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MA High School Forces All Students To Buy MacBooks
An anonymous reader sends in this excerpt from the Salem News:
"A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer to prepare kids for a high-tech future. But there's a catch. The money for the $900 Apple MacBooks will come out of parents' pockets. 'You're kidding me,' parent Jenn Parisella said when she found out she'd have to buy her sophomore daughter, Sky, a new computer. 'She has a laptop. Why would I buy her another laptop?' Sky has a Dell. Come September 2011, every student will need an Apple. They'll bring it to class and use it for homework. Superintendent James Hayes sees the technology as an essential move to prepare kids for the future. The School Committee approved the move last year, and Hayes said he's getting the news out now so families can prepare. 'We have one platform,' Hayes said. 'And that's going to be the Mac.'"
Just out of curiosity - were the bathroom stalls always occupied and was there panting cum..coming from them?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Last I checked, every child in the United States is entitled to a free education up to the 12th grade. If one has to pay even $0.01 a month to get an education, then the education is not free.
ROFLMAO every CHILD might be entitled to a free education, but every Property owner has to pay for it - There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - so if it would mak you happier, then they could tack it onto your property taxes, and solve the problem....
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Perhaps the same applies to you?
"but they won't be able to take it home, Hayes said."
But I guess its ok, they can still learn at school, that F grade for not doing their homework due to lack of maciness at home doesn't matter. After all, they're poor they wouldn't have gone to college anyways.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
"Apple's not the most expensive vendor in the market. Their laptops are quite price competitive for the quality of the device and software."
What PC vendor(s) and model(s) do you compare Apple to?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Or how about "No, I'm not going to buy my kid a POS Mac."? I'm sure at least one Windows or Linux adminstrator's child goes to high school there.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
They also pay taxes when they don't send their kids to school at all (i.e. homeschool). That's the unfairness of a monopoly in a nutshell.
Sorry, I can't be angry about that as I'm too worked up about all the road taxes I pay that go to roads I don't drive on.
And all those books that I'm paying for in the library but haven't read.
There's also those parks I don't go to, yet their budget comes out of my taxes. Infuriating!
I have to go lie down now...
I love this article. Here, educators had the integrity to demand systems that are suitable for education. At best, a Dell or similar is a business PC, at worst, it's an I-T project. Students shouldn't be forced into business or I-T. They need a broad focus system that can do anything reliably without requiring them to learn I-T.
I wish there was another system other than Apple that was suitable for students right now, but there is not. The rest of the PC makers joined a cartel that was run by an illegal monopolist and shat out unstable DOS+ systems with malware and proprietary formats that you have to handhold and babysit and troubleshoot and patch constantly. There's no excuse for how shitty a Dell is today and giving one to a kid is like tying a hand behind their back.
Kids need to be focused on their work, using a stable, functional system. They need to be thinking about literature in English class. They need creative tools for audio video and photography because that's part of their language today. They need Unix and HTML5 and standard networking for computer science. They need standard formats so they can share their work with each other. They need systems that don't crash and don't force them into I-T work in the middle of their homework.
The economic argument is bullshit. A MacBook for education is $900. The equivalent PC is more than $900, because you not only need the hardware, you need Windows Ultimate, anti-virus, and $500 of applications. You need to pay a Slashdot reader twice a year to clean viruses off it. And that doesn't even count time lost to unreliability and the extra work you have to do. The opportunity cost.
So these educators are not only preparing the kids to actually be educated, they're educating the parents not to drop $500 on a shitty PC and expect it to just be the right solution because it has a keyboard and display. You have to get the right tool for the task. It's good that they're sticking up for these kids, 90% of whom are not computer nerds. The classroom will feature kids doing much higher-quality broad spectrum work because of this. Kids will be better communicators, with multimedia skills. And even computer nerds are encouraged to do productive programming work instead of rebooting and patching. there are 10 open source languages built-in and free Mac/iOS tools.
