Computer Repair Tech

eWeek put together a top-ten list of women who are at the top of the ladder in Information Technology located here (as individual pages or as a slide show.) This is an awesome group of powerful individuals who are driving the biggest names in corporate America: eBay, Yahoo!, Lucent, Dell, Motorola, Google, and others.

We have a lab full of new HPs (joy!) -- these are the new XW-4400 towers that don't have a floppy disk drive. I discovered the first morning that students weren't able to access a drive letter for their USB thumb drives in XP. The non-privileged user obviously doesn't have access to Disk Management under Control Panels --> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management (or the Manage shortcut under My Computer) - they're locked out with ZENWorks Workstation Manager policies.

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week
October 29, 2007

INQUISITIVENESS

When you were very young, three years old, you didn't want to look into the possibility of escape, particularly, because you were so interested in how things were done. You used to ask your father and your mother all sorts of questions: "Why is this so, Mommy? Why is this so, Daddy? Why do we do this? Why don't we do that?" But that innocent inquisitiveness has been forgotten, lost. Therefore you have to re-ignite it.

It was only a matter of time before another computer hardware vendor jumped on the low-cost/low-power laptop for students. ASUSTeK has come out with their answer to the OLPC XO system with their Eee PC4G. This is another laptop that uses Linux for its operating system.

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week
October 3, 2007

THE CARROT OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The Buddhas and great teachers have developed skillful means throughout the ages. Their approach is to hold up the Star of Bethlehem, enlightenment, like a carrot in front of a donkey. There is a carrot thousands of miles away shining, and you have to walk and walk and walk and go get it. The donkey doesn't have the carrot at this point, at the beginner's level, but he has to be inspired.

The most fabulous Slashdot.org has this story/link (and inevitable discussion/rants-raves and flame-wars) to a CNN Heroes video about a guy in Northern California (Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco) who takes old computers, fixes/refurbishes them, sets them up with the freely licensed operating system Linux, and makes them available to poor, non-profits, and elderly. All the while, this hero, James Burgett, is teaching valuable skills and employing ex-drug addicts, people from the fringe of society.

Awesome project[1] by the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) folks/Nicholas Negroponte: buy an OLPC laptop[2] ($399) for your own child and a second OLPC laptop will be sent to a child in a developing country. Or you can simply donate $200 (or any multiple of $200) towards the purchase of one of these great laptops for a child in a developing country.

I thought I just made that word up, but Wikipedia and Google say it's been done. But, it really does describe the process of your Windows-based PC being infected with spyware/malware and then becoming a Zombie that is remotely controlled by some nefarious type to perform their fell deeds. Let's step back a mo', shall we and really expand this analogy I'm working on.

I want to gather thoughts and ideas about District Information Technology (IT) and questions for IT department management and staff and to other school computer techs. I hope others can feel free to post comments, their ideas, complaints, and suggestions about making the best use of school computing and technology resources.

Do you use wireless (WiFi) networking at home or out at coffee shops/WiFi HotSpots? Wireless access (with a laptop, tablet PC, or a wireless network card in your desktop computer) is really convenient and wireless hardware and software vendors have done a great job to make this access easy to set up. But almost everyone I talk to has done nothing about making their wireless network connection secure and safe from outsiders spying/sniffing on their traffic. I hope to provide some information here that will help you to learn about these security issues and why it's so important to safeguard your communications and information. Mindi McDowell of CERT has posted a brief overview of wireless (WiFi) communications here on the US-CERT website.