Category: NewsFeed

Posted on

Students Do Better Without Computers

Slashdot | Students Do Better Without Computers
“The Telegraph is reporting a large study that shows that the less students use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and math. The more access they had to computers at home, the lower they scored in tests, partly because they diverted attention from homework. Students tended to do worse in schools generously equipped with computers, apparently because computerised instruction replaced more effective forms of teaching. “

There are some good comments in this piece. This study highlights the ambivilence toward the use of computers in education. It is not that difficult to find evidence on both sides of this argument, but the thing that one should carry away from it all is that computers are a tool. And any tool can have a either a negative or a positive impact depending upon how it is used.

I think the key to primary and secondary education in the US is parental involvement. Know what your kids are doing in school and at home, guide them in decisions on which tools to use, and be proactive about what is going on in your child’s classroom. Yes, it is a lot of work, but raising children is no easy task.

Posted on

Google Print Results Are Turning Up

Slashdot | Google’s Library Up and Running
“It seems that Google Print results are beginning to appear on searches. For those who don’t know, Google has been scanning from libraries from some of the world’s greatest universities in order to compile a freely accessible online library. An easy way to turn up these results is to simply type “book”, and then whatever you want to search for. For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin’s controversial treatise.“

Posted on

3rd Party VOIP to Get Dissed?

PBS | I, Cringely . The Best days of Voice-over-IP Telephone Service May Already Have Passed
“These are heady days for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone services. From Vonage to Packet8 to Skype and a hundred more besides, several million people around the world are enjoying really cheap phone calls that are carried primarily over the Internet. But that fun may be diminishing soon because the big Internet service providers, which is to say the big telephone and cable TV companies, are about to start taking back that third-party VoIP traffic, leaving Vonage and the others at a distinct disadvantage.“

The argument is that cable and telco broadband providers will tag their VOIP packets to guarantee a higher level of service and leave the Vonages of the world with ‘best effort’ service resulting in things like dropped calls and bad audio quality. There is no evidence of this yet, but with Comcast just announcing the availabilty of VOIP in metro Atlanta, it will be interesting to see if soemthing like this develops.

Posted on

Firefox Up, IE Down

Internet Week > > Firefox Eats More Microsoft Market Share > March 18, 2005
“Firefox continues to steal market share from Microsoft Internet Explorer, according to Net Applications, a maker of Web-monitoring software. According to the company’s February figures, use of Firefox rose to 6.17% from 5.59% in January.

Firefox’s gain comes at the expense of Internet Explorer, which dropped to 89.04% market share, from 90.31% in December. Net Applications reports that other browsers maintained their user base.“

CALI is seeing this shift. Our IE share is down to 93%, off from about 98% last fall. Of course that’s still a huge domination of the market.

Posted on

Programmer Alleges GPL Violations

Open-source programmer alleges Linux misuse | Tech News on ZDNet
“An open-source programmer stopped by the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, this week to tell Motorola and 12 other companies he believes they’re using Linux in violation of the license that governs the software.

Harald Welte said the companies have embedded Linux in their products but haven’t released the underlying source code, as required by the General Public License, or GPL, that governs the operating system. He tried to notify 13 companies of his complaint at the sprawling trade show, but three companies refused to accept it, he said in an e-mail interview.“

Posted on

Boston College, Calif. State University computers hacked

Boston College, Calif. State University computers hacked – Computerworld
“The break-in at BC is the second such incident to be reported this week by a university. On Monday, officials at California State University in Chico disclosed that hackers had broken into a housing and food service system containing personal information — including the names and Social Security numbers — of about 59,000 current, former and prospective students, faculty and staff.“

Colleges and universities will certainly be spending more on security going forward.

Posted on

VB6 Protests Continue

Developers Prolong Visual Basic Protest
“Microsoft may have hoped that the backers of the Visual Basic “classic” code would just roll up their petition and go home.

But it doesn’t look like that’s about to happen. In fact, the Visual Basic 6 faithful seem to be gaining momentum.“

Seems that MSFT intends to EOL VB6 on March 31, 2005. MSFT wants VB developers to switch to Visual Basic .NET.

Posted on

PHP Conference & Expo 2005

Zend / PHP Conference & Expo 2005
“The Zend/PHP Conference is the only US-based PHP conference this year and the only place where PHP and business come together. Come hear from the experts and from the companies that have deployed real PHP applications to solve real business problems. There will be a range of tutorials and sessions for both technical and business attendees evaluating or using PHP. Come away with a better understanding of how and why PHP can be used to power your business. “

Posted on

Ebay Loses Patent Challenge

Internet Week > > Patent Ruling Presents Stiff Challenge To EBay > March 16, 2005
The controversy over Internet patents is about to heat up again. An appeals court on Wednesday decided in favor of MercExchange in its legal fight with eBay Inc., the online auction powerhouse.

The court affirmed one of MercExchange’s patents, threw out a second, and reinstituted the most controversial patent, which had been struck down by an earlier court, over the process of conducting online auctions.

The affirmed patent covers Ebay’s ‘Buy It Now’ feature and the reinstated patent covers online auctions. It is not clear what Ebay’s reaction will be, though MercExchange is seeking an immediate injunction to enforce the ‘Buy it now’ patent.