Tag: About the web and you and me and all…

About the web and you and me and all!

Robin Hood Tax

isi / / Stuff that matters

:: 2013 update – http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/latest/dont-believe-hype-robin-hood-tax-alive-and-kicking ::

A rockin good idea. Sure not easy to roll out, and in danger of being ‘hijacked’ at some point, or see inflated overheads, but still a beautiful (and just) idea.

Go and vote YES 🙂

Why now?

Because the time is right.

From 2007 to present the world is suffering the greatest recession since World War I that is caused by a crash in the financial system. There is global agreement that we need to regulate finance so it cannot crash in the same way again, even if there are different views about how to do this. But the finance sector can – and should – make a proper tax contribution towards putting right the damage it caused and making the world a better, fairer, more sustainable place.

Computerisation of the finance sector has made a tax like this easy to implement. What’s more, it’s made it necessary – the very speed of today’s financial systems is a direct contributor to the surge in global trading. Nowadays, too much trading is done to make a quick profit, and not to serve the real economy. This high frequency trading has brought instability.

read more here http://robinhoodtax.org.au

About peanuts and monkeys

isi / / General stuff

A little story for them who haven’t yet grasped the actual meaning of Schadenfreude:

I’m a Sydney based web producer. Last week I was told that a former client got a “great cheap website deal from overseas.” I was not impressed.
But now this client’s website is down ever since the ‘great deal’ eventuated. Their website is now down for more than a week [update: 2 weeks now].

Schadenfreude is the word that describes best my current state of mind about the whole situation – I just can’t help it.

As you know, there is a saying about how to secure quality services for your business…

the age of

isi / / Stuff that matters

The most important subject taught to school children is rapidly becoming computer science and applications: How to use machines instead of brains, programs instead of knowledge.

Ray Kurzweil – THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES | The Age of Intelligent People

What will that do to our N-Geners? Will it impact their capacity for empathy and compassion?

Freedom of speech

isi / / Stuff that matters

September 30 2012 – by Annabel Crabb | smh opinion

Brilliant write this 🙂

… Freedom of speech – it’s simple in theory, but endlessly complicated and distorted by a million other factors of politics, circumstance, or the belief that you’re restricting it for the best possible reasons.

In the end, freedom of speech is like democracy: the worst possible system, except for all the others.

Attempts to curb freedom of speech for entirely excellent reasons are the most tempting of all: the shutting down of hate speech, for example, or the protection of society from extremes.

Human nature is to insulate ourselves against nasty shocks. That’s why we invented insurance. But you can’t insure against genuinely irrational human evil, any more than you can against stupidity or malice.

Which is why the bottom line on freedom of speech must always be: sometimes you just have to suck it up.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-worst-possible-option-except…

Annabel Crabb writes for ABC Online’s The Drum. She tweets as @annabelcrabb.

three main myths about banking

isi / / Stuff that matters

Telegraph.co.uk/finance Bank-reform-held-back-by-lobby-group-myths-BoE-member-Robert-Jenkins-claims

He outlined three main myths propagated by the banking lobby. The first was that reform, principally the demand for larger loss-absorbing capital buffers, was a choice “between safety and growth”. “The banking lobby would have us believe that higher capital requirements and lower leverage will damage economic growth and retard the recovery,” he said. “Bankers have exploited this fear.”

Mr Jenkins claimed that the argument was false because more capital would not limit the amount of lending a bank could do, but would make it safer and therefore lowered its funding costs. Banks have claimed the opposite was the case due to their adherence to “return on equity” (RoE) targets, which ignore risk.

The second myth was that unless RoE was high, shareholders would not invest and capital could not be raised. Mr Jenkins dismissed the claim, saying: “The prospective investor is no longer interested in promises of short-term RoE, he is interested in achieving attractive risk-adjusted returns.”

The third myth was that governments cannot afford to over-regulate for the risk of losing financial centres. However, he said: “In a world of increased risk awareness, letting your banks off the capital hook will likely damage not enhance their ability to compete.”

Mr Jenkins also suggested that banks should be subjected to far higher capital and leverage ratios but fewer complicated rules in return.

Job interviews…

isi / / About

… and why I suck at them.

All that is happening around us, the digitalisation of our world and the ever-connectedness that comes with it, to me this is all just one awe-inspiring invigorating exhilarating over the moon great huge adventure, with software sprouting everywhere to be consumed brainfinger-lickingly, with layers going down deeper and deeper by the byte, all that just absolutely blows my mind, every single day, again and again. What’s ahead of us, the breadth of the tech horizon of which we’ve only just seen a fraction so far (its maybe 5:45am on a winter morning), is just so gobsmackingly fabulous and exiting and inspiring right down to the tiniest braincell (and heart.bit), it’s the best reason to get out of bed every morning to see where we’ve gotten to today. At least that’s what I think and feel about the whole thing.

But – when at a job interview I find it simply impossible to even begin to give a proper answer to questions like “where do you see personal enhancement opportunities” or “can you describe a situation past with communication gone wrong” or “would you see yourself rather-than-as?”
Continue reading “Job interviews…”