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In Class/OutClassed
Welcome to InClass/OutClassed: On the Uses of a Liberal Education, an Emily Balch Seminar offered in Fall 2011 @ Bryn Mawr College. This is an interestingly different kind of place for writing, and may take some getting used to. The first thing to keep in mind is that it's not a site for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts." It's a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Imagine that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking. The idea here is that your "thoughts in progress" can help others with their thinking, and theirs can help you with yours.
So who are you writing for? Primarily for yourself, and for others in both sections of our course. But also for the world. This is a "public" forum, so people anywhere on the web might look in. That's the second thing to keep in mind here. You're writing for yourself, for others in the class, AND for others you might or might not know. So, your thoughts in progress can contribute to the thoughts in progress of LOTS of people. The web is giving increasing reality to the idea that there can actually evolve a world community, and you're part of helping to bring that about.
We're glad to have you along, and hope you come to both enjoy and value our shared exploration of class, in education and outside it. Fee free to comment on any post below, or to POST YOUR THOUGHTS HERE.
The Interview
I really liked interviewing for research purposes because I love working with people more than working with readings. But I feel like it's hard to combine all three interviews into one thesis. For me there were a lot of conflicts between each of the interviews. I think it's easier though to shape your paper by interviewing people on what you want to know instead of pulling and stretching the ideas found between the lines of our weekly readings.
Research paper
I had a much harder time with this paper than I expected. I believe it was mainly because I went into my interviews with an idea of a research question but discovered that my interviewees didn't answer my questions the way I expected them to. Developing a research question afterwords was a little more difficult, and I'm not quite sure if I wrote the paper the way I was supposed to. I also may have read into my interviewee's statments a little differently than they expected. I basically didn't take them at face value. Did anyone run into this problem too?
Interviewee? interviewer?
First I really want to say something about my on-campus interview. This is the first time I communicate with people as an interviewer. At first I thought it would be easy, cauz it's all about ask questions, answer questions and record people's words. But it turned out that being a great interviewer is really hard. I have to admit that when I designed my questions for my interviewees, I was making assumptions about how they will answer them. Or, in other words, I know what I HOPE them to say in order to gain some useful information to prove my thesis of my essay. But actually when I finished conducting my entire interview, I found that actually almost all my interviewees answered those questions in a way that I didn't expected them to answer, which means that I had to try change my claim. When I went over my notes trying to come up with a new topic for my essay, I really rethought many questions. I used to believe that I knew answer to these questions, which turned out only my own assumption. For example, one of my questions that I designed for my professor of English workshop is do students from different socioeconomic backgrounds perform differently? I thought her answer would be like "students from higher class families are more confident, whereas students from lower class families are more quiet." But actually her answer was "there is no distinct difference." I realized that actually I regarded my own assumptions for many problems as the truth.
Research Paper
The most important task with this paper for me was staying within the confines of my data. Three interviews with BMC student does not offer a broad range of information to make larger claims very strong. Academic writing must be able to be suported by more than conviction, fact, statement, interview, quote, calculation, etc. While you may "know" that there is a larger truth to what you are saying, you must not state something bigger than your concrete data shows. Additionally resourcing interviews for an essay was a first for me, and it was great to explore research options other than the internet and books.
Invested in Conveying a Clearer Story and Claim
Despite my initial apprehension and borderline anxiety about the depth of this paper in combination with the new element of interviewing, I really enjoyed this project. I was incredibly surprised by the openness of my interviewees in the subject and was really excited to start working on my paper after I had completed them all. Especially because I had really gotten involved in each of my interviews and the stories they represented, I was positive that this had to be the best paper I've written thus far; however, I feel like because of this attachment to the topic and pressure of very high expectations, I was not very happy with the outcome of the paper. I really wanted to capture the essence of each of the interviews, so that I could strongly prove my point, and when I was talking about that point and about how I planned to prove it, I felt that it was clear. When I got to the writing aspect, however, I feel as though my argument was lost in including too much interview content and not enough explanation. I am definitely going to continue revising this paper because I really want to use the interviews as much as I can, while getting my claim across clearly. I think it's something I'd like to work on because I feel so invested in the topic and in conveying the students' stories as they pertain to my topic.
