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The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports Senate Democrats threaten to block education bill, while WJLA-TV notes that lack of federal special education funding is part of the DC schools money problems in Special Education Costs Blamed for DC School Deficits. Teacher strikes are never pretty, and the one in Middletown, New Jersey, turned very ugly with teachers being jailed and the community angrily reacting to the actions of the teachers. Two New York Times (free registration required) columns tell that story:
Some students in Henrico County, Virginia, have been disciplined for using their new iBooks to download porn. Associated Press writer Larry O'Dell reports that about 60 high school students were involved. He notes, "A first offense generally results in a 10-day suspension."
A column I missed last week reports the ugly side of the current resurgence of patriotism in America, Dissenters on campus singled out by conservative council Professors put on "list' -- fear 'whiff of McCarthyism." The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has compiled "a list of 117 alleged anti-American statements heard on college campuses after Sept. 11." John H. Bunzel, president of San Jose State University and a member of the council, has written a strong protest of the council's actions in Academia: A dangerous list to the right. He asks, "Why are various conservatives and other voices of the political right irresistibly driven to drawing up enemy lists?" The file in question is available for download (101K PDF document). Computerworld reports that the nine states that didn't go along with the previous settlement have filed a remedy plan that would "open Microsoft code as antitrust remedy...Microsoft would be required to make the software code for its Internet Explorer Web browser open source and allow the porting of its Office applications to other operating systems such as Linux"
While web buddy Joe Taylor wrote this weekend, "Once I get Office for 10, I probably won't need to boot into 9 anymore," I think I'll need a good bit more horsepower to get the speed I need (want?) under OS X. I still print to a serial port printer and OS X doesn't recognize my old CD burner (for burning disks, it reads CDs okay). But more than the necessary hardware upgrades to make the OS useable, I find that I just don't like the organization of OS X. Under Classic 9, I open almost every document or folder from the Apple Menu using Behierarchic. I suspect as I use the new version more, I may become less critical of it. (Note: I did the last half of this update under OS X.) Send Feedback to |
I enjoyed applying both the Classic 9.2.2 and the OS X 10.1 updates to my computer this weekend. You may have noticed from Friday's posting that I'm still not happy with Apple for the "smoke and mirrors" of a "free" update that costs $19.95 plus tax if you don't live close to a participating Apple reseller. It was with some amusement that I noted Apple Legal hasn't yet been able to suppress all the postings on how to hack the 10.1 update CD into a full installer. It took me just three clicks from my hacking bookmark page to find the full, illustrated instructions still online! A couple of good columns on the issue are:
I'm not sure I see what all the hubbub is about. I've paid (public beta) and paid (OS X 10.0) and paid (OS X 10.1) for Mac OS X and still don't have an operating system that performs well enough for daily use on my 300 MHz G3 minitower. Anyone who has access to the update probably has paid for 10.0 somewhere along the line anyway.|
Associated Press's Greg Toppo reports Barriers Removed to Education Bill. A compromise has apparently been reached on funding that still leaves special education not properly funded. Senators James Jeffords and Paul Wellstone have "vowed to reject the measure, saying Republicans' refusal to include mandatory funding for disabled students made the bill incomplete. House Republicans earlier Tuesday rejected the special education funding measure, the second time in a week that such a measure was defeated." For those of you that think testing students will ameliorate the effects of poverty, community violence, poor parenting, etc., and that this bill will actually improve education, you'll find The Los Angeles Times Something for Everyone on Capitol Hill in Schools Bill, by Nick Anderson, more to your liking. It's a bit of a "thin week" on new items from the SchwabLearning.org. The one new column is Dr. Robert Brooks Speaks with SchwabLearning.org about Negative Scripts. There's also a new posting of Resources for Assistive Technology, along with the usual site summary link. Computerworld reports that Microsoft has amended the proposed settlement of class action suits to deflect allegations that it just might be a self-serving settlement (my sarcasm, not Computerworld's). While the estimated $1 billion amount remains unchanged, technical training would now come under the control of the independent foundation proposed to administrate the settlement. In