Kerno

Great lines from the Internet

2005-12-03T21:53:00.000+11:00

A comment after an article about how parents these days are so terrified of their children getting hurt that they don't let them do anything by themselves anymore. Comment away, Pete Nightingale...

Too right, I grew up in the 70s when every piece of play equipment was surrounded by a concrete apron and you had to be really really careful when you rode your bicycle down the slide.
Pete Nightingale, Reading UK

Article at BBC News, here.

How to build Google.

2005-11-26T13:42:00.000+11:00

I've been wondering a little bit about what it takes to build a company like Google - is it just about making the search engine algorithms a little better, is it hiring the smartest engineers going, or is it cleaning out your rivals of talented people?

I think this probably captures a bit about what makes Google seemingly different to other dotcoms.

First, I accept that Larry and Sergey really are brilliant. I'm sure that on IQ tests, they're off the charts, but that's not the kind of brilliance I mean. I mean brilliant in the sense that they have a vision that burns so brightly within them it scorches everything that stands in its way. The truth is so obvious to them that they have no patience for the niceties of polite society when bringing that vision to life.

From Xoogler.

Baby got back in time for the noughties.

2005-11-24T21:25:00.000+11:00

Ladies. Gentlemen.

Do yourselves a favour and listen to this mind-blowingly cool cover of Sir Mix-a-lot's infamous "Baby Got Back" by Jonathon Coulton.

Mp3 is around the top of the page - seriously, this song is ridiculously good.

Great Lines from the Inner-net

2005-11-22T13:16:00.000+11:00

Today's great line comes courtesy of MAKE mag. Here's Jasmina Tesanovic talking:

Back in 1999, while my hometown of Belgrade was being blown up by 19 different countries, I was writing and uploading a diary. One day, a producer from German national TV phoned me. She’d been reading my online journal (Diary of a Political Idiot) and thought it might make a good film.
Unfortunately, since her country was so busy bombing mine, she couldn’t give me any practical help.

Frogger

2005-11-19T16:32:00.000+11:00

These two dudes are very very funny. I can't wait for more.

See the frogs review websites here.

Who woulda thunk it?

2005-11-19T16:09:00.000+11:00

This is just about the most astonishing thing I've seen recently.

And the story is just as good.

GOOOAAALLLLLL!!!

2005-11-17T13:51:00.000+11:00

OLE OLE!
OLE OLE!
OLE OLE!
OLE OLE!

Germany, prepare yourself. Stock the fridges, put the pies in the oven, order the tomoto sauce and make sure you've got plenty of green and gold paint because -

THE AUSSIES ARE GOING TO THE WORLD CUP!

Summer

2005-11-14T17:58:00.000+11:00

Is it me, or are the jacaranda's super bright this year?

Oh my GOD - IT'S BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING!

Yeti do bad...

2005-11-02T22:25:00.000+11:00

This image from the front page of the Yetisports website just looks wrong.

No Dickheads, Please.

2005-10-26T19:51:00.000+10:00

Recently the Sydney Swans won their first premiership in seventy-two years. One of the stories to come out of the post-victory analysis concerns the recruitment policy of the Swans.

While interviewing the recruitment manager for the team, one of the specific policies that was mentioned is a policy called, in a wonderfully to-the-point way, the “No Dickheads” policy. The manager stated “You won’t find any dickheads in our team”.

Apparently this comes down to two factors. One is that the team has instituted a player welfare scheme that aims to provide training and support for the players to keep them out of trouble and keep them playing.

More interestingly, though, is that the team has overlooked potential recruits with “superior skills” because they didn’t have the right character. Says the manager “I won't name the names, but we've been laughed at sometimes for overlooking kids because they didn't have the qualities we wanted…a few years later, the same blokes are making headlines for the wrong sort of things. They’re underperforming”.

Having just finished “Good to Great”, it made me wonder about the Swans performance. It seems Jim Collins provides the basis for this policy with the summary point;

“Whether someone is the “right person” has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background, or skills”.

Unbelievable and frightening

2005-10-25T20:01:00.000+10:00

Plot from a novel I read recently.

On the most significant day of the sporting calendar, when literally an entire country stops to watch the main event, a shadowy law is rushed through the democratic parliament with debate curtailed to just ten minutes. The laws allow unprecedented powers of arrest, without explanation, justification, and most significantly, without publication. They are to be used willy-nilly by the 'intelligence' agencies against yet more shadowy dissenters, criteria unknown.

I lied - this isn't a novel. It's about to happen.

When the Melbourne Cup starts, say a little prayer for sanity whilst you pray for your horse.

Oil, Chemicals, Environmental Protection.