Writing Paper 10
This paper turned out to be really difficult for me. Conducting the interviews was fun. I had all my data, but i hit a roadblock when it came to turning the data into a 3 page paper. I did not want to repeat myself, since i had already touched on the subject in my two previous papers and my confusion heightened when after my conference, I still had a hazy idea of what line of argument to pursue. Its like having too many options only served to hinder my progress. I managed to put something down, but I do not feel quite satisfied with it, especially with my conclusion. I really felt the pressure to use an extra page. Any way, it appreciate the challenge of chanelling qualitative information into academic writing. There is always a first time. Next time i can tap from this experience.
Research Paper
This paper was difficult for me in that I'm not sure I adequately understand what a research paper is supposed to be like. I didn't have a problem using my interview data to support my claim, but was that what we were supposed to be doing? I felt just like I was writing one of our usual papers but using the interviews as texts. Beyond my confusion about the format of the essay, I really enjoyed hearing first hand accounts from my interviews, and using my peers' knowledge to provide data for a topic that I am interested in. Although I didn't end up using one of my interviews in my essay, seeing a different, administrative view of Bryn Mawr was certainly very helpful and enlightening. In the end, I'm not sure I was able to do myself and my efforts justice with this paper. It was difficult for me to present the information in a concise, scientific way when so much of my information was personal to the speakers. However, I did find that my thoughts flowed onto the paper easier this time around. I think this comes from the amount of papers that we've written so far and that my writing is finally growing to reflect/catch up with my expanding thoughts. If I could go back, I think it would have been helpful for me to have seen/ learned about what is meant by a research paper, similiarly or in conjuction with how we learned about interviewing.
Paper #10, not so esay!
I've just finished my paper and I feel relieved now. Honestly, the assignment is not hard to write since I believe that everyone has a lot of things to say: on-campus workshop, parkway visit, those interviews and writing partners notes. I can feel a sense of responsibility throughout this assignment. I can feel I act as a part of the workshop and I am the active part of those interviews. I can feel that I am responsible to make everything connected and make things around me glittering. I hope that I conduct others opinions honestly and my voice can help making a better community. The change is really subtle and interesting. Previously, I am giving my response to others theories and ideas while those outcomes turn out to be less important when compare to this assignment.
Assignment #10
I find this style of academic writing to be a lot more enjoyable than many other types of academic writings. I wouldn't say that it's easier because it's definitely is not, but it's a lot more interesting. I think what makes it a harder form of academic writing is that there is so much information from my interviews that I feel obligated to include in my paper. What also makes it difficult is that because I made my claim and interview questions before I actually interviewed someone, I had a specific idea in my head about what I wanted to try and prove in my essay. What makes it frustrating is that I didn't get the answers/results that I was looking for and for that reason, I wasn't able to exactly support my claim. I think that this form of writing has made it possible for me to question what I have written and if what I have written actually makes sense…
Easier Writing?
A lot of people have mentioned that they found this week's paper easier to write, but I actually found the opposite. I really enjoyed conducting my interviews, but felt constrained by the fact that we could only make statements based on that information. In addition, I ended up disagreeing with what my data suggested because of personal opinion and an outlying story I heard from one of my interviewees. I guess what I really struggled with was figuring out how to show the data I'd found and then disagree with it by highlighting a specific story. I also felt like I was juggling a lot of different things we'd gone over in class – including bringing in stories from our visit to the high school and information from our Wendy Luttrell reading. I ended up with an essay where I feel I got to highlight my feelings on the subject of going to college (and the assumption that everyone should) and I appreciate that opportunity, but the writing process was definitely difficult for me.
Undocumented and Unapologetic
Hi everyone,
This is just a post about the upcoming event with Tania Chairez at TGH ths coming Tuesday. Professor Cameron sent out an email to the Class of 2015 but I figured I'd post about it here in case he missed anybody:
Academic Writing
I enjoyed writing this paper more than the others. I think it was because the idea that I was able to pick my own topic made it easier for me. I like to write about what I think is important and this paper allowed me to do so. Although it wasn't to fun to intervew people, it was the bases around writing an academic paper and had to be done. I had a lot to write when I had the chance to sit down.
