Troubleshooters.Com Presents

Troubleshooting Professional Magazine

Volume 3, Issue 4, April 1999
The Education Revolution
Copyright (C) 1999 by Steve Litt. All rights reserved. Materials from guest authors copyrighted by them and licensed for perpetual use to Troubleshooting Professional Magazine. All rights reserved to the copyright holder, except for items specifically marked otherwise (certain free software source code, GNU/GPL, etc.). All material herein provided "As-Is". User assumes all risk and responsibility for any outcome.

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Contents

Editors Desk
Rapid Learning: A Key to Universal Education
Power to the People
Viva La Revolucion
My Fellow Americans
Richard Stallman, Architect of the Revolution
Linux Log
Letters to the Editor
How to Submit an Article
URLs Mentioned in this Issue

Editors Desk

By Steve Litt
What a difference a decade makes. In April 1989 the 386 chip was three years old, and was just getting to a price point affordable for individual computer users. 286 technology had been around for seven years, and you could still buy a new 286 computer. And if you used a PC compatible, you had DOS. Sure, it was version 5, but it was almost identical to the DOS 3.1 you'd used in 1984. PC Programmers used teen-age C or the baby on the block, five year old Dbase III. You could take a year or two to learn a computer language, and spend a year or two writing the program.

You had to be a genius to access the internet, and even then you still had to be at a major university or the military. And unless you were trying to reproduce Robert Morris' Internet Worm virus that had appeared the year before, why would you even want to get on the internet? And so we continued on our leisurely path, oblivious to the wildly accelerating technological changes the 90's would bring.

Now technologies come and go in two years. Time to market has shrunk to months or weeks. The successful companies and technologists have shrunk their learning times to days or weeks. College and trade school don't cut it. Even those week long training courses can't do the job. New learning methods are needed. Luckily, free software, the Internet, and the documentation of the Rapid Learning process allow us to keep up.

This issue of Troubleshooting Professional Magazine is devoted to the Education Revolution. We've even given the articles political names. After all, learning is the most vital component of our careers, and ultimately our corporations and our nations. So kick back and relax as you read this issue. And remember, if you're a Troubleshooter, this is your magazine. Enjoy!

Steve Litt can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


Rapid Learning: A Key to Universal Education

By Steve Litt
If you hang out with leading edge technologists long enough, you see they all use similar learning techniques. They use the 'net, trade mags and their acquaintences to learn the terminology and its definitions. Armed with that, they achieve a theoretical understanding. They then do incremental/differential learning, often using free software (free as in speech) to verify their understanding and learn more. All of this is done within the context of their work, not separate from it. They've mastered the technology long before their co-workers have gotten clearance to take the course. They make the big bucks.

I'm trying very hard to document this process, which I've dubbed Rapid Learning. I'm ten percent done with my new book, "Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist". It looks like it will weigh in at 42 chapters and a little over 200 pages. I hope to have it available for sale in about a month, assuming more pressing projects don't interfere.

Using Rapid Learning, a technologist can learn new technologies quicker, cheaper, and easier than their counterparts taking training, trade school, or college. Rapid Learning has been used for decades, but the advent of the Internet as a research tool and free software for setting up a kitchen table lab have supercharged Rapid Learning's advantages.

The de-facto class restrictions on technical education are crumbling.

Steve Litt is the author of the upcoming book "Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist". He can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


Power to the People

By Steve Litt
Some cynical days I wonder if this whole thing is just class warfare. "Buffy, we simply cannot allow these lower classes to program. They work so cheap the profession will be ruined".

"Precisely, Skip. We must make sure the lower classes have no contact with programming. Expensive compilers, expensive computers, and just in case some rif-raf gets his hands on one, we'll require a $100,000.00 college education, and make sure a computer training lab costs six figures.

Remember your first computer lab? The minicomputer cost nearly a hundred thousand, with each terminal $500. Or, if it was later, maybe an $8000.00 PC server with a $4000.00 NOS (Netware) and each workstation costing $2000.00. But that wasn't the big thing. The big thing was the software. Compilers were probably $100.00 to $500.00 per seat. And the big-iron compilers like Cobol -- if you have to ask you can't afford it. And remember the cost of the DBMS? That was sure to keep the small entrapeneur out of the game. Any way you looked at it, setting up a computer lab would set you back over $60,000.00 -- probably much more.

If there are such a Buffy and Skip, they're certainly tearing their hair out today. Anyone with a spare two hundred square feet can set up a respectable computer lab for less than a good used car -- maybe a lot less. Let's start with buying everything new:
  

Item
Quantity
Unit Price
Total Cost
Server OS
1
$49.00
$50.00
Desktop OS
1
$49.00
$50.00
Server
1
$2000.00
$2000.00
Workstations
15
$600.00
$9000.00
8 port Hubs
2
$200.00
$400.00
Network Cabling
n/a, home made
 
