The beginning of the end for Dell

Posted on 02/05/2013 by Zed

Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell. Image used under Flickr CCLi. Photo from Oracle Photos Flickr Stream.

Back in the 90′s Steve Jobs had just returned to save Apple, which was fighting for its life. Michael Dell was asked at the time what he would do if he were in Jobs’ place. He replied, ”I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

Later, someone asked Jobs about Dell’s comment at a full-company meeting. Steve Jobs said: ”Fuck Michael Dell.”

Indeed. Apple’s sky-rocket success is the exact polar opposite of Dell’s decline in the last ten years.

Dan Lyons, editor-in-chief of RedWrite has an astute article about the latest news from Dell:  The company has gone “private” with a leveraged buyout valued at $24.4 billion. And as if to make things worse, the deal includes a $2 billion loan from Microsoft.

The irony is simply too good: Dell is giving the money back to its shareholders and going private. This is the start of the death spiral for Dell, which has become more and more irrelevant as time has passed.

Lyons writes:

“Deals like this are where big companies go to die. Michael Dell has gone to hell. He’s now in bed with a bunch of ruthless private equity guys whose role in this world is not to build things, but to take them apart and sell the pieces. They’re corporate chop shops. “

Read the full article here.

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Hilarious Chinese DVD movie covers

Posted on 02/01/2013 by Zed

I have no memory of seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger in Star Wars, and from what I recall, Matrix was not a movie about “The white men wanted a stud to breed slaves.” But such is the story of DVD covers of pirated movies as seen in China.

Some of the translation is absolutely hilarious and my favorite covers are the ones where negative reviews are quoted on the front.

Source: Pixfans via Gizmodo

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Street art of the day

Posted on 01/29/2013 by Zed

Source: Reddit.

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Exercise helps regulate appetite

Posted on 01/22/2013 by Zed

Image used under Flickr CCLi. Photo by Flickr user gregralich.

It seems common sense to assume that exercise would make you hungrier, resulting in a larger than normal appetite. However, experience and science show otherwise.

An article by Gretchen Reynolds of NYTimes‘s health pages, reports the results of a few studies that seem to show that the right kind of exercise changes the way our bodies interact with food.

Even though human appetite is complex, and is the result of a mixture of genes, psyche, and signals from the brain, certain hormones have been shown to regulate how much we eat. Ghrelin is one hormone which stimulates hunger.

Many studies have shown that exercise increases the production of ghrelin, which is where the idea of increased appetite comes from. However, other studies have shown that despite the increase of ghrelin, people who exercise tend to consume less than their sedentary counterparts.

The reason for this restraint on part of the exercising subjects is due to a simultaneous increase in other hormones that create satiety.

According to the article in NYTimes, the right kind of exercise seems to “improves the body’s ability to judge the amount of calories consumed and to adjust for that afterward,” said Catia Martins, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who led the study.

There is a caveat to this: Not all exercise has the same results. Running it seems is better than walking. And you need to stick to the exercise for a few months, according to Martins.

Read the full article here.

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Anonymous Proxy, USA

Posted on 01/22/2013 by Zed

There is no place like 127.0.0.1

Source: Blame It On The Voices.

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Sign of the times

Posted on 01/21/2013 by Zed

Source: Reddit via Gawker

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Requiem for a lightweight

Posted on 01/17/2013 by Zed

Google’s website for Nexus Q has a notice saying it is no longer for sale. Shucks!

Gizmodo is reporting that Google may have finally discontinued the (much derided and oft delayed) Nexus  Q. The Nexus Q was unveiled by Google as a media streamer, primarily for Android users. It confused people universally.

Update: Gizmodo reached Google and got this pile of corporate gobbledygook in return:

We don’t have anything to share re: Nexus Q at this time. The messaging is still true from our announcement in July that we listened to the feedback and the team is hard at work.

Source: Gizmodo

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What is wrong with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner?

