CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About... The "Occupy Wall Street" protests are gaining momentum, having spread from a small park in New York to marches to other cities across the country. So far, the protests seem fueled by a collective sense that things in our economy are not fair or right. But the protesters have not done a good job of focusing their complaints—and thus have been skewered as malcontents who don't know what they stand for or want. (An early list of "grievances" included some legitimate beefs, but was otherwise just a vague attack on "corporations." So, what are the protesters so upset about, really? Do they have legitimate gripes? To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes. And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely—if ever—been a time when "capital" was so clearly winning.
Nicholas Carr: Is Google Making Us Stupid? Bio Nicholas Carr A former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, Nicholas Carr writes and speaks on technology, business, and culture. His intriguing 2003 Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter," was an instant sensation, setting the stage for the global debate on the strategic value of information technology in business. His 2004 book, Does IT Matter? : Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, published by Harvard Business School Press, was a bestseller and kept the worldwide business community discussing the role of computers and IT in business. A prolific and nimble thought leader, Mr Carr has written more than a dozen articles and interviews for Harvard Business Review and writes regularly for the Financial Times, Strategy & Business and The Guardian. Mr Carr has served as a commentator on CNBC, CNN, and other networks and has been a featured speaker worldwide at industry, educational, and government forums. Peter Norvig Internet
Google Engineer: “Google+ is a Prime Example of Our Complete Failure to Understand Platforms” Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+. Apparently, he only wanted to share it internally with everybody at Google, but mistaken shared it publicly. For the most part, Yegge’s post focusses on the horrors of working at Amazon, a company that is notorious for its political infighting. The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run. The post itself has now been deleted, but given Google+’s reshare function, multiple copies exist on Google’s own social network and elsewhere on the web. Google+ Is a Knee-Jerk Reaction Here is the meat of his argument: “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. Ha, ha!
Alain Giffard The Friday Podcast: Why Do We Tip? : Planet Money Paul Sancya/AP In the 16th century, coffee shops prominently displayed coin boxes with the phrase "to ensure prompt service" written on the side. If you wanted your coffee in a hurry, you dropped a little something extra in the box, and made sure the waitress saw you do it. This, according to at least one version of history, is where tipping began. But today, we tip after we get served, not before. And, according to one expert we talk to on today's podcast, the quality of service we perceive makes a tiny difference in how much we tip. According to one theory, when you get down to it, we don't even tip for good service.
Nicholas G. Carr Nicholas G. Carr (born 1959) is an American writer who has published books and articles on technology, business, and culture. His book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.[1] Career[edit] Nicholas Carr originally came to prominence with the 2003 Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter" and the 2004 book Does IT Matter? Carr's second book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, was published in January 2008 by W. In the summer of 2008, The Atlantic published Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Carr's 2010 book, The Shallows, develops this argument further. Through his blog "Rough Type," Carr has been a critic of technological utopianism and in particular the populist claims made for online social production. See also[edit] Books[edit] Digital Enterprise : How to Reshape Your Business for a Connected World (2001) ISBN 1-57851-558-0Does IT Matter? Notes[edit]
We Need a New System In the Spring of 2000, my friend and former colleague Zack Exley arrived in Washington, DC, to observe the protests that had engulfed the city during the World Bank's annual meeting. Driving into Washington from the airport, out the window of his taxi he saw "a teenage white girl with long dreadlocks who wore a homemade t-shirt proclaiming: WE NEED A NEW SYSTEM." Later that evening he attended a party at the home of then-Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers along with "ambassadors, politicians, esteemed professors and what seemed like the entire combined senior economist staff of the IMF, World Bank and Treasury." It turned out Larry Summers had seen the girl too and was eagerly telling his guests about an interaction he had with her: And so I asked the girl: 'What is this new system that you want? "Mr. Summers chuckled and the conversation moved on. In 2000, Larry Summers tried to outsource fixing a global economic system he bore responsibility for to a girl in dreadlocks.
