Month: December 2008

Programming Practice

If some entrepreneur introduced the bicycle today, no one would fund him. You have to actually learn how to use it! …I saw a controller for Guitar Hero that costs a couple of $100. You can get a decent electric guitar for that price. But you’d have to actually learn something to play it! It’s important to remember how much we lose when we think that ease of use is everything. Many things worth doing are hard, requiring a great deal of practice before you achieve mastery.

unwillingness of people to work hard to learn new skills

Credit Crunch board game

Players start with 500m econos each. One player doubles as banker.

Players move round by throwing 4 coins and progressing as many squares as they throw heads. If a player throws 4 heads, he moves forward 4 spaces and has another turn; if he throws 4 tails, he throws again. When a player lands on a + square, he collects money from the bank; equally, when he lands on a minus square, he pays the bank.

The aim is to be the last solvent player. In order to achieve this, players try to eliminate the competition. Risk cards encourage players to pick on each other.

Players who cannot pay their fines may borrow from each other at any rate they care to settle on—for instance, 100% interest within 3 turns. They should negotiate with the other players to get the best rate possible. Players who cannot borrow must either go into Chapter 11 or be taken over.

Players may conceal their assets from each other.

No separation of Church and State

In choosing evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama is associating himself with one of the most popular religious figures in the nation, reaching out to conservative America and proving he’s willing to take some flak from the liberal flank of his party

WTF? why is there even a religious angle to the inauguration?

Siemens bribes

There is something almost touching about the candour and trust with which Siemens went about a very dirty business. Take the 3 “cash desks” it set up in its offices, to which employees could bring empty suitcases to be filled with cash. As much as $1.4m could be withdrawn at a time to win contracts for its telecoms-equipment division

Ha. And to think that I recently got an unsolicited request to talk to them about making Siemens attractive for employees in a googly way. I told them it is not a marketing / hr problem and needs to start with the CEO.