FEAR is a terrific motivator. Unfortunately, it is a lagging indicator response as Ballmer has initiated it.
Ballmer is not a forward thinking guy who came out with a total package solution (software+hardware) 4-5 years ago, when he would have been a leader/innovator.
He let Linux, OSX, & OLPC get a 4 year head start while Ballmerizms were used to describe Medica Center, XBox, etal.
As a result of insecurity foisted by MS's poor state of programming and internet bug/hole detection over the last 4-5 years, MS may just not be able to stop the switch by critical thinking customers to UNIX-Linux solutions. OS's are becoming just a commodity.
Users are currently free to buy Win XP Pro, Mac OS X, Linux & Unix flavors, as the most popular "PC" Os's which are usable.
Thus I submit that currently it is a free market, even though MS holds a super-majority position in market share.
MS does not hold a gun to people's heads. If a user makes no choice, then the stupid user gets what is delivered to him.
The average user who just wants simple tasks and Internet access, certainly does NOT need to buy anything buy Ubuntu Linux.
Linux may be the largest winner, once people find out that life can be a lot easier & safer without Windows in your PC Box to break unexpectedly, which the user has to pay for to fix with his time &/or money. Users do not remain guillable forever. They may have to take a beating over the head a few times over a few years, but sooner or later they learn.
Microsoft should be able to sell what it wants, at the price it wants with whatever DRM and restrictions like its ET = "Phone Home" stuff and whatever else it wants, because it is a free market out there.
But CUSTOMERS always determine success or failure in various markets. With the 244 MS China sales reps, IT guys & crackers having bought a copy of VISTA to jump start sales, the rest of China has given MS's VISTA a slamdown.
3rd world sales of VISTA are worse than the OS cost as other things cost more: 1. New Hardware needed in maybe 80%+ of users 2. New or patched applications & MS Office needed 3. Maybe your new PC goes into slowdown if you bought one with a pirated version of VISTA
How much is an OS worth & why is a stand-alone VISTA copy so high?
I seem to recall I bought my family pack of OSX 10.4 for around $150 for use on up to 5 computers, and there was no choice in which of 6 versions of OSX I would buy, and I did not fear that all sorts of things would crash when I upgraded from 10.3 (and they didn't).
Just my opinion, but I think Ballmer goes by 2010. I understand that pricing as high as the market will bear works in Tiffanys, but OS's are COMMODITIES. Ballmer is trying to moosh the numbers so MS stock price goes up or at least holds. Customers vote with their feet and their wallets, and Ballmer will never be able to spin customer demand.
The MacMini may be the most underrated personal computer on the market today. It is no slouch and minimal in cost @ its $599 price point for all typical uses.
Average everyday computer uses on a MacMini is just plain easy, no hassle computing. I already had a couple extra keyboards, LCDs, so whether I want to use the 14" 1024 or the 23" 1920 & wired or BT keyboards.
A big reason Windows users don't want to upgrade or reinstall (& thus tolerate crap & corruption way too long), is that they know the hell they will go through in time and aggravation to deal with making Windows run.
Anyone buying up to a MacMini has no hassle system & gets to work in minutes, and updates from Apple have been as close to flawless and trivial for the user as they can be.
Time is the one thing you can't recover. Consumers are increasingly aware of this.
Give OS X & Linux a REAL boost. Can you say semi-suicidal sales strategy fast?
To say I am astonished is putting it mildly.
I now think I was wrong to have stated previously that Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer are too removed from the average PC user and the things he has had to put up with in the past when users were forced to upgrade and then put up with all the headaches.
Bill & Steve obviously only talk to each other, with no input from the real world average PC user and the firms that employ them.
The consequence of FORCING upgrades is going to be a big negative on Microsoft in so many ways.
One high end program I use simply can not be "VISTA Ready" by year end. I have been through this and it takes 4-5 updates once the product gets its first release and that takes 6-8 months minimum. Some companies because of training, productivity and security issues, simply will NOT allow a premature adoption of new software for fear of damaging their production systems & quality systems.
According to my recollection, the difference in total solar radiance into the Earth's ecosystem between high solar sunspot time and low parts of the 11 year cycle (let alone other cycles), is about in the range of 0.1%.
Hence, if you are going to plot a difference of 1 part in 1000, you will need to use special charting methods likely with a logarithimic chart or table of some type to make the differences "visible".
