Presumably, Apple is trying to boost OS X use by teachers, so that more students will be exposed to the OS and thus will use it when they grow up. So why is Apple not offering this to home schoolers?
Home schoolers only directly school a few students each, but they interact with hundreds. For example, we belong to a home schooling association in Ft. Worth, which has about 200 students total. These people get together, and they talk - a lot! - about how they educate their children. These parents/teachers will sell (by which I mean convince to buy, though occasionally there is trade also) curricula, tools, local programs and the like to each other, based on how much it helps them. If Apple were to offer a homeschooling teacher this deal, they would be reaching as many people as they would through a public school, and people very dedicated to educating. Throw in sample educational software (which they should do with public school teachers as well) and their chances of growing their market go up dramatically.
On top of this, in many states, home schools are legally private schools no different (except in number of students and which building they are housed in) than any other private school. (This is true in Texas, for instance.) I don't really understand Apple's reasons for excluding homeschoolers from this program.
no doubt, we would see articles about how the US exemptions from the ICC lead to our soldiers raping and pillaging with total immunity. At least it's a (nominally) European country, so we don't have to listen to that kind of tripe.
If this guy caught the infection in the hospital, how could antibiotic soaps or failing to follow doctor's directions have been contributing factors, especially given the rarity and strength of vancomycin?
AT&T is not Unix in the same sense that Linux or Solaris are. That is to say, AIX is not trying to stay very true to the original forms of Unix in every particular.
AIX is, rather, a very enterprise-friendly Unix, with lots of nice disk management features, amazing hardware (RS6K) to run on, an object database for configuration (try reconfiguring your Solaris or Linux kernels without a reboot - OK, Linux can to some degree, with a performance penalty, with extensive use of modules) which is very smooth, and very high performance. As a former AIX admin (for years, including with the IBM AIX support group), and having been an admin also on many other unices (14 at last count), AIX is flat-out the easiest Unix to administer ever in an enterprise environment.
I suggest either Palm Desktop (really - it has a good contact manager), Now Contact or Jaguar's Address Book. Depends on what you need, though, and none of these is an exact analogue of Act!
I'm not familiar enough with Java development on the Mac to make recommendations. Pity that the RTFM idiots have now taken to trolling in Ask Slashdot, or you might have gotten better answers on that.
I despise Solaris - it's basically UNIX from 1987 with very few updates. That said, it is terribly important in many corporate environments, including mine (though I am now working with the applications, rather than directly with the OS).
AIX is a fantastic UNIX, with lots of configurability and flexibility, running on quality hardware with outstanding support behind it. For some reason, not many people use it. I suspect that this is in part left over from the early 80s mis-steps by IBM and in part due to fewer applications being available for it than for, say, Solaris. But it's IBM, and it'll be around for a long time to come. It will likely outlast Solaris.
MacOS X will be around for a long time to come, and if Apple expands their workgroup servers and enters the enterprise market, it could pose a real challenge to Linux's adoption in the corporate environment because it is valid on both the desktop and the server. Corporations like dealing with corporations, and this is an advantage to Apple.
Most likely, though, MacOS X will continue to be a niche OS, and Linux will continue to be a niche OS (different niche, though) and Solaris and AIX will continue for quite a while. The other commercial unices are effectively dead letters in the long-term.
The $1000 SUNs are actual 64 bit machines running the same software as you enterprise systems. I am sure they are not being used to render PhotoShop images.
They are being used for Perl script development and LDAP configuration testing, mostly.
I spent $2000 for my system, which at the time (2000) was the best laptop I could find, bar none. I did this because I needed to be able to run Windows and Linux, I prefer Macs for my personal use and sometimes have Mac clients, and I was anticipating OS X.
I paid $600 for my wife's laptop (used, same processor but slightly slower) last year.
I am also running a PowerComputing box from many years ago (MacOS 9 for the kids' use, soon to be Darwin and a server) and a Linux box (email server and such).
