Author: grabe

Cost of Open Source

I walked into the office of a colleague the other day (the director of our IDT graduate program) and on his office table was a new Xserve blade and a Xserve raid (the Macintosh server with software and storage). Very nice equipment that will allow the IDT students to each have their own accounts and offer many terabytes of storage for streaming media.

“When are we going to have this system online,” I wanted to know. “I am waiting for someone to come to get everything up and running” was the reply.

So, I have been trying to estimate what this combination of hardware, software, and services was worth. Hard to know for certain. There were terabytes of storage in both the blade and the external RAID. The hardware had a very fast CPU. OS X server is not free and then someone was going to set up the entire thing.

I am in my “lab” on a Saturday morning working on my own server (the setup running this blog). It is a G-4 cast-off from a campus lab that I picked up as surplus. I use all open source software – the server, database, blog, and middleware software responsible for this blog and the other applications I run are free. Total cost = $0.

Clearly, I would not want to put my equipment up against the resources now available to the IDT students – no way the combination of software and hardware are close in terms of the users that can be serviced simultaneously, volume of content that can be streamed, storage capacity, etc. Still, $0 is $0 and I actually have and can continue to add more servers of the type I have described. Anything multiplied by $0 is still $0.

I happen to like operating my own hardware and software, but here is the other perspective on the cost issue. The other perspective would recognize that I am up here on Saturday morning. I am spending time doing things that would not be required of the users of more “ready-made” systems AND I have spent a considerable amount of time to get to the point that I am able to keep open source software operating. If I were not interesting in doing this “for fun” and say I was operating these same resources for a K-12 school, what would my time be worth?

My task this morning was to upgrade the blog software that serves the content you are viewing. If you are not familiar with open source, here is a description of why this singular task may be more complicated than you realize. To provide you access to my blog with free software, one of the challenges is to keep multiple free components synched (I don’t mean this as a technical term). The server software (Apache), the database storing blog “pieces” (MySQL), the middleware conntecting the database to the server and providing the processing necessary to assemble blog pages sent via the server (PHP), the blog software (WordPress) and blog software plugins (the add-ons that deal with spam, insert the tags, etc) are all continually upgraded. These upgrades make the software work more effectively and also reduce security threats. I could get everything working and then not mess with the new advances, but the university would be upset if I did not do what I could to reduce security problems. The challenge is that you have to deal with many separate parts and you have to be careful that the parts remain compatible. If you pay attention to only some of the pieces, you often find that the piece you have upgraded assumes a more current version of another piece and your upgrade has in some mysterious way “broken” the entire system. I don’t mean to make this sound impossible – everything went smoothly this morning. My purpose was to identify some challenges that are hidden in the use of open source software.

I learn a great deal doing what I do. I think acquiring the experiences I have allows me a different perspective on the way things work that those who rely on ready made apps simply do not have. Some may feel this knowledge is unnecessary for practitioners. It really is hard to say what is the best way to spend your time.

Blogged with Flock

Loading

State Response to Flat World

A week or so ago I outlined findings and recommendations from a report entitled tough choices or tough times. This report identified changing economic trends and recommended needed educational adjustments to prevent economic decline in the US.

Some states appear to be making a commitment to a similar combination of improved basic skills, a more focused set of goals, and 21st century skills. West Virginia (Technology and Learning article) has committed to such changes. However, what struck me in reading the description of the West Virginia approach was the way the approach was described. In contrast to Tough Choices or Tough Times there was much less of that “if you can’t do it we will find someone else” mentality. Of course, I am guessing the reimbursement model recommended in Tough Choices or Tough times will also not be in place. On the surface the goals seem very similar, the difference I suppose is assumptions about what are the sources of existing difficulties and what sort of changes must be made (tough choices) to create change.

BTW, the West Virginia specifically incorporates technology in the plan. I did not see that topic specifically addressed in the Skills of the American WorkForce recommendations.

Loading

State Of The Union

I decided I was going to mark the uniqueness of this year’s State of the Union address by participating in a unique way. I have a CNN Pipeline account so I decided to watch via the Internet. Unfortunately, CNN decided to use the occasion of the event to allow anyone to try Pipeline. The consequences, at least for me, were not good. Normally, the video and sound come through with high quality. For the first part of the speech this evening, nothing worked. The feed constantly rebuffered allowing only a few seconds of video. About half way through things improved. I am thinking that most folks decided to try the trusty TV allowing those of us who were more stubborn the opportunity to use the net.

One can only imagine what direction variations on this type of application and opportunity might take. What about a digg-like system allowing a show of support or rejection following different claims or proposals?

