On 05/03/2012 15:09, Chris J Dixon wrote:
Adrian C wrote:

I'd dumb it down further, just have a course in using a PC keyboard,
mouse and GUI. No particular application or OS.

Series of eight 1 hour lessons.

lesson #1. How to hold and move a mouse.

lesson #2 to 6, How to select something and drag it, moving it elsewhere.

lesson #7. How to Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Backspace, Minimise,
Maximise, The Task Bar / Panels, Window Focus, Select One item, Select a
choice, Select All, Esc, Ctrl-Z, F1, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Login, Start, Shutdown.

lesson #8. How to store a file in a folder so later it can be found

I year or two back I attended an evening class in digital photo
processing, using Paintshop Pro. Sadly, quite a number of the
participants would have benefited from first attending the course
you outline above.

Some years back a friend of mine ran a business teaching kids IT skills
under the guise of doing fun stuff with computers. He actually found
that there was a much bigger demand from the parents for basic IT
literacy than there was for classes for the kids. Ended up getting into
running all sorts of courses like the European computer driving license,
CLAiT etc - many of which were focussed on basic use of applications etc.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 05/03/2012 14:22, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 05/03/12 12:57, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 04:18:33 -0800 (PST), jgharston wrote:

Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

True enough, but AFAIK there is no "generic" word processor or
spreadsheet out there so you have to choose something and, although
it pains me to say it, Word and Excel are the defacto standards out
there.

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

Does "no usable alternative" include MS Access itself?

I've been doing databasy-stuff professionally for over 20 years now and
have still never had to touch access :-)

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.

Is there a windowless modeless GUI OS for the desktop? Single
application on the screen without other distractions? Like done on a
smart mobile phone?

Ah, eldy.

http://eldy.eu/

Be a boon to those not wishing to play video games to write a letter.

--
Adrian C

On 05/03/12 16:41, Clive George wrote:
On 05/03/2012 14:22, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 05/03/12 12:57, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 04:18:33 -0800 (PST), jgharston wrote:

Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

True enough, but AFAIK there is no "generic" word processor or
spreadsheet out there so you have to choose something and, although
it pains me to say it, Word and Excel are the defacto standards out
there.

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

Does "no usable alternative" include MS Access itself?

I've been doing databasy-stuff professionally for over 20 years now and
have still never had to touch access :-)

That's probably your loss. Some people use it very badly for jobs that
it's not suited for. But for the jobs it does well there is nothing else.

It's good for rapid prototyping without needing a single line of code.
It includes a database engine, interfaces to back-end systems,
import-export tools, a visual forms designer and a very powerful report
generator. You can get some of those features in separate products but
they won't integrate as well. There have been various attempts at doing
the same thing under Linux but none that I would trust my data to.



--
Bernard Peek

On 05/03/2012 16:41, Clive George wrote:
On 05/03/2012 14:22, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 05/03/12 12:57, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 04:18:33 -0800 (PST), jgharston wrote:

Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

True enough, but AFAIK there is no "generic" word processor or
spreadsheet out there so you have to choose something and, although
it pains me to say it, Word and Excel are the defacto standards out
there.

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

Does "no usable alternative" include MS Access itself?

I've been doing databasy-stuff professionally for over 20 years now and
have still never had to touch access :-)


What should be taught is bare naked SQL, stored procedures, triggers and
connection strings...

Access is a front end forms and VB thing that should have been killed
off a long time ago or absorbed into something else. Excel I think.

Mis-spent 10 years of my life on that junk.



Meanwhile, my niece has been exposed to Microsoft Publisher at school :-(

Before the Software For Students deals, Publisher was a stupefyingly
expensive package to buy for home practice use, and hence was pirated
about widely.

--
Adrian C

Adrian C wrote:
On 05/03/2012 16:41, Clive George wrote:
On 05/03/2012 14:22, Bernard Peek wrote:
On 05/03/12 12:57, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 04:18:33 -0800 (PST), jgharston wrote:

Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

True enough, but AFAIK there is no "generic" word processor or
spreadsheet out there so you have to choose something and, although
it pains me to say it, Word and Excel are the defacto standards out
there.

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

Does "no usable alternative" include MS Access itself?