None of that is relevant. The company where I now work buys laptops from IBM for $1400 each, and desktops from Sun for $1000 or so or from Dell for $1000 or so. These boxes are typically underconfigured, and about comparable to the $800 iMacs (which are not "stripped" or "feature-poor" in any reasonable sense) in features. The only difference is the OS. If the company I work for now bought Macs, given its purchasing methods and preferences, it would probably be getting the $1200 iMacs and the $1000? iBooks. In all, they'd break about even.
I certainly spent more for Macs, and it has been very, very worth it. I didn't have to spend more for Macs, though, which is my point.
Decent Mac systems are available for $800 or so new. I do not believe that corporate Linux boxes would be available for 1/3 (particularly not 1/5) of that. Maybe a Frankenstein's box put together at your kitchen table out of old parts, but not a corporate Linux box.
OK, that's a bit strong of a statement. My physics prof uncle taught me at a very young age that all of science is a best approximation of how things work, and that we sometimes realize that we were way off in cause, even though our theories do a good job of describing effect. A case in point is Newtonian physics vs. Relativity. Newtonian physics works until you get to very large or very small measurements, and then it breaks down completely.
As I understand it, Quantum theory describes the very small very well, and Relativity describes the very large very well, and each describes the middle (our normal perception) fairly well (particularly relativity). There has been a search to unify these into a single theory, but it keeps breaking down, and my understanding is that it's gravity that generally gets in the way.
As a result, I've come to the conclusion that we are very wrong about gravity at a fundamental level, though our understanding is certainly good enough to get from place to place in space. The problem is, I don't know what to replace that underlying understanding with. My cosmology isn't complete there.
It seems that either way that this experiment turns out, it is going to be one of those events which is looked back on as pivotal in our understanding of the world.
If the group, alledgedly a terrorist cell, is headed by the Mullah or Imam, is it a religious group? One would assume that it would be a religious group until proven otherwise. There is no game being played here.
religious groups
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I have no problem with the government monitoring religious groups, so long as they do it on the same basis that they would monitor any other organization. That is, it must be done based on a warrant, must be reasonable, and must not target groups solely on the basis of their religion. For example, if a judge agrees that sufficient evidence exists of possible meetings by a terrorist cell at a mosque; and if the monitoring involves only the suspected people, rather than the population of the mosque at large; and if it is a specific group at a specific mosque that is being watched (rather than any gathering of young men at any mosque); then I am OK with it. Now, if the same evidence were presented for a synagogue or a temple or a Baptist church, I'd be similarly OK with it. On the other hand, if there was no judge's warrant (or if false information were presented to the judge to obtain the warrant), or if the monitoring was of everyone (or most people) at a certain mosque, or if the monitoring covered several mosques as a linked investigation, without evidence that there was a link other than that they were all mosques, then this would be very, very dangerous.
Aside from the gratuitous and annoying bashing of Republicans, it was an interesting article. However, it missed the real reason that broadband is such a pain in the ass.
About 4 years ago, I got a cable modem from Marcus, our local cable provider. The infrastructure was designed so that few homes would share a line, and the speeds were estimated to max out at 6Mbit/6Mbit. There was no cap on bandwidth. There was no hassle about servers. I had 5 static IPs for $45 or so per month. I did not get any cable TV service. The provider was @Home, but I ignored them. Marcus' tech support was clueful and useful, the few times I had to call them. Uptime was excellent.
Charter bought out Marcus about 2 years ago, I think. The first thing that happened was that the prices started rising (to about $55 per month). Then the bandwidth got capped at 3Mbit/512Kbit. Then they hassled me about the server. Then the uptime started getting a little iffy. Then they required that I have basic cable service in order to get the cable modem, split the fees, and ended up charging another $5 per month net. Then they tried to rent me the cable modem I owned (that failed when I threatened them). On top of all of this, their technical support was miserably uninformed and useless.