2005-10-14T23:50:00.000+10:00

From Fortune magazine, the annual Social Responsibility index.

There is just something very wrong with this table, don’t you think?

Read This:

2005-10-11T23:13:00.000+10:00

Read it RIGHT NOW!

Ipod's Ugly Boring Stupid Cousin

2005-10-11T07:45:00.000+10:00

Great quote from a Slate article about how the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone, well, kinda sucks, and how people might not want a device that does everything.

"I associate my BlackBerry with work," a friend retorted to me. "I use my iPod to forget about work. I don't want it to fucking ring."

Woot! Mod chips not illegal after all.

2005-10-06T16:20:00.000+10:00

In a judgement hot off the bench the High Court of Australia has deemed that mod-chips that allow you to play games from different regions are not illegal. It deemed that the technology implemented by games companies allows them to artificially control prices in different parts of the world. Link to article here and the judgement here.

Now if they could only do something about my Indonesian copy of GT2 that turned out to be Barbie Detective.

Go the SWANNIES!!!

2005-09-25T12:12:00.000+10:00

You wear it well Barry. I'm officially on the bandwagon.

PowerPain - an antidote?

2005-09-23T17:34:00.000+10:00

If you've ever had to, might have to, or anticipate having to give a presentation, presumably you will be using PowerPoint. In that case, please read this from Presentation Zen, and we'll all be a lot better off.

Friday Fun One : 000,000,000,000,000,000...

2005-09-23T17:18:00.000+10:00

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the President of the USA the weekly briefing on the War in Iraq. He finishes his speech with condolences to three Brazilian soldiers who were killed in action.

Abruptly, Bush brusts into tears. Great, sobbing jerks shake his body as he is overcome with grief. His staff look on, his tender concern for the lives of foreign soldiers clearly evident.

He look up, with tears streming down his face, and asks Rummy;

"How many in a brazillion?"

Ermm...God? Did you drop something?

2005-09-22T16:48:00.000+10:00

Maybe this?

Or this, perhaps?

September 19th - Talk like a Pirate Day

2005-09-19T16:38:00.000+10:00

Ladies! Prepare to be boarded!

Comment

2005-09-18T16:13:00.000+10:00

Ah - the first comment on my blog and it's a spammer. The joys of the Internet.

Petrol, Petrol, everywhere; wait....where'd it go?

2005-09-18T14:54:00.000+10:00

Presumably some of you would have a recieved an email along the lines of this one by now

It has been calculated that if everyone in Australia did not purchase a
drop of petrol for one day and all at the same time, the oil companies
would choke on their stockpiles.

Including "calculated figures" (by who? with what assumptions?) the email claims that such an action would result in a "4.6 billion dollar loss to the industry". It proposes various dates for this consumer action to take place.

Hmmm, let's have a think about this one, shall we? I don't know about the rest of you, but petrol isn't the sort of thing I buy on a daily basis. So either I put off buying petrol until this particular day, and then refuse to buy it on that day (absurd, isn't it) or I hope that by natural circumstance this is the only day of the week that I have to buy petrol and thereby am able to accomplish the goal of the email.

Thinking a bit harder about this proposal, perhaps we should look at why petrol prices are so high at the moment. Price gouging by oil companies? That's very possible - but let's not forget that the Singapore Tapis price of petrol (that is, the price of oil purchased by Australian oil companies) is at historically high levels. So petrol is actually costing more to get to the consumer, and given the steady reduction in oil supplies, petrol is going to start costing more, period. So either we stop using it so much (which is what the proposal suggests, although in a rather roundabout way) or we find a way to not have to use so much of it. Maybe what the email should propose is that we all contact our local and state members and lobby them to remove the tariff subsidy on 4WD vehicles which have some of the lowest fuel economy ratings going, or the email could advocate that the government invest more in hybrid vehicle development.

Not buying petrol for one day might be a good idea in principle, but it only looks at the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is our reliance on oil for energy, and high prices is only one of the problems we're going to have.

*An enlightened friend of mine has added that it doesn't matter if we don't buy the petrol, but that we don't use it. And that you will need to buy more of it the day after because your consumption habits haven't changed. Couldn't agree more.

Remembrance

2005-08-30T21:24:00.000+10:00

Regardless of all the hoohah over the eventual shape of the Freedom Tower, wouldn't it be awe-inspiring and deeply reverential to have the the recently collected oral histories from September 11, all 12,000 pages of it, inscribed on plinths in the garden?

You can see them all at the New York Times.

Run Away!

2005-08-29T20:35:00.000+10:00

It was the Ice, Officer, I swear!

