Category: personal AnGoL

Posted on

rePost::Memo: NYT’s Sulzberger, Robinson Explain ‘Important Decision About Our Future’ | paidContent

Hmm, hearing the news (from facebook post of gelo) that NYTimes would put up some sort of paywall made me think how much I would pay for their service.
Let’s see:
10 PhP per day x 6 days a week (I don’t read much of anything sunday) x 52 weeks a year / 46 Php/USD: around 68 $ per year
I’d pay an extra 12$ if they give me full feeds of the NYT stuff I follow, so I can read it at google reader.  Must mark this post to remind myself to subscribe when they put up the paywall.

On the Record . . . From Arthur + Janet
Vol. 1 2010: An Important Decision about Our Future
Today we are announcing that we will be introducing a paid model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011. As you will see in the press release, we have chosen a metered approach that will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.
The metered model implementation is an integral part of our comprehensive plan for enhancing NYTimes.com. In 2010 we will continue initiatives such as Times Open, Times Topics and our work to develop more active communities and more fully integrate the real-time Web. We will continue to develop new online products and offerings as part of our effort to enhance the user experience for our readers and advertisers.
Our strategy is to build the metered model while we remain focused on making NYTimes.com more compelling, interactive and entertaining, providing many more reasons for online audiences to visit our site and stay longer. In the weeks ahead, we will be adding resources to achieve these critically important goals.
Since NYTimes.com is, by a variety of standards, one of the world’s most popular and successful news Web sites, why are we changing our model at all?
We are doing so because we believe that a second revenue stream will be an important part of our future. While digital advertising will continue to be the major contributor to our success on the Web, we expect that online subscription revenue will improve our ability to grow an important part of this business.
via Memo: NYT’s Sulzberger, Robinson Explain ‘Important Decision About Our Future’ | paidContent.

Posted on

rePost::MLQ3 on Tumblr!: A Philippinres That Works: Benigno S. Aquino III

nice read. napanood na ni noy ang invictus???

We must find a unity that transcends the divisions of today, based on a shared commitment to transforming our country into one that works: One where traffic flows well, garbage is collected efficiently, crimes are solved, justice is served, and our kids are educated properly. It works in the sense that you do not have to flee the country to move up in the world, improve your lot in life, and rise to the highest level your personal merits can achieve.
We are a nation of sacrifice, of diligence, dedication and, idealism, because we are a people imbued with compassion even when we have officials who lie, cheat, and steal. Our faith teaches us that we are our brother’s keeper. Our logic should tell us that in taking care of others, their growth equals our own.
In the movie “Invictus,” Nelson Mandela says, “In order to rebuild our nation, we must exceed our own expectations.” It requires us to insist, always, that we are not a nation of crooks, of thieves, of murderers who get off scot-free and where justice is won by the highest bidder.
In May, you will be asked to make a choice. Will you choose transformation and change or will you choose to uphold the status quo?
We have already made our choice. Ours is a journey towards transformation. I ask you today to join us in this journey now.
via MLQ3 on Tumblr!: A Philippinres That Works: Benigno S. Aquino III.

Posted on

Best Read::Nicanor Perlas and the Dreams of an Ordinary Citizen | Filipino Voices

Millions share his vision because they see, and feel it. Perlas is someone crying out in the wilderness and asking people to come to him and share his vision for the Nation. Perlas wants to unite people and fight against poverty. Perlas wants to eradicate graft and corruption. Perlas will exercise strong political will to fight the forces that weaken the Motherland. And Perlas will see to it that those who have committed grave injustices against the People are put behind bars.There is something terribly wrong when people like Nicanor Perlas who once lived peacefully in their rich hamlets are suddenly seen in the streets, preaching the Gospel of Salvation from poverty and wants. When people who hate politics are suddenly going around town, preaching of “New Politics”, that’s surely a sign that things have turned for the worst.It just means that the exploitation, the degradation, the immorality, the amorality, the misery of the human condition, has seeped into the comfort zones of those who are not of the hungred kind.And I laud Blogwatch.ph and the Vibal Foundation for allowing me to partake of Nicanor Perlas’ vision even for an hour. Meeting him just makes me realize that the end is definitely not near, because there are still a few good men left who will sacrifice everything, just so that others may live better lives.
via Nicanor Perlas and the Dreams of an Ordinary Citizen | Filipino Voices.

Posted on

rePost::Red Squirrel's Nuts – 50% Time

The problem is really to work an extra 20 hours per week on self improvements means you have enough energy to to expend in self improvement. This is why I am limiting myself to jobs within 30 minutes from my house optimistically and within 1.5 hours with traffic. If the commute is too long I’m too tired to study/self improve. Life is too short to waste on a commute.

At the time I was finishing Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, a book that digs deep into the stories and counter-cultural explanations of successful people. Having someone so close to my context tweeting about a topic related to the book I was reading helped me see something I hadn’t noticed before. I’ve spent years trying to make sense of how a person evolves from a novice programmer to an accomplished software developer. And up until now I haven’t paid enough attention to the raw number of hours spent deliberately working to improve oneself. Uncle Bob calls us to work a sustainable pace in our day jobs (40 hours), so we have time (20 hours) to improve ourselves in the off-hours. Most people don’t do that, though. It’s not considered normal. People who spend time doing more of what appears to be their job in the off-hours are seen as obsessed or workaholics. Maybe we are, there is some grey area there, and I know I’ve taken it too far before. One of the ingredients to being an outlier, though, is an opportunity to work hard. Sure, many outliers have had some good breaks, like being born in the right decade (American entrepreneurs in the 1830’s) or even the right month (Canadian junior hockey players in January), but that luck only provided them with an opportunity to work hard at something that they wanted to do.
via Red Squirrel’s Nuts – 50% Time.