President Bush

Loading

DOPA is Back

Before the elections, potential DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act) legislation was the target of posts on many educational blogs (including Learning Aloud). Now, it appears that active consideration of DOPA legislation is back.

How could anyone object to measures intended to thwart potential online predators? It is the means and not the goal (see my previous comments) that generates objections – blocking commercial social networking sites including commercial blog sites. Blocking potentially useful activities represents a significant down side. Failure to confront the most serious problems gives the appearance of doing something while accomplishing little (unsupervised access to the Internet outside of the school results in what data appear to indicate are the most serious problems). This is an issue with a political slant – the appearance that one is “fighting” for our kids sounds good and it may not be obvious what is lost when blocking a hodge-podge of sites.

Loading

Ubuntu

Every once in a while, that geek part of my personality forces its way to the surface. The time has come to describe Ubuntu.

I use open source software on several servers I operate (this one for example) because I have access to bandwidth, but not a lot of money. My hardware consists of older Macs (the cast-offs from computer labs) and the Mac OS is built on a linux foundation (BSD). From time to time operating this type of server requires a basic understanding of linux. Such requirements in combination with reading several accounts of the work of Linus Torvalds created a personal interest. Working with linux commands was kind of a throw back to my first experiences working with computers. You enter text command rather than interact with the computer through objects and menus.

I first heard of Ubuntu when listening to podcasts (probably Leo Laport but I can’t remember for sure). It was described as a version of Linux that could be run from a CD on a variety of hardware. The cool thing about this is that it was possible to experiment without having to worry about messing up the operating system of the computer (which was always somewhat of a concern when I was working on one of my servers).

When I finally got around to looking for Ubuntu (the holiday break), I encountered Edubuntu. The edubuntu community is attempting to develop a host of educational applications around ubuntu. Again, experimenting is low risk and no cost. You pretty much download a collection of resources associated with a CPU (e.g., Intel x86) and then burn a CD. You boot your computer from this CD. A user interface has been developed so you will have no trouble launching a variety of open source productivity (e.g., OpenOffice), Internet (Firefox) and educational apps.

The vision here is to create low cost alternatives for education and the resources are intended to be installed (not run from a CD) or run in thin client mode (programs are loaded from a file server when run).

If you have heard about open source alternatives to popular productivity tools or linux and were curious, this is a reasonable way to explore a bit. I would suggest you create a CD even if you have a specific interest (say OpenOffice). Getting OpenOffice to run on the Mac is a little more complicated than just downloading the program (e.g., you need X11 installed first), but running from the edubuntu CD just works (I must admit I did not deal with the issue of how I would store files I might create).

Blogged with Flock

Loading

Quest For Truth

One of the benefits of blogging is that it is possible to follow-up on previous posts. I suppose this is similar to a news program doing a kind of “where are they now” segment.

A year or so ago, I wrote an entry that described the Department of Education’s effort to do a better job of evaluating the effectiveness of instructional software. This post described a research program to be initiated in 2004-2005 to evaluate 16 commercial reading and mathematics programs available to K-12 schools. Mathematica Policy Research and SRI were awarded the grant providing the resources to finally conduct quality research. Conducting educational research in a way that avoids confoundings and methodological flaws is extremely difficult so I have been attempting to follow the success of this project.

I have been able to locate a brief update provided by Mathematica in mid 2004. This update promises:

During summer and fall 2005, the team will analyze the data and prepare a report to be submitted to Congress. Consideration is being given to adding another year of data collection with the same teachers and new students. These data would be gathered in 2005-2006.

I am unable to locate a report resulting from this research. Online searches generate plenty of descriptions and announcements by the companies involved, but I have been unable to locate study results. I would think the initial results described above should be available. If you are aware of published results, I would appreciate an email.

Disregard my request for information. My emails generated a reply:

I expect ED will release our report on findings within six weeks or
thereabouts. When it is released, it will be posted at the Institute of
Education Sciences web site and also at edtech.mathematica-mpr.com.

Mark Dynarski

Stay tuned.

Loading

Cranky

I have been reading “Got Game” and one of the core ideas is that differences in generational experiences (e.g., widespread exposure to video games during childhood and adolescence) create differences in values, etc.

With this reading as a context, today I encounter the concept of age-appropriate search engines (age sensititive). cRANKy (cute huh) recommends itself as the search engine for 50+ year olds. Sites are selected by the editors of Eon and rated by viewers.

Get this – the top two searches – sex and brain builders. No way I could make stuff like this up. 😉

Loading