2005-08-19T14:25:00.000+10:00

Reported recently by that venerable old dame, the SMH, was this article involving the unfortunate predilections of a certain Tamarama man who shall go un-named on this page, though not in the article - that stuff is just too juicy to keep secret.

After finding a number of mutilated, bloodied (and of course, dead) rabbit corpses lying in the streets around their suburb, suspicious residents reported these most disturbing happenings to the local police. Having nothing else to do apart from protecting the residents from having their Mercedes burgled for use in ram-raids, the police set up an operation and caught the scoundrel. Yay! Only...something tells me they got more than they bargained for. From the article;

Police say they intend to lay a further six charges of bestiality against a man arrested last week over the mutilation deaths of 18 rabbits purchased from Sydney pet stores.

Pleading a "drug-induced psychosis" from meth-amphetamine use, the man was refused bail as a threat to the community. That's a shame, because;

In applying for bail, [the accused] was willing to surrender his passport and would undertake not go within 50 metres of a pet shop.

He's clearly trying, people. He probably never had the opportunity to get this sort of advice from Savage Love readers who, like him, just love animals.

I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have me.

2005-08-12T13:01:00.000+10:00

Xeni Jarden's latest article for Wired has an absolutely priceless quote tucked away right at the end. It's a discussion of the uber-precious networking community "ASmallWorld" which has as a prerequisite you were born with a silver spoon shoved tightly up your Duchy. ASmallWorld is populated by people like this guy.

as Cheray Unman, an ASW member and former VC living in Mill Valley, California, puts it, "If I'm trying to find someone to look after my purebred Samoyeds while I'm in St. Tropez, I'm not going to ask some naked Burning Man hula-hooper on Tribe.net".

Man, you can't script that stuff.

Violence, yes. Sex, no.

2005-08-11T13:02:00.000+10:00

Well, this took me by surprise, simply because I thought we were better than that, but then again, I think back to all the other stuff we've tried to stop mature adults viewing out of their own choice. I guess the message is that blowing someone's virtual brains out with an Uzi is much better for you than blowing --

A message from the OFLC

In the interest's of good taste and public safety the remainder of this post has been refused classification.

This is Microsoft. We Own EVERYTHING!! That is all.

2005-08-03T18:56:00.000+10:00

Bleeding Edge asks a provocative question that I'm not game to answer directly - my geekiness doesn't extend to the history of the Incredible Monopoly Machine.

BE asks "Have Microsoft ever invented anything?" I assume so, but regardless of the answer, at the rate they're going with patent filing, they may not have ever invented anything, but they're sure going to own it all.

This article by the New York Times (via Cnet) shows how Microsoft have changed tack in recent years, with Gatesy ramping up the "Patent Quota" (no talk of quality, unfortunately). How's this for usefulness "Adding and Removing White Space from a Document". My God! It's revolutionary! Like, er....the Delete Button. Or an Enter key, maybe?

The Redmonites have seemingly gone berzerk - if it exists, apparently Microsoft own it. Or at least, they want to. This patent, filed on the 21st July 2005, attempts to patent...emoticons.

Yep. Jens Martin, of Redmond, WA - I salute you. Glad to see someone fighting the good fight against those who would say Microsoft has never invented anything.

Microsoft - killing innovation daily since 1981.

As Australian as : Part 2

2005-07-28T11:22:00.000+10:00

Do yourself a favour and check out Carlton Draught's Big Ad. And just for the record, I was drinking it before it went mainstream...

As Australian as : Part I

2005-07-28T11:16:00.000+10:00

Giving an interview on the Channel Ten late news last night, Shappelle Corby's mother could be seen in front of a wall plastered with notices. The yellow one immediately to her right offered for sale "Free Shapelle Stubby Cooler's - $5".

!

2005-07-24T09:40:00.000+10:00

R.A.B is Regulus A. Black.

You heard it hear first.

?

2005-07-19T11:56:00.000+10:00

Who is R.A.B?

Britannia

2005-07-08T11:48:00.000+10:00

London Mayor Ken Livingstone was still in Singapore celebrating the city's winning bid for the 2012 games when the London bombings occurred. He said:

"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever."

Speaking directly to those responsible for the blasts he said:

"In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

"They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

What would Time know, anyway?

2005-06-27T15:59:00.000+10:00

50 Coolest Blogs, according to Time Magazine. Why this blog isn't in the list, I will never know.

Look out! Accountant's about!

2005-06-23T13:33:00.000+10:00

The Institute of Chartered Accountants' latest Ad Campaign will well and truly put the croc among the hens. There has always been an undercurrent of animosity between the CA and CPA organisations but this takes it to a whole new level.