Posted on

Musings 2010 01 20

I fear the low hanging fruits have been or would be picked within this year, what I mean is the places to go to/ food to eat / events to experiences that are within easy reach has been. This means that I’d have to earn more to enjoy newer experiences. Thought about this when I saw a post about Sundance, minor want would be to go to those film fest even once.Here’s to dreaming and trying to fulfill those dreams.
this was the post that prompted that thought, from  my favorite film blog /Film:
http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/01/20/film-has-arrived-at-sundance-film-festival-2010/

Posted on

rePost:: Ambition and Imagination 01/19/2010

I’ve been wondering lately why I lack ambition, its probably from my nihilistic tendencies. I don’t really know if I want to change enough to change. This was a nice post, read the whole thing.

At about the same time, I was noticing that people can exist in the same general place and yet inhabit different time. Some people live for the moment, others are stuck in the past, and some live in the future. You can identify people’ time zones by their conversation. People who live in the past will compare everything now to something that went before, or tell you how the past made them what they are. The lucky people who live in the present will talk about their immediate environment. And the people living in the future will talk about their plans or predictions.
via Scott Adams Blog: Ambition and Imagination 01/19/2010.

Posted on

rePost:: Information wants to be free my ass

If we do not support finacially the artists that enriches our lives, we may one day have none of them any longer.

It’s a strange world we live in. We begrudge the folks who actually create the stuff we enjoy reading, listening to, and watching a few pennies for their labor, and yet at the very same time we casually throw hundreds of hard-earned bucks at the saps who run the stupid networks through which the stuff is delivered. We screw the struggling artist, and pay the suit.
Somebod’s got a good thing going.
via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Information wants to be free my ass.

Posted on

Quote:: Does Travel Make You Smarter?

So let’s not pretend that travel is always fun, or that we endure the jet lag for pleasure. We don’t spend ten hours lost in the Louvre because we like it, and the view from the top of Machu Picchu probably doesn’t make up for the hassle of lost luggage. (More often than not, I need a vacation after my vacation.) We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.
via Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Does Travel Make You Smarter?.

Posted on

rePost::Analytics X Prize – Home

must file in the maybe part of my to do list!!!!

Welcome to the Analytics X Prize
The Analytics X Prize is an ongoing contest to apply analytics, modeling, and statistics to solve the social problems that affect our cities. It combines the fields of statistics, mathematics, and social science to understand the root causes of dysfunction in our neighborhoods. Understanding these relationships and discovering the most highly correlated variables allows us to deploy our limited resources more effectively and target the variables that will have the greatest positive impact on improvement.
Current Contest – 2010 – Predicting Homicides in Philadelphia
Philadelphia is a city with 5.8 million people spread out over 47 zip codes and, like any major city, it has its share of crime. The goal of the Analytics X Prize is to use statistical techniques and any data sets you can find to predict where crime, specifically homicides, will occur in the city. The ability to accurately predict where crime is likely to occur allows us to deploy our limited city resources more effectively. Full rules can be found on the Rules & FAQ page.
via Analytics X Prize – Home.

Posted on

rePost::“A Message of Modern Politics” by Randy David | Filipino Voices

This was an excellent write up of a speech/lecture? Prof Randy David gave. It’s an interesting read!!!

Quest for political stability
David observes that Filipinos are “sick and tired” of politics. In other societies, people are not overburdened with politics. And normally citizens think only about it during elections. The fact the politics consumes much of our national imaginary has both good and bad effects, he says. It is good in that citizens are kept informed. It is bad in that the constant politicking leaves little room to do much of anything else. It is time spent away from thinking about ways to improve education and health, growing businesses and the arts.
He says in the region the Philippines has had the longest experience with elections and yet we cannot seem to get it right. Elections are a good way of making the transition from a ‘traditional’ to a ‘modern’ society.
Here he gives quick yet unerring definitions of these broad concepts. A ‘traditional’ society is one of hierarchies. One might also call them ‘feudal’, ties and associations based on families. He also calls this society ‘limited-access’ in that only certain people enjoy monopolies of power and influence. A ‘modern’ society is ‘open-access’ and allows associations not based on familial or personal ties but through functions. They are ‘functionally differentiated’, allowing for clear divisions between politics and business, politics and religion, politics and other public realms. One might argue that a modern society is also more democratic.
David then makes an astonishing claim, one that many of us will probably instantly recognize but which we have not yet articulated, most of all to ourselves. I know I was struck by it. David claims we cannot seem to make that transition from being a ‘traditional’ (i.e. hierarchical, monopolistic) society to a ‘modern’ (i.e. truly democratic) society. We are stuck somewhere in the middle, exhibiting characteristics of either model. And here is where David makes a crucial point. He asks, why is it important to modernize?
via “A Message of Modern Politics” by Randy David | Filipino Voices.