Richard Rothwell :: Blog

See my new blog on this at http://www.richardrothwell.com/Blog/Blog. A more florid version is at http://cockspiracy.blogspot.com/.

I carry my Puppy with me everywhere

Puppy is a remarkable Linux distribution. The main version (puppy-2.01r2-seamonkey.iso) is 71 MB, while there are versions all the way down to 47MB with a graphical user interface or a remarkable OneBone Puppy 2.01 - this is the "commandline Puppy" and only occupies 28MB. The interesting feature of Puppy is that it runs in RAM (minimum 32 MB) - so once you have booted from your CD or memory stick it is unbelievably fast.

Why do I rave about Puppy? Well my list includes:

• very fast once it has loaded
  
• will work on old machines
  
• allows you to save your work (see below)
  
• it has a cute puppy theme
  
• it is free to distribute
  
• it is pretty good at finding hardware
  
• once booted you can remove the CD
  

In particular I like the idea of carrying a CD that contains everything I need. One clever trick allows the CD to be used in 'mutli-session' session mode. This means that when you finish working on a computer, if it has a CD-R drive the 'home' area is copied onto the CD, and available when you next use the CD.

The standard 71 MB version comes with a remarkable range of software:

• Word processor
  
• Spreadsheet
  
• Web Browser
  
• Graphics editor
  
• Instant Messaging Client
  
• Personal Finance package
  
• HTML editor
  
• Media players
  
• and much much more
  

What gets me everytime is how easy it is to use - and just how fast it is. If you have never tried Linux start here.

A Personal Project I would like to get a copy of PuppyLinux into the hands of every Headteacher, Head of ICT and Network Manager in every school. It might open their eyes to the advantages of open source - this CD will run on a computer that you can buy for £25 from a local recycling centre - or breath life back into those old computers that almost every school seems to have sitting around. Anyone fancy helping me with this project? Puppy Linux Project Homepage.

You may not have heard of the ASCL - the UK Secondary Head's Assocoaition, SHA became the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) in January 2006. Anyway, as Chair of Schoolforge UK I recently phoned the secretary of the ASCL to suggest that she consider arranging a talk on the subject of Open Source for their members at the annual conference. The list of reasons that I recall for it not being approriate included:

• We are obviously selling something
  
• They only had people from major organisations speaking
  
• They only had talks on major issues
  
• She hadn't heard of Open Source so it wasn't important
  

Now it is possible that I failed to communicate what I was talking about, and she did suggest that I propose an item for their journal, but it worries me that people in such positions haven't even heard of Free, Libre and Open Source Software. The name "Linux" didn't even seem to have an impact.

The upshot of this is that I've launched a pledge on Pledgebank to try and raise £250 per month to help get Schoolforge a higher profile amongst these movers and shakers.

Oh yes, this is a begging letter, if you can afford £5 per month please sign up.

While attending an otherwise bland consultation with Becta, we were treated to a speech from Stephen Crowne. This contained two points that really interested me... Now it may be that I've not been listening and these are well known.

Firstly, Crowne stated that the drive will be for schools to take on responsibility for the education of the whole community, not just those that get in to their school.

Secondly, he indicated that there was not going to be a lot of money around in the future. I didn't really follow the...

"I make no bones about it, we have been through a period of unprecedented real terms growth in school budgets. It hasn’t always felt like that. One of the profound disappointments of the crisis that we all went through is we clearly failed to deliver the full impact of those increases at a critical moment but we have to look forward to a period where resources will be relatively tighter."

bit, but what he did say was that money would be tight.

Now, a little bit of research about Crowne shows that he was Director of School Resources at the DFeS - and that he made some of these points, http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/_doc/9338/SCrowneSpeechandQAs.doc, while in this role to a conference of school governors last year.

