John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers
(33:45-35:53 from John Gruber’s keynote speech at The Çingleton Symposium, a conference which took place in Montréal on October 14th and 15th, 2011)
One simple way to look at it is that there are far more people who’ve never bought an iPhone and who’ve never bought an iPad, who will in the next five years than all of us who’ve already bought at least one to this point. And I don’t see how anybody can deny that, unless something unbelievable, dramatic changes. That’s certainly the way everything is going now. If you think this app store platform is big now, you really haven’t seen anything yet. At an event last week, Tim Cook had a line – he said, ‘This is an extraordinary time to be at Apple’. And He is definitely right. But I say to you, ‘This is an extraordinary time to be an Apple developer’ .This is the right time and the right place. This is a once in a career opportunity. This is like being a Rock and roll musician in the late sixties. This is like being a film maker in the seventies following Scorsese, Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (when he was a saint). If things go right, if things go the way I think they are going to go, these next five years, we are never going to work harder, we are never going to be under more pressure, we’re never going to be more stressed, we are never going to feel like we have to work faster and we are never going to have to solve tougher problems. We’re never going to have to move this fast. But the only thing any of us are going to regret is if we don’t aim big enough. If you don’t feel that you’re now in a position to do the best work of your entire career, to look back and say, ‘This was the time, I was there, I did this, I helped make this thing a reality’, then you need to find a new position. This chance will never come again. And we are lucky, we’re so unbelievably, incredibly lucky that it even came this once. Thank You.
via Cycle Gap: John Gruber Has Some Career Advice For Developers.
rePost::Leila de Lima is only using her common sense | Inquirer Opinion
Likewise, the freedom to travel is not absolute. It is limited by the right of the government and the people to seek justice. Of all the rights, I think the right to justice is the most important. Why should a person’s right to travel be more important than a whole nation’s right to justice? Travel is supposed to be taken at one’s leisure. Are a person’s leisure and pleasure more important than justice?
Once the cases against GMA are finished and she is acquitted, she can travel all over the whole world for all she wants and nobody will stop her.
via Leila de Lima is only using her common sense | Inquirer Opinion.
Why the Occupy Wall Street Movement Has Libraries | Peer to Peer Review
Lending without limits
As I write this, I see that the Occupy Wall Street library has over 3500 books cataloged at LibraryThing. It also has policies and procedures, as libraries do. These include how to close the library when it rains (put lids on the boxes and tuck the tarps around them in a manner that won’t aggravate the police) and it has circulation policies, including how to check books out forever: “these books belong to everyone, so we trust everyone to do what they think is most effective with them. If you think you could put a book to good use long-term, by all means keep it. If you think others might benefit from it more after you’ve finished, we strongly encourage returns.” I love that.
These books belong to everyone. There’s enormous trust embodied in that statement, and it’s the kind of trust that at times is betrayed by rules designed around the assumption that people will act selfishly if allowed to govern themselves. As David Carnevale wrote in his article on “organizational trust” in the Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration, “bureaucracy is a monument to mistrust.” Luckily, it’s not the only option: he points out that “governance systems can be crafted that take advantage of people’s best, not their worst, tendencies.”
via Why the Occupy Wall Street Movement Has Libraries | Peer to Peer Review.
TED::Jay Bradner: Open-source cancer research
WOW there is hope!
Cancer needs to be cured now!!!!
Elink Video:: Awesome Kinect commercial!!!
This is probably in the top 5 MSFT commercials. Awesome!!!
rePost::His Libraries, 12,000 So Far, Change Lives – NYTimes.com
I came here to Vietnam to see John Wood hand out his 10 millionth book at a library that his team founded in this village in the Mekong Delta — as hundreds of local children cheered and embraced the books he brought as if they were the rarest of treasures. Wood’s charity, Room to Read, has opened 12,000 of these libraries around the world, along with 1,500 schools.
Yes, you read that right. He has opened nearly five times as many libraries as Carnegie, even if his are mostly single-room affairs that look nothing like the grand Carnegie libraries. Room to Read is one of America’s fastest-growing charities and is now opening new libraries at an astonishing clip of six a day. In contrast, McDonald’s opens one new outlet every 1.08 days.
It all began in 1998 when Wood, then a Microsoft marketing director, chanced upon a remote school in Nepal serving 450 children. Only one problem: It had no books to speak of.
Wood blithely offered to help and eventually delivered a mountain of books by a caravan of donkeys. The local children were deliriously happy, and Wood said he felt such exhilaration that he quit Microsoft, left his live-in girlfriend (who pretty much thought he had gone insane), and founded Room to Read in 2000.
He faced one challenge after another, not only in opening libraries but also in filling them with books that kids would want to read.