When @Home died, I lost the ability to get static IPs (DHCP only) and the price was going to go up. Despite my $200 investment in a cable modem, I switched to DSL from Verizon. The cost was about $55 per month, the data rates were OK, but they set me up on the wrong service plan. I was unable to get static IPs, and to switch from the (wrongly-provisioned) home service to the business service (complete with IPs) would not only take 3 weeks, with all of the coordinating done by me (even though Verizon owned both DSL services, the modem, the phone line and so forth), but it also cost me another $30 per month to switch over, and I'd have to send back my DSL modem and get another one! On top of that, their uptime was not good, and their tech support was clueless. (Once, I called them to let them know that their nameservers were down. The tech support person told me it was not them, it was me, and that I would have to fix my problem. Note, I was on the DHCP only service, and was using their nameservers, etc., with nothing on my end but clients. I asked the tech to go check, and he came back with (I kid not!) "I can't check, because the network is down.")
I decided to get Earthlink's DSL, because I could get a static plus several dynamic addresses for $65 per month without any hassle about servers, and with better bandwidth, and because the sales guys appear clued in. I didn't want to wait weeks without service, so I reattached my cable modem and got it turned on for the interim period. I was told that for $45 or so per month, I could get 5 dynamic IP addresses. (Bandwidth now 384Kbit/128Kbit!!! and no possibility of static IPs.) When it was hooked up, I could only get three. I called tech support, and was told I was on the wrong package. I should only have one. Tappity, tappity, voila! Two of my computers stopped working. Call to sales got my package upgraded to one that "supports home networking" for another $10 per month. Still no additional addresses. Call to tech support informs me that while my package supports home networking, I had not purchased any additional addresses. Call to sales gets me 4 additional dynamic addresses for $7 per month each, total now up to $85 or so. I can get 3 addresses. When I bring my laptop home from work to use the VPN, I have to unplug the cable modem, turn off all of the machines, plug in the cable modem, and turn on the machines in the order that I want them connected to the network. Usually, I can get three, and sometimes four, to work at one time. I have stopped calling customer service or tech support, because they don't want to help me very much, and appear unable to help if they wanted to. I am expecting the Earthlink service to be working any day now, so I can shut off the Charter crap.
In the end, bad customer service, high prices and terrible difficulty just making things work will drive me off of traditional broadband. I am looking very seriously at moving to a community that has broadband installed throughout and run by the homeowners' association (they are building a number of these in my region now) rather than put up with the hassle of dealing with any of these companies. Maybe Earthlink will save me (I've heard good things) or maybe I'll move.
I've always wondered about that. We sent records on Voyager for instance. Now, any society as advanced as ours is today would have to look at that and reason that and somehow determine that the disc is not merely art, that the grooves do not represent language per se, but instead encode some physical phenomenon, and that phenomenon is sound (let's hope they have some kind of pressure sensors which approximate hearing). What are the odds that anyone finding Voyager would be able to figure out the disc? What would we do with a broadcast from an alien race for a device we had never conceived?
Let's say that Apple were to port OS X to commodity PC hardware, and were to make their own high-quality (and likely expensive) well-designed x86 boxes running OS X. If you're not running on an Apple box, don't expect OS X support.
Other than predictable bitching, the first thing that would happen is that Windows would be installed on the box by a number of users who like the hardware, but not the software. The second thing that would happen is that people would likely be able to get OS X running (badly) on cheaper hardware, reducing in the process Apple's reputation for solid and dependable software. This would reduce the user base for OS X software at the same time as Apple's hardware profits are sinking. App developers would flee in droves, and the OS sales would trickle to a halt. In about two or three years, at most, Apple would either be back on PPC (having lost a lot of money) or dead.
So the curriculum isn't actually doing anything but making sure that the student achieves a certain skill level set by the state education organizations (I think you can check the websites for your state government, find the education dept, and then find listings of what they state are the required things/levels that the student should know). Which would imply that you don't NEED to buy a curriculum... it is however much easier than coming up with all the work sheets, etc, that most students are going to need to ensure that they are learning the proper things...
It's not the students who need the worksheets to ensure they're learning the proper things. It's the teachers.
You're right, there's no special "formula" for education. I think this is what scares many people about the idea of homeschooling. The public schools are *not* the last word on what should/should not be taught, and when and how.
