Epilogue: Austin schoolteacher who didn't believe Linux existed
The teacher has since had a long conversation with the gentleman from the free Linux project, which is called HeliOS, and he's published a long, mature, and insightful note about the peace he's made with her (in particular, he posted a graceful and heartful apology for some out-of-line remarks he made about the teaching profession and the US teachers' union). It's worth a read:
Karen seems to be a good teacher, and as she stated to me today, she has learned more about the tech world in a few days than she's learned in five years.Character-Assasinations-Ain't-Us (via /.)That's because she's trapped in a world of Windows. Most people are.
I have contacted the technology department of AISD and have discovered it has a rich technology environment that uses open source software in all aspects of instruction, operation, and administration. The District has over 36,000 desktop and laptop computers. While about 24,000 of those computers run some version of Windows, AISD is anything but a Windows shop. Their current standard teacher/student image includes both Open Office and Firefox on all Windows computers, and recently has added Open Office to the Apple OS image. Other open source software on both images include audacity and lame, and other Free Software such as Google Earth, iTunes, Adobe and many plug-ins. They also are members of the world community grid; their 36,000 computers are providing many hours of spare processing time (during the work day) to organizations trying to solve major world problems such as energy, cancer, and AIDS. Additionally, they are running more than 100 Linux servers.
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Someone was educated and cooler heads prevailed. Bravo.
Awww :)
She got schooled.. *sigh*
I do hope everyone who read and commented on the first item read the link above. This how it is supposed to work. Indignation, anger and reaction changed to education, reconciliation and peace. And Progress is Made.
Yeah - a happy ending!
Everyone likes a happy ending! =-)
Seriously, I hope this got a lot of press in Austin and opened a few eyes - on a lot of levels.
"I've learned something today..."
Unfortunately I am also trapped in a world of Windows. I've tried the distros, they're nice, and if all I did was surf or program that would be fine. But I don't and most of the creative apps I use have no substitute that even remotely compares to what is available on windows. (Installing Wine is too difficult, at least for me.) It would be nice if people spent less time on particle effects for beryl and a bit more developing professional level apps for the various linuxes.
I'm glad this had a good outcome.
"out-of-line remarks he made about the teaching profession and the US teachers' union"
Out of line? Hardly.
Yes, some teachers are underpaid and schools are underfunded. But the concept of teaching and the education system needs to be completely torn apart and rebuilt. And that means getting rid of teachers like this.
And replacing them with robots . . .
I think I speak for most people in the open source community when I say we would prefer people educated on open source rather than repelled.
Ignorance is everyones enemy... even those who think they ARE enlightened. We all sleepwalk... some are just deeper sleepers than others.
Alowishus @7: That means getting rid of teachers who are willing to learn and admit their mistakes? Seems to me those are the teachers who shouldn't be replaced.
"Replacing them with robots"? That's just stupid. There has to be a sensible half-way point between doing nothing and replacing teachers with robots.
Which is why I'm lobbying for replacing teachers with android bio-trons.
The author of the post may feel some remorse for what he said and how he said it, but commenters clearly don't, such as the one who says he still thinks she "should be stabbed in the face." Nice.
I hate Windows as much as the next guy, but these Linux people are out of hand. They make it sound like we're literally shackled by Windows, and Steve Ballmer is literally standing behind us, holding the whip. They make the Mac users of yesteryear seem downright reasonable.
I use a Mac with XP, Vista, and Ubuntu on VMWare. I need all of these OSes for browser testing. I can honestly say that Linux isn't where it needs to be in order for any regular person to pick it up and start using it as comfortably as they can use a Mac or Windows.
Ubuntu certainly is nice, but until it's as easy to install any program on it (not just the ones in the default repository), as it is on OS X, then it's not ready. As easy as Windows isn't good enough. And until they sort out interface inconsistencies, it's not ready. Why do some menus stay dropped down and some behave like Mac System 7, where you have to hold the button down?
It's getting closer, and it's great if you have some moral opposition to paying for software, but it's not as good as Windows, and this comes from someone who has never owned an actual Windows PC.
I really want it to be better than Windows, but it's not there yet.
@6: I have to say that at least for me the professional level apps are there, it just depends on what profession you are a part of. I personally am very happy with Linux not becoming mainstream.
how's the Koolaid in Stockholm,Fresh? (just kidding!)
Can somebody explain to me WTF is up with tech people thinking unions are the devil's tool? Tech people are generally pretty liberal, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that unions are for retards and are corrupting America somehow. Is it some sort of Randite knee jerk reaction? Is it elitism, because most union members are blue collar workers? WTF?
Would anyone else like to make a proclamation about worthiness of Linux as an operating system on the basis of their personal UI pet peeves?
Don't be shy!
@Freshyill
I beg to differ. I have no idea what you are talking about here:
I use KDE on openSUSE. I can install any open source program in the world. It's called compiling. Even Perl in alien keyboard layout isn't that difficult to compile.
I can also install almost everything that runs on Windows. All Microsoft products will run on openSUSE with KDE, but a few high end games won't. If you are an avid gamer, then yes, you need to keep Windows. In all other respects Linux is far superior to the Microsoft OS.
There are no viruses. There is no spyware. I run monitors that tell me every single running process at all times. I can monitor every tiny packet that comes in and out of my server. I have a virtual honeypot, and I compute through LVM.
Advanced Linux is not for children, but there are educational Linux platforms children can use. If you don't know how computer programming works, then you probably should stick with a simple setup. You are only limited by your own knowledge.
Linux pwns DRM content, Windows keeps you a slave to it. With 8 gigs of RAM on my Blade, it only takes eight minutes to rip... nevermind.
P.S. Frak Windows.
@ZIKZAK
Since you ask, the last 4 jobs I have used Linux on my desktop at work. Most companies I work for install Linux on all their web servers and other servers included telephony and database servers.
