December 2011
3 posts
1 tag
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Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Murder stats →
mrgan:
In 2005, the homicide rate in the US was 5.6.
In 2011, it was 4.8. It has been steadily declining since 1991.
In 2010, the international homicide rate was 6.9. For Europe, 3.5.
That figure for the murder rate in Europe is misleading, as it is skewed by the terrible murder rate of 15 for Russia.
The number for the UK is 1.17, making the US over four times more dangerous. Even safer...
4 tags
Planning your Business Startup
Stumbled across this post, detailing the process of how the author creates (and filters) startup ideas. Which is pretty interesting, but not of direct relevance to me as I have one startup idea, and just want to make that work, not create more!
However of even greater interest was the planning worksheet that he uses. Fortunately. a commenter pointed me to the Business Model Generation website,...
November 2011
1 post
1 tag
Does NYC Really Want To Store 80,000 Gallons Of... →
Jon Stokes points out a critical infrastructure flaw in NYC that looks to be a gift to terrorists.
August 2011
3 posts
5 tags
TV sport: Bud & FB hint at the future
lookatluca:
Some time ago I posted about what I considered was the untapped relationship-marketing potential of Formula 1, steeped as it continued to be in the world of free-to-air television and its somewhat retro business model.
So… Free-to-web is going to replace Free-to-air. And that’s ‘progress’?
In that case give me ‘retro’ any day.
3 tags
Why Android, not iOS, killed WebOS
Yesterday HP announced that it was killing of its WebOS-based phone and tablet products. It has also said that it will keep WebOS alive (in other areas), but, since HP doesn’t licence WebOS to any other mobile hardware manufacturers, if is clear that WebOS is dead as far as the mobile space is concerned.
Some bloggers have tried to hand the credit (if one can call it so, as I think this...
2 tags
The Great Disconnect: Why Riots were Inevitable
We have a society where almost half the eligible population feel that there is no point in voting - that the mechanisms that run our country have nothing to do with them. For certain age groups, such as the young, that proportion becomes the majority. So why do most young people feel that there is no point in voting, that there is no point in expressing their point of view about how the world...
June 2011
3 posts
2 tags
If computers...
peanutweeter:
via @MikeDrucker
Windows 7: Windows 8's hideous fat friend →
diogenex:
Windows 8 does look good. But I’d be lying if I said that the sight of legacy Windows wasn’t as jarring as being approached by someone hot, only to be asked if you might be interested in their hideous, fat friend.
May 2011
2 posts
2 tags
12 Reasons to Vote For AV
I’ve not seen anyone actually list the reasons why you should vote for AV, so here they are:
Removes wasted votes. Under AV you can ensure that your vote is kept alive after your first (or even second or third) choice candidate is eliminated, so your vote is only wasted if you choose to keep your list of alternate candidates short.
Eliminates tactical voting. You may not actually be aware...
2 tags
Tories video against AV →
Wow - I was expecting some intelligent comparison of voting systems. Instead, we get a (literally) childish promo.
Mr Cameron: You always talk about CHOICE. Choice in the NHS, choice in schools, etc, etc.
Yet when it comes to giving the voters REAL CHOICE - not having to worry about wasted votes, not needing to vote tactically - you’re against that.
You’re afraid of giving voters...
April 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Our voting system: A cancer at the heart of...
It seems extraordinary that people are not more excited about being given the chance to change our voting system, especially as it comes just 2 years after the expenses scandal, which proved undeniably the degree to which MPs take our votes for granted. And the reason they take our votes for granted is because our current voting system allows them to do so. The 5th May represents a fantastic...
1 tag
AV explained as buying crisps →
This article in The Independent contains the best real-world analogy that I’ve seen for how AV works from the voter’s point-of-view:
Scenario one: You hand over £1 for a bag of crisps and tell your friend you want a packet of salt and vinegar. But when he gets to the shops, it turns out there are none in stock. So your friend asks the shopkeeper what’s popular, he comes back...
October 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Marco.org: The Mac App Store isn't for today's Mac... →
marco:
Apple’s recently announced App Store for the Mac is a Really Big Deal™, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment. But a lot of existing Mac developers have pointed out major issues or unknowns that need to be addressed:
Provides an interesting insight into the likely role of the OS X App Store. One area that he doesn’t really discuss is how the OS X App Store is going to fit into...
New MobileMe Calendar - Fixing Disappearing...
Today, Apple released an upgrade to the MobileMe Calendar. The upgrade went fine and afterwards I could see all of my data when browsing to the MobileMe website directly. However it had all (apart from Birthdays!) disappeared from the iCal app on my Macs and from my iPhone calendar. This was despite having up-to-date software on all devices.
Investigating further, I found that the new version...
July 2010
1 post
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Are You The Unreasonable Man? →
Boris from The Next Web has posted a thought provoking article asking about the role of unreasonable behaviour in business.
