Recently in links Category

links for 2010-06-29

|

links for 2010-06-28

|
  • High-tech meets low tech and the coolest accessory for your phone was born. iPlunge is the perfect solution for your video emergencies — just squish it against the back of your iPod®, iPhone®, or any device with a smooth hard surface, sit back, and smile.
  • As Gary Lineker once said: “Football is a simple game, 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans win.”
  • “An abject performance,” said Gary Lineker. “You cannot believe how bad England were,” said Alan Hansen (who’d told us pre-match that the Germans “are an average side and are eminently beatable”). “I don’t know where to start . . . they were hopeless from start to finish,” said Alan Shearer. “Defensively, it was the worst team performance I’ve ever seen,” said Lee Dixon. “Shambolic, it really was,” said Hansen. “Quite frankly it was awful,” agreed Dixon. “They could have lost by five or six,” said Hansen. Dixon disagreed. “They could have lost seven, eight, quite easily,” he sighed.
  • WORLD CUP 2010: ROUND OF 16: GERMANY 4 ENGLAND 1: THE BIG pieces of hardware lining the roads in Bloemfontein to promote the local military museum set just the tone the English fans like to adopt for clashes with their old enemy. If they viewed the Free State Stadium as a battleground yesterday, though, few of those who had travelled so far to support Fabio Capello’s side can have avoided the conclusion that his side were completely routed over the course of their latest 90 minutes engagement with the Germans.

links for 2010-06-26

|
  • There's no need to queue overnight for the latest iPhone - if you can afford the HK$14,800 price tag on parallel-import 32GB iPhone 4s that went on sale in Mong Kok yesterday. That's a month before the local launch, and the price (for an unlocked phone from Britain) is more than twice that of iPhone 3GS released last year. Two days after the iPhone 4 went on sale in the United States, France, Germany and Britain, Hongkongers were able to get their hands on the gadget yesterday at Digital Concept Mobile Pro-shop at Sin Tat Plaza. The iPhone 4 price, at US$1,902, is more than six times the US$299 price of locked versions offered by one telecoms service provider in the US - and that's with a two-year contract.

links for 2010-06-25

|

links for 2010-06-23

|
  • The ActiveGS plugin is required to safely run apple II/IIGS software within your browser Latest version is 3.0.246 Installation Procedure for Firefox 3.6 (Mac) If the automatic installation process from Firefox did not work, click HERE to manually download the plugin. Once downloaded, press on the [Install Now] button that will be enabled (after 3seconds !)in the next window to complete the installation process. Please check http://activegs.freetoolsassociation.com if you need further assistance
    (tags: apple games)

links for 2010-06-02

|
  • Steve: I'll tell you. Actually. It started on a tablet first. 7:00PM Steve: I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on. I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, 'my god, we can build a phone with this' and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone.
  • May 13th: A small number of interconnected businesspeople operated at the apex of Irish business during the boom years 2005-2007. In a major new piece of research, Mapping the Golden Circle (digital version available here), equality think-tank TASC has revealed the extent of the network across 40 of Ireland’s top private companies and state-owned bodies in that period
  • I’m going to disagree. I think it’s that he’d rather be wrong repeatedly in the short term than admit that his entire technology industry world view is wrong. His big picture perspective has remained very consistent since the ’90s: Microsoft is the undisputed king of the industry, and Apple makes some nice but trivial niche products.
  • When do people learn languages? My concern here is to look at what linguistics can tell us about why and when people learn a language. (Summary: It's not easy, so they'll try not to.) I'll also cover the subsidiary questions that usually interest folks more: How can I learn a language? and, How can I make other people learn this language?
  • Cold weather warning issued by observatory Regina Leung 5:39pm, Jun 01, 2010 Email to friend Print a copy Bookmark and Share The Hong Kong Observatory issued a cold weather warning at 4.20pm on Wednesday and warned that temperatures would drop further, said a spokesman. “A winter monsoon associated with a cold front is affecting the coastal areas of Guangdong and the temperatures in those areas have decreased by four-to-six degrees Celsius compared to yesterday. “The observatory forecasts that when the monsoon passes over Hong Kong temperatures will drop further. In urban areas it will be around 13 degree Celsius tonight and a couple of degrees lower in the New Territories,” senior scientific officer Ginn Wing-lui said. The observatory estimates the temperature will drop further on Thursday and Friday. “The temperature on Thursday will be around 12 degrees Celsius and on Friday may even drop to 11 degrees,” he said.

