Stephen's Untold Stories

I am a big fan of Mozilla’s products so far, and this looks very intriguing. I wonder if schools will actually give it a shot.

The SeaMonkey Council is proud to announce SeaMonkey 1.0, the first end-user release of their internet suite. This open source application, available as a free download from its mozilla.org-hosted website, features a state-of-the-art web browser and powerful email client, as well as a WYSIWYG web page composer and a feature-rich IRC chat client. For web developers, mozilla.org’s DOM inspector and JavaScript debugger tools are included as well. SeaMonkey 1.0 is one of the most complete, powerful, and secure internet software packages available today.

Link to site

I’ll be downloading this one to try it out. I’ll post my thoughts in a couple of days.

Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows XP SP2 Beta 2 Preview

I should have known it wasn’t just me!

Of all the obstacles to graduation, algebra was the most daunting.

The course that traditionally distinguished the college-bound from others has denied vast numbers of students a high school diploma.

“It triggers dropouts more than any single subject,” said Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer. “I think it is a cumulative failure of our ability to teach math adequately in the public school system.”

When the Los Angeles Board of Education approved tougher graduation requirements that went into effect in 2003, the intention was to give kids a better education and groom more graduates for college and high-level jobs. For the first time, students had to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry or an equivalent class to earn diplomas.

The policy was born of a worthy goal but has proved disastrous for students unprepared to meet the new demands.

In the fall of 2004, 48,000 ninth-graders took beginning algebra; 44% flunked, nearly twice the failure rate as in English. Seventeen percent finished with Ds.

In all, the district that semester handed out Ds and Fs to 29,000 beginning algebra students — enough to fill eight high schools the size of Birmingham.

Link to full article

Version 4 has just been released. Here are the new features:

http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/static.py?page=features.html&v=4

Looks about right to me.

I was very lucky to have the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of San Francisco recently, and I have been looking through my pictures almost every day. I posted a few earlier, but this one might be my favorite. The sailboat was in the perfect position.

Here is the full size version. (1600×1200)

Another thanks to Tom McMahon for this one.

SyncToy v1.0 is available as a free download on the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.

There are new sources of files coming from every direction: digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store and retrieve files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to get copies of files from one place; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping a mental card catalog in their heads. Others use one or more applications to provide this functionality for them.

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without added complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

Link to site

Google celebrates Mozart’s 250th birthday!

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a great post about how to deal with a Mac that refuses to login.

One way to fix a Mac that won’t login

Another site that makes me want to do some more traveling.

Images of China

These 3rd graders know how to blog!

RoomTwelve

Some of these are really nice.

Birds in Nature – images of wild birds by Richard Ditch

Thanks J-Walk!

Very nice work!

The subjects were typical for a seventh-grade classroom: a summary of a mealworm’s metamorphosis, strategies on improving memory and making studying easier and a story about a classroom candy thief.

But the discussions last fall at Longfellow Middle School in La Crosse, Wis., were not taking place only for their classroom to hear. They were recorded as part of a series of podcasts the students produced and syndicated over Apple’s iTunes music store.

“Their audience has moved to the entire world,” said Jeanne Halderson, one of two seventh-grade teachers at Longfellow who supervise the podcasts. “The students find that exciting. It’s a lot more motivating to write something that the whole world can hear, rather than just something for a teacher to put a grade on.”

Link to article

I got to spend this past Saturday in the City by the Bay, and I can’t wait for a chance to get back when I have more time.

Only if you have a Mac!

The 27dBm Transceiver works with Apple AirPort networks including all 2.4GHz, Wi-Fi systems. It is Wi-Fi compliant, supporting both 802.11g and 802.11b. and works with both Mac OS 9.x and Mac OS 10.x systems. The Apple iMac G5 has RF output of no more than 30mW; while our Transceiver blasts out 500mW.

Here’s the link!

Nice work, and a good use of Wikipedia.

Student reporters at a Minnesota high school exposed a prospective transfer who said he was a member of the British royal family as a fraud, a 22-year-old adult, and a registered sex offender.

When a prospective transfer student claimed he was Caspian James Chrichton Stuart IV, fifth Duke of Cleveland, and a member of the British royal family, he sparked the interest of the Stillwater Area High School newspaper staff. But when student reporters began investigating, they discovered the “student’s” picture on a list for registered sex offenders.

The reporters uncovered their first clue when they read the entry for the Duke of Cleveland on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that takes submissions from readers. The entry was written by Joshua Gardner, a name that also turned up on the National Sex Offender Public Registry.

Link to article

Not bad!!

ESPN article about KSU basketball

Need to see your site looks in Safari, but you don’t have a Mac? Use this!

SafariTest

Thanks to Tom McMahon for alerting me to these!

Here are all of the new ones