Vista is the new Linux (in a bad way)

--versus--

The only reason I never seriously tried Linux, pre-Ubuntu, was my percetption that once I install the darn thing, I would have to go around hunting for drivers for every little screw installed/attached to my computer.

However, bad karma to blame, I did. But not with Linux, but Windows Vista Ultimate.To contrast, I installed Ubuntu to see what happens:

Driver----------------------Vista Ultimate----------------Ubuntu 7.xx
====================================================================
PCMCIA Slot Driver-----------Painful hours of Googling-----Automatic!
SD Card Reader Driver--------Painful hours of Googling-----Automatic!
External Firewire Drivers----Painful hours of Googling-----Automatic!
Tablet PC Recognition--------Automatic---------------------Not Tested
Sony Camera (DV Connection)--Movie Maker does not recognise the DV Camera
====================================================================

Less Messy Computer: Vista, Ubuntu over XP?

So why will I upgrade from Windows XP (Tablet PC edition) to a dual boot of Ubuntu and Vista? Several reasons:

-- I have battled a Windows Update memory leak which sucked the juice out of my computing experience without respite. Every 2 or 3 minutes, wuauclt.exe will execute, eating up 99% of CPU. I had to kill the process and it would start up in a blink of an eye. Finally when I safe-mode started Windows and deleted the wuauclt.exe and wuausrv manually, svchost.exe came up as the hungry monkey. I went Bob Dylan:

"How many times does a man have to kill
wuauclt.exe before he can compute?"

Anyhoo, it seemed like an endless blackhole. Even worse, Vista refused to update on my TC4200 HP Tablet with Windows XP Tablet PC edition. I had to reformat the HDD before I could re-partition.

Would all of this be avoidable? Yes, if only HP would leave unallocated space on the HDD. The factory default is that the entire HDD is allocated to "C:\" which cannot be resized without destroying the current data. I pity the average users and "medium-power-users" like me.

Anyways, Vista is installed and Ubuntu is on its way. I have 4 beautiful partitions on my HDD, thanks to my sacrifice of wiping out my HDD (important stuff backed up on a Firewire HDD).

Here were some rude shocks:

-- Windows Movie Maker (Vista) refuses to work in Vista unless I get a fancy display card. Now that is not possible for everyone, so I guess for quick and homely video editing, I will have to run Windows Movie Maker (XP 2.6). I was actually surprised that Vista did not grumble about me installing a XP application.

-- HP's website does not list Vista Ultimate as an option for driver upgrades. Only Business and Enterprise (and Venti, hehe).

Ubuntu is installing on a 10G partition, just for fun. Hopefully it will not mess up my Vista installation and I will have a nice dual boot system. Lets wait and watch. I still have 1 Vista installation pending for this computer. Hope it works.



Now I formatted the entire 60G hard-disk on my Tablet and

HAML

I came across HAML while browsing the Ruby on rails blog: http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/

Its described, by the author Catlin, as Haiku for ERb (rhtml) code.

I was a little turned off by swearwords used by the author while demoing the coolness of HAML over ERb (rhtml).

InstrDesign SIG: CTools Fall 07 Preview

Resources

-- Actions are better interface -> cool flyout DHTML context menus

-- Citation list tool: library's subscription to online journals & resources. Ability to search the subscriptions and add link to articles directly to a folder in Resources.

Compared to eReserves, this tool does NOT guarantee availability of resources.

Students can create citation lists too with the right site config.

Groups (under Site Info)
Ad-hoc persmission groups for restricting certain resources to certain groups only, at the site level.

Re-ordering Tool for resources

Roles
Librarian - Everthing, except grading and eval materials

Forum Organization and Re-ordering tools
-- Forum statistics
-- Individual author's contribution summary
-- Organizing topics (categories) and have sub-topics for threaded discussions
-- Read/Unread notification for discussions
-- FORUMS ARE NOT GROUP AWARE - important to know.
-- Discussions can be graded by linking to the gradebook:
-- create gradebook entry first
-- then create discussion item linking to the gradebook entry.


Assignments Tools
-- email notification to instructors (on/off/digest mode)
-- This can be used as a reciept (manually forwarded by instructor)

Announcements
-- Time release of announcements (similar to resources).

Syllabus
-- Redirection to URL
-- Redirection to Resources not possible (manually adding a static attachment within Resource is possible).

Wiki
"Watch" tool
History
Comments option - cannot be deleted, just content can be.
Export to Word, PDF, RSS feeds in various formats, public view

ACSF Meeting: Future of Webcoferencing at UM

"Agora" on Sakai
-- Sean DeMonner (demonner)

Tool within Sakai/CTools. emerging tool. working well at test labs at the 'dude'. Java client. partial mac support. significant development and integration is still pending.

Pilot phase starting post Fall07 rush.

Apart from standard features. One that piques one's interest is "Movie Broadcast".

"Webex" at Business School

we cracked up as the opening remark from the presenter was: "DO NOT BUY". Well its not too bad a system, infact a business world standard in webconf. VoIP was only recently added, so the business school users were using it in conjunction with Skype.

at the business school they had a 10 user licence and a 1Cent overage charge for additional usage. Shockingly this brought their billing amount up from the apparent $16K to a whopping $80K. So, it is great for the business world, but not a good licencing model for the academic world.

ePop (at Law School)
-- for student interviews
-- good entry level system and great licencing options, compared to the big players
-- gives a great screen capture program (like Camtasia)

Adobe Connect - Med School and MAIS

-- MAIS piloted on the med school server and then moved onto a hosted solution with Adobe servers. They dont need kerberos, but the med school setup is integrated with kerberos.

-- production environment expected by summer 2008


End discussion points:
-- WebEx is market leader
-- Adobe connect was surprisingly cheap at 10K/year
-- Live Communicaion server (MS) was evaluated by several ppl, but not really adopted due to early lack of features, reconfig of switches, lack of VoIP
-- Vlad compared Illuminate and can send the comparision matrix