I've been doing databasy-stuff professionally for over 20 years now and
have still never had to touch access :-)


What should be taught is bare naked SQL, stored procedures, triggers and
connection strings...

Access is a front end forms and VB thing that should have been killed
off a long time ago or absorbed into something else. Excel I think.

Mis-spent 10 years of my life on that junk.



I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond
give me a default view of a flat table.

I had MySQL doing useful stuff in under a day, and couple into a php
html form in less than a week.


Meanwhile, my niece has been exposed to Microsoft Publisher at school :-(

Before the Software For Students deals, Publisher was a stupefyingly
expensive package to buy for home practice use, and hence was pirated
about widely.


And isn't a patch on Quark anwyay.



--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that my
OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.


I discovered when playing a little RPG, that insert and delete make my
character shuffle around in a circle, and F7 lights a bonfire.

I love these intuitive GUIS.


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that my
OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.

F1 is the Windows standard way to open the Help menu in an application,
and has been since Windows 3, if not before.

CTRL-Alt-Del works on Windows, DOS and used to work on Linux until they
started trapping it and ignoring it in the GUI. The last time I tried
it, it still worked in a text terminal under X. I assume there's an
equivalent on Apple machines.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 05/03/2012 17:14, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that my
OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.


F1 on most PC applications brings up the Help information for an
application. You have a 'help' key?

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.

I'm sure you have other equivalent basic key command combinations that a
Mac user is expected to know, to get on with things. And a funky out of
the box introduction video for users to watch to learn these things.

New Window / Linux users don't have that luxury.

--
Adrian C

I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond
give me a default view of a flat table.


In Access tables are only ever tables. Forms and reports based on the
table present the data any way you please.
I had a lot of fun learning the basics of Access. I never got beyond
macros though, and I suspect most people don't need to either. It's the
"relational" aspect that should be taught, something that IME
programmers don't necessarily understand too well!

I've seen 4- and 5-year-olds learn all those on their own. In less than
6 hours too.

Yes, interesting that. Kids seem to learn by attacking things, picking
up random scraps of information, and joining the dots up later on. Drag
and drop appears to come naturally. The trick is they don't forget
things like grown ups.

lesson #7. How to Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Backspace, Minimise,
Maximise, The Task Bar / Panels, Window Focus, Select One item, Select
a choice, Select All, Esc, Ctrl-Z, F1, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Login, Start,
Shutdown.

lesson #8. How to store a file in a folder so later it can be found

And I've seen adults have trouble with some of those (myself included).


Especially in Win 7 :-)

Tim Streater wrote
Bernard Peek wrote
Tim Streater wrote

[1] They need a lesson to understand what an OS is, and that there are others besides Windows. They need two more
lessons to
understand what Word and Excel are, and a quick overview of what
they do and what they might be used for. And that there are other
programs which perform the same sort of function. That's it.

It depends on what age they start at. My beef is that the reason why
sixteen year olds need lessons in word-processing is that they didn't get those lessons at age eight when they would
have been more appropriate.

Why do they need lessons on the detail of word processors at all?

Because many of the employers need that sort of capability and schools
are there to educate the kids on stuff that they may well need. It makes
no sense for employers to have to educate many of their employees on
stuff as basic as that instead of having the schools do it.

Corse whether thats better done in primary, secondary
or trade schools is another matter entirely.

Like Bernard, I'd personally do it in primary school, but obviously how viable
that would be depends on what those primary schools have computer wise.

On how to add a footer or change the font? You'll teach them how to do that with Word 2007 or something, next thing
you know is that MS has changed the front end completely.

If you teach them properly, they will be able to cope with that.

When you teach them to read using physical books, they can handle ebooks fine.

So all that teaching suddenly was a waste of time.

Nope, not if you teach them properly.

Thats true of your OS example too.

They need to know what a word processor is.

They also need to know how to use one effectively, if only so they
can use one to do quite a bit of their school work, assignments etc,
let alone what so many of them will use once they are working.

They need to know that you *can* add a footer (and to know what a footer is) or change the font for a paragraph or
that you can justify the text.

And the best way to teach that is to get them used to doing that.

The detail of how it's done, they can learn for themselves at home.

Makes a lot more sense to teach that at school where they can get immediate
assistence from the teacher when they stuff it up, particularly with the 8 year olds.