Here's the thing about state-approved curricula: okay, so some folks got together and decided they know what's best for our kids. They decided what should be learned and when. This has become some scary, sacred thing. Standards, checklists, curriculum objectives, blah blah blah. Why are those the "proper things" to learn? What if my kid learns things in a different order? At a different time? What if he learns different things? My 6 year old doesn't know his sight words, but he can tell you more about World War II than most adults know. Should I stop wasting time on all that history until he catches up to the state-mandated age-appropriate skills?
Where *did* Jefferson put those worksheets, anyway?
It is true that you won't find a great deal of actual courses freely available. The information being taught in any course/curriculum is public domain; you're paying for the time and effort it took for someone to arrange that information for you.
However, do you need actual courses? The information you're seeking *is* out there for free. It is possible to pull together a fantastic curriculum with little effort.
One book you should immediately look at is "Homeschooling Your Child for Free." I forget the author, but you can find it on the shelf at any Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc. I found a copy at my local library. It is filled with free educational resources on every subject. If there are free courses available, this book will list them.
Another useful book is "Home Education Year by Year" by Rebecca Rupp. This book will walk you through pulling your own curriculum together.
There are literally thousands of free lesson plans for teachers on the web.
All of the phonics and reading materials I use to teach our kids can be found at the library. So far all of my science material has come from the web or libraries. My kids learn handwriting from worksheets I print off the web. Most of our citizenship and art projects come off the web too.
I did purchase math and history programs, but I could easily teach those subjects using free resources as well.
Finally, go grab any books you can find by John Taylor Gatto and John Holt. Anyone who is considering homeschooling should read what they have to say about education.
www.openldap.org has lots of information about how to set up the openLDAP server on various platforms.
The old Netscape (4.x) clients may do the job for you on Win* and Linux. The Mac's built-in address book is LDAP (at least in 10.2, and possibly in 10.1.x).
iPlanet's (well, now it's SunONE) LDAP server is great if you want to spend the money, in which case spending money on the clients shouldn't be an issue as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably, Apple is trying to boost OS X use by teachers, so that more students will be exposed to the OS and thus will use it when they grow up. So why is Apple not offering this to home schoolers?
Home schoolers only directly school a few students each, but they interact with hundreds. For example, we belong to a home schooling association in Ft. Worth, which has about 200 students total. These people get together, and they talk - a lot! - about how they educate their children. These parents/teachers will sell (by which I mean convince to buy, though occasionally there is trade also) curricula, tools, local programs and the like to each other, based on how much it helps them. If Apple were to offer a homeschooling teacher this deal, they would be reaching as many people as they would through a public school, and people very dedicated to educating. Throw in sample educational software (which they should do with public school teachers as well) and their chances of growing their market go up dramatically.
On top of this, in many states, home schools are legally private schools no different (except in number of students and which building they are housed in) than any other private school. (This is true in Texas, for instance.) I don't really understand Apple's reasons for excluding homeschoolers from this program.
no doubt, we would see articles about how the US exemptions from the ICC lead to our soldiers raping and pillaging with total immunity. At least it's a (nominally) European country, so we don't have to listen to that kind of tripe.
At least now I know why I couldn't get into USS Clueless this morning. All you guys were there first!
If this guy caught the infection in the hospital, how could antibiotic soaps or failing to follow doctor's directions have been contributing factors, especially given the rarity and strength of vancomycin?
AT&T is not Unix in the same sense that Linux or Solaris are. That is to say, AIX is not trying to stay very true to the original forms of Unix in every particular.
AIX is, rather, a very enterprise-friendly Unix, with lots of nice disk management features, amazing hardware (RS6K) to run on, an object database for configuration (try reconfiguring your Solaris or Linux kernels without a reboot - OK, Linux can to some degree, with a performance penalty, with extensive use of modules) which is very smooth, and very high performance. As a former AIX admin (for years, including with the IBM AIX support group), and having been an admin also on many other unices (14 at last count), AIX is flat-out the easiest Unix to administer ever in an enterprise environment.
