Acclaimed author Jostein Gaarder, best known for the novel Sophie’s World, has written a critical opinion piece on Israel in Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper. Not surprisingly, it sparked a fiery debate on political, religious and cultural fronts. There is an unofficial translation of Gaardner’s article, but I doubt it will ever make its way to… Read More »
One of the many business trends in the 1990s was “three nines“, i.e. businesses should strive for 99.9% accuracy, 99.9% customer satisfaction, 99.9% quality, etc. But is 99.9% good enough? If so… 268,500 defective tires will be shipped each year. 132,412,800 cans of soft drinks produced in the next 12 months will be flatter than… Read More »
I’m glad a mainstream magazine finally came out of the woods to debunk Jack’s rules (see FORTUNE‘s “The New Rules“, August 7, 2006). FORTUNE‘s story essentially argues that it’s very much time for new rules of success, ditching an obsession with managing quarter-to-quarter earnings to please Wall Street and in the process, disinvesting in the… Read More »
Amid concerns about the security risks posed by travellers who bring their laptops into aircrafts, Dell has struck a further blow to the product’s safety credentials by issuing a recall of 4.1 million Lithium-ion laptop batteries after a series of public reports of its laptops catching fire. According to The Economist, such batteries have been… Read More »
Went to watch Click yesterday evening at Greenbelt 3. This offbeat comedy about Michael (Adam Sandler) who was “gifted” a magical “universal” remote that can fast-forward and rewind his life touched on issues that have real emotional currency for men and women in the modern society: how to allot time to the things that truly… Read More »
Mind-reading computers seem to be all the rage again. First, Reuters reported that British and American scientists are developing an “emotionally aware” computer that will be able to read an individual’s thoughts by analysing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings. Then, BusinessWeek carried a similar article about a computer developed by British… Read More »