I RARELY see a Linux box go down, NEVER see it get hacked and honestly find them a breeze to work with as I can interface with them easily from my scripts in a million different ways (as well as all the programs on them).
Sure, people who are used to Windows may be a bit whiny about not being able to play games but I play Warcraft just fine via Cedega. They may also complain about media but I've managed to hook up my touch iPod and sync all my files.
So I dont get the bitch?
CalvinRodo - Compositing, matchmove, rotoscope, 3D. I am chained to Autodesk and to Adobe. There is no escape. In order to succeed Linux needs to become a platform developers can write for-profit applications for. Otherwise it will never be more than the geek toy it is right now.
Actually, Steve Ballmer is standing behind me with a whip, but it's unrelated to my OS.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!
The case of the Connecticut teacher who just two weeks ago "..agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, pay a $100 fine, and surrendered her teaching license, according to the Hartford Courant. The ordeal left her hospitalized for stress and heart problems, " for the porn pop ups shows that teachers face a dilemma.
Too much enforcement, they lose.
Too little , they lose.
Presto:
I fear you missed Fresyill's point.
Presto, any time you have to mention "compile," you're reinforcing the idea that Linux distros aren't ready for prime time. If an average user can't insert a disk, click the disk icon, then go from beginning of installation to functioning, operating program using nothing but on-screen prompts, they won't succeed. They will fail, and become frustrated. They will choose the operating system that allows them to do that.
This is not stupidity, and it's not unreasonable.
I use both Windows and Linux, and am a very advanced "computer user" in general, and still have trouble with certain kinks in the Linux method from time to time. I have always managed to sort them out, but the average computer user would not.
I am enormously pleased that both the teacher and HeliOS guy were reasonable and sorted things out. While the process could have gone smoother to begin with if there had been more humility on both sides, it's important to at least eventually recognize the humanity of the other party..
@DCCULBERSON
Very little compiling is needed in Linux anymore. Thousands of programs are contained in 'repositories' from where they can be easy installed,updated, etc. There is rarely a need to do a 'make'.
@11: C'est la internet, Fred.
Xeno, I know that; I was addressing Presto's comment specifically mentioning compiling.
And while many programs are contained in repositories, installing and configuring them is frequently not as straightforward as the OSX or Windows equivalents. (At least, the commercial equivalents.)
Before we get too deep into the install/compile discussion, I'm going to throw in another kudo à la the first few posts, congratulating the reconcile/educate approach. Very inspiring.
Yeah, I know it's not all simple. But it's not rocket science. I'm a writer. I have no computer programming education of any kind.
I understand Linux is not for everyone. A lot of people just don't have the time to learn how it works. However, it's kick ass for anybody who does have the time. It leaves Windows in the dust.
Compiz? K3B is better than Nero any day of the week, and they give it away. Amarok has a far better database than Winamp (WMP is a joke), which is really good for somebody like me who has Grateful Dead concerts to hell and back.
It's really worth learning if anybody wants to try something new. I switched because of Windows Media Player. I just got fed up with a computer telling me what I could and could not listen to.
That's all I was saying. I still have Windows. I'm sure I'll need it for Diablo III. As long as the free world has electricity I'll be playing that for at least six months when it comes out.
yeah... Karen? I apologize for calling you a Peggy Hill.
@8 "Ignorance is everyones enemy... even those who think they ARE enlightened. We all sleepwalk... some are just deeper sleepers than others."
The most dangerous ignorant folks out there are the ones who think they are enlightened.
Glad this story has turned from what it originally was. I was pretty surprised to hear how much open source AISD was actually using.
@dculberson
Installing programs is as simple as 'apt-get install gimp'
As for configuring, it's preconfigured.
Other programs that really need configuring like SERVERS actually require technical experience by default no matter what platform you are on (windows, OSX or Linux).
So again, I don't see the problem? My 65 yr old mom runs Ubuntu, uses Gimp, downloads pictures from her digital camera, scans in photos, prints them out, etc etc. Everything you do on a Windows machine she can do via her Ubuntu Linux machine.
And no, she doesn't call me for support. That's why I gave it to her; because she called me constantly for Windows support. So I sent her a Linux box and now she just calls to say Hi instead. :)
Google Earth and iTunes are free software?
Xeno,
OS X: *click click*
:)
Arkizzle,
You can also use synaptic too... click click. Tada.
I've been using Linux since Debian 2.0 in 1996 or so.
Last week I rebuilt my laptop using an unfamiliar distro I was persuaded to try by colleagues at work.
Nothing worked. I got hours of frustration and eventually ended up in a state of impotent rage (I /hate/ that feeling.)
Eventually I gave up my attempt to use the 1337 Linux, decided to just deal with the mickey-taking of my colleagues, and reinstalled my preferred distro. Everything Just Worked. (I did notice that there were several points where, had I not had to work out the magic incantation the last time I did this, I'd have been stuck with a broken system.)
I stick with it because Freedom, in the FSF / GNU sense, is important to me. I personally am prepared to put up with reduced functionality as the price of freedom.
FWIW, if you're sticking a toe in the water for the first time, I recommend using the Mandriva or Ubuntu LiveCD versions first. The uber-techie distro that wrecked my head was Arch. (The damn trackpad didn't work! In Mandriva, it worked out of the box /in the graphical installer/!)
...The biggest question is whether she'll have the guts to apologize to the student she falsely accused of piracy in front of her classes and admit she was totally full of shit. I suspect she won't out of a teacher's need to maintain the aura of superiority, and simply blow it off as if it was no big deal.
