Stephen needs a new car. Being dilligent and a car lover, he takes the time to write down all criteria for a great car. When he finishes the list, he notices that the only car matching all his criteria is a Ferrari. Well, he always loved a Ferrari so that makes sense. To make things more realistic he adds another criteria, called “price”, and starts looking for alternatives.
Tag: opinion
Kilometerheffing? GPS-data NEE!
Ik weet niet welke lobbyist menner Eurlings heeft verteld dat dit een briljant plan is, maar ik weet donders goed waarom onze regering kilometerheffing wil invoeren. Weer een kraantje toegevoegd aan het vat dat “werkende Nederlander” heet, en als bonus nog wat privacy gevoelige GPS gegevens om in rond te neuzen ook. Mocht je de rest van deze post niet willen lezen, reageer dan wel even op de volgende sites, want Eurlings heeft gezegd dat kilometerheffing “bij gebrek aan draagvlak” (welk draagvlak?) niet doorgaat:
- http://www.redonzeprivacy.nl/
- http://www.kilometerheffingnoway.nl/
- http://www.kilometerheffing-nee.nl/
- http://petities.nl/petitie/kilometerheffing-is-verkeerd
- http://www.kilometer-heffing.eu/
- http://www.anwbledenpeiling.nl/ <– Eurlings gaat deze uitslag gebruiken! (als je de vragen gezien hebt zie je waarom :-/ )
T(w)inkering
Now that the twitter hype is cooling down, and companies tart to realize that it is, in fact, just CB radio in a new asynchronous form, only the “true tweeps” still hang around. And now, it’s time to t(w)inker with it.
Design Gripes
Dear Akio Morita,
Lately I have some small issues with a lot of design decisions being made by the company you founded a while ago. If you look at my irritations seperately they’re just small gripes of a grumpy old customer. But the increasing number of design mistakes have me worried about your user acceptance testing and quality assurance processes. Given the sheer size of your company, and the fact that the very same people who are sabotaging your overall product quality can silently delete my complaint, I thought I’d share it with you here, on my very private blog. Nobody else will read this. Honest.
LED’s in your livingroom?
In some countries, there is some talk on banishing the classic (incandescant) lightbulb. I think this whole discussion is needless. The only reason why it exists, is that the fluorescent bulbs are often of mediocre quality, and certain people are here to enforce their bad tastes upon us “for a greater purpose”.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like trees and birds around my house, and I would be more than happy to install energy-efficient appliances in my home, even if they cost me slightly more. But especially if I’m paying more, I expect to get a certain level of quality.
Because of the inefficiency of incandescent bulbs, and the number of bulbs in my household, I decided to look around for energy efficient solutions. Particulary LED lighting caught my interest, because it is not only energy efficient, it’s also dimmable with normal (cheap) floor dimmers. They even stay cold enough so that children touching them do not burn their fingers.
Are you a Wise person?
When Ducks migrate for the winter, they are able to have their brain partially asleep. This comes in handy when you have to fly hours on end in a pack, without restbreaks. Aparently, people have started to adopt this habbit. Yes you’ve read that right. I’ve seen some very good examples of people using only one half of their brains.
Tweet Week
About a week ago, I was a bit bored and decided to see what Twitter is all about. I created an account, and I Tweeted for a week. I tried to keep to the original idea, where a Tweet should answer the question “What are you doing”? Looking back, my tweets include Coffee, Podcasts, Global frustration, Small joys, Small irritations, Re-tweets, and Replies.
Bill’s Mosquitoes
Bill Gates found a very good way to get the news reporters to pay attention to the malaria problem. In his talk at the TED conference, he released a few mosquitoes, stating that malaria should not be just for poor people to experience. People who did not see the whole performance may react shocked, because when placed out of context it sounds like an outrageous thing to do.
If you think that’s the case, you should maybe have a look at his talk, available (for free, without registering) at TED.com. You’ll see that the audience is actually laughing when he releases the mosquitoes, and at the end of the talk Bill gets a standing ovation.
In addition to the malaria problem, Bill also makes a very good case about how important good teachers are, and what we can do to help teachers become just that.
Get well soon
Dear Steve,
Congratulations on the 25th aniversary of the Macintosh. I was sorry to hear that you are not feeling well and took some time off. Try not to worry about work, enjoy the time with your family and take care.
Get well soon,
Rolf
Buddha had a stroke
Here’s Jill Bolte Taylor. She’s a brain scientist, studying schyzofrenia, and the micro-circuitry in the human brain which causes these (and other) mental illenesses. On the morning of September 10, 1996 she had a stroke. Amongst all other things that went though her head, she realized that this was a tremendous oportunity because she got to study this phenomena first hand. Luckaly, she fully recovered, wrote a book about it, and did a very impressive presentation about it at the 2008 TED conference, called “a powerful stroke of insight”.
Having watched this presentation, I realized that Zen monks already figured this out a long time ago, without knowing that they were talking about left or right brain halves. Here’s a short recap of what your left and right brain halves do: