Category Archives: current events

Greeks leaving Greece, again

http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artid=351032&dt=29/08/2010

Το πιο εντυπωσιακό συμπέρασμα της έρευνας της Κάπα Research είναι ότι η μεγάλη πλειονότητα των νέων με πτυχίο στην Ελλάδα δηλώνει πρόθυμη να εγκαταλείψει τη χώρα για να βρει μια σταθερή και καλά αμειβόμενη εργασία. Από το σύνολο των ερωτηθέντων, το 73,6% δηλώνει ότι θα έφευγε από την Ελλάδα, ενώ το 42% δηλώνει ότι έχει ήδη προβεί σε συγκεκριμένες κινήσεις για να το επιτύχει, αναζητώντας εργασία στο εξωτερικό, κατοικία ή κάποιο ειδικό εκπαιδευτικό πρόγραμμα πρόσθετης επιμόρφωσης. Από εκείνους οι οποίοι δηλώνουν πρόθυμοι να εργαστούν στο εξωτερικό, το 66,4% δηλώνει ότι το κάνει για να έχει καλύτερη ποιότητα ζωής συνολικά, το 44,7% για να βρει μια καλή δουλειά και το 32,6% για να διασφαλίσει περισσότερη αξιοκρατία στην εξέλιξή του. Μάλιστα, το 60,7% δηλώνει ότι θα προτιμούσε μια θέση εργασίας με προοπτική καριέρας στο εξωτερικό παρά μια μόνιμη θέση εργασίας στον ιδιωτικό ή στον δημόσιο τομέα στην Ελλάδα. Ταυτοχρόνως, η συντριπτική πλειονότητα εκείνων που δηλώνουν πρόθυμοι να μεταναστεύσουν θέτει ως επιδιωκόμενο μισθό ένα ποσό της τάξεως των 1.500 ως 5.000 ευρώ. Ακόμη τονίζουν ότι «οι Ελληνες της ξενιτιάς είναι δύο φορές Ελληνες», προσθέτοντας ότι «μπορεί να γίνει πατρίδα και η χώρα που μπορεί να εργαστεί και να ζήσει κάποιος αξιοπρεπώς».
Διαβάστε περισσότερα: http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artid=351032&dt=29%2F08%2F2010#ixzz0y11LUstZ

In this article by Vima, an Athenian newspaper, 73.6% of Greeks between the ages of 22-35 want to leave Greece, and more depressingly 42% of them are in the process of making plans to leave.

Reasons are opportunities, and depressingly 32.6% say that because they don’t feel that Greece has opportunities for advanced based on merit. In my own life that was part of the reason I wanted to leave. The fact that you had this impression that who you knew was more important than how good you are…

What’s really depressing, is that in the mid-80’s to late 90’s a similar study would have revealed the same data. In the 90’s, with the economic boom, things changed. Greeks in that demographic wanted to stay in Greece.

But now we are back to where we started. And what’s depressing is that the best educated segment of the country will leave, again.

Perhaps Nokia has chosen not to die

Nokia’s irrelevance in the smartphone market, their inability to deliver a usable UI for their new touch screen gadget, and their ongoing inability to create an application ecosystem around the single most popular OS in the cell phone market has made me wonder if they are headed into oblivion.

Or at the very least, whether their role in life is to be displaced by a Chinese or Taiwanese cell phone manufacturer who figures out how to make really cheap and really reliable devices for the masses who just want to make a phone call.

But perhaps they’re not dead yet:

Microsoft Corp said it will announce an alliance with Nokia on Wednesday, likely unveiling plans to make the software company’s Office suite of applications available on devices made by the world’s top cellphone manufacturer.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE57A60P20090812?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

In spite of the efforts of Google and in spite of the claims by the Mac phone boys, Office is the single most important set of applications for smart phones. The fact that Windows Mobile has the only workable implementation continues to make it a contender.

This can only help both MS and Nokia.

And the Spaniard Ends an Era

For even the unsurpassed, the great, Lance Armstrong, age finally arrived.

image

Amazingly able to keep up with great climbers a decade younger than him, Lance seemed poised to triumph in this year’s tour.

But the tour, has a way of separating the champions from the pretenders. For the first time in almost 11 years, Lance Armstrong felt like his competitors must have felt as he crushed them up mountains, leaving them gasping for air and wondering what went horribly wrong…

Alberto Contador looked to his left, saw the group of leaders and then blitzed to the top.

As we watched him sprint on ahead, we wondered, will Lance respond, and the old tired body that crossed over the finish line a 1.5 minutes later told us the story, no.

Lance no longer the Champion, he was now the domestique of a new champion.

George Orwell, once again, is right

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=1

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

        […]

Of all of the books of all of the authors to demonstrate the power of the technology…

George must be laughing wherever he might be.

Privacy and Cell Phones

Nude pics in phone lost at McDonald’s get online

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Here’s some food for thought: If you have nude photos of your wife on your cell phone, hang onto it.

Phillip Sherman of Arkansas learned that lesson after he left his phone behind at a McDonald’s restaurant and the photos ended up online. Now he and his wife, Tina, are suing the McDonald’s Corp., the franchise owner and the store manager.

The suit was filed Friday and seeks a jury trial and $3 million in damages for suffering, embarrassment and the cost of having to move to a new home.

The suit says that Phillip Sherman left the phone the Fayetteville store in July and that employees promised to secure it until he returned.

Manager Aaron Brummley declined to comment, and other company officials didn’t return messages.

 

D’oh.

With 8 GB of storage, a reasonably good camera, and a desire to photograph everything for posterity, this is going to be happening a lot more frequently than we would like.

I believe being able to remotely wipe a phone of all contents is going to be a key feature of cell phone’s going forward.

And sooner rather than later, folks are going to learn the value of encryption and strong passwords.

I wonder if we’ll see biometrics make it into phones?

The Mayor, Jester of London

Watching the newly elected Mayor of London  Boris Johnson, at the Olympics was amusing. It was obvious that no-one told him what to do, when to do it or how to do it. The optimist in me thinks this was just a normal guy thrust into extraordinary circumstances who was as befuddled as I would have been in front of 90+ thousand people and 1 billion people on TV. The cynic in me wants to observe that for a country that spent so much time choreographing everything, you would think they would take the time to walk the Mayor of London through the ceremony, you would think they would tell him to button up his suit, you would think they gave him a comb… But they didn’t. Was it all done to make the Mayor of London, and the City of London look ridiculous as compared to Beijing?

But I am an optimist so I’ll assume he was just thrust into extraordinary circumstances without his own handlers giving him sound advice.

So here’s what it looked like.

He arrived on stage looking haggard and bedraggled. His hair was poorly done. His suit looked ill-fitting. Couldn’t a tailor in London have given him a proper suit?

He walks onto a stage with over 1 billion people watching, with his suit open looking confused about what he should be doing.

London mayor Boris Johnson, left, and the President of the IOC ...

He then stands on stage, and his first reaction is to put his hands in his pockets … only to see that everyone else has their hands by their side … so he pulls them out.

He than stands wondering what is going to happen next.

Then we watch the Mayor of Beijing majestically wave the flag and pass it on with two hands to the president of the IOC, who then in turn passes it to the Mayor of London, who has never waved a flag in his life. The flag is twisted around the flag-pole so we have this anxious moment where we wonder if The Mayor of London is going to drop the flag but thankfully we avoid that embarrassment. Finally the Mayor of London hands the flag over with one-hand relieved to be done with this ceremony…

For a country that understood pomp and style seeing the Mayor of London be so confused with such a simple ceremony was just plain funny.

Madness.

Poor Scott McClellan.

He has become the Jose Canseco of the War on Terror. The poor fool with the access that told us what we already knew:

An administration drunk with it’s own invincibility and sense of history and a country in a state of rage against a world that felt it was okay to say: Death to America waged war against a dictator whose departure from the world scene, regardless of the death and destruction that followed was  a good thing by manipulating the people’s fear and hatred and the press’ need to sell copy.

I feel for the poor bastard. He’s just trying to point out that the Emperor has no clothes. And all we can do is sit back and wonder why he would do that?

Why the English Still Have a King…

When I saw Michael Moore’s film on 9/11, I was struck by the fact that very few members of the US leadership had children that were in harm’s way.

And here we learn that Prince Harry was deployed in a front line unit in Afghanistan.

Amazing isn’t it?

There is, possibly, a connection between the fact that English monarchy continues to exist and the monarchy’s willingness to fight their nations wars.

I wonder how much more credibility the Republicans would have if their children were willing to fight their wars.

BLECH!

Border Incursions

With the focus on Barack and Hillary, and the Oscars, the tiny little border war going on in Iraq between Turkey and the PKK in Northern Iraq didn’t even make the news.

It is interesting that this potentially horrifying development gets so little air time… In fact, I only found out about this developing situation, because I happen to read Greek newspapers.

In fact if you go to www.cnn.com, you have to actively search for news about this.

Of course if you go to news.google.com, you’ll find a lot of news about this invasion. Hmm… I may have to blog about this later.
Why is this so interesting?

Think about it. We have troops in Iraq. As the occupiers of Iraq we are obligated to protect Iraq’s territory. What a delightful little mess we are in.