[ale] Please help me give away PCs.

[Jeff Hubbs]

Being a former ("escaped?") Fed myself, I presume that he's limited to
public schools not of his own choice.  I think this other fellow's point is
well taken - that this kind of giveaway is in effect casting swine before
pearls.  

I encountered a similar situation with the Department of Energy.  They
wanted to make a big deal out of giving not tens but *many hundreds* of
machines away.  I opposed the move on the following grounds:

1.  The machines themselves would have been very hard-pressed to deal with
the current MS OSses of the time (this was like 4-5 years ago and my Linux
knowledge was miniscule), thereby greatly limiting their value for running
commercial software of the day.

2.  I asked to see any curriculum or lesson plan that would have gainfully
utilized the machines.  I know from firsthand experience that any such
"goodies" tend to get piled into closets and unused rooms without a cogent
plan for their utilization.  

3.  The mere presence of these computers - and *knowledge* of that presence
on the part of school boards and politicians - would likely make it much
harder for faculty to justify the procurement of new, modern machines for
reasonable and fully legitimate purposes.  I could forsee someone saying
"COMPUTERS???  You want COMPUTERS?  The government just gave us 1,000
computers!!!  You don't need no stinkin' COMPUTERS!!!!!" and not at all
understanding that the distinction between a new computer and one of
equivalent cost five years back in time is all the difference in the world
with respect to what can be accomplished with it.  

Despite my passionately-argued points, the giveaway took place, and I
imagine that you can find these machines standing in for missing furniture
legs, serving as load-bearing members for many a jury-rigged bookshelf, and
holding open many a door throughout the public school systems of the Central
Savannah River Area (Bao Ha probably used some of those very machines at
some time in the past).  Hands were shaken for press photogs, glowing
articles were written, life went on.  

Now, I believe that an all-Linux solution could make a pallet-load of 486es
gainfully usable, but  although I am relatively certain that examples of
such being done exist, it requires some improbably determined, resourceful,
and smart faculty and equally improbably forward-thinking and open-minded
school administrators to pull it off.  

I am just sorry that we didn't hang on to the machines and set up the
biggest, baddest Beowulf cluster of its kind (some people at Oak Ridge
National Lab did just that with the "Stone Soupercomputer").  We probably
could have amassed a 500-node cluster over the course of less than a year.
How we could have powered, cooled, and UPSsed such a monstrosity would have
been a whole 'nother story.

- Jeff





> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christopher S. Adams [mailto:toiletduk at penguinpowered.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2000 2:57 PM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Please help me give away PCs.
> 
> 
> have you tried private schools and orphanages? since they're not
> state-funded, they would probably appreciate the pc's
> 
> or if you want to be really charitable, you can give them to me :)
> 
> Chris
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <tew at wiencko.com>
> To: <nixpop at hotmail.com>
> Cc: <ale at ale.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2000 2:40 PM
> Subject: Re: [ale] Please help me give away PCs.
> 
> 
> > Al Gore and the Federal Government is taxing my 
> communications services to
> > death to provide state of the art PCs and internet access 
> to schools and
> > libraries all over the country.
> >
> > I don't think you'll find too many public schools willing 
> to take obsolete
> > equipment when they can get new stuff for free.  Now, if 
> you were willing
> to
> > support some non-taxpayer financed charatible institutions, 
> then I think
> you
> > might find an audience.
> >
> > On Thu, 20 July 2000, "Jon Rennie" wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Off topic but in line with a recent thread.
> > >
> > > I have between 60 and 100 PCs and almost as many monitors 
> and a few
> other
> > > things to give away.  There are conditions.  I work for 
> the federal
> > > government.  I need to find a tax-payer supported educational
> institution
> > > (school)  somewhere in the Kindergarten through 12th 
> grade range to take
> > > this stuff.
> > >
> > > The greatest number of the CPUs is Dell Optiplex 433s/L 
> CPUs (having a
> 33MHz
> > > '486SX chip) with 8MB RAM average and minimum 210 MB hard 
> drive.  A few
> > > systems have better specs and I have some garbage lesser 
> systems I need
> to
> > > get rid of.  The 433s and better have 10BaseT cards.  The 
> monitors are
> > > mostly Dell color 14" ones.
> > >
> > > Please help.  Perhaps you can interest a school in 
> teaching some kids to
> set
> > > up Linux routers/firewalls/whatever.
> > > 
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