Google needs to ensure its book scanning is good enough for scholars

It's safe to assume that the digitized books that scholars will be working with then will be the very same ones that are sitting on Google's servers today, augmented by the millions of titles published in the interim.

That realization lends a particular urgency to the concerns that people have voiced about the settlement —about pricing, access, and privacy, among other things. But for scholars, it raises another, equally basic question: What assurances do we have that Google will do this right?

Netflix lets its staff take as much holiday as they want, whenever they want—and it works

Ever more companies are realising that autonomy isn't the opposite of accountability – it's the pathway to it. "Rules and policies and regulations and stipulations are innovation killers. People do their best work when they're unencumbered," says Steve Swasey, Netflix's vice-president for corporate communication. "If you're spending a lot of time accounting for the time you're spending, that's time you're not innovating."

The same goes for expenses. Employees typically don't need to get approval to spend money on entertainment, travel, or gifts. Instead, the guidance is simpler: act in Netflix's best interest. It sounds delightfully adult. And it is - in every regard. People who don't produce are shown the door. "Adequate performance," the company says, "gets a generous severance package."

The idea is that freedom and responsibility, long considered fundamentally incompatible, actually go together quite well.

Is the Internet making you stupid?

On Saturday I made a horrible mistake and bought a copy of The Times. In it was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read in a major newspaper. Its title? Is the internet making us stupid?. It's thousands of words of utter drivel claiming that:

For the past five centuries, ever since Gutenberg’s printing press made book reading a popular pursuit, the linear, literary mind has been at the centre of art, science and society. As supple as it is subtle, it’s been the imaginative mind of the Renaissance, the rational mind of the Enlightenment, the inventive mind of the Industrial Revolution, even the subversive mind of Modernism. It may soon be yesterday’s mind.

Let me begin with a detailed, thoughtful critique: bollocks. Seriously though, this 'linear mind' (which we apparently got from books) is the source of the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution? Surely, it's a complete lack of linearity, as in lateral thinking, that's given us the world we live in.

But the article is far worse than that simple paragraph. Let's start at the beginning...

read the rest at blog.jgc.org

Pro Tip: When a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is generally "No."

A Review of the Droid X, Wr item Written on the D rod Droid X

Droid X product shot.Overview of the trade x written on the droid rocks...

A review of detroit tax return on the droid tax...

Overview of the droid tax return on the droid tax...

A review of the Drois Z written on rhw Droid X...

I tried to write the title of this Using the voice recognition on the Deoid X but it didn,'t go very well. I tries the voice recognition. Wcause because the virtual keyboard ia pretty a.nohing annoying too.

I gave the HTC Aria with Android 2.1 an honest try, using it exclusively for about a week. Then it sat on my desk another week, while I tried to use it for tasks when I had the time to think about them. Now it's going back to the shop.

Seems to me the disconnect between the glossy home screen (yay, it's like an iPhone!) and underlying OS (this seems like it needs a command line...) creates a cognitive load too large for comfortable everyday use.

Plus, everything induces anxiety. Configure email using the setup wizard, and nothing shows up. Turns out that's the other email app. Try to install CNN from the app store, it says it wants my number and can make charge calls, and btw, is not affiliated with CNN.

I feel like I just don't have the time.

The Last Psychiatrist: Why Parents Hate Parenting

The real form of the question, the one that generates the correct answer simply in its asking,  is, "why doesn't having kids-- or getting married or getting a better job or getting laid or anything else I try to do-- make me happy?   Oh. I get it.  I'll shut up now."


mother and child.jpg

I was sure that color coordinating the baby and the bathroom would make me happier but it didn't... should I have gone with lavender?

This intriguing media criticism suggests not just that the article's subjects are self-absorbed, but the journalists themselves. The Last Psychiatrist calls such articles "cognitive parasites" because even if one disagrees with the articles' conclusions, they can change the way one thinks.