$100.00
 
 Educational Software
 
 (GNU) C compiler
15
0
0
 (GNU) C++ compiler
15
 0
 0
 Perl Interpreter
15
0
0
Python Interpreter
 15
 0
 0
Tcl/TK Interpreter
 15
 0
 0
 Java
 15
 0
 0
(PostgreSQL) DBMS
15
0
0
(DBI::DBD) Middleware
15
0
0
(PHP) Web App RAD
15
0
0
 (Netscape) Web Authoring Tool
 15
 0
 0
 (GIMP) Graphics Software
 15
 0
 0
(Netscape) Web Browser
15
0
0
(Pine and Elm) Email
15
0
0
(Vi, Joe, Emacs) Text Editor
15
0
0
(UMENU) System Menu
15
0
0
So that's it. For $11,600.00 anybody can set up a 15 workstation computer lab. But wait. There's more. If 15 people decide to set up the lab for themselves, and each brings an old, Linux GUI capable computer (low grade Pentium with 32Meg of ram, 1 gig disk), and one person contributes a server (low grade Pentium, 32 meg of ram, 6.4 Gig drive), the cost goes down to $600.00. That's not each, mind you. That's divided among the fifteen. That's right, forty dollars each.

What do they get for the money? Here are the classes that can be offered:
 
Programming 101: Algorithms (Python)
Programming 102: OOP (Python)

Intro to C
Intermediate C
Advanced C

OS Programming in C
Driver Writing in C
Linux Internals in C
TCP/IP Programming in C

Basic Network Configuration
Intermediate Network Configuration
Network Design and Architecture
Network Troubleshooting
DNS Configuration
Web Host Configuration
Email Server Configuration
Advanced Webmastering

Intro to C++
Intermediate C++
Advanced C++

Web Design (Netscape Composer, GIMP)
Advanced Web Graphics (GIMP)

Intro to Web Programming (Perl)
Web Forms Programming (Perl)
Database Web Programming (Perl, DBI::DBD, PostgreSQL)
Programming for Electronic Commerce (Perl, DBI::DBD, PostgreSQL)

So just in case it isn't clear, fifteen people without money for college can get together, pony up a PC each and less than $50.00 each, $2.00 each per month for an internet connection (which they can share simultaneously real-time via Linux IP-masquerading). For that tiny investment they'll gain theoretical and hands-on mastery of C, C++, Web authoring, Web applications, Web database applications, Electronic Commerce, network administration, network troubleshooting, network architecture, webmastering.

Who will teach the classes? Using Rapid Learning techniques, they can teach themselves. Then pass on the information in the form of Rapid Teaching tutorials. Those original 15 can charge ten percent of university prices, and recoup their investment in a year. They can expand and teach thousands of folks unable to afford a college education.

Buffy and Skip, like it or not you have some serious competition.

Steve Litt can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


Viva La Revolucion

By Steve Litt
Nowhere is the education revolution stronger than in Mexico. Their Scholar Net program is installing a nationwide network of computer labs using free software including Linux and Gnome. Over the next few years, they will be installing 140,000 computer labs (not computers -- labs) at a rate of 20-35,000 per year. These students will have all the advantages enumerated in the previous article. If this sounds unbelievable, I've reprinted the words of the  Scholar Net project head, Arturo Espinosa Aldama.

From the Horse's Mouth

============================
From arturo@estadistica.unam.mx Thu Oct 29 21:46:11 1998
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 13:54:25 -0600 (CST)
From: Arturo Espinosa Aldama <arturo@estadistica.unam.mx>
To: gnome-list@gnome.org, gnome-hackers@gnome.org
Subject: Mexico's Educative System Goes for GNU/Linux + GNOME


Greetings, beloved GNOME users and developers.

   I work as the project leader of the "Scholar Net", a program that aims
to bring computers and the net to every elementary and mid-level school in
Mexico. We expect to install from 20 to 35 thousand labs per year to a
total of 140,000 centers in the next five years. 

   Due to matters of cost, reliability and configurability, we plan to
use GNU/Linux to replace the proprietary server options and, now thanks
to GNOME, the proprietary desktop application options. 

   We will develop GNOME to a point where we can get a useful and friendly
enough desktop for the elementary and high school student. There are some
aspects of GNOME, such as uniformity, Spanish translation, bug fixing and
application development which we will address to achieve this.

   At an average of 20 users per machine, and being all of them school
children and teachers, GNU/Linux will become, at the long term, a major
influence in Mexico. In the short term, GNOME will get an additional
impulse from us and those who will contribute following our guidelines,
and GNU/Linux will prove to be a real-world option for the end user. 

   For further information and details on the Scholar Net and, specially
for GNOME developers, on how to contribute to GNOME for us to arrive to
deployment stage, please contact Arturo Espinosa .

Arturo Espinosa Aldama
Project Leader
Academic Services Coordination
National Autonomous University of Mexico

The text above may be copied in any way provided that it stays
with this paragraph and unmodified.
=============================

Note: The original source URL of this document is contained in the URL's section of this magazine.

Steve Litt can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


My Fellow Americans

By Steve Litt
My fellow Americans, we're in another race every bit as vital as the space race of the 1960's. Once again it's time to get moving. The race is no longer to the moon, but instead to technological dominance. Our competitor is no longer the Soviet Union, but instead every nation on earth. The threat is no longer nuclear obliteration, but technological and economic obliteration.