They need to know that there are other word processors than Word, too.

Only that there are others that anyone who can use Word can use.

It's the *concepts* that matter,

Yes, but there is also a need to teach them how to actually use what so
many of them will use while in school and at work. It makes no sense to
leave that to their employers to teach them, thats what schools are about.

and the stimulation of their natural curiosity.

Yes, but just waffling to 8 year olds about what a word processor can
do and not letting them actually use one doesnt do that very effectively.

With Excel in spades.

And then there are decent databases which leave Excel for dead for some stuff.

It makes more sense to be teaching that sort of thing rather than programming
languages which few will ever use in real life once they have left school now.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:
On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.
I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that
my OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.
I discovered when playing a little RPG, that insert and delete make
my character shuffle around in a circle, and F7 lights a bonfire.
I love these intuitive GUIS.

RPG?

Rocket propelled grenade. ;-)

Alternatively, "role playing game" at a guess.

Tim

On 05/03/2012 18:21, Tim Streater wrote:

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.

Not here. And you've forgotten Start.

That's your Apple menu. Apple logo top left of your screen (sensible
place). And then there's the dock....


I'm sure you have other equivalent basic key command combinations that
a Mac user is expected to know, to get on with things. And a funky out
of the box introduction video for users to watch to learn these things.

That may be but you're just confirming what I said, that these other
things are OS-specific.


Forget the specifics, the underlying is the same. There are buttons that
do this, there are mouse movements that do that. There are controls in a
car that once someone has learn't driving can adjust to using be it a
BMW or a Trabant.

For someone who is just introduced to computers and needs to start work
with an appplication, the rudiments of working with an operating system
is the first hurdle to overcome. There will need to be initial specific
training to suit a particular computer system, granted, but Mac's aren't
so different once ye have picked up on using one of the others.

Now explain to someone how to click, drag and release. OS specific?


--
Adrian C

On Sunday, March 4, 2012 10:09:32 PM UTC, Bob Eager wrote:
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what they
might do with it/them?

It might be ideal to control my Internet cat feeder:

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/catfeeder

The current incarnation with a Linksys WRT54GL is a tad overkill, and arguably a waste of a fairly decent router!

When the dust has settled I might take a look.

Mathew

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:35:36 +0000, stuart noble wrote:

I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond
give me a default view of a flat table.


In Access tables are only ever tables. Forms and reports based on the
table present the data any way you please.
I had a lot of fun learning the basics of Access. I never got beyond
macros though, and I suspect most people don't need to either. It's the
"relational" aspect that should be taught, something that IME
programmers don't necessarily understand too well!

I've taught relational databases at A level (computer science) - but not
with ACCESS IIRC I used VFP8 at the time

There are 2 areas here ICT - word processing, spreadsheets, files folders
etc whichh all will still do and the computer science aspect (what the RPi
is targeted on) how cmputing machines work etc
--
(º€¢.¸(¨*€¢.¸ ¸.€¢*¨)¸.€¢Âº)
.€¢Â°€¢. Nik .€¢Â°€¢.
(¸.€¢Âº(¸.€¢Â¨* *¨€¢.¸)º€¢.¸)

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Rod Speed wrote:


It certainly doesnt make any sense to be teaching plumbers pure maths
unless they want to do that.

Actually EVERYBODY ought to have if not the facility to use it, a basic
*understanding* of pure maths philosophy and science.

If you are the result of studying philosophy I think we can manage without
it.

John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Tim Streater wrote
wrote
Bob Eager wrote:
Bob Eager wrote

Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I am told, for mine) does anyone have any
interesting ideas about what they might do with it/them?

I've heard of car computers, TV boxes, PBCes as ideas...

I remember a similar looking dev board that came out back around 1981 .. it had a built in Hexadecimal keypad...
you do a whole days worth of coding and get a stepper motor to revolve or a set of LED's chase a traffic light
sequence.

The issue was none of the students could be arsed to do this more
than once .... then would rather play with the Commodore pet.

I think that is the problem with Dev board approach, it provides so
little for your effort when you can instead just go use a PC and gui.