It's really past time to keep trying to force everybody to be computer nerds. If you are pissed about this, you should be pissed at Dell et al for making such shitty systems.
He may not pay "road Taxes" but he most certainly pays taxes for roads since the gas tax only pays for 1/4 of required road maint. At least in most of the USA.
yes, when all her friends are having fun in windows, she'll get to feel like a looser and left out.
Well done.
on the plus side when she enters the real world she'll be completely unprepared.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I would say that because the PC world is regularly pwned by all kinds of viruses as well as botnets, dll tomfoolery, etc. etc. Whereas these are almost completely unknown to mac users.
Now the argument can be made that this is due to there being far more PC's in the world, instead of Microsoft's crappy software. I don't buy that argument, but it can be made. But even if that's the case, it still would be a good reason to go with macs - it still means there are almost no viruses to be concerned about.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
I paid for tanks and bombers, but I don't get to kill any brown people!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've seen your website and appreciate the high quality and creativity of your graphics. Your site is concise and nicely designed.
Besides web design, I've produced 3D animation and post production for architectural renderings and music videos for 15 years, all on PC-based software. Most Mac users insist my work can't be done on a PC, then become very defensive and insulting when I confront them about the shear irrationality of their attitudes.
I'm not interested in banning your platform or telling you what you should be allowed to use for production, but most Mac users I've run across feel the need to ban all PCs and rob everyone else of their choices. Maybe it's more about a smug arrogance and neurosis of control, but that's a pretty big contradiction coming from an outfit that hails itself as being on the forefront of creativity.
Allow me to point out major problems with your "real world" analysis.
Macs are non-existent in the world of server applications; Apple has little if any software addressing those needs.
Despite all the propaganda, most people are using PCs to produce music, and many graphic artists are also PC-based.
Macs need little maintenance because their applications offer so few options, unlike Windows and Linux. It's also ironic you sight UNIX being accessible on Apple's OS. Mac users have been notorious for having a coronary whenever they see a DOS prompt or have to do any command-line typing. UNIX is a superior but vastly more complex OS than DOS.
As to kids being unable to play games, that's because very few game developers have ever been Mac-based, which is further proof of Apple's tiny niche market.
Your claim about Macs getting very few viruses omits the main reason why: so few Apple users exist on the world market that no one can be bothered to write viruses for Macs. In 2008, Mac surpassed Amiga and Otari users on the world market. PCs are over 90%. Also, as soon as anything becomes popular enough, virus writers will hit it. This has already happened with the browser FireFox gaining against Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
I've also never heard of applications "being destroyed" on a PC, other than hard drive failures or other random problems that, in spite of all the propaganda, Macs are just as vulnerable to. I've had just as many crashing problems and other unexplainable wierdnesses occur on Macs as I have on PCs.
Mac users have a tunnel-visioned and distorted view of the web because of Apple's archaic restrictions against media file sharing. Quicktime's play-only format won't allow legally free downloads. Stuff It Expander supposedly gets around this but doesn't address Apple's proprietary file type schemes, which are another built-in impediment that further hedge it's users.
It's also no surprise public school boards are forcing everyone onto Macs. Besides the vast corruption and criminal misuse of taxpayer funds, these outfits are run by radical ideologues who are more interested in indoctrination than education. Apple is perfect for an extremist mindset that encourages control, censorship and a one-side view.
China now welcoming Apple in its country is really a condemnation of both, considering the totalitarian Butchers of Tiananmen Square want a totally restrictive OS to continue controlling its population.
Not all Mac users are bad people, but many share a collective fanaticism and tacitly approve the underhanded tactics of power-hungry Apple operatives, who seem determined to control all computer users and eliminate other platforms. Windows and Linux users I've known would never do that to Mac users if the situation were reversed. A large backlash of hatred for Apple is forming, and many innocent Mac users will find themselves suffering the same discrimination they've used against PC users.
That's the unfairness of a monopoly in a nutshell.
No, it's the unfairness of a WELFARE STATE.
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