...That being said, here's a suggestion for you Linux supporters who want to procylitize and corrupt the young: Go buy a few dozen beehives, burn off copies of whatever free distributed easy-to-install(*) version of Linux you think the kids will have the most success with, go to the schools and offer a free hour seminar on how so much better Linux and open-source is, and give out those copies after the lecture. It'll give the kids a break from classes, the teachers a chance to sneak another swig of the MD 20/20 they've got stashed in their desk, and - God/Yahweh/Roddenberry forbit - you just *might8 sucker a few dozen kids into growing up to be Linux geeks.
...I'm serious about this one, kids. It's one thing to lambast a clueless excuse for a teacher for being clueless, but it's another thing to try to do some g0sp3l spreading and Penguin tossing yourselves. I'd really love to see this happen all over the country, just to see how well something like this could work. And it would give the Boing Boing gang something to cover live.
(*) insert pre-recorded hilarious laughter here
You use Ubuntu. Then get the .deb file from your software vendor, preferably one that is made for Ubuntu, but Debian usually work. Click on it. Finished.
I don't remember if the default is to install in your user directory or in the root directory. If it install as root, you will be asked for your password.
If they don't have a .deb file, complain!
It's actually easier to install any program on Ubuntu then on OS X. And on OS X you have to track down and remove all preference files and other garbage files (sometimes possibly secret or embarrassing stuff like web cache and history) by hand when you remove an application. On Ubuntu you just uninstall it and is politely asked if you want to keep those files or not. If you keep your preferences and decide later on that you want to uninstall them, you just do it. No hassle.
@OM
I'm actually pondering joing Americorp's tech side so I can install open source in schools. Not going to do it under Bush's shadow. Waiting for the 'Bamster to take office.
But I've always wanted to get a bunch of geeks together and just teach Java, Perl, Apache, etc to under privileged kids and teach them how to install linux on recycled laptops. Give them a shot to become hackers themselves and get a decent income before they are even out of high school.
That would be cool. :)
Freshyill
"Ubuntu certainly is nice, but until it's as easy to install any program on it (not just the ones in the default repository), as it is on OS X, then it's not ready. As easy as Windows isn't good enough. "
Do you think Windows isn't ready for ordinary computer users to use?
I mean, I personally do think that Windows isn't ready for ordinary computer users, and simultaneously that it's below the dignity of advanced computer users. But I'm wondering what you think...
I'm really glad about how this turned out. The first thing I did after reading the original blog post was to look for the follow-up. I can't say that I was very hopeful, but I think this turned out to be a pristine example of good conflict management.
Kudos to the HeliOS maintainer for not truly throwing her to the wolves, and for apologising for his harsher statements. Kudos to Karen for engaging with him and for honestly trying to escape her cage of ignorance. And kudos to (some of) the responders to the follow-up story for helping to save the name of the FOSS community.
Making school teachers cry is not our goal.
I want to put a plug in for Linux Mint. It's not political like Ubuntu and a good deal of work has gone into making it very easy for first time users. It also includes things like codecs, fonts and esp. flash so that you don't have to spend hours after installing hunting them down. It just works, even better than Ubuntu. The next release, "Felicia" should be ready early next week.
That said, yeah, linux is just fine for casual use. Even for games through Wine. Just not for my needs. And dual booting is yet another nightmare.
I actually think this epilogue has started me thinking that it's all a bit made up of the worst fears of the open source community.
Is that excessively cynical of me that line: "Karen seems to be a good teacher, and as she stated to me today, she has learned more about the tech world in a few days than she's learned in five years" just seems a bit, somehow, too magnanimous? Pat the nice teacher on the head.
I'm not the type to shout "CLEARLY PHOTOSHOPPED" when a photo goes online but this just seems a bit too perfect of an outcome and a scenario - a spitting and hissing "no software is free" fanatic doing a legally awkward confiscation/theft of a poor student's (while educating his peers) LiveCD. Before coming around so completely to discover that, actually, she likes the idea and her association has thousands of linux installations in their system and use free and open source software.
Having read that, I'm still totally confused about why she believed that "free software doesn't exist"
even after she had "tried Linux during college."
yeah, but she didn't inhale.
be gracious in victory - or it isn't victory.
Alowishus @7, you're wrong.
Fred Ochsenhirt @11, I assure you, it's a temporary condition. Do please read the moderation guidelines, which are linked from the front page.
Anonymous @15:
Anonymous, it's embarrassing to have to say this, but it really is a conspiracy.To be more specific, it's probably the oldest fully-financed professional disinformation campaign out there. It's more than thirty years old. How much older, I don't know. (Some others: Social Security will be empty when you retire; liability cases are wrecking the country. All quite untrue.)
Second, tech people are working in relatively new industries, so there are almost no geezers around to tell the young'uns why unions exist. Their jobs, professional skills, and industry configurations mutate quickly enough to hamper background geezer formation rates. Also, they tend to be know-it-alls who have enough data-gathering sophistication to run into the extant disinformation on these subjects, but not enough sophistication to recognize it for what it is.
Third, the blue-collar Left has always been strong in the printing trades, for obvious historical reasons. That, plus chronic underfunding, plus fears of elitism, has made them a little slow to get their stuff online. The tech guys you're talking about are a lot readier to look stuff up online.
Upshot, your average tech person thinks they know all they need to know about unions, though in fact they don't know jack, and are constantly making atrociously naive statements on the subject.
I did once get to see a genuine geezer transmission. They were both heavy-hitter Amiga types, one of them about as old as you see in the industry, and the other remarkably young for what he was doing. The older one was explaining, with many vividly illustrated examples, how irrationally and counter-productively the bosses can scuttle top-notch staffs, ditto worthwhile projects that are close to completion. I wish I'd had a tape recorder running.
OM @36, what's turned you so sour lately? The woman's already admitted she was wrong, and been at some effort to learn how and where. You have no justification for saying that about her.
Also, procylitize = proselytize.
