“I totally endorse the decision of Howard Hinesley, the school chief in Pinellas County, to eliminate Apple computers from the public schools and switch to Windows-based computers,” Howard Troxler writes for The St. Petersburg Times. “ERROR: THE FILE “WHATSIS.DLL’ HAS UNEXPECTEDLY DISAPPEARED FROM THE HARD DRIVE. After all, the entire point of public education is to prepare children for the real world, and the real world is dominated by Windows.”
“There is no sense in letting kids get accustomed to easier-to-use, more reliable machines that are less prone to viruses when they will have to grow up and survive in the modern workplace. ERROR: WINDOWS DID NOT FINISH LOADING ON THE PREVIOUS ATTEMPT. Face it. Macintoshes are toys. They are for drawing pretty little pictures. Mac lovers can cite all the facts and figures they want about their processor speeds, but a Macintosh simply cannot compete with a Windows machine when it comes to what matters: keeping techs employed,” Troxler writes.
The full glorious, beatifully-written article is here.
MacDailyNews Take: For more than a second, we thought we were reading a new SteveJack article. Bravo, Mr. Troxler! It’s examples like this in the mainstream media that give us hope that all is not for naught. May a few more eyes pop open in Florida.
UHAUHAUHAUHAU
Kudos. When ridicule starts flowing in columns such as this I hope people will wake up.
Together we had Richard Stallman conferencing on the spirit of Free Software Foundation and he launched several attacks at Microsoft.
He also mentioned that he was told local management was pushing toward standardizing on Micros**t products and he added “this is such a stupid decision” and people applauded.
He urged resisting and refuse to adopt those solutions. Next time you receive a .doc file (.ppt or excell) resist and send it back asking the sender to re-send using an open standard format instead. Again people applauded. The auditorium was crowded.
I guess something might be changing for real.
???
“Together” above should read “Today”
Now this is funny…
I think that this article is a milestone in the hopeful end to Microsoft domination. It’s great that people are keeping up the pressure on Microsoft, and the IT industry in general.
Here’s hoping for REAL change.
hahaha good stuff
I once thanked a PC using friend of mine for sending me something as a PDF instead of as a word doc. He was a bit perplexed at first. He said he always sent stuff out as PDF because he had no idea what version of word people had anyway.
A very sensible chap. Apart from using windows. He’d buy a G5 mac, but he can’t really afford one, which is a shame. (He’s tech savvy enough to self build a decent PC for peanuts and a eMac wouldn’t really offer the kind of garage based tinkering which is something he actually enjoys).
super@pinellas.k12.fl.us is the super’s email. go nuts
I invited him (super) to join Dot-Mac. ; )
Don’t go nuts. The people locally who are trying to fix this blunder don’t need strangers (who have no legitimate personal stake) harassing those involved. That will NOT make things better for the school or the students.
Especially since most people won’t send logic, but flames. How does that make Mac users look? It will indirectly reflect badly on the teachers using Macs at Pinellas!
Listen to Nagromme. His words are wise.
No wise words needed. And no need to get excited about a guy who crushes Microsoft with only words.
This is just fun
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here was my reply to him:
Howard Troxler,
This is in reply to the following article:
Schools will give kids new Windows on the world
“I totally endorse the decision of Howard Hinesley, the school chief in Pinellas County, to eliminate Apple computers from the public schools and switch to Windows-based computers.”
I disagree, and I’ll tell you why.
“After all, the entire point of public education is to prepare children for the real world, and the real world is dominated by Windows.
There is no sense in letting kids get accustomed to easier-to-use, more reliable machines that are less prone to viruses when they will have to grow up and survive in the modern workplace.”
When I was in school, they didn’t have Windows, it was Apple IIs or MS/DOS-based PCs. This didn’t prepare me for a “Windows-dominated” world. You don’t teach children one way to do things, you teach them the fundamentals (of computing), so they can apply their gained knowledge to any situation in the “Real World”.
“Face it. Macintoshes are toys. They are for drawing pretty little pictures. Mac lovers can cite all the facts and figures they want about their processor speeds, but a Macintosh simply cannot compete with a Windows machine when it comes to what matters: keeping techs employed.”
Macs are not toys, they makeup about 80% of the graphics and desktop publishing market. They serve a purpose, just as Windows serves a purpose in office productivity (the lowest form of computing).