addition, the directors of the foundation would be nominated by a variety of groups, lessening Microsoft's influence over the foundation. Power On Software is giving away Action Menus 1.0.3 for a limited time. It's the one part of Power On's Action Utilities I don't regularly use, as it just blows me away with too many menu modifiers! When I was testing it a year or so ago, however, I found it to be a stable addition that many might find helpful. When I was messing around with OS X last week, I was amazed to see that Power On's Action Files worked quite well under the Classic environment in OS X 10.1. Arrrrh (as Charlie Brown would say)! I just lost a keyboard in the middle of doing this update. While the escape key has stuck for some time, the caps lock suddenly decided to stick in the caps position. Had it stuck in lower case, I might have gotten away with doing a poor e. e. cummings imitation. So I'm now completing the last few lines with a different and terribly uncomfortable keyboard. Guess I'll just give it up for today, as it's time for our annual office Christmas dinner with my wife, Annie's, coworkers. They're a delightful group of Novell and Windows nerds. Rick Pierce and Carolyn Bower report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Federal bill to reform schools has some educators concerned. Pierce and Bower note that the increased funding provided by the bill is said by many professional organizations to be insufficient. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting column that summarizes the thrust of current educational reform, Perfect Schools in 2013? Like so many other columns of this genre, this one ignores the social issues unaddressed by this law that drive many the problems in today's public schools. Philadelphia Inquirer staff writers Dale Mezzacappa and Susan Snyder report Edison's share of city school deal: $101 million in the state takeover of the Philadelphia public schools. They state, "At the same time, the state proposes to reduce the district's $1.7 billion budget by cutting 500 teaching positions, eliminating many non-instructional jobs, reducing the cost of employee benefits, and charging community groups to use school buildings at night."
On Dan's recommendation, I gave piDock a limited test under OS X and found it satisfactory. While I'd really prefer a modifier that restored the current anemic Apple Menu to its previous classic robust nature, I think piDock will certainly serve the purpose. piDock runs just $15 and the download is fully enabled for at least 14 days--plenty of time to decide if it's worth the investment. piDock also works under classic systems 8.6 and later. Speaking of InformINIT, it continues to be one of the excellent sources of information about your Macintosh computer. It describes the various items in the system folder and what they do. It also helps trim the fat (and RAM gobblers) from Mac systems. This is especially valuable when working with older, RAM-limited Macs. While the current version of InformINIT tops out with information on System 8.1, Dan's web site reports a version that includes OS 9 is under development. Thorsten Lemke has updated GraphicConverter to version 4.2. This update adds the usual multitude of improvements. At this writing, the GrapicConverter.net server was swamped and my favorite mirror, AusMac, hadn't yet updated their postings. The last portion of this posting requires a little story. Last weekend, my father-in-law called and asked if either Annie or I could look at a file he was sending and see about possibly modifying it. When I received the file (on my Mac), I immediately noticed the file's title, "ChristmasCard.exe." I wondered if one of the many current viruses had mutated or contained the ability to rename its attachments. I couldn't test the file on my OrangeMicro PC card in my Mac, as it was out of service at that time, so I copied the attachment onto one of Annie's zip disks lying on the desk and took it to our venerable Acer Aspire. I'd already popped the zip into the drive when I realized that I may not have updated or even installed virus protection on the Acer when I refitted it last summer. The Christmas Card executable had to wait while I installed and updated virus software on the Acer. I then scanned the zip disk and sure enough, there was a known virus on it. BUT, it wasn't the ChristmasCard.exe attachment to my father's-in-law email, but in an outdated file Annie still had on the disk from several years ago! Okay, now that you've waded through my virus story, let me add that I'm still receiving about two virus infested emails a week via one server that doesn't run screening software. Since I bring the predominantly Windows viruses down on my Mac, there's no risk. The point is that there's still a lot of nasty stuff making the rounds that can make your PC computing experience miserable. I noticed that Windows Tracker lists a whole slew of December virus definition updates in the last few days, including Norton, Kaspersky, F-Secure, RAV, and Inoculan.
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