Xeno: You keep responding to objections by saying "It's easy, do this," but the people you're talking about don't know how to "do this", and they don't have the background to understand what "doing this" does.
That's something people like you underestimate about the all-Windows universe. Why something is done a certain way in Windows is normally so inscrutable to inexperienced users that they simply don't learn it. They learn how to use the system they're working on right now. Their brainpower goes into the rote memorization of steps and exceptions. The more talented ones may learn some troubleshooting tricks -- that is, learn some of the intermediate reasons behind the surface reasons -- but that isn't the same as understanding what's going on.
That hampers their problem-solving abilities. It's a lot easier to find an answer if you expect that answer to make sense. Imagine instead how wide the range of possible answers is for a Windows user who's run into a problem not covered in the documentation. The fix might call for a simple key command, or for downloading a new printer driver, or for trashing the installation all the way way down to bare metal and starting over with a replacement copy of Windows. How long do they expect it'll take them to find out? If they have no faith that the effort won't just waste their next six hours, most won't even try it. Teachers are busy.
Meantime, there you are with Linux, saying "Just do this." There's a whole lot of bad learning you need to undo before that can work.
Nur @42, I've known schoolteachers all my life, and I have no trouble believing that story. Do you imagine she had some kind of personal investment in the "no software is free" position? I'm sure she wanted to do the right thing -- not solely because it's right, but because not doing the right thing can have hideous repercussions for teachers -- and what she was hearing from the kid ran contrary to what she'd been told about software.
Are you aware that Microsoft put the thumbscrews on a bunch of school districts about six years ago? In one case in Los Angeles, the school district could have been assessed a penalty of $150,000 per unlicensed software program -- and they'd been caught with 132 unlicensed copies of MS-DOS. The whole campaign got enough publicity to guarantee that teachers would be mindful of the dangers of unlicensed software. (Which may have been the point.)
There's some kind of problem with that "thumbscrews" link. Until I can fix it, google on "Microsoft to schools: Give us your lunch money".
@Teresa
Your point about saying something is easy is a good point. It is relative to experience. But let me also add that the same was said when people were trying to learn Windows... people say 'just do this, it's easy'. They say that about alot of things. But what would you have them say instead?
Have you ever heard about the psychological study done with the duck that imprinted on the football and thought it was it's mother? Well they did the same thing with computer users and they found that the very first program, operating system, etc they imprint on is what they think is a word processor, mail client, operating system, etc.
So if someone has been using Windows for 5 years and it's all they know, anything that is even SLIGHTLY different will hit them with a sense of xenophobia. The experience may be better, faster, more secure, safer and EVEN FREE... and they will balk. WHY? Because their brains imprinted prior on another program and the one you are showing them is not like that one and a form of software xenophobia kicks in.
I understand that you think that my approach might be harsh but when you understand the psychology of computers and people, the economies behind them and what drives them, that kind of approach is very tame. Saying something is easy and demonstrating how to use it is far less destructive than a variety of other techniques that geeks use in the workspace. After all, we ARE known for our social skills after all. :)
Still... if you have a better approach. I would love to hear. If you have a kinder gentler approach (not that I was being mean) to breaking through consumer imprinting, I'm most definitely all ears and wide open to criticism
To the moderator, I'm not thinking that the teacher had a personal investment in thinking that "no software is free" - I'm thinking that people from the free software movement have a personal investment in pouring scorn on the idea.
I indeed do know and in fact have studied some of the occasions that companies have gone out and tried to enforce their natural right to have people pay for using their products. I've never liked punitive measures against copyright infringers because I think that criminal courts are justified to make sentences to discourage other people from their crimes but that civil courts should stick to paying the infringed party back their actual loss and the costs they worked up enforcing the loss and leave it at that - none of this $150,000 a song plus costs nonsense, for example.
I'm not actually accusing the HeliOS group of making this furore up but they can be the targets of external trolls as much as any other group of people. If someone goes through a "5 complaints other people have about Linux" list they found online and then writes an email to open source groups ticking all the boxes to make up an absolute masterful piece of trollfeeding then you could have a teacher who steals LiveCDs from students while the student is doing a good deed for his peers' education and goes on to accuse patently innocent people who are conducting charity work and have recovered from cancer a few times of committing a crime while telling him that people in the real world only use Windows and other commercial software and that not using it is setting up children to fail in life.
It's the combination of all these factors into just one story that's tipped my credulity filter.
I understand the reasoning that the name cannot be released online and, if it is a real person (or someone pretending to be her) then that saves her potentially severe harrassment from people who read about her online and that's completely no problem but it means we might never know if this is actually true or not. My gut feeling is currently wavering between fake and real because of the incredibly complete finish that's been drawn over this and how neatly it all ended up being a vehicle for a message of "Linux good, Windows tyrannical."
@Teresa:
I'm wrong? You suck! *sticks out tongue*
There, set things straight.
you're still wrong though. Especially about the robots.
Regarding how easy or not easy things are in Linux distros: it depends a lot on what you're used to from the word go. My two kids started using the computer on a machine running Linux, and they never had any problems with it (granted, they don't know how to do everything, but they're 11 and 4, so I don't think it's a problem with Linux, really).
When the older one got to the point where she got IT at school, she was disappointed and irritated at how difficult everything was in Windows.
As more and more people grow up with Linux, the "things are so much easier in Windows" meme is going to shrivel and die, too.
Xeno, a good example is a media streaming (uPNP) server. You can set one up under windows XP without installing any additional software and with four clicks inside Windows Media Player. It works well, with the PS3 or the Xbox 360 or any number of commodity media streaming clients available on the market.
Try setting one up under Linux. Yes, you can apt-get install mediatomb. Then what? Oh, it's got a nice web interface it tells you about. You go to the web interface - the only way to add files to it. Wow, what's that page all about?