Paper 10
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to write this paper. I can't tell if it was because I got to think out loud and formulate my thesis during my one-on-one with Professor Cohen or if it was because it was a topic that I could write about forever because I was a part of the interviewing process too. My paper largely focused on the experiences of first-year Posse scholars so far and how the scholarship has benefited them. I interviewed three of my friends from the Posse and it was interesting to hear their answers because they were very much the type of answers I would've given because I'm going through the same things as them. It was so nice to not have to look for a reading and cite authors and squeeze quotes into my paper. Citing other readings from our classes just seem to be particularly difficult to me for some reason. Sometimes I'll write a paper with my claim and my personal thoughts and then someone will suggest that I use a reading to back my claim up. I didn't have to do that this time because my source of reading was my own self! I took my own notes and I was able to make a profound claim all on my own, not based on some other scholar who had the idea first.
Academic Writing
Academic writing is difficult for me, no doubt, but this kind of paper was a little better. I enjoy interviewing immensely due to the interpersonal part of it and that definitely made this paper easier to plan and write. It's not my favorite form of writing but this paper was a lot more fun than the entirely essay based essays from earlier in the semester. At this point, it's still a work in progress but I'm confident yet nervous about where this paper is going. I know I'm going to have do this kind of writing more often so I'm treating this as a practice run for my future papers for biology. Biology papers are organized in a specific way and that's how I'm structuring this paper.
Writing Essay Number 10
One thing I have noticed about my writing overall is that it does get easier each week. While I still struggle to produce paper's I feel comfortable turning in, the process has become increasingly easier, and I find that our weekly papers have given me a great sense of growth. However, this paper was extremely challenging for me to write, and I am still unsure as to if I completed the task in the way I should have. I felt unprepared, and I wished that I could have gotten just a few more voices to place into the paper. Overall, I felt as though my paper was too representative of my own thoughts and voice, and I struggled to find a thesis out of the information I had. I also felt uncomfortable with quoting my interviewees because without "real" quotations, I was nervous about overstating things they had said.
My writing process gave me a lot of ideas as far as how to address issues of class on campus, but again, these were personal thoughts. While they were influenced by my interviewees, I wish I had put more voice of others into the paper. I definitely think that this week's writing has a lot of room for revision.
Thoughts on Paper 10
At first I hated the idea of this paper. I did not give much thought to the process we were going to go through. I just judged my feelings from the initial idea, which is not always the best way to go about things. I felt like my interviews were successful and I gathered some important information, but I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with that information. Initially my focus area was based on class and money. I did not have a research question to base anything off of, so I decided a focus area would lead me to my research question. Initially I thought that my research question would relate to class and money, but my interviews led me to a new question that I did not think would come up based on the questions I asked. My research question was based on the correlation of class position and how comfortable we are talking about class. Once I found the path I was going to take with this paper, I realized hate was a pretty strong word.
In the end, I actually enjoyed writing this paper because of the fact that it was so different form ones we have written before. Our sources were not what we read from scholars, but rather our own questions we made for our interviews. I also liked that we created our own question to analyze and make a claim towards. We were not given a specific question that we had to make something out of, but rather we created a question based off of what was collected. So, I guess this paper was not as bad as I made it out to be.
My thoughts about deliberative academic writing
This kind of writing is totally new to me. Writing a paper based on your interviews and real life workshop is a very hard job, but I did learn a lot from that. I recognize the importance of making questions for an interview. It's obvious that we need to make open-ended questions, but to what extent? At first, I tried to make my questions very general. I thought by doing that, my interviewees wouldn't be limited by the narrow topics. They could have more space to express themselves. However, what happened was contradictory to what I expected. Because they are general questions, people just give me general answers. These answers are not deep enough to write a paper. I had to add so many small questions to get the information I want. Even though I tried my best, the information I got from all sources were not deep enough for me to write a good paper. To me, it's easier to write an essay based on complicated ideas from the texts rather than little stories I heard from the interviews. I just have 3 interviewees and all of my interviews just last for about half an hour, it's hard to step away from the simple ideas and acquire indepth information. However, it's nice to go beyond classroom and experience what happen in real life. It's a wonderful exercise that make students become more familiar with social research. I think all of us may have many difficulties and make mistakes for the first time, but we do learn a lot from this experience.
