I posted "The Conscience of a Hacker" by The Mentor, that was written on January 8, 1986 on my facebook "notes" section, and a good friend of mine commented:
"As an educator in a world in which there's less and less room for
individuality allowed us in our classes, I found myself nodding a lot.
One
of the new trends in education (including the St. Paul Schools with its
new Superintendent)? Handed-down curriculum in which every English
teacher of a certain grade level teaches the same thing on any given
day. Oh, it's the second Tuesday in October? Then today, all teachers
should be teaching "irony." Tomorrow, it's something else.
As if
all students *were* alike. As if my classroom, with its humans, were
the same as another teacher's classroom. As if I and other teachers
were alike.
I haven't taught the same course twice the same,
yet, because each year the kids in my room are different. I, as a
teacher, must follow *them* or I'm not doing my job. And now?
Administrators and "educational experts" are forcing teachers to become
robots and ignore the fact that those human beings in the desks aren't
*product*, they're individual human beings.
I've said the day an
administrator hands me a canned curriculum and expects me to read a
script is the day that I leave a job I adore--ADORE. I hope it never
happens.
But it's happened to St. Paul. To a suburb of Dallas.
To many in California. Go to your School Board meetings--even if you
don't have kids, even if you don't send your kids to public school--and
pay attention.
(Just my little response from one perspective.)"
Which made me step up onto my soapbox...
Unfortunately the public school system has been infiltrated by buffoons
in the upper echelons... passing down complete trash to teach to
students.
Deep down I bet these folks are the most well
intentioned peeps known to man, but somehow they bowed to political
pressure and the BULLSHIT Politically Correct Movement which is making
the United States an nation of complete pussies unwilling to stand up
for their beliefs because it may offend someone.
Offend me!
Stimulate my brain and lets engage in some rage... talk it out rather
than duke it out. Ever wonder why there is so much road-rage? Ever
wonder why kids kill kids in these day-time jails we call schools?
Ever just wonder WHY?!?
Censorship is another crock-n-bull story also. There are loads of things we should be teaching our kids... interesting things. Nicolai Tesla. Buffalo Soldiers. Skeletal remains that PRE-DATE our so-called indegenious peeps the Indians... and the cover-up around that involving the Army Corps of Engineers.
Students get in trouble all the time for expressing their views... even in college. What makes the prof/instructor/teacher so fucking arrogant that s/he cannot engage in dialogue with a student with an opposing view?
My dad sent me this blathering from their new IT company's president
that they are using for their office, which has client records being
scanned into a document management system and that machine is
accessible via the internet... my response follows:
What was Microsoft thinking?
Creating
the next Operating System (OS) for the World has to be a daunting
undertaking. What are the chances of success? Apparently, not that
good. Microsoft, with all of its resources, market data, experience,
and time has produced what many believe to be one of the industry’s
largest flops. With few productivity enhancements for the typical end
user, Vista comes at the heavy price of hardware upgrades, heavy
battery consumption, slow start-up and application incompatibility. In
fact, 60% of companies surveyed have no plans to migrate to the new
operating system and only 13% have plans to fully deploy it.
The
most popular alternative is skipping it all together and waiting for
the next OS from Microsoft. This has become a viable solution since
Microsoft recently leaked the progress of their next OS, currently
referred to as Windows 7. Microsoft is targeting late 2009 for the
release.
ORBIT has made available to all of its clients the
option to move to Vista. Acceptance has been similar to what has been
seen everywhere else, with fewer than 5% of our users requesting
installation. We anticipate that there may be an increasing trickle of
interest over the next year, but that many of you will also decide to
forgo Vista and its accompanying costs, waiting for Windows 7.
So,
with all the rumblings from Apple (and their Mac OS) and the Linux
world (an open source OS) you would think that the demise of Microsoft
is imminent. The commercials are cute and with fortunes being generated
from the iPod, iPhone and iTunes, they can afford to run them non-stop.
But, don’t be fooled. When it comes to the desktop (laptops included)
Microsoft still has more than a 96% share of the world’s market
(Microsoft Windows XP – 89.8%, Microsoft Vista - 6.3%, Mac OS – 4.2%
and Linux - .6%).
My response to my dad:
Because an OS has X% of the market share, doesn't mean that company's
IT adviser's shouldn't be explaining the benefits of integrating Apple
machines for desktop and/or server use... or moving to Linux
altogether for their server applications. When more firms move toward
change then the market will change.
Firms win when software licensing costs are reduced or eliminated and
machines on the desktop and server applications require less action
from their IT departments... read less downtime and more productivity.
Simply skipping an OS, like sticking with XP and not going to Vista
because of its problems, the machines themselves become even more
obsolete. Little to folks realize that the same machines that cannot
run Vista now for whatever reason will surely not be able to run the
next version of the bloatware OS and there will be more rumblings that
IT budgets are skyrocketing.
Skipping an OS upgrade is like a police officer in a high crime and
violent area volunteering to hit the streets without any body armour.
It would be looked upon as risky and a host of other things. There is
nothing different here when companies in a Microsoft environment opt
to skip service upgrades leaving themselves vulnerable to the latest
exploit that any kid with a desire to learn more (and no full
understanding of the massive implications) puts it to use and takes
down an entire multinational company's network (or bank, government,
school, etc) because the network was running an unpatched DNS server
or something.
Its a lose lose situation sticking it out for the next cool thing from
Microsoft. They have already proven that they have nothing up their
sleeve and encourage folks to "hold on" and "we're working on that".
Cumon! People really need to wake up and smell the coffee vs. the
manure that Steve Ballmer and his marketing (and PR) armies are
polluting us with.
Companies with any sort of proprietary information (clients personal
data, credit information, SSNs, etc al) should not be connecting these
machines containing this information to any network connected to the
rest of the world. If somebody wants the information bad enough they
will find it... or some kid playing with the new exploit just learned
about at a convention (or wherever on the interweb) will sacrifice the
information..
Also all of these dufas' (we hear about almost every other month or
more) who are misplacing valuable laptops, getting them stolen, etc
have compromised the information contained simply by removing it from
the workplace and firing it up at the cool coffee shoppe with free
WiFi.
Melissa and I have been very happy with Apple, its software &
hardware. We have also been using Ubuntu Linux on a (borrowed) PC in
the kitchen and have found that we are not worried at all that we
cannot use a Micro$oft product.
Updates are mostly automatic and we do not worry about some
crack(head) team working for ONE company to release what they consider
an acceptable fix for "X" problem... its a community project (that is
governed) always allowing the OS to evolve... Mac OSX at its core is
running BSD. BSD and Linux are close cousins. Mac OSX is running a
pretty GUI (graphical user interface) that Apple developed.
I could go on... but until IT "professionals" get whacked with a clue
bat a few times and learn more about security procedures there will
always be the same old, same old grindings about these same topics and
more that I went on about above.