals who excercise such rights is an affront to First Amendment protections, a harm to consumers, and inhibits the creation and public use of intellectual property!
To say I'm glad to be represented by him is an understatement.
Jason
I work for a K-12 school, I wonder if pricing is cheaper for us vs higher ed?
Jason
When I login for the school system I work for, it shows $999 for the base model.
Jason
It's simple, you can't agree to something that is illegal. Even if you click "Agree", it isn't binding if the license agreement itself is illegal.
Jason
Have you ever looked at Compaq's business systems (Deskpros)? Really awesome design with completely tool-less chassis, mini-tower/desktop swappable case (slide out the drives, slide them back in sideways, flip the case over 90 degrees .. all with no tools). They also use standard components and memory. If we have a hardware problem, the replacement is there by 10:00 am the next day. We support several hundred of these at work.
There's a reason companies don't build their own PCs or buy from Joe-Bob's Computer Warehouse.
I noticed that after running the newest ref file from Ad-Aware that Kazaa Lite stopped working. It gives the message: "You have uninstalled a part of Kazaa that is required to run". I thought my system was clean until the latest update where it found more BDE stuff. I assume that's what made Kazaa Lite stop working. So, it appears that the Lite version isn't as ad/spy-ware free as I thought.
Jason
What do corps do when MS no longer sells/support Win2K? They will be forced to upgrade. It has already happened with Win95.
Jason
As a PHP developer, I don't agree with many of your points. The only one that really got me though was variable names. That's a function of coding style, not the language. All my PHP apps have full descriptive variable names.
Jason
What does the average Slashdotter (AMD-lover, MS-hater) do in this situation? I'm expecting some to have big headaches today just thinking about it. What next? Dogs and cats living together?
JAson
I think he what he means though is that in this case, the traffic doesn't balance out. How many times do you visit sites in Africa? I don't think I ever have. How many users in Africa visit sites in the US? I would bet that is a fairly large number. That's why the costs are different.
To look at it another way. I start a small ISP with several thousand users. Will MCI pay to peer with me? No, because it is worth more for me to peer with them since they have access to all the cool sites my users want to visit. This is the same situation, just on a larger scale.
Jason
The problem though is that if I want everyone to access my OpenNIC site, their ISPs must also add the OpenNIC root servers. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Jason
What's illegal is for "Bristol Herald Courier" (my local newspaper) to tell the stores that they can't carry USA Today, New York Times, etc. They aren't wanting to do it for free, they're wanting to sell the national feeds to anyone who wants them. Local channels aren't available on DSS where I live, so I have to use an antenna to receive the network feeds. If this were to pass, I could receive the NYC NBC feed for example.
Jason
They are only available in larger metropolitan areas. Of the 200+ local broadcast domains for example, only about 40 are available on satellite.
Jason
No, you can buy their "upgrade protection" each year if you want to keep up with versions, but we don't do that.
Jason
Also, corps get a much better deal on Office with their volume licensing. We pay about $43 a copy for OfficeXP Pro.
Jason
Jason