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I want one
Awesome looking electric car.
Source: autoblog.com
What goes around, comes around, and it seems the era of electric vehicles is
about to come around again. Last year a vintage car rally stopped off at my
house for a tea break. (Click to enlarge)
Although not shown here there were some veteran electric cars from pre 1905,
when electric cars were quite common. One of the benefits of electric cars is
that they are a lot, lot simpler than petrol or diesel driven ones. Modern
electric motors can be built with just one moving part - compare that to the
hundreds of components in a typical engine.
I’ve seen prototype electric cars with the motors embedded into the wheel so
then almost all the ‘works’ of a modern car are just gone, no central engine, no
gearbox. And a large bunch of batteries replacing the fuel-tank. And with
battery technology advancing at a rapid rate, we’ll all soon be driving electric
cars - seriously within 10 year such cars will be commonplace. Within 20 years
petrol driven cars will seems as old fashioned as the ones shown here.
More on Electric cars here
Copy / Paste pictures into Gmail
Cloud computing is the future. I’ve believed this for a very long time - even
started a company doing cloud-based software more than 10 years ago. I’ve
been surprised how long it’s taken to become established, but cloud-
computing is now becoming mainstream. And there’s almost no type of
software that can’t be done better in the cloud.
The highest profile examples are web-based email, such as Hotmail and the
current king Gmail (from Google).
But one problem of using a web browser to operate software such as Gmail or
Google Docs (web-based Office applications) is a pretty basic one - you can’t
copy pictures from desktop applications into web-based ones. If you do a lot
with graphics and photos, as I do, this is a real pain. The only way to copy a
graphic from Word, say, into Gmail, is first save it from Word then in your email
program select Upload, browse to the image and upload it to the server. And
some email systems don’t even provide image upload.
Well here’s a utility that solves the problem. It’s called PicturePaste. It’s great.
Let’s screw the bankers - tax them 98%
I'm no lover of banks, but when I see the witch hunt going on in the media
regarding the bankers bonuses and bankers in general I despair. This is a
McCarthy-style witch hunt, lead by the media (as always), whipping up anger,
hatred and jealousy. It's sickening to see. The worst culprits of the supposedly
respectable press, the BBC, (that utter idiot Preston, who speaks as if his
audience are five years old) and just about all UK media are jumping on the
bandwagon. Hey everyone's doing it so ‘let’s bash the bankers’.
The press and media in general is one of the worst aspects of living in the UK.
If it’s not focussed on fatuous, infantile ‘celebrity’ of non-entities, it specialises
in scandal and jealousy, and loves bashing not only those that are successful,
but any high profile ‘star’. The UK media, almost without exception, is wholly
negative, specialising in reporting nothing but bad news, half of it made up.
The so-called respectable press as as bad as any.
And when you see the government milking this situation, with populist laws
brought in on a whim because ‘the masses demand it’. Jesus, what sort of
place is this country?
Some banker’s bonuses are excessive I’ll agree. Banks are poorly run, and
don’t help business growth in this country. But to tax the entire financial
industry up to 98% tax is an insane over-reaction. And frankly I’d rather give
money to the bankers than the government to throw it away or (mis-)use on
their bonuses.
I never though I'd like to see 98% taxes imposed on anyone in this country, but
that’s what is now imposed on bankers. No it’s not the 50% ‘bonus tax’ you
thought it was. It’s a lot, lot more than that. Check this out;
Example:
A bonus of £200,000 made to an individual would incur the following
deductions:
This represents a 98% tax burden on the net payment of £200,000 to the
employee.
A high flyer is any other industry, who was bringing in millions worth of
business (and quite a lot of salesmen can earn bonuses like this) then £200k
bonus is not unreasonable. But oh no, if you’re a banker (and the definition by
the government is now so wide that means anyone in the financial industry)
how dare you reward success - and we the government will have it ALL back.
But of course the press don’t report that. Because then the people might wake
up and realise ‘oops, perhaps we’ve gone a bit far’ on this bash-the-bankers
jolly.
Message from government to bankers and banks: You really, really don’t want
to operate in this country.
And since London is the largest financial center in the world, this has to be one
of the most effective ways to destroy that business. I’m sure some people
might think ‘screw the bankers’, but like it or not the financial industry, mostly
in London, generates a huge proportion of the wealth of this country.
Android is going to be huge
For those that don’t know Android it’s a mobile phone operating system
created by Google. And Android is going to be larger than the iPhone, by far,
for exactly the same reasons Microsoft Windows beat Apple the last time a new
platform emerged.
I can’t stress how significant Android will be to the future of computing. Some
very
well connected and experienced people have suggested the mobile
computing platform (smart phones if you will) will be larger
than the PC industry. I believe it.
So I bet in a few years time Android will be larger than iPhone
and in 10 years it will have 80% market share and be part of an
industry larger than the PC industry.
If I was a software developer today I’d be focussing entirely on the mobile
platform (and that includes the mobile web-based platform). Oh, I am a
software developer...
A web log, a test of my design web software, stories about the absurd, the dumb & interesting stuff.
Source of tax
Tax payable
50% special levy payable by the company
(£200,000 - £25,000)
£87,500
12.8% Employer’s National Insurance
£25,600
Employee’s 40% income tax on £200,000
£80,000
1% Employee’s additional National Insurance
£2,000
Total tax burden
£195,100
Source: http://www.uploadlibrary.com/KleinwortBenson/prebudgetrespose200912.html
December 2009
November 2009
Jan 2010
What is ‘cloud-computing’? It’s relatively new
jargon for web-based software, or client-server,
and really it’s no different than the decades old
mainframe-terminal style of computing. In the
modern context it means the software runs on the
Internet servers (the cloud), rather than on your
local computer, and you control is via a web
browser.
Checkout Wikipedia’s definition
I want one
Awesome looking electric car.
Source: autoblog.com
What goes around, comes around, and it seems the era of electric vehicles is
about to come around again. Last year a vintage car rally stopped off at my
house for a tea break. (Click to enlarge)
Although not shown here there were some veteran electric cars from pre 1905,
when electric cars were quite common. One of the benefits of electric cars is
that they are a lot, lot simpler than petrol or diesel driven ones. Modern
electric motors can be built with just one moving part - compare that to the
hundreds of components in a typical engine.
I’ve seen prototype electric cars with the motors embedded into the wheel so
then almost all the ‘works’ of a modern car are just gone, no central engine, no
gearbox. And a large bunch of batteries replacing the fuel-tank. And with
battery technology advancing at a rapid rate, we’ll all soon be driving electric
cars - seriously within 10 year such cars will be commonplace. Within 20 years
petrol driven cars will seems as old fashioned as the ones shown here.
More on Electric cars here
Copy / Paste pictures into Gmail
Cloud computing is the future. I’ve believed this for a very long time - even
started a company doing cloud-based software more than 10 years ago. I’ve
been surprised how long it’s taken to become established, but cloud-
computing is now becoming mainstream. And there’s almost no type of
software that can’t be done better in the cloud.
The highest profile examples are web-based email, such as Hotmail and the
current king Gmail (from Google).
But one problem of using a web browser to operate software such as Gmail or
Google Docs (web-based Office applications) is a pretty basic one - you can’t
copy pictures from desktop applications into web-based ones. If you do a lot
with graphics and photos, as I do, this is a real pain. The only way to copy a
graphic from Word, say, into Gmail, is first save it from Word then in your email
program select Upload, browse to the image and upload it to the server. And
some email systems don’t even provide image upload.
Well here’s a utility that solves the problem. It’s called PicturePaste. It’s great.
Let’s screw the bankers - tax them 98%
I'm no lover of banks, but when I see the witch hunt going on in the media
regarding the bankers bonuses and bankers in general I despair. This is a
McCarthy-style witch hunt, lead by the media (as always), whipping up anger,
hatred and jealousy. It's sickening to see. The worst culprits of the supposedly
respectable press, the BBC, (that utter idiot Preston, who speaks as if his
audience are five years old) and just about all UK media are jumping on the
bandwagon. Hey everyone's doing it so ‘let’s bash the bankers’.
The press and media in general is one of the worst aspects of living in the UK.
If it’s not focussed on fatuous, infantile ‘celebrity’ of non-entities, it specialises
in scandal and jealousy, and loves bashing not only those that are successful,
but any high profile ‘star’. The UK media, almost without exception, is wholly
negative, specialising in reporting nothing but bad news, half of it made up.
The so-called respectable press as as bad as any.
And when you see the government milking this situation, with populist laws
brought in on a whim because ‘the masses demand it’. Jesus, what sort of
place is this country?
Some banker’s bonuses are excessive I’ll agree. Banks are poorly run, and
don’t help business growth in this country. But to tax the entire financial
industry up to 98% tax is an insane over-reaction. And frankly I’d rather give
money to the bankers than the government to throw it away or (mis-)use on
their bonuses.
I never though I'd like to see 98% taxes imposed on anyone in this country, but
that’s what is now imposed on bankers. No it’s not the 50% ‘bonus tax’ you
thought it was. It’s a lot, lot more than that. Check this out;
Example:
A bonus of £200,000 made to an individual would incur the following
deductions:
This represents a 98% tax burden on the net payment of £200,000 to the
employee.
A high flyer is any other industry, who was bringing in millions worth of
business (and quite a lot of salesmen can earn bonuses like this) then £200k
bonus is not unreasonable. But oh no, if you’re a banker (and the definition by
the government is now so wide that means anyone in the financial industry)
how dare you reward success - and we the government will have it ALL back.
But of course the press don’t report that. Because then the people might wake
up and realise ‘oops, perhaps we’ve gone a bit far’ on this bash-the-bankers
jolly.
Message from government to bankers and banks: You really, really don’t want
to operate in this country.
And since London is the largest financial center in the world, this has to be one
of the most effective ways to destroy that business. I’m sure some people
might think ‘screw the bankers’, but like it or not the financial industry, mostly
in London, generates a huge proportion of the wealth of this country.
Android is going to be huge
For those that don’t know Android it’s a mobile phone operating system
created by Google. And Android is going to be larger than the iPhone, by far,
for exactly the same reasons Microsoft Windows beat Apple the last time a new
platform emerged.
I can’t stress how significant Android will be to the future of computing. Some
very
well connected and experienced people have suggested the mobile
computing platform (smart phones if you will) will be larger
than the PC industry. I believe it.
So I bet in a few years time Android will be larger than iPhone
and in 10 years it will have 80% market share and be part of an
industry larger than the PC industry.
If I was a software developer today I’d be focussing entirely on the mobile
platform (and that includes the mobile web-based platform). Oh, I am a
software developer...
