From Yahoo News, an article about the first National Education Summit, where leaders from across the country are gathered to discuss what can be done to improve education.

Bill Gates had something to say about the situation, and I think there's a good chance he's absolutely right:

The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates... He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.

"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools - even when they're working as designed - cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

(via Slashdot)

The other day, I was attending a conference in Redmond at a big ol' software company that is based there. I had the opportunity to catch up in person for a few minutes with Omar Shahine, who happens to work at that company, and who also just happened to be in the area that day (he actually lives and works in a different state, so it was a cool coincidence).

Omar is one of the principal people currently driving hard developing dasBlog, which is the weblog software I use here. It's an ASP.NET application and it's pretty darn cool.

Anyhow, it was great to meet Omar, even if just for a few minutes. It's funny how you "meet" people online, but never actually see them in person. I always like it when I can talk face to face with someone.

It's amazing to me how the world - and how we meet and interact with the people in it - has changed. It truly is a big small world we live in.

Oh, and Omar - it was great to meet you!

If you use the Firefox web browser, you need to get the latest release, v1.0.1, which contains a number of security-related bug fixes that are important to patch.

Here's what's new in Firefox 1.0.1:

• Improved stability
• International Domain Names are now displayed as punycode.
• Several security fixes

Download your preferred language version from here.

Press release is here.

If you use Photo Story 3 from Microsoft, now you can add a plug-in from Sonic to burn your story directly to DVD - useful if that's your targeted media.

Photo Story 3 brings your digital photos to life by making it easy for you to create professional-looking slideshows. Now, with the Sonic DVD Plug-in for Photo Story 3, you can save your favorite memories on DVD to share with family and friends. Making your own DVDs is just a click away with this powerful plug-in. Get more information on the Sonic Web site and download the plug-in for $19.99 US.

I'm in the Seattle area (well, Redmond to be exact) for a couple of days (Tuesday and Wednesday) for a conference that I'm not allowed to write about here, at a Very Large Software Company.

If anyone's in the area and wants to grab lunch/dinner/coffee/air, drop me a line via email or other means (see the sidebar).

The Tech Report reviews the new P4-600 series of processors. With 64-bit support, and double th eon-board cache, how does it stack up against the Prescott line and processors from AMD? Depends on what you want to do with it. Check out their side-by-side review, published today.

"Today, in the dead of early Sunday morning, Intel is meekly unveiling another new Pentium 4 processor core, and it may be just as consequential. The Pentium 4 600 series is a new tier of performance-oriented Pentium 4 processors that will be sold alongside the existing P4 500 series. Based on the Prescott design, the 600-series core adds key features intended to pep up Prescott's performance and curb its power consumption. Not only that, but these are 64-bit CPUs. With the introduction of a 64-bit version of Windows approaching, Intel has finally turned on Prescott's dormant support for the 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set pioneered by AMD."

The verdict in the end seems to be that these new processors hold their own, but offer nothing earth shattering in the 32-bit world over the 500-series Prescott line of P4 processors. However, for an extra $5 or $10, you get true 64-bit capability that's not part of the Prescott procs, so all in all, it's a pretty good deal.