Even with good charting, the variables in a short term make it difficult to deal with such small differences versus the yearly variables. Even though they are relatively small, we know from the Maunder minimum era, that they do make a LARGE difference in temperature over time.
"The most dramatic is a 10Be peak ?40,000 years ago, similar to that found in the Vostok ice core, thus permitting a very precise correlation between climate records from Arctic and Antarctic ice cores."
There is a lot of scientific data and the summary article (as poor as it was) did not even start to touch on the breadth of what is currently known from the analyses.
The Sun has a DIRECT influence on global climate, yet the author says "indirect influence", and this is not disputed by ANY scientist.
The relationships between where Beryllium comes from, the solar wind strength, number of sunspots and cosmic rays is not explained in a coherent manner with simple statements that could be made.
The number of sunspots has been near constant (on average) over the past 20 years, yet they are at the highest level in over 1000 years for the last 60 years "yet the average temperature of the earth has continued to increase". This shows the author doesn't understand lag times between applying extra energy input to the atmospheric system versus the time required for the large mass of the Earth's ecosystem to respond by warming land, sea and air to the point where average temperature changes can be measured.
These sort of incomplete descriptions give the average reader a bad view of what is really going on. It gives journalism a bad name.
Indeed I shortened my list of problems, where malware dumped on the PC from various web based exploits seem to be at the root of lots of problems, some of which then cause various malfunctions (possibly because of badly written malware).
When the computer gets scrambled up, then the time spent extracting various data files before wiping the HD comes in as another time waster.
I am into "Use What Works Easiest".
At least if Win XP Pro on Parallels in a MacMini goes wonko, replacement of the virtual HD file is as simple as can be. Plus, if you want to extract files from a corrupted PC file, you can just save the file somewhere else to work on it.
I have run out of time in solving Windows problems, no matter what flavor. There is simply too much to put up with and guard against, and the average user doesn't understand and won't study up and remember. It is too time consuming for them and me.
I've just told friends to stop the B.S. & buy a MacMini. $599 and you don't have to worry about BSOD, missing DLLs, hardware that doesn't mount/recognize, etc. They have the screen & mouse and at most need a Mac keyboard. Enough older smaller LCDs are around that you can get them for next to nothing. Plus, if they actually do need to run Win XP, they can do it in Parallels and EASILY BACK IT UP AND RESTORE IT ANY TIME IT IS REQUIRED.
inaccurate data: "electric cars do not get great gas mileage at highway speeds because of the power required to keep the car at 60+mph."
I hate to see comments like this. If you have an electric car, there is no gas, and hence, no "gas mileage". This type of comment permeates the media and contributes to the drivel that totally mushes up the real facts of what goes on in engineering and science.
By 2010-2012, I predict the newer faster charging and less expensive batteries being tested now will give us an all electric or hybrid which is charged up at night on reduced rate power off the grid, and which can run 200+ miles before a recharge, or the onboard gas/diesel needs to come on.
Custom shops in the Los Angeles area will mod your Prius or Highlander hybrid today with double the amount of batteries or more, so you can go most of the day on batteries. The ONLY THING REQUIRED IS DOLLARS. It is doable and effective today. It is not yet cost effective or Toyota would be doing it now for retail sales. The minute the battery cost drops, Toyota will easily supply the extra capacity.
Must be a slow day. Fangs will eventually shred the competition.
I had to buy a Mini for extra work, but am holding out on the MacBook Pro for Leopard. Got a strong feeling many existing Mac customers know they need to wait 2-3 more months.
One friend with XP Pro has had inumerable problems with XP Pro, mostly because of the various crap that managed to infect his machine even with decent malware protection. Then a hard drive started to go wacko, and the scanner wouldn't work. The time & money this guy has spent trying to recover from 3 incidents has nearly driven him wonky. All he wants is to get standard text docs, emails, and std web work & pdfs done, yet something is always seems to cripple his output once a month. This is the dilemma of the average computer user. That is why some are switching.
I told him he really ought to consider the MacMini for $599, which would get rid of the vast majority of his problems, work with his existing peripherals, except the keypboard, and put him on a highly productive path. My friend will be lining up at the Apple Store very soon.
I create 3D models and then Rapid Prototypes, and the current state of the art in RP parts is OK for light duty checking of looks and fit.