Interview Paper reflection
Usually, after reviewing class readings, I start an essay with the expectation of knowing (at least the guidelines of) what to write about. With readings, the argument is logically outlined and easy to follow. However, due to the open structure of my interview questions, I had to entrust my subjects, the international students, to guide me through their story, convoluted stories that involved different contradictory factors which made it harder to follow and produce a thesis. Furthermore, never having been an international student, I didn't know what to aspect from them - what they want me to take away from their experiences, their needs and their story. I took this as a blessing because, having read Tuck, I did not want to taint my data with my assumptions and bias. I wanted my data to be raw and genuine.
In any case, working with the international students for this paper reminded me of our reading of Tuck in which I was researching not only to build a greater understanding but utilize it towards change. The paper wasn't just about collecting what they were saying but trying to piece together what to do with this understanding, to create a message that would give these encounters meaning. Sometimes, I take for granted conversations and encounters with different people but having to develop a deeper meaning for this encounter helped me to remember the potential in interaction and in turn, active learning beyond the self.
I need to
figure out how to delete this. sorry, guys.
Week Five of our Diablog: Learning and Teaching
What is something you learned, and something that you taught, during the times we walked and talked w/ one another on Tuesday? (If you weren't able to join us then, name something in the last week that you learned, and something that you taught--not necessarily in school.)


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Posts by Russ Pitcher
20 posts • joined 29 May 2008
Rosetta probot drilling DENIED: Philae has its 'LEG in the AIR'
Pot, meet kettle
Don't be an idiot - how many comets have you landed on? I would prefer to talk about the amazing achievement and put it alongside the great successes of others, particularly NASA, but if we're resorting to purile one-upmanship then I'm game for that. I could point out that Beagle 2 was a low budget mission, about $100 million in today's money. Perhaps I should list a few other failed Mars missions and their rough budgets in today's money:
Mariner 3 - ~$300 Million ($55M 1970$) - Failed - Fairing didn't separate
Mariner 8 - ~$300 Million ($55M 1970$) - Failed - Didn't get into orbit
Mars Observer - ~$1300 Million ($813M 1993$) - Failed - Lost comms before orbital insertion
Mars Climate Orbiter - ~$460 Million ($327M 1999$) - Failed - Burned up
Mars Polar Lander - ~$155 Million (110M 1999$) - Failed - Landing failure
Deep Space 2 - $47 Million (29M 1999$) - Failed - No data returned
Why not applaud the successes of the incredibly complex decade-long flight and landing and note the fact that the primary objectives were only 60 hours long and it looks like they'll achieve most of them.
Whichever way you look at it it's something to celebrate.
Obama HURLS FCC under train, GUTPUNCHES ISPs in net neut battle
Prioritize the type, not the source.
I'm happy with different TYPES of packets being prioritized - video, voice etc - using some sort of QOS. What I'm not happy with is different SOURCES of packets being prioritized/delayed.
If ALL vidoe packets were slowed, then that would affect ALL providers on that network. That's fair and provides a differentiator between this ISP and that ISP. If Netflix packets are prioritized and StartupVideoOnDemandCo packets are hindered then that is NOT reasonable.
Surely the basic principle is simple: If you connect using my network then you pay $x/GB transferred and/or $y according to the top speed of the connection. Add price bands for volume and you're done. Simple. It shouldn't matter whether you are Joe Nobody with your 2MB personal link to the world or Jack Google with your 10TB backbone.
If the peering connections are completely unbalanced then clearly peering as it stands does not work and you should create new agreements and balance the pricing and/or service between the ISPs, not charge the end users to carry their traffic! If the ISPs want the protection of Common Carrier status then they should behave like common carriers. Obama is in essence correct - an Internet connection is pretty much a necessary utility these days and will only become more and more necessary. I wish the UK gov would think the same and ensure that everyone in the UK has an acceptable connection if they want one. It should be part of the basic infrastructure now!