I hope the pi doesn't go the way of the Newton. Lots sold in the lead up to release date and soon after, then next
to nothing. I think what you're describing above will be a problem. The notion that all these
schoolchildren were just waiting for a cheap board to program at the
bit level is a bit silly, in the same league as when years ago they
expected that all women would learn to become car mechanics.

No. I expect some teenagers will get the pi and do some stuff with
it. When I was 15 I had a few relays I scrounged off my brother,
who was in the navy, and doing some primitive binary logic with
them. I could have done with something like the pi being available
then. Or relays for a penny instead of five bob each.

If people are expecting that lots of pis will be used in this way,
why weren't these people already doing it - using the Arduino?

Mind you, if "computer classes" at schools consists of them being
forced to learn about ****ing Windows and being bored learning to use Word and Excel, then that is a waste that
could usefully be stopped. [1]

I'd be interested to see what folks think it could be used for, though.

[1] They need a lesson to understand what an OS is, and that there are others besides Windows. They need two more
lessons to understand what Word and Excel are, and a quick overview of what they do and what they might be used for.
And that there are other programs which perform the same sort of function. That's it.

Dunno, that gets into the whole area of what schools should be teaching.

You can make a case that if you want people to be able to use
particularly Excel to do useful stuff for themselves, even just at
home etc, they need to do a lot more with it than you propose.

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able to
use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Bit rash to claim that no one takes years full time to teach
say Word, but if anyone is that stupid they should be shut down.

Corse you can certainly make a case that say those who plan to
become plumbers, hair dressers, mechanics etc dont need that,
so you can certainly make a case for being selective about who
needs that in school, but its going to far to claim that no one does.

With what the Pi can do its more complicated. You can certainly
make a case for at least some school kids being able to do stuff
like that, if only to provide something that might lite the fire of
some potential engineers etc.

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of
most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional and not compulsory.

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it possible for just about any parent to also "buy what
they use at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff like
that after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even
has outdoor "pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it is like to work in real world conditions for some of
these tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

"Bernard Peek" wrote in message
...

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

VisualStudio and M$ SQL server, both free.

Tim Streater wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Dave Liquorice wrote

not directly for plumbing maybe but these days running a business
completely with pen and paper is almost impossible(*).

Sure, but they dont necessarily need to be that flash at Word and Excel.

And in fact they aren't. None of them end up with any notion of how to nicely lay out a document. You'll see pages of
stuff where some paras are ragged-right-edge, others are justified. I rarely come across
anything (e.g. in local village mags) where anyone has used styles.
Want some space between paragraphs? Hit the return key once or twice,
instead of applying space-before-paragraph. Most stuff looks awful.

Yeah, you can certainly make a case for teaching that sort of stuff in
schools to almost everyone except the severely 'intellectually disabled'
and say the blind etc.

The Natural Philosopher wrote
Andy Burns wrote
jgharston wrote
BartC wrote

Once you've added a monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory (and a PSU?), it won't be far from the cost of a netbook.

But the whole point is that most people *already* *have* a spare keyboard, mouse

spare USB keyboard+mouse quite likely I suppose

and about 20 quid if not.

Not even that with the cheapest off ebay.

monitor 'cos we never got around to throwing them away.

Having an unused HDMI capable monitor is less likely, but a TV with HDMI or composite input quite likely, perhaps an
old monitor with DVI input which would work with a suitable cable

I wouldn't use a monitor anyway - since its got a fully capable X
server and networking on it, not hard to control it from an existing
PC.. it would be, like a router, a useful 'smart box' to do stuff at
much lower power on a 24x7 basis. Like my existing server. Only it
has no disk apart from a flash drive so its not useful as a storage box.

It does have USB tho.

along with half a dozen plug-in PSUs.

The Pi can be powered by microUSB (think most new mobile chargers
except apple) or by "raw" 5V supply soldered to the I/O connector

If you've ever had a camera, PDA, MP3, wotnot that uses SD cards,
you're likely to have some older/smaller cards kicking around.

With suitable cable I suppose xbox/ps3 gamepads can be connected too.

"Andy Burns" wrote in message
news
dennis@home wrote:

I think a 32G SD card and a couple of 64G sticks will be fine.
The USB sticks will be much quicker than the SD card so I may just use
the sticks.

