Archive for October, 2009

hello, offshoring; goodbye, offshoring.

[Updated 2010-07-23]
There’s been a persistent sentiment that nations like india and china are great offshore partners… so long as the offshore work is restricted to rote analytical or manual labour.

The fable of HOW-WHY (or, a skew-whiff history of Enterprise)

A story:
Once upon a time a long time ago, when people needed to do something they knew WHY they needed to do it: they were cold, they were hungry, they needed shelter for the night, and so on. It was mainly a question of figuring out WHAT to do and then figuring out WHO [...]

The Goth and the mechanic

First off, the Goth is my car (actually ‘the snow goth‘, if you must know)… and the mechanic in question finally figured out and explained to me what the hell has been going on with the goth’s front-left wheel.
But very little of this has anything to do with auto engineering. Or anything in particular, for [...]

Hulu stalks subscription-based revenue… but do they have “the secret”?

Hulu, the tv station in the sky, is wanting to grow its business by adopting a subscription-based revenue model alongside its regular ad-based model. In case you didn’t know, or in case you’ve been putting up with the geo-hobbled Hulu experience served up for non-US denizens, what content there is on Hulu is free mainly [...]

Not so fast, little internet…

Imagine that the ever-densifying network of devices that we know and love as the internet becomes sentient. Ish. Or aware or whatever:
Dangling upside down via an umbilicus to its humbler origins, and having its ass spanked by Lady The Phenomenon of Emergence herself, will the quasi-conscious intelligence that gulps down it’s first breath be a [...]

Discovering N-ness, and thus the entire field of mathematics

[updated 2010-06-13] If you haven’t gotten your mitts on ‘Mathematics: “Its Content, Methods and Meaning”* yet, run to chapters and grab a copy. It’s a hefty 3 volumes in one; let the cheery orange cover distract you from its price tag (though apparently it’s much cheaper online – on sale, no less… Sigh. Screwed by [...]

In flagrante delirium : my 5AM mind-body crunch

I had a bad dream.
But the thing is, I knew I was about to have one; I had a rough outline of what was gonna play out, and a pretty good prescience of the visual and neurological assault to come.
I caught my brain/body in the act of putting together the whole (pointless?) farce, probably because [...]

Malicious engineering

Quivering there in the shadows of an axed registry, lying low, this little app has to hide itself, feed itself, load itself, talk to its owners behind your back and pretend to be YOU whenever you visit the bank. The rest of the time it stealthily marks the passage of opportunity, with phone-home events from [...]

Venture Capital : the love that crushes with its embrace

First off, I know diddley about venture capital and the entire VC industry. However, I have been in a few organisations now which have sought VC-assisted growth, and the ensuing fallout each time has got me wondering if:
1) it’s truly inevitable that things go pear-shaped after VC (if so why does anyone get on the [...]

The over-survival complex

I have come to the realisation that some people are too willing to over-extend themselves in order to get through a really tough, difficult situation. They genuinely believe that ‘God will not give you a cross that is too heavy for you to bear’, as the saying goes, so bear it they must – as [...]