Astounding: We're about to stick a probe in orbit of a COMET
Re: "Rosetta craft screams 6 billion km through space to reach its cosmic prey"
Ah, but just because no-one can hear you, it doesn't mean you're not screaming!
Virgin Media boss AND ex-Murdoch man: BSkyB broadband is 'lousy'
Re: Sieze the opportunity
I've also been with Virgin (née ntl, née CableTel) since the minute they dug a trench outside my house and I've had a somewhat different experience.
I had about a 30% uptime for the first six months with many, many hours on the phone CableTel simply lying to me about where the issues being 'outside their network'. Being the geeky type I immediately proved them wrong and got 3 months service for free. To be fair the service improved rapidly and was generally stable, although the customer service was a joke for years. For the past three years or so however, the service had been terrible. I get outages of an hour or so around once a month and every three or four months I have outages of many hours. The customer service is awful - I have more than once spent over FOUR HOURS waiting in a queue - and despite me providing plenty of appropriate diagnostic information, they insist I walk through their muppet script to get the same details and perform the same tasks I've already done myself. They often blame my pc/router/switch/weather/cat and only after an hour or so agree to send an 'engineer'. The outage will then get mysteriously fixed some hours (or days) later, some time before the engineer is due. If he does turn up he's almost invariably stumped and we're on to round two of the customer service merry-go-round. In fairness, I've had superb engineers on two occasions who have identified the problem in minutes and undone the bodge job performed by previous poorly-trained staff.
The only reason I haven't moved is that I can't bear to go from a 120MB connection down to a 3MB ADSL one - the only 'competition' there is in my area. As soon as OpenReach finally realize that they need to lay fibre to the cabinet, not just the exchange, before the punters can sign up then I'll happily change my intermittent 120MB cable for a hopefully stable 70MB of FTTC.
Google's driverless car: It'll just block our roads. It's the WORST
Oh, for Pete's sake!
This is a lousy article - possibly the worst I've ever read on El Reg. What we have here is an author who has already made up his mind and is desperate to find any argument to use against the idea, no matter how weak, rather than a reasoned assessment of the technology taken to its logical conclusion. And to be honest, complaining about the possibility of improving mobility and freedom for the physically and visually disabled is pretty offensive!
This is a prototype of a new and game-changing technology. All the points made and more need to be worked out, no-one is denying that, but how about exploring the real impact that such vehicles might have - for better or worse - as they are gradually introduced into the real world, improving all the time. What might life be like in 20, 50 or 80 years time? Think how much better life could be if the two hours a day I currently spend driving to and from work - sometimes with my mind on other things, no matter how good my intentions are - could be spent starting work during the commute, reading a book, calling friends, doing anything within reason! Properly managed, this could reduce congestion, shorten journey times, improve efficiency and boost safety. None of this will happen overnight, but if we work hard it will probably get there.
And no, I don't like the idea of giving up the right to drive my own vehicle, but surely a reasonable compromise can be worked out and the potentially huge benefits are worth some sacrifice? Every disruptive change is just that - disruptive, but after the pain comes the real benefit. The industrial revolution was a bugger for those that lived through it and lost their livelihood, but I'm glad it happened!
BEHOLD the HOLY GRAIL of TECH: The REVERSIBLE USB plug
@Graham Dawson - Re: Am I the only one ....
Erm... it does include a time component.
1 Watt = 1 Joule per second
Got a Netgear router from Virgin Media? Change your admin password NOW
Indeed it is, but...
And how many friends and mums actually listen and can be bothered to take action in an area that they're already scared of. Techies also tell their mums to back up, install NAS devices and write one-click backup scripts and add calendar reminders and mums STILL don't every back up, despite being reminded at every visit and having lost important data in the past.
Even those with tech-savvy relatives and/or friends rarely listen. When they plug it in and it connects to the internet they consider the matter closed. The don't have the inclination to think about the complexity of getting connected. As far as they're concerned the modem is just a tap for the modern world. Plug it in to the wall, turn it on and out pours the internet. If you make devices for the masses then, as far as is possible, that is what should happen.
4K-ing hell! Will your shiny new Ultra HD TV actually display HD telly?
These are not the pixels you are looking for.
