Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright

Franklin Veaux’s Journal – Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright:

People who hold these ideas can not, I think, be persuaded otherwise. A person who feels entitled to something will construct rationalizations about why his entitlement is justified, whether it’s by imagining creativity as some inborn thing like race or sex, or inventing a moral system whereby anyone who does something that could make another person’s life better like create a painting or, I don’t know, haul away garbage is ethically obligated to do so for free. Such people will often spout platitudes like “True artists do it for the love of art, not for money,” setting up a false dichotomy that ignores the fact that creative people also have to eat. This argument also creates a system whereby an artist’s merits are judged not on her technical proficiency or her ability to illuminate the human condition, but rather on how much stuff she gives the speaker for free.

[It’s not easy, but this legislation was deeply flawed. Fortunately (ahem) we can count it on it being back in some form or other. Maybe we can figure out a better idea in the meantime.]

d: Why making an effort is a failure

I made an effort.

I made an extraordinary effort.

I made an “all in”, once in a lifetime effort.

They’re all a failure. Why? Because you make an effort, even an extraordinary one, and not attain your goal. I can cheat myself out of achieving a goal I desire by making an effort. We make efforts all the time, and many of us are good at making them. But it isn’t the goal.

The goal is the goal, atmo.

Improved math scores with iPad textbooks

Students’ math scores jumped 20% with iPad textbooks, publisher says:

A yearlong pilot program with digital textbooks on Apple’s iPad found that students’ algebra scores increased by 20 percent when compared to a curriculum with traditional books.

[snip -Ed]

In its test run, the “HMH Fuse” application helped more than 78 percent of students score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.

“By engineering a comprehensive platform that combines the best learning material with technology that embraces students’ strengths and addresses their weaknesses, we’ve gone far beyond the capabilities of an e-book to turn a one-way math lesson into an engaging, interactive, supportive learning experience,” said Bethlam Forsa, executive vice president of Global Content and Product Development at HMH. “With HMH Fuse, teachers can assess student progress in real time and tailor instruction as needed.”

[It being new probably has something with the score rise. OTOH, there was a test done years ago with Mathematica that showed improved scores as well. What if these sorts of tools really do a better job, or allow teachers to do a better job?]

Can we buy your search engine?

Can we buy your search engine?:

Can we operate our own search engine? Can the developers who lead us there get unreasonably rich even if they don’t control our future? These are all questions that I believe we can address. I think we can all win. And I think that until we do this, and do it right, we’ll be stuck in the same infinite loop we’ve circling as long as I’ve been in tech.

[More to consider.]

Source: Scripting News

Setting up an iPad in 2012

Setting up an iPad in 2012:

My mom says that all her friends who have iPads had to go to the Apple store to get them set up. I’m not surprised. I can’t imagine how it could be otherwise.

[Sadly, I think this is a question of market. My parents are constantly frustrated by not knowing how to do things on their iPad. But I wonder whether Apple cares. Well, no, I don’t wonder, I don’t think they care. I think they’ve written them off. But the real failure here (even if I’m right about Apple ignoring the grandparent demographic) is that it also applies to people who do not share the same experiences that leads to these things feeling easy. Apple shouldn’t need to help so many get going with their iPads. No?]

Source: Scripting News

The disneyfication of tech

The disneyfication of tech:

Twitter and Facebook are rich and getting richer. Either of them could easily buy a struggling but independent news organization. Then where would you be if you were dependent on them to distribute news? It would be like the Times depending on Murdoch to print their daily paper. Instead the Times invested in their own printing plant, presumably so they could have better control of the product, both from a creative and tactical standpoint. If Murdoch owned the presses and the trucks, who do you think would deliver the most timely news? They have to think about Twitter that way. At some point they will come to see themselves as a media company, if they don’t already.

[It’s such a mess right now, that I’m completely certain that the system will change for the better.]

Source: Scripting News