I may be the last to see this, a war, underground and undeclared, but a war. The opponents are a bit undefined but there is a clear and escalating combat in the world. I’m not talking about Terrorists, (although the establishment who is under assault may declare their attackers as such) I am talking about the the established order, The Multi-Nationals, the Big Press, Governments, Military establishments, Religious organizations. The big anonymous bodies that have been abusing their positions to detriment everyone else.
On the opposing side, are all the little people, groups and oppressed, or the perceived oppressed. Your fellow ‘pissed off’ worker setting next to you, who will explode in a fountain of Whistle blowing. A venting of frustration that will result in the...
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Yesterday I just got a trackback from a new article on Business News, Advices, Quotes And quite a handful of link through’s from there also. The funny part, call it amazing, they were linking to blog post I wrote 18 Months ago. Hardly a current, breaking news item, but the article seem to be quite active considering the link through’s and the minor nature, in context, with what the article was on about.
The internet really doesn’t forget....
All the bad news,
Nokia smartphones dumb down profits
Nokia releases Q2 2010 results; profits down, market share flat
Nokia Q2 2010 results – profits down but smartphone sales up
So lets do a reality check on the facts; Nokia profits are Down 40%, but are still making a Profit. Which means they are in the green economically, and are making a Profit of €221M Euros (285M$). But 40% less than last quarter, meaning that they are only making 60% of the profit they made last quarter, during the worst recession in over 100 years And everyone is complaining?
The only thing this tells me, is that a manufacture like Apple who makes more profit on their iPhone 4, is ripping off their customers by charging a premium price for a Smartphone and Nokia does not!
Reality Check cashed,...
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This article is one of the best portrayals of Nokia’s Perceived fall from grace: The Background Story
…But somehow with Apple, the facts no longer matter. The iPhone was the ultimate best phone ever – according to Steve Jobs – and because Steve Jobs says so, that started to become the storyline. The truth didn’t matter…
Mobile Phones Shipped last quarter
…Because Apple was in the game, now anything Steve Jobs said was the word from god. And no matter how severely deficient the first iPhone models were, because they were Apple phones, that meant they were the world’s ‘leading’ phones. And if you didn’t match the current iPhone model with a potential ‘iPhone killer’ – then you were obsolete. …...
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If you haven’t heard there is a vote in The Dáil on Tuesday, A No Confidence Vote against the Fianna Fáil Government. But listening to RTE and the Newspapers, you would only hear about Fine Gael frontbenchers ousting Kenny . What? No! We are voting AGAINST Fianna Fáil ! Where did all the kerfuffle about Kenny come about. In a word Fianna Fáil! It’s a ploy augmented by the gullible and lazy press to deflect attention away from the Tuesday No Confidence Vote. A lame attempt to displace attention away from their criminal activities which created the Irish Banking Crisis and to make a mockery of the Vote....
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I have had a revelation with regards to SmartPhones and the Reality Distortion Field.
Simply put, if the device, any device, that does not behave like a profit generating platform for Apple, should not be considered a Smartphone.
Platforms based on Symbian OS, BlackBerry , Windows and Palm and are based on a principal that the phone provides smart services to help the owner become more productive. To assist with the communications and telephony functionality and on the side, provide other useful apps. For the newly renamed iOS the goal is looping the customer into more expenses, locking them into Apple products, and Apple’s iPhone Ecosystem. To behave as a continuous advertisement and mobile marketing stream. A profit stream that even Razor Blade Salesmen would love....
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This is a simple projection based upon sales-to-date, plus next months iPad 3G launch, and an estimated 10,000 units a week sales through the end of the year. The only real variable here is if (and that’s a BIG if) Apple can maintain 10,000 units a week....
While reading this article 5 Reasons Why Online Freedom of Speech Does Not Exist I was encouraged that a person of Arabic decent wrote it. And is spot on about the real lack of freedom on the internet.
