During one of the committee hearings, it was disclosed that it is cheaper to send products from other countries to the Philippines than to ship goods within the country.
For example, the cost of shipping a 20-foot equivalent unit (TEU) from Kaoshiung, China to Cagayan de Oro is $360 or P16,000 only.
However, the cost of shipping the same cargo from Manila to Cagayan de Oro will cost $1,120 or almost P50,000.
via Bam wants foreign ships to have access to local ports.
Seth's Blog: What are you seeking at work?
What are you seeking at work?Some people want safety and respect. They want to know what the work rules are, they want a guarantee that the effort required is both predictable and rewarded. They seek an environment where they won’t feel pushed around, surprised or taken advantage of.Other people want challenge and autonomy. They want the opportunity to grow and to delight or inspire the people around them. They seek both organizational and personal challenges, and they like to solve interesting problems.Without a doubt, there’s an overlap here, but if you find that your approach to the people around you isn’t resonating, it might because you’re giving your people precisely what they don’t want.Posted by Seth Godin on September 19, 2014
via Seth’s Blog: What are you seeking at work?.
How Much is 2.2 Billion?:::Will Senator Nancy Binay call on her dad to do the same? | Opinion | GMA News Online
How much is P2.2 billion?
In real numbers, just how much is P2.2 billion?
· It is equivalent to providing PhilHealth benefits to 916,000 indigent families all over the country.
· It is equivalent to providing full college scholarships to 5,500 financially underprivileged but deserving Filipino youth.
· It is equivalent to providing low-cost housing to 14,000 indigent families all over the country.
As you can see, this staggering amount is enough to change the lives of so many Filipinos thus, the least we can expect from our government leaders from the President down to our barangay leaders is to use our hard-earned taxpayers’ money in a most effective and ethical way.
via Will Senator Nancy Binay call on her dad to do the same? | Opinion | GMA News Online.
The Work Required To Have An Opinion | Farnam Street
Li Lu recently reminded me that Charlie Munger used to say something along the lines of “You’re not entitled to take a view, unless and until you can argue better against that view than the smartest guy who holds that opposite view. If you can argue better than the smartest person who holds the opposite view, that is when you are entitled to hold a certain view.”
via The Work Required To Have An Opinion | Farnam Street.
iPhone 6 and Android value — Benedict Evans
How much of an impact will these new iPhones have on that segment? There are a bunch of reasons why someone would buy a high-end Android rather than an iPhone:
Their operator subsidies an Android but not an iPhone – this has now ended, with Apple adding distribution with all the last significant hold-outs (Sprint, DoCoMo, China Mobile)
They don’t particularly care what phone they get and the salesman was on more commission to sell Androids or, more probably, Samsungs that day (and iPhones the next, of course)
They have a dislike of Apple per se – this is hard to quantify but probably pretty small, and balanced by people with a dislike of Google
They are heavily bought into the Google ecosystem
They like the customizations that are possible with Android and that have not been possible with iOS until (to a much increased extent) iOS8 (more broadly, once could characterize this as ‘personal taste’)
They want a larger screen.
Splitting these out, the first has largely gone, the second is of little value to an ecosystem player and nets out at zero (i.e. Apple gains as many indifferent users as it loses) and the third is small. Apple has now addressed the fifth and sixth, and the massive increase in third-party attach points means that Google’s ecosystem (and Facebook’s incidentally) can now push deep into iOS – if Google chooses to do so.
That is, with the iPhone 6 and iOS8, Apple has done its best to close off all the reasons to buy high-end Android beyond simple personal preference. You can get a bigger screen, you can change the keyboard, you can put widgets on the notification panel (if you insist) and so on. Pretty much all the external reasons to choose Android are addressed – what remains is personal taste.
Amongst other things, this is a major cull of Steve Jobs’ sacred cows – lots of these are decisions he was deeply involved in. No-one was quicker than Steve Jobs himself to change his mind, but it’s refreshing to see so many outdated assumptions being thrown out.
via iPhone 6 and Android value — Benedict Evans.
rePost::Binary confusion: kilobytes and kibibytes | blog.forret.com
In 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published Amendment 2 to “IEC 60027-2: Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics”;. This standard, which had been approved in 1998, introduced the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, pebi-, exbi-, to be used in specifying binary multiples of a quantity. The names come from the first two letters of the original SI prefixes followed by bi which is short for “binary”. It also clarifies that, from the point of view of the IEC, the SI prefixes only have their base-10 meaning and never have a base-2 meaning.
