Monday, December 24, 2001

Amid threats of litigation, the state of Pennsylvania has finally taken over the Philadelphia public schools. The school board will be replaced with a five member commission appointed by Pennsylvania Governor Mark S. Schweiker and Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street. The takeover is to include privatization of at least some of Philadelphia's public schools with Edison Schools, Inc. running up to 100 of the poorest performing schools and advising the commission.

• Yahoo/AP -- Government Takes Over Philly Schools -- by Michael Rubinkam
• New York Times (free registration required) -- In Largest Schools Takeover, State Will Run Philadelphia's -- by Jacques Steinberg

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dale Mezzacappa has written a good analysis of what caused the Philadelphia takeover in Political tension led to school takeover. The Inquirer also has a good question and answer page, School Takeover: What's Next, of general information for Philadelphia citizens, such as, "Will there be any changes in my school day when I return in January?"

I found this weekend that Bill Fox had discovered and posted the direct download page for the OS X 10.1.2 update on MacsOnly. I'd searched for it without success. I downloaded and installed the update Friday night and Saturday morning via the Software Update. The 30.4 MB update took a while on my home dial-up connection.

I find that I'm getting to like OS X more and more. The 10.1.2 update seems a bit quicker on my beige G3, but still not nearly as quick as OS 9.2.2! I'm certainly not ready to convert to X as my primary operating system. Adam Robert Guha did a good job of listing most of my reservations about OS X recently in OS X and the Beige G3 on Low End Mac. Adam vents some of his frustrations about the lack of support by Apple for the G3's floppy drive, video support, and outdating most of his peripherals.

Like many other G3 users, I've considered a Firewire/USB PCI card and a USB printer to allow me to use OS X full-time or nearly so. Unfortunately, I'm still unwilling to go that route when the card, printer, and other goodies, such as a CD burner compatible with X, will cost so much to replace before I even begin upgrading applications.

Even after reading Adam's column, I was unaware of the firestorm Apple had created by updating a Tech Info posting to say that drivers for the G3's ATI Rage II+ video card will not be supplied in OS X. I saw that news first in Dan Knight's column, Rage at Being Left Behind. It appears that Remy Davison of Insanely Great Mac broke the news first with It's Official: Apple Remains Committed To Sub-standard ATI Graphics Performance in OS X. The lack of drivers extends to machines just two years old. There's an online Petition to Apple, and, as always, you can also write your feelings to Apple at Feedback.

Anyway, have a good holiday.

Where'd all the ads go?

I spent last month's ad revenue on a couple of Tootsie Roll Pops and decided to let the ads go at least for the time being. Throughput on this page was being seriously downgraded due to the ad banners. I'm going to leave the ads on the archive pages for now, but for at least this week, we'll be ad-free!

If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please .

Wednesday, December 26, 2001

The folks in Boulder, Colorado, are fighting prairie dogs on school grounds. The New York Times (free registration required) tells of health, safety, and environmental issues involved in School District to Wipe Out Prairie Dogs in Safety Bid. (Can you tell it's a slow news day?)

Comicsoft has updated their test and exercise creation tool, starQuiz, to version 1.0.1. The $20 shareware is available for Windows (562K), Power Mac (639K), and Mac OS X (749K).

I installed Office v. X for Mac yesterday without any difficulty. The part of the new Office suite that most impressed me with the import mail feature in Entourage. I'd been disappointed with the import scripts for Entourage 2001, but the Office X version correctly imported my entire Claris Emailer database in under two hours.

Friday, December 28, 2001

Dave Hirsch has released Test Timer 2.0 (0.9 MB) for Mac OS X. Test Timer is designed to assist in proctoring timed exams that involve moving from lab station to station at fixed intervals. In Dave's words, it's "essentially a repeating alarm clock, with optional subsidiary alarms." Version 1.1 also remains available for Classic Mac OS users from the Test Timer site. Both versions are freewares.

Richard Rothstein, writing for the New York Times, notes "The story of the president's education program is not yet over...The new legislation seems to impose on every state a Texas- type model that may actually retard sensible accountability in some places." In The Education Bill: Many Trials Ahead (free registration required) Rothstein explores the possibility of how strict interpretation of the new education bill may actually dilute efforts already underway in some states.

Associated Press writer Martha Raffaele reports Judge deals blow to opponents of Philadelphia's plan to privatize struggling schools. Commonwealth Court President Judge Joseph Doyle "rejected arguments by a coalition of unionized school employees, minority groups and community activists that the reform commission is actually a state agency, and therefore barred from giving contracts to companies that have served as government consultants." Other suits are still pending.

Pamela Ferdinand takes a look today in The Washington Post at some colleges de-emphasizing college athletics in Good Sports -- and Maybe Not: Colleges That Once Promoted Athletics Take a Second Look. Ferdinand says that "about half the 11 members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) -- including Amherst, Bowdoin and Middlebury colleges, among other private institutions -- decided they will admit fewer applicants 'for whom prowess in athletics is the difference between being admitted and being rejected.' "

CNet's 2001: Year in Review page asks the question, "What is it about the letter X?" The index of year end review columns answers the question with "Stealing a page from the marketing playbook of the big automakers (Acura MDX, BMW X5 and Lexus RX300), Microsoft and Apple Computer introduced ruggedized versions of their operating systems."

Dan Knight takes one of the more levelheaded and realistic views on the web of the past year for Apple Computer in Apple Takes It on the Chin in FY2001. Jim Heid, writing for the Los Angeles Times, sees a rosier picture in Mac's Year Not So Bad After All.

Bill Fox's MacsOnly site today proclaims Happy Birthday to Us! MacsOnly is beginning its seventh year today of serving the Mac community.

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