And a thought came to mind that what Irelands ‘Smart Economy’ ought to be, is to create a genuine open internet connection to the world. An Internet free of ALL censorship, blocking, filtering and snooping both into and out to the rest of the internet. Even so much as establishing free VPN connections into the country for people living in internet ‘oppressed’ world areas thus giving an open gateway into a free, and (as) open as anyone could make, Internet. It would not prevent countries from blocking export of banned information into Ireland, but Ireland would not...
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That headline isn’t really news, at least to the people of Ireland. And only the, very disconnected, Irish Government believe that their spinning of any other message has changed that public attitude.
But here is another one, Rent, the very nature of the overinflated rents, which are driving companies out of business. This has only one value, and that is to the Banks which are utilizing the higher rents to increase the apparent value of their holding before passing them on to NAMA. In any other country, this is called Fraud
Accounting fraud
In order to hide serious financial problems, some businesses have been known to use fraudulent bookkeeping to overstate sales and income, inflate the worth of the company’s assets or state a profit when the company is operating at a...
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A fellow Blogger at A Networked World made the connection with another blogger. And Got me thinking about The Real, Next Big Question! He states;
…the talking heads all talk about this recovery, but its always a recovery “from” the crash and never, ever, about what our lives and communities and economies will look like once we have “recovered”.
What are we recovering TO?
It can’t really be the same as it was before. We have to seek new things, new jobs, and a different way of life than that which was before. That world is gone! IT will NEVER return, or better yet, SHOULD NEVER be allowed to return. It’s unsustainable and WILL collapse again (for the worst) should we ever ‘Recover’ it.
What’s needed is Vision and...
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If anyone wants to know the benefits of having an Internet connected population only needs to skim this article Economic Benefit of Getting Everyone Online in the UK
– Digitally excluded households are missing out on average savings of
GBP560 per year from shopping and paying bills online
– The most economically disadvantaged families are missing out on savings
of over GBP1billion
– 1.6 million children in digitally excluded families could increase
their lifetime earnings by GBP10.8billion
– Unemployed people who get online could increase their lifetime earnings
by over GBP12,000
– If 5% of digitally excluded unemployed could find work by using job
websites it would deliver an estimated GBP560million to the...
One thing, If the Yes vote is supposed to be the right (as in correct, AND good) Vote. Why is so much money being spent to Buy the Yes Vote!
Shouldn’t the Yes be self evident? And don’t say that it’s because there is a ‘No!’ campaign on, that must be countered. Opposition occurred second....
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In the area of advertising, outside of posting nude pictures of celebrities and offering Free Beer I’m our of m league. When I talked about my new projects to the Open Coffee Cork gang, I got what I thought was pleasant interest. But outside of the amusing use of my @querynetTwitterBot asking about jaegerbombs, no one else bothered to visit my projects.
I have been seeking any feedback on Idea Forecasting, Query-The.net (@querynet) and fleetingthoght.com (@fleetthoughts) but if I can’t get a reaction from a more or less friendly crowd, it’s unlikely to get much of a reception from anyone else....
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I have noticed that there are a lot of dystopian Apocalyptic movies being released in 2009.
2012, The Book of Eli, Carriers , Daybreakers , Knowing , Gamer , The Road, Legion , Surrogates and Zombieland and that’s just to name the soon to be released one’s. For movies to be this depressing indicates that they were being created in the latter part of the Bush/Cheney Era, when the world was very depressing....
Say I have a store and I’ve been buying rotten fruit from my friends for sometime. Paying top Euro for it as well.
When it comes to selling it, I find it impossible to sell it, and so I conceal from my stock holders the fact that I’ve been buying all this rotten fruit,
I talk with my friends and they tell me I should convince the government that I should have help selling this fruit, or else I’ll go out of business. Isn’t it just the great that my friends in government have agreed, and are going to buy all my rotten fruit, at top Euro as well, and then they will let me continue to operate my store however I wish to.
Isn’t this a bit like the new ‘Financial’ bill in the Dail currently. The Irish taxpayer gets all the rotten fruit, and the...
If this isn’t the most Idiotic Marketing move Palm has ever made, I can’t see how thay could top it. To begin Marketing a second Web-OS phone that is called the Mini-Pre BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN SOLD A SINGLE ‘PRE’ If there was ever a way to cripple the potential sales surge normally associated with the release of a new Phone, this would be it! Release information about a newer, cheaper version! What were they thinking? Now the ‘Pre’ sales are stunted, as all the people who might have been willing to stretch their wallets in a recession to buy a slick new phone, will now wait for the cheaper model to arrive.
Idiots!...
Many of you have seen this video on YouTube where investment expert Peter Schiff is shown many times on US TV in 2006-2007 explaining why the US was in a property bubble and why it was all going to collapse. If you haven’t seen it, it’s hilarious and depressing at the same time.
I don’t claim to know much about investing but when we were moving from Dublin to Cork in 2003 and saw that our house had increased in value more than 400% in 9 years, we took the money and ran. Even in 2003 the valuations seemed idiotic. By 2007 they were in the realms of fantasy land. Of course many people told us we were stupid and if we’d rented the house out in Dublin we’d have made another €200k minimum when we went to sell. But when would we have sold? 2005? 2006? Or, gawd...
I keep calling this DYI project a server, which it is currently doing, Samba server, MySQL server, Apache server FTP server. But beyond this it’s also a desktop server with all the features of your average desktop PC. 2GB of Ram, 128MB Video, 250GB disk DVD-RW DVD+RW, Gig Ethernet and low power consumption of less than 50 watts. All this for 271 Euros delivered!
As you can see I purchased the parts from Elara but you should be able to pick up the parts anywhere you can find them. You may be able to buy a pre-made server/PC elsewhere but then you wouldn’t learn anything new...
Image via WikipediaWell, Brian Cowen did answer some of the questions posed by the public to him in his online Q&A, try and keep your eyes open during the video's. I think that is the harder task, I didn't realise he was that boring, and people give out to me that Enda is boring (he is but Cowen is worse in these videos). And if you are wondering, he didn't answer my "loaded" question. The videos are all below.Welcome and ThanksThe EconomyThe Pension LevyThe Political SituationThe Smart EconomyAre you still awake? Fair play? I wonder will they try this again?Related articles by ZemantaWhy was Brian Cowen unopposed for FF leader? (politics.ie)FF split on joining ELDR?? (stephenspillane.blogspot.com)Is the Government planning an election? (irishelection.com)Brian Cowen and the Árd...
It may be a bit premature to talk about the recovery from the recession but it’s not too early to take steps to initiate a decision about the culture and nature of the recovery from the recession. In my time in Ireland I marveled at the concept of the local shop in an estate, and the small shops in general and the culture of such an environment. Now the the incursion of the giant Dunn’s, and the discount Aldi’s and Lidl’s a decision can be made about the nature of the recovery.
Do you save yourself a bit of change and buy cheap, or spend it at the local shop? Do you want to keep that cultural icon of local shops and merchants alive, or support the mass market monster. The application of your food budget to supporting your local may tax us all, but could well to...
At the Cork Open Coffee today there was discussion about how the University of Cork could be utilized to solve real world business problems, with a counterpoint that the University also was a resource for IP that was underutilized or not exploited at all. Answers without questions that had been explored and solved, but not yet marketed and deployed. And I thought of how that could happen.
I have always been boring, in most conversations I almost never initiate a subject, but I can always contribute (read; shoot my mouth off). This is true in my IT skills. I know many things, but I don’t create many new things, but I can solve most puzzles and resolve problems. And in reviewing them, I find it’s more to do with not having an agenda, or operating under a set of predefined...
