Re: [tlug] refurbished Thinkpad X60 with Coreboot & Linux

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

Attila Kinali writes:

 > Or take networking: The Strong Point of unix-like systems. How long did
 > it take until WLan configuration was a seamless and easy as on Windows
 > and MacOS?

WLan configuration may be seamless and easy on Windows and Mac, but
only if "robustly working" isn't a requirement in my experience.  You
still need networking skills to reeconfigure one of those so it will
*stay up* even if it *comes up* "seamlessly".

 > > Academics waste *so* much of their grant money on the "use it or
 > > lose it" principle.
 > 
 > I always found this principle funny, and very disturbing at the
 > same time.  IMHO it's a big waste of money and resources. But i
 > don't see how to overcome the problems of letting people keep the
 > money they didn't use from their grants.

You don't let them keep it.  You just (1) require that they spend the
money as budgeted (ie, if they've still got half the budget left in
January, you don't let them buy a GPU-based number cruncher to write
their final grant report in MS Word with), (2) don't penalize them for
giving it back (ie, you congratulate them for finding a way to save
money on the research, then given them the full amount of their
request next year despite their proven inability to spend it all), and
(3) don't evaluate them on how much money they pull in, but rather on
the quality of research they produce.