Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Steve Jobs?

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions Friday, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.

When you really think about it, what 2 things are required for good education? Good teachers and disciplined students.

Jobs also said some things I don’t completely agree with:

Earlier in the panel discussion, Jobs told the crowd about his vision for textbook-free schools in the future. Textbooks would be replaced with a free, online information source that was constantly updated by experts, much like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

“I think we’d have far more current material available to our students and we’d be freeing up a tremendous amount of funds that we could buy delivery vehicles with - computers, faster Internet, things like that,” Jobs said. “And I also think we’d get some of the best minds in the country contributing.”

I don’t see major cost savings, nor do I see much benefit in having “far more current material.” Most K-12 subjects just don’t exactly change much. The best thing is probably to print no-frills open-source textbooks.

It’s all just basic economics.

It has been 22 days (16 business days) since I last checked in with my pals at OnRebate. At that time I was assured my $5.50 would be processed and sent within 10 business days. So yesterday, sans check, I called in again. After holding, asking to speak to a manager, re-telling my story to Mike, and then being told that manager was unavailable, I was left to wait for the manager to call me back.

As yet, there has been no return phone call. I did however receive an “OnRebate Status Change” email.

OnRebate.com pleased to inform you that your rebate has been processed on [DATE].

Below is the summary of your rebate registration information:

Rebate Offer: ORREF-1009
Rebate Description: $5.50 No-Wait Fee Refund
Rebate Award: $
Final Award: [FinalReward]
Tracking Number: [TrackingNum]

Thank you for using OnRebate.com!

Mike also told me that Shawn had indeed put my case into the system to be processed, but didn’t have a good reason why it would have been unprocessed after 16 business days when typical turnaround is 7-10.

Time to hurry up and wait on my check.

Oh, and here’s the link to the Florida BBB page on OnRebate. “Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to a failure to respond to complaints.”

“Guarantees or Warranty Issues: 439
Outcome of all complaints -
Resolved: 222;
Unresolved: 12;
Administratively Closed: 2;
No Response: 203;”

“This is a game we were playing up at Michigan Tech during winter carnival. It’s called, ‘Throw the cat at someone when they aren’t looking.”

(from CollegeHumor)

I’m very happy that Apple, which likes to pretend that it always gets things right the first time, releases upgrades to iPod firmware.

You see, my nano simply didn’t work right. I was supposed to be able to hold down the center button to add a song/album/artist to the on-the-go playlist. But it only worked for individual songs.

Now, months later, my problem is fixed. Woohoo.

All-in-all I think the iPod is ok. It’s a really cool little gadget, but I feel it adds between very little and absolutely zero value to my life. It is simple to operate, but I often find myself wishing I could perform simple operations such as deleting a song from a playlist. For as nice as it is to have a lot of music to carry with me in a tiny package, I find myself spending far too much time thinking about what I might want to listen to later on as well as updating artist and album info.

If I didn’t know that the people who got it for me would ask me how I liked it, and if it weren’t personalized with their company name, I would sell the damn thing. $150 in my IRA is worth much more to me than some little device which separates myself from my thoughts. $150 is not more important than upsetting my employer.

For reference, I spent >$200 on a 19″ LCD monitor for my desktop. It’s so worth it that I can’t wait to get a 2nd one hooked up. I also spent ~$200 on a universal remote, which I still consider to be a sound purchase.

And with the iPod came my switch from WinAmp to iTunes. WinAmp was kinda crappy but I was used to it. iTunes is better (than WinAmp and even the new WMP), but still I don’t find all that much to love.

The automatic download of podcasts is great. I really like that (although I’m sure there are similar other ways to do it without iTunes).

Other than that, I don’t particularly like the layout and I maintain hatred for the faux sleek styling. It’s not good at finding album artwork. More often than not, I find it to be sluggish and confusing. I’m not sure that any of it is particularly intuitive, and lot of it runs counter to my years of windows training. It is particularly bad at ctrl+click operations. But then again, I’ve hated QuickTime and iTunes since I first experienced them.

In brief summary, the value of the iPod is in its “wow,” and “I have one, too” factors. I’m still amazed that such a tiny thing has a color screen and holds eons of music. But that doesn’t mean it’s even remotely a necessity.

Apparently there was another “offense college party” (aren’t they all?) at some tiny college I’ve never heard of. As usual, the blackface and Klansman gear weren’t appreciated.

The article had a paragraph about other colleges with similarly publicized offensive parties, but Clemson was left off the list.

We are moving up in the world.