Everyone has heard the old saw:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Lao Tzu
But no one seems to think that it applies in the Economic Crisis facing Ireland, with the loss of low end construction and manufacturing jobs, and the multi nationals leaving, the fish are gone. Ireland needs to concentrate on educating fishermen. Or maybe better yet, high tech Developers, Designers and Programmers, Engineers, and scientist which are sorely lacking here. A major investment in education is the only lifeline for Ireland. And even if it doesn’t rescue the Irish Government, it would rescue the Irish people....
Image via WikipediaSo Ireland, and mainly Fianna Fail, is on its way to following the UK the US into Web 2.0 land. Brian Cowen will be answering questions posed to him. I suggest that he actually starts answering questions in the Dáil first then answer our questions. But anyway, you can ask questions here, I have an awful feeling that my question wont be answered, as it will be a scripted affair with all the nice questions being asked.My question isWhen will the Government admit they made a mistake in nationalising Anglo Irish Bank considering the investigation and raids by Gardaí?I wonder how it will go...Related articles by ZemantaBrian Cowen sends me an email...
I’m making a bold prediction that this Recession with bring on a resurgence of Comfort food in the Irish diet, and really the world. Many exotic restaurants will begin to feel the pinch long before the local carvery closes it’s doors. The question you could ask, can you still find proper Comfort food these days. I was reminded of this after the wife prepared a fine feast of Shepherd’s Pie and bread pudding....
The Gardaí raid offices of Anglo Irish Bank in Dublin in the first positive step in restoring confidence in the Irish Government. It’s a shame that that it took almost violent public outcry from the people to stir action from the lame corrupt ministers. It’s also a shame that any incriminating evidence has probably been destroyed and disposed of....
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Economics is as much of a Belief system as it is matter of math and relative perceived value exchange. And as such is subject to Self-fulfilling prophecy . If the belief is strong enough the value or a rock could be zero, of worth vast sums of currency. So also when a people believe in their leadership, and believe that they will fix the underling issues in the economy, almost by magic, the economy will turn around. The reciprocal is also true, when a majority loose faith in the economic plans of a government, nothing that government will do will generate a reversal of economic decline.
This is why the U.S. will recover from the world recession quicker than the Irish. A faith in the Obama plan far exceeds the faith that the Irish have in Brian Cowen and Fianna Fáil. At this stage...
I have watched the management of Waterford Crystal over the past few years, and have been amazed at how clueless they are about their product. Like most bean counters, they have sought to reduce expenses by pushing production into Eastern Europe and any other place where they could drop the cost of production. They must be insane! It’s the only conclusion that makes sense. They have been behaving as if their product is a commodity item like an automobile, or a toaster.
Waterford Cystal and Wedgewood ARE the labors and works of Waterford Ireland and Wedgewood England! Anything else is a fake, even with a waterford/wedgewood label on it, they are FAKES! Waterford Crystal is a luxury item that speaks to Quality not quantity. It means workmanship that a slow and skilled workforce...
White collar crimes that get punished!
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A former executive of insurance heavyweight American International Group Inc. was sentenced to four years in prison Tuesday in a fraud case that authorities say cost shareholders more than $500 million....
It looks like Dell is attempting to suppress all information as they slap blackout on news about Raheen factory closings. That could be good news, or not. It could be a sign that they are negotiating a deal with the Irish Government. It could also be very bad news, and they are holding off until they can extract all the executive ‘hostages’, just in case...
Brian Lenihan, should be fired! Plain and simple, because he does NOT understand the terms or meaning of GOVERNMENT. Today in an interview he mentioned that the banks were not being bailed out by recapitalization using taxpayer money, that they were using other government funds from retirement accounts. Where does he get the idea that the government HAS ANY money that is not the property of the taxpayers? GOVERNMENT IS NOT A BUSINESS! I’ve said it many times before, the Irish Government only manages the finances of the people of Ireland, THE TAXPAYING PEOPLE OF IRELAND! The Irish Government does not, and never will have independent funds separate from Irish citizen taxpayer......