Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | jlefo7p6's commentslogin

Tell us how you really feel: "...His declaration in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that there was 'no such thing as a neutral education' became a mantra for leftist professors, who could use it to justify proselytizing for America-hating causes in the college classroom..."

I know hackernews doesn't obsess about being "fair and unbiased" as much some sites, but I'm unwilling to consider an argument couched in such ridiculous terms.


I totally bought a wind-up OLPC laptop last Christmas, with one extra feature: vaporware crank.


Limiting yourself to works with a narrative hook in the first few sentences is a mistake.


Narrative hook is not the point. Having a sense of real contentand cogent argument leading to a useful conclusion, is.

All too frequently missing.


without sounding pretentious - one of the biggest things I've found is that today's authors suffer from a lack of eloquence. Communicating well is not something that's simple to master, and few are truly good at it - in the same way that computer science is a discipline, there are myriad courses in university devoted to communication.

But we're trying to glean insight and information from blog posts and articles often produced by time starved writers, first time bloggers or similar. The art of communication is being lost in search for the sound bite, the skim reader- the 20 second attention.

Perhaps we should all commit to reading a book a week- or how about writing a short story: surely the better we are at communicating then the more enriched we will be as a society?


It seems to me that eloquent writing actually makes it harder to skim and decide that it's worth reading. I used to read things because I liked how they were written, but now that it's become clear to me that there's more than I could ever hope to get to in years, I just want to get to the point and on to the next thing; I find myself skimming even novels I'm reading while on public transit, looking for the conclusion.

My point is just that great writing takes more attention and time, and so will simply have a smaller audience. I wish writers would worry less about putting together just the right turn of phrase and simply say what they want to say.


I find myself skimming even novels I'm reading while on public transit

Well, I think this is all very personal and our experiences cannot be generalized into a trend. In direct opposition to your experience, I've recently started to actually read books, instead of just skimming them for the story. The balance was tipped by the first book of the Gormenghast trilogy "Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake... really wonderful prose.


yes i know but when i feel that i'm reading something not useful i will be not interested and then it has no sense for reading it and i'll simply give up!


I can appreciate Empiricism as much as the next guy, but Google Search, Cuil, and Alpha seem comparable.

edit: the dreaded homonym! I mean they can be meaningfully compared to each other, not that they are the equivalent.



We've already heard today that focusing too much is bad (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599977).

All we need is an article warning against a balance, and we'll have the whole set!


The current economic mess is an example of too little focus...


I guess Alpha could come with tech support to gently rearrange your questions, but it seems like cheating ;)


The title is a little off: security updates boost security, and silent updates boost adoption of updates.

The recent stink with Adblock Plus and NoScript using my browser in their personal snowball fight makes me leery of auto-updates. Making the normative choice the default setting has an okay track record, but I'd like as many as eyes as possible helping me keep developers in line with my needs.


Hand the software out for free and charge for user accounts on the server.

This turns the problem into one of "How do I prevent account piracy?", which is hopefully not dependent on characteristics of the iPhone.

edit: I'm not sure what sort of kickback Apple would like in this case. Be sure to check that out first.


That could be accomplished in the upcoming 3.0 SDK which supports subscriptions.


It cannot be with 3.0. Subscriptions and one time charges are only supported for apps that initially cost money. You could get away with charging .99 cents for it initially and then charging a subscription.


You'd have the make the subscription cheaper to offset the app's cost, so you'd still be losing money on piracy. Plus, making the end user pay twice sounds annoying.

It sounds like Apple set it up this way to make sure they are getting a piece of all the money coming through the iPhone. I won't begrudge them that, but I feel for the developers.


That's the first time I have heard of that... is that official?


Yeah it was in the iPhone 3.0 announcement: http://i.gizmodo.com/5172200/iphone-app-store-revamped-for-c...


The photo of the wide corridor of KIVA's bustling past each other struck me as beautiful. Maybe I should get some sleep ;)

Like the Roomba, these guys found a way to use tech that we already have to do something magical.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: