Saturday, January 31, 2009

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

It's all about the money (well, for most of us)

From a post by an ex-Google employee:
In one TGIF in Kirkland, an employee informed Eric Schmidt that Microsoft’s benefits package was richer. He announced himself genuinely surprised, which genuinely surprised me. Schmidt, in the presence of witnesses, promised to bring the benefits to a par. He consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his tired, familiar standby (”People don’t work at Google for the money. They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a billionaire.
Amen to that. I too have heard about similar stories of senior management folks who, having made their fortunes in stock options, feign incredulity and exclaim, "Don't tell me you are in it for the money!", when the sorry fact is that if the next month's paycheck isn't in, it's a question of which bill can you postpone payment for.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

FUD statement of the day

"We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware when I get on a jet."
-- Anne H. Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS

That's right, all free software is baaad.

Gaza

Why does Hamas still persist with not recognizing the state of Israel and calling for its destruction, thereby providing a fig leaf to Israel to carry out its genocide? Hamas' hatred may be justified, but pragmatism dictates that they do what is best for their people. Of course, it's a moot point that Israel would come to reason and start conforming to internationally accepted standards of behaviour once Hamas does this.

Deccan Chronicle 1 - 0 Hindu

Headline in The Hindu:
Order allowing plea challenging appointment of Ananth stayed
Head hurts, trying to figure out whether this is good news for the director or not.

Deccan Chronicle version:
HC reprieve for IIT-M director
Thanks, got it.