If you need higher strength and toughness like is commonly expected from Polyethylene to Polypropylene to Polycarbonates, and particularly when it is in thinner sections, current RP materials don't even come close to the physical properties of finish injection molded parts.
In terms of accuracy and surface finish RP models will not be able to match the smooth accurate even surfaces of molded parts, as RP models are created in discrete layers, layer by layer. Until those layers could be brought down extremely small (meaning enormously increasing processing times), the surface finish will always be "rough".
You can't grow if you don't jump in the ring and play ball.
Ex-players who couldn't make it for whatever reason then try out as announcers, but announcers aren't team owners, team managers, team strategists or team players. They are all talk.
In the features I see below, ONLY ONE FEATURE is a PHONE FUNCTION: The iPhone is a modern version of what a Newton might have been.
1. iPhone as a Phone: It is going to work, if not spectacularly 2. Syncing with Macs: I can guarantee it will be as seamless as possible. 3. WiFi connection: I'll bet it is about as solid as my MacBook 4. Internet Info: Whether it is getting or sending a short email or two or finding a specific piece of data on the web, I will bet a hot cup at Starbucks that iPhone works like a charm 5. Calendar: Given the ability to have calendars sync'd I'll bet that this is also seamless 6. Special Appls: I am willing to bet that Apple approved 3rd party applications make it to the platform real soon, to improve user productivity (Hi-end calculator, Business specific tools)
Buy a separate extra hard drive for internal use (probably even larger capacity & higher RPM than stock), and install it yourself, and save the original hard drive with Windows in case you have to send it back for repair.
I do the same with MacBooks. It also offeres you the way to keep your private data from ever going back to the laptop mfgr during a repair.
Price & use differences, & device use conflicts will keep a thriving market for all the different models.
The orginal article is just another piece designed to get the author a writing credit and meager income check, as the publisher doesn't have enough substantial pieces to put up for readers, coupled with the fact other authors have already speculated the same earlier than this article.
The oddest non-computer, non-internet user I know is a mechanical engineer friend who is extremely creative who refuses to use computers, and has refused to learn for 20 years, & yet would benefit so much from using it. It has hurt his work, but he trudges on with paper and pencil. His sons use computers all the time, and his oldest son is now at Annapolis.
These types of people see the downside of the hassles and frustrations as being insurmountable for their psyche. It is a total mental rejection of or lack of true understanding of what ultimate time savings there are in using computers.
I understand the pain of the hassles, but I never understood accepting the loss of not being able to communicate easily with peers & customers everywhere who are up with Internet use, plus engineering applications that speed up work tremendously.
"Erm, let me think... IRAQ!" Well IRAQ is not funded out of NASA but that has lots more than $170m/yr wasted you are right.
The irony of war, waste and lost lives, is that the technologies which have been developed in Iraq & Afganistan by the U.S. & its allies from surveillance, guidance, sensors, weapons, language analysis, tactics and human psychology of urban conflict have resulted in abilities and knowledge which will help the industrialized world immensely in being able to find, monitor, stop and minimize potential conflicts through this century.
Learning and applying the lessons and equipment early will save countless dollars and lives ultimately, against a medieval set of ideas based on forced conversion not of just people to their religion, but indeed also the conversion of the entire worlds law and governmental systems to Sharia law.
Defending your and my independence from forced thoughts, religions and governments is necessary, though necessarily "messy" & costly at times.
If there is only 1% waste in the NASA budget, they are wasting 170 million per year, and that would be considered a low level waste-fraud-mistake amount.
If it is 0.1% loss that is $17m/yr. So what is with shutting down a program that may yield opportunities for far greater savings and benefits over time?
I suspect more efficiency program work would do better for NASA.
Boy if HotSpotVPN is not going to make hay off of this, I don't know what will.
Unfortunately No Parents?
on
High Tech High 2.0
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I read the article and don't think I remembered hearing about parents at all.
That may be intentional or not & might be true or not in the actual school experience, that parents are ignored, but without parent involvement, encouragement & support, there will not be the achievement that everyone wants.
Slashdot Mirror
FEAR is a terrific motivator. Unfortunately, it is a lagging indicator response as Ballmer has initiated it.
Ballmer is not a forward thinking guy who came out with a total package solution (software+hardware) 4-5 years ago, when he would have been a leader/innovator.