links for 2010-06-01

|

links for 2010-06-01

|

links for 2010-05-31

|
  • In a pre-emptive blast before the banks launch their own lobbying effort on June 10, Stephen Cecchetti, chief economic adviser to the Bank for International Settlements, said the banks’ “doomsday scenarios” were based on their assuming “the maximum impact of the maximum change with the minimum behavioural change”. EDITOR’S CHOICE Lex: European bank levy - May-26 G20 urged to make investors pay for failures - May-24 US Senate approves financial reform bill - May-21 Opinion: Senate bill merits two cheers - May-23 “They are assuming they’re not adjusting their business at all to the regulatory reforms and that the result for the economy will be the worst possible,” said Mr Cecchetti.

links for 2010-05-30

|

links for 2010-05-29

|
  • "That Spartan management style was successful in past decades and was widely adopted by early Hong Kong and Taiwanese manufacturers who operate factories in Guangdong," he said. "But it has gradually come to be regarded as an outdated and unsustainable management style for dealing with young people born after the 1980s."
    (tags: china apple)

links for 2010-05-28

|
  • Although careful not to advise his Irish audience not to use SEO consultants – a valuable source of advertising dollars for Google – Cutts was clear he would prefer if webmasters felt they could get to grips with the issues themselves. “A lot of SEO is simply common sense. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself how would a regular user see this.” The SEO business is also one that has attracted more than its fair share of shysters and snake oil salesmen. Sites abound on the web selling software and services that guarantee to get a site into Google’s top 10 listings for their favoured search term for as little as €100. In reality they are little more than a scam to get the credit card details of the unsuspecting.
    (tags: seo google)

links for 2010-05-25

|

links for 2010-05-24

|
  • This timeline goes over all the major events and plot points of the saga, from before Half-Life 1 to the end of Half-Life 2. The HL1 manual indicates that the Black Mesa incident occurred on May 5, 200-, implying by the "-" that the incident could take place during any year during the decade. For simplicity's sake, I assumed it happened in the year 2000 and went from there.

links for 2010-05-23

|
  • Basically, US postwar economic history falls into two parts: an era of high taxes on the rich and extensive regulation, during which living standards experienced extraordinary growth; and an era of low taxes on the rich and deregulation, during which living standards for most Americans rose fitfully at best.
    (tags: economics usa)
  • Once again, it's NOT the battery at fault. The first thing to try before getting an iPod replacement battery is re-calibrating the meter. This will not magically produce a meter so accurate that you can tell at a glance the difference between two hours left and three hours left -- the system just isn't designed for that. But it may fix the early shutdown problem. To re-calibrate, run the iPod until it shuts down. Recharge fully, using the AC power (mains) adapter, not a USB or Firewire port (see below). Do not recharge until the iPod shuts down due to low battery again. This does not mean you have to leave it running for hours; use it normally, but hold off on any "top-off" small recharges.

links for 2010-05-20

|
  • let the dough rise overnight. It’s not a new idea. Anthony Mangieri redefined New York’s artisanal scene when he opened Una Pizza Napoletana in 2004 (now living in San Francisco, he will reopen his pizzeria there later this summer). He learned to let dough rise for 24 hours in Naples. Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco and Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix all have overnight rises; at Lucali’s in Brooklyn, the dough rises for about 36 hours; and at Saraghina, also in Brooklyn, it goes for as long as 72 hours.

links for 2010-05-19

|

links for 2010-05-16

|

links for 2010-05-14

|

links for 2010-05-13

|

links for 2010-05-07

|

links for 2010-05-05

|
  • When the Central Bank discovered that the Ansbacher Bank was breaking the law by running a major tax evasion scam for the benefit of a small group of individuals (which included Charles Haughey, a longtime Irish prime minister noted both for his personal vindictiveness and his lavish lifestyle), it declined to discipline the bank for abusing its license, or indeed to inform the taxation authorities. This minimalist approach to oversight was later to wreak havoc, as the bank turned a deliberate blind eye to the problematic accounting practices of well-connected banks.

