When will educators understand opensource

Helios ^ | 1-17-2009 | helios

[N3WBI3]

That image is usually used to make fun of the folks who say open source is communism..

[N3WBI3]

YOu should already be on it

[N3WBI3]

“There are arguments on both sides of this issue. Especially support issues. If you have to support client computers, it is best to limit the # of OS’s you have to support. Otherwise you have to have staff trained in all the variations. This costs $$$.”

This is true and that’s why large organizations usually stick to one standard but when a teacher tells a kid that opensource is illegal we are not talking money, we are talking stupidity.

“Opensource is great stuff. But the lack of uniformity is troublesome and the lack of support is a major issue also. As times get tight, you will see more and more of it though.”

Lack of uniformity? when windows 7 comes out people will be using everything from 2k-xp-vist-windows7. There is more choice on the linux side but if you want uniformity its there you just stick to a distro.

As to support I have worked with vendors and support of all stripes and RedHat comes away head and shoulders above the rest..

[informavoracious]

It’s a racket, just like college textbooks.

[ChinaThreat]

Well,

Redhat is opensource, but the support is not. I use CENTOS, which is basically Rehdat ES for free. I’m not arguing with you about the a$$hat’s statement about the legality of using an OS. I’m not arguing with you at all actually.

Lets look at an average LAMP stack Linux server. It is using Linux distro, Apache Web Server, MySQL, and PHP. Its a fabulous combo for free. But, when you multily the number of linux distros x the versions of apache x the # of MySQL versions x the # of PHP versions, you are looking at a support nightmare in a large setting like a university with 1000s of users and a tight budget. I even make a concerted effort to limit the variations of OS/Software combos in the server room for the same reason.

We limit our client support to Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10x. We will help you if you are on a linux variant, but it is not a supported OS on our campus.

I’m a big linux fan myself. But when it comes to support and uniformity, there is something to be said for a standardized supported OS.

I’m not arguing with you, just stating obvious realities.

[Tribune7]

The reason public schools use Windows is because it’s not their money.

[Tribune7]

I like the circa 1999 iMac the kid is using.

[texas booster]

No, he is talking about retail education purchases. This software really is from $100 to $200, depending on what is included.

The MS Office that you purchased at college is produced under a special license from MS, and even that is suspect and open to interpretation.

Most colleges around DFW will charge a “copy fee” of $6 per CD, and MS lets them give the software away.

However, even within MS there are differing interpretations of the legality of this transaction, as of summer 2008.

[Jakarta ex-pat]

"When will educators understand open source?"

When will "educators" return to being teachers?

[neb52]

“Lets look at an average LAMP stack Linux server. It is using Linux distro, Apache Web Server, MySQL, and PHP. Its a fabulous combo for free. But, when you multily the number of linux distros x the versions of apache x the # of MySQL versions x the # of PHP versions, you are looking at a support nightmare in a large setting like a university with 1000s of users and a tight budget. I even make a concerted effort to limit the variations of OS/Software combos in the server room for the same reason.”

I don’t know about RedHat or Novell, but I think Canonical will support Ubuntu LAMP Server fully not just their distro under their service contract. But you do have a really good point. Getting support for Terminal Server, IIS and SQL Server is pretty easy; and probably doesn’t even require a back end contract with MS considering the number of people out there that can support those applications.

[N3WBI3]

“Getting support for Terminal Server, IIS and SQL Server is pretty easy; and probably doesn’t even require a back end contract with MS considering the number of people out there that can support those applications.”

This is where the logic fails me...

if you use centos you can buy support from the centos folks, if you use canoical you can buy support from them. If you use novell you can get support from them. Its *not* hard to find support for a LAMP stack unless you decide to go with something like Fedora or Slax or some other seldomly used distro.

[Texas Fossil]

Thanks for your suggestions.

We own CS2, but my background is not in print. I have not spent a great deal of time with it. Did try to import XML into it, but the learn curve seems steep.

I spent 30+ years in outside sales, sales management, and retail store design.

I learned enough Quark to get the job done.

Have been able to streamline the workflow, but it is still very labor intensive.

We are looking at going to CD version only. No print except for promotions.

My problem with InDesign is it is like all Adobe products, very very bloated. We went from Apple to PC’s about 6 years ago. I have used Linux personally for over 10 years and would like to find a total open source approach.

The catalog I compose is now over 3000 pages of pictures with the indexes added to that. It is huge. 37,000 sku’s.