If I'm right then the open source communities have a clear opportunity. Here is my model for including all of the community in learning through technology. In order to make the most of limited resources and to reach as many people as possible we need:

• every one to have access to reliable computers
  
• every one to have access to a reasonably fast internet connection
  
• all learning and teaching resources to be available to everyone
  
• collaborative development and improvement of these resources
  

Now there are some technical issues here and some social issues. What I'm proposing here is a model that might be adopted in communities from cities through to villages. The technology is available and cheap.

Proposal

1. Issue every family in the country with two CDs - one copy of the Open CD http://www.theopencd.org/ and one copy of Puppy Linux http://www.puppylinux.org/.
   
2. Find ways of getting Internet access to everyone. These would include local bulk buying, local wireless networks and anything else you can think of.
   
3. Require state school teachers to publish at materials that they use at school under the Creative Commons attribution licence http://creativecommons.org/. I'm aware that this is controvertial, but if you are employed by the state, you can't really then claim ownership of the work that you are paid to do. Some awards and financial rewards for the best product might be all that you need to encourage this production.
   
4. Require that, whenever possible, state school produced materials are freely accessible. By this I mean that they should be based around either generic software descriptions or free software. There is, after all, no point in giving away the teaching materials if you then have to go out and buy an expensive software licence.
   
5. Redesign or replace Curriculum Online http://creativecommons.org/ with something that works so that people can post and find work to build on.
   

How much does this cost? Well next to nothing.

• copying and distributing CDs is a very cheap
  
• the work is already being done by the teachers
  
• the cost of sharing and recognising the work is low
  
• Puppy will revive such old machines that many more people will have a PC
  
• sharing the cost of Internet access and buying in bulk will bring these costs down
  

All that is needed is a bit of seedcorn funding.

According to Ed Blott's Microsoft Report Microsoft are looking to switch on the code that will switch off your software if they think that it's an illegal copy.  This raises an interesting issue.  I can accept that they should be able to require you to have the legal right to use the software, but can they reasonably deny you the use of your data?

Lets take this to the logical extreme

Microsoft cannot reasonably expect computer vendors to collect their taxes dues for them for much longer.  The cost of a useable computer has already dropped below the 'full market price' of the Microsoft software (office suite and os).  So, how can they keep an income stream?  Well if I were a convicted monopolist, I might consider stopping selling the software tied to computers and start taxing selling the right of the individual to use it.  Then you could move to the assumption that, a bit like the UK television licence, everyone would need an personal identifier.

In order to understand what impact ICT is going to have on the world you need to recognise one thing...

Things are changing at the most amazing rate.

My favourite example is that there is more computing power in that birthday card that plays a tune than there was on the Lunar Landing module in 1969.  Now I can remember sending punched tapes off to the local technical college and waiting for printouts to come back with my error list.  As I'm vaguely youthful I can remember this from being a pupil not a teacher.  I know what computers used to look like, and I've got something several times more powerful on my belt as a PDA. 

Moore's Law

Over the past 30 years the personal computer has sat at the £1,000 mark.  The application of  Moore's law has been in increasing the power of the computer - so every 18 months the power and capability of the PC has doubled, like clockwork.  A few years ago there came a point where we just didn't need that next doubling of power.  Since then computers have dropped in price.

Applying Moore's Law to technology makes me think that within a few years my local pound shop is going to be selling mobile phones and computers.  They already sell 4 port USB hubs and PSTN phones.  So the fact is that computing power is going to drop in price over the next few years - because people just don't need more that extra computing power.  In fact, as more network services become available, the desktop may need less power!

What do you need?

 I need good resolution 17" monitor at 1200 x 1000.  I need a keyboard, mouse and good sound quality.  I need to be able to exporet my data onto a memory stick or a CD and import my pictures from my camera.

To run this I need about a 800 MHz processor with 256 MB of memory and a few gigabytes of hard disk. 

I can buy this for about £150 on ebay and install open source software for free (Ubuntu is my preference) - and I can see no reason other than hardware failure to replace this system in the next few years.