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  • Tough love: An education

    Is ‘Tiger parenting’ the key to Asian academic success and what happens when the pressure becomes too much?

    http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2011/10/2011101185019403701.html

  • Fiscal Federalism on the Campaign Trail

    http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2011/04/25/fiscal-federalism-campaign-trail/

  • On access to information, Canada is a developing country

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/on-access-to-information-canada-is-a-developing-country/article2242001/

  • Headphones, what could be simpler?

    Intrigued by Ten… noise-cancelling headphones I spent all of last night combing through the internet looking for the headphones for our family. Lots of things surprised me, like open vs closed design etc. Now that I am (marginally) smarter here are the choices that seem to fit the bill (and knock you dead with the price tag):

    • AUDIO-Technica ATH-M50
      • cheap
    • Sennheiser PXC 450
      • lots of control and function
    • Bose Quiet Comfort 15
      • very Apple-oriented and won’t function without noise cancelation. Cheaper than PXC 450

    Looks like noise-canceling properties is something really personal as I read two independent pilot accounts about **the same** phones claiming opposite results (ultra quiet vs utterly useless). Also audio qualities are contested for every single model. Noise cancelation comes in two forms – low pitch is handled by all sort of doo-dads while high pitch is handled by… snug fit.

    Out of non-cacleling crowd sounds (nice punt, eh?) like those brands deserve closer inspection:

    • Monster Beats by Dr. Dre
    • Denon
    • AKG
    • Shure SRH-940

    Some brands fell off on “sturdy” factor – if those are going to be used by kid – they better not be flimsy.

    Some interesting resources are:

     

  • Fedora 16 LXDE Xorg keyboard layout switching

    I was trying to set up a laptop with Fedora 16 & LXDE to have alternative layouts and it turned out LXDE was pretty spartan when it comes to such things. So back to Xorg setup. On-the-fly change:

    $ setxkbmap -option ” -option grp:switch,grp:alt_shift_toggle ‘us,ru(phonetic)

    and a bit more permanent solution is (obviously) in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard :

    KEYTABLE=”us”
    MODEL=”pc105+inet”
    LAYOUT=”us,ru(phonetic)”
    OPTIONS=”grp:switch,grp:alt_shift_toggle”

    With addition of LXDE applet via

    “Right click on the panel → select Add / Remove Panel Items → Add → select Keyboard Layout Switcher and click Add

    use the Up and Down buttons to move the plugin to the desired position.

    You can now switch layouts by using the keyboard shortcut or by clicking on the xkb plugin”

     

  • Microsoft seeks patent on employee spy system • The Register

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/18/microsoft_patent_employee_monitoring/

     

  • Copyright isn’t working, says European Commission | Blogs | ZDNet UK

    http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/copyright-isnt-working-says-european-commission-10024835/

  • What The Founding Fathers Thought About Corporations | Addicting Info

    http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/13/what-the-founding-fathers-thought-about-corporations/

  • Jefferson on the role of press

    “The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” –Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

    http://blog.buzzflash.com/alerts/3230

    http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/19/just-who-is-this-right-wing-arch-nemesis/

  • Memo to American Bankers Association from lobbyists spells out $850,000 anti-OWS plan « Boing Boing

    http://boingboing.net/2011/11/19/memo-to-american-bankers-assoc.html