Hungary is no longer a democracy It is now a fact: Hungary is no longer a democracy. President János Áder has just signed the implementation decrees for new constitutional reforms that wipe out what was left of opposition forces against the government. More particularly, the Constitutional Court is no longer allowed to give its opinion about the content of laws and to refer to its own case-law – which results in the loss of almost all monitoring power on the legislature and the executive. This meticulous destruction of democracy and its values – whose starting point was the landslide election of Fidesz in 2010 – has taken place over months and months, under everybody's eyes. This political degradation gives us a gruesome historical and political lesson. Obsessed by economic and financial issues, too indifferent to its fundamental values of freedom, equality, peace and justice, the EU has abandoned the fight to promote or even maintain democracy as the political system of its member states.
plucky tree: the last time I saw Steve Jobs I worked at Apple from April of 1999 through July of 2011. I’ve never written publicly about that experience, but I wanted to share a little moment that will always be with me, even though it’s not of any great significance. After leaving my job at Apple, I dropped in for lunch one day. I was exiting the main building, Infinite Loop One, and just ahead of me was Steve Jobs, walking with the usual spring in his step that never seemed to go away even as he started looking more frail. Bumping into Steve was a surprisingly common occurrence for such a large company as Apple. Steve was heading towards a car parked next to the curb with its door open, waiting for him. Steve paused for a moment as an iPhone was extended to him, realizing that they didn’t seem to know who he was. Steve took a great deal of care composing the photo, backing up a few steps several times, tapping the iPhone screen to lock focus, then said “Smile!” And that was the last time I saw Steve Jobs.
Generally Assembled at #OccupyWallStreet—By Nathan Schneider The nightly meetings of the General Assembly at occupied Liberty Plaza (officially, Zuccotti Park) in New York have been treated by the media mainly as a quaint footnote to the mass arrests and alleged police brutality attendant to the occupation. In fact, though, the open, non-hierarchical assembly has been at the center of the movement. Starting with the planning meetings that took place in parks around the city prior to September 17, it was instrumental to bringing the #OCCUPYWALLSTREET Internet meme created in July by Adbusters magazine into real life. And as the occupation movement has caught on and spread from city to city, open assemblies have been spreading alongside. Participating in the assembly process can take some getting used to. Each night at Liberty Plaza since the occupation began, a few hundred people have clustered in loose, semicircular rows to attend the GA.
Clever Small Home Architecture Derived From Site Restrictions in Tokyo The River Side House is an impressive project designed by Mizuishi Architect Atelier and located in Tokyo, Japan. The small home was constructed on a triangle site and occupies a building area of 29.07 square meters. According to the architects, the structure of the residence includes functionally separate areas, as follows. Viewpoint: Is the alcohol message all wrong? 12 October 2011Last updated at 00:54 Concerns are high over binge drinking Many people think heavy drinking causes promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour. That's not necessarily true, argues Kate Fox. I am a social anthropologist, but what I do is not the traditional intrepid sort of anthropology where you go and study strange tribes in places with mud huts and monsoons and malaria. I really don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to unpronounceable corners of the world in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when in fact the weirdest and most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep. And if you want examples of bizarre beliefs and weird customs, you need look no further than our attitude to drinking and our drinking habits. Clearly, we Brits do have a bit of a problem with alcohol, but why? But we are wrong. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. End Quote
Not All 4G Are Created Equal: HSPA+ VS LTE | Apartment Therapy Unplggd Mobile Carriers have been touting the coming of 4G as the next standard of mobile internet. Now all the carrier are claiming they have the fastest network, and adding on to seemingly random letters, like HSPA+ or LTE, to market their network. Still don't know what network is the fastest? What carriers claim as "4G" can really be separated into three different categories or three different wireless technology: HSPA+: This is one of the earliest "4G" technology and it's adopted by US carriers such as, T-mobile and AT&T. WiMax: A standard offered by Sprint in partnership with Clearwire here in the US, this is really the first 4G network deployed. LTE: This is the big three letter words in mobile technology. Now that you know all 4G are not created equal, you'll be able to make a more informed decision when choosing your wireless carrier.
8 Things I Want in My Ice Cream Sandwich With Google teasing us about the next major release, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, of its popular mobile operating system fan sites and online forums are already brimming with speculation about what new features the latest incarnation of Android could contain. We already know from Google’s announcement at I/O 2011 back in May that ICS is going to combine Gingerbread and Honeycomb into one operating system, avoiding the need for two separate versions of Android, and that this version of Android is “the most ambitious yet” when compared to previous incarnations such as Gingerbread and Froyo. Leaked screenshots posted on the Internet a few days ago show that ICS has heavily borrowed from Honeycomb (for example the slidable application changer) and the ring unlock screen. They also confirm what everyone has been speculating: that this version of Android will be known as Android 4.0. Two leaked screenshots of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), courtesy of Romanian website Mobilissimo 1. 2. 3.