links: June 2010 Archives

Civilizations which become obsessed by sustaining unsustainable debt-loads have forgotten the basic nature of money. Money is not real. It is a conscious agreement on measuring abstract value. Unhealthy societies often become mesmerized by money and treat it as if it were something concrete. The effect is to destroy the currency’s practical value.

The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness.[11] We play Farmville, then, because we are trying to be good to one another. We play Farmville because we are polite, cultivated people.

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.

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.

# Map them using Google Maps # Publish a map on your Web site # Create a store locator # Get coordinates, print maps, and more!

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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.