Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "Can The Linux Kernel Blow Up Your Speakers?" video.

  1. Suggestions about redirecting the students' creativity, as at 9:25, are obviously made by people who have no experience of educational institutions, apart from having attended one with an intention to learn (which makes them a minority from the start). If you consider what has been happening at this school--I mean, the lived reality of the context described in the use-case--then you realise that for the poor bastard asking this question, burning down the school (7:45) could be a beneficial side effect. Alternative suggestions also do not take seriously the chronic underfunding of public schools in many parts of the world: in the USA, for instance, I gather that school teachers have to buy pens and paper for the kids out of their own, tax-paid, incomes. So the probable situation is that the school has the person who's asking the question, and one tech, to look after the kit. How long would it take to disconnect a speaker on a PC? Remembering that you have to not only do the deed, but also travel from computer to computer, probably including travelling between buildings. And all this, BTW, would have to be done out of hours, so as not to disrupt the creative little angels while they're (ostensibly) learning. I guess, on average, about half an hour per machine. Might be twenty minutes, if the logistics are favourable. How many computers? Sounds like they've go a lot. Maybe 200? So that's 100 hours, or two and a half weeks work (in a civilised country with a 40 hour week: even in the USA, management would have to budget 10 days to get the job done). So, by the time you get to the end of the process, the computers you did first have already had new, louder, speakers put in by the kids. And you've made it a competition, so it's a matter of principle now. Who gets to turn the school PC into a theremin? I know, I'm cynical about kids--and I haven't even been a school teacher. And many students could doubtless be diverted to more useful aspects of computer systems programming, though of course you'd have to fit it in with the government-mandated syllabus. Or you could set up a computer club, so that's someone who volunteers to give up another evening a week for the privilege of looking after other people's children, and organising the use of facilities, and ensuring that they don't try a ransomware attack on the local hospital, all on an income that pays a poor hourly rate even if you just stick to the official part of the job. But even if all this worked, you wouldn't get everyone. A few little twats would just like causing trouble for the sake of causing trouble (or maybe shit posting is not really a thing?), so it would start again, and others would then join in, and you're back at square one, though maybe a more sophisticated lot of troublemakers because of all they've learned in Computer Club. In the circumstances, the question, certainly asked after much thought and in desperation, seems entirely sensible. To people who have never been in a classroom, teaching seems easy and obvious. And bits are, indeed, good. So why don't you go and frigging do it? But in the real world, I think the questioner would have been justified in asking for a good implementation of EOU.
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