He let Linux, OSX, & OLPC get a 4 year head start while Ballmerizms were used to describe Medica Center, XBox, etal.
As a result of insecurity foisted by MS's poor state of programming and internet bug/hole detection over the last 4-5 years, MS may just not be able to stop the switch by critical thinking customers to UNIX-Linux solutions. OS's are becoming just a commodity.
...means HP still has to offer "a deal" to customers, otherwise Xerox or another company will take the customer's money.
Users are currently free to buy Win XP Pro, Mac OS X, Linux & Unix flavors, as the most popular "PC" Os's which are usable.
Thus I submit that currently it is a free market, even though MS holds a super-majority position in market share.
MS does not hold a gun to people's heads. If a user makes no choice, then the stupid user gets what is delivered to him.
The average user who just wants simple tasks and Internet access, certainly does NOT need to buy anything buy Ubuntu Linux.
Linux may be the largest winner, once people find out that life can be a lot easier & safer without Windows in your PC Box to break unexpectedly, which the user has to pay for to fix with his time &/or money. Users do not remain guillable forever. They may have to take a beating over the head a few times over a few years, but sooner or later they learn.
Microsoft should be able to sell what it wants, at the price it wants with whatever DRM and restrictions like its ET = "Phone Home" stuff and whatever else it wants, because it is a free market out there.
But CUSTOMERS always determine success or failure in various markets. With the 244 MS China sales reps, IT guys & crackers having bought a copy of VISTA to jump start sales, the rest of China has given MS's VISTA a slamdown.
3rd world sales of VISTA are worse than the OS cost as other things cost more:
1. New Hardware needed in maybe 80%+ of users
2. New or patched applications & MS Office needed
3. Maybe your new PC goes into slowdown if you bought one with a pirated version of VISTA
How much is an OS worth & why is a stand-alone VISTA copy so high?
I seem to recall I bought my family pack of OSX 10.4 for around $150 for use on up to 5 computers, and there was no choice in which of 6 versions of OSX I would buy, and I did not fear that all sorts of things would crash when I upgraded from 10.3 (and they didn't).
Just my opinion, but I think Ballmer goes by 2010. I understand that pricing as high as the market will bear works in Tiffanys, but OS's are COMMODITIES. Ballmer is trying to moosh the numbers so MS stock price goes up or at least holds. Customers vote with their feet and their wallets, and Ballmer will never be able to spin customer demand.
I thought MS was "making significant advances into the media-distribution business".
You know, tens of billions in the bank along with the valuable media properties like MSNBC, Media Center, Zune, DRM heaven, et al.
The MacMini may be the most underrated personal computer on the market today. It is no slouch and minimal in cost @ its $599 price point for all typical uses.
Average everyday computer uses on a MacMini is just plain easy, no hassle computing. I already had a couple extra keyboards, LCDs, so whether I want to use the 14" 1024 or the 23" 1920 & wired or BT keyboards.
A big reason Windows users don't want to upgrade or reinstall (& thus tolerate crap & corruption way too long), is that they know the hell they will go through in time and aggravation to deal with making Windows run.
Anyone buying up to a MacMini has no hassle system & gets to work in minutes, and updates from Apple have been as close to flawless and trivial for the user as they can be.
Time is the one thing you can't recover. Consumers are increasingly aware of this.
Give OS X & Linux a REAL boost. Can you say semi-suicidal sales strategy fast?
To say I am astonished is putting it mildly.
I now think I was wrong to have stated previously that Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer are too removed from the average PC user and the things he has had to put up with in the past when users were forced to upgrade and then put up with all the headaches.
Bill & Steve obviously only talk to each other, with no input from the real world average PC user and the firms that employ them.
The consequence of FORCING upgrades is going to be a big negative on Microsoft in so many ways.
One high end program I use simply can not be "VISTA Ready" by year end. I have been through this and it takes 4-5 updates once the product gets its first release and that takes 6-8 months minimum. Some companies because of training, productivity and security issues, simply will NOT allow a premature adoption of new software for fear of damaging their production systems & quality systems.
According to my recollection, the difference in total solar radiance into the Earth's ecosystem between high solar sunspot time and low parts of the 11 year cycle (let alone other cycles), is about in the range of 0.1%.
Hence, if you are going to plot a difference of 1 part in 1000, you will need to use special charting methods likely with a logarithimic chart or table of some type to make the differences "visible".