links for 2010-05-04

|
  • The point of terrorism is not to "destroy." It is to terrify. And for eight and a half years now, the dominant federal government response to terrorist threats and attacks has been to magnify their harm by increasing a mood of fear and intimidation. That is the real case against the ludicrous "orange threat level" announcements we hear every three minutes at the airport. It's not just that they're pointless, uninformative, and insulting to our collective intelligence; it's that their larger effect is to make people feel frightened rather than brave.

links for 2010-05-02

|

links for 2010-04-30

|

links for 2010-04-24

|
  • "Credit-rating agencies allowed Wall Street to impact their analysis, their independence and their reputation for reliability," Senator Carl Levin, who leads the investigative panel, said on Thursday. "They did it for the big fees that they got." E-mails released by the committee show Moody's and S&P deferring to investment banks that were paying them to assign ratings to securities composed of pooled mortgages.

links for 2010-04-23

|
  • If you check that site out, you will see that it is a total spam site. The site is completely loaded with ads, mostly Google Adsense. If you read the supposed solutions to the problems on there, you will see that for the most part these so called expert answers are super low quality pieces of crap. In fact, it appears that the overall business model for this site is to flood the internet with highly optimized posts that provide zero value to the end user so that visitors just click on an ad to leave the page.
  • Looking to add even more retro flavor to your Olumpus E-P1? Then you might want to consider taking after Flickr user Lok Cheung, who was inspired by the Rolleiflex TLR to create this Rollei EVF (of sorts) for the Micro Four Thirds camera.
    (tags: photography)

links for 2010-04-22

|
  • Hong Kong’s leading authority on air quality said on Thursday he was leaving the city to avoid its polluted air and keep his respiratory problems under control. Anthony Hedley, best known for creating the Hedley Environmental Index, which tracks the public health and economic costs of Hong Kong air pollution in real time, is relocating to the Isle of Man.
  • First, I’m fascinated by their apparently cavalier attitude regarding the legal implications of their actions. I’m not offended by their decision to obtain this unit and publish everything they were able to ascertain regarding it. It simply boggles my mind the stakes they have effectively wagered that Apple will not pursue this legally. Second, publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves.
    (tags: apple news)
  • Piling on more rules and statutes will not produce something different than it has in the past. Reliance on affirmative principles of truth-telling in accounting statements and a duty of care would be preferable. Deregulation is not some kind of libertarian mantra but an absolute necessity if we are to exit crony capitalism.

links for 2010-04-21

|

links for 2010-04-16

|
  • "3. Let every person have from birth to grave, their own personal data stick, on which goes their PPSI number, current photo, all medical details, tests, scans, prescriptions, donor status etc. and let every health-related outlet have a reader/writer for same." NICHOLAS GRUBB, [DAVE: tying long term records to a single storage medium is not very clever. How can you guarantee that a 2010 USB data stick can be readable in 2080?]
    (tags: health ireland)

links for 2010-04-05

|

links for 2010-03-29

|

links for 2010-03-26

|

links for 2010-03-24

|
  • The expatriate mother who sent out the e-mail that went around Hong Kong falsely claiming two Chinese women tried to abduct a boy in Ocean Park admitted yesterday she got her facts wrong after picking up the story in a bar on Saturday night.
  • If you own a GSM phone then there are several codes that can be entered to tell the network how to handle incoming calls and more. These codes are not really considered secrets, but they are poorly documented by service providers.
    (tags: gsm phone)

links for 2010-03-23

|

links for 2010-03-19

|

links for 2010-03-16

|

links for 2010-03-06

|

links for 2010-03-05

|

links for 2010-03-04

|
  • Americans are historically a tough lot. But the policies and rhetoric of the Bush-Cheney years, which set the tone for the current GOP attacks, are infantilizing: be very afraid, we're told, and let the government take care of you. The tough-guy bluster has led to a permanent state of anxiety—and a slew of counterproductive policies, from harsh visa restrictions to waterboarding. Our politicians rail about apocalyptic threats while TSA officers pat down toddlers at the airport. The irony is that many potentially lethal terror attacks—from United Flight 93 to Richard Reid to the underwear bomber—have been foiled by regular citizens. The aim of terrorists is to make people feel powerless and afraid. Un-fortunately, not every plot will be foiled. But if that's the standard we and our leaders set for ourselves, we are doomed to perpetuate dumb policies that flow from irrational fears. Just what the terrorists want.
  • In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI. In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire. More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil.