It was still in the back of my mind while at Tai Chi class last night. Our instructor reminded us of the central role of Yin and Yang and the balance of opposites in Chinese martial arts and philosophy in general.
I was struck by the stark contrast with the Western...
May 2009
1 post
April 2009
3 posts
4 tags
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How VCs should not pitch to a startup →
It does seem odd that the VC’s focus is on differentiating them from other VCs, rather than being interested in what they’re likely to put their money in.
Like so many things nowadays, this is just doing a job by a fixed process - crank the handle and the ‘right’ result comes out.
March 2009
1 post
3 tags
Technologizer assesses Lauren and the 'Apple Tax'
Prompted by the Microsoft ‘Lauren’ advert, Technologizer’s Harry McCracken compares the 17” Mac Book Pro with equivalent models from Dell, HP, Lenovo & Sony. In short he finds that the ‘Apple Tax’ is the same as the ‘HP Tax’, less than the ‘Dell Tax’ more than the ‘Lenovo Tax’, and that the Sony machine belonged in a...
February 2009
2 posts
Firefox Overtakes IE (on one site, at least) →
The site for developers, W3Schools, has just published the browser statistics figures for January… and more people now use Firefox than all versions of IE put together (including IE8).
It has been coming for a while, but what is particularly interesting is that the numbers for IE7 have been dropping for the last 3 months (and the IE8 numbers nowhere near compensate for it).
January 2009
6 posts
Trading stopped for 15 minutes... →
The article contains this little note right at the bottom:
“Paulo Sergio Silva, 36, a trader for the brokerage arm of the Brazilian banking giant Itaú, shot himself in the chest during the afternoon trading session of São Paulo’s commodities and futures exchange in an apparent suicide attempt in November. Trading stopped for about 15 minutes.”
Trading stopped for 15 minutes!!! Your...
2 tags
Loaning of Shares →
This article tries to absolve short selling of responsibility for the bank values crash a couple of weeks ago (it does look like institutions dumped their bank stock as soon as they found out that short-selling was being re-enabled).
But the interesting statistic in this article is that over 3 percent of Barclays shock was out on loan, even while short-selling was banned. Which begs a...
2 tags
Microsoft's World of Pain →
I’ve known for a while about this guy’s trials with trying to create the ‘Shutdown’ menu for Windows Vista, but not read his actual blog.
The section on Microsoft’s source control system looks like a world of pain. How can any software company succeed when it take months for code changes to propagate from one team to another?
Continuous Integration this is not!
4 tags
Merrill Lynch paid itself $4 BILLION in bonuses →
Merrill Lynch paid itself $4 Billion in bonuses 3 days before the bankrupt company was taken over by Bank of America?!!!!
Three questions: Where was the oversight? Surely, once it was known that bailout money was going into the banks (and Merrill, or its rescuer was clearly going to be a recipient), a method of overseeing the financial management of these companies needed to be created? Or...
June 2008
1 post
bbum’s weblog-o-mat » What is good tequila? →
Not Cuervo Gold, apparently
March 2008
3 posts
Richard Dawkins & Darwinian Societies →
Very amusing description of PZ Myers being ejected from the preview of ‘Excluded’ - the new film on Intelligent Design. But that is not what interested me.
In the 11th paragraph Dawkins repeats his view from ‘The Selfish Gene’ that our origins in Darwinian evolution do not mean that we should structure our society in the same way. He argues that we should use our brains...
The Role of Powerpoint in the Colombia Disaster →
It does seem odd that NASA’s engineers presented technical information in the form of Powerpoint slides. It suggests to me a culture focussed on ‘managing the managers’ rather than engineering problem solving.
February 2008
1 post
Even MS boxes suffer from poor usability! →
ROFLMAO! Thanks to John Gruber from pointing this one out.
November 2007
7 posts
Sozzled Oz footie fan tattoed with 'Left Arm' and... →
He also ended up with “Gay Premiers 2007” on his arm, rather than celebrating his team’s win in the “Day Premiers 2007”!
ROTD - Monkeys and MS Word Formatting
Why the bloody hell do so many people have so little clue on how to use Microsoft Word?
Microsoft have spent years adding sophisticated formatting abilities, and yet most users space out documents by hitting the carriage return key like a bunch of demented monkeys. And adding a headline means ‘poke the bold button’
Clue Guys - there are are formatting properties and - gasp -...
4 tags
RDC 2.0 for Mac Beta 2 →
Haven’t seen this announced elsewhere, but on Wednesday Microsoft released a new beta of the updated Remote Desktop Connection for Mac.
Strangely no mention of Leopard compatibility in the release notes, though.
3 tags
Blackadder - BBC Episode Guide →
Plot synopses, quotes and information on which bits of Shakespeare the authors lifted. Good fun.
“The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil’s own satanic...”
– Blackadder - Series II - Money