Posted on 01/17/2013 by Zed

Image of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. Used under Flickr CCL. Photo by Flickr user eyeno.

According to The Atlantic Wire, last night, the FAA grounded all six of the 787 Dreamliners operated by U.S. carriers due to safety issues. On Tuesday ANA and Japan Airlines had already announced that they were grounding their 24 Dreamliners.

Following the FAA announcement, all other countries whose airlines were using the 787 also went ahead and decided to ground their fleet.

This could be bad for Boeing.

There has been a rash of events with the Dreamliner–fuel leaks, cracked cockpit windows, which have caused concern. But the primary focus right now is on the battery fires that have resulted, in one case, an emergency landing in western Japan.

On Jan 7th of this year, a mechanic inspecting a Dreamliner belonging to Japan Airlines came across smoke in the cockpit. There were no passengers on board the plane at the time.

The 787 Dreamliner has been developed by Boeing at the cost of $30 billion and is considered state of the art. They two most often touted features of the plane are the use of composites and the unprecedented amount of electricity it uses to power its many components. Many operations that on older planes used hydraulics or pneumatics, have been replaced by systems that use electricity.

And therein lies the rub.

Boeing’s 787 is the first commercial plane to use lithium-ion batteries as its main backup power source. These batteries are notorious for overheating. And to make matters worse, the cells release oxygen in a fire, which, of course, makes it easier for the fire to continue burning.

Despite years of testing and debate over the use of lithium-ion batteries in an aircraft,  it seems that all of the safeguards were not enough. At the moment it seems everyone, including NTSB, FAA, Boeing and others are investigating the issue.

It may perhaps require a change in the systems of the aircraft, or perhaps in the way the lithium-ion batteries are being manufactured.

Source: NYTimes, Wired, and TheAtlanticWire.

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Did a Google StreetView car kill a donkey in Botsawana?

Posted on 01/16/2013 by Zed

The sensational controversy has quickly gone international:

“Did Google Street View car run over a donkey? Camera car appears to hit animal on dirt road in Botswana” says the Mailonline.

“Google deny killing donkey with maps car in Botswana” says the Sun.

And my personal favorite:
“Google denies smacking Botswanan ass” screams The Register.

Someone spotted, what appears to be, a dead donkey lying in the middle of the road in a Google StreetView shot in Kweneng, Botswana. The Google StreetView images are made by Google cars that prowl the street photographing the streets.

However, let’s travel down the street a bit, using GoogleView itself to investigate this incident.

Google’s StreetView cars travel forwards, that much is known. So if we go backwards in time using the Google StreetView, we see the following scene:

As the Google StreetView car approaches (above two pictures) the donkey, it appears the dear animal was just taking a customary dirt bath, as is common with donkeys. The puff of dust near the animal is proof enough that this was indeed the case.

However, the next picture almost seems to show the StreetView car about to run over the donkey:

Just one click forward and the Google StreetView car seems to have gone right over the poor donkey:

However, the truth is just barely hidden from us.

Moving to the left in Google’s StreetView, we can see that the donkey has simply gotten up and out of the way of the StreetView car.

In fact, looking back, a few clicks later, we can see the donkey, safe and sound, way back in the distance.

Case closed.

Source: GoogleStreetView, dailymail.uk, theregister, the sun, theatlanticwire, and CNet.

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Facebook announces graph search. (Does anyone care?)

Posted on 01/15/2013 by Zed

The Gawker has the best estimation of Facebook’s new graph search feature. In a post entitled “Find All Humans on Earth Who Like Trail Running with Facebook’s New Magic Search Engine” Adrian Chen writes:

We’ve all been there: It’s a Tuesday morning and you’ve got a hankering for some trail running. But your wilderness survival class taught you never to trail run alone. What do you do? With Facebook’s new search engine, you can instantly use your computer to search for anyone on earth who likes trail running. (You can also find other things. But why would you want to?)

Well said.

Source: Gawker

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