"Shrink to Fit"

Some quick math here:

Assuming it's all laptops, if $20m was lost, and it was 77,505 Laptops, that's an average of $258.05 per lost laptop. That's about the price of a decent Chromebook with licensing.

According to public records, Chicago Public Schools has about 330,000 students. That's a 23.5% loss rate, if each student has 1 laptop. That's not good.

---Switching hats to give my opinion---

The 1:1 Laptop idea has it's pros and cons.

The biggest pro is that teachers can use the technology to reach students in the new digital mediums such as online testing, remote classes, specialized software for specific courses. And the teacher will know that every student has access to the tech.

The biggest con is the cost. Other cons, like training, poor implementation, and configuration are an issue as well, but the cost of fixing/replacing devices is huge.

My suggested solutions: Either A) return to a non-1:1 model. Doing this is to abandon the benefits. or B) reduce the costs somehow. Students will always be hard on equipment. It would take a real culture of taking care of the equipment to reduce the loss, but if the devices were $100 or less, it would be easier to handle. Seeing how Chromebooks haven't really improved much in the past decade, I don't see why they can't be made cheaper. No Touchscreens. No fancy cameras. Keep it bare-bones and somewhat rugged.

This is the answer.

Aren't Bards "Jacks of all trades but masters of none?"

That sounds like an AI chatbot to me.

So they invented Plastisteel?

https://starwars.fandom.com/wi...

Molnupiravir - Mole-NUH-PEER-a-VEER... I think...

Couldn't the just call it "NoCov-19?" Bah. Sm:)e.

So this is a great opportunity for the Linux Distros to prepare for and run a campaign to "Switch to Linux!" Seriously, this is a huge opportunity, and my guess is that it may be wasted.

What the distros should do to do it right:

* Advertise as "Easy, safe and powerful alternative for your existing PC. No hardware upgrade necessary!"
* Provide the tools to easily move your Windows data over, connect to the most popular cloud services.
* Distros should offer a familiar themed desktop experience, if desired. (XP, 7, 10, 11 styles, etc.)
* Someone should make a "Compatibility checker" for windows, that looks at your current hardware/software and explains the conversion. (i.e.: Your model of printer will work but only using a USB connection. Etc.)

You're likely correct, but the one case I could see where "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" for Linux does makes sense is if Microsoft was trying to protect their Windows desktop marketshare. They did make about $22 Billion on windows sales last year.

I just have to wonder... Is this Linux being accepted as a valid desktop operating system, or is this an attempt to prevent it from being the next big Windows competitor?

I'm not saying it is either, just that this does feel like the old "Embrace and Extend".

So here I am on a fresh run of Chrome opening a single tab to Slashdot... reporting ~550MB used with 14 processes, the biggest one ~150MB.

Is this bloat? Sure, it's half a gig, but computers with 1GB of ram have been available for 20 years now. It's bigger than it used to be, but I can run 3D games, complex HTML5, and even emulate other operating systems in a browser tab. Even a $35 raspberry pi has a gig of ram.

So, I can have a machine with a small amount of ram and be conservative with my browsing habits. Or I can leave 50 tabs open.

How Linux wins the Desktop

1. We need a "Default". Not necessarily a default Distro, but a set of standards that all distros can follow. Of course, other options will be allowed, even encouraged. Rationale: We need the "fragmentation" problem to be addressed, and I would suggest that a good start would to have a standard interface that is common across all of "Linux".

2. We need an easy way to manage a large group of computers. Large or small, businesses and schools want to make the configuration of their computers easy. Examples: Mass deploy Chrome. Setup a lab of computers to use a single printer. Setup logins with permissions and shared home folders. Rationale: These features are easy to configure on Windows and Mac OS X, but not so easy on Linux.

3. Easy Deployment. There needs to be a scriptable deployment that can mass install Linux onto multiple computers easily, including initial setup and joining of whatever management system is being used. While "image based" deployment can work, native installation deployment with configuration would be better. Rationale: If it is going to compete against Windows and Mac OS X, it has to be as easy to deploy.

I'm sure there are some projects that already fill some of these needs... but it's not there yet.

Fox (and friends) makes money on TV shows in two ways: You buy their channel on [insert TV provider here]. Otherwise, they make money from advertisers. If they have a show that has 1 million viewers, the ads that are played during and around that show are worth 1 million possible ad views. That's worth some money, and Fox (and friends) will extract the value of good programming in this manner from the advertisers.

So there is a reason why Fox (and friends) are not interested in you skipping their commercials. If the box automatically skips the commercials, the advertisers can claim that there were no ad-view from that viewer, effectively lowering the overall value of the ads on the show.

Let's say that Fox (and Friends) win. No big deal, we have to press a button to skip commercials, just like we have done for years.

Now let's say Dish wins. One or many of the following may occur:
a) Fox (and friends) start to insert their advertisements directly into their shows. They already do this, in a limited fashion. Imagine much more invasive ads.
b) Dish (and their competitors) starts to skip commercials on a ALL channels, all the time. (The current version only hops adds automatically the next day, you can't do that the day of.) This leads to...
c) Advertisers reduce the amount of money they give to the channels. Because of the decreased revenue...
d) Fox (and friends) start to charge more for upfront for their channels and/or...
e) Fox (and friends) start making cheaper to produce content.

Is that what will happen? Maybe. Is that what we want? Maybe not.

--Pathway

-----

Disclaimer: I am a long-time customer of Dish Networks. I do not currently own the Hopper, but I have followed its' release. I am an advocate of IPTV, and I feel that Dish currently provides the best IPTV solution with their Sling purchase. I do not watch the TV show "Fox & Friends." The repetitive use of the term was intended as a joke. Laugh, it's funny. Especially since you have read this far.

I love the fact that "It's the best thing in the world!" right now... and you can't get in! I'm usually really late to these social things (i only got into Facebook a year ago), so maybe I'll get in early this time?

--Pathway

I'm sorry, but that's just Crazy!

Forgive my ignorance on the subject matter, but why can't we fix this?

Is it because the infected machines have no anti-virus or anti-malware? Would a free AV program installed on the maxhine fix the problem on an individual machine?

Is it because it is too hard for most AV programs to detect a Bot?

Is it because there are too many older computers that don't have a supported AV solution?

Could a free AV check on the most popular homepages (google.com, yahoo.com, live.com, etc) inform users that they are potentially compromised? This would only check to see if an up to date AV program was installed, not a full AV check...

Is it something else all together? Do we even know?

Thanks for helping me understand the problem.

--Pathway