“There are no books for kids in some languages, so we had to become a self-publisher,” Wood explains. “We’re trying to find the Dr. Seuss of Cambodia.” Room to Read has, so far, published 591 titles in languages including Khmer, Nepalese, Zulu, Lao, Xhosa, Chhattisgarhi, Tharu, Tsonga, Garhwali and Bundeli.
via His Libraries, 12,000 So Far, Change Lives – NYTimes.com.
Musings on a thing on the Checklist
I’ve just dissuaded a couple of officemates thinking of getting training from an it training center from a school that I am ambivalent towards.
I did this with a heavy heart because a part of me feels like a traitor. The part of me that won was the part that cared towards other people. The part that wouldn’t shut up if you didn’t at least try to steer people towards a better outcome.
This has brought to my attention a dearth of great IT training places in the Philippines. I’ve always had a school as part of the checklist. What can one do?
Have to research the IT training programs available locally.
Elizabeth Warrens anger – The Plum Line – The Washington Post
After the event, Warren reflected on the man’s outburst, which she said was her first such encounter. “I actually felt sorry for the guy. I really genuinely did. He’s been out of work now for a year and a half. And bless his heart, I mean, he thought somehow it would help to come here and yell names,” she told HuffPost.The assault stuck with Warren, and she continued to think about it throughout the night. Hours later, she said she wasn’t upset with the man himself, but rather with those who attempt to channel his anger in a malevolent direction.“I was thinking more about the heckler. I’m not angry with him, but he didn’t come up with the idea that his biggest problem was Occupy Wall Street. There’s someone else pre-packaging that poison — and that’s who makes me angry,” she said.
via Elizabeth Warrens anger – The Plum Line – The Washington Post.
Google OCR of QC Socialized Housing Program
Republic of the Philippines HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Quezon City
‘ THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
1“ Regular Sessipn
House Bill N0. 2 4 1
Introduced by RODRIGUH D. DADIVAS
Explanatory Note
The lack of decent and affordable housing facilities remains to be one of the most pervasive sooio-economic problems that our government needs to confront. At present, there are more than 60% of Filipino households belong to the poverty threshold or whose family income is below P14,000.00 a month. These people do not have a home to cali their own not because they don’t need it but the unavailabiiity of affordabie housing units that prevented them from having one. Furthermore, if there are housing programs available, its loan mechanisms are still not proportion insofar as the income of these more than 60% Filipino househoids.
This biii seeks to establish a mechanism that would provide low-cost housing loan restructuring program. It provides ince
Under this bill, all penalties and surcharges will be condoned upon approval of the application, provided, that all accrued interests shall be added to the remaining balance of the principal, the aggregate of which shall be considered as the new principal amount.
There are other pmvisions under this biii that wouid make housing loan facilities avaiiabie jqmhgpoor Fiiipinos.
P
In lightfof the foregoing approval of this om is eamestly sought.
Republic of the Phiiippines HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Quezon City
THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 1* Regular Session
241
HOUSE Bill NO.
Introduced by RODRIGUEZ D. DADIVAS
J77 7 777“ 7 WW- W77 H 777 777 “7
TO ESTABLISH A sOc|ALlzEO ANO LOW-COST HOUSING LOAN RI’-:sTRuO1’uRmO PROGRAM, PROVIDING THE MECHANISMS THEREFOR, ANO FOR OTHER PURPOSES
Be .1 enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Phmppines in Congress assembled:
Section 1. Title. – This Act shall be known as “Socialized and Low-Cost Housing Loan Restructuring Act of2004.”
Sec. 2. Restructuring of Delinquent Socialized and Low-Cost Housing Loan Accounts. — In keeping with the Constitutionai mandate for the State to undertake a continuing program of urban land reform and housing that will make avaiiabie at affordable cost decent housing and basic services, ‘there is hereby established a Socialized and Low-Cost Housing Loan Restructuring Program. Under this program:
a) For three (3) years from the effectivity of this Act, aii socialized housing ioans or loans amounting to Two Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Pesos (P225,000.D0) and beiow, and all low-cost housing loans or ioans amounting to over Two Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Pesos (P225,0D0.00) but not exceeding Five Hundred Thousand Pesos (P500,000.00) with any of the govemment financing institutions and agencies involved in the National Shelter Program (NSP), inciuding but not iimited to, the Government Service insurance System (GSIS), Social Security System (sss), Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF), National Home Mortgage Finance corporation (NHMFC), Home Guaranty Corporation (HGC), and the National Housing Authority (NHA) that have at ieast a six-month unpaid monthly amortization area hereby declared covered by the benefits of this restructuring program notwithstanding that the same account has availed of the benefits of a previous restructuring or condonation program and even if the annual total family income of the borrower-applicant exceeds Three Hundred Thousand Pesos (30Ei,0O0.00);
b) An applicant for restructuring shall only be charged a processing fee which shall be lower than those charged under previous restructuring or conolonation programs and no down payment shall be required for a borrower to apply for the benefits of this restructuring program;
1
o) Ail penalties and surcharges shaii be condoned upon approval of the application under this Act: Provided, that aii accmed interests shall be added to the remaining balance of the principal, the aggregate of which shaii be considered as the new prinoipai amount; d) A borrower-appiicant may be aiiowed to use the totai accumulated value of hislher membership contribution or savings with the GSlS, SSS, or HDMF to pay in fuil or in part hismer housing ioan;
e) The term of a housing loan account being appiied for restructuring may be extended for a period longer than its original tenn in order to lower the amount of the monthly amortization to a maximum of One Thousand Five Hundred (P‘l,500.00) for a period of three (3) years from the approval of the application, after which, the monthly amortization will revert back to its original amount. The unservioed portion ensuing from the three~year towered monthly amortization shaii be paid on the last year of the term of the housing loan along with the last monthly amortization. in the event that the borrower fails to pay any amortization during the three-year period, helshe shall voluntarily surrender his-‘her property without need of judicial proceedings;
f) In case of incapacity of a borrower, hisfner heirs and successors-in interest may assume payment of hisiher outstanding housing loan; and
g) Loan restructuring under this Act may be availed only once.