Rather than trying to squeeze more and more pixels into limited bandwidth, wouldn't it be better to make the best use of the 1080p pixels we already have by increasing frame rates and colour depth and attempting to reduce or improve the overdone compression on existing channels? That way we can realise the full potential of FullHD which, if done correctly, should more than enough for most households.
Or is it easier to market "MORE PIXELS!" than better quality...?
Speeding cops, fearsome drops and Death Star shops
Re: Personally
Agreed! I'll buy a 69p game without thinking - it's the cost of a Mars bar. Even a £1.99 app isn't much to risk on a whim, but this constant Upgrade for 69p, Unlock for £1.99 and 10,000 credits for £27.99 drives me bananas.
If it's not realistically playable without purchasing in-app or if the micro-payment nagging gets too much then I simply won't play it!
George Soros pumps £50m into fibre-gobbling ISP Hyperoptic
Re: Maths?
You're not wrong, but I'll bet that there's an installation fee, just like every other provider. Another £75 per installation would swell the coffers significantly and I wouldn't be surprised if the business is expected to run at a loss for a while.
How UK gov's 'growth' measures are ALREADY killing the web
Re: Care-o-Meter hovering at zero
Market forces are indeed about finding the price that consumers will pay for a given item, and circumstances can and will change as the world evolves. This is not arguing against that, but it is arguing about the right of corporations, or anyone else for that matter, to steal work. If a photographer puts in substantial amounts of time, effort and hard-won skill to create a desirable image then it's reasonable to suggest that they should be allowed to set a price and expect to get that price, if the market thinks it's worth it. If we simply allow anyone to copy and paste that image from a website, or publish it after legally stripping the metadata and then refuse to pay as 'a reasonable search' - read as short as legally possible - didn't turn up the creator's phone number then photography isn't worth spit any more, no-one will be able to afford to make a living doing it and there's another nail in the coffin of the creativity and expression that enriches everyone's lives.
FFS I bet you wouldn't agree that it's right that I should be able to pick up your phone in a bar, remove the SIM, whisper "does this belong to anyone" and then LEGALLY walk off with it would you?? A weak analogy I know but it illustrates the point.
I'm an amateur photographer who licenses his work with a creative commons license that allows pretty much anyone to do pretty much anything with my images as long as it's non-commercial. I think we should all encourage sharing of images within reason; but at the end of the day they are MY images and I should be able to control what happens to them. It's not for governments to give away mine, or anyone else's rights.
LHC spots mesons flipping between matter and antimatter
Re: And the "Standard Model" is?
Personally, I'm looking forward to the No' As Big As Medium Model But Bigger Than Wee Model Model
'I'd buy that for a dollar': Apple on Moto phone patents
Fair, Non-discriminatory. Don't get the issue
Surely if it is FRAND, then the patent holder sets a REASONABLE price for licensing the patent - say $x per item or per use of IP, and then publishes that price and charges everyone the same. Therefore FAIR and NON-DISCRIMINATORY in its application.
Am I being too simplistic?!?
Top admen beg Microsoft to switch off 'Do Not Track' in IE 10
Re: It's a good default
They do. On the Windows 8 installation screen Do Not Track is shown with a slide-switch that is set to on. One click half-way through the installation and it's off. What's the problem there?
Microsoft have been battered for years over their relaxed approach to security. As soon as they change tack and do what's been demanded of them they instantly get shouted at. If I was them then at this point I'd throw my hands in the air, accept that I can't win no matter what and do whatever I felt like...
EU greases up orphan works copyright loophole for Big Culture
Having a central register of all images/footage covering all sources is a fine notion until you think about it for a few seconds. I took about 10,000 usable images last year and I'm just a reasonably enthusiastic amateur. How on earth would you propose that we manage the 100s of millions of images created each year with a single system? And then scale that globally.
Whilst I agree that the photographer should make an effort to be discoverable by thoughtful use of metadata and maybe watermarks the final responsibility should be on the party that wants to use the image. I spotted a bike in town the other day and that would have made it a lot easier for me to get home. I couldn't find the owner after a short search so I just took it. Is that OK?!
