icarus_drowning

So many of the things he claims to have seen aren't in essence untrue: hexane poisoning did happen, he just didn't meet (and tell a true story) about how. Underage workers do exist, but I think it is less than clear whether Daisy met any of them. Terrible abuses resulting in lasting, terrible physical damage (or death) clearly are occurring, but Daisey isn't the one uncovering them, he isn't the heroic reporter interviewing the victims to reveal their plight.

When Daisey defends his work, he's really defending himself as the champion of the oppressed. This, I think, is really about his ego, not about the plight of any abused Chinese worker.

I'm a composer who works in film/games. I can assure you this is exactly what I'd like people to do when they listen to my music. I spend 99% of my time trying to create good musical ideas, and I spend 1% of my time getting the mix down. I get criticized (rightly) for this quite a bit, but it is hard to care about someone sitting in a >$10,000 labyrinth of sound equipment when I'd rather write a catchy tune.

Then again, when I write sheet music I have to endure some of the most soul-crushingly awful midi sequencing in order to check my work, so perhaps I'm too tolerant to terrible sound quality. Still, I'd rather people listened to the music, not the sound of it.

But they aren't really relevant to the parent comment's point, which is that, even with these (potential) holes giving your address book to Path is fundamentally different than posting it publicly. In one instance, your data is public, immediately and unconditionally. In the other, there is potential for abuse that could result in your data becoming public if an arguably unlikely sequence of events were to occur.

So it doesn't make any sense at all for Winer to be challenging PD to engage in a behavior that is simply not analogous to the issue at hand. All that Winer's post does is distort the issue, intentionally or not, and distract from the important debate/conversation that Path's policies initiated. I honestly don't see how that's helpful at all.

[UPDATED: Minor correct for clearer syntax]

The new Windows logo is a weirdly parallaxed set of rectangles. Nothing specifically diacritical at all.

EDIT: I think this is why the monochrome Win7 logo that has been posted here is better. It is distinctly Windows, building on decades of brand identity, and a truly unique and iconic. It is almost as if the "flag" shape that Microsoft seems so eager to drop is perhaps their greatest asset.

They've missed the point: minimalism for the sake of minimalism isn't "better". Simple is simple. Beautiful is beautiful.

Having said that, I doubt Microsoft is moving in a direction an Arch Linux user would call "minimalist".

Meanwhile, I'm confused why you're so quick to start what will only be an incendiary political discussion that has nothing to do with the article at all. There are probably better forums than HN to post essays about U.S. military and foreign policy.

Actually empowering children involves giving them choices, yes, but within a framework that constrains them. "You have a choice to eat the candy now, but at a cost later" teaches a child to make long(er)-term decisions than "do whatever you want". This mirrors the actual experiences they will have later in life, where they will have freedom, but still be required to operate with the bounds of lawful society. (I can buy myself X now, but I will have to save later in order to pay my mortgage, etc.)

By refusing to limit children by modeling the realities they will face later in life, adults teach children that consequences are fantasy, often to disastrous results when they grow up.

I mean, its one thing to criticize Google for something that may, in fact, been a real case of agism. But 1) we really don't know more than the facts reported in the original NYT article (which, by the way, seem to indicate that if Google did something wrong, they've done enough monetary penance that "all parties" are "satisfi[ed]") and 2) have little evidence other that Dave Winer's brash and unfounded assertions to believe that such attitudes, if they even existed are still around today-- let alone as the dominant culture at Google.

But I guess that doesn't that stop Dave Winer from judging every Google employee he meets based on the actions of a few that occurred nearly a decade ago.

I'm forced to conclude that what Winer really wants is to believe that a culture of agism does exist at Google, and then go find "evidence" to support that desire, whether or not it makes any sense at all.

Were we living in the universe of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, I'd suggest he get out Diax's Rake.

[1]http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/01/theIdiotsOfHackerNew...

But this does highlight the fact that our overly-simplified view of political parties in the United States as monolithic entities of zombie-politicians who take marching orders from the party establishment is quite out of step with the reality, particularly where conservatives are concerned. The GOP is a surprisingly diverse political entity, accepting the likes of Ron Paul on one extreme and George W. Bush on the other. Indeed, in the "center", it can often be difficult to tell the difference between "moderates" of either party.

All of which is to say, it is often unwise to make sweeping statements about large political entities simply because prominent politicians within that movement are vocal about a particular issue. Often the fight within a large political party is as heated as the battles with other political parties. Savvy voters would do well to recognize that fact.

Finland does not use multiple choice exams and has literacy standards that are clear and simple. Contrast this to the U.S. model, where literacy standards are a byzantine mess, and are often completely disconnected from a student's inability to read and write.

Mike Schmoker has addressed this in his excellent book Focus, where he writes:

"[Finnish] success, according to observers, is a result of how much time students spend actually reading during the school day. They found one Finnish student who, upon returning from a year in U.S. schools, had to repeat an entire grade. This is because in the United States, instead of reading and writing, she and her fellow students spent their time preparing for multiple-choice tests or working on "projects" where students were instructed to do things like "glue this to this poster for an hour"..."

I teach in a charter school. We have mandated standards requiring us to assign students X numbers of hours of reading/writing per semester. Students who leave our school and then re-enroll in later years are often entire grades behind, and have often not been assigned any writing or reading of any kind during their time in the "mainstream" public school district.

I suppose my argument isn't so much that private schools are/aren't a good and moral thing, but rather that there are many far less controversial methods of improving the U.S. school system than abolishing private education.

My first thought is to ask a question of those who aren't fluent in the language of written music: does this help you "understand" the music better? As a performer (I teach piano as one of my many occupations), I'm constantly trying to simplify my ability to quickly read and understand the music I'm playing, and that inevitably involves seeing chords, not notes.

So: do you think this helps you? Why?

I'd highly recommend Schmoker for anyone who's interested in these issues, whatever your opinion of these articles:

http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Authors/Mike-Schmoker.aspx?...

I use most of Schmoker's methods even in my music classes, where students are consistently asked to write about the music they are learning, as well as to learn how to take a position about that music (e.g., "the woodwinds are not properly used in this piece because...") in addition to the more "dry, academic" writing (research papers on the Baroque era, etc). I've had a lot of success by simply following Schmoker's recommendations, which are almost universally applicable across the humanities.

There's a lot of power, I think, to end an argument against SOPA with "...and, at the end of the day, it won't stop anyone. It won't work." Having functional, working systems only bolsters that argument, and thus helps, rather than hurts, the case against this kind of ludicrous legislation.

Not that missing that deserves the downvoting you're getting though.

When faced with a $300 million dollar movement to basically rip-off their product? I doubt they'll move nearly as quickly.

The Mac "pro" market is heavily skewed toward media types, and especially with i7 iMacs there to do much (if not all) of the heavy lifting, I'm not surprised that the Mac Pro is nearing the end of its life.

I'm sure there are a lot of situations that Thunderbolt and i7 don't address, but I'd posit they don't crop up in a vast majority of Apple's "pro" niche.

I don't run an exit, and won't be running an exit, but it is simple enough to run a bridge/relay that I'm surprised how few people do.

A really helpful piece of software is arm: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/arm-release-140 really useful way of monitoring how much bandwidth tor is using. It also allows you to edit/reset you torrc with a couple of keys. It keeps stats on how much data your passing through the network too, which is pretty cool.

I've had no problems from my ISP (Comcast), but then again I do pay for their commercial grade service, which doesn't have ToS restrictions on proxies. (I used to run a node out of my residential Comcast connection too-- they didn't seem to mind).