It's something I've worked through, I understand it, but I would never, ever expect my dad to understand it. (And he's an advanced computer user, been using computers since the 1950's.) I wouldn't even try talking him through it on the phone. But I could easily talk him through setting up WMP on the phone. It takes 5 minutes. When is the last time you set up an unfamiliar Linux service, I mean completely 100% unfamiliar, in five minutes?
The worst part is, I'm someone that likes it and gets it and sees what a pain Windows is. But it works better for the vast majority of users. It really does. For now.
#46: Teresa, on the topic of Microsoft, educational institutions and thumbscrews:
Back in 2001 I was a volunteer writer for the student newspaper at my university. Being more tech-savvy than most of the other journalists, and having heard that the IT department held open community forum meetings to announce policy changes, I decided to go to one of these. And one of the agenda items was that the university was soon going to buy a Microsoft campus agreement, at significant expense. The reason given for this was that the Business Software Alliance had threatened the university with an audit. Both the BSA and the university knew that, with thousands of computers in labs and offices, such an audit would turn up huge amounts of pirated software. So, the BSA gave the university a way out: They could sign the campus agreement, and the BSA would leave them alone.
Now this, to me, sounds pretty indistinguishable from a protection racket. In those days, I wasn't yet a serious Linux user (although I'd had a few tentative stabs at it), and it was still some years before I became one. Nevertheless, the experience shaped my view of Micro$oft, its products and its marketing strategies.
I would dearly like to see some accountability (e.g. prosecution) for this kind of behaviour, but I guess when the "harm" part of the extortion is a law suit, it's skating the edge of the legal definition.
Xeno, Arkizzle,
OpenSuse, 1-click install. *click*
This is all just so very arrogant.
@DCULBERSON
Media is definitely a sorespot for open source and that's because of proprietary codecs; they close out open development. There is little that can be done about that until those codecs get opened up, people start embracing open codecs.
You can incorporate the codecs into existing Linux products but they don't come with the distros as they are generally not supported or maintained (as they are proprietary).
So if you want to do something about these formats, get the companies to open them up.
I used to use a real Unix at work, and have used a couple of reduced Unices since then, but I have no idea what any of the Linux advocates here are even talking about. For example, 'apt-get install mediatomb' is entirely opaque to me (well, it sounds like you're getting something called mediatomb and installing it, but why 'apt' instead of 'app' if mediatomb is an app?).
I'm in software support. I tell people how to make our company's proprietary software (all of it Windows-based) work. I love explaining the inadequacies of IE and how if they don't clear the browser cache regularly, virtually any possible behavior of a program can result.
But Linux scares me. And I even know what rm -r * does, and that I shouldn't do it.
@#51 Takuan: Yeah, you're right. I was wrong about the robots. But monkeys! You have to admit there's potential.
@#56 MARTHA_MACARTHUR: I prefer "bumptious."
Remember Slackware? and then Red Hat released RPM.
Then there was Sorcerer Linux, which was quickly overshadowed by Gentoo portage -- which is basically a workalike to FreeBSD ports but for Linux. (Gentoo Linux also strives to match FreeBSD in terms of thorough documentation.)
Even OSX (a "real UNIX") has MacPorts.
The best love-hate relationship with Linux is expressed by Jamie Zawinski (jwz).
Ubuntu, as a distribution, is basically admitting that it wants to be a Free Software clone of OSX. (Ubuntu itself being a fork of Debian, and all the hardcore Linux nerds use either Debian or Gentoo.) But the more casual Linux users (such as myself) want a balance between Freedom and ease/productivity, and have mostly migrated to OSX for day-to-day work (as jwz has, as well), but supposedly someday Ubuntu will catch up and convince us to switch back (or so the theory goes).
Anyway, the package management system for Debian (and Ubuntu) is apt-get:
Advanced Packaging Tool (APT).
(Red Hat gets excluded because it's basically a Linux striving to be like Microsoft Windows, and who the hell wants that? The only feature that Windows really has going for it is its path-dependency of compatibility with the existing ecology of software written for Windows. A clone of Windows that's not compatible natively with Windows software is just crap.)
The problem with Ubuntu last I used it is that it has its own framework for handling multimedia, like QuickTime for Apple or Media Player for Microsoft, and since Debian/Ubuntu people are "purists" there's all kinds of tricks you have to perform to get all the proprietary / quasi-legal codecs installed.
However, here are the equivalent apps as I'm aware of them to date:
* Final Cut Pro -> Cinerella
* Illustrator -> Inkscape
* Photoshop -> GIMP
* Aperture / Lightroom -> BlueMarine
* iTunes -> Rhythmbox
Nothing on Linux/X11 really matches OSX/Aqua's use of Quartz / native-PDF rendering though, such as for universal Preview and "save-as PDF". (Vaguely inherited from NeXT's use of Display PostScript, in the same way that Cocoa was inherited from NextStep.) That's something I totally take for granted on OSX. Too bad something like NeWS didn't emerge from the Linux community.
Better luck next time around when operating systems ditch WIMP and make the leap to Zooming User Interfaces, such as Apple's evolution with Core Animation (first on the iPhone) or as Microsoft Live Labs is experimenting with Blaise Aguera y Arcas's Seadragon / Photosynth. Perhaps Linux developers can take some cues from EMACS, Jef Raskin's Archy, or even Plan 9's Acme -- as with wmii.
"OM @36, what's turned you so sour lately? The woman's already admitted she was wrong, and been at some effort to learn how and where. You have no justification for saying that about her."
...Yes, I do. I have AbZero Tolerance for teachers and educators who are totally off-base and 110% wrong about matters such as these who aren't required to admit their ignorance and at least apologize to their class as an attempt to make amends for the damage their actions may - and probably - caused. I stand by what I've said on this, Teresa, and if that's being "sour", then "sour" it is.