I also do the images for our website, plus the images for the website of our sister company in California.

Pretty big task.

Have tried to find an XML solution, but have not found a solution using that yet.

I truly admire simple, efficient solutions.

[neb52]

“I don’t know about RedHat or Novell, but I think Canonical will support Ubuntu LAMP Server fully not just their distro under their service contract.”

That is what I said in my post you quoted. The difference is you can pick up a Windows Server Admin cheap and they are everywhere. Linux/Unix Admins are harder to find and usually ask for higher pay or charge a higher fee.

[Texas Fossil]

What educators will eventually learn to understand is that technology has the potential to multiply the good teacher productivity.

It will not make excuses for the poor teachers survival.

Distributive learning with local coaches is a win win for the student, taxpayers, local community, and the good teachers.

Not the teachers union.

[Golden Eagle]

Open Office documents send and receive .doc and exel spread sheets just fine. As in the story noted above, the uh...young lady lamented that she couldn't use anything but Microsoft Office because the formats on her Ubuntu computer were incompatible...? Absolute nonsense.

If it's nonsense then why is the author balling his eyes out? Must be because it ISN'T actually compatible, if it were, he could just use it, and the teacher couldn't tell the difference with the finished product.

[Texas Fossil]

sorry, I did not see the lower image text.

I want you to understand I am not Microsoft, but I am against monopolies of any kind. In this case not technically based, but marketing based.

After 10 years of using Linux I am still in awe with what programmers have produced under the GPL license.

I have Never had an Open Source application cause a problem with Spyware or similar issues.

That is refreshing.

[antiRepublicrat]

My school district is about to get millions in bailout money, and they’re saying they’re going to use it on technology. Whatever their solution, be it open source, PC or Mac, I hope they have a long-term plan or the money is going to be wasted. What you use means nothing if there is no viable plan, and schools getting millions in phone tax money have shown that to be true time and time again.

I think I’m going to a school board meeting.

[SoftballMominVA]

Good point - both of my daughters get a free copy of MS Office from their schools. $150? Nope, not here.

[antiRepublicrat]

My problem with InDesign is it is like all Adobe products, very very bloated.

InDesign itself is not bad. It has a small core application and everything else is a plug-in, including the text renderer. You can remove many of the plug-ins that you don't want. It can seem slow because by default it tries to render the page on the screen extremely accurately, and that takes a lot of processing power. You can cut down the quality of the representation while you are working.

XML in InDesign works basically like mail merge in Word, but on steroids. You define places for text and graphics to go, and the styles of those text and graphics. Here's an example doc from Adobe:

And here's the relevant part of the XML that would fill it:

<employeeName>davidfmiller</employeeName>
<employeeEmail>davidfmiller@gmail.com</employeeEmail>
<employeeAddress>1234 main street calgary, ab, ca a1b 2c3</employeeAddress>
<employeePhone>(403) 555-5555</employeePhone>

You import the XML and you're done.

You'd probably just tell your database to export all of your data with an XML structure that matches the styles and placement in your document, then import. Many databases have an XML output function. If not, a regular SQL query for your data, modified to add the XML tags, will do it. If you wanted an image, you could have defined an image frame and equated that with an XML tag.

If you have any problems, there's a book called "A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML" (under $40 at Amazon). One of the examples walks you through creating an automated product catalog. It will also show how to translate that XML to HTML for the Web using style sheets.

Of course if you're really masochistic, you could just use LaTeX and TeX.

[Texas Fossil]

I have not looked at InDesign in over 2 years. Several years before I used hijack this to look at my browser hi-jackings and was appalled at what CS2 did to that.

I quit using Photoshop for Gimp2, a long time ago. I like being able to use one application to open any type of file. Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. In Gimp I can open a .pdf, .jpg, .ai, .eps, .ps file in one application. I found it less resource intensive because of the Adobe Bridge.

Not sure where we are going from here. We were of many many years strictly an Adobe house. That was back when we created catalog manually on Mac’s, not from database.

Most of the XML structures I have produced or looked at are serialized. I would prefer something I can edit downstream. The SAX XML is not sequencially editable downstream, I cannot cut and paste items in the flow of data. With what I am using now, I can do that, it is not serialized.

I developed a process of extracting a text file from the final .pdf and using Grep (and regular expressions) to recover the item number sequence of the final document to give repeatability. The problem is there are always new items added, understandable with 37,000 sku’s.

Thanks again for your suggestions.