Right out of the gate, Chromebooks are easier to administer at an "enterprise" level. Yes, the school district needs to "sell its soul to get the management console (domain control and device management.) Google has been helpful with support for any needs we have. Getting in touch with and help from apple for issues is near impossible.

Chromebooks come with some good tools for using existing infrastructure without too much of a learning curve. Getting teachers to open and use a spreadsheet on an ipad is a lot more tricky than opening the same file on a chromebook.

Bottom line, if you are dealing with more than 5 devices, chromebooks save a ton of time and energy.

I have an ipod.. If I am part of this class action settlement, I'll get 10 cents (as someone said earlier). I don;t want the dime; I want to be able to add media to the ipod without going through itunes... Want a class action lawsuit to do some good? Make it so that there are fundamental changes. of course Apple will say that it is impossible to put media on the ipod with out itunes... I know a few jailborken ipods that show otherwise.

I should just Mod this up, but I'll add to it.

I work with a lot of students at my school and I've purchased a few KANO kits. They are great and appeal to kids who want to program and kids who want to make cool cases in woodworking shop... Grab one and try it out. If it doesn;t work, donate it to a local school's computer club.

I also use RPG maker (There is a free version on sourceforge I think) which can be used to make some very elaborate 2d rpg style games.... At first the kids I work with love the mapping and simple switch oriented programming, but after a while, the kids are learning scripting and the logic behind all programming.

But, yeah, Scratch is great too.

The ads for me are always late. Here are a couple recent examples. I wanted the 5th edition D&D Players handbook. I knew about it from word of mouth within my local D&D group. I went to amazon and ordered it and a big bag-o-dice. For the next day or three, I see advertisements for stuff I have already purchased.

I frequent a blog HomeBrew Finds which is nothing more than a listing of sales around the internet. I saw a fermentor last month and ordered it. After I ordered it, I saw adds for fermentors.. .I don't need any more.

Contextual ads need to be a little more prophetic and a little less "I sold you so."

My first encounter with realistic space battle physics was with Antares Dawn: a great book by Michael McCollum... Great stuff.

Just over a month ago, Google dropped the SMS chat feature that has been present in Google labs for years. it has worked great and was the main reason I switched to gmail. Discussing it with other tech folks we can only conjecture that Google has ditched it because it was one of the ways people have found to sens SMS messages from a source that the NSA can;t track. (Create throw away email through some random VPN.) Contemplating going back to my own email server again. This new beta look might just be what pushes me over the edge.

With Ford's last two movies, a cardboard cutout of him in his 40's would have done a better job than he did. His performance in Ender's Game was horrendous (don;t blame the script Asa Butterfield and Viola Davis did great with what they were given.) Hopefully Harrison Ford's reprisal will be Han Solo sitting in a Laser-Rocker in the old folks asteroid telling stories of who shot first to you bantha fodderlings.

In all the mythology I read, Jupiter was always trowing his seed around.

Use this pill on Friday night and make the weekend seem like it last for 5 years instead of 20 minutes.
Maybe I could give it to my spouse before sex.

Welcome to modern politics. Politicians do whatever they want and don;t need to consult the public at all. And when motivated enough, these politicians can pass all sorts of legislation in a day. In the recent past Illinois lawmakers introduced a bill requiring teachers to teach until they are 67; passed the bill in both house and senate; had the bill signed by the governor. All of this in one single day. Teachers union, was shocked and has been fighting this ever since, but since it is "the law" they don;t have a lot to go on. Everyone else in Illinois has been on pins and needles knowing that the government can in a day vote your career into misery.

5,10,15,20,25,30,35 -- seven times in 36 years. Check.

Says the seven fingered driver.

I store some of my media on the hard drive.., ripped DVDs, CDs, and yes, records...
I store some of my media in the TV cabinet... DVDs, and VHS
I store some of my media near the stereo ... CD and Cassettes and Records
I store some of my media in the closet ... 8 track tapes, floppy discs
I store some of my media on the wall ... Digital Art I've created.
I store some of my media on a linux box for streaming music at my workplace.... no pandora ads.
I store exactly one "album" in the cloud. which is about .09% of my media.

Have been using Opera since the early days when Netscape was king, but bloated, and IE was a fiasco...
I even paid $30 for it... If they would have taken a free, as in beer, stance in the days of the Netscape ie battle, we might all be using it now.
Which I still do.

I dare the administration to tell me I have to teach this curriculum to my students. I'll give my own slant on it and end up teaching anonymous proxy, torrents, ripping, you name it...

Actually as common core, students have to work more with media. As a result we are ripping DVDs and cds and editing these to meet some educational goals... I am sure that is against their curricula.
bastards. (*IAA, not the students, this time.)

So you were the type of student in school that "read" the assignment but failed to "understand" what he read. Never once did Ender seek "revenge." Never did Ender want to make them "Sorry" for beating him up. He wanted them to stop, and he was willing to hurt them enough so they would never hurt him again. This is very different than revenge.

I really don't understand where you come from in thinking that this is a revenge novel. In the Ender makes sacrifices because he is going through is for the betterment of humanity.

Survival is a large theme in this novel. not revenge. There is a huge difference.

I'm glad I was not your teacher for a literature class.