Sunday, November 30, 2008

Browse by cellphone

Was bored the other day and decided I'd check out this site with my cellphone, and was happily surprised to see that not only could I cruise through posts, but could click though links back to the source articles, which were formatted for my cellphone.

So those of you with cellphones that can browse the Web can read through postings and articles rather easily. What I noticed that didn't come through were the headlines and videos.

James

Friday, November 28, 2008

An ounce of prevention in finance

Link above goes to: The New York Times

Quote from the source:
Op-Ed Columnist
Lest We Forget
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: November 28, 2008
The story of how we failed to see this coming has a clear policy implication — that financial market reform should be pressed quickly, and that it should not wait until the crisis is resolved.


Yeah, if the best reforms are ever to be done, they have to be done while things are painful, and the realization is clear as a result that they are needed.

Past history guides us to the conclusion that whatever reforms are done now, in time, there will be calls to remove them and de-regulate.

So, if not now for the clearly needed reforms, when?

Giving the remarkable conclusion that as we fix the current financial crisis, we must also work to prevent the next one.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Middle class is a feeling

However anyone else defines it, for me being middle class is a feeling. It is the middle way outside of class though the word "class" is part of the phrase as it is about living without a continual sense of fear, while class is about fear.

Classed societies separate themselves into at least two groups out of fear, and in the past when disease, famine or war could dramatically cut into the size of a population beyond 1/3 those fears were continually reinforced by losses hard to properly imagine today.

But today many people can be more afraid about hurting others than being hurt by them, and more concerned about their hopes and expectations than daily fights for survival--in middle class societies.

Those who pine for class do not understand it.

Possibly they have naive dreams of being royalty where to them that is just about parades and adulation, ordering others around and having plenty.

But class was about deciding who lived and who died, about surviving when so many others died to re-teach, and hold on to culture, as otherwise everything would have to be re-discovered. Starting would be from scratch.

The leaders were servants of the people, burdened with the task of living for the future no matter who else died, told that their duty was to preserve the knowledge, and rebuild after the disasters that always struck, killing vast numbers of their people.

Their lives were about pain and its inevitability.

Simply feeling safe is the most powerful gift of the modern world, and one worth striving to help others achieve.

Feeling safe is possibly the most under appreciated feeling in the world, until you lose that feeling, or live a life, where you never had it.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Slow boot times

Link above goes to: The New York Times

Quote from the source:
Digital Domain
30 Seconds to Boot Up? That’s 29 Too Many
By RANDALL STROSS
Published: November 2, 2008
Unhappiness with boot times is shared by many computer users, as reflected in much online discussion of the issue.


Great article as I'll admit I'm increasingly infuriated by how long my computer takes to boot up, especially when I get to the point when my browser is open and I'm trying to surf the web and the stupid computer is still loading. What is it still loading then?

Clearly I have everything I need as my browser is open and I'm trying to get to sites so what is this other crap I'm paying for with my time that I do not need and do not want?

Maybe someone should get a class action lawsuit together against software companies that do operating systems for wasting our lives and get some monetary compensation for the time we're forced to lose because we have no options with these freaking machines which are increasingly so important.

I want my time back. So I think as a warning to tech companies, speed up these machines before the lawsuits. Please.