The Good Old Days

Written by Jamie Wednesday, 25 January 2012 19:29

Most of society’s gains, such as the increase of rights for women and the working classes, just like the technological gains we’ve made, such as the free telephone calls we can now make, are usually taken for granted.  In order to understand this, I like to think about the good old days.  My father used to say that the good old days were awful.  His family had no money, no food, each bedroom was crowded.  There were old days, he used to say, but none of them were very good.

In Pursuit of an Acceptance of Human Nature

Written by Jamie Tuesday, 24 January 2012 10:21

In 1980, Geert Hofstede published a book called Culture’s Consequences.  He had been lucky enough to gain access to a huge survey that IBM had carried out against its employees.  Hofstede was able to draw some conclusions about different countries, including the distance between ‘the man on the street’ and a member of the ruling class.  He called this the Power Distance and compared countries to each other in what he called the Power Distance Index.  This is what he had to say about leaders from different countries:

The Free and Open Web Is dead, Long Live Commerce

Written by Jorrit Thursday, 12 January 2012 11:15

Yesterday the Dutch courts ruled that access to The Pirate Bay should be blocked by the Internet Service Providers XS4All and Ziggo.  The courts are usually there to protect our freedoms, but this time something has gone wrong.  Article 7 of the Dutch constitution and this European legislation clearly state that we as Dutch and European citizens have the right to unrestricted access to the internet. So why has the court ruled in favor of Stichting Brein and ordered ISPs to block the site? Can it be because Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, China, Sweden and United Kingdom have previously done so?  Maybe it's because the music industry, represented by stichting Brien, has a large commercial drive?

Reference
Court ruling in Dutch available here:
http://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Den-Haag/Nieuws/Pages/Ziggo-en-XS4ALL-moeten-toegang-tot-The-Pirate-Bay-blokkeren.aspx

Translation of the Court ruling in English available here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie/Rechtbanken/Den-Haag/Nieuws/Pages/Ziggo-en-XS4ALL-moeten-toegang-tot-The-Pirate-Bay-blokkeren.aspx&act=url

Tweakers news post on ruling in Dutch available here:
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/79266/ziggo-en-xs4all-moeten-the-pirate-bay-blokkeren.html

Translation of the Tweakers post in English available here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F79266%2Fziggo-en-xs4all-moeten-the-pirate-bay-blokkeren.html&act=url

Conformity in the Global Village

Written by Jamie Sunday, 08 January 2012 15:58

I saw a film once, I don’t know where, about the effects of violent television on the behaviour of children.  Some kids were shown a video of a teddy bear being nurtured by one of the experimenters.  Later, when the children were left with the teddy bear, they nurtured it, too.  A different kid, who had seen violence perpetrated against the bear, as soon as he could, beat the shit out of it.

Why Software Projects In Finance Fail; Or, I Really Do Hate Your Guts

Written by Jamie Monday, 02 January 2012 10:47

Software professionals usually can’t stand financial engineers. It’s not just that their code is bad and their manner strange, they are also pompous and often arrogant. The feeling of course is utterly mutual but in return the financial engineer throws derision into his hatred: he knows it’s harder to become a financial engineer than a software engineer and he knows he earns more.