There has been a lot of stuff happening in the IT world recently. This blog entry is a summary of some of the recent going's on in Nerd World.
1) This article concerning the implementation of laptop computers and academic achievement was posted in the NY Times via Slashdot. Briefly, school district across the country are starting to abandon the implementation of laptops in schools and giving them to students. Some excerpts from the article include:
LIVERPOOL, N.Y. — The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).
Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.
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“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool.
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Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.
Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.
2) This is an article on a possible upcoming shakeout happening within IBM. Scary as it seems, my company, VLICA, is currently considering an outsourcing agreement with Big Blue.
Addendum - May 7, 2007. Read this counter story - Wizard.
I have watched IBM now for nearly 20 years. Back in the beginning of the 1990's, IBM was under severe attack from the emerging workstation / client - server model of computing. Everyone and anyone in the computing industry, not to mention the chattering classes and punditry just knew that we were witnessing the fall of an American titan. Fast forward to 2007 and we see that IBM is still here in one piece, even though Compaq, DEC, Tandem, Wang Laboratories, all went under or were merged with others. Other famous names in the industry such as Silicon Graphics have barely managed to slip the bankrupcy noose. Meanwhile Big Blue rumbles on and on and on.
Now none of this is to say that IBM has made some missteps along the way. IBM was effectively forced out of the commodity desktop market by Dell and others. Still, IBM has its patents, its awesome research facilities, and its one stop services and solutions packages it offers to large organizations, albeit at a price. IBM also managed to bumble through to the realization that Linux was a winner circa 1997 or so. Once the IBM brass got behind it, IBM did do much to legitimize the OS as well as contribute much to kernel development. From all of this, I would say that IBM will survive. It looks as though the company is having to go through one of its periodic shakeouts though.
3) And speaking of companies going through transitions, we found this week that Dell has elected to support Ubuntu Linux at the desktop. I work with Dell / Redhat Linux on Precision workstations and PowerEdge servers at work.
This decision can be seen through the lens that Dell has been struggling lately vis - a - vis a resurgent HP now that HP has succeeded in getting over the problems that Carly Fiorina had in trying to manage the Compaq / HP merger. Also, choosing Ubuntu allows Dell to avoid having to pay Redhat licensing fees for offering Linux on their desktops and laptops. This is great news for Linux.
4) and finally, the Microsoft / Yahoo merger as an idea for countering the Google train. I would both hate and love to see M$ buy Yahoo. The rumored price is something like $50 billion! I would hate to see a merger between the two because a merger would ruin everything that is great about Yahoo - its groups, the news layouts, etc. I love Yahoo.
At the same time, I would love to see M$ buy Yahoo because it would be a huge waste of money on the part of Microsoft. Both companies overlap on many of the same Internet products and services, ergo in my view M$ would simply be throwing lots of money away just to find that they have hardly gained anything.
Until next time.
Wizard