Ric Moore wrote:
On Sat, 2006-12-30 at 09:22 -0800, Norm wrote:
Tim wrote:
On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 13:20 -0500, Ric Moore wrote:
a similar setup in Beckley WV, using 16 XT's and 386's as dumb
terminals. Someone donated two Dickens Terminal Servers and I just
ran DOS on those machines and Qterm for text logins at 9600 baud.
People could use Pine and email to the internet just fine or play MUD.
Not too many years ago I scored a collection of XTs, 286s, and a 386
from the local high school that was just going to dump them. I sorted
out what worked, and a local disability group took them for their blind
members to log onto their BBS to chat, do mail, and play games. Even
what most would consider to be obselete, often has a use to someone.
The lady who took them off my hands was confined to a wheelchair, barely
able to speak or do anything physical, but you'd never guess that when
you chatted to her on-line. Computers to her, were a liberating
experience. Just for a change, she got treated the same as everyone
else.
Tim
Your project is the type of project more of us in the IT world should
do. Too often people in IT are considered nerds and not part of the
real world, if a a group we use our IT skills to help the disadvantaged
and at the same time spread the use of Linux we can all feel we have
done something to help society.
Well here's one of huge magnitude that needs Linux users to reclaim Open
Source ground that Windows and Mac users have grabbed a hold of.
http://www.croquetcollaborative.org
Yeah, I'm gonna pang on this one until we get some interest started.
People like Alan Kay are directing this project and if we snooze we
lose. The project is completely Open Source, but from the people I am in
contact with, there is for all intensive purposes very little
participation shown by the Linux Community. We leave it to the Win / Mac
crowd, someone will paste a "For Sale" sign on parts of it or patent
Virtual Reality and then the crying towel gets tossed into the ring.
And, it'll be our own damn fault.
This is bigger than spreadsheets and databases ever thought of being.
IMHO, it's the next Big Thing that can issue in the New Era. The dnload
is supposed to work with Linux, Windows and OS-X. Guess which part is
the buggiest? First introduced under Linux, it can't find openGL
libraries out of the box.
I'd REALLY like to see the Fedora Foundation and RH take this one under
their wing as Alan Kay is also part of the $100 one-laptop-per-child
project, as is RH and MIT. I'm using it for my OAR project to reduce the
recidivism rate among the 2.7 million incarcerated in the US. As much as
I cut up, I'm stone cold serious on this one. I want to put RH or Fedora
on the servers with everything running as it should, and I'm no coder by
any stretch of the imagination. I want to get Linux into public
institutions, in this effort, before Bill Gates sees 2.7 million
licenses. Ca! Ching!
Please dnload it and check it out. See if you can figure out why it
doesn't grok localhost, running a server and a client app on the same
machine. I can't. It's beating my ass here. They don't connect and I
think they should be able to, without having to have another machine on
a local network. I hope some of you gifted ones can eyeball this thing
and participate in the project.
Thanx for any considerations, Ric
Ric
Years ago Mac almost became the OS of choice after they started giving
few equipment to schools. Most people will prefer to stay with the OS
the first learn on. The Linux community is no where near as cohesive as
a single company like Apple or Microsoft can be. This does not mean we
can not take a page out of the marketing manual of the others, As a
community we need to find projects that will bring new users into the
community. How, each of us have specific ares of interest related to IT
and and the world at large(in my other world I swing into an
environmentalist mode), If as a New Years resolution we can each
resolve to bring one more person into the Linux community, by finding
ways to support projects like th One-Laptop-Per-Child we can make a
difference. Support can take many forms from expanding the number of
application they will need, of course money, providing recycled
computers to those that miss out on the one laptop program, but probably
the biggest area is in finding ways to supply individual support to
encourage the child to stay with the program. Is there an online help
or mail list focused towards the program that will be available? The
challenge of setting up a useful multi-language help desk is big. As
community do we have the resources to do this? If we can keep the new
users on Linux for their first year the odds are they will stay for a
lifetime.
