Ready Player 1, opens this weekend. I am going to see it. Everything else is secondary.

I had a Belkin Home Router years ago. It was solid. Nothing fancy but solid. A basic router. Sometimes that is all you need.

I am just so excited. We are upgrading our network to a 10GB backbone. Using Unifi-48 port switches. Running fiber between all the switches. I am stoked!!! Just got approval today! Now if we could just convince them to use the Unifi APs over the Cisco......

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

No @pchiodo today as there are tornado warnings across Oklahoma.

We in St. Louis are getting the northern edge of that system. Just rain for us. Bad thing is we had 3" of rain yesterday. School buses for my kids school couldn't get all the kids home because of flash flooding in the rural areas. The parents had to come get the kids. Some had to drive an hour out of their way to get to the school. I always have to watch and see if the four lane highway I take to see my kids get closed at the Cuirver river due to flooding.

@scottalanmiller said in New, Cheaper iPad for Education Announced:

@penguinwrangler said in New, Cheaper iPad for Education Announced:

• It is cheaper

• Can actually do work on it, i.e. type a paper.

• Did I mention it can be about 1/3 of the cost

It's not that much cheaper. The new iPad is $329 + $99 for the Pencil. The comparable Chromebook Tablet 10 is $329 with the Wacom stylus included. That's quite a bit cheaper, especially as the Chromebook is the more powerful of the two, given that you get the $99 stylus included in the base price, twice the RAM, and the ability to add storage with an SD card, but it's not 33% of the cost, it's more like 80% of the cost. Still an amazing deal, but not that dramatic.

If you go to a completely non-comparable Chromebook, you are really not going to get anything useful below about $180. Which is a lot cheaper, for sure, but still not 33%, and not as much power, not the same features.

Chromebooks for education can be had for under $200.00. I know I saw a quote that my friend was looking at. He asked if my side business could beat them. I could if he would go with refurb models. I was a tech director for a small rural school district. With budgets so tight, it just doesn't make sense to go Apple for a 1 to 1 initiative, and that is what the school(s) wants to do. It is the big push right now, at least in Missouri, especially for the rural/inner city schools, who usually face similar budget issues to do. Most of the better off schools have already implemented it.

A Chromebook is a much better in education than the iPad.

• It is cheaper

• Can actually do work on it, i.e. type a paper.

• Did I mention it can be about 1/3 of the cost

@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Facebook:

@penguinwrangler said in Alternatives to Facebook:

@kelly said in Alternatives to Facebook:

I've started to poke around looking for alternatives to Facebook. It is a hard sell to tell people to get off without having a good alternative. Have any of you tried anything else that might replace it, or the parts of it that you use? I looked a little bit at Vero (https://www.vero.co), and it looks promising since they are subscription based. However that is a hard sell still. Thoughts?

Alternative to Facebook.....how about a real life?

Real life is an alternative to staying in contact with people. That's why we like things like Facebook, a chance to not be socially isolated and cut off.

I disagree, Facebook makes you seemed connected when you are not. Facebook is all about the "me" and not about connections. It is also more perception/surface/glitz and not about depth and truly knowing someone. It is much harder to lie in person than on Facebook. It is not about being connected it is more about getting likes, again more about the "Me". I stay in contact with all my friends, without facebook. I might go days without knowing something but then when we do get together we get to have meaningful conversations.

I have an oral appliance but I use it in conjunction with my CPAP, that is how bad mine is. However, when I travel I just use the oral appliance. Easier to travel with.

CPAP sucks. I have to have it though. I go to this site to get my supplies. Cheaper than insurance. http://www.thecpapshop.com/

We need a post that lays out all the reasons why Lenovo is bad. Then we can just link to it. It comes up all the time it seems like.

@mlnews said in The First ChromeOS Tablet Is Out:

The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 has release as the first official Chrome OS tablet. The tablet includes a Wacom stylus. The new tablet can run Android apps and appears to be part of a move by Google to get the tablet market going again now that Android tablets have been fairing very poorly.

