school

This week, we follow new developments in the system-wide PS3 meltdown, which knocked PS3 gamers off the grid for most of Monday. Then, we find out that a New York school administrator coincidentally named "Dan Ackerman" is spying on kids' laptops. Does this mean Dan now officially has an evil doppelganger?

HD video on a Netbook is something of a misnomer, but as we demonstrate, equiped with the right hardware and the latest beta Flash player from Adobe, you can play and stream HD video to a Netbook (with varying degrees of success). Finally, we engage in a … Read more

A recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 73 percent of online teens use social-networking sites. Updating their Facebook or MySpace page has become a regular activity for teens as is using these services to catch up on what their peers are doing. But, for the most part, teens are using social networking while they are away from school. Many schools actually ban access to services like Facebook and Twitter and often configure filtering programs to block students from accessing them.

While I can understand why it might not be educationally relevant for schools to … Read more

You know it's bad when it gets the suffix "gate." In a case against the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania, which some are already referring to as Webcamgate, a federal judge Wednesday made a very clear statement.

According to Fox 29 Philadelphia, the judge told the school district not to activate Webcams remotely under any circumstances.

In case this unquestionably soon-to-be-produced episode of "Law and Order" had slipped by you, a student's family is accusing Harriton High School of spying on their son in their home by remotely activating the Webcam on his … Read more

The Webcam spy case in the Lower Merion School District near Philadelphia has raised concern as to whether others with Webcams are vulnerable to remote spying. The school district admitted to activating the Webcams 42 times during a 14-month period, claiming that it did so only to track lost or stolen laptops.

But for anyone with a Webcam (and Webcams are now built in to many laptops and desktops), the question is whether you are vulnerable to having your Webcam remotely turned on. The answer is yes, though the newest version of the software used by the district to monitor … Read more

Two days after a New York Times report linked two Chinese schools to hack attacks on Google and other Silicon Valley companies, both schools are denying those claims.

Security experts traced the attacks to computers at Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School, The New York Times reported Thursday. But on Saturday, according to the Associated Press, China's official Xinhua News Agency cited a representative of the university calling the accusations "baseless" and an official from the vocational school saying its investigation turned up no evidence the intrusions originated on school machines.

Shanghai Jiaotong University is known … Read more

I know that there are many parents who would dearly love to spy on their children. Some, because they think their kids might be up to no good. Some, because they think their kids might be up to something so very not good that it might be illegal.

So I am rather moved with concern at a spying accusation that has reportedly been leveled by parents at a Philadelphia-area school district.

According to Computerworld, a class action lawsuit has been served upon the Lower Merion School District, based in Ardmore, Pa. It declares that the school district has taken on … Read more

You guys filled up our voice mail box over the weekend with your thoughts on the new Apple iPad, but we have to spread the hate around with a quick chat about last night's Grammy Awards, PETA's robotic groundhogs, and high school reunions. We've also got plenty of your sticker pictures to show off, including one that might be NSFW....big surprise, 404!

The Grammy Awards are becoming less and less significant to our personal music tastes, but something has to be said about a show that nominates NICKELBACK for Best Hard Rock Performance. To make matters worse, the show paired together some of the worst collaborations in the history of live performance.

To quickly recap the night, all you need to know is that Lady Gaga won two well-deserved awards and performed Speechless with Sir Elton John, Green Day took the award for Best Rock Album, poor Stevie Nicks looked pissed to be singing about locker room romance with 16-year-old darling Taylor Swift, and the live studio audience got treated to a 3D clip from Michael Jackson's "This Is It" while the rest of us settled for 2Ds and a subsequent headache.

Speaking of bad news, we've got some bad news about the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the new Broadway musical coming soon to New York. We just found out that the entire musical soundtrack is composed by U2's Bono and The Edge. Don't get us wrong, the three of us all have a special place in our hearts for U2, but their music just doesn't evoke images of a masked web-crawler slinging his way about town snapping photos of criminals and taking down a few in the process.

Finally, much thanks to everyone for sending in their sticker pictures! We've sent out hundreds of envelopes so far, so keep them coming; send a photo of where you put the stickers and tattoos to the404(at)cnet(dot)com!

The Women's Audio Mission is a San Francisco based, nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of women in music production and recording arts. WAM provides hands-on training, experience, career counseling and job placement for women and girls.

I spoke with WAM's founder and executive director, Terri Winston, by phone earlier this week. Before she started WAM seven years ago, she was a college professor and developed the recording arts degree program at City College of San Francisco. Ms. Winston is also an electrical engineer, musician, recording engineer, and record producer.

Steve Guttenberg: Is it fair to describe WAM as a school?

Terri Winston: Yes, but it's small and it doesn't look like a school; more like a studio. The classes are small, with between seven and fifteen students. WAM has 350 to 400 students a year, and we try to funnel them into two- and four-year programs.

SG: Can local musicians and bands record at WAM?

TW: Yes, we offer no- and low-cost recording services for independent artists. We did a band called Built For the Sea that was on Live 105, and we're currently working on other projects.

SG: I truly admire WAM's goals, but recording studios are closing left and right. It's not a growth industry; why train a new generation of engineers? More and more bands are recording themselves, aren't they? … Read more

School Administration Made Easy is, frankly, anything but. Although the program has some useful features, its lack of professionalism and options for customization seriously limit its usefulness.

The program bills itself as a way to manage a variety of school administration tasks, including student enrollment, attendance, grades, transportation, and more. As far as navigation is concerned, the program's interface is average, neither particularly well-designed nor particularly difficult. However, the templates into which users enter information leave something to be desired. One would expect to be able to customize the templates, allowing users to enter information relevant to their particular … Read more