links for 2010-03-03

|

links for 2010-03-02

|
  • 4000 AD is a unique game of strategy set two thousand years in the future, when men have spread to the planets of other stars hundreds of light-years from the earth. An interstellar conflict between worlds is its subject. The concept of star travel by hyper-space is the basis of its unique playing character. 4000 AD is pure strategy of movement, with no chance element. Two to four players may play independently or in alliance with others.
    (tags: games scifi)
  • 4000 AD is a science fiction game set 2000 years into the future. Players maneuver fleets of ships in an attempt to conquer the known galaxy.
    (tags: games scifi)

links for 2010-02-28

|

links for 2010-02-27

|
  • <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1Kg8HFQ1xP4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1Kg8HFQ1xP4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
    (tags: movies humour)

links for 2010-02-26

|
  • Madam, – As an Irish citizen who travels extensively in the course of my work, I am very concerned about the fraudulent use of Irish passports. I have long experience of the ready welcome that an Irish passport receives in many corners of the world. This welcome is now being threatened by the use of fraudulent Irish passports by those suspected of murdering Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. There is a strong prima facie case against Israel: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was seen as an enemy by Israel; Israel has engaged in foreign assassinations before; Israel has used forged third-country passports in other such operations; and no forged passports from Israel’s closest ally (the United States) were used. Clearly, the perpetrators think that they can treat Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, and Australia with contempt.

links for 2010-02-21

|

links for 2010-02-20

|
  • How is it even possible that a Minister who slandered a political opponent and then swore a false statement in an affidavit before the High Court that he had not done so, could still remain in office? Because, in post-Ahern Irish politics, anything goes. No wonder the public have grown increasingly sick and tired of politics and politicians. It is apparent to me that, with the playing out of the O’Dea affair, we have arrived at a point that the 20th-century American writer Jean Toomer described most aptly. He said that acceptance of prevailing standards often means that we have no standards of our own. The prevailing standards the Government is operating off in Irish politics are those of Bertie Ahern. The result is that the current Fianna Fáil party has no standards. They do have one guiding principle remaining: blind loyalty to party colleague, come what may.

links for 2010-02-19

|

links for 2010-02-18

|
  • Ubisoft's New PC DRM Really Requires Net Access, Ends Game If Disconnected by Chris Faylor Feb 17, 2010 3:20pm CST Ubisoft wasn't kidding when it said that its new digital rights management technique mandates "an active Internet connection to play the game, for all game modes." Advance copies of the first two games to embrace the new solution--Assassin's Creed II PC and The Settlers 7 PC--recently arrived at PC Gamer, leading to the discovery that the games automatically shut down if temporarily disconnected from the Internet. In the case of Assassin's Creed II PC, a single-player game, players will lose any progress since the last checkpoint in the event that they briefly lose their connection to Ubisoft's master servers, be it because of client-side or server-side issues.

links for 2010-02-15

|
  • To those familiar with the science and the IPCC’s work, the current media discussion is in large part simply absurd and surreal. Journalists who have never even peeked into the IPCC report are now outraged that one wrong number appears on page 493 of Vol.2. We’ve met TV teams coming to film a report on the IPCC reports’ errors, who were astonished when they held one of the heavy volumes in hand, having never even seen it. They told us frankly that they had no way to make their own judgment; they could only report what they were being told about it. And there are well-organized lobby forces with proper PR skills that make sure these journalists are being told the “right” story. That explains why some media stories about what is supposedly said in the IPCC reports can easily be falsified simply by opening the report and reading. Unfortunately, as a broad-based volunteer effort with only minimal organizational structure the IPCC is not in a good position to rapidly counter misinformation.

links for 2010-02-13

|
  • 1989 should have been the best year ever for Rock Sugar, the big haired heavy metal band that had just broken the top 41 on the rock radio charts with their solid brass debut album “Bang You Like A Drum”. But instead of headlining concerts, Rock Sugar made the headlines when they were presumed lost forever after playing an extremely ill advised gig celebrating the bat mitzvah of 13-year-old Lisa Rosenberg.
  • E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists. And Google, so recently a hero to many people for threatening to leave China after hacking attempts against the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, now finds itself being pilloried as a clumsy violator of privacy. As Evgeny Morozov wrote in a blog post for Foreign Policy, “If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government."
  • The problem is how. Google has taken a couple of services that had basically clear privacy expectations — specifically, Gmail (private) and Google Profiles (public) — and combined them in a way that discloses previously private information that many people consider confidential.

