In 1983 I went into a new room in my comprehensive school in England and sat at a BBC computer for the first time.
It looked exactly like this…
BBC Micro creators reunion tonight at London Science Museum – Boing Boing
Same machine, same screen (a cub) and the same dust!!!
It’s like looking back in time.
“It was as important to him as it was to them to underscore the horror and futility of it. More than anything, he was appalled that he had been made to fire on people he didn’t know and to whom he, too, was a stranger. These were fathers of children. He had no quarrel with them. C’est complètement idiot la guerre. His Italian Alpine regiment had once stopped firing for three weeks on the Austrians, whose language many of them spoke; they had swapped loaves of bread for tobacco and taken pictures of each other. To the end of his life, Mr Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been fighting.”Lazare Ponticelli | Economist.com
“American’s are starting to ask: for all of this investment, how do I benefit? How does it help me put food on the table, heat my home, or send my kids to college?” John Robb’s Weblog: The Cost of War debate
For most of my life American foreign policy has claimed that Europeans are “soft”. They didn’t have massive armies, refused to support American actions overseas and spent all their time negotiating.
Now the rules have changed for the last superpower will they become more “European”?
Of course, European in this context is the wrong label; Japan, China, Russia, Brazil and many others all act this way. Will the US have to do the same?
This is an enormous bit of news. Steve Gillmor will talk about it for the next 9 months; “Microsoft is dead, again!”
Seriously this means that I’ll spend even more time in Google’s applications.
Just noticed…
This site now has a Google Page Rank of 1/10!!! Only nine to go!
In 2000 we traveled to Sydney for the Olympics; seeing the games was a childhood dream. When the sun set on the World Cup in 1998 we started planning for the games (to the extent that the first thing I did on arriving at Accenture was request a vacation to go to the games two years later, my manager laughed and signed on the spot!).
We’d been to Sydney five years before and would be traveling with friends; what could be better?
Well….the friends were wonderful as always and even managed to organize an amazing series of places to stay between Melbourne and Sydney. I’ll never forget the night on the farm in the Outback.
However, the games themselves were strangely annoying. Every press article I’ve read about the Sydney games said that they were perfect. I was reminded of this by reading this…
“I’ll stand corrected on the logistics: Sydney did a great job.”
However, the journalists traveled on a separate system from the fans to and from the venues. My memory was of packed trains, crowds of people being shepherded by volunteers shouting into loud speakers and train times being advisory at best. I didn’t mind particularly; but the exemplary logistics talked about in the press seemed to refer to their private car lanes and even a press ferry that went between the city and the main site.
The article that prompted the article above was from the Sydney Morning Herald…
“They were supposed to showcase NSW as the can-do state, as a place where travellers could be welcomed with warmth and joviality and exposed to a breathtaking diversity of destinations. But somewhere, somehow, it went pear-shaped, according to industry leaders.”
So here is how I think that they went wrong…
Television and even the announcements in the Olympic sites only mentioned Australian athletes. I learn of the judo results on the tf1 web site and Redgrave via the BBC.
The result was that Sydney seemed quiet, obsessed with itself and wealth. In 1995 on our first visit to Sydney I couldn’t wait to return; after 2000 I’m not planning on returning.
I’ve a bet that London will fall into the same trap. They’re already so obsessed with protecting the image that there is no participation, no sharing in the process of hosting the games and a structure in place to manage the news. They’re already obsessed about which British athletes might win; the best in the world are coming to perform; Celebrate Humanity – all of it!
The London games will be declared a massive success before they start (who’ll dare question the British press when they start getting protective and nationalistic?) and then a decade later someone will ask the question why nobody is coming back.
To anyone who lives in France this description of the APEC is interesting…
“Most English speakers won’t know much about France’s Apec, a non profit organization that offers job listings and job resources in France.”
APEC is a non-profit because it’s a government department. “Offers job listings” is also slightly wrong; if you’re recruiting in France you MUST register the opening with the APEC.
All the details aside, this is a massive deal for LinkedIn. Congratulations!
“They wanted copies of HHGTTG on campuses in the US, and they wanted people to read it and tell other people. Word of mouth is still the best tool for selling books.”Why free reading is important – Boing Boing
OK, I didn’t study in the US but…
I think that every campus bookshelf had a copy in the 90s, most of my copies “went missing” during that period; I must have purchased a news copy every year.