Rants: Steve Jobs Fixes Schools
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More remarks on the Apple CEO's controversial speech on teachers unions and education reform. Plus: Links to our  most popular blog posts.
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A minor data disaster reveals a small flaw and briefly dampens my early adopter's enthusiasm, but Steve Jobs' wonder phone remains my favorite gadget of all time. Here's why. Commentary by Leander Kahney.
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When I suggested in a recent column that a problematic 5 percent of employees account for 75 percent of the IT support burden, I expected a wave of âright on!â letters from IT support staffers. After the column was published, the letters did come â most of them disagreeing with my premise, with one reader suggesting that the real whiner was yours truly. I still think itâs outside the realm of overextended IT departments to provide training on basic computing skills (which I defined as âmanaging and finding files, and basic working knowledge of suites such as MS Officeâ). But my thinking was adjusted a bit by the thoughtful feedback.
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Sandro Zic recently gave a presentation on Java and PHP, and posted his slides here. I didn't attend his talk, so I don't have all the facts, but I would like to comment on one of his slides [...]. First, a minor point. Limited or no OOP has rarely stopped any software from being enterprise-ready. Most modern operating systems continue to be written in C, and the large Cobol programs running on mainframes that manage your bank accounts and insurance do not use OOP. [...] Let's address some of his other criticisms: Virtually no multi-threading, Lack of maintenance tools, and Immature frameworks.
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Podpodpod Podpodpod Letters Let's get started. You all had lots to say about Apple (and when is it ever any different) and its Pod lawsuit, so we'll start there. After that, it is a whistlestop tour of the top stories of the week. Buckle up:â¦
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At Tuesday's unveiling of the iPod Photo, Steve Jobs repeated his contention that the iPod is the "wrong place" for video. I doubt he'll be saying that a year from now. [Missing Links]
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A program called HIPSchools lets parents track assignments and communicate with teachers online. For a Brooklyn middle school with a failing grade from the state, the system has meant a dramatic turnaround. By Cyrus Farivar.
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By Brier Dudley, The Seattle Times  Feb. 12--Watching Steve Jobs is giving me a sense of deja vu.   The Apple boss is reminding me of the way Bill Gates acted in the late  1990s, before the crash. Gates was on top of the world then.
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Microsoft opens Xbox development to the masses today, and plans summer workshops to teach middle-schoolers to make 360 games. In Game|Life.
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The British Department for Education and Skills (DfES) recently launched a "Music Manifesto" campaign, with the ostensible intention of educating the next generation of British musicians. Unfortunately, they also teamed up with the music industry (EMI, and various artists) to make this popular. EMI has apparently negotiated their end well, so that children in our schools will now be indoctrinated about the illegality of downloading music.The ignorance and audacity of this got to me a little, so I wrote an open letter to the DfES about it. Unfortunately, it's pedantic, as I suppose you have to be when writing to goverment representatives. But I hope you find it useful, and perhaps feel inspired to do something similar, if or when the same thing has happened in your area.
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By Melanie D. Scott, Detroit Free Press  Jun. 24--Computers loaded with design software line the back wall of Harry Istok's classroom at Malow Junior High School in Shelby Township.
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Before heading over to the Web 2.0 conference at the Palace Hotel in SF this morning, I couldn't resist doing some more digging into alternate user interfaces for news reading based on the NY Times keywords.  One thing I learned the hard way is that when you access the Times site from a script (not through a browser) if you try to read an article that's too old (not sure what the time limit is) it tries to redirect you to a login page (which is pretty pointless considering that there's no human being around to log in). I hit this problem yesterday, and then hit it again this morning, but couldn't remember what the problem was. So by writing it up this time I hope to remember.  No doubt some debunked hack journalist posing as a tech industry mogul will slander me for this, but the asshat asshole has no idea how blogging works, and who the fuck cares what he thinks anyway. "cheesecake"
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Soft and slow Complacency and incompetence continue to plague a US education system that has fallen well behind other nations, according US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.â¦
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El Reg demands an apology Much to our surprise, Apple mavens have revolted against Steve Jobs. And he's trying to appease them.â¦
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Apple fans have a little more fodder for the rumour mill after a new posting on ThinkSecret.com. The Apple rumour site claims that Steve Jobs &amp; Co.
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In a rare open letter, Steve Jobs calls on the music labels to drop copyright controls. In Cult of Mac.
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Robert's Story; the Problem of Poverty in America  Robert is in the third grade. He likes school, and he's pretty good at it. He started reading chapter books this year, and he likes that. He wishes he could go to school today, but he can't. He lives with his mom in their 1985 Mazda GLC. They get in trouble if they  stay in one place for more than a few nights, so he can't take the school bus. This morning Robert's mom can't take him to school. She's too busy. This happens to Robert a lot. It makes him really sad. He remembers when he was in first grade he and his mom lived in an apartment. It wasn't a nice apartment, it kinda smelled funny, the carpet was a weird orange color,  and the people who lived downstairs scared him. He didn't like it there, but now he just wishes they could go back. He doesn't understand why he and his mom have to be poor. One time he asked his mom, and she started crying. He doesn't ask her questions like that anymore.    This is not an uncommon story. In 2003 there were 35.9 million people living below the poverty line in the United States of America, 1.3 million more than in 2002.  In addition, there were millions living within the penumbra that surrounds 'official poverty', with incomes that fell above the poverty line but bellow the threshold for a decent standard of living.