Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Wait a minute here, Cobb county is the same one that put the "evolution is a theory not a fact" stickers in the "science" textbooks? Do these kids really need laptops or should they start by getting the books right? And note that the local ATL news last night had a story about the enormous costs to taxpayers for the whole theory fiasco. The county put in the stickers, got sued and lost, then the school board decided to appeal the lost ruling. All the while spending all that tax money in such a brilliant way. Now they have enough extra cash for laptops?

And note that I say "science" class because its sure as hell not about science anymore once you start picking and choosing accepted principles and coating them with religion. Besides being completely ignornant for denying evolution based on misguided ideology they also dont understand what the word "theory" means (maybe they could use the laptops to look up words - theory means body of evidence).

Ah, they couldn't use their computers to look up anything supporting evolution. Something tells me they'll have a nice little spyware app in there that sends them to a creationist (uh, excuse me, intelligent design) website every time they look up something on evolution.

I heard from the guy building the genesis museum that the dinosaurs died during Noah's flood, 4000 years ago.

Puts that one to rest right there.

Dinosaurs, what the fuck you say? No such thing man, get a clue. You must have meant the "Jesus Horses".

Hey Cobb County Commissioners---> No more SPLOST taxes for you to spend! Hey everyone...call each of the commissioners and get their stance on the laptop giveaway. One wonders what the Apple "rebate checks" look like for the cobb board of education members.

Apple is giving away the razor so that it can sell the razor blades later. Watch the costs on this program sky rocket. But at least the kids will get some cool IM platforms. Uh, who gets to be the security admins on each of these? Will parents have admin access to make sure they know what their kids are doing? Or will they be locked out and have to trust the school system is taking care of that aspect?

Hey big spender, I really hope you haven't bred. You write, "Will parents have admin access to make sure they know what their kids are doing?" If you want to live in a military state move to North Korea.

Freedom for all.

and in addition they'll probably use the laptops to advertise to the kids.....

Just like UGA SEC rings at least 50% go missing first year....

fun while it lasted. Bye, bye Joe Redden, Don Beers, Kim Quinn...

We got a comment to our newspaper all the way from Amherst Ohio. Novel idea, he said, no more SPLOST taxes ever. Then we don't need to argue how to spend them. Say Goodbye Redden!

Though OSX is less than 5%, Unix is the future
around the world. Not because of OSX, because
of Linux... but OSX isn't that different.

Schools should be training kids for the future, not for the present.

Not to mention that Dell boxes would be infected with porn-spamming viruses within minutes.
You really want porn on you're kid's computers?

This is quite an example of ignorance:

"Great idea, give kids OSX so they can get to a job that requires knowledge of Windows, nevermind the kid who used a "regular" computer got that job. Macs are less than 5% in the US, less than 2% worldwide.. way to prepare these kids for the 'real world'

Not to mention Mac users are infamously cult like. My kid is taking a PC to school keep you iwhatever, we use PC's at home and work. If my son wants to listen to music, I'll give Apple a call."

Where does the 5% number come from, oh, that statistical body of knowledge called your anonymous ass.

Apple is very prevalent in the workplace world. Its prevalent in software design firms, publishing houses, recording industries (audio and video) and more. In addition its BSD based which means the kids *might* get exposed to Unix. Unix/Linux IS the business world (I have worked for several fortune 100 companies - a knowledge of Unix is very helpful).

Now granted the reason Windows is more popular than Mac in homes and in offices where they arent doing anything with the computer other than reading email, surfing the web and using Excel/Word (where the computer is a fancy word processor and communication assistant, not really being put to work) is exactly because they arent doing anything with the computer (that and they dont know any better).

What are the kids going to use the machines for? Editing documents, viewing web resources, communicating, then sure Windows would be fine, but so would Mac - those trivial tasks can be done on any platform - its just that Macs make more sense in such an environment because they are far more secure and far less prone to support issues (save money in the long run).

If you are worried about your kid not getting a job because you use PC at home and you think Mac would hurt those chances (why because the kid couldnt click on "Word" instead of "W" which launches the exact same program?), then you are truly ignorant - go back to the evolution stickers and just leave the computers out of it altogether.

Now that the "dust has settled", what do you have? Did other equipment get purchased? What steps for access were taken?