<div dir="ltr">I am honored to have been of help. That time was the happiest I've been using Linux and making a real difference. It was part of why I ran for school board.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 2:44 PM, Edward Holcroft <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eholcroft@mkainc.com" target="_blank">eholcroft@mkainc.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Ah Jim, this discussion brings up so many bitter-sweet memories for me. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">
I remember when you were running the K12LTSP list, and I was deploying K12LTSP in disadvantaged schools in deep rural South Africa. Your list was my core survival tool and Jim you personally solved many problems for me and the non-profit I was running at the time. The heady days of Etherboot and rom-o-matic (when Ken Yap himself would help me resolve boot issues), hand-built UV eprom erasers, reclaiming old BIOS chips from dead motherboards to create etherboot NICs. My EPROM programmer was the single most expensive piece of equipment that we owned. We made thin clients out of refurbed PC's that were donated to us by government departments and some companies. By tapping into the corporate social responsibility project of UniForum (the .za domain administrators) we were able to deploy several thousand seats into the most grueling of environments. I believe they are still running to this day (although with the demise of K12LTSP, the project switched to Ubuntu shortly after I left South Africa). </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Finding you on ALE when I moved to Atlanta really brought home to me what a small world it is. One day I plan to attend a monthly meeting so that I can thank you in person and tell you the story, or perhaps one chapter of the story, of thousands of Linux-using schoolkids in Africa that you had no idea you actually helped! And drink beer.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Your stories of corruption are distressing to me because they sound so much like what I encountered in South Africa at one level or another. It bothers the heck out of me to see the same issues cropping up in an officially developed nation: we have no excuse for this kind of behavior in the US (not that anyone does of course, but here we're quick to use terms like Third World corruption, banana republic and so on, when we seem to be living in a glass house). When it came time for a government sponsored rollout into all 2000-odd schools in one South African province, Microsoft and their OEM partners came out hitting hard, and even though we deployed a fully functional demo site that "just worked" while the Windows teams were still booting, there was NO chance that Linux was going to happen ... too many palms greased and too much incompetence. In another South African province a DoE official actually threatened me with "consequences" if I dared to install non-Windows systems: I turned that province into my show-piece.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">One tale of woe, and there certainly were a few: the DoE sent a Doze technician to one of our sites who was so confuzzled by not being able to find hard drives in the refurbs, that he went and installed hard drives, and Windows, on each machine! After that little experience we started to glue-gun the IDE ports on the MB's before deploying. lol. You can't win 'em all.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Anyway, just want to say is it's awesome that there are still believers out there. I would be willing to join with someone, or better yet a team of people, in taking a shot at rekindling the idea in Atlanta schools.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The concept-plan I used in South Africa was very community oriented - we would have the school take responsibility for basic infrastructure and even have the kids help pulling Ethernet cables, with teachers and senior students trained in system administration. Regrettably, I had to leave SA before implementing the full self-sustaining concept that I had in mind (that's another story). I still believe though, that the basic concept is universal and regardless of the fact that Windows and corruption won one battle in Atlanta, the war is far from over as many fervently Microsoft shops are more susceptible than ever to the viability of FOSS.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">cheers</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">ed</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">
<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:58 PM, Jim Kinney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com" target="_blank">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>I had no more resources to throw at it. After it was all over, I ran the numbers and thanks to the ridiculous number of meetings I had to go to on the project I made just barely over $5 an hour. Can't feed a family on that even working 60+ hours a week.<br>
<br></div>We looked at expanding that process and there was just not enough traction to justify staying in it. Marketing up against "everyone use Windows" was outside of our financial ability. When I spoke at NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) in San Antonio in 2008, the room was quite surprised to hear the greatest single challenge was "political engineering". My surprise was that the room was packed to overflowing.<br>
<br></div>Don't get me wrong: the process WORKS. We came up with the first generation of LTSP that would scale to 10's of thousands of simultaneous clients. What we did has not be replicated at even half that scale anywhere in the western hemisphere to date. There are some projects in Europe and Scandavian countries in particular that are close to that scale.<br>
