The Wacky World of Chris Knight – Page 26 – Life is an adventure. A good life is worth selling the movie rights. These are my story notes.

2008/12/202008/12/20

Google Book Search: Where it Works

In the past couple of years there had been a bit of rumbling about Google’s project to scan and index published books for search. I believe there were even some lawsuits about it.

I am a bit of an extremist, in that I believe that organizations such as Google are wrong to believe that, unless otherwise excluded, they have a right to search and index published content. I believe that as a copyright holder, companies such as Google need to get permission before cataloging and storing my content. I don’t dispute that search engines are beneficial; but I believe the onus is on the searcher to obtain permission and not on the copyright holder to deny it after the fact.

So, that’s my disclaimer about my beliefs. Now, as to how Google’s book search benefits authors and publishers:

Last week I was Googling for information on how to set up dynamically mountable user directories under Linux. Of the articles Google presented to me, their scanned copy of Oreilly’s “Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two” had the most clear and concise explanation. I could very well have set up this functionality with the Google results alone; but the Google preview of this book introduced me to a book that would be useful to me on a regular basis. So, I ordered it from Amazon and it was just delivered.

Score one for Oreilly choosing to have their books indexed by Google.

-Chris

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2008/12/062008/12/06

Idiocracy in report cards

One more step towards the world of Idiocracy… We are so eager to create a world where everyone is ‘equal’ that we just keep lowering the bar. At this rate we might as well grant citizenship to chimps and gorillas, since they are far more intelligent than the kids who are getting H’s on their report card.

Some schools stop giving F’s – UPI.com
Published: Dec. 6, 2008 at 12:54 AM

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (UPI) — Some schools in the United States have stopped handing out failing grades, or at least are delaying them while students get a chance to improve.

In Grand Rapids, Mich., work that would justify an "F" will get an "H" for "held," ABC News reported. The school superintendent, Bernard Taylor, said students will have several choices — including retaking a course, doing additional work or agreeing on another plan with teachers — but the grade will become a failing one if nothing is done within 12 weeks.

"I never see anyone doing anything but punishing kids," Taylor said. "If the choice is between letting kids fail and giving them another opportunity to succeed, I'm going to err on the side of opportunity."

Taylor and many other teachers and administrators say they believe many children quickly become discouraged and failing them contributes to the country's high dropout rate. He argues that children need to see a way forward.

Critics say the practice is amounts to coddling children.

"The task is to change the reality, not the labeling of it," said Alan Kazdin, a child psychiatrist at Yale.

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2008/12/062008/12/06

iPhone repair: Not for the faint at heart!

Holy crap, repairing an iPhone is worse than repairing a 1950s stopwatch!

Within weeks of buying a 16G iPhone (first gen) to replace the one I lost in the BART parking lot, I dropped it and cracked the screen. Fortunately, I had not removed the factory plastic cover, so I was able to live with that cracked screen for months.

Then I found a vendor on eBay who sold just the glass screen component, and having seen an article on Something Awful where someone replaced their screen with thin plexi I thought I’d give it a try. What a disaster! First, the glass cover is glued to the digitizer in a vacuum chamber, and removing it involves breaking it off a piece at a time and removing the glue. I got glass in my eye and had to go to an ophthalmologist to have my eyes checked out. Second, since I couldn’t glue my new cover in place in a vacuum chamber, the glass cover made imperfect contact with the digitizer. I learned the hard way that multi-points of contact at unexpected times lock the digitizer input so that the iPhone won’t do anything until you put the screen to sleep and wake it up again. Holy crap is that annoying. I can’t tell you how many calls I had go to voicemail because I couldn’t answer using the screen input and I couldn’t get my headphones inserted in time.

The folks at PDA Parts have put together a video on the iPhone take-apart, and after finding a complete screen + digitizer + LCD module on eBay I thought I’d give this a try. It took me three very frustrating hours, but I managed to get my screen replaced. Let me tell you… There are scene cuts in the video from PDA Parts, and it wasn’t just clean editing; those buggers clipped bits out to make it seem easier than it really is! The video doesn’t depict the battery being glued to the case, which I thought was a somewhat important point as I tried to get the battery out without damaging it, or that the top and bottom of the glass cover are double-sided taped to the case. These are the sorts of little things that when left out of a take-apart video can really screw you up. Thanks guys!

In the end I have a working first gen 16G iPhone again, but the amount of frustration energy I built up during the repair has led me to the conclusion that I’m not going to go through this again if I drop the damn thing again. Between the parts, lost time and frustration, I have to conclude that it would have been worth spending the $299 for the flat rate repair. That’s how frustrating I found this repair to be!

-Chris

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