Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2007
in Uncategorized.
I made a contract to teach K-10 computers in a remote northern community today. This could be very good or a very tough year. One never knows exactly what to expect in such places.
I usually teach high school subjects so this will be an adventure. I have been advised to keep the little munchkins busy and having fun, so I will stock up on strategies and resources all summer so I do not go under fire unarmed, so to speak.
The little ones are active learners so this could be a lot of fun. High school students often carry a lot more negative baggage and limit themselves in school. I will start by reviewing the K-12 curriculum for computing. The high school computer science was recently revised and is much better than the previous 1990s stuff when computers were capable of much less. My impression is that the introductory courses cover far too little for engaged students (too much warm/fuzzy stuff). I will treat the curriculum as a minimum requirement and put in as much reinforcement of the regular classroom learning as I can manage. For example, teachers often have only 1 PC in the classroom so it is hard to do much for the class. I will have a lab to put to work with games, graphics, audio, video, and even hand-eye coordination for the little ones. How to use a mouse and keyboard may take some time.
Last year, I had some grade 5 students who could manage mouse and keyboard fairly well, as expected, but they had little idea what could be done with computers. We did something different every day, visiting websites, checking out spreadsheets and word-processors. I touched different areas of the curriculum each day: language arts, science, math, social studies but did things that are quick and easy using computers and difficult without. One day we visited Babelfish and found out what translating repeatedly does to meaning… 
Another day we did a search on the local server for text about anything and found books to read without going to the library or turning a page. We researched endangered species in Canada and tried to find out why they are endangered. We found pictures of things they never knew existed. Kids love pictures. I can set up a database for the kids to store images and annotate. I can set up a local search engine with local content so kids have a very snappy and safe environment. Activites are limited only by the imagination of the computer teacher.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2007
in Uncategorized.
I have been spending some time at DesktopLinux and feeding some trolls. I know it is generally advised not to do that but there seemed to be a lack of information on the site and a well-researched comment blows away their denial so easily. For instance, when confronted by a link to an EU report on the impact of FLOSS in the world, one replied, “Why don't you cite some references that aren't fatally biased.
Your references above are obvious propaganda, written poorly despite their own assertion that they utilized high academic standards.”
and
“Statements about "fairness" are INHERENTLY and INTRINSICALLY biased!”
I had to chuckle… Others claimed that M$ was a poor unfortunate being abused by losers in the market place and ignore that M$ had been convicted of illegally propping up their monopoly on the desktop. I immediately pointed them at the US Department of Justice webpage where you can find this gem of a memo from Joachim Kempin advising the team about strategies to deal with the ever-falling price of PC hardware. The artificial shortening of PC life was a theme as well as the strategy of hiding their licence fee in the price. The illusion that M$ is an innovator competing on price and performance certainly vanishes after reading things like that. The judge thought so, too. In his ruling, he wrote:”62. Microsoft's actual pricing behavior is consistent with the proposition that the firm enjoys monopoly power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. The company's decision not to consider the prices of other vendors' Intel-compatible PC operating systems when setting the price of Windows 98, for example, is probative of monopoly power. One would expect a firm in a competitive market to pay much closer attention to the prices charged by other firms in the market. Another indication of monopoly power is the fact that Microsoft raised the price that it charged OEMs for Windows 95, with trivial exceptions, to the same level as the price it charged for Windows 98 just prior to releasing the newer product. In a competitive market, one would expect the price of an older operating system to stay the same or decrease upon the release of a newer, more attractive version. Microsoft, however, was only concerned with inducing OEMs to ship Windows 98 in favor of the older version. It is unlikely that Microsoft would have imposed this price increase if it were genuinely concerned that OEMs might shift their business to another vendor of operating systems or hasten the development of viable alternatives to Windows.”
The message is clear. If you want to get value for your money do not buy from M$ directly or indirectly. I welcome the release by Dell of a selection of hardware shipped with GNU/Linux. You should save some money by buying those models if you buy from Dell. A lot of schools do just that. Trolls do not have much fun…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 6th, 2007
in Uncategorized.
This weekend, I built a lean, mean desktop machine for a small church organisation. The bottom line was very important so I built from parts and used GNU/Linux to avoid “the tax” and donated my labour. AMD64 3500 AM2 1GB should do their bidding for many years to come.
The shopping took an hour. The assembly took an hour ( I am old, nearly blind, and I RTFM). It took two hours and several e-mails discussing and revising the proposal. To my distress, I could not find my CDs. I have recently moved and the CDs are somewhere in the pile. So, I tried to boot via USB drive after transferring a bootable image and the amd64-installer from Etch. Worked like a charm, but I did notice the machine paused for long periods during the boot… The installation was routine, about 15 minutes. I did a netinstall from my local repository. The sucker would not boot! Amazing! I could rescue, chroot into the installation and run it, but I could not get it to boot. I tried to setup grub several times and even installed LILO.
I started disconnecting devices but got nowhere. After a good night’s sleep, it occurred to me that these parts were COTS (Consumer Off The Shelf) and still on the market, so they must work. I had made a jumper change to make the hard drive the master and put the CD/DVD drive on a separate IDE cable, as this usually is a reasonable choice. I put the jumper back to cable select and it booted like a scalded cat, 24s to the login with about 5s delay for GRUB menu time. The system was crisp. I configured the printer and discovered that there were no drivers in Debian amd64 on the Brother support site. This was a multifunction machine MFC-7220 from Brother and Brother did have drivers for i386. I had already wasted hours on this and did not want to bother making 32 bit drivers work so I reinstalled in i386. Joy! Everything works.
I installed a few extra packages, configured desktop icons for the usual applications, password changing, file path indexing and searching and shipped the computer out.
This is an example why the DELL/Ubuntu deal is a big deal. If I could order a machine without “the tax” and having Linux preinstalled, I would have saved many hours of my time. Of course I am proud that the system is set up personally for friends but it would be good if I could do that for fewer hours of my time. DELL/Ubuntu can solve these little problems once and save hundreds of thousands of hours for their customers. If I had a lot of friends (;-), I could keep the parts list and an image of the installed disc system, but I rarely build two systems exactly the same. DELL does. The big time waster for me was a BIOS bug that would not deal properly with a master IDE drive (MSI K9VGM-V). Last year I wasted hours with a motherboard that would not boot from any drive but the third if four drives were installed (ASUS A8N-E). Go figure. That made my RAID 1 array somewhat silly and required manual reconfiguring of the boot loader for six servers. Linux is more ready for the desktop than some motherboard manufacturers.
- Robert Pogson
Dell has announced that it will sell in the United States of America (I wish these guys had come up with a better name…) laptops and desktops with Ubuntu GNU/Linux installed in the factory. That is good news for the market because Dell has a fairly large market of home/business/school customers and the more exposure the idea of a Windowless PC gets, the better.
It remains to be seen whether Dell’s products will be advertised or only made available to the dedicated Linux lovers out there. Currently, if you browse dell.com/linux, you find very little and “Dell recommends Windows” is prominent. Also their site search function fails to find Linux. They did, however, make XP available again, so there is hope that this is not just window dressing but a real market initiative that will offer choice to ordinary consumers.
I really want to see this choice made available to schools and in particular as thin client/server arrangements. Dell is not doing much for that yet.
Dell’s prices are starting to reflect an absence of the Windows tax for similar models with and without Windows, so this could be a breakthrough in pricing. I am from Winnipeg (although I have lived and worked elsewhere many years) and love a bargain. I would hate to see a Dell machine with Linux selling for more than a Windows machine.
I am an optimist but this situation still faces harassment by MSFT, market acceptance (Will we see TV spots???), and a profitable line of business for Dell. There sure is room for growth. In the consumer society, new and better often gets the ball rolling. I wish Dell well in this new enterprise. I hope it works.
- Robert Pogson
