July 2010
1 post
2 tags
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
2 tags
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