I think you'll need a small SD card to boot it, clearly it doesn't have a
BIOS to allow "conventional" USB booting, AIUI it's the GPU that performs
the bootstrap from SD and then hands over to the ARM ...

I expect it will boot from USB or SD card, but we will see soon enough.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:
On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start,
are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.
I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you
that my OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.

I discovered when playing a little RPG, that insert and delete make my
character shuffle around in a circle, and F7 lights a bonfire.

I love these intuitive GUIS.

RPG?


Role Playing Game. Dungeons and Dragons? also a MUD - multiuser dungeon?

Your character walks around killing things and making things and trading..

www.eternal-lands.com

It runs on Linux and its free, which is why I tried it.

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

Rod Speed wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote
Rod Speed wrote

It certainly doesnt make any sense to be teaching plumbers pure maths unless they want to do that.

Actually EVERYBODY ought to have if not the facility to use it, a basic *understanding* of pure maths philosophy and
science.

Dont agree with that with the sort of individual that is
only able to do stuff like drive a truck etc with pure maths.

And I'm not convinced its even possible to do with science
with the worst of the fundys that believe that their collection
of fairy storys is the literal word of some god or other.

Buy that I don't mean following the reasoning, just understanding where it fits in the general pool of knowledge.

I believe thats beyond a decent subset of kids.

Just how big that subset is is another question.

There's a reason that the sales of 'natural' remedys is so unbelievable.

Then I could dispense with the signature below.

I had to plough through Penrose twice before I realised WTF he was actually doing...and that it was in principle,
simple ..

And there is a very substantial subset of the kids that will never manage that, even
with the best teachers, and it will never be possible to have most teachers that good.

though the actual mechanics of manipulating abstract algebras, I will take on trust.

I'm not convinced that it makes much sense to even be teaching that stuff to say hair dressers.

Makes more sense to concentrate on much more basic stuff like
not actually racking up debts that incur very high interest rates etc
and even with that, I dont believe that even the best teachers can
get even that message thru to some of the more stupid kids.

I setup DSL and voip for a kid's family that has just left high school after
doing all the years that are available to do, with quite decent results.

I keep getting questions about whether the voip invoice means that
he has a credit and so has money he can spend etc, with one of the
clearer statement formats around. There is something very fundamentally
wrong with an education system that produces a result like that.

Account Summary
Opening Balance $10.00 CR
Call Charge $1.50 DR
Service Charge $4.95 DR
Payment $6.45 CR
Closing Balance $10.00 CR

I cant decide if he's just thick or just super cautious and wants confirmation etc.


You need to learn then. You have not even understood the point.
That is arithmetic, not mathematics.



--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

On 05/03/12 19:31, dennis@home wrote:


"Bernard Peek" wrote in message
...

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

VisualStudio and M$ SQL server, both free.

I did say without writing a line of code. If you look at the Express
editions of VS you will find out that they are designed to make database
programming difficult.

--
Bernard Peek

Bernard Peek wrote:

On 05/03/12 19:31, dennis@home wrote:

VisualStudio and M$ SQL server, both free.

I did say without writing a line of code. If you look at the Express
editions of VS you will find out that they are designed to make database
programming difficult.

I wouldn't put it that strongly, ok so the VSE webdev can't create
databases, but you can just do that in SQL studio, then import the
database as the model of your MVC (model/view/controller) it
automagically creates generates the controller code for each table, and
web pages per view for CRUD (create/update/delete) functions for each
controller, following whatever relations you made within the database.

No, I wouldn't recommend it to a newbie (but I'm a bit snobbish and
would hesitate to recommend MS access either) but it's the first time in
about 15 years I've been impressed by the amount that VS(E) does for you
.... of course when you start tinkering you still wish it'd do more for
you, but I wouldn't knock it, it *does* get you a basic functional
web-based app without writing a line of code.

dennis@home wrote:

"Andy Burns" wrote:

I think you'll need a small SD card to boot it, clearly it doesn't
have a BIOS to allow "conventional" USB booting, AIUI it's the GPU
that performs the bootstrap from SD and then hands over to the ARM ...

I expect it will boot from USB or SD card

I expect you'll be disappointed ...

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

"You have to boot from SD but a USB HD can 'take over' after the initial
boot. You cannot boot without an SD card."

jgharston wrote
Dave Liquorice wrote

Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

Word processors and spreadsheets are a lot
more complicated than a car user interface wise.

