Archive for the ‘ Business ’ Category

More Productivity Means Fewer Employees are Required

This is something few want to talk about (except Marxists), but this process has been at work ever since the Industrial Revolution began. The result has always been that the rich (the Industrialists, the Capitalists) got richer and the poor (the workers) got poorer. There used to be a middle-class but they are disappearing too. [ READ MORE ]

Bankers at the Gates

NY Times This one more (yes, more!) about the Greek/Euro crisis. But this one is written from a much longer temporal perspective – from the fall of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. This ended with one of the most disgraceful acts in Western History – the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade[ READ MORE ]

Snakes in Suits

I just got this book and it is a good one. I have know a few of these snakes – or psychopaths in the various companies I worked for in high-tech California – where all the crazies (including me) seemed to end up. From the Preface: — The “organization wars” began in the early 1970s [ READ MORE ]

Sordor

From Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: Function: noun Inflected Form(s): -s Etymology: New Latin, from Latin sordes dirt, filth + -or – more atSWART : REFUSE, DREGS; also : SORDIDNESS I can across this word reading Lewis Mumford’s The Condition of Man, which I have spoken of frequently before, on page  301: For those who found it impossible to accept the grinding discipline of the [ READ MORE ]

Americans Do Not Like People

They are above that kind of thing. This explains a lot about their behavior, which otherwise is mystifying. For example, their attitude towards health care, which seems simple to me: it’s about caring for people. But they do not see it that way. For them, it’s about keeping people in their place, which is well [ READ MORE ]

Wealth Has Its Responsibilities

And any wealthy society that denies this is evil. An experience of mine back in Silicon Valley illustrated this. I was working for a successful company that had been founded by an immigrant that arrived with twenty dollars in his pockets. When I started working for the company, he retired a wealthy man and accepted [ READ MORE ]

Intelligence That Only Seems Intelligent

Technology Review – Social Intelligence Siri may not be the smartest AI in the world, but it’s the most socially adept. I am pleased to see that Technology Review has its articles online. It’s very nice to have articles online so you can link to them after reading them on paper. You can easily read this [ READ MORE ]

Modeling a Domain

This posting is about software – something I am determined to learn, but most are determined not to learn. Take your pick. The latest thing in software development are application frameworks - which describe the architecture of internet software – how it is put together. The one I am studying now is the Model/View/Controller (MVC) architecture. Everything is oriented toward the Domain the application [ READ MORE ]

Corruption in Mexico

NY Times – The Sun, the Moon, and Wal-Mart When I was in junior high school, my history teacher sold us lottery tickets, promising that the more we bought, the higher our grades would be. The winning number, he said, would coincide with the National Lottery winner. I happened to buy that number and received [ READ MORE ]

A World Not Good For People

Now that Man dominates the world, and should have been able to make it exactly what he wanted, he finds instead he has been working against his own best interests. He has been working for something else instead. Now he should be asking himself what this something else is – but he cannot, because this something [ READ MORE ]

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 106 other followers