I suggest either Palm Desktop (really - it has a good contact manager), Now Contact or Jaguar's Address Book. Depends on what you need, though, and none of these is an exact analogue of Act!
I'm not familiar enough with Java development on the Mac to make recommendations. Pity that the RTFM idiots have now taken to trolling in Ask Slashdot, or you might have gotten better answers on that.
I despise Solaris - it's basically UNIX from 1987 with very few updates. That said, it is terribly important in many corporate environments, including mine (though I am now working with the applications, rather than directly with the OS).
AIX is a fantastic UNIX, with lots of configurability and flexibility, running on quality hardware with outstanding support behind it. For some reason, not many people use it. I suspect that this is in part left over from the early 80s mis-steps by IBM and in part due to fewer applications being available for it than for, say, Solaris. But it's IBM, and it'll be around for a long time to come. It will likely outlast Solaris.
MacOS X will be around for a long time to come, and if Apple expands their workgroup servers and enters the enterprise market, it could pose a real challenge to Linux's adoption in the corporate environment because it is valid on both the desktop and the server. Corporations like dealing with corporations, and this is an advantage to Apple.
Most likely, though, MacOS X will continue to be a niche OS, and Linux will continue to be a niche OS (different niche, though) and Solaris and AIX will continue for quite a while. The other commercial unices are effectively dead letters in the long-term.
It's increased the amount of time I spend reading Slashdot every day as the stories mount.
They are being used for Perl script development and LDAP configuration testing, mostly.
You could get a Palm, and sync it to one of the Windows boxes. Then sync one way to the Mac (from the Palm to the Mac) and you are done.
I spent $2000 for my system, which at the time (2000) was the best laptop I could find, bar none. I did this because I needed to be able to run Windows and Linux, I prefer Macs for my personal use and sometimes have Mac clients, and I was anticipating OS X.
I paid $600 for my wife's laptop (used, same processor but slightly slower) last year.
I am also running a PowerComputing box from many years ago (MacOS 9 for the kids' use, soon to be Darwin and a server) and a Linux box (email server and such).
None of that is relevant. The company where I now work buys laptops from IBM for $1400 each, and desktops from Sun for $1000 or so or from Dell for $1000 or so. These boxes are typically underconfigured, and about comparable to the $800 iMacs (which are not "stripped" or "feature-poor" in any reasonable sense) in features. The only difference is the OS. If the company I work for now bought Macs, given its purchasing methods and preferences, it would probably be getting the $1200 iMacs and the $1000? iBooks. In all, they'd break about even.
I certainly spent more for Macs, and it has been very, very worth it. I didn't have to spend more for Macs, though, which is my point.
Decent Mac systems are available for $800 or so new. I do not believe that corporate Linux boxes would be available for 1/3 (particularly not 1/5) of that. Maybe a Frankenstein's box put together at your kitchen table out of old parts, but not a corporate Linux box.
So now I can run MacOS X running Virtual PC running Linux running MOL running MacOS X running a Commodore 64 emulator running M.U.L.E. What a deal!
Or just go recursive: MacOS X->VPC->Linux->MOL->(repeat forever).
OK, that's a bit strong of a statement. My physics prof uncle taught me at a very young age that all of science is a best approximation of how things work, and that we sometimes realize that we were way off in cause, even though our theories do a good job of describing effect. A case in point is Newtonian physics vs. Relativity. Newtonian physics works until you get to very large or very small measurements, and then it breaks down completely.
As I understand it, Quantum theory describes the very small very well, and Relativity describes the very large very well, and each describes the middle (our normal perception) fairly well (particularly relativity). There has been a search to unify these into a single theory, but it keeps breaking down, and my understanding is that it's gravity that generally gets in the way.
As a result, I've come to the conclusion that we are very wrong about gravity at a fundamental level, though our understanding is certainly good enough to get from place to place in space. The problem is, I don't know what to replace that underlying understanding with. My cosmology isn't complete there.
It seems that either way that this experiment turns out, it is going to be one of those events which is looked back on as pivotal in our understanding of the world.