links for 2010-02-12

|
  • Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. We’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010.

links for 2010-02-11

|

links for 2010-02-09

|
  • This bears out the pervasive "conservative" American ethos of "I've got mine, so screw you," so the problem is much bigger than health care reform. The idea that anyone could fall victim to negative circumstance or make a bad decision or just find themselves on the losing side of something is attributed to their own bad character --- or, perversely, to the government which has taken from you, the deserving citizen, and given it to someone else, thus unfairly placing you at a disadvantage. It's old style Calvinism mixed with adolescent Randism and it's a very serious problem for people who believe that social stability and economic justice are important.

links for 2010-02-07

|
  • Many fung shui masters make a living out of being able to divine the future. Doubtless, then, they foresaw the taxmen coming their way. Thanks to the epic probate battle over the estate of the late billionaire Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum, the Inland Revenue Department has now clarified that fees and red packets given to fung shui consultants count as income and can be taxed. If some public good came out of what was essentially a private dispute, it is that the public coffers have found a new source of revenue.
    (tags: hongkong)

links for 2010-02-03

|
  • Hey guys, we know you like to have your fun, voice your opinions, and argue over your favorite gear, but over the past few days the tone in comments has really gotten out of hand. What is normally a charged -- but fun -- environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations... and that's just not acceptable. Some of you out there in the world of anonymous grandstanding have gotten the impression that you run the place, but that's simply not the case.

links for 2010-01-30

|

links for 2010-01-29

|
  • Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.

links for 2010-01-28

|
  • As a driver entering the new streets, you are immediately aware that this is somewhere different, somewhere special. It feels quite unlike a normal urban road. You start to pay extra attention, and to become more alert to other people and to your surroundings. The narrower apparent width of the carriageways, the absence of road markings and signals, the lighting, low kerbs and distinctive paving all help to encourage low speeds, whether you are familiar with the space or a newcomer. Every aspect of the scheme contributes to establishing a naturally low-speed, free-flowing environment.
    (tags: transport tr)
  • So, labour costs (the largest input), payroll taxes, gas, water charges, transport and fuel (including labour-related transport costs), couriers and accountants – all cheaper here than in Maastricht. So what’s going on? Why is the cost of running retail operations more expensive here than in Maastricht? Rent: rents are the killer. For city centre locations Dublin rents are €2,600 more expensive per square metre; for high street locations (Grafton Street compared to Grote Straat) the differential is a staggering €8,000 per square metre. Even in Outer City Shopping Centres (such as Dundrum), rents are nearly €2,700 dearer here per square metre than the Maastrich equivalent. That’s a lot money flowing out of consumers’, workers’ and owners’ pockets into commercial landlords’.

links for 2010-01-27

|

links for 2010-01-23

|

links for 2010-01-22

|

links for 2010-01-20

|

links for 2010-01-19

|
  • So, if you’re American, a large chunk of the reason you make a lot of money (relative to the rest of the world) is that you are American. The main cause of your relative wealth is not that you work hard, or that you’re innately smarter than members of other nations (though you may be since you weren’t starved as a child). It’s because you had opportunities given to you that most people will never had, and those opportunities existed due to the pure accident of your birth or because you or your family chose to come to the US. The same is true of most first world nations.

links for 2010-01-14

|
  • By (obliquely) accusing the Chinese government of involvement in corporate espionage and challenging the government to shut the company down for providing uncensored search, “Google has taken the China corporate communications playbook, wrapped it in oily rags, doused it in gasoline and dropped a lit match on it.” (Those evocative words are from top Chinablogger Imagethief.) This isn’t a temporary strategic retreat – this is a retreat where you detonate the bridges behind you.
  • Because also at the root of this problem are the American businessmen who dismantled their manufacturing and production, discarded their quality control, let go of their supply chains and fired their American workers and steadily squeezed the wages of everyone left over -- all so they could have their consumables, drugs, toys, dry goods, tools -- you name it, made in China. And every damn one of them, and everyone in regulatory affairs in the US government, knew going in they were going to have a big problem in this area. And they all made conscious decisions to abandon their scruples, decency and moral high ground to the pure pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else.
  • Terrorism simply isn't a visible factor in your chances of dying while flying, or indeed while doing anything else: it is insignificant, a problem that has been almost totally eliminated for Western citizens since its not-very-serious heyday in the 1970s and 80s, and you shouldn't worry about it. It would make absolutely no noticeable difference to your or my chances of violent death/injury if terrorism was eradicated overnight.
  • The British economist David Blanchflower warned that Ireland could be plunged into a 1930s-style depression if the public purse is cut: "Balancing the budget is not what you do in a recession. My advice is to wait until you're out." His warning was widely reported in the Irish press but totally ignored by government.
  • Full episodes now available in HD on the dailyshow website!