Of course, the fact that I've seen this sort of crap from teachers happen far too often in the past four decades I've encountered them, and that this happened practically in my own back yard might have something to do with my vehemence over the matter...
"Also, procylitize = proselytize."
...Yep. Realized that after I hit [post]. Sadly, BB doesn't allow you to go back and edit your own posts. Although I will add it's mox nix towards my view on the situation. That teacher's students deserve an apology, and it needs to be made public for all to see whether she's adult enough to admit her mistakes.
maybe she did apologize, and why does it have to be public? Proportionate response Om, and always to an end.
"...why does it have to be public?"
Beat me to it.
School board meetings are held to public scrutiny, for example.
and people wonder why there aren't enough good, human, humane teachers? There are greater criminals walking free without even being challenged.
I think apologising to the kid involved, Aaron, and admitting and explaining her mistake to the rest of the class is the thing to do here.
you want her as an enemy or ally?
"Isn't she a public school teacher? She's a public servant, and her fuck-up was work-related.
School board meetings are held to public scrutiny, for example."
...Zuzu beat me to it. She made a major mistake here, and the public - read: those who pay her wages through taxes like myself - need to hear from her that she recognizes her mistake(s) and atones for them.
"you want her as an enemy or ally?"
...I want her held responsible for her actions as any teacher who screws up should be, and not have this brushed under the carpet. Simple as that.
"It's the one from New Zealand that bothered me the most.
The caller identified himself and then further identified himself as an editor for a well known magazine published in the UK. He was extremely to-the-point with his call.
He would donate $1000.00 immediately to The HeliOS Project if I would give him the name of the Teacher I blogged about.
I hung up the phone.
"This is madness." I thought to myself. What is the big friggin' deal here? This is a non-story.
And my phone buzzed again but it wasn't with the incoming call ring...it was a text message being received. I cued the caller ID and it returned as "unavailable".
I pushed "read message" and waited for the text to appear on my screen.
"Can I call you?"
I pulled the truck over into a parking lot and answered:
"I guess. Who r u?"
The inactivity was so long that I started the truck and began to put it into gear and re-enter traffic when the buzz came again. I pushed the read button.
"Karen".
It was my turn to hesitate. Finally, I toggled Reply and typed in one character.
"k"
She didn't call right away. It took her about 15 minutes to finally call me. When she did she didn't say anything for the first 15 seconds. When she finally did speak, it was obvious she was crying.
"Why did you throw me to the wolves like that?"
I didn't even have to think of the reply.
"I didn't throw you to the wolves Karen, I threw ignorance to the wolves. Let me ask you something. If I had not emailed you a link to my blog, would you have even known about this?"
Again she hesitated. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that if you didn't know I had written that blog, would you have known about all these comments? Has anyone called you or bothered you about this? Have your co-workers mentioned it?"
"Well...no."
"Then the wolves didn't touch you Karen. If I had included your last name or email address, then yes, you could ask me that question but as it stands, you are just a nameless school teacher that evoked a public response from me."
She didn't say anything for several seconds. When she did, it was a quiet and simple:
"Thank you".
Yeah...thank you. Like I deserve that. Let me share a couple things with you here. First off, I want to sincerely apologize for some things I did say, things that were way off base and even if they were situationally true, they didn't add anything of value to the conversation.
I want to apologize to all the hard-working and honest NEA members. My statements were based on an isolated but nasty experience two years ago, and, while I developed a nasty dislike for the people in that situation, it was both unfair and short-sighted to say the things I did. The teachers that we entrust our kids with on a daily basis do us a service that is under-appreciated, under-paid and over-criticized. My mini tirade didn't add anything of value to the situation and only served to inflame an already volatile area of debate. You have my sincere apology for slapping you all with such a wide brush.
Karen isn't alone in her ignorance. I have sat in a PhD's office...a PhD that happened to be a principal of a school. She told me that according to her "tech staff", it was illegal to remove Microsoft Windows from their school computers. So who is ignorant here? The "tech staffer" afraid of losing his MCSE position or the Dr. of Education that didn't bother to check into such a statement. Ignorance isn't the sole possession of this particular school teacher.
Karen and I have talked on the phone now for a couple of hours, here and there. We've come to understand each other more and had she said some of the things in her email that she said during our phone conversations...this black ink on white digital paper probably wouldn't exist.
And neither would over 2000 comments that were less than kind on one end of it and absolutely brutal on the other.
The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube.
She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness Free Software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping.
In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too.
Karen seems to be a good teacher, and as she stated to me today, she has learned more about the tech world in a few days than she's learned in five years.
That's because she's trapped in a world of Windows. Most people are."
We're all fallible. We all make mistakes. But admitting them and learning from them is pretty much the foundation of learning. (As part of the Socratic method.) And no one can afford to allow their ego to interfere with that. The only shame would be deserved by trying to cover up your ignorance to protect a pretense of authority. Conversely, would publicly admitting that she learned something new and stands corrected by one of her students be humiliating for a teacher? If so, she should be fired.
I'm reminded of that anecdote Richard Dawkins is fond of telling... I think it's form The God Delusion (although he also uses it in one of his television specials)... about a professor who after being convinced that a theory he believed to be accurate for 15 years was actually wrong, the professor thanked the lecturer for revealing the error to him.
Someone who jumps to conclusions and who can't tell the difference between accusations of being a bad teacher and accusations of being a bad person, is hardly exemplifying the characteristics of someone tasked with illuminating the minds of children.
Great thread.
when you cut the throat of the vanquished, you prevent weeds springing up behind you. When you exercise mercy, you plant seeds. Which is the better long term plan?