My Acer R13 is really nice in tablet mode. ChromeOS is very navigatable in tablet form. I like my Acer R13 over any tablet I have mainly for the flexibility.

Audible is having a 3 for 2 sale right now, I think for the next couple of days. I just bought these books (all links go to Audible.com) :
Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Revenger

Just finished Artemis by Andy Weir, the person who wrote The Martian, which is on my list to read still. Artemis was a really fun book to read/listen to. I only listen to books now while I drive. It is about Earth's first city on the moon. Fun book to read, would totally make a good movie or I think a even better video game.

@kelly said in Alternatives to Facebook:

I've started to poke around looking for alternatives to Facebook. It is a hard sell to tell people to get off without having a good alternative. Have any of you tried anything else that might replace it, or the parts of it that you use? I looked a little bit at Vero (https://www.vero.co), and it looks promising since they are subscription based. However that is a hard sell still. Thoughts?

Alternative to Facebook.....how about a real life? I have hated Facebook since day one. My friends were all on it and got me to sign up and I saw what a waste it was and how narcissistic it was. I deleted my account after a week. This was many many years ago. If you're my friend, you will call, text, meet up for lunch sometime etc to find out what is happening in my life. I hate social media. I believe a forum like this isn't social media like Facebook is social media. Sure there is a community element to Manglassi but I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all the tech conversations. Honestly, I am here because it exposes me to tech that I normally wouldn't be exposed to or know about. To know my true feelings listen to Weird Al's song Albuquerque and substitute Facebook for sauerkraut and you got my feelings on Facebook.

@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:

@dbeato said in Non-IT News Thread:

@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:

@dustinb3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:

Um... yes that is how authority works. Someone or people have put some person into that position. Authority. . .

That's not how authority works, that's how society likes to make you think it works. Some random person says "authority" and you just accept it. That's really just marketing.

Well if they are the president, Director of Security Agencies, Senators, Police Chieft, your boss you name it, they have authority whether you agree with it or not. You don't need to follow it but what they say has authority over what they have been entrusted to.

Yes, if you accept that all people have authority, everyone has some degree of authority. But to be the authority is different.

I'm an authority, your an authority, the president is an authority, etc.

For example, the police have the authority to arrest someone under US law, or Texas law in this case. They are the legal authority to arrest. They are not the legal authority to determine guilt. A Texas court has the legal authority to determine guilt. But neither the police nor the courts have any more authority to determine who actually did something than anyone else is, you, me, the media, etc.

The power to rule is a form of authority, but only authority over what they can physical coerce. Authority, in the more general sense, does not exist in that way.

Technically only the court has the authority to determine guilt, if it is a bench trial. Otherwise it would be the jury, which isn't technically part of the court. The jury is made up of your peers.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitcoin-blockchain-illegal-content

So if you are found with part of the blockchain on your computer that has that imagery then you are breaking the law. If you were mining it they could say you were participating in transmission of illegal content.

@aaronstuder said in KaOS Linux Screenshots:

@dafyre said in KaOS Linux Screenshots:

Fedora 27 has been stable for me.

Me too.

Me three

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Is that in China? That is what it was like when I went 20 years ago.

@scottalanmiller said in My Son & College:

@penguinwrangler said in My Son & College:

@dustinb3403 well he is interested in it. That is why he will take coding next year at the vo-tech his senior year of high school. To see if he really wants to do it.

Why is he not doing it right now, to find that out, before spending his senior year in classes figuring it out? Classes are a terrible place to get exposed to career or job options. Programming in a class is nothing like the real world. And if it is anything like high school programming classes I've seen recently, you've got a very high chance that they won't teach programming at all. My niece just did this and her "C# programming class" never wrote a line of code. I'm pretty sure she got an A in a class and doesn't even know what programming is having taken it!

He isn't doing it right now because he lives with his mom, who doesn't have internet access. Making it a bit harder to access the online material to learn.

@dustinb3403 well he is interested in it. That is why he will take coding next year at the vo-tech his senior year of high school. To see if he really wants to do it.