...but mAYBE THat wouldn't be the cASE IF i Wasn't A 2 FINGER/HUNT and peck typist.

ThANK YOU TO /. FOR TIPS ON USING THE SCROLL LOCK and windows keys AS WELL as how to remap the cAPS LOCK (Man I hope thAT IS WHat thAT CODE REally does). I am usually too busy reading idle^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hworking to remember to lookup how those extra keys work.

So does this mean that the a girlfriend of a geek can save her files on it too??

I totally agree (on the UCM and the satellites). My wife is the sole admin for her company's (a power utility) UCM; only a very small part of her responsibilities. My wife is a civil engineer not an EE or computer engineer and her department needed a document management solution years ago. Prior employees had evaluated and installed the system. The IS dept is only brought in when an upgrade is installed; the hardware is managed by IS after all. The system is so easy to use that additional departments keep putting in requests to have their documents added to the system due to word of mouth around the company. In addition to increased productivity, the company has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in paper/printing.

Why not just charge him $10 for the price of a movie ticket

+ $25 (for the hour of lawyer time it took to research and contact the manager [probably with sort of form letter at that])

+ $25 (for the hour of Media Sentry time for monitoring the p2p transaction.)

While $60 might be a slightly expensive "movie ticket", the studio gets their cost recovered plus it is a low enough incentive that there will always be repeat offenders from whom to recover the lost revenue until a way is worked out to distribute movies electronically and on the same day as the movie release.

+ssh for secure communictions
+Sessions logged on the server.
+Each person can talk to other people in private - just like "IM"
+IRC client lists who is logged in - presence awareness #1
+IRC clients configured to auto idle after X minutes - presence awareness #2
+Scalable past 100 users
+Permanent channels can be created for each team.
+DCC for file transfer.
+Depending on the IRC client, ascii emoticons can probably be converted to gif animations.

Maybe ?? http://www.unrealircd.com/

Or is IRC not the protocol you are looking for?

With that argument, then each student should get cubicle (or a console) from which to work since that is what they will be using when they get into the 'real world'.

Plus take into account that I posted using a Mac mini, Safari and consulted the Mac dictionary, and it makes it even funnier. :)

I disagree. By hiring that linux/unix admin you get an infrastructure that is deployed across the school district and will require little administration. One (or two) people can administer the whole affair (I am thinking primarily network booting with the standard education applications [see k12linux or edubuntu])).
The Microsoft and Mac approaches appear to necessitate a local admin at all times.

While I don't have a problem with the local teacher administering the computers, those teachers that only care about computers as a tool, can use them as such. Program to accomplish task X is installed at the beginning of the setup and reviewed with the teacher yearly, bi-annually, etc.

Teaching has been around for a long time. There is a cirriculum that is fairly constant to be met. Just as periodic reviews allow for said cirriculum to be updated with newer methods of teaching, so to can periodic review of programs result in better programs to fulfill said teaching need.

The object is to teach kids, not just teach them computers.

http://www.classroom20.com/profile/AlexInman

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