Even with good charting, the variables in a short term make it difficult to deal with such small differences versus the yearly variables. Even though they are relatively small, we know from the Maunder minimum era, that they do make a LARGE difference in temperature over time.
Beryllium in ice cores: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1997/97JC01265.sh tml
"The most dramatic is a 10Be peak ?40,000 years ago, similar to that found in the Vostok ice core, thus permitting a very precise correlation between climate records from Arctic and Antarctic ice cores."
There is a lot of scientific data and the summary article (as poor as it was) did not even start to touch on the breadth of what is currently known from the analyses.
The Sun has a DIRECT influence on global climate, yet the author says "indirect influence", and this is not disputed by ANY scientist.
The relationships between where Beryllium comes from, the solar wind strength, number of sunspots and cosmic rays is not explained in a coherent manner with simple statements that could be made.
The number of sunspots has been near constant (on average) over the past 20 years, yet they are at the highest level in over 1000 years for the last 60 years "yet the average temperature of the earth has continued to increase". This shows the author doesn't understand lag times between applying extra energy input to the atmospheric system versus the time required for the large mass of the Earth's ecosystem to respond by warming land, sea and air to the point where average temperature changes can be measured.
These sort of incomplete descriptions give the average reader a bad view of what is really going on. It gives journalism a bad name.
Indeed I shortened my list of problems, where malware dumped on the PC from various web based exploits seem to be at the root of lots of problems, some of which then cause various malfunctions (possibly because of badly written malware).
When the computer gets scrambled up, then the time spent extracting various data files before wiping the HD comes in as another time waster.
I am into "Use What Works Easiest".
At least if Win XP Pro on Parallels in a MacMini goes wonko, replacement of the virtual HD file is as simple as can be. Plus, if you want to extract files from a corrupted PC file, you can just save the file somewhere else to work on it.
I have run out of time in solving Windows problems, no matter what flavor. There is simply too much to put up with and guard against, and the average user doesn't understand and won't study up and remember. It is too time consuming for them and me.
I've just told friends to stop the B.S. & buy a MacMini. $599 and you don't have to worry about BSOD, missing DLLs, hardware that doesn't mount/recognize, etc. They have the screen & mouse and at most need a Mac keyboard. Enough older smaller LCDs are around that you can get them for next to nothing. Plus, if they actually do need to run Win XP, they can do it in Parallels and EASILY BACK IT UP AND RESTORE IT ANY TIME IT IS REQUIRED.
Geesh.
Genuine Advantage seems to now benefit the bastards too.
inaccurate data: "electric cars do not get great gas mileage at highway speeds because of the power required to keep the car at 60+mph."
I hate to see comments like this. If you have an electric car, there is no gas, and hence, no "gas mileage". This type of comment permeates the media and contributes to the drivel that totally mushes up the real facts of what goes on in engineering and science.
By 2010-2012, I predict the newer faster charging and less expensive batteries being tested now will give us an all electric or hybrid which is charged up at night on reduced rate power off the grid, and which can run 200+ miles before a recharge, or the onboard gas/diesel needs to come on.
Custom shops in the Los Angeles area will mod your Prius or Highlander hybrid today with double the amount of batteries or more, so you can go most of the day on batteries. The ONLY THING REQUIRED IS DOLLARS. It is doable and effective today. It is not yet cost effective or Toyota would be doing it now for retail sales. The minute the battery cost drops, Toyota will easily supply the extra capacity.
Must be a slow day. Fangs will eventually shred the competition.
I had to buy a Mini for extra work, but am holding out on the MacBook Pro for Leopard. Got a strong feeling many existing Mac customers know they need to wait 2-3 more months.
One friend with XP Pro has had inumerable problems with XP Pro, mostly because of the various crap that managed to infect his machine even with decent malware protection. Then a hard drive started to go wacko, and the scanner wouldn't work. The time & money this guy has spent trying to recover from 3 incidents has nearly driven him wonky. All he wants is to get standard text docs, emails, and std web work & pdfs done, yet something is always seems to cripple his output once a month. This is the dilemma of the average computer user. That is why some are switching.
I told him he really ought to consider the MacMini for $599, which would get rid of the vast majority of his problems, work with his existing peripherals, except the keypboard, and put him on a highly productive path. My friend will be lining up at the Apple Store very soon.