“Macintoshes will not prepare schoolchildren for the challenges of the employment market, such as dealing with IT, whatever exactly it is that “IT” stands for.”
And teaching children “Windows-only” will not prepare them for…
…”the challenges of the employment market, such as dealing with IT, whatever exactly it is that “IT” stands for.”…
…when Linux (or any other platform) becomes the dominate solution by the time these children graduate high school (or even college). A mult-platform environment will always apply because different requirements call for different solutions.
That is why teaching fundamentals is most important. Just like you don’t teach a 16 year old kid how to “only” drive a Ford (or Chevy), you teach them the fundamentals of driving so they can apply that knowledge to any car they drive.
People like you are so short-sighted. Diversity is key to success. Didn’t you learn this in Biology?
Cheers…
(My “don’t go nuts” was directed at the post telling people to “go nuts” with the superintendent’s email address. The article is great!)
DudeMac…. the article was an obvious put-down of Windows. It’s humorous parody! The author you flamed is as pro-Macintosh as you are.
Heh…. DudeMac, that’s not a nice thing to send to someone who so obviously is a Mac advocate.
I have a Win2K unit (brand unimportant) that I MUST use at work. PowerBook Pismo, OS 10, at home. I just today experienced the “mblaster” worm on the Win2k. (Yes, I should hae patched, but hadn’t.) The virus scan program did the following:
� Erased my Mozilla bookmarks and prefs, themes and extensions
� Obliterated my desktop icons, links, placements, etc
� Erased my Oulook settings, mailboxes, calender and contact links
� Removed my Pegasus links to the desktop
� Reset ALL my GUI prefs.
This was just the scan and repair…thanks M$.
Then I attempted to download necessary patches, etc. The “Start” bar link did nothing. I manually launched IE. It would not ACCESS THE M$ SITE. After a few minutes, I found and launched Firebird. I successfully navigated to the correct site and then proceeded to sort through an ungodly number of patches to find (I think) the ones I needed.
Total time to scan, repair, download and apply? About 4 hours. I still have no Outlook access to the institutional network. IT has others to attend to. I’m in line.
It’ll take only a week or so to reset everything to right. That’s what corporate time is for, though, isn’t it?
@ DudeMac
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
DudeMac seems so well-read. A pity he didn’t read just a bit deeper.
Amazing. DudeMac, you really need to disconnect the knee-jerk reflex and reread the article; you were disagreeing with irony, in what was a bald jab at Windows. Didn’t the “error messages” clue you in? And that “People like you are so shortsighted” shot was a bit much, considering that the piece was completely pro-Mac, and you were the one too myopic to see that. Lighten up man, you’ll live longer.
I’m really suffering the effects of MSBlaster, or possibly a malicious spammer at the moment. I’m getting bombarded with auto-response undelivered mail messages. Started a couple of days ago. Up to about 4,000 a day now. Makes email almost impossible.
I didn’t take notice to the error messages. And maybe I did prematurely respond, but the reasonings he posted is the usual FUD you would hear from a ‘Wintel Elite Enforcer’. I’ll give it another read (for my own self humor).
To make a long story short… I had this lame arguments some months ago with a guy who had the exact wordings and I also made it clear of what I said to this guy. It’s so stupid to assume that though Windows is dominate now, that it will be dominate in the future. No one can predict the future!
D’OH! the laughs on me he he
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Here is my redeemer:
Howard,
Hello… Hey I wanted to apologize for my earlier email that totally missed the point of your article that had ‘sarcasm’ written all over it. I guess school has got me down in the deep sludge of stress that I decided to make you a victim of it. It took some Mac elite to point out my error of judgment. You would have thought I that I could have read “between the lines” with the chock full of humor and could have seen what your article was actually saying. So I’m the only fool here. I hope I made your day, almost like catching a big mouth bass on the lake
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Cheers…
Dennis
You Mac folks okay with that?
:-
MKG,
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You should have send a memo to your IT CC:-ed to your CIO and CEO, and ask for your computer to be repaired a.s.a.p. instead of fixing it yourself. Tell them fixing computers aren’t in the job description and include detailed costs associated with lost productivity. Make inference that othe OSes does not have the problem. If enough people do this, maybe the CEO will ask why virus problems aren’t included in TCO.
In the meantime, enjoy your day off.
Dude,
well done!
DudeMac,
You just won my Macintosh Gentleman Award. That was really gracefully done pal. All the best.