links for 2010-01-13

|

links for 2010-01-10

|
  • There's also the popular notion that Apple has to do something entirely new or totally amazing in order for the tablet to succeed. After all, tablets have been tried before, with dismal results. It seems absurd to some people that Apple can succeed simply by using existing technologies and software techniques in the right combination. And yet that's exactly what Apple has done with all of its most recent hit products—and what I predict Apple will do with the tablet.
  • In particular, the newspaper cited "conversations with several former Apple engineers" who've reportedly had a key role in the ongoing development of Apple's much-anticipated tablet device who suggest the company may require that users adapt to a "somewhat complex new vocabulary of finger gestures to control it, making use of technology it acquired in the 2007 purchase of a company called FingerWorks." “The tablet should offer any number of unique multitouch experiences — for example, three fingers down and rotate could mean ‘open an application,’ ” one former Apple engineer reportedly told the paper. A second added that the Cupertino-based company has “spent the past couple of years working on a multitouch version of iWork."

links for 2010-01-09

|

links for 2010-01-08

|

links for 2010-01-06

|
  • "FORMER taoiseach Bertie Ahern will not pay tax on the estimated €400,000 earned from his autobiography thanks to the artists’ exemption introduced by his former Fianna Fáil colleague and political mentor, the late Charles Haughey." *rolls-eyes*

links for 2010-01-04

|

links for 2010-01-03

|

links for 2009-12-31

|

links for 2009-12-27

|

links for 2009-12-17

|
  • For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

links for 2009-12-15

|
  • The regulation states internet service providers are no longer allowed to host individually owned websites, and that only businesses with operating licences or government-authorised organisations may now have websites. The China Internet Network Information Centre, which supervises domain name registration on the mainland, said the measure stemmed from concern over widespread pornographic content on personal websites. The draconian regulation requires a domain name applicant to submit, among other things, a photocopy of its business or organisation licence. The purpose of requiring the licence is to guarantee the background information of the applicant is "real, accurate and complete".
  • Central to O’Toole’s analysis is the notion that Ireland is not yet democratically mature, with a weak civic morality and underdeveloped system of political governance, and an electoral system that encourages and condones local clientelism and corruption. He suggests that Ireland failed to create a proper democratic republic, to go through a process of political and social reform, the establishment a strong welfare system and collective interest, and to create a state independent of Church and local interest, as in other post World War Two, European countries. Instead Ireland persisted with two, essentially ideologically barren, middle right parties that were for all intents and purposes identical and which used a form of machine politics that were highly clientalist, reactionary and short-termist.

links for 2009-12-14

|

links for 2009-12-11

|

links for 2009-12-02

|

links for 2009-11-18

|

links for 2009-11-14

|

links for 2009-06-08

|

links for 2009-06-07

|

links for 2009-06-05

|

links for 2009-06-03

|

links for 2009-05-23

|

links for 2009-05-22

|
  • Water main bursts in Wanchai Staff reporter 1:41pm, May 22, 2009 Email to friend | Print a copy All lanes at Harbour Road, Central, near Fleming Road, were closed to traffic after a water main there burst, a spokesman for the Transport Department said on Friday. "About 4.30am, the water main burst," said the spokesman, adding that the main was about 450 millimetres in diameter. He said workers from the Water Supplies Department were still repairing it. "As they have been affected by the main bursting, all premises at Wan Chai and Happy Valley have had their sea water supplies suspended," he added. The spokesman said motorists going from Causeway Bay to Admiralty should use Tonnochy Road and Convention Avenue. "Those who drive from Admiralty to Causeway Bay should use Tim Mei Avenue and Lung Wui Road," he advised. (dave: disagreement between the headline and the first line of the story? Come on SCMP, pay some attention to detail.)
    (tags: scmp hongkong)

