Rant VI - HCPS from Apple to Dell 23
On April 28, 2005, Henrico County Public Schools decided to switch from a lease with Apple that ends this year, to a lease with Dell.
This is possibly the stupidest decision Henrico County has made in my 12 years of being in their school system, and that’s outweighing some pretty stupid decisions.
Not only are we switching from a superior system to an inferior system, but now we have to retrain the TSTs, retrain the Help Desks, retrain the entire school system, reconfigure every single file server to work through FTP instead of AFP, and undo all the hard work myself and the Info-Freeman team were doing on that informational site for the students because now we don’t use Apple.
Now, to better understand the stupidity a little more, let’s pick apart the article:
“Input was received from hundreds of teachers, students, staff, parents and community members about the challenges with the current laptop program.”
Yeah… that’s nice… but what do they know about computers?!
“A nine-member evaluation committee made up of teachers, principals and administrators studied the three RFPs and unanimously voted to recommend Dell’s proposal.”
Again, this tells me that the people that were voting know nothing about computers. I’m somewhat sad to say that my own school’s principal, Dr. Pruden, was on that evaluation committee.
“Making sure every high school student may utilize a laptop every day was one of the priorities for this new contract, Morton said. At any given time, he said 10 to 15 percent of the students in each classroom do not have an iBook due to maintenance issues. ‘That presents a huge problem with instruction,’ Morton said.”
Teach people not to smash their computers on walls, run over them, and slam them down when they’re in backpacks, and that wouldn’t be the problem. You’re not going to see any change come next September when we move to Dells, buddy.
“As for software, Morton said everyone he talked to at every level wanted Microsoft Office. The iBooks utilize AppleWorks. ‘Office will be on every machine,’ Morton said.”
Oh, really? Because I work in the Freeman High School Help Desk, Mr. Morton, and I didn’t see you coming to talk to me, or any of my colleagues, or hear about you visiting any of my colleagues at any other schools. Seems you missed a level there.
“Lloyd Brown, director of technology for Henrico schools, explained the features of the new Dell Inspiron 600M laptop. The screen is 14 inches compared to the iBook’s 12-inch screen. It has two USB ports and a track pad for moving the mouse. The Dells will utilize a Windows XP operating system.”
So… the only advantage is screen size? Because I looked at the specs, and they’re horrible compared to the iBook, not to mention it lacks a Firewire port.
“Brown also addressed the question of security —? how to prevent students from accessing inappropriate web sites. First of all, he said, ‘The type of laptop does not have anything to do with security — it’s your filters. Therefore, security will be a challenge with any product.’”
He got one thing right, the laptop is a case and some hardware parts. However, the brand behind it and the Operating System it utilizes and the users that use it have everything to do with it. Dell is no where near Apple when it comes to Customer Service or Support. Also, Windows is no where near Mac OS X in security prevention, hence why we see security bullentins every month from Microsoft. And it may be the responsibility of the student to maintain the security of the laptop once they get home, but you know better than that, Mr. Brown. Who’s going to have to deal with the viruses? The Department of Technology and the Help Desks. Who’s going to have to deal with the viruses that leak into the network and spread to every laptop in the system? The Department of Technology and the Help Desks. Who’s going to have to deal with the people who will still download and view porn at home? The Department of Technology and the Help Desks.
But wait, there seems to be one advantage to come out of all of this:
“Other than price, loaners and software, fees were another issue for the new contract. The $50 teacher fee and $100 student deductible for damage were eliminated, although the $50 student fee will remain.”
That’s good that you guys got rid of the $100 deductible. I’m sure the other Help Desk students will join me in smashing the Dell Inspiron 600M’s on the wall upon arrival without having to pay anything when we say, “Oops, I dropped it.”
And on a furthur, more personal, note, I’d like to say I own a Dell Inspiron (Thanks, Reid). Though I love it to death and I use it for all it’s worth, it’s a piece.
So, here’s to you, HCPS— enjoy your mistake.
Rant V - IE7 11
Microsoft is finally going to get in gear. Chris Wilson, one of the developers of Internet Explorer 7, posted on the IE Blog that they will finally properly support CSS and PNG alpha channels.