Our neighbors to the south are attacking this challenge head on. Mexico is installing 140,000 computer labs using the best (but not the most expensive) technology available. Soon they will field a fleet of millions of superiorly trained technologists. Mexico has taken a page from America's pioneering spirit. Free thinking, they went with the right choice, not the politically expediant one. They worked to get results. They stood up for their children.

Contrast this with America's response. We hesitate over lab installation because it's too "expensive". Expensive because we pay per-seat licenses. Expensive because Windows desktops requires more expensive hardware. Expensive because NT Server is *fabulously* expensive. Expensive because Windows requires constant attention to keep running. Our children languish while Microsoft stockholders get rich.

My fellow Americans, the choice is ours. We can change course to the better plan instituted by Mexico, continuing our leadership position well into the next century. Or we can remain in our present comfort zone, making Microsoft stockholders rich while our children receive inferior educations and our nation's technological leadership fades.

I ask you to follow Mexico's lead. Stand up for our children. Stand up for our nation. Use free software in our schools.

Fellow Americans, my critics will tell you there will always be work for Americans who want to work. They are absolutely correct. The question before us today is whether that work will be charting the worlds technological course, rather than serving at resorts, hotels, gas stations and restaraunts, hoping we'll be tipped in Pesos.

Steve Litt can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


Richard Stallman, Architect of the Revolution

By Steve Litt
In 1984 Richard Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto, which advocated free software, specifically a free UNIX workalike. In the Manifesto, Stallman prophetically described the process of getting this to happen, including ideas in licensing (must pass on source and all rights to the receiver, etc). In 1991 he copyrighted the GNU General Public License (otherwise known as GPL). That license provided a framework allowing a developer to guarantee that his work would never be co-opted or subverted by an unscrupulous corporation. Software authors began to license their software using GPL.

It worked. Linus Torvalds and his crew wrote the Linux kernal, combined it with many of the already developed GNU utilities, to come up with the GNU/Linux operating system, which was absolutely free to anyone. Other software followed.

Others started licensing software under non-GPL licenses that nevertheless guaranteed source availability, ability to modify, and passing on of rights. Others had licenses that didn't do all that, but managed to make the product free and standard. And now you can get, absolutely free of charge, the GNU/Linux OS, Netscape browser and authoring tool, GIMP graphic software, Apache web server, sendmail email server, GNU C and C++ compilers, Python, Perl and Tcl interpreters, Java, and several editors. Or, if you don't want to download them, you can purchase them for as little as $1.99 plus shipping.

Much of the Internet runs off these free tools, especially Apache. And the web can replace any 30 technical textbooks, and it's always up to date.

This has cut the cost of setting up a computer lab or computer school by a factor of 10 or more. Once only the upper middle and upper classes could get an excellent computer education. Now almost anyone can do it.

Richard Stallman: hero or rabble rouser? I guess the answer depends on whether you're a normal working person, or the president of an expensive and elite university.

Steve Litt is the originator of the UMENU Software Project. He can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


Linux Log: The Redmond Tea Party

Linux Log is now a regular column in Troubleshooting Professional Magazine, authored by Steve Litt. Each month we'll explore a facet of Linux as it relates to that month's theme.
Few grudge anyone the right to make an honest living. I haven't heard one person question the cost of (Borland) Turbo Pascal or Turbo C. Few objected to the price of the DOS or Windows operating systems. There were some problems with Mac pricing, but those wanting a cheaper product simply bought one.

Trouble is, sooner or later certain commercial outfits get greedy. I don't know whether they forgot history and then repeated it, or whether they felt the lessons learned didn't apply. But these commercial outfits (and it wasn't just Microsoft) gouged us blind. The insane prices and even crazier licensing provisions erected an entry barrier few could penetrate. So we went elsewhere. To Linux, to free software in general. And we found it to be better.

So we snuck in the corporate back door with superior free software systems, and got free software on the corporate agenda. It's humorous that now the commercial biggies find themselves subject the the same type of FUD they used to dish out. "I'm not buying the Microsoft product -- a superior free software product is expected any time now". The Mexican government is building a nationwide computer lab network using Linux and Gnome. It hasn't happened yet in the US, but it will. Throngs march on Redmond to dump not tea but Windows, not into Boston Harbor but into the Microsoft campus.

I predict that Windows 2000 will fail miserably, as the masses shift to the technically superior, and probably by that time more user friendly, Linux. The other gouge and grab software outfits will get theirs soon after.

Let's hope Caldera, Slackware, SuSe, Pacific HiTech (TurboLinux), Red Hat, Star, Corel and Applix learn from their predecessors' mistakes.

Steve Litt can be reached at Steve Litt's email address.


Letters to the Editor

All letters become the property of the publisher (Steve Litt), and may be edited for clarity or brevity. We especially welcome additions, clarifications, corrections or flames from vendors whose products have been reviewed in this magazine. We reserve the right to not publish letters we deem in bad taste (bad language, obscenity, hate, lewd, violence, etc.).
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URLs Mentioned in this Issue