I create 3D models and then Rapid Prototypes, and the current state of the art in RP parts is OK for light duty checking of looks and fit.
If you need higher strength and toughness like is commonly expected from Polyethylene to Polypropylene to Polycarbonates, and particularly when it is in thinner sections, current RP materials don't even come close to the physical properties of finish injection molded parts.
In terms of accuracy and surface finish RP models will not be able to match the smooth accurate even surfaces of molded parts, as RP models are created in discrete layers, layer by layer. Until those layers could be brought down extremely small (meaning enormously increasing processing times), the surface finish will always be "rough".
You get what you pay for.
You can't grow if you don't jump in the ring and play ball.
Ex-players who couldn't make it for whatever reason then try out as announcers, but announcers aren't team owners, team managers, team strategists or team players. They are all talk.
In the features I see below, ONLY ONE FEATURE is a PHONE FUNCTION: The iPhone is a modern version of what a Newton might have been.
1. iPhone as a Phone: It is going to work, if not spectacularly
2. Syncing with Macs: I can guarantee it will be as seamless as possible.
3. WiFi connection: I'll bet it is about as solid as my MacBook
4. Internet Info: Whether it is getting or sending a short email or two or finding a specific piece of data on the web, I will bet a hot cup at Starbucks that iPhone works like a charm
5. Calendar: Given the ability to have calendars sync'd I'll bet that this is also seamless
6. Special Appls: I am willing to bet that Apple approved 3rd party applications make it to the platform real soon, to improve user productivity (Hi-end calculator, Business specific tools)
Buy a separate extra hard drive for internal use (probably even larger capacity & higher RPM than stock), and install it yourself, and save the original hard drive with Windows in case you have to send it back for repair.
I do the same with MacBooks. It also offeres you the way to keep your private data from ever going back to the laptop mfgr during a repair.
Price & use differences, & device use conflicts will keep a thriving market for all the different models.
The orginal article is just another piece designed to get the author a writing credit and meager income check, as the publisher doesn't have enough substantial pieces to put up for readers, coupled with the fact other authors have already speculated the same earlier than this article.
The oddest non-computer, non-internet user I know is a mechanical engineer friend who is extremely creative who refuses to use computers, and has refused to learn for 20 years, & yet would benefit so much from using it. It has hurt his work, but he trudges on with paper and pencil. His sons use computers all the time, and his oldest son is now at Annapolis.
These types of people see the downside of the hassles and frustrations as being insurmountable for their psyche. It is a total mental rejection of or lack of true understanding of what ultimate time savings there are in using computers.
I understand the pain of the hassles, but I never understood accepting the loss of not being able to communicate easily with peers & customers everywhere who are up with Internet use, plus engineering applications that speed up work tremendously.
Humor is what sets up many good points in print or video.
Pointing out the laborious droning on of political speech by a particularly notworthy practitioner in a quirky way has made it memorable.
That is what advertising is ALL about.
"Erm, let me think... IRAQ!" Well IRAQ is not funded out of NASA but that has lots more than $170m/yr wasted you are right.
The irony of war, waste and lost lives, is that the technologies which have been developed in Iraq & Afganistan by the U.S. & its allies from surveillance, guidance, sensors, weapons, language analysis, tactics and human psychology of urban conflict have resulted in abilities and knowledge which will help the industrialized world immensely in being able to find, monitor, stop and minimize potential conflicts through this century.
Learning and applying the lessons and equipment early will save countless dollars and lives ultimately, against a medieval set of ideas based on forced conversion not of just people to their religion, but indeed also the conversion of the entire worlds law and governmental systems to Sharia law.
Defending your and my independence from forced thoughts, religions and governments is necessary, though necessarily "messy" & costly at times.
If there is only 1% waste in the NASA budget, they are wasting 170 million per year, and that would be considered a low level waste-fraud-mistake amount.
If it is 0.1% loss that is $17m/yr. So what is with shutting down a program that may yield opportunities for far greater savings and benefits over time?
I suspect more efficiency program work would do better for NASA.
Boy if HotSpotVPN is not going to make hay off of this, I don't know what will.
I read the article and don't think I remembered hearing about parents at all.
That may be intentional or not & might be true or not in the actual school experience, that parents are ignored, but without parent involvement, encouragement & support, there will not be the achievement that everyone wants.