Whenever you asked your university lecturer “which is better?” they’d dodge the issue but you could tell that, whichever qualification they’d taken, they had a smug sense of superiority. Yet there have even been four merger attempts between the two bodies. Seems like this gut-punch by the ICAA will put paid to that.

From the Campaign press release comes this;

“CPA Australia plan to launch their new advertising campaign in the coming week and we look forward to the healthy competition this represents”.

Very passive-aggressive. It’s just a shame the ICAA couldn’t come out and say what they really meant.

“The CPA is crap, and no matter what they tell you we’re better. We’re Chartered!”

In response the CPA comes out whingeing like the beaten-up nerd vowing revenge.

“You can't go throwing rocks at people and then say it will not affect our relationship” [CPA Chief Executive Greg Larsen] says.”

They plan their own campaign in coming weeks. I look forward to future episodes of “The Number Crunchers – Calculator’s at Dawn”

You eat kangaroo, why can't we eat unicorn horn?

2005-06-21T21:06:00.000+10:00

Thankfully, the Japanese were recently blocked by the IWC in their preliminary bid to extend so-called “scientific” whaling. This debate isn’t over yet but I wanted to tackle one of the statements that have been put forth in defence of whaling.

In this Sydney Morning Herald article, Japanese ambassador Hideaki Ueda told reporters;

"We [Japanese people] cannot imagine kangaroo sometimes being eaten in order to protect your farms or cattle or sheep," he said.

"So when our people realise sometimes kangaroos are to be eaten it is a shock."

What isn’t mentioned by Mr Ueda is that in 2003, the four species of kangaroos in Australia that are commercially harvested had a population of around 23 million. Depending on seasonality the population of the three largest species can vary from 15 million to 50 million. Furthermore, kangaroos breed year round, which means that they are able to increase their population by four fold in just five years.

Compare this to the whale population. Of Blue whales, there are between 400 and 1400. Of Fin whales there are around 50,000. Of Humpback whales there are around 12,000. (Figures from IWC Office for 1980-2000. Current estimates unattainable.) The breeding cycle of a Minke Whale, which numbers around 800,000 according to figures from the Institute of Cetacean Research in Japan (remember, it’s “scientific whaling”), is around a year, with larger whales such as Humpbacks taking three to four years.

So, it is true that Australian’s eat kangaroo, though not in great proportions. It is more so consumed as a game meat at restaurants rather than as something to put on the barbeque as a replacement to beef, and it is also exported to Europe and Asia. Yet whilst Mr Ueda and his fellow Japanese may be “shocked” that we eat kangaroos, they are not endangered. The population of kangaroos is must more easily estimated than that of whales. Their breeding profligacy is innumerably greater, and in fact the kangaroo can reach “pest” status. Furthermore, research by Steve Palumbi of Stanford University in California has shown that suggestions by the Japanese that the ‘growth’ in Minke whales population (remember who’s supplying those population figures) is hampering other whales breeding to be false. Strikingly, Mr Palumbi states

“They are not weeds that need to be pulled.”

The fallacy of Mr Ueda’s statement is that it creates a connection in people’s mind between Australian consumption of kangaroo and Japanese consumption for whale, justifying one with the other. In attempting to compare them he misleads not only those in the whaling debate but also damages our tourist industry by associating us with practices like these. Yet the statistics clearly show that whilst one is so abundant as to be a nuisance, the other has a population growth that is unknown and a total population size that is fewer by multitudes. Kangaroos may be cute and cuddly but “majestic” and “awe-inspiring” are not words usually associated with them.

Pre-Branded and Post-Intelligence

2005-06-20T22:57:00.000+10:00

This appeared on the Tom Peter’s Wire Service today. It’s from the Seattle “Post-Intelligencer” columnist, Bill Virgin. Great job title – shame about the column. See, I read it over and over again, and something’s just not right.

Bill seeks to establish, I think, that the traditional approaches to branding no longer work. But then he says that they do work. But only if you spend a lot of money. And only if you can stand out from the crowd. If it seems like he trying to have it both ways, well, he is. A couple of points.

“Microsoft, Costco, Amazon.com and Starbucks have achieved…international prominence, without benefit of a catchy slogan, a universally identifiable symbol or an anthropomorphic spokesanimal, to build awareness in consumers' minds.

So you no longer need to spend lots of money on your brand, right? No. Bill refutes this statement by discussing the power of the Budweiser Clydesdales, and the automatic audience association between the largest of horses and the weakest of beers. So he says that branding, of the kind where you are top of mind, is a powerful tool. And that having something warm and fuzzy is better than asking your consumer base where they want to go today (Antigua!).