AI! corresponding penalties and surcharges with NHMFC may have to pay its funders as a resuit of the implementation of this Act shalt be automatically adjusted and condoned.
Sac. 3. Exclusion from Coverage. – In no instance shall the following housing loan accounts be covered by this Act:
a) Any account without a single payment since takeout;
b) An account whose housing unit has been abandoned by the borrower
cwner for more than two (2) years;
c) An account whose housing unit has remained unoccupied for a period of
at least two (2) years; d) An account whose housing unit is occupied by a third party other than the
original registered beneficiaiy; and
e) An account that has been foreclosed, the title of which has already been consoiidatedltransferred in the name of the govemment financing institution.
Sec. 4. Declaration of Dividends. – The declaration ofdividends of the funds managed by the GSIS, sss, and HDMF shall be limited to their members who have not avaiied ofthe restructuring program under this Act
Sec. 5. Contribution of Government Financing Institutions to the National Shelter Program. — The contribution of the govemrnent financing institutions to the NSP shall be limited to the net eamings derived from their housing programs.
2
Sec. S. Incentive for Prompt Payment of Monthly Amortization. — Upon the effectivity of this Act, all accounts whose monthly amorlizations are paid on time shall be entitled to a reasonable discount on loan interest.
Sec. 7. Applicability on Delinquent Accounts Due to Defective Housing Units. – This Act shaii likewise apply to borrowers who faiiecl or refused to pay their monthly amortizations due to structurally defective or substandard housing units andior subdivisions lacking in basic amenities such as water, light, drainage, good roads, and others and as required by iaw.
Sec. 8. implementing Rules and Regulations. – There is hereby created an inter-agency committee headed by the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and composed of all govemment institutions and agencies enumerated in Section 2 hereof tasked to promulgate the implementing rules and regulations within sixty (60) days from the effectivity of this Act.
Sec. s. Congressional Oversight Committee. – There is hereby created a Congressional Oversight Committee composed of the Chairman of the House Committee on Urban Planning, Housing and Resettlement, five (5) members of the Senate and six (6) members of the House of Representatives. The members from the Senate shall be appointed by the Senate President from among the members of the Senate Committee on Urban Planning, Housing and Resettlement based on the proportional representation of the parties or coalitions therein. The members from the House of Representatives shali be appointed by the Speaker from among the members of the House Committee on Housing and Urban Development based on the proportionai representation of the parties or coalitions therein.
The Oversight Committee shall review and approve the Implementing Rules and Regulations. it shall also review the performance of the gcvemment financing institutions and agencies involved in the implementation of this Act.
Sec. 10. Repealing Clause. Ail laws, executive orders, rules or reguiations, or any part thereof, inconsistent with any provisions of this Act are hereby repealed or modified accordingly.
Sec. 11. Effiectivlty Clause. This Act shail take elfect fifteen (15) days after its complete pubiication in the Officiai Gazette or in at least two (2) national newspapers ofgenerai circulation.
Message To Humanity: The Time is Now – The Revolution Is Coming!
A revolution is coming to America.. Not Just America but the World, people are waking up and finally realising how the world works and that their rights as free human beings are slowly being taken away from them..
The 99% are rising up!
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As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose
sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon
corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and
those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the
people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the
Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic
power.
We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest
over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled
here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system
through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement,and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay andsafer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens
of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achievethe same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity.They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. To the people of the world, we, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy,we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
The statement issued from Zuccotti Park, by the general assembly, at Occupy Wall Street.