If the group, alledgedly a terrorist cell, is headed by the Mullah or Imam, is it a religious group? One would assume that it would be a religious group until proven otherwise. There is no game being played here.
I have no problem with the government monitoring religious groups, so long as they do it on the same basis that they would monitor any other organization. That is, it must be done based on a warrant, must be reasonable, and must not target groups solely on the basis of their religion. For example, if a judge agrees that sufficient evidence exists of possible meetings by a terrorist cell at a mosque; and if the monitoring involves only the suspected people, rather than the population of the mosque at large; and if it is a specific group at a specific mosque that is being watched (rather than any gathering of young men at any mosque); then I am OK with it. Now, if the same evidence were presented for a synagogue or a temple or a Baptist church, I'd be similarly OK with it. On the other hand, if there was no judge's warrant (or if false information were presented to the judge to obtain the warrant), or if the monitoring was of everyone (or most people) at a certain mosque, or if the monitoring covered several mosques as a linked investigation, without evidence that there was a link other than that they were all mosques, then this would be very, very dangerous.
Aside from the gratuitous and annoying bashing of Republicans, it was an interesting article. However, it missed the real reason that broadband is such a pain in the ass.
About 4 years ago, I got a cable modem from Marcus, our local cable provider. The infrastructure was designed so that few homes would share a line, and the speeds were estimated to max out at 6Mbit/6Mbit. There was no cap on bandwidth. There was no hassle about servers. I had 5 static IPs for $45 or so per month. I did not get any cable TV service. The provider was @Home, but I ignored them. Marcus' tech support was clueful and useful, the few times I had to call them. Uptime was excellent.
Charter bought out Marcus about 2 years ago, I think. The first thing that happened was that the prices started rising (to about $55 per month). Then the bandwidth got capped at 3Mbit/512Kbit. Then they hassled me about the server. Then the uptime started getting a little iffy. Then they required that I have basic cable service in order to get the cable modem, split the fees, and ended up charging another $5 per month net. Then they tried to rent me the cable modem I owned (that failed when I threatened them). On top of all of this, their technical support was miserably uninformed and useless.
When @Home died, I lost the ability to get static IPs (DHCP only) and the price was going to go up. Despite my $200 investment in a cable modem, I switched to DSL from Verizon. The cost was about $55 per month, the data rates were OK, but they set me up on the wrong service plan. I was unable to get static IPs, and to switch from the (wrongly-provisioned) home service to the business service (complete with IPs) would not only take 3 weeks, with all of the coordinating done by me (even though Verizon owned both DSL services, the modem, the phone line and so forth), but it also cost me another $30 per month to switch over, and I'd have to send back my DSL modem and get another one! On top of that, their uptime was not good, and their tech support was clueless. (Once, I called them to let them know that their nameservers were down. The tech support person told me it was not them, it was me, and that I would have to fix my problem. Note, I was on the DHCP only service, and was using their nameservers, etc., with nothing on my end but clients. I asked the tech to go check, and he came back with (I kid not!) "I can't check, because the network is down.")
I decided to get Earthlink's DSL, because I could get a static plus several dynamic addresses for $65 per month without any hassle about servers, and with better bandwidth, and because the sales guys appear clued in. I didn't want to wait weeks without service, so I reattached my cable modem and got it turned on for the interim period. I was told that for $45 or so per month, I could get 5 dynamic IP addresses. (Bandwidth now 384Kbit/128Kbit!!! and no possibility of static IPs.) When it was hooked up, I could only get three. I called tech support, and was told I was on the wrong package. I should only have one. Tappity, tappity, voila! Two of my computers stopped working. Call to sales got my package upgraded to one that "supports home networking" for another $10 per month. Still no additional addresses. Call to tech support informs me that while my package supports home networking, I had not purchased any additional addresses. Call to sales gets me 4 additional dynamic addresses for $7 per month each, total now up to $85 or so. I can get 3 addresses. When I bring my laptop home from work to use the VPN, I have to unplug the cable modem, turn off all of the machines, plug in the cable modem, and turn on the machines in the order that I want them connected to the network. Usually, I can get three, and sometimes four, to work at one time. I have stopped calling customer service or tech support, because they don't want to help me very much, and appear unable to help if they wanted to. I am expecting the Earthlink service to be working any day now, so I can shut off the Charter crap.