(from en.wikipedia.org)
So this is the correct usage for file, disk, memory size:
Kilobytes (KB) 1.000 Kibibyte (KiB) 1024
Megabyte (MB) 1.000 ^ 2 Mebibyte (MiB) 1024 ^ 2
Gigabyte (GB) 1.000 ^ 3 Gibibyte (GiB) 1024 ^ 3
Terabyte (TB) 1.000 ^ 4 Tebibyte (TiB) 1024 ^ 4
Petabyte (PB) 1.000 ^ 5 Pebibyte (PiB) 1024 ^ 5
… … … …
via Binary confusion: kilobytes and kibibytes | blog.forret.com.
Japanese companies turn Filipino workers into overseas leaders- Nikkei Asian Review
I’m so happy reading stuff like these that I have to link to in twice.
THI sends Filipino hires to Tsuneishi Shipbuilding, a core company of Tsuneishi group, in Fukuyama, for training in Japanese craftsmanship. Kawano said the company’s goal is to dispatch engineers from Cebu as instructors in Tsuneishi factories around the world.
Fifty THI employees have already been sent to Paraguay to work as technology instructors at a Tsuneishi Holdings dock that began building river boats in 2011. Tsuneishi also plans to build a new shipyard in Southeast Asia and dispatch THI technology instructors there too.
Learning to lead
via Japanese companies turn Filipino workers into overseas leaders- Nikkei Asian Review.
rePost::UP basketball players go to games hungry – literally, says Maroon fan
Late reading this.
If you are from UP please read this!
One of our players was offered what would translate in any parlance as a “bribe” — allowances of all sorts, housing, and the spot cash of P1 million — just to play for another school. He is 17, young, impressionable, and impoverished like most of his teammates. Saying “yes” would have been the easier and more lucrative response. True to his UP education, I was told, he gave an emphatic “No!”
But like I said, basketball has grown shamelessly commercialized these days. The other school went directly to our player’s hometown to talk to his parents. If the kid won’t agree, perhaps, the parents will be a tad less uncompromising, they must have thought.
Our Maroon, having learned of what happened, borrowed money, practically begging for airfare so he can convince his parents otherwise. Back in his hometown, he pleaded with them: “I am staying in UP. I will get my UP diploma. UP is my team, my second family, my community!”
Of course, every parent would want the best for their children. The offer was tempting, sure, but the kid’s plea was also unbending. The father requested only one thing: one win, one win out of several games in a season; not the championship, not the MVP, just one win; not the sun and the stars, just a ray of hope that this adolescent does not waste away his future on something so abstract as the “UP way.”
via UP basketball players go to games hungry – literally, says Maroon fan.
rePost:8 annoying messages you encounter when selling things online | Calvin's Hub
Why I’d rather just gift something rather than sell it!
In a perfect world, buyers and sellers won’t have to expend a lot of messages back and forth just to agree on a transaction without stiffing one another. But we’re not in a perfect world are we?
I’m doing a kind of 8-list thingy with this topic here and to make it hit my point, I’ll be writing it in English and Filipino.
via 8 annoying messages you encounter when selling things online | Calvin’s Hub.
Online freelance workers get support from Bam Aquino | ABS-CBN News
Aquino encouraged the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Science and Technology -ICT to craft an e-Commerce Roadmap that will help concerned stakeholders, especially in terms of Internet speed and access.
“The rate of Internet access has increased about 10 to 15 percent since 2010 as a whole. The more we increase our Internet usage and Internet penetration, we are looking at a space where we can generate employment,” the senator said.
Aquino also urged the Bureau of Internal Revenue and DTI to relax their registration rules and provide incentives to encourage online-based workers to get into the formal economy.
“Let’s not cast fear among the online freelancers, if we can get them into a nurturing environment, we can actually help their businesses grow. Once they grow, they will provide employment, provide for their families and it will go back to the economy anyway,” he said.
“Let’s review the Barangay Micro Business Enterprise Law or BMBE Law –which exempts a business owner from paying income tax as long as its assets are not higher than P3 million, and see how it can be applied to online freelancers.”
via Online freelance workers get support from Bam Aquino | ABS-CBN News.