My reeducation camp*cough* I mean school is very friendly with the Microsoft corporation, like most schools in the USA are. It's to an extreme that for me to accurately portray their relationship, this journal would lose any semblance of a PG rating. So of all the 300 computers on campus, 5 are Apple, 1 is a Linux server only for the required "How to use UNIX" class, and the rest are Microsoft. Not just Microsoft, locked down Microsoft. They use a lovely program from Norton Inc. called "Ghost" that completely erases and resets the hard drive of every machine every time it reboots. Students are not allowed server space. Students are not allowed user accounts. Students are not even allowed email addresses. They are instead required to sign in via a time card program called S.T.A.R. that locks down the desktop and prevents all mouse clicks until you type in your valid serial number to authorize your presence as a student.
After that you're treated to a lovely desktop environment that isn't standardized between all the computers. About half don't have Firefox. Only those in the locked computer lab have PuTTY. Some have math programs. Some have drawing programs. Every single freaking one of them has Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer just in case they can get another rube--another student to think their products are somehow more familiar than other products, and therefore other competing products must be shunned. We are good little consumers you see, we do not like the unfamiliar. We obey our brands and our commercial programming, and only buy what the rich man thinks we want.
So, that said here's what I was doing while the teacher was droning on in computer class today:
Yes, that's both VNC and the cygwin X server running on the campus computer's Microsoft Windows, running gaim on my Linux machine remotely at home. ^.^ Sadly gaim cannot sign onto the same accounts at the same time (duh) but I assure you the X11 one on the right is 100% functional, if dang nasty slow.
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