…maybe they’re just going to make money by charging to send users emails.
“Starting today, we’ll begin blocking links in Mini-Feed, Notifications, and Notification Emails which lead to the installation of another application in the hopes that developers focus on user experience and engagement being paramount, not deceiving users for the sake of growth.
Happy Hacking!”
Dave Winer is taking on Apple’s hard disk policy. The fact that they keep the hard drives is upsetting him.
“It’s amazing to me that the tech blogosphere doesn’t treat Apple’s policy re broken hard disks as the huge gaping security hole that it is.” from It’s a security issue, folks (Scripting News)
I’d not thought about it before but this is industry standard practice. Most hardware manufacturers exchange hard drives for corporate clients every day. There is Peta-bytes of data walking out of offices around the world every day.
Nick Carr has a good article in The Guardian about how consumer IT is now a service.
The big switch may turn off jobs | Technology | The Guardian
Of course he’s right, but he doesn’t talk about how this is going to affect corporate IT departments. Most IT staff are not running dating sites or YouTube; they’re running payroll and finance applications for corporations.
Political Polarization During the 2008 US Presidential Campaign
Now can we have the same for email addresses in corporate address books?
via Scientific American: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Proper Praise
How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”
We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.
The FT predicts what will happen in 2008…
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment – President Clinton, Google grows, $100 oil, but no US recession – this is 2008
There are a couple of intersting comments; first Iraq…
Will Iraq disintegrate?
Iraq is a broken country – broken by dictatorship, war, invasion and occupation. For most practical purposes it already has disintegrated: it can no longer properly be considered a unitary state. The best hope is a weak central government whose primary role is to allocate oil revenue on an agreed basis.
That would require a broader rapprochement in the region between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia (which is possible), and the US to bury the past and seek a diplomatic grand bargain with Tehran (which is not – at least in this last year of the Bush administration). David Gardner
Intersting that the obvious is now out in the open. Iraq no longer exists but we continue to pretend that it does.
Now to a good prediction on Sarko. The main reason that Sarko will survive is that he moves faster than the opposition can organize (he launches a debate, last nights was about the “politics of civilisation”, by the time that the opposition has decided what they think he’ll move to another subject) as long as he keeps that up he’ll survive.
Will Nicolas Sarkozy blow up?
Observing Nicolas Sarkozy governing France is a bit like watching a man striking matches in a warehouse full of fireworks: there is constant colour, noise and excitement but also a nagging fear that the whole thing might explode. His determination to reform the country’s rigid labour laws is the most likely spark. But the country’s civil service, universities and banlieues are also combustible. The French president’s impulsive foreign policy seems yet another accident foretold. That said, Mr Sarkozy has an instinctive understanding of his compatriots and a happy knack of skirting disaster. French voters elected him to change the country. He runs the most risks by taking none. There will be plenty of flashes in 2008, but none is likely to prove fatal. John Thornhill
“Its all gone mental”
“I realise what the night could be like – thousands of people will be intent on drinking until they fall over. The streets could be running with glittering steams of spilled drinks, urine and blood. The blue strobes of police and ambulance vehicles and the lights of takeaway shops will provide the illumination.”
‘I’m a glutton for punishment’ | Newsblog | Guardian Unlimited
Oh, man…
I believe that he’s refused to rule himself out of the running for 2008! Please let him run, please!
End of Support for Netscape web browsers – The Netscape Blog
That little logo with the asteroids symbolized the early web and now it has gone.
Let it be a lesson to us all; they launched a product called Communicator with high ambitions to completely take over the web. The result was that the web remained independent and Netscape slowly died.
R.I.P.