If everyone, especially commercial users of images, were prevented from stripping the metadata from images, preferably by law, then the bulk of the problem would go away because anyone who cares about their images makes damn sure that their details are embedded in the file!
So, just what is the ultimate bacon sarnie?
Re: You don't fry bacon, you grill it...
What!?! The fat's where the best bit of the flavour is! Fry it quickly and when you're done cooking the bacon you can fry off some thick mushroom slices in what's left.
Hungry now...
Disable Gadgets NOW says Redmond
Re: I do
On Windows 7 if you adjust the date/time from the taskbar you can add two zones using the Additional Clocks tab. The additional times appear when you hover over the clock.
Other than that you can use ZoneTick to show pretty much what you want on the taskbar.
Pints under attack as Lord Howe demands metric-only UK
Full steam ahead
Born in 1971 I'm theoretically a metric lad, but I think in feet, pints and miles most of the time and mm and kilos at other times. A forced move to metric would probably drive me nuts, BUT...
Having the world measured with two systems, one of which is really the bastard child of dozens of unrelated 'systems' is madness, and selling 568ml of milk, or a sheet of MDF at 1220x2440 is lunacy. 1220mm x 2440mm is roughly 4' x 8', but not exactly, therefore it makes little sense from a metric point of view and doesn't really fit imperial systems well.
Yes, a forced change would be a real pain for those of us over 20, and some might never fully adapt, but just think how much better things will be for future generations. Sometimes you just have to accept that something is broken and it will be worth the pain to replace it in the long run.
FSF takes Win 8 Secure Boot fight to OEMs
How is Microsoft restricting OSs exactly??
As far as I can tell Microsoft are only insisting that a PC has the ability to enable UEFI secure boot (note: not Microsoft secure boot!) in order for it to obtain a Windows 8 certification. It is not insisting that users be prevented from disabling secure boot. It is not preventing other vendor keys being present in addition to the Microsoft keys.
I don't see how they can be painted in such a bad light for trying to get a useful security feature implemented! Whilst it's true that if lazy OEMs fail to allow secure boot to be disabled or fail to allow the addition of new keys then unknown or unsigned OSs will be prevented from being installed, but surely that is a problem with the OEMs, not Microsoft. Once again this is not a Microsoft feature, but a UEFI feature.
Yes, I'm a PC guy in general, but I use Apple and *nix devices as well and I'm by no means blind to Microsofts failings, but all I can see here is uninformed fanboi/MS-hater ranting.
Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow
This is ridiculous! I don't download films or torrents, but occasionally (~twice a month) I have to download DVD-sized software from MS for my job, and then suddenly my connection is nobbled for hours!
If the cap was set to kick in if a rolling 3-day average exceeded 3GB, for example, then I'd never have a problem. This sort of thing would allow most users who occasionally hammer their connection to use their 20MB as expected (when they get 20MB of course..), but would put a stop to those who blast the system 24x7
To be honest, if it wasn't for the lousy ADSL round my way I'd have been long gone from the Virgin/NTL/CableTel cowboys.
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- Conversion Rate Optimization & Marketing Blog | FutureNow - http://www.grokdotcom.com -
Bryan Eisenberg on the Twist Image Podcast
Posted By Anthony Garcia On September 13, 2006 @ 11:48 am In Waiting For Your Cat To Bark | 1 Comment
Our very own warm, fuzzy, and lovable Bryan Eisenberg was recently interviewed on the Twist Image Podcast – Six Pixels of Separation
Mitch Joel interviews Bryan about the book [3], and Bryan shares some recent insights on current events as well as today's morphing marketing biosphere. The interview is 35 minutes of savory goodness in MP3 format. Find it here [2].
Article printed from Conversion Rate Optimization & Marketing Blog | FutureNow: http://www.grokdotcom.com
URL to article: http://www.grokdotcom.com/2006/09/13/bryan-eisenberg-on-the-twist-image-podcast/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.grokdotcom.com/wp-content/uploads/typepad/uncategorized/podcast_icon_1.jpg
[2] Twist Image Podcast – Six Pixels of Separation
: http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000703.html
[3] the book: http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Your-Cat-Bark-Persuading/dp/0785218971
Click here to print.
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