My response: it’s about time. Mr. Wilson says they’re listening to web developers, but where was that a year ago? Two years? Three? Seven? The latest major release they had was Internet Explorer 5, with version 6 being a security and bug fix, if that. That’s seven years of having the number one browser in the market stagnant. Seven years of misery as Web Developers have to hack their own code just to get it to look right in Internet Explorer 5 and 6. Some may say better late than never, but that doesn’t hold true in this instance.
I say Long Live Firefox, Long Live Safari, and Long Live Opera.
Viva la Revolución!
Flashweaverdreamshop? 19
Me, oh my, what will come of this:
Adobe just about swept up the entire web design world with this move. Not only do they make and distribute Photoshop, a must have for anyone trying to hack it in this business, they just snatched up Dreamweaver and Flash. There are only two possible scenarios I see coming from this:
- Adobe sits on it and does nothing with the products they just acquired, subsequently stagnating the market
- Adobe takes this chance and runs with it, and the industry prospers
I’m worried that the first is going to come true. There hasn’t really been anything spectacular coming out of the Adobe camp in a while; just mediocre updates to already existant software.
Time will tell, I just hope Adobe doesn’t throw this industry back into a dark age when we’re just starting to see some light.
The Wordpress Scandal 19
In mid to late 2003, I volunteered for a web design job for a SourceForge.net project. Part of the job was to implement a Content Management System (CMS) so the project manager could post news about the developement of the project. They had previously used Xoops, and Xoops is just disgustingly overweight. So, I looked for another. If I recall correctly, I looked at Geeklog and Nucleus at first. Both Geeklog and Nucleus took a crippling long time to upload and install, especially with me on a 56k, so I ditched them, basically saying to myself, “Screw that, screw you, and screw the horse you rode in on.”
Then, b2 came and slapped me with a big ol’ frozen trout, and said “behold the light weight that is b2.” I wasn’t sure at the time if it was exactly what I wanted, but looking back, it was the perfect solution. From then on, I always used b2 for any project that required a CMS.
When I started Milk Carton Designs, it ran on b2. Unfortunately, it bugged out; I never really found out why. So, with b2 bugging out, I had to pick a new CMS. Fortunately, I knew about b2’s descendant: Wordpress. My impressions of it were extremely positive. To quote my review of Wordpress 1.5: “Wordpress 1.5 is amazing. It’s beautiful, light-weight, easy to manage, and by goodness it’s got so many features I feel like a spoiled rich kid with 20 Ferraris, 10 Lambos, 5 Lotus Elises, and a spit-shined Bentley.” Needless to say, I was sold. My trust and loyalty in the b2-Wordpress line runs deep.
This brings me to explaining why I’m posting this. Recently, Matt Mullenweg (co-creator and main developer of Wordpress) allowed Hot Nacho, Inc. to rent some space on Wordpress.org for a flat fee as an experiment to raise money for Wordpress. This failed miserably. The people running the rented space apparently used hidden words (not viewable by a browser, but by a search bot) and the such to spam search engines so they could get higher rankings and therefore make more money on their ads. People found out what was going on and the word spread like wildfire: Matt Mullenweg, an anti-spam pioneer in blogging software, had allowed the use of search engine spam on his site. However, Matt didn’t know that this was going on. Of course, People judged before they knew all the facts, before Matt even had time to speak for himself. Matt, at the time, was enjoying time offline and was on vacation in Italy. The poor guy found out on a call to his sister whom read him headlines off of Google News upon finding out herself.
Basically, I want to add my voice to the thousands that came to his defense and say, lay off, especially you Andrew Orlowski. The man made a mistake, just like the rest of us humans. He didn’t know what was going on, he was busy developing Wordpress 1.5, a highly-anticipated and highly-loved released. If you can’t be sympathetic enough to appreciate that people make mistakes, then just jump off a cliff— and that’s being nice.
Rant IV - Mac Elitism 36
Idiots. That is possibly the only word to describe Mac fanboys. Those elitist idiots.