All bullies are revealed to be cowards. Read again her original letter:
Instead of posing questions and investigating for herself, her first reaction was one of blind dogmatism and authoritarian intimidation.These are the actions of a tyrant, not of a skeptic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angulimala
the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software to make sure the software is free for all its users.but in practice, the GPL is actually one of the less "free" software licenses out there because it requires anyone who modifies a GPL'd program to make the program's code freely available, if the program is "distributed" to others.
-sohail roshni
That argument neglects that the entire purpose of the GPL is a recursive hack to undo the use of copyright to restrict the use of code and obfuscate through compilation towards that end.
Early in the days of computing, there was a debate about whether code would be sold as a commodity (via licensing through copyright) or whether code was shared via distribution by definition and the economic value lay with programmers who could learn from and modify existing code to make new code supporting new features and new hardware.
Bill Gates made a fortune convincing IBM and other existing supply chains on the former. While Richard Stallman made a compelling argument in a research university context for the latter (such as when a user needed to add a feature to a printer driver).
(Both BillG and RMS are awfully fanatical about their respective points of view, though.)
However, the point is that the question is not about how free you are to license your code, but how free you are to use and modify the software you're running on your computer.
Will the programs you use only accept a narrowly limited set of modifications (e.g. traditional inputting of user data, such as typing a URL into Safari), or will they provide the flexibility necessary to add new functionality as end-users are inspired to do so (e.g. ad blocking functionality for Safari)?
A translation note: When someone says in Geekspeak, "All you have to do is..." what they are saying in cleartext is, "For god's sake, don't let me near a large-scale production environment!"
As for the apology from the user group guy, first off let me say it stinks of Mary Sue.
Look at the narrative excerpted above. First, we get the writer turning down a thousand bucks (from yet another unknown person! Why not name the magazine and the reporter?) to reveal the teachers identity. Coincidentally enough, the very next phone call is the one that comes from Karen. Oh, and look! She's crying. Ain't that just like a woman? But our brave, manly geek consoles her!
What a bowl of cold puke for breakfast. We'll examine the tasty sprinkles on top in a moment.
But first, note the whole story so far is based on one guy's report. The teacher herself has yet to be heard from directly. It's not safe to take what he's saying as more than provisionally true.
Now, let's look at the sprinkles. Good for the guy apologizing to teachers individually. However, he did not apologize for his statement, which to the best of my knowledge is not true, that the teachers' union--that is, each of those teachers to whom he apologized taken collectively--takes money from Microsoft. Until proven otherwise, I'm going to be generous and call that Making Shit Up.
(And why is it never Oracle or Peoplesoft or some other large commercial vendor? I'd much rather do business with Microsoft than Oracle, especially in an academic environment. But I digress.)
And this--it's a small detail--but check this out:
Ignore the crappy writing, and if you can, overlook that we're getting yet another story about one of them silly women being hookwinked, this time by a clever yet evil male tech staffer.
Maybe you should dwell for a moment on the assumption that there was clear communication between the principal and the tech staff, as that's a pretty big assumption to make, one commonly made by people who, for whatever reason, don't spend much time working in organizations at a larger than personal scale and thus don't know what they're talking about.
One other possibility comes to mind: That school's computers could have been bought under a restrictive grant that specified Windows on the machines. (That might still leave the possibility of dual-booting machines, but that's got problems from the usability standpoint for end-user machines.) That could easily get confused from "not allowable under the grant" to "not legal".
But this bozo doesn't know the difference between a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. That's not such a big deal, either, unless you are interested in, you know, working with the schools.
And speaking of working with the schools, I think we're all happy to hear that
The full version of the blog post goes on to give quite a bit of detail about how the AISD (Austin Independent School District) uses open source, and he's very gracious and insightful about the district's vendor-agnostic approach. But why, if this guy is wanting to do open source advocacy in the schools, did he not already know that easy to discover and important fact?
One last thing: It's nice of the guy to say
Nice, but stupid. How can you judge whether someone is a good teacher based on one phone call? Why, the same way you can judge them a bad teacher based on one second-hand report!
Sprinkly poop on a bowl of puke--yum, yum!
I wonder if the depth of feeling here (and attendant clumsiness with the tenderer emotions) would apply if this had been an instance of a teacher incorrectly teaching a foreign language out of simple ignorance?
Teachers by definition must not be ignorant.
Otherwise, that's like hiring a lifeguard that can't swim.
how about a lifeguard that swims but doesn't know the backstroke? At that level, what degree of knowledge is needed? Ideally, top of the field-cutting-edge. Is that any good if someone is no good with children? Or can't control a classroom?
The ruder comments come from people who are either a) still suffering from remembered injustices at school, b) were smarter than their teachers and held them in contempt, or c) just reciting their union-busting mantras.
It's the toughest job I ever had, and I've had many.
what is a "good" teacher, by definition?
A: someone willing to continually learn.
Because it's a real problem culminating in "you can't fight city hall"!(or, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.")
Students smarter than their teachers need to flip roles. Injustices should not be swept under the rug. And solidarity must never stand in the way of intellectual honesty.
The whole contrived system leaves one feeling like the man in the white suit.
If you're not going to make real creative progress, then make room for those that can!
Your petty emotions and "hard work" are irrelevant. Either the students are getting smarter, or you're a failure at your job as a teacher (and need to be replaced).
If schools exist to provide technical training- and nothing else- you have a point. Is that all they are for?
I would like the teacher to apologize to the student in front of the class too. But I think it would be almost completely worthless for her to do so by anything other than her own choice.
zuzu 60: Initially, this reply started with "If you think this post explains anything to me...well, you underestimate the depth of my confusion." Below you'll see that I finally understood, but didn't the first several times I read it.
I see that a thing called 'package management' has a relationship to installing software, but the only place the string 'apt-get' appears on the referenced page is as part of 'slapt-get'.
I don't remember Slackware. I believe you when you say Red Hat released RPM, but couldn't tell you what it stood for (perhaps because I'm an Olde Pharte and to me 'rpm' stands for 'revolutions per minute', a relevant characteristic of a now-obsolete technology we used back in olden times).