links for 2009-05-16

|

links for 2009-05-14

|

links for 2009-05-11

|

links for 2009-05-10

|

links for 2009-05-07

|

links for 2009-05-06

|

links for 2009-05-01

|

links for 2009-04-30

|

links for 2009-04-27

|
  • “What you get from Harvard Business School,” says Radio 4's In Business presenter Peter Day, “is a wonderful network of people who were there with you and a set of tools that you can then use and bamboozle people with for the rest of your life. It is a habit of thought - conventional responses to conventional situations. Harvard teaches very much on a case-study basis, so it is always telling people how to respond to things that happened in the past. No wonder that when something like the credit crunch comes along, huge numbers of highly skilled people in compartmentalised worlds are unable to respond to it.”
  • But the critics say there's an even deeper problem at the heart of the MBA degree. The MBA is all about putting careers on a fast-track to the top, whereas in the glory days of American industry there were no fast-tracks. MBAs, in other words are fundamentally anti-meritocratic.

links for 2009-04-20

|
  • Since water meters will not be read at intervals of exactly 121.64 days, the volume covered by each tier is adjusted on a pro-rata basis according to the actual number of days in the period between two meter readings. As such, a consumer who uses the same amount of water as another one but over a longer period of time will receive a lower water bill. dave: If the volume of water consumed is adjusted to match the observation period, why does the adjusted total match the observed total? WSD appear to be overcharging users who use more than 62 Cubic Metresof water per quarter.

Resolved: the pro-rata adjusted part is the tiered sections up to 62 Cu.M per 121.64 days. You pay full whack on the remainder up to your actual usage.

links for 2009-04-10

|

links for 2009-04-08

|
  • According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. ... Deaths of Americans due to terrorist activities, according to the US State Department, have averaged less than 15 per year since 2002. And all of those occurred abroad. The majority were in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

links for 2009-04-05

|
  • This site would be quite interesting if it wasn't completely contained in a flash animation, so you have to sit through the tedious opening animation every single time. Ironically, putting the whole thing in a flash file means that it can't be viewed on many devices, indexed by Google, or archived by the Internet Archive (archive.org), both of which defeat entire purpose of the site. Well done, incompetent web site designers and administrators!

links for 2009-03-31

|
  • The lesson should be clear. Commercial banks are just too important to the economy to be allowed to participate in the more dangerous business areas of modern finance. Trusting in the good sense of bankers to avoid excessive risk doesn't work. In a deregulated environment, caution is penalised and the conservative are soon pushed out.
  • All graphs on this page are ©Dave O'Brien 2003-2009, and licensed under the Creative Commons as Creative Commons License Sars Graphs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Hong Kong License. (I should have done it years ago, but I didn't even think of it until listening to <a href="http://www.43folders.com/2009/03/25/blogs-turbocharged">this podcast by Merlin Mann and John Gruber</a>.)

links for 2009-03-30

|

links for 2009-03-29

|

links for 2009-03-28

|
  • Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.
  • Based largely on my travels in China but also on events like the linked article, I'm finally beginning to think we're on the tipping point for Electric Vehicles. In five years time, I'd like to see most new cars be Electric. That requires a lot of local infrastructure and commitment to change, which HK government will not do unless China does it first. We're relying on the completely corrupt cadres for any progress. HK Government are truly a bunch of spineless weasels.

