The ARM Phillosophy
Tudor Brown has stepped down as president of ARM Holdings, the chip designer. This article on the BBC,explains the company and its philosophy.
It is a business model that should be copied. It’s certainly worked!
Sex Trafficking, Forced Marriage and Honour Killings
Some of the news just gets worse. Take this story about Mexicans trafficking women to the United States and other places for the purpose of prostitution and sex slavery.
Some of the figures in the report are horrendous.
$32 billion – Annual turnover of human trafficking industry
9.8 million – Total involved in unpaid work or prostitution
800,000 – People trafficked across borders each year
79 % – Of those trafficked are women or girls
And then we have the Shafilea Ahmed case, where she was murdered because, she wouldn’t agree to a forced marriage to someone she’d never met in Pakistan.
To me there is little difference. In my view to use threats and violence to exploit women makes those that do it, the lowest of the low.
We probably can’t do much about the problems in Mexico and the United States, but we should put lots of teeth behind the views of Baroness Warsi, her father and everyone, who believe that women have the right to choose how they lead their life.
Bad Maths
I’m 65 this year. Could my generation’s everyday maths, be better, as we had to cope with £sd? When I served in a bar in the 1960s, you learned things like 3 bottles of Guinness at 1s. 8d. were 5s. You had to do it all mentally, as the till was just a drawer.
I also played a lot of cribbage and other card games. Many of which need a certain amount of arithmetical dexterity. So have computer games lost all this?
But in some ways my biggest advantage was that my mother had very good arithmetical skills, partly brought on as she had been a comptometer operator before and during the Second World War, at Reeves just down the road from where I now live. So when we travelled in the car, she would always set me puzzles.
Interestingly, comptometer is rejected by the computerised spelling on this computer and WordPress.
A Discussion About the Falklands
During part of the Falklands War or soon afterwards, I was at an Artemis Users Conference in Denver Colorado.
After dinner one night, four of us, got together and had a few drinks. The other guys were the Project Manager of the McDonnell Douglas Harrier program, a guy with a similar position at Long Beach Naval Shipyard and a banker from New York.
The banker kept on about us needing a nice big flat-top (aircraft-carrier) with a few Tomcats and that would have dealt with the Argentines. I wanted to stand my British corner, but really didn’t know what to say. In the end the other two Americans, just let him have enough rope and then they played their card; the awful weather. One said that the weather reports from the Falklands, they’d seen, were so bad, that the only aircraft you could take-off and land back again was a Harrier.
The banker wasn’t seen again that evening,
Ivan Massow Joins Peer-to-Peer Lending
Peer-to-peer lending is growing fast, with new companies starting up seemingly every week.
Now entrepreneur, Ivan Massow has joined the party with a company called Massow’s Angels.
This was reported in the Independent yesterday, under a title of How Peers Can Solve Borrowing Headaches.
This is part of the report.
Funding Circle recently reported that its customers invested £6.1m in the first two months of this year and the total amount saved and borrowed at Zopa, the UK’s first peer-to-peer website, passed the £200m mark last week. Such growth prompted Andy Haldane, the head of policy at the Bank of England, to say that such peer-to-peer lenders could ultimately replace high street banks.
As if the banks hadn’t got enough problems.
Note that the Indie talks about the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association, which is a trade body created to ensure standards in the industry.
I have lent money through Zopa for several years now and get a reasonable return. In some ways though, my guarantee is in the figures, that I track every day in a spreadsheet and the fact that the company is totally open about the processes it uses. The processes must work, as at the end of May 2011, I’d earned 6 % since the start of that year. The figure is now 9.3 % for 2012, with ten days to go of the month of May.
Megrahi Leaves More Questions Than Answers
Having seen the one-man show Lockerbie: Unfinished Business at the Edinburgh Fringe two years ago, I have always been suspicious that Megrahi was the man behind the Lockerbie bombings.
In the meantime,nothing has convinced me, that he was guilty and I agree with the show, that it was more likely, Iran was behind the bombing.
Now that Megrahi has died, it makes it even less likely that the truth will be discovered.
If you have a view on this case, read this. If it changes your view, note why in your mind.
BBC Ignores the Science and the History
Perhaps it’s symtomatic of our age, where people forget or ignore the science and history behind everything.
I watched the start of the torch relay at Land’s End on the BBC.
They didn’t mention that the miner’s lamp used to transport and safeguard the flame is a development of the Davy lamp. The original lamp was designed by Humpry Davy from Penzance. That was close to Land’s End, last time I looked.
Is Beckham Going to the Olympics?
He may be past his sell-by date at 37, but I’m coming round to the view, that Stuart Pearce may pick David Beckham for Team GB at the Olympics.
But he could motivate a young team and all the hype could be a feint to install him as a coach. Let’s face it both Beckham and Pearce are bright enough to fool most of the people most of the time.
Everything so far in the way we’ve organised the Games has been very much conventional, so a surprise of the positive sort would be welcome and would unsettle other teams.
In the meantime, everybody should wait.
Greeks Knight David Beckham
Well not really, but the announcer at the flame handover ceremony in Athens yesterday, added Sir to David Beckham’s name at every opportunity. Perhaps with all their troubles, the Greeks may be following the Albanians, who famously offered CB Fry the throne, by knighting him and hoping he’ll give them a bit of publicity. The whole episode is reported in the Independent.
The Anonymous Widower 