February 2011
1 post
August 2010
24 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Alistair Darling: RBS 'two hours' from collapse in... →
Alistair Darling, chancellor of the exchequer at the time of the financial crisis, has described a “frenzied” phone call with a senior RBS executive as the bank teetered on the brink of collapse.
1 tag
1 tag
Google's count of 130 million books is probably... →
1 tag
“A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master...”
– (via mnmal)
1 tag
2 tags
WatchMade for a political purposes, but still, I didn’t know this: How Marijuana Became Illegal
1 tag
1 tag
Want to Fix Immigration? Give Noncitizens the Vote →
Alexandra Starr - Foreign Policy:
But the Netherlands also offers an interesting case study in what happens when anti-immigrant politicians must face the people most affected by their policies: immigrants themselves. While noncitizens aren’t able to vote in Dutch national elections, they can vote in local elections, and the results of this policy — in the Netherlands and several...
2 tags
Minimal: A mini rant →
Because Android can be installed on any phones that support it, in my opinion, it will suffer from the same problems that Windows and Linux are suffering on the PC world.
They will have to support different hardware: screens sizes (and we’ve already seen what happen then: the screen doesn’t align…
1 tag
Analyst: Android Competing Against ‘Dumb Phones’ →
[…] Canalys analyst Horace Dediu put the figures in perspective. “Android is mostly competing with non-consumption and not iPhone. Android buyers are not choosing between it and an iPhone but between it and a dumb phone,”
[…] Android’s eclipsing of the iOS platform is a matter of geography. While 65 percent of Android sales are made within the US, 70 percent of iPhone sales are...
1 tag
1 tag
David Leventi Photography
David Leventi: “Photos of the world’s most beautiful opera houses.”
Via coudal.
1 tag
Information technology in transition: The end of... →
The Economist on the Microsoft-Intel duopoly.
1 tag
1 tag
Meten met twee maten
Met de deelname aan een kabinet samen met de PVV, zelfs al geeft de PVV formeel alleen “gedoogsteun”, dan meten VVD en GDA met twee maten.
Schande, riepen onder meer CDA en VVD toen een – democratisch gekozen – ‘vrijheidspartij’ toetrad tot de Oostenrijkse regering. Nu, tien jaar later, dreigt in Nederland hetzelfde te gebeuren. En dit keer werken CDA en VVD er aan mee. Het...
1 tag
Sessions for Safari →
Splendid extension for Safari.
Sessions keeps track of your open windows and tabs for you, with automatic periodic backups for easy and robust session restoration across launches. If the current panoply of tabs gets to be too much for either you or Safari, simply save a snapshot of the session at any time and start fresh, secure in the knowledge that you can go back and revisit all of those...
1 tag
““Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually...”
– Is The Bible More Violent Than The Quran?
July 2010
41 posts
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest... →
Long piece on “… why the “Apple of American business” is, well … Apple.”
1 tag
1 tag
The Geometry of Pasta
A book about pasta:
Pasta is a simple thing but getting it absolutely right depends as much on choosing the best pasta shape for the sauce as on cooking it properly. Each shape of pasta has a subtly different role to play. An Italian might say that understanding this is an innate skill that is difficult for the non-Italian to acquire. We politely disagree. Our book, THE GEOMETRY OF PASTA shows...
1 tag
1 tag
This Week at War: Pakistan Is Winning the War in... →
Of all the players in the Afghan game, Pakistan is running up the highest score. For several decades, Pakistan’s policy toward Afghanistan has remained largely unchanged, regardless of who was running the country. That policy is to support Afghanistan’s Pashtuns in their seemingly genetic resistance to outside control (outside in this case extends to any government located in Kabul)....
1 tag
An Illicit Whole Earth Catalog at J.F.K. →
After negotiating for four months with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Ms. Simon received permission to photograph all newly arriving contraband from Nov. 16 to Nov. 20, 2009. She used a large-format camera and a neutral backdrop. “I wanted the shoot to be somewhat of a performance piece, where my photographs were replicating the actual flow of goods during a very fixed period of time,” she...
1 tag
1 tag
Onderhandelingen over kabinet (VVD - CDA) met... →
Het wordt tijd om te emigreren…
2 tags
The view is bleaker than the official portrayal of... →
Long piece in the New York Times on the documents published on WIkiLeaks. Two quotes:
The secret documents […] are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.
…
The archive is clearly an incomplete record of the war. It is missing many...
1 tag
What Microsoft really said to analysts: Apple... →
Microsoft has been helping its partners with Tablet PCs for almost a decade and they still haven’t caught on. On the other hand, Apple’s iPad caused an incredible amount of buzz in the industry months before it was even released.
“Apple has done an interesting job,” said Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. “They’ve sold more than I’d like them to sell. We think about that.”
1 tag
2 tags
Disable Spotlight Searches to Improve iPhone 3G... →
Here is some voodoo to mkae your iPhone 3, running iOS 4 a little faster:
Go to Settings- General -Home - Search Results, and shut off everything you don’t need (I disabled Music, Podcasts, Video and Audiobooks; leaving Contacts, apps, Notes, Mail and Calendar checked). Made my phone a lot quicker, more like it was with v2 (I’m still running v3.1.2, jailbroken).
Before, there was a...
1 tag
1 tag
WatchAs the war in Afghanistan enters its final chapter, Sean Smith’s brutal, uncompromising film from the Helmand frontline shows the horrific chaos of a stalemate that is taking its toll in blood (via Video: Endgame in Afghanistan: ‘It’s taken a year to move 20km’ | World news | guardian.co.uk)
Coyote Tracks: The Emperor's New Antenna →
So I’ve been thinking about “Antennagate.” First thought: stop fucking calling every scandal “-gate,” for Christ’s sake.
Next thought: so what’s the scoop here? Biggest problem in the history of all of mobile phones, or minor issue blown way out of proportion by the tech media? Neither, of…
1 tag
“This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate [the journalist], who is not gay, told...”
– Rome’s Subculture of Gay Priests Rocks the Vatican - Newsweek
“On this matter, the church’s real problem is the closet,” [Brian Cones] says. “I must agree with the Vicar of Rome that it would be helpful if gay priests would come out—so we could thank them for their faithful service,...
Apple’s New $29 Battery Charger Is A Delightful... →
You will need one if you own anything bluetooth (keyboard, mouse … )
1 tag
“Afbrandrisico’s, onmogelijkheden en valkuilen. Ik denk dat de PVV lekker in de...”
– Sargasso, over de Kabinetsformaite en de PVV: In het kabinet, en dan?
1 tag
1 tag
Spion aan de Muur
Schande! 47 jaar na publicatie ben ik dit voor het eerst aan het lezen. Eén excuus: mijn kennismaking met Le Carré was “A Small Town in Germany.” En dat heb ik nooit verder kunnen lezen dan bladzij 30. Terwijl ik later veel van hem gelezen heb! Pagina 23, 5e zin; “Als u nog een whisky wilt hebben,” zei de stewardess, “mag u wel voortmaken. Over twintig minuten zijn...
1 tag
The War Logs - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com →
The NYT has a lot of information made public by Wikileaks:
A trove of military documents made public on Sunday by an organization called WikiLeaks reflects deep suspicions among American officials that Pakistan’s military spy service has for years guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the...