It isnt really feasible to teach either word processing or spreadsheets
without using specific examples of those, and it makes no sense to not
be using the most commonly used ones.

Its arguable if its worth bothering with the pre 2007 UI of Word and
Excel when few will bother to get those older versions for their own
systems and the student versions of the latest UI are so cheap.

Andy Burns wrote:

Bernard Peek wrote:

If you look at the Express
editions of VS you will find out that they are designed to make database
programming difficult.

I wouldn't put it that strongly, ok so the VSE webdev can't create
databases

Even that's not true, depends whether you prefer database first (in
which case you can't use VSE to create the database) or to write code
first (in which case VSE will create a SQL schema from your object
model, but there's the disadvantage that if you want to change the
schema it will drop and re-create everything rather than import
incremental schema changes if you make them in the database).

Anyway, enough MS advert from me, but VSWD(E) is a decent alternative to
writing and distributing an access app if you vaguely know what you're
doing.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:

I keep getting questions about whether the voip invoice means that
he has a credit and so has money he can spend etc, with one of the
clearer statement formats around. There is something very fundamentally
wrong with an education system that produces a result like that.
Account Summary
Opening Balance $10.00 CR
Call Charge $1.50 DR
Service Charge $4.95 DR
Payment $6.45 CR
Closing Balance $10.00 CR
I cant decide if he's just thick or just super cautious and wants
confirmation etc. You need to learn then. You have not even
understood the point.
That is arithmetic, not mathematics.

Sums, is what we used to call it. Calling it "Maths" has just been part
of the dumbing down process.


Nah.. Reeling Writhing and Arthriticmetic. The three R's

sums was just the first bit before you got to doing long division.

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

The Natural Philosopher wrote
Adrian C wrote
Clive George wrote
Bernard Peek wrote
Dave Liquorice wrote
jgharston wrote

Word and Excel do need to be taught,

No, word processing and spreadsheets. You don't teach somebody
to drive a Ford Focus, you teach them how to drive a car.

True enough, but AFAIK there is no "generic" word processor or
spreadsheet out there so you have to choose something and,
although it pains me to say it, Word and Excel are the defacto
standards out there.

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

Does "no usable alternative" include MS Access itself?

I've been doing databasy-stuff professionally for over 20 years now and have still never had to touch access :-)

What should be taught is bare naked SQL, stored procedures, triggers
and connection strings...

Access is a front end forms and VB thing that should have been killed
off a long time ago or absorbed into something else. Excel I think.

Mis-spent 10 years of my life on that junk.

I once spent several days trying to get access to do something beyond give me a default view of a flat table.

Then you are a VERY slow learner.

I had MySQL doing useful stuff in under a day,

Ditto.

and couple into a php html form in less than a week.

Meanwhile, my niece has been exposed to Microsoft Publisher at school :-(

Before the Software For Students deals, Publisher was a stupefyingly expensive package to buy for home practice use,
and hence was pirated about widely.

And isn't a patch on Quark anwyay.

Most dont need that for their club newsletter etc.

"Bernard Peek" wrote in message
...
On 05/03/12 19:31, dennis@home wrote:


"Bernard Peek" wrote in message
...

Some schools are using Open/Libre Office for word-processing and
spreadsheets, but there is still no usable alternative to MS Access.

VisualStudio and M$ SQL server, both free.

I did say without writing a line of code. If you look at the Express
editions of VS you will find out that they are designed to make database
programming difficult.

I didn't think so, you can make databases with forms and the like without
any code.

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:14:53 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start,
are all
OS-specific.

But still there, in some form across all OS's.

But dependant on the partcular GUI you are using, even on the same
OS.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for,

Brings up context sensitive help, sometimes.

but I can tell you that my OS has no equivalent to Start

No Start here either.

or CTRL-Alt-Del.

I've got that but you don't use it unless you *really* have to as it
might not shut the file system down properly.