<br></div>Technology changes as well. What worked then for thin client processes is not an ongoing solution now. Between 2006-2007 and now, KVM and SPICE have progressed to provide a far better user experience than what we could do then with LTSP. Server technology has vastly exceeded what we built with in 2006. A dual proc, dual core with a total of 8GB RAM was sizable then and laughable now. Schools we installed with 5 servers we could do now with 1 and still have expansion room. <br>
<br></div>There was a serious emotional toll on the project as well. Watching the leadership squander resources to pad their own pockets or just out of total ignorance was bad enough. But watching them do it at the expense of 140,000 kids who already getting kicked in the social balls just by being there was too much.<br>
<br></div>On the very first school we worked at, we met the librarian who was tickeled pink about the whole project. When I ran into her the following year at DragonCon, she was spitting bile over the project in general and us in particular. It seems the day after we were "officially done", some windows idiot from ITD went to her school and messed with the servers and they never worked again. Of course I was never informed of this or else I would have certainly RUN and fixed things. In fact, that school was the one where we verified the restore process that was fully documented (step-by-step cookbook) and provided to APS. They broke it and didn't care. And the people who were trying to make things work there had no power to get anything done. As far as the librarian was concerned, we built an unstable system that broke as soon as we left and no one could fix it so it was bad from the beginning.<br>
<br></div>People expect Windows to crash and loose data. But a Linux system is touted as being so uch better and more stable so that when ANYTHING goes wrong, the PHBs and everyone want to throw it all out. APS really thought LTSP would work like a VCR. Set it up and walk away and it magically works with no intervention. Well, for the most part that was true for most of the rest of the year. The next school year, all the thin clients were in different rooms and didn't autoregister (by design - needed to KNOW which room they were in for many reasons) and manually registering was about 20 file edits per system. <br>
<br></div><sigh> good and bad memories from all of that.<br></div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Dustin Strickland <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com" target="_blank">dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Well, why not try a different area? You might be surprised at the results.<br>
</div><div>
<div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Jeff Hubbs <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jhubbslist@att.net" target="_blank">jhubbslist@att.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>Where to begin, indeed. The crying
shame is that we (Aaron, Jim, and I) had done a lot of the
scenario planning work to scale up what we had done to the entire
district - tens of thousands of seats - and create the industrial
processes we'd need to "go big" and still improve on what we'd
done. We had even joined forces with an established and
well-respected 8(a) local contracting firm to make it easier to do
business with us. But because of the circumstances Jim described,
we couldn't get a fair hearing even though we had demonstrated in
no uncertain terms that our systems worked extremely well in that
environment (even though we had almost no control over hardware
selection). Yet the outfit selected to do the work couldn't come
close to replicating what we had accomplished even though we
mostly just made use of very common tools and capabilities present
in most any Linux distribution. <br><div><div>
<br>
On 7/1/13 7:55 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:<br>
</div></div></div><div><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<div>
<div>where do I begin....<br>
<br>
</div>
As referenced in the ALE posting, two parents installed
Linux in the form of LTSP in their school. They fought the
APS process and managed to show that having working
computers used more than 20 minutes a week made a
significant educational improvement in the school. Most
importantly, they found a tipping point ration of 3 students
per _classroom_ computer was was the minimum needed to
achieve this impact. The choice of Linux was for cost,
security, reliability. Using thin clients allowed a lot of
students to use a single "server" in the classroom and
minimized maintenance of the overall process.<br>
<br>
</div>
APS then was motivated by the performance statistics to do a
larger-scale pilot project. That's where I came in. Assisted
by Aaron Ruscetta and Jeff Hubbs, over the span of 6 months we
deployed 33 enterprise-scale server, 2200 thin clients in 7
elementary and middle schools for APS.<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>At the end of that school year, schools that had been
performing poorly and had solidly embraced the new classroom
technology showed significant improvements. Some of these
improvements were not manipulable by faculty as the tests were
done on line by the students.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Once again, APS had to continue the process as there was
compelling reason to expand what had started as a parent
project.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>What happened next was classic APS corruption. My team had
already been first-hand witness to blatant theft of servers,
contractors being arrested for attempting to pickup
12-year-old girls, and what smelled suspiciously of
refurbished servers provided as new servers (of the 33
deployed, 12 failed out of the box and required new
motherboards). APS handed the next phase of the process to a
contractor with financial ties to a person (who was not an APS
employee but a contractor with no actual contract) with the
authority to decide who got the contract. The contractor then
managed to never get a single server running LTSP in any
school despite multiple millions spent in server purchases.
