A good rule of thumb is to roll your sessions back prior to the start of every single class. This always gives a fresh machine and the students will quickly learn how to set their VM just the way they want it.

They can start each class with a fresh snapshot. In effect they would be restoring from backups. The configuration files from some other networked storage or their thumb drives and the applications themselves from the repositories. I've done something similar, but on bare metal, and after about half a dozen times they don't notice -- it had become such second nature to install and restore applications. Heck you might even have them practice installing the whole system from scratch. If you go that route, they can become quite proficient with installation and resource allocation. PXE booting a netinstall image helps there.

However, once you start to load packages from the net things can really slow down unless you prepare. The best way is to have a cache like APT-Cacher or Squid on your LAN or host system and have them configure their systems to use it for APT. For the cache to be most effective, you have to pre-load it before each class. That's easy and can be done while doing other things. It only takes time not attention. But once you have the cache loaded, installation will fly and can be done in 15 - 20 minutes. After that they weren't shy about installing on their own computers at home or helping their friends.

If SSH is working properly you don't need a VPN. In fact if your service is so insecure that it needs a VPN then it probably shouldn't be connected to the net in the first place. Same goes for Git, SVN and other versioning. I can think of dozens of work activities that would never need to use a VPN. The whole premise of low VPN usage smacks of MBA-driven ignorance and Windows quirks.

True. Those things are almost exact opposites. You will never waste money by cutting costs, if you are accounting correctly.

Creative accounting has created too many problems and expenses already. Cost cutting itself will never waste money if the actual cost cutting is really done right. I've seen and heard of too many cases, especially in larger companies, of being penny wise pound foolish.

Good point. Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child didn't fail on its own, however. It had help from M$ and M$' better half, Intel. They got in and messed with OLPC causing delays, barriers and overruns. Even in the most generous assessments, Intel had a serious conflict of interest because it was actively trying to sell a product of its own which competed directly with OLPC. The OLPC was suppose to be based on the AMD Geode and Intel couldn't have that.

Yeah, and kid$ like you have been $aying this $ince '98, too. *Yawn*

To be fair it must be pointed out that M$ ran an $18 billion loss in 1998. Subsequently they may have gone over to Enron-style accounting to shuffle the numbers. Now even with all the voodoo economics, M$ is running a loss. Things would be even more bleak without tricks like deferred sales.

So if it were up to just the numbers, they would have been long gone.

He made no call to abolish the TSA. He made a call to privatize it. There is a world of difference. There would be even less oversight of the TSA if it were out of government hands. It's bad enough as it is. Privatizing it would just remove all accountability, not that there is that much now. If it really were a call to abolish the TSA, that is something that many freedom lovers could get behind.

Look at the stats. The old ones never really go away. They just get overshadowed by the newer ones. A little bit of trickery is also done with counting variants as separate malware. Anything to keep the stats down.

I don't want a touch screen. How about saving the touch screen and making a $150 laptop? The touch screen is just unwanted extra cost. I have a hard enough time keeping the screen clean without people intentionally smearing their grubby fingers across it. It's definitely not anything I want to pay extra for.

Netbooks are quite useful. I'd also like to see more ARM units with long battery life. The netbook form has more room for battery than a tablet does so there really aren't any excuses any more for not having 10 - 12 hours of battery. That's enough to get through a full day at a conference or long flight with transfers.

M$ did cause Nokia to tank. That was done via Elop. The topic of Elop comes up often at Tomi Ahonen's blog. He is the most accurate mobile forcaster around and has on multiple occasions enumerated the damage being caused by Microsoft's Elop at Nokia. Nokia was at the top of it's game when Elop killed it. The Linux phone that he stopped was getting better reviews than the iPhone. But at this point there's nothing viable left and he's even brought in more people from M$ than just himself to ensure that the damage is permanent. Most of the talent has been fired or left on their own. If you want to look for progress, you'll have to turn away from Nokia and towards Jolla. That's just a sample of what the state of Washington can expect with microsofter in charge.

It's not just the war spending, it's how the money is spent on war spending. An already expensive situation is made even more expensive through no-bid contracts and private contractors in general. You have Halliburton and Xe (formerly Blackwater) and many other private contractors gouging the government for services that would have been much more inexpensive and efficient if still done by the military. Yes that includes all those growing numbers of no-bid contracts that this administration is continuing to hand out, just like the previous one did.

There may be a usual reason to ensure disclaimers, etc are read, but javascript is definitely not the way to go. You can very easily require a specific http referrer URL by configuring Apache to require it for a file or directory. Or you can simply have a plain old README or LICENSE file included in the tarball. Javascript just hurts usability and makes things over complicated and broken.