It's all well and good syaing you need to learn how to do that list
of things but there a subtle variations between versions of the same
GUI. Once you move to a different GUI there can be major differences.
Personally I don't like Windows, it's inconsistent, Mac I positively
detest, the K Desktop isn't bad, Gnome is to dumbed down.
Presentation Manager gets it more or less right but I doubt many here
have used a system with PM on it.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:38:48 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

"Andy Burns" wrote in message
news
dennis@home wrote:

I think a 32G SD card and a couple of 64G sticks will be fine. The USB
sticks will be much quicker than the SD card so I may just use the
sticks.

I think you'll need a small SD card to boot it, clearly it doesn't have
a BIOS to allow "conventional" USB booting, AIUI it's the GPU that
performs the bootstrap from SD and then hands over to the ARM ...

I expect it will boot from USB or SD card, but we will see soon enough.

It boots from SD card, although the GPU is apparently the actual boot
processor.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 14:52:14 -0000, BartC wrote:

... Window Focus ...

And I've seen adults have trouble with some of those (myself included).

That maybe because on some OS's you can't make any window have focus
or even move others about at anytime. Those two "features" are
probably the most annoying thing of that OS. Followed closely by
opening a blocking dialog box *behind* everything else on the
desktop.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:37:18 +0000, John Williamson wrote:

Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Adrian C
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are
all OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that my
OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.

F1 is the Windows standard way to open the Help menu in an application,
and has been since Windows 3, if not before.

Long before. It was documented as the preferred Help key on the very
first PC (there's a list of recommended keys in the original Technical
Reference Manual, circa 1981).

CTRL-Alt-Del works on Windows, DOS and used to work on Linux until they
started trapping it and ignoring it in the GUI. The last time I tried
it, it still worked in a text terminal under X. I assume there's an
equivalent on Apple machines.

But it works differently on DOS and Windows, of course.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:21:47 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 05/03/2012 17:14, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Adrian C
wrote:

On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start, are
all OS-specific.

But still there, in some form across all OS's.

Nope.

I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you that
my OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.

F1 on most PC applications brings up the Help information for an
application. You have a 'help' key?

Not on this keybaord. SWMBO's has one, but generally you look in the
app's Help menu.

Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC with Windows is a short cut for starting task
manager, locking, logging out or rebooting the machine.

Not here. And you've forgotten Start.

My Windows system (used rarely) doesn't *have* a Start button.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 05/03/12 17:31, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:
On 05/03/2012 16:04, Tim Streater wrote:

Minimise, maximise, Task Bar, CTRL-Z, F1, CTRL-Alt-Del, Start,
are all
OS-specific.


But still there, in some form across all OS's.
I've no idea what F1 is supposed to be for, but I can tell you
that my OS has no equivalent to Start or CTRL-Alt-Del.

I discovered when playing a little RPG, that insert and delete make my
character shuffle around in a circle, and F7 lights a bonfire.

I love these intuitive GUIS.

RPG?

Report Program Generator?


--
djc

On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:39:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Ooo. Just thought of another use with the addition of a USB DSAT
or
DDTV dongle. An off air digital radio receiver so one doesn't need
the telly on. Controlable over its ethernet port via a web
interface
(one assumes the linux it comes with has a web server?). This
could
be expanded to an internet radio as well if one wasn't worried
about
gobbling up (possibly expensive) internet bandwidth.

no FLASH plugins - so no web radio IIRC.

Cos most Beeb content is flash,.

AIUI Flash is only a wrapper around standard coded streams, I think
there is some link with DRM in there though just to make life
difficult.

Makes a good ON AIR RX with a dongle tho. Has it got sound?

Yes, little point in having HDMI and the abilty to process
information fast enough to produce HDTV signals with out sound...

Except you need a [more expensive than a TV] monitor..

I don't follow what you are saying there. Why do you need a monitor?
A Pi has HDMI out just plug it into a telly and get both pictures and
sound.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 05/03/2012 22:56, Dave Liquorice wrote:

It's all well and good syaing you need to learn how to do that list
of things but there a subtle variations between versions of the same
GUI. Once you move to a different GUI there can be major differences.
Personally I don't like Windows, it's inconsistent, Mac I positively
detest, the K Desktop isn't bad, Gnome is to dumbed down.
Presentation Manager gets it more or less right but I doubt many here
have used a system with PM on it.

waves

Personally I'm quite used to a combination of classic mode XP and a 4NT
prompt for most of the actual file work. Didn't really get on with PM
that much.