In the end, bad customer service, high prices and terrible difficulty just making things work will drive me off of traditional broadband. I am looking very seriously at moving to a community that has broadband installed throughout and run by the homeowners' association (they are building a number of these in my region now) rather than put up with the hassle of dealing with any of these companies. Maybe Earthlink will save me (I've heard good things) or maybe I'll move.
I've always wondered about that. We sent records on Voyager for instance. Now, any society as advanced as ours is today would have to look at that and reason that and somehow determine that the disc is not merely art, that the grooves do not represent language per se, but instead encode some physical phenomenon, and that phenomenon is sound (let's hope they have some kind of pressure sensors which approximate hearing). What are the odds that anyone finding Voyager would be able to figure out the disc? What would we do with a broadcast from an alien race for a device we had never conceived?
this
Let's say that Apple were to port OS X to commodity PC hardware, and were to make their own high-quality (and likely expensive) well-designed x86 boxes running OS X. If you're not running on an Apple box, don't expect OS X support.
Other than predictable bitching, the first thing that would happen is that Windows would be installed on the box by a number of users who like the hardware, but not the software. The second thing that would happen is that people would likely be able to get OS X running (badly) on cheaper hardware, reducing in the process Apple's reputation for solid and dependable software. This would reduce the user base for OS X software at the same time as Apple's hardware profits are sinking. App developers would flee in droves, and the OS sales would trickle to a halt. In about two or three years, at most, Apple would either be back on PPC (having lost a lot of money) or dead.
Talk about an oxymoron...
It's not the students who need the worksheets to ensure they're learning the proper things. It's the teachers.
You're right, there's no special "formula" for education. I think this is what scares many people about the idea of homeschooling. The public schools are *not* the last word on what should/should not be taught, and when and how.
Here's the thing about state-approved curricula: okay, so some folks got together and decided they know what's best for our kids. They decided what should be learned and when. This has become some scary, sacred thing. Standards, checklists, curriculum objectives, blah blah blah. Why are those the "proper things" to learn? What if my kid learns things in a different order? At a different time? What if he learns different things? My 6 year old doesn't know his sight words, but he can tell you more about World War II than most adults know. Should I stop wasting time on all that history until he catches up to the state-mandated age-appropriate skills?
Where *did* Jefferson put those worksheets, anyway?
It is true that you won't find a great deal of actual courses freely available. The information being taught in any course/curriculum is public domain; you're paying for the time and effort it took for someone to arrange that information for you.
However, do you need actual courses? The information you're seeking *is* out there for free. It is possible to pull together a fantastic curriculum with little effort.
One book you should immediately look at is "Homeschooling Your Child for Free." I forget the author, but you can find it on the shelf at any Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc. I found a copy at my local library. It is filled with free educational resources on every subject. If there are free courses available, this book will list them.
Another useful book is "Home Education Year by Year" by Rebecca Rupp. This book will walk you through pulling your own curriculum together.
There are literally thousands of free lesson plans for teachers on the web.
All of the phonics and reading materials I use to teach our kids can be found at the library. So far all of my science material has come from the web or libraries. My kids learn handwriting from worksheets I print off the web. Most of our citizenship and art projects come off the web too.
I did purchase math and history programs, but I could easily teach those subjects using free resources as well.
Finally, go grab any books you can find by John Taylor Gatto and John Holt. Anyone who is considering homeschooling should read what they have to say about education.
~medcalf's wife
www.openldap.org has lots of information about how to set up the openLDAP server on various platforms.
The old Netscape (4.x) clients may do the job for you on Win* and Linux. The Mac's built-in address book is LDAP (at least in 10.2, and possibly in 10.1.x).
iPlanet's (well, now it's SunONE) LDAP server is great if you want to spend the money, in which case spending money on the clients shouldn't be an issue as well.
How about License Mover or License Preserver or some such?