links for 2009-03-26

|

links for 2009-03-25

|

links for 2009-03-24

|

links for 2009-03-23

|

links for 2009-03-22

|

links for 2009-03-19

|

links for 2009-03-14

|

links for 2009-03-10

|

links for 2009-03-09

|

links for 2009-03-07

|

links for 2009-03-06

|

links for 2009-03-04

|

links for 2009-03-02

|

links for 2009-03-01

|

links for 2009-02-28

|

links for 2009-02-27

|

links for 2009-02-26

|

links for 2009-02-24

|

links for 2009-02-21

|
  • Bureau turns back on creationism concerns Liz Heron Feb 21, 2009 Guidance for biology teachers will not be reviewed to address concerns that it encourages creationism before the new secondary diploma is launched, the Education Bureau has indicated. Four scientists, including the University of Hong Kong's dean of science Sun Kwok and science faculty board chairman David Dudgeon, have called for a reference to "alternative explanations" to Darwin's theory of evolution to be removed from the biology curriculum guidance. The guide drawn up for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education states: "In section II, genetics and evolution, students are expected to understand that evolution is a scientific theory supported with evidence and are encouraged to explore other explanations for evolution and the origins of life in addition to Darwin's theory."
  • If man evolved from apes, why do we still have apes? It was interesting reading about the continuing debate between creationists and evolutionists, which poses some interesting questions and observations. As far as creation theory is concerned, it would appear self-evident that it happened. Everything is here in perfect order and balance. Also, according to science, it has been so for billions of years. However, science has failed to adequately explain how it arrives at that figure. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that the one (and I might add the only one) who claims responsibility for this creation has come and spoken about it. He called himself God. Science itself has not created anything without using what God put here in the first place as a base. Medical science has not been able to cure sickness or disease, heal crippled limbs, make the blind see or the deaf hear without using medicines, drugs or operations. STEVEN STRINGER, Queensland, Australia

links for 2009-02-20

|

links for 2009-02-16

|

links for 2009-02-14

|

links for 2009-02-10

|

links for 2009-02-09

|

links for 2009-02-03

|

links for 2009-01-27

|

links for 2009-01-24

|

links for 2009-01-19

|

links for 2009-01-17

|
  • This room — the “maximum kitchen,” he calls it — and the “video game room” he was sitting in minutes before are just 2 of at least 24 different layouts that Mr. Chang, an architect, can impose on his 344-square-foot apartment, which he renovated last year. What appears to be an open-plan studio actually contains many rooms, because of sliding wall units, fold-down tables and chairs, and the habitual kinesis of a resident in a small space.

links for 2009-01-15

|

links for 2009-01-14

|

links for 2009-01-12

|

links for 2009-01-08

|
  • Movie review: Australia (Baz Luhrmann) Australia has always been known for its fine food and wine and now you can add cheese to the list. As camp as Priscilla Queen of The Desert, broader than Steve Irwin bellowing "crikey", and generally making outback machismo as gay as Crocodile Dundee's vest-with-no-shirt look, this 166-minute sprawling epic is so bad it's actually good. With gooey emotions and calorie-rich visuals, Baz Luhrmann's busy homage is pure fromage. In fact, it's a magnificent, continent-sized disaster.

links for 2009-01-07

|

links for 2009-01-02

|

links for 2008-12-29

|

links for 2008-12-28

|

links for 2008-12-22

|

links for 2008-12-21

|

links for 2008-12-15

|

links for 2008-11-16

|
  • It's not in your rational self-interest to allow other people to go hungry or to lack necessities like health care just because you're unwilling to contribute your fair share to the social contract you were born into. The world is not a better place if people are homeless or trapped into poverty because the only skill you recognize is the ability to separate people from their wallets.

links for 2008-11-09

|

links for 2008-11-05

|

links for 2008-10-31

|
  • So on the nose is the traditional way of celebrating Halloween that a group called Media Evangelism has organised a march from Mong Kok to Tsim Sha Tsui today. Spokeswoman Vickie Chan said it was not right for Christians to celebrate Halloween by donning horror masks and demon horns and trying to scare each other as though it was a big joke. "Celebrating in this way means you are having a conversation with the Devil," she said. -- Why is no one pointing out that this is not mainstream Christianity? These evangelical organisations are representing an extreme and fundamentalist point of view. If Muslims were making these kinds of comments, the editorial view would be far more critical.

links for 2008-10-29

|

links for 2008-10-25

|

links for 2008-10-24

|

links for 2008-10-15

|

links for 2008-10-12

|

links for 2008-10-11

|

links for 2008-10-08

|

links for 2008-10-07

|

links for 2008-10-04

|

links for 2008-10-02

|

links for 2008-08-12 [delicious.com]

|

links for 2008-08-09 [delicious.com]

|

links for 2008-05-14

|

links for 2008-05-13

|

links for 2008-05-11

|

links for 2008-05-02

|

links for 2008-04-30

|

links for 2008-04-20

|

links for 2008-04-17

|

links for 2008-04-10

|

links for 2008-04-08

|

links for 2008-04-04

|

links for 2008-03-31

|

links for 2008-03-30

|

links for 2008-03-29

|

links for 2008-03-25

|

links for 2008-03-24

|