Gordon's Notes

Commentary: politics, science, technology and humanity. Secular humanist.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Mobile carrier SMS pricing created the messaging lottery - and WhatsApp won it

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If mobile carriers priced MMS/SMS messaging as a dumb pipe data service, there'd be no WhatsApp. But mobile carriers wanted short term r...
Saturday, February 08, 2014

Vanguard and Fidelity: When did civilization collapse again?

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I must have been asleep when civilization collapsed. Anyone know the date? I say this because I haven't done much with our mutual funds...
Sunday, February 02, 2014

21st century market failure: what the rise and fall of Guitar Hero teaches about gamification

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My oldest wants to learn to play drums. Learning is difficult for him, and the Smart Music program his school uses is obviously too sophisti...
3 comments:
Sunday, January 19, 2014

Bad backs: not necessarily hopeless

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I set a Crossfit deadlift "PR" (personal record) today. My best is not a big deal for anyone else. I'm among the weakest of ...
1 comment:

After the Smart TV debacle: what we really want

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Years after everyone else, I reluctantly retired our 25yo SONY Trinitron CRT and it's (free, subsidized) A/D converter box  and naively ...
Thursday, January 09, 2014

Valerie Plame Wilson on the NSA, Keith Alexander, and Edward Snowden

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Ten years ago Karl Rove, Richard Armitage and Lewis Libby took revenge on a man who'd exposed some of Bush/Cheney's Iraq lies. Thei...
2 comments:
Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Why do corporations do lifestyle "wellness" programs?

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Even with rather generous tax breaks, wellness programs cost corporations money. So why pay companies like South Africa's Vitality Group...
Thursday, January 02, 2014

Beware fees and interest payments if you use credit card to wire money

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Due to a family emergency I had to send money to a relative twice in two months. Each time I used MoneyGram  and paid for the transaction wi...
Friday, December 27, 2013

How to evaluate a publicly traded corporate employer

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There are many articles on how to judge employees, and many on how to manage typical employee interviews. What I don't see are blog post...
Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Silver bear snow scoop: The Net is still good

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When we lived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula snow scoops were sold at the local hardware store. Snow scoops is how snow was moved before ...
Saturday, November 30, 2013

Android's curious advantage: lawbreaking made easy

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Remember when Apple made ads about ripping CDs? iTunes and the iPod made it elegantly easy [1]. The ads were coy but clear -- wink, wink ste...
2 comments:

Future Stunned: Earlier reality flux in the post-material world

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When I was a child, I read Alvin Toffler's 1970 book Future Shock ... ... Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous struc...
Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Resolution: tighten bike bolts AND the shoe bolts every 2 months

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There are a lot of bolts on my bike and they're always yearning to be free.  Last week it was a brake lever than went from a bit wiggly...
2 comments:
Saturday, November 23, 2013

1973 vs. 2013: Stagflation vs Stagbubbilation

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Stagflation was a catchy way to describe the economics of the Vietnam war West: Stagflation, a portmanteau of stagnation and inflation, i...
Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Lessons from healthcare.gov - we have the wrong Cabinet

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This is the The Cabinet  of the executive branch of the USA (slashes mine) Department of State Department of the Treasury Department of...
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