› 2010/09/20
via www.economist.com/
When Wal-Mart tried to impose alien rules on its German staff—such as compulsory smiling and a ban on affairs with co-workers—it touched off a guerrilla war that ended only when the supermarket chain announced it was pulling out of Germany in 2006.
Guilty as charged.
You better not force us to smile - or have fun; we're German.
Though the guerrilla war against affairs sounds reasonable to me.
› 2010/09/14
via arstechnica.com/
The authors of the study argue that the root of all these tasks involves making a probabilistic inference, where complete information is missing, so people have to make a best guess based on known odds. Video gaming, in their view, increases the efficiency at which people can process the odds and make an accurate decision—gamers simply can do more with less. As a result, any task of this sort sees benefits.
Action Games improve decision making
› 2010/09/04
via www.sebastianmarshall.com/
The equal-odds rule says that the average publication of any particular scientist does not have any statistically different chance of having more of an impact than any other scientist’s average publication. In other words, those scientists who create publications with the most impact, also create publications with the least impact, and when great publications that make a huge impact are created, it is just a result of “trying” enough times. This is an indication that chance plays a larger role in scientific creativity than previously theorized.
› 2010/09/02
via blog.stackoverflow.com/
It is clearly not easy for man to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against intruders is not to be despised. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness. I once discussed the phenomenon that is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other — like the Spaniards and Portuguese, for instance, the North Germans and South Germans, the English and Scotch, and so on. I gave this phenomenon the name of “the narcissism of minor differences”, a name which does not do much to explain it. We can now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier.
The Narcissism of minor differences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents
› 2010/08/03
via daringfireball.net/
Unlike some jailbreaking apps, JailbreakMe.com does not require a third-party app. All you have to do is visit the JailbreakMe.com on your iPhone and follow the onscreen instructions. When it’s done, your phone will be jailbroken.
This is a small example of how to not do it