jacktams.co.uk

Speaks for itself.

Wilson Miner - When We Build from Build on Vimeo.

The EU Creed - "Try and Try again there is no do"

The negotiations have gone on for months. If you truly believe that it's about making Greece's' debts more affordable you're mad, this is about setting targets that are impossible to meet, thus creating a situation wherein Greece becomes a third world country outside the EU, and all the unelected eurocrats cry "We did our best, we spent months working on a plan". We already know its win, win for the bondholders anyway link , link, and the US is heavily leaning on Germany to do what ever is possible to stop the inevitable default bleeding the fed dry.

Saturday 4th February 2012

Euro zone finance ministers told Greece it could not go ahead with an agreed deal to restructure privately held debt until it guaranteed to implement reforms to secure a second financing package from the euro zone and the IMF.

via Euro zone insists no Greek rescue without reforms | Reuters.

Sunday 5th February 2012

Greece's prime minister scrambled Sunday to convince lenders and politicians to sign off on a 130 billion euro rescue, after his finance minister said just hours remained to clinch a deal to avoid a messy default.

Via Greece on "knife edge" in push to agree bailout

Analysis 24 January 2012

So, they’re going through a drawn-out step-by-step procedure of demands for reforms, promises, failed implementations, rebukes, withheld bailout transfers that then might still be made, and so on. The idea is to keep markets from panicking, give governments time to prepare for the inevitable, and render politicians blameless for Greece’s exit from the monetary union.

Via Paying Lip Service To Saving The Eurozone

Pretty cool as IDEs go. If only Netbeans could be that lightweight...

Nide is a web-based IDE for Node.JS, designed with simplicity and ease-of-use in mind.

You can run Nide locally or install it on your remote server, and access it through your Web browser.

via Nide - Beautiful IDE for Node.JS.

(3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.

via RFC 1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths.

Motorola Germany want 2.25% of Apple revenues, presumably from  iPhone and iPad. Chances of this happening? Nil.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents found new information that suggests Motorola has offered to end the patent dispute and license its wireless patents to Apple -- in exchange for 2.25 percent of Apple's sales.

via Motorola wants 2.25 percent of Apple sales to license patents | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Euro zone finance ministers told Greece on Saturday it could not go ahead with an agreed deal to restructure privately-held debt until it guaranteed it would implement reforms needed to secure a second financing package from the euro zone and the IMF.

via Euro zone loses patience with Greece | Reuters.

I have been messing around with Node.js pretty much like I did with Ruby back in the day.

Its quite cool, and seems a bit faddy when you get to the nitty gritty. I can't be bothered to write some actual content I have linked some posts that outline just some of the reasons node isn't all that - If  "it's fucking javascript on the server" isn't a good enough reason.

Almost no function in Node directly performs I/O, so the process never blocks. Because nothing blocks, less-than-expert programmers are able to develop fast systems.

This statement is enticing, encouraging, and completely fucking wrong.

via Node.js is Cancer.

Next, suppose you're an expert programmer, and you've got some CPU bound work that you fork off to child processes to keep your event loop trucking. OK man, how complicated do you want to make this thing? At full capacity, you're at par with threads, provided it's not memory bound. At this point, you are less focused on solving the problem at hand than you are on coming up with something you can blog about and get on programming Reddit.

via Straight Talk on Event Loops

If the US economy really is creating jobs, then you’d expect the rate of creation to be up there with growth. But it isn’t. In the last quarter of 2011, American economic growth was recorded as 2.8%. In that period, roughly 145,000 jobs were ‘created’ according to the Labor stats. That adds up to a 0.3% growth in jobs. New technology to cut costs is gradually rendering more and more of middle class America unemployed. 243,000 jobs were ‘created’ in January alone – still only a 0.5% increase. A good time to look again at this will be the end of March, when Q1 economic performance can again be compared side-by-side with ‘new’ jobs.

via US JOB STATS: Why the Americans are getting excited about nothing. | The Slog.

The puzzle is why firms pay huge sums to big name consulting firms, when their advice comes from kids fresh out of college, who spend only a few months studying an industry they previous knew nothing about. How could such quick-made advice from ignorant recent grads be worth millions? Why don’t firms just ask their own internal recent college grads?

via Overcoming Bias : Too Much Consulting?.

Will Solaris be renamed So-Larry-Us?

via Oracle Drags Microsoft, Red Hat Into Itanium Lawsuit Swamp | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.

Assuming ~93% of ZNGA’s bookings are generated through FB average of first three quarters of 2011, then total net FB bookings for ZNGA for 2011 would be $1,117mm based on FB’s ZNGA rev of $445mm divided by 30%, generating gross FB bookings of $1,484mm for ZNGA, then multipled by the 70% that ZNGA keeps.

via Zynga & its Facebook Problem — Tech News and Analysis.

Bezos on the Segway, the benefit of hindsight allows us to call bullshit on that one.

You have a product so revolutionary, youll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?—Jeff Bezos

via Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger" - HBS Working Knowledge.

"Applications in England are down over 50% more than in any other part of the UK as a result of the government making it the most expensive country in the world in which to gain a public degree."

via BBC News - UK university applications down as fees rise.

I can't even be bothered to find the counter point, just Google "Average US College Fees" then convert it to UK £.

Here in lies RIMs' problem - it repels talent.

Uhh [long pause] you know, Canada is the wrong direction for me my friend. It's cold up there [laughs]

via The exit interview with Jon Rubinstein: 'What we accomplished has been amazing' | The Verge.

Apple, the computer giant whose sleek products have become a mainstay of modern life, is dealing with a public relations disaster and the threat of calls for a boycott of its iPhones and iPad.

via Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China | Technology | The Observer.

Two Important things to note about this 'bogus-ness':

A) Foxconn make lots and lots of consumer electronics for practically every company on this earth. Xbox or PS3 yup that's them.

B) Apple, has been extraordinarily transparent about its manufacturing record. But, rules and expectations do not translate from one country to another.

"If you add up all the workers who have died to build your iPhone or iPad, the number is shockingly high,"  - Peter Cohan : Forbes

Finally, if your going to write sound-bites, at least have the decency to give the number or cite the source.