Yes; Apple is an awesome company. Yes; Mac OS X is an awesome platform, and is far superior to Windows XP. Yes; I have a profound respect for all Steve Jobs has done for the technology industry (whether it be from Apple, NeXT, or Pixar). But seriously, shut up. I swear to bloody Goodness. With your banishment of Windows users, you effectively shut off a source of new users to the brand that may have possibly switched to Mac. Idiots.
I’ve even had one guy (not named to protect the “innocent”), that found out I was using iTunes for Windows, start insulting me for using it on Windows, when in that particular conversation, I was talking about running iTunes… on my iBook G4. Idiots.
Another example happened not so long ago. A friend (again, to protect the “innocent”) had written an article on Longhorn that another friend commented on on their site. It was a short post… but it was extremely biased and said something along the lines that Apple should be filing a suit (that they would be laughed out of court for) against Microsoft. I commented, telling him he was wrong, but more subtly. He apparently couldn’t handle the criticism since he deleted the comment. Idiots.
So to sum up, since I need to be going, stop. Stop being elitist. It’s stupid. It’s moronic. It’s driving people away from the brand, which, to put it frankly, you really don’t need.
Idiots.
Help Desk Fundraiser: Final Report 6
So we had, today, what should be our last report to the PTSA regarding the Help Desk Fundraiser. It had a few hitches, mainly me not being good at public speaking and stuttering a bit and fumbling for words. However, I think it went over well, not to mention the Principal and Chairwoman both stood up for the idea to nay-sayers, which really only included one woman. So, with that all said and done, and with all questions asked, they said they wouldn’t know how much money they have to give us, so we go again next month and hopefully get us a nice check. Mm. G5 here we come.
Typography, Web Design, and sIFR 13
The Problem
Us web designers have a truly limited range of choice when it comes to what font we use on our sites. We have to take in consideration that some fonts aren’t cross-platform. We have to take in consideration that some fonts that are cross-platform show up radically differently in different platforms (eg.: Georgia). So what it boils down to in terms of what web designers can actually use is Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Times New Roman, and a few others. That’s not much choice, especially when fonts can make all the difference in the appearance of the site.
I can hear you saying, “So? Deal with it,” in the background. When designing my site, and I start looking at what fonts I want to use, and I see Font-X looks twenty times better as header type than Font-Y does, but I’m forced to use Font-Y because Font-X is Mac specific, I get a bit mad. I don’t want to just “deal with it” anymore. It’s annoying. So, like many, I turn and see a solution: sIFR.
sIFR
So I’ve done my research– like a good boy– and the only solution that I think is worth noting is scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR), currently maintained by Mike Davidson and based on the original IFR from Shaun Inman. Scalable Inman Flash Replacement uses Flash and Javascript to change normal text to any font the designer wants. This is, seemingly, and on paper, the perfect solution. However, I wouldn’t be writing this if sIFR was the perfect solution. It’s a solution, but not the solution. It has its problems.
Let’s start out with Javascript and Flash, the foundation of sIFR. Flash is extremely popular, and only some odd percentage of people (something around 3%) don’t have it. Javascript has been around for ages and is still a key scripting language in the industry. However, those 3% of people who don’t have Flash, and those odd number of people who turn off Javascript support in their browsers, well, they don’t see the effects of sIFR. Instead, they’ll see the font that the designer specifies for when sIFR fails, which will ultimately be one of select few fonts that the designer would have used anyways, defeating the point of sIFR.
The next problem is a biggie: loading speed. Half the world is still on dialup, and load speeds when rendering sIFR are slow, for the lack of a better word. I’ve personally seen sIFR take up to a minute to load on a 56k. That’s horribly slow just to see the title of a blog post.
The last problem I’ll mention is that sIFR is mainly for use on headers. It still doesn’t solve the problem of use for body text. For some, it’s not only about the headers, but also the main text. What’s the point in having nice looking headers when the text underneath still looks horrible?
sIFR is a good solution, but it’s not the solution, and we need the solution. I’ve heard tell that CSS3 will support typography in the way sIFR does, but CSS3 is a long way off. I hope, in the future, I won’t have to see sites default to Times New Roman because an aspiring designer that doesn’t know about typography issues, or just doesn’t think about it, uses a font that’s not on my system. I hope that solution comes along soon, for the sake of myself and the web design industry as a whole.
