Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 19th Jan 2012 17:41 UTC
Apple's education event just ended, and just as Ars Technica said, Apple announced better support for textbooks, as well as a textbook authoring tool. The textbook authoring tool is heavily inspired by Keynote and Pages, and hence, I already know it's going to be top-notch and very pleasant to use. In addition, the company also repositioned iTunes U as a Blackboard competitor. As great as all these new tools are, several large red flags went up in my mind: I remember what it was like being the only student who didn't use Windows. Update: "Any e-textbook author that wants access to the iPad-toting masses must make his or her work an exclusive to iBooks 2."
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Member since:2011-05-12
When the planets align people can agree, even in this site!
Look, I don't think every school/university will throw all books out of the window tomorrow and commit 100% to the iPad, iBooks and Apple. A number will take a look in to it, run trails, others will wait to see what happens.
If it works, more and more schools will use it more and more. If it doesn't, or doesn't for some schools or for some situations, they'll stick with traditional teaching methods.
I'm trying to write more using a pen and it's not easy. My brain is way faster than my hand, causing some strange letters to appear. I think this illustrates that we still need some traditional teaching and skills.
When I tell other people this they often also say they have trouble writing. Sure we still write the occasional word or two, but do we write ever whole sentences? More and more people don't, they type it. Despite being a geeky nerd I don't think it's good to become so depended on technology.
Member since:2010-03-08
I'm trying to write more using a pen and it's not easy. My brain is way faster than my hand, causing some strange letters to appear. I think this illustrates that we still need some traditional teaching and skills.
Strange ! Even though I'm more or less born with a computer in the hands, it's the reverse for me. I strongly prefer pen and paper to computers for note-taking, drafting, and pretty much everything that requires a fast communication channel between my brain and a storage support.
I believe that is mainly because computers have inflexible input methods and tend to make me focus too much on appearance and layout. On a sheet of paper, it's natural to write in several directions, draw stuff to illustrate a point, strike stuff and redraw it from scratch elsewhere. On a computer, I tend to keep stuff clean, take the time to erase and rewrite, adjust the appearance of drawings, and I lose too much time doing it.
I would love to see a computer designed for pen input and with software that is as straightforward to play with as a piece of paper. However, it seems that Microsoft and their OEMs have done too much of a good job to associate pen tablet computers with crappy tablet computers.
When I tell other people this they often also say they have trouble writing. Sure we still write the occasional word or two, but do we write ever whole sentences? More and more people don't, they type it. Despite being a geeky nerd I don't think it's good to become so depended on technology.
Myself, computers and studies ruin my writing because they make me use English all the time, to the point where my written French becomes grammatically awful while my English does not get much better
Studying does help keeping good handwriting though, maybe we should do it more often in our lives ? Edited 2012-01-23 09:00 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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Member since:
2010-03-08
It seems to me that you only help my point there