Posts by Paul Campbell
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I spent the last three weeks in Bangalore on a biz trip, I'd say maybe 10% of the notes I received in change came with some added text - of course it's harder to write on plastic notes than on cloth/paper ones
-
Hard News: Notes in My Pocket, in reply to John Armstrong,
Attached to the choccies is a very lovely memory of said two-year old's much anticipated (at least by me) response to his first sighting of proper fireworks. Which was to sleep through them.
Took my (then) 3 yr old to the Oakland 4th July fireworks - the result was abject terror - but as I was carrying him away from the waterfront clamped to my shoulder he kept peeking in wonder at the lights in the sky
-
Hard News: That page doesn't exist ..., in reply to James Butler,
I quite like the framing of faith-based organisations as "holistic"; not the first adjective they might want to be associated with...
perhaps "holystic" then?
-
I spent the weekend at Mysore too, the palace is cool .... oh wait .....
-
Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Has nobody pointed out the fact that light rail vehicles travel on, well, rails? bit hard to "turn left" I would have thought.As with much legislation in this country the drafters were lacking in practical experience I think.
There are places in the world with large developed light rail (aka trams, aka streetcars) that have such complex systems that they have points in the streets - they do turn - and of course sometimes they turn left without points (it's the only place they can turn) and should be indicating there too just like any other vehicle
-
Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Bart Janssen,
We could force our drivers to take care of the cyclists. In California if a driver hits a pedestrian it is assumed the driver is at fault. How about similar laws here. How about police ticketing drivers who put cyclists at risk - instant 50 demerit points. How about legally defended cycleways on the roads where any car (or bus!) entering them gets instant fines. A legally enforced change in driver attitude - because our police don't have much else to do and would love to spend their time writing traffic tickets.
I don't think California law is quite like that - what they do have is notional (virtual) zebra crossings at each and every intersection (unless there are lights) and pedestrians have right of way on all crosswalks whether they are marked in place or not - the downside? enforced jaywalking laws - it's a trade off is that pedestrians only get to legally cross at intersections
Of course crossing the street in Berkeley where I used to live you take your life in your hands, not because cars wont stop, they do, it's the cyclists who somehow expect that they don't have to stop for pedestrians - or stop signs, or red lights.
Really the rule should be simple - the slower and more vulnerable get the right of way - and while some drive cars and some bikes EVERYONE is a pedestrian.
-
This would be the same Whole Foods that drove its unions out, and fires people who try and organise right?
-
Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
When I visited Vietnam five years ago, the view there was very much that they did not want to simply be the next cheap outsourcing location. They were training a hell of a lot of programmers.
I think that everywhere wants to do that (you hear it here in NZ all the time) it's sort of the obvious move to bring in more wealth - we can't all have the high paying programming jobs
Mind you India is a generation ahead of all of them, and has English as a common language - when I was designing chips for a living half the engineers in almost every design team were Indian ex-pats (all expected me to know everything about cricket) many have moved back home where they can have a higher standard of living - every company I've worked for since then has had an Indian team floating around somewhere.
Mind you India in general has to get its act together business-wise - they seem to have appropriated the worst of victorian bureaucracy - I'm slated to visit another company's Indian design team ASAP - it's 2 weeks minimum for a business visa (and you have to surrender your passport) - I can get a China visa in Hong Kong with 24 hrs notice (otoh - 2 weeks is about right for the anti-malarials ....)
-
The This American Life piece is being credited with Apple's (very) recent publishing information about practices in its supply chain - while it's a great piece it's probably more due to California passing a law requiring ALL companies to provide a supply chain statement on their web page - this law came into effect Jan 1st (and was aimed at Apple).
(BTW This American Life is generally excellent and worth an hour a week in your podcasts)
I think that China is in a stage along a path - they're growing their middle class which can only be a good thing - largely middle class countries tend to have too much to lose if they go to war - this is also what real wealth redistribution from the West to the 3rd world looks like - maybe not always pretty, but long term a good thing - eventually China's standard of living will rise and the factories will move to Vietnam, Burma, India and eventually Africa
-
yeah - it just continues from all those carefully chosen not-so-flattering photos