Starting with the next paragraph you're off on another general discussion of Linux, which leaves me confused, not only about Linux, but about whether you're still talking to me. I kept getting bogged down in this, and it was somewhere between the fourth and eighth try at reading this post that I noticed you actually mention the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT).
See, you knew what I wanted to know, but had I not been writing this reply I'd never have figured out that you answered my question. Thank you for that, but may I suggest a different approach to answering questions of this nature from Windows-poisoned slowcoaches like me?
That would have answered my question too, and also has the advantage of making it clear from the outset that you were attempting to do so.I appreciate your taking the time to answer my question, but I think this points out the problem Linux has in making converts: Linux people tend to talk about everything they think is relevant (which all of that was, I'm certain), rather than giving the ignorant WPS (Windows-Poisoned Slowcoach) all and only the information they can accept without becoming confused.
Takuan 86: Hear, hear. Teachers WILL, by definition, be ignorant on some topics. To require otherwise makes the position fairly impossible to fill! Being able to learn and acknowledge mistakes...well, that's a more valuable teaching moment than anything that comes about by actually using Linux, I'd say.
Apparently I failed to adequately interpret your contextual knowledge given a disclosure of@90 Xopher
Yeah, you have to keep reading. No glossing over. That includes the fact that I hyperlink for a reason. Click on those and read them too (like an actual glossary). :) Maybe there's a difference in personality that when I'm confused, I dig in deeper into researching online what all of those other tangents also mean, and try to congeal a larger construct from all of it. It's not enough to only understand a small part, but to instead understand the entire system in which that part is contextualized. Otherwise, you end up thinking like this."The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube.
She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness Free Software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping.
In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too.
Karen seems to be a good teacher, and as she stated to me today, she has learned more about the tech world in a few days than she's learned in five years."
@92 Takuan
Yeah, that was the "fairly impressive conclusion jumping".
She didn't ask questions, just just assumed the worst and passed judgment thick and fast.
-- John Taylor Gatto, "Six Lesson School Teacher"zuzu, it wasn't so much glossing as glazing. I couldn't wade through it, and my eyes kept passing over things without comprehension. And I did look at the first hyperlink, as you can tell...it was some time before I noticed the second one was there at all, and when I did I clicked it and found the answer to my question.
What I'm saying is that the blockquoted statement in my last post would have been a more effective way of answering my question. Then I could ask more questions and get more information, or use the links you provided for further research. But like many people I find Linux very confusing, and tend to panic when Linux people get to talking about this stuff.
Gatto continued:
"Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children's development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking that schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that it is not likely to happen. First and foremost, the business I am in is a jobs project and a contract-letting agency. We cannot afford to save money, not even to help children.
At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue. "
However, I'm totally down with using mutual feedback to tailor the learning experience to your particular needs. (Comment posts are perhaps not the best way to go about that.)
I'm by no means a Linux expert either. There's much of it I find confusing, or at least undocumented;, and much I simply haven't spent the swaths of time to sift through. Much of UNIX is an oral tradition that documentation by FreeBSD and Gentoo has only relatively recently helped to get written down and published. (Seriously, how does anybody ever learn the ubiquitous EMACS and vi keybindings adopted by everything else for navigation?)
Linux greatly lacks feedback and reflection to have the computer tell you what's wrong. Few developers are focused on minimizing the role of administration on Linux systems (i.e. autonomic computing), just as few developers were interested in unifying "everything is a file" with modern networking (as Plan 9 from Bell Labs attempted to do).
Projects such as the friendly interactive shell (fish) are some excellent first steps in this regard, however. Likewise Live CD kernels such as Knoppix and Genkernel have gone a long way towards automating hardware detection and ending the tedium of "just making Linux work" with a computer. (Though getting ALSA and 802.11 (WiFi) drivers to work still feels like nails on a chalkboard to me.)
To paraphrase an old saying for accuracy: "Those who can, do; but doing isn't teaching." Old Kung Fu monks living on a mountain can tell their students they're learning wrong, but a good teacher adapts to their student.
I'd be fascinated to hear an account of how one night apply the adage, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach" to a subject like third-grade arithmetic. Exactly what is it that they would be doing, if they could?
Zuzu @ 87:
In fact, they don't and they shouldn't.
Absolutely! The kindergartner with the IQ of 143 must tell the teacher with the IQ of 142 what to do.
Yeah, I had a 13-year-old student whose I.Q. was ten points higher than mine and she didn't know shit. I guessed she would some day, but that didn't stop me from ridiculing her and making her cry. Snotty little brat.
A kindergarten teacher with an I.Q. of 142 is an underachiever. Or a wannabe mommy.
Buddy66 @ 102: Absolutely! Why on earth would anyone intelligent want to teach kindergarten? You can just look in a kindergarten teacher's face and see the stupid.
Okay, some people are more gifted at seeing the stupid than others.
This is not just about a person who's missed the linux train, this is also about a teacher so closed off that she was completely unwilling to accept that her students might be telling the truth.
Double checking is one thing, but threatening to call the police? That's just small mindedness.
whoosh! whoosh! zoom! Whoosh!
This got my attention;
They also are members of the world community grid; their 36,000 computers are providing many hours of spare processing time (during the work day) to organizations trying to solve major world problems such as energy, cancer, and AIDS.
I'm using BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ for
Rosetta@home http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/ and I would like to know what(if any)all of you using and what projects.
I'm actually part of a company that does commercial grid computing (Plura Processing). We have customers that pay to use the grid, but we also have some research-oriented projects on it as well. We're actually trying to get 5-10% of our grid to be used toward non-profit endeavors.. I'm going to have to see if the world community grid would be interested in 2-5000 nodes :)