At least try...- May 18, 2007 I recently came across a Grace Hopper quote I'd heard before, although I had no idea who Grace Hopper was. The quote in question was...A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for.I love that quote. Somehow the phrase "take risks" doesn't convey the message, and there's something about the metaphor that really works. I was inspired to look up her other quotes and a little about her - it turns out she was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy, and a bit of a computer geek in that she...http://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000506.html Popular Decisions and Immediate Solutions- May 9, 2007 A couple of days ago, Brazil announced that it was breaking the patent on Efavirenz, a drug manufactured by Merck that combats HIVAIDS. The method of breaking the patent was to authorise (actually, to issue a "compulsory license") for the importation of a generic version of the drug from Thailand. Clearly, this is the right decision in terms of the immediate short term problem of getting the latest drug to the most needy. Brazil's aggressive management of the challenges posed by the AIDS...http://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000505.html (Untitled)- May 8, 2007 Did you hear the one about the North Korean who told a joke about George Bush ... to the only audience in the world who wouldn't get ithttp://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000504.html (Untitled)- May 8, 2007 What do you mean, I'm going to live That's just so inconvenient.http://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000503.html Regulation Costs- May 6, 2007 It there to make you safe - it's put in place, maintained and enforced by your elected representatives, and it gets in the way of everything that you do. People have lamented its existence since the dawn of paper, and a collection of new terms have evolved to deal with its existence. Red tape. Bureaucracy. Process. To some this is an incredible burden (as I am discovering, to my cost). To others, this is an opportunity to make money for nothing. I will illustrate with two examples. I...http://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000502.html A hairline crack in the monopoly- May 2, 2007 As we all know, and lamented when had enough free time to give a damn, Microsoft Windows completely dominates the desktop computer market. The only company ever to give them the slightest cause for concern was Apple, and now that Microsoft Office is the de facto productivity software of choice on that platform also, the deluge of cash pouring into Redmond seemed set to continue for a few years yet. For a long time, Linux was mooted to be the challenger waiting in the wings, and - when I had...http://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000501.html It's all about the context- May 2, 2007 "It's a matter of perspective". I wonder how many different things could have this simple phrase applied to them. How point of view skews our view of the world. Douglas Adams, talking about a completely different topic, once put it like this...The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be..http://www.salocin.com/weblog/archives/000500.html |