BUT…

"A powerful brand image can be expensive to establish, but once it's established, it can accomplish far more at less cost than expensive marketing campaigns for less well-known products or services.”

And therein lies the problem. The problem with that argument is that, sure, if you had an established brand, it would cost you less for an ad campaign for a new product than if you had raise brand awareness of your just-released “XYZ-Cola”. Tell me, though - anyone like to do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation on how much Coca-Cola has spent over their lifetime to get their brand top of mind?

In 2004 they spent $US 2.1 billion alone on advertising (Link to 2004 Financial Statement). I’ll bet you it’s a lot more than your XYZ campaign. And having the most well known brand in the world won’t save you anyway if your product is crap – New Coke, anyone?

So traditional branding is a good thing, but only if you already have a brand. And it seems that it really doesn't matter whether you have a logo or a horse. You just need dosh.

He is correct, though, when he writes that;

“…marketers can be expected to continue throwing ideas at consumers, hoping something sticks so deeply in the public consciousness that people recognize it...”

But that’s because Marketer’s aren’t, on the whole, very creative.

Tasty Cat Food

2005-06-19T20:47:00.000+10:00

Tasty_Cat_Food

Hmm...gotta get some cat food. Completely out, the cupboards are bare. My God, this thing is an eating, sleeping, licking...eating sleeping machine. What to get, what to...oh...this looks interesting. Whiskas for Kittens. Well, she's not really a kitten anymore. She more closely resembles the John Candy of Kittens, albeit with only three legs.

But wait! What's this? Great new Taste! Packed full of Taste! Well, apart from my apparent disbelief in my cat possessing that indefinable quality known as "taste", given that she has a tendency to try and lick my toes after I've been for a run, I'm sold! Give me twenty!

Seth Godin wrote about this marketing like this here, and let's be serious people, it is a marketing ploy. Cat's eat mynah birds and snails, for crying out loud. And mice! Rats, even!

If you really wanted your cat eating something Packed full of Taste then you'd give it your rib-eye steak. Me, I just want it to not die.

Accidental Excel Haiku

2005-06-16T15:58:00.000+10:00

haiku

Originally uploaded by kerno.

It's True, It's All True

2005-06-09T14:46:00.000+10:00

I Think, Therefore Kerno.

Kerno, the Other White Meat.

Kerno Really Satisfies.

Ad Slogan Generator : Link

Blogging for a Job

2005-06-08T11:55:00.000+10:00

Tim Bray at Sun has outlined his Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good for Your Career. I particularly like the point about it actually being harder to fire someone who has a blog. Can you imagine the outcry if Wired up and dumped someone like Xeni Jardin? What would Bob Lutz write if he got the boot from GM? And it will be a lot harder for companies to explain a dismissal away as being for “personal reasons” if the employee has a blog.

THIS SHOULD KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT!

2005-05-20T12:28:00.000+10:00

Imagine this scenario;

There's a company who buys your product. You have a very good relationship with the chief buyer - they are very loyal to you company. One day, the CFO is slashing budgets and calls in the chief buyer to tell them to do significantly less business with you. But she slams her fist on the table and says;

"There's no way I'm doing less business. We've got to do more business with them! They're fantastic for us because..."

Finish the sentence.
(Fewer than 5% of company president's can)

Courtesy Steve Yastrow @ tompeters.com

Even the umbrella's are in on it…

2005-05-12T15:02:00.000+10:00

Lectures last night (Audit) – someone had a rainbow umbrella that I opened out of curiosity. You see, there’s an old science experiment whereby you paint a round card with rainbow colours and spin it. They merge into a murky, crappy looking white, but hey, it impressed me as a four year old. Also, I was attention seeking. Well, it worked.

The sound was sucked out of the room by the collective hiss of twenty people. Evidently I had either accidentally skewered the very last Tasmanian Tiger or signalled to ASIO to commence the Doomsday Sequence. Granted, we have no nuclear weapons of our own but we have very good relations with the USA.

None of the above – apparently opening an umbrella indoors is v. bad luck and I had just cursed myself for another seven years, or twelve karmic lifetimes, whichever comes first. Interpretations varied.

So, fully expecting to be hit by a bus and then pulped into a pothole by a street sweeper, I made it home in one piece. My classmates were not so lucky. In the days since the class one has had her hard drive hammered (Wooh! Alliteration!) by the ever-wrathful God of Machines and lost her major uni assignment. Another broke up with her boyfriend of three years. I, meanwhile, am still okay, albeit a little too pale.

It seems that my bad-luck quotient is just TOO FULL and so the bad luck I invited by dint of my opening the umbrella indoors simply bounced off me and reflected onto all the other suckers in the room.

I AM INVINCIBLE!