They simply didn't have the the Linux expertise to make it
work.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>As I understand it now, the new head of ITD threw out the
entire pile and put in windows systems. The old head of ITD is
under indictment and many of the APS ITD staff should be
joining him. I would strongly recommend avoiding APS on this
topic.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>I can't confirm the timeline of events, but my brief look
when the APS test cheating scandal hit the news loosely aligns
with my concerns: APS chose to not continue working with me
and my team likely because of the "trouble" we caused raising
red flags on ethics. The followup group didn't have the skills
to maintain Linux systems and certainly not LTSP systems so
the existing servers died of neglect. The performance gains
promised in the grant process that funded the initial and
following installations were not going to materialize so the
need to keep the funding going in the ITD group was a key
factor in APS pushing test cheating. The cheating took place
in the schools that were touched by the LTSP process that were
not being maintained. In particular, Parks Middle School was
one of the schools that showed remarkable improvements in 2
and 6 months and the teachers attributed it to being able to
split the classes in half (we installed at a 2:1 ratio instead
of the minimum 3:1) and the time spent on test drill in
advance of the actual tests due to an abundance of working
systems. Once those systems failed and APS was unable to
return them to service, the performance improvements began to
fade and thus the push to regain them at any cost.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>All sour grapes aside, what we saw when those systems went
live was nothing short of total gratitude from the teachers
and rampant enthusiasm from the students. That was the
highlight of my professional career so far.<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 7:07 PM, Dustin
Strickland <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com" target="_blank">dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>I have been thinking for the past few weeks about
trying to get my local schools to migrate to Linux. It
seems like a much-needed change. Technology is becoming
more important with each day that passes-- and the
coverage of it in the curriculum is disappointing, to
say the least. I remember when I was in Yeager middle
school, not too long ago, the only class I had
pertaining to computers or technology was a class on how
to use Microsoft Word.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Computers are far too important, and other subjects
becoming far too deprecated(in my opinion), for coverage
of technology in our schools to be limited to how to use
MS Word. It's almost insulting. Sure, there are programs
that the majority of people need to be familiar with,
but kids need to at least know about the basic
components of a computer and the role of the operating
system. It seems to me a logical step - in order for the
children to gain an interest and actually learn, they
need to be introduced to Linux. Perhaps, then, we can
see about adding some more technology into the
curriculum.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>As I was researching this topic to prepare a
statement for the Douglas County Board of Education, I
stumbled upon <a href="<a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/44438/" target="_blank">http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/44438/</a>">this</a>
posting. If anyone has any more information on this
case, please let me know. I haven't been able to contact
the Board of Education yet, but I will keep you all
posted.<br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org" target="_blank">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
-- <br>
James P. Kinney III<br>
<i><i><i><i><br>
</i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will
have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the
other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten
the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br>
<i><i><i><i><br>
<a href="http://electjimkinney.org" target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br>
<a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</i></i></i></i>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
<br>
<pre>_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org" target="_blank">Ale@ale.org</a>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div></div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org" target="_blank">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>
</div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org" target="_blank">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://electjimkinney.org" target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</i></i></i></i>
</div>
</div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org" target="_blank">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br></div></div><div dir="ltr">Edward Holcroft | Madsen Kneppers & Associates Inc.<br>3020 Holcomb Bridge Rd. NW | Norcross, GA 30071<br>O <a href="tel:%28770%29%20446-9606" value="+17704469606" target="_blank">(770) 446-9606</a> | M <a href="tel:%28678%29%20587-8649" value="+16785878649" target="_blank">(678) 587-8649</a><br>
</div>
</div></div>
<br>
<span style="font-family:arial"><font>MADSEN, KNEPPERS & ASSOCIATES USA, MKA Canada Inc. WARNING/CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This message may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately then delete it - you should not copy or use it for any purpose or disclose its content to any other person. Internet communications are not secure. You should scan this message and any attachments for viruses. Any unauthorized use or interception of this e-mail is illegal.</font></span><br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Ale mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Ale@ale.org">Ale@ale.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
<a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_blank">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://electjimkinney.org" target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</i></i></i></i>
</div>