"Classmate specs are better than XO. There is a bit of goods in XO hardware, but not all that much"
Depends on your definition of 'better'. I don't think the OLPC hardware should be underestimated. The Classmate may have a faster processor and more storage, but it also has a shorter battery life, no 'e-book' mode, no mesh network, isn't nearly as rugged or user serviceable, and costs more. Given that a 366MHz processor and 128MB RAM is a perfectly respectable combo as long as the software is tuned for it, flexibility and longevity ought to be a more significant factor than raw [on-paper] grunt.
Do you understand how copyright works? All rights are implicitly retained by the author for the duration except for those they explicitly give away. Where exactly on Harvard's copyright notice does it give third-parties the right to modify it, or to remove the original copyright notice and present it as original work?
Oh, and the notion that anything coming out of the DI could be described as "educational" is also pretty laughable when the DI has repeatedly demonstrated - from its Wedge Document onwards - that its major aim here is to sabotage science and science education by the aggressive promotion of thoroughly debunked creationist propaganda.
But hey - and to throw your own words back at yourself - "don't let the facts interfere with your smear campaign".
Competition is great. Microsoft selling their products as $3 a pop isn't competition though, unless you think $3 is cost price or greater. That's a subsidised loss leader intended to undercut the competition and thereby put them out of business, a classic anti-competitive tactic. You're welcome to disagree, of course, but try fitting out a US-based organisation with $3 copies of MS software and see how long it takes the BSA to drop on them like a ton of bricks.
There are some especially nice developer/unix features -- DTrace, extensive support for Ruby, and 'bridges' to allow Ruby and Python apps to enjoy Cocoa and the OSX scripting interfaces.
While you wouldn't know it from Apple's cleverly worded 'feature list' page, the aforementioned Cocoa bridges are really just new releases of RubyCocoa and PyObjC, both of which are already well-established OSS projects. While Apple and others have put a load of work into polishing and improving these new versions, and it's great to see them finally receive an 'official blessing' which they totally deserve, you don't actually require Leopard in order to get your mittson them.:) Likewise, third-party scripting bridges have also been available for quite some time (although Apple's gone with its own solution in Leopard); see my sig.
I'll definitely be checking out the new DTrace stuff though; while having an oh-so-conveniently pre-installed Rails might be just the thing that finally tempts me to learn it...
"Admittedly, the Times article just talks about GCSEs [...] and never makes any comparison to the Scottish equivalent"
Don't worry, there's not much left to compare. Scottish secondary science education already got gutted years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
"Classmate specs are better than XO. There is a bit of goods in XO hardware, but not all that much"
Depends on your definition of 'better'. I don't think the OLPC hardware should be underestimated. The Classmate may have a faster processor and more storage, but it also has a shorter battery life, no 'e-book' mode, no mesh network, isn't nearly as rugged or user serviceable, and costs more. Given that a 366MHz processor and 128MB RAM is a perfectly respectable combo as long as the software is tuned for it, flexibility and longevity ought to be a more significant factor than raw [on-paper] grunt.
There's a nice recent take-apart here:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=218
Obviously a great deal of thought and design has gone into these beasties. If only my own (much-battered) machines were built like that...
Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian. Winged horses. Texas creationists genetically closer to sea squirts than chimps.
Do you understand how copyright works? All rights are implicitly retained by the author for the duration except for those they explicitly give away. Where exactly on Harvard's copyright notice does it give third-parties the right to modify it, or to remove the original copyright notice and present it as original work?
Oh, and the notion that anything coming out of the DI could be described as "educational" is also pretty laughable when the DI has repeatedly demonstrated - from its Wedge Document onwards - that its major aim here is to sabotage science and science education by the aggressive promotion of thoroughly debunked creationist propaganda.
But hey - and to throw your own words back at yourself - "don't let the facts interfere with your smear campaign".
Competition is great. Microsoft selling their products as $3 a pop isn't competition though, unless you think $3 is cost price or greater. That's a subsidised loss leader intended to undercut the competition and thereby put them out of business, a classic anti-competitive tactic. You're welcome to disagree, of course, but try fitting out a US-based organisation with $3 copies of MS software and see how long it takes the BSA to drop on them like a ton of bricks.
While you wouldn't know it from Apple's cleverly worded 'feature list' page, the aforementioned Cocoa bridges are really just new releases of RubyCocoa and PyObjC, both of which are already well-established OSS projects. While Apple and others have put a load of work into polishing and improving these new versions, and it's great to see them finally receive an 'official blessing' which they totally deserve, you don't actually require Leopard in order to get your mitts on them. :) Likewise, third-party scripting bridges have also been available for quite some time (although Apple's gone with its own solution in Leopard); see my sig.
I'll definitely be checking out the new DTrace stuff though; while having an oh-so-conveniently pre-installed Rails might be just the thing that finally tempts me to learn it...
"Admittedly, the Times article just talks about GCSEs [...] and never makes any comparison to the Scottish equivalent